Marlowe and the Spacewoman (23 page)

Nothing happened.  The driver of the truck was leaning against the roof of the car, one arm on the open door, his head inside the cab.  He seemed totally oblivious to Nina.  Marlowe tried to keep a bead on him, but with every jolting step the barrel of his gun bounced up and down.  Nina spent a moment crouched on the far side of the Studebaker, raising just her hand above the window level to tap frantically on the glass.  Father ignored her, keeping the Studebaker buttoned up tighter than the Ministry of Policing headquarters.  Marlowe felt absolutely certain that the former dictator had dropped a few notches in her esteem.  

Marlowe suddenly realized that while watching Nina, he no longer had the driver under surveillance.  He whipped his eyes back on the driver, who was still buried headfirst in the cab of the truck.  Not being able to use both eyes independently felt strange to Marlowe, and he made a mental note to remember this liability while his PDI remained down.  Now that he had closed about half the distance between the truck and the escape hatch, he could make out more details of the driver’s clothing and general appearance.  He noticed some very familiar details.  

Nina had evidently noticed the familiar details first, because she had given up on getting into the Studebaker and had walked over to the cab.  The driver pulled his head out of the cab, and Marlowe recognized the man.  Of all the confounding irritations!  It was his father.  Nina turned and waved the all-clear to Marlowe.  Marlowe walked the last fifty meters.  Any perception of danger had evaporated upon recognizing his father, and he was tired.  In fact, he was breathing so hard when he did reach Nina that he couldn’t immediately speak.

“There’s no one here.  Just your father.”

“I thought,” panted Marlowe between gasps, “that I told you to stay in the damn car!”

“I was trying, you ungrateful bastard,” replied Jebediah between clenched teeth, “to stop this truck from pumping gas into the tunnel you had entered.”

“I only wish I was a bastard.”

“Excuse me, but will you two can the bickering?  We’ve got a truck right next to us pumping its explosive contents into a hole not much further away than the truck.  Perhaps you should put your differences aside long enough to address this, to me anyway, rather dire situation.”

Nina was right.  Marlowe hated to admit it, and he could see that his father also felt she was right and hated to admit it.  An awkward silence fell.  A few moments passed, and then Marlowe was surprised to hear a mumbled apology.  It was his.  

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”  

“Finally, the boy talks sense!”

His father never could take the high road.  To cover his swelling anger and irritation, Marlowe made a plodding circuit around the truck, examining it while counting down from ten.  It was a ordinary, garden variety City Gas and Electric delivery tanker.  A robot arm in the back was holding a hose down in a mound of fresh earth.  The last time Marlowe had seen that mound, it had been the entrance to the abandoned sewage plant.

“OK,” he said when his breath returned to him.  “Finally we’re getting somewhere.”

“What do you mean?” asked Nina.  “The truck’s automated.  There’s no one to interrogate.”

“Quite the contrary,” said Marlowe, walking up to the cab.  He opened the driver’s side door.  “Excuse me, what are you doing?”

“Oh, beg your pardon, sir,” responded the truck smartly.  “I didn’t notice you there.  I’m just refilling this tank.”

“I’ve already tried this,” broke in Jebediah.

Still staring into the cab of the truck, Marlowe started to count down from ten again.  He gave up and succumbed to the flash of irritation at nine.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  Is there someone else here who hasn’t been committed to a mental institution who feels competent to handle this assignment?”

“I haven’t been committed-” started Nina.

“Excuse me,” interrupted Marlowe.  “Allow me to clarify.  Is there anyone here who has spent at least the last eight years on Earth while at the same time not spending any of those years in a loony bin?  Raise your hands, please, if you aren’t from outer space and haven’t spent time in an asylum.”

Jebediah and Nina fell silent.  If glares were explosive, Nina had just lobbed a nuke Marlowe’s way.  Jebediah just stared at the ground.

“No hands?  No one?  Are you sure?  OK then, I’ll handle this.  Sorry for the interruption,  truck.  You said you were refilling a tank?”

“Yes, sir.  And quite all right about the interruption.  Doesn’t bother me in the slightest.  I’m here to serve.”

“What tank?”

“The natural gas tank for the electricity plant.”

“You’re not at an electricity plant.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but yes I am.”

Marlowe frowned.  This wasn’t very helpful.  “Have you looked around?”

“Yes, sir, I have.  Is there something amiss?”

“Which electric plant are you delivering to?”

“Why, sir, this one.”

Jebediah piped in.  “You see, I told you.”

Marlowe clenched his teeth and sucked in his breath.  “And which plant would that be?”

“Same one as is printed on that sign there sir, right next to the gas tank I’m filling.”

Marlowe looked around just to verify there was no tank or sign.  The only tank was the one on the truck.  There wasn’t a sign to be seen anywhere.

Nina leaned into Marlowe’s ear.  “What’s going on?  Is it blind?”

“I’m not sure.  I think it’s an ARA, but I’ve only seen that in people.  Never in a vehicle.”

“ARA?”

“Zounds, that explains some of it!” exploded Jebediah.

“Excuse us a moment, truck.”

“Certainly sir.  Hello madam, hadn’t noticed you there.”

Marlowe dragged Nina to the rear of the truck.  “An ARA is an alternate reality addict.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, in humans, it’s someone who has modified their sensory implants so that the world looks different.  The real images are filtered through the PDI, and things are added, removed, or altered, also known as ARA.  So if you don’t want to see ugly buildings and graffiti and pollution, you have your PDI filter everything you see so it’s shiny clean towers of glass, and City noise is edited out before your brain receives the auditory signal.  People build their fantasy world around them, and then can’t cope with actual reality.  It’s highly addictive.”

“So, computer programs as drugs.”

“I think, for the most part, that analogy works in this case.”

“So the truck is seeing things.”

“In a way, yes.  As far as its central core is concerned, the inputs are reality.  I doubt the truck stumbled into this.  Someone probably hacked it.”

“It’s so simple, I should have seen it.”  Jebediah looked relieved, although still somewhat concerned.  “I kept thinking it was me.  The truck was quite adamant about this being an electricity plant, and yet all I saw was a large open field.  I admit, I began to suspect I might be losing my mind.  An ARA!  How could I have missed that?  Still, it doesn’t explain-”

“Father, shh, please, I’m trying to think of a way to find out who hacked the truck.  If I had House here, it would be a piece of cake.”

While Marlowe pondered, Nina stared back at the cab.  “Why don’t we just ask the truck?”  Nina walked to the front of the truck.  “Excuse me, can I ask you a question?”

“Certainly ma’am.”

“Who ordered you out here?”

“Oh, beg your pardon, ma’am, I didn’t notice you there.  I’m just refilling this tank.”

“What?”

“Sorry, did I not enunciate clearly?  I apologize.  I’m just refilling this tank.  Almost done.  Odd, I am almost done.  I must have lost track of the time.  Very strange.”

“But you didn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t!?  I’m terribly sorry, I must not have heard you.  Better have my auditory systems checked next servicing.  Please, repeat your question for me.”

“Who sent you out here to fill the tank?”

Marlowe was standing beside Nina now, listening to the conversation.  

“Oh, beg your pardon, ma’am, I didn’t notice you there.  I’m just refilling this tank.  Almost done.  Odd, I am very nearly finished.  I must have lost track of the time.  Very strange.”

“There, you see!”  Jebediah was hopping up and down now, pointing at them with all of the fingers on both of his hands.  “’You’re crazy, let the sane man handle it.’  Well, there you go!  You’re just as stuck as I am.  If you’d just listened to me for a moment-”

Marlowe waved his father silent.  “The truck has been looped.”

“Looped?” asked Nina.

“Great Cesar’s ghost!  Looped!  Of course,” gasped Jebediah.

“Recursive loop hack.  Every time you ask a question that the hacker doesn’t want answered, the system gets reset.”

“I’m sorry, did you say something about me being loo-   Oh, beg your pardon, sirs and madam, I didn’t notice you there.  I’m just refilling this tank.  Almost done.  Odd, I am quite close to finished.  I must have lost track of the time.  Very strange.”

“I’m not crazy!  That damned truck kept going on about an electric plant that isn’t here, and then kept resetting its conversation every time I asked it who sent it here.  It was very confusing and disorienting.  I found the entire experience disconcerting.  It’s a good thing you showed up when you did, or this could have triggered a psychotic episode on my part.”

“Did it ever occurred to you that maybe it has?”

Nina closed the front door and leaned against it.  “Marlowe, Jebediah!  Enough!  Now what do we do?”

“Well, to be honest with you, I’m kinda worried about what happens when the truck finishes filling the tank.  And as the truck keeps saying, it’s almost done.”

Nina was already heading towards the Studebaker.  “You mean…BOOM!”

Jebediah backed away from the truck.  “BOOM?”

Marlowe tapped on the car window, and it unlocked the doors.  “Yes, I mean BOOM!  I don’t know what it’ll be like here, but I suspect the truck is not meant to survive this task.”

The Studebaker had been listening, and started backing up before Nina had her door closed.  Jebediah had to run after them to get in.  The car had decent acceleration in reverse, which gave the three passengers a good view of what happened next.  The truck must have finished, because the robot arm began pulling up the hose, looping it around the elbow of its arm.  They watched this under the bouncing illumination of the Studebaker’s headlights.  Then there was a spark, it wasn’t clear where it came from, but a few seconds after the spark there was a rumble, and the ground rippled, then a trough, three meters deep, twenty meters across and a couple of hundred meters long, formed.  The Studebaker, off-road at this point and using its wheels due to the lack of magnetic conduit, transmitted the tremors through its tires to Marlowe, Nina, and Jebediah.  Amazingly, following the blast there was no smoke or fire aside from a small jet of flame that flashed for a fraction of a second.

At about this point, Nina managed to close her door.

The tanker truck leaned dangerously to one side as a sinkhole formed.  The ground slowly sank a meter, and then suddenly dropped an additional two.  This toppled the truck which rocked back and forth a bit on its side.

“Hey,” pointed out Nina, “the truck wasn’t destroyed.  Maybe we can still get some info from it.”

Marlowe raised his hand over his eyes.  “Wait for it.”

The wait wasn’t long.  The Studebaker continued its steady, reversing retreat away from ground zero.  The skyward side of the truck was just visible over the edge of the trench.  Then the snap of a loud cracking sound raced over the car and the truck dropped out of sight.  Marlowe slammed on the brakes, and the Studebaker lurched to a halt, squealing angrily the whole time.

“It’s OK, car.  They’re not going to use a big bomb to destroy the truck after going to all the trouble of keeping the explosion that was supposed to kill Nina and me underground and out of sight.”

The car sounded its doubts with a shrill toot of the horn.  They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, staring off to where the truck had been.  Marlowe tapped his fingers impatiently on the wheel.

“Really, I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.  Don’t make me use the manual override.”

The Studebaker honked again, not quite as shrilly, and slowly rumbled forward, back towards the former entrance to the sewage treatment plant.  While the car reluctantly closed the gap, Nina leaned over to Marlowe and whispered softly to him.

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

Marlowe winked.  “Ninety nine percent.  I really want to get back to House and fix my PDI, but we need to check the truck before going home.”

“I demand you stop this car at once, Spares!  Only a madman would approach that site right now.  There could be additional booby traps!”

Marlowe stepped on the brakes again.  “I’ve already told you how I feel about that nickname.  Now, if you want out, you can get out right now.  But I will not be letting you back in.  If you leave the car, you walk home.  It’s your choice.”

Jebediah pouted, his arms folded as he muttered angrily to himself.  “Fine, I’ll stay here, but if anything happens, it all falls on you.  And they say I’m the crazy one!”