Marlowe and the Spacewoman (32 page)

“I have no idea what all we’ve found, but I suspect we’ve done quite well.  Let’s go.”

“Just a second,” said Nina.  “We still haven’t found the items they took from my ship.  Can’t we do a quick search for a wall safe or something?”

Marlowe looked back longingly to the entrance.  “Oh, very well, but make it quick.”

They pushed and pulled on every tank to see if that triggered any more secret passages.  It didn’t, but Marlowe noted with some satisfaction that the items growing in the tanks had stopped pulsating and now only dimly glowed.  Apparently the computer was needed to regulate everything.  Obedere would be very upset when he discovered what had happened.  And that actually worried Marlowe, now that he thought of it, and made him long even more for the exit.

Nina grew more frantic as the search continued without success.  “It’s got to be here somewhere,” she muttered to herself.  It was Jebediah who again inadvertently discovered the safe.  Not a wall safe but a floor safe.  He’d grown weary of the searching, looking very tired and worn out, and had sat on the floor again.  Only to jump up, biting his lower lip and rubbing his hindquarters.

“What is it, father?”

“Son of a parrot, there’s something in the sand!”

Marlowe and Nina started scooping away the sand where Jebediah had tried to sit.  As the sand was brushed and shoved aside, a handle was revealed.  Then a safe dial and stainless tritanium door.  The door was one meter by one meter, and had “Ministry of Policing Official Use Only.  DO NOT OPEN without authorization of the Chief Minister” etched into it in very large, very noticeable print.

Marlowe began digging into his inseam.  “Brute force won’t work here, Nina, but I have my safe-cracking kit in here somewhere.”

It was the work of a moment to extract the safe-cracking kit, but the work of several minutes to fit the ear piece, listen to the tumblers, measure the magnetic fluxes, and slide aside the explosive locking bolts.  But this Marlowe did, working with feverish intensity in order to expedite their exit.  Every added moment spent in Obedere’s lair felt like a moment closer to arrest.

In her eagerness to see the contents of the safe, Nina shoved Marlowe aside as he started to open the door.  “Sorry, I just need to see if it’s here.”

Marlowe rubbed the shoulder he landed on as Nina peered into the safe.  She squealed with delight and clapped her hands.  “It is here!  And so are the rocks!”  She pulled out a thick plastic bag containing coppery green, rust red, and smoky orange rocks ranging from small pebble-sized to larger fist-sized chunks.  

She hugged the bag before tossing it over to Marlowe.  “Space rocks.  Absolute, undeniable proof of my story.  But more important than those, I have this back!  Oh, how I’ve missed it!”

Nina reached back into the safe, and with some difficulty, extracted another object.  Unearthly, alien sounds erupted from the safe as she struggled with the unseen item.  Jebediah’s eyes grew wide.

“Good Governor, Spares, do you think she brought some sort of alien back with her?”

Marlowe listened to the struggling creature, which was wailing and shrieking in the most unspeakably horrible way.  “I don’t know, but it sure sounds like it.  And don’t call me Spares!”

Something peeked over the lip of the safe.  Something, and here Marlowe stood in gap-jawed amazement, tartan. Tartan and wheezing.  The creature had red skin with horizontal and vertical stripes of darker blues and purples.  And then the whole thing was out, Nina holding it tightly to her chest in an effort to keep it from escaping, its spiny dark appendages flapping and wobbling from its underside as she jumped up and down with her exertions.

“Oh, Marlowe, this is wonderful!  I have my bagpipes back!”

Jebediah looked to Marlowe, who looked back.  They both shrugged.  “It’s called a bagpipe?” asked Marlowe.

“Well of course!  Haven’t you seen a bagpipe before?”

“No, I haven’t, but I’m surprised at how…earthly the name sounds.  Can it talk?”

“Talk?  What are you going on about?  Oh my God, you think….”

Nina laughed for a few seconds, a boisterous burst of amusement, and then stopped to catch her breath.  “Oh, Marlowe, you are so silly.  Bagpipes are a musical instrument.  I brought them with me from Earth.  An alien!?  That’s too rich.”

“Oh, bagpipes!” said Jebediah.  “I misunderstood you at first.  Of course, bagpipes.  Musical instrument.  I knew that.”

Marlowe, in the middle of returning Obedere’s report on Nina to the desk, threw a baleful look Jebediah’s way, then cleared his throat.  “This is all very amusing, but we are still in the belly of the beast.  If you’ve found everything you want, I suggest we exit post-haste.”

“Um,” broke in Nina tentatively.  “Can we stop at a bathroom on the way out?”

Jebediah’s eyes grew round.  “Are you crazy?  We come this far, and now you want to kill yourself?”

Nina gave Jebediah a blank look.

“You want to hold it, Nina.  Trust me,” said Marlowe.  “They use vacuum-assisted flush toilets here, with auto-flush sensors.  You sit down, and about halfway through your business, the toilet auto flushes and the vacuum assist kicks in.  The very powerful vacuum assist.  Let’s just say you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that kind of suck - it’s always fatal.  The ministry installed them to discourage people from wasting work time going to the bathroom.”

Nina looked puzzled, then angry.  “Oh sure, killer toilets invented by men, no doubt.  You guys get the urge, at least you can use a urinal.  But women-”

“Urinal?”  Jebediah turned as white as his wide eyes.

“You’ve got the wrong idea, Nina,” said Marlowe.  “The toilets are bad, but the urinals.”  Marlowe shuddered.  “You don’t want to know what the urinals do.”

“If I can’t go here,” said Nina, “then we’d better get a move on right now.”

Marlowe carefully folded their copy of the report on Nina and stuffed it into a pocket inside his uniform.  The bulge was barely noticeable.  “No argument here.  We got what we came for, and then some.”

Jebediah, ever the gentleman, swept his arm out in an ‘after you’ gesture.  Needing no further prompting, Marlowe took the lead.

CHAPTER 18

ONE WE BURN SO THE COMMIES DON’T GET IT

The exit out went remarkably smoothly, if you discounted the team of commandos that was lying in ambush.  Fortunately, the commandos were only drilling for urban warfare, and after enduring a five minute tirade about paying attention to scheduled office closures delivered by a nametagless commanding officer, they were allowed to leave.  Marlowe, sending out a mental thank you to House for suggesting super-absorbent undergarments, continued onward with his team to the stairs and the freedom of the sewers.

House had been emphatic about waiting until they were home before reactivating the PDIs.  House had a couple of modified repair weevils skittling through the house broadcasting false signatures matching the PDIs of Marlowe and Jebediah, in the almost certain event that Obedere was monitoring them.  Any premature activation of the real PDIs would shatter the carefully crafted illusion that Marlowe, Nina, and Jebediah were walking in circles around his home.  It also offered a modicum of security as an alibi when Obedere discovered the break-in.

Marlowe pulled out the report the instant they were back in the car.  He would have preferred to have his PDI activated so when he read it, he’d generate an optically scanned copy at the same time.  Without it, his choices were to wait until he had a PDI to read it, or read it twice – once now and once after his PDI was back.  He couldn’t wait.  The bundle of paper was quite thick despite being double sided, almost two centimeters, and in the interest of expediency, he split it among the three of them.

“We each read a section, summarize it to the others, and then swap and read again.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until we have our PDIs back, so we’ll have electronic-”

“No father, we’ve got a bit of a drive with traffic, and I want to get started right away.”

They read.

The best news was the analysis of the rocks.  There were actually five analyses packaged into a final Finding of Fact.  The first report concluded the rocks were not terrestrial in nature.  The second report, which started out stating it was double-checking the work of the recently deceased first report’s author, reached the same conclusion.  The third report, which started out stating it was double-checking the work of the recently deceased first report’s author and the recently incarcerated second report’s author, cautiously and reluctantly reached the same conclusion as the first two reports.  The fourth and fifth reports were similarly prepared, with the end of the fifth report noting that the author of the first report had been allowed to resurrect, and that the second, third, and fourth authors had all been released from detention.  Replacement limbs were on order for authors number two and three.

The biggest surprise in their haul was a complete copy of the images and articles about Nina they had downloaded off the Internet.  Nina had gotten that section, and when she mentioned it was mostly printouts of pictures, Jebediah had muttered bitterly under his breath about the jumble of tiny letters on his pages and the failing eyesight of a weary old man.  

Apparently the Ministry of Policing also had an access point to the verboten Net, and had done their own search on Nina’s name.  That section had been marked with a large graphic overlay stating, ‘NOT TO BE SHOWN TO THE DEFENSE!’

Nina was excited.  “Well, this ought to do it, right?”

Marlowe was terse.  “Maybe.”

“Oh, come on!  Obedere’s own scientists acknowledge the rocks are from outer space.  How can I lose?”

“Well, aside from the fact that we stole the documents-”

“But Obedere said he didn’t take anything from the ship.  Accusing us of stealing the documents would mean he’d have to admit to lying about taking them from my ship.”

“There’s also,” broke in Jebediah, “the chain of evidence question.  It gets tricky.  Oh, I think we’ll be able to use the evidence, but we’d better have additional material to back it up.  The watermark on the paper is a stroke of luck in our favor.  Obedere won’t be able to challenge the authenticity.  But a few of the Joint Chiefs may raise some withering questions.”

“Oh.”  Nina visibly sagged.

“Not to worry,” said Marlowe.  “This case was never really about evidence.  It was about forging, or in this case, forcing alliances.  We have enough dirt on Obedere’s id box hijacking and body replacement projects that we can blackmail him to support you.  It’s a shame, really, because after we play that hand, he’ll erase any evidence of the program.  It’s a one-shot deal.”

The second section was about ‘Anomalous Object B1’ and at first none of them knew exactly what it was about.  The scientists had been very puzzled by B1 and were totally unable to ascertain its purpose.  A series of experiments and probings were described, from stimulus response tests that apparently consisted of poking the object with a stick, increasing the force incrementally, to x-ray analysis.

Nina started laughing when she got to the description.  “It’s my bagpipes!  What is it with you people and musical instruments?”

Marlowe shrugged.  “We have plenty of musical instruments.  Given the quality of music composed today, too many instruments.  But before today, I’d never seen or heard of a bagpipe before.  My guess is that these scientist types are pretty dry characters.  At least the ones willing to work for Obedere.”

The car stopped a couple of blocks from the house.  All part of the plan.  They couldn’t have the modified repair weevils running around inside if there was a constable watching the house to see the real Marlowe and Jebediah pull up in the car.  About a minute after stopping, Marlowe spotted the small repair drones hopping along the gutter like fat metal ticks with screwdrivers and wrenches for arms.  They were moving fast and skittered under the car just as a police flitter came around the corner.

They had dumped the uniforms in the sewer, much to everyone’s relief.  The fake uniforms had been stiff and abrasive, even with the PseudoPhelt lining House had added.  Now they were back in their street clothes, Nina in her FESP jumpsuit, Marlowe and Jebediah in a set of Marlowe’s backup outfits.  They’d forgotten to bring solvent to dissolve the uniforms, and had left them floating in the sewage sludge.  That worried Marlowe a bit, despite the mildly acidic nature of the sewer water.  He hated to leave any evidence lying around for the dragnet Obedere would surely launch once he discovered the break-in.  Hopefully he wouldn’t think to check the sewers.

There was a faint clicking sound, and the repair weevil telltale on the dash flickered briefly.  The car continued to House, followed not-so-discreetly by the police flitter.  But no constables accosted them as they exited the car and went inside.

“Welcome back, friends.  I trust everything went smoothly?”

“More or less.  House, I have a couple of CSUs for you.  Took them off a computer not on the network.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Obedere had a secret lair with a computer that was, well, isolated.  Not on any network.  Probably as proof against hacking.”

“I see.”  House’s tone conveyed strong disapproval.  “I will have to handle the Central Storage Units carefully.  An isolated computer intelligence is apt to go insane.  It’s considered extremely cruel to keep one off the CityNet.  So cruel there isn’t even a word to properly describe a computer not on the network.”

“How about ‘stand-alone’,” suggested Nina.

“Ah, an archaic but apt description.  I will update my dictionaries, but I hope to never have to use the term again.”

“The good news, House,” said Marlowe, “is assuming we find evidence of Obedere’s id box hijacking project and another project to extend his life on these CSUs, we know that your back door is secure.  Apparently the really secret projects are controlled on stand-alone computers you can’t access.”

“Then I will endeavor to find such evidence on these units.  However, to be safe, you’d better plug them into the sandbox port.  I will access them via a proxy to protect myself from any viruses or, worse, infectious insanity.”

Marlowe left the room with the CSUs.

“Sand box?” asked Nina.

“I will create a virtual computer with no real connections to me or the outside world.  I’ll then activate the CSUs to determine their contents.”

“We had something similar back in my day.  Any viruses would infect the virtual machine instead of the real one.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Marlowe returned.  “OK, House, whenever you’re ready.”

“Hmm.”  House sounded a touch unhappy.  “This is going to take a little while.  The CSU personality is uncooperative and…overbearing.  This may take a larger percentage of my resources than I first thought.  Oh well.  I have some additional information for you.  Paslin Biological finished their analysis and messengered over the results about an hour ago.  The bill was quite large.  I do hope your brother doesn’t raise a fuss when he sees it.  And my posting on the CityNet about the ship in orbit inspired several amateur astronomers to look for it.  The pictures are fuzzy, and certainly not conclusive, but the fact that something is out there can only aid our case.  If you will activate your PDI, I’ll beam the results and pictures over.”

“Well how about that?  I forgot it wasn’t on!  Hang on.”

Nina patted Marlowe on the shoulder.  “Pretty impressive, considering how lost you were without it yesterday.”

“Transmission complete.”

Marlowe started scrolling through the results.  “Thank you, House.”

“Your welcome.  Ah, and I have finished with the CSU analysis.”  House sounded like he’d just finished drinking something sour.  “Transmitting that now.  I will summarize, for Ms. Minari’s benefit.”

Marlowe opened the file House had just sent over.  It was large.  “Better make it the short, short summary.”

“Very well.  Obedere does indeed have an Id box hijacking program in place.  Some testing has been done, but according to this computer, which, by the way, has a very distasteful personality, those results have been mixed.  No successes yet, though there is a tone of optimism that positive results will be forthcoming.  The most recent attempt transferred a copy of Obedere’s mind into a gorilla, which upon awakening attempted to kill him.”

Nina tapped her fingers on a wall.  “Failed attempt to transfer properly, or one Obedere not liking another as competition?”

“Impossible to say.  The computer declined to speculate on that point.”

“House,” said Marlowe, “is there anything on all those body bits and pieces in the cave?”

“Ah yes, the AFO, or ‘Always and Forever Obedere’ project.  According to the CSU, the first efforts focused on Obedere simply supplanting the existing mind of a younger body with a copy of his own.  But given the delays they’ve encountered, he started a second project to construct a new body, made of super-strong materials and impervious to harm.  The body is complete, but they’re having problems with brain retention.  They can grow the brains just fine, but when an Id box backup is transferred to one, it rejects the personality within twelve hours.  They’re still researching the cause.”

“Well, thank the Governor it doesn’t work,” breathed Jebediah.

“Yet,” said Marlowe.

“But it sounds like he can take over a brain for twelve hours,” said Nina, “which is nothing to sneeze at.”

Marlowe had to agree with Nina on that point, but needed a clarification.  “What do you mean by ‘sneeze at’?”

Nina closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.  “This is going to be a rough adjustment.”

“I believe she means ‘not to take lightly’,” said House.

“And the odds, House, of Obedere ‘sneezing at’ our little incursion when he discovers it,” asked Marlowe.

“Not very good, I’m afraid.”

Marlowe looked at the others.  “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.  If the other shoe is about to drop, I’d like to be well rested for it.  And knowing Obedere, it’s probably going to be raining shoes tomorrow.”

“No doubt the sky will be positively thick with footwear,” said House.  

Marlowe started for his room, the nano probes already hard at work countering the surge of acid frothing in his stomach.  Standing at the edge of his very inviting bed, Marlowe thought he saw the sheets quiver.

“I hate to interrupt,” said House, “but the bed sheets have asked that you shower before going to bed.  After all, you have spent the better part of the day in the sewers.”