The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (12 page)

“Can you decipher it?” asked Alex. “Might take me a while,” said Carlton. “I’ll try.”

“Hello,” said Alex. “Here’s our friend.” McTurk was coming out of the building in a hurry. He was looking down as if to avoid surveillance cameras. He stopped by the curb, waved his hand, and a vehicle instantly slid up alongside him. He climbed in and they sped off.

“Oh shit,” said Alex. “Now what do we do?”

“Make up your mind time,” said Dunphy in the mirror.

“I’ll follow him,” said Alex. “You stay here,” he said to Carlton.

“Don’t, for God sake, lose her.” He shoved the reluctant Carlton out onto the pavement and the cab pulled away.

I stopped believing in God when I found they’d lied to me about the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny.

—
Lewis Ashby

Lewis emerged from the subway into a suburban neighborhood. He checked the address and found a line of identical mid-rise apartments. When he rang the doorbell, a surprisingly tall young girl answered the door. She had short brown hair, a cute little nose, and her eyes were hazel. He noticed with a shock she was wearing nail polish.

“Tay?” he said.

“It’s my daddy,” she yelled.

“Tell him to come in, I’ll be right down,” said a familiar voice.

She held a hug for the longest time and then led him into the kitchen. Her drawings were pinned everywhere. She chattered away brightly to him, showing him things.

“This is my bear, Sophie. This is my horse, Earthwind. These are Dorothy and Edna, my dolls.”

His ex-wife came into the room. She was fastening a hat on her head and he noticed she avoided his eyes. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he had really married this woman.

“You leaving?” he said carefully.

“Thought you two would like to be alone,” she said, and then couldn’t resist adding, “it’s been a while.”

He nodded. “What should we do, do you think?”

“Well, she likes the zoo. She’ll ask you for McDonald’s, you can take her there if you like. Only one Jell-O though. She can eat six if you let her.”

“Oh,
can
we go to McDonald’s, please? Please, Daddy, will you take me there?”

“Sure.”

“Yay!” Her delight was huge and unforced.

“She’ll take you shopping if you want. Hello Kitty is her favorite. It’s in Mall 3 on the third level. But please, Lewis, don’t keep her out late. She has school in the morning.”

Tay was trying to drag him out of the door.

“Get your things first, Tay,” said her mother sternly, “and go to the bathroom before you go.” Tay ran off. He could hear her rattling around singing.

“She’s glad to see you.”

“She’s amazing.”

“She saw you on the Brenda Woolley show, you know. She’s very proud of you.”

He said nothing.

“I assume this is just a short visit?”

“Sadly yes.”

“She’ll get over it. She’s really quite strong. Stubborn at times. Like you.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, I have to get ready, my cab’s coming.”

“How are you?” he asked.

“Me?” she said. “I’m glad of the break.”

Tay came flying into the room, dressed to leave.

“Ready, Daddy.”

She took his hand.

“Okay, be good now, Tay,” said her mom.

“Is Daddy staying for a while?”

“I don’t think so, honey.”

“Oh.”

“Daddy’s very busy.”

“C’mon then, Daddy. Let’s go.”

She led him out into the street. He watched her mother wave from inside the apartment.

Alex and the cab were stuck in traffic again. McTurk had given them the slip.

“Can’t you see him on the screen?” asked Alex, irritated.

“’Fraid not” said Dunphy, shaking his blond mane. “He ain’t in a cab. Must be some kinda private limo.”

They went by the Parrot Club to check. Its red upholstery and plastic leaves looked shabby and cheap by daylight. He wandered through the club room into the long bar. A couple of young men were playing pool. They didn’t look up. The barman was studying the racing form. He glanced at him enquiringly. Alex shook his head. “Just looking for someone.”

“She ain’t here,” said the barman.

He looked into the tiny show room, and glanced nostalgically at the stage.

“Can I help you?” said a voice behind him.

“Looking for McTurk.”

“Is that you, Alex?”

“Hello, Benny.”

A short guy, with a rather obvious toupee crammed onto his head, came in and grinned a smile which showed a lot of gold teeth. A tight vest was stretched over a generous belly.

“Jeez, Alex, it’s been a while. When you gonna come play here again?”

“Soon, Benny.”

“Too big for us now, I guess. We all saw the show. That Brenda Woolley’s something, huh?”

“Yeah. She’s not as nice as she looks.”

Benny allowed himself a laugh.

“Seen Peter McTurk?”

“Nah, he ain’t bin round in a while. What’s up?”

“Chasing a dame, Benny.”

“So, that’s not like you,” said Benny. “I thought you were a dyke.” They grinned at each other for a little. Alex promised he’d come back and do a set.

“Don’t forget us now you’re in the big time,” said Benny.

He used the vidphone outside the men’s room to call Carlton.

I told you Carlton was a tintellectual. He is a clever little metal fellow, there’s no doubt about it. I’m proud to have discovered him. I have these very strong feelings towards him. Possessive. Almost paternal. He’s so bloody smart. That’s why I kept him from Molly. And I’m glad I did because she’s still not come home. Got a note she’d swanned off to some conference. Yeah, sure. Flat on her back with a prick up her, no doubt. Academic trailer trash, that’s all she is. I asked her why she always dressed like a slut when she has so many degrees? Know what she said? “If you don’t like the way I look, then fuck off.” That’s nice, isn’t it? Not much give-and-take there, I fancy. I wasn’t ready to fuck off, so I shut up about it. But I was hurt, I can tell you. They have that power over you—women—don’t they? The power to leave.

Whilst Carlton stood patiently waiting outside the Rialto, his circuits were busy looking for some way into the electronic gibberish that filled his chest screen. He couldn’t figure it out. It was obviously encrypted, but what sort of a code: logarithmic, exponential, random, or variable sequential? There were a million possibilities. His mind began whirring, crunching large numbers and testing them on the gibberish. It remained garbage. While his right hemisphere cells searched for a way to break the code, his left thinking module began thinking about comedy. He had lately been contemplating the rule of threes. Apparently every third thing was funny. Also words which began with
k
were funny. Was that true? Was “
khaki
” funny? Was “
kettle
”
?
Was “
Kipling
”
?
Apparently some words were just simply funny. “Chicken,” for example, was always funny. He couldn’t figure out why that should be. It led him to consider the Chinese restaurant gag:

“Waiter, this chicken is rubbery.”

“Oh, thank you vely much sir.”

Now what was funny about that? It seemed to him merely a misprint. Chicken, chicken and egg. Comedy was like cracking a code. Words were the key.
Words
. Of course! The censored electronic gibberish was in an old–fashioned word-based key. It was a government computer. They were using the new Dumb Technology. To try and outsmart very smart computers some agencies were resorting to stupidity. Simple, almost childish passwords were substituted for lengthy equations. How do you baffle a computer which can speed through several multibillion-number combinations? Simple, you use a word like “cat.” You’re going under its intelligence threshold. It cannot factor you to be so dumb. It was like comedy, he thought. Chicken and egg. Well, why not. He tried “egg.” It didn’t work; neither did “cat” or “dog” or other simple words, but in two minutes he’d figured out it was a five-letter code word he was looking for. He tried “Daddy,” since Sammy had scribbled that in the margin. It didn’t work either. Well, he could hardly expect a human to solve the problem before him. He settled down to try all the five-letter words in the English language, and after half an hour “Paris” began decrypting the code. Within seconds the gibberish was readable. There it was, the Daddy File.

Father, Alexander Walewski, age fifty-two, and yes, Dunphy was right, he had been shot for leading an uprising on Rhea. Not exactly executed, but his body was found mangled in the remains of a fire-fight with government forces. Seems he had been a rebel even back in his native Silesia and was forced to emigrate after some kind of trouble at Krakow University. Trapped on Rhea for a lifetime, he and his wife, Natalie, had tried to leave the Company and failed. They set up the White Wolves, a protest group, which disseminated information and attempted to contact others who shared their plight. After their grievances were dismissed (by the Company), they worked towards an armed struggle which took place ten years later. They were well organized and well supplied, and it had taken several weeks to put down. They had been betrayed by someone from inside. Their last days were both agonizing and heroic. They had retreated farther and farther into the icy wastes of Rhea before being surrounded and shot to death, their blood red on the icy snow. The symbol of the red drops on the white background was still a powerful symbol of resistance.

Then there was some more stuff on the White Wolves. How the organization had spread to Mars amongst the Silesian immigrants. General alerts and warnings. There was also a psychological profile of Katy. Spells of depression. Her conviction that her father would return—she was only five at the time. Her childhood dream that he would be back like Santa Claus with a sack full of toys. The harsh years in the school camps. Death of her mother (“under interrogation” was the sinister comment), her employment in the crystal fields, the
Bronia
disaster, and then her escape from Rhea through show biz via Emil Keppler. Sugar daddy.

So her father was a dead revolutionary hero. So what?

His vidphone rang. It was Alex.

“What’s up?”

“No sign of her yet,” said Carlton.

“Keep on it,” said Alex.

“I managed to open that file.”

“And?”

“It’s all about her father.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s dead. Shot. Twenty years ago.”

“Oh, hold the front page,” said Alex. “What’s got Sammy so hot then?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I’ll check her out now.”

He dialed her number, but the screen remained dead. Probably in the shower, he thought. Might as well pop over and see what she’s got; she’s only a few minutes from here.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work…

I want to achieve it through not dying.

—
Woody Allen

Tay was throwing the Frisbee and screaming and yelling. Lewis panted after it. His lanky figure almost gawky, his long arms stretching for the plastic dish. They were in the park, not far from the zoo. He bent to retrieve the brightly colored toy. A dull thud echoed far above them. A clump of pigeons beat their wings in a sudden fluttering cloud and took off. The sound like someone shaking sheets. Tay squealed in delight and ran after them. Look at me, he thought, I’m playing with my kid.

They had dined at the zoo café and he had stared at her with pride as she handled the ordering like a grown-up. She asked the waitress about specials, recommended things for him, discussed what she should drink, and listened politely to what he had to say. She had opinions and views like an adult, and then quite suddenly the six-year-old would emerge as she burst out laughing.

“This is my daddy,” she told the waitress. “He’s in show business.”

The waitress smiled. “He seems a very nice daddy,” she agreed.

“He’s really silly though,” confided Tay.

“That’s all right in a daddy I think,” said the waitress. Tay considered this seriously. “Yes it is,” she finally conceded. “He’s going to come and take me out every week.”

“That’s nice,” said the waitress.

“C’mon, Daddy, let’s go play Friskee like you promised.”

“I think it’s Frisbee.”

“No, it’s Friskee,” she said. “We always play Friskee.”

He rose. The waitress smiled.

“That’s a lovely little girl you’ve got there.”

“I know it,” he said.

Outside, she stopped and pointed to the dome.

“Look, Daddy, there’s a crack in the sky.”

He looked up. Something spidery seemed to be crawling along the dome far above their heads. As he watched, the spiderweb increased in all directions like a broken windscreen.

“I expect it’s nothing,” he said.

From somewhere the wail of a siren echoed around the park.

Alex heard the siren as he entered the elevator. Sammy’s apartment was on the hundredth floor. The elevator took forever. As he stepped out, he shivered. Someone stepping on my grave, he thought. There was a faint whiff of cigar smoke in the air. His footsteps echoed down the hallway. He came to her door and pressed the buzzer. He could hear it clearly echoing inside. There was no response. He pushed and to his surprise the door opened. He put his head cautiously inside, half expecting a book. Be just like Sammy to come leaping out at him stark naked. She used to do wild things like that in the days back when. Once he had found her in bed, spread-eagled, wearing only a pair of heart-shaped panties, completely tied up with silk stockings.

“Help,” she’d whimpered.

He’d helped.

Now what was she up to? He felt a sudden stab of desire rekindled by the memory.

“Sammy?” he called softly.

He pushed open the door of the bedroom, half disappointed she wasn’t in there waiting. He continued through the kitchen. Then he stopped suddenly. Something was wrong. Where was the dog?

His heart was thumping wildly in his chest now. He breathed deeply and walked into the living room. Sammy was lying quietly at the computer console, her face resting on the keyboard as if listening for something. Her eyes stared blankly towards the window. She couldn’t have been dead long. Behind her all was chaos. Someone had done great violence to her computer console. Both the screen and the hard drives had been smashed, and bits of her files were strewn all over the room. The open window indicated they had tipped some stuff out that way too. Looks like they threw the dog out as well. He felt suddenly sick.