The Scarab (25 page)

“That reminds me,” I said, tossing
him the room key from my shirt pocket. “Here’s my key to the room. You’ve
already got Mare’s. It’s yours till tomorrow at eleven. We had to get a
handicapped room.”

At first he was taken aback, but I
suppose after he considered that his sister couldn’t be safer from me, and Miss
Valencia was already ensconced in this suite, he said, “Thanks.”

The resumption of the race was
almost an anticlimax when it came. Mare pulled over and Nigel conversed with
the cops over his head set. Steve and I plotted the fastest course to the
finish line. We would continue to follow the hover-way after we checked in at
the Brandenburg Gate, and skip the historic district altogether. We’d miss a
test, but make a net profit on time. Miss Valencia came back out at this
moment, dressed in my Snap-On jumpsuit.

“I’m glad somebody can use it,” I
said.

“Sorry, I told her she could,”
Steve apologized.

“I understand. Mare will need to
change eventually, too. Thirty seconds till launch.”

“You know what your problem is?”
Josie asked me, continuing before I could hazard a guess. “Your company doesn’t
have a logo.”

“I guess I could keep using that
black Egyptian Scarab beetle I’ve been using during the convention. We haven’t
thought about any of that yet,” I answered, keeping an eye on my watch and the
screen.

She wrinkled her nose. “That may
look cool to people up north, but down here, it just reminds people of a big
roach.”

Once the EU patrolman finished his
inspection, I started getting messages about violations. I set up a script to
feed them to Nigel’s fax machine where I would get to them later. Steve asked
her, “What do you suggest instead?”

“I did a little research on the
net, and there are a dozen types of gorgeous scarabs, Costa Rican gold,
chromium, rainbow. They look like jewelry. I have a friend who does album
covers who would be glad to work up some samples for you,” Josie offered, just
a little too conveniently. I stared at her for a moment, unsure if she was
sincere or Matsumura was offering me a consolation prize for bowing out early.

“Later,” I growled impatiently. As
soon as the TRANSMISSION COMPLETED message chimed, I shouted “Go!” to Mare.

Nigel guided her down the main drag
at ever-increasing speed. I must have faded for a minute, because the next
thing I knew, we were coming up on the arch. I watched the view from the laptop
screen. “Gently,” I coached. “This is the last check-point in the race. All we
have to do is pass through the arch. Don’t even slow down much. Once we’re on
the other side, we hop the bicycle racks, or whatever they have there to stop
traffic, and head back out here as fast as we can.”

After passing through the arch, we
were caught between two solid walls of buildings. Each store front was built
flush against the next, with the rare alleys barely two meters wide. The whole
street was decorated in motifs over a hundred years old, a well-designed,
old-world, tourist trap. We wouldn’t be able to jump right back on the hover-way
as expected. “Keep going straight. Stay under seventy, the cobblestones don’t
look safe. Plan B, anyone?”

Virtual pedestrians cheered our
progress, and I heard strains of John Phillips Sousa from somewhere to
celebrate our arrival. “Up ahead, there’s a fountain,” announced Steve. “Turn
right there, and then we can get back on the fast road.”

Following Steve’s lead, we found
the source of the music in a rude fashion. We turned right and a high school
band had set up bleachers smack in the center of the side street. There was
just barely enough room over the percussion section for us to squeeze through. “Keep
banking, over the drums, and then we’re clear!”

“We’ll hit someone!” she countered.

“It’s not real. And they’re in the
road, making them fair game for paint balls.” I opened fire on the corner of
the bleachers, widening the opening by a few feet. The simulation wasn’t very
good here. The blue paint from the pellets looked more like black. Nobody dove
for cover, and the tubas shattered like rock vases. I stopped firing when I
flashed back to the lobby. We knocked over a street sign in passing. The
frontal armor took the brunt, barely scuffing the bumper. “Clear,” I said
weakly.

Nigel got her back to the
expressway only seconds behind our original schedule. “Faster. This is the last
straightaway. Show them what we’re made of.”

Steve saw me slumping and whispered
“Are you gonna make it, chief?”

I nodded. Only minutes remained
till victory. I could will myself alert for that long.

“I didn’t want to distract you
earlier,” Steve told me in somber tones. “But the Japanese team just finished.”

I didn’t share this with the rest
of the team, but kept them focused on the next hurdle. “The next test is on the
bridge over the Spree River. I don’t know what it is. There’s no legend on the
test, just a grid number, so be ready for anything,” I told Mare.

As soon as we entered the test
region, going full speed, our overhead displays vanished, the directional
readings, and most of our dash controls went dead. Mare recognized the symptom
at once. “We’re satellite blind! Is it an attack, or did we just pass into an
inactive grid?”

Nigel struggled with the maps. “I’m
looking. The Russian satellite coverage begins in Poland. We’re awfully close
to the border. The grids might overlap, but they shouldn’t black out entirely.”

“Steer by visuals till we get this
cleared up,” I said, typing frantically on the laptop.

“I’m trying, but the road splits
three ways up ahead. Which way do I go?”

“Left,” shouted Nigel. “I’ve been
here before. Only a few kilometers to go. We’ll be able to see the complex on
our right once we hit the suburbs. I’ll tell you when we get to the exit. We
could fly the rest of the way with our eyes closed.”

At the laptop, I had access to the
test files as well as satellite reconnaissance. I wrestled with the ethical
dilemma. I had to know if we were under enemy crosshairs, and I wasn’t changing
the interface. No one here wanted to lose after coming this close. However, I
also knew no one here would want to win by cheating. I closed the lid on the
laptop to bar myself from the temptation.

“Think,” I ordered. “No radar lock.
No jamming. Are we getting any signal?”

Mare wanted to nod, but that would
have thrown off her eye controls. “Yes, but it’s almost entirely flat.”

I beat my head on the cool table
top, trying to get the answer. Nigel interrupted. “I don’t recognize this
neighborhood any more. It was eight years ago, and the visibility is low. It’s
getting foggy. We’ll have to slow to almost nothing without NavSat input.”

“Two signals overlapping?” I asked.
“Could they be out of phase with each other?”

Nigel grunted. “The Russians are
notoriously bad with European conventions, almost as bad as the US.”

“Destructive interference! They’re
canceling each other out. Mare, turn off auto-tracking on the satellite. Click
on the compass icon and have it switch to the built-in accelerometers. They’re
not perfect, but they should be enough to get us to the arena,” I explained.

To pass the tense moments in the
fog, I asked Josie, “So why does your painter friend want to help me?”

Josie shrugged. “He loves bugs. He’s
an entomologist.”

“Don’t you mean etymologist,” Steve
said.

“That’s someone who studies the
roots of words,” said Nigel as if everyone knew.

“Ick, that’s gross,” I joked.

“Could I get some quiet?” Mare
snapped. “This fog is rough, even with partial Nav assist.”

Soon, the colossal sports complex
loomed before us on the screen. Neon arrows led us to the parking ramp. As we
crossed the threshold, the wear and maintenance snapshot of our vehicle was
taken. “The finish line is on the seventh floor, at the top of this garage.
Take it as fast as you can. This is the slalom test. The attitude stabilizers
were built for this. Override collision avoidance if you have to, just don’t
build up enough delta v that we go out a window.” After this, one more test
remained. It was also unlabeled.

“Delta v?” asked Nigel.

“Change in velocity, it’s a fighter
jock term,” Steve supplied in a whisper. Nigel started to ask what fighter jock
meant, but everyone shushed him.

Mare took the curves like a demon.
I clenched the sides of my wheelchair. ESPN put us on a live feed. We had the
second fastest time going up to the roof. With the smallest remaining vehicle,
only the Japanese team had beaten us by taking the elevator. Just as we crested
the final ramp, bright flashes of light exploded around us. It was the final
test, a joke really. Photographers tried to blind us, but the tinting filtered
the glare enough to enable Mare to stop cleanly in the winner’s circle. A
digital photo of the Ghedra appeared on our screen along with our final score.

Despite the loud uproar and
celebration that followed, I fell asleep in my chair and missed the press
conference.

“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” Mare said gently Monday
morning at nine. “I’ve been up for two hours packing and getting ready. We’re
supposed to be out of here by eleven.” Still groggy, I noticed her hair was
down now, and she was wearing a silk blouse. My blanket was teal. Last time I
remembered, I had an orange blanket. The bedroom door had changed sides as well.
The steel rail on the wall leading to the bathroom told me we were in the new
suite.

“I must have fallen asleep. How did
things go last night?” I asked.

“I didn’t go to the party; I was
tucking some tired, little boy into bed.” She smiled involuntarily. “But there
are FCC agents everywhere this morning taking notes and looking for violations.
They’ve slapped classified labels on several game records and vehicle logs,
ours among them. I tried to tell them the horses are already gone, but they’re
welding the barn doors closed anyway. Did you want a bath this morning?”

Mare wheeled me into the bathroom.
I took one look at the sling and crane apparatus and declined. It reminded me
of a witch torturing device I had once seen in Salem. I did, however, shave,
brush my teeth, and let Miss Anselm wash my hair in the sink. After this and
the bacon and egg breakfast she had prepared, I felt human again. Against my
wishes, I had another pill with my orange juice. Once I had obeyed her nursing
instructions, she said, “Now for the surprises.”

First, she handed me a sports page
plastered with race results. We had indeed taken fourth, fifth, and sixth in
the purely individual racing portion of the competition. We had been ranked
fourteenth for kills, and third for style. For overall design, Ghedra rated a
disappointing eighteenth in our class. The other racers awarded us the title of
Miss Congeniality, and the judges voted us number one survivable. DeClerk was
the only company to bring the entire team back alive and with all its original
pieces. That endorsement alone would sell vehicles for North Ameri-Car and
Porsche. We also took fifth place in the team competition, for a total SimCon
monetary reward of $395,000. Nigel assured me yesterday that the sum could be
placed in trust for a year until we resolved my current financial woes. After
paying off the entry fee, bodyguards, doctors, taxes, and giving my team mates
a bonus of 10 percent each, I would have about a hundred and fifty grand left.

“You and I will have to start house
hunting soon, now that we have a down-payment,” I muttered.

She glanced down, “Isn’t that a
little premature? I mean, we haven’t even set the date yet.”

I shrugged, conscious of how the
sling interfered with my body language. “With your three week vacation, and us
being this close to Vegas, I’d do it today.” There was nothing wrong with Mare’s
body language. She definitely didn’t want a Vegas wedding. I sighed and
continued as if it were my own idea, “But then I wouldn’t get to see you in
your Grandma’s dress.”

Her face lit up again, and she gave
me a hug. I’m glad I hadn’t added that part about the pelvis bruise putting a
damper on the honeymoon. “June it is then,” she agreed, as if I had a choice in
the matter. Just tell me what to wear and when to show up.

“What are those other papers?” I
asked, seeing the odd assortment clutched in her hand.

“Oh, there was more. This is the
printout of all the problems that have to be corrected before we can sell in Europe. See number fifty-seven? I told you tampering with those regulators would get you in
trouble.”

The list was five pages long. I was
crushed. I thought I had a tight design. “Good God, has North Ameri-Car seen
this?”

“No, seal of evidence, classified,
and all that. Nigel says you can work it out with them later as a consultant.
They’re only leasing the patents remember?” She gave me a typed list with about
two hundred names. “This is the list of engineers who want to work for DeClerk.
I gave the list of other support personnel and technicians to Nigel. I thought
you might want to look over their resumes and screen some of these guys by
phone.”

Next, she handed me the front page
section of the local paper. In the lower center portion of the page, the
headline read “Scarab Lives!” It had a picture of me in my Horus costume before
Kali blew it to feathers, and the article summarized what little the media knew
about my pitiful life and my accomplishments at the convention.

I drifted a little, but not because
of the medicine this time. I snorted at the picture. “A hawk, how appropriate.
Did I ever tell you I used to dream of flying?”

She smoothed my hair back with her
hand. “Well, now you can.”

I grabbed her hand and held it. “I’ve
spent half of my life imitating those around me in order to fit in. Now, I feel
like I was robbed of those years. I shouldn’t sound so bitter. There were good
things in those years, too. You were the best.” She melted to the floor beside
me. “A job as a mechanic with my family history was an invitation to arthritis.
Sam knew that, which is probably why he promoted me to head mechanic so fast.”

Mare interrupted me to say, “Sam
didn’t do that out of pity. You’re good at what you do, an incredibly fast
learner, and the cheapest worker he ever had. I’ve seen you fix vehicles they
don’t even have the manuals out for yet and put them back together better than
they started.”

I waved the five page violation
list over my head. “But I don’t have the skills for manufacturing. Look at this
mess of problems in Ghedra. I’m sure the other tests found even more. I don’t
know the trade-offs. I learned at this convention that I’m not a real designer.
And that’s what I wanted to be. That’s why I came here.”

Mare stared me right in the eye and
told me, “But you have new ideas. These people are starved for them. Paper
clips and safety pins are things we take for granted now, but someone had to
invent them. What could you possibly regret about this weekend?”

I never got to blow the hull armor
or use the bi-directional firing trick. But I’m glad I never needed the
gimmicks. Besides, it gave the FCC two less things to put a security seal on. “Aside
from getting shot, you mean?” I asked. I might have made it to third place
without Kali, but without the narrowed playing field, I might never have
reached the top ten. I knew in the pit of my stomach that I’d never get this
close to number one again.

Mare was doing her best to
encourage me, but I still sulked. “I feel like Cinderella the morning after,
but I managed to keep both of my shoes. Now that this race is over, what do I
do? With all these new contracts and people, Foxworthy could run the company
without me. Up till now, I’ve only been reacting to life. Now that I have a
breather, I’m lost. I have no goals left.”

“It might seem like it, but we don’t
live for goals, Ethan. Life is what you’re doing while you’re waiting.” Someone
knocked on the door. She smiled mysteriously. “Meanwhile, we have a plane to
catch. I’ll go check out and get a bellhop for the rest of the bags, and you
hold this.” Mare handed me a notebook binder full of different cards and
calligraphy styles. “Wedding invitations for you to look over on the plane ride
home. But don’t start looking at them yet, because someone out there wants to
talk to you. He warned me that he’d be up after breakfast.”

Mare let in a thin, grandfatherly
gentleman dressed in a black wool suit and a bolo tie. She whispered something
in his ear as she stepped out. I recognized the shirt he was wearing as
Egyptian linen. I complimented him on it and said, “Ethan Hayes. I have a shirt
just like it, but it kind of got ruined this weekend.”

“Jairus Sanders,” he said, shaking
my hand. I felt my grip go limp. He was the founder of SimCon. We chatted
briefly and I told him how much I respected him and what his consortium was
doing.

After a bit, he got to the point. “You
want some advice on the race?”

I nodded. He designed most of the
simulator himself. The man had to know something.

“You got lucky,” he told me. My
self-esteem sank another notch. “Your design is probably the most original I’ve
seen in ten years, but the same trick won’t work twice in a row. Ghedra had
some serious flaws. Next year’s had better be something special, because every
young gun-fighter this side of Dodge is going to be out to make a name for
himself by killing you the first day.”

“I know. I don’t think I’m cut out
to be a vehicle designer,” I admitted. To be honest, I had never considered
competing again. DeClerk Enterprises had its reputation now, and a three year
back order to go with it. He was being brutally honest, so I said, “It’s not
advice if you tell me something I already know.”

“You like to break things and find
loopholes. Am I right? You’re a good player, but you’d be a superb tester. I
want you to consider being a course designer. I think one of your courses would
double attendance.” I was momentarily stunned by his shift into compliment.

“I don’t know what to say. Maybe
after I’ve played a couple times, I’d feel more qualified.”

He winced, and fretted with the arm
of my wheel chair as he imparted some grandfatherly wisdom. “I’m not supposed
to tell you this, but you’re not going to be allowed into the competition again
because you’ve seen the master program from the point of view of the superuser.
You broke the first rule.”

“But I did it to save the game,” I
protested.

“I know that,” he said, spreading
out his hands to hold back my reaction. “It ain’t fair, but you did see it, and
you can’t guarantee you won’t use that knowledge to gain some kind of edge.
Even if the other members could be persuaded to let you in, the Feds would
never permit it. You’re too much of a wild card, and they won’t risk another
leak. If you ever want to see this game again, even from the net, you’ll only
do it as a course designer, tester, or a judge. Give it a few months to sink
in. Call me when you decide. It’s a rare honor, Mr. Hayes, and you’ll be the
youngest member we ever let in.”

Mare and Foxworthy would skin me
alive for giving these services away free. For their sakes I asked, “How much
would this design work pay?”

Mr. Sanders smiled. “We don’t pay
you in the Consortium. But you are allowed to market your contribution as a
benchmark after the event. Trust me, everyone will want a copy. These
simulations become the performance standards over the years.”

I started considering the
possibilities before me. I was planning again, and it felt good. Maybe Mare
wouldn’t mind letting me come back for just one week a year.

###

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