The Scarab (9 page)

Once again, we were nervously awaiting post time. This time
Mare had the jitters. She was a lot better at “urban deployment” than I would
ever be, and there was virtually no chance of armed exchanges till everyone had
left the city. By then, I planned to be out of sight, out of mind, and off the
tracking system.

This time, I set up the command center,
tuning in all the major sport news stations, the auditorium downstairs, and
MTV. I wriggled in my overstuffed leather seat as I focused in clearer pictures
of the Eiffel Tower, and the crowds. I loaded the CD drive with the Complete
works of Vivaldi—her favorite. I fed it through the interface at low volume to
help soothe her nerves during the drive. I showed her how to rig the music
override to her heart rate so that it wouldn’t distract her in an emergency.
Being an “adroit woman,” as Foxworthy put it, Mare picked up on the new
addition to the console right way.

“What’s this blue button?”

I smiled. “That’s for later, Doc.
Another ace for when we don’t want somebody to catch us. Push that, aim with
the glove, and somebody automatically swerves to avoid us.”

“Isn’t that what you were talking
about doing for the government? They won’t like that,” she warned.

“First, it hasn’t been built yet.
Second, I said that I wanted to prevent this effect in the field. Third, there’s
nothing in the rules forbidding it. Fourth, the FCC approved this design
already, and I’ve added nothing to it. How can anyone complain?”

She wasn’t soothed by this
sophistry. “I still say it’s dangerous.”

“Dear, people are aiming tank
turrets at us while we jump over Niagara in a barrel, and you’re worried about
playing with matches?” She still wasn’t convinced, but she wasn’t objecting any
more. “I haven’t used it yet. I just feel more comfortable with the option
there.”

The proclamation “Contestants start
your engines” cut short our debate on ethics.

Once more, sounds of simulated
engines roared over the speakers. As the flag dropped, racers left their marks.
At first we saw mainly lightweights, moving like bats out of Hell. We would
start the day in the same order we finished yesterday. I counted down to our
pole position, and got ready to play navigator.

The Harley Ikawa took off with
weapons on and engines blazing. Mary seemed worried, but I just shook my head. “Evolution
in action. Too much testosterone can be fatal.”

She was just about to ask me why,
when a brown, hump-backed, computer-animated figure walked out of the crowd
with a French beret and a tourist camera. His name tag read “Armand d’ Lo,” and
he was visiting from Texas, no doubt with his wife Amy. The cartoon tail
trailing behind him made it obvious that the infamous killer dillo was making
his debut for this year’s convention.

The horrified Harley driver swerved
to avoid the invulnerable obstacle as it chased him for a picture. The driver
almost made it, but he caromed off the tail and collided with a bistro, totaled
in an instant. The audience went wild. This was the bloodiest race ever, and
the second day had yet to begin for all players.

The crowd below in the auditorium
takes up the chant “Go, Killer Dillo, Go.” Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla” with
slightly different words screamed over MTV’s airwaves. A family of white-bread
American armadillos wandered in and out of the crowd at random, striking dread
into the hearts of the racers.

Nobody else fell prey to the d’ Lo
clan, but the start looked more like a funeral procession than a race till they
all cleared the threat. Since Paris was a well-planned river city, despite the
detours, I knew we could get out if we could just find our way across the
bridges. Highlighted on the map in red were various testing areas. We could
take any path out of the city we wanted as long as we hit five tests.

We took the uneven railroad track
test without damaging them or us. I didn’t even look at the results of the
cabin noise level meter when we passed the jack hammer in the construction
zone. We were surprised by the third test, however, when a sewer worker popped
his head out of a manhole in the middle of the street. Mary had to steer
sharply to avoid him, the other vehicles, the flower stand, and the light post
as we surfed the sidewalk around the corner.

I didn’t catch everything, but Mare
did her part as smooth as silk. She cut off people like a true Parisian
madwoman. In fact, ESPN had even found a French tavern that was cheering her
on. During that half hour, I heard her plug for Snap-On no fewer than three
times. I just wish we were getting paid for it.

As we came up to the next zone, a
double test, I told Mare to veer off. It was a bridge left up at a thirty
degree angle to act as an acceleration test. “But with our grids damaged, we’d
fail the suspension test on the other side. Not only that, but the twins would
either break loose or jam.”

“Couldn’t we take the three across
one at a time?”

“Maybe in Hollywood. Even though we
could bring one of the three units over by remote, the cycles might tip after
the impact, and then we’d have an injured pilot on the test record. No, thanks.”
I was already looking at the map for an alternative. “There’s another double
test just down the street to our left. It’s on the way, so we won’t lose time.”

She zipped down the narrow street
paralleling the river, and floored it when she saw a broken power line dangling
over the intersection ahead. “Electrical insulation test. I trust your design,
but the less time we’re in contact with it, the better.”

I agreed. Although we passed that
test with flying colors, raising our safety rating even further, she couldn’t
slow down in time to avoid toppling a step ladder in the road. A gallon of
paint splattered across a meter of our windshield—the visibility test. I didn’t
have wipers that could remove the paint, but I did have something just as good.
“Lean forward in your seat, push function three, and tap the brake!”

I had just given her a sequence to
re-aim the turret gun beneath the bubble to an angle as high as it would go.
She followed my cryptic instructions, and the cockpit bubble cleared as the
paint rotated to a position over head. Once we cleared the Paris obstacle
course, and hit the countryside, there was no longer any computerized scenery
to speak of. They even skipped the toll booths for the various toll roads.
After all the detailed action going on in Paris, this part of the race felt
like an old, Spartan jet simulator.

I watched the engine load and fuel
gauges like a hawk. At about three quarters speed Ghedra operated at peak
efficiency. This was probably the last day we could put pretty numbers up on
the stats board, so we’d better take advantage of the opportunity. “Let the hotdogs
spring all the traps and we’ll get fuel economy ratings.”

After Mary slipped into stealth
mode, nobody bothered her, which in and of itself was miraculous. She passed
one driver, but he didn’t see us until it was too late to arm his weapons.
Nobody went around with the safety off at all times. The judges tended to visit
you with bad Karma. Thank you Mr. Harley for that demonstration.

We were both surprised when the
noon lunch hour came. The break was more for the television people and sponsors
than to give the players a chance to rest or eat. While local newscasts
interrupted the race, I ran a quick diagnostic and asked “So where do you want
to eat?”

“We don’t have time to go out, but
I’m way ahead of you.” She walked over to her purse and started removing foil
packets. “I figured we’d need lunch, so when I was in the diner this morning I
ordered two ham and cheese croissant sandwiches with Dijon mustard for the
French theme, and two cans of cola for the caffeine.”

“A feast. Thanks,” I said, wolfing
mine down without even reheating it.

“Humph. Tomorrow, you get lunch.”

“Deal.”

By 12:15, I had finished my lunch
and was getting anxious. “I’m going to pay a visit to the Pensatronics team
before they check out, too. I’d like to find out what’s in the vault before we
go any further.”

“How do you plan to pull that off?”
she said, wiping alfalfa sprouts off the corner of her mouth. I never
understood why she just didn’t go for lettuce like everyone else.

“Do you want to go down to the
Pensatronics suite with me to help sweet talk them into giving us the
combination?”

“No thanks, I chew my food and
enjoy my tea. You should try it some time,” she said wryly.

“Next week. I’ll be back in a
flash,” I said. The elevator seemed to take forever, so I used the stairs. I
noted in passing that there were security cameras on the nineteenth and
sixteenth floors just like the one outside the elevator.

Pensatronics didn’t answer the door
at first. I found the maid down the hall, an extremely short Hispanic woman in
her forties with a name tag reading “Carmelita”, and asked her if they had
checked out. She wrinkled her nose.

“No, sir. The big one is still
here. Since they have been here, he has not used a single towel. He throws
garbage all around, and red wine all over the carpet. Nobody else will clean
this floor now. He pinches all of them,” she clucked.

I thanked her, and pounded on the
door. A short, overweight man in blue jeans, an open flannel shirt, and greasy
hair opened the door. Already I could tell he was going to be belligerent. I
forced a smile.

“What?!” he said.

“I’m from the DeClerk team...”

“Who?” he almost shouted.

“The Scarab. I’m his business
manager.” He grunted at this. “I was hoping we could talk in private.”

The Pensatronics programmer opened
the door, and stepped back to let me in. The TV was on with the volume off.
Aside from that, the room was dark, and reeked faintly. “You like Chinese food?”
I guessed.

“Get to the point,” he said with
just a trace of Germanic accent. He took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket,
and I didn’t bother to tell him it was against hotel policy.

“We want the combination to your
mini-vault.”

He got a wolfish grin I didn’t like
at all. “What will you give me for it?” His accent made me think of every bad
spy and war movie I’d ever seen.

I shrugged. “I have the 500 dollar
voucher for the casino tonight you’re welcome to have.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I just sank
half a million of my own money into this game and if I’m not careful I’m going
to lose my whole freaking company. 500 isn’t going to do it.” Smoke was already
clouding around him, adding to his height, giving him confidence.

“We could always offer you a
position on our staff, a consulting job.”

“The only person I work for is me,”
he said, pointing to his own chest with the hand holding the cigarette. Ash
dropped on the carpet. I winced.

“If you won’t sell it, I guess I’ll
leave you be.” He stopped me from going by putting his hand on the door. He
took another puff to make me wait.

“I never said that; I just want it
to be worth my while.”

“Like?”

He licked his lips. “Like that tool
woman you have on your payroll. I have been watching. She would be worth my
while. Throw her in, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

I kept my calm, and pretended to
consider it. Reaching in my wallet, I pulled out one of the business cards
Foxworthy had printed for me. “I’ll ask the boss, but he usually doesn’t go for
that sort of thing. If you think of anything else you might like to trade
instead, give us a call.”

He gave a disappointed grunt, threw
the card on his kitchen table, and let me leave.

When I got back to the room, I washed my hands and face, and
then climbed in the harness. Mare was chuckling over one tele-journalist who
had built a profile of me in a hurry. He voiced several rumors about me,
stating that I was a reclusive genius educated in England, employed by the
military, and rarely seen because of heavy security. According to him, I was
the next Alan Turing. He even had a picture of me as a freshman in high school
when I was still pretty pale and scrawny. Okay, I’m still pretty pale, but this
guy was way off base.

“Any luck, my young Turing?” she
asked.

“Not a chance in hell,” I answered.

Soon after we resumed, the weather
changed from cloudy to a torrential downpour. This test proved how waterproof
the prototype was. Not a drop got into the cabin or controls. In fact, the
paint on the rear of the dome washed off. Many players slowed down
instinctively, but the UFO design of our craft cut through the rain like a
speed boat.

During the storm, only one vehicle
passed me. I played with the Hicks-Eisener Overdrive (HEO—the rock band was
named after the company, not the other way around as is popularly supposed) for
a while, not letting him pass. Normally, I didn’t make an issue of letting a faster
vehicle pass, but this guy was favored to win. Every second I could delay him
meant points for the rest of us. The pilot thought about gunning us, but he
couldn’t figure out where the twins were. His detectors told him that the 50
caliber machine guns from both sleds were aimed at him, and within lethal
range. He just couldn’t figure out where they were hiding. Not everyone had
figured out that the sleds were linked to the main body.

Since his primary defenses were
directional, he was at my mercy. I decided to score some style points and sent
him the White Glove. This offer, if accepted, amounted to a gentleman’s contest
in which no weapons would be used. As soon as the HEO vehicle agreed, I turned
off my guns. The narrow roads worked to my advantage. Even though this guy was
a better pilot, the Ghedra was wider than he expected and could steer faster
than any normal GEV. For over two minutes, I did it! I was standing toe to toe
with the best in the game. Unfortunately, the road widens for exit ramps, and
the HEO out-maneuvered me. Soon we were driving side by side and the extra lane
was running out. If I persisted, one of us would splash on a guard rail. At
this point, I backed off, and sent him a salute clipped from the movie “Top
Gun.”

I had the whole exchange recorded
on today’s removable drive. I’d be playing this clip and ones like it for the
rest of my life. I even got another 15 seconds of fame on ESPN. The skies
cleared and I went all the way to Nice with a silly grin plastered on my face.
I was half way through the town before I realized I would need directions. Mary
Ann had been quietly watching me for a while now. She does that sometimes when
I’m asleep, too.

“Isn’t the Riviera romantic? I’ve
read Tender Is the Night twice.” She had one of those “if only” looks on her
face now.

I wanted to steer the topic back to
turns in my immediate future. “Fitzgerald. Lots of description, but no action.
I never finished it. Which road do I take?”

“Philistine.” Huffing, she crinkled
that part of the map flat. “Head toward the beach, right, then all three roads
that branch off from this point go through Monaco. Three roads in, and three
roads out. You can’t miss—or was that too much description?”

I took the road closest to the
beach, reasoning that it would be an easier climb. I’m sure nearly every other
racer in the game used that same reasoning, but didn’t think of that until five
minutes later when it was too late to turn back to the branch point. Outside
the town, the road took to wrapping itself tightly against the cliffs like a
snake on a Caduceus. As the road rose and fell, I could see the shoreline ahead
weaving like the Dow-Jones Industrial average during an election.

“Description is OK, Casino Royale
by Ian Fleming is filled with imagery and lavish paintings of this area, but he
doesn’t spend a chapter on a beach picnic and half the book trying to guess who
some kid’s father is.”

I had to slow Ghedra way down to
keep from flying off the edge of the road due to inertia. This was definitely a
performance test.

“Fleming had a grossly distorted
view of women.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “But he was a
real spy at one time.”

“Says who?” she argued.

“Everybody... oh cripes!” My
proximity sensors went wild. Ahead, at the base of a particularly nasty
hair-pin turn at least five of my rivals were camped in the road, and blocking
further progress. I faded out of cloak, and glided to a halt. The right
shoulder of the road was a cliff extending about fifty meters above sea level,
so I couldn’t very well go around. I didn’t go into 360 degree bullet spray
mode because none of them were pointing at me and I recognized a Lamborghini
Aerospace team member, the Turn-Pica Elite.

I contacted the LAS player on a
point-to-point link. “What’s up, Elite?”

“Chill, Scarab.” I cringed at the
name. Was everyone going to call me that on the air? “We have a temporary truce
here while we figure a way to deal with the situation. The French middleweight
Mirage crew has been bragging for weeks about its maneuverability and fire
power. They need a big showing at this race because the French military
aviation industry can no longer sell to Libya or other countries in the
Middle-East. They have to prove that the same jet technology, with minimal
adaptation can work commercially.”

I shrugged, not that the Elite
pilot could see it. “Compelling human interest, but why the parking lot?”

“Ah. They were racing two other
contestants through these insane curves when someone on their team got the idea
to even the odds a bit. The Mirage used it’s rear rockets to take out the
Volkswagen on the turn. This also blew out the high-gee-turn embankment. The
Simonson International couldn’t stop in time and took off into space. The
bastards managed to fire all their fast weapons from mid-air and took out the
Mirage’s rear armor before crashing and burning.”

I already knew where this was
leading. “Since the Mirage can’t turn it’s back on anyone, he’s decided to go
for sheer body-count and forget the race. Pierre found himself a perfect ambush
spot, and just waits for the prey to come to him.”

“That’s a roger, Scarab. We have to
approach at under 50 km/h or we’ll shoot off of the cliff as well. But then we’re
sitting ducks for the Mirage’s long-range rockets. He already racked up four
kills before some altruist put out the warning,” said the Elite pilot.

“Why don’t we all just rush him?” I
asked.

“With the wreckage and rubble, the
road’s only wide enough to go single-file. We might score a lucky hit and take
him out before he gets us, but nobody wants to be the martyr. My rail cannon is
big enough, but I’d need three or four seconds of free time just to sight it in
and warm up the coils,” he admitted.

“What about the heavies? They can
take the hit and roll him over without stopping.”

Mary Ann used her head-set to break
into the same circuit. “They won’t be here for another eighteen minutes at any
safe speed through these turns. But we don’t want to rely on them for help,
Babe. It’s just as easy for them to make an alliance with the Mirage and have
us all for breakfast. That way, he doesn’t have to worry about his bare ass.”

“Either way, we’re toast,” said the
Elite.

I found a spot in the gravel, a
hundred meters back from the main encampment to park. I deployed the sower mine
on the road in front of me as a precaution and put Ghedra into conservation
mode while I sat down to think.

If we could trust these piranhas to
keep the peace, I could use the drones to distract the Mirage and have someone
with a big gun blow him off the road. The question was, what could I get in
return? They wouldn’t trust any plan I suggested unless they could see how I
profited. How could I link this to my goals? Off-link, I said, “Mare, I didn’t
ask you before, but did you get any clues from the loser bar and grill?”

“Just that the environmental
simulation is kick-ass this year. The snow, sand, and even wind simulations
were taken from assorted thesis projects done over the past few years,” she
said.

“Nothing about our salvage,
Exotech, TSM, or Pensatronics?” I asked, tapping nervously on the fire
controls.

“Nothing. The UC project was at
ground-zero, as was the econo-box from India. Every guy in that room thought I
was offering myself as some sort of bizarre consolation prize. I didn’t stick
around long,” she explained. “However, I did talk with a Swiss ski instructor
for a while in the auditorium before that NPR guy happened by.”

It didn’t matter which car was
where when the explosions took place, because pieces of everything would end up
scattered everywhere. The fact that so many guys here had hit on Mare had
started to grate on the nerves at the base of my skull. I had a primitive urge
to bash a few players and beat my chest.

I decoupled both the drones, and
slaved each to one of the data gloves. The main unit of the Ghedra, I left in
sentry mode. I wanted to slave the drones together to fly in tandem, but I
couldn’t independently dodge and fire with only one set of eyes. “Mary, I need
your help. Sit down beside me, here.”

She looked puzzled as I took off my
left glove and left eye piece. “Right here,” I said patting the one-person
chair. “You can drive left handed, can’t you?”

“Yes...” she said. “I’ve got years
of experience. I have to because I drink coffee with my right hand.”

“Well I can’t. I need your help.”
She put on the gear, but we couldn’t get situated with the gloves the proper
distance apart unless she sat side-ways on my lap. “You hit the fire controls
with your non-driving hand. We need to stay as tightly-grouped as possible to
present a single radar image. French radar might not be that good, but it will
notice if our propulsion grids are more than two-meters apart. Follow my lead,
and I’ll try to announce turns well in advance.”

She nodded, and the left
cross-hairs bobbed up and down. We couldn’t thumb the weapons active until we
were within kill range, or we’d telegraph to the prey. I punched up the link to
Elite again. “I’ve got a plan. But I’ve also got to call in a few favors.”

The LAS pilot seemed wary. “Let’s
hear both first, Scarab. I know we owe you, for the repair help but ...”

I looked around the field at other
players. “We can divert the Mirage, and even soften him up for you. We want you
to handle the kill. Get one of the other middleweights to stand rearguard on my
main unit while we concentrate on the attack. Tell the other four players here
they owe both of us. We get to go in front of them into Monaco, and they split the cost to repair us both to full functionality when we get there—if
we survive.” I hoped I sounded casual enough.

“Roger, Scarab. You’re an old
softie.” Two minutes further inaction and negotiation followed. The
heavy-hitters were less than fifteen minutes away. That fact alone, announced
on broad band, convinced the others to cooperate. The networks latched onto
this fact as well, and were requesting a live-feed of the action. I held out
for a ten minute delay, which was standard in ambush situations. A tabloid TV
show once broke that agreement. The company wronged bought the station and did
an hour-long documentary about the adulterous relationships and tax evasion practices
of the former host. We didn’t have that kind of clout, but the participants in
SimCon did practice solidarity about a few things. We got our delay.

At T minus fourteen minutes till
the big guns arrived, my drone pair raced back down the road to find access to
the beach. When we got there, and slowed down to turn, I noticed that one of
the lightweights had followed us. I warned him off, but the Anaconda refused to
go back to the camp. “Why should I owe anybody, when I can follow you out the
back way, then kill you when I’m done. The rest of those guys will all die, and
you’ll get blamed.”

I didn’t bother to tell the
Anaconda about the tape-delay on the event. I also couldn’t take the time to
turn around and shoot him. Instead, I kept the drone totally silent, scrambled
his electronic detection gear and whispered to Mare. “Drop back to eighty km/h,
and do the slalom with me. We’re going to make this jerk eat our dust.”

True to prediction, as soon as we
hit the beach, we kicked up a huge dust storm. No doubt we were soaking up
mega-cycles for the particle modeling. As soon as the Anaconda hit the cloud,
he was blind. Slowing didn’t help him. Once the sand got in his intakes, his
engines were doomed. First cursing, and then pleading, the Anaconda realized
that the “Desert Storm Effect” had taken him out of the race. After the dust
cleared, he would be a clearly visible target from the road, alive but
helpless. Rather than give any other team credit for the kill, the Anaconda
punched his own ticket.

Mary Ann seemed shocked at the
strategy. “I’ve heard of blowing a blood vessel, but this is ridiculous.”

“Some people have killed their own
team members to score. We have a fail-safe device built into our own hull for
cases just like this.” I told her.

“Yeah, but you’re different. You
wouldn’t destroy months of work to get a point on a stupid board.” She said
with unjustified confidence.

I just grunted and steered her over
the water, parallel to, but out of sight of the cliffs. This was no easy task
with all of the rocks and jetties I had to swerve around. Some fractal geek had
a field-day designing this part of the computer graphics.