Blank

by Simone, Lippe

  Which is why Clint had looked away from the magnetic spectacle of a city and its people and giraffes and lions turned against one another to acknowledge Marmalade’s presentation of straight rum in a champagne flute, which was so far the closest he’d come to getting it right. So when he returned his attention to the city Clint was caught off-guard by what appeared to be the very sudden appearance of a tank trundling over the uneven surface offered by the roofs of the cars stalled on Venice Boulevard. It turned onto Lincoln, parallel to the water, and then into the courtyard of the marina. With no more obstacles and a smooth terrain the tank immediately picked up speed before driving directly off the dock and into the water.

  Honor chapter 6

  Honor was delighted with what turned out to be a natural facility for driving tanks. It was in every way that mattered the same as driving a car and if anything it was easier than driving a car, because with cars one so often had to concern oneself with avoiding obstacles and braking. This was not the case with the tank, which offered a very forgiving scope of alternatives to steering and stopping. The vast majority of objects which for, say, a Ferrari 458, would represent impassable obstructions are for a tank more a variation of surface textures offering subtly differing degrees of traction. The brake pedal seemed to be largely ornamental because stopping was a simple matter of decelerating and allowing the tank to wedge its wheels into the hood of a car or bed of a pickup.

  Enclosed and protected and safe and bouncy, the trip down Venice Boulevard was a leisurely one for Honor and her tank and she was able to observe the early evening military machinations of a lapsed civilization like a tourist in a glass-bottomed boat on the surface of a particularly savage South American swamp. So when she found herself entering the clearing in the jungle of cars on the four sides of the intersection of Venice and Centinela she was almost entirely unprepared to have to swerve into a campervan to avoid hitting a man who was standing directly in her path and trying to sell her a newspaper.

  Honor had been driving over the cars in the middle of the boulevard partially, in fact mostly, because it was tremendously amusing but also because it avoided the morally dubious exigency of driving over people, savage or not. But now here was a man presenting the dual challenge of being both a person and, apparently, sane. Or at least he appeared to be a different kind of insane to the universal delirium of the masses tearing one another to bits across Los Angeles. This one was, instead and in the middle of it all, selling newspapers and looking like he’d been in a lengthy and brutal fight to the death, which he lost. He stood in the intersection holding a tabloid over his head with both hands, as though the headline itself might mean something to Honor. And then she realized that of course it did. It meant “Memory Panic”.

  In a single motion and looking not unlike a clockwork cuckoo, Honor flung open the manhole sized door on the roof of the riot car and rose from it and pointed her gun at the lunatic paperboy.

  “You don’t do maps, do you?” asked Honor from just beyond a police pistol that she had no intention of firing again if it could possibly be avoided.

  “Maps?” replied the crazy man with the tabloid newspaper over his head. Then he looked up and took her meaning and smiled a weak smile and said “No. No maps. Just this newspaper. Final edition, I suspect.”

  “I suspect you’re right. Who are you, newsie?”

  “Ray, er, Tom.”

  “Rare Tom? Is that because you, yourself, are rare, or because of the epidemic shortage of Toms? Because both are probably solid explanations. I’m Honor.”

  “Hi Honor.” Ray’er Tom lowered his newspaper. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet you and I’m looking forward to trying but first can I get in your tank? I’m feeling a little exposed out here.”

  “Climb aboard Rare Tom.” said Honor, and dropped down into the tank.

  Clint chapter 3

  Clint blinked. He’d fought the instinct until now, for fear of missing what was doubtless going to be yet another exponential escalation in the surreal nature of events, but he could resist no longer. And when he opened his eyes the tank was still there, in the water, in the marina, where it had landed after apparently intentionally driving off the dock. Since waking up lost at sea and being saved by a plane crash and witnessing society rebuilding itself into primitive factions and a lioness stalking and killing and eating a giraffe on the freeway and a tank driving into the ocean, he was entirely unsurprised to discover that it floated like a cork. The armored and unwieldy and enormous vehicle was also, evidently, amphibious.

  Leaning meditatively on the railing of the yacht, Clint watched the tank drift not unlike a disengaged lily, describing a slow circle along a long arc until it was almost next to the yacht and in fact fitting quite close to correctly into the vacant boat slip. The tank lightly biffed the hull of the yacht like a starlet’s empty kiss and came to an undulating stop. Clint moved closer to the side of the yacht nearest the tank to listen to it emit a tinny clang, then another, followed by an echo which sounded more like an antagonized Scottish Terrier trapped inside an oil drum then it did anything else. Then the turret door jerked slightly ajar and wavered in this position, surveying for danger, then it swiveled wide on its hinge till it clanged all the way open and produced, naturally enough, a pretty redhead.

  She locked her elbows on what was now the top deck of the tank and looked up at Clint and proceeded directly to the point: “Are you capable of speech?”

  “What?” asked Clint back, “Do you mean like a lengthy political discourse delivered to a cheering throng? Probably not.”

  “No,” said the pretty moon-faced tank driver, “I just mean human speech. Talking.”

  “Oh, right, then, in that case,” said Clint, “yes.”

  “That’s a relief. My name is Honor and this is Rare Tom.” said Honor, followed by a reverberant “It’s just Tom. Hello.” from within the tank-boat.

  “Hi Honor.” said Clint. “Hi Rare Tom.” he said, a little louder this time. “I’m Clint. Clint Hardcliff.”

  “No you’re not.” said Honor. “Not for a second are you Clint Hardcliff.”

  “No, you’re right, I’m not. I made it up. I have others. Do you prefer Rock Power?”

  “I do not.” said Honor. “Let’s stick with Clint. I take it you don’t know who you are either?”

  “I’m afraid not. Is your name really Honor?”

  “Nope. It’s just the latest in a series of aliases.”

  “Well I like it. You should keep it. I can’t imagine anyone will argue the point. I like your tank, too. It floats. I didn’t know that tanks could do that.”

  “Neither did I.” said Honor, surveying the machine with a degree of reserved pride. “But I didn’t know how to stop it, either.”

  “I can sympathize with that. Would you like to come aboard? I was about to ring for cocktails.”

  Tom and Honor climbed first onto the dock and then up the fore ladder to the bow of the shipwrecked yacht.

  “Sorry about the poor parking job.” said Clint as they slid down the incline toward the stern, “You’ll have to take my word for it that it could have been much worse.”

  “On the contrary.” said Tom, “If we hadn’t spotted you deliberately ramming the dock we wouldn’t have thought to come to the marina at all, but in fact this is where we all need to be. Or at any rate we need to be close to water. Is there any scuba gear on board?”

  “For the record, it wasn’t deliberate. And I’m not sure that I know what scuba gear looks like, so, maybe. Isn’t that the sort of thing that most yachts have on board? Like life jackets and marlin freezers?” Clint led his guests into the salon and rang the drinks bell.

  “You have staff?” asked Tom.

  “Hardly. They couldn’t make a Martini to save the life of an infant. But I’ve been on board since this morning with little to do but drive straight and train Marmalade and Apricot. Those too, except in the case of one of man’s greatest coincidences, are not their real
names.” Marmalade shuffled through the galley door with a silver tray on which was balanced a shot glass of plain water. “Can I offer anyone else a chance at a drink?” He took the glass with an appreciative nod and rang the bell again and Marmalade turned on his heel and tripped away back to the galley for another try.

  “I initially thought that I was having an alcohol induced blackout. There was strong evidence supporting the hypothesis.” said Clint. “But then after several hours and a one-sided conference with the staff and the plane crash…” Clint paused, offering a courteous gap into which any gasps of amazement might be inserted and, encountering none, continued. “...and still no idea who I was or how I ended up lost at sea, I deduced the cause might be something even more insidious than my hangover. Which is saying something, incidentally, because as a hangover it was a thoroughbred, first-place winner by three furlongs. So you say all this has something to do with scuba diving? No offense, but that sounds a bit thin.”

  Tom showed Clint the newspaper with the “Memory Panic” headline and story about the suppressive effects of the sun’s radiation bursts on society’s ability to drive cars and not kill each other and the curious protection afforded to a party of divers. Marmalade returned with an empty jam jar filled with dishwashing detergent and offered it to Honor, who took it and the liberty of ringing the bell again.

  “Well that’s cheerful.” said Clint, returning the newspaper. “But why should we be concerned about being near water? Even if the sun comes in for another attack we, apparently, are immune.”

  “But we’re not, are we?” said Tom. “We’ve all lost at least some memories, in fact we show all the symptoms of classic trauma induced amnesia from the same moment this morning. The moment when everybody else had their memories wiped totally blank. It’s not only possible it’s probable that we’d react to another sun flare in the same way.”

  “You mean, we’d get reset again. We’d have forgotten today.” said Clint.

  “Exactly.” said Tom, and the grim cocktail party looked gloomily at their drinks while Marmalade presented a cocktail shaker filled to the top with vodka.

  “Talking of immunity,” said Tom, after an appropriate period of reflection, “we should try to identify what it is that kept you two from having your minds wiped like the rest of Los Angeles.”

  “Clean living?” proposed Clint. “Actually, no, it wouldn’t be that. Could we each have been shielded by a protective marinate of champagne and whiskey?”

  “No. And in my case I was at least temporarily vaccinated by radiated neurotoxins that I self-administered.” said Tom. “Could you have been underwater?”

  “No. I was behind the wheel of a car, doing about 90.” said Honor.

  “Frankly, given my state when I came to there’s very little that I’d rule out, but I don’t think that I’d been swimming.” said Clint.

  “Well whatever it was we can’t rely on it working twice.” said Tom.

  “Why don’t we just take some more of those neuro-Texans?” asked Clint.

  “Neurotoxins. Because there aren’t any more. There were some that I prepared before I lost my memory but they’re gone.”

  “So the idea is that we scuba dive during the sun flares?” asked Honor.

  “No. Well, yes, as a last resort. There’s nothing evenly remotely scientific about it. Even if the divers in Hawaii were subject to the radiation, we don’t know how close they were to it nor how far underwater nor for how long. What’s more we can’t know when the next event will occur or even if it’ll be here. There may be warning signs but of course no one who’s seen them would remember them. All we have is a very rough guess that it’ll occur, if it occurs at all, at around sunrise tomorrow morning.”

  “What then?” asked Clint.“A submarine?”

  “No, not a submarine. I suggest — wait, do you know where we could find a submarine?”

  “I do not.”

  “Right, then I suggest that we equip a boat with supplies, most particularly diving tanks and an air compressor, and head north. We’ll be near water, we’ll be moving away from the nexus and we’ll eventually reach an unaffected part of the country.” Tom took a long draw on his lemon extract and replaced his measuring cup on the table with an authoritative finality.

  Tom and Honor searched the yacht from the ominous lower decks to the bridge and found everything three adventurers and their domestic staff could need for a lengthy deep-sea diving holiday or wedding cruise for 120 confirmed alcoholics. They also selected their staterooms and Tom raided the galley where he found only disappointment.

  “There’s no food. None.” said Tom, returning to the salon. “There sure is a lot to drink, but there’s no food at all.”

  “No, I know. There was some sort of party so everything was either eaten or partially eaten or getting kind of gross in the heat. I threw everything overboard. There are fishing rods.” said Clint, brightening.

  Honor slipped through the galley door and closed it behind her like someone furtively avoiding an old flame at a reunion.

  “Any luck?” asked Tom.

  “In terms of food?” clarified Honor, “Or in terms of dead bodies in my bathroom?”

  “The bathrooms. Of course.” said Clint, drawing enquiring glances from his guests.

  “How do you mean, of course?” asked Honor.

  “I probably should have mentioned it sooner,” said Clint, “but when we first met I didn’t know that the total breakdown of society wasn’t limited to a yacht on which I was the only viable suspect in a mass murder. I was worried how you’d react to knowing that the entire crew had been brutally slaughtered, mostly with sharp things. Was that the case of the body in your bathroom, Honor?”

  “Most manifestly so, yes.”

  “Anyway I cleaned up and chucked the bodies overboard. All but one, apparently. Actually that may not be exactly right, you might want to check your bathroom too, Tom.”

  “What happened?” asked Tom.

  “Judging by the artistic composition of the massacre in the kitchen, they killed each other. And I must have slept through the rebooting, rebuilding and ruin of an entire seafaring society. A microcosm of what happens when people are put in a limited space with an even more limited supply of food. Now I think of it, that probably explains why there’s no food left but plenty of liquor.”

  “Is there anything else you think we should know Clint?” asked Tom.

  “If I mentioned the fishing rods, no.” said Clint, “Oh and below decks. I was afraid to go below decks. I don’t know what’s down there.”

  “Not a morsel.” said Honor. “I looked everywhere apart from the engine room, which is locked and it was too dark to pick the lock.”

  “Was picking the lock an option?” asked Tom and Honor replied only with a look of slighted professional pride of the sort that Napoleon probably held in reserve for generals who asked him if he knew the way to Prussia.

  The sun finally dropped below the indefinite horizon of the ocean leaving a lingering heat and gun-metal blue sky that glowed like something radioactive — the sky, for instance. So the night was lit not unlike a nightmare along the spectrum from black to blue and from the prow of the yacht Honor was able to survey the city like a prison guard in a tower.

  The sounds of clumsy violence faded in rhythm with the night and the increase in the volume of screeches and whistles and howls and growls of exotic animals foreign to the California coast making themselves at home in the trees lining the boulevard between the marina and a shopping mall on the other side of Admiralty Way. At the end of the little four-lane access road larger creatures were negotiating an uneasy cohabitation of the undeveloped Ballona Wetlands, next to the marina and extending to the ocean. Doubtless the lions and hyenas and hippopotamus and elephants were lured there by the freshwater creek which drains into the Pacific from the mountains, or perhaps they were drawn by a timeless instinct to complicate Honor’s life.

  The unfortunate placement of dangerous an
imals along the southern flank, the ocean to the West and nothing useful to the North meant that the only viable access due East to the shopping mall with its grocery store and the aerosol cheese and nacho chips and tinned pasta essential to an ocean voyage was a direct frontal assault across a no-man’s land of two uncovered parking lots and a four-lane road.

  Nevertheless Honor, Tom and Clint set out with a pistol, spear gun (unloaded, two spears) and a rucksack to do some precision looting. There was exactly enough discussion of endeavoring to get the tank out of the water to discard the idea as a mug's game and they proceeded on foot. Admiralty Way was deserted at ground level. There was only the sharp, blue light of night and the unnerving sounds of strange animals sleeping and moaning and being randomly startled in the trees on either side of the road and in a sort of hedgerow down the middle. Consequently the looters crossed the road and shopping mall parking lot and arrived at the grocery store without incident before encountering their first obstacle.