Marlowe and the Spacewoman

by Ian M. Dudley

  “Yes. Most interesting. Oh, by the way, Gomer has an urgent message for you.”

  “What is it? Did the Governor call?”

  “He won’t say. He’s put together an encrypted package for you. Transferring now.”

  A download bar flicked across Marlowe’s right field of view for a half second. A fairly small file. He double-blinked it open, and a light blue rectangle filled his field of vision. It flickered and morphed into Gomer’s cage, with Gomer sitting on the top of the open door.

  “Hey Marlowe, just a reminder. Buy more cat food on the way home!”

  The video message faded. Marlowe frowned. “House, in the future, review all messages from Gomer to determine if they need to be sent out right away or not.”

  “Very well. I apologize if it wasn’t as urgent as Gomer led me to believe.”

  “Not your fault, House, not your fault.”

  “You got what you need?” asked Huggy Bear.

  Marlowe flashed through the images again, real quick, to make sure he was satisfied. “Yeah, we’re good. Let’s get out of this stink hole.”

  Huggy Bear made a big deal of carefully folding up his computer, returning it to his backpack, and grunting the backpack onto his back. Nina bounced up and down on her toes, excited and hopeful about what they’d just accomplished. Marlowe, eager to get out of the filthy tank and home to a shower (though using liquid soap this time), led the way out. They had just left the sewage tank and reentered the corridor when the explosions started. Three short, staccato blasts that shook the passage violently. They were coming from the entrance.

  “Oh God, they’re disappearing us!” screamed Huggy Bear, his teeth flashing as his mouth flapped open and shut.

  The lights flickered, and another series of sharp blasts reverberated through the underground passageway. Then the lights went completely out. Huggy Bear panicked, crashing into Nina and sending her sprawling before bounding down the other end of the corridor.

  “Marlowe, I can’t see. How’s your low light implant?”

  “No dice. I need some light for them to work. It’s pitch black.”

  Another set of three blasts rocked them.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sounds like bumble bombs. Three short blasts is the typical signature.” Marlowe fished out the box of light beads and pulled a couple out. He squeezed both and handed one to Nina. “Don’t lose that. I’m gonna run out of these things at this rate. Anyway, bumble bombs are small, size of a thimble, and you roll them discreetly at your target. They bounce a few times, then burst. Nasty devices. Usually used to disable cars or blow out windshields and the like – you drop them out the window and let them bounce onto a car behind you.”

  “They’re sealing us in.”

  “Most likely. But I don’t understand why they’re using such small ordinance. There’s some stuff out there that would cave in this entire underground complex with one blast.”

  Nina started after Huggy Bear, holding her light bead in front of her. “Come on, he’s our best bet for finding another exit.”

  Marlowe followed. “Hang on, I’ll see if there’s a floor plan. House, can you search the City Records server for floor plans to this plant, please?”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then another moment of silence.

  “House?”

  Nothing.

  Nina had reached the tank with the Internet drop and stuck her head inside. “He’s not in here.”

  “I can’t reach House.”

  “I think we have more important concerns here.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Something is seriously wrong.” Marlowe started shaking.

  “We’re about to be buried alive, and now you decide to complain about technical difficulties?”

  “House, can you hear me? Can you hear me at all? Please answer, House.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a minor glitch. We’ll get out of here and fix it in no time.”

  “Minor glitch?” Marlowe’s voice had gone up a few octaves, sliding from baritone to screech. “Minor glitch?? Don’t you get it? I’m cut off from House! Nothing! Not a peep is coming through!”

  Having no tolerance for hysterics, Nina grabbed Marlowe by the shoulders, rattled him vigorously, and when that didn’t bring the focus back to his eyes, slapped him hard against his face. “Marlowe! Get a grip! We’re about to be buried alive!”

  Marlowe calmed down, becoming quite still. Not because of the rattling Nina had given him, and not directly because of the slap. He went numb with fear when something after the slap DIDN’T happen.

  “At least the explosions stopped.”

  “Nina, slap me again.”

  “Excuse me? This is hardly the time-”

  “Slap me again! As hard as you can!”

  “Fine.” Nina obliged him, striking Marlowe a mighty blow. His head snapped to the side, and after the initial sharp sting had subsided, an achy rush of heat spread across his cheek. Nina had outdone herself; Marlowe could tell this would leave a bruise. And that’s what terrified him.

  “Hey, don’t you have some sort of infrared implant? Maybe we can see Huggy Bear’s footprints.”

  Marlowe swallowed, a difficult act considering how dry his mouth had become. He’d never had a dry mouth before. He lost Nina’s words to the torrent of rushing air roaring through his ears. A surge of terror swept over him, its undertow pulling him down and tumbling him end over end through the black, empty void. He spun around, the light bead flying from his convulsing hand, and plowed into the side of the corridor. Blood began to dribble out of his left nostril. He sank to the floor and touched the bleeding nostril with his shaking hand.

  “Marlowe, are you all right? What are you doing?”

  “My PDI is dead. That’s why I can’t reach House. That’s why the nano probes didn’t release sedatives when I panicked about not reaching House, and why they didn’t stop the pain and repair the damage when you slapped me. And that’s why all my optical, audible, and sensory implants no longer work – they’re all controlled by the PDI!”

  “Maybe the batteries are dead?”

  “It’s dead. No nano probes.” His voice was soft now, distant. He held his shaking, blood-covered hand up between them. “I could bleed to death from this.”

  Nina crouched down next to Marlowe, barely able to mute the strain of keeping her voice calm. “Don’t be absurd. Humans have survived without PDIs for thousands of years, and suffered nose bleeds and other minor injuries for just as long. Your body can form platelets all by itself. Granted, it might take longer, but it’s an age-old, proven design.”

  Marlowe stared at the oscillating tips of his wet, crimson fingers. “Oh Governor, this hurts. No pain blockers, no medical status display, no nano probes.” His breathing became sharp labored gasps, his voice wheezy. “Nothing. Hell, I can’t even see properly.”

  “That’s because it’s dark.”

  “You just don’t get it!” snapped Marlowe, taking a wide swing in the air. “I’m all alone! All alone in the dark!” He had to move; when he kept still, he could feel the sticky hold of the Truth-Be-Told table against his skin, the cold metal underneath him. Obedere’s eyes flashing above him. “Oh Governor, not again.”

  Real concern showed on Nina’s face, but Marlowe was beyond caring. He babbled softly to himself, a faraway look in his eyes. Nina slapped him again. “Marlowe, stay with me.”

  Marlowe responded to the slap by taking a swing at Nina. He caught her off guard, and actually managed to connect with her shoulder. She grunted, then grabbed his arm and twisted it. With her free hand she slapped him across the face again. And again.

  At first he just whimpered. Nina persisted, her strikes making a sharp clap that echoed down the corridor. Marlowe cried out. A couple of more blows and Marlowe invoked an actual word. “Ow!” Another set of smacks, and he raised his hand, no longer shaking, and shouted out, “Stop! Enough.” His eyes had stopped rolling and now looked directly at Ni
na. He took several deep breaths.

  “Sorry, I’m not used to this…silence. Brings back bad memories.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, just a little out of sorts. The last time this happened to me…. Obedere must have gotten a virus through, one House didn’t detect. No more backups. If I die, my backup mind won’t be able to transfer over. I can’t do an emergency backup right now to preserve my memory of today’s events. If I die and the body isn’t recovered within an hour, it can’t be restored. That’s too long to be down.”

  “Welcome to my world, Marlowe. We can find a fix to your implant problem, but only if we survive the immediate threat.”

  Marlowe’s panic had subsided, but his assessment of their chances remained the same. They were going to die. Permanently. Nina’s breath was warm on his face. An idea occurred to him, and he thought, why not? He had nothing to lose at this point, and she’d done the same earlier. So he leaned forward and kissed Nina. Or tried to, anway. It was dark, and he missed, landing his lips on her nose. Bad enough if he’d been going for a closed mouth kiss. But he hadn’t been. Her nose tasted salty.

  “What are you doing,” asked Nina as she pulled back.

  Marlowe braced himself for another slap. It never came.

  “Jesus, Marlowe, you really know how to romance a girl. Is that how people kiss these days?”

  “No, sorry, I just-”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. I kissed you when I thought I was about to die, and now you’re returning the favor. You get this one for free, but next time you try to kiss me, you’ll pay for it. And trust me, you can’t afford the asking price.” And then she was kissing him again, gently, her lips warm on his for just a few seconds and then gone. “Better?”

  “Yeah,” said Marlowe, “A lot. More than you could know. Thanks.”

  “For all your advanced technology, Marlowe, you’re really rather simple. Now can we focus on the task at hand, not dying?”

  “Sorry. I lost it there for a moment. I’m OK now. You’re right, we’ll get through this and fix everything. It’ll all be fine. Absolutely fine.” He started rocking back and forth, hugging himself as their predicament broke through the warm haze of their kiss.

  Nina walked over to his light bead, which was perched precariously on the floor grating. She picked it up and and handed it back to Marlowe. “You’ve been in worse situations, right?”

  Marlowe stared at the bead, smearing blood on it. “No, not really.”

  “What about the recon parlor?”

  “I was in touch with House during all that.”

  Nina shook her head in exasperation. “Fine. Well, Huggy Bear’s not in that tank, and there’s only one direction he could have gone, which is down this corridor. Shall we?”

  Nina interlocked her arm through Marlowe’s and took the lead. He felt out of sorts; without his low light implant, he couldn’t see clearly. The light bead did little to dispel the darkness. His eyes hurt as they struggled to remember what to do with the pupils to compensate, how to manipulate muscles that hadn’t been used involuntarily in a long time.

  “Hey, Marlowe, wait, we can contact House with my wrist communicator. House, can you hear me?”

  “It’s no good. That’s a cheapie communicator. It’s slaved to my PDI.”

  “It doesn’t work without your PDI?”

  “No. You have to be within two kilometers of my PDI for it to work; everything is routed through me.”

  “But then why even have a wrist communicator? There’s no point if you need to have the PDI anyway!”

  “It’s a kid’s toy. I had it growing up. It’s the novelty.”

  “You mean like walkie-talkies?”

  “I don’t know what those are.”

  “Never mind. The more I learn about this world, the less I understand. Say, do you smell that?”

  Marlowe sniffed, and immediately regretted it. “I can’t smell anything but years old raw sewage. My nasal filters are clogged with the odor, and I can’t open them now.”

  “It smells like gas.”

  “Gas?”

  “Natural gas. Assuming you still put the same additives in it to give it a distinctive smell.”

  “I…I don’t know. I can’t check with my PDI down.”

  “Well, all other things being equally bad right now, let’s assume it is gas. They’re gassing us.”

  “Or worse. They’re pumping natural gas in with the plan of blowing us up. It makes sense. Some small bombs to seal us in, then pump the facility full of natural gas and detonate it. We’re deep enough underground, people might not even notice.”

  “See, you’re not so useless without your PDI. You can still think. Maybe this failure is a good thing.”

  “Help could be on the way if I could reach House.”

  “Coulda, shoulda, woulda. I’d still be at 55 Cancri if the scientists hadn’t been wrong about the debris orbiting the star. But we can’t change events that have already happened, so I suggest we focus on the here and now. I’ll bet that hacker Huggy Bear made himself a back door out of this place.”

  They kept going down the corridor. They even resorted to calling out to Huggy Bear, yelling for help, screaming for someone to hear them. Between outbursts, they listened. And heard nothing.

  “He’s got to be able to hear us.”

  Nina shrugged. “He’s afraid. Or better yet, already outside and away through his secret exit.”

  “I think that gas is getting to your head.”

  They kept walking, shouting, listening. It was Nina, who was more used to using her eyes unaided, who noticed it. A slight change in the level of light as they walked.

  “Marlowe, stop.”

  Marlowe stopped.

  Nina made a fist around her light bead. “Cover up your light bead.”

  Marlowe covered his up in his fist. Pitch blackness descended. “Why are we doing this?”

  “Shh. Just look around.”

  “Why do I have to be quiet if we’re looking for something?”

  “Shh. It’s just semantics. Look around.”

  “It’s pitch black!”

  “No, it isn’t. I walked past something that was giving off light. Just not a whole lot. Look around for light.”

  Marlowe spun around in a complete circle. It left him a little dizzy, but as he turned, he noticed that it wasn’t completely pitch black. He had finally hit on the successful natural response to darkness, opening up his pupils. He noticed a faint, faint glow emanating from his fist, and another one presumably emanating from Nina’s fist.

  “Hey, I see something, but I think it’s your light bead. Move your hand up and down.”

  The faint, faint glow moved up and down. “Yeah, it’s you.”

  He spun around again, but again all he made out was his fist and Nina’s. The smell of gas was starting to seep through his sewage-clogged nasal filters. It was natural gas, and Marlowe felt himself getting light-headed. Nina coughed.

  “Are you sure you saw something?”

  “Yes!” Nina hissed. “I’m positive!”

  Marlowe, convinced at both the folly of their current search and the folly of attempting to persuade Nina to move on, rolled his eyes. And that’s when he saw the third glow.

  “Nina! Above us!”

  Nina gasped and then Marlowe went blind with the explosion of light. He screamed, for about half a second, before he realized it was Nina’s light bead and not the gas igniting. Her light bead revealed a service port in the ceiling. It was just large enough to admit someone of Huggy Bear’s girth, and was hanging ever-so-slightly open, letting in a crack of illumination.

  “This looks promising,” said Nina. “But I can’t quite reach the handle.”

  Marlowe dropped his light bead and reached up, grasping the handle and pulling down hard. He’d been expecting resistance, but there was none, so the port swung open and Marlowe fell backwards. Which was just as well since a ladder slid down through the open port, crashing
into the floor with a loud clang.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said Marlowe, retrieving his light bead before standing up. “Go. I’m right behind you.”

  The climb up the ladder was long, cramped, and very uncomfortable. The rungs of the ladder were rusty and jagged, and with each new abrasion and cut into his hands, Marlowe mourned anew the loss of his nano probes. Above, if he craned his neck painfully, and Nina was positioned just so, Marlowe could glimpse a bright light. A bright bulb high above them. He found it incredibly frustrating that with each painful step and each excruciating grip of the rungs, that bulb didn’t change in size. He wondered if the ladder was sinking at the same rate they were climbing. Eventually the futility and discomfort of staring up convinced Marlowe to just look straight ahead. And then he dropped his light bead.

  “Damn it!”

  Nina stopped climbing. “What is it?”

  “I dropped another light bead. Those things are expensive!”

  Nina said something under her breath, but Marlowe couldn’t make it out without the audio amplifiers built into his ear canal. She started climbing again. He thought about asking her what she said, but thought better of it and simply followed.

  After what seemed like hours, and for all Marlowe knew without his PDI, it was, they finally came to the surface. A small lamp was set into the wall just under the lip of the exit, with the fainter light of evening above it. Nina poked her head out slowly, checking to see if it was safe. Evidently it was, because she continued out. Marlowe crept out after her, welcoming the delicious sensation of brittle grass blades under his hands. Nina was flat on the ground, and he followed her example. The ground was cool and hard, the yellow grass itchy against his cheek. The night air blew gently over them, sucking away body heat. Confused by the transition from artificial light to natural darkness, his irises and pupils were at odds about what to do. Finally they compromised on a setting that revealed the world to him, but not too clearly. Marlowe marveled when the darkness slowly ebbed away and details began to manifest themselves. His eyes were starting to get the hang of things. He surveyed their surroundings and immediately pined for the ability to increase optical mag.