by Frank Rich
"Here we go again," I said.
"Huh?" Marlene said, the tears cutting through her makeup like temporal streams through a dusty desert.
"You're not going to tell me I'm going to die, are you?"
A strange look crossed her face. "Of course not."
"Good." I pulled her close and held her tight, not unfamiliarly. My life has become one long series of dramatic goodbyes, I thought. I inhaled her expensive perfume and kissed her neck, then her lips. Again I looked hard, deep into the pit of my heart for something, the slightest stirring. All I found was the numbness of a morphine addict.
I let her go and backed toward the skimmer. When she raised a tiny hand, I waved back and climbed aboard. I saw her lips pronounce three syllables as we lifted, but with the noise of the engine, she could have said anything.
"What's your name?" I asked the pilot.
"Buck."
"You want a drink, Buck?"
He stared nervously at the pint bottle I lifted from my pocket. "I don't like to float and fly."
"Suit yourself." I took a hit and put the bottle between my knees. We turned into the sun and I put on sunglasses. "You have a knife, Buck?"
"Sure." He dug an Army model out of his pocket.
I folded out a blade and pried open the back of the transmitter. I found out why the transmitter was so big. It had to be to accommodate the fat square of clay wrapped in lead foil. I closed the transmitter and gave Buck his knife.
"So, Buck, did Rob go over the plan with you?"
"Yessir, he did. Uh, if you don't mind me asking, why's he so mad at you?"
"I don't know. Tell me what you're going to do after you drop me off."
"I fly back to the base."
"Then what?"
He looked confused. "Uh…"
"You wait to get my signal from this transmitter disguised as a beeper, so you can come pick me up. Remember?" I showed him the transmitter.
"Oh, yeah."
I dropped the transmitter out the window. "Oops."
We watched the black box fall to earth.
"You dropped the beeper," Buck pointed out.
"That wasn't a beeper, Buck. That was a bomb."
He eyed me. "Why would they give you a bomb instead of transmitter?"
"Seems kind of goofy, doesn't it? Maybe they don't think I'm capable of doing the job on my own. A little insurance."
"What are we going to do now?" Buck wondered.
"We'll have to change the plan, Buck."
"Oh."
"I want you to come pick me up exactly thirty minutes after you drop me off. If I'm not there, I want you to swoop by every fifteen minutes."
"For how long?"
"Until they shoot you down."
He slid me another look. "Oh."
"Now, I want you to tell me precisely how you're going to rescue me."
"I, uh, swoop by and catch your, uh…"
"Hoop. You want me to write any of this down for you?"
"Naw, I can remember. Yeah, I catch the, uh, hoop with my skid and, uh, pull you from the roof." He smiled proudly.
"A difficult maneuver at best. But I bet you've been flying for some years now."
"Two months."
"Perfect." I finished the gin and dropped the bottle on the floor the same instant we landed on Remi's tower.
A squad of armored troops with complicated weapons escorted me from the pad to the rooftop elevator. While we were waiting for the elevator, I watched Buck lift the skimmer off the roof. He gave me a goofy wave as he sped away. I doubted that he'd be back.
We crowded into the elevator. I took off my sunglasses. All the guards were over six foot five and in their gleaming white armor they appeared even larger.
"Must be hot in those monkey suits," I said, trying to alleviate the tension.
No one seemed interested in a round of idle banter.
"What sort of rifles are those?" I asked.
A guard with red shoulder boards swiveled his helmeted head. "Don't be so inquisitive. Have you been drinking?"
"Wait a minute, pal," I snapped, "I'm the goddamn inspector here. It's my job to ask the questions. What's your name, soldier?" I took out a tiny notebook and pen.
"Techtrooper Karlis. With a k."
"Techtrooper, huh?" I said scribbling into my notebook. "The World Party will be watching you very closely, Farlis."
"Karlis, with a k".
"With a k." I made another note.
We went down two floors, and the doors opened onto a brightly lit lobby with all the sterile charm of a hospital waiting room. The squad steered me to a counter behind which two techs in bright red jumpsuits waited. In front of them squatted an industrial-sized handscanner. One of the techs took my papers, and the other stared at a monitor after I'd slid my hand under the scanner. More men in tech suits searched me with electronic wands. I stared at the tech reviewing my scan data. He seemed troubled.
"He's clean outside," the men with wands said.
"Papers are in order," the guard with my orders said, stamping them. I started to move from the table when the tech behind the handscanner held up his hand. "Hold on."
Karlis clamped an iron grip on my biceps. I faced the scan man.
"It says here," he said, staring at the screen, "you've been in the corps of inspectors only five years." He looked up at me, his glasses going opaque under the harsh fluorescents. "Party inspector school is two years long, and it'd take at least seven years to rise to your rank of city-level inspector. Can you explain this, Mr. Strait?"
I stared at him, my mind scrambling for answers. I noticed his red hair was receding to meet a balding pate and his freckles sprinkled his face and neck like a galaxy of orange stars. My mouth opened and the words came out without me thinking about them. "Well, it's like they say. It's not what you know, it's who you know."
He seemed unsatisfied so I drew out the deceit. "My uncle is a Party director. He has old Army mates in the corps of inspectors." I shrugged. "You know how it is."
His intense stare did not lessen; his eyes seemed to be drilling into mine, searching for lies. The tension began to howl in my ears as the seconds ticked by like days.
"Okay," he said softly. "You pass."
Before I could feel relief, the guards hustled me beneath what resembled a monstrous heat lamp suspended from a large metal box. The box buzzed as if it had bees trapped in it, and a blue light bathed me.
"He's clean inside," a tech in front of an instrument panel said. "Except for four hectograms of undigested alcohol in his stomach." The tech looked up and smiled. "Get a little loaded on the flight over, Inspector?"
"I do my best work while loaded," I said.
The tech laughed, and the guards led me away. We stopped before a door that looked like it belonged on a bank vault. Techtrooper Karlis looked up into the brace of cameras above the door and spoke. "The inspector is here, Techmaster."
The door hissed back into the recesses of the wall, but we didn't go in.
"Enter!" a voice commanded, and we paraded in.
Huge rose-tinted windows made up most of the facing wall, bathing the room with pinkish tint. A sea of mauve shag ran from one wall to the other, lapping at the plastic oak paneling. In one corner a huge chrome desk squatted in a circle of gleaming chrome tile. Against the left wall stretched a long aluminum table displaying an assortment of bizarre-looking equipment. Against the opposite wall sat a lonely yellow wet bar. In the middle of all the tackiness stood Remi Jonson.
"Welcome, Mr. Strait," he said in a mysterious tone. "I've been expecting you."
A short man, Remi emanated the exaggerated bravado peculiar to some men of lesser stature. The manner in which he ran Denver spoke of a man with a desperate need for control, yet, as he stood before me, there was a sense of a man out of control, a prophet made frantic by the suspicion his god may well be false.
"What do you think so far of my humble city?" he said, his small, shining eyes flashing from his cher
ubic face, his mad, elfish smile demanding approval.
"I haven't had much time to look it over," I said, "but from what I've seen, it's very efficiently run."
"Alas! Finally an inspector willing to admit the obvious. Tell me, what impressed you most?"
"Your crime-fighting techaology. Poppers, I believe they are colloquially called."
"Ah, you mean my code-enforcement automatons."
"Yes."
"One of my greatest achievements. I hope to export them to every city with a crime problem, which is all of them. Since crime-fighting equipment seems to interest you, let me show you some other items I've developed. Follow me, follow me!" he cried, waving his arms and smiling as if we were taking the first steps of some magnificent journey. The guards took up position at the door, lasers at the ready.
His chubby body moved with the hectic, nervous speed usually associated with amphetamine addicts, jumping and lunging as if trying to stay out of the cross hairs of some distant assassin, his wildly happy eyes saying he enjoyed the attention.
He scooted to the opposite side of the long table and faced me. "In anticipation of your arrival, I took the liberty of creating a display of some of the newest fruits of my technology." He picked up a two-foot-long rod with trigger housing and cord.
"What's that?" I asked.
"A sonic disrupter! Using our newly developed sound-wave technology, we've developed a device to aid the average trooper on the beat. Point this tube in the direction of the criminal and pull the trigger, and sonic waves pound the offender's nerve synapses, rendering him helpless without damaging objects around him. A boon for hostage situations."
"The trooper will have to pack a long extension cord."
Remi frowned. "Yes, well, it does require a rather large amount of power, but we're working on supercharged battery packs. We've got them down to seventy-five pounds already." He picked up what looked like a hand-held video camera. "Look at this dazer! Aim this baby at a criminal's eyes and press the stud, and a powerful wave of UV light scrambles his neural transmitters. The offender is instantly brain locked, helplessly dazed for ten minutes."
"They used those during the corporate wars, didn't they?"
His glee diminished. "Admittedly, much technology was lost in the confusion following that great conflict. We are recovering much as we speak and are making great new strides in other fields. Like this!" He smiled as he moved down the table, pointing at a small black box with a speaker built into it. Remi cleared his throat. "Steno, back ten sentences!"
"We've got them down to seventy-five pounds already," the steno said in Remi's voice.
"A tape recorder," I said. "Wow."
"Much more than that, Inspector. It has a voice-recognition system built-in and can store up to a week's worth of conversation on its microchip. If I tell it to go back ten sentences, it will go back ten sentences from the last thing said. It will go back so many words or so much time. It's an executive's best friend!"
"Impressive," I said.
"That's nothing, look at this!" Remi cried, scuttling to his desk. "Suppose hostile forces somehow slipped past my guards and through the near-impregnable titanium walls and doors of this room."
"Seems unlikely, but let's suppose they did," I said, genuinely interested. "What would you do?"
"Why, I'd merely stand here and say 'Lazarus, up screen.'"
A humming, barely discernible wall of energy rose from the edge of the chrome tiles around Lazarus and Remi's desk.
"A force field!" Remi cried. "Impenetrable by bullet or body. C'mon," he taunted. "Touch it, it'll shock the hell out of you."
"I'll take your word for it. What's to stop the hostile forces from saying 'Lazarus, down screen?'"
"Go ahead, say it!" Remi encouraged.
"I just did."
"But not in my voice! You see, the screen command recognizes only my voice. Lazarus, down screen." The screen disappeared. "See?"
"Clever indeed," I said.
Remi nodded immodestly. "It's only a small part of my dream. I foresee the day Denver will be the greatest bastion of technological research, development and production in the world. The World Party will come to me for answers to the perpetual riddles of modern life."
"Sounds like a big dream," I said.
"A dream I will achieve at any price. We were supposed to be enjoying automated homes, robot servants and routine tourist trips to Mars by now. Something went wrong somewhere. We still have ghettos and drive cars powered by internal-combustion engines. We've gone nowhere! But we can have all those things and more if the World Party would just listen to me."
I nodded and stared at the bar across the room with a friendly eye. No bottles were in evidence, but there was a tall cabinet behind the bar. In the center of the cabinet was a collection of apparatus.
"I see you noticed the bar. Would you care for a taste?"
"Certainly." I said. We crossed the room. "Shall I pour?"
"Why lift even a finger, when Abby, the automated bartender, would love to do you the favor." Remi turned to the cabinet. "Abby, make the good inspector here a, uh…"
"A screwdriver."
"Abby, a screwdriver."
"At once, sir!" Abby said in a high, strangely effete electronic voice.
"Now, when was the last time you met a bartender that polite?" Remi leaned close and whispered conspiratorially, "And you don't have to tip him, either!"
The bar hummed and rattled, and a glass dropped down a clear tube from the cabinet and sat on a grate long enough to be shot full of ice and fluids. The drink slid toward the bar on narrow steel rollers. The glass hit the felt bumper at the edge of the bar and tipped over onto the floor.
"Reminds me of a couple bartenders I know," I said.
"Well, Abby's not the neatest bartender in the world, but we're still working the bugs out. Another drink?"
"Please. The first left me a little dry."
"Abby, another screwdriver." He looked to me. "You better catch this one."
"Right."
Abby hummed and rattled and rolled out a glass of ice. "This one seems a little weak," I said.
"I can't understand what's happening." He walked to the side of the bar and slapped the cabinet. "Abby, a screwdriver!"
Abby grated and shook and shot out an empty glass. "He's cut me off already," I said. "The rude bastard."
This time Remi went behind the bar, took a power wrench from beneath and clobbered Abby with it. "A goddamn screwdriver, you stupid machine!"
Abby rumbled and fluid splashed down the tube, but there was no glass to catch it.
"Maybe it was designed to make people stop drinking," I suggested. "Wean them off slowly."
"Nonsense. Give me a frigging screwdriver, Abby!" More fluid splashed out.
Remi leaned back with the wrench and gave Abby a blow that would have sent most bartenders to the floor. Instead, Abby completely wigged. The bar shook and shrieked, a hose burst beneath the cabinet and flailed around like a beheaded snake, spewing what tasted like cheap bourbon.
"It's gone berserk!" Remi screamed, leaping from behind the bar.
The guards rushed forward, weapons at the ready. "Should we shoot it, sir?" Karlis called out excitedly.
"I don't think that'll be necessary," I said. I reached behind Abby and unplugged it. Abby gave one last dying spurt and expired.
"Ungrateful machine," Remi said. "I wonder why it flipped?"
"Maybe he got tired of not being tipped," I said.
Remi moved away from Abby, symbolically putting it behind him. "That kind of technology isn't important anyway. Just cheap gimmicks for the easily impressed." He stopped in front of the huge computer next to his desk. "This is the real technology."
I yawned. "What's so great about this machine?"
"Give me a name."
"What?"
"Give me a name, a common one."
"John Thomas."
Remi giggled. "Okay. Lazarus, execution warrant. Name entr
y, John Thomas. Execute and report." Remi looked at me. "Watch how quickly the task is performed." Remi smiled and hummed, rocking on his heels, looking at the ceiling. Thirty seconds later Lazarus beeped.
"John Thomas is dead!" Remi cried happily.
Lazarus beeped again.
"Look how diligent! How efficient!" He rubbed the side of Lazarus lovingly. "As we speak, sweepers scour Denver's streets and alleyways, on the lookout for criminals."
"Or any poor sap named John Thomas."
"Whatever. The beauty of Lazarus is it is completely self-contained. Say a robbery is committed at a drugstore. Criminal-activity detectors or a silent alarm alert Lazarus. Lazarus instantly dispatches a popper to the scene. Embedded scanners in the streets and sidewalks trace the movement of the criminal, and the popper is upon him within a matter of seconds. The guilty are executed, Lazarus informs reclamation, and the vans are on their way."
"Sounds to me there's a lot of room for error."
He smiled vainly. "Lazarus has a ninety-three percent rightful-execution rate. Not bad, eh?"
"The seven percent might not agree."
"It's all in the averages. It all evens out for the better in the end."
Lazarus beeped again. And again.
"Lazarus is killing all the John Thomases," I said.
"Believe me, the world can live without them." Remi laughed. "It's such a silly name, anyway. Anybody stuck with that ringer probably prays daily for death."
"You don't mind killing innocent people?"
Remi gave me a sly look. "Now, Mr. Strait. Nobody is innocent. Not really. Experience has taught me one truism — everyone is guilty of something. Everyone."
"Guilty enough to die?"
"Are they innocent enough to be allowed to live? That should be the question. No man or amount of men have died that the world cannot live without. We're overpopulated anyway. You have to look at the big picture. Starvation would kill many more of the so-called innocents than my machines. You could say I'm just another random factor like cancer or car wrecks, except my percentages are much better. Listen, if there was an incurable disease that nine times out of ten killed bad guys, wouldn't most law-abiding people welcome it? Sure they would!" He scuttled to the window, then waved me over. "Come here, Inspector."