The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue

by Louis Shalako

  “Scott.”

  When she spoke, a short, sharp burst of adrenalin went through him. His heartbeat subsided, and then she was talking him along a path through the park. They were still in a patch of forest and brush of some kind.

  He had to listen hard, as she had both hands full with the luggage. She was quiet enough, just sort of muttering encouragement as they went.

  He walked along at her right side.

  He’d never been in that particular park before and it was all very well.

  It was better than sitting at home listening to the boob-tube. Scott would have given his left nut to see the look on that guy’s face.

  The cane came around and he realized what was happening.

  Chapter Seven

  Things could have been worse, although they were wet, and Scott was getting ravenously hungry. He was thirsty as hell and kept dreaming of a cold beer, which she had promised him at some point to keep up morale when he flagged. The water gurgled all around them.

  Scott was getting tired, and he told her so.

  She digested that bit in silence.

  “Scott. There’s something I want you to know.”

  “Sure, Honey. What is it?”

  She was lost in thought for a second, but Scott wasn't going anywhere.

  “I can have babies, Scott.”

  That was right—it was on the TV and everything, all about artificial wombs and how robots could be surrogate mothers for folks who were infertile, or sterile, or perhaps couldn’t see their way to adoption. There was a big demand for certain types of babies. Adoption was tough because demand was high. Everyone wanted the blue-eyed, blonde-haired archetypes with plenty of ambition and an IQ of a hundred and forty.

  “Well. So can I. Big deal.”

  She tried to chuckle but it didn’t come off very well.

  “But underneath, I really am just a robot. Scott. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I mean, really, Lover.”

  Scott thought about that for all of thirty seconds.

  His words, when they came, were oddly serene, calm, even.

  He grinned crookedly.

  “Oh, no, Baby. This is the perfect revenge.” He bit his lip, and bit back some tears as well.

  The perfect revenge for a forgotten life.

  A couple of spasms went through him, and he took a big breath.

  Fuck the world, anyways.

  “Where in the hell have you been all my life? Wild horses couldn’t drag me away at this point, Baby…Betty Blue.”

  He sang a little tune.

  “Betty Blue, where are you? Get it, Honey? Betty Blue!” He laughed. “Baby, baby baby…Betty Blue, where are you?” It had a kind of ship-shap, retro-doof beat to it.

  “Boy, you really are getting tired. Anyway, we’d better…”

  “Yeah.”

  The sounds of an unfamiliar location were all around. They had followed the paths to the end of the park.

  Scott had endured a terrifying descent into the ravine, hanging onto saplings and roots all the way. Into the water, slipping on rocks and sinking into the ooze, followed by the entrance into the culvert, and then across under the highway. First, they had followed along a deep ditch, half a kilometre or so of that, and then some more fields, woods, and brush. It was all wasteland and industrial decay.

  Pop open the nearest manhole cover and you're home-free, Baby.

  He was taking it all on faith.

  They were in the warehouse district. Whether on her own, or when they were together, they had to avoid cameras and drones. While Betty’s transponder was switched off, she could still be pinged passively at almost every street-corner, and she couldn’t shut that part down. It was a fail-safe from the manufacturer. The pingers were mercifully of very short range. The trouble was that there were billions of them.

  The parts were inside of her, they were very small, and Scott obviously couldn’t do the work of cutting the fine wires even if they did get a chance to get her access panels open.

  His mind reeled when she said that. Betty would block out the pain, or so she said, but under her natural skin was a chassis.

  And a very nice chassis it was, too, or so he assured her.

  But there was just no way, and hence their stealth. All of this creeping about in dark sewers.

  According to Betty, they were in a culvert. Also according to Betty, there was some kind of rave party going on up above. It was on private property, but the cops were all around. She’d spent twenty minutes or half an hour scouting the place while he rested as best he could in ankle-deep water.

  “So. What do we do?”

  He sensed her quick grin.

  “I’ll bet I’m going to love it.”

  “Of course you are—George.”

  “Huh?”

  “George, and from now on my name is…” She hesitated a moment too long.

  “Giselle—no, Gigi.”

  She chuckled, the sound sepulchral in the enclosed tubular space.

  The whanging and banging up above, the sweet and saccharine sounds of some real oldies, Agnes L. Dildoe, and Beyond Belief, and Baby Goo-Goo or whatever her name was, dispelled any fears that they might be overheard.

  “I would prefer Sushi, or almost anything, rather than that.”

  “Okay, what name do you want?”

  “Lori.”

  He laughed. Somebody somewhere was missing a purse.

  “Sure. Why not.”

  Scott, now George, sort of saw where this was headed.

  “So—we pop up and then just walk right out the front door. Right?”

  “Better.”

  “What?”

  “Better.”

  “I’m listening.”

  The pair squatted in six inches of unpleasantly warm sewage. Luckily, this was a storm sewer, but even so.

  There would be everything in here, everything from gasoline, motor oil and brake fluid, to dead squirrels, dead birds, rotting debris, all kinds of stuff coming down off of the streets.

  Considering human propensities, and the inevitable dogs, cats and urban wildlife, no doubt there would be some piss and shit in there as well. It didn’t smell all that bad, and unlike a film version, there were no shrieking, squeaking, highly-aggressive rats to be heard in the wings. Also unlike the film version, no one threw a cat at them at an opportune moment, of which there were one or two. It was best to be grateful for small mercies. Conveniently, there was a smaller, dry culvert coming in right there at waist level, or the bottoms of the suitcases would have been soaked. The smell was fetid, but not quite enough to make a person gag. That was mostly the imagination.

  She held his head, kissed him on the lips, and then he saw a flood of warm light in his eyes as she worked. Betty’s eyes were good enough for most purposes in low light, but for this job proper illumination was best.

  “This is an earpiece.”

  Her warm, gentle fingers pushed it firmly into place.

  She took off his ball cap and threw it away. She took his sunglasses for safekeeping. He changed coats, finding the thing a bit short in the arms. It smelled of another man’s aftershave.

  “You look a bit like him in the photo on the driver’s license.”

  “If we get asked for I.D. we’re done anyways.”

  She ignored it. It was obvious enough. The odd light in his eyes went off.

  “So what’s going to happen, George, is that you are going to walk out of here. All on your lonesome.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “And you’re going to talk me through it?”

  Scott shook his head.

  “Nah. I mean, I don’t think I can do it.”

  He didn’t think it was humanly possible. It sounded pretty damned crazy up there.

  “Scott.”

  He sighed.

  “Of course I’ll do it. Anything for you, dear.” It made a weird kind of sense. “Hey. It’ll be fun.”

  The logic was good. The cops couldn’t car
e less what happened to him.

  But if Betty was spotted on camera, anywhere, they were both goners. And they’d be watching this place like a hawk. In that sense, they were coming out of the Trojan Horse. They were coming out openly, out of the ass end to be sure, but it was the wrong guys, from the cops’ point of view. It made a weird kind of sense.

  “So…ah, how is this supposed to work?” Scott pulled her in close. “Don’t worry, Baby. I ain’t skeered a nothin’. But…”

  “I’ll be right with you at all times. At least until you get outside the gate. Here’s your ticket stub, here’s your wallet and I.D.” The real problem with the lapel cameras was the small lens, and in low light, with a lot of distractions, Scott had better be prepared for anything.

  “Didn’t he have a chip?”

  “Yes, Scott. But the venue is temporary—and they don’t have a reader. I checked.”

  The rave was a once a year thing, only for the weekend. There would be some sort of shady promoter involved, he realized. With all the dope on hand, booze, the inevitable underage kids, no one saw much percentage in having security too tight.

  “Hmn. Good girl.”

  Scott might be on his own, and all too unexpectedly. As soon as he started to move the plan would go right out the window.

  He just knew it.

  The wallet felt fat and heavy in his hand. He could literally smell the thing, even in here. He opened it up and had a quick riffle through it.

  There was some money in there, a couple of thousand at least. Kids these days.

  “Nice.” Scott wondered what the guy's credit limit might be.

  “Put it away.”

  He stuck it in his pocket. He gave her his wallet. She’d have all of their luggage to deal with. What he had in the small backpack wouldn’t get him very far. He had ditched his empty shopping bags a few blocks from home, just cover to get him out the door. All Scott would have would be water and the minimal hard-ass rations. This was no place to munch on a cheese sandwich anyhow.

  Scott nodded in contemplation. The plan would get him out the gate. They were safe enough at this exact moment. The cops wouldn’t come on private property without a complaint, for one thing. And for another, they would probably just let the party go on. They would sit down the road and pull over cars coming out, looking for prohibited drugs, off-the-cuff booze, contraband of all sorts. But he, and Betty as well, would be clean. Betty had boundless energy and could go across country for days. It had interesting possibilities.

  “How are you getting out?”

  “Down the tunnel, my dear.”

  “So who’s this George guy?”

  “He’s sleeping off a good drunk, quite the chemical cocktail, actually.”

  "Can he dance?"

  She laughed. The humour in her voice belied her own worries. If the cops knew her and Scott were together, they’d pick him off by retinal scan or remote facial recognition via the ubiquitous overhead cop-drones, flying pigs people called them. And if they had Scott, then they had her. But they would only zoom in close for the retinal scan if something triggered their suspicions. There were civil liberties and privacy issues involved, as Scott recalled. They were still taking a chance, going out right past their noses.

  “I’ll believe it when pigs can fly.”

  She slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, George. I promise not to tell your mother about all this.”

  Scott snorted.

  “Yes, she would definitely worry. All right. I go up the ladder.”

  “That’s right. I’ll lift the cover for you, or at least help lift it. You step out. You’ll turn exactly eighty-seven degrees to your left.” She had pinned a miniature cam-phone-GPS pin to his lapel.

  It was an open frequency that she could monitor. All the kids had them now, that and the Googgles. Apparently they could play games, chatter back and forth constantly, and drive in a never-ending Disneyland. Shit like that. Betty would follow the drainage tunnels, the ditches, and meet him somewhere away from all the cameras. If only he could get there on his own.

  Once they were out of the city, it will be like we never left it…because there is no record….

  Right?

  We’re gaming the fucking algorithms.

  He’d heard somewhere that it was at least possible.

  Not being sighted himself, the whole subject of gaming, and augmented reality, had always been a crashing bore to Scott. He’d heard all about it, of course. People loved that shit. They lived in an illusion. He’d been walking around in front of those cameras for his entire life. He figured he was pretty much invisible, as long as he had the stick and couldn’t participate.

  “And then I just walk out the front door.”

  “Yes. The cab will be waiting when you get there.”

  By her own information, streaming in constantly over the net, the car was a scant six or seven blocks away.

  “We’d better get going.”

  She took his hand and the pair straightened up. Scott allowed the stick to fall from his hand. The current, slight as it was in the dry season, carried it off.

  She lifted his left hand and put it on a rung, half an inch thick and with the paint worn off from the tread of a thousand work-boots. His right hand found the rung above it.

  “Twenty-seven rungs, straight up.”

  Scott, or George now, lifted his right leg.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound.” He began to climb. “What the fuck, eh? Life is beautiful.”

  “Scott.” She was climbing right along with him, so close that if he fell back, he was essentially trapped by her body. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  “You mean George, don’t you?”

  No answer. He’d stumped her algorithms.

  He could almost hear it in his head.

  “…in today’s top story, Mister Scott Nettles and his girlfriend Betty Blue escaped from the city…”

  There was no way she was going to let him fall. She was strong enough to make it work. She’d just wrap an arm around him and carry him back down, one-handed. The funny thing was, he really wasn’t scared.

  This was necessary.

  It was even a pretty good plan, although he had no real idea of what came next. They’d talked about it, of course. His ideas were wilder than hers. She was the one with all the information.

  His heart rate settled and he had to be about six rungs from the top. Even the sound of his breathing was different. Scott was in a vertical tube now, a steel one. He was right there.

  “It’s okay, Baby. Can you back off a bit? You’re crowding me.” He climbed another rung.

  He supposed it didn’t pay to get too cocky, but—but.

  The truth was, that they were really doing this.

  Scott Nettles and his girlfriend Betty Blue were really doing it.

  They were escaping.

  Ha!

  Would you imagine that?

  Me. With a fucking girlfriend.

  Escaping. From Onion fucking City.

  “George. I have to be able to help you lift it, it’s really heavy—” Ninety kilos of high-grade bronze is what it was, the city sparing no expense when it came to sewers in borderline-suburbia.

  This was no inner-city outreach program for the disabled, the mentally-ill, the homeless and the permanently unemployable.

  ***

  “Holy, Jesus! Where in the fuck did you come from, man?”

  At his feet, the manhole cover settled quietly back into place.

  The noise, perhaps music was too kind a word, was horrendously loud. He cringed and grimaced.

  There was no way to run.

  Scott straightened fully. He waved his arms a bit and shuffled his feet as much as he dared.

  He made his head go back and forth like a chicken. The shoes were squishing with water, which could be a dead give-away if anyone really looked. He had to blend in. Composing his features as best he could, he pondered the question.
r />   “Yeah. Where did you come from?” The voices were everywhere.

  He seemed to have popped up right in a clump of dancers, mostly female.

  This one was a guy. The young man’s breath stung his nose.

  The rushing as of winds was all around him, and the smells, of cannabis, alcohol, perfume and sweat and piss and shit and candy-floss, if one might believe it, were all mixed up into one unforgettable fugue.

  “I’m not Jesus, although the mistake is a natural one.”

  Those nearest or paying any attention at all laughed. Scott, or rather George, practically had to bellow to be heard.

  "Yeah, really, it happens all the time." More laughs.

  In his ear, Betty’s clear voice was calm but insistent.

  “Don’t get distracted. Just say excuse me and try and go north…to your immediate left.”

  “Excuse me.” He raised his voice. “Excuse me…coming through”

  Trying desperately not to fall on someone, making inevitable body contact here and there, with flailing arms and limbs moving the air in tight little zephyrs up around his face, and even with the odds and ends of someone’s hair in his mouth as he opened it to speak again, he tried to force his way through on lumpy, uneven ground.

  “Hey, man!”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “Watch where you’re going!”

  “I am really sorry. You have my deepest apologies.”

  The tone of that voice was really angry.

  “You fuckin’ doof!”

  “It’s just that I’m blind, you see, and I dropped my cane, and I just want to find the gate.”

  “You’re what? What, are you fucking blind…?”

  The tone was incredulous, and Scott wondered just how fucked-up this person was.

  The time for bellowing was now.

  “Yes. Yes, sir. I’m fucking blind—now do you get it, Buddy?” Scott almost said ‘asshole’ there but stopped himself in the nick of time.

  There was no such thing as silence to be had in such a venue, but Scott had the impression the guy hadn’t gone away.

  “My name is George. Can you please help me get to the gate?”

  A hard hand clamped on his upper bicep.

  “All right, Bud. Sure, no problem.”