by Rhine, Scott
“I’ll ignore this feeble attempt to rehash the previous question, and tell you that I was the sole designer of this vehicle, as specified on the authorship cover page.” This caused a bit of a murmur in the audience, too. Most companies had teams of designers; a one-man show couldn’t hope to compete. Fortunately, I never planned to go into production, and I didn’t have to worry about issues like mass production tooling, long-term repair costs, and profit margin.
“Do you expect me to believe that just one person wrote the 200 plus pages of paper work necessary for this event?” he blustered.
“Sir, you just got finished accusing me of not giving you credit for my own ideas. Now, you claim that I could not possibly have thought them? You know that only ten pages of the document are filled out by the contestant, the rest are computer-generated vehicle description and legal forms. Or did you have somebody else fill out your part?” This got several chuckles from the crowd. I was gaining ground slowly. The evidence disc was burning a hole in my pocket, but now was not the time.
“Your form shows many irregularities. For example, you are from Massachusetts, your company is incorporated in Pennsylvania, your plant is scheduled to be built in Maryland, and the submission was from Hawaii. Which is it?”
“You’re grasping at straws. This is all common practice. Your research came from Massachusetts, you live in Arizona, and the plant is in Brazil.” I wanted to add that he was ugly and his mother dressed him funny, but resisted the urge.
“Who’s really behind you, Scarab?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, what’s the rule in question?”
The judge glanced at her watch, and said “Point taken. Are you trying to delay Mr. Hayes unduly? If so, your team will be penalized for poor sportsmanship. Are there any other valid complaints against the DeClerk team? Any questions which fall within the scope of this convention?”
When no one spoke for a moment, I broke in. “I have one. What is it with you people? Why do you harass me when you must know what the answer will be?”
The jackals were disbanding, and eventually Gertrude answered my question. “Because, sir, you need to know the answer or it doesn’t count. They want to see if you slipped on an important detail. That’s just as valid a way of winning as any.” When the last of the wild dogs wandered away, she added “You’ve won this round, Mr. Hayes, but you’re on thin ice as far as the judges are concerned. Be careful.”
Before walking into the auditorium, I took off my jacket to cool down. When I ran into Mary, she had been side-tracked at the newly-placed NPR booth. She was being interviewed in French by someone I’d never seen before. Several photographers were snapping shots of her. I leaned over the host of “Car Talk” and asked “What’s up?”
“She’s the first bimbo they’ve had here that speaks French. Our Quebec affiliates are eating her up. Marie Antionette Anselm. What a name! I hear the only thing she can say in English is ‘our tool he is the best.’“
For some reason, having her thought of as an air-headed sex symbol irked me more than it should have. I walked up as close to her as I could get in the forming crowd and tapped my watch.
She excused herself, and waved good-bye to the cameras. One of the reporters saw me at her arm and asked “What team are you on?”
“DeClerk,” I said, blocking my face from any nearby cameras with the print-out.
“Is Mademoiselle Anselm your team mascot?” he asked.
I almost decked him. “No. For your information, she’s our starting pilot today. She’s needs to get ready.” Every male within hearing distance was momentarily stunned.
“Oui,” she said with the accent again. “Nobody is better at the game of pursuit than ze woman. I will beat their pants off.”
I took her arm and escorted her from the room. When we got to the elevator, she said “Good come back.”
“I was serious.”
Quiet for a moment, she asked “Why?”
“You’re much better at city chases. There are detours all around Paris today, and I can’t read the road signs. Besides, I have to recover from the third degree treatment I just got in the judge’s lounge.” I briefed her on the complaints and our new gear. But because of the orders Playfair gave me, I neglected to mention the cheating I’d discovered.
“What stirred up the hornet’s nest?” she asked.
“I’d like to know, too. Maybe when we find out what’s in the safe.”
When the doors opened, I spotted a man in a black suit standing in front of our door. As we got closer, I noticed the corner of a holster against his white Oxford shirt. Instinctively, I ducked into the Coke machine alcove, dragging Mary Ann with me.
“Mr. Hayes?” the man asked, looking at a folded fax in his hand.
“Who’s asking?” I said from around the corner. Mare was giving me a strange look. “Playfair said to be careful,” I whispered.
“Mark D. Waters, Private Investigator. Your lawyer contacted me about a job here?”
I smiled, dusted us both off, and crawled out to shake hands. Mary did the talking. “Pleased to meet you, Waters. Hope we haven’t kept you waiting. For right now, we’d like you to get a chair, and sit guard outside that door for the next six hours. Get your own food, and anything else you might need on your breaks. Don’t trust the hotel workers, don’t talk to the media, and don’t let anyone in. Any questions?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t taken it, yet. Who am I working for, why, for how long, and how much am I getting paid?”
I fielded this one while Mare opened the room door with her card. “We’re the DeClerk racing team. We plan on winning this thing if the big boys don’t poison us, sabotage us, or discredit us first. There have already been a few attempts. You work round the clock till we finish the race.”
“Are you a fan?” asked Mary Ann, bringing out a chair.
“Never heard of the race till today.”
“Even better. You can listen on the radio, but no TV. I want your eyes on the hallway,” she said, as harsh a task-mistress as ever. “You can rest for the eight hours after today’s leg, but we expect you back on duty by midnight. Pay is standard during the day, double for night, but zero if we catch you sleeping.”
Convinced she had things under control, I finished adjusting the interface station and the navigation gear for today’s leg. I wanted the equipment to be as comfortable as possible for the long stretch where there was bound to be some pilot ergonomic measurements.
He looked pleasantly surprised. “That’s a lot of money for one day of sitting.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll earn it. What do you say?” she asked.
“Best deal I’ve had all month.” He said, shaking her hand on the contract.
“Nigel will send you the papers. See you later,” she said, shutting the door on him.
Chapter 12 – Paris and Pensatronics
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 wha
t 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.”