Tubular Android Superheroes

by Mel Gilden

  I thought I knew why Mr. Will had abducted the surfers. I even thought I knew why he'd taken the extra trouble to abduct Zamp. It occurred to me that instead of following the truck I should have hunted for Mr. Will and made his life unpleasant until he told me where everybody was. Then it occurred to me that he had large, powerful employees whose superpower was to make life unpleasant for guys who things occurred to.

  ID Advertising was one more one-story building with a plate-glass window in front. The street was not busy, but it wouldn't be at this hour. I turned off the engine and listened to the silence in the car. It was a silence of sorrow and frustration, of which I was the West Coast supplier.

  Bill and I got out of the car and walked around to the side of the ID Advertising building, where trucks were parked in neat rows behind a chain-link fence. By walking the entire fence I could see the number on every truck. I didn't see number eighty-two. It wasn't here. It was somewhere else.

  I stood outside the fence with my hands in my pockets, feeling silly about coming to Earth, about being a detective, about standing there with my hands in the alien pockets of another man's suit—Philip Marlowe's suit.

  I walked back to the car feeling like the inside of a sewer and sat behind the wheel. I must have sat there for a long time because Bill said, "Where to, Boss?"

  "We'll wait," I said.

  "What are we waiting for?"

  It was a logical question, a pretty good question even from somebody who had a much more expensive brain than Bill's. I said, "For truck number eighty-two."

  "Waiting is my meat. Boss."

  So we waited. It got later. I shut my eyes. I listened to the silence and to the rattling of ideas inside my own head.

  What seemed to be a moment later, a growl awakened me. I jumped and hit my head on the ceiling of the car, thinking, in the dream I'd been having, that the tigers were after me again. Bill looked at me sideways and I told him I was all right. "Sure, Boss," he said, but he kept looking at me. The growl had been the engine of a truck, of course. I rubbed my eyes as I watched it make a right turn into the driveway of the ID Advertising parking lot. Laboring as if it were pulling the Titanic from the bottom of the ocean, a machine dragged the gate open and then grated as the gate began to shut behind the truck. As the truck turned, a streetlight shone on the back of it. It was number eighty-two. Bill told me it was number eighty-two. That confirmed it.

  Bill and I got out of the Belvedere and we ran through the shrinking space between the gate and the fence. Making a sound like a plumber's toolbox falling downstairs, the gate slammed closed behind us. The air was cold, without even a memory of the sun that had warmed it all day. Buried among the jasmine and orange blossoms, other things tickled the inside of my nose:

  the familiar insult of smog and a vague spicing of credulity gas, fresh as a locker room after the big game.

  Bill skipped beside me as I strolled to where the big truck stood, its engine complaining as it died. Like all the other trucks this one was clean, a big cube of vanilla ice cream in the night. I'd missed a few things on it back at the Convention Center. As if it were important, stickers on the rear bumper told me liliput miniature golf and stop truck stop and truckers do it all night. That was all they told me. Maybe it was some kind of code.

  Not knowing what to expect, I rapped on the side of the truck. When nothing happened I rapped again and put the side of my head against the truck. The metal was colder than a penguin's toes. More nothing happened. Then the cab door slammed, making my head ring.

  I stood away from the truck, and the driver walked toward me looking very much like a truck himself. He was a man-mountain who stood beside his truck with a pipe that in his hands looked no larger than a toothpick. It was difficult to tell in that light, but I think he had a blue plastic collar around his neck. A superpower is a superpower even if it only allows you to drive a truck better than anybody else.

  In that polite way people have when they've caught you and they're being cute about it, he said, "May I help you?"

  Knowing it was not smart but being in no mood to be smart, I said, "What's in the truck, bub?" My voice didn't even shake. I just wanted Grampa Zamp back and would likely get my brain parted by this aggro dude for my trouble.

  "Nothing but the rent," the driver said, and hefted his pipe. Bill laughed, but stopped when he saw the dead look on my face. I rubbed my forenose tiredly and said, "You think it's none of my business, but I lost somebody tonight and I think he might somehow— just by accident, you understand—have gotten into the back of your truck." "How might he have accidentally done that?"

  The driver looked puzzled. He might even have been sincere. "He might have been put there by a couple of androids, one of whom has very long teeth. But I'm only guessing, of course."

  The driver nodded and came toward me with the pipe. Bill and I backed out of his way. He climbed onto the rear bumper of the truck and, with a practiced shove of the heel of his hand, sprung the lock. The door drifted open on hinges that squeaked demurely like a hungry kitten demanding dinner.

  Maybe it was because the guy had opened the truck instead of braining me, maybe it was some Toomler extrasense, maybe it was just my imagination, but I knew that nothing interesting was inside that truck. I pulled open the door and looked into a space that was about the size of Whipper's bedroom but was considerably emptier. Bill hopped onto the bumper and looked inside too. "Hello?" he called, and made an echo that pleased him. No point my climbing inside. No point giving the driver a chance to lock me in. He might take me to where Zamp and the others were. Or he might just dump me off a freeway overcrossing.

  I pulled Bill off the bumper and said, "So, where have you been this evening?"

  The driver got cagey. With one finger he wiped imaginary dirt from his truck and said, "Just cruising, mister. That's all. Just cruising."

  "In a company truck? In the middle of the night? Not unless your superpower is getting away with stupidity."

  He didn't get angry. I'm not sure it was possible for him to get angry. But he took me by an arm and Bill by an arm and walked us over to the gate. I didn't have to go. I could have stood there with one empty shoulder. Using the toe of one boot he touched a button that opened the gate and pushed us through—not roughly, but with the inevitability of a bulldozer.

  I turned to watch the gate close. When it was done and the echo of its slamming died away, I said, "So there's nobody in your truck, and you were just out cruising. What do they do in the office, make paper flowers?"

  He looked at the ID Advertising building as if he'd never seen it before. He said, "I just drive a truck, you know?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I know."

  I walked back to the Chevy feeling as black as the night. Grampa Zamp had trusted me. Whipper Will had hired me to protect him and the other surfers. Mr. Daise had not quite hired me but had presented me with an interesting problem. Three up. Three down. Only Mr. Will had come out ahead. Maybe I should send my bill to him. I sighed as I settled behind the steering wheel of the Belvedere feeling like a weathered old kite hanging from a telephone wire, still a little gaudy but not much use to anybody. Bill was as eager to continue as he'd been that morning.

  "Where to?" he said. Bill was my friend, but at the moment his machinelike persistence angered more than comforted me. "Dreamland," I said sarcastically, and knew he would miss the subtle wit. I closed my eyes and tried to get comfortable. On the backs of my closed lids Zamp looked at me more in sadness than in anger.

  "I have six Dreamlands in Los Angeles County. Which one did you want?"

  If I didn't answer him he'd ask me again in a minute or two. I said, "Forget it. Bill. The one I want isn't in your bubble memory."

  "Right, Boss. Forget it."

  I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes again, the night had done that funny half-twist it always manages just before sunrise. It was early again. My watch said it was six o'clock.

  I couldn't fall back asleep, so I
watched Pasadena awaken. There are more exciting things to watch. At nine o'clock a tall woman in a dark blue dress unlocked the glass door of ID Advertising and went inside. Lights came on.

  I gave her ten minutes to get the coffee going and to check herself in the mirror. Ten minutes that I measured in geologic ages. I left the car, and Bill fixed the parking meter so I wouldn't have to put change into it. As I was about to push open the glass door I caught a look at my reflection. I was a little gray, and things that had not sagged yesterday sagged now.

  I entered a small living room whose walls were painted a bright, almost silver white. The couches against the walls were black furry caterpillars. Over them hung very artistic framed photographs of androids and Melt-O-Mobiles, and sometimes androids and Melt-O-Mobiles together. Lots of shine, lots of sculpted shadows, lots of pretty women lounging against the product and looking very pleased with themselves for knowing how.

  The woman in blue must have paid a lot of money to have her blond hair frizzed and piled up on her head in that terrible way. While sitting behind a desk that supported a computer and a telephone she drank coffee from a cup that said what part of "no" don't you understand? She frowned for a moment, remembered her training, and smiled at me as if she'd had a good night's sleep.

  I summoned whatever charm I had left and said, "Good morning. I'm looking for a little information."

  She said, "What kind of information?" Her question was reasonable, but for a moment it stumped me. I waved one hand as if dusting a statue and said, "What do you do here?"

  She didn't like that. If I didn't know what went on in this place I couldn't possibly have business. I could see her recede into the distance before she said, "ID Advertising is the advertising arm of Will Industries."

  "ID?" I said, sounding confused even to myself.

  "Iron Duke, Mr. Will's first and middle names. You've heard of Mr. Will?"

  "We've met," I said, confusing her. "I'm looking for a friend of mine. He said he would get a ride with truck number eighty-two, but he didn't tell me where it was going." My smile was a thing of thumbtacks and rubber bands and paper clips.

  "Our drivers are forbidden to pick up riders."

  The driver was nothing to me. I was looking for Grampa Zamp. Still, the guy had not hit me with his pipe. I said, "It must happen sometime."

  "The drivers who let it happen no longer work for us."

  "Can you tell me where truck number eighty-two went last night after it left the Convention Center?"

  She glanced at the computer. Sure. Everything anybody might want to know would be on the old hard disk. Bill could get into their system with less trouble than a drunk would have getting into a can of brewski. Given the chance. This woman didn't seem the type to give it to me, not even if I were at my best. She said, "I don't see why I should."

  I nodded casually and said, "No reason, I suppose. Can I use your phone to call Mr. Will's son, Whipper?"

  Her plucked eyebrows went up and looked like bows over her eyes. She put down her coffee cup and set her hands flat on the desk. Her nails were long and the color of blood. "You weren't kidding before about meeting Mr. Will?"

  "Want me to describe his aftershave?"

  "I wouldn't know it," she said, a little haughty, like a woman who'd been accused of using catsup on her steak.

  "You still don't trust me. That's fine. Why don't you call Willville and ask for Whipper Will? You probably have the number there someplace."

  She glared at me, but didn't say anything as she pulled out a large spiral-bound book. After finding the number she wanted she punched it into the telephone and waited. "Whipper Will, please," she said, and watched me carefully, not wanting to miss the appearance of the first cracks in my composure. I smiled at her. Bill rocked on his heels.

  She went through operators and secretaries like Kleenex. At last she said, "Mr. Will? Mr. Whipper Will?" There was a space during which someone could have said yes or no. "One moment, please." Like a challenge, she held out the phone to me.

  Bill tried to grab it, but I pushed him aside. With the receiver to my head, I said, "How you be, Holmes?"

  "Zoot?"

  "Right the first time."

  "You have a secretary now?"

  "Just temporary. They got Zamp."

  "Who got Zamp?"

  "Guess."

  Whipper breathed at me for a while. Almost whispering, he said, "How did you know I was here?"

  "If you're working for your father where else would you be? I was kind of hoping you'd seen the gang."

  "That makes two of us."

  "I'd like to come out and look around."

  "You think my father would make things that simple?"

  "He might. If he knew we thought he was too smart to be simple."

  Whipper breathed at me some more, probably thinking about scams and double-scams and triple-scams. "Come ahead," he said. "I'll show you around the magnificent Will Industries laboratories."

  I handed the phone back to the woman behind the desk. She hung up slowly, without making a noise. Very politely, she said, "I still can't tell you where that truck has been. The truth is, I don't know myself."

  I nodded and said, "I'll remember you to the boss."

  Bill and I walked out the glass door and got into the Chevy and drove away. I was hot on the trail of something. I hoped it was Zamp.

  Chapter 11

  Willville

  WILLVILLE was inside the southeastern edge of Los Angeles County, so Bill had the place in his bubble memory. The morning was still young, and a lot of traffic was out frolicking in it. My Chevy slid down the Santa Ana Freeway like a barge on a river of mud.

  I had not slept well in the car. My muscles were stiff from the cold and felt like bundles of sticks. Also not helping much were unfamiliar noises and nightmares about Zamp, and the fact that I was not really built to sleep sitting up anyway. Not any more than an Earth person. I was more alert than I had been that morning, but I was about as smart as usual.

  The air was cool, but I could tell by its hard smell that by afternoon it would be hot. Like love, credulity gas was in the air; it must have been squatting all over the L.A. basin, but except in a few lucky places it was not concentrated enough to matter.

  Big trucks crept along like everybody else, grunting in their lower gears like old men mounting stairs. I spotted a few Melt-O-Mobiles, but they were all in use and not making gas. A few cars were driven by androids, but not even they could make headway against the impacted mass of cars.

  I sniffed taillights for over an hour, came to my exit at last, and got off the freeway. At the bottom of the ramp was a collection of candy-colored boxes called the Android Motel. Though it was daytime, their neon sign was on. It represented a muscular guy waving at the traffic. He wore little else but a blue collar.

  The whole neighborhood was like a carnival that had stayed too long. The atmosphere of the place was silly, and those who traded on it tried to make silliness a virtue. You could not go half a block without running into Android this and Blue Collar that. It was as bad as Hollywood, but newer, cleaner, and somewhat less sanctimonious about its historical importance.

  I lined up the Chevy behind a lot of other cars waiting for a chance to use the visitor's entrance to the Willville parking lot. Two dollars were taken from me by a kid who was so wholesome he didn't seem natural. He nearly squeaked when he moved. Maybe he'd been raised in a mayonnaise jar. He wore a striped shirt and white pants that were probably cleaner now than when he'd put them on.

  The lot was crowded, but spaces must have been available if you knew where to look. A few times I was just behind the guy who got an empty. The driver was always an android, probably with the superpower of finding places to park. After a while I enjoyed the performance even less.

  I said to Bill, "Why can't you find places to park like that?"

  "I'm not designed for it. Read the brochure." He surprised me by opening a door in his side and offering me a folded piece o
f slick paper. I told him to put it away for later, when I didn't have so much on my mind. The disappointment he showed as he put it away was probably just my imagination.

  Just when I thought I was going to spend the day exploring the majestic wonders of the parking lot I found a spot and slid into it before an android flew in from San Diego to take it ahead of me. It was nice to know they weren't perfect.

  Bill and I rode to the front gate on a white tram, getting curious looks from the driver and the attendants. Paranoia told me they were looking at my nose, but in this place, the fortress of androids, I was pretty sure that Bill was the attraction. Bill didn't notice and I didn't point it out.

  The Will name I mentioned did not impress the clean young things at the gate. They probably heard that stuff all the time and had been told to ignore it. I paid admission for two. It was less than the Latvian national debt and not quite as much as a scalped front-seat ticket to a rock concert, but more than a good dinner at a restaurant where they parked your car for you.

  Seeing Willville, I knew the sharp business men who ran the places outside the park were amateurs. Bill and I walked across a drawbridge of a mighty castle and found ourselves someplace back in Earth's history. The smell of credulity gas was strong enough to build a condo on.

  Bill gawked and I could not blame him. He and I stood at the end of a long street that wandered like a river between small well-barbered huts and half-timbered buildings like the peasant cottages and inns in a Robin Hood movie. Crowds broke around us and hurried up the street, ready to believe anything. The castle towered over us with real towers.

  Behind us and to one side, over an open archway in one wall of the castle, was a carefully lettered sign that said castle of android progress.

  "Cousins," Bill said, and waddled toward the archway.

  "Later," I said, and walked up the street. I wasn't here to visit Bill's relatives.

  Bill followed while he agreed that later was a great idea.