Lippe Simone - Blank

Clint snapped the high-powered binoculars from doorway to alley to rooftop to balcony and each was playing out the same scene of feral and furious fighting, as though he was channel-surfing in a mid-range hotel in the Ozarks. And where there were groups there were sides, characterized by something and usually something conspicuous and petty. A softball team was making short work of a group of vendors for control of an organic fruit and vegetable store while a hard-hatted construction crew beat senseless the aproned baristas of a coffee shop for no apparent reason at all. Policemen with batons and the lids of garbage cans chased panicked Hare Krishnas with broken tambourines while something that looked very much like a platoon of confederate soldiers was bayoneting the male members of a tour group armed with only reflex cameras and sensitive skin.

The battle for food and women and terrain was played out all across the flat and faceless landscape of Los Angeles. Clint traced the binoculars along the straight roads in all directions and saw them blocked with abandoned cars and otherwise entirely deserted, with the exception of the small portion of the Pacific Coast Highway that he could see, which staged the stalking of a family of giraffes by a female lion. Clint felt compelled at this point to ring for another drink.

Which is why Clint had looked away from the magnetic spectacle of a city and its people and giraffes and lions turned against one another to acknowledge Marmalade’s presentation of straight rum in a champagne flute, which was so far the closest he’d come to getting it right. So when he returned his attention to the city Clint was caught off-guard by what appeared to be the very sudden appearance of a tank trundling over the uneven surface offered by the roofs of the cars stalled on Venice Boulevard. It turned onto Lincoln, parallel to the water, and then into the courtyard of the marina. With no more obstacles and a smooth terrain the tank immediately picked up speed before driving directly off the dock and into the water.

Honor was delighted with what turned out to be a natural facility for driving tanks. It was in every way that mattered the same as driving a car and if anything it was easier than driving a car, because with cars one so often had to concern oneself with avoiding obstacles and braking. This was not the case with the tank, which offered a very forgiving scope of alternatives to steering and stopping. The vast majority of objects which for, say, a Ferrari 458, would represent impassable obstructions are for a tank more a variation of surface textures offering subtly differing degrees of traction. The brake pedal seemed to be largely ornamental because stopping was a simple matter of decelerating and allowing the tank to wedge its wheels into the hood of a car or bed of a pickup.

Enclosed and protected and safe and bouncy, the trip down Venice Boulevard was a leisurely one for Honor and her tank and she was able to observe the early evening military machinations of a lapsed civilization like a tourist in a glass-bottomed boat on the surface of a particularly savage South American swamp. So when she found herself entering the clearing in the jungle of cars on the four sides of the intersection of Venice and Centinela she was almost entirely unprepared to have to swerve into a campervan to avoid hitting a man who was standing directly in her path and trying to sell her a newspaper.

Honor had been driving over the cars in the middle of the boulevard partially, in fact mostly, because it was tremendously amusing but also because it avoided the morally dubious exigency of driving over people, savage or not. But now here was a man presenting the dual challenge of being both a person and, apparently, sane. Or at least he appeared to be a different kind of insane to the universal delirium of the masses tearing one another to bits across Los Angeles. This one was, instead and in the middle of it all, selling newspapers and looking like he’d been in a lengthy and brutal fight to the death, which he lost. He stood in the intersection holding a tabloid over his head with both hands, as though the headline itself might mean something to Honor. And then she realized that of course it did. It meant “Memory Panic”.

In a single motion and looking not unlike a clockwork cuckoo, Honor flung open the manhole sized door on the roof of the riot car and rose from it and pointed her gun at the lunatic paperboy.

“You don’t do maps, do you?” asked Honor from just beyond a police pistol that she had no intention of firing again if it could possibly be avoided.

“Maps?” replied the crazy man with the tabloid newspaper over his head. Then he looked up and took her meaning and smiled a weak smile and said “No. No maps. Just this newspaper. Final edition, I suspect.”

“I suspect you’re right. Who are you, newsie?”

“Ray, er, Tom.”

“Rare Tom? Is that because you, yourself, are rare, or because of the epidemic shortage of Toms? Because both are probably solid explanations. I’m Honor.”

“Hi Honor.” Ray’er Tom lowered his newspaper. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet you and I’m looking forward to trying but first can I get in your tank? I’m feeling a little exposed out here.”

“Climb aboard Rare Tom.” said Honor, and dropped down into the tank.

Clint blinked. He’d fought the instinct until now, for fear of missing what was doubtless going to be yet another exponential escalation in the surreal nature of events, but he could resist no longer. And when he opened his eyes the tank was still there, in the water, in the marina, where it had landed after apparently intentionally driving off the dock. Since waking up lost at sea and being saved by a plane crash and witnessing society rebuilding itself into primitive factions and a lioness stalking and killing and eating a giraffe on the freeway and a tank driving into the ocean, he was entirely unsurprised to discover that it floated like a cork. The armored and unwieldy and enormous vehicle was also, evidently, amphibious.

Leaning meditatively on the railing of the yacht, Clint watched the tank drift not unlike a disengaged lily, describing a slow circle along a long arc until it was almost next to the yacht and in fact fitting quite close to correctly into the vacant boat slip. The tank lightly biffed the hull of the yacht like a starlet’s empty kiss and came to an undulating stop. Clint moved closer to the side of the yacht nearest the tank to listen to it emit a tinny clang, then another, followed by an echo which sounded more like an antagonized Scottish Terrier trapped inside an oil drum then it did anything else. Then the turret door jerked slightly ajar and wavered in this position, surveying for danger, then it swiveled wide on its hinge till it clanged all the way open and produced, naturally enough, a pretty redhead.

She locked her elbows on what was now the top deck of the tank and looked up at Clint and proceeded directly to the point: “Are you capable of speech?”

“What?” asked Clint back, “Do you mean like a lengthy political discourse delivered to a cheering throng? Probably not.”

“No,” said the pretty moon-faced tank driver, “I just mean human speech. Talking.”

“Oh, right, then, in that case,” said Clint, “yes.”

“That’s a relief. My name is Honor and this is Rare Tom.” said Honor, followed by a reverberant “It’s just Tom. Hello.” from within the tank-boat.

“Hi Honor.” said Clint. “Hi Rare Tom.” he said, a little louder this time. “I’m Clint. Clint Hardcliff.”

“No you’re not.” said Honor. “Not for a second are you Clint Hardcliff.”

“No, you’re right, I’m not. I made it up. I have others. Do you prefer Rock Power?”