Sci fi, p.1
SCI FI, page 1
part #6 of Yellowthread Street Series
William Marshall—Yellowthread Street 06—SCI FI
THE YELLOWTHREAD STREET MYSTERIES
BY WILLIAM MARSHALL
Yellowthread Street
The Hatchet Man
Gelignite
Thin Air
Skulduggery
Sci Fi
Perfect End
The Far Away Man
ALSO BY WILLIAM MARSHALL
Shanghai
SCI FI
A YELLOWTHREAD STREET MYSTERY
William Marshall
An Owl Book
HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON
New York
Copyright © 1981 by William Marshall All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
383 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10017.
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Marshall, William Leonard, 1944- Sci fi: a Yellowthread Street mystery.
I. Title.
PR9619. 3. M275S3 1981 823 80-27264
ISBN 0-03-071063-4 (An Owl bk. ) (pbk. )
First published in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1981.
First Owl Book Edition—1984
Printed in the United States of America
13579 108642
ISBN 0-03-071063-4
an ebookman scan
The Hong Bay district of Hong Kong is fictitious, as are the people who, for one reason or another, inhabit it.
Chapters
William Marshall—Yellowthread Street 06—SCI FI
Chapters
1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 — 7 — 8 — 9 — 10
11 — 12 — 13 — 14 — 15 — 16 — 17 — 18 — 19
1
The Martians had landed.
And, with them, the Venusians, the Saturnians, the Moon-People, Gill-Man, the entire complement of Star Wars extra-terrestrials, Chest-burster, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The Hulk, The Alien, The Contagion, and, for the joy of antique and nostalgic older souls, several variations of Oriental Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and—particularly popular among the more diminutive—Peter Lorre and The Incredible Shrinking Man.
The second day of the All-Asia Science Fiction and Horror Movie Congress was in full swing in Hong Bay and so far there had been so many outside invasions of the place by sea and by land that if Paul Revere had been resurrected to take on the task of announcing them to the Colonials he would have retired from the scene with terminal laryngitis after the first fifteen aircraft-fuls.
To date, in the midst of cheering crowds of never less than five thousand dressed-up raving and cheering fans, the publicity men had:
launched a helium-filled Death Star from the roof of the six storey Empress of India hotel in the general direction of Indonesia, Australia and the Antarctic—fortunately for world peace shot down by an aghast A. A. battery just as it crossed immediately and provocatively across the border into Red China—christened with a massed shriek of delight the maiden voyage of the Thing From Beneath The Sea—The Thing, an enormous hairy sausage some sixty foot long had instantly snagged the propellers of a freighter loaded with high explosives and been untangled and sunk without trace by a slightly anxious Water Police—tried, for some totally mysterious and unthinkable purpose, to land a massed bank of tungsten-steel cutting lasers which were, happily for the continuance of civilisation as we knew it, confiscated at the airport by a small army of terrified and trembling wild-eyed Customs officers ...
Meanwhile the ledge hanging abilities of The Human Fly at 5 a. m. had thrilled hundreds. A lecher bent on the defloration of a less than willing young lady on the eighth floor of a block of government housing apartments, his screams for help as she shut her open window suddenly on his fingers had roused thousands.
A small riot had been narrowly averted when Space Warrior, armed with his sword and his mission to make the Galaxy a safe place to live in, had decided to take on a few Chinese rowdies in Icehouse Street and discovered that, as well as not being fans of Space Warrior, the rowdies were in fact a peaceful group of kung-fu enthusiasts celebrating the promotion of one of their number to Black Belt status.
A group of very drunken World Killers bent on finding a world to kill ...
*
In the Detectives’ Room, Senior Detective Inspector Christopher O’Yee shrieked, “I’m running out of space!” It had reached the point where he had a schematic of the cells spread out on his desk like the cabin plan to the Queen Mary. He counted the cells for the eighth time in ten minutes and still came up with the same statistics: fourteen cells and sixteen prisoners not counting The Green Slime in cell twelve and something of indeterminate sexual persuasion calling itself The Object in cell eight, two Godzillas in eleven, The Human Fly in six, in cell seven—. He looked down at the schematic for steerage. The only steerage was a broom cupboard. There were a series of grunts outside as Constable Yan struggled with God knew what fresh in from the streets, and O’Yee yelled out through the open door, “Is it male or female?”
There were more grunts and then Yan’s voice yelled back, a moment before someone hit him, “How do I know? It looks like a cross between Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk! Where do I put it?”
“Put it with The Object in cell eight!” There was a fire point near the broom cupboard with, fortunately, a lockable door. It might be handy if they got in any midgets. That was, if the fire hose once The Object and Yan’s catch got together, wasn’t needed for more urgent things. O’Yee demanded, “Why the hell don’t you stop bringing these people in?”
Yan went, “Oof!” as another blow struck him and gave a grunt as he drew his baton and struck back. Yan called back, “They’re all criminals, sir—obviously.” He added as an afterthought, “Ow!”
“But I’m running out of space!”
“Get North Point Station to take some.”
“North Point ran out of cells four hours ago. North Point have got The Swarm.”
Yan complained, “I missed that one!” He was referring not to the movie, but to a point on Hulk/Wonder Woman’s anatomy. He rectified the omission with a blow of his baton that terminated with a thud as Hulk/Wonder Woman made a nose dive for the floor. Yan trumpeted, “Got you, you—”
O’Yee consulted his cabin plan and tried to correlate it with a sheaf of arrest reports. “Yan, did you arrest The Green Slime?”
“Me, sir? No. Why?”
“Because I haven’t got an arrest form for him!” O’Yee thought of going out into the charge room in order to stop shouting, decided that the last thing he felt like doing in a morass of forms was filling out a Witness To Brutality Statement, “I can’t find an arrest report for him anywhere!” He called out, “Constable Sun, are you there?”
He wasn’t.
“Constable Lee, did you arrest The Green Slime and forget to make out an arrest form?”
A voice called out, “Give me a hand!” and there was a fresh series of oofs and grunts as Lee evidently joined in the morning’s sport of Hulk/Wonder Woman whacking. Lee yelled out, “No, sir, not me.”
Auden and Spencer had been at the Canton Road carpark since 4 a. m. It couldn’t have been them. O’Yee appealed, “Do you know if Mr Feiffer—” He got no reply, “Do you know if anyone in the goddamned place has bothered to—” O’Yee yelled at the top of his voice, “Constable Sun, where the hell are you?” His phone rang and he snatched it up.
It was the duty officer at North Point mentioning politely that the paddy wagon had picked up thirty or forty drunks dressed identically as The Thing From Beyond Space, and, speaking of space—
O’Yee said, “No! Forget it! Try goddamned Wan Chai Station!”
“Wan Chai Station is full of hookers and pimps—”
“Then Yaumati over on—”
The duty officer at North Point said, “A gang of mad Australians wearing Ned Kelly helmets and carrying space boomerangs. I think it’s a character from some obscene Antipodean comic strip called Iron Outlaw or—”
“Kai Tak?”
“Amok Malaysians wielding—”
“Juvenile?”
“Do you mean have we got any spare juveniles in our cells or has Juvenile got any spare cells? Yes, We’ve got some spare juveniles—about twenty to be precise—and no, Juvenile hasn’t got any spare cells.” The duty officer paused for a moment, “Either that, or they’re midgets.” He asked, “Why? Could you take a few midgets or something?”
“No, we couldn’t take a few midgets or something! What do you think your goddamned fire hose cupboard is for?”
“Our fire hose cupboard was smashed to bits yesterday afternoon by Wolf Man and The Adder People.” The duty officer at North Point said, “Hey, Christopher, I don’t want to sound like I’m whining for a favour or anything, and I wouldn’t actually like to come right out and say that any little assistance you could give me might be more than amply repaid in the future—”
O’Yee said with a snarl, “Good, then don’t say it!” He asked, “Listen, The Green Slime, by any chance did you—” Yan yelled out, “Constable Sun, there’s another one outside, pissing in public—” and O’Yee yelled out, “Don’t bother, we don’t want him!” a moment before the duty officer at North Point bellowed in his ear, “Don’t send him to us!”
“I wasn’t going to!”
Sun said, “I’ll get him!”
“It’s not a him!”
Sun said, dropping his voice,
O’Yee tried hopelessly, “Sun! The Green Slime—”
The North Point duty officer shouted down the line, “No! No!” He roared at someone in his own station, “Don’t just stand there! Hit him!”
O’Yee hung up.
The Hulk/Wonder Woman yelled out ominously (meta-morphosising?), “RAA—YAGH!”
“Sun!”
Nothing.
O’Yee looked down at the cabin plan and, sticking his fingers in his ears, wondered if ever on the old Queen Mary the purser, finally driven out of his goddamned mind, had gone downstairs, caught half a dozen of the passengers by the ears, and then bodily thrown them overboard. He snapped out as Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer came in through the door carrying two cups of coffee, “Harry! Where the hell have you been?”
Feiffer looked surprised. “In bed. I’m not on until 6.” Outside in the corridor, Sun, evidently having failed to find his more interesting quarry, had dragged in someone dressed as a Chinese Batman. The someone dressed as a Chinese Batman had his hands around Sun’s throat and was in the process of determining by scientific method how hard he had to press before Sun’s face, going purple, went to the full end of the colour spectrum at black. Sun called out, “Yan! Lee!”
Feiffer said, “Why? What’s the problem?”
“I’m running out of cells. The problem is that those idiots out there have gone mad arresting people and I haven’t got anywhere to put them! The problem is—the problem is that The Green Slime hasn’t even got an arrest sheet!” Feiffer said, “Oh.” Sun, by the simple technique of near collapse had got Batman down onto the floor and was in the process of removing his fingers from his neck and seeing how far back he could bend them against Batman’s wrists before his eyes popped out. Batman made a series of rumbling noises and tried to land a kick in Sun’s nether regions. Sun avoided the kick and bashed Batman’s bat ears against the ground.
Feiffer said innocently, “Never heard of him. It wasn’t me.” He looked down at the moving battle on the floor and asked Sun, “Do you want a hand?”
Sun already had two of them, both belonging to Batman. He twisted them around the Caped Crusader’s cowl, got an encouraging death rattle started, and, getting to his feet like a wrestler, kneed Batman in the utility belt.
Sun said, “No, thanks. It’s a Uniform Branch matter really, sir.”
Batman shrilled out, “How the hell was I to know he was straight? It’s common knowledge Robin is gay! What the hell does he get up to all day in the goddamned Bat Cave if he doesn’t—”
Sun brought his knee up again, missed, and as Batman got a damaged gloved paw loose and inserted a finger in his eye, fell over, reaching for his truncheon.
O’Yee said, “I haven’t got a cell!” His protest was lost as Batman snaked his hand out to grab Sun around the ankles and screamed, “I’m going to kill you, you brutal butch bastard!” His mouth changed into a round O as Feiffer set the two cups of coffee on a filing cabinet by the door and stood on his fingers.
O’Yee said to the cabin plan as the message from Feiffer’s heel got through in a flash to Batman’s tonsils and Batman began screaming, “There’s just no organisation in the place! No organisation at all!” His phone rang again and O’Yee snarled out, “No, we can’t take them whatever they are! We’ve got every goddamned maniac, pervert, flasher, jerk-off artist, retcher, midget, mugger and goddamned sonofabitching lunatic we want, so just screw off and find your own goddamned motherloving cell in your own goddamned lousy—”
At the other end of the line his wife said, “Christopher! What if this had been one of the children ringing up to talk to you?”
From down in the cells, Constable Lee yelled out, “Sun, are you there? I need help!”
Sun called back, “I’m bringing Batman down!” Batman, staring at his hand under Feiffer’s heel, had a glazed look in his eyes. Sun nodded to Feiffer and said politely, “Um, thanks, that’s fine now—” He called over to O’Yee, “Sir, where will I put him?”
Emily O’Yee demanded, “What would the children have thought? What would Patrick have thought?” She changed her tone to one of pure female menace, “Or Penelope? Or little Mary? Or—”
Sun called out, “Sir? Mr O’Yee? Where shall I put him?”
“How the fuck do I know where you should put him?” O’Yee, remembering the phone in his hand, said, “Oh—!”
Feiffer said to Sun, “Did he actually touch anyone?”
“No, sir. He just offered to touch someone.”
“Where’s the complainant?”
“He took off. He said he was going to link up with the end of the Star Wars Two parade in General Gordon Street—”
O’Yee said into the phone, “I’m sorry, dear. Gosh, I’m really sorry.” He stared around the room desperately, “Gee whiz, I’m really—”
Feiffer said to Sun, “There isn’t much room in the cells. If the complainant isn’t going to complain you may as well chuck him out onto the street again.” He took his heel off Batman’s hand and for a moment thought Batman was going to grab his shoe and kiss it.
Batman said in Cantonese, “May all the heavens bless you, sir!” He said, “Ugh!” as Sun decided he was going to get one good retributive kick in before he threw him back.
O’Yee said, “It’s just that, dear ...”
Emily O’Yee, working herself up, said, “I wasn’t going to mention this before, Christopher, but are you aware you went out this morning and left the front door totally and completely unlocked?”
“I’m really sorry, dear ...”
Emily said, “What if Patrick or Penelope or little Mary had—”
Feiffer shut the door after Sun and Batman and came forward with the coffee. Feiffer said with a wink, “Organisation.”
O’Yee said, “Yes, dear, no dear ...” He said weakly to Feiffer, “Tell me about it.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“No, dear! No!”
From the cells, one of the prisoners shrieked out at the top of his lungs, “Dirty, second-rate, low life, rotten cop CRUD!” and O’Yee, gazing up at the ceiling with the coffee from the cup dripping onto his Queen Mary cabin plans, couldn’t have agreed more.
*
In the cleared employees’ carpark of the Empress of India hotel—the venue for the Congress—there was an eighty foot diameter plywood flying saucer, decal-less, grey-painted, and other-worldly with a fibreglass spaceman on guard by it.
The Star Wars Two parade was in progress out of earshot on the other side of Hong Bay and except for The Spaceman and two T-shirt and shorts clad Chinese street sweepers brushing unhurriedly at the gutters with their wire brooms, the area was still and deserted.
The Spaceman, a life-sized figure in a silver suit and black visored helmet stood a few feet from the saucer like Gort the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still. He had an imitation ray gun of some sort in his silver gloved hand and with the slight wind blowing in from the sea and making creaking noises in the glued joints and plates of the saucer, the ray gun wavered slightly as if the hand holding it might be of frail flesh and blood rather than, like the other statues of Godzilla, Buck Rodgers, Walrus Man et al littering the Hong Bay streets, nothing but locally made moulded fibreglass.
The first sweeper stopping to scratch, waited while his colleague, an older toothless man, wandered up to scratch alongside him, then, leaning on his broom, asked critically, “Do you think that’s any good?”
The second sweeper made a sniffing noise. By the control dome on the saucer you could see a black stencilled mark. The second sweeper shook his head. The second sweeper said dismissively, “Nah, that’s made out of old tea chests. You can see the black marks they put on tea chests.” He looked at The Spaceman.
There was the faintest clicking sound from The Spaceman’s gun.
The first sweeper said thoughtfully, “Yeah. Unless it’s supposed to be a Chinese character?” Like his colleague, he was illiterate. He asked, “Do you think that’s what it is?”
