Headcrash

by Bruce Bethke

  “Oh, don’t be such a worry wart.” He adjusted the fit of the gun on his shoulder and took a squint through the sights. “I’ll be fine.” He thumbed the safety off and on a few times, for practice, I guess.

  The beast roared again. It was much closer now.

  Reba burst out of the underbrush and grabbed Gunnar by the collar. “Will you quit playing?” she demanded. “We’ve got a schedule to keep!”

  Gunnar turned and whined at her. “Aw, Mom!”

  “You can hunt dinosaurs later,” she said, as she dragged him into motion. “I promise.”

  Gunnar pouted. “Yeah, that’s what you said last week. You never let me kill anything!” He dug in his heels and stopped.

  Reba stopped, too. “Young man, if you don’t come along right this instant, you’re going straight to bed without any sex!”

  Gunnar’s pout vanished. “Time to go!” He dashed ahead of us and jumped through the portal.

  “Honestly,” Reba said, shaking her head and clucking her teeth, “I do not understand that man sometimes.” I was saved from replying by the timely arrival of the tyrannosaur, who kicked aside some small trees and lunged at us, fangs dripping and breath stinking. We stepped through the doorway—

  *shimmerCLICK!*

  “This is weird,” I said as I looked around.

  “Too weird,” Gunnar added.

  “It’s the weirdest one yet,” Reba agreed.

  “It’s his latest book,” Eliza announced, “Everything Is Swell.” She stepped back and made a broad, sweeping gesture to take in the shady, elm tree-lined streets, the well-maintained residential homes, and the friendly people sitting out on their front porches in the cool of the early evening, enjoying pleasant conversations with their neighbors and the passers-by on the sidewalks. A group of healthy children ran by, playing tag and laughing innocently. Somewhere nearby, a friendly dog barked.

  Gunnar stared at Eliza and wrinkled his nose. “You sure about this?”

  Eliza returned Gunnar’s stare. “Of course. Didn’t you—” She stopped, looked from Gunnar, to me, to Reba, and then just about spit with disgust. “You mean to tell me you spent a week researching Curtis’ computer, but you never thought to look for a press release about the book?”

  I looked down and kicked my shoes. Gunnar mumbled something inaudible and blushed. Reba looked up at the clear, smog-free evening sky and started whistling.

  Eliza made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh, shook her head in disbelief, then looked at us and made that sound again. “Look, you twits,” she said at last, “Everything Is Swell is another alternate timeline story! In this one, the secret cabal that really runs the world rigs the ‘92 presidential election so the Democrats nominate an utter doofus, and he wins! By ‘94 this guy is so reviled that the Republicans take control of both the Senate and the House—”

  “Impossible!” Gunnar gasped.

  “—the presidency in ‘96—”

  “Ridiculous!” Reba shrieked.

  “—and by the year 2000 everyone is prosperous, people only have sex with the people they’re married to, and no one ever gets eaten by monsters, blown up by robots, chased by spies, or trapped in out-of-control theme parks!”

  “Enough!” I shouted. “I don’t know where Curtis gets these crazy ideas from, but our job is to steal it, not critique it! So if you don’t mind,” I pulled back the sleeve of my jacket and checked my watch, “we’ve got just over twenty-five minutes left. Let’s meet back here in fifteen.” We exchanged high-fives and split up.

  Fifteen minutes later, exactly, we were all back at the rendezvous point. Gunnar handed me the microfilm cartridges from his and Reba’s virtual cameras. “You find the door?” he asked.

  “Eliza did,” I said. “It’s right over here by this, this…” I gestured helplessly at the bizarre-looking metal contraption in the street.

  “Studebaker,” Eliza filled in. “They were nice cars. My dad had a Studebaker.”

  “Right, then,” Gunnar said. He looked around, took Reba’s hand, and stepped through the portal. Eliza and I followed. We found ourselves back out in the endless empty marble hallway.

  “So,” I said. “I’d say it’s time to bug out, no?”

  “Well-l-l.” Gunnar smirked at Reba. She winked at him. “Reba and I got talking, and we decided if we had a few minutes to spare we’d like to go back into Hot Sluts In Black Leather. Just to see if we missed anything important.”

  Eliza looked at me and rolled her eyes.

  I scanned the vast marble hallway—it was still quiet and empty—then checked my watch again. “Okay,” I decided. “You two have been pretty good so far; you can go play. But be back here in five minutes, or we’re leaving without you.”

  Reba’s eyes went wide. “Five minutes?” She grabbed Gunnar’s hand and dragged him away. “Come on, honey!” Without another word, they disappeared through a door.

  I looked around the vast castle hallway for something to sit on, then gave up and lowered myself to sit on the marble floor with my back against the wall. Even through my virtual leather jacket, the cold stone against my kidneys was thrilling.

  Eliza strolled over to stand before me. She opened her mouth as if to speak once or twice, then apparently reached some kind of decision and plunked her skinny butt down on the floor to sit next to me, leaning against the wall.

  I conjured a cigarette into existence, took one puff, about coughed my lungs out, and stubbed the cigarette out on the floor.

  Eliza sighed heavily.

  “Something on your mind?” I finally asked.

  She thought it over. “Yeah.” She nodded in confirmation.

  I gave it a decent pause. “Wanna talk about it?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  I waited. I waited some more. She looked at me, and sighed, and said nothing. I got fed up with her efforts to communicate by telepathy and conjured another cigarette.

  “Something on your mind?” Eliza asked.

  I looked at the cigarette glowing in my hand, but wisely decided not to take a puff. “Yeah,” I said. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “Whoa,” Eliza said. “You blew the rhythm.”

  “Huh?” I wrinkled my nose at her.

  “These pithy male/female conversations,” she said. “You’re supposed to be taciturn and make me drag it out of you in monosyllables.”

  “Screw that,” I said. This time I got a light puff on the cigarette without coughing. It tasted like roasted camel shit. “I believe in words. Lots of words.”

  Eliza nodded. “And what words do you want to hear?”

  “Actually, I’m waiting for the sound of a slapstick.”

  This time it was Eliza’s turn to wrinkle her nose. “Huh?”

  “You,” I said. “Everytime I get involved with you, I end up flat on my ass. Something blows up, something gets destroyed, and sooner or later I wind up taking a pratfall. You’ve been with me two whole hours now, and I keep wondering, where’s the punchline? How are you going to whack me this time?”

  Eliza took the cigarette from my hand, leaned back against the wall, and took a long drag. It all came back out in a cough.

  “Maybe there isn’t a punchline,” she said, when she’d caught her breath again. “Maybe I’m being honest with you.”

  “For a change.” I took the cigarette back from her and flicked the ash off the tip. “I seduced you and I dumped you. For the last three weeks you’ve been trying to kill me. And now, suddenly, you care about me?” I took another puff and tried to disguise my cough as a bitter laugh.

  “I do care,” she said softly, when I’d settled down. “That’s why I’m here now: because I hate to see people I care about making dumb mistakes. I care a lot about you, Max. You remind me a lot of a guy I used to know in the real world, and it makes me want to protect you from your own stupidity, if I can.” She frowned and shook her head.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “That’
s also why you bring out so much anger in me, Max. Because I really care about you, and I really hate some of the things I’ve seen you do lately.” That whole explanation seemed kind of oxymoronic to me, but I let it pass.

  After another pause, she asked, “So why did you dump me?”

  I looked at her. Max Kool thought of a half-dozen flippant answers. Jack Burroughs answered. “Don’t know,” I said.

  “Did I bore you?” she asked. I shook my head. “Was the virtual sex that bad?” I shook my head.

  “Honey,” I said, trying a smile for a change. “Virtual sex with you was great. I used to brag about how good you were.”

  She frowned. “Then why’d you leave me?”

  I shrugged, and stubbed out the cigarette on the floor, next to its predecessor. “Dunno. I was restless, I guess. Looking for something I never found.” I turned, and looked at Eliza, and slowly, very slowly, an idea started to creep up on me. “Maybe it was something that was right under my nose the whole time.” She looked at me blankly.

  I kissed her full on her thin, pale lips.

  She continued looking at me blankly.

  “So,” I said, “if you want to, like, give it another try…”

  Eliza’s blue eyes went wide, and her mouth opened in a little “O.” I went in for another kiss. She pushed me back firmly. “Don’t take this wrong, Max,” she said, in an entirely unromantic voice. “I really am flattered that you feel this way about me. And you know, a roll in the hay with you might even be fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a guy who really knew how to turn me on.

  “But Max, sex without emotional commitment is just tag-team masturbation, and frankly, I’m tired of collecting scalps.”

  My lower jaw hit the floor. My teeth bounced out like Chiclets. I stared at Eliza, and blinked and stared some more. Oh, no. It couldn’t be. I found my voice.

  “T’shombe?”

  At the sound of that name, Eliza twitched like she was strapped into an electric chair and had just gotten a good jolt. She stared at me. Her mouth fell open. The ice-blue scales, literally, fell away from her eyes, and shattered on the floor. Underneath, her eyes were chocolate brown and wide open.

  “PYLE?”

  22: THE LONG STEEL PROSTHETIC OF THE LAW

  We would probably still be sitting there in that cold marble hallway in Castle Franklinstein, staring at each other in shocked surprise, had not the alarm system picked that exact moment to go off. One moment, T’shombe and I were floating together in a pool of pure mind-boggling disbelief; the next moment, klaxons were blaring, sirens were shrieking, blue lights were flashing, and a hysterical amplified voice was screaming, “INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!” Far down the hallway, metal doors slammed open, and heavy hobnail boots poured onto the hard, echoing, marble floor. Lots of boots.

  T’shombe and I leaped to our feet. “Guards!” she shouted.

  “Gunnar and Reba!” I shouted back.

  “Where?” she shrieked.

  “There!” I grabbed a door and yanked it open. A flood of foamy seawater, flopping fish, and empty beer bottles poured out. “Wrong door!”

  “This one!” T’shombe pulled open a door, and the scent of cheap perfume rolled out like a fog bank. We jumped through.

  *shimmerCLICK!*

  “Well, well,” Mistress Ayeisha said, as she coiled her whip and strutted across the floor to greet us, “you again. You’re too late for a foursome—your friends have left already—but I do believe we could put together a nice threesome, hmm?”

  T’shombe grabbed my hand and dove back through the door.

  *shimmerCLICK!*

  We were out in the hall again. A squad of Nazis burst around a corner and leveled guns at us. “This way!” I shouted.

  “No!” T’shombe shouted back. “This way!” We jumped high as the guns went off. The bullets ricocheted off the hard marble walls and floors and did a lot of damage to the Nazis. “Run!” T’shombe screamed when we hit the floor again, as if I needed instructions. We made nearly fifty yards down the corridor before the next squad of Nazis charged into view.

  T’shombe pushed me into an alcove and covered me with her skinny little body as the Nazis ran past. They didn’t see us.

  The thudding boots faded into the distance. T’shombe opened her eyes, stopped shivering, and risked a peek into the hallway. “It’s clear for the moment,” she whispered. “Can you bug out?”

  I closed my eyes again, tried again, and failed. “No. Must be the lightspeed lag. Something local is blocking my emergency exit before the command gets through.”

  “Bummer.” She ducked back as another squad of soldiers raced past, then peered after them. “Look, Pyle,” she said, “there are a couple thousand questions I’d like to ask you right now, but in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in deep shit.”

  I nodded. “I figured as much.”

  She reached over and patted my jacket pocket. “You still got the microfilm?” I nodded again. “Good. Then we still have a chance.” She risked another glance up and down the hallway, and turned back to me. “Okay, here’s the plan. You take a head start, then I’ll create a diversion while you try to slip through the main gate. Once you’re outside the castle grounds, you should be able to call your emergency exit.”

  I blinked at her. “You’re not coming with me?”

  She shook her head and began morphing into a battlemech. “Not this time, I’m afraid,” she said in a deep metallic voice. “So you’re going to have to promise me two—no, three, things. First, promise me you’ll be careful when you deliver the files to Amber. Don’t turn your back on the bitch for a moment, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise. Next?”

  “Jack?” She stroked her gleaming metal chin. “Promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to find out who Amber really is. That is my honest-to-God reason for being here. This woman—if she is a woman—is just plain evil, and there’s far more at stake here than some stupid book files.”

  I considered what Eliza had said, reevaluated in light of the new knowledge of who she really was, and for the first time started to believe her. “Okay. What’s the third thing?”

  “Pyle?” she asked shyly. “There’s going to be a really nice ice-cream social at the church this Sunday, and I was hoping you might…?”

  “Be happy to,” I lied.

  “Then,” she took another glance up and down the hallway, finished her transformation into a battlemech, and stepped out in the corridor, “let’s go for it!” I lit off in a sprint for the main gate. A squad of Nazis burst out from a side passage and came after me. “Oh, boys!” T’shombe sang out. They stopped to stare at her clanking metallic form and didn’t even have time to scream before she chopped them to chutney with her mini gun.

  More squads rushed in from side passages, some of them carrying things that looked like rocket launchers and bazookas. They all ignored me and concentrated both their attention and their firepower on T’shombe. The sounds of a fierce battle erupted all around me.

  I pressed my back against the wall, let the soldiers dash past, then slipped around a final corner and found the main gate standing open and unguarded. With one last look around to make sure I wasn’t being followed, I stepped through the gate. Then, once I was outside, I put my shoulder against the heavy steel door and pushed it shut. The lock clicked. I turned around.

  Amber was standing there, in the driveway. She had a sly smile on her face and a small chrome pistol in her right hand. The pistol was pointed at me.

  “Darling!” I shouted, trying hard to simulate the appearance of happy relief. The pistol, I noticed, continued to be pointed at me. “What’s this?”

  “Why, Max,” she said sweetly, “it’s the double-cross, of course.” She held out her left hand. “Give me the microfilm.”

  “But—” I tried to step back and ran into the closed door. “Why? I did all that you asked. Why this?”

  She pouted at me and took steady aim. “Oh, I can
think of about nine hundred thousand reasons.” She studied my face through the sights, and her expression softened a moment. “What, you actually thought I was going to pay you the rest of the million?” I nodded once and smiled nervously. Her face went dark.

  “But we can renegotiate,” I said quickly.

  Amber shook her head and thumbed off the safety. “Sorry, too late, bidding’s closed. Give me the microfilm now.”

  I hesitated a moment longer. Her sweet face flashed into a snarl, she pulled the trigger, and my right knee exploded in a gout of blood and shattered bone. I went down like a poleaxed steer. The virtual pain, I might add, was spectacular.

  “BUGOUT!” I screamed. Nothing happened.

  Gritting my teeth and fighting back the waves of agony, I pulled my face out of the gravel and struggled to find my hands. A pair of beautiful sexy feet in red high heels crunched across the driveway to stop mere inches from my nose. I managed to heave myself over onto my back.

  “BUGOUT!” I screamed again. Still blocked.

  Her second bullet smashed my left kneecap. “Please give me the microfilm,” she said petulantly. “I want it.”

  “Here!” I gasped as I dug into my jacket pocket and fished out the film with trembling hands. “Take it! Please!”

  “Why, thank you, Max,” she said with a smile as she dipped down to collect the microfilm. Then she put her left hand to her chin, she shook her head slightly, and swept the pistol over my supine form. “Decisions, decisions. Heart or crotch? Heart or crotch?”

  I raised my hands as if they could protect me. “Nooooo!”

  Amber reached a decision. “Crotch,” she said with a satisfied nod. She pocketed the microfilm, took careful aim using both hands to hold the gun, then suddenly straightened up, blanched past white all the way to glaring monochrome, and mouthed a silent scream as she flickered out of existence.

  Ten seconds later, I flatlined and the world went black.

  The coffee pot was wailing “Volare.” Strong hands seized me, lifted me bodily off the CompuTech office floor and dumped me roughly on my feet. The memory of the virtual pain in my knees faded quickly, to be replaced by the real pain of having my arms twisted around behind my back and cable-cuffed together at the wrists and elbows. Someone tore my audio headset off with a violence that almost removed my external ears; the same someone removed my video goggles with the same degree of care a moment later, but dammit, didn’t yank the ProctoProd. I winced at both the light and the pain as he grabbed my lower jaw and used it like a handle to turn my head from side to side. With great effort, my eyes slowly crawled back into a gritty focus.