Of Chiefs and Champions

by Robert Adams

  "But after the docs finally did get him fixed up, he went back and hunted that slope-head whore down and beat her damn near to death, broke the back of another whore tried to stop him beating on her, then busted the leg off a chair and rammed it so far up both them whores that he ruptured their insides, and that did kill them."

  "He damn near bought the farm for that; hadn't of been for his medals and all and how much the brass thought of what he'd done up against Charlie, his fucking ass would of sure been grass. But as it was, they claimed he was a psycho for long enough to get him back Stateside. And since then, he won't never put his meat in no woman ain't white."

  "Then," said Mike Sikeena, shrugging, "Mikey is just flat out of luck, Greg. Of the four white women here, Kitty and me are paired off, Helen and John are shacking up, Lisa is trolling for Arsen, as everybody except him knows, and Rose wants her husband and nobody else. That's the way the cookie crumbles is all, I guess."

  Greg and Mike Sikeena found Lisa alone in the squad tent and of course asked, as one, "Where's Arsen?"

  She, who had been half nodding off in the chair, looked up and said, "Gone in the carrier to pick up some things—medical stuff, food, beer for you sots, of course, some equipment. Why?"

  Mike asked, "Look, Lisa, is it anything that you have that will put Mikey out, completely out, I mean, for a day or so? You know, a drug or a strong tranquilizer or something like that?"

  "Why in the world . . . ?" she demanded, and so they told her. She shook her head slowly. "I always did feel that that man was disaster just waiting to happen. I can think of some things that would do the job. You two wait here—I'll be back."

  At the doorway of the crypt, she knocked, lightly at first, then harder, saying, "Rose? Rose? I'm sorry, but I've got to get a syringe and a dose of something for Mikey."

  After a long moment filled with hushed whisperings from within the crypt, she heard the bar being shifted, and Rose, wearing a fatigue shirt that reached almost to her knees, gaped the portal enough for Lisa to enter, then closed it again. Bedros lay on an air mattress, atop the sleeping bag, part of the bag lapped over his legs and lower body, his face beaded with perspiration and his dark hair looking as damp as his furry chest.

  When she had found the medications she sought, Lisa paused long enough to lift down the pistol belt from over the spot whereon she normally slept, then went back to the door, admonishing Rose as she departed, "Don't open the door again for anybody except me, Kitty, Helen, John, or Arsen." Seeing the question in the younger woman's eyes, she added, "For one reason, we don't want them to know that we can project people between the two worlds yet. For another, Mikey has been on a rampage, once already tonight, and if this doesn't put him out, it might well happen again."

  Speaking over Rose's shoulder, she said, "Bedros, I know you're not asleep. Bedros, do you know how to use a rifle or a pistol? One like those you see in here, military ones?"

  "Yes," he said. "I was in the ROTC in college. But why?"

  "Because," she said bluntly, "Mikey Vranian tried to rape Rose some time back, while we were all still in England. His wartime buddy has just told me that he murdered two women in Vietnam in a brutal, disgusting fashion. He tried to kill Haigh a short time ago, and as big and strong as he is, I'm sure this makeshift door wouldn't slow him for long. If he comes through it, Bedros, you're going to have to shoot to kill, there won't be any reasoning with him . . . and that's a direct quote from his buddy, the only man who gives a damn what happens to him. If you don't stop him, he'll kill you and take Rose, that's all there is to it. He's crazy for sex, but he won't have it with any woman who's not white, it seems."

  But there would be no more disturbance from Mikey, that night. The injection worked quickly and effectively, although it required the full efforts of all four of the other men in order to hold him down and still long enough for her to administer it properly, then keep him still until the drug had had time to start sedating him.

  Not long after she had returned, alone, to the squad tent, a pile of odds and ends appeared suddenly near the front flaps and, a moment later, a glowing carrier flickered into sight, hanging weightlessly a few inches above the floor tarp.

  "I think I got everything you and John wanted," said Arsen, when he had climbed out of the carrier. "There's three more sides of beef on the rack by Squash Woman's wigwam. I hope to God she and the rest of those bigwigs make up their minds about moving everybody across the fucking mountains before I run out of gold and have to start in really stealing to keep the whole bunch of them fed. And it would help a lot if Soaring Eagle and his crew would take some of their shiny new rifles and go out there and show me what good hunters they are, too."

  "I sent back nine helmets, and honey, I played hell making them, too. Papa's plant and lab didn't have anywhere near enough pure silver, which was what the carrier said I had to have, and it looked for a while like I was just shit out of luck. But then Papa recalled that his papa, Grandpapa Vasil, had bought a whole pisspot full of silver bars a long time ago, and I projected him back to the house and followed in the carrier and he rooted around in the basement and the attic until he finally turned up a bunch of old, dusty, dry-rotted wooden cases full of silver bullion bars from some mine out in Nevada. Then I projected him and them back to the lab at the plant and went back and went to work. With those nine and the three we have from the carriers, we've got one for everybody except Bedros, but I can't make up any more unless I can get a hold of some more silver somewhere."

  "I think you'll have enough for Bedros to have one too," Lisa said quietly. "Arsen, despite your fears for anyone who you send back to our old world, you're going to have to send back Mikey Vranian. He's getting worse and worse, more and more uncontrollable and quicker and quicker to go after other people. And Greg Sinclair told me something tonight that makes me feel that letting him stay with us here would be the very height of folly. Did you know that he had murdered two civilian women in Saigon?"

  He shook his head. "No, honey, I knew he'd fucked up real bad, someway, there, and was flown back sedated and under strict guard, is all. But we weren't in the same unit, see, so that was about all I knew. I won't try to alibi for him, honey, but you know, all those slants looked so much alike—both sexes wearing those fucking black pajama outfits—it was damned easy to loose off some rounds and find out you'd wasted somebody you wouldn't of if you'd known for sure who or what they really were."

  "No, Arsen, he didn't kill them under combat conditions. He went out and hunted one of the women down and beat her almost to death, crippled the other woman because she tried to stop him, then used a length of wood to thrust into them far enough and hard enough to pierce their internal organs—that's how he killed them, Greg says."

  "But, honey, Greg is Mikey's buddy," said Arsen in clear amazement. "Why would he tell you something like that?"

  So Lisa told him all of it, ending by again importuning, "That's why I say you've got to either send him back, Arsen, or keep him constantly drugged and/or locked up . . . or kill him. Letting him stay here loose will mean that eventually you'll be responsible for one or more murders."

  "Look, according to Greg, Mikey had adapted pretty well to his civilian life in the old world we came from—at least he wasn't very often dangerous, there. The worst that can happen if we send him back now is that he may be locked up in a psychiatric hospital, and that might be the best thing that could happen to him, Arsen. He's one of these highly disturbed individuals who has slipped through the cracks of the system, someway, all of his life, missing the kind of therapy he needs most."

  Arsen said nothing for a minute, then, "Honey, there may be one other way. But he's going to have to be awake, conscious, for me to try it."

  "All right, Arsen." She nodded, looked at her wristwatch, and said, "He'll be awake by around eleven in the morning. But what do you mean to do?"

  "Either of us could do it, I think," replied Arsen. "I've just had a little more experience at doing it. Here."
He took off his helmet and proffered it to her, saying, "Put this on, honey, and lie down in the carrier and think about this problem, then ask the carrier's instructor what you can do for Mikey. Go on, honey, do it."

  Later, as she climbed out of the carrier and handed back the silver helmet, Lisa said, not without a note of uncertainty, "Well, Arsen, it's worth a try, I guess. No physical surgery is involved, and at this point, almost anything that might work had better be tried, I think . . . and the carrier's instructor hasn't been wrong about anything to date."

  "You want me to help you carry this stuff you wanted over to the crypt, honey?" Arsen asked. "None of it's heavy, just bulky."

  She shook her head. "Not tonight, Arsen. I turned the crypt over to Rose and Bedros for tonight, until we can get them their own wigwam built, tomorrow."

  "Well, hell, where are you and Kitty going to sleep, honey?" he asked.

  "Kitty is with John and Helen for the night. I guess I could go over there, too. Since you're back, maybe I'd better go on over there before it gets too late." She stood up.

  Arsen stood, too, and facing her at a distance of a foot or less said, "Don't go, honey. Stay here, in the tent, with me, tonight."

  Lisa looked him in the eye and said bluntly, "Arsen, I'm no sheltered virgin, but I'm not a slut, either. I have to feel something for a man before I'll sleep with him. Do you understand me?"

  He nodded. "Perfectly, honey. But now you try to understand me, too. I'm no Mikey, I can control myself . . . within definite limits, of course. You'll be as safe around me as you want to be. Understood, honey?"

  At her wordless nod, he said, "Okay, I've got a spare air mattress here—let me find the foot pump and I'll fill it for you. You start unrolling that extra sleeping bag."

  He rooted out the pump, but just as he was about to attach its hose to the valve of the mattress, she said softly, "No, Arsen, one mattress will be enough . . . for us, tonight."

  Dropping both pump and deflated mattress, Arsen arose from off his knees and stepped over to stand again before her. He did not realize that he was trembling until he reached out to take her cool, slender hands in both of his. "You're sure, honey . . . ? You're sure this is what you want?"

  Her reddish tongue tip flicked out to moisten her pale-pink lips, then she answered, "Yes, Arsen. Oh, yes, this is what I want."

  When they all were assembled in the crypt, Arsen said, "First off, I've been lying to you, all of you, for a while, since we've been here . . . wherever the hell here is."

  Greg grinned and remarked laconically, "So what the fuck's new, cuz? You been a bullshit artist all your life, it just comes with being a purebred Armenian, I guess. Now me, I'm only a quarter-breed, so I at least knows what the truth is." He paused and grinned, then added, "Of course, that ain't to say I don't stretch it some, now and then."

  "Can it, Greg," snapped John, "This is serious business." The usually easygoing dentist's tone of voice and manner punctuated his words.

  "Don't go looking around trying to find Mikey, any of you," said Arsen, continuing, "Mikey is now back on our old world." He paused, then added, slowly and distinctly, "And he has been there all along—he never went up there to play that gig and he now has no trace of memory of anything that happened here, on this world, while he wasn't here."

  "What the fucking shit . . . ?" yelped Al and Haigh, almost as one.

  Arsen sighed. "Look, I've known that I could project one or two or more of you at the time back to our own world ever since I asked the carrier instructor about the capabilities of the Class Five and the Class Seven projectors. I didn't tell you about it in the beginning because I wanted so desperately to help the Indians out and get the slavers off their backs. Then, after I'd had time to think it all through, I realized that it was a kinder thing just to keep you here and in the dark."

  "Why?" demanded Mike in a no-nonsense voice.

  "Look," answered Arsen. "When we all just disappeared from our old world—poof, like that, in front of a hundred people—a real grade-double-A fucking shitstorm sprang up all over the damn place, Mike. The local police, up where we disappeared from, they'd never cottoned to those Iranians much anyhow, see, a lot of them had diplomatic immunity and so could get away with lots of things that other folks couldn't, and then too they had more money than most of the folks lives up there and their countries was asshole-deep in the oil crisis, too. And when we all disappeared, well, they come down on the lot of them just as hard and as mean as they could get away with, and not just them but a whole lot of feds, too."

  "The biggest reason, aside from an apparent mass kidnapping, that the feds was in on it, and Interpol, too, was me and Uncle Rupen and Al and Haigh and Greg and Rose was all connected to Ademian Enterprises in one way or another, and whether or not you all know about it, not only does Ademian make a whole lot of hush-hush stuff for Uncle Whiskers, as international arms dealers, we act as a go-between on a lot of things the government can't look like they're doing up front, see. So the first thing that popped into a lot of bigshot heads was that the Russkies or one of their kind, their stooges, had grabbed everybody to get a hold of me and Uncle Rupen, so's they could have a lever to make a deal for classified stuff with Papa."

  "And as time went by and no fucking body turned up any trace of any of us, Papa and the feds started really going apeshit, started pulling chains and rattling cages all over hell and creation, and you better fucking believe it, too, man. Strictly illegally, Papa and some of his people nabbed up a couple of those Iranian fuckers what had hired us—the band and all—to come up there that night, and took them somewheres private and proceeded to beat the holy living shit out of the fuckers and got somebody to shoot them full of truth serums, too, before he'd believe they didn't know any more than anybody else did about it all."

  "And what did their embassy have to say about that kind of shit?" demanded Mike.

  Arsen grinned. "It never was reported to those fuckers. See, Papa was real cagey, there, he hired guys that spoke Farsi, to start out, and had the fuckers he grabbed convinced, before he was done with them, that it was their own country's security police or Gestapo or whatever you want to call it . . ."

  "They call it the SAVAK," said Lisa, adding, "And I hear they make the Nazi Gestapo look like schoolboys."

  "Anyhow," Arsen went on, "between Papa and his contacts and the feds, just about every foreign government all over the whole fucking world, man, and most of the guerrilla outfits like PLO and ETA and IRA and you name it was felt out. Papa even had the fucking Mafia trying to help him at one point, he says, on account of Uncle Rupen had pulled one of their people out of some deep shit years ago overseas somewhere and so they felt like they owed him one."

  "So, anyhow, after all the shit that's gone down over us being snatched, you can bet your fucking ass that was one or more of us to just suddenly turn up, they'd sure as hell put us through the fucking mill, and you better believe it, Mike, and not just one outfit, either, and not just Americans. And trying to tell them the fucking truth wouldn't do you no good at all, because nobody'd fucking believe you, and if they didn't end up beating you to death trying to make you tell the 'real truth,' they'd prob'ly end up carting you off in a fucking straitjacket to a place with soft walls, so the fucking headshrinkers could run high-voltage juice through you till you wouldn't know which end to wipe."

  Greg snarled, "And you done sent Mikey back into that kind of shit, Arsen? What the hell kind of fucker are you, you . . . you . . ."

  "Cool, down, Greg," admonished John. "Mikey's okay. Let Arsen tell you about it."

  "So, that was the way I understood things up until this morning, see," Arsen went on. "It was the trouble with Mikey, last night, that got me started digging further into whatall the carrier instructor could tell me and Lisa about how to help Mikey and us who was saddled with him and his tantrums and all. What with Lisa's medical training, I thought she ought to be the one to do what I'd been doing to people's minds—like, I'd gone back into our old
world and fixed up the minds of all of everybody's relatives so's they'd stop worrying about us, see—but I figured, come to Mikey, who was kind of nuts to start out with, she could prob'ly do what had to be done better."

  "Well, the carrier instructor did give her instructions on what to do and how to go about doing it, but some of what she told me about some alternatives the instructor had told her about got me to thinking, see, so I crawled back into the carrier this morning, real early, and found out some more things I hadn't known before."

  "Then me and Lisa and John here talked it all out and decided what would be the bestest thing for Mikey and for the rest of us, and that was what we did."

  "See, the Class Seven projector can move you not only through from this world to our old one, but through time, too. Only problem is, if you was to go back to a time before you was projected here to start out with, the process of being projected back there would wipe your mind clean of everything that's happened since you was projected the first time around. Understand? So that's what we did with Mikey, Greg. We set him down, still asleep, in the back of a pickup truck in his brother Harry's backyard the very night we all drove up to do that gig, see. Then I went ahead a couple days in the carrier—see, it's something in the carrier keeps your memory from being erased—and checked the papers, and, sure enough, Mikey wasn't listed as being a member of the band that had disappeared."

  Helen Pappas squinted, her brow wrinkled under her bright, brick-red hair, and asked, "But Arsen, what about his family? You just said you'd gone to our old world and done something to the minds of our families so they wouldn't worry about us. So what about his family?"

  Arsen smiled and shrugged. "Well, according to what the carrier instructor allows to me, I just never did go and soothe Mikey's folks because there was no need to do it because he never had been jerked out of that world to begin with, see."