And honestly, of course he wasn’t going to! That is, he wasn’t going to try, because he wasn’t going to need to try, because he had no intention of shooting his friends, and surely he didn’t need to try to not do something he didn’t want to do. Not doing it would surely just come naturally! So he wasn’t going to accidentally do anything with the gun. He was only going to use it to shoot robots, and make no effort whatsoever to avoid shooting his friends, because not shooting his friends would just happen automatically. Also he wondered if the gun was called a Tonsil Job because it was small enough to fit in your mouth, and what might happen if it was in your mouth when you fired it, and that was when Sally took the gun out of his hand and put it back in his pack.
“About the Mark V,” Z-Lin said quietly to Sally as they gathered in front of the lander. “Did you make those fixes to it that we discussed?”
“There are two separate units now,” Sally said, “acting as redundant backups.”
“Redundant backups of redundant redundancy!” Contro exclaimed, wanting to be of some use in the conversation.
“The one with the white smiley-face sticker on it is the one you wanted with the data added,” Sally continued, giving Contro a little grin before turning back to Z-Lin. “You want us to take it down to the surface?”
“Not right now.”
Waffa and Janya headed aboard the lander. Glomulus, standing with a very harmless and innocent look about him, waited for Sally.
“This will probably be a good time for you to go snoop in Waffa’s quarters,” Sally said to Z-Lin in an even quieter voice, “and see if that eejit is in there. You know. The one who is definitely under no circumstances Thorkhild.”
“Never occurred to me,” Z-Lin said with a very straight face.
Sally turned to Contro. “Right then,” she said.
“Ha ha ha! You know, there are lots of eejits on board who aren’t Thorkhild! Practically all of them, actually!”
“Practically,” Sally agreed, and jerked her head at Glomulus. “In.”
Contro did his best not to chatter too irrelevantly as they descended. He’d been seated next to Glomulus, which was nice.
“Do you have a gun?” he asked the doctor.
Glomulus smiled. “Not me,” he said with a solemn wink. “Can’t abide the things, myself.”
“Looks like Bunzo has taken over the landing procedure,” Waffa said, turning and rising from the pilot’s seat. “It’s not like I knew what I was doing there anyway.”
“Are we worried about Bunzo landing us?” Glomulus asked idly.
“I don’t know! I’m not!” Contro declared. “Although now I don’t know whether I maybe should be! And so now I am!” he laughed, and rummaged in his cardigan pocket for a toffee.
“Nothing to worry about,” Sally said. “We’re playing this part of the mission entirely to Bunzo’s tune, in the hopes of achieving a more useful dialogue with him.”
“I know Bunzo’s tune!” Contro told them. “It goes Bunzo, it’s Bunzo, he fills-”
“Don’t make me shoot you, Chief,” Waffa said.
The lander came down at a glitzy, posh-looking spaceport. This one, unlike the one Zeegon and Decay had been telling him about, didn’t have a big pile of starships all around it. Just forests and lakes and lawns and rivers. It was all very nice indeed.
“Welcome!” Bunzo’s enormous, expansive voice exclaimed happily as they disembarked. “Welcome to Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World! Welcome, Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed! Welcome, Janya Adeneo! Welcome, Controversial-To-The-End! Welcome, Galvan James W-”
“Waffa’s fine.”
“Welcome, Waffa!” Bunzo continued without missing a beat. “And welcome, Glomulus Cratch! So you’re free!”
“Free as can be,” Glomulus said. They sidled cautiously into the huge, glittery entrance hall of the spaceport.
“Mary will be so pleased! It’s important, you see. Very important. Have you killed anyone yet?”
“Of course he has,” Sally snapped.
“I rather thought the dear pups would come,” Bunzo went on. “The seven young ladies you keep in your freezer, don’t you know. I was dearly hoping to meet them. I suppose I’ll have to come up with some way to introduce myself up on the ship.”
“I’m sure,” Sally said, sounding cautious. “Unfortunately it was a bit warm down here, and they’re all still a bit too small to fit into Thord’s suit,” the last time Contro had been in to visit the pups, they hadn’t really been pups anymore. Most of them were chest-high, two of them almost shoulder-high, and all of them were very broad and heavy.
“Oh, stuff and nonsense!” Bunzo exclaimed. “I told you, I’ve been preparing for this! And if I can’t control things down here to provide a bit of comfort to our aki’Drednanth sisters, what sort of a host would I be? Of course, I won’t demonstrate now, because I wouldn’t want all of you to get a chill … but I do hope there will be an opportunity later. I feel we have much to talk about.”
“Why don’t we talk about why you think we’re here,” Sally said, “and then we can talk about why we think we’re here?”
“Well obviously, you’re here to celebrate my birthday with me,” Bunzo said, “and I have everything prepared. I would also be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping, in a small and silly way, that you have come to make amends for the way we parted last time. I didn’t want to say anything, but the saucy way you snuck away after snatching your tithe away from me … yes, I suppose you might say I was hoping for an apology after that. Maybe you can make amends. I’m going to let it pass anyway, because I’m so glad you came back.”
“What tithe are you talking about?” Sally asked. They’d moved to the middle of the big entry hall, and were now milling a little confusedly. “You mean Janus? Janus was meant to be some sort of offering? You gave him back,” Sally raised her voice a little. “I’m pretty sure if you’d wanted to keep us all and murder us, you could have. It wasn’t our fault you let us go.”
“Although,” Glomulus added hastily, “we’re very grateful that you did.”
“Well,” Bunzo huffed, “at least Glomulus is polite.”
“I take it you’re not talking about Janus,” Janya said. “Is the tithe supposed to be a person? Someone who is supposed to stay here with you, in order for you to let the rest of the crew go?” she looked around at the others. “That would explain his obscure remark about ables earlier on. It might also explain some of the other survivor-stories floating around.”
“Quite so,” Bunzo said, “quite so, indeed. Of course, there is no need to make your choice yet! I’m still holding out hopes that you’ll all want to stay!”
“Hang on,” Waffa said. “So the only way anyone has gotten out of here in the past three hundred years, since the last official AstroCorps report, is by leaving someone? And none of those guys made any sort of report about it?”
“Would you?” Sally asked.
“You’re asking the wrong guy,” Janya murmured. Sally gave a brief snort of amusement.
“Hey,” Waffa protested. “The only reason we didn’t lodge a report last time was because most of our data was fried off the system. Z-Lin sent some sort of notification to the higher-ups, but all we had were some random bits of information, confirmation of identity of the Denbrough and Yojimbo and their crews for the brass, and that was about it. Mission accomplished, but nothing concrete. The rest of it got wiped by the exile program we got hit with. There was no point in lodging a report based on our eyewitness accounts. It just would have ended up as more unfounded hearsay.”
“I remember,” Janya said. “Even the injury and medical logs were hushed up because of the … unorthodox way we solved that issue. But I think if we had actually lost somebody, we would have had to report it.”
“So if we didn’t leave anyone,” Sally said, “how did we get away last time? Much as I’d like to take credit, I don’t think the Sally-Forth Engine had much to do with it.”
“Oh ho,”
Bunzo said a little forcedly, like someone who was the butt of a jolly good old joke but getting just a wee bit tired of it. “Well, quite. Like I say, you won’t trick me again.”
“Is that why you were so upset?” Janya asked. “Because we didn’t leave anyone?”
Bunzo laughed. “Didn’t your Captain tell you his plans in advance? Oh yes, he took care of that side of things.”
“Who did the Captain leave behind?” Waffa demanded a little shrilly. “Who did he leave behind?”
“Nobody,” Janya repeated chidingly. “There were ten of us when we arrived last time, and there were ten of us when we left. Give or take the odd piece.”
“I don’t suppose he lived to tell you, afterwards,” Bunzo burbled, “clever little man he was.”
“Did he leave an eejit?” Janya guessed.
“No no, won’t have ‘em. Like I said.”
“Did he leave me?” Contro asked excitedly. Everyone looked at him. “Sorry!”
“I get the impression you think our Captain’s dead,” Sally noted idly.
“Oh, most certainly!” Bunzo laughed.
“Only I think you might be surprised on that score, if you wanted to look into it. I mean, you can get your eyes and ears anywhere you like on board our ship, right?”
“Trickery. Astounding trickery!” Bunzo’s tone turned from growing surliness to one of pure delight, and Contro wondered if he was putting eyes and ears inside the Captain’s quarters back up on the ship. He had to have a bit of a laugh at that idea. Imagine eyes and ears all over the walls of the Captain’s chambers! “Oh, I am so glad you came. I said that already, didn’t I? Well, this time you will all be searched for scoots.”
“Scoots? None-” Sally stopped.
Scoots, as even Contro knew, were near-light-speed transfer devices, terribly energy-consumptive and very dangerous, used mainly for the transfer of mechanical components and other big heavy stuff. You certainly didn’t want to use one as a – what, as a teleporter or something! That would be daft even by Contro’s standards!
Actually most of the time Contro gathered they were used as weapons rather than transportation. He remembered Sally telling him about it, in fact, or maybe it was something he read in an adventure book. You could technically scoot something into a ship through its hull even when its shields were fully active. Although you had a much greater chance of just slightly increasing the number of parts per million of metal particles in the air, because scoots often just moved all the atoms and subatomic bits and bobs from one place to the other at almost the speed of light, but didn’t pay much attention to what order they had started out in and therefore what order they should be in at the other end. And yes, it usually worked best with big lumps of solid machinery. And you really needed a landing-and-accretion field at the far end to make it work more reliably, and not many people had those inside their ships, especially not programmed to help a bomb or a torpedo rematerialise on board! Because honestly, why would anyone have a thing like that? Just asking for trouble, wasn’t it?
Golly, did Bunzo think they’d escaped by scooting themselves to safety last time? And that they’d all somehow survived? That would be a jolly good trick! Or maybe Bunzo had cracked the scoot code. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing all this time! He was a great big old computer, and darned intelligent even if he was a bit potty.
Anyway, Sally had evidently remembered old Bitterpill’s rule about not upsetting or disagreeing with Bunzo, which they were probably skirting the edges of already. “Okay,” she concluded, “uh, of course, search away. If you do find anyone smuggling scoot technology and trying to transfer any of your belongings off the planet, please let me know. Scoots are banned for civilian use.”
“Oh indeed, indeed,” Bunzo said busily, “don’t you worry, there’ll be no cheating this time. Come in, come in, do. Please make your way through to the Funporium entrance at the back of the hall.”
“Funporium?” Glomulus said. “Am I about to be placed in a Funporium context? Because that would be strange and uncomfortable.”
“Oh, such clever people there are, all over the galaxy,” Bunzo philosophised as the landing party made their way through the spacious hall towards … well, towards the Funporium, Contro supposed. He had to say it sounded like fun. And also like a porium! So that settled it! “And they all come flocking to me,” Bunzo continued, “although it’s so sad when they can’t stay. And oh yes. Plenty of Captains – yes, and clever Commanders, too – have decided they’re not going to leave a man behind,” Bunzo chuckled. “They try any number of desperate, brilliant things. Heroic things. Such a learning experience it is, every time.”
“And last time?” Janya asked.
“Let’s not speak of that again,” Bunzo said, his voice once again going high and reedy. “It’s this time I want to talk about. And you being such an awful bunch of clever-clogses. And none of those other ships ever getting out of here in such a cheeky way as you did.”
“None of the ones that did get out ever came back, either!” Contro said.
“No, this is true,” Bunzo agreed. “I’m so glad you did, by the way. Did I mention that?”
“Once or twice,” Waffa replied.
“So, yes. Yes, you can decide to be noble, and try to be clever, and stay here forever. Or you can pay the tithe, and maybe leave. Although now I have you back, I’m really not inclined to let you go…”
“So, let’s leave Cratch and call it good,” Waffa suggested. “Isn’t that what we brought him down here for? It’s sounding like Clue and the Cap had already known about this tithe bullplop, so-”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” Sally said firmly. “Cratch and The Bun might belong together, but we’re not about to start throwing our lawfully-arrested prisoners to the wolves and walk away.”
“Very well said,” Bunzo approved. “I’m not sure I like that implication about wolves, but very noble and very worthy, indeed.”
“Besides,” Glomulus said, “I don’t think The Bun would want to keep me around. His wife has a thing for me,” there was a sudden, horrified silence, and Glomulus examined his fingernails. “Of course, I can’t blame her,” he went on. “She’s only human, the poor old dear.”
The silence stretched another five seonds, then Bunzo laughed.
“Well done!” he exclaimed. “Well done indeed! A bit cheeky, but well done!”
And Glomulus’s hands exploded with a pop-pop.
Contro couldn’t help laughing, even though he got some burnt crunchies on his shirt and everyone else looked shocked. It just made such a funny noise! It wasn’t his fault! Anyway, Glomulus made an even funnier squawking sound and fell down unconscious with his stumps curled to his chest, so he wasn’t going to be bothered by it. Sally stared down, then looked up very angrily indeed.
“Yes, a bit cheeky, a bit cheeky indeed!” Bunzo continued. “And now, please step into the Funporium,” they’d arrived at a big colourful arch, and standing under the arch was something horrible. “And please ignore Bilo,” Bunzo added.
“I’d love to ignore Bilo,” Sally said weakly, “but I’m also worried about Bilo then being somewhere behind me where I can’t see him.”
Bilo was a human, or a humanoid, anyway, with a body almost as pale and skinny as Glomulus’s and only a pair of shorts to his name. He also had a lot of funny lines and scars on his arms, legs and torso, and his head appeared to be a jenkiball. That is, it was big and round and a sort of maroon colour, and stitched vertically down the middle with rough cord. It looked far too big for Bilo’s pointy shoulders, and was such a funny proportion to the rest of him that from a distance he looked like a child.
The ball, of course, had no eyes or nose or mouth. Bilo was really quite ghastly.
“Hello,” Bilo said in a muffled voice.
“Oh,” Contro said in relief, “so you’re just wearing a mask! I didn’t realise you had a sort of a scary section here as well! I just thought the Funporium
would be all the cheerful happy stuff!”
“I’m very sorry about this,” Bunzo said. “There are different schools of thought about the whole clowning issue. Bilo was actually – well, I have been planning this, like I said. Not necessarily for you to come back, but for someone to come back. And Bilo was meant to meet and greet and hand out gifts. Weren’t you, Bilo?”
“I still can,” Bilo snuffled. “You can take me with you if you like.”
“Uh, no,” Sally replied.
“Aw.”
“You do realise you’re just Bunzo pretending to be a robot with a jenkiball for a head, right?” Waffa said. “And I am very much aware that the weirdest thing I have ever said might end up being the last if you take exception to it.”
“It’s alright,” Bilo said. “I know I’m rather ill-conceived. But preparing coming-back surprises for people who leave us … it’s not the sort of thing we’ve had much call to do. Not that many people even leave us, let alone come back.”
“Remember the Moritania?” Bunzo said fondly.
“Wait – the Moritania came here?” Sally demanded.
“Sure,” Bilo extended a skeletal hand, ushering them deeper into the Funporium. “Would you like to see the crewmember they left behind as tithe?”
“Will it give us all nightmares for the rest of our lives?” Waffa asked.
“Maybe,” Bilo admitted.
“Depends how long you live,” Bunzo added.
“And how much of a Tilly Tinkle-Tears you are,” Bilo concluded. “You’re not a Tilly Tinkle-Tears, are you?”
“I’m a bit of a Tilly Tinkle-Tears,” Waffa confessed.
“Actually we do have one surprise I think you’ll really like,” Bunzo said. “Bilo, bring Glomulus. You’ll see, Sally, there’s method in my madness. Please bear with me.”
Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Page 33
