“Let her sleep, sweetheart, she’s a growin’ girl an’ needs the rest. Listen, I hate t’bother you, but I’m in sort of a jam out here.”
Heplar groaned an’ tried t’rise. I woulda slapped him with the slab-sided .45 but was reluctant to expose m’self t’Edna’s gunsights. Besides, I was sorta worn out.
“Oh, dear!” Georgie exclaimed. “I didn’t notice, with all the other emergencies going on. How can you ever forgive me? What can I do?”
“Take it easy, baby, if I had a quasar-bomb about t’go off behind my navel, I’da been a bit preoccupied m’self.” I could feel my strength fadin’ fast, now. That Olympic-style crawl’d plumb near used me up. Whatever happened better happen pretty quick.
I had an idea an’ shared it with m’best girl.
“Ready now, on the counta three?” I laid the undermuzzle of the .45 on the edge of the boardin’ ramp, prepared t’draw an instant bead on the office.
“Ready, Bernie!”
"Three!"
FLASH! On went every one of her landin’ lights, swiveled straight in Edna’s direction. Musta felt like a stroke of lightnin’ t’her. Practically nailed her to the wall, that blindin’, searin’ photon-pressure.
I squeezed the trigger.
BLAM!
A shadow passed in fronta me, totterin’ down the gangplank an’ muckin’ up m’aim. Just as quick a skinny green appendage snaked around its ankle an’ jerked.
Heplar screamed.
BLAM! BLAM! One shot left.
BLOMMM!
Heplar pitched over on toppa me, fulla little teensy steel arrows. Somehow I flopped him over behind me, took aim, thought better of it an’ ducked.
BLOMMM! said Edna’s Remington.
BIAM! replied the Hartford Colt, its sights lookin’ right at her midriff.
Silence.
“Well, Grandfa—Bernie, didn’t I tell you this could be your Most Important Mission?" Cuthbert looked disgustin’ly pleased with himself as he squatted there behind, that dance-floor of a desk. Trouble was, he had the stag-horn handle of a seven-inch bowie knife protrudin’ outa his blub-bery chest, an' though it didn’t seem t’inconvenience him much, it made polite conversation a mite awkward.
He scratched absently around the cross-guard.
“Look, Your Colonelcy, y’can’t fool me this time. I realize perfectly well this is a dream. I’m actually lyin’ all busted up on a greasy concrete floor in a universe you don’t even know exists—an’ I won’t stand still for this!
A big fat droppa blood ran down m'right wrist, the back a my hand, along the index finger an’ off, startin’ its lazy one-sixth gee voyage to the expensive carpet below.
“You volunteered!" pouted Cuthbert. “You can’t back out now!"
A chromium house-mouse bulleted out from the Aztec-modern wainscottin’: Ignorin’ the pain from my broken bones, I reached down an’ snatched the little bugger up. Looked like a teeny walnut-sized Army helmet with a little metallic gooseneck stickin' outa the top an’ about a million almost microscopic wirelike legs wigglin’ around underneath.
I popped it in my mouth, crunched an’ swallowed, washiri it down with a big gulpa coffee from the decanter on m’grandson’s desk.
“Skip the bullshit, sonny-boy. You’ve picked the wrong patsy. I know my rights! Insteada hallucinatin’ you, of all the vermin in the known galaxy, I oughta be travelin’ through a long dark tunnel, sorta floatin' like, with a brilliant light toward the end. When I get there, this guy with an aura an' a long white nightgown 1I hold two fingers up an' tell me t’cough—”
“Don’t be sacrilegious. Captain!” With sudden annoyance, he yanked the blade from between his ribs, makin’ a horrible suckin’ noise, an' tapped the bloody point on his desk-blotter for emphasis. “It must be the baleful influence of the Confederacy. But don’t worry, as soon as the Academy takes over and puts an end to their disgraceful anarchism, everything will be just fine.’’
He smiled so sweetly / considered reinsertin’ that toad-sticker somewhere where there’d be more effect. I glanced down at my feet. Somehow those combat bootsa mine’d been done over in bright red sequins when I wasn’t lookin’. This generated an idea: I clicked my heels together three times, real smartlike—
“Ain’t no place like home. Ain’t no place like home. Ain’t no place...”
“Bernie?”
I looked up into the glitterin’ faceted eyeball of a very worried Freenie. Gimme a pain right behind the bridge of my nose—an’ the feelin’ this was where I’d come in.
“Charm, old mollusk! I thought sure you was done for!”
“I’d never desert you that way, Lord. I only wish I had' been able to help you sooner.” He was parked there on the floor beside me, his tentacles makin’ little nervous pats on m’good shoulder.
Mighta known y’couldn’t eighty-six a Yamaguchian by throttlin’ his eyestalk. The anatomy just don’t work that way—be like tryin’ t’strangle a human bein’ by the earlobes. Painful, but far from disastrous.
I was still lyin’ on that lousy concrete, just like I’d told Cuthbert, but there was a blanket underneath me, an’ inflated plastic cocoons the lengtha my right arm, another reachin’ from my armpits to m’knees. Touchin’ m’face, I discovered a heavy bandage coverin’ the right side there, too.
I was gonna miss that eye.
Mary-Beth Sanders leaned over my pitiful remains, inadvertently deliverin’ herself of a scenic tour of her decol
letage as she handed me a cuppa somethin’.
“Take this, Bernie. It’ll grow hair on your chest.” “Mighty glad you’re not in the habit of drinkin’ it, then.” Not everything was broken. “What is it, anyway?”
She blushed. The garage was still lit up like a movie premiere by Georgie’s landin’ lights, an’ I could hear a buncha other people talkin’ an’ millin’ around.
“Vitamins, minerals—and about three ounces of singlemalted Scots whiskey. Bottoms up!”
I grinned. “Same t’you, lady. Say, anybody found Edna’s body yet? Up in that office-cubby, yonder?” I sipped at the potion. Mebbe she’d exaggerated, but not by much—it was curlin’ the hair on my chest.
A paira human legs suddenly popped over the shotgun-battered edge of the gangway beside an’ above me, dangled there an’ kicked their heels against the metal framin’.
“I looked up there, too, Bemie,” Fran said not uncheerfully. “There wasn’t any sign of her. I noticed the slide of your automatic, locked back on an empty magazine. That’s a lot of ammo to expend on just one little villainess, without any tangible—”
“You shoulda been there, girlie!”
“I know we should have!” a familiar voice replied. Win Bear clomped down the runway, unlit cigar in hand, with G. Howell Nahuatl trottin’ at his heels. “Next time you get invited to a gunfight, why not bring your friends along, too?”
“Glad t’see you’re better, anyway,” I said t’Howell as he hopped off the last few feet of the gangplank. “See what drugs’ll do to ya?”
“I have had worse hangovers.” The coyote sat beside me on his haunches. “So there is a 789 George Herbert, after all. Certainly impressive, and an extremely nice person, in spite of her long association with Certain Parties. But you’d better order young Koko off the bridge. She appears to be in a button-pushing mood!”
“She can’t accomplish any more’n Cromney could ’thout the equalizin’ firammis, an’ Georgie’ll keep an eye on her.
’Sides, she sure as Shiva pushed the right button a little while—say, how long’ve I been outa contact with reality, anyway?”
Win glanced at his watch. “Guess we got here a little after eight. Hardly time for the blood to congeal. I could still smell gunpowder in the air. I’ve made a tentative I.D. on the bodies—Heplar, Cromney, that mess over there by the oil drums is Gregamer, I presume. This place looks like the rail-yard scene in Gone With the Wind. You’ve been told we couldn’t find Janof?”
�
�I been told, all right. Say, this vitamin-juice is okay, Mary-Elizabeth. Too bad about m’uniform, though. Wish y’hadn’t hadda cut it up this way.” Half my coverall was lyin’ between m’legs, tom away where they’d put the air-casts. Little wires stickin’ out where the environmental controls’d been an’ a tag I’d never noticed inside one leg, listin’ the penalties for destroyin’ Academy property.
She shook her pretty head. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a medic, Bemie, though thank goodness Win carries adequate emergency supplies in his car—must be Clarissa’s influence. And I think you’ll find someone in Laporte who can repair your clothing so well that—”
I nodded. “Gotcha: had an uncle in the invisible reweavin’ trade m’self, one time, until the Emperor come down with pneumonia an’ they strung him up. But...” I looked at my friend the detective kinda sheepishly: “Speakin’ of your car, an’ of repairs...”
He laughed. “The insurance will take care of it—though they may want to have a word or two with Koko about it— and if not, the newsies will pay handsomely for an exclusive on this little tea-party. In the meantime, I’ll—”
There was a boom an’ clatter at the fronta the garage. In strode T. W. Sanders, Captain Li-Li, halfa Griswold’s Grimmest, an’ a paira Freenies, one with a glued-up seam along his back.
Sanders had a mean look on his phizz.
“Not so much as a goddamned footprint! Gruenblum, you not only keep a dirty gun, but you can’t shoot for sour owlshit!” He lifted a pistol-filled hand toward the rear of the garage. “The back wall of that office looks like a player-piano roll!”
His junior wife hopped off the gangplank, took a coupla steps toward a stacka 55-gallon barrels, an’ kicked at the sole of a shoe I could just see outa the comer of my good eye. It was attached to somethin’ lyin’ behind the drams.
“Tell that to the late Norrit Gregamer here, darling. I made the same mistake myself, but I’ve had time to think about it: a running head-shot, left-handed, and in the dark? Bemie, you can join my militia, any time!”
This from the little broad who lit torches with a plasma-gun. I accepted it as the high praise it was an’ kept m’mouth shut. Sanders shook his head, a grudgin’ apology on his face.
“How soon can we get moving?” Mary-Beth asked. “We really ought to get Bemie some competent professional attention.”
I didn’t have any complaints about the attention I was gettin’.
“Well, there’s that vet downtown,” Koko offered as she emerged from the passenger-level airlock. “Bemie, will you and Georgie take me for a ride before you go home?”
“Of course we will, Koko,” a disembodied voice replied behind her. “Won’t we, Bemie?”
I tried t’sit up on an elbow—an’ got pushed back gently by three setsa hands, a paira doggie paws, an’ only Qchs-kahrt knows how many little green tentacles.
“What’s this about goin’ home? Back an’ forth in time I can understand—an’ even handle. How’m I gonna-—”
“Take it easy,” Fran said. “That’s something we’ll discuss later. It’s all set. How about it, Sis? Can we move him?”
“Unless he’d rather lie there until his bones knit.”
Somehow they managed t’lever me up onto a disused tool-cart an’ wheeled me toward the broken door where Win’s Neova stuck through like some kinda modernistic wali-sculpture.
“Wait a doggone minute! I can’t leave Georgie here like this, not after all I been—”
The furry hand of a chimpanzee rested itself on m’good shoulder. “Not to worry, Captain Gruenblum. Griswold’s will take good care of her.”
I looked up at Li-Li, at his midnight-black uniform, the two big pistols an’ the bowie-sword he carried, at the paira throwin’ knives tucked down the backa his collar an’ the shot-loaded leather gloves shoved under his epaulet.
“I believe it!” Brrrr.
“And you know what, Bernie?” my fly in’ saucer chimed. “Captain Li-Li has promised he’ll tell me all about the Heller-Browne decision and equal rights for sapient machines! Isn’t that exciting?”
Li-Li tried t’wipe the self-conscious expression off his face. “I wanted to be a lawyer,” he said, “but my I.Q. overqualified me.”
“Swell.” I groaned. “Just wheel me home, then, mother. I’ll be okay in five of six millennia.”
They hadda lift me over the garage doorsill, an’ it wasn’t easy, as the passage was narrow, my head an’ feet were hangin’ off the endsa the cart, an’ the whole assembly, top-heavy as it was, threatened t’go belly-up any moment. Outside a big black hovervan was waitin’ with its back hatches open, studded with machine-gun blisters an’ small-arms ports.
Belonged t’Griswold’s, natch.
The little cart-wheels skidded, floppin’ around sideways, skipped an’ dragged through the gravel.
Suddenly, around the comer slashed a yellow ground effect machine, canopy open, a wild-eyed Edna Janof at the tiller, hair streamin’ crazily in the wind. One-handed, she levered somethin’ big an’ shiny onto the edge of the car door, its muzzle pointin’ directly at—
BLOMMM! BLOMMM! BLOMMM! BLOMMM! BLOMMM!
Steel slivers sleetin’ around us, everybody went for the ground an’ their own hardware at the same time. My cart tipped over in all the excitement, spillin’ yours truly in the dirt but providin’ me a shield. I grabbed at the extra Bren .40 Will Sanders thrust at me, wonderin’ momentarily where m’Colt’d gotten off to.
I ain’t even gonna try conveyin’ what all that ordnance goin’ off at once sounded like. Wasn’t more’n a coupla ticks an’ somebody inside the van let loose with everything they had, eoncentratin’ its heavy firepower on the stolen yellow sportscar as it tried t’work its way around for a second strafin’ run.
That Edna never did know when t’quit.
An explosion ripped its swollen plastic skirt from hood-omament t’trunk, flippin’ the vehicle over an’ over as smoke an’ mountin’ flames enveloped it. The damn thing smashed through the flimsy side of an abandoned warehouse. There was a flash inside that lit up all the windows, a bellowin’ of tortured steel an’ superheated air, an’ the walls sorta puffed themselves outward, splittin’ at the comers of the buildin’, released energy flattenin’ everything within a hundred meters.
An’ tippin’ the ersatz Gurney I’d fallen off of, right over onto my remainin’ good arm, snappin’ both radius an’ ulna with a sound like splittin’ bamboo.
I didn’t find it humerus.
23 Is It Live or Is It Muzak?
WE NEVER DID FIND EDNA’S BODY.
Only took about a week t’get the various splints an’ stickin’ plasters off m’scrawny corporeal essence. Good thing, too:
I was beginnin’ t’feel as accident-prone as Denny Kent, there, for a while.
. Now that’s a loose end that got tied up good an’ proper. Restitution, not imprisonment, is the primary concern of Confederate justice, but it appeared like there wasn’t a whole lotta gainful employment for an otherwise unhandy MarxoFriedmanite Neo-Revisionist of the Old School—not in laissez-faire-land—until somebody remembered there was a Help Wanted out for a professor of Alternative Moral Philosophy up in Cheyenne.
Shucks, I’d planned t’haul poor Denny back to the Academy in irons, but not even a “defunct economist” deserves the Pylon. Besides, he’d be workin’ for the next several dozen decades t’pay Win an’ Griswold’s an’ Birdflower an’ Tree an’ the owners of all that industrial-district real-estate he’d helped t’tear down an’ blow up. Not that I felt he was responsible for all of it, but it seemed t’satisfy everyone else, includin’ Denny—;punishment's another religious-based concept the Confederacy’s given up.
Dunno as I approve of that m’self.
While I was sequestered in Win’s spare bedroom, growin’ m’bones back together an’ enjoyin’ frequent visits with the former Kendall sisters, presently “living under the name of Sanders,” I gave a lotta thought t’what I was gon
na do back home. Made a certain amounta sense t’stack Merwin, Hul-bert, Heplar, an’ Cromney in Georgie’s freeze-locker an’ present ’em to Academy authorities by way of some kinda explanation. But it made me feel like Vincent Price.
Gregamer I’d gladly leave t’whatever fate awaited his counterearthly remains here in Laporte.
What didn’t make sense was tellin’ the dear of Academy about sideways time-travel or the Confederacy. That final nightmare hadn’t been altogether as surrealistic as it mighta seemed. They’d wanna move in over here, all right—Confederates are a mighty people in their way, but their civilization seemed peculiarly innocent an’ vulnerable t’this outsider—an’ a lotta swell folks’d wind up radioactive in the process.
So what was I gonna do?
“Georgie, what’m I gonna do? You know how it is back home—hell, they’d take you apart, just t’see what makes you tick!”
At the time—a couple days after the battle in Wyoming—she was still parked in that Hell-on-Wheels carbarn, waitin’ faithfully for me t’plug in herequalizin’ fram-mis—which I’d withdrawn from Mulligan's Bank & Grill— once I had a paira workin’ hands t’do it with.
Her image on the bedroom ’com wall frowned aiittle, then brightened. “We could always just stay here. I’ll bet we could make a pretty good living in the time-travel business. We’d have a monopoly!”
I shook my head, enjoyin’ havin’ both eyes t’look at her with. “Not for very long. Deejay an’ Ooloorie’ve been playin’ with the equations, mostly t’get a stardrive outa. An’ I’m sure you recognized that assistant of theirs. Gimme the creeps—sure hope they keep a tighter rein on him here than they did back home.
J looked at my watch. That ersatz Ochskahrt’d fixed it, all right. Ran just fine.
Backwards.
There was a lull in conversation as I fiddled with the arrangement of big white plastic pillows they’d strapped to me, housin’ the Basset coils that were healin’ up m’bones at an unnatural rate.
“Besides, baby, much as I like the people here, human an’ otherwise, I ain’t no anarchist! Shucks, ’thout no rules t’break, what fun would life be?”
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