by John Varley
When things became clear again I was on my knees in front of him looking at bits of matted, bloody hair sticking to the edge of the cold-cream jar.
Nick Charles would have shrugged off being sapped, shinned, and drop-kicked in the crotch. He'd have straightened his tie, dabbed at a trickle of blood with an immaculate handkerchief, and delivered a trenchant line. Well, folks, I am an actor, and the thought of Nick and others like him from violent melodrama had kept me going through the fight—me, basically a coward and not the least bit stoic—but when it was over I did what most humans do. What you would most likely do. I howled like a dog.
Everything hurt. Getting sapped, in particular, is not at all what it seems in the comic books.
One thing that didn't hurt was the family jewels. That's because they were in a safe-deposit tube in a Lunar hospital, near absolute zero. My father taught me that testicles were God's joke on the male species, good only for procreation and the delivery of agony. Testosterone comes in pills.
I got to my feet. When I turned my head a team of horses clattered over the top of it. I thought I might throw up, but mastered the urge. I stood looking down at my vanquished foe, then at the Pantechnicon. I told you not to be surprised at what it might do.
I banged my fist on the top of it, and with an apologetic little sproinnnng! the collapsible billy club popped out of the side and clattered to the deck.
"Where were you when I needed you?" I asked it, then fell down and slept.
It should have been one, two, three!
One, the laser, and two, the tanglenet, arriving almost simultaneously. Then, with him disarmed and restrained, the steel shillelagh pops into my hand and I belabor him about the head, shoulders, and any other sensitive parts that strike my fancy.
All for want of a spring...
The ejection mechanism worked fine when I tried it later. No doubt years of disuse and infrequent testing had frozen it just enough to nearly get me killed. It wasn't the Pantech's fault, but my own.
When designing the thing I'd given a lot of thought to a lethal attack. The laser was quite capable of slicing heads from shoulders like lunch meat. But killing is a step you can never draw back from. Nor can you ever be sure you might accidentally set your infernal machine into motion. I had been as careful as I could, requiring that the Pantech get not one but two cues from me. In this case, in the dressing room, the quote from Macbeth had primed the mechanism, jacked a shell into the chamber, as it were, causing the Pantech's brain to come alert, size up the threat, locate the weapon, if any, and await further orders. Which came when I tossed my hat onto the bed. Both these are things an actor never does in the dressing room. Had I been elsewhere there were other signals, which will remain within my own purview. There are enemies lurking everywhere, and who knows but that you might be one of them?
Thank God for The Pusher's Return. It wasn't the first time my craft had saved my life. One day I might even put my sword-fighting skills to good use.
And by the way, there is no damn justice. Dixon de la Mare won that Alley Award, stole that Alley Award. It's the same old story. I played the villain so well the voters subconsciously didn't like me.
* * *
When I woke up I did so all at once, nearly falling off the bed as every muscle in my body jerked. I'd dreamed he was hovering over me, the bloody ruin of his face twisted into a deadly grin, his white, sharp teeth getting star billing. I looked at the floor and he was still in the same position.
Bad mistake, that, not taking the time to check him out. But I'd really had little choice. I looked at him now.
All right, Sparky. You've cleverly lured your prey to you, and you've vanquished it. Now, do you stuff it and mount it in the den, release it back into its native habitat, or eat it?
Maybe I didn't have much choice. Maybe he was already dead. I reached down and pinched his nostrils together. In a moment a breath came bubbling from his lips, a comical sound in another situation.
Good. He might still die—I might yet decide I had to kill him, for that matter—but it's always best to have a choice. And Father always used to say you should never kill anyone unless it's absolutely necessary. Of course, he viewed getting a bad review as fulfilling that condition.
This might be one of those times. The Charonese had a bulldog reputation for pursuit. There was no way they were going to let this matter remain in its current state. They would be coming after me. I was not safe on Pluto, or the Neptune or Uranus systems. It was said the ferrymen had considerable clout as far sunward as Saturn's orbit. Beyond that I didn't know.
So step one was to depart the balmy shores of Pluto. Five minutes from now would be about right, I thought. It would take me a bit longer in actual practice.
What about Isambard Comfort, then? Could that really be his name? Should I let him survive to inflict its ridiculous syllables on other innocent ears? I frowned down at him again. Under a flap of detached scalp I thought I saw a gleam of metal.
I nudged the skin aside with the tip of my billy club. It looked like a stainless-steel egg in there. There were broken bits of skull bone but beneath it all he seemed to have encased his brain in a protective shell.
I'd heard of it, but never seen it. We monkey with our bodies these days—Lord knows I'd done enough of it myself, for professional reasons—but there are a few hard constants that resist our best efforts. That wrinkled, red-gray, be-veined and be-flustered mass known as the brain was one of them. You could augment it with crystal memory, wire it for radio reception, or bronze it for posterity, as Comfort had done, but if you tampered with it too much it simply stopped working. So I knew that, whatever he had done, it hadn't been proof against repeated blows from a jar of cold cream. That sphere of metal would prevent the gray matter from being penetrated by a knife or a bullet, but nothing could alter its inertia, and slamming it against the inside of the shell produced a concussion, and you were out. Worse, the not infrequent sequella of concussion was brain swelling, which could be fatal even in our current state of medical grace. Isambard's brain would be swelling now, with no more place to go than if it had been in a standard-issue skull.
As I came to that conclusion I saw a tiny network of cracks appear in the metal carapace. The whole construction grew by about a quarter of an inch. It was now more of a fine metal mesh than a seamless helmet.
This was commando stuff, I realized. Damage-control circuits were coming into play.
That's when I realized I wasn't going to kill him. Mainly, it was the conclusion that killing him would not further my cause in any way.
And he'd said he liked Sparky and His Gang.
* * *
For well over twenty years Britannic had been cruising a triangular route meant to simulate a trans-Pacific voyage. The original ship could not have made the crossing in less than two weeks. The Plutonian copy did it in four days. This was no great feat of speed, as the entire journey took place in the hundred-kilometer bubble of rock deep beneath the planetary surface known as the Pacifica Environmental Park, still the largest disneyland in the system.
It was a voyage in both space and time, and don't ask me how they did it. I mean, the ship when under weigh always seemed to be making good speed, cutting smartly through the blue water, leaving a long, straight wake behind. It stood to reason that she was actually either tethered in place, or going in large circles, but you couldn't tell it by looking.
The trip started in Edo, in 1853, the year of the arrival of the Black Ships in the bay of what would become Tokyo. Passengers embarked after sampling the culture of feudal Japan, sailed out with magnificent Mount Fuji in the distance as Commodore Perry sailed in.
The next morning brought them to Tahiti in 1789—a very cute trick: two thousand leagues south by southwest, and sixty years into the past in about eighteen hours. Britannic would drop anchor at Papeete alongside the Bounty, met by dozens of outrigger canoes filled with happy, naked brown people throwing tropical flowers, and the passengers would be fe
rried ashore for a day of sensual pleasures in the sun, surf, and sand. They'd feast, frolic, and fornicate (all included in the price of your ticket, no tipping, please!), have their pictures taken with Fletcher Christian and Captain Bligh, then stagger back to feast and frolic and fornicate most of the night, until the morning, when the ship arrived at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, where the Pacifica disneyland management had prepared a little show for them, which the less hungover among the vacationers might actually watch. Even those you might have thought dead to the world were usually awakened; the show was very noisy.
From there the ship sailed for San Francisco, arriving in time for the earthquake of 1906.
I said the trip was triangular, and you might have noticed this triangle seemed to have four corners. No real mystery this time: San Francisco Bay was actually just a few miles on the other side of Fuji. During the night the ship was brought around through a tunnel under the mountain, ready for another group of revelers. Actually, the trip through the tunnel, which the passengers never saw, was as interesting as the Great Quake, in my opinion. I'd gone through it twice.
This schedule allowed Titanic and Olympic to follow at twenty-four hour intervals, which meant that every fourth day Pearl Harbor was spared, Frisco didn't burn, and the Clark Gable and Charles Laughton clones and all the other actors in the four locations got a day off. (Not the crews. We worked thirty days, then had a ten-day furlough.)
Not this time, though. My hiatus would last a bit longer, as I was about to bid an informal good-bye to Britannic.
It was not the first time I'd had to abandon a show in the middle of a run. In fact, thinking back, it had been some time since I'd been able to finish one. There'd been two more before my hasty departure from Brementon. I never felt good about it. The show must go on, don't you know. You hate to let your fellow troupers down. But there was no point in sticking around if you were about to be sent to jail, or the grave. Any way you looked at it, it was understudy time.
* * *
Dawn was just breaking as we rounded Diamond Head and steamed into Pearl Harbor. Just down the beach I could see rows of resort hotels that had not been there in 1941. Even at this hour I could see a few fanatics out in the water perched on fiberglass boards, engaging in a Hawaiian version of attempted suicide known as "surfing." I'd tried it my last time through. If God had intended me to surf, He'd have given me gills.
Disembarking was going to be something of a problem. If I waited until we tied up at the wharf, I'd be sure to encounter whoever Mr. Comfort had intended to meet. I felt I could elude him or them with a suitable disguise, but there was no good way to disguise the Pantechnicon, and somebody was bound to wonder why that odd-looking fellow was stealing my luggage. Embarrassing questions were sure to be asked, attracting unwanted attention.
That meant an unceremonious dunk in the drink. Even that presented problems. It would be a good idea not to be seen. With the Day of Infamy about to begin, the decks were jammed with spectators. My one lucky break was that the port side offered much the better view of the festivities, and the stewards had advertised that fact. That was also the side that would tie up to the dock after the show, so the crew preparing hatches and ramps were over there, too. I had found a big cargo hatch near the starboard bow and in the fifteen minutes I'd been standing there, watching the water flow by twenty feet beneath me, not a soul had come down the passageway. Until now.
"Good morning, Elwood," I said. He was ambling toward me, hands jammed down into his pockets, hat jammed down on his head. I hadn't seen much of him during the voyage. No doubt he was spending his time at the bar, telling his tall tales to anyone who would listen.
" 'Lo, Sparky," he drawled.
"Feel like a swim?" I asked him.
"No. No, I think I'll pass on that one." He leaned on the pole that blocked the open hatch door and gazed out at the gray Navy ships, dozens of them, clustered around the dry docks and repair yards of Keanapuaa. All the bigger ones, the behemoths, the battleships named after political divisions of the old United States, were on the port side.
"I looked in on that feller in your dressing room," he said.
"How's he doing?"
"Gonna be a close thing," he said. "A real close thing."
"That's what I thought, too."
He turned to squint up at me.
"Didja have to hit him so hard?"
"You didn't see the fight, Elwood."
"No, you're right. I didn't see it. He must have come at you really hard, for you to do that to him."
"Actually, he didn't come at me at all. He was just holding me at gunpoint."
He looked surprised. "You don't mean it. What was he, some sort of cop?"
"In a way. Private security."
He shook his head slowly and looked down at the water.
"It's usually not a good idea, beating a cop half to death."
"Didn't have much choice. He was going to kill me."
"He said that, did he?"
"Well, not in so many words."
He gave me another long look, and this time I looked away. Sometimes I wish Elwood would just go away. He's always second-guessing me.
"What did you want me to do?" I protested. "Wait around and see?"
"Now don't you get all excited. I'm just asking, that's all. I don't want to try to run your life for you."
"Sure you do."
"That's not true, Sparky. I'm just looking out for your welfare. If that man dies, you know good and well there'll be more trouble—"
"Getting killed isn't your idea of trouble?"
He looked me over again, then nodded. I was beginning to hear a low, droning noise, still distant but getting nearer. Elwood looked up. The sky was blue, and still clear.
"All I was gonna suggest," he said, "is when you get ashore, would it hurt anything to give a call and have somebody go get him? It might make a big difference."
"They'll find him soon enough."
"Maybe, maybe not." He kept looking at me.
"All right. I'll call."
"That's good." He looked down at the water again. "I'm glad I won't be diving into that. Looks cold to me."
"Are you kidding? This is Hawaii. It's warm as soup."
"Yeah? Seems to me there's a nip in the air."
With that the droning noise got a lot louder, and the first wave of torpedo bombers of the Japanese Imperial Navy appeared over the pineapple fields to the north. I gave Elwood a sour look, and shoved the Pantech over the side. When I hesitated for a moment, he planted a foot encouragingly, and I tumbled into the water.
* * *
The next half hour kept me busy as a one-man show of Cast of Thousands. It wasn't nearly as dangerous as it looked... or so I kept telling myself.
Pacifica's Pearl Harbor spectacular, known in the trade as a Vegas, employed every trick in the book to make it seem life-sized and historically accurate, including one of the more subtle tricks I know: having parts of it actually be life-sized. The aircraft were all exact replicas, powered by real gasoline engines. The torpedoes they dropped were to scale, but had no warheads, explosions being provided by charges already in place. The battleships themselves were also big as life... on the side the audience saw, anyway.
The show employed a cast of several thousand. Most of them simply had to run around shouting and pointing. Others did actual stunts, from simply swimming through water dotted with burning oil slicks, to being blown from the deck of an exploding battleship. There were fire gags, with sailors running around engulfed in flame, and bomb gags, where men bounced off concealed trampolines at the moment the gas and flash powder went off.
Only about a hundred of these were full studio-certified expert stunt performers, and they were clustered near the center of the action. The rest were journeymen, getting extra wages because of the marginal dangers involved, but not qualified for the more exacting gags. My plan was to stay in the areas where these guys were assigned, and try not to get my hair
singed off.
The Pantechnicon is equipped to deliver motive power in a variety of mediums. Today I'd rigged a small propeller to a shaft that would normally power a set of wheels, and I trailed behind at the end of a three-meter cord. The Pantech is about as streamlined as a brick. Its progress might best be described as wallowing, but it managed a steady three knots, which would eventually get me there.
I'd seen the show twice before, so I had some idea where the biggest effects were produced. Still, it could get dicey. The best thing I had going was the clarity of the water, at least before the worst of the explosions roiled the bottom and filled the water with foamy bubbles. I could duck my head under and see where the charges were placed.
My worst moment came when I felt a vibration in the water, turned my head, and saw a torpedo headed straight for me. I saw it pass about ten feet below, a lethal silver shark, then the water all around me turned to foam and my clothes filled up with air for a while.
But a few minutes later I ran aground on a concrete shore to the south side of Ford's Island. I dragged myself and my luggage out of the water and sat down to await the end of the show.
* * *
If you think the sinking of the Arizona is spectacular, you should see the raising.
Britannic had gone to her berthing point before it was over, all the fire and noise and fountains of water and planes crashing in flames. Then the heavenly director shouted, "Cut, that's a wrap," and it all stopped for a moment... then went into reverse. Torpedoes bobbed to the surface, then headed for a submarine tender like schools of fish. Half a dozen enormous gray metal battlewagons were lifted from the bottom, still smoking, paint blistered. Sailors who had gone down with the ship spit out breathing tubes and broke out the paint cans. Everywhere water cascaded off buckled "wooden" decks, which now started to unbuckle along the invisible hinge lines. All over the harbor little boom skimmers darted, corralling the black bunker fuel, sucking it into big tanks.
