The Sheriff of Yrnameer

by Michael Rubens

  The tenth Bad Man was Taknean. He didn’t know about the protein.

  The others roared with laughter as he leaped up from the rock he had been sitting on and ran giggling in circles, flapping his triple-jointed arms. They laughed even harder as he began manically describing the instructions he was receiving from the giant, invisible filbert, apparently a female.

  “She’s right there!” he babbled. “And she needs me to reshingle her schnauzer’s chewing-gum hat!”

  He then seized a stick and commenced furiously scribbling something in the dirt, underlining and circling certain parts with great vigor.

  “There,” he said with evident satisfaction, “that’s better.”

  Then he collapsed, dead.

  Later on, a tumbleweeg, looking for all intents and purposes like a large ball of dried twigs, was carried by the wind past the scribbles. Huh, thought the tumbleweeg, whose name was Reg, that looks like a pretty viable solution to the Riemann hypothesis. I really should mention this to someone, thought Reg, and then the wind blew him away and he forgot about it, as he had a tendency to do.

  No one would have been more surprised than the dead Taknean—who had trouble counting to three on his three digits—that his scribbles would have earned him a Fields Medal for Mathematics. It’s doubtful his companions would have cared even if they’d known about his achievement—they were more concerned with the fact that he’d crushed the compass when he fell, and they made their displeasure known with several pointless kicks to his insensate corpse. Then they rode on.

  “Who is Ken—” said Hard Woman, and then they were jolted sideways as another violent explosion shook the ship.

  The RO communicator crackled to life.

  “Hello, Teg,” said Kenneth. “Sorry about that. Just a warning shot to let you know I’m serious. I’m a huuuge fan, you know.”

  “He’s flying a lobster,” said Whiny. He seemed somewhat dazed.

  Cole glanced at the three-dimensional display. Kenneth’s ship did look very much like a lobster.

  “So, Teg,” said Kenneth, “it would be quite helpful if you’d hand over Cole—Karg is very cross with him.”

  “Are you Cole?” asked Hard Woman.

  “Absolutely not,” said Cole.

  Hard Woman grabbed the communicator handset.

  “Listen. Cole is here. I don’t know who the farg you are or what you want, but believe me, we’d be very happy to hand over—”

  Cole tore the handset from her grip and smashed it several times against the control panel.

  “Hey!”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” came Kenneth’s voice. Cole smashed it again. “Please repeat—”

  Smash.

  “—your previous—”

  Smash.

  “—transmission.”

  Smash smash smash.

  “Give me the transmitter,” said Hard Woman. She had the gun out again.

  Cole sighed, hesitated, went to hand it to her, then abruptly smashed it a few more times.

  “Hey! Hand it over!”

  He did.

  “Hold on,” he said as she was raising the handset up to speak. “Before you say anything, just hear me out.”

  “Hi, Teg,” interrupted Kenneth. “Kenneth here again. Like I said, I’m a huuuge fan, but I’m going to have to put a cannon round right through your ship if you don’t answer me soon.”

  Hard Woman went to speak again.

  “Just listen. Just for a moment,” said Cole. She paused, the handset to her mouth. “Okay?”

  She nodded, a single, terse movement.

  “Okay,” said Cole. He hurriedly unstrapped himself from the seat and stood, the gun following him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I have to find something,” he said, his hands moving with a rough, desperate haste as he scrabbled at his scalp, felt around his ears, his neck, up and down his arms, his trunk. “If you hand me over to him, he’ll kill me.”

  “And?” she said.

  Not the response he was looking for.

  “Well, he … might kill you, too.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because, he, I … Look. I’m a really good pilot,” he said, his hands still searching. “I need to get out of here. You need to get somewhere. I can get you to that somewhere while getting me out of here.”

  “Okay, I’m arming another round,” said Kenneth.

  “I say we hand him over,” said Whiny.

  “Sorry, we’ve been having some radio trouble,” said Hard Woman into the handset. “We’ll be right with you.” She spun back to Cole. “Look, friend, do you have a—oh, God.”

  Cole now had both hands down his pants and was rooting around energetically. “A plan! Yes, a plan! I have one!” he said. “I just have to find—ha!”

  “Find what?!”

  “Arrrr—!” said Cole, his face contorting with painful effort as he pulled at something on his buttocks.

  “Hello?” said Kenneth.

  “—rrrrrr—!”

  “I’m going to count to three,” said Kenneth. “One—”

  “—aarrrrghh!” continued Cole, and then something evidently tore free, and he yanked his hand out of his pants triumphantly. “Find this,” he said, and held up a tiny barbed device. “Farger put a tracer on me.” He put it on the floor of the cockpit, grabbed the helmet, and slammed it heavily on the tracer.

  “Two—”

  Cole jumped back into his seat and strapped himself in. “Handset,” he said to the woman. “Give me the handset! Please.”

  She handed it to him.

  “Three.”

  “Kenneth! It’s Cole!”

  “Oh, hi! Are you coming over?”

  “I am. I’ll be right there.”

  Then Cole hit the silver button he’d spotted on the control board and punched the accelerator as far as it would go.

  Those watching Teg’s ship from the air or the ground witnessed something miraculous and very expensive: Teg’s Benedict 80 suddenly became twelve separate Benedict 80s, each accelerating away in a different direction. This was no standard holo display—there was no green shift along the edges, none of that Bayne patching; each ship appeared to reflect the sun and cast a shadow; better yet, each ship was transmitting a standard ID signal to the traffic control system.

  Farging Teg. He could afford the best.

  The news feeds were immediately running footage of the incident, the reports all featuring the same winking tone—guess what that naughty rascal Teg is up to now! Over the next few days voices would be raised, editorializing against the elevation of criminals to celebrity status and about the general coarsening of public behavior, but those voices were easily drowned out by the sound of high fives or eights or so on emanating from the galaxy’s boardrooms, as Teg’s numerous sponsors celebrated their prescience and the momentary bump their stock prices got.

  Kenneth, however, was not pleased. His reaction was to slam a claw down in rage and say something shocking and horrible in his own language. To the untrained ear it sounded very pleasant.

  ˙ ˙ ˙

  The Benedict 80 bucked and rattled as they rocketed out of the atmosphere at emergency ascent velocity. The G forces jammed them deep into their seats, making it impossible to move or talk, making it hard even to breathe. It was, Cole had to admit, the comfiest, cushiest G seat he’d ever sat in, the kind of seat that automatically monitored your blood flow and squeezed your extremities to direct the oxygen to your brain instead of to your toes and fingertips. Good ol’ farging Teg.

  They punched through the cloud layers, higher and higher, until they were looking at the blackness of space and the stars and gravity stopped clawing at them.

  Cole took a deep gulp of air and shook his head, feeling his circulation return.

  “What happened?” asked Hard Woman. “Is he gone?”

  “Not for long. We have to bend our way out of this system ASAP. Just have to make sure th
e bendbox is charged, which”—he checked a display—”of course it’s not. Perfect.”

  He unbuckled his straps, floating free from his seat.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The bendbox isn’t charging, and if the bendbox doesn’t charge, we can’t bend—”

  “I get it.”

  “—and then Kenneth is going to find us, and if he does—”

  “I get it.”

  “Aren’t we going to reconform, so that we can get some gravity going here?” said Whiny Man, who now looked like Nauseous Whiny Man.

  “No time. Can’t slow down.”

  Cole propelled himself out of the cockpit and floated down the main central corridor. Behind him he could hear Hard Woman undoing her safety straps.

  “Hey!” she said, following him. “Hey! Who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Cole.”

  Passageways of different shapes and sizes branched off from the corridor. They followed the basic theme of the cockpit—smooth, white walls with subtle lighting; tasteful prints. The floors here were a mix of carpeting and HardWud, tougher than the toughest steel. He grabbed the handrail and pulled himself around a corner, taking what was for him a right turn. She followed.

  “Yes, I’m already aware of your name. I’d like some answers, Mr. Cole.”

  “Just Cole.”

  He reached another intersection and propelled himself upward. Kenneth would be monitoring the traffic signals, waiting to see if the Benedict had bent. Until he overheard a bend notification indicating that the ship was gone, he’d be doing a sky survey, one slice at a time, trying to find the ship. If Cole was unlucky, Kenneth would guess right on the first few tries and spot them quickly. Considering how things had been going, Cole was fairly certain that he’d be unlucky.

  “Well, you need to give me an explanation, Cole.”

  “What I need to do is find the bendbox.”

  It wasn’t here. He pushed off in another direction, then turned another corner, passed through an intersection, and headed downward at another branch. The more time they had before Kenneth spotted them, the faster they’d be going, meaning they’d be farther away, meaning he’d have a harder time spotting them, meaning they’d have more time to charge the bendbox, meaning maybe they’d escape.

  “How come Teg never mentioned you?” Her voice came now from behind him, or maybe to his left.

  The Benedict 80 was fast. But Kenneth’s ship was undoubtedly one of those zippy little interceptor-class deals, and it would probably be armed with some sort of missile that could go from 0 to 60 percent of light speed in about two seconds. No matter how fast the Benedict was, it couldn’t outrun that.

  “Do you see anything resembling a bendbox?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Where are you?” she added impatiently.

  “I’m over he—” he said as he rounded a corner at a healthy float and plowed directly into her. They grabbed at each other reflexively, tumbling in a clinch along the corridor, bouncing gently off the walls.

  “Hi,” he said when they came to a rest. He was not addressing her face.

  “You can let go of me now.”

  “Right.”

  They disentangled themselves, she somewhat more roughly than necessary, sending him sailing backward across the corridor.

  “Hey!” he said, as his head bonked against a steel access panel.

  “Sorry,” she said, her tone intimating she wasn’t.

  “No, ‘hey’ as in, ‘hey’ we found it.” He pointed to the access panel, which had popped open from the impact. He whistled.

  “What?” she asked.

  “A 5200. Never seen one before.”

  The cubelike unit was about the size of a dishwasher, the front an attractive panel of brushed aluminum. Across the top a sans serif font read, BENDTRONIX 5200: GET BENT!

  “I love you, Teg,” muttered Cole. “Reset button. Where’s the reset button?”

  “What was that back there, with the shooting?” asked Hard Woman.

  “I told you,” he said, distracted, running his hands over the smooth surface of the Bendtronix. “That was Kenneth. And that was more my problem than yours.”

  “Well, clearly it is our problem, so if you could tell me a bit more—”

  “Greetings!” interrupted the bendbox. “Welcome to the Bendtronix 5200!” Music started, a chorus of smiling female voices. “For travelers it’s heaven-sent / let us help you go get bent!”

  “Shut up!” said Cole.

  “What?!” said Hard Woman.

  “Not you.” He smacked the Bendtronix. The music stopped.

  “What happened to your face?” she asked. “You get beaten up in some alley?”

  “Beaten up? In an alley?” he sputtered, turning to her. “Me? Listen: if there’s an alley, if there’s beating, beating up, if anyone—I’m the one who does any beating up that might happen to occur in any alleys,” he finally managed. “Shut up!” he repeated, thumping the bendbox again, cutting off the music that had restarted. He checked the indicator lights. “All right, that should do it.”

  He brushed past her to retrace his path back to the cockpit, muttering about beatings and alleys.

  “Hey,” she shouted after him as he disappeared around the corner. He ignored her. “Hey!” she repeated. “That’s the wrong way.”

  He reappeared and pushed past her in the other direction without a glance. This time she followed.

  “Buddy, you had better start giving me some answers.”

  Without stopping he said, “What’s your name?”

  The question seemed to surprise her. She hesitated a moment before answering. “Nora.”

  Now he turned so that he was floating backward, facing her. “You are an extremely attractive woman, Nora. You shouldn’t scowl so much—you get all these lines up here around the eyes.” He twisted to face forward once more, pulling at a handhold to accelerate again.

  “You’re not going to give me anything, are you,” she called after him.

  “I just gave you some very good advice,” said Cole, rounding a corner.

  She kicked off the wall at the intersection for a burst of speed, moving nearly even with him.

  “Okay,” she said, “let me take a stab at it. First off, I stand by my statement about you getting beaten up in some alley. Why? I’d guess that you’ve probably done something extraordinarily stupid, and you now owe a large amount of money to the wrong person.”

  Cole found another handhold and flung himself forward, pulling away again. “Except it’s too late now,” she continued, pursuing him, “and all you’ve got left to do is run and keep running and pray to God that they don’t catch you. Right?”

  He kept going.

  “I’m right, aren’t I. Aren’t I?”

  She followed him into the cockpit, watching him make a show of intense concentration as he fiddled with the controls.

  “Think you’ve got the bass adjusted properly on those speakers?” she asked. He stopped fiddling and took a closer look at the dials. Farg.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You know what you seem like? Like some guy who ends up with eggs laid in his brain.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said as he spun around angrily to face her—a little too hard, actually, and then had to wait several rapid revolutions until he regained control and was facing her again.

  “Oh, yeah?” he repeated, in case she missed it the first time. “Well …”

  She waited, an eyebrow professionally arched.

  “Well,” he said again, searching for something. “Well,” he said at last, “I’m all you’ve got.”

  The eyebrow slowly de-arched.

  “Yes,” she said. “I guess you are.”

  They examined each other. “You don’t look like a smuggler,” said Cole.

  “We’re not,” said Whiny Guy.

  Cole kept his gaze on her. “Who’s he?”

  “That’s Philip.”

  Now Cole glanced ov
er at him. Philip’s face still had a greenish tinge to it that had, if anything, grown more threatening. Some people did not do well in zero G.

  “Errrrp,” belched Philip.

  “Wonderful,” said Cole. He turned back to Nora. “You hired Teg. You’re smuggling something.”

  “We’re with the Interstellar Relief Pro—” began Philip.

  Nora interrupted him. “It doesn’t matter who we’re with,” she said. “And you know what? I realize I don’t care that much who you are or what you’re running from. All I care about is that you honor Teg’s original agreement with us.”

  “Where—urp—is Teg?” asked Philip.

  “What’s the destination?” Cole asked Nora.

  She took a deep breath. “Yrnameer.”

  He stared blankly at her for a few moments.

  “I’m sorry, did you say—”

  “Yrnameer,” she repeated.

  Cole did some more blank staring. “You want to go to a yrnameer? There are no more yrnameers. The last yrnameer got a corporate sponsor, what, fifty years ago. Someone has taken all the Your Name Heres, and put their name there.”

  She shook her head. “We’re not talking about just any yrnameer. We’re talking about the Yrnameer. The very last unsponsored planet.”

  “Aw, c’mon. That place is a myth.”

  “No. It’s real,” she said.

  “Computer!” said Cole. “Define planet Yrnameer!”

  “Yrnameer is a mythical utopia, a planet said to exist in an unreachable location in space,” said the affectless voice of the computer.

  “A contraction of your name here, a yrnameer originally referred to—”

  “Thank you,” said Cole. He turned to Nora.

  “It’s real,” she repeated.

  “How would you know? If it exists—and I’m not saying that it does—they say you can’t even get there, that the bend calcs are too weird.”

  “We’ve both been there,” said Nora.

  “I don’t believe you.”