Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  "That’s all right. Duelling’s illegal here, you know,” said Latimer comfortingly.

  "I said,” repeated Dr. Rumfort, "that I could prove it!”

  Featherby faced him, scowling. "All right, if you’re so sanguinarily smart, go ahead and prove it!”

  Rumfort spread a sheaf of papers arrogantly. "There; take a look. I have shown that moving from one space-time continuum to another would require instantaneous acceleration to the velocity of light!”

  "All right, all right,” snapped Featherby. "I admit all that. It’s self-evident. So what?”

  "So what? Why, my dear man, that would require an infinite amount of energy applied in an infinitesimally short time!”

  "Yes, yes. Go on. Where’s your proof that I'm a liar?”

  Rumfort looked baffled. "Well, dammit, you couldn’t possibly carry that much power on your back!”

  "Hah! Who said I carried it on my back? Who, I ask?”

  "Why, you did! You said—”

  "I said no such thing! This mechanism draws power from the Universal ether!”

  Rumfort pounced on that statement as though it were the entire keystone of his argument. "Ahh-HAH! It has already been shown that the Universal ether does not exist! And if it did, you wouldn’t be able to draw enough energy from it!

  "It requires infinite energy! Infinite! That means that if you left some other continuum, you used every bit of energy in it! All the energy and all the matter in that universe would have to be used instantaneously as energy for your machine! If you had done as you said, the universe you left would be nonexistent now! And that’s impossible! You, sir, are a confounded liar!”

  Latimer turned to Rumfort. "For heaven’s sake, Rumfort! The poor guy’s a little off his rocker! That’s no reason to tease the unfortunate chap.”

  Featherby’s face grew purple. "You! You—argh! Liar! Off my rocker! If only my dueller were here! Well, by gad, I haven’t got to stay about and listen to your foul insults!”

  He reached up and pressed a button on the control panel on his chest.

  Neither Latimer nor Rumfort felt anything, of course. One can’t feel anything when one is instantaneously converted into energy along with the rest of one’s universe.

  At the bar of the Green Lizard Lounge, Dr. Rumfort was saying: "In my forthcoming monograph to the Journal, I show that it is mathematically possible to describe a six-dimensional continuum in which an infinite number of points could exist, each of these points being, in reality, three-dimensional.”

  Latimer nodded, sipping his Beer. He had been watching the door, hoping somebody interesting would come in. Anybody would be better than old Rumfort.

  Nobody had come in yet, but he thought they might. After all, in an infinite number of universes, there might be somebody who...

  Randall Garrett, a mainstay of the science-fiction field for the last thirty years or so, is best known from his Lord Darcy series, about an alternate Earth in which magic rather than science is the basis of civilization. There is one Darcy novel, Too Many Magicians, and one collection, Lord Darcy Investigates. A collection of Garrett’s humorous pieces, Takeoff!, has been published by Donning, and The Best of Randall Garrett has appeared from Pocket Books. He has recently collaborated on a series of SF adventure novels with Vicki Ann Heydron.

  WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

  By Barry B. Longyear, John M. Ford, and George H. Scithers

  ... stories within stories, frames within frames... ”

  He was rolled into the hearing room, a drip bottle attached to the back of his wheelchair. The nurse following the attendant pushing the wheelchair carried a portable cardiac unit. The trace on the screen was jagged and irregular, and hanging ominously at its side by insulated coils were the white handles of two large electrodes. As the attendant stopped the chair before the long, polished mahogany table, the seven board members filed into the room from a door behind the table. Each one glanced at the man in the wheelchair, then shook his head before taking his chair at the table. The man in the wheelchair stared with vacant eyes at the wall above and behind the board members. His tongue hung from the left corner of his mouth, and the attendant would lean forward every few moments to wipe the drool from the man's chin. A doctor entered the room, studied the cardiac readings, frowned, then turned and walked to the man seated in the center of the seven at the table. The one seated sadly nodded his head, and the doctor returned to the man in the wheelchair. He removed a case from his pocket, took a syringe from it, and inserted the needle into an entry port connected to the drip bottle line. After another moment, the doctor stood and nodded at the man seated at the table, then he walked around the chair and stood next to the nurse.

  The man in the wheelchair jerked, then retracted his tongue. His eyes became less vacant, his glance darting about the room until it finally came to rest on the men seated behind the table. He jerked again. The man seated in the center smiled at him and nodded.

  This is... it. This is it. The hearing, isn’t it? Yes, I can see that. I’m not crazy, you know. Very dreadfully nervous, but why do you call me crazy?—a little upset—not crazy. Not at all. I’m still John... John... Well, you know me! Yes, of course you do. Best one you ever had. Best damned one...

  You want to know what happened?... It’s getting clearer. The wig-picker and I, we’ve been working on it. Working on it a lot! At least we have when this quack here doesn’t have me junked up to my eyeballs. A shrink can’t work with a piece of meat; I have to be awake..... What happened? Give it a mo

  ment. It’s coming back. Aaaahh! No! This jerk business is just nerves. Anybody would have a case of nerves after what I’ve been through. Anybody...

  Well, I remember waking up in that alley. All that garbage, the cans, the cartons. It was dark! Night. Yes, it was night, and I woke up in that alley. My head was fuzzy, but my mind was... blank. How I got to the alley, who I was... all of it was gone! That would upset anyone, wouldn’t it? No, don’t give me any more of that knockout juice. I’m all right.

  All right. I was in the alley waking up. My mouth tasted funny. Maybe drugs or something else. Someone had dumped me in that alley, and that same someone must have slipped something into me, I guess.

  I stood up and weaved about, trying to get my bearings, in the fog and the maze of rickety wooden buildings. My chest felt like the drummer for Steppenwolf had used it to practice on. More turns, more twists, more fog. I didn’t know where I was; this place looked like a waterfront, but I couldn’t smell the sea, just a scent like something burning. San Francisco maybe. Where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars, above the blue and windy sea. Or maybe somewhere in Maine. It was tough to say.

  And I didn’t know who I was. My head felt like Enrico Fermi was running a reactor test inside it. I was wearing a brown trench coat. I shoved my hands in my coat pockets, searching for ID of some kind. In the left pocket was a pack of cigarettes, Gauloises, the French ones that smell like grass, and a bit of Normandie butter in foil. I wished I hadn’t put my hands in so hard, and licked my thumb. The butter was salted. I was no gourmet, either.

  In the right pocket was a gun. I took it out and turned it over in my hand. It was a .25-caliber Colt automatic, nickel-plated. A short, lethal-looking weapon that packs enough punch to mildly annoy anything smaller than a house cat, and is carried mostly by people who’d only hurt themselves with real guns.

  In my pants pocket was a portrait gallery of my favorite presidents, signed by great folks like Douglas Dillon and James A. Baker III. No credit cards or traveler’s checks, though. Karl Malden would have hated me. But at least I had money, cigarettes with butter all over them, and a gun that would make a great cigarette lighter. And I could butter any toast I ran across.

  Time to get things moving again.

  The street at the far end of the next alley was brightly lit, and I stumbled in that direction. When

  I reached the end of the alley, a roar deafened my ears, leaving me with a heada
che that could split granite. I sagged against a wall and watched as a ball of fire with a long tail moved up into the night sky until it was out of sight. 1 looked down and saw white and blue lights dotting the surface of a landing field of some kind. Too small for a jetport, though: those 747s have to roll forever to make it into the air.

  I pushed away from the wall and looked up and down the street. There was no one in sight except an old man. He was dressed in rags and a hood, and carrying a brown paper package. He stopped in front of me. "Have you seen Leibowitz? I have something for him.”

  Damned winos. They’re everywhere. "Beat it. I don’t know any Leibowitz.”

  The old man nodded. "Bless you, my son. Kyrie Ellison.” He wandered off. I looked at the buildings lining the street, dark windows and doorways— eyes and mouths of crumbling monsters from another age. Another roar and I clasped my palms over my ears and looked toward the white and blue lights. Another tailed ball of fire climbed into the night above. As I lowered my hands, I saw a bit of neon lighting adding some color to the otherwise drab scene, cutting through the fog like a flying saucer telling me it wanted to give back some missing pilots. The sign said:

  D I S M A L

  P O R T B A R

  on and off, on and off. When I got closer I saw that it really said ALDISS MALT, but a lot of the letters were broken. Some kind of British Beer, I figured.

  But below it was another broken word. What it said was SPACEPORT BAR. What kind of joke was that? The only spaceport around was Cape Kennedy, and the closest thing to a bar there is the

  Greyhound bus stop restaurant that serves micro-waved sandwiches.

  My head ached so, I decided to stop trying to figure out the first word and concentrated on the second. Bar. If my head was telling me anything, it was that I needed a drink. I pushed open the door and found myself in a darkened vestibule staring in horror at a tall, hairy thing with lots of teeth. Another customer pushed in behind me and waved at the hairy thing. "Lookie, Wookie.”

  The hairy thing waved back. "How’s the weather, Hal?” it asked.

  The man shrugged. "Clement.” Then I followed the man past the hairy thing through another door. While my ears were being assaulted by bad punk jazz, what spread before me was...well, I don’t know what it was. The customer called Hal took a C02 extinguisher from the wall, aimed at the globby-looking thing, and gave it a short blast. The glob contracted, clearing enough space to walk by. I looked down at the mass of quivering jelly.

  It shrugged and held up two tendrils. "Hey, man; I’m sorry. I just been out of work a long time. Can you spare me a couple of credits?”

  I reached into my pockets, found a few bills, and pulled out a fiver—U.S. currency—and held it out.

  A tendril whipped out, absorbed the bill, then nodded a glob to my left. "Thanks, buddy. I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can get work.” It flowed through the door; and I heard the hairy thing call after it, "Good night, and stay away from ice-skating rinks.”

  Beyond an orange, pinch-faced combo that was thumping out horrible music, someone in a red jersey shot to his feet and shouted something at a tableful of uniformed things with heavy eyebrows and pointy ears.

  Inside, I hung up my trench coat, pushed my way through the customers milling around the entrance, and made my way to the bar. If fists started swinging, I didn’t want to be within knuckle distance. I leaned an elbow against the bar and waited for the bartender. Between the noise, the smoke, and my headache, my stomach started doing the flapjack bit. At the far end of the bar, a robot was opening Beer cans, flipping each one pull-tab-end down, then deftly puncturing the tabless end. I shook my head; motion caught my eye; I found myself staring at the mirror behind the bar. I saw—I even waved my hand to make sure I was me. My face was bruised, but it was the jacket I was wearing—a loud, loud thing of black and white and red plaid. And a necktie. While I was struggling with this image, a fat man in a bloused coat came up behind me. I turned and met his eye.

  He smiled ingratiatingly. "Sir, could I interest you in one of nature’s most cuddly, loving creatures—”

  "Scram, fatty. I got troubles of my own!”

  The fat man shrugged. "Well, if you’ve already got one I don’t suppose you need another.” He faded into the haze. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the sounds of the place. The fat man had triggered —almost—a memory. I opened my eyes again to look at the mirror, but between it and me was a huge cat. It twitched its whiskers.

  "Order, sir?”

  "Borehole Number Three,” I said, without thinking, and suddenly I was back under the old Olympica dome again, hearing the thin Martian wind blow red sand against the walls—sand that it had picked up as it swept across the Dead Sea Bottoms. And Marsdust: there was half an inch of it on the dome floor, you couldn’t keep it out. And I was drinking Borehole Number Three from a quartz cup, drinking to forget Calkins and Nowlan. They’d been my drill partners, until Calkins had made one little mistake. All he’d done was to forget that gravity makes things fall down, but Mars doesn’t forgive mistakes like that.

  And now I, Erik Juan Massif, mercenary of a hundred worlds, was stuck—

  On Mars?

  The room jiggled like the background of a Godzilla movie. I’d ordered Martian miner’s booze from the bartender, and if I couldn’t think of a good explanation, I’d be sharing a padded hotel room with Napoleon and the Emperor Caligula.

  Come to think of it, I wanted an explanation myself. I looked at the barkeep, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was holding a ceramic bottle in tongs, pouring into a quartz cup. The bottle had a big 3 on it.

  "Two Deimos in gold, sir.”

  I fumbled. So go ahead, tell me you wouldn’t have. I got out my wad of bills, finally, and pulled off a few dollars.

  The cat sorted through the bills, then licked its whiskers. "I keep telling you people: no dollars. The banks and I have an agreement: they don’t serve drinks and I don’t exchange currency....”

  Something flitted by and landed on the bar. The cat shook its head, took the bills, and gave me some change. The thing that landed on the bar looked at me with huge, yellow eyes. It raised its left eyebrow and said, "Bad taste.” I looked closely at the creature; it was an owl. I swear it was. No, I didn’t even know that owls have eyebrows. Do they? They must.

  Anyway, it took off, flew across the room, and came to roost on the antlers of the mounted head of a big white deer that hung over a fireplace half-filled with broken glass. I shook my head slowly, turned back to the barkeep, whose eyes got big behind the safety goggles he’d been wearing to pour my drink.

  "Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know you in those clothes.” The cat leaned close. "He’s in the booth over there, waiting.”

  I could have said "Who?” but what difference would it have made? I picked up the drink and went to the booth.

  "Come in, Captain,” the booth said, in a voice like oiled gravel. Captain? Why not. I went in.

  Inside was a man you could have made two ordinary-sized guys out of, with a head that put me in mind of a tank turret. He evidently got his jewelry cheaper by the pound, and his coat had cost the lives of half the world’s silver fox population.

  On second thought, maybe he wasn’t as rich as he looked. There was a girl sitting next to him, and he hadn’t been able to buy her much to wear at all.

  "Wolf, I’m sorry about—you know,” she said, in a voice like honey and old Bourbon.

  And she was looking straight at me as she said it.

  "Quiet, Magda,” the tank said. "Captain Lupus and I have business to discuss. Why don’t you go buy yourself a drink? Hexer will keep you company.”

  She snorted at him and left. She had a way of leaving that inspired hot pursuit.

  "Do you recognize me, Captain Lupus?”

  I didn’t, but then I didn’t recognize myself either. "Should I?”

  "No, of course not. I hide behind my wealth, much as you—heh, heh—hide behind a cutlass and a fast
ship. I tun Constantin L’Avectoi.”

  And I remembered:

  Half my pirate squadron thundered down into atmosphere, half—my half—stayed in orbit to hold the Patrol at bay.

  We lost ships, and men—good rogues, loo: like Arcot, who once drank half the population of a water world, and Morey, who did an incredible trick with two girls, a zero-gee waterbed, and a quantum black hole, and Wade, who I knew ran a private trade in parsecs and gegenschein—but I never cared.

  Kenneth "Wolf” Lupus, bold and free, master of space pi-ra-cee; that was my song—it wasn’t very good, but it’s in the Geneva accords you have to have a song.

  There was a flash of light and a sizzling sound, and Constantin L’Avectoi slumped forward. Or he tried; he was too big to slump properly.

  I moved quicker than the price counter on a gas pump, but there was no one there but an old man in brown robes showing a kid how to use a flashlight. I went to the next booth.

  There were four creatures seated at the table: one looked like a huge sack with an enormous slit across its entire body. The slit opened for a moment, exposing a great, single eye. Next to that was a human: a stout fellow with closely cropped hair and beard sprinkled with grey. Next to him was another human: slender, clad in black, with a droopy blond moustache that made him look like Fu Manchu with a bad peroxide job. And beside him was a lively, red-haired woman with a vaguely Egyptian hairdo.

  There was an empty chair at the table. I sat down in it. The eye sack staggered to its feet, tossed a few credit coins onto the table, then said, "Ah’s am off.”

  The two men nodded as the eye sack faded into the blue haze. The one with the droopy moustache saw my confused look, then pointed into the smoke. "He talks lak dat ’cause he frum de Southern Cross.”

  The one with the beard looked over his shoulder at the owl on the white deer’s head over the fireplace. He turned back, looking troubled, then said to the man with the droopy moustache, "I don’t think he’s noticed us.”