The chaos was the only reason we hadn’t been ‘made’ yet. The holo-projectors were almost burned out from my magnificence and as we skidded around the corner to the main holding cells, they finally shut off entirely and everyone ceased to look like me (though I took up the slack for everyone else).
The corridor opened up to reveal the scope of the holding area that was the put the ‘hole’ in ‘Manhole’. It like some kind of enormous tube, made up of rings of tiny rooms facing inward. Each ring was roughly a mile in diameter and the tube itself was some immeasurable number of miles deep. Some say it was as much as seven, other said maybe nine. Imagine a rubber tyre. Inside of that you glue a whole bunch of tiny replica jail cells and put it in space. This structure was like that, except that this was no tyre, but rather a huge part of an intergalactic spinning space prison. Also, it was not made of rubber.
We skidded round the corner, up a flight of stairs and into Erdinger’s cell.
“Which one?” I asked.
“Just rip ‘em all down!”
We’re allowed some small luxuries, some small measure of decoration, even in the Manhole. Erdinger had cunningly chosen to collect posters to decorate his cell. Big posters. Big enough to conceal an escape tunnel. And as double-insurance he had chosen to collect posters of escape tunnels so, even if his was uncovered it stood a chance of just being mistaken as part of his collection. The guards suspected nothing and he had garnered a lot of compliments on his taste in tunnels. But it was a deuce of a job finding the real thing now. We ripped down every scrap of paper on the wall till we found it- a ragged aperture hewn out of the very plastisteel of the wall.
Presently I picked up the tool that sat on the lip of the hole, held it and smiled.
“Worn almost to the nib,” I remarked.
Any and all delivery to Erdinger’s colleagues had been used as an opportunity to smuggle tools in. And for every ten cake that had had a tool removed from it, one got through. A small rock hammer is a modest and unassuming thing, but if one removes the metal hammer part from the top and whittle down the wooden handle with one of our knives, then you have a pretty serviceable stake. That is what we had been using these last few months to dig Erdinger’s tunnel. As for the debris, it was a simple matter of carrying it out discreetly by the handful and depositing it in his neighbour’s cell, where a hole- twice as deep as ours- had been dug into the wall, to receive the rubble. Simple and airtight, really, but it was the devil’s own work, taxing patience, willpower and the wooden stake I now held which was almost as small as a matchstick now.
“Worn out, eh? Just like my patience with you today, Rex.” Erdinger was on the lip of the tunnel readying to slip in, but still spared time to sneer. He always made time for that. “You getting misty eyed over a bloody tool? You always get this flaky on an escape? Or are you still weepy over that guard I took out?”
He was perched over what I knew was an eighty foot drop. One push, I thought. One push would do it.
A smile like a scar crawled on his face. He tapped his cranium.
“I don’t like that look in your eye, Rex. Remember-” tap tap, “what’s important. It’s what’s in my head. That’s what you’re getting out of here- intel that any government, crime family, black market, grey market or flea market would kill for. Not my winning personality. So, keep your eyes on the prize. Now wipe that soppy look off your face and hand me the rope. Now.”
I swallowed a ball of bile and then did exactly what he told me to. Under his bunk was a makeshift rope that would lower him then me down the escape tunnel and onto phase three. It felt flimsy and greasy in my hand as I fetched it. Culled from the hair of every criminal on this ring of the prison it was a mesh of hair that had been shorn off of every body part you can think of and woven and knotted together to form some kind of horrific dreadlock.
“I said ‘now,’” Erdinger called. He was crouched on the lip of the hole and finally I passed him the fat thread. He shot me a smile as I braced against the wall and he heaved his weight onto the line like a recidivist Rapunzel. He disappeared down as I fed the line through my hands and scanned the cellblock behind me.
“Faster,” he called and I let the hair rope slide through my hands till it burned.
“Slower,” he hollered and I fed it out slower.
“Good lad,” he yelled.
I looked down again at the remains of the hammer on the floor.
Worn. Worn right down to the nub.
I tied the rope off to Erdinger’s sink and lowered myself into the tunnel.
Worn almost to nothing.
---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---
On the twelfth strike he moved.
He was fast. I had to give him that. Maybe he was not exactly ‘lightning being fired out of cheetah’s ass’ fast, but he was, at least to me, a blur. In an instant his revolver was in his hand, already cocked, already fired before my eyes could even register it. It just sat there, as if it had always been there, letting a lazy plume of acrid smoke drift up from its barrel. The shot rang out in the sudden silence that follows the din of church bells and the Sheriff stood stock still in that hush, his left hand hovering flat as a blade over the hammer of the gun, ready to fan it back again if needed but more than ready to just maintain a pose if not.
As for Black Raoul, he had not seemed to move a millimetre. He just stood there, now presumably with some wound about his person, readying himself to fall down dramatically after a suitable silence. But instead of that another sound rang out in the post-shootout quiet- a tiny tinny one, but monumental in its own way. It was a small metallic thud as something fell to the ground between the two men, something the size of a fat revolver cartridge fell to the desert floor halfway between the two men kicking up a small puff of pale dirt. All eyes fell on it.
The Sheriff, still holding his pose, looked down at it and knit his brows together. Raoul himself looked a little taken aback and a rising murmur from his posse spread to the few townsfolk outside peering out from their batwing windows.
“Well I’ll be…” I heard the sheriff mutter as he returned his gun to the holster.
Two revolver bullets, smashed and melted together sat there in the dirt. Raoul had shot the Sheriff's bullet with one of his own.
The two men locked eyes and my trousers vibrated.Something was rotten in Sweet Gulch.
The men returned the guns to their holsters, flexed their hands and prepared to kill each other afresh, and my trousers hummed into life once more.
“Let’s try that again!” he called to the bandito. Raoul, looking slightly shaken, nodded an agreement and the men squared off, a little uncomfortably now that the innate drama of the church bells’ ringing had passed. Once again a town took in a collective breath and held it.
“Three!” The Sheriff yelled as he hovered his hand above his gun butt once more.
“Two!” Raoul did the same, squinted more fiercely than ever.
“One!”
The huge hollow boom once more, but nestled in it was another shot at the same time, I was sure of it. Raoul had fired, but his hands themselves had seemed not to have moved at all. Was it possible to be so fast?
Once again the Sheriff's slug met Raoul’s in mid-air and the two fused bullets plopped anticlimactically down into the sand and sat about a half yard away from the first. All eyes went to it again and the collective breath we had all held turned to a gasp. But there was another gaseous exhalation in the desert wind at the same time, I could smell it.
The Sheriff, now openly shocked, fired his guns once more, almost experimentally. Raoul’s hands were an impossible blur. Another shot rang out in answer at the speed of thought and another fused bullet plopped down in the dirt. Holliday fired two shots in quick succession to the same result. He emptied his guns casually now, freely conducting an experiment in whether or not this was truly happening. After the thunder of the guns faded the street stank with the smell of cordite yet the two men still stood there like statues, holding em
pty guns, sporting astonished looks and regarding twelve sets of mashed together bullets which lay in the streets.
But I had almost ceased to pay attention to that.
While the two men looked down in wonder at the bullets and their own hands I was scanning the area. It was clear that Tempus was involved but the slight chilli tang in the air downwind of the sheriff and the vibrating of my trousers had confirmed it. The Sheriff had the same gaseous reaction to the presence of time travel as everyone in his genetic line and the billowing of his duster had testified to the temporal skulduggery at play. Oh, he was farting himself silly and my trousers were all a-quiver; which could mean only one thing. I was tuned in to the frequency of Tempus’ own trousers and he was up to something that was sending my trousers into a frenzy. All eyes were on the duellists so I took the opportunity to delve my hands crotchwards to try to jack into whatever I could find. It didn’t take long. I found something- small but unmistakable- and I twiddled the knobs until it grew. I was close. I looked up and the two men, having reloaded their guns were now preparing to fire on one another afresh, half out of a sense of genuine curiosity, it seemed. The signal grew strong and I attuned the sensor in my posterior to it and sent a jolt of energy there. I could piggyback on the signal just as I had done that first time, or so I hoped.
An uncertain voice rang out. “Three!”
I locked on to the wavelength and adjusted my own frequency
“Two”
I keyed it in. Set our two trousers to the same setting and-
“WUUUUUUUUUUU”
But there was no tunnel to greet me this time. Nothing opened up. No new time period. Nothing happened. My trousers hummed along merrily, but I was still just in the same spot.
I looked up then, to where the Sheriff was, to where he was still enunciating the ‘u’ sound and saw. He was moving but only barely. His hand was reaching for his gun at the speed of a medicated sloth. His mouth was still chewing on the end of the word ‘one’ which was still annoyingly echoing through the street. His duster was billowing out slightly as I saw his tell-tale time travel toot blow out of him like a reluctant train chugging out of the station. In the sky above I saw a vulture hovering there, its wings crystalized mid flap. The world was slowed to a crawl.
I took a step into this frozen world, cautiously at first, then confidently as I seemed to be shielded from the freezing effects. I wandered up to the sheriff and peered up at him. His hand was still taking its languorous journey down to the butt of his gun.
“UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU,” he said as I waved my hand in front of his face.
The word continued to spill slowly out of the sheriff’s mouth as his hand slowly gripped the butt of his pistol. At this rate he’d fire his first shot in a quarter hour.
In the air above us the vulture hovered frozen in the air with its wings descending at the stately speed of a hospice stairlift. Casting an eye to Raoul’s posse I could see one curr letting fly with a globule of tobacco-brown mucus which hung suspended from his lip and glittered in the air, unwilling to give in to the forces of gravity just yet. Raoul himself was stuck in a similar movement as the Sheriff- his palm only just gripping his obsidian revolver. I wandered a few steps into the frozen street, letting my own footsteps be the only normal thing to be heard.
“UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU,” continued the Sheriff.
“‘Uh’ indeed,” I agreed.
“Your mind works as slowly as his does, Mr Funkworthy,” came that familiar voice from across the street.
Tempus casually walked out from behind the church and strolled up to Raoul and laid a hand over his gun.
“I think I understand, alright, Professor.”
“Thrill me with your acumen then,” he said as he took a grip of the criminal’s wrist.
“You’ve created a bubble of artificially slowed time over this town. You’re using that to win this duel.”
Tempus wrapped his hand around Raoul’s gun-hand and brought it up, squinted toward me and made the gun level with the Sheriff. “Right you are! I’d say you’re the second fastest mind in this whole rootin’ tootin’ town. But this here town is only big enough for one time manipulator, pard’ner and I’m faster on the trousers.” Tempus thumbed back the hammer on the gun and squeezed Raoul’s finger onto the trigger, then sighed as waited for the hammer to fall.
I had been talking extemporaneously, but it all added up. I was right, but more importantly for now, I was behind. Tempus had his first shot off and this one was not there to deflect any bullets. This one was a kill shot. A chill ran through me. I looked back to the Sherriff. That bullet would reach him in twenty minutes. I had to act.
I ran back to the Sheriff and took a hold of his wrist and yanked it upward. It was a little resistant but I could tug it in the intended direction and the gun was finally free of the holster. I stood in front of the man and took his hand in both of mine as I steered the gun up into a decent shooting position, trying not to be put off as he continued to yell “Uuuh!” into my face. From behind me I heard the flat report of Raoul’s gun firing. It went on for a good long while and I looked round to where he stood, his face still blank and uncomprehending as fire licked out of his gunbarrel. I focussed and picked out the bullet in the air. It was heading towards us at the speed of a tortoise but I knew it to be at least three times deadlier. I tried to trace the trajectory in my head, it looked like it was a shot straight to the heart. I tugged the sheriff's sleeve and his gun followed.
“You think you can deflect that?”
“That’s the plan, professor. You’re quite quick on the uptake yourself.”
He chuckled derisively, then did so a second time, louder so as not to be drowned out by the sound of the Sheriff yelling ‘one’. “It’s harder than it looks, Mister Funkworthy. I just got my eye in these last two rounds. Practice. Oh, and I also have years of experience of doing mathematical equations on things like trajectories and geometry. Your man is as good as dead.”
I locked in the gun’s position and pulled back the hammer. I could see the bullet clearly in the air, meandering its way to us. I’d have to shoot where it was going to be. “I may not have any of that but I’ll warrant I have a touch more experience in a firefight. And this-” I pulled the trigger, “is pretty sedate for a firefight. For instance there usually isn’t this much conversation.”
“By all means let’s dispense with it then.”
Tempus was already pulling the trigger on his second shot. He was planning on emptying his guns at me. Six rounds , heading my way with the speed and inevitability of the rising tide and I wasn’t even sure I had managed to properly hit the first one. No time for doubts, though, as the second bullet was already about a centimetre shy of peeking out of the barrel of the gun and Tempus was already pulling the hand fractionally upwards to aim another shot.
“NNNNNNNNNNN,” the sheriff said finally.
“Draw,” I muttered to him and gripped his wrist once more.
If it was a gunfight Tempus wanted, it was a gunfight he’d get. I squeezed the man’s trigger finger again and waited patiently for the hammer to fall.
The slowest and quickest gunfight the west would ever see was under way.
Chapter Twenty Three
Space on the Run/ the Way of the Gun
* * *
Failure is falling off a ladder.
Cowardice is falling off a ladder, then living under the shelf.
Wisdom is falling off a ladder, then throwing the ladder down a hole.
Enlightenment is letting a ladder climb you.
Ladders.
Nelly Rowland
Brainflections (A Meditation)
Ѻ
As I slid down the sewage tunnel trying to keep criminal effluent out of my eyes mouth and ears, one thought kept circling through my powerful mind like a go-kart- ‘why are things going so smoothly?’.
Now, ‘smoothly’ is a relative term, I thought as I batted away a turd that seemed to be swimming, salmon-li
ke up the stream of brown. This wasn’t a banner day, by any means. I had too much human slurry crusted in my hair for it to be considered anywhere near my top twenty Tuesdays, but from what I remembered of the escape plan things were going pretty much on schedule. We were on our third uncontrollable fall down a chute (water, then garbage and now sewage) and nothing had gone wrong. The riot, the escape tunnel, now this- it was all as it had been. At each turn I expected the cosh of Tempus’ interference to appear- for some new security countermeasure to pop up- a mesh of fiber wire in the tunnels, robotic sentries at key locations, a tuba hurled at my cranium, anything-, but so far, nothing. The absence had me on edge. It was like a bully who, after slapping his victim each day for a solid fortnight will randomly leave them in peace, knowing that the anticipation of pain is worse than the thing itself. Granted, that was a funny thing when I did it to Ebenezer or to any of my regular baristas, but Tempus’ darker version was driving me up the wall, round the bend and down the poop chute.
Ahead of me Erdinger loomed larger in the tight pipe which meant that the gradient was easing off. I kept my arms flat to my sides and made blades of my hands to get as aerodynamic as possible for what was coming.
The septic tank would be waiting below us, by far one of my least favourite kinds of tank to dive into, but it was on the way to the next spot- the laundry service, and the next stage of the plan.
“Get ready for splashdown,” called Erdinger over his shoulder as he let himself shoot out of the pipe and into the mush below.
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 27