by Mike Resnick
“You must have seen an earlier version,” said Baker. “This one ran only one performance, and no one ever captured it.”
“What happened?”
“New Samarkand is a temperate world, and they hold most of their operas and symphonies and other shindigs at this huge outdoor amphitheatre,” began Baker. “Anyway, there’s a scene at the end when Tosca commits suicide by throwing herself off the top of a tall tower they call a battlement. Ordinarily they’d toss a couple of air mattresses down on the stage, out of sight of the audience, to break her fall—but Diva Duva was so, well, large, that they figured she was sure to bust something, so instead of mattresses they put out a hydro-trampoline to break her fall.”
“A trampoline?” asked Max, frowning.
Baker nodded. “She plunged down so fast you could almost hear the wind whistle around her, hit the trampoline full force, and shot straight up. And like I told you, New Samarkand is a low gravity world. She reached escape velocity and wound up crashing through the cargo hold of a mining ship out near one of the planet’s moons.” He sighed. “Next day they got rid of the trampoline and put in a swimming pool for her understudy.” He shook his head sadly. “Nobody ever thought to ask the poor girl if she knew how to swim.”
There was total silence for a moment, while everyone digested the story.
Max was the first to speak. “You absolutely sure every word of that is true?” he asked dubiously.
Baker’s jaw jutted out pugnaciously. “Are you impugning my integrity?” he demanded.
“No,” Max assured him. “Just your veracity.”
“Well, that’s okay, then,” replied Baker, relaxing.
Just then Achmed of Alphard entered the Outpost, dressed in his glowing robes and sparkling turban. He towered at least a foot above Catastrophe Baker and Big Red, and even more above everyone else.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, then bowed in the general direction of Sinderella and the Earth Mother. “And ladies, of course.” He looked across the room at me. “The war’s getting close, Tomahawk.”
“Anyone figure out who the enemy is?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Beats me.”
“Then how do you know there’s a war?”
“They’re firing on Navy ships.”
“Yeah, that sounds kind of warlike,” opined Max.
“How far away are they?”
“Who knows?” replied Achmed. “A few days, a few systems. It all depends on how often and accurately the Navy fires back.”
“I wouldn’t worry much,” said Gravedigger Gaines. “No war’s ever gotten this far.”
“This one won’t either,” added Nicodemus Mayflower, nodding his lean, angular head for emphasis.
“Well, if it does, they’re going to wish they’d gone in some other direction,” chimed in Catastrophe Baker. “I’ve killed men for lesser crimes than disturbing me while I’m drinking and socializing.”
“Are there any greater crimes?” asked Three-Gun Max.
“None that come immediately to mind,” admitted Baker.
The door opened again and Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull entered. The wind was blowing, as usual, and they were coated with the red dust that covers most of Henry II when it’s not blowing through the dry, hot, thin air.
Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull were wearing their tribal buckskins and feathered war bonnets, which looked just a tad out of place on a pair of roly-poly, fur-covered, orange, three-legged aliens, but we’d all grown used to their appearance over the years.
“Hey, Tomahawk …” began Crazy Bull.
“I know, I know,” I said. “The war’s getting closer.”
“What war?” he asked.
“Damned if I know,” I answered. “Let’s start again.”
“Sure,” said Crazy Bull agreeably. “Hey, Tomahawk, a couple of Blue Angels for me and my partner.”
Reggie mixed them up and placed them on the bar.
“That looks pretty interesting,” remarked Baker. “I think I’ll have one, too.”
“You don’t want it,” said Sitting Horse, picking up his glass. “It’s poison to humans.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Cancel my order, Reggie,” he said. “By the way, what are a pair of orange, three-legged furballs doing dressed up like Injuns?”
“We come from Velitas IV,” said Sitting Horse.
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s because it’s not Velitas IV anymore,” said Sitting Horse.
“We were colonized by descendants of the Great Sioux Nation,” said Crazy Bull. “But instead of exploiting us, they shared their knowledge and their culture with us, and finally we all became blood brothers and took Indian names. We even renamed the planet. Now it’s Little Big Horn IV.” He paused. “Sitting Horse and me, we make the Outpost our headquarters because we like anyone who calls himself Tomahawk.”
“Just out of curiosity, have you guys ever seen a horse or a bull?” asked Baker.
“No, but we’ve seen a lot of Men who were crazy, and even more who spent all their time sitting when they should have been doing.”
“Hey, it’s no skin off my nose,” said Baker. “But if was me, I’d have took Geronimo for a name.”
“Not me,” interjected Big Red. “I’d have been Jim Thorpe.”
“Pocahontas for me,” said Sinderella.
“So come to Little Big Horn and you can choose any name you want,” said Sitting Horse.
“And as an added bonus, you get to put on war paint every Saturday night,” said Crazy Bull.
“How many wives do Injuns get?” asked Baker.
“How many women can you live with?” asked Sitting Horse.
“It’s been my long and considered experience that the total comes to something less than one,” answered Baker.
“See?” said Sitting Horse. “You’re not so alien after all.”
“I thought you guys were the aliens,” said Baker.
“Not to us, we aren’t.”
They took their Blue Angels off to a table and began playing a game that seemed to involve cards, pebbles and feathers in equal quantities.
“I wonder if we should be worrying about this war,” said the Reverend Billy Karma.
“They know better than to attack the Outpost,” said Max. “This is where all the living legends hang out. They don’t want no part of us.”
“If they’re godless chlorine breathers, maybe they don’t know about us,” said Karma. “Or maybe they subscribe to different legends.”
“If they’re godless chlorine breathers, they have no more interest in Henry II than we have in their home world,” said Nicodemus Mayflower. He grinned at his wit, and between his widow’s peak and his thin face and aquiline nose, he looked exactly like my notion of the devil—which may well have been why he chose Nicodemus for one of his names.
“I want it on the record that I, for one, resent the notion that all non-humans are godless,” said Argyle, sparkling like a Christmas tree.
“You believe in God?” demanded Billy Karma.
“I believe in 37 separate and distinct gods,” answered Argyle proudly. “That puts me 36 ahead of you.”
“It makes you a pagan.”
“It makes you a man of limited vision,” said Argyle.
“Still, it don’t matter what you believe,” continued Karma. “Jesus died for your sins anyway.”
“I never could figure out why you worship someone who couldn’t even save himself,” said Argyle. “And you walk around wearing a representation of the cross that killed him. That’s awfully close to psychic necrophilia.”
“Them’s fighting words!” cried Billy Karma, putting up his fists and starting to bob and weave.
Argyle sprang forward, clipped Billy Karma cleanly on the chin, then stood back as the Reverend slowly collapsed.
“You can’t beat a being who prays to Balaxtibo, the God of Self-Defense!”!" shouted Argyle triumphan
tly.
“He’s one of the 37?” asked Baker.
“Right,” said Argyle. “Though my personal favorite is Wilxyboeth.”
“Which one is that?”
“The god of sexual potency.”
The Reverend Billy Karma groaned and sat up on the floor, gingerly rubbing his chin.
Argyle extended his hand. “No hard feelings?”
“None,” said Karma. “Pull me up, will you?” When he was standing, he turned to Reggie. “Hey, Reg, mix up a couple of tall ones for me and my pal here. Come on, Argyle, you fascinating little alien bastard,” he said, putting an arm around the sparkling alien’s shoulders and leading him off to a table. “We got a lot to talk about.”
“We do?”
Karma nodded. “Let’s start with Wilxyboeth.”
“I wonder how you spell Wilxyboeth?” mused Willie the Bard, frowning and staring at his paper notebook.
“How come you don’t use a recorder or a computer?” asked Catastrophe Baker, walking across the room to look over the Bard’s shoulder.
“That’s not art.”
“What’s the difference between recording what we say and writing it down?”
“I embellish.”
“And you couldn’t do that with a computer?”
The Bard considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t like machines.”
“Neither do I, come to think of it,” admitted Baker. “I just figured a computer could do things faster.”
“It can fuck up my book 200,000 times faster than my pen can,” agreed the Bard. “Trust me, you’ll all come out looking better because of my pen.”
“Gonna take off all the rough edges, huh?”
“Or add a few,” said the Bard. “Whatever it takes.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Willie,” said Little Mike Picasso. “Give me ten percent of the advance and I’ll illustrate your book for you. I’ll do sketches of everyone in the Outpost.”
“Sounds good to me,” said the Bard. “Long as you’re willing to wait ’til I sell it.”
“Sure. No problem.”
The Bard stared at him for a long moment. “Okay, it’s a deal,” he said. “Now suppose you tell me the real reason you offered to do this?”
He gestured toward Silicon Carny. “I’ll die if I can’t draw her.”
Baker looked over and saw her for the first time. “If all you want to do is draw her, you got a lot more wrong with you than you think.”
Silicon Carny stood up, and everything came to a sudden stop. No one spoke, no one drank, no one dealt cards. If you made the effort, you could probably hear one molecule of air bumping into its neighbor. She had that kind of effect on men.
I knew a little bit about her. Not much, but enough to understand her name. The Silicon part was easy enough; mighty few slender women have 50-inch bustlines with nipples that point almost straight up. The Carny part was because her entire body was covered by art—not exactly tattoos, but some alien painting that was in constant flux, almost like a continuous holo—and she’d grown up in a carnival sideshow.
Finally, Baker broke the silence.
“By God!”!” he exclaimed. “This has got to be the first time I ever saw one work of art stuck on top of an even purtier one!”
Silicon Carny smiled at him. “You like?” she purred with an accent I still hadn’t placed after four or five years.
“Ma’am,” he said, removing his vest and shirt, “I got some mighty artistic tattoos myself, as you can plainly see, but I freely admit they ain’t nothing compared to you—and they sure as hell ain’t painted on such a nice canvas.”
I’d been right about the tattoos: they met in a passionate and pornographic embrace on his chest, then ran off in opposite directions until they reached his hands and headed back toward his chest again.
Silicon Carny looked at him and giggled. For all I know she even blushed, but she had so many colors in perpetual motion that no one could tell. It didn’t matter much, though. When she laughed, she shook—and when she shook, strong men just naturally got a little weak in the knees.
“What a delicate, tinkling laugh you got, Ma’am,” said Baker admiringly, putting his shirt back on. “I think I’ve only heard one other as engaging.”
“Who did it belong to?” asked Max.
“Strangely enough, to the only other carny performer I ever knew,” said Baker. “A woman of rare and delectable beauty, though lacking this charming lady’s exceptional superstructure.”
“So tell us about her,” urged Max
Baker shook his head. “It’s a long and tragic story and I don’t want to go into it.”
“I’d like to hear it,” said Silicon Carny.
Baker seemed to consider her request for a moment, then shrugged. “All right, Ma’am,” he said at last. “It brings back a lot of painful memories—but I make it my business never to say no to a lady, especially one put together even remotely like yourself, Ma’am, so if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. But I warn you up front, it ain’t got no happy ending.”
Catastrophe Baker and the Siren of Silverstrike
It all began (said Baker) when I decided to pay a visit to my old friend Bloody Ben Masters, who’d been the first one to hit paydirt on Silverstrike. He’d made a few million credits off his silver mine, then sold it for a few million more, built himself a castle with an acid moat around it, and retired.
When I got there I learned that poor Ben was no longer among the living—seemed he’d got a snootful one night and decided to see if he could swim the moat without taking a breath. He got the last part right, because I don’t believe there was enough of him left to breathe about three seconds after he dove in. Anyway, there I was with some time on my hands, so that night I moseyed into town to see what the locals did for entertainment besides jump each other’s claims, and that’s when I found Old Doc Nebuchadnezzar’s All-Star Carnival and Thrill Show.
They had all the usual carny stuff: a null-gravity Ferris wheel, a Tower of Babel for the menfolk and a Gomorrah Palace for the ladies, a couple of fights to the death between Trambolians and a pair of the local Men, a magician who volunteered to cut your spouse in half—I don’t recall remembering him promising to put her back together, now that I come to think of it—and the usual surgically-altered six-armed jugglers and knife-throwers and the like, but none of ’em especially interested me.
In fact, I was about to leave when I heard a trumpet blare and a little guy in a bright plaid suit got up on a floating platform and announced that the moment we were all waiting for had arrived, and that anyone with twenty credits to spend could come into his Bubble and see the Siren of Silverstrike in all her sensual glory.
Well, the last time I saw so many people move so fast all at once was when me and Bloody Ben had had one of our little disagreements back on Bilbau II and I threw a couple of poker tables through a window and demanded a little more fighting room, and he threw the bartender out after the tables and allowed that that was a right good idea, and I figured anyone or anything that got everyone so motivated was probably worth twenty credits and then some, so I gently shoved a few folks out of my way, tried not to listen overmuch to their howls of anger and agony, and forked over my money.
Once I got inside the Bubble, I kind of shouldered my way to the front, hardly discommoding anyone at all except six or seven men who refused to step aside as quick as they should have for a newcomer to their fair planet, and then I took a seat.
I didn’t have long to wait, because the second I sat down the music started, and suddenly the Siren of Silverstrike appeared onstage, and you got to believe me when I tell you that she was about as lovely a critter of the female persuasion as I’d ever seen up to that time. Her hair hung down almost to her waist, and it was striped with rows of iridescent colors: red, blue, yellow, green, and the pattern repeated a couple of times. Real striking and artistic, you know?
She held up an almost-transparent little
sheet or towel or some such thing in front of her and began her dance, and I noticed when she spun around that she wasn’t wearing nothing but her dancing shoes, and that the rest of her hair also came in the very same rows of colors. I think that might have been the instant I decided I was hopelessly and eternally in love with her.
I couldn’t figure out why such a lovely young piece of femininity was working in a carnival, and then it occurred to me that this Nebuchadnezzar feller had probably kidnapped her when she was just a little girl, before she’d blossomed into the fullness of womanhood, so to speak, and that she was just waiting for some handsome hero-type to rescue her from this life of enforced slavery and take her home so she could dance every night just for him as a way of showing her gratitude.
I waited until her dance was over, and then it took another five minutes for the audience to stop cheering and stomping and whistling, and finally the bubble emptied out, and I hopped onto the stage and found the little exit at the back and walked through it, and a few seconds later I found myself in the Siren’s dressing room.
She was sitting, stark naked, on a little stool that floated in front of a vanity and a tri-dimensional mirror, brushing her multi-colored hair. There were dozens of holos of her in various states of dress and undress on the walls, and a couple of missives which were either love letters or glowing testimonials. There were a bunch of little fussy dolls on a shelf, and a row of ugly-looking porcelain dogs that yipped a nonstop musical tune, and some paintings of big-eyed alien children who all looked pretty much alike, even though a couple were four-armed and one was insectoid and another was a chlorine-breather.
When the Siren finally saw my reflection in her mirror, she turned to face me.
“Who are you?” she demanded, either totally forgetting that she wasn’t wearing nothing or else not much caring about it.
“I’m Catastrophe Baker, here to declare my everlasting love for you and to rescue you from a life of indentured servitude,” I told her.
“I’m flattered,” she said, looking me up and down, “but I don’t want to be rescued.”
“That’s because Old Doc Nebuchadnezzar has brainwashed you,” I explained. “Spend a few months traveling the galaxy with me and you’ll be as good as new. What do you say, Siren?”