Rooba rooba rooba: everyone spoke at once. Then, with comical suddenness, everyone shut the hell up again.
Another Finn out there? An unfriendly Finn?
Finn was capable of causing suns to go nova…
An unfriendly Finn who was tougher than Finn and Mary put together?
We were all thinking the same thought. What if it tracked them here? Finn must have read our expressions, for he held up both his hands and said quickly, “Do not be afraid. It cannot have tracked us.”
The outside door banged open, letting in enough breeze into the foyer to start the swinging doors swinging.
No one screamed. No one even jumped a foot in the air, as far as I can recall. Most of us had been drinking with the Lucky Duck for several months, and had been pretty hard to faze even before we met him. But I think it’s safe to say that everyone’s attention focused on that doorway.
And we certainly didn’t freeze in terror, either. Nearly everybody seemed to be in motion—calm, unhurried but purposeful motion. Fast Eddie, for instance, scratched his ankle and the back of his neck in the same flowing motion, and ended up with his blackjack in one hand and a knife in the other, both ready for throwing. Ralph Von Wau Wau circled around and took a position beside the doorway, ears flattened, grinning (and this time he was drooling). Long-Drink McGonnigle was taking a Glock 9mm from his night watchman’s uniform jacket. Buck Rogers produced a handgun of his own; looked to me like a Dan Wesson. Several people were experimentally tapping their palms with beer bottles, mugs, sugar shakers and other blunt instruments; others were taking up chairs. I found that I was standing between Zoey and the door, had my shotgun in hand, was easing the safety off. All these preparations were of course ludicrous, but we were doing our best. Aborigines defiantly waving our spears at the incoming bomber.
Only four of us that I could see were absolutely still. Mike Callahan and his daughter stood motionless, facing the doorway. Finn had lifted his arms, and the forearms were starting to glow faintly. And over by the fireplace, Nikola Tesla, glowering ferociously, clutched his death ray.
And the swinging doors opened, and our visitor entered, and the barometric pressure in the room dropped suddenly, as everyone gasped at once. Including the newcomer.
A fireplug with a pit bull’s head…
It was the homuncula that had visited me and Zoey that morning at dawn.
And I had a pretty good idea of what she had been doing with her time since then. She had been scouring the earth for a dress even uglier than the one she’d had on. Somehow she had succeeded.
Along the way she had acquired a camcorder; a glowing red LED at its snout said it was recording.
Believe me, you don’t want to think about what we were seeing. Think instead of what she must have been seeing. And taping.
A room full of disreputable--looking thugs and molls, brandishing assorted lethal weapons including a shotgun and a death ray. An open guitar case full of money, sloppy stacks of bills beside it on the bar. A seven-foot-tall man with glowing forearms and a very large lady, both dressed in Mylar. And a big naked Irishman.
We gaped at each other in silence, for what seemed like a long time. And then Ralph von Wau Wau spoke.
“I’m zorry, my friendz.”
She whirled to her right, failed to find him, then looked down and froze.
“I vould like to help,” Ralph went on, flattening his ears, “but I am not biting zat.”
She howled, just as she had that morning when I doused her with a warm urine sample. The howl was even louder than her dress.
Most of us screamed back, in instinctive self-defense. Ralph ran and hid under a table, tail between his legs, paws over his ears.
The sound filled the room, filled the solar system. Glasses began to shatter here and there around the room. I wondered if I was going to lose this roof, too. She seemed to have the didgeridu player’s knack of breathing in and out at the same time: her shriek seemed to go on longer than the average commercial break.
And then she spun on her orthopedic heel and fled into the night, barking in an unknown tongue.
There was a long and profound silence. Then Buck Rogers said something inaudible, realized he and the rest of us were half-deafened, and said it again louder. “Well? Was that a Cockroach, or not?”
Everybody in the place fell down laughing.
Buck correctly interpreted this as a negative, and joined us. We laughed until our noses ran, until our stomachs knotted and our eyes crossed. Tension release.
Callahan was the first to get his breath back. “No,” he puffed, “a Cockroach that was not…in fact…I’m going to go out on a limb…and say it was a human being…” He lost it again.
“The least beautiful I’ve ever seen,” Doc Webster managed, “and I once met John Diefenbaker.”
“Lord,” Chuck Samms whooped, “I never realized before what a handsome woman my ex-wife is.”
“Ugly enough to make a freight train take a dirt road,” Buck contributed.
“The clock!” Tommy Janssen crowed, pointing. “Look at the clock!”
Sure enough, it had stopped. A second wave of laughter took us.
When I could talk again, I told everybody about that morning’s visitation.
“Twice in one day?” Callahan exclaimed. “That’s got to be a message—but what? Naggeneen, have you any thoughts on the matter?” No answer. “Naggeneen?”
We all looked around, and by God, our resident myth, the cluricaune, was nowhere to be seen. I rapped on the beer kegs, one after the other, but he didn’t seem to be in any of them.
“I think she frightened him away,” Mike said slowly.
“Swell,” said Fast Eddie. “Dere goes our meal ticket.”
Naggeneen had been putting away anywhere from ten to twenty gallons of booze a night, and paying for it in solid gold coins, for several months now. If he was truly gone for good, Mary’s Place was in financial trouble. But I certainly couldn’t blame him.
Noah Gonzalez spoke up. “Did it seem to any of you guys like she was trying to, like, talk there, at the end?”
“She was cursing in an obscure dialect of Ukrainian,” Solace said. “Fluently. I would prefer not to be more specific.”
“I wonder what she had the camcorder for,” Doc Webster said.
“So much for comic relief,” I said finally, pitching my voice to cut through the chatter. “Now why don’t we get this show on the road? Whoever she was, whatever she wanted, we’ve got more important fish to fry. Mary, continue your report.”
“Yes, Jake.”
Blind to our doom, we were…
6
RISE TO VOTE, SIR!
“We thought it was a boat race. We thought we had it locked. Maybe that’s why we blew it.
“The way we had it figured, Finn could practically have handled the whole thing by himself. I was more or less along for the ride, mostly as companion. Well, and hacking consultant. We located the Beast’s Lair with no problem at all. The databanks were multiply booby-trapped, and encrypted when we got through the booby traps, but it was all fairly straightforward. I have…cracking techniques that no other being native to this time ficton has, not even a Cockroach. We tripped no alarms; I’m absolutely certain of that. I think. Anyway, we found Finn’s people in the files, and were just about to upload them to a portable medium and go home. Another few minutes would have done it…
“And then even when we detected the other scout closing to attack, we weren’t worried. There was that moment when we still had the power to choose, whether to accept combat, or run and try again another day. We gave it careful thought, and we couldn’t see any cause to worry. It seemed reasonable that Finn and the other guy would be roughly matched—surely anyone as paranoid as a pervert Cockroach would make all his slave bodyguards as powerful as possible—and it figured that my added firepower would tip the scale our way. So we stood our ground.”
Mary hesitated, looking around at us. “I can’t g
o into the specifics of the battle in any detail: it involves things—principles, technologies—that those of you native to this ficton aren’t cleared to know. Think of us hurling big rocks at each other, if you need a visual image, and say Mick and I had the Other in a crossfire. Just take my word for it that between us we should have creamed the bastard.
“And he cleaned our clock. I was lucky to be able to spare the juice to get us the hell out of there, and I swear I never had time to consciously select a destination: I was startled to find myself here. It was a near thing. He came that close to destroying us. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t make sense!”
Buck cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am—but that sentence should always have the word ‘yet’ at the end of it.”
She frowned, and said, “I know, I know, you’re right. What I mean is, ‘it beats me.’”
“Describe this other scout,” I said.
“Think of a lizard,” she said. “It isn’t a lizard—wasn’t even before it was cyborged, I mean. It isn’t even a true reptile—it has mammary glands, and a four-chambered heart—but if you saw it, you’d think, there’s a nine-foot-tall lizard with no chin, and three of everything else. Three legs, three arms, three eyes that double as ears, three mouths—”
“Three?” Tesla said, interested. He’s always felt an inexplicable affinity for the number three. “How arranged?”
“Symmetrically. It stands on a natural tripod, and it has no back. Its eyes give it three-sixty vision and its arms give it three-sixty reach. Three fingers on each hand. Its only blind spot is directly underneath, beneath its feet, and it’s a damned small spot.”
“Excellent design,” Tesla said. “Elegant.”
“Impressive brain,” Solace said admiringly. “That’s a lot of data to integrate.”
Mary nodded. Either she didn’t hear where the voice came from, or a sentient computer didn’t surprise her.
Long-Drink McGonnigle sighed. “’Scuse me, Mary, but I want to be sure I’ve got this straight. We’re talking about a giant three-legged lizard with tits.”
“Three of ’em,” she agreed. “Scaly ones.”
The Drink nodded. “Uh huh. Just wanted to nail that down.” He swirled his beer to bring out the head, and took a big sip.
“We should have been expecting it,” Doc Webster said dizzily. “You tangle with a foot-long Cockroach and live through it, naturally you have to expect a giant lizard with three tits to come along sooner or later.”
You’d think people would laugh at lines like that—but most of us had been present the night that foot-long Cockroach—the Beast!—had come crashing through our ceiling. Yes, it was a funny sight. A foot-long cockroach in a space suit has to be funny. But there are kinds of funny that leave you completely uninterested in laughing. This triple-breasted lizard sounded like the same sort of thing. A person could die laughing…
“Mary,” I said urgently, “what are the chances that the Lizard was able to lock some kind of tracer on you?”
“Absolutely n—” she began, and then blushed. “Uh…in light of my track record in guessing its capabilities, I guess I have to admit I don’t really know for certain. But don’t worry!” she went on, seeing my expression. “Even assuming it is on our trail, it can’t possibly arrive for hours and hours yet. It has to play by the rules of this ficton.”
“How do you mean?”
She looked pained. “Look, there are three basic types of locomotion in a deal like this, and I want to tell you as little as necessary about each of them, okay? First, there’s…let’s call it the Finn Drive. The motive force Mickey uses to get around the galaxy, the same force the Lizard used to approach us. It’s not limited by lightspeed—but even so, at that speed the Beast’s Lair is a good seven or eight hours away. Now me, I have two additional methods of changing neighborhoods. One you know about: time travel. Our word for it is Translation.” She said that word the way you say a pun you don’t think your listener is going to get—but she didn’t explain it, and to this day I don’t get it. “It’s a dandy way to duck a problem, but it has some limitations. One of these is that you have to Translate naked.”
Now that I came to think of it, the two times I’d ever seen a time traveler arrive—Mike Callahan in both cases—he’d been nude. “Nonliving matter can’t time-travel?” I suggested.
“Not quite correct,” she said. “You can Translate nonliving material, just as easily as living—but it can’t travel in the same load, or both are destroyed on arrival. Spectacularly. Any matériel you take along through time has to go by separate cover.”
“Observe,” Callahan said. He was just pulling on a pair of pants that hadn’t been there a moment ago. He didn’t bother with shoes or socks.
I blinked and turned back to Mary. “You and Finn aren’t naked,” I pointed out. “So you didn’t get here by Translation, right?”
“Think it through, Jake. I couldn’t. Not with Mickey.”
“Oh.” Of course. Mickey was a cyborg: by definition he was organic and inorganic matter in the same load. So he was stuck here in this ficton with the rest of us, forever unable to jaunt around through history like the Callahans and Nikola Tesla did. I hadn’t realized that. It seemed kind of noble of Mary to have married him, under those circumstances. Still, at any given moment in history, the universe holds enough wonders to fill a long long lifetime—especially once that bother about lightspeed is dispensed with…
“By the same logic,” Mary went on, “the Lizard can’t be capable of Translating either, even if he knew how, which he doesn’t.”
“So how did you get here, faster than a speeding lizard?” Tommy Janssen asked.
“By method three,” she said. “Transition. Through space alone, rather than through time and space. Organic and inorganic matter Transit together just fine.”
“How fast is Transition?”
“Just short of instantaneous,” she said. “A couple of shavings off a millisecond. To anywhere in the universe with known coordinates.”
I blinked. “Wow.”
“My sentiments exactly. The point is, I am certain that nobody native to this ficton has the ability to either Translate or Transit, and those are the only two things that would put us in immediate danger here. Worst case, the Lizard is heading this way at only a multiple of lightspeed, whole hours away—and I don’t think he’s even doing that. I don’t believe any tracer beam presently in even theoretical existence could track a Transiting object to its destination.”
“Could I offer a suggestion?” Acayib asked. “Couldn’t you, uh, Translate back to the instant you were attacked? I realize you’d have to leave your husband behind, but you could keep on doing it until there were dozens of you englobing the Lizard, all shooting at once—”
He broke off; Mary was shaking her head sadly. “Nice try. I’m afraid it’s only possible to Translate to fictons in which you do not already exist. Not even once…or I’d just hop back then/there and boost the data while the Lizard’s busy fighting me and Mick.”
“How about this?” Buck offered. “Assume the Lizard is on his way, ray guns bristling, following your trail at Finn Drive speed. Figure out where that puts him right now, then Transit to just a little ways past that point, and sneak up on him from—oh!”
“Aw hell,” Fast Eddie said, seeing it too. “De scaly son of a bitch hasn’t got a behind to sneak up on.” He shook his head. “Jesus, t’ree tits and no behind.”
“Sounds like my ex-wife,” Chuck Samms said.
Long-Drink McGonnigle cleared his throat, a sound like a garbage disposal seizing up. “You people all seem to be missing the point, here,” he said, looking pained. “We may have all the time in the world, and we’ve for sure got hours and hours. There’s no red lights on the board. And our patroness and our old buddy have just walked in here for the first time, after what sounds like an extremely bad night, and they’ve been here for twenty minutes now and nobody’s offered either of ’em a goddam drin
k. Are we barbarians?”
That took us aback. Could a little thing like potential interstellar war with cyborg lizards cause us to forget our manners? I raised an inquiring eyebrow at Mary, and she exploded.
“God damn it, everybody’s missing the point!”
Shocked silence.
“What’s the matter, Mary?” Tom Hauptman asked gently.
“Don’t you get it, Reverend?” she said, too loud and getting louder. “We failed. If the goddam Lizard is on the way then we’ll deal with him—but meanwhile the Filarii are as dead as the Hittites. No more chances. All gone bye-bye. I do not feel like a fucking drink, all right? Billions of sentients. Wise, kind, imaginative, expressive people—Mick’s people, and my fucking in-laws—extinct!”
My ears were ringing. And burning. I had loved this woman—still did—and she was in agony and there was nothing I could do for her except offer to pour her an Irish coffee.
Zoey. Zoey had a natural gift for comforting me whenever I sorrowed. I had seen her comfort others. I caught her eyes—
“What makes you so sure?” Zoey asked loudly.
Mary turned to glare at her, and I wished for death. “Logic,” she snapped.
Zoey put her fists on her hips. “Well, us pregnant broads don’t know from logic—you’re gonna have to explain it to me.”
Mary lost a little of her frown. “Look, isn’t it obvious, Zoey? The Lizard caught us rifling its Master’s database. Clearly it’s still loyal to The Beast, dead or not—and believe me, ‘loyal’ is a feeble word for the kind of compulsion I’m talking about. Mick’s the only Scout ever known to have broken the geas, and he says the effort almost killed him. Most of the people here saw it, ask them if—Say—” She broke off and turned to Mick. “Could that be it, do you think, love? Could you have burned out some important bits that night, and that’s why the Lizard was so much stronger?”
“Insufficient data,” he said. “But an interesting hypothesis—”
“Finish the logic,” Zoey interrupted. “The Lizard is a zombie, and it’s programmed to protect The Beast’s data.”
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