Bill 4 - on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure (21 page)

Wyatt Slurp stopped him. “No, Bill. Wait until they draw first 'cause that's the way we guys in the white hats play it.”

They took a few more steps forward, then stopped short as Dr. Delazny held up a halting hand. “Wait a moment, folks. I want to take this brief opportunity before we blow you all away to introduce you to a very good pal of mine, Mr. Billy the Kidney!” Delazny looked behind him. “Why don't you step on out and take a bow, Billy!”

A particularly warped and dirty sperm wearing tattered clothes and a bullet-holed hat squiggled out and stared at his opponents with eyes that had less life than a dead fish. The Kidney was chawing something in his mouth, and a bulge worked around its body like an animated carbuncle.

Billy the Kidney spat out a gob of tobacco juice that clanged onto the hard-packed dirt, bounced and spattered into a fence post.

“Ya varmints wanna fight, huh? Ya think ya can kill my friends the Jism Brothers and get away with it? Well, get ready to get turned to vulture chow and look forward to eternity in Shoe Hill.” He drew his guns, twirled them fancily, then pointed them into the air. “And guess who's coming to dinner!”

Bill looked up. Hovering over the scene was a bunch of particularly ugly buzzards, looking down upon the good guys and licking their beaky chops.

“Don't kid me Kidney,” said Wyatt Slurp. “You've spat your last spit. Since you've got a little help in your little argument with Bill here, me and the Doc are gonna settle our runnin' account with you, right this mornin'. 'Sides, it'd be a nice change if we can prevent you boys from havin' your way with the Bank!”

Delazny laughed. “That's what you think, Sheriff. I forgot to mention to you, that I have also enlisted the services of the entire Vindaloo Indian Nation in this little gunfight!” He waved his free hand. “Come on out, boys, and show yourselves!”

From behind the stables squirmed at least fifty more spermatozoa, wearing feathers, loincloths and single moccasins on their flagella. Each held a bow and arrow, and all of these were aimed at Bill and Company.

Bill's eyes widened. With good reason. Not only the threat to his life but it isn't every day you run across giant red Indian spermatozoa.

Unhappily he had a fine view of the hills, down which coursed a stream of thousands upon thousands of Vindaloo Indians, glistening wetly in the rising sun.

“I guess that's one nice thing about working with sperm!” said Dr. Delazny. “Where you find one, there's a couple of million more just hanging around!”

“Gee, guys,” said the Bgr the Chinger. “It doesn't look good does it!”

Doc Shoreleave shook his head sadly, shrugging. “Hell, I guess that's what life's all about, though, isn't it. Staring us right in our faces. It's the never-ending, striving, yearning, heaving indefinable urge to merge. That's what Nature wants! And what is Nature but a great cosmic pursuit of yang by yin! Individuality? The human soul? Bah! It means nothing compared to the heaving sea of mindless, salivating critters of procreation that govern the depths of human being!” He gestured out to the sea of spermy outlaws and Indians, coughed, and then drew his six-shooters. “Our destiny gentlemen! Let us not go out gracefully!”

“Well, Bill,” the Chinger said ruminatively, “I think I was rather foolish to even think I could stop this phenomenon!” Eager Beager's tail swished around and he touched it to his mouth, ceremoniously.

“What's that?” asked Bill, trying to recover his nerve and not quite succeeding. “A Chinger religious ritual?”

“Not quite, Bill. I'm just kissing my tail good-bye!”

A war-whoop rose up from the assembled Indians. They started to slide down the hills, waving spears and chanting. They were savage-looking sperm, no question, done up in warpaint, looking fierce and mean as a group of Galilean gophers on Galactic Ground Hog day.

“Shee—eet,” said Wyatt Slurp. “This morning's going to make the Little Big Horn look like Custer's Last Ice Cream Stand!” He raised his gun and aimed. “Well, if we're gonna die — we might as well die like men!” He plugged a Jism Gang member right between the vacuoles.

“But I'm not a man!” observed Bgr. “I'm a Chinger! I really don't think I should be here.”

“Tough titty, reptile,” said Doc Shoreleave as the bullets and arrows started whizzing past their ears. “Get those guns going!” His own weapons started blazing and a row of the nearest Indians bit the dust messily.

Eager Beager hastily jumped behind a rock, from which he blasted away at their multitude of attackers.

As the first arrows flew any vestige of his Western manliness suddenly fled from Bill. This was no fight, this was a massacre. The only reasonable thing any one with a grain of intelligence should do was vamoose!

However, when Bill turned to run, he saw that he was cut off at the pass. An enormous quantity of Vindaloo Indians had flowed behind them.

They were surrounded!

“Bowb!” commented Bill intelligently as he started blasting away, hoping to shoot his way out, exploding Red-membranes willy-nilly. But for every Indian he blasted, another took its place. And he was running out of ammunition.

They were all running out of ammunition!

Wyatt Slurp had an arrow through his arm and a bullet in his belly, but he just kept on firing. “Sheee—eet,” he laughed. “Ah only got one bullet left!” Streaming blood, he snarled out to the outlaws, “Billy! This one has your name on it!” With a war-whoop that sounded like a Hoop's worth of rebel yells, Sheriff Slurp charged toward the blazing group of outlaws. Splat splat spat! went the bullets as they tore into his manly body. But the Sheriff just kept on walking, though soaked in blood, until he was within spitting distance of Billy the Kidney.

“Kidney,” he gasped. “Suck on this!”

Billy the Kidney turned to run, but Sheriff Slurp's bullet caught him in the back. The Kidney exploded like a water-filled balloon, and slapped hard onto the ground.

“I can die happy now!” groaned the Sheriff.

“We'll help you along!” cried the Jism Gang, who immediately filled the Sheriff so full of lead that gravity instantly dragged him down. But the firing continued until Sheriff Wyatt Slurp was finally and truly dead.

This was too much for Doc Shoreleave. He simply cracked.

“Beam me up, Beagle!” he cried to the skies. “Beam me up!”

Arrows whistled through the air, pin-cushioning him, making him look like a walking hairbrush. Or rather a standing one. He really was dead on his feet — so bristled with arrows all around him that even though he was quite dead, he couldn't fall down; he was propped up by arrows.

Bill blasted, reloaded, and blasted some more until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber and there were no more silver bullets to be had.

Somehow, through the unknown manifest workings of destiny, or stupid luck, Bill so far had escaped without a wound. But the way the volleys were flying, he knew he was going to catch some any second.

He was going to die. Croak. Expire. Bite the big one, go out for a Burton, snuff it, buy the farm, take the Black Hole Express. His life passed before his eyes. Though he'd been remiss of late, since he was four years old, and had not gone to church, he nurtured the secret and irrational hope that soon he would be dropping through the great Tunnel of Light within moments, and that his Great-Grandfather Bill would be waiting for him with his good old Robomule, Rusty, just a-rarin' to start plowing the heavenly sod.

An explosion cracked the sky.

“I'm coming, Great-Grandad!” cried Bill. “I'm coming home!”

Closing his eyes, he braced himself.

Trying not to whimper, he readied himself for Death's sting.

But Death did not sting.

In fact, the bullets stopped whizzing and the arrows stopped whistling.

“Gee! Bill, look at that!”

Bill opened his eyes. Bgr the Chinger was jumping up and down, pointing up at the sky excitedly.

Bill looked up.

The rocket ship was coming down on a sun-bright plume of fire, silvery and needle-shaped. Bill shielded his eyes and studied the starship more closely.

Could it be! Yes, it was!

There it was, proudly printed on the side: the name!

It was the starship called DESIRE.

It was Rick the Supernal Hero's spaceship!

The reaction amongst the Indians was fear and mass panic. As one they thundered back to the slopes of the hills, where they watched with awe as the ship settled down on the field where they had once swarmed, frying the fallen of their number. Gray spumes of smoke and yellow tongues of flame whipped and fluttered and then slowly dissipated.

“Curses!” cried Dr. Latex Delazny. “What's going on here! Modern technology is not supposed to work here in the Over-Gland!”

A voice erupted from the fabulous starship's outside speaker system. “Whoever said this boat was modern, Delazny? This ship's straight from the 1940's AMAZING STORIES!”

Bill recognized the voice. It was Rick! The real Rick, not the android that Delazny had created to spy upon them. The Rick for whom Bill had been first mate!

“He didn't forget me!” cried Bill. “He's come to our rescue! Yeah, Rick! Yeah!”

Delazny turned back to the hundreds of thousands of Indian hordes. “Don't worry, great Indian nation! Not even a starship and Rick the Supernal Hero can stop your massive hordes! Look how thin and flimsy the ship is! Why, you can simply fire a few tens of thousands of arrows en masse and it will simply tip over!”

“That's what you think, Doctor D!” said Rick through the speakers.

Then, the most astonishing thing happened!

BILL'S BIG BANG THEORY

Bill had seen some incredible things in his life. The Palace Gardens of Helior! The death-tangled Jungles of Veniola! The majestic Fertilizer Mountains of Phigerinadon II!

However, this sight unfolding now before his eyes really took the concrete cupcake.

From the top of the starship emerged a cannon, and from this cannon an explosion exploded. A wobbling globule of liquid shot up into the air over the Indian nation of the Vindaloo — a giant drop that began to slow down, undulate, and then expand and grow. It spun out like a gigantic soap bubble. It splashed down over the entirety of the Vindaloo tribes, and the Jism Gang to boot.

“What's happening?!” cried Bill.

“Arrrrr!” said Rick's voice from the speakers. “This is what they never expected — but I did. I went straight to the manufacturers and filled all the spare fuel tanks with NoPreg — the most effective spermicide in the known universe!”

And thus they died. Thus was the greatest threat removed at last. Bill heaved a great sigh of relief; all thoughts of heavenly sanctuary vanished and he looked forward to a long and full life. Unhappily still in the Troopers.

For Doctor Delazny's part, he was simply standing alone now, bereft of his army, quivering and shaking with frustration and anger. Bill strode up to him.

“Answer one question, quack, before I kill you. What did you do to my dearest Irma to make her boot me out? How could a repulsive ugly like you ever replace me in her affection?”

Bill added a certain attention-getting to his question by seizing Delazny by the throat and shaking him up and down strenuously.

“Glug!” Delazny gasped, and Bill loosened his grip. “It is the p-p-power of the Over-Gland!” he gurgled. “I admit I lied a teensy bit to you both last night. It was within my grasp. I used it on her. Its energies are irresistible.”

Bill nodded. He felt a little better now. Not much, really, but it would have to do. He supposed he could find some way to forgive Irma now. He knew he still loved her. Possibly.

“Where is Irma, Delazny?” Another quick shake to drive home the point.

“S ... s ... still back in the hotel room, like I said.”

“Then that's it Doc. Finito for you. You're outnumbered and have two seconds to surrender before I choke you to death. One —”

“Glug! Surrender! Fins!”

“I sort of wished you hadn't,” Bill mused, throttling a bit more for his own pleasure. “It would have felt real good to kill you. Oh well....” He threw Delazny to the ground. “Now that your plans for galactic domination are through, and before I throttle you some more, do you think you'd have time to take a look at this bum foot of mine? After all, that is one of your specialties, isn't it?”

“Oh y ... y ... yes. The mood foot. Which one was it again, Bill?” said Delazny, eager to please. He frowned. “It looks pretty permanent. I'm not sure that there is much I can do....”

Bill howled with unbridled anger, throttled the Doc again, then hurled his unconscious form away in disgust.

“Arrrrrrr! Nice choking, Bill,” said Rick the Supernal Hero, climbing down the ladder. “If you don't mind I would like to get in a couple shots myself! The nerve of that guy, imprisoning me and then copying this beautiful mug onto an android!” Rick tromped over to the unconscious Dr. Delazny and rearranged a few teeth with a muddy boot. “There, that's good enough. Too bad he didn't feel it — but he will when he wakes up in my brig!” Rick patted Bill on the back. “Arrrr! Good to see you again, first mate. By the way, I want to show you something!” Around Rick's neck was slung a leather bag. From this bag he pulled a six pack of cans. He pulled one out of the plastic carrier and handed it to Bill.

Bill looked at the can. “HOLY GRAIL ALE,” he elated. “Rick! You found it!”

“Arrrr! You bet matey!”

“But where?”

Rick pointed a handsome, slender forger past the rainbow that had just formed in the sky and was smiling down colorfully at them. “You're not going to believe this, Bill! But it looks like Dr. Delazny wasn't totally correct on the Over-Gland theory. You see, it's much more than that! And it's right over there!”

Bill didn't wait for an explanation. He did what it was natural for all good Troopers to do with a tall cool one in his hand: he popped the top and drained the can in one great, enjoyable, heavenly insufflation.

The fluid washed down his throat like a gentle zephyr of spring. Hops hopped gaily in their milk of liquid kindness, splashing down into his stomach where they spread gentle mists of calm and well-being throughout his body. Bill's hangover was shooed away in an instant, and the quiet joy of tasty, beery inebriation took its place. Ah, heaven!