Bill 7 - the Galactic Hero (17 page)

Actually, it wasn't the area per se that Bill recognized, since every area in the mine looked pretty much the same, but the person who was sitting in it. Even the little holographic man and woman wrestling on her desk were like a touch of home after the bleakness of the mines.

“Hi, Sylvia!” he said brightly.

“You again,” she countered. “Not dead, then.” She looked up at him to make sure. “Snorri's expecting you in eight seconds. Get inside.” She pointed to the corner, where the door was sliding open.

“Nice seeing you again,” Bill chirped.

Sylvia sniffed and ignored him. Sam and Sid dragged him into the room with the bench.

“Snorri?” Sam said suspiciously.

“Sure,” Sid said sibilantly. “He's a persuasive guy. Or maybe a traitor.”

“He's an officer,” Bill said. “All officers are the enemy. Don't you guys know anything?”

“GEE, BILL, I DON'T THINK THAT'S FAIR!” The gigantic image of Snorri Yakamoto on the wall-screen leaned forward to adjust the volume. “Maybe in the Troopers, but this is a democracy, you know. Or it was until recently, which is pretty close.”

“Traitor!” Sam shouted.

“Collaborator!” Sid sneered.

“Where's our lunch?” Bill asked. “We're supposed to get lunch.”

“Bill's right,” the director said. “You guys should really have something nutritious to eat. You're going to need your strength for your escape.”

A small door in the wall rose up, revealing three trays of piping hot GungeBurgers. Bill grabbed at them and began chomping and drooling, reveling in food that involved chewing. He left it to Sid and Sam to figure out the rest of what Snorri meant.

By the time he came up for air everything seemed to be under control. “I don't suppose you have any beer?”

“No, Bill,” Snorri's image said. “Now don't you forget that I'm really not a traitor — no indeed! I just figured that I could help President Grotsky best by staying in my job. And here you are! Gee, it all worked out for the best, didn't it?”

“Looks like it,” Sam muttered in sullen agreement.

"So you guys can be on your way in a few minutes. I've got my secret back exit into the garage. Your car is still there, and still has a pass on the windshield. Eat up.

“Meanwhile, Bill, since you have pigged your food already, just mosey through the door for a private chat?”

Another door slid open, making a hole in the wall-screen. It was dark behind the doorway, but Bill had the strong feeling that nothing was going to happen unless he went in there — no escape, no more GungeBurgers, nothing. He went in. The door slid closed behind him, leaving him in darkness just like the bottom of the mine.

“Gee, Bill, long time no see, huh?”

The lights came gradually up, revealing a tiny office set into a raised niche in the wall. If it had been to normal scale, it would have been a good-sized office for a standard human being, but it was scaled for someone seven inches tall, and sure enough, behind the desk was someone exactly that height. A camera in front of the desk led into an advanced image-processing computer with a label that said CHINGER-TO-HUMAN CONVERSION UNIT.

“Bgr!” Bill belched. “What are you doing here?”

“Gee, Bill, you know how hard it is to keep a good Chinger down. Don't you want to sit back and reminisce about all our great times together in training at Camp Leon Trotsky when I was disguised as the toadyish human Eager Beager?”

“No,” Bill insinuated.

“Good,” Bgr said, relieved. "To tell you the truth, I really hated the Troopers. All that human BO all the time. But I thought even you would have figured out that we Chingers had to be involved here somewhere. I was sent to Eyerack to try to disrupt the war effort and encourage the peace movement here.

“But, gee, it didn't quite work out the way I expected. We Chingers still have so much to learn about war. Killing your own kind — I never would have thought of that one.”

“That last foot you gave me —” Bill began.

“Never mind about that now,” Bgr said. “You've been a real disappointment to us at the CIA, the Chinger Intelligence Agency. I don't think we can afford to give you any more new feet until we get some real subversion out of you. Besides, that looks like a pretty good foot you've got down there.”

Bgr ruminated a moment, then leaned forward and fixed Bill with a baleful stare. “Don't you realize that our entire project here is in your hands? You're the only one who can turn this coup back and restore democracy on Eyerack. Gee, Bill, I thought you liked my pal Millard. So do this for him, if you won't do it for me.”

Bill thought about it long and hard.

“Can I have another GungeBurger — and a beer?”

“You got it.”

“Then it's a deal.” A minute later, after wiping his chin and licking his fingers he belched, “That means I get out of here?”

“You get out.”

“Okay. Where's the back door?”

Nothing seemed to have changed much on the surface of Eyerack since the coup. Bombs were still falling more or less at random, more or less everywhere. The roads were still in pretty bad shape. And most of what semi-normal life persisted in the face of the Emperor's demonstrations of his loving forgiveness was limited to the underground shopping malls.

The air was generally pretty smoky, and the sun had a little trouble brightening the scene, but it was still a lot more cheery outside — except for the bombs — than in the mine.

Sam and Sid and Bill drove along in their armored car with the top hatch open, enjoying the breeze, basking in the success of their incredibly clever ploy to get past the guards at the entrance to the mine.

“That sure was an incredibly clever ploy, Sam,” Bill said. “Could you explain it to me one more time?”

“Gee, Bill, I don't think so,” Sam said, looking up from scribbling all over a pile of computer paper. “It was incredibly complicated, as well as being incredibly clever, and you haven't understood it the last eight times I explained it. Let it slide. Take a break. Enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.”

Bill shrugged and stood up in the hatch. He took a deep breath of the smoky air, coughed, and sighed. In a few hours they would get to the city that Sam and Sid and Bgr (who the other two still thought was just Snorri) had selected for Bill's dramatic speech against the coup. They would find a tank, Bill would climb up on top and rouse the populace into a democratic frenzy, the generals would be overthrown, peace would reign, and Bill would get a cushy job.

This plan was simple enough for Bill and he thought it was a pretty good plan, with only one problem. He wasn't much good at giving speeches.

The drama part wouldn't be hard. He figured he could handle that; he'd acted in plays when he was in pre-elementary school, and his performance in “The Beast with Ten Fingers” had been reviewed in the school newspaper as “Digitally dramatic.” He'd played one of the fingers.

But that role, while it had stretched Bill's talents almost to the limit, hadn't had a lot of lines. Though a lot of scratching was involved. Even his time as an Eyerackian celebrity hadn't involved much that wasn't ad-libbed. One or two lines at a time, tops.

And now he had a whole speech to do. Bgr had worked with Bill before, and knew that letting Bill improvise a stirring oration was, to be generous, risky. So he had written a speech for Bill, a speech that was practically guaranteed to have the desired effect. All Bill had to do was memorize it.

“Memorize it!” Bill had sputtered, hefting the printout. “I won't even be able to read it before we get there!”

But there was no time to put together either a new speech or a new plan. Their only chance was to have Sam cut the speech down to an hour or two — reduce it to words of one syllable or less — while they were en route, and then feed the high points to Bill one at a time and hope for the best.

So Bill's reverie was interrupted periodically when Sam passed him another page. Bill read most of them, lost a few in the breeze, and remembered practically nothing. In this way he had more or less mastered the speech to his own satisfaction by the time they reached central square of Central Square, their destination.

Central Square was a medium-sized city with a medium-sized university. Bgr's studies told him that this was likely to be a hotbed of unrest and dissent, which would catch fire from Bill's speech and spread over the surface of Eyerack, cauterizing the wound of the coup and stretching the metaphor beyond all reasonable limits.

Sid drove their armored car right up to the edge of the plaza. It was evening. There were a few people sitting at an outdoor cafe at one end (since General Weissearse had to lead each wave of the Imperial attack, the Eyerackians had been able to work out the schedule; outdoor dining was popular during the bombing lulls), and a few more milling around near the statue of Gar Ganchua, the city's founder. Most of the people, though, were gathered near a tank that was parked in front of what looked like the city hall.

“Superb,” Sam said. “We have an audience waiting for us. Perhaps there's even a protest already in progress.”

“Gee, Sam, that doesn't look like a protest to me.” Bill shook his head to clear it. Gee? Had he said that? He'd been hanging around with the wrong sort for too long. “They look like they're watching something.”

“No, it must be a silent vigil against the junta, I'm sure of that. See how they aren't talking to each other? See how they concentrate on the front of the building? They're applying moral force without provoking a violent response. Excellent strategy.”

“I'm not entirely sure of that,” Sid said thoughtfully. “Shouldn't there be signs or something if it's a vigil?”

“Of course.” Sam pointed across the crowd. “And there's a sign. Can you read it?”

They all peered over at the sign, but it was too far away for any of them to make it out.

Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, they worked their way around to the front of the building and stayed close to the wall while they sidled over toward the tank. Bill hoisted himself up one of the treads and crouched beside the hatch; Sam handed him the final revised copy of the speech.

Making his appearance as dramatic as possible, Bill suddenly stood atop the hatch, facing the silent crowd, his arms thrown wide in greeting.

A tumultuous noise rose from the assembled people, a veritable torrent of sound, all aimed at Bill. He basked in the joy his arrival had caused.

But only for a moment, until he figured out what the people were shouting.

“Down in front!”

But he could not be stopped; an evanescent thespian flame burned hotly in his bosom.

“Get out of the way!”

“Friends, Eyerackians —” Bill began. He felt a tugging on his pants leg, but went on.

“Move your bowby body!” someone yelled, and a few people were shaking their fists now.

Sid was yanking on Bill's leg now. It was time to pay attention.

“Bill! Get down here!” Sam was shouting to be heard over the increasingly angry crowd, and waving at Bill to get off the tank.

“No, I've got their attention now! Let me give the speech!”

Sid finally got enough of a grip in Bill's leg to topple him completely over. The two bodyguards caught him before his head hit the pavement. Some of the crowd cheered, and some booed.

“I don't think this bunch is going to be very receptive, Bill. Look.” Sam pointed at the sign they'd seen earlier.

Now they were close enough to read it. “Old-Time Outdoor 2-D Movie Night,” it said. Bill looked behind where he'd been standing. Dim grayish images flickered on the wall. Sid pointed out that everyone in the audience was wearing some kind of headset, no doubt carrying the sound from the “movie,” whatever that was.

Bill kicked at a pebble. “OK,” he said. Then he cocked his head and raised one finger. “I've got an idea.” This was the pose he always saw in the comix when somebody got an idea, and he was still practicing being dramatic.

“No, Bill, I don't think you better have one.” Sam shook his head.

“Probably a bad idea,” Sid agreed. They started dragging Bill back to the armored car.

Bill stamped his Swiss Army Foot. When the rattling stopped, he said, “But you haven't heard it yet.”

“Well, no, not technically.”

“But we've heard some other ideas of yours, and if this one is just as good, then maybe we aren't too enthusiastic.”

“But we could go to the university!” Bill pleaded.

Sam and Sid stopped in their tracks. They looked at each other.

Sam said, “Hmm.”

Sid said, “Indeed.”

“Could it be?”

“Law of averages.”

“Right. Had to work out. That's actually a good idea, Bill. Let's go.”

The main quad at the university was full of activity; so busy, in fact, that hardly anyone noticed when the armored car drove up. There was a tank there, however, and a crowd of people around it, and this crowd wasn't Just standing there. They were shouting and yelling and screaming and talking loudly, and some of them were shaking their fists. This was far more promising than the central square.

“How are we doing up there?” one student was asking as Bill and his bodyguards approached the tank.

“One more, I think,” said a hollow-sounding voice. Could he have been inside?

Bill vaulted atop the tank's turret, but he couldn't stand on the hatch; it was open. Ever neat, he started to close the hatch, but a head popped up from inside.

“No way, man, you're much too big. We need someone smaller. Maybe one of the girls?”

“What?” Bill inquired.

“You'll never fit inside. We need someone small. If we get one more person in here, we'll break the record for students inside a tank.”

Bill looked in. It was pretty crowded in there, all right. It was even worse than a troopship. “No, I don't want to get inside. I'm just here to make a speech.”

“Oh. In that case, before you begin, could you bring one of the girls up here?”

Bill hoisted the smallest coed he could find up onto the turret and lowered her feet down the hatch. Another student passed him a beer, and Bill drank it before shouting for attention. He began his speech.

“You may already be a winner!”