Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell (17 page)

“Uhmmm — that's a tough one,” he muttered.

“Try harder, Bill. Put some of your so-called brain into it.”

“Maybe he doesn't do anything?”

“What a true idiot you are. You're supposed to say, 'I don't know.'”

There was a heavy bass on the voice. The clouds rumbled and quivered, and Bill rumbled and quivered right along with them. The situation was getting more than a little worrying.

“I don't know,” Bill finally quavered.

“That's better. Now I deliver the punch line!”

Bill flinched, expecting a fist to appear from nowhere. Stranger things had happened.

“An agnostic dyslexic insomniac stays up all night, wondering if there's a dog!”

The clouds thundered with laughter.

Bill didn't get it, but he figured he'd better laugh too.

“Pretty funny, huh, Bill?”

“You bet, wow, a real yak!”

“I wish I'd made that joke up myself, Bill, I tell you. But I told you that joke for a reason. I generally don't make appearances before people, so when I do I at least try to be slightly oblique about it.”

“Oh ... yeah. I get it,” he said, not getting it at all.

“Bill, don't you understand?” rumbled the voice, groaning with exasperation. “There is a dog!”

“I never had a dog,” said Bill. “I had a robo-mule, though!”

“This borders on the believable. I bet that you can't walk and talk at the same time. Do I have to spell it out for you? Do I have to burn a bush or knock you on the head with tablets or — wait a minute. I know....”

Bill was hardly listening. He was really thirsty and sure could use a drink. And he still hadn't the slightest idea what the invisible voice was talking about. A beer — a really frosty large mug of beer obsessed him.

Zoroaster, he certainly could use one of those!

Suddenly, with a slight pinging sound, a mug of beer materialized before him, just as he'd imagined it!

Bill's reflexes went into gear before his thoughts could engage. He reached out, grabbed the beer and had sucked it halfway down before he realized the miraculous quality of what had just occurred.

“That's pretty good — how is it done?”

The voice seemed fairly writhing with frustration: “That is not the point, you moron. Think about it, my boy. If you can. Think of your previous, unspoken thought. Whose name did you take in vain, wishing for that beer?”

Bill blinked. “Oh. Zoroaster, I think.” He continued drinking the beer. And then it hit him.

He spit out a spume of beer.

“Zoroaster! Is that you? I mean I'm sorry, sir — that is I mean — gulp — is that really you out there? — you really exist!”

“Finally caught on, Bill. This is your god speaking — because you've been a rather bad boy, haven't you? Drinking and chasing girls — and catching them! — and killing Chingers and fragging officers ... all the things quite against the way you were brought up in your church. Am I wrong?”

Bill's insides turned to jelly. Old childhood terrors and tales of hellfire suddenly spasmed up to the surface of his mind and festered there. He hadn't thought about Zoroaster for a long, long time he realized — he'd backslid! Of course there were chapels and stuff in the service, but they were there only to reinforce the concept of the Emperor as God Incarnate and to spike the communion wafers with training-reinforcement drugs. As a child, Bill had been a model altar-boy sort, the pride of his Mother and the lead soprano in the children's choir.

“I haven't been a good Zoroastrian,” moaned Bill, head bowed penitently.

“And what happens to my downsliding children?” said the Voice.

“They are chained to a rock in a sea of fire for a thousand years.”

“Bill, I'm reaching for the chains.” There was a hideous metallic rattling and Bill's stomach dropped into his boots.

“Don't say it, no! You mean ... you mean I'm dead?” With a hideous groan he dropped to his knees, bringing his hands up into contrite prayer. Unfortunately he forgot that he had a half-full mug of beer in his hands and drenched himself.

The Voice tsk-tsked. “Now that's a waste of good beer, Bill.”

“Please! Please! A second chance — that's all I want. Let me live and I promise to live a better life, far far better than I lived before!”

“That certainly would not be hard. But actually, Bill, you're not quite dead yet.”

“I'm not?”

“No. In fact, you're a pretty healthy guy. You've got to be to take the kind of punishment you've been giving yourself. I see cirrhosis eventually, definitely, but another mortal's liver would have been deep-fried by now!”

“I'm alive!” Bill said, laughing, and dancing around. Suddenly, though, he stopped. “But if I'm not dead — where am I, then?”

“It's a little difficult to explain, Bill, particularly to someone with your attention span. Did you ever push the 'Pause' button on a Holo-VCR?”

“Sure. I have a good technical background.”

“You certainly do if you could master something that intricate.” There was an edge of sarcasm to the disembodied voice. “Let's just say that's what I did, Bill. Let's just say that I wanted to have a word or two with you.”

Bill nodded contritely. “I can understand that, oh mighty in your wisdom and kindness, great Zoroaster. I'm listening. Real carefully. You want me to stop drinking? I'll stop drinking. You want me to stop cursing? I'll stop saying 'bowb' forever. I'll start going to chapel again. But no rock! No chains!”

“Not to fear — that's not my bag. It's a scam some priests dreamed up to keep the peasants in line. Just a myth, actually, Bill. Anyway, I'm not here to threaten you. I thought you'd be interested in an opportunity for salvation, redemption, and double-value for your eternal prayer collection.”

Bill nodded eagerly. “Anything you say, Mr. Z.”

“I pulled you out of a major goof-up, while you were diving back through the Stuff between Time and Space, so you were pretty accessible. I don't usually take too much notice of mortal affairs, but this business you're involved in is pretty important. So I grabbed the chance to have a word or two with you.”

“My pleasure, oh mighty Zoroaster!”

“That's more like it, Bill. A little obsequiousness and writhing goes a long way to cheer a god. I consider myself a pretty lenient deity, as deities go. None of my buddy Jawah's stuff about being vengeful and remorseless — or Allah chopping off hands and so forth. My philosophy toward all universal creation has been pretty hands-off. Free will. Stuff like that. The mess that humanity has gotten itself into is pretty much its own fault. Right?”

“Right, bang-on, sir.”

“War, murder, officers, infanticide — they're kind of hard to ignore. But I do my best.”

“But killing Chingers, that's great, right, sir? I'll kill lots of Chingers for you! I'll even blast Bgr, if you want!”

“Well, actually, Bill, that's not quite what I had in mind. Particularly since Chingers are actually a lot better creatures than you human beings. Sometimes I think I dropped your prototypes on their heads or something. No, Bill, not Chingers!”

“Horny-porny comix. They'll have to go.”

“Not if I have my way. Good fun. I'll miss reading them — but you are close. I suppose they are for the knackers, though. My thanks, my boy, for pointing this out. Perhaps you're smarter than I thought. No, it's certainly not horny-porny, Bill. It's the Nazis.”

“The Nazis.”

“Yep. The Nazis. Talk about excrescences. They've got to be stopped, or they'll take over the Universe! I feel them breathing down my neck already.”

“But —”

“Good question, Bill. Why should they bother Me? Well, I'll tell you. The whole thing is really My fault. If a god could feel guilt, I would even feel guilty. You see, I was cooking up a stew of morals and clean living for a new world I'm designing and I left it in the sun and it turned sour. Not thinking, I just threw it away. Unhappily this mass of decay hit Earth, a country in particular called Germany, and that was it. Need I say more?”

Bill blinked. “So what happened?”

There was a celestial sigh. “Well, obviously I do have to say more. Must I explain everything to you? Obviously, yes. The rot spread, and voila. Nazis. Imagine! Nazis, even a lower form of life than lawyers, Emperors or Second Lieutenants.”

“So what do I do, Zoroaster?”

“Simple. Fight Nazism. According to my classified sources, they're the ones behind all this Time Slip business. Stamp them out, Bill, you've got my permission and instructions, do that and my light will shine on you!”

“I'll do it, great Zoroaster! All my Trooper training will be put to the test. But I'll do this. But it would help with the transport problem, if you could tell me where they are, get me in touch with the Nazis.”

“Well, Bill, as much as I would like to, and I really and truly would, there's the problem of intelligence here. I hate to admit it but I really don't know exactly what's going on! Some other deity seems to have a hold on this particular thread of your life, and by golly if he's not doing some fancy cross-stitching with you —”

“But — but —” Bill butted fairly incoherently.

“I know, Bill, it hurts to hear that. I may be immortal but I'm not omnipotent. So you're on your own — although my best wishes go with you of course. So — go get them, tiger!”

And then the clouds parted beneath Bill's feet and he fell once more into total confusion.

Total confusion, Pilgrimworld, was a little two-rocket ship town just this side of Nowhere and well to the Galactic South of Somewhere. It was a well-known place for colonists to stop off to wet their feet in the sort of trials and tribulations they could expect on their respective chosen colony worlds, and maybe wet their whistles on some of the famous homegrown moonshine. The theory was, if you could survive Pilgrimworld's 'shine, you could weather various and sundry conditions on whatever hunk of wasted intergalactic rock you'd cast your lot with.

Bill found himself in the midst of the air, above a sidewalk here in Total Confusion, dropped, as it were, from the very fluff of Time. It was a cement sidewalk, real hard, and Bill had erupted into existence about six feet above it. He went down and hit hard but — experienced Trooper that he was — turned the fall into a shoulder roll that canceled out most of the impact. He climbed to his feet and brushed himself off. Cursing under his breath, he looked around. Not much of a place.

The sky was green.

In the green sky were two — no, three suns.

A few of the passersby, he noted, were not human. Indeed, they completely ignored him and acted as though Galactic Troopers falling from the sky were an everyday occurrence.

Gigantic flowers grew from the conical tops of buildings. A sweet and sour musk, like hair oil and vinegar, was in the air. In the distance, a rocket landed on a pillar of flame.

“Hmm,” said Bill. “I wonder what part of Earth's history I'm in now.” He glanced around. “A weird part, that's for sure!”

Walking down the road was an old man. Bill called out to him. “Say, Pops — you couldn't tell what era of Earth's history is this?”

“You drunk or something, sonny?”

“No — but I wish I was. It's a simple question, isn't it?”

“Nope. Because this ain't Earth, sonny.” The old man spit out tobacco juice. It was a big target but he managed to miss the street and got Bill's boot instead. “This here is Total Confusion!”

“Story of my life,” Bill muttered, looking at the brown stain.

“But wherever you go, sonny-boy, you won't be on Earth. Because this here's Pilgrimworld. The Year of Our Heinous Emperor, Stardate 234152!”

Bill blinked. “Why, that's about a year before I was born. But this is totally another part of the galaxy from Phigerinadon II.”

“You talk like you've lost your marbles. War wound?”

Bill scratched his head. Why, he'd been catapulted through space and time to a completely new place. But why? It just didn't make any sense! But then, what in life of late really did? Except, of course, one steady reliable Reality.

“War wound, something like that,” said Bill. “One more question — a real easy one. Is there a bar around here?”

“Yep. Reckon so. Just 'round the corner, on Utter Nihilism Street, we got a real nice establishment, name of Sally's Saloon. Tell 'em Willie-Boy sent you!”

“Thanks, Willie-Boy!” said Bill, waving to the old geezer as he hobbled over toward the Saloon.

“Hell, I ain't Willie-Boy!” the old man snapped as he staggered away.

But Bill didn't hear him. Visions of beer bottles danced in his head.

Bill rounded the corner marked “Utter Nihilism” and immediately saw the tell-tale neon sign crying out SALLY'S SALOON. He needed a couple drinks before he found out how to get back to Barworld, save the universe from the hippies from Hellworld and the Nazi menace and that kind of thing. He walked into the saloon, which was his kind of bar — dark, damp, smelling of stale beer and dead butts. He grabbed a stool directly in front of a bored-looking bartender with arms the size of Aldebaran hams.

“Willie-boy sent me!” said Bill.

The bartender immediately punched him in the face.

When Bill managed to scrabble his way back up onto the barstool, he had his own fist cocked back to deliver a punch himself.

He found himself looking at the biggest shot glass he'd ever seen, filled with amber fluid that could only be whiskey, alongside a healthy-sized draft beer.

“What?” Bill muttered, head ringing with confusion.

“Code for a practical joke, friend,” said the bartender. “All newcomers on Pilgrimworld get it. This is a frontier world, fella. We get kinda rough, but we're good-hearted people too. Enjoy your free drinks.”

Bill did not need a second invitation. The whiskey was rotten but alcoholic, the beer flat but cold. But what the hell, this was the frontier. As he sipped and looked into the mirror behind the bar, he saw that Elliot Methadrine was coming through the door. Elliot smiled and pulled up a stool next to the shocked figure of Bill.

“Barman, I'll have whatever my friend here is drinking. And tell him to close his mouth before he catches some flies.”

“Ergle!” Bill ergled and clacked his jaw shut. “But you're dead, shot to death in the subway.”