Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell (9 page)

“Not really. I believe that it is a matter of public record that the Knights Temporal are from beyond recorded posteriors!” answered Dudley in a thoroughly smug fashion.

“Hmmm. Guess that makes you guys the butts of jokes!” snorted Uncle Nancy the Bartender.

“Access to the Knights Temporal is one of the Fundamental Keys to the Universe, and a hell of a cheap way to travel!” said Elliot. “However could the hippies from Hellworld have obtained that kind of access?”

Uncle Nancy scratched his head. “Robbed banks?”

“No. No!” Elliot paced the floor. “This is far too crucial, too fundamental an issue! We don't know enough about these hippies, dammit! But I can't help but feel as though an understanding of their access to the Knights Temporal — and a comprehension of you knights yourselves — is crucial to the success of this mission!”

The shining Portal glowed a positively numinous sheen with pleasure at the prospect of explaining the story of the Knights Temporal.

“Ahem!” he began. "In the beginning, even before Marmite and traffic wardens, Certificates of Deposit and talkie movies, there was a good deal of nothing but space and absolutely no time for anything or anybody. The local cosmic galactic race at that time first invented overdraughts and Irish jokes to try to make sense of things. That's our lot, mind you — the Knights Temporal. However, needless to say, none of this really worked, since often as not you finished doing something before you began, which caused all manner of confusion and made it rather difficult to calculate interest on CDs. 'What we need,' posited a singularly intelligent gentleman Knight Philosopher-Scientist, Simon Temporal, 'is some sort of order to this wretched chaos. I mean, when you don't know when it is the right hour of the day to take tea, that's not civilization.'

"And so Simon Temporal invented the idea of Time. This startling and revolutionary concept was such a profound notion that at first it was far too cosmic an idea for general dissemination and it took a few eons to assimilate. But when it did, the suns and planets started to tick off those days and years like wretched cosmic clockwork, erstwhile life ebbed and flowed, civilizations flowered and died. Although the ultimate boring truth at the core of it all was that it all has about as much relevance as a monkey's ballocks in a nunnery, at least you could measure how many years of boring nothingness an average life held.

“Now this was all very well and now we could soft-boil eggs just right, but for the Knights Temporal, you understand, it was all just a concept. You see, time is actually just a kind of brainwashing on a gross atomic level. It really doesn't exist for us, unless we imagine it does, utilizing these stainless steel and crystalloid casings. We simply modulate the degree of collective molecular imagination generated by the universe. Thus we can transport — and be transported — through so-called Time — and always be the first to arrive at good parties that we never have to leave. In any case this is all rather boring, and I am sure impenetrable to your teeny-tinies as well.”

Uncle Nancy made a face. “I still don't understand what that has to do with hippies! And how in hell do I get my bar back?”

Bill scratched his crotch with grim depression. He hadn't the slightest idea what was happening or what they were talking about. And even worse, when he could get the next drink.

“Even through your fog of temporal confusion I see some meaning,” philosophised Elliot. “Meaning penetrates and I understand now! Somehow, the hippies understood this on a preconscious level ... and hypothesized your existence. They didn't exactly summon you as we had to. They calculated that for some reason you'd be here at a certain hour, minute, second and that you'd be open for the exact leap they needed ... to wherever that was! Thus the agent was able to go back in Time and change history.”

“But why this Nazi stuff?” asked Uncle Nancy. “That hardly jibes with my understanding of essential hippie philosophy.”

“We can puzzle that out later!” said Elliot. “Right now, we have to go back and undo the damage that bearded bowb did.” He spun to face the Time Portal. “Dudley ... Sir, if I may make the supposition that that is your honorable title.”

“Why yes, indeed it is!” the Time Portal simpered, pleased with this crafty bit of bumsucking.

“All you need to do is open your Portal again just as it was when the hippie leaped and allow us to jump through! In that way, we can go back and undo the damage!”

“Damage? Again, I see no damage. In truth I suppose the long and short of it is, Mr. Elliot Methadrine, Time Cop — and I must be insistent on this point — what's in it for me?”

“Well, I have a couple of megabucks I brought for expenses.”

“Ah! Excellent! Far more than the hippie paid me! Let's have a look at this money, and then I'll see about this adjustment.”

Elliot took out the shining discs, the cross-eyed semblance of the Emperor glowing from each of them. A cash-register drawer 'chinged!' open from the alienoid interior of the Time Portal and swallowed up the offering.

“Super! Now then, my part of the bargain. Just allow me a few moments for a bit of concentration!” Antennae extended, quivering. Static electricity crackled between Van Der Graaf generatorlike coils. Dollar and cent signs erupted from the portion that held the cash register.

“My God! He's doing it!” cried Uncle Nancy, pointing as Time mists poured through the glowing hole.

Bill looked. Sure enough in the moil and parti-colored fractious fantasy uncoiling within the Time Portal, Bill was able to see an image — a Time Ghost, if you will — of that hippie from Hellworld leaping through the space between Now and some other Then and disappearing in a twinkle of stars.

“Yes!” cried Elliot. “That's it! That's the instant! Hold that thought!” He turned to Bill and Uncle Nancy. “Well, guys! The Moment of Truth! Are you with me?”

“Uh,” said Uncle Nancy, grinning artificially. “I'm just a simple barkeep. It is my duty I think to ... maybe I could do with some aerobic exercise! Maybe pump some iron! A few laps around the pool! You guys stay in touch, hear. Let me know how all this comes out.” The bartender shuffled backwards, grinning smarmily.

“Whatever,” said Elliot. “Come on, Bill. Let's show the universe some real men in action!”

“You know,” said Bill inarticulately, “I've been kind of, you know, feeling poorly lately. Maybe a month's training would put me in better shape for this kind of particular mission.”

“...maybe they'll hire me to push their kumquat yogurt coolers!” came Uncle Nancy's voice, drifting back from the door.

“Kumquat yogurt coolers!” The very notion put a halt to Bill's intended departure. It stopped him long enough for Elliot to grab him.

“Come Trooper! Let's start earning the Emperor's bucks!”

The next thing Bill knew, Elliot Methadrine had hurled him straight into the maw of the Time Portal.

Bill was familiar with the concept of failing upward. Certainly his graduation to his present position in the Troopers showed that this was basic to the law of bureaucratic mobility. However, never before had he ever had the sensation of falling upward — which was exactly what it felt like; what was happening now.

Nor was it remotely like drifting in zero gravity.

No, it was as though the universe had suddenly turned around 180 degrees and he'd been pushed off some cliff and was headed up, not down, at a steadily accelerating speed toward ominous rocks above. Rocks that felt like they were below.

Wobbly stomach, butterfly brain — rushing of air, smell of rotting gym bag, scream of fear.

Then, at the last moment, the rocks veered away and Time itself came hurtling into this meaningless maelstrom.

And then Bill struck the ground — soft as the foamiest feather.

For the briefest of moments, he seemed to lose consciousness, and when he awoke it was with the light-headed feeling as though he were recovering from a faint. Which was a hell of a lot better, actually, than waking up from a massive hangover, or waking up dead, but was still disorienting.

Where the bowb was he anyway, Bill pondered puzzledly as he looked around.

He seemed to be in some sort of valley, surrounded by a vista of pine-topped mountains.

A bright sun shone hot and fiery and merciless in an infinitely azure sky.

The ground he was on was dry, fringed with scatterings of brown grass and spattered with stands of beautiful flowering saguaro cacti.

A desert! He was in some kind of desert. He felt around for a canteen, hoping that there was something cold and liquidly alcoholic inside. No canteen, no beer. Oh, well. Hadn't he read in his favorite book, his bible, A HEAVY DRINKER'S GUIDE TO HEAVY DRINKING, that tequila was made out of a kind of cactus? Plenty of the latter around. Must be a few bottles at least of the former.

But before Bill could begin his traditional search for drink, he was distracted by a sudden thump and a startled “Ooff!”

He turned to find Elliot Methadrine facefirst in a pile of sand, rear end prickly from an unfortunate run-in with a cactus limb on the way down.

“Ouch!” expostulated Elliot, slowly climbing to his feet and twisting his head around to try and inspect his rear. Gingerly, he began pulling the spikes from their pincushion placement.

“Yow! You must have a high pain threshold!” said Bill, cringing with posterial empathy at the spectacle. “Me, I'd like a strong drink before I tried that.” He turned around and looked at where they'd landed. “You know, Elliot, I'm afraid I don't see a whole lot of history that can be changed around here!”

Elliot ploinked the last cactus needle from his backside, then looked about doubtfully. “You haven't seen that hippie around here, then.”

“No. All I see are those pretty guano birds hovering up there. Maybe they're the intelligent aliens of this planet and they're here to greet us.”

“No, Bill,” said Elliot. “Those are buzzards. I'm afraid they're waiting for us to die so they can eat us. Beak straight up the arse and soft guts first. Eyeballs for dessert.”

“Don't talk like that!” Bill quavered, then looked back up at the hovering things with alarm. “That's not the way I want to die. In fact — I don't want to die at all! Anyway, where the hell are we, Elliot? Have you got a clue? And when you get the clue — what do we do?”

“I'm not totally sure, but it looks a hell of a lot like Duneworld or Desertplanet or, if you can believe the holohistories, a desert back on long-gone-but-never-forgotten Earth. You know what would be real nice right about now?”

“A beer ... no, two beers. Make that three beers!”

“Shut up, Bill. I could use a talk with that Time Portal, Dudley Do-Do.”

“Maybe he'll bring us a six-pack,” Bill said doubtfully. Already, that scorching sun was getting hot on the back of his neck and he could feel his sensitive scalp broiling under the heavy-duty burner heat waves that sizzled him.

“Did I indeed hear my honored name being taken in vain, gentlemen?” came that proper British accent.

Bill and Elliot spun around.

There, in a spot judiciously distant from prickly cactus plants, materialized none other than the aforementioned Sir Dudley. In a halo of shimmering lights the Time Portal dipped into this particular reality.

“Speak!” Bill cozened. “Where the hell are we?”

“Is this where that hippie went?” demanded Elliot.

The crystalline array of controls inside the Portal winked and blipped and danced to a tune curiously similar to the Colonel Bogie march. The TV set flashed images of historical periods, then seemed to get stuck for an endless period on a monumentally dull cricket match.

The Portal was mute then for a suspiciously long period of time.

“Dudley?” said Elliot. “Sir Dudley. We presume you are checking your controls to answer our question?”

“Hmm? No, actually I was watching England playing India. Damned foreigners are thrashing us. Pardon me?”

“You're supposed to be checking on that hippie who's changed the universe!”

“Well, you'll have to excuse me, but cricket hasn't changed a jot! Longest, most boring game really, cricket. Gets in the blood though. That is, it would get in my blood if I had any. An intellectual sport perhaps —”

“Shut up!” Bill hinted as he scratched his cooking head, burning his fingers in the process. “I don't want to hear about games — I want to hear about out of here!”

The Time Portal, rapt and fascinated by its monologue, ignored him. “I have thought a lot about the game of cricket. It's eternal, so it doesn't really count as a game. But back to that hippie bounder, eh?” The lights began their antic parade once more, finally flashing all at once in a climactic paroxysm. A John Philip Soused march (Bill's favorite) sounded from the speakers.

“You've found him! You've found him!” said Bill.

“Well, frankly, no, I haven't. Curious. Seems to be a bit of a commotion back at Central.”

“Central?”

“Yes. The Paradox Processor seems to be overloading. Oh dear, I'm being summoned back!”

Sir Dudley the Time Portal began to tremble and shake. Then, slowly, he began to fade into thin air.

“Wait! Come back!” cried Elliot.

“At least leave us something to drink!” cried Bill.

“Sorry, gentlemen! I shall make every effort to return. I do hope you survive on this godforsaken —”

And then, with an imploding plop the Time Portal plopped out of existence. An arid wind whined mournfully in his place, stirring up a dust devil — and then all was still.

Elliot shook his head. “Damn! If that doesn't beat all! The bastard didn't even bother to tell us where the hell we are. Not the place, the year, the date, the time ... absolutely nothing. We can only presume that somehow this is the place where that hippie went. And this is where he changed Time, the future and the past. Where he did the dirty deed that we must reverse.”

“What about that Time Ticker of yours, Mr. Time Cop?” asked Bill.

“Ah, yes. Little problem with that item!” Elliot pointed down. The mechanism was on the ground, dial faces cracked, obviously inoperative.

“Well, at least you can try and fix it!” said Bill, screaming with incredulity. “I mean, we've got to do something to find out where we are!”