Doctor and the Kid, The (A Weird West Tale) (Weird West Tales) (11 page)

“Let's concentrate on
useful
thinking,” said Edison. He turned to Holliday. “We don't have anything out here that's as impervious to weaponry as the train station, but before we're done today we'll have a pretty good idea what these inventions can do. I can't believe at least one of them won't solve the problem.”

Holliday turned and looked at the back of the wagon. “I can't see through the tarp,” he said, “but it sure doesn't look like you've got anything as big as a cannon back there.”

“We don't,” answered Edison.

“I don't know,” said Holliday dubiously. “We already know cannonballs bounced right off it.”

“Never mistake size for strength,” said Edison, as they passed out of town and headed toward the mines.

“I know you're the genius and I'm the shootist,” said Holliday, “but that whole damned valley is resistant to cannons, guns, fire, everything. It's going to take a whole train to carry a weapon that can make a dent in it.”

Edison merely smiled.

“Aren't you going to answer me?” demanded Holliday.

“When I'm sure no one can see us,” replied Edison.

They went another four miles, and the landscape, which was never colorful, became a duller brown. There were a few stray cactus plants and the occasional bush. Trees were few and far between, and it was hot enough that the lizards, the snakes, and the insects all chose to remain in their lairs below the ground. What had been occasional rocky outcroppings as they first left the city limits became more common. Edison finally nodded to Buntline, who pulled the team to a halt.

“Do you see that rocky ridge off to the left?” asked Edison.

“Of course I do,” said Holliday.

“Ned, can you climb down and pull out that device we came up with Thursday—no, Friday—afternoon?”

Buntline got off the wagon, went around the side, lifted the tarp, found what he was looking for, and carried it around to the front, where he handed it up to Edison.

“That looks like about half of a metal broom handle,” remarked Holliday.

“Oh, it's a little bigger than that,” replied Edison, fiddling with some buttons and knobs at one end of it. “Three inches in diameter, twenty-four inches long.” He pointed to a bulge beneath the knobs. “Can you give me the cord, Ned?”

Buntline handed him a heavy rubber-coated wire that he attached to two thick metal pins.

“And it's plugged into the battery in the wagon?” asked Edison.

“Yes, it is, Tom.”

“Okay, it's a
big
metal broom handle,” said Holliday, staring at it. “What has all this got to do with the ridge over there?”

“Watch,” said Edison, pointing the device toward the ridge. He fiddled with the buttons, cursed when nothing happened, then touched them in a different order. Holliday thought he heard a very soft whining for perhaps ten seconds. Then it stopped, but not before the rocky ridge had turned entirely to rubble and a cloud of dust.

“This little thing did
that?”
demanded Holliday.

Edison nodded. “I'm thinking of calling it a Deconstructor.”

“It
really
did it?”

“Really,” replied Edison, looking very pleased with himself.

Holliday turned to Buntline. “Whip the hell out of these horses, Ned! I've seen Hook Nose's magic. Now I want to get to the mine and see what kind of magic we've got in the back of this wagon!”

T

The mine looked like all the others, a large rocky outcropping with a cave entrance, enhanced and widened by the miners, with abandoned cart tracks leading to the interior. Buntline and Edison untied the tarp that was covering their equipment. Holliday was about to help when he experienced another coughing seizure. It was when he was putting his blood-soaked handkerchief away in a pocket that Edison turned and stared at him.

“Is there
anything
you can do about that, Doc?” he asked. “I don't know how much blood a man carries around, but you're ridding yourself of it at an alarming rate.”

“The body reproduces blood,” noted Buntline.

“Not as fast as he's coughing it up, I'll wager,” said Edison.

“I'll take that wager,” said Holliday with a sardonic smile. “After all, if I lose, I won't be around to pay off.”

“Well,” said Buntline, “I suppose it's a better attitude than being morose.”

“I have my morose moments,” said Holliday. “I just don't choose to share them.” He walked around to the back of the wagon. “So what have you got here?”

“Just about everything we could come up with on short notice,” answered Edison as the sun glinted off all the bronze objects, some looking like weapons, others looking like nothing Holliday had ever seen or imagined. Even after staring at them for a long minute, Holliday couldn't determine how more than half of them would be used, or what their functions were. “The problem is that even if something works here, it doesn't mean it'll work on a station that's protected by Hook Nose's magic—and conversely, if it doesn't work here, that doesn't mean it
won't
work on the station.”

Holliday frowned. “Then what the hell are we doing here?”

“Testing them out,” said Edison. “We won't know if
any
of them work until we give them this field test. So far these are just theories that Ned's given physical form to, but what works on paper or in theory doesn't always work in practice.”

“What about that one?” asked Holliday, indicating a multibarreled rifle. “It looks like a Gatling gun.”

“Same principle,” said Buntline. “I improved on Gatling a bit. It's more accurate, the barrels will turn faster, and it's considerably lighter. You could carry this one for a mile or more, whereas most Gatling guns have to be transported by wagon.”

“That's all very well,” said Holliday. “But when all is said and done, it's a Gatling gun and we already know the station can't be penetrated by bullets.”

“Have a little faith in your partners,” said Edison with a smile. He turned to Buntline, “Ned, you want to load it?”

“How many rounds?” asked Buntline, carefully pulling out a small wooden box.

“Oh, I think a dozen will do it.”

Buntline opened the box, and Holliday leaned forward and stared at it. “They're just bullets, each one wrapped in cotton,” he said.

“Not quite,” said Edison, still smiling.

“Brass casings, and they're the right size,” said Holliday as Buntline very gingerly loaded the first bullet.

“Pick one up, Doc,” said Edison. “And be very careful how you handle it. Above all, don't drop it.”

Holliday reached over and pulled out a bullet, then held it up to examine it. Suddenly he frowned.

“What the hell is
that,”
he said, indicating the nose. “It's sure as hell not lead.”

“It isn't,” confirmed Edison.

“Looks like glass,” continued Holliday.

“Probably because it is,” said Buntline, continuing to load the weapon.

“If you thought shattering glass against the station would harm it, we wouldn't be here in Arizona testing things out,” said Holliday. “What am I not understanding?”

“Instead of shooting a lead bullet, this rifle will shoot a specially made glass pellet,” explained Edison. “Inside the pellet is a small amount of nitroglycerin, the same explosive that the miners have been using for half a dozen years.”

“And you think one little pellet…?”

“I doubt it,” continued Edison. “That's why we'll be shooting them from this specially constructed Gatling gun. Each will hit the target with explosive force, and we'll hit the same spot twelve times in maybe six seconds.” He paused while Holliday assimilated what he'd said. “It just might be strong enough to break through Hook Nose's magic.”

“Why bother testing it here, then?” asked Holliday. “You won't know until you shoot it at the station.”

“These are explosive bullets, Doc. If you drop them, or even shake them too much, they make a mighty big bang.”

“So?”

“I'd like to know that the first or second time we fire the gun, with it's noise and its kick, that the other ten or eleven bullets don't blow up inside the gun.”

Holliday turned to Buntline, who was loading the final bullet. “And you're going to test it?”

Buntine chuckled. “How stupid do I look?”

“Well, you're sure as hell not getting
me
to fire the damned gun,” said Holliday.

“Nobody's going to fire it,” said Edison. “At least, not the way you mean.”

Buntline pulled a brass stand with long, thin legs off the wagon and set it up about fifty feet from the entrance to the
Silver Spoon.
Then he led the horses and wagon about one hundred yards farther from the mine, took a cord that was on a large reel, and pulled it over to the stand.

“The other end is connected to a battery and a little control switch in the wagon,” explained Edison. “Now Ned will attach the rifle and aim it at the entrance of the mine.”

“If it works, no one will ever get into the mine again,” noted Holliday.

“We have other devices that should fix that,” replied Edison.

Buntline attached the gun to the stand, and the cord to the firing mechanism, then aimed the weapon at the mine.

“Okay,” he said, walking back to the wagon. Edison and Holliday followed suit.

“Doc,” said Edison, pointing to a switch at the side of the wagon, “would you like the honors?”

“What do I do?” asked Holliday.

“Just throw the switch, and then protect your ears, because
something
is going to explode—either the mine or the gun.”

Holliday walked over to the switch, placed his hand on it, turned so he could observe the results, and threw it.

The explosions came so close together it sounded like one long
Boom!
The rifle fell off its stand, but not before it had emptied its chambers of the nitro-filled bullets.

The smoke and dust obscured the entrance to the mine for a full minute. Then an errant breeze blew the dust cloud away, and suddenly they could see the results of their experiment. The entrance to the
Silver Spoon
, which could easily accommodate five men walking abreast, was now totally sealed off by debris from the ceiling and walls.

“What do you think?” asked Edison.

“It'll do,” said Buntline.

“What about the gun?”

“I was watching it,” said Buntline. “It fell after the eleventh shot. I don't know where the hell the twelfth went. So if it didn't have enough kick to fall off the stand with the first few shots, it can be handled.”

“And it'll have to be,” said Edison. “We keep talking about the station, but we've got to get rid of the tracks, and anything else we may have missed when we were there, like perhaps a storage shed behind the station, or whatever.”

“You could get rich selling this to the army,” suggested Holliday.

“We
are
rich,” replied Buntline. “And before we sell it to the army, we have to make sure it does what it's supposed to do. Remember, if it won't work against the station, then it won't work against any Indians who are protected by their medicine men.”

“But if it
does
work,” added Edison, “indeed if anything we try out here works, then we've taken our first major step toward combating the medicine men's magic—which, when all is said and done, is why I'm not tending my garden in Ohio.”

“All right,” said Holliday, peering into the back of the wagon. “What else have you got in here?”

“I've never liked guns or explosives,” said Edison. “Electricity is my forte.”

“You used electricity to fire the Gatling gun,” noted Holliday.

“Only as a convenience, until we could be sure it wouldn't blow up,” replied Edison. “But
this
little item”—he pulled out a device that seemed to be all spokes and buttons, made totally of Buntline's super-hard brass—“will use electricity as a weapon, not as an ignition.”

“What does it do?” asked Holliday.

“It works on the same principle as the Deconstructor, but it generates a much broader field.”

“Where's the battery?”

“We'll use the same one that powered the gun,” answered Edison. “It isn't depleted yet.”

Another breeze came up, and the men all turned their backs and covered their faces as best they could. Then Buntline heard the horses shuffling uncomfortably, and turned them away from the wind.

The breeze died down as suddenly as it had begun, the dust settled out of the air, and the men went back to work. Buntline walked to the multibarreled rifle, unplugged the cord, and pulled it back to Edison, who plugged it into the angular brass device.

“I've got a question,” said Holliday. “This brass of yours—bullets don't dent it, you can't melt it, you can't even scratch it. So how do you mold it into all these shapes?”

An amused smile crossed Buntline's face. “Hardening it is the
last
step in the process, Doc. No way I could shape it once it's as hard as the final product.”

Edison walked to the now-filled entrance to the mine, set the device on the ground, and walked back to the wagon.

“Another bang coming up?” asked Holliday.

“It should be silent as a tomb.”

“Then why are you back here instead of aiming it?”

“I've already aimed it,” said Edison. “Those longer spokes, the ones that curve in, will generate the field. But there's always a chance that the brass will become too hot to hold, or, more likely, that the heat generated by the field will be overwhelming, so until I know all of the unintended consequences I think it's much more intelligent—to say nothing of being safer—to stand back here and observe.”

“It isn't doing a damned thing,” said Holliday.

“I haven't activated it yet,” replied Edison. “I wanted to be sure I was out of harm's way—well, as far from potential harm as possible—before generating the field.”

“You say that as if I know what it means to generate a field,” said Holliday.

“Don't worry about it,” said Edison. “Just watch.” He turned to Buntline, “Okay, Ned, let's see what it can do.”

Buntline, who had detached the cord from the battery when the first experiment was over, now attached it again. There was no explosion, no light, no humming, nothing to indicate the device was working, and Holliday was just about to make that observation when the rocks and dust blocking the entrance to the mine simply vanished.

“Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Holliday.

“Not bad,” commented Buntline.

“It's too damned bad that the landscape isn't littered with castles, and that we're not conquerors,” remarked Holliday.

“Well, so far so good,” said Edison. “Our luck can't last much longer.”

“Why not?” asked Holliday.

“Every one of these is an experimental device that's never been tested before,” replied Edison. “It's the nature of such things that most will be failures.”

“What do you want to try next?” asked Buntline.

“Well, if it works, my guess is that the most effective of all of these devices will be the Imploder.”

“I
m
ploder, not
ex
ploder?” asked Holliday.

“Right.”

“What does it do?”

“It's my belief that everything—you, me, that bush, the wagon,
everything
—is composed of tiny particles, so small that you can't see them, not even with a magnifying glass or a microscope,” said Edison. “There is space between them, just as there is between the planets. Just as an
ex
plosion blows things apart, an
im
plosion presses them together. Take yourself, for example. An explosion, if it's powerful enough, might very well spread you over two or even three acres. An implosion might reduce you to the size of an apple.”

“That's pretty weird stuff,” said Holliday. “Have you discussed this with anyone—I mean, with anyone who can argue the subject?”

“I've mentioned it to a few colleagues,” answered Edison. “Some believe in these particles, some don't. Time will tell who's right.”

“But we can go a long way toward proving Tom's right if the Imploder works,” added Buntline.

“Do
you
believe in these tiny particles?” asked Holliday.

“I don't know,” said Buntline. “But I'm willing to help prove it one way or the other.” He reached into the back of the wagon and withdrew a device that looked like a sister to the Deconstructor—brass, cylindrical, an opening at one end, a switch at the other. Buntline attached it to the battery then handed it to Edison.