The Outpost (20 page)

“What the hell does that have to do with your religion?” asked Max irritably.

“You asked for prophets, I gave you prophets,” replied Billy Karma.

“Not the kind anyone would want to write up in a bible,” said Max.

“You didn’t specify Old Testament-type prophets.”

“I didn’t ask for any prophets at all.”

“Then what the hell are you bitching about?” demanded Billy Karma. “Get uppity with me and I’ll bring a rain of toads down on you.”

“Ain’t no such thing,” said Max.

“Don’t bet on it,” interjected Sinderella. “Every time I go out I’m immediately surrounded by more unkissed frogs and toads than you can shake a stick at.”

“What a pair of lost opportunities,” said Bet-a-World O’Grady, shaking his head sadly.

“You leave her opportunities alone!” said Max, who seemed determined to fight with
some
one about
some
thing.

“I’m talking about the Isaiah brothers,” said O’Grady. “A man who knew how to use what they had to offer could own half the galaxy in a year’s time.”

Big Red had been translating for Einstein, who suddenly tapped something on his computer, and Big Red’s screen immediately lit up with a number that seemed to cover the whole of it. He held it up in front of O’Grady.

“You know what this is?” he asked.

“A googol?” guessed O’Grady.

“The yearly tax on half the galaxy. Einstein just computed it.” He grinned. “Do you
really
want to own it?”

“Well, if I
did
own it, I’d go to Deluros VIII and sit down opposite the Monarch and pull out a deck of cards and we could cut for the tax—double or nothing.”

“What if you lost?” asked Hellfire Bailey.

“With
my
deck?” replied O’Grady as if that was the silliest statement he’d heard all week—which it probably was.

“Forgive me,” said Bailey with a smile. “I lost my head.”

“So, Catastrophe Baker,” said the Reverend Billy Karma, “are you about ready to join my church?”

“I’m giving it some thought,” said Baker. “A man ought to have something to do of a Sunday morning.”

“You mean besides rape, carnage, plunder, murder, and sleeping late?” said a deep voice from the doorway, and we all turned to see who had wandered in. “I can’t imagine what it might be.”

They were an eye-catching couple. The woman was tall and shapely, with coal-black hair and eyes, and matching black lipstick. The man was as big as Catastrophe Baker, which was going some. He had wild red hair, and a bushy red beard, and was wearing an outfit made from the furs of various alien polar animals. I knew from the descriptions I’d heard that it couldn’t be anyone but Hurricane Smith.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Baker.

“Probably you will be,” agreed Smith, “but pour me a drink first.”

Smith and his companion walked to the bar, where he and Baker hugged and pummeled each other with enough energy to have killed anyone else in the room except maybe Gravedigger Gaines.

“It’s good to see you again, Hurricane!” said Baker. “And who is this elegant lady by your side?”

“This here is Langtry Lily,” answered Smith. “We’re on our honeymoon!”

“Well, congratulations to both of you!” boomed Baker. “Do you mind if I kiss the bride?”

“You remember what happened the last time you kissed one of my female companions?” answered Smith with a smile. “And
that
was a lady I’d only known for ten minutes.”

I stepped over to greet them. “What can I have Reggie get for you?” I asked. “The first one is always on the house.”

“I’ll have some Denebian firewater,” said Smith. “How about you, my dear?”

Langtry Lily whispered something in his ear.

“Have you got a gallon of coffee somewhere in the back there?” he asked.

“No problem,” I said.

“Maybe a pint of cream?”

“Yeah, there’s always some around.”

“And a pound of sugar?”

“That’s an awful lot of sugar,” I said.

“She’s got a sweet tooth. Can you do it?”

“A gallon of coffee, a pint of cream, and a pound of sugar,” I repeated. “Yeah, we can do it.”

“Good,” he said, escorting Langtry Lily to a table. “Now, hold the coffee and hold the cream, and bring what’s left.”

I’ve had stranger orders, though not too many, so I shrugged and gave Reggie his instructions.

“Hey, you’re that Pelopenne lady that the Hurricane ran off with, aren’t you?” asked Nicodemus Mayflower.

“She’s my wife,” snapped Smith. “That ought to be enough for you.”

“No offense meant,” said Mayflower hastily. “The Hurricane and I served together. I got nothing against the Pelopennes.”

“So is she or isn’t she?” whispered Sitting Horse.

Just then an insect flew by Smith’s table. Langtry Lily opened her mouth, her tongue shot out a good twenty inches and snared it, and an instant later we could hear an unladylike crunching sound, followed by a quick
gulp
.

“She is,” answered Crazy Bull.

“Geez!” sighed Sinderella. “Do you know how much money I could have made with a tongue even half that long?”

“A man of the cloth can’t stand by while a possible parishioner expresses such feelings of inadequacy,” said the Reverend Billy Karma. “Why don’t you come by later and try your physical shortcomings out on me?”

“Because I don’t want you trying
your
physical shortcomings out on
me
,” answered Sinderella.

When the laughter died down, Baker walked over and joined Hurricane Smith and Langtry Lily at their table.

“What brings you to the Outpost?” he asked.

“Truth to tell, I wasn’t originally headed here,” replied Smith. “But there’s an awful lot of shooting going on over in the next system, and since I’d heard of this place I thought it might be a nice spot to hole up until they get their war over with.”

“Either side fire on you?” asked the Bard.

“Hell,
both
sides fired on us,” said Smith. “Who are they mad at, anyway?”

“Pretty much everybody, as near as I can tell,” answered Baker.

“Hey, Hurricane,” said Gravedigger Gaines, “are you going to introduce me to your missus, even if I can’t kiss her?”

“That all depends,” responded Smith warily. “Are you still a bounty hunter?”

“I gave that up years ago.”

“Glad to hear it. I always liked you, except when you were shooting at me.”

“Well, damn it all,” said the Gravedigger, “I always figured you and I could be great friends if you’d just stop trying to kill me.”

“Hell, ain’t no time like the present,” said Smith, extending his huge hand.

“Sounds good to me,” said the Gravedigger, taking it in his own oversized paw.

“Honey,” said Smith to his wife, “this is my—”

Her eyes went wide and she started drooling uncontrollably on the table.

“Uh … sorry about that,” said Smith hastily. “Used the wrong word,” he explained to Hurricane Smith. “Langtry, this is my friend Gravedigger Gaines, who used to be the best enemy a man could have. Gravedigger, this is Langtry Lily.”

Langtry Lily glared at the Gravedigger and hissed.

“It was just
business
,” explained Smith. “I never held it against him.”

“Honest, ma’am,” added Gaines. “There was no one on the Inner Frontier I was less eager to go up against, and no one I would have been prouder to collect the reward on. Except maybe for that ugly blonde guy over there,” he added, jerking his thumb in Baker’s direction.

“Anyway, we’re friends now,” said Smith.

“We were never enemies, just business rivals,” said the Gravedigger.

“It’s like athletes who play on different teams,” explained Smith.

Langtry Lily looked from one of them to the other, then finally smiled at Gaines. It was the kind of smile men went out and died for—or, in the case of the Pelopennes, deserted by the thousands for.

“Didn’t there used to be an actress called Langtry Lily back when we were still Earthbound?” asked Little Mike Picasso.

“Lily Langtry,” answered Smith. “My Langtry is an actress too.”

“Really?” said Little Mike. “I try to keep up on the theatre. When was her most recent performance?”

“Five’ll get you ten it’s right this minute,” said O’Grady with a chuckle.

“We don’t hide what she really is,” said Smith. “We just thought you’d all feel more comfortable seeing her like this. But if you’d rather—”

“No!” hollered Baker. “I still plan on eating sometime this week. I don’t want nothing to kill my appetite.”

At the mention of the word “eat,” Langtry Lily emptied the pound of sugar on the table in front of her. Then a kind of straw emerged from a corner of her mouth, and she began sucking up the sugar with loud slurping noises.

“And this don’t bother you none?” asked Baker.

“There are … ah … compensations,” said Smith.

“Yeah, I saw one of them when she nailed the fly,” said Sinderella.

“God teaches us not to be jealous,” said Billy Karma. “I really think you’re ripe for some private counseling, my dear.”

“I’m afraid not, Reverend,” said Sinderella. “I’ve got better things to do with my time than listen to you croak ‘Compensate me, baby! Compensate me!’ in a voice like a strangulated duck.”

“Funny,” said Billy Karma, half to himself. “I can’t think of anything better to do with
my
time.”

“Go sacrifice a virgin on the altar of love,” said Sinderella.

“I’d be more than happy to accommodate you,” answered Billy Karma, “but you’ve no idea how difficult it is to
find
a virgin these days.”

“It always was,” said Max.

“Me and Hurricane knew a guy who found one once,” said Baker. “Remember?”

“How could I forget?” said Smith. “That must have been, oh, ten or twelve years ago.”

“So let’s hear about it,” said the Bard.

“If you insist,” replied Baker with a weary sigh.

Johnny Testosterone and the Temple Virgin

There was this guy called Johnny Testosterone who wiped out a whole army of aliens (said Baker). For his reward, he was given the Temple Virgin.

The end.

“Loses a little something in the retelling, don’t it?” said Max dryly.

“Well, it ain’t much of a story,” responded Baker sullenly. “I’m hardly in it at all.”

“Still, it was a better story than
that
,” said Smith.

“How would you know?” Baker shot back. “I was emptying the wine cellar and you were off with a God-knows-what doing God-knows-what-else.”

Langtry Lily reached out to hold Hurricane Smith’s hand. Suddenly her own hand became a mandible, and she dug it into his flesh.

“He’s exaggerating, my dear!” said Smith, painfully pulling his hand away and wiping the blood from it as her mandible became a feminine human hand again. “Besides, it was a long time ago!”

She leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

“All right, all right, if you insist,” he said, and then turned to the rest of us. “I’ve been requested to tell the true story.”

“The whole thing?” asked Max. “I get the feeling Catastrophe left out a couple of details here and there.”

“The whole story,” promised Hurricane Smith.

Johnny Testosterone and the Temple Virgin

First of all (began Smith), his name wasn’t really Johnny Testosterone. That was just the name he took when he hit the Frontier, probably in the hope of impressing the ladies, as I never noticed him behave any differently or score any more often than the rest of us.

His real name was Johnny Potts. It didn’t make the kind of lasting impression on people that Catastrophe Baker or Gravedigger Gaines did, so he dumped it as soon as he could. Then he began dressing to match his new name. Wore his shirts unbuttoned down to the navel, tied a silk scarf around his neck, and his trousers were so tight you’re swear he was auditioning for a ballet. Even tinted his skin tan. Women loved it; men thought he looked kind of silly.

Still, once push came to shove, he could handle his fists and his weapons with the best of them, and he wasn’t scared of anything except maybe Catastrophe Baker when he was drunk, which is a mighty reasonable attitude to have, so we let him travel out to the Albion Cluster with us.

There’s a lot more to the hero business than meets the eye. One of the biggest problems is that actions which seem properly heroic to us get our holographs on wanted posters and attract a lot of men like the Gravedigger here, despite the fact that we never did him any harm.

Anyway, the three of us—Catastrophe, Johnny and me—got word that there was a religious colony on Leviticus IV that needed heroes more than most. Seems that some aliens had landed and set up shop there, and it was against the colonists’ religion to raise a hand in anger, even to defend themselves.

It was a very elastic religion, though, since it didn’t seem to have anything against
other
people raising hands in anger on their behalf. Before long we heard that there was a substantial reward for anyone who freed them from the yoke of alien tyranny, and while none of us had any serious philosophic objections to aliens or tyranny, we had all kinds of objections to not collecting substantial rewards. So we passed the word that we were heading to Leviticus IV and weren’t in the mood for any competition, and once people heard that Catastrophe Baker and Hurricane Smith didn’t want any company, they suddenly remembered that they had urgent business elsewhere.