L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 (19 page)

Which meant they were okay.

I slid my Colt outa the leather. I’d been closest when the door exploded. It still stood, splintered an’ swayin’ on one hinge. I crawled forward to the four or five steps leadin’ t’ground level an’ snicked off the thumb-safety.

There was a
crunch,
an’ a furry foot smashed through the ruined door, followed by the chimp it belonged to. Decked out in commando paisley, he carried a pistol in each mitt. Behind me I felt, rather than saw, Fran Sanders raisin’ her plasma-gun t’pick him off. I breast-stroked with my left hand, tellin’ her t’hold fire until we saw what else we were up against.

The first chimp was followed by a second in a disgustin’ squash-colored leisure suit, then by a very familiar paira faces: Denny Kent an’ Edna Janof squeezed into the entry hall, each carryin’ some kinda huge-bored two-handed weapon. Coulda been grenade-launchers, judgin’ by what’d happened to the door. Whatever they were, that gave Denny an’ Edna first priority as targets, even if I hadn’t been inclined that way in the first place. I let ’em have another coupla seconds, then drew a bead on Denny’s left knee an’ pulled the trigger.

WHAM!

He jerked like a broken marionette an’ slapped against the wall, droppin’ his artillery. I shifted m’sights.

Ssssspakkk!

Blommm!

Ka-bammm!

That shot of mine’d been the signal for everybody else t’open up. Edna leveled her cannon at me, but outa nowhere a pink fluorescent hemisphere, fringed in green, dropped on her head. She shrieked an’ tore it off, threw it to the entryway flaggin’, an’ bashed it, over an’ over, with the butt-stock of her weapon. There was a sickenin’ crackle.

WHAM!
I fired an’ missed. But somethin’ bright an’ slender sizzled toward her upraised arm, an’ suddenly, as if it’d sprouted there, one of Sanders’ smallswords stood quiverin’ through her wrist. She didn’t utter a sound, but snatched the blade out, cast it away. Before I could line up again, she leaped backward through the wreckage of the door an’ was gone.

I almost teleported down the steps. Denny stretched grog-gily for a fallen pistol, an’ I kicked him in the face. The delay was satisfyin’ but costly: by that time, a buncha pissed-off Confederates’d stacked up on the stairs behind me, tram-plin’ over me on their way out the door after Edna.

I got back t’my feet, decided t’quit while I was ahead.

Looked like two enemy simians were dead. Denny wasn’t goin’ anywhere. Little Spin had an ugly ragged split across his shell from rim t’rim, oozin’ purple fluid. Upstairs through a thinnin’ cloud of smoke, the Telecom conveyed a worried female demand: “What’s going on over there? Bemie, what’s happening?”

Holsterin’ m’pistol, I lifted the little Yamaguchian carefully in a crooked arm, caught the semiconscious Kent by a pants-cuff, an’ dragged him up the stairs, his head bounce-thumpin’ at every step. I was too worried about Spin t’enjoy it.

Much.

I propped Kent against the coffee table, put a foot on his crotch t’keep him in place, an’ set the injured Freenie down as gently as I could on the couch. His pals were there immediately.

I’d misjudged ’em again: in the scant few seconds after the door exploded, they’d arrayed themselves against the intruders over by the front window where they could drop off into the entry way. Spin’d had the bad luck t’be first in line.

“Bemie?”

“It’s okay, Deejay,” I replied to the Telecom at last. “Win was right—one way t’get the equalizer frammis was from me. The
posse comitatus'll
be back with Edna, on her shield or wearin’ it up her—
owch!

Feelin’ a dribble of blood on m’neck, I reached up. Somethin’d pierced m’right earlobe, a wood-splinter or scrappa metal—no—I plucked it out: a teensy little steel arrow, point, fins an’ all.

“Bemie?” the feminine voice said. “Are you okay?”

“Busy now, Deejay, I—”

There was a feral snarlin’ down at the door. A third chimp clumped up the steps, holster empty, hands on the backa his head. Behind him was a brand-new Nahuatl I hadn’t seen before, muzzle accordioned up an’ fangs bared.

“Apparently, I got back just in time, Bemie. This one was keeping watch from a hovercraft. What I cannot fathom is why a chimpanzee should be working with the Hamiltonians.”

“Hamiltonians!”
the captured simian exclaimed. “Why it’s you people who’re the Hamiltonians!”

I gestured with m’.45, an’ he sat down beside Kent, hands still on his head, lookin’ like a new addition t’Hear, See, an’ Speak No Evil.

“Bemie?” the Telecom insisted,
“please
speak to me. I’m scared! Bemie? This is
Georgie!”

15 The Ship Who
What?

“It’s a
flechette
,"
Will Sanders commented, watchin’ me as Fran dabbed at his arm with some kinda cloth. He winced suddenly. She seized somethin’ between her fingers an’ plucked it outa the wound.

“Ungh!
Just like this one!”

I kept moppin’ at my bloodied earlobe, dumfounded by about six things at once. ’Cross the room, Win an’ Mary-Beth finished gloppin’ cyanoacrylate over Spin’s fractured shell, as Color an’ Charm patted his little tentacles. He
wheepled
an’ bravely tried t’hold his eyestalk erect.

Our simian prisoner moved an elbow—Howell snarled— the offendin’ appendage snapped back into place.

We’d tied a tourniquet above Denny Kent’s disintegrated knee. I’d wanted it around his neck, but’d been persuaded otherwise by those who take unfair advantage by bein’ girls. Thanks t’Deejay an’ Ooloorie, professional helpa various kinds’d been summoned, but it seemed a mite slow cornin’.

“A flechette,” the gunsmith repeated between gritted teeth. Gone were the glitterin’ toys he’d been wearin’, replaced now with a heavy long-barreled .40-caliber Stateside Bren, slung low from a dirty olive-drab web belt. Dunno
what
he’d been back home;
here
he was a gunfighter.

High on the right hip, he carried a U.S.M.C. combat knife.

Those weapons our friends brought with them,” he explained, “like shotguns, only with steel darts, about 8-gauge, good for four hundred meters.
That’s
what took the door out, Bernie. We only caught a few after they were spent.”

Will seen to, Fran offered me the projectile from his arm. Bent, as if it’d ricocheted offa somethin’. Will’d made her fetch his serious weapons—started t’go himself on the way back from their wild-Edna-chase—before he’d let her look at the ragged wound. “Want this for your
other
ear, Bernie?” She touched m’punctured lobe with somethin’ that stung a moment, then went cold. “We could mount one on a post and the other on a screwback.”

“Thanks for nothin’! I done kept m\self
pinna Intacta
, even when I was a seventeenth-century pirate. ’Sides, I got other problems.” Which I did: the Telecom was filled with shiftin’ kaleidoscopic patterns. “Georgie, is it really you?” I squeaked.

As if they hadn’t done enough already, Deejay an’ Ool-oorie were off doin’ more scientific stuff, everything appearin’ under control now at
maison
Bear. The lady physicist—the
human
lady physicist’d duly received the equalizer frammis Denny an’ Edna’d been too late cornin’ after. The cavalry’d lost Edna in the construction-mess underground where Win’s Interworld Terminal’s gonna be someday.

“Gee, Bernie,” a sexy but disembodied voice replied, “who else
could
it be?”

I felt real bad about Edna makin’ her escape but was too rushed t’give it much thought. Another ’com screen catty-comer to the first was bein’ occupied by the assistant Deejay’d put in charge of repairin’ my timepiece.
He
was familiar-lookin’ as all get-out, yet I couldn’t place him. Funny-lookin’ gink—big thick glasses, hairless dome shaped like a lightbulb. Kept askin’ for details about the fission-powered watch.

Prob’ly coulda figured where I’d seen him before, but the tattered remnants of m’concentration were on this voice claimin’ t’be Georgie, an’ there were wounded t’take care of, as well: me, in a small way; Will Sanders most seriously; Spin. Even Win was carryin’ a red-dyed Kleenex—musta opened up that wine-bottle cut between his fingers again. I saw him lookin’ at the blood an’ shakin’ his head. Prisoners t’think about, too. An’ I had an epistemological puzzle on toppa that.

Georgie.

“How do I
know
it’s you?”

I hadda ask: the weird-lookin’ assistant watched from one screen as, on the other, colors swirled, coalescin’ into a sunlit grove of trees at the edge of endless meadows, the breezes fresh as they stirred the knee-high grasses. She stood beneath a spreadin’ oak, my beloved, a songbird warblin’ in the leafy—

“/
believe you
,
Georgie. Cut it out!"
The girla my heretofore very
private
dreams grinned conspiratorially as the imaginary camera’s viewpoint zoomed toward a face as lovely as any I’d seen in the Confederacy. An’ a
whole
lot more familiar.

“It really
is
me, Bernie!” Her big blue eyes shone ecstatically. “I can hardly believe it myself!” I didn’t like the way Deejay’s bottle-washer ogled her.

“Neither can I, sugar.” What was that unaccustomed warmth risin’ in m’ears? Musta been Fran’s antiseptic. “But we ain’t got time for philosophizin’ over it now. Tell us where they’re keepin’ ya.”

That
stopped all incidental conversation in the room. Every eye turned toward her screen—’cept for Denny’s. He was in no condition. I tried not t’gloat.

“It’s
horrible,
Bernie. I don’t know! A big corrugated metal building. I haven’t had any inertial references since we crashed in those mountains. No windows. Somebody used my Emergency Drive, but I can’t tell how far or in what direction.”

I turned my attention to the shiny-pated assistant physicist. “Forget that watch a minute, Mac. How come, if we can talk t’Georgie on the ’com, you can’t just triangulate on her signal an’ track her down?”

“Mac?” he blinked confusedly. I realized suddenly he was the only bald guy—besides m’self—I’d seen here. An’ so damned familiar! “Captain Gruenblum, this question better suited
you
are than am I to answer. Your vehicle into the lower-probability universe misnomered ‘Little Bang’ her signal radiates. Thus, from
all
directions propagated it appears, when into this continuum it emerges.”

Grammatical or not, he was right. Georgie routes her radio communications through subspace t’beat the light barrier. “Y’got me, Mac—whaddya say your name was?” “Was — and still is—Associate Professor Doctor Himschlag von Ochskahrt.”

“Mother,” I groaned, “I think I need a rest! Himschlag von... well, I reckon if the Confederacy’s got its own John Wayne—pardon me, Mike Morrison an’ Billy Mitchell...” “Bernie.” Now she
really
sounded scared.
"Please
tell me what to do!”

“Bemie’ll come getcha, baby. Relax. What’s happenin’ at your end now?”

“That awful Heplar is in my workroom building something.”

“Figures.” Hadda minute’s trouble integratin’ the idea of this cute little wisp of a girl havin’ a machine-shop down inside her. Reality was gettin’ slipperier every time I turned around in this place.

“Cromney’s on the control deck,” she continued. “I’m being real careful so he won’t know.. .but that’s Denny Kent, right there!”

Her eyes went to the mess on the floor as Mary-Beth sprayed plastic on what little m’.45’d left of its leg. Win leaned back against the coffee table, played out. Georgie mighta been only the figment of a computer’s imagination, but her eyes were wide with real horror. Kent moaned his way back t’semiconsciousness.

“How about it, you low-life son-of-a-test-tube? Where you hidin’ my, er...ship?” I stepped forward, intendin’ t’put a foot where his knee usta be. Already looked like a broken porcelain crock fulla strawberry jam.

The Confederate Ochskahrt took one look, turned green, an’ vanished from the screen.

“Bemie!” Mary-Beth raised a defensive hand. “He’s been hurt badly enough. Broken arm, incompetently set. I don’t know what this bandage across his nose is for. I’m afraid to look. And the ugliest bruise on his chest...” She reached inside his jacket, extractin’ a twenty-third century Perma-Note binder. There was a neat hole halfway through the paper-thin metal plates which served as erasable pages; buried about page 55, a 230-grain .45-caliber bullet, its conical nose blunted by impact. She shook her head. “I wish Clarissa were awake.
When
is that ambulance coming?”

Kent groaned again an’ stirred.

I looked down at him in contempt, thinkin, oddly enough, about Cuthbert. “The one good thing you can say about scum—it keeps
worse
things from risin’ to the top.” I toed the notebook where Mary-Beth’d laid it on the carpet. “Don’t press your luck, Kent! Tell me where m’Georgie is, right now, or I’ll center my
next
shot better!”

“Please don’t... hurt!” He gasped. “Wasn’t
my
fault ... Edna made me..
.please
don’t, please!”

A cheerful thought occurred t’me: mebbe he had a coupla broken ribs. “I ain’t gonna hurtya, creep. I jus’ think we oughta fix your
other
knee so’s you’ll match! Win, y’wanna hold him so I don’t muff the shot this time?”

“Later.” The detective sighed tiredly. He set the broken ’com pad halves on the coffee table behind him. They’d likely saved his life. He leaned over t’make sure little Spin was comfortable on a couch-cushion where the other aliens continued t’commiserate.

“Ask me!” Will demanded. “I want a piece of this!” Fran grinned savagely.

“Really!"
Mary-Beth stood straddlin’ Kent, put her hands on her hips, an’ somehow looked the bunch of us straight in the eye at the same time. “I
resent
being forced to defend this... this
person;
you all know perfectly well you haven’t any real intention of—”