Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell (12 page)

Sure enough, there was something remarkable to look at.

“You're right! There are still full cans of Foster's lager on that cart!”

“No, you quasi-alcoholic military moron, no!” screamed Elliot. “Not the beer. The cloud! Look at the cloud.”

Bill blinked his eyes and tried to focus his attention on the cloud. He saw that the vapors of which it was composed were moving — moving and moiling so as to form a face!

The face had a big clown nose, protruding clown eyes and frizzy red hair, with a painted-on frown. “Hark and honk!” said the clown god, honking a horn from within its little cumuloid assemblage of water vapor. “I am Quetzelbozo, the clown of ridiculous blood-thirsty pagan Aztec ceremony. I've been sent by Coaxialcoitus to tell you that you're doing this all wrong.”

“Wrong!” said Buffalo Billabong. “Why, we've got them marinated to high heaven!”

The clown-god sniffed. “Yeah. I can smell them from here. But you didn't do the rituals right. Recipe seems right on, but the rituals we gods like have to be included to make it a proper sacrifice.”

“Oh, damn! Of course! I forgot the pies!” said the medicine man.

“That's right!” said the clown-god. “Prerequisite to the proper ritual burning of sacrificial victims is a proper mashing of cream pies in the face!”

“That's about as bad as a poke in the eye with a burnt stick!” moaned the medicine man, slapping his forehead in self-abasement and derision. “I forgot the cream pies.” He fell down to his knees before the clown-cloud. “What else has your humble, penitent servant forgotten, your Big-noseship?”

“The rubber chicken with its head bitten off!”

Buffalo Billabong's eyes went wide. "The rubber chook — of course! How could I have possibly forgotten the bloody chook! This is just not my flipping day.

“You got it that time, buster. Be prepared to take your punishment for absentmindedness, worthless servant.”

The medicine man braced himself and closed his eyes. A spray of carbonated water squirted from the cloud, smacking him on the kisser, followed by a dead mackerel which slapped him wetly in the forehead.

Holy blood-thirsty laughter echoed through the canyons. Even Bill and Elliot had to laugh. This was better than dying, thought Bill. Now if they could escape — along with some more drink — everything would be pretty all right.

Buffalo Billabong sighed and gestured to the nearest Indian brave to go and procure the important items he had forgotten.

Meanwhile, Bill felt something around the vicinity of his wrists. There was a momentary constriction, and then he found his bonds falling at his feet.

“Huh?” said Bill.

“Shh!” said Elliot. “The fire and the soaking loosened the bonds. Don't move — and don't run until I do.”

“You're on!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Quetzelbozo,” Elliot said, “but I have an important philosophical question to ask you.”

“Let me guess,” said the cloud. “You want to know whether the universe is really perched on the back of a turtle held up by giant elephants?”

“Close but not quite on.”

“Knock it off, buster — I'm not playing twenty questions with some prospective roast. What is it?”

“The answer to a very simple question. If you gods are so great how come you let the entire U.S. cavalry over there come and break up this rotten ritual?”

In unison every head — Including the god's — turned towards the dusty plains.

Elliot and Bill threw off their bonds and ran as though their lives depended on it. Which, of course, they did.

Bill's rear end was singed. His stomach, filled with beer, sloshed and swung back and forth as he ran, panting and gasping, with Elliot gasping and panting and trundling along at his side. There were arrows zipping past his ears, lightning bolts from the clown god cracking at his feet, and off to one side just what they didn't need: that damned Cue-tip thing, snarling and hissing, coming toward them looking extremely on the bad-tempered side.

All in all, Bill wondered, close to exhaustion, if maybe he hadn't been better off back in the middle of that sacrificial fire, bombed out of his gourd on Foster's lager and about to be booted out of life well before he'd even been born.

“The doorway to the tunnel!” cried Elliot, dodging an arrow. “Where'd you say that doorway was?”

Bill — stumbling, cursing, and in the act of dodging an arrow himself — was hard-pressed to answer.

“There's that other damned Aztec god, Bill!” moaned Elliot. “You said the doorway was somewhere near the lizard god, so where is it? Hurry up, man, or if the Indians don't get us, that monster will!”

Bill could see that Elliot was quite correct. Cue-tip, mightily peeved and hissing with joy upon seeing the man who had just escaped its jaws within its sights again, roared and snarled and trundled toward them, obviously bent upon Bill's total destruction, mastication, digestion and undoubtedly elimination in more ways than one.

“The tunnel!” said Bill. “Right! It's over there!” His pointing finger wobbled as he tried to point in the direction where he'd seen that mysterious opening to the other world alluded to by Cue-tip.

“Bill!” cried Elliot. “I don't see it!” He cried desperately, recoiling as he ran — which is very hard to do. “I DON'T SEE IT BUT I DO SEE THAT GOD, AND THAT MONSTER IS HUGE!”

Sure enough, the saliva-dripping jaws of Cue-tip, to say nothing of the hissing rattlesnake kirtle and the scorpion-tail claws, were nearing them with extreme rapidity.

“Kill them!” ordered Thunder Bluster. “Shoot them!”

Another volley of arrows tore through the air. Bill did not exactly duck this time, though the consequence of the next event served the same purpose: he tripped. He tripped on a rock, and in doing so managed to knock Elliot Methadrine down as well. But good fortune doth come. Occasionally. For they both went down in a tumble, and the just-released hail of arrows tore through the airspace they had just occupied, banging and thunking into various parts of the anatomy of the Aztec god called Cue-tip.

Now it is written that even monsters of legendary nature are supposed to have been of flesh and blood, or something disgusting roughly resembling flesh and blood, so when Bill looked up he expected Cue-tip to be at least bleeding a little bit — and hopefully mortally or immortally wounded.

Instead, he was startled to see the Aztec god going through strong reactions of a decidedly electronic nature.

One of its lizard heads had been blown clear off, exposing wires and computer components. Most of the arrows had bounced off its chest, but the ones that had connected were now fountaining showers of sparks. The snakes wiggled and squirmed, bolts of static electricity snapping between them.

“Argh! Zap! Snap! Crackle! Pop!” crackled Cue-tip. “Kill the infidels! Bowb the Emperor! Fie Fi Fo Fum Fizzle!”

It then slowly keeled over, spasming and spuming fire and sparks, to hit the ground with a decidedly metallic crash.

“You aboriginal Indian idiots!” cried Chief Bluster. “You shot the god.”

“This I do believe,” moaned Buffalo Billabong, “Is what might be called in the old outback definitely bad news!”

“Infidels!” exhorted the clown-cloud god, zipping over on its cloud. “They must not be allowed to escape. My wrath is mighty, let me tell you, and there are going to be some roasted redskins around here if —”

It was an ungodly sight, for the god never finished its goddamn sentence. Because a sudden arc of energy blasted up from the wreckage of the fallen Cue-tip, an arc of corruscating crapola, connecting with the cloud and exploding in its interior with a massive bang. Instantly coils and transistors rained down, along with a great splash of water that slammed onto the Indians, dousing them thoroughly and plopping them headlong into an instant lake of mud.

“Robots!” said Elliot. “Bill, both those gods were robots! Do you know what that means?”

“Not good! If this means that I'm back on the Planet of the Robot Slaves, then we are in for it.”

“We're still in the same place, you idiot. There has got to be an explanation but this is not the time to worry about it! If you want to worry, look over there — keep moving!”

Bill looked. Sure enough, there in the canyon wall was the tunnel entrance. A section of the rock wall was rolling back with a grating, rock-against-metal sound.

“See!” said Bill. “What did I tell you?”

“Well don't just lay collapsed there like a dead bug! We've got to get moving before those Indians recover!”

Bill was thus properly motivated. He scrambled up from the ground and galloped for all he was worth toward the beckoning cave entrance, Elliot thundering along at his side. But the portal was only ajar enough to allow one and a half persons in. Driven on by fear and the urgent sense of survival, the two hit the opening at precisely the same time, wedging themselves into the opening like comedians in a really crappy movie. But there was no polite give-or-take now, no you-first-old-buddy stuff here.

“Troopers first!” shouted Bill, giving Elliot the elbow as hard as he could.

“No! I'm the Time Cop! I declare this a priority order and insist that I go first!”

After a few moments of intense discussion on the matter, and some desperate shoving, their mutual desire to save their butts drove them into close embrace and popped them through. They stumbled on into the darkened tunnel, Elliot falling flat on his face on a metallic floor and Bill smashing into a bulkhead.

The tunnel door slammed behind them.

Bill immediately smelled the difference. Whereas the outside had been fresh and dry and desertish, sort of smelling like standing in front of a good air conditioner, this dimly lit corridor smelled old, metallic and musty — with just a trace of pizza in the air. In short, it smelled like the infamous old Italian starship Bill had once served on, from the planet Mondo Pizzaiola, the S. S. KAKABENE.

“Wait a moment,” said Bill, climbing uncertainly to his feet. “Starship! This place smells like the corridor of a starship!”

“Exactly, Bill,” said Elliot, rubbing his nose. “That's why I pointed out the wobbling sun.”

“Why should a starship corridor be attached to a desert canyon wall?” asked Bill, thoroughly baffled and buffaloed by the mystery.

“Don't you understand, you ninny? Didn't the fact that those gods were robots mean anything to you? It's because —”

Elliot broke off, horrified, interrupted by a figure coming forward, pushing something long and ominous in front of him. Strangely sinister-looking too, thought Bill, squinting fearfully into the dimness. Some kind of terrible savage weapon? Some grim lesser god to avenge the ones they had knocked off?

No, actually, he could see as the creature came closer. See what hideous artifact it was pushing before it —

A broom.

And pushing the broom was a large brawny man in a khaki jumpsuit. He had thick shoulders and not one but two heads.

It was too late to hide, so Bill just walked over and held out his hand in traditional Phigerinadon greeting to janitors. “Howdy, neighbor.”

“Greetings, guys,” said the longer-haired head of the two-headed big guy. “What are you strangers doing here? We usually sweep up nothing but bones and skulls hereabouts. Never had ourselves a couple of live people before, have we, Bill?”

“Nope, Bob. We sure haven't. A yup, a yup,” mumbled the other head, with short spiky hair and moronically vapid features.

“We're Bill-Bob!” explained the friendly custodian. “We're of the New People!”

“Duh — yeah! We're moo-tated moo-tineers!” drooled the other head.

“Perhaps you mean to say that you are mutated mutineers?” suggested Elliot hopefully.

“No, we worship the Holy Cow, from which all things drip, including intelligence,” said Bob. “You've got to excuse my inferior half. He was behind the door when they passed out the brains!”

“Damn, Bob! I was? I wish you would have called me. I always wanted a brain!”

Bill was horrified at this dreadful spectacle before them!

How could someone so stupid possibly be named “Bill”?

And then he had a thought.

“Oh. You must be one of those Bills with only one L,” he said.

“Nope!” said the moo-tant. “I'm a Bill that's got THREE Ls!” said Billl proudly.

“No you don't, ninny. You've got two!”

“Two? I want another one! I've been cheated!”

Bill, disgusted with the argumentative mutant, was about to kick the creature where it would do the most good, but Elliot took matters immediately into hand. “This really is absolutely ridiculous. Bill-Bob, or whoever you are — we are agents of justice. I assume that you can take us to your ship's officers, to whoever is in charge here!”

“Officers? In charge?” Bill glottled, his stupid expression mirroring that of the cretinous Bill facing him.

“Bill, you really are an incredibly ignorant victim of military brain-washing. Hasn't any of this filtered through that great gob of gristle on top of your shoulders? The valley, the wobbly sun, the robots, the two-headed mutated mutineer with the broom — and here's the clincher, the metallic corridor?”

Bill muttered and scratched his head. “This one's a toughie, Elliot. Maybe it turns out that the ancient American West is a much weirder place than anything in the comix, that's for sure!”

“No, you gormless government-issued gob-brain. We're on a spaceship. We haven't gone back in time at all! That unreliable Time Portal took us to the wrong place! That hippie didn't come here; he's gone someplace — some time entirely different!”

“Golly,” muttered the moronic mutated mouth, “that fellow sure uses long words. What that first word mean? The long one: 'no'?”

Bill pondered the idea and did not understand it at all. “Come on, Elliot, why would someone put a desert and a valley on a giant spaceship?”

“Why would anyone put you on a starship? That's the question I've been asking myself, Bill.”

“Look,” said Bob. “I hate to interrupt this convivial discussion, but I've got a hell of a lot more sweeping up to do before I get my evening bowl of gruel and cup of milk in reward. Do you want me to take you to the bridge or not?”

Elliot skipped and capered with joy. “You see! You see, Bill, he said bridge. So there must be a bridge. And the bridge must be on a spaceship. So this is a starship!”