The Guns of Two-Space (61 page)

Fielder looked at Asquith and said with a smile, "Bert, let me see if I can explain it to him this time, all right?" He strolled over to the frustrated, red-faced marine and his highly pissed-off monkey, who had spent most of the morning trying to learn how to shoot and reload together.

Kobbsven's basic problem was that he was very good, and had lots of practice doing it the old way. Which meant that his shooting and reloading skills were burned into muscle memory. Instead of shooting and then bringing the pistols in for his monkey to reload, he kept them low to his side so he could holster and reload rapidly. Kobbsven had proven he could do it slowly, but the moment he was asked to speed up, his old reflexes came in to play.

Fielder reflected that the last monkey he had seen this angry with its person had been his own after that tête-à-tête with Ursula. Which gave him an idea for a training technique that just might work.

He looked up at Kobbsven's red, scowling visage and grinned in a wonderfully friendly fashion. Which made Asquith nervous. The earthling had learned that the first officer only got that expression when someone was going to receive "good training"—or, in other words, a painful educational experience.

"Kobbsven," said Fielder, shaking his head slowly, "Lt. Broadax is convinced that somewhere in your prehistoric cranium there exists a node of something resembling brain matter which can be trained. I'm not too sure she's correct, but I am willing to see if I can assist the learning process."

"Vat?!?" Kobbsven replied in confusion.

Fielder looked over at Kobbsven's monkey. "Can I assume that that you have your trusty little belaying pin with you?" He smiled evilly as the monkey pulled the length of hardwood out from underneath its stomach. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that there was something just a little bid odd about the way the monkeys kept those belaying pins under their bodies. The dimensions just didn't seem quite right.

"Excellent!" Fielder exclaimed genially. "And since you are obviously the brains of this team," he continued, speaking cheerfully to the monkey and ignoring Kobbsven, "I'll explain the new training method to you so that
you
can implement it!
If
Kobbsven does it wrong, smack him in the head with your pin! Just the head, mind you, we don't want to actually hurt him."

Kobbsven's monkey replied "Eep eep!" and sent the pin whistling through the air toward the big marine's head, stopping just short of impact. Then it twisted its head to the side and looked at Fielder inquisitively.

"I do believe you might want to start off a bit less enthusiastically," Fielder said thoughtfully. "I know Kobbsven is sturdy, especially in the head area, but he really belongs to the marines and not the Navy, and so I have to give him back in almost the same condition I got him, do you see?"

The monkey looked at him consideringly,
eek
ed in agreement, swung a somewhat less enthusiastic blow toward Kobbsven's noggin, and then cocked its head over toward Fielder.

"I think that might be about right," Fielder said judiciously. "Just remember to take it easy with him, after all
you
have to live with your human!"

Both Kobbsven's and Fielder's monkey replied with a less than enthusiastic "Eek!"

As Fielder started to join Asquith, Kobbsven asked plaintively, "Lieutena't Fielder, vat am I supposed ta do now?"

Fielder stopped and looked back at him. "Well, Corporal, you should practice shooting, and your monkey will helpfully remind you if you're doing it wrong."

Asquith looked at him curiously. "Daniel, what are you..."

Fielder interrupted him, "Shhh, Bert. Just watch the show and see if this has any effect."

Asquith looked at him quizzically, shrugged, and returned his attention to Kobbsven.

"Whenever you're ready, Corporal Kobbsven," Asquith called out.

The big marine turned to the firing line muttering under his breath. They could barely hear what he was saying, but it didn't seem to be in English and it definitely wasn't happy.

He lifted his first pistol, aimed and fired over the rail at the target,
"Crack!Crack!"
then dropped the gun to his side as he lifted the second pistol up.

His monkey screeched "EEK!!" whipped out its belaying pin and whacked him over the head. As Fielder said later, "It was just enough to get his attention. Of course, for anyone else, they would have been out for the count, but with Kobbsven..."

"YOW! VAT JA DODAT FER!?" Kobbsven screamed at his monkey as he reached up to grab his head with the hand that held the empty pistol.

In a blur of activity the little eight-limbed creature grabbed the muzzle end of the pistol with one hand, quickly flicked a bullet into each barrel with another, rammed them in with two more hands, and shoved the pistol away to signify it was reloaded. Then it smugly screeched, "Eep!" with its arms crossed in front of its chest and its head extended out in front of Kobbsven's.

Asquith called out, "Corporal, I do believe your friend was just getting your attention so he could reload your pistol for you." He struggled to keep from laughing out loud at the outraged expression on Kobbsven's face.

"Yah, yah, but yah din't haf to hit so hard!" Kobbsven said aggrievedly to his monkey, who glared back, and began to tap its belaying pin into its hand.

"Yah, yah, okay. I gots it. Yah, yew betcha," Kobbsven muttered.

Fielder leaned over to Asquith and whispered, "Bert, let me know how many belaying pins the monkey has to go through to get an idea into Kobbsven's head. I have to admit I've always been curious if pounding an idea into someone's head actually works!"

Asquith winced in mental pain and nodded.

Cuddles decided that the damned mold had to go. Enough was enough. After all, it was decimating his harem, and something had to be done!

Thus he concluded that it was time to take the matter to the head human. Cuddles had tried to tell Mrs. Vodi and Lady Elphinstone, but they were too preoccupied with finding the source of the poison and treating the dying cats to pay much attention to one more yowling, complaining cat.

Cuddles had a general sense that dogs did this kind of thing all the time. Your basic, "Quick, come see! Timmy fell into the well!" role was something that the proud, independent cats of two-space had gotten away from. It was thoroughly beneath their dignity. If their ancestors ever
had
the ability to do it, it was gone now. But Cuddles felt that it ought to be pretty simple.

Melville was not a cat person. No cats were permitted in his cabins, and when one tried to enter it was rapidly and ignominiously evacuated by McAndrews.

But in this case McAndrews was not handy. So when Cuddles wandered in, the captain gave the mission to Ulrich, who was whittling on a piece of dried salt pork.

"Ulrich, get rid of the cat," said the captain.

"Aye, Capkin!" replied the coxswain.

"Eek!" and "Eep!" echoed his monkey and bird.

Ulrich had caused his ubiquitous dagger to disappear, but his monkey was flipping its little dirk in one of its upper hands with calculated menace.

Cuddles took one look at Ulrich coming toward him and immediately panicked.
This
was terror incarnate, thought Cuddles.
This
was the most pitiless aspect of the savage wilderness hunting him down.
This
was the reason why cats sought shelter with fat dumb humans in the first place. Humans were supposed to protect cats from creatures like this!

Ulrich was inhumanly fast, but he was not quite able to catch the deranged cat as it scampered around the room in abject terror. Boye joined joyfully into the spirit of the chase, leaping and barking happily with his monkey
eek
ing from his neck, egged on by cries of, "Heeere kittykittykitty!" and "I taste like chicken!" from Spike the parrotlet.

Then Ulrich snarled in frustration, flipped out his dagger, and cocked his arm to throw. His actions were mimicked perfectly by his monkey with its own tiny dirk. Ulrich figured cats were a constant threat to his beloved pigeons, and here was a chance for some preemptive psychopathic payback.

Melville had a vision of Cuddles being pinned to the deck by twin blades. The cats were being decimated by this mysterious malady, and Elphinstone and Vodi had been crushed by every death. The captain didn't like cats and couldn't find it in himself to worry if they all died. In the end he was convinced that the cats were parasites who contributed very little to the Ship. But he did care about the surgeon and her lob-lolly girl. They were dear friends and formidable women, and he had a sudden vision of trying to explain himself to them if Ulrich killed this cat.

Besides, it would make a terrible mess. All that blood. And McAndrews would give him hell for it.

Melville's mental computer clicked and whirred and came up with the results in a millisecond: killing the cat was Not A Good Idea.

"Belay the knife! Damn it, don't kill the cat, Ulrich!"

Ulrich froze, his mind spinning. Then he said, "I'll jisk pink 'isk tail to da deck den!" and his arm reared back again as he chased the cat out from under Melville's writing desk.

Once more Melville had The Vision. Still there would be a mess. Plus, there would be a wounded martyr that the medicos would patch up and fuss over, and he would once again be the villain. It might be even worse this way.

"Belay that!" ordered the captain.

Luckily, McAndrews came in at that moment.

"McAndrews, damnit, get rid of this cat," said Melville.

"Heeere, pusspuss," said the steward, crouching down and making the foolish face that only cat people make for their cats.

Safety! Succor! Salvation!
thought Cuddles. This was the fat stupid human they had first joined around the campfire!

Cuddles leapt into McAndrews' arms, shuddering with fear. "Mwrow!" cried the cat, issuing his complaint to the management as he looked into the steward's round face.

"WoofWoof!" added Boye eagerly, which was basic dog-speak for "And stay out!"

Then, danger gone, as he was being carried outside the cabin, Cuddles looked up in the steward's kindly face and wondered if the stupid fat human had any food.

Food? Got food? No? Then to hell with you,
he said, with a flip of his tail as McAndrews set him down. There were only two kinds of humans. The smart, dangerous ones who didn't trust cats, and the dumb, friendly ones who fed them.

"Cats. They love me, you know," said McAndrews. "They're great judges of character."

Brutus, in his battle for the alpha male position, finally appeared to have overcome the ninja slime mold. By eating it.

The mold had made a desperate attempt to escape the water barrel while the cats' leader was gone—which was Brutus' opportunity to put his plan into action. After he devoured the enemy, he intended to regurgitate or defecate the creature over the side of the Ship.

The thing tasted terrible, but a cat's gotta do what a cat's gotta do.

The cats were selfish, self-centered little beasts (quite similar to Fielder except he wasn't little), but they did have their pride, and Brutus was determined that he wasn't going to be defeated by a mobile patch of mold. This bold act would also, once and for all, establish Brutus as the alpha male.

This tactic had worked before, but Brutus had failed to observe something that Cuddles had instinctively understood: after the first two times, the mold had adapted and it was now able to poison any cat that came into contact with it.

So the tactic didn't work, and the mold began to fight back. First Brutus tried to hack it back out, intending to vomit it into two-space. This was something that cats were particularly skilled at. It was generally best done over something irreplaceable that people were fond of, and he saw no reason why it shouldn't work.

Cuddles had just returned from his unsuccessful foray into the captain's cabin, and he looked on with keen interest. It wasn't every day that you saw a cat try to hack up an alien hairball.

When that didn't work Brutus went to Plan B: trying to expel the alien out the other end of his digestive tract. But when the mold came out, it clung to Brutus' hindquarters like a large, slimy growth hanging from his rump. As Brutus stood, awkward and splayed out over the "head" (which was nothing more than a seat with a hole in it, suspended over two-space) the mold began to <> to him.

<>

This was very confusing. Food often made noises or communicated distress, but not
after
it was eaten.

<>

Brutus had done his best, but now he admitted defeat and looked pleadingly to Cuddles for help. Cuddles carefully considered the situation. Then, with one brutal, powerful, lighting-fast uppercut swipe of his paw, Cuddles smacked Brutus (and the mold) off into space. As the black cat flipped back, his body paralyzed with toxins, he was only capable of one last plaintive, bewildered, frustrated, enraged "Warrllll!!" as he spun 360 degrees and landed in Flatland, feet first.

* * *

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors grasp?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And why thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
 

* * *
 

On the lower quarterdeck, Lt. Fielder, the officer of the watch, looked out upon these proceedings with bemused approval.
Cats are excellent judges of character,
he thought.
They distrust all other cats.
 

On the other side of Flatland, two idle sailors were leaning on the upperside railing. They watched in amazement as a cat popped through the dark blue membrane of two-space, emerging feet first. He appeared only briefly before dropping back into interstellar space.