Strapping Young Lads

Brian Dunning

Strapping Young Lads

Copyright 2014 by Brian Dunning

All Rights Reserved.

Thunderwood Press

Laguna Niguel, California

Second Edition

Printed in the United States of America

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a terrible book. It is not intended to impress or entertain, but rather to see how long you can keep up the pretense of being interested in it.

Those who have read earlier drafts have, rather than providing feedback as is the custom, merely smiled with poorly feigned encouragement and said “It’s good. I think you should keep at it.”

At that point, I drew the line and refused to accept additional feedback. If you feel it needs to “find its voice” or you have some other smartypants “constructive criticism,” then you shall be taken behind the shed and beaten with a tire iron.

If you agree to this, then you are invited to proceed. If not, you shall be strapped down to a metal table and have it forcibly read to you.

- The Author

1

There wasn’t anything really wrong with Corky Bumberton, except that he had his belt caught on the top spike of the fence and looked very silly, and his friend down on the ground was making great sport of him. No, Corky was an all right fellow. The few people who gave him any thought appreciated his best qualities. He had enough imagination to choose ice cream flavors, his sense of humor could discriminate between witty remarks and things people said while striking him, and when he danced the Twist, the bulk of his stomach would always twist the opposite way from the rest of his body.

Corky was not accustomed to hearing his own heart beat. He was not accustomed to being stuck on top of fences, either; or to being out of doors in the middle of the night. Trespassing and danger were new experiences that made his cardiovascular system do things it wasn’t used to. Corky preferred the ordinary, the tangible, the edible.

Corky’s friend Hewlett, the one on the ground, was less predictable, which he saw as a quality, and which Corky saw as his own misfortune. Hewlett imagined that people thought he was very benevolent to grace Corky with his friendship. But then, Hewlett imagined many things.

Twenty minutes earlier, Hewlett had noticed a lovely brunette at the coffee shop across the street from Thunderwood College, and imagined that she had been created for him. Corky didn’t feel like any excitement that night, especially Hewlett’s brand, and so tried to dissuade Hewlett by pointing out that the brunette wore too much eye shadow; but Corky’s disapproval was always enough to make Hewlett like anything.

The two had followed the brunette’s sports car for three short blocks on foot and arrived, completely out of breath, at the Colonel’s estate.

“I bet she’s his daughter,” said Hewlett, trying to peer through the bushes to see whether she pulled into the garage or not. “Do you think she’s his daughter?”

“Granddaughter, more likely,” said Corky, but didn’t have time to say more, because his belt finally gave way and he plunged into the hibiscus bush beside Hewlett’s hydrangea.

“Stop making so much noise.”

“Sorry.”

Hewlett crept to the edge of the shrubs, then tumbled across the lawn and took cover behind a voluminous oak. There was no need to tumble, but Hewlett had seen commandos do it on TV and thus it was obligatory. He motioned for Corky to do the same, but Corky had recently eaten, and deemed tumbling to be poor judgment.

“Stop shaking your head no, Corky, and get over here.”

Corky crawled over and joined Hewlett.

“The light in that top floor window just turned on. I think it’s her room.” Hewlett eyed the window much in the way a cat stares at a mouse before springing. “The Colonel’s going to find he’s got a new son-in-law to add to his will.”

Hewlett quickly planned Corky’s route: up the vines, across the ledge, up the chimney, hand over hand from the treacherous rain gutter, and drop to the ledge below her window.

“I want you to climb up there.”

“But that’s four stories.”

Corky felt a pang of guilt as Hewlett’s anxious brow twisted into despair. He grimaced, swallowed hard, and tiptoed across the moonlit dew to the vine bound columns. With a last look back, Corky reached high into the prickly leaves and pulled himself up.

Corky had never been widely acclaimed for his extraordinary athletic ability. He had been good at wrestling, for that required nothing more than to fall against his opponent. He had left many a muscular jock pressed into the mat flailing his fingers and toes for air. But Corky found those skills of little use here. As he reached the top of the column scratched and sweating, he rolled onto the first ledge, felt his pockets for the inhaler presently on his bathroom counter, and looked up at the spinning heights which remained. Corky set his teeth with grim determination, but bit his cheek and winced.

Minutes later, inside an exquisite Victorian chamber, an opened window blew on a crackling fire. Corky Bumberton peered in, saw that he was unobserved, and clambered in over the sill. He looked out at Hewlett, standing on the grass far below.

“Is it her room?” asked Hewlett in the loudest whisper he could muster.

“No. It’s something like a den, at the end of a great hallway.”

“Is anyone pointing a gun at you?”

“No. There’s nobody here.”

“All right,” said Hewlett, and gripped the vines. “I’m coming up.”

Corky wondered how a Colonel could have enough money to own such an expansive estate. In fact, much about the Colonel was mysterious and almost mythical to the local student population; consequently, the wooded grove surrounding his estate was a favorite place for making out. The Colonel was retired, and little was generally known about any military career he might have had. He wore big white muttonchops all over his face, like the kind you laugh at in Old West photographs. He had a monocle, too. Corky observed that a monocle was probably difficult not only to keep on, but also to buy a replacement for. One doesn’t exactly find monocles at Glasses in One Hour in the local mall. There must be a mail order catalog for monocles. Or else there’s some weird old guy in a basement somewhere making them, and he doesn’t know that it’s not the year 1350 anymore.

The Colonel stood like a bow, once you’ve drawn back the string and are about to release the arrow. He had this big gut that projected way out in front of him, and kept him from bumping his face if he ran into something. There were layers of vests and smoking jackets and things all over him, and it looked like he had about twelve watch guard chains draped all over the place. He was pretty old, but looked like he could still knock you flat with his cane. Corky figured that the cane was about as useful as the monocle. The Colonel never relied on the cane for support, but only used it to impressively punctuate his sentences, and add drama to his poses.

“What a spread,” said Hewlett as he swung his legs inside and kicked the wet grass from his shoes.

“You might have wiped your feet on the ledge. You’re a guest in someone’s home.”

“I’m a trespasser, guilty of breaking and entering, and so are you.”

Corky felt ashamed, but nevertheless felt justified in having wiped his feet.

“Perhaps one of these doors is hers,” said Hewlett, and had just started out into the hall, when suddenly came the sound of approaching voices!

It was the Colonel and two others. Their footsteps sounded to be about halfway up the stairs.

“I tell you that whiskery chap at Thunderwood doesn’t know as much as his own white mice,” said one. “If Einstein knew anything at all, one can move through time as easily as through space.”

This was, quite obviously, Old Guy Talk. Corky’s first thought was that these people must be retired, because they clearly had way too much free time.

“Indeed, but moving through time may not be as abstruse as you imagine,” said another voice. “And I’ll prove that to you tonight.”

“The customary wagering amount,” came a third voice, “says that neither of you are right.”

“Done,” said the others, just as the party reached the top of the stairs and hove into view. They turned down the long hall straight toward Corky and Hewlett.

“Quick, in here,” said Hewlett, and pushed open a door.

It was one of those two-story libraries that had a pair of ladders going up to the second level, but no stairs. You could slide the ladders around on little tracks, then climb up and disembark onto a narrow catwalk, from which the slightest fall would mean serious injury. Corky studied this arrangement, contemplated it, and determined that whoever thought of it was operating on a mental level so superior as to be incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. The guy who thought of it probably thought so too.

“Come into the library,” said the Colonel’s voice from outside the door. Corky and Hewlett each sprang for a ladder and scrambled up to the catwalk where they lay flat, out of sight. No sooner were they hidden than the door swung open and the three old guys came in.

Corky’s ladder was only just sliding to a stop. One of the three men, the Poet, noticed the ladder, but seemed to be either scheming or highly dense, and made no alarm.

The Poet was fat and always had one hand in his pocket. He smoked a pipe with the other hand and wore glasses that made it look like he didn’t have any eyes, unless he was facing you straight on, in which case his eyes looked like cue balls. He had this little stupid thing of hair that probably wasn’t worth the bother of tending.

The Poet had neither gained great notoriety and respect nor accomplished anything particularly noteworthy, but because he was a literary type, coupled with his appropriate appearance and the comfortable manner in which he puffed on his pipe and seemed to be at ease with the profound and complicated matters being discussed around him, qualified him as a friend of the Colonel’s and nobody ever thought to wonder why he hung around the estate all the time and didn’t seem to have a job.

“I bet that fat guy doesn’t have a job,” whispered Hewlett. “Look at that tweed jacket. It doesn’t even fit. I bet he stole it from a thrift store.”

The Colonel walked to a grandfather clock and set his watch by it while the Professor carried in his machine, which was inside an ordinary backpack, and set it on the Colonel’s grandiose desk. The desk was actually second hand, and the color of the wood didn’t match the rest of the room, but the Professor was not offended and set his machine there anyway.

“My greatest achievement,” said the Professor, and stepped back to take a bow. He looked like he had about three joints in every limb, and could extend and retract his body, and could step over a house, and reach across a cafeteria to fill his glass.

“What a spazz,” whispered Hewlett. “Look at that guy. I don’t even need to say anything.”

“You might say something nice,” suggested Corky, but Hewlett gave him a look of stunned bewilderment that made Corky feel like apologizing for the remark. Corky always felt like apologizing for everything. By the time he was four, his mother got him a T-shirt that said “I’M SORRY” on the front and “I’LL SHUT UP NOW” on the back.

The Professor took three steps back, expending about ten times as much energy on each step as a normal person would. He gestured by swinging his arms out wide, and Corky and Hewlett could have sworn they heard a swoop.

“Think of a dentist’s mirror,” said the Professor. “He holds it behind your teeth, and he’s able to see round the corner.”

“Extraordinary,” proclaimed the Colonel, and pounded a fist on the desk for effect.

There was awkward silence for part of a moment, until the Colonel blushed and realized his applause was premature. The Professor cleared his throat and continued.

“Quite,” he said. “Only he’s not seeing the tooth as it is; but rather as it was a tiny fraction of a millisecond in the past. Just as the stars we see at night might be thousands or millions of years older than we observe.”

“You’ve invented a way to circumvent the speed of light?” asked the Poet, and proudly noticed the approval his intuitive question provoked in the learned Colonel.

“Not to circumvent it, my friend,” said the Professor, “but to use its advantage to observe our own past.”

Straightaway Hewlett remembered episodes in his own past that he was not anxious for anyone to observe. The word “sabotage” flashed through his mind; but within a few seconds his native instincts replaced it with “profit,” and then even more basic impulses focused this latter suggestion with “brunette.” Hewlett would steal this machine and use it to win the affections of the brunette.

The glow of the light bulb over Hewlett’s head did not escape Corky’s notice, and he wished he was home in bed.

“Observe the past,” said the Colonel, and began pacing impressively.

“Even if you could hold a mirror far enough away from the Earth,” said the Poet, “the time it would take to get it there could not better than equal the amount of time into the past you wished to observe.”

“Indeed,” explained the Professor. “In fact, the speed at which your point of view moves away from the Earth would have to exceed the speed of light in order to observe the past. And you would be limited to a two-dimensional view, exactly the same as what you could see through an ordinary telescope.”

“This is all well and good,” said the Colonel as he stopped pacing, “but what the devil are you getting at? I need more than dime store philosophy to put the whiskered fellow where he belongs.” And he struck the desk with his fist again, shaking the machine.

The Professor scooped it up delicately to protect it. “Just as the two-dimensional optical image of Earth’s history streaks into space at the speed of light, so is there a three-dimensional image just a space fold away, streaking off into the fourth dimension at the same speed. This machine, by imploding the energy of a laser beam out of our universe and into the fourth dimension, reflects back into the present a spatial image of the world as it was, through which an observer might move about. Attend.”

The Professor wriggled his long arms through the straps of the backpack, drew out a cord with a control box on the end, danced his fingers over the keypad and in an instant, was gone!

“Great Scott!” cried the Colonel and the Poet in the same breath.

Corky and Hewlett jumped, rattling the catwalk, but its telltale thump was lost in the excitement and shock of the moment.

“He can’t have gone far,” said the Colonel, and poked about the room with his cane.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” came the Professor’s disembodied voice. “The room that I see is as it was six minutes ago.”

The Poet strolled about the spot where the Professor had been standing, marveling. He looked about, as if checking for hidden microphones or mirrors.

“Extraordinary,” said the Colonel again, and reached to pound his fist on the desk, but was too far away; and so stamped his cane on the floor instead.

“That’s strange,” said the Professor’s invisible voice. “One of the bookshelf ladders is sliding along by itself, as if someone had given it a shove.”

Ten feet above the Colonel and the Poet, two hearts stopped beating. The Professor must have entered the past at precisely the moment the boys had scrambled into their hiding place.

“And now I see the three of us coming into the room,” the Professor’s voice continued. “The Poet seems to notice the ladder.”

Corky wished he was dead. Hewlett wished Corky was dead. He could shove the body off the catwalk to create a diversion, and escape.

The Poet, meanwhile, simply stood there and said nothing.

“I say,” said the Colonel. “Can you hear us, old boy?”

“Of course I can.”

“Can you move about and see different parts of the room as they happened?”

“Certainly. That’s the whole point.”

Hewlett gripped Corky’s arm. “The Colonel’s onto us. He’s going to have the Professor watch us come in and hide here.”

“That’s stupid. He could just climb up here now if he wanted, and find us.”

The Colonel did indeed have something up his sleeve. He had a look on his face with one eyebrow up and half a smile, as if he was about to put something over on somebody.

“When I set my watch,” said the Colonel through his half of a smile, “was it fast or slow?”

“I’m watching you do it now,” the Professor’s voice said. “It’s slow. You’re moving the minutes hand from five up to seven.”

“Extraordinary,” said the Colonel, and stamped his cane again.

“How do you get back?” asked the Poet.

And, with as much flair as he disappeared, the Professor was back. “I simply switch the machine off,” he said. It was like having a giant spider suddenly appear in the middle of your room, filling the space with long, angly appendages.

“Great Scott,” said the Colonel and the Poet, simultaneously, as before.

Corky and Hewlett sighed. “We’re going to get that machine,” said Hewlett.

“I don’t feel very well, Hewlett.”

“Shut up. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“We must lock this machine up,” said the Colonel. “In the morning we’ll take it to the chap at Thunderwood, and show him a thing or two about relativity. Blasphemous non-believer.”

Hewlett and Corky remained still. The new threat of the machine being locked up was not promising.

The Poet took out a handkerchief (“What a dork to have a handkerchief,” thought Hewlett) and began to polish out the bowl of his pipe. Corky had seen pipe smokers do that before, but it had never caught his attention until now. What’s the point? It’s going to get his handkerchief all dirty, and who cares if the inside of his pipe is shiny or not.

“I agree,” said the Poet, “and furthermore, we ought to find someone fairly large to take with us tomorrow. One never can be too careful, can one.”

“My driver’s an awful sized chap,” said the Colonel. He walked to his desk drawer and took out a key. Then he swung open the picture above the fireplace—it was hinged and opened like a door—and there, hidden in the wall, was a safe.

“He keeps the key right there in the desk,” whispered Hewlett to Corky. “What a lame-o. We’ll have that thing out of there ten seconds after they leave.”

“The key?”

“Yeah. The key. I’m not talking about the machine; we’re going to steal the Colonel’s key, and sing and dance about what a lark it was.”

Corky thought a moment, suspecting sarcasm; but remembered that he was good at singing and dancing, and was again at ease.

The Professor shoved the machine back into the safe. The Colonel locked it with the key, swung the picture back and replaced the key in the drawer.

“Now to the drawing room,” said the Colonel. “I’ve just acquired the most charming set of crystal flagons. And even more charming is the scotch that goes in them.”

The Colonel held the door as the Professor strolled out. “Coming?” he asked the Poet.

“Yes, in a moment,” said the Poet, and the Colonel left. The Poet stood alone, and pointed his fishbowl eyes upward at the catwalk.

Corky and Hewlett drew in their breath and rolled away from the edge, pressing themselves flat against the bookshelves.

It was silent for some moments. Then the Poet turned toward the door, but didn’t look overwhelmingly satisfied. In fact, he looked much like the Colonel did, when the Colonel was trying to put something over on somebody.

The Poet went to the Colonel’s desk, took out the key and pocketed it. He turned out the light and left.

Quite suddenly, Corky and Hewlett found themselves speechless—and in the dark. And quite precariously positioned on treacherous catwalks.

“He took the key,” said Hewlett, and angrily thumped the bookshelves. A volume of Milton fell and struck Corky. “That fatso took the key.”

“Ouch,” said Corky.

Moments later, the library door burst open and Corky and Hewlett slid out onto the hallway’s slippery marble floor.

“They’re gone,” said Hewlett. “I’ll check the stairs; you see if they went that way.”

Corky went back to the room they climbed into and happened to catch a red flash out the window. “Hewlett,” he said, with a tone that sounded like he’d just broken Hewlett’s VCR, “the brunette. She just drove off.”

Hewlett was there in an instant, skidding to a stop just in time to see the red sports car vanish around the corner.

“You idiot!” said Hewlett, and slapped Corky atop the head. “Get the key from the fat guy. I’ll follow the brunette.”

“But you haven’t a car, and she’s already down the road.”

Hewlett was stumped. Corky’s logic stood proudly and magnificently, much like the Rock of Gibraltar. But then Hewlett remembered whose logic it was, and modified his opinion to reflect that Corky had simply accidentally stumbled upon a very obvious fact, and repeated it like a parrot.

But Corky wasn’t finished. “Hewlett,” he said thoughtfully, “what if we were to get the machine in the future; couldn’t we then get the key out of the drawer before the Poet did?”

Hewlett pondered the multi-dimensional physics of Corky’s proposal, and quickly concluded that multi-dimensional physics was entirely over his head.

“As usual, Corky, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hewlett, and Corky hung his head sadly.

At this moment, an overstuffed leather chair facing the fireplace spun round, and sitting in it was the Poet, engrossed in the maintenance of his pipe’s bowl.

“But his idea,” said the Poet, very matter-of-factly, as if he had been participating in the whole conversation, “is intriguing.”

The Poet probably figured that spinning around in the chair, and then jumping into the conversation as if he were an appreciated participant, would produce an imposing Dramatic Effect on the boys, thereby rendering them Under His Spell. Instead, Hewlett simply thought the guy was a moron, and Corky was already under everyone’s spell.

Hewlett leaned toward Corky and murmured, “I thought you had this room covered.”

“I was supposed to find him, and here he is.”

The Poet finally took out some tobacco and filled the bowl, deliberately taking way more time than it should take any semi-capable person. He did this to further enhance his Dramatic Effect.

“You’ve been playing with that thing for half an hour,” said Hewlett to the Poet. “Don’t you ever smoke it?”

The Dramatic Effect suffered a crushing blow, and the Poet tried haphazardly to salvage it by continuing to act as if nothing special had happened.

“Unfortunately,” said the Poet, “the machine doesn’t work the way your friend is proposing. It only provides glimpses into the past. You can’t change anything.”

“Why not?” asked Corky.

The Poet smiled at Corky’s question, believing that his Spell had overwhelmed the boys, and that he had them at his feet. He didn’t know that being overwhelmed and at people’s feet was Corky’s native condition.

“It’s enough that it doesn’t work that way,” said the Poet, immensely enjoying the power of being able to answer a question with flippancy, especially when it was covering the fact that he didn’t know the answer.

“Do you boys know a young brunette?” asked the Poet.

“Sure,” said Hewlett. “We’re friends of hers.”

“Friends of the Colonel’s grandniece?”

“That’s right. We’re friends of the Colonel’s grandniece.”

The Poet grinned with his fat pasty lips and pulled the Colonel’s key from his pocket. The key dangled, and caught light from the fire, and looked very enticing indeed.

“I knew there were two of you hiding up there,” said the Poet. “But I had no idea you were two such industrious, strapping young lads.”

Corky had never quite understood what “strapping” meant. Once, as a youth, Corky had unloaded three cords of firewood, with the expectation of being paid equitable compensation, for a guy who seemed like he was about six hundred years old, and when the job was done the guy gave Corky fifty cents, proudly told how much work he would have had to do for that much money “in his day,” and concluded with an admiring lecture of what a “fine, strapping young lad” Corky was. Corky walked away richer, not only by fifty cents, but also by the knowledge that “strapping” is perhaps not the most profitable quality to have.

“Is your friend all right?” asked the Poet.

“Ignore him,” said Hewlett. “He’s having a childhood memory. Just how industrious and strapping do you think we are?”

“I think,” said the Poet, “that you’re strapping enough to go back into the Colonel’s library, and remove a blue leather bound volume from the second drawer in his desk, and deposit it in the hydrangea bushes outside when you leave.”

A twinkle from the key sparkled in Hewlett’s eye. An innocent enough adventure. A lark. Not even theft, as they would not be removing anything from the property. Harmless. “And we’d get the key,” said Hewlett.

“You may have the key for four hours. And not a moment longer.”

When the evening had begun, Corky had not been in the mood for any excitement. And now that feeling was magnified to the point that he did an unusual thing. He grabbed Hewlett by the collar and whisked him around the corner, pausing to apologize to the Poet for his rudeness. Once they were out of earshot, Corky said:

“Hewlett, I think you’re making a very big mistake.”

“Relax, Corky. You’ve got nothing to lose. In fact, just to show you I’m on your side, I’ll fix it so there’s no risk to you.”

“How?”

“I’ll stay here with the fat dorky guy, while you go get the machine and the blue leather book by yourself. We’ll be in here, so nobody will see you do it. No witnesses, no risk. I won’t even look myself.”

Corky started to think about this, and it seemed to make sense, though not everything was in order, but it certainly seemed all right…

“Done,” said Hewlett. “I’ll talk to him, I’ll make the deal, it’s between him and me. Corky, I envy you.”

Hewlett strode back into the room and snatched the key from the Poet’s hand.

“Four hours,” said Hewlett. “You’ll have the key in four hours, and the book in four minutes.”

The Poet grinned, and leaned back into the leather chair, and finally took a long draw from his pipe. Hewlett handed the key to Corky, and just as Corky looked like he was about to say something, Hewlett pushed him out into the hall and closed the door.

Corky looked at the key, then down the hall toward the library. He thought it was very kind of Hewlett to close the door, because Hewlett knew that Corky couldn’t stand pipe smoke.

2

Before long, Corky Bumberton and Hewlett Stacks were seated at their favorite table at the coffee shop across the street from Thunderwood College. It was the Pac Man table. Hewlett enjoyed playing Pac Man with Corky, because Corky could be easily defeated. But tonight, Hewlett wasn’t winning because he had his eye on the Colonel’s grandniece. And Corky wasn’t losing because he was tangled up in the straps of the Professor’s machine, and had his hands full.

“Look at that bald guy sitting at her table,” said Hewlett. “What an idiot to only be in college and be bald already.”

“Maybe he’s her boyfriend.”

“She wouldn’t have a boyfriend like that. The guy’s a freak. He doesn’t have any hair on his head, and he’s only in college.”

Corky noticed several conspicuous grays on Hewlett’s head, but said nothing.

“Let’s try a little test,” said Hewlett. “Go back to when she came into the coffee shop, and see if she came in with the bald guy or not.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. You’re the smart one.”

“I am?”

“Yes. Now do it.”

Corky looked at the keypad for a button that said “Go back in time to when the brunette came into the coffee shop.” However, there were far too many buttons, and none appeared to be so comprehensively labeled. He pressed several of the buttons at random.

“Some of us try switching it on first,” said Hewlett, and colored the snide remark with a wink for the cute brunette with lots of eye shadow. He winked in a particular way that he thought made his face look all GQ, and he angled his head so that she’d get the best three-quarter view of his stylishness. Naturally he imagined that he appeared oblivious and unaware of her presence.

In fact, she was oblivious and unaware of his presence. She was quite happy with her bald boyfriend, and if she’d known Hewlett was performing for her attention, she would have enjoyed telling him so. The bald guy’s head was shaped all wrong, so that his glasses had to be cocked at about a thousand degree angle across his face to fit right, but the brunette didn’t seem to mind, and she let him be her boyfriend anyway. He was actually pretty smart, and was likely to pull down some major bucks some day. It’s because his head was shaped wrong. Those guys have all the luck.

“I think I’m getting somewhere,” said Corky and touched a few more buttons.

Hewlett was brushing his hair with his arm bent up in a manner designed to exhibit what biceps he had, and Corky’s remark retrieved his attention.

Hewlett looked back at Corky, but Corky wasn’t there.

“Corky?”

“Hewlett?” said Corky, and was surprised to see not only Hewlett, but a duplicate Corky as well, sitting at the Pac Man table in front of him. Corky marveled at this, and then felt himself to make sure he was the real one. Sure enough, his stomach rolls were as tangible and perky as ever. He then took a step toward the duplicate Corky, who was sitting there with a gob of drool hanging out of his mouth. “Hey Hewlett,” said Corky, “how come you didn’t tell me I had a gob of drool hanging out of my mouth?”

“Would you tell me if I was drooling?” came Hewlett’s voice from across the dimensions.

“Of course.”

“That’s the difference between you and me. Now listen carefully: you’re back in time, but just not far enough. Try to go back to before we came in.”

Corky approached the image of Hewlett in order to stick his tongue out at him, but observed the image commit a very telling act.

“Hey,” said Corky. “You didn’t put a quarter into your side of the table. That’s why the game didn’t work. You told me it must be out of order, and made me put in three more quarters, and said it still must be out of order.”

“Corky,” came Hewlett’s voice sharply, “pay attention. Go further back. Do you know how you did it?”

“I think so,” said Corky. Actually he didn’t have the first clue how he did it, but in light of Hewlett’s Pac Man offenses, Corky was not about to admit it. Corky felt much better about himself if he could, once or twice a year, not admit something to someone. He fiddled with the keypad again, until the Pac Man table in front of him became empty.

“What do you see?” came Hewlett’s voice.

“She’s walking up to the front door. The bald guy’s with her, and he’s holding the door for her.”

“Idiot,” said Hewlett. “Doesn’t he know about women’s lib?”

“Perhaps he’s just being polite.”

“Shut up. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

Corky turned the machine off, and his proper seat at the Pac Man table with the real Hewlett appeared.

“The machine seems to work,” said Corky, “but I don’t see how it’s going to make the Colonel’s grandniece fall in love with you.”

“That’s why you’re the sidekick,” explained Hewlett, with a slicing gesture to indicate that his word was the final one. “Because you don’t see things as I can. I’m the guy, and you’re the sidekick.”

“So you’re like Marlin Perkins,” said Corky, “who sits in the tent drinking tea, while Jim Fowler plunges into the river and wrestles the giant crocodile?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.”

Corky entertained a vision of his brawny self locked in a death struggle with a thrashing beast, the crimson water staining his shredded safari shirt. Hewlett enjoyed a similar vision, except his included opening envelopes containing large checks from the networks, and Corky suffering from appalling wounds inflicted by the reptile, and eventually succumbing, with words of praise for Hewlett on his lips.

Across the room, the waitress dropped a check—or rather, a bill that she deceptively referred to as a check—at the brunette’s table. The bald guy reached for it, but the brunette shook her head and reached into her purse.

“Hello,” said Hewlett. “She’s found something.”

It was a plain piece of note paper. She took it out with curiosity, and unfolded it.

The bald guy, who was wearing a style of sweater that only idiots used to wear twenty years ago, and had one collar sticking out and the other not, tried to take a peek at the letter, but she wouldn’t let him.

Wheels turned inside Hewlett’s head. “Watch that letter she’s reading. If that hairless imbecile is her boyfriend, how come she won’t let him see it?”

The brunette replaced the letter into its envelope, and calmly slipped it into the candle flame. The bald guy was all astonished, and asked her something, gesturing quizzically at what she was doing. She only smiled.

“Hey, she sure blew him off,” said Hewlett. “That letter must have been pretty juicy.”

“Here she comes,” said Corky.

The brunette, coat in hand, was striding toward the door. The bald guy gathered his books and straggled along after her, dribbling yellow sticky notes and important calculations. In a moment they would be within earshot. Quickly, Hewlett arranged his facial expression to demonstrate that he did not approve of bald intellectuals, but was very much in support of things written in letters.

“I know all about quantum gravity,” said the bald guy as he tried to hold the door for her, “and nobody has any theories on modern classicism more advanced than my own.”

Corky listened and watched the girl leaving the bald guy. Mentally, Corky filed the bald guy’s statement under Things Not to Say on a Date.

A string on the bald guy’s sweater had caught on something and partially unraveled as the brunette closed the door on him. He stood there a moment, scratched his head, rubbed his chin, wrinkled his brow, punched some keys on a pocket calculator, observed the results dubiously, then, mumbling to himself, wandered off into the coffee shop, decorating it with the string of his sweater.

Corky gathered up the Professor’s machine and stood to follow the brunette, but Hewlett raised an arm to block his way.

“That letter is the key to her heart,” said Hewlett, but his raised arm accidentally struck the backpack from Corky’s grip. The sound of breaking glass inside made Hewlett shriek.

They opened the backpack and sadly looked inside. Some metal project boxes, elaborately wired together, had crushed and broken one of several large vacuum tubes.

“Vacuum tubes,” said Hewlett. “The Professor built it with vacuum tubes. That’s what we get for dealing with old guys. We finally get a chance to really be something, and you steal a time machine built by a Neanderthal.”

“Perhaps the bald guy can fix it.”

The bald guy stood on the far side of the room, winding sweater string around his hand, and climbed back behind a table of people where there wasn’t enough room for him, to retrieve more of the string. The people at the table protested, glasses of water were upset, the bald guy whimpered apologetically, more of the sweater unraveled, and someone rose to complain to the manager.

“That’s our man,” said Hewlett.

Across the room, the manager came out and went straight to the bald guy. The manager looked like he’d been drawn by a bad cartoonist, with a swoopy mustache that was too big, and all kinds of different colored stuff smeared all over the front of his white apron, even though it was just a coffee shop and didn’t serve anything that matched any of the colors. In order to speak, he had to gesture appealingly with both hands, as if physically lifting the words out of his gut; so he’d take a big heave of breath, lunge forward, turn his palms up and say something the bad cartoonist would have written like “Whassa matta you?” So he’d stand there, turn to one side and hunch himself up with a “Whassa matta you?” Then he’d turn the other way and go “Whassa matta you?” and punctuate it with another thrust of his body. You could say something like “What time is it?” and he’d turn to you, wrinkle his brow, raise his palms and shrug, and say “Whassa matta you? Issa four o’clock,” and you’d wonder what that stuff is all over his apron because it sure ain’t coffee; or you could be introduced and say “Pleased to meet you,” and he’d hunch up again and go “Whassa matta you, shake a my hand,” and he’d crush your little bones in his fat fist, and shake your elbow joint apart, and you still wouldn’t know what that stuff is all over his apron. Or why he runs a coffee shop. Or how he could possibly think people still wear mustaches like that.

The manager rattled on at the bald guy, gesturing wildly, and getting closer and closer to the bald guy’s face all the time. The bald guy stammered for words, took out his pocket calculator and began to type but the manager struck it to the floor, said something and shrugged his palms heavenward. He ushered the bald guy toward the door as he jabbered on. Better than sixty percent of the bald guy’s sweater was now wound around his hand, and as he stumbled toward the door with pens and paper clips scattering from his person, he suddenly fell flat against someone’s legs.

The whole coffee shop got quiet and everyone turned to see who the bald guy had run into. Even the manager stopped and let his arms hang by his sides.

It was Hewlett, standing proudly in front of the door, arms akimbo, steely eyes fixed sternly upon the oppressive manager. He laid a comforting hand on the bald guy’s head, but the shiny skin felt weird so he yanked it away and wiped it on his pants.

No one said anything for a moment; all was still. Until the manager shrugged with his palms up, as if to say “Whassa matta, you gonna say something or what?”

“Corky,” hissed Hewlett, “give me something profound and impressive to say.”

Corky looked around, picked up one of the bald guy’s pens and scribbled something on a napkin. He handed it to Hewlett, who cleared his throat and read like an orator:

“Hold, brutish man, and let fly this forsaken waif.”

If it was quiet before, it was even quieter now.

“What the hell was that?” said Hewlett, and threw the napkin down. “Forsaken waif? You made me look like an idiot.”

“It’s from Shakespeare,” said Corky. “No one calls him an idiot.”

“Who reads Shakespeare anymore? He was like five hundred years ago. Get with it.”

The bald guy collected his things and stood up. “Excuse me, buddy,” he said, and pushed his way past Hewlett out the door. The murmur of the customers returned and the manager returned to the kitchen shaking his head and wiping his hands on a towel.

“So much for that freak,” said Hewlett. “Guy’s completely ungrateful. What are you doing?”

“Trying to see about this machine.”

“It’s only one vacuum tube. It probably still works anyway. I say we test it. Let’s go back ten minutes and see if we can read that letter.

The test seemed reasonable. Corky had no intention of returning the machine in a damaged condition, and was eager to learn whether the machine would still function. He raised a finger over the keypad.

“Wait wait wait,” interrupted Hewlett. “How do we make it so both of us go?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps if we hold hands.”

Hewlett stepped back and looked at Corky contemptuously.

“Fag.”

“Well then, maybe we should each hold a strap on the backpack.”

“Next I suppose you’ll want to go skipping merrily through a field with me, sharing a handle on a basket of flowers.”

Corky looked bewildered.

“Never mind,” said Hewlett, “we’ll each hold a strap. Hit those buttons, Corky. Ten minutes ago, here we come.”

Corky danced his fingers on the keypad. There was a flash, and they were gone.

Corky and Hewlett stood on the poop deck of an old sailing ship. Perhaps a Federal revenue cutter of the late eighteenth century, thought Corky, then recalled that he knew nothing about such things, and dropped that idea. The sails were full, the lines strained in the fresh wind, and happy spray danced from the bows. Rough, unkempt sailor guys tugged on capstans, climbed aloft, beat on each other, and did all sorts of sailor things. 200 yards behind their ship…or 200 fathoms, or knots, or whatever they use…another vessel was racing along, trying to catch them. From the top of its foremast flew the grim death’s head of the Jolly Roger.

“Just an educated guess, Corky, really only a speculation…but it seems to me that we’re no longer in the coffee shop.”

3

Some sailors jostled by nervously, carrying ropes and stuff, and tied knots in things and pulled on lines, and shouted, and seemed quite fearful of the pursuing vessel. One guy bumped into Corky. Corky rubbed the place where it hurt, recalling that he hadn’t felt anything at all when he was using the machine back in the coffee shop.

Corky opened the backpack and rustled around the bits of broken vacuum tubes. “I think something’s wrong, Hewlett. I think we should try to get back to where we were.”

“This is amazing,” said Hewlett, oblivious. “The sights, the color, the smells… it’s as if we’re really here.”

Corky had a really dorky black plastic digital watch. It had a calculator on it, and about six lines in the display, and would play songs, and had little games; and would always go off in movie theaters, so that the owner, in an impressive way, could say just loud enough for everyone around him to hear: “Oh, that’s just my digital watch going off;” and had multiple time zones, and would do military time, and left a watch tan about three inches wide. In fact, it didn’t merely leave a watch tan, it actually had a bleaching effect on the skin. If you compared your wrist to your butt, or someplace that never got any sun, the wrist would still be whiter. That was so the dork could impressively respond to queries with “Yes, that’s the tan mark left by my digital watch.” And people would go “Ooooooh” in great awe and amazement, and there would be whispers like “He has a digital watch; he must be high tech.” Others would sadly mutter “He’s better than me, for he has a digital watch, and I have nothing.”

Hewlett had made fun of Corky’s watch on a daily basis for several years now, but only to overcome the natural feeling of inferiority because Corky had a digital watch, and Hewlett had nothing.

“Wow,” said Corky. “My digital watch says that it’s 1766.”

“Seventeen sixty six,” said Hewlett. “Very good. Very, very good.”

Hewlett narrowed his eyes, and paced around a bit, and nodded, as if he had expected it to be 1766, and Corky’s revelation was mere confirmation of what Hewlett already knew. “Very, very, very good.”

“But it shouldn’t say that. We’re supposed to still be in the coffee shop.”

“Shut up, Corky, here comes some 1766 guy. Let’s impress him with how much modern stuff we know.”

A peglegged ship captain came stumping up to them. He had a hook instead of one hand, and a patch over his eye, and a finger missing (not counting the five that used to be on his absent hand), and had a hunchback, and about every other malady that might afflict a human being. His remaining eye went off at an angle, so that you might suppose he’s looking at a cloud when he’s really staring straight at you. He was like those people who are cross-eyed but who see everything normal, so that when they look at you, one eye is looking at the sky and the other is looking at the shirt of the guy next to you, so when he amicably says “Hi, pleased to meet you,” you think he’s talking to that guy, or maybe to a bird high above, and aren’t sure whether to respond, and feel guilty for a week.

The Captain wore a blue naval jacket that was all specially tailored to match his various modifications, and some fluffy fringy shirt underneath, with straps to hold swords and things going across everywhere, and a telescope that actually telescopes in his hook, and a crutch in his hand, and long, long gray hair that was neatly combed into this huge bundle that went all over the place, and had dips and swoops and bumps in it.

He was pacing back and forth, suspiciously eyeing the ship off their stern, and mumbling “Aaarrrr” to himself every few seconds. Then he noticed Corky and Hewlett and said:

“Aloft with ye, ye foc’sle swabs, and shake out the foreto’garnts’l.”

“Go where?” asked Corky, “do what?”

“Belay that flapjaw, scurvy swine, and hoist the stuns’l booms.”

“Well you know what?” said Hewlett. “You lose, 1766 guy, because we’re not really here. You can suck our wind. Pop us out of here, Corky.”

“But Hewlett…”

“Never mind, just do it.”

“I tried to tell you before…”

The Captain took a few stumpy steps closer to Hewlett and looked down at him. The Captain was pretty tall, probably because he’d had his peg made a few inches longer than his real leg had been. He was all distorted anyway, so it didn’t make any difference, but at least this way he’d be taller than everyone, and could tower over them, and blow his bad breath in their face. As he did to Hewlett now.

Toothpaste was not available in 1766. If you wanted to freshen your breath, you had to eat a sprig of parsley, which didn’t help much anyway. They grew no parsley aboard ship. Guys in 1766 usually considered themselves “rogues” and “brigands” and things like that, so they didn’t really want fresh breath anyhow.

“Corky?”

“In the coffee shop, my watch stayed normal when I went back a few minutes, because I didn’t actually go anywhere.”

“Come to the point, if you have one.” Hewlett would often say that when he didn’t understand what somebody was saying, in order that they’d feel in the wrong, and that it was their fault for arranging their thoughts incomprehensibly so that Hewlett couldn’t understand.

“Since my watch says 1766 this time, I think we really are in 1766. I told you the machine was broken.”

Hewlett’s eyes got a bit bigger as he stared up into the Captain’s nodding face.

“So,” said the Captain, all long and drawn out, in order to blow as much bad breath in Hewlett’s face as possible, “ye have quite a mouth on ye, isn’t it so? Aaarrrr.”

“Well pop us somewhere, Corky.”

“T’will be a long day indeed before Captain Sprat of the Flying Nudibranch takes backtalk from the likes of ye. Know that before ye sleeps with the sharks.”

“I’m sorry, Hewlett, but the machine’s not doing anything now. I’ve pressed all the buttons.”

“Bos’n,” said Captain Sprat. A disheveled striped shirt guy with all kinds of curly hair that never got washed sprang to his side. “Prepare this man for hauling.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” The bos’n clamped a big fat hand on Hewlett’s shoulder. There was gross curly hair all over the guy’s hand, which made Hewlett shudder at the touch.

“Wait a minute, you don’t understand. I’m an upperclassman. What’s hauling?”

“Come, lad,” said the bos’n as he forcibly pushed Hewlett forward, “don’t struggle, and t’will be o’er with the sooner.”

“Hey, that hurts.”

Several sailors guffawed.

“He’s delicate, he is.”

“Don’t jostle him so, bos’n.”

“Careful of his dainty necktie.”

More laughter, and Hewlett began to feel annoyed. “This dainty necktie,” he said as he was roughly hustled forward, “is pure East Indian silk.”

The laughter stopped in an instant. Eyes widened. Many of the men had never seen East Indian silk before, or even knew that such a thing existed. Some were impressed with its velvety sheen. Others with its cunning paisley motif.

Corky, meanwhile, was hard at work studying a certain familiarity about Captain Sprat. Corky climbed to the poop of the Flying Nudibranch and approached the forbidding presence.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Captain Sprat did not turn around. If he did, it would acknowledge Corky’s presence, which of course might give Corky the idea that he was not an insignificant microbe after all. And that would be incompatible with commanding a crew consisting of a couple dozen total losers. So instead, Captain Sprat just said:

“Well?”

“I was wondering, sir, if you might know of a place called Thunderwood.”

“‘Tis me family estate in the colonies. What know ye of it?”

“I was just wondering if, by any chance, you might have a great great great great grandson named the Colonel.”

At this, Captain Sprat did turn around, to scowl at Corky. He looked him over head to toe, much as one would look hatefully at a thorn bush that had just scratched him.

“Look I that aged to ye? Perhaps if ye’d lose eighty or ninety stones, ye might not have so much fat between your ears.” And he stamped his crutch on the deck, exactly as the Colonel had done with his cane in the library.

Corky deemed it wise to make a hasty retreat, which he did. Captain Sprat watched him go, his lip trembling with anger. By the time he got up enough dander to say something else, Corky was gone, so the Captain let it go and turned back the way he was facing before. But his lip still had all that trembling going on, which meant that his dander was at a high level, probably not short of maximum, and needed to be discharged somehow. Probably, he would remain in a bad mood the rest of the day. If Corky knew this, he would have allowed Captain Sprat to “haul” him along with Hewlett, because Corky didn’t want to be responsible for the Captain being angry at everyone for the whole rest of the day.

“Where’s me mate?” roared the bos’n.

“He’s aft, punishing Hawkins.”

“Someone else will have to haul this swab. Volunteers.”

“Me, sir! Me!” from a dozen men. Then the shoving started, and comments like “You punished yesterday,” and “I haven’t punished anyone all week.”

Lots of the sailors in the crew had things wrong with their faces. All sailors back then had facial anomalies. Most were missing some teeth, due to scurvy and things like that, and scars were popular as well. One guy’s eyes were only like half an inch apart, and he had one big eyebrow arching over both of them. It was about four inches thick. Another guy’s mouth was really huge, and when he talked, his big tongue flapped all over the place like a dog. If you tried to become a sailor back then, but looked normal, they wouldn’t let you join. You had to look tough, and the easiest way was to have something wrong with your face. No one doubts the toughness of a really weird looking guy. The one sailor who was the toughest was from some country, and was super tall, and had little animal bones stuck through his face, and was a weird color like orange, and no one could tell where he came from. But he looked like you wouldn’t want to mess with him, so he made a satisfactory sailor.

“All right, you,” said the bos’n, “and you, and you too.”

Everyone who didn’t get picked griped and moaned and “shivered their timbers” and expressed disappointment in all manner of sailor-like ways, but the bos’n just ignored them, and went aft to go spectate at Hawkins’ punishment.

The sailors kicked bits of debris along the deck and swatted at hanging ropes, and remarked that Hewlett’s hauling wouldn’t be worth administering anyway. What with his wimpy silk tie and all. So they all went back to work.

The big orange guy and a couple others bound Hewlett’s hands. At this point, Corky trotted up and said:

“Hewlett! I have some good news.”

“You’re going to beat these guys up and release me?”

“No. Captain Sprat is a relative of the Colonel’s.”

“Oh, good, Corky. That’s good that you’ve been researching the family trees of complete strangers. I was afraid you had boring and irrelevant news, like you’ve decided to pop us back to the coffee shop before these guys ‘haul’ me.”

“I’m afraid the machine still isn’t working.”

“Well then, you go back to your crucial genealogy work. I’d hate to think you were wasting time by continuing to try with the machine.”

Before Corky could apologize, he had to step aside to let the big orange guy through. One of the sailors had a rope tied to Hewlett’s wrists, and the other had a rope tied to Hewlett’s ankles. These two stepped to opposite sides of the ship, and the big orange guy lifted Hewlett up to throw him over the bow.

“Maybe you’d like to try the machine again, Corky.”

Corky pressed several buttons, but nothing happened. He shrugged.

The big orange guy did nothing for several moments.

“Go on,” said Hewlett to the orange guy. “See if you’re man enough.”

The big orange guy said a whole bunch of stuff in some language, and pointed at the ropes and things that attached at the bow of the ship.

“Idiots!” hissed Hewlett. “Corky, look. They can’t throw me over the bow because there’s stuff in the way. You there, pass your rope underneath that big stick thing coming out from the point of the ship.”

The guy was Portuguese and didn’t know what Hewlett was talking about. He thought Hewlett was cautioning him to have a really good grip on the rope, and so double-wrapped it around his wrists.

“I’m being hauled by idiots!”

Corky went to the third guy, who could understand English all right, except that he was just really stupid. Corky directed him to pass his rope underneath the bowsprit, then positioned the orange guy to drop Hewlett over just to one side of it.

The Portuguese guy grinned really big, and figured out what was going on, and made weird hand symbols that were Portuguese for “thumbs up” and “OK.” The Portuguese guy wasn’t stupid or anything, it’s just that he only spoke Portuguese, and the orange guy only spoke orange guy language, and the stupid guy was entirely clueless; so together, they made a real winning team.

Corky showed the orange guy how to cradle Hewlett in his arms, and performed a pantomime “one two three toss,” which the orange guy seemed to pick up all right. He’d probably done similar things with missionaries in whatever country he was from.

About this time, the other ship that was chasing them caught up alongside and steered toward them. Captain Sprat shouted from the poop deck:

“Aaarrrr, heave to, laddies! Prepare to repel!”

Neither Corky nor Hewlett knew what kind of a thing “heaving to” might be, but the crewmen did; so they ran around and pulled on ropes and climbed on rope ladders. The ship slowed and began to turn in the bouncing swells.

The orange guy dropped Hewlett and grabbed a couple spears that were leaning handy against the mast. The Portuguese guy sprang into the rigging and started aloft, while the stupid guy looked around, saw that the coast was clear, and disappeared into a hatch.

Hewlett loosened his ropes and threw them aside. “Now’s our chance, Corky. Let’s hide somewhere and get that darn machine to work.”

The other ship was bigger and had more guys on it. They had these little miniature cannons attached to their fancy teak railings, which they were in the process of loading. Their ship was bearing down on the Flying Nudibranch, and it didn’t look to Corky like there was enough room to stop or turn away. A collision was imminent.

“Hewlett, I don’t think we should hide right now.”

“Nonsense, Corky. Let’s just follow that guy down that hatch.”

The other ship plunged into the side of the Flying Nudibranch. Wood crunched apart, beams snapped, the decks lurched and everyone tumbled. The enemy crew aimed their miniature cannons and fired. Captain Sprat stood on the poop, waving a sword in the air (as if it was going to frighten the enemy away, or who knows why), just as one cannon shot a white burst of smoke with a bang. Chainshot swept across the Flying Nudibranch’s decks, clearing a path of men and rigging nine feet wide.

Guys from the other ship swung over on ropes, like in movies where someone swings someplace where there couldn’t possibly have been a rope hanging from anything. Nevertheless, a whole bunch of guys came over this way, and the crew didn’t have time to question how, but fell to with swords, muskets and song:

Such manly men are we
We’re manfully a-sea
Hark, some chainshot
We fight manfully.

“Now this is when men were men,” said Hewlett with admiration, as the crushed bow sunk lower and lower, and fire broke out. He closed his eyes and drew in a long, savory smell.

Some guys who were sword fighting got close, so Corky and Hewlett stepped back and got on top of some barrels.

“Hewlett, why do you think the machine brought us here? Of all places.”

“It’s technical, Corky. I’m not sure you could understand.”

“I think it’s important that Captain Sprat is distantly related to the brunette.”

“Of course,” said Hewlett, and ducked to avoid a flaming piece of debris. “You’re beginning to comprehend.”

The guy with the huge mouth staggered up, run through by a cutlass. He handed his matchlock pistol to Hewlett, then collapsed on the deck and burst into flames. The pistol had a big curved handle that was really hard to hold, and a big bayonet blade that was probably more effective than the pistol part.

“What does he think I’m going to do with this?”

An enemy bald guy who looked like Sinbad the Sailor swung over on a rope, laughed crudely, and lunged at Hewlett with something that may have been a scimitar. Whatever it was, it looked like you’d probably call it a scimitar. It was eight feet long and curved, sharp on the side that was curved in, and jagged on the side that was curved out. It could probably mess you up if wielded by the right guy, and the Sinbad guy looked like he could be him. He was your average big fat bald nose ring muscle guy, and he looked like he drew on a circle of black eye shadow every morning, and wore big loose Baghdad pants.

Hewlett quickly handed the pistol to Corky and said:

“Shoot that guy.”

“No.”

Corky tried to hand the pistol back.

“Corky, sidekicks do the dirty work.”

“Who says I’m the sidekick? Perhaps you are.”

Hewlett scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

Corky handed the pistol to the Sinbad guy, who dropped his scimitar, examined the pistol approvingly, and said:

“Thanks.”

And he ran off and joined the fight.

“Anyway,” said Corky, “I think the machine brought us here on purpose. If it was completely broken and operating at random, we wouldn’t have encountered Captain Sprat.”

Another blast of chainshot cleared the poop deck and sheared away Captain Sprat’s remaining arm—and the one that was waving the sword, at that.

“Great thunder and lightning!” shouted Captain Sprat. “Return fire, lads!”

“But Cap’n,” said the bos’n, “your arm.”

“Never mind,” said the Captain, and went for the ladder down to the deck, and leaned to reach the handrail. But the move was poorly planned, because he wasn’t yet accustomed to having no hands left, and the lean sent him toppling headfirst off the poop.

The bos’n helped him to his feet, or rather, to his foot and peg, and adjusted his hat for him.

“Where’s gunner’s mate Hawkins?”

“In punishment, sir.”

In the midst of the fire, smoke, rising water, bloodshed and clashing steel, several members of both crews had laid their weapons aside and were taking turns thrashing on a bound sailor with cat-o-nine tails.

“Commute the balance of his punishment, and get him to the powder stores.”

“But Captain, he’s only ten or twenty more lashes to go.”

Captain Sprat stepped into a knothole in the deck, and was busy trying to wriggle his peg out of it, when another volley of shot crashed through the scene and sliced off his good leg. The impact sent him spinning like a top, which drilled his peg even deeper into the hole.

Corky and Hewlett observed all this dubiously.

“I don’t see how he’s going to be of any help to us,” said Corky.

“You’re right; the old man let us down. Try the machine again.”

A vast, weather-beaten hand landed on Corky’s shoulder with a thump. Corky was rotated by force, and found himself facing the man attached to the hand.

Admiral Grog was not really an admiral at all. In fact, if he was ashore, he’d have been naked and chained inside a box in an asylum. But at sea, insanity was encouraged, and so Grog found conditions favorable to declare himself an Admiral, and tell dumb sailor guys so, and get them to follow him. He had a big blue three pointed hat which he’d stolen from a tavern, and had plucked a pink plume from the costume of a dancing girl, and stuck it in the hat. His dumb sailor guys assumed it was a real naval officer’s hat. They didn’t know enough to wonder what navy he was an admiral in. Whenever his ship was in trouble, Admiral Grog just raised his sword and said something like “King and Country,” which country being irrelevant. His crew would blubber and wipe a tear, overflowing with nationalism and pride, and fight to the death for him. Those who made it most of the way through battles uninjured began to fear that they were not giving it their all, and so would seek out deliberate injury or death, perhaps by allowing themselves to fall dramatically from the rigging. Consequently, Admiral Grog had to put in to port often to restock.

“Aaarrrr,” said Captain Sprat. He was still boring deeper into the knothole, but his revolutions were beginning to slow enough that he could carry on normal conversation. “‘Tis me old nemesis, Admiral Grog.”

“Captain Thpwat,” said Grog through his neatly waxed handlebar mustache and 24-karat incisors, “and with a limb or two leth eath time, I thee.”

“I still has me hook,” said Captain Sprat, and swiped his remaining prosthetic limb in Grog’s direction each time he spun past, “and a bloody good distance from it ye’d keep if ye had the wisdom.”

The clamor of battle waned. Now and then there was the odd musket shot, or the sound of a sword sticking fast in a mast once it had passed through a victim, but the main part of the action was ended. Admiral Grog’s dumb sailors rounded up the few survivors of Captain Sprat’s crew.

“It theemth the battle ith won,” said Admiral Grog, and looking over the burning and sinking surroundings, “and little time left for converthathun.”

Admiral Grog maintained his grip on Corky and took three or four steps toward Captain Sprat. Grog had read many years ago that to gain respect, a seaman must walk With a Swagger. As a youth, he had interpreted this to mean that the legs must be splayed into a bowlegged position, and held rigid. The actual walking motion must take place in the spine, thus maintaining all parts of the anatomy from the hips down in a fixed position, tipping alternately forward, with the pivot point near the top of the lumbar vertebrae. He had practiced this action tirelessly for years, and through careful observation and note-taking, had concluded that the proper costume for walking With a Swagger included pantaloons that stopped short below the knee, proceeded tightly up the thighs, buttoned up the front with prominent round brass buttons, and ended above the stomach roll or at the bottom of the ribcage, whichever was higher. Outwardly curved legs that tapered uniformly like bent carrots were best, particularly with tiny little black shoes. Socks, or, more properly, stockings, were to be pulled high and terminated just below the cuff of the pantaloons. Observations of actual naval personalities suggested that the most effective countenances tended toward top-heaviness, with the bulk of the body concentrated in a great round ball, supported by the seemingly inadequate leg structure. Admiral Grog was fanatical about the maintenance of these characteristics. He was convinced that it was the secret to his command.

His steps With a Swagger toward Captain Sprat were meticulous. His costume was immaculate; his presence, dominating.

“Thtop that nonthenthical thpinning.”

Captain Sprat’s rotation slowed even more, but rather than alleviate his embarrassment, a new development added to it in the form of a loud creak. Captain Sprat’s bos’n and remaining officers cringed in shame; each time their Captain’s face went by Admiral Grog, the pegleg gave an excruciating squeak against the wooden knothole.

“Aaarrrr,” said Captain Sprat each time he went by, though with less gusto than before.

Finally he creaked to a stop. He had hoped that he would at least be facing Admiral Grog, but alas, fortune put him at an undignified four o’clock position. The bos’n rotated him back toward the Admiral manually.

“The Flying Nudibranth ith thinking,” said Admiral Grog. “It’th a pity, for you’d make a fine maypole for a thummer thelebrathun.”

Captain Sprat swiped with his hook again, but he was a couple feet short.

“I thuppothe you know why I’m here.”

“Me secrets will go to Davy Jones with me, and a curse shall be on he that dare follow.”

“I’m thertain that would thound nithe in literature,” said Grog, and took a couple more steps around Captain Sprat. Everyone watched with awe. The bos’n discreetly rotated his captain to follow Admiral Grog as he paced around.

“I thuppothe thith hath nothing to do with your thecret.” Admiral Grog threw Corky to the deck at Captain Sprat’s feet—or at his peg, rather.

“Ouch,” said Corky.

Captain Sprat glared at Corky with derision. “‘Tis merely a lubbardly member of me crew, more suited for the gallows than the foc’sle.”

“A thimple thailor, you thay?” Admiral Grog prodded Corky’s prone form with his tiny foot. “How do you explain the finery of hith dreth?”

“Aaarrrr,” said Captain Sprat with a note of surprise. He noted with disgust that Corky was not wearing the same coarse rags of the others.

Admiral Grog’s rapier shot backward over his shoulder, caught Hewlett by the dainty silk necktie, and pulled him down to the deck beside Corky.

“And thith one. Look at hith handth. Thith man hath never handled a rope or climbed a throud in his life.” The Admiral tugged Hewlett to his feet and gently caressed his hand. “The hand of a thcribe. The hand, my dear Captain Thpwat, of the author of your thecret thelethtial navigathunal thythtem!”

Corky and Hewlett exchanged knowing glances. “The Colonel’s blue manuscript,” said Hewlett as Grog dropped him back to the deck, “the one you stole for the Poet. What was in it?”

“Honestly, Hewlett, you can’t mean to insinuate that I would read someone’s private writings.”

“Well then, is celestial navigation a 1766 thing, or a modern thing?”

“I don’t know. It sounds pretty 1766 to me.”

“Then it follows,” said Hewlett, and stamped his fist on the deck, “that our Captain Sprat fancies himself something of an amateur scientist, not unlike his great great grandson the Colonel.”

“Great great great great grandson,” Corky corrected.

A burning spar fell and crunched a couple of Flying Nudibranch prisoners. Yards of flaming canvas crashed down and landed with a hiss in the water washing over the sinking decks. Steam billowed.

Admiral Grog smiled. It made his waxed mustache twitch. In fact it cracked some of the wax off, and made it look like he’d done a really bad job waxing it. His grin exposed his golden teeth. Hewlett reckoned that if it wasn’t 1766, Admiral Grog would probably be working in Vegas.

“Me bones shall sink to Neptune’s realm before I give ye my secret system,” growled Captain Sprat as the water lapped at his peg, “and I’ll scuttle me ship before ye takes it in prize,” he said as a firestorm raged in his rigging.

“Time is wathting. Give me the thecret thythtem.”

Captain Sprat’s officers began to sweat. Were they to die to protect their Captain’s navigational discoveries?

Admiral Grog’s pasty face swelled with ecstasy in the suffering of his foe.

Hewlett picked himself up out of the water and fixed his tie. “Gentlemen,” he began.

No one responded. A few of Grog’s dumb sailors looked at each other. Finally someone said:

“You mean us?”

“Yes. Gentlemen, I believe I have the solution to this dilemma.”

“Thpeak, thcribe.”

“It is pointless for men to die, and for a technological advancement to be lost forever, to protect one man’s sadly misdirected pride.” And Hewlett turned toward Captain Sprat, narrowed his eyes with disapproval, and shook his head as if to say “I am so disappointed in you.”

Captain Sprat opened his mouth to call Hewlett a foul traitor, but stopped himself when he realized that Hewlett knew nothing about the secret navigational system.

“You were quite right, Admiral Grog,” said Hewlett. “I, and my valet,” (here he indicated Corky by kicking him in the gut) “do indeed possess the keys to the deepest mysteries of Captain Sprat’s secret.”

“Aaarrrr, I’m being betrayed by me own scribes, the two men more knowledgeable than e’en meself about me life’s work. The only ones who, if ye were to take and haul them five or six times, might spill what they know and make ye rich for life.”

“Ith that tho?” said Admiral Grog and stepped right up to Captain Sprat, and put his face right up to him, thus threatening to put an eye out (the one that remained) with his long, pointed nose; but Captain Sprat’s bad breath drove him back a step or two.

“I think,” Admiral Grog continued, “that I will take thome memberth of your crew aboard my thip, to prevent their drowning and being lotht at thea.”

Several hands went up.

“Hmm,” said Grog, and scanned the ranks of men. His eye fell upon Corky and Hewlett. “Thethe two. Where ith my firtht mate?”

A dumb guy sprang to his side and saluted.

“Thtrap thethe two thoroughly with thtring, tho they cannot ethcape.”

Hewlett pretended to struggle as the guy bound him. He didn’t want to actually struggle, because if by some small chance he managed to struggle free, they might harm him. So he acted like he was immensely strong and straining against powerful captors, even though it was just one skinny first mate guy tying him with string; this way, people wouldn’t think he was a wimp.

Corky was a wimp, and so did not struggle. Admiral Grog noticed Corky’s lack of resistance, and concluded that Corky must be stoic and unafraid, and not someone to be trifled with. He saw Hewlett’s theatrical squirming and strained facial expression, and decided Hewlett was an average coward.

“My notes,” said the average coward, “I can’t tell you anything without my papers.”

Admiral Grog narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“They’re in the cabin,” said Hewlett. He noticed a handy dinghy tied alongside the Admiral’s ship, and thought he could make it if given only the shortest moment. “If you’ll just untie me for a minute, I’ll go and grab them.”

Captain Sprat hissed out a laugh and nodded. He had that Something Up His Sleeve look so prominent on his great great great great grandson.

Admiral Grog surveyed the situation with dubious caution. “Untie that one,” he said to his first mate, but pointed his rapier at Corky.

“No, me,” said Hewlett with a worried brow. The first mate cut off Corky’s strings and helped him up. Hewlett was indignant. He tried winking to Corky, and tried to gesture by jerking his head around to say “Grab that dinghy, fight your way to me, rescue me and escape.”

The message did not get through to Corky in its entirety, but Corky resolved to do his best anyway. He walked past Captain Sprat on his way toward the main cabin.

“Aaarrrr,” whispered the Captain to Corky. “Get ye down to the powder stores and blow up the ship, and Grog along with us.”

Corky smiled and nodded as if he found favor with the Captain’s order. He wended his way through the burning debris to the half submerged poop deck and climbed in through the shattered door.

Admiral Grog expected him to bring confidential notes describing celestial navigation.

Captain Sprat expected him to blow up the ship.

Hewlett expected something he had tried to indicate with indecipherable head movements.

Corky expected to drown.

He swam into the Captain’s cabin, awash nearly to the ceiling. The mighty Flying Nudibranch was settling into her watery grave, and as the massive structure crumpled and sank, great shivering snaps shook through her timbers. Loud creaks groaned from the submerged decks below.

Pages from the ship’s log floated everywhere, as well as numerous corks that Captain Sprat had gnipped across the cabin. In Corky’s day, fat guys who drink beer and watch TV always snap their bottle caps across the room. Captain Sprat’s gnipping of corks was analogous to this. A proper gnip consists of gripping the cork firmly by the flat ends between the thumb and bent forefinger, and then applying pressure until the cork pops out and is gnipped across the room. Captain Sprat had a caged parrot on the receiving end of most gnips; that parrot was now collecting its belongings and stretching its wings at a cannonball hole for an extended holiday.

Corky rummaged through a shelf containing titles like Ye Nakked Wenches and Songf to be fung at fea. For some reason, people back then didn’t know the difference between the letters F and S. Often, when they meant S, they’d write F instead. Corky was aware of this, so when he saw a logbook with Celeftial Navigation scrawled on the cover in ink, he knew he’d found what he was looking for.

Moments later, Corky emerged on deck. Admiral Grog and Captain Sprat both looked at him with hopeful enthusiasm, but Hewlett was gritting his teeth angrily and jerking around. Corky observed that it may not be possible to please everyone all the time, but it may still be accomplished…

“You have the important paperth needed by the thcribe?”

“Yes sir,” said Corky, but winked at Captain Sprat to reassure him that his precious research was not in jeopardy.

Corky handed a volume to the Admiral. The Admiral held it out a ways, rotated it one way and then the other, then brought it in close and squinted at it.

“The dinghy,” hissed Hewlett when Corky was close enough. “I told you specifically to make a break for that dinghy.”

“We’ll be all right once we’re aboard the Admiral’s ship.”

“The Admiral’s going to haul us once he finds out we don’t know anything.”

“Of course we do,” said Corky. “We’re modern guys, right? We can certainly fool a 1766 guy. We can tell him whatever we like.”

Hewlett perked up at that suggestion. Any opportunity to profit through deception was more than appealing.

“Thcribe,” said Admiral Grog, stepping forward with the volume, “It ith not the duty of admiralth to perform menial tathkth of literathy.”

“Oh,” laughed Hewlett. “You mean you can’t read.”

A wave of fierce glowering swept over the Admiral’s face, chipping off a bit more mustache wax. Nevertheless, he held the book out for Hewlett to read aloud.

Hewlett cleared his throat and examined the book, ignoring Corky’s frantic gestures to shut up:

“Ye Nakked Wenches,” Hewlett read. “Cool!”

“What!” shouted Admiral Grog, and his rapier flicked from its sheathe in an instant. Captain Sprat roared with the proverbial Last Laugh, as Corky grabbed the bound Hewlett by the middle and lunged for the dinghy.

“After them! Thieze them! Hoitht them to the matht head!”

All the Admiral’s dumb guys flocked over the debris just as Corky and Hewlett landed in the dinghy. Aboard the Admiral’s ship, more dumb guys loaded the swivel guns.

“Can’t even read!” shouted Hewlett with a vulgar laugh. “You…you stupid head, you!”

“You will thuffer for that thnide remark!”

Corky rifled through the backpack, dug past the Celeftial Navigation notebook and found the controls to the machine. He hit all the buttons at once, and there was a flash.

4

Corky found himself waist deep in murky swamp water. Surrounding him was a tangled jungle, stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions. A steamy fog carried the stench of marsh gas, and everywhere were the battered and moss-covered remnants of civilization. Here a bombed-out city bus, sunken in the swamp, now carried water moccasins as its only passengers; there, the blasted corner of a once mighty glass skyscraper ripped through the ceiling of willow branches and housed only nervous little monkeys.

Corky discovered that he was scowling, and chewing the end of a cigar. He took the cigar out of his mouth and stopped scowling. He noticed his hand was painted camouflage, and moreover, whoever had applied it had done a sloppy job and smeared some of it on the cuff of his nice Thunderwood pledge sweater. He had a belt on, too, with pouches and things and all kinds of weapon accessories in little compartments. He had on some big machine gun, probably the kind that’s supposed to be mounted on a tank, but really cool guys would carry it themselves to look tough. Probably, if you had some little lightweight machine gun, and were handy with it, you could whip it around and mess up the tough guy who was still trying to swing his huge tank gun into position; but the tough guy had the dignity and respect commanded by Looking Tough. As did Corky, now.

Hewlett had the top three inches of his head sticking out of the swamp, and the only thing on him that wasn’t green were his eyes, and they were looking around back and forth. Finally he raised his head the rest of the way up and breathed.

“Did that look cool?” asked Hewlett. “I’ve seen guys do that in movies. It sure looks cool.”

Hewlett was shirtless, except for a flak jacket and his tie, so his ribs were showing, and he looked like a kid trying on his dad’s army stuff. Noticing this, he suddenly realized that he did not look cool, and certainly could not compete with Corky’s Looking Tough, and so said:

“Hey.”

“What?”

“How come you get that big gigantic thing, and all I get is this?” Hewlett brandished a small machete.

A voice shouted:

“Shut up!”

Corky and Hewlett turned, and saw the top half of a swamp bush standing up. It wasn’t really a whole bush, just part of a bush that some big muscly guy had turned into a hat. Here and there were other guys, one floating like a log, another up in a tree, another disguised as a piece of junk; and all were taking cover.

“What?” yelled Hewlett.

“Take cover, and shut up.”

Corky and Hewlett slogged over to a big willow and crouched in a shadowy part of its trunk that was all hollow.

“Who does that guy think he is?” said Hewlett. “Giving me orders. I ought to go teach him a lesson.”

“Never mind who he thinks he is,” said Corky, “who is he? And what are we doing in this place?” Corky paused a moment to reflect on the smoothness of that segue. He said it again, under his breath, and savored the sweet taste it left on his tongue.

“Check your digital watch,” said Hewlett.

“The time is 16:30.”

“Number one,” said Hewlett, “I don’t care if you have the cool tank gun, only guys in the chess club, or the audio club, or who play Dungeons & Dragons, use military time; and I won’t be smeared by hearing it given to me, thereby implying that I would expect or condone an answer in military time. Number two, I wanted to know what year it is.”

“But we seem to be in a military situation, and I only wanted to fit in. We want these fellows to like us.”

“The year!”

Corky pressed a couple of beeping buttons.

“2122.”

“Twenty one twenty two…” repeated Hewlett, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“And we’re in the Eastern Standard time zone.”

Hewlett slapped Corky upside the head for giving him Digital Watch Guy information. Corky decided that since everything he said seemed to be not nice to Hewlett, he would say nothing at all. Like his mother had taught him. Actually, instead of such useful lessons, Corky’s mother would usually just slap him upside the head for most any reason.

“Take cover,” shouted the big guy with the bush on his head.

Corky and Hewlett looked at each other: take cover from what? The jungle seemed peaceful enough…

And then, faint strains of music drifted through the swamp. But what kind of music? It was still too dim to tell.

“What is that?” asked Hewlett. “It sounds like…”

But he was cut short by the flash of an explosion only a few hundred yards away. Some men shouted in the distance.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” said Corky.

“No you don’t. The machine brought us here for some reason. We’re staying until we find that brunette.”

The music was clearer now. A happy bass line could be discerned, and the faint boom-chuck of rhythm guitar…

The flash of another blast, more shouting, and an unearthly bright red glow came round the corner of a grove only fifty yards away.

“I know that song,” said Hewlett. “It’s—”

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head burst forth triumphantly, the lead played by a psychedelic mandolin, and accompanied by free-thinking guitars. Simultaneously, a brilliant red orb of light floated into view, with a grinning smiley face painted on it, followed by a yellow one, and then a blue…

“It’s the Happy Smileys!” screamed one of the soldiers, who splashed through the swamp in full retreat. Sparkling dust scattered from the Happy Smileys, and everywhere it landed, a flower grew.

A devastating shock from a concussion grenade knocked Corky and Hewlett back. The man with the bush on his head pulled the pin from another and hurled it into the path of the Happy Smileys, and a second later, the water burst skyward with a tremendous crack, and the blue Smiley was atomized.

A cheer rose, and machine gun fire opened up. The remaining Happy Smileys drifted on, meandering aimlessly through the men, scattering love and happiness, and rainbows and tie-dyed patterns; grenades were fired, a mighty willow was hit, and exploded in a billow of flame, and several soldiers hurtled out of it on fire.

Corky seemed to automatically know which thing to pull back on his tank gun, which he did, and jumped out from behind their tree. A Happy Smiley was straight ahead; with a shout, which made his voice crack in the middle and sound all embarrassing, he fired the mighty gun. The big thing clattered and rang, and tree limbs got chopped off all over the place, and guys dived for cover, and the big guy with the bush on his head was trapped between the two Happy Smileys, and was shielding himself from the impending sparkly dust; Corky’s stream of bullets ripped the surface of the water all around the guy, chewed up the trunk of a tree and cut through the red Smiley. The Happy Smiley popped, and sounded like a champagne cork, and little tatters of it dribbled down into the water.

The yellow Happy Smiley wavered for a moment, then reversed course and went happily drifting back the way it had come. All the surviving soldiers jumped out from hiding and gave chase. Bullets flew all around the Happy Smiley; explosions flashed everywhere, but it drifted away faster and faster, and soon only the faint music could be heard, and it was right at Corky’s favorite part of the song, too; but now it was gone, and peace was restored to the swamp.

The men cheered again. The big guy with the bush on his head slogged over to Corky and Hewlett, took off his bush and grinned. He was shaved all bald, and had nose rings and things, and half of his head was tattooed like the red side of a lightning bolt, and the other half was blue, just like the Grateful Dead skull. Hewlett figured the guy was probably a loser, because the only people who would hang out with someone like him were those whom Hewlett deemed losers: people who had long hair, or beards, or Volkswagen buses, or motorcycles, or who converted their bodies into Jerry Garcia shrines. Hewlett reflected that with his machete, he could probably take Jerry.

“Nice work, soldier,” said the Grateful Dead guy to Corky. Corky seemed to know that this was Sergeant Brom Thorn, and that he could kick your ass. Guys like Brom Thorn never actually kick anyone’s ass, but they threaten to all the time, and probably ride the razor’s edge of threatening everyone just enough to make them scared, but never enough to make them actually try your threat on for size. Now here was something about Brom Thorn that Hewlett could identify with, but of course could never admit it, because as he thought before, with his machete, he could probably take Jerry Garcia. Unless Jerry had a machete too, or a pocket knife, or…anything; in which case Hewlett would eye Jerry threateningly, and touch his machete against his cheek, as if pretending to shave with it; and if Jerry took him up on his threat, Hewlett could always run around behind Corky and make him use his tank gun.

Clearly, Hewlett concluded, weakness was not to be shown to Brom Thorn.

Brom Thorn bit the end off a cigar and jammed it in Corky’s mouth. Hewlett sloshed forward and was about to tell Brom that he could take Jerry Garcia with his machete, when Brom stepped around in front of Corky to light the cigar. Brom would not typically notice someone like Hewlett, and that held true now. Before Hewlett could open his mouth, Brom had stepped on him and crunched him underwater.

“Thank you,” said Corky, as the end of the cigar glowed red.

“That was a hell of a shot, fatso. There’s an extra shot of turpentine for you tonight.”

Eyes fixed on the speck of flame on the cigar, Corky began to tremble. Hopefully it would go out before he had to breathe.

“What’s the matter? Draw. Don’t want to waste a two ammo case cigar.” Brom dipped a hand in the swamp water and splashed a gallon or two liberally on Corky’s stomach. The sudden chill forced Corky to suck in a huge breath. He coughed immediately on the smoke, firing the cigar into Brom’s nostril.

For part of a minute, Brom stood in great shock, studying his new nasal appendage. Then he began to rumble.

Corky prepared for death.

Brom Thorn erupted with volumes of belly laugh. He clapped a hand on Corky’s back and wandered away, the cigar still stuck in his nostril, chortling about how “a good laugh adds years to your life.”

“Move it out,” roared Brom Thorn, and the surviving soldiers fell into line.

Corky and Hewlett looked around for something to “move out,” but nothing was apparent. “What does he mean?” asked Corky.

“You’re the one with the military time; don’t you know?”

Corky pushed another beeping button or two on his watch. Hewlett slapped it down.

“Let’s just follow those guys, and do what they do.”

This plan was agreeable, and so they started off. The platoon trudged through the swamp for several hours, and everywhere loomed the same remnants of whatever ancient city left its bones here. They came to a cracked and overgrown elevated turnpike, and the platoon was able to climb onto solid dry ground for the first time.

“This looks like the midtown onramp for the 74 turnpike,” said Corky. “I wonder what could have happened.”

“The 74 turnpike never had Happy Smileys floating down the carpool lane.”

“What are the Happy Smileys?”

“They’re technical, Corky. I’ll explain them to you later.”

Corky had some crazy uncle named Jim who always used to say he’d “explain later.” Jim was the family’s “weird old uncle,” who didn’t seem to be related to anyone directly, but was someone’s brother-in-law, and never got married, and never had a job, or lived anywhere, or owned his own clothes. Corky’s mattress was about nine generations old, and whenever Corky was bad, his mom told him that it was the mattress that “Uncle Jim had died on.” Anyway, Uncle Jim would always stick a hose in Corky’s mouth, and tell him to hold it there, and if Corky asked why, Uncle Jim said he’d “explain later.” Then he ran and turned the water on full blast and changed Corky into a blowfish. Or once, Uncle Jim told Corky to climb a big elm tree and hold it steady while he chopped it down, and he would “explain why later.” Corky did as he was told, but the police came and gave Uncle Jim a white sweatshirt, so Corky never got to find out why his uncle wanted the tree chopped down.

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Brom Thorn. The platoon was gathered around Corky, who was drooling.

“He’s having a childhood memory,” explained Hewlett. “He’ll snap out of it in a minute, and apologize.”

“Poor little fatso,” said Brom Thorn. “I had a childhood memory once. I used to get mistreated by the family’s crazy uncle.”

“You had a crazy uncle too?” asked Hewlett. “I thought I was the only one.”

Several members of the platoon said that their families also had crazy uncles.

“Did they have something weird they did with their bodies, like having a fake leg, or a glass eye, or being double jointed, or unusually flatulent?”

Most did.

Brom Thorn wiped a tear away. “When I was five, my crazy uncle told me that the Grateful Dead tattoo on my face made me different from the other kids.”

The pathos of Brom’s story struck at Hewlett’s heartstrings. He felt a knot in his throat. “My crazy uncle always told me to open my mouth for a piece of candy, but instead he spit tobacco in.”

Most of the soldiers were sobbing out loud now. Sorrowful strains of old Streisand songs added depth to a mutually therapeutic outpouring of emotion.

Brom Thorn shook his tattooed head, slapped his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He looked around suspiciously. Then he grabbed the nearest guy and hissed:

“Soldier, are you in touch with your feelings?”

The soldier, crying wholeheartedly, nodded through the tears and wailing.

“I thought so,” roared Brom, and out came his machine gun. He racked it and put it to his shoulder.

“Violence?” cried Hewlett. “That never solves anything, friend.”

Brom shoved him aside and squeezed the trigger. The gun rang, spitting empties everywhere. As one, the platoon begged Brom to put down his torch of burning and take up a hammer for building.

POP!—and shreds of a Happy Smiley came drifting down from the sky. Brom dropped his empty clip and pounded in a fresh one.

“Got the yellow one,” said Brom Thorn.

The soldiers shook their heads, wondered where they were, and looked around. Corky came back to the world of the living, and before he could apologize, Brom laid a hand on his shoulder and said softly:

“We almost lost you there, buddy.”

Hewlett felt like retching. He now knew for certain that he could take Jerry Garcia with his machete.

Brom yelled “Move it out” again and everyone shouldered their equipment and continued along the turnpike. Corky and Hewlett, again unable to detect what they were expected to move out, exchanged a knowing wink and slyly followed what everyone else was doing. They trudged along for an hour or more, with a good view of the wrecked skyline. Many of the skyscrapers were at least mostly intact, but completely overgrown. The ceilings had collapsed in the low industrial buildings, filled now with willows and swamp water. New World monkeys howled in the distance, and as the sun got lower, the horizon turned an unearthly green.

Finally the platoon climbed down some vines onto dry ground. Beneath the turnpike, campfires crackled and more soldiers milled about. Huge supply crates were stacked, mechanics worked on swamp buggies and air boats, mess lines were in operation, and a makeshift radio tower beeped with Morse code.

“Morse code,” said Corky. “I recognize it from Cub Scouts.”

“That means these guys are about a thousand years behind the rest of the civilized world. I bet they all have 8-track tape decks.”

“Perhaps the Morse Code radio tower is just there for ambiance. It does lend a sense of wearisome futility to the camp.”

Brom Thorn clapped a hand on Corky’s back. “You gents catch some grub; fall-in’s at four thirty.” And away he went.

“Grub?” said Hewlett.

“Fall-in?” said Corky.

No explanation was apparent, so the subject was dropped.

A roar of cheers erupted from the far end of camp. Corky and Hewlett wandered toward it. Big gruff guys were in the way, and roughly ignored the boys as they shouldered past. Hewlett noticed that the bigger and gruffer the guy, the more deliberately he did not relax his shoulder as he brushed by. If the guy was really big and gruff, he would apparently tense his shoulder muscles to impart a good solid blow to Hewlett, and then purposely act like he didn’t notice. Hewlett assumed a brusque facial expression, but it had little effect. Hewlett noticed that Corky seemed to be getting bumped quite a bit less than he was.

“Hey Corky,” said Hewlett, “that big gun must be getting pretty heavy by now.”

“It sure is.”

“Perhaps you’d allow me to carry it for you.”

“Oh, thank you, Hewlett.”

Corky undid some straps and clips and things, and transferred the heavy artillery piece to Hewlett. Hewlett’s eyes flamed joyfully. He gripped the weapon comfortably, and scowled. They started off toward the cheering again.

Immediately, Corky was hit by several gruff shoulders. One guy even took a couple sidesteps toward Corky to be sure he struck him, keeping his eyes looking straight ahead where he was going, of course. Corky felt bad that he seemed to be getting in everyone’s way, but at least those he bumped into were all polite enough not to say anything.

A vast ball of flame billowed into the sky, followed by a loud thump. A guy went somersaulting through the air, and everyone cheered some more. Corky and Hewlett arrived at the back of a dense crowd of soldiers, but couldn’t see what was going on. Hewlett snarled, and forced his way in a body or two, and everyone saw his gun and so let him on through. “Oh,” Hewlett figured they were saying, “he has that big gun. He’s probably a pretty tough guy. He’s all right, let him through. He’s one of us.”

Actually they had a better reason for letting him through, but Hewlett didn’t know that yet.

Corky had less luck. He stood on his tiptoes, first behind one guy, then behind another, but could see nothing at all. He remembered a trick he learned in grammar school. He hoched up a bunch of gross stuff in the back of his throat, then sneezed it all into his hands. Then he drew his hands a couple inches out from his face so that strings were hanging down.

“Excuse me,” said Corky, and immediately received an avenue like the Red Sea. Corky strolled directly to a front row seat without hindrance.

It was a dirt clearing, well lighted, scattered with dismembered portions of bodies. In the middle was some martial arts Kung Fu guy with no shirt on, going through some little routine, like he had bees in his big floppy Kung Fu pants. He finished his little routine by picking up a weapon that was like a bunch of sticks tied together with little chains. He flung it around his body like a juggler, then launched up into the air, flipped around a bunch and landed with a shout.

Corky applauded and shouted “Here here!” but stopped clapping when he saw the mess that was all over his hands now. The guys around him stared, moved away a bit, and were all quiet. Corky sheepishly took out his handkerchief.

“Oh, gross!” said someone.

“What?” asked Corky.

“This guy has a handkerchief.”

All the gruff soldiers went “Eeewww” and squeezed even further away from Corky.

The Kung Fu guy picked up a gallon canister of turpentine, drank the last few gulps…or rather, some of them; the rest ran down his chin…crushed the canister in his fist and tossed it aside. Then he strode around arrogantly, motioning for anyone to come out and be next.

Corky raised his hand to volunteer, but as had been his lot in life since childhood, someone else always got picked.

The guy standing in front of Hewlett had several teeth, but even more hand grenades. He took two in each hand, like a tennis player holding extra balls, and advanced into the clearing.

The crowd cheered, and the Kung Fu guy whirled to face him.

The Kung Fu guy started some low pitched growl as he took a special grip on his chained stick thing, and started to swing it around; his growl got higher and louder, developing into a whine; and the chained stick thing swung in faster and bigger circles round his head. The grenade guy pulled a pin with his teeth, let the handle pop out, and he and the Kung Fu guy slowly circled each other, neither daring to get any closer to the other. Suddenly the grenade guy tossed his weapon; the Kung Fu guy batted it aside with his chained stick thing, and the live grenade went out over left field and burst in the crowd, hurling silhouetted bodies through the air like rag dolls.

A mighty cheer went up.

The grenade guy did some little somersault past the Kung Fu guy, as if it would throw him off, which it never does, although guys on TV seem to do it all the time. Another pin was pulled, although this time another one of his remaining teeth stayed with the pin. He took only the slightest pause to wince sadly, but that pause was enough. The chained stick thing smacked him smartly atop the head, the world spun, and the grenade guy’s face thumped into the ground.

The screams from the crowd were deafening. The Kung Fu guy swung his stick thing crazily, lost in the hysterics of the moment. It was at this point that numerous muscular arms shoved Hewlett into the ring.

The Kung Fu guy’s eyes flashed red and he charged Hewlett madly, even before Hewlett fully realized where he was. Hewlett turned a full circle, and everywhere he looked, he saw buff soldier guys swinging their fists in the air, going “Woo woo woo” like orangutans.

Corky’s eyes were the only part of his face visible behind the handkerchief, and they got really wide when he saw Hewlett out in the ring.

The Kung Fu guy leaped, like a springing leopard, and Hewlett observed that the target appeared to be himself. Instinct made Hewlett start to turn and run and cry, but he mastered it instantly, and fumbled for the big gun’s trigger. Out of the corner of his eye, a human form on the turnpike above peeked out from behind a jeep, and there was a muzzle flash. Just as Hewlett found his trigger, the Kung Fu guy burst apart in mid-air, and Hewlett stepped aside to let the remainders land in a heap where he had been standing.

“Far out,” said Hewlett.

Hats and turpentine cans were thrown into the air; the cheer was loud and heartfelt. Hewlett was a hero. He grinned with just the corner of his mouth, because he didn’t want to look like this was any big deal to him. Hewlett wanted people to think that this was all in a day’s work to him, and boring and ordinary. He just hoped nobody else had seen the person up on the turnpike.

He did what he imagined was the Michael Jackson moonwalk, but it looked really stupid because he had no idea how to do it, but these guys didn’t know any better so they cheered even louder. Hewlett swung the big gun toward a fuel dump, cut loose a couple rounds, and a vast explosion sent huge volumes of kerosene flames billowing into the air.

The soldiers had never seen such a show. Playboy bunnies could not have compared with it.

Hewlett sent a line of bullets popping into the ground in front of the crowd. They dove for cover, and the debris rained on them like glory.

Some of those jeeps on the turnpike above seemed like good subjects for entertainment, so Hewlett tossed a barrage their way. One of them exploded really cool, but the other, even better, burst into flames and toppled off the turnpike into the crowd, and then exploded. Once again, guys flew through the air on fire. Their joy was complete.

But then, inexplicably, the cheering, shouting, gunfire, and turpentine chugging stopped. It was so quiet, you could hear the last empty shells drop.

Hewlett looked around. The crowd was silent; only the breeze carried away the smoke.

Corky wondered what was up. The soldier closest to him wore an expression of dreaded respect, as one facing the devil himself. An expression that told of years of horrors, but nothing that could compare to this. An expression that was so clear in its meaning, Corky could tell what the guy ate for breakfast three Tuesdays ago, and what he named his dog when he was six.

“Western omelet,” mumbled Corky incoherently, “and…I believe…Topsy.”

“Huh?” asked the guy.

“What’s going on?” said Corky.

“It’s…I hesitate to speak the name…the Supreme Warrior.”

Hewlett looked around the clearing, but saw no one. Then he spotted the Warrior. Up on the turnpike, black against the roaring flame of the first jeep, stood a form. The Supreme Warrior stood motionless, hands on his hips, and waited to make sure he had everyone’s attention (because some of the men were still giggling and passing notes in the rear of the crowd, and hadn’t noticed him yet).

Hewlett was not afraid. A guy who stood that way was just like Brom Thorn; everyone thought he was tough, but he’d probably had never had to prove it. And this time, Hewlett had Corky’s big gun.

The Supreme Warrior jumped all the way to the ground, a good twenty five or thirty feet, and landed solidly without putting a hand down.

“That theory’s out,” said Hewlett. “He can kick my ass.” Hewlett hunted for a switch on the gun that might ensure it was ready to fire, but he had no clue. He checked his stance. All set. Partially set. As set as he was going to be. It was Corky’s gun; why wasn’t Corky doing this?

The Supreme Warrior started toward Hewlett, taking patient, measured steps. He was no more than average size, and being unable to look the part of Supreme Warrior based on vastness and musculature, he had sought other avenues. His solution included, mainly, a helmet, not unlike what you might find on a medieval knight, except futuristic. It was pretty cool, and had some nifty eye slit to look through, and was probably all full of electronics and stuff. He also wore a full suit of blue and gray camouflage, and had every kind of pocket and pouch, and knee pads and elbow pads, and about fifty little zippers, and a digital display that probably meant something. There were little lights all over the Supreme Warrior, indicating that he was at Full Power, or maybe indicating that his air conditioning was turned on, or perhaps that he was a theater usher. Whatever the lights meant, the Supreme Warrior stopped ten feet from Hewlett.

Hewlett narrowed his eyes and nodded. He thought this made him look In Charge. And looking In Charge, Hewlett had learned, was often more valuable than actually being In Charge.

“I bet you have a digital watch,” said Hewlett. “I know your type.”

The Supreme Warrior was motionless. A couple lights blinked on and off, like a Christmas tree, but that was all.

“Maybe you’d like to wrestle this gun away from me,” offered Hewlett, and snickered when the Supreme Warrior made no response.

Hewlett felt more In Charge now than ever. He laughed, sort of, like a single little “Ha,” which he intended to indicate that the Supreme Warrior was lamer than he’d thought.

“Or maybe,” said Hewlett, and took a step or two forward, “I should put a big hole right through your middle. Right next to your digital display.”

“That’s a Westinghouse…” came the Supreme Warrior’s husky, electronically synthesized voice.

“What?”

“…And you’ve had your fifteen hundred.”

Something in the Supreme Warrior’s tone told Hewlett that he might no longer be In Charge. He became aware of a low, rhythmic chant beginning from the crowd.

Corky was as caught up in the moment as anyone; more so in fact, because he was so gullible and naïve. He was chanting too, and it went a little like this:

Smash him, trash him
Eat him up for lunch,
Bash and thrash him
It thrills us all a bunch.

The Supreme Warrior took a step toward Hewlett. Hewlett narrowed his eyes and nodded again, but it was a mere ruse; he had no real hope of being In Charge again. He put his finger on the trigger.

The Supreme Warrior took another step. The chant grew in intensity…

A bead of sweat rolled down to the tip of Hewlett’s nose, and hung there, and tickled, and was the last thing Hewlett wanted to deal with, because to scrunch up his face and make it drip off, would be to lose his In Charge expression. So he put up with the tickle.

Corky jumped up and down, with the rest of the crowd, who shook their fists, and drank their turpentine, and fired their guns in the air, beat on each other and shouted:

Smash him, trash him
Eat him up for lunch,
Bash and thrash him
It thrills us all a bunch.

Hewlett looked at the Supreme Warrior, at Corky, at the crowd, at his Westinghouse tank gun, at his spastic and sweaty trigger finger, and back at the Supreme Warrior, who lifted his foot to take another step. Hewlett pulled the trigger.

Bink!

The Supreme Warrior slapped a hand on the tank gun and yanked it from Hewlett’s body, straps and all. He took a fresh clip out of one of his many pouches and pockets, slammed it into the gun, turned it on Hewlett and shouted:

“Bang!”

The world went dark, and Hewlett knew nothing more.

The men around Corky went wild, and most of them charged the Supreme Warrior. The first were cut down with the gun, others got closer and the Supreme Warrior beat them over the head with it, or jumped in the air and flipped upside down and knocked their heads together, or spun around and kicked them, or whirled and tossed one guy into several others. Corky ran out there with everyone else, occasionally ducking to avoid the odd hurled body. He found Hewlett in the center of the melee, passed out on the ground. Corky hefted him onto his shoulder and jogged out of the ring. When Corky jogged, the most of his stomach bounced up and down twice as much as the rest of him, and made an entertaining spectacle.

Now Brom Thorn strode into the picture. He grabbed the first couple of guys and tossed them aside, and shouted until everyone could hear him, and made everyone knock it off and hit the sack. He yelled at the Supreme Warrior for making such a big mess, and detailed a couple guys to clean everything up. Then, as everyone dispersed, Brom picked up a turpentine canister, shook it, gulped down the last quart or so, crushed it in his hand like a Real Man and tossed it over his shoulder.

Corky laid Hewlett down behind some supply sheds and fanned him with his handkerchief.

“Oh,” said Hewlett, his eyes still shut, “what’s that smell?”

Corky looked at his handkerchief, and discarded it into an empty fuel drum.

“Corky,” said Hewlett, “did I win? Did I kick his ass?”

“Yes. You were amazing.”

Hewlett stood and checked his body for damage. “I seem to have come through it all right. Corky, I think it’s time you dug up some dinner and a place to sleep for your champion.”

“I was going to sleep in the jungle,” said Corky. “There’s a comfortable tuft of ferns just over there, with a spring of fresh water, and even a rock for privacy. You’re welcome to join me.”

Hewlett assumed a pained expression, the way jerks do when they’re trying to make you feel bad for being wrong. He slowly shook his head in despair, and appealed heavenward. “Corky,” he began at last, “these people do not seek out comfort, privacy, fresh water, perfumed bath soaps. They will not respect you if you gingerly puff baby powder on your face each morning.”

Corky was going to interrupt and mention the place that anatomy required him to gingerly puff baby powder, but held his tongue.

“We must demonstrate that we shun comforts,” Hewlett continued. “That we reject convenience, hygiene, sanitation. That we will not simply lay ourselves down anywhere to sleep, when rest can be had at great difficulty, and in maximum discomfort.”

“Oh,” said Corky, and questioned whether he’d had things mixed up his whole life.

“Take this Quonset hut,” said Hewlett. “Rude, ugly, doubtless hot inside, full of fungi and spiders and spray painted graffiti. A man would sleep here.”

Hewlett banged loudly on the metal door.

“Eat that hand, buddy, or I will,” roared a husky voice from inside, that vibrated Corky’s stomach.

Hewlett cleared his throat, then assumed his most manly voice: “Sorry, I was looking for the men’s room.”

Corky turned and ran, but Hewlett held him by his collar so he didn’t go anywhere.

The metal door slammed open, and there stood a pile of muscle and camouflage paint, with sweaty hair all over the place, and things like hand grenades and ammunition belts draped everywhere. A bristly brow rose, and tiny little shiny eyes looked down on Hewlett.

“A comedian,” observed the pile of muscle.

“A sucker, who’s sleeping outside tonight,” observed Hewlett.

“Those ferns look inviting,” observed Corky.

The pile of muscle extended a bulging appendage, probably an arm, and gripped Hewlett, and compressed him so that he swelled out between the muscly fingers, and picked him up, and turned him side to side to examine him.

“This yours?” asked the pile of muscle.

“Yes,” said Corky. “Thank you for collecting it for me.”

The Pile turned Hewlett upside down, to see if anything spilled out, but nothing did. Then he tapped Hewlett’s head against a rock a few times, to see if anything would happen, but nothing did.

“He seems languid and oscitant,” rumbled the Pile.

“Yes,” said Corky, because he didn’t know what either of those words meant, but nevertheless wished to leave a favorable impression upon the Pile, and so thought it well to laugh pleasantly at his jokes.

The Pile found the way Corky’s belly jumped up and down as he chortled to be intriguing, so he extended another appendage and compressed Corky as well. Corky was a significantly larger handful, but the Pile picked him up anyway and compared the two together. He tapped them against each other to see what would happen, but nothing did.

Suddenly a chain fell around the upper end of the Pile, and wrapped around the musculature that would correspond to a neck, and the Pile looked up wonderingly to see if it was raining. Then the chain was given a mighty tug, and the Pile crash landed on its back.

The Supreme Warrior climbed out of a pickup truck, detached the chain from the back bumper, and coiled it up as he walked over to the prone Pile. The Pile just lay there, wondering why the jungle looked so much like the sky.

“Open your hands, Fasolt,” said the Supreme Warrior.

The Pile did so. Corky and Hewlett gasped mightily, as each sucked in their first breath in minutes, and crawled away from the Pile on shaky hands.

“Real…men,” stammered Hewlett, in between five gallon breaths, “don’t need to be…rescued.”

“What’s the matter with your voice? Is there something wrong with you?” asked the Supreme Warrior.

“Real…men…talk…this way.”

“I see.” The Supreme Warrior tossed his coil of chain into the back of the pickup, then gave the Pile a kick. “Get out of here, Fasolt. Go back to sleep.”

The shiny little eyes opened wide, then the heavy black brow dipped low and sad. A big scruffy jaw full of yellow teeth and manly bad breath-causing plaque and bacteria stuck out, the Pile stood itself up, and moped into its hut. It turned back once, its eye sparkling with moisture…a tear?

The Supreme Warrior kicked the door shut.

Corky and Hewlett had recovered enough to shakily try to stand. The Supreme Warrior watched them, arms akimbo, as they re-enacted Bambi. Hewlett was able to quiver freely, but Corky, with the extra mass around his midriff, had a shock absorber effect and wasn’t able to look as retarded.

Hewlett narrowed his eyes and stared at the Supreme Warrior. He stood there impressively, arms folded, numerous weapons neatly sheathed for the night, his face hidden behind the enigmatic helmet. Hewlett figured he must be ugly, or maybe had a cleft palate, or had a big birthmark all over his face that looked like Florida, or some big infectious zit right in the middle of his forehead. Or probably he was just a dork, and thought it would impress gullible people to wear a stupid looking helmet. Hewlett tested the theory by looking at Corky: Corky was as impressed as Hewlett had ever seen him; indeed, he even had a thing of drool hanging down. The matter was settled. The Supreme Warrior was just some dork who wore a helmet to impress gullible people. Well, Hewlett wouldn’t be one of them.

“You gonna say something,” asked Hewlett, “or do I need to teach you another lesson?”

“There are bunkhouses at the south end of camp,” said the Supreme Warrior’s burly electronic voice, conspicuously ignoring Hewlett’s remark. Hewlett realized it, too, and reflected how it’s like in movies, where some tough guy says something tough, and then another guy, who’s maybe not so tough, tries to act even tougher; but can’t think of anything tougher to say, and so ignores the first guy’s tough thing, which is the same as saying it was too insignificant to warrant a response.

Hewlett grinned wryly. He now knew that he was tougher than the Supreme Warrior, already known to be a dork.

“We’re expecting the Happy Smileys to mount another beautification at dawn tomorrow, so you’d better get some sleep.”

“Real men don’t sleep in bunkhouses.”

“Then I’d invite you to try that tuft of ferns over there,” said the Supreme Warrior. “The mutant alligators might be afraid of real men.”

The Supreme Warrior tossed a couple fifty year old cans of dog food on the ground. “Here’s some grub.”

Corky and Hewlett looked at the cans hungrily.

The Supreme Warrior took off his helmet, and shook out a shock of short, fluffy blond hair.

He’s a namby too, thought Hewlett when he saw the fluffy blond hair.

The fluffy hair fell into place and exposed a chiseled, steely-eyed face with sharp features and perfect teeth.

No, Hewlett realized, he’s a girl!

“Wipe your friend’s drool,” she said with a normal girl voice, and snickered slightly as she looked Hewlett head to toe, then whirled and strode off into the night, knowing full well where four eyes were fixed. Then she stopped at the edge of the light, looked back just in time to catch the four eyes dart elsewhere, and said:

“Sweet dreams.”

5

Some hours later, a dark and mysterious form crept along through the camp. It peered around the corner, and what it saw sent chills down its spine.

Corky lay amidst the ferns, with his shirt up over his stomach, revealing about an acre of pasty whiteness. He snored like the Seven Dwarfs, all musical like, like someone pulling open an accordion on the inhale, and three people whistling in harmony a descending tone full of vibrato on the exhale, with extra percussion sounds thrown in to give it a snappy rhythm. Empty dog food cans were scattered on the ground around him.

Hewlett was nearby. He had tried to sleep sitting up against a tree, but his head had toppled to one side and his mouth was open so wide it looked like he had a detachable jaw. Some funky green snake was hanging down from the tree and was looking around inside Hewlett’s mouth, but probably wasn’t finding much that appealed to it. Another snake, of the larger Anaconda variety, had most of Hewlett’s leg down its throat and was proceeding upward. Beside him, a mutant alligator was just tying on a bib and licking his chops, with his eyes going around in circles of ecstasy.

The mysterious form stepped into the light. It was the Supreme Warrior. She said:

“Scram!”

The Anaconda turned its eyes to look, furrowed its brow in frustration, and began disgorging Hewlett’s leg. The little snake rolled up into the tree limbs, and the mutant alligator took off the bib with a grimace, crumpled it up and threw it down. He laid in the water, stuck his tongue out at her, and floated away.

The Supreme Warrior tiptoed over and reached for Corky’s collar, but stopped herself and cautiously reached for his shirt. It grossed her out, but she grabbed it and pulled it down over his repulsive stomach, then quickly wiped her hand on her camouflage suit. She grabbed his collar and snatched his head up.

“Wake up!”

Corky’s eyelids fluttered.

“Mom?”

She struck his head against the ground.

“Ouch.”

“Wake up. Come here.”

She dragged him bodily across the dirt, around a shed and slammed him against the corrugated steel wall. Corky woke up fully now, looked around, and smiled.

“My name’s Corky.”

“Who cares?”

Corky thought, but could not immediately answer. So instead he asked:

“What’s your name?”

The Supreme Warrior was surprised to find herself a bit impressed by the calm and In Charge way that Corky ignored her remark, and proceeded unfazed to interrogate her instead. Nevertheless, she was not about to give the upper hand to this fatso, so she said:

“What’s it to you?”

Corky was taken aback. He had never considered this before, and it posed an interesting problem. Just what was someone’s name to someone else? The thing they call them by, obviously; but why would the Supreme Warrior ask him that? It seemed inexplicable, but he naturally supposed the Supreme Warrior to be far superior to himself in intellect, so he did his best to answer. To him, her name would be:

“Your name?”

Once again, her hard driven remark had failed to penetrate the defenses of this rock. The Supreme Warrior was definitely impressed now. She had made two deliberate snide remarks, and Corky had swatted both of them aside like flies, and had now, in fact, repeated his question to her with little or no more consternation than the first time. Clearly, Corky was not one to be trifled with.

“Cyndy,” she said, defeated. “Spell it with an ‘i’ and I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

Corky was agreeable to the terms of her spelling. Perhaps, he thought, they could become friends. In fact, he began to realize that she was attractive.

“Now,” she said, getting down to business, “getting down to business.”

“My name’s Corky,” he said again, with a big smile that made you want to dump forty pounds of stomach contents all over the place.

“Yes it is,” said Cyndy. “Now tell me, exactly who are you?”

“Corky.”

She shook his collar roughly and threw him against the steel shed. A brick fell off the roof and struck him a glancing blow to the cranium.

“Ouch.”

“Where did you two come from? I haven’t seen you here before, and you’ve obviously never handled a gun before in your life.”

“I’m a student. At Thunderwood College.”

Cyndy began to boil. There were no such things as colleges, and she’d never heard of any place called Thunderwood. She threw him to the ground.

“You’re lying.”

“That’s because you threw me down here.”

“No, stupid,” said Cyndy, and hauled him to his feet with one hand, “I mean there’s no such place. Where is it?”

“Just on the other side of the turnpike, and several blocks through the jungle.”

“So what are you doing here?”

Corky told her all about the brunette (which she ignored, and gestured by moving her hand around in a circle to get him to move on to something relevant), and the Professor’s machine (which she did not believe, and resolved to beat Corky to a pulp), and about how the Poet had offered them—

“You follow the Poet?!”

“We made a deal with him.”

“So,” said Cyndy, and thrust a large handgun with all sorts of accessories in his face, “you guys are Poetite spies. Just as I thought.”

Five minutes later, Corky and Hewlett found themselves being thrown on the floor of Brom Thorn’s tent. Brom was just rolling out of bed, and rubbed his eyes, and looked around to see if it was 4am Manly Tai Chi time yet.

“Here they are,” said Cyndy, “the two Poetite spies. And we wondered how the Happy Smileys have been so good at finding us lately.”

Brom buttoned his shirt and stood looking down at the boys. He had a stern expression. Coupled with the Grateful Dead tattoo on his face, his countenance was formidable.

“Poetite spies,” he repeated. Brom rubbed his shaved head and looked at the floor. He paced in a little circle, muttering in disappointment.

He and Cyndy were the only ones in there. Hewlett figured it was dumb of them not to call extra guards or anything; after all, he and Corky were Poetite spies, and might escape. It was also a little humiliating. It was like Brom was saying to him, “Ha, look at you, you wimpy little dipstick, you’re so lame that I don’t even need any guards.” Hewlett would have much rather had the dignity of struggling fiercely against burly captors…as long as they didn’t hit him or anything.

“Hewlett,” whispered Corky, “we’re not really Poetite spies, are we?”

“I don’t know about me,” Hewlett whispered back, “but you sure are. You stole that blue book and gave it to the Poet. Remember?”

“I repented of that.”

“A lot Brom Thorn will care about your psycho-religious redemption. He’s going to have you for breakfast.”

Corky wondered if he would make a good fry.

Brom Thorn pulled a chain to turn on a sickly little light bulb that was about one watt. It was right behind his head, and he probably hung it there to make himself look impressively backlit when he gave speeches and lectures about guns and tough things to idiots. He said:

“More than a century ago, the world was a different place. There were more people, so the guns were spread around more. Not everyone carried two or three.”

Cyndy was sickened by thought of wimpy, unarmed people. But she was raised to be a soldier, and so said nothing. Brom continued.

“It wasn’t as comfortably warm, neither. So the oceans were sunk down into separate places, instead of swamped up all over, like now. They fought wars from control rooms, not the manly way we do it now. There was different kinds of shoes to wear, too; not just jungle boots. People was free, free to do what they wanted, go where they could go on roads that used to go everyplace. See movies if they wanted. Bust someone’s head. Wear whatever shoes they chose.”

Hewlett thought that if Brom lost the light bulb, or learned grammar, his speech would be entirely ineffectual.

“But the Poet came and changed all that,” continued Brom Thorn. “He published a theory that proved nothing was really like it seemed, only probably that way. And he learned to make things like they probably weren’t. The problem was, the Poet was poetic, you might say, and he thought everything should be…happy. Sweet. Sugar coated.”

“Warm and fuzzy,” added Cyndy.

“Poignant.”

“Overwrought with compassion.”

“Misty eyed.”

“In touch.”

“And now,” said Brom Thorn, spreading his arms and stepping onto a footlocker, “the world is plagued by the Happy Smileys, spreading warmth and beauty everywhere, robbing us of our free will to be depressed and violent if we so choose.”

Cyndy pulled some lever on a gun that made a frightening metallic sound, and thrust it into Corky’s face. “And all because the Poetite spies keep the Poet’s theories alive. We can destroy the Happy Smileys, but until the world is once again as it probably should be, they’ll just keep coming.”

Hewlett was relieved to see that Cyndy had chosen Corky to point the gun at. “You’re right,” said Hewlett, and sprang to Cyndy’s side, “he’s not one of us. Corky must be one of those spies.”

“Give it up, wimp.”

Hewlett gave it up wimpily, and rejoined Corky.

Cyndy kept them covered, and said:

“What should we do with them, Sergeant Thorn?”

Brom Thorn realized that nobody was paying attention to his impressive pose atop the footlocker, and so stepped down. He took up a shiny automatic and began polishing it.

It reminded Corky of the Poet polishing out his pipe bowl. Soldier guys who polished shiny guns never fired them, it seemed. They’d keep one gun to shoot with, and then one for display, which always got polished. If polishing was actually good for a gun, hadn’t it best be saved for the one that was to be operational?

“You saved my butt from being beautified in the swamp today,” said Brom Thorn to Corky. “Why would a Poetite spy do that?”

To Corky, it was like being asked if it was the first time he had been pregnant. It’s the kind of question that bratty little snots will ask you, where no matter how you answer, everyone laughs at you. Only here, everyone would fire heavy assault weapons at him.

“Perhaps a Poetite spy,” said Corky, wording his response as carefully as he could, “has no reason to hurt you. Perhaps a Poetite spy would—”

“Corky needed you alive so he could steal secrets from you later,” broke in Hewlett. “Now give me clemency.”

“Then you confess!”

“No,” said Corky, alarmed.

“Yes!” said Hewlett. “Don’t you see, Corky? He’s trying to trick us into confessing. But if we confess first, then he’d be trying to trick us into not confessing.”

Once again, Corky marveled at his friend’s logic, which was entirely over the head of mere mortals.

“Kill them,” Brom told Cyndy, and turned to climb into his bunk.

“What have you got in here?” asked Cyndy, and tried to pull the backpack away from Corky.

“Hold on there,” said Hewlett. “That’s none of your business.”

“That so?” rumbled Brom Thorn, and reached out to take it himself.

Hewlett made a dive for the backpack. It slipped off of Corky and Hewlett landed in the dirt with it. Cyndy pulled out her big automatic (the one with all the accessories) and pulled the slide to chamber a round.

“Freeze!” she shouted.

Obediently, Hewlett froze. “I’m terribly sorry,” he laughed. “I don’t know what came over me. The backpack’s yours. Corky’s yours. Really; I’ll help you take both of them.”

Corky lay on the floor, looking up at Brom Thorn in astonishment. Corky made a funky face that neither Hewlett or Cyndy could interpret, so they looked at Brom to see what caused Corky’s expression.

Brom’s head was completely engulfed in a bright green Happy Smiley. Bolts of terror shot through Cyndy and the boys from the shocking apparition: Brom’s massive body, arms outstretched, torso pulsating, with a bright, happy green balloon head, with the sickening broad smile painted on.

Hewlett sprang to his feet and slapped the gun from Cyndy’s hand. They all fell on top of Corky.

6

There was a flash and a crackle. The universe seemed to snap, and Corky found himself on the outside of things looking in, and then on the inside looking out, and then somewhere else looking nowhere in particular, and then several hundred feet in the air without a parachute. But the weather was quite pleasant.

A great rush of wind began blowing upward. Corky’s clothing began to rustle as the wind grew more fierce. In only a few seconds, the rush became deafening.

Corky felt the backpack strap tug. He saw Hewlett flapping about in the wind beside him, looking all wild eyed and clueless. Hewlett was trying to stand on something, or clutch at something, or do anything normal; but found nothing to stand on and nothing to clutch, and so floundered about in an undignified way.

Corky felt a combat boot knock him behind the skull. It sent him tumbling, just in time to see Cyndy whirling about, grabbing at nothing, flailing crazily. Then she disappeared into a treetop.

Everything was dark and loud. Corky felt himself being whipped and strapped by invisible switches which seemed to come from everywhere, and grew heavier and heavier. Then there was brilliant sunlight, and bright long grass on a slope that rushed by quickly, and then it was dark again, something bumped Corky into the air. He felt a lot of leaves surround him, and quite suddenly, everything stopped.

It was quiet for a second, but then Hewlett came sliding down on the grass, headfirst on his back. There was a coconut sound as he struck a tree. That made him stop.

“Ouch,” said Hewlett.

The bushes were ripped aside as Cyndy scrambled to her feet. She tore around, looking for her gun, but found nothing.

“Where are we?” she demanded.

Hewlett just rubbed his head. Corky looked around.

“Where?!”

“In the bushes.”

“Corky,” moaned Hewlett, “let’s not press that button anymore, shall we?”

“Button…what’s he talking about?” and Cyndy shook Corky roughly by the collar.

“You shake me roughly by the collar a lot, don’t you?” said Corky.

Once again, Corky showed himself to Cyndy to be impregnable to intimidation and rough collar shaking. Cyndy let go of him. He landed back in the bush.

Cyndy looked around. She didn’t see her gun. She didn’t see Brom Thorn, or his tent, or any cans of turpentine, or dismembered dead guys on fire. And she felt very small and far from home indeed.

“Well, what happened? And where did we get these hats?”

Corky picked his up from where it had come to rest beside him. “They’re pith helmets,” he said.

Hewlett yanked his off and dashed it to the ground. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Why would someone do it into a helmet?”

“No, no,” said Corky. “Pith. Pith.”

Hewlett sheepishly put it back on, and gave Corky a wry look. Ignorant people trying to hide how much they don’t know are the only ones to whom the term “wry” applies. They say something really stupid, embarrassing those around them, and then when somebody explains it to them, the ignorant guy gives them a “wry” look. This is intended to give the impression that the ignorant guy was only joking when he said his stupid thing, and that the joke’s on the guy who explained it, because any intelligent person should have known that the ignorant guy was joking. In effect, the “wry” look says “Come on, you idiot, you don’t actually think I was stupid enough to mean what I said?” When one is stupid, the easiest solution is to make someone else feel stupider.

Accordingly, Corky felt stupider and hung his head.

“So now,” said Hewlett in an effort to state the obvious to complete his recovery from ignorance and appear In Command, “we’re explorers on a wooded mountainside.”

“That answers all my questions,” said Cyndy. “How did we get here?”

Corky thought it well not to say anything about the Poet until he was more certain Cyndy would not maul him. So he simplified things:

“This machine is how people at Thunderwood College travel.”

Corky and Hewlett were indeed from Thunderwood College, and they used the machine to travel. Thus Corky felt secure that his statement was true. All was well; Corky would not burn in the inferno for lying.

“Cyndy,” said Hewlett, “hike up to the top of this hill and see where we are. Corky, look around and find me some mangoes.”

Corky started off, but Cyndy grabbed his arm. “Stay here, Corky.” Then, to Hewlett: “Who the heck are you to be giving orders?”

Hewlett wrinkled his brow and looked at her as if he couldn’t figure out what she was trying to communicate. People whose positions are weak do this to make you feel that your question is so wrong that it’s not comprehensible.

“I’m the guy,” said Hewlett at last. “Corky’s the sidekick, and you’re the passenger.”

“Passenger? If I hadn’t taken out that kung fu guy, you’d see what kind of a passenger I am. I’d be riding your coffin.”

Corky wasn’t sure how one would “ride a coffin,” but said nothing. He did not wish to find out.

So instead he turned and took a step or two, because to remain still might indicate to Cyndy that he expected her to continue with her sentence, and risked learning the realities of “riding a coffin.” Unfortunately, his first step was into a trap. Some hidden trigger mechanism caused a bent-over tree to spring loose, which snatched a rope coiled from vines out from under the forest-leaf carpet, which sprang a couple other things…

“Look out!” shouted Cyndy.

…and dropped a big rock as a counterweight, and yanked Corky up into the air by his ankle, knocking him generously against the trunk of a mighty oak.

“Ouch,” said Corky. He swung back and forth like a good sized pendulum. He was carrying a fair amount of mass, and the trees above creaked as he probed the limits of the vine rope’s tensile strength.

“Look out!” shouted Hewlett. Then he quickly coughed, and sneezed, and did one or two other things, in order that it might be perceived that the tardiness of his warning was due to biological factors that were beyond his control. Actually, he still wasn’t sure what had happened, and had shouted only because Cyndy had, and he didn’t want to look “out of it.”

There was a rushing sound, and Hewlett’s pith helmet jumped from his head and was pinned to a tree by a giant spear. The spear vibrated, and made a twangy cartoon-like sound.

Some huge native guy with all kinds of tattoos and beads and muscles and grass skirts and things stepped into the clearing. He had thrown the spear to achieve a Dramatic Effect for his entrance. It was more potent than the Poet’s dramatic appearance in the chair in the Colonel’s study, because the Poet hadn’t thrown any spears, and didn’t look like he could rip you in half with two fingers. Another thing the Poet hadn’t clued in on was stretched out earlobes, which this guy had. He’d worn bigger and bigger earrings for twenty years, and now his earlobes hung down a foot. You could have thrown a basketball through them. If the Poet had chosen a similar adornment, he would have been guaranteed to get better notice. But this native guy was way ahead of him.

Corky swung toward the native guy at about thirty miles an hour, so the native guy put out a stocky arm which Corky smacked. He reeled and bounced and said “Ouch” again, but stayed in the same general place.

Out of habit, Cyndy reached for her gun but found nothing there. She crouched a little lower in the bushes.

“Mgumbo,” the native guy said at last.

“What’s that,” said Hewlett, “is that his name, or is it some kind of a threat?”

“Let’s not immediately assume the worst,” said Corky as best he could, with all the blood sinking to his head. Corky’s face always turned purple when he was upside down. He was one of those guys who got sick on merry-go-rounds, and couldn’t do pull-ups, and had to take medicine, and always got things like “sun poisoning” and “hives.” Therefore Hewlett, with his emaciated and fish-belly white spindle of a body, enjoyed Corky’s company because he felt physically superior.

“He’s very large,” said Cyndy, eyeing Mgumbo. “Tactically, I’d put us at a disadvantage.”

Hewlett was not discouraged, as he had Cyndy to deliver his blows for him, and Corky to receive any that might come his way. Hewlett felt secure about both his offense and his defense. A show of strength, he had once read, was a mandatory first step in securing dominance.

Showing strength might be dangerous in this case. It could be received with retaliation. Therefore, Hewlett deemed, wisdom dictated that Corky should deliver the show of strength, in order that any retaliation might be received by the proper beneficiary.

Mgumbo growled under his breath. Hewlett smirked.

“Corky, hang him a loogie.”

Corky was not certain about that. He whimpered, and looked to Cyndy for guidance.

Cyndy nodded and gave him the thumbs up.

The guidance was not in the direction Corky wished, so he looked, as a last resort, back to Hewlett. But Hewlett had his gaze fixed steadily on Mgumbo.

“Hang him a decent barbell. Strap him from ear to ear.”

Corky wished he was home in bed, or perhaps sitting on the toilet reading Popular Mechanics, but he wasn’t. He was hanging upside down in some big jungle guy’s trap. So he sloshed his tongue around in the back of his throat, in preparation to lubricate a good hoch, and shrugged apologetically to the unsuspecting Mgumbo.

“What’s a barbell?” asked Cyndy. “Is it a Poetite weapon?”

“It’s a subcategory of loogie,” said Hewlett, “consisting of two main globules, held together by a string.”

“A loogie. That’s a pistol, isn’t it?”

Corky spat. The barbell flew straight and true, though rather wobbly along its path, and struck its intended target ear to ear, exactly as designated.

“Ah,” said Mgumbo, in a deep rumbly voice that you could feel in your ribs. He smiled and nodded. “Aqaqa.”

“He said something,” observed Hewlett cleverly. “Quick,” he asked Cyndy, “what did he say?”

“I think it was a challenge,” said Cyndy.

“A challenge,” repeated Hewlett, and nodded as if he had expected it to be a challenge. “Very, very good. All right you guys, get him.”

Corky and Cyndy looked at each other.

Mgumbo happily strode over toward them. He was so huge that he made it in just a couple big steps. He slapped Corky on the back with a hand the size of Canada and said:

“Aqaqa.”

“He wants you to hit him back,” said Hewlett. “Deck him.”

Corky looked up. Mgumbo seemed quite enraptured about something, and wanted to share his joy with Corky.

“Should I spit on him again?”

“Sure.”

“You guys are morons,” said Cyndy. “He’s trying to be friendly.”

That struck Hewlett as a suspicious development. He tightened his belt and backed off a few steps.

“That’s not what I mean,” said Cyndy.

Mgumbo dipped his hand in the barbell across his face and showed it to Corky. “Aqaqa.”

Mgumbo tapped Corky on the back of the head, and gestured his hand flying away from Corky’s mouth. Corky comprehended. He snorted up another good one, and let it fly. It smacked into the tree.

“Ah,” said Mgumbo with an enormous grin of approval. He grabbed Corky, plucked him from the vine like a grape and threw him up on his shoulder.

“Aqaqa,” said Mgumbo to Hewlett and Cyndy, and motioned for them to follow him. He went bounding off into the jungle.

“Now’s our chance,” said Hewlett. “Let’s beat it.”

“He just kidnapped your friend.”

“Corky selflessly gave us this chance to escape,” said Hewlett. “I won’t let his sacrifice be in vain.”

Cyndy glared at him, then realized he wasn’t worth any more of her trouble, and struck off after Mgumbo and Corky.

Hewlett fell in behind, not because he was afraid to be alone in the jungle, but because he felt like it.

“Aqaqa,” said Mgumbo brightly, and laughed heartily. He ran with great smooth steps. Mgumbo ran through the jungle like old Swedish guys ice skate, with effortless practiced precision that made it look real easy. Cyndy ran like a soldier on an obstacle course, jumping over logs, climbing up and over things and doing little somersaults off the top, and panting rhythmically to maintain proper metabolism. Hewlett ran like an out of shape spazz who’s afraid to be left alone in the jungle.

Soon they arrived at a picturesque jungle village. Various jungle people stepped out of their grass huts as Mgumbo strolled down the main dirt avenue, chattering away in his jungle language which was made of all kinds of different sounds, including (but not limited to) belly slaps, finger pops, creative vocalizations, armpit farts, and just about everything else one can do on one’s body. The citizens seemed quite pleased with Mgumbo’s news, and looked at Corky with approving wonderment. Corky grew suspicious and looked around for staked heads or piles of skulls, but was relieved to see nothing of the sort. He saw only a happy people living in harmony with their environment. Apparently they had never figured out showers, but otherwise they seemed quite inoffensive. Their village was quaint and busy as a beehive. Atmospheric jungle drums could be heard. A few women even winked and waved their elongated earlobes at Corky. He wished he knew how to respond, but simply smiled and waved. The women giggled and scattered, then peered out at Corky from various hiding places, flushed with excitement.

An old man came out from his hut with an empty bowl, and begged of Corky “Aqaqa, aqaqa.” Mgumbo angrily made a bunch of language sounds at him and waved him off. The old man stood sadly in his doorway with big brown eyes. Corky began to suspect that all was not well in Mgumbo’s village.

Hewlett and Cyndy entered the village with caution. “Try to act normal,” cautioned Cyndy. “Don’t attract any attention.”

“I’m clothed, and my ears aren’t four miles long. How am I not going to attract any attention?”

Cyndy pulled some vines loose and tied them into little loops. “Let’s drape these over our ears. It’ll make good cover.”

“Good plan.”

With their disguises in place, Hewlett and Cyndy walked through the village unnoticed. They could hear their hearts thump every time somebody passed.

One big fat guy stopped directly in front of Hewlett. He slapped his belly.

Hewlett popped his finger out of his mouth in response.

The big fat guy laughed and strolled on by.

Hewlett and Cyndy breathed sighs of relief and continued on their way.

Meanwhile, Corky found himself atop a sort of altar at the center of the village. A dozen or so old and brown-toothed women munched on sundry papayas and babacos and passionfruit and other random things, but rather than swallowing, they expectorated their mouthfuls into a huge boiling kettle not less than eight feet across. The old women’s mouths were clearly getting dry, and they were at the end of their strength.

“Aqaqa,” said Mgumbo sadly.

Hewlett and Cyndy, still cleverly disguised to blend in, approached the vat. Corky did not seem to notice them.

“Pssst,” said Hewlett.

Corky looked around. Hewlett lifted one of the vine loops hanging over his ear, and Corky broke into a relieved smile. “Hewlett, am I glad to see you. Where’s Cyndy?”

Cyndy had subtly circulated to the far side of the kettle. She glanced side to side, and certain that she was unobserved, lifted one of her ear loops for a brief moment. Corky recognized her, and his ease was complete.

Mgumbo made an impassioned speech, like a Human Rhythm Machine, but its contents were no doubt profound and poignant. He wrapped it up by dipping a wooden bowl into the vat, and handed it to Hewlett.

They stared into the kettle of foul liquid. It was all wavy and distorted, like heat rising off the desert, and had bubbles and things and little bits of stuff floating on it. It also wasn’t the same color all over. Some places appeared to have a skin, like hot chocolate, except that here the skin was either shades of green or purple; while other places had separated a bit, and had little lakes of clear stuff floating on top. Corky thought that it looked pretty gross, even if it hadn’t been spit up by gross-smelling people with brown teeth.

Hewlett sighed, almost regretfully, and looked into his wooden bowl. “A man would drink it,” he admitted at last.

“Aqaqa,” said Mgumbo, and with a polite smile, pantomimed sipping from his cupped hands.

“Looks like he wants you to be a man,” said Cyndy.

Hewlett’s desire to appear manly was powerful indeed, but in certain instances, it was fortunate that his character was not exactly the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Corky,” said Hewlett solemnly, “this is the highest honor Mgumbo’s village can bestow. It would be wrong for me to accept what should rightfully be yours.”

Corky took the bowl from Hewlett’s outstretched hand. Mgumbo gasped in awe; every villager froze with shock.

Hewlett looked around him. “What?”

The toothless old women regarded him scornfully, and looked him up and down as one might a convicted mass murderer. Even Cyndy turned her head away in shame.

Hewlett turned pleadingly to Corky. “Tell them, Corky. Tell them it was all your fault, whatever it was.”

But Corky just stood there with his bowl, like Oliver Twist or one of those other guys out of boring old books, and sadly averted his gaze.

Mgumbo spoke a single word, and a line of warriors trotted out from a hut. Mgumbo chattered and popped, and pointed at Hewlett. The warriors took out little darts and dipped them into small jars of drippy black stuff, and fit the darts into long tubes, then placed the tubes to their mouths.

“Aqaqa?” said Hewlett with a laugh, and enthusiastically snatched the bowl back from Corky. “Why didn’t you say so? It’s one of my favorites.”

Hydrochloric acid would not have been a more welcome drink. Hewlett sucked it down heartily, and with gusto. He tossed the empty bowl aside, and with pink rivulets running down his chin, bellowed:

“Another round!”

But the village was still silent. Hewlett looked around questioningly. The faces of the villagers still bore shock, but it seemed to be of a different kind. The warriors seemed to lose strength, and their blowpipes fell to the ground one after the other as they looked at Hewlett with a horrific wonderment.

Mgumbo slowly shook his head no.

Hewlett narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Corky, what’s going on?”

But Corky had fainted and was unconscious, and was being supported by Cyndy, who was as stunned as everyone else.

Mgumbo scooped up another bowl of aqaqa and dipped two fingers in. By way of demonstration, he painted red stripes on each of his cheeks.

“Aqaqa,” said Mgumbo apologetically.

A solid buzz knocked Hewlett in the head like a load of bricks, and he began to feel unsteady on his feet.

“Aqaqa,” echoed Mgumbo’s voice, and he began to laugh.

The world swirled before Hewlett’s eyes, and as more and more people joined in with mocking laughter, the ground suddenly tipped up and struck him in the head.

That made Cyndy laugh too. Hewlett resolutely tried to stand on rubbery legs, but things were swimming around such that he couldn’t get his proper bearings. Some of the warriors tiptoed over and danced around the staggering Hewlett, prodding him with their spears, trying to trip him up, mocking him in general, and just having a good old time.

“Out of my way,” slurred Hewlett loudly and belligerently, and he clawed at the air and tried to punch a warrior. “I’ll show you…all eight, or…all sixteen of you.”

Hewlett tripped and fell against the vat of aqaqa, dunking his head and one arm. The village erupted with its greatest belly laugh yet.

Cyndy had had enough of this undignified behavior. She dropped Corky and tried to pull Hewlett out of the vat, but he clung to the side and scooped handful after handful of aqaqa into his mouth.

“Knock it off, Hewlett, you’ve had enough.”

Hewlett turned and tried to focus on her, aqaqa running down his chin and all over his front. “Piss off,” he blurted. “You’re not my mother.”

“All right,” said Cyndy and dropped him back into the aqaqa face first. “Easily asked, easily granted.”

She collected Corky, gripping him by the back of the belt, and started away carrying him like a suitcase. “We’ll be over in this direction,” she said, “if you ever sober up.”

“Sober up?” said Hewlett, and stood up tall and arched his back, and bent his arms a bit, and his chest would have thrust out if it had any convex surfaces. “Who are you saying needs to sober up?”

Hewlett punctuated the sentence at that point with a belch of reasonable force.

“Whoa,” he said, a bit surprised, and staggered to regain his balance. That was LOUD” (pronounced with another equally unexpected belch).

Most of the natives had had their laughs by now and went on about their business. Hewlett took a few shaky steps and looked around. He saw the people going away and naturally took it as a personal insult.

“Where…where do you think you’re going?”

He picked up a gourd and dipped it full of aqaqa. The toothless old women scooted away and tried to ignore him.

“I’m talking to you. That’s right.”

Draughting mightily from the gourd, Hewlett swaggered around the aqaqa kettle with a proud air of dominance, nodding at the village below him as if to say “Dat’s right, I bad.” The sight of a native relieving himself into a similar gourd and depositing it on the ground did little to shake Hewlett’s new-found self confidence.

“Sit up, Corky,” said Cyndy as she laid him against a tree and lightly slapped his cheeks. Corky’s eyelids fluttered open and he looked around.

“My name’s Corky.”

“You’re fine,” she said, and opened the backpack hoping to find something to eat.

“Oh,” said Corky, and reached to take the backpack away. “You mustn’t look in there.”

“It’s just a bunch of…broken glass, and electronic components, and…” (she held up the book of Celeftial Navigation) “…things.”

“It’s the Professor’s machine. You must be very careful with it.”

“Machine? Does it produce ammunition?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a finely calibrated detonator.”

“I don’t think so.”

Cyndy studied the machine in closer detail. She found the keypad and examined the buttons.

“This is what you were fumbling with in Brom Thorn’s tent.”

“Yes,” said Corky, and put the keypad back into the backpack and zipped it closed. “We borrowed it from the Professor so we could find Hewlett’s girlfriend.”

“Hewlett has a girlfriend? I don’t think so.”

“Well,” said Corky, and thought for a moment. He did not wish to become a gossip. Neither did he wish to speak ill of anyone. “She is a girl, and I’m sure she’s somebody’s friend.”

“I thought so,” said Cyndy. “Is she at the camp? Is that why you guys were there?”

“We got to your camp by mistake. Just like the way we brought you here. I’m terribly sorry, but we don’t know how to control the machine.”

About this time, Hewlett stood a short distance away, looking them over critically. He glanced back at the village to make sure no one did anything without his permission, took another swig from the gourd, and lumbered pompously over. By now, Corky and Cyndy had found ample tropical fruits and were making themselves a tidy and opulent luncheon.

“Oh God,” said Cyndy upon sighting the apparition, and rubbed a developing headache on her forehead. “Look who’s coming.”

Hewlett brushed through the undergrowth and decided that he would impress Cyndy by showing how well he could hold his aqaqa. He strode manfully along, very at home in the jungle, and helped himself to another belt or two from the gourd. He sat on a rock a few feet from the luncheon and greeted his two friends with a guttural (and very debonair) burp.

“Anyway,” said Cyndy, “go on with what you were saying about this sea captain.”

“Captain Sprat turned out to be a relative of the Colonel’s,” said Corky. “And the Poet obviously had a profound impact on your own time. So somehow, the places the machine takes us are all connected, but just not put together, like pieces of a…of a…”

“Of an ammunition belt after it’s been fired, and all separated into bits.”

“Exactly.”

Hewlett nodded and tried to look interested. But he overacted in such an obvious way that it was extraordinarily distracting for Corky and Cyndy. Detecting their discomfort, Hewlett decided to smooth things over by jumping seamlessly into the conversation and aiding its flow:

“In a toolbox,” said Hewlett, “you might find a…” (here he struggled to force the right belching pressure on his diaphragm) “…WRENCH.”

“Yes,” said Cyndy. “Thank you, Hewlett. So Corky, what significance do you think this time and place has to this brunette and her mysterious note?”

Corky did not know. Perhaps there may be more evidence of the Poet’s influence somewhere in this jungle. Perhaps the year was significant; Corky checked his digital watch:

“1910. What was going on in 1910?”

Cyndy shrugged. “Chemical combustion firearms…primitive automatic reloading mechanisms…”

Corky thought it well to include Hewlett, so he asked:

“Hewlett, do you remember anything significant about 1910 from the Colonel’s estate?”

But Hewlett seemed lost in thought. “This tree,” he said, and examined it minutely, “seems to be covered in BARK.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Cyndy got up and dusted herself off. “It’s ridiculous to just sit here and have my hair blown back. I’m going to go try and talk to Mgumbo.”

“I say,” said an English-sounding guy as he strode out from behind some trees. “You chaps haven’t got any continental tobacco, have you?”

“WHAT?” belched Hewlett.

“Bother. It’s terribly rude I know, but one of the M!biki@ chieftains had quite a fix on my Double-H brand American snuff, and I’m fresh out of the lot.”

Corky and Cyndy looked at one another.

“Say that again?” asked Corky.

“What, you mean M!biki@?”

“Wow.”

“I’m Dr. Lawrence Thistlebread, Cambridge University. I’ve been studying the M!biki@ tribe for nearly three years, and it’s vital that I win the favor of the chieftain Mgumbo. He uses my tobacco in his ceremony.”

“Tobacco, you say,” said Hewlett, and rose to his unsteady feet with his aqaqa. “I thought I tasted some of that in here.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Thistlebread, “a M!biki@ rest gourd. Do you mind?” He took it from Hewlett, unzipped his safari trousers, and turned away for a moment. “Thank you,” he said and handed it back.

Hewlett held it at arm’s length for a moment, then finally offered:

“Corky? Aqaqa?”

Dr. Lawrence Thistlebread was like those old fashioned explorer guys who would ride on elephant back in tuxedos. But he was in the jungle now, and sacrificed the formal tuxedo for a very blinding white shirt with sweat stains all over it. You could see his undershirt through the wet fabric. It was one of those tanktop undershirts that leave your armpits open, thereby defeating the whole purpose. Guys who buy those undershirts don’t wear them for their utility, however, but for the way they look through a sweat-soaked outer shirt. Those undershirts shout “I am an undershirt.” They proclaim “This guy wears undershirts.” They make it clear that “This guy is still an English Gentleman, even when he’s in the jungle.” Corky wondered if Dr. Lawrence Thistlebread still wore the undershirt if no one else was around; or if he perhaps kept the undershirt on, shed the regular shirt and became a Gruff Sweaty Guy with a Cigar.

His mustache stuck out on both sides and was about the size of a ruler. He wrapped the ends up all pointy, and probably had a special mustache comb. Most likely, since he went to the extra bother and expense of a whole other comb for his mustache, he probably had special shampoo and conditioner and finishing rinse for it too. It was big enough that it could probably even get its own case of dandruff separately from the rest of his head. He probably even had to blow dry it, because it would weigh about forty pounds if it was wet.

He had glasses, too. They were the old fashioned kind, from when they didn’t know how to make glasses properly. So they didn’t fit too well, and were made of some really cheap metal like tin, and had perfectly round lenses that some guy had carved into shape and said “There, that’s pretty good, hope they improve your vision.” There wasn’t very much known about optometry in those days. With his glasses, mustache, grease slicked hair and pith helmet, Dr. Thistlebread looked so English that you thought he might, at any moment, suddenly turn to you and go “I say.”

He had on pants with suspenders. They were the kind of pants that had about fifty safari pockets but no belt loops. They were for suspenders only. The pants came up to Dr. Thistlebread’s third rib, and looked really stupid. His boots were the shiny black kind that go all the way up to the knee. Each boot had about eighty buttons down the side, and probably took three hours to get on. Hewlett reflected that if he only had a little more aqaqa in him, he’d probably grab Dr. Thistlebread by the grease slicked hair, slap him around, and say “Why don’t you get some real shoes?”

Cyndy opened one of the pockets on her suit and took out a small canister.

“You chew tobacco?” Corky asked her.

“No. It’s for wounds.”

“What good does tobacco do for wounds?”

“You spit it on them. Keeps flies off.”

“Jolly good,” said Dr. Thistlebread. “Tomorrow morning I’ll give it to Mgumbo, and he can proceed with his ceremony.”

He pronounced “ceremony” wrong, like all English people. He put all the emphasis on the first syllable and completely skipped the third, and said it all real fast, “CERem’ny.” Hewlett narrowed his eyes angrily, and looked Dr. Thistlebread over with scorn and hatred. Hewlett was certain that an examination of a proper English dictionary would show that freaks like this Dr. Thistlebread pronounce stuff wrong. Hewlett believed that Dr. Thistlebread was un-American. Perhaps that he might even be a Communist. Hewlett reflected that if he only had a little more aqaqa in him, he’d probably grab Dr. Thistlebread by the collar, rough him up some, and say “If you’re going to speak my language, you’re going to speak it right.”

And Hewlett laughed, well satisfied with his moral victory.

Everyone looked to see what Hewlett was laughing about.

“Just ignore him,” said Cyndy to Dr. Thistlebread. “We find it works best.”

“Quite.”

Corky had heard cultured people interject the word “quite” before, and it made no more sense to him now than it did then.

“We were just going to try and talk to Mgumbo,” said Corky, because he didn’t want anyone to know that the word “quite” had confused him and thrown him off the track of the conversation.

“Ah,” said Dr. Thistlebread. “You’d not have gotten far with their language. However I have made a short journal of some of their most common words. You might want to look it over.”

He took out a small leather book tied with a string and passed it round. Cyndy looked at the first page. Dr. Thistlebread had written entries like “^%$” and “(**&.” Cyndy could not have cared less about the book; as far as she was concerned, these people didn’t know proper combat radio signals and weren’t worth any more of her time. She passed the book to Corky.

Corky looked at the “^%$” entry, then turned it upside and read it as “$%^.” He felt quite proud of his ingenuity, then passed it on to Hewlett.

Hewlett read the first few pages slowly and carefully, shaking his head dubiously the whole time, as if he found nothing worthy of approval. Jerks do that when you ask them to look at the painting you’re working on, or the sketch of the new machine you’ve just invented. Without even saying anything, they’ll shake their head, rub their chin, maybe give a negative grunt or two. Hewlett used this technique whenever an opinion was requested of him, and quite often, even when one was not. Hewlett calculated that this would make it clear to Dr. Thistlebread that Hewlett was his intellectual superior, and fully qualified to find fault with his work. Naturally Hewlett didn’t have the first clue about any of the M!biki@ language documented in the book, but that was no excuse to let Dr. Thistlebread think for a minute that he might know something Hewlett didn’t.

But Dr. Thistlebread was not acquainted with Hewlett, and supposed Hewlett might well be able to add corrections and additions to his book. So upon noticing Hewlett’s reaction, he quite naturally said:

“Please feel free to add to it, if you’ve anything that could help.”

Hewlett looked up, apparently surprised that such an audacious demand on his time would be made of him in such an unexpected and uninvited way. But Hewlett consented with a pained grimace. He checked the time, looked around to see if any of his other appointments were due, shook his head with a sigh, and reluctantly took out his pen and set to work.

Cyndy felt her headache coming on again.

Dr. Thistlebread was rather embarrassed at having behaved so presumptuously. He looked at Corky, hoping to find a friendly face, but Corky only narrowed his eyes and shook his head sternly.

Finally Hewlett finished his scribbling and handed the book back to Dr. Thistlebread.

“Thank you,” said Dr. Thistlebread. “Thank you very much, I’m dreadfully sorry.” Then he opened the book to see what Hewlett had written:

Hewlett’s®
Top Ten Belching Words

10. Rack
9. Omelet
8. Radar
7. Birch
6. Soup
5. A-Weem-O-Weck
4. Corky
3. Welch
2. Eureka
1. Riker

Dr. Thistlebread looked up with a bit of shock, but Hewlett was already halfway back to the aqaqa.

7

They woke the next morning to the bright sounds of brilliant young birds darting hither and thither. Splashes of eye-popping color were everywhere as the flowers burst forth radiantly, and the strong, clear sunlight blazed on Hewlett’s grotesque curled form, groaning and clutching at his agonized head and gut.

“What was that stuff?” he moaned, half speaking and half crying. “What did it do to me?”

“We used to drink denatured xylene,” mused Cyndy as she laid back against a sun-warmed rock, contentedly munching on a dripping papaya, “when we could get it. Better buzz than turpentine, but twice as bad of a morning.”

Corky peeled a banana. He wished he could add spice to this conversation, but he hadn’t quite finished the one beer he’d ever tried, and wisely felt that a description of its dizzying effect would not impress.

“Would you guys stop eating?” said Hewlett. “You’re going to make me puke.”

“Oh no,” said Cyndy without emotion as she cut into another papaya, “I wouldn’t want you to go through your day with a reeking crust dried all over your face. That would break my heart.”

“Top of the morning,” sang Dr. Lawrence Thistlebread as he strode into camp with his eighty button boots. He’d probably gotten up more than an hour before just to get them on.

Hewlett winced and rolled away, covering his ears and eyes from the insensitive happiness. How thoughtless could people be?

“Good morning,” said Corky. “How’s the research?”

“Blasted stars,” said Dr. Thistlebread. “The M!biki@ travel from island to island in great outrigger canoes without instrumentation, and I’ve spent six months deciphering their methods of navigation. But I tested it myself by watching the skies last night, and wouldn’t you know it? The bloody stars moved.”

“Blimey,” said Corky with disappointment, in order to make Dr. Thistlebread feel comforted by hearing his own kind of oath.

“There’s a Nobel Prize waiting for the genius who can first interpret their techniques, but it shan’t be I.”

Corky felt moved by this, and wanted to boost Dr. Thistlebread’s spirits by recalling to mind a recent triumph:

“Now that you have the tobacco, Mgumbo will hold his ceremony today, won’t he?”

“Indeed he shall. The M!biki@ elders are gathering even now.”

“What are they gathering?”

Corky’s question derailed conversation. Dr. Thistlebread started to respond, but found he could not. Corky looked up at him in genuine innocence, but the line of thought was irretrievably defunct.

“Can’t you guys shut up?” groaned Hewlett. His voice was all muffled because his face was buried against the ground under his arms.

“Mind those weevils,” said Dr. Thistlebread. “Your face is smack jammed into a colony.”

Hewlett shouted and sprang up, crazily dusting his face and shaking off all over. But there were no insects on him; he checked the ground where his face had been—nothing.

Dr. Thistlebread put such effort into his laugh that his face got all serious, and his mouth had to open real wide, like he was at the dentist, then he went, “Ha! Ha ha! Ha! Ha ha ha!” really terse and individual, like ping pong balls popping up and down in a lottery machine. Also his head shook a bit with each “Ha!” like the recoil of a gun. His brow was furled tightly from the massive exertion.

And then as suddenly as he had begun, Dr. Thistlebread clamped his mouth shut and stopped laughing.

Everyone looked at him like he was from Saturn.

“I expect they’ll begin within the hour,” he said, implying through his tone that it was a naturally flowing continuation of what he had been saying before.

Corky did not detect any disruption of the discussion, and so contributed a question:

“What kind of a…ceremony” (taking care to pronounce it the English way) “is it?”

“It’s called the M!biki@ Virility Rite™. The tribal elders all perform it regularly. It keeps the women of the village attracted to them, and restores their manful passions, stripped by the rigors of subsistence.”

Hewlett was not too ill to realize that the rigors of subsistence may have sapped his own manful virility, and any chance to regain it was worth investigating. Particularly when there was a brunette to impress. So he thought carefully, and made the insightful hoarse grumble:

“Virility Rite?”

“Quite.”

Similarly, Corky felt that his own manly libido, though “saved up for the right girl” as he excused himself, could not be hurt by a boost. He imagined himself trim and fit, washboard stomach ripped, headshot like a poster in a barber shop. Barber shop posters are always at least fourteen years old, with hairstyles about five and a half fashion cycles behind the times, and show Eric Estrada or David Cassidy lookalikes with long flowing perfectly trimmed hairstyles. You’re supposed to think “Wow, apparently Eric Estrada gets his hair cut here. If I get my hair cut here, I’ll have my own TV show, and be a poster boy, and become wealthy and celebrated.” But it doesn’t work because no one knows who Eric Estrada is anymore, and they don’t recognize the lookalike, and think instead “Whoa, wonder why they put up a picture of that dorky hairdo. What is that, some shot from Saturday Night Fever?”

Anyway Corky was impressed by barber shop posters, and figured a quick injection of M!biki@ Virility Rite™ just might do the trick for him. Might push him “that one extra little inch, just over the edge.” Like the final dab of paint on a Rembrandt.

Even Cyndy discovered that she wouldn’t mind attending the ceremony. All the guys she knew were like Brom Thorn; they had Turpentine Tummies, where the belly projects outward and obscures the belt buckle, and is usually hairy. It might be educational to see savage animal hardbodies…from strictly a curiosity perspective, of course. It could even be considered combat training; say, familiarity conditioning to possible semblances of potential enemy infantry. Cyndy considered this, and decided that this training could prove crucial. She too must attend the ceremony.

“Perhaps we could see the ceremony, Dr. Thistlebread,” said Corky.

“Terribly sorry, dear lad, but the M!biki@ would never allow outsiders. It’s taken me years to gain their trust.”

“But it’s my tobacco,” said Cyndy.

“Tell them they can boil Corky,” said Hewlett. “They might go for that.”

“So sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. Thank you for the tobacco. I’ll see you all later.”

Dr. Thistlebread started off into the woods, whistling and goose stepping, swinging his arms like a soldier, leaving despair on three faces.

Hewlett grabbed Corky by the arm, as if this was all his fault. “We have to see that ceremony, Corky. It could be the key to this whole thing.”

“You think the Virility Rite will make the Colonel’s grandniece fall in love with you?” asked Corky.

Cyndy laughed.

“You shut up,” Hewlett snapped at her. “Corky, you have to stop him. Bring him back. Get us into that ceremony.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Hewlett, “you’re the smart one. Just…just do what I’d do.”

As Dr. Thistlebread marched into the jungle with the fullest musical accompaniment his puckered lips could provide, Corky jogged to catch up. Corky had to jog at just such a speed, otherwise harmonic resonances would build up in his “insulation layer” (as he preferred to call it) and send him bouncing up and down like a beach ball. Finally he made up the distance, recognized Dr. Thistlebread’s tune, and joined in the music.

Fortunately, Corky had seen Bridge over the River Kwai forty or fifty times, and could fluently whistle the harmonic counterpoint part. The two marched in step and in time, and when the song ended at last, they halted the march, clicked their heels and faced each other.

“Jolly good,” said Dr. Thistlebread with heartfelt admiration. “Another round.”

“I’m afraid I must get back to my friends,” said Corky. “We have some important papers to take back with us.”

“Bad show. It wouldn’t be proper for an Englishman to march into the ceremony without pomp and pageantry.”

“I’m very sorry, but the papers are too important to delay.”

“Papers?”

“Yes. Excuse me, Dr. Thistlebread. Enjoy the ceremony.”

“Quite, but what are these papers?”

“Certainly the tribal elders must be waiting for you.”

“Indeed,” said Dr. Thistlebread, and looked back and forth between the path and Corky. “Then I’ll bid you adieu. Good luck with your papers on the botanical study.”

“The papers are not botanical,” said Corky.

“Zoological, then? Entomological?”

“No.”

“A biography of a certain English researcher?” and he added a burst or two of his laugh, but there was no heart in it.

“The papers have to do with celestial navigation,” said Corky. “Good day, Dr. Thistlebread. I enjoyed our march together.” And Corky started back to the clearing.

“Dear lad,” said Dr. Thistlebread, finding himself in the shoes of the pursuer for a change. “I should like very much to see those papers, if I might.”

“I wish we had the time to show them to you. Good day, Dr. Thistlebread.”

“Good day.” He watched Corky get a few steps further, then started after him again. “I say, dear lad, why don’t you bring the papers to the ceremony, and we can study them together?”

Corky stopped.

“I don’t know,” said Corky, acting as if he was headed for thin ice. “The papers are very important, and our timetable is strict.”

“The ceremony only lasts for an hour or two. Surely your friends can wait that long.”

“Well,” said Corky, rubbing his chin, and glancing furtively in the direction of the path, “it is tempting.”

“Tempting? I should say! Not three Europeans in history have seen this. You’ll be part of a bloody elite group, let me tell you.”

Corky checked his digital watch, scratched his head, and looked toward the clearing. “I mustn’t. Hewlett and Cyndy would suspect if I took the papers away for that long.”

“Bring them along. They’d be most welcome.”

Recalling Hewlett’s recommendation, Corky resolved to “do what Hewlett would do” and hunted for more reservations, and found some at last. “I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “You said it took years for the village elders to accept you into the ceremony.”

“You’ve heard of human nature, haven’t you? Whomever has the gold,” said Dr. Thistlebread, and held up Cyndy’s canister of tobacco, “makes the rules.”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Mgumbo had his mouth full of Cyndy’s medicinal tobacco. He sloshed it back and forth with his tongue, calculating for maximum volume of liquid.

Mgumbo’s face was bathed in bright sunlight, and the tops of the trees below him waved gently like thousands of approving spectators. Then he leaned forward, and let the great gob of tobacco spit fall…

And fall…

And fall…

Mgumbo studied the wind currents as the tobacco spit wobbled on its downward course and smacked into the ground in a good place. Mgumbo beamed with happiness, licked a finger and verified that the wind was good up here too.

And then, in front of everyone, he shouted:

“&%#!!”

And cast himself into thin air! Corky’s eyes bugged out as two hundred feet of coiled vines unraveled themselves at light speed.

Mgumbo flailed as he fell. The trees rushed by. The wind accelerated higher and harder. Floor after floor of bamboo scaffolding, two hundred feet in all, tore past in a blur as he sped toward ground zero.

Then, just as the tobacco splatter was about to meet him in the face, the vines ran out and grabbed Mgumbo by the ankles. The jolt was shattering. Mgumbo’s body went limp as the blood compressed in his head and he bounced like a rag doll. M!biki@ tribesmen cheered and cut him free.

Atop the tower, Corky, Hewlett, and Cyndy looked at one another in disbelief as Dr. Thistlebread ejaculated his laugh syllables like a maniac.

“This is a Virility Rite?” said Cyndy with the air of one who has been unspeakably wronged. “Dopes with flat heads and really long legs?”

Hewlett, still a little groggy from last night’s aqaqa, noticed one of the chieftains tying vines around his ankles.

“Hey,” said Hewlett.

The chieftain pushed Hewlett off the tower.

“I say,” said Dr. Thistlebread and looked up from the book of Celeftial Navigation. “This is fantastic. Revolutionary. A triumph.”

“It is?” asked Corky. “I mean, it is.”

“I had never seen anything like it,” said Cyndy, trying to throw in her two cents for the benefit of the cause. She was one of those people who never lied; if the need arose, she’d come up with something that was the truth but sounded misleading: “He wasn’t dead when I got here.” Actually it probably is a lie, since it’s intended to deceive. Cyndy was a flagrant bald-faced liar, like everyone else in the world.

“What will you do with the Nobel Prize?” asked Corky.

“An uncle of mine—twit from the deviant Wheeler side—disappeared in 1886 and left our family estate in the Colonies to the creditors. I had hoped to win the prize that I might buy it back, and show those Wheelers just where the integrity in the family heritage lies. If you’ll let me publish this book as my own, I’ll pay you four hundred pounds.”

“Four hundred pounds of what?” asked Corky in all innocence, but Dr. Thistlebread found it too awkward to answer.

Hewlett’s upper body crashed into a thorny %% bush, and the recoil of the vine snatched him out of it again, leaving him spiked with a thousand little barbed spears all covered with ants. Hewlett bounced through the air, screaming and waving his arms about, as the various tribesman tried to catch him. For some reason Hewlett’s vine was twisted and he started to spin at about 5000 RPM, and he drifted over toward the scaffolding, and when he struck it, it sounded like putting a baseball card in the spokes of your bike.

“Here now,” said Dr. Thistlebread, which doesn’t really mean anything, as he and the rest stepped down off the comfortable bamboo staircase. “He’s got %% spines in him. Untie him quickly, and lay him out flat.”

Two of the tribesmen held down Hewlett’s squirming form as Dr. Thistlebread unzipped his trousers; the rest of the tribesmen did the fig leaf equivalent.

Corky and Cyndy looked at Dr. Thistlebread quizzically. He explained:

“The ammonia is the only way to neutralize the toxin in the spines.”

Hewlett screamed.

Reeling in a maelstrom of horrors, Corky and Cyndy turned their heads and groped for fresh air. Through a dizzy haze they ran and ran, and never looked back.

8

“Rest,” said a soft voice. “Don’t get up.”

Hewlett shivered as he found himself regaining consciousness. He was dazed and he didn’t know where he was.

He opened his eyes and saw Cyndy standing over him. Corky fidgeted nervously beside her. Both looked terribly concerned for him.

“What happened to me?” asked Hewlett.

Corky and Cyndy exchanged a sigh of relief. Corky knelt down close to Hewlett.

“Cyndy tells me that in combat, things happen sometimes that are so horrible, the brain forgets them. You’d best leave it at that.”

Hewlett wondered why he was all wet and saw that he was laying in a puddle outdoors, in some sort of desert region.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere along the Overland Trail,” said Corky. “Maybe someplace like Utah or Nevada. It’s 1888. See?” And he held his digital watch out for Hewlett to see.

Hewlett extended a bare arm and pushed the digital watch away. Then he sat up to see why his arm was bare, and exposed an equally bare torso! He laid back down and splashed warm, brown water onto himself to cover up with. It didn’t work too well.

“I’m naked!” he shouted angrily. “Why am I naked? What did you see?”

“It was painful enough,” said Cyndy. “Don’t make me relive it.”

Corky held Hewlett down. “Calm yourself. Your clothes are drying over there, on that rock. I’ll bring them in a moment.”

“Then again,” said Cyndy, “maybe we’ll just stuff them into the nearest cactus.”

Hewlett made them go about a hundred yards away before he jumped out of the puddle and dressed himself behind a bush. When he was quite finished, he casually strode over to them, carrying his jacket over his arm, with the air of one quite at home with bathing and dressing in the outdoors. Corky and Cyndy were waiting alongside the road for the next stagecoach. He inquired:

“Where does this road go?”

“West.”

“Ah.”

Hewlett checked the sun’s position and nodded, confirming that West was indeed the correct and expected direction. He granted his permission for the road to go West, and for Corky and Cyndy to take the initiative of waiting beside it.

They waited in silence for several minutes.

“Doesn’t look like anything’s coming,” said Hewlett. “Snap us out of here, Corky.”

“Perhaps we should wait and see who we meet. So far, everyone we’ve encountered has been crucial to creating the required history for you to meet the brunette.”

Momentarily thwarted by logic, Hewlett grumbled and kicked at the ground. He held his peace for most of another minute.

“But this is boring!”

“I can fix that,” said Cyndy and stepped around behind him.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold still. A quick shock to your anterior carotid artery, and the wait will go by quicker than you imagined.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just be quiet, and relax your neck.” She cradled his head in her hands, rotated it gently to one side, and—

“No! I’ll wait. I’ll shut up.”

“Good. You can sit on that rock over there.”

Beaten, Hewlett went over to the indicated rock, but then, just to show that he was not one to take orders from a girl, sat on a different rock instead, and stuck his tongue out at her. He passed the next half hour trying to bean lizards with stones.

At last a cloud of dust on the horizon grew into an authentic Old West stage. Corky flagged it down, and the Driver reined in his team of four sweating horses. The Conductor, hunched over in his seat beside the Driver, woke up and looked around. The Driver slapped a heavy coat of dust off his jacket and pulled down his bandanna.

“May we please have a ride?” asked Corky.

“Fare’s three dollars apiece into Coffin,” said the Conductor.

Corky opened his wallet and ruffled some bills.

“Specie, if you please, sir.”

Corky looked up. He had no specie. He was quite certain he had no specie, because he didn’t even know what it was.

“No silver, no ride.”

Hewlett was about to sarcastically remark that he had forgotten the six or eight thousand-ounce silver ingots he usually carried with him, when Cyndy kicked the stage wheel. The driver’s carbine fell, struck something and spun around in the air, and she caught it. She looked it over and pulled the cocking lever.

“The action could use some lubrication.”

The Driver reached for his pistol, but the Conductor held up a hand cautioning him not to draw yet.

Cyndy shouldered the carbine, found it too short to sight along accurately, and set it in her holster. She turned to face a saguaro cactus twenty or thirty yards away.

In a flash, she drew and pounded three slugs into the cactus, cutting off exactly three spines. Corky ran over and brought the cleanly shaven spines back for inspection.

“The rifling’s too tight,” said Cyndy, and tossed the carbine back up to the Driver. “Nice and straight, but at the expense of muzzle velocity. I bet you drop at long range.”

“Sometimes,” said the Driver, a trifle surprised.

“Indians in this country, aren’t there?” said Hewlett.

“Apache on this side of the ridge, Comanche on t’other.”

“Dangerous?”

“I expect.”

“Bloodthirsty?”

“I expect.”

“Precious cargo you’re carrying?”

“Three days mail for Coffin, plus passengers.”

“Ah,” said Hewlett. “Then your passengers must be well armed.”

“I reckon not. They’re delegates from the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

Hewlett leaned and looked in the window, and smiled at the impatient old ladies waiting within.

“It’s a long way to Coffin, is it?”

“Thirty mile.”

“Gentlemen,” said Hewlett, and put his foot up on a rock and hooked his thumbs where suspenders would normally be, except that he hadn’t any so it looked stupid, especially since he hadn’t tied his tie properly and the knot was like halfway down to his belly button, “I offer a solution to your plight. The Supreme Warrior here will ride shotgun all the way to Coffin, for a mere…fifteen dollars.”

Corky leaned over to whisper in Hewlett’s ear. “The fare’s only nine. Don’t talk us out of a deal.”

“Shut up, Corky. I’m negotiating.”

The Conductor looked in his scheduling book, as if the decision was important enough to require administrative research. Then he shook his head to indicate that Hewlett’s proposal was not practical, and scratched his chin, pretending to think hard to come up with any feasible counter offer. At last the Conductor said:

“I’ll let the lady ride for free. You two walk.”

“Done,” said Hewlett.

Corky turned slowly and frowned at Hewlett. Hewlett looked offended and said:

“What?”

The walk was long and hot and dusty, and rocky and rutty, and Corky and Hewlett gradually fell further and further behind the stage, so that it had to keep stopping while the Driver shouted obscenities to get them to catch up. There were big stumbly rocks in the road, and Old West animals like sidewinders and scorpions, and an ever growing cloud of vultures orbiting behind them. Cheerful laughter could be heard from the bench seat where Cyndy made herself comfortable between the Driver and the Conductor, and the clink of beverage glasses came from the coach wherein the Daughters of the American Revolution luxuriated. Inwardly, Hewlett vowed never again to let Corky help him negotiate anything.

The Conductor’s cheeks were red and blotchy like a Dutch guy. It made you want to tell him not to use so much rouge. He breathed through his mouth really loud, and there was a little string of spit hanging from his top lip that went in and out, according to the direction his breath was going, and you could hear gargly noises in the back of his throat. He was really gross. It was like he always had a cold, or some other illness, and had a fever, and spots all over him, or other symptoms and that kind of thing, but actually he was just normally like that. And then when he looked at you to talk, he had condensation all over his glasses because he was so sweaty and had all that heat building up in his face from being so red. His heart probably had to do triple duty because he had so many capillaries all over the place. He probably also had to drink a lot, because he spattered stuff when he mouth breathed. He kept lifting up his Conductor’s hat and wiping the sweat off the top of his head. His handkerchief was permanently soaked; it wasn’t something you’d ever want to pick up and hold in your hand. He’d wipe off his glasses, stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket and say:

“Middling hot, don’t you reckon?”

He said that because he wanted Cyndy to think that he was all sweaty and gross because it was hot, instead of because he was just a sweaty and gross guy. He hoped to appear attractive to Cyndy. He didn’t study the idea enough to realize that his sweaty grossness wasn’t the only thing stopping Cyndy; there were about a dozen other things that made him repugnant as well.

The Conductor also thought that he was really funny. He was not by nature a creative person, but he thought he was; which is a dangerous combination. He kept telling jokes that were stupid, and he told them pretty badly. He spent more time on the punchline, and explaining the punchline, than he did on the joke itself.

“Did you hear about the cowboy that took his horse across the river?”

“No,” said Cyndy.

“He rowed the whole way! Rowed, like a boat. He rode his horse, and rowed him across the river.”

“Yes, I under—”

“My stars, but that was a humdinger when I first heard it! Do you know what kind of a joke that is? I’ll tell you. It’s called a pun. Now a pun is considered to be one of the funniest types of humor. Which means, on a scale, it rates not down low, but way up…way up…”

“High?”

“Hello yourself!” and the Conductor grabbed his gut and lost himself in the folds of an endless belly laugh.

Cyndy sighed. She’d gone through her whole supply of fake polite laughter an hour or more ago, and she did so wish that some Indians would attack and kill her quickly and mercifully. Either her or the Conductor.

Meanwhile, Corky and Hewlett were near the end of their endurance. The Driver stopped the stage again and shouted profanely for them to hurry up, because he didn’t have “all the time in tarnation,” and they still had “a fur spell to go.” Corky and Hewlett reckoned that they had best “shake a leg” and catch up.

It was completely dark by the time the Overland Trail entered Coffin and became the main street. It was a typical Old West town, with wooden sidewalks and all, and Hitchin’ Posts instead of parking spaces. The stage stopped and Cyndy hopped down from the platform. The Conductor looked all surprised to see her go, and he pulled his foggy glasses down for a last look at her.

“We’re leaving now,” said Cyndy through her teeth as she strode briskly away from the stage. They stopped at the sound of a commotion from around the corner. A crowd of people gathered around a large wagon, well lit with lanterns and torches. It was one of those circus type wagons all painted up with signs all over it. The biggest sign said:

PROFESSOR AVALANCHE T. WHEELER, M.D., Ph.D., Q.E.D., A.S.A.P.

SENIOR DOCTORATE EMERITUS

CONTINENTAL COLLEGE OF THE SCIENCES

LONDON, PARIS, BERLIN

YUROPE

Professor Avalanche T. Wheeler cavorted about on a little stage that folded out from the side of his wagon. He was wearing these tight little black pants, and a red tuxedo jacket with tails, and a fluffy white shirt with little lacy ruffles all over it, and a big tall top hat. Corky was all impressed, and figured the guy was probably the world’s most imminent…whatever he was. Hewlett noted that the guy’s outfit was all thrashed, like it was the only one he had, and he’d bought it used, and had to sleep in it, and roll around in it, and get drunk and fall in the street in it. He had this pointy beard, too. It was like he was too much of a sissy to grow a real beard, figured Hewlett, so he just had this little scrawny pointed one that stuck out from his chin. Also he had on lots of jewelry. It was probably fake, because it was all emeralds and rubies and stuff that were like two inches across. Hewlett was satisfied that Professor Avalanche T. Wheeler was a sissy. His real name was probably Annabelle or something.

Cyndy was studying him too, but of course had never seen someone like him before. She didn’t know what to think. She observed the easy and relaxed way he strutted from one side of the stage to the other, orating powerfully, and often pocketing little discs of gold and silver from people and handing them slips of paper, or advice, or nothing at all. Cyndy concluded that Avalanche Wheeler must be like the product demonstration specialists she’d seen, who travel around from camp to camp, giving lectures on the operation of the newest weapons. However, neither the slips of paper he handed out nor the little discs he received seemed to be of any value. Neither would destroy a Happy Smiley. Their worth must be hidden, and so she resolved to learn what that worth might be.

Cyndy approached the edge of the stage and listened.

“Aquarius,” continued the learned Dr. Wheeler. “The heavenly observations have been peculiarly complicated for this sign, and the resulting calculations difficult in the extreme. However,” and here he whisked aside a curtain to reveal a blackboard covered in what Cyndy perceived to be mathematics, “new advances in what mathematicians call the calculus have allowed derivations of unprecedented precision. I bring you the mathematically proven and unerring predictions for the sign of Aquarius.”

He held aloft a fistful of little paper slips. Cyndy’s mouth watered. There was no doubt that the weapons described in those slips would be new and deadly indeed.

Avalanche Wheeler scanned the silent and expectant crowd. When he had paused for exactly the right amount of dramatic silence, he added:

“Six bits, if you please.”

A dozen fists of coin shot toward the stage, and a general pressing of bodies and murmur of excited speech.

“Aquarius is what?” asked one guy. Avalanche Wheeler leaned down close and answered:

“March through November.”

The guy grinned and eagerly dug out his change. The property exchanged hands.

Cyndy looked around, and saw that some kid next to her was counting out some of the gold and silver discs in his hand. She took them and did a quick karate chop to the kid’s neck which put him out for at least ten minutes. She handed the fistful of discs up to Avalanche Wheeler.

“Thank you, dear lady,” he said, and meticulously counted out her change, then handed her not only a slip of paper, but more discs than she had handed him! This was truly incomprehensible. However, she turned her attention at once to the paper:

Trouble awaits the Aquarius who remains in this town.

A new visitor brings destruction and terror. Remain silent, and make not inquiries, and discuss not this prediction. The wise Aquarius will keep out of harm’s way for several days, until the new visitor has passed on.

It appeared to Cyndy to be nothing more than a fortune bullet, like you’d get at a We Won the Battle celebration. Except when you pulled open a fortune bullet with your teeth and read what was inside, it was always something like “Watch your back, Trooper” or “Always shoot yourself before being taken prisoner.” Sometimes a proper bullet would get mixed in with the fortune bullets; those went to the guys who got really bad fortunes.

Cyndy was not superstitious, but she pocketed the slip of paper and resolved not to mess with any “new visitors.”

“And now,” said Avalanche Wheeler, “science.”

He snapped his fingers, which ignited a little puff of some chemical powder that went “poof” and made a big flash with a lot of pink smoke. Everyone was all impressed. That’s because people were pretty dumb in the Old West. Old West people always used to shoot each other, and walked with their legs all bowed out, and wore chaps, and said things like “schoolmarm” and “Texican” (because they thought Texas and Mexico were the same thing), and built cruddy little buildings with huge facades that stuck up fifty feet, and were all impressed at how large and important each other’s buildings appeared; and so it follows that they were also impressed by some idiot igniting flash powder.

Hewlett blurted out a sarcastic laugh.

A bunch of big huge cowhand guys turned and looked at Hewlett like he was a jerk. “Dod-dern city boy,” said one.

“Old West guy,” retorted Hewlett.

The cowhand decked him, and Hewlett’s face shot to the ground in a dod-dern way, and he lay purt’ near unconscious.

“Science,” continued Avalanche Wheeler, “which has advanced the medical arts to unheard of degrees. Why, here in the Territories, one might expect to die from trifles like bullet wounds or consumption. However, at the London College of Medicine, we have used science to derive new treatments for even the most appalling of ailments. Who among you finds himself in a state of affliction?”

“Wake up this here city boy,” said the cowhand.

“A simple matter. Deliver him to the stage.”

The cowhand and a couple of cowpokes hefted Hewlett and tossed his limp form onto Avalanche’s stage. Hewlett’s body rolled to a stop, with his arms all flailing and smacking into the floor.

“What ails the boy?”

Cyndy could have spoken up with a list, but held her tongue.

“You’re the doctor,” said the cowhand. The cowpokes laughed and found favor with this challenge.

“Indeed I am. Approach and observe.” Avalanche Wheeler prodded Hewlett with his foot. “The lad seems to be unconscious, possibly from some cerebral aberration, or metabolic hemorrhage.”

There were faint oohs and aahs from the crowd. Some had never heard so many syllables.

“Electricity,” said Avalanche Wheeler, and brought forth a long metal wand at the end of a burly cable, “can often work wonders with the aberrant mind. In Paris, it is a routine treatment for all brain dysfunctions.”

Avalanche touched the wand to Hewlett’s forehead. His body flipped and spazzed about, like a spider whose leg you’ve just pulled off, but there was no other result. Avalanche tossed the wand aside and continued, unfazed:

“New developments in chemical medicines are also a promising treatment. I beg your forgiveness for one brief moment.”

Muttering angrily, Avalanche Wheeler ran inside his wagon and rummaged about on the shelves. He uncorked a jug of forty rod whiskey and filled a bowl.

“A bit stronger, perhaps.”

He rifled through a set of bottles and found one marked “Isobutyl Acetone.” He emptied it into the bowl as well, then took a turkey baster and sucked up the completed potion.

“If this doesn’t fetch him,” said Avalanche to himself, “he’ll do nicely in my Organ Preservation demonstration.”

Avalanche strode onto stage with the turkey baster held high.

“Witness the penultimate evolution of medicinal formulation. I present to you the compound…” (Avalanche thought for the only the briefest moment) “…Scotchwhiskzene.”

The crowd oohed as one.

“Complete silence, if you please, good citizens.”

Avalanche knelt beside Hewlett’s body and lifted his eyelids, much as he had seen physicians do. Avalanche appeared surprised at the gravity of Hewlett’s condition, and acted as if he found himself in over his head. He manufactured an artificial smile of reassurance to the crowd, which fooled no one.

The cowhands and cowpokes began to chortle. A murmur of dissatisfaction swept over the crowd, and seemed to distress Avalanche Wheeler considerably. Avalanche gulped audibly, lifted Hewlett’s head gently, applied the turkey baster to his mouth…

One of the cowpokes laughed out loud mockingly. Some in the back joined in the laughter; a few stragglers in the crowd walked away. Avalanche smiled inwardly, but seemed to suffer.

The commotion brought some faint hint of sensibility back to Hewlett, and one of his eyelids opened in reconnaissance. The face of Avalanche Wheeler bending over him slowly came into focus.

Avalanche detected that the crowd had reached the summit of its skepticism; the time was come. He winked at Hewlett.

Hewlett scarcely had time to wonder what the wink was for when Avalanche squeezed the bulb of the turkey baster, squirting its contents forcibly down his throat. Hewlett bolted upright, his eyes exploded to the size of serving plates, and the breath that he bellowed may as well have been dragon fire. The laughter was scorched from the faces of front row cowpokes, and citizens clamored for safety as Hewlett staggered wildly from the stage; a haywire Frankenstein, shouting gibberish like a drunken banshee.

Amidst the melee stood Avalanche Wheeler with gleaming teeth. His voice could barely be heard above the din:

“Tubules of Scotchwhiskzene, one Yankee dollar.”

And the coins battered the stage like a hailstorm.

Cyndy, not wishing to be associated with Hewlett in any way, turned her back and wandered to the far side of Corky. Detecting her discomfort, Corky took her arm and scanned for a temporary safe haven.

“In here,” said Corky, and led her toward a rollicking saloon. “Perhaps we can get something to eat, and wait for Hewlett.”

A sign beside the shutter doors said “Bartender Wanted. No Irish Need Apply.” Corky was not Irish, and such distinctions were irrelevant in Cyndy’s time; nevertheless, despite their qualifications, neither chose to apply for the position.

The tinny sounds of an ailing piano greeted them with a happy rendition of Camptown Ladies, except a note was missing and left the “dah” out of the “doo-dah.” Corky and Cyndy were not offended and came in anyway.

There were Rough Characters at the bar. Many strangers used to “drift” through towns in those days. Often, “drifting” newcomers found themselves the targets of jests and sport, and an effective defense was to project oneself as being a Rough Character. This could be easily accomplished by not shaving and having a couple teeth gone. Corky’s beard was at best minimal by nature, and his white teeth had been straightened by years of retainer wear. Consequently, he had a poor start at attaining Rough Characterhood. Many of the Rough Characters sensed this, and immediately identified him as a potential target for their guff, should they begin to feel inebriated and boisterous.

Cyndy, however, was accustomed to drawing a firearm quickly, and her normal stance was with bent arms sprung to produce a weapon. She had an aura of combat readiness, from her digital fatigues and laser designating systems to her medicinal chewing tobacco. For the moment, the Rough Characters’ designs on Corky were effectively thwarted.

The bartender was a slicked up mustache guy with a fancy vest, a transparent green visor and what appeared to be a garter around his arm. He stood there polishing a big mug. There weren’t any other glasses there similar to the mug, so the mug was probably his special Polishing Glass. It was probably the only one he could fit his hand inside easily. The green visor protected against a non-existent blinding overhead light source, and the garter around his bicep served only to fire the imagination. Thus, Corky was intimidated by the all of his cryptic idiosyncrasies, and for Corky, intimidation represented authority. Corky therefore recognized him to be the bartender and ordered a drink from him.

“Sarsaparilla,” said Corky in his toughest and lowest tone of voice.

All the Rough Characters burst out laughing. Corky looked around bewildered. He had expected that the bartender would snap the fingers of both hands, point at him and wink an approving “Outta sight.” Instead, everyone laughed at him. The bartender smiled subtly and continued polishing the mug to show Corky that his order was not worthy of immediate attention. Four or five rubs later, the bartender set the mug down and filled a tall glass from a tap.

“Two bits.”

Corky stared as blankly as if the bartender had said “Entropy varies proportionately to the direction of time.”

The bartender grew impatient, then translated his statement to “Twenty five cents.”

“Ah!” said Corky. “Money.” He rifled his pockets, but found none.

Cyndy had observed other patrons using the same metal discs that Avalanche Wheeler had given her as change. She produced some from a pocket.

“You mean these?” she said. “Are these called moneys?”

“Yes,” said Corky and took the coins from her. “Thank you.”

He tried to select a quarter to give the bartender, but all the coins were strange. Some featured Indians, or eagles, or English royalty, or other ridiculous non-money oriented things. Corky longed for a good old-fashioned American pyramid with an eyeball at the top. He dumped the entire handful on the counter and said:

“Give us an open account, my excellent fellow.”

The bartender was a little leery of Corky’s remark, but money was money, so he took it.

“What else do you serve here?” asked Cyndy.

“For the ladies, we have lilac water or tea and tonic.”

“Lilac water. Corky, is that pretty strong?”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

“Give me an ale. Unleaded.”

“That’s usually for our gentleman customers.”

Cyndy gave him an injured look, then sadly shook her head and reached for the coins…

The bartender laughed and took down a clean mug. “Of course,” he laughed, “why not make this ladies’ night.”

The bartender filled a beer from a tap. Cyndy held it up, muttered dubiously, took a sip, winced with great sadness, and set it back on the bar. The bartender looked a trifle amused. Cyndy said:

“Don’t you have anything with some pep to it?—like napalm thinner or turpentine?”

The bartender smirked and rolled his eyes. He did it deliberately, but tried to make it look natural, as if he found Cyndy naïve and wanted to react in such a way as to demonstrate his own sophistication, yet willingness to humor. He pulled out a dusty bottle of some backwoods solvent and began to drive a corkscrew in, while maintaining direct eye contact with Cyndy, to show his sophisticated ability to uncork a bottle without looking. Fortunately, the corkscrew slipped and drove pretty deep into his hand, which made blood spurt appallingly. He grabbed a cloth napkin and wrapped it around his hand really fast, but tried to make it look like it was the classy way to hold a bottle with a napkin. Corky noticed that his lips trembled fairly high on the Richter scale as he struggled to keep his composed facial expression. Corky rated the bartender’s recovery as a six.

The bartender poured the drink. He recorked the bottle and dropped an olive into the glass. The olive immediately sizzled away like an Alka Seltzer, and left no trace in five seconds.

Cyndy shrugged approvingly, held the glass up to the light, sampled the bouquet, and dumped it down her throat.

The bar got completely quiet. Secretly, the Rough Characters had been watching to see if the backwoods solvent took Cyndy out (allowing them to harass Corky freely), but they all kept talking as a cover. The silence lasted about four seconds, until everyone realized that their astonishment was apparent, and then they all quickly resumed talking really loud, saying things like “As I was saying” and “To make a long story short.”

Cyndy set the glass back on the bar and smacked her lips. “Water,” she said.

The bartender had a glass ready, and handed it to her.

“No,” said Cyndy. “This stuff tastes like water. This crap wouldn’t even dissolve gun grease. Give me something with some hair on its chest.”

A big surly guy stepped up, winked, and scruffed his chest hair for Cyndy’s inspection. She floored him with a backhanded karate chop to the throat.

The bartender looked around, but knew that he had nothing else even half as potent as the backwoods solvent, and his distressed expression betrayed it.

“It’s all right,” said Cyndy. “Just leave the bottle. We’ll make do.” She toasted and clinked her glass with Corky’s sarsaparilla.

Just then, the shutter doors slammed open with such force that one of them broke off, sending Rough Characters tumbling. There was a shriek or two, and a piano string snapped with a fearsome clamor. A mountain of a man stood in the open doorway, surveying the interior landscape of (former) Rough Characters.

The man was seven feet tall, with a flaming red beard and vast lumberjack overalls. In his mighty hands he held the sign advertising “Bartender Wanted. No Irish Need Apply.” Slowly he raised it over his head, and in his bare hands, bent it until the wood creaked. The sign burst in half, raining splinters everywhere.

“My name,” said the mountain with a high-pitched Northern Ireland accent that belied his huge size, “is Rory MacO’Shaughnessy. To whom do I speak about the job?”

9

“Rory MacO’Shaughnessy,” repeated a guy at the bar timidly, as if the name itself filled him with dread. “The infamous highwayman and sod cutter.”

Rory moved his huge legs and took several bone-crushing steps into the saloon. He stood looking down at the frightened patrons.

“Is there no one here who will hire an Irishman?”

Corky took a quick look around for a box of Lucky Charms with which to pacify the huge visitor, but found none.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy towered over a table. The Rough Characters sitting at it cowered to the far side of the table, looking up and quivering with fear. Rory placed his flat hand across the top of their whiskey bottle and crushed it flat against the tabletop like it was made of sand.

“Oops,” he said.

He strode casually to another table and put his big hand across both uprights of the back of one guy’s chair. The guy looked up, his sweaty face pleading for mercy.

Cyndy had had all she could take. Her hand naturally went for her holster, but it was still empty. No matter. She had to stop this menace.

Just as she hopped off her barstool, Rory closed his hand and crushed the man’s chair to splinters, sending him sprawling. Red faced with anger, Cyndy started toward Rory MacO’Shaughnessy.

Cyndy suddenly remembered something. She took the fortune she’d bought out of a pocket. A new visitor brings destruction and terror, Cyndy read. The wise Aquarius will keep out of harm’s way.

It was a moment of moral choice. Cyndy knew it was wrong, but the fact was that she couldn’t afford to get mixed up with this town and this time. She took her seat reluctantly, just in time too, because Rory had heard her jump down and turned to see who it was. He saw nothing, and returned to his bullyragging.

“Can nobody save us?” asked the guy on the floor in despair.

Suddenly the one remaining shutter door fell off and clattered to the floor. Every head turned to see Hewlett, lurching precariously in the doorway, releasing a long, guttural belch.

“Hewlett!” said Corky, thrilled that his trusty friend was riding in like the proverbial cavalry. Traces of hope appeared on every face in the bar…except Cyndy’s, because she was too embarrassed and was hiding under a napkin, and Rory MacO’Shaughnessy’s, because he was filling with malignant glee at the prospect of a person to eat for supper.

Rory took a few massive strides in his mighty boots which bent the floorboards. His Herculean hands rested on his gunbelt as he studied his foe with a self-assured chuckle.

Hewlett did his best to remain on his feet as he stared through a haze of Scotchwhiskzene, trying to figure out what was going on. He seemed to be in the middle of a large, bright room, and there appeared to be people all around him. In particular, one very large person directly in front of him…or it might have been two; Hewlett was having some slight difficulties with his ocular convergence…it seemed like déjà vu, only the last time he’d found himself in a similar circumstance, he had an automatic weapon the size of Rhode Island and now he had only a headache the size of Michigan.

Corky nudged the Rough Character beside him:

“That’s my friend.”

“Ho ho ho,” laughed Rory MacO’Shaughnessy in his leprechaun voice. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me that no Irish need apply here.”

“Sure,” said Hewlett innocently. “No Irish need apply.”

Rory’s countenance became deadly serious. Some of the Rough Characters scrambled from their seats and took refuge against the far wall, well out of the way of bullets or errantly cast snide comments.

Rory picked up a shot glass, held it up for everyone’s examination, and then deliberately took a bite out of it. Everyone gasped when he took the rest of it into his mouth, actually chewed it, and swallowed the remnants.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy crossed his arms, well pleased with his display, and waited for Hewlett’s response. Would it be fold, or raise?

Hewlett had not seen the shot glass demonstration, any more than he had seen anything other than static. He felt around for something to lean on, but his hand touched only the top of a burning candle. Five or ten seconds were all that were needed for the pain to register, and Hewlett quickly withdrew the hand.

Another awed murmur swept the ranks of the saloon patrons; even Rory himself started slightly, but quickly recovered his composure. Corky and Cyndy exchanged looks of wonder; had Hewlett found self respect? Could he actually be standing up for himself?

They quickly discarded the notion.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy chortled inwardly; he was confident that this confrontation was about to end. His hand closed around the grip of a massive dragoon revolver slung in the rawhide holster at his hip. The gun was slowly drawn, and it seemed to just keep coming, and finally the whole 18-inch barrel gleamed for all to see. Rory exposed the magazine and removed one single bullet the size of a big toe, held it aloft, then cast it aside. The bullet thunked on the floorboards with the sound of a brick. Five remained in the gun. Rory then spun the cylinder and quickly snapped it shut; none present could tell where the empty chamber was.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy laughed.

Hewlett turned his dizzy body to see where the laughter was coming from, but could see only double images of fuzziness.

Rory was more than a little impressed by Hewlett’s coolness; most people for whom Rory performed this feat were unable to take their eyes off of him. Hewlett would be a hard nut to crack.

When Rory pulled back the hammer on his huge pistol, it sounded like the piston of a steam locomotive. The sound echoed and died in the tomb-like silence of the saloon as Rory MacO’Shaughnessy held the gun with both hands, raised his arms straight out in front of him, then turned the gun around to point back at his own face…

Cyndy leaned close to Corky. “There are five bullets in that gun,” she explained. “That’s an eighty three percent chance that a live round is in the firing position. Given an average of six percent dud cartridges from this period, that leaves him a seventy eight percent chance of blowing his own head off.”

Rory paused while Hewlett concentrated his wandering attention on irrelevant parts of the room. Some swore they saw sweat trickle down Rory’s temple.

“Those are fifty caliber bullets,” Cyndy continued. “Probably a one hundred and forty grain black powder cartridge. Should be one hell of a bang.” She plugged her ears; Corky took her advice and did the same.

Finally Hewlett dizzily swayed more or less in Rory’s direction. Rory wasted no time, he pulled the trigger with both thumbs and the recoil tore the revolver from his grasp.

“One hell of a bang” was a trifle of an understatement, since most of the saloon’s windows burst and the mirror behind the bar exploded. Everyone in town felt the concussion in their ribs, and a guy building a card house lost more than six minutes worth of work.

A dense cloud of white smoke billowed where Rory had been standing. Only his size-16 boots could be seen as he wobbled and teetered and staggered back a few steps, finally emerging from the cloud with his charred and blackened face clenched tightly in an agonized grimace. Rory shook his head, fanned some smoke away, and grinned, exposing white teeth biting firmly on a giant lead bullet.

Corky lifted Cyndy’s jaw up from the bar and fitted it back into place.

Hewlett groaned and held his splitting skull with both hands. The sound was still echoing back and forth through his brain, send throbbing volleys of pain throughout his body.

“A drink…” moaned Hewlett. “I need a drink.”

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy began to laugh his elfin little “Ho ho ho” laugh, figuring that Hewlett was thoroughly defeated and retiring from the ring. Hewlett was indeed thoroughly defeated, and would have been happy to retire from the ring, except that he still didn’t know he was in one. As he reeled around the saloon calling for a drink, he tripped and fell. Hewlett put his hands out to break his fall and, by chance, caught himself on the rim of the spittoon.

“Poor Hewlett,” said Corky. “They’re all laughing at him. We ought to help him.”

Cyndy remembered the fortune again, and thought it best to keep Corky out of harm’s way too. She must not let him get involved with the “new visitor.”

Corky stood, but before he could take a step, Cyndy grabbed him by the belt.

“Wait!” she said. “Let’s just sit here and see what happens.”

“But Hewlett might get crunched up into little bits.”

Cyndy wanted to say she hoped so, but before she could speak, the saloon suddenly fell silent once again. Evidently something was about to happen.

“A drink,” said Hewlett, but no one laughed. He stood tall and erect, his hands firmly clamped onto the spittoon. He raised it toward his mouth.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy looked horrified. He dropped his revolver.

The bartender whispered under his breath:

“Good god, no.”

A few men near the door scrambled out. Others looked away in revulsion.

Corky remembered his duty and tried to break free of Cyndy’s grip. “I’ve got to help him.”

“No. This is his fight.”

Hewlett put the spittoon to his lips and tilted it back.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy’s eyes grew to three or four feet in diameter, and it was apparent from his collapsed demeanor that he was thoroughly beaten.

There was no sound other than Hewlett’s rhythmic gulping.

Avalanche Wheeler put his face to the window and peered in. Like everyone else, he was mesmerized by the superhuman feat.

Finally the spittoon was drained. Hewlett cast it aside, looked disgusted and said:

“Aqaqa!”

Then he turned and happened to be facing the saloon patrons in general. The grim look on his face made everyone take a step back.

Rory MacO’Shaughnessy took off his hat and held it respectfully. At last he spoke, quietly:

“What was that you said, sir?”

Hewlett tried to remember. “I think it was, no Irish need apply.”

Rory nodded, collected his things, and good loser and sportsman that he was, walked out of the saloon, blackened face and all.

“Drinks are on the house!”

A cheer went up. Spirits soared, the taps flowed, Hewlett was lifted onto the shoulders of the town and carried triumphantly to the bar. He was seated beside Corky and Cyndy and a hundred drinks were thrust at him at once.

Hewlett groaned. “Why didn’t you guys tell me that jar had aqaqa in it?”

“Why did you drink the whole thing?” asked Cyndy.

“I couldn’t stop. It was all in one long string.”

Avalanche Wheeler climbed atop a table amidst the melee and held aloft a couple Scotchwhiskzene tubules. “One Yankee dollar,” he said. “The fantastic agent responsible for what you have just witnessed: Scotchwhiskzene, only one Yankee dollar!”

Most people ignored him, others bumped his table. Most of the people just wanted to toast Hewlett. Actually, they really only wanted the free drinks they thought they’d get if they acted like they were toasting Hewlett. Avalanche Wheeler searched everywhere to make eye contact with even a single buyer, but none presented themselves.

“Blind fools,” he said.

“What?” spoke a burly lumberjack. “Would you repeat that, friend?”

“I said you’re a blind fool.”

Avalanche Wheeler was pulled to the floor and beset upon by the entire lumberjack crew. Nobody really cared, though; pressing the bar for more free drinks, and quickly remembering to acknowledge Hewlett, were the order of the day.

“Hewlett,” said Cyndy, “I’m truly impressed. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I do now,” Hewlett said and clutched his turbulent stomach.

Avalanche Wheeler staggered up to the bar, groping for air and wheezing. He had a lot of black eyes and fat lips and things.

“Whiskey,” he said, which was the only word one really needed to know in an Old West bar. It would have been superfluous to say “I’d like a whiskey, please,” and downright uppity to say “Oh bartender, I’m ready to place my order.” The bartender probably would have pulled out some big scattergun from under the bar and let you have it with both barrels.

“Oh bartender,” said Corky, “this gentleman needs some help.”

“No I don’t,” gasped Avalanche between swigs of whiskey. He ran a shaking hand through his sweaty hair. “I need privacy, a great deal of money, and a new life.”

Corky’s heartstrings were touched by the pathos of poor Avalanche Wheeler. “But you’re a doctor, and a great scientist. I should think you’d be very well off.”

Avalanche gave Corky a pained look that said “How stupid are you?” He spat out a tooth and threw down the rest of his whiskey. “Bartender! Another. A double.”

Corky watched Avalanche drain his fresh drink in less than five seconds. He turned his sarsaparilla bottoms up and chugged and chugged, but made hardly an impression in fifteen seconds. Clearly, Avalanche Wheeler was a man to be greatly respected.

The Senior Doctorate Emeritus threw his glass at a neat stack of beer mugs, shattering them all and eliciting brief applause from the saloon patronage, then buried his face in his arms and sobbed.

Cyndy reached to place a comforting hand on Avalanche’s shoulder, but Hewlett shook his head “no” and pressed a silencing finger to his lips. “If he passes out,” he whispered, “we can rob his body.”

Avalanche draughted mightily when the bartender set a third whiskey in front of him. He rinsed some of the blood out of his mouth, spit it on the floor and wiped his nose. Then he gripped Corky by the collar.

“Did you know that my family was the wealthiest in all New England?”

Corky looked at the bloody spit all over his nice collar, and shook his head no.

“Well we were. Great authors, poets, explorers, educators. Twelve generations of the finest minds the nation has ever produced.”

Corky and Cyndy sat in awe of the great presence. Hewlett, however, dismissed Avalanche Wheeler with a wave of his hand and said “I could have been any of those things.”

“And so I was raised,” continued Avalanche, “my path made clear, my destiny mine alone to keep or to spoil. And then came commerce, and greed, and the love of a woman, and devastation.”

“The love of a woman,” said Hewlett and lifted the glass of some guy next to him to toast with. “Enough to ruin any man.”

“What happened?” asked Corky.

“I lost everything. There’s no money left; all was wasted. The family estate of Thunderwood, in tatters, in the hands of creditors to rot for eternity. And so I’ve drifted these past two years, seeking wicked fortune and watching the grains of my life sift through the sieve of time.”

Corky and Hewlett exchanged a knowing glance and a wink. Avalanche Wheeler was the connection they sought. A big rough Drifter beside them saw the wink, and hunched himself away from them.

“I could have been something,” continued Avalanche Wheeler. “I was meant to be something. The universe was given to me, and I cast it back to the cosmic ether.” And he dropped his face to the bar again and resumed sobbing.

Cyndy remembered something that might cheer Avalanche up. “Some of the things you sell work,” she said. “I know.”

Avalanche kept his face buried. “Nothing works. It’s all nonsense. My whole being is a lie.”

“This fortune you sold me,” she said and unraveled it. “It warned me not to interfere with Rory MacO’Shaughnessy, and I didn’t.”

Avalanche took it from her and glanced it over, then he struck it to the floor. “Every horoscope I print says the same thing. It’s not warning you about the Irishman, it’s warning you about me.”

“You?”

“I’ve been tarred and feathered once, and that was enough. That horoscope is intended to buy me a little extra time. Hopefully, angry customers who read it may fear to confront me.”

“That’s pretty weak,” laughed Hewlett. “Someone would have to be pretty stupid to fall for that.”

Cyndy caught him in the jaw with a fast left jab. Hewlett grabbed a bottle, but Corky sprang—if that is the correct word—to intercede. He separated them and said:

“It’s getting very late. Why don’t we continue this in the morning?”

Cyndy and Hewlett grumbled and collected their things.

“Oh sir,” said Corky to the bartender. “Do you have rooms upstairs, like in movies?”

The bartender made a little signal to a big-boned woman with lots of makeup, a red-sequined dress, and a bright red wig. She sidled over, lumped her mass into a seductive pose, and looked Corky over like he was from the third moon of Saturn.

“We’d like a room,” said Corky, “ to stay in. Overnight. For the three of us, just to sleep, through the night, and not do anything else except sleep. All night.”

The big woman smirked. Her face was big and soft, and had lots of folds and pockets and slabs and things, so the smirk involved about eighteen pounds of stuff.

“This here’s a respectable joint,” she said with a husky, screen vamp voice.

“Really?” said Hewlett. He pulled the cigarette holder out of her mouth and examined it. “It looks quite ordinary to me.”

She grabbed it back from him and pointed Corky toward a rack of room keys on the wall. “Take room 6,” she said, and sidled away.

“Hewlett, are you coming?”

Avalanche clapped Hewlett on the back and suggested:

“One more round.”

“Are you buying?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be up soon,” said Hewlett, and waved.

Corky and Cyndy headed upstairs. Their room was quite elegantly appointed, like all Old West rooms in movies, even though in the actual Old West, there wasn’t any way to transport elegant fixtures into the middle of the desert, nor the money to pay for it. Nevertheless here it was, replete with ornate canopy bed, velvet love seat, and queensware washbowl. Corky set the backpack on the love seat and took a good approving look around.

“You take the bed,” said both simultaneously.

Corky blushed and was about to apologize for speaking out of turn when Cyndy said:

“Really, Corky, I’m used to sleeping on the hard ground. I wouldn’t be able to sleep in a springy, cushiony bed.”

“You’re very kind, but I couldn’t sleep in a bed while a young lady slept on the floor.”

“Then we’ll both sleep on the floor,” suggested Cyndy, “and I get the rug.”

This was acceptable. When the light had been out for less than two minutes, Cyndy had a disturbing thought.

“Wait a minute. If we both sleep on the floor, Hewlett will take the bed.”

“That’s all right,” said Corky, “he’ll be more comfortable.”

“He’ll think we left him the bed out of respect.”

“He’ll appreciate it that way.”

“But I won’t.” Cyndy sat up. There was not a hint of sleep in her body with the thought of Hewlett’s gloating in her mind. “Corky, you have to take the bed. If you really want to be a gentleman.”

Corky struggled with the proposition. He knew that Cyndy would indeed sleep better on the floor, but nevertheless, his instincts were too strong. As in every other unfortunate aspect of life, etiquette outweighs practicality, sad as that may be.

“I’m sorry, Cyndy, I wish I could, but I cannot.”

Corky’s use of the word “cannot” instead of “can’t” like a normal person would have said convinced her that he meant it, and would not be dissuaded. For as she knew, Corky was a man of great resolution and moral impetus. Cyndy cursed under her breath and climbed onto the deep, over-quilted mattress and struggled to get comfortable in the tangled mess of strangling blankets.

Corky was sorry for her, but deep down he knew he was doing the right thing.

One of them slept very soundly that night; the other made do with the greater good.

10

Hewlett leaned against the piano as he looked across the emptying saloon. The big woman with the red dress and the loose face sat at a table counting receipts, the bartender devoted all his time to polishing, and only a few Rough Characters remained in the corner, lost in a game of Seven Up. The piano player was still playing Camptown Ladies, minus the “dahs” as before. It was probably the only song he knew, but also the only one required of a frontier piano player. However, it was easy for Hewlett to imagine his trusted sidekick Sam experimenting with a soft jazz melody, and warm cigarette smoke drifting through the night air…

“What’s that you’re playing?” asked Hewlett.

“Camptown Ladies. What did you reckon it was?”

“Stop it. You know what I want to hear.”

“No I don’t.”

“You played it for her, you can play it for me.”

“Listen, Mac, I don’t want any trouble.”

This broke Hewlett’s concentration. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say. Don’t you remember that scene?”

The piano player slammed the lid over the keyboard and stood up. “Good thing I’m off work. You’re loco, that’s what I think.”

Hewlett followed the piano player toward the door. “You’re supposed to play As Time Goes By, and then I get all sentimental, and…and… Boy, don’t you people ever go to the movies?”

“Movies,” repeated Avalanche Wheeler, as he watched transfixed from his bar stool. He had a drink—club soda, which is what evil guys drink when they’re trying to suck good guys into a trap and don’t want to get too drunk to lose the razor sharpness of their conniving minds—and half of a smoldering cigar, which is what evil guys hold to show that they’ve been sitting there long enough to let the first half burn away.

“Yeah, movies,” said Hewlett as he took his seat next to Avalanche. “You know, moving pictures? How ignorant are you 1888 guys anyway?”

“Moving pictures. Fascinating.” Avalanche rubbed his chin, and wheels could be heard spinning in his head. They needed a bit of oil, perhaps, but they spun a lot better than Hewlett’s.

“This material in your shirt,” said Avalanche and stroked it. “Extraordinary.”

“Fag.” Hewlett slapped Avalanche’s hand away.

“And the ingenious wrist timepiece your heavy-set friend wears. From where do these objects of such cunning finery arise forth?”

Hewlett shrugged. He had no idea where he’d bought the shirt, and if he knew where Corky shopped for digital watches, he’d sooner die than admit it.

“Here,” said Avalanche and passed Hewlett a Scotchwhiskzene tubule. “Perhaps this will calm your mind, and clarify thought.”

“Thanks.” Hewlett drank deeply, and relished the immediate thrill.

“Where do you hail from, my dear friend?”

“Hail? The sky, I guess.”

Avalanche was intrigued, but not surprised. Doubtless persons who possessed such strange and wonderful things might well travel through the sky. He leaned against the bar, acted calm and did his best to put Hewlett at his ease. A few minutes were all the Scotchwhiskzene should need to take effect. He selected another fine cigar from the case he carried in his breast pocket.

“Cigar?”

Hewlett did not understand, so he picked up a toothpick and said:

“Toothpick.”

Avalanche put the cigar away. “You intrigue me,” he said. “What brings you and your friends to this town?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Scientific curiosity. There is much you and I could learn from one another.”

“I could teach you how to dress, that’s for sure.”

Avalanche forced a laugh at Hewlett’s chummy jab. “Oh, this,” and Avalanche flapped a thinning lapel of his tuxedo jacket, “it’s all part of the show. Playing down to the crowd, you know.” He leaned a little closer. “People like you and I, we’re beyond all that shallow pretense that so appeals to the massed rabble. We could go places.”

Avalanche didn’t mention that they were the only clothes he had. It would not have served his argument.

Hewlett was always in favor of exploiting the massed rabble, and so raised an eyebrow with interest.

“Your tubule,” said Avalanche. “May I freshen it?”

“Thanks.” Again Hewlett sucked down the lusty Scotchwhiskzene.

“Tell me,” said Avalanche as he leaned back again to appear relaxed and easy mannered. “What are your plans for the road ahead?”

“To get out of this old fashioned place, and get back to a modern place where they have cars and stuff.”

Avalanche wrinkled his brow and looked crushed. He shook his head sadly, as if Hewlett had answered “To take poison, and burn myself to death.” Avalanche said:

“Great profits could be yours, my friend. Don’t you see? We are the solution to each other’s problems. Here, have another Scotchwhiskzene. With my experience and éclat, and your knowledge of miraculous inventions, the world could be ours to take.”

“Your money’s mine to take,” said the bartender, and presented a bill. Avalanche Wheeler dug in his pocket for coins.

“That old fashioned money’s ridiculous,” said Hewlett and plopped a modern quarter on the bar. “Have some real stuff. What do you think this is, some…some weird money place…like Canada?”

“We don’t accept foreign currency,” said the bartender.

“Foreign?” said Hewlett angrily and held up his quarter. “I—”

“It’s all right,” said Avalanche Wheeler and replaced the quarter with a handful of his own coins. “It’s my party.” He slipped Hewlett’s quarter into his cuff, the oldest of magician tricks.

“He thought my money was no good,” said Hewlett, noticeably slurring his speech. But his mind was clear as a bell…he thought. He knew his speech was slurring, but his head was spinning too much to do anything about it.

“Of course he did,” said Avalanche. “Just like the drinks he serves. They have nothing here as good as Scotchwhiskzene.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Avalanche poured Hewlett yet another tubule and it was gone in seconds.

“How shall you get home tonight?”

“The backpack.”

“Backpack, did you say?”

“The machine. It’s in a backpack.”

“And this machine…it is how you get home?”

“Home…or anywhere else. Or anywhen else.” Hewlett tried to laugh at his little joke. But it was so little he couldn’t even laugh at it himself. Anyway he was spinning too much to try.

Avalanche acted like he was checking his pocket watch, but really he slipped the quarter out of his cuff and looked at the date of minting: more than a century in the future! He started and nearly dropped it.

“Whassa matter?”

“The year! I mean, the hour,” said Avalanche Wheeler and stuffed his pocket watch away along with the quarter. “I must be leaving at once.”

“Don’t you want another (hic) drink?”

“Indeed I should like one, my friend, but we must get you to bed at once.”

“Bed,” said Hewlett, and began to lay down atop three bar stools. “That’s a fine, noble idea.”

“Up we go,” said Avalanche as he pulled Hewlett off and tried to stand him up. He might as well have tried to stand up an octopus. Finally he threw Hewlett over his shoulder, inquired the way to the room, and carried the limp body upstairs.

“I knew them eastern fellows was odd,” said the bartender.

Avalanche quietly pushed open the door to the room. Hewlett was easily dropped in a heap, and it was an equally simple matter to locate the strange thing called a backpack on the velvet love seat. Avalanche examined it by the light of a Lucifer match, one of the many newfangled trinkets he carried with him. He was the kind of guy who would use a stupid word like “newfangled.” It’s the same breed of person who’s impressed by a silly wooden facade on the front of a tumble-down Old West shack.

Within minutes, Avalanche was four blocks away with the backpack, which meant that he had completely traversed the entire length of the town. People in the Old West didn’t know how to make intersections, so they laid their whole towns out along one single street. This was good, because horses would have looked really stupid with turn signals, and everyone knows that cowboys were too tough to use hand signals. If any one cowboy did use a hand signal, the others would have all laughed and called him a sissy for giving in to them “ornery” traffic laws. Notwithstanding, Avalanche made it through the midnight shadows to the opposite end of town without being seen.

He entered a dark livery stable and carefully set the backpack down on a bunch of hay covering the dirt packed floor. Like an escaped criminal, Avalanche looked wildly all around with sweat speckling his forehead, but saw only strangely quiescent horses staring back at him, their long faces made sinister by the sickly moonlight.

“What are you looking at?” he hissed with all musterable theatrics, and, finding the horses unappreciative of his acting skill, turned his attention to the backpack. He rummaged through the electrical components of the machine, and resolved not to risk adjusting them. He found the keypad. The buttons were strange devices, unlike any he had ever seen, and made of an unfamiliar material, as was the backpack itself. He learned nothing from his examination, and had the presence of mind not to touch anything further. He studied the straps, and recited the word:

“Backpack.”

Meaning, perhaps, that it goes on one’s back. Standing, he awkwardly thrust one arm through a strap, and then the other; and found himself wearing a stomachpack. Avalanche Wheeler studied the arrangement critically, but deemed it ultimately acceptable and shrugged.

The keypad was intimidating indeed. The unlabeled buttons must be the control mechanisms, but how to use them? Avalanche decided to employ the same technique he had always applied with his potions, cure-alls and electric therapy devices. Trial and error, with himself as the guinea pig.

He placed a finger on a button, gritted his teeth and prepared to press it.

“Perhaps something to steady my nerves,” he said, and reached into a pocket for his flask. It was not present, but a tubule of Scotchwhiskzene was. He uncapped it and threw it down.

As the room began to dizzily sway around him, Avalanche Wheeler pressed a button.

The floor shot away from under his feet. Fearing he would strike the ceiling, he looked up but saw the clapboards above speeding away just as fast. The horses and the hay and the stable burst into millions of tiny sparkles which exploded away from him at light speed, and Avalanche Wheeler kicked his feet and clawed with his hands in zero gravity and blackness. More sparkles appeared all around him, and all sped away to infinity, growing in size the farther away they got. Strange shimmering spheres, even as large as himself, began to fall past all around him, and he looked through the thickening haze of Scotchwhiskzene as a sphere bounced past him, paused a minute, looked him over and said:

“I could teach you how to dress, that’s for sure.”

The sphere casually bounced along on its way. Nearby was the saloon (Strange, thought Avalanche, it’s on the other side of town), and several more shimmering spheres bounced toward the shutter doors and entered. Some spheres were smallish and yellow, and had buzzing clouds of hornets (or what looked like hornets) raging around them; others were larger and bluish, and were harried by only one or two hornets at best. Two of these entered the saloon, but a yellow sphere darted up to them and directed their attention to a sign that plainly said “No Hadrons Need Apply.” The blue spheres sadly moped out, decayed into quarks, and were gone. Avalanche tried to get to the saloon, but it spun out of reach, smaller and smaller, and more sparkles appeared and shot by, some striking him in the rear, and then everything got really loud, and suddenly he felt the pull of gravity and the rush of cold air into his lungs. Avalanche landed on hard ground in a dark forest, and knew nothing more for a long time.

11

It was hot and the desert sun streamed brightly through the window. Most of it focused directly on Hewlett’s unconscious face, including some that was hitting a full length mirror and bounced from there onto the other side of his face. There was a silver tea kettle atop a bureau, with facets on it, and as the sun rose, the facets reflected a line of laser beams that progressed one by one across his half closed eyes. After an hour or two of this, Hewlett began to groan and scrunch up his nose.

Corky was still asleep on the floor, and was all twisted clockwise, yet his sweater and both pant legs were twisted counter clockwise and rode halfway up. He looked really uncomfortable. One arm was stretched way up over his head at an unnatural angle and had turned white from lack of blood supply. Probably when he woke up, he’d get pins and needles and would be so sensitive that he wouldn’t be able to move a finger without incredible discomfort.

Cyndy’d had it pretty rough on the cushy bed; in fact, she’d been awake for four or five hours and been tossing and turning the whole time. A couple times during the night, she almost got up to stretch out on the comfortably firm floor, but the fear that Hewlett might wake and find the bed available was too great a risk.

She waited for the current laser beam to pass across Hewlett’s eyes, then at last stood up and crunched her back.

“Up and at ‘em, guys,” she said. However her meaning was unclear, because it was not apparent who was supposed to “go at” whom.

“Ohh,” groaned Corky, “My arm went to sleep. Don’t anyone touch me or I’ll get pins and needles.”

Hewlett, trying to see through burned-in spots on his retinas, yawned and asked “Which arm?” apparently greatly concerned.

“Corky!” snapped Cyndy, “Don’t tell him!”

But Corky had already formed the words “Left arm” in his mouth, and the words came out; and Hewlett burst out laughing like a banshee. He sprang over and grabbed Corky’s left arm and shook it vigorously. Corky screamed bloody murder, and by the time Cyndy got there to help, the damage had been done. Hewlett lay kicked back on the bed chortling, and Corky sat wild-eyed on the floor tingling uncontrollably.

“Anyone seen my pocket knife?” asked Cyndy. “I thought I stuck it in the backpack.”

“Well gee,” offered Hewlett helpfully, “if you left it in the backpack, let’s see if we can think where you should look for it.”

“The backpack’s not here.”

Corky managed to hunch himself up onto one elbow, leaving his other arm draped uselessly across the floor. “I set it on the love seat last night. At least, I thought I did.”

“Obviously, you thought wrong,” said Hewlett.

Corky got up and went over to the love seat, as if Cyndy’s examination might have overlooked something as large as a backpack sitting squarely in the middle of it. Cyndy was a bit offended that he didn’t trust her report that the backpack was not on the love seat, to the point that he deemed it necessary to verify it for himself. She would have said something brusque like “You think I’m blind?” but she remembered that she had done the same thing herself many times. Often, when she and Brom Thorn were looking for a dropped rocket propelled grenade, and both poking and prodding through the swamp bushes and murky water, Cyndy would say:

“Have you found it yet?”

Brom had never answered “Yes, I found it some time ago, but kept it a secret from you because I wished to continue slogging through this goop just for grins.”

Cyndy realized that Corky’s critical reexamination was due to his human nature, and not to arrogance or mistrust.

“I don’t trust you guys,” said Hewlett and jumped off the bed. “Seems like I’m the only one who can do anything right around here.”

Hewlett spent as much as a full minute looking beneath, behind, around and under the cushions of the love seat.

“Corky,” he said as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “Where did you really put it?”

“It was there when we went to bed,” said Cyndy sharply. She had not intended to seem like she was protecting Corky. She knew Corky was well capable of defending himself against Hewlett.

Corky just looked from Hewlett to Cyndy and back again, to see who would win the argument, and thus discover for himself whether or not he was guilty of losing the backpack.

The three made a thorough search of the room, but finally resigned themselves to the hard truth that the Professor’s machine was gone, and probably gone for good. Hewlett couldn’t remember whether he had locked the door when he came in late, and so naturally claimed that he had; but the evidence was against him and his credibility deemed dubious at best. The fact that they woke up with the door standing wide open was not in his favor.

Corky closed the door. Hewlett opened his mouth to say something about a horse bolting from a barn, but just as he was about to speak he forgot what the saying was, and when he tried to remember, he could see no relevance in their situation to horses and barns. So he acted like he was yawning instead.

The three had a very glum breakfast in the saloon, due in part to the fact that saloons weren’t accustomed to serving breakfast, so the best they could get was pretzels and sarsaparilla. The big woman with the loose face set silverware out for them, though there wasn’t much use for silverware with pretzels, but she did it because it made her feel like a big time restaurateur. She even snapped her fingers to make the bartender refill their sarsaparilla for them. He was mad about having to be out of bed so early, and still bitter that his hardest drink had been too weak for Cyndy, so he was cross and the service they got from him was pretty gruff.

Always the pragmatist, Corky began to realize just what the loss of the backpack meant to them. “I’m going to have to buy some boots,” he said.

Cyndy was not concerned about being able to get by in the Old West, she was more worried about her platoon back home. “I always thought I’d get back,” she said. “A major beautification was going to be launched against my men this morning. What will they do without me?”

“We were doing fine until you showed up,” said Hewlett. “Your men might have a chance now that you’re gone.” The remark did little to boost her spirits.

That afternoon, the big woman brought her flaps of facial skin up to their room and knocked.

“I’ve got your bill prepared. You folks figuring on spending another night?”

“I’m not sure,” said Corky and fished in his pocket to see how much money he had. “How much would it cost?”

“Ninety cents,” she said to everyone’s relief, but then added “and that Canadian rubbish you tried to slip my bartender won’t answer.”

Cyndy checked her pockets, but found she had no more 1888 currency. Something had to be done quickly.

“I’ve been scoping out that bank across the street,” said Hewlett, “and it’s a pushover.”

“What’s a bank?” asked Cyndy.

“It’s where they have lots of moneys.”

“You can’t mean you’re going to rob a bank!” said Corky.

“No, no,” laughed Hewlett reassuringly. “You guys are.”

Corky and Cyndy looked at each other.

“I’m listening,” said Cyndy.

“It’s simple. Corky, you go in first to draw their fire. Once they’re all out of ammo, Cyndy goes in, blows open the vault, loads all the moneys into a bag, then the two of you take a hired buggy and skedaddle.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right here,” said Hewlett. “We have to have an alibi, don’t we?”

The big woman knocked on the door a bit more impatiently.

“Thank you, madam,” called Corky. “We won’t be staying another night.”

“What about this here bill?”

At a loss, Corky looked to Hewlett.

“I’ll send someone down to pay it,” said Hewlett. Corky and Cyndy mouthed silent questions to him. How did he expect to pay the bill?

This way, he motioned, and waved them toward the back window. Cyndy was not about to stand for any more of Hewlett’s dishonesty, but the big woman pounded on the door again, and Cyndy threw in the towel. She followed Hewlett as he climbed over the sill and onto the roof of the shed below. Corky shrugged apologetically through the door, as if the big woman had x-ray vision, and followed the others out the window.

The shed was not really designed for the weight of three people, and so folded under their feet and dropped them into a bunch of hay. In the Old West, whenever someone fell off a roof or jumped out a window, there was always a big pile of hay to break their fall. In this case, it was very convenient.

“This works,” said Hewlett brushing himself off. “We don’t need any money. We can just go from hotel to hotel, get three squares and a night’s sleep out of each one, then skip out for free.”

Accordingly, they shortly found themselves in the dining parlor of another hotel. Never one to procrastinate, Hewlett had insisted on going straight to Coffin’s fanciest hotel, rather than work their way up, learning as they go and polishing their freeloading technique. The Metropolitain was similar to Coffin’s other buildings, but had paint on the front and a misspelled name. The owner, a gentleman from Nevada named b’Ob, had discovered years ago that to misspell a common word made people think it’s foreign or exotic or somehow of greater value, thus the Metropolitain was able to charge triple for identical services. He could have named it the Butchered Chickene and been just as successful, but b’Ob was not one to take unnecessary risks, or to miss a flair when it could be easily thrown in, thus the basket of mintes at the front counteur.

The waiter, a salvaged town drunkard whose elaborately embroidered nametag said Hanque, brushed some bread crumbs (which had been sprinkled there by b’Ob for that purpose) off the tablecloth (which covered a roughly hewn table much like the others in Coffin) and asked, as he had been coached, if they were ready to “ordare.”

Cyndy raised her eyebrows and made an impressed facial expression, apparently feeling that it must be extraordinarily high treatment to be spoken to with mispronunciation.

Hewlett was fuming. He had never taken French in school, and here was a backwards country waiter in the middle of the Old West who could talk classier than he could. This was not acceptable. Hewlett knew a few words of Spanish, but he considered that too plebeian to compete with an exotic “continental” language like French. So he sat there grumbling inwardly, but outwardly acted mighty bored of the waiter’s mispronunciation. Whenever Hanque spoke his pseudo French, Hewlett hummed audibly, yawned obviously and stared around the room, looking for any art worthy of his attention. Hanque noticed that his French accent was not impressing Hewlett, and grew concerned and began to feel inadequate.

“You don’t have to be so rude,” hissed Cyndy when Hanque sadly moped away with their order.

“Oh right,” scoffed Hewlett, “you’re just in love with him because he has that fake accent. Girls always go for foreign guys. They come over here and they steal our women.”

Corky got up to use the restroom. He went over to Hanque and whispered something.

“Powdare?” said Hanque, and pointed out a side door. Corky thanked him and left.

“Swell,” said Hewlett, hunching his chair away from Cyndy. “Now everyone’s going to think we’re a couple.”

Cyndy did not find that to be an appealing prospect. “Oh no,” she said, her voice trembling with concern. “You don’t suppose they will?”

She hunched her chair the other way. Both Hewlett and Cyndy leaned back and looked away, gesturing to people that they had no idea who they were seated across from.

Meanwhile, Corky was having a sad lesson in Old West sanitation. The view from the bottom of the pit showed Corky’s forlorn face staring down, speckled with buzzing flies and gnats. He reconsidered his need, and concluded that it was not urgent.

There had been a short queue outside the little shack, and when Corky came out he found himself face to face with the bartender from last night’s saloon. Both faces registered surprise at once.

“Hello,” said Corky in a friendly tone.

A surly miner near the end of the line cut in. “Less palaver and more action,” he said brusquely.

The bartender was not engaging in palaver, however. He remembered Corky as the fellow who skipped out without paying his bill, but also as a member of the party that licked Rory MacO’Shaughnessy. The bartender stiffened like he was nose to nose with Billy the Kid himself. He hopped back and looked around for a sheriff or someone. He looked like a pogo stick, hopping back and forth, side to side, spotting nobody but the prodigious great mastiff belonging to the saloon.

“Zeus! Sic ‘im!”

Zeus sprang from his comfortable resting spot like a jack-in-the-box and soared through the air at Corky, a slobbering mélange of claws and teeth and drool and big flapping lips. Corky politely excused himself and accelerated.

Hewlett cracked up laughing when he saw Corky run past the restaurant’s front window, the great mastiff firmly riveted to his boxer shorts which protruded a surprising distance out of his trousers. Cyndy upended the table and crashed through the window glass, tackling the huge dog and liberating the better portion of the boxer shorts. Corky quickly fastened his trousers to hide the embarrassing acreage and ran.

Cyndy hurled the dog at the bartender who pursued on foot with several other men, then ran after Corky. Hewlett, smelling trouble, began to whistle and edge his way toward the restaurant’s back door, as if nobody noticed that he was with the involved party. Everyone in the place looked at him though, like they were expecting an explanation for the upended table and shattered window. He acted like he didn’t know they were looking at him, hoping that it might cause them to think “Well, if he were involved in this mess, he certainly wouldn’t be standing there whistling casually and ignoring us. We must have the wrong man.” Hewlett then bolted out the back, breaking dishes and making a girl in the kitchen scream.

As soon as he burst onto the back alley, Corky jogged past at about two miles an hour, which was his maximum speed, including overdrive. Cyndy appeared around the corner of the building wiping her fists on her fatigues and said:

“They won’t get up for a while. We’d better find somewhere to hide out for a few hours.”

Corky was impressed. “What did you do to them?”

Cyndy opened her mouth to answer, but Hewlett broke in. “I don’t like to talk about it, Corky; it wasn’t pretty. Never is.”

They slunk around in the alley awhile, finally venturing to peek out onto the main street a couple blocks further down.

“Look! There!” shouted Hewlett and pointed across the plaza. Coffin’s idea of a plaza was really just an intersection where junk had collected in the middle, allowing mesquites to take root and give the impression of a central island. What appeared to be a naked young infant, dancing sprightly and playing a happy tune on a pan pipe, was merrily wending its way across the plaza—and wearing the backpack.

“It’s our backpack,” said Corky.

“What did you think I was pointing at, Sherlock?” asked Hewlett.

“Shut up,” said Cyndy, “and let’s grab that kid.”

They ran over like a vicious rugby squad, provoking the happy little baby to squeal with fright. Hewlett made a rough dive tackle and the others piled on top.

“Get him!”

“Sack him!”

“Wait, you idiots,” said Cyndy. “There he goes.”

The tackle had missed. The infant bounced its happy way across the street, tooting on its pipes. Hewlett felled it with a dirt clod, dived again and got a secure handful of baby fat.

An old lady stepped off the plank sidewalk and beat Hewlett savagely with her purse and cane, calling him crude names like “ruffian” and “bully.” Corky took the opportunity to secure the backpack and jounce the baby in his arms to calm it. Cyndy had to restrain Hewlett when he jumped up to counterattack the old lady.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” said Cyndy, “I’ll take care of him.” Cyndy doubled Hewlett over with a punch to the gut and stretched him out with a roundhouse. A bunch of loafers on the sidewalk, who had enjoyed the spectacle immensely, cheered and heckled. Hewlett screamed obscenities, to which they responded with laughter and jeers, as Cyndy carried him away, kicking and squirming.

Corky led them to safety in the lobby of Coffin’s last virgin hotel. Cyndy dumped Hewlett into a seat in the restaurant and shoved the chair in to hold him. Corky set the backpack on the table and sat back to make coo-cooing noises to the baby.

The restaurant had fifteen or twenty people in it, all of whom stared rudely. Hewlett, seeing that he was a center of attention, cleared his throat and acted like he meant to be seated there, and was at the head of the table, and was holding an important meeting.

“The backpack has been retrieved,” he said, a fact which Corky and Cyndy were well aware of. Hewlett knew they were well aware of it, but he imagined that they were waiting for his acknowledgment of the obvious to render it reliably factual.

“Retrieved,” said Cyndy, “but who took it? I don’t think this kid could have gotten into our room. Naked babies don’t roam around saloons.”

“He’s wonderful though, isn’t he?” smiled Corky. “Such a darling little cherub. Coo coo coo, little one.”

Hewlett shook his head sadly. Corky had finally lost it.

“He does look like a cherub,” said Cyndy. “In the classical sense, anyway. Like a cupid or an elf.”

“He’s quite accomplished on the pan pipes,” said Corky. The cherub smiled up at him, brought his instrument to his lips and played a quick flourish. The cherub winked.

“Did you see that?”

“That’s nothing,” said Hewlett. “When I was that age I could drive.”

“That’s not the point,” said Cyndy. “Cherubs didn’t run around the old west. Cherubs used bows, and the old west was well into the black powder era. Where does he come from, and how did he get the backpack?”

Corky unzipped the pack and checked the machine. All seemed to be in order. It was as full as ever of busted vacuum tube and tangled wiring.

“Here,” said Corky. “This switch on the keypad. I’ve never used it before.”

“What switch?”

“It says auto return. Perhaps it’s for when you take back a rental car.”

“Perhaps you got a lobotomy for your third birthday,” said Hewlett. “Sounds like that means the backpack will return to wherever it came from.”

Cyndy rubbed her chin. “Do you think the backpack has been somewhere since last night?”

They looked at the cherub. It smiled back, and blew bubbles.

“I think it has,” said Hewlett. “Wherever cherubs come from.”

“We must return there with the cherub,” said Corky. “If someone there knows how to use the backpack, we may all be able to get home.”

Cyndy nodded in agreement.

“That’s good enough for me,” said Hewlett. “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of this damn cherub. I ain’t changing any diapers.”

“He’s not wearing any.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Hewlett in disgust, and scrambled to the far side of the table. Hewlett smiled at a lady across the room who happened to catch his eye for a second. He faked a laugh and rolled his eyes, shaking his head in a shrug, in an effort to convey to the lady that he too thought it was silly for a naked baby to be allowed out in public. His expression also communicated a veiled indictment of Corky and Cyndy’s abilities as parents, who, Hewlett also implied, owned the baby.

“I hope no one thinks this naked brat is mine,” Hewlett said from the corner of his mouth.

The cherub sneezed, fortunately spraying Hewlett with a fine mist of phlegm. He screamed and frantically scrubbed his body with napkins.

“That is a scary thought,” Cyndy agreed. “A fine father you’d be. Not that it would ever happen.”

“I’d make a better parent than you. At least I’m not some Rambo swamp weirdo. At least I’m a normal person.”

Cyndy coughed on a breadstick.

“I come from a fine and respected family,” Hewlett continued. “I don’t wager you could say the same.”

“I was born across enemy lines. My mother was a forward scout, and was respected in every company of the United Human Forces.”

“I’ll bet she was!”

Cyndy resisted the urge to damage Hewlett’s head, and turned her attentions to the sweet cherub instead.

“Sounds pretty weak, Cyndy. I had a governess. My parents did not spare one cent to raise me well.”

“I’d say they doubled their investment.”

There was a commotion in the hotel lobby. They turned to see the woman with the extra skin on her face and the waiter from the Metropolitain, with a guy wearing a star. The Sheriff was bowlegged from riding horses his whole life, like his legs were made of clay and someone had rolled them out long and thin and bent them into a perfect semicircle. If he was on roller skates, he could have gone over a Volkswagen without noticing. He must have had a really fat horse. The big woman lifted her forehead out of her eyes, like a basset hound, and screeched:

“There they are!”

“Hit that button, Corky,” said Cyndy.

Corky fumbled with the wires as the others reached to hold onto one another, including a firm grip on the cherub.

“Now hold on there, varmints,” said the Sheriff. “I don’t reckon you hadn’t oughta be doing that.”

They all smiled at him and the cherub played a trill on his pan pipes that sounded not unlike a Star Trek transporter. The Sheriff had never seen Star Trek, and so did not understand the reference. In a moment the four were gone.

“I’ll be sucked up the hind end of a cow,” he said, pushing back his ten gallon hat and scratching his sweaty forehead, staring at the empty chairs. “Them hotel sharks is getting wilier and wilier. Just this morning they was still jumping out of windows.”

12

Hot light blazed brighter and louder and whiter than ever before, and it was a blade of lightning cracking not twenty yards away! The cherub’s face froze in terror for the split second of a another bolt’s brilliant spark; a dense forest all around them quaked as thunder exploded and they were pounded with a torrent of icy rain in the blackest night.

Hewlett yelled something critical and unconstructive as a hurricane-like blast of chilled wind crushed him against a tree trunk, but it was thankfully inaudible under the roar of water smashing him in the face.

Cyndy’s combat suit had some automatic little flashlight that popped out by itself and it weakly shone around, but served merely to illuminate the shards of horizontal rain and was lost completely in the repeated thunderclaps of blazing lightning. Corky found it difficult to stand on the slippery wet forest leaves, and as Cyndy was catching him, he called out:

“Where’s the cherub?”

They looked around, and Cyndy’s light caught a brief glint from a tiny naked butt trotting away through the trees.

“That way!”

The three held hands to avoid being blown away, and did their best to follow the streaking cherub. Corky was in the middle, so he didn’t have any hands free to move prickle bushes and things aside, so he got the worst of it. Once the wind knocked his feet out from under him and he sat with a splash in a near-frozen pool of rain, which pulled the other two down with him, since he weighed about four times as much as them. It was too bad that Cyndy got pulled into the puddle, because she was cool; but it was no problem when anything painful or uncomfortable happened to Hewlett. Cyndy wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, but Corky felt bad for seven or eight months afterward.

Finally they emerged from the edge of the forest onto a meadow, scoured clear by the howling storm. Long grass and reeds, pressed by the gales, weaved and twisted in hypnotic patterns under the flickers of lightning, and several inches of collected rainwater streamed across the meadow in splashing torrents. Across the meadow was a knoll, and atop the knoll stood a massive castle, tall and mighty, black against the silver clouds charged by the lightnings. The castle showed lights in many of its windows, steadfast bastions of light and warmth and shelter, well guarded by the impregnable walls.

“Let’s get some shelter in there,” shouted Cyndy above the din.

“Wow,” yelled Hewlett, “you’re clever.”

Another burst of lightning overhead, and Corky spotted a small round form bouncing downrange across the frigid meadow.

“Look! The cherub’s washing away!”

“We’ll look for him in the morning.”

But Corky was already off. The meadow was sloshy and his feet sunk in a good ways, thus making obscene noises each time he took a step. Just as the wind and spray was about to blast the poor cherub into a river, Corky dived and sunk his fingers into the fleshy baby fat of its leg. Cyndy and Hewlett pulled him clear of danger, and the four hurried to the castle.

When they got there, they discovered that it was not a proper stone castle at all. Rather it was a huge timber and sod lodge, ten floors high with steep, heavily thatched roofs on its many wings. Thick logs, fifteen feet in circumference, fortified the great hall’s main gate, and its walls were solid stacks of great sodden bricks awash with driving rivers of cold rainwater. The timbers glistened with each flash of lightning. Corky approached the solid wooden door, at least twenty feet high, and said:

“Hello.”

“That’s right,” said Hewlett. “There’s a doorman just inside, waiting up all night for someone to walk up quietly and say ‘Hello.’” Hewlett picked up a rock and drove it against the door with all his strength. There was little result, other than the vibration causing a whole bunch of ice water to spill onto their heads.

“Dammit!” shouted Hewlett and staggered back. A gust of wind drove some more rain at him, and made him lose his temper and wish he was home. Corky and Cyndy picked up Hewlett’s rock and struck it against the door twice more.

A small hatch uncovering a peephole slipped open. They heard the sound of a bow tightening, and saw an iron crossbow bolt poke out through the peephole at them. Cyndy went for a weapon, but Corky restrained her.

A woman wearing a scarred and beaten iron helmet put her face up to the peephole and looked out at her visitors. The three of them didn’t looked very threatening, without even the sense to come in out of the rain, and so the helmeted woman said something to them in old North Germanic. Corky had been to an Oktoberfest once, in Boston, but nevertheless did not understand her. He answered:

“What?”

Her eyes widened and the crossbow was lowered. Corky heard some other voices behind her muttering in astonishment. The woman said humbly:

“You speak Göttersprache, the language of the gods.”

At these words, Hewlett straightened his jacket, cleared his throat, and stepped to the front. “Yes,” he said, “you might say they speak my language. And hey,” as he snatched something away from Corky and held it up by the scruff of the neck, “we found your cherub.”

There were a bunch of loud resonating clanks and clunks and squeals, as whatever mechanism was used to unlock the door. There was a little handy door built into the gigantic one, but it would not have been as theatrically impressive. A whole bunch of counterweights and cantilevers and things like that had to be operated by a team of oxen just inside, so the overall effect on visitors was considerable. Corky and Cyndy wandered inside looking up at the imposing apparatus in wonder, but Hewlett strode in trying to look unimpressed, as if he expected no less of a door to be used to admit him anywhere he went. The woman in the helmet looked disappointed when she saw Hewlett cup a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn; she had banked on blowing them all away with her nifty door, and seeing the impression fail was a minor defeat for her.

The oxen were reversed and the process to close the door begun. The oxen were led by scrawny young girls holding switches, awkwardly garbed in heavy leather armor. The flickering light of torches, orange in the musty air made thick with smoke and ox droppings, revealed a small battalion of gate guards armed with crossbows and broadswords. All were crudely armored in steel; Cyndy recognized the alloy as high carbon, beyond the metallurgical technology of Europeans at this time in history. She wondered what poundage the crossbows were, and what the effective range might be. She also wondered who the crossbows were meant for.

“Fafner,” said the woman in the iron helmet, “comes in the night. It is not safe to be outdoors in the storm.”

The cherub jumped out of Hewlett’s arms, shook itself off and smiled up at him. Then it streaked off into the corridors of the castle, its giggles echoing weirdly.

“Gutrune,” came another woman’s voice from around a corner. “Who comes in the darkness?” She appeared in a doorway in a gown of mail and stood looking in at the wet travelers.

“Three strangers,” said the woman in the iron helmet. “Lucky knaves indeed, with Fafner still about.”

“Strangers, dressed more strangely yet,” she said as she stepped down into the castle entryway. Hewlett checked out her chain mail gown, wrinkled his brow, and was about to comment on her “strangely dressed” remark, but Cyndy saw it coming and kicked him.

“I am Erda, hostess of the great hall,” she continued. Hewlett would have bet that she’d come up with a title like that. He figured he could do her one better.

“Yeah? Well I’m Stacks, the Black Saxon. Try saying that ten times really fast.”

Corky had never seen chain mail before, and thought at first that Erda was wearing one of those flashy disco outfits all covered with sequins. But the disco ball on the ceiling was not present, and left him temporarily at a loss. Hewlett had been to museums and realized that she was clad in primitive armor, but decided that Erda was into some weird sex thing and found the subject too intimidating to pursue any further. Erda was pretty tall and probably could have beaten Hewlett up pretty good, but that wasn’t saying much. She also had a jaw that looked like some guy had carved it on a bandsaw using a straightedge and a square, and then neglected to round off the edges and finish it decently. Her eyes were deep and very blue, just like Gutrune’s, and even though one half of her face was in the shadows, both eyes were equally radiant. It was like they were radioactive. Her hairdo was like a checkerboard. The yellow pigtails were woven together with each other on the back of her head, by some incomprehensible process, and that probably took a team of six hairdressers three or four hours. If she were to shampoo, she would have had to call the hairdressers back just to unravel the darn thing. Erda had some leather archery thing strapped onto her left forearm that was beat up enough to show that it got used a lot. Her boots were heavy and of reindeer hide, not that Corky or Hewlett would have known reindeer hide even if they saw Santa Claus go by, but that’s what they were made of anyway. She kept one hand on the hilt of a short sword that was sheathed on a stout leather belt, not because she thought she might need to use it, but because it was the stylish way to appear with a sword. Some people wear swords and just let them jangle around, but not Erda. She wore it calmly, looking like she was born with her hand on it, and could have said “That’s right, I have a sword, and you have nothing.” Like suave people who smoke cigarettes. Erda had the same confident look in her eye as them.

“How come you to Valgarok?” Erda’s tone carried neither welcome nor suspicion; she seemed, more than anything else, surprised to see people coming to the castle at all.

“That cherub brought us,” said Hewlett. “We were chasing it and, well, here we are.”

“Chasing a dear sweet cherub?” A murmur went around the room and some of the guards rustled their swords.

Hewlett hadn’t meant to sound as if he didn’t like the cherub, but the damage was done. “Not chasing it, per se, really just pursuing.”

Cyndy stepped forward before Hewlett got them into trouble. “We needed shelter from the storm, and followed the cherub hoping to find it.”

Erda looked approvingly at Cyndy.

“You are a warrior?”

“I’ve taken out a Smiley or two.”

“She’s the Supreme Warrior,” added Corky.

Erda touched Cyndy’s Kevlar impregnated fatigues with wonder. “How are you called?”

“Well,” said Cyndy, “with a holler, or a whistle, I suppose I’d answer to anything.”

“I mean your name.”

“Cyndy. With a Y.” Most of the women Cyndy had known were soldiers like herself, and therefore respectable. In this dark room, lit by crude torches, were her forerunners, true warriors in the purest sense, with only the rudest of weapons and certainly limited training, surviving in a harsh environment, yet the victims of none. She felt like a sister to Erda and Gutrune, even to the young girls leading the oxen. All too often, the Cindys she had known were too flowery and sugary for her tastes, and the frequent misspelling of her name had always been a source of grief for her. Consequently, whenever she felt it was important to be recognized as a soldier, as a real woman, she pointed out her unique spelling to set herself apart from the flowery types. Cyndy never was much for flowers.

“We have shelter for you, Cyndy. Always we can use another strong hand.” Erda turned to leave and beckoned Cyndy to follow with a toss of her head, but then remembered the two dorks standing there shivering and dripping. Erda pondered a moment, then remembered a couple other spare rooms and reluctantly added:

“Stacks the Black Saxon, and…” she remembered that she had not caught Corky’s name, so Hewlett quickly furnished one:

“Corky, the Ostrogoth that Thin Forgot.”

“Follow,” said Erda, “there may be work for such as you,” and led them up some stairs and into the heart of the stronghold.

As Gutrune went back to the door to lower the great deadbolts with the help of the guards, Hewlett looked back and saw that the guards themselves were all women as well. “Are you catching all this, Cork? Are we gonna score or what? This place is popping with babes, and I ain’t seen a single ugly stick.”

Cyndy overheard the remark, but resolved to ignore it and not destroy Hewlett just yet.

Erda stepped aside to let a girl hurry past, carrying a large bowl spilling over with hot bloody water. Some of it sloshed on Hewlett as she bustled past, and he shouted in disgust.

“Quiet, Stacks the Black Saxon. This is our—how do you say in Göttersprache? Place of the sick people.”

“Los Angeles,” said Hewlett.

“Ah. This is our Los Angeles.”

They passed an open door wherein several warriors lay groaning on sodden beds, with more girls tending to their fresh wounds with poultices, and cauterizing them with glowing irons from a furnace. Corky winced.

“Did you check that out?” said Hewlett to Corky when they’d passed. “Every one of those chicks was blonde.”

“Erda,” asked Cyndy, “where are all your men?”

“Years ago, many voyaged to the New Found Land to battle the savages. Those who stayed have long since fallen to Fafner.”

Cyndy felt a knot of excitement in her stomach, much like the very first time she’d seen a Happy Smiley. The Happy Smileys no longer exhilarated her; as much as she respected their horrific powers of beautification, the tingle of anticipation was long since gone. But here at Valgarok she felt it anew; fellow warriors were dropping like flies, Cyndy had combat fatigues with blinking lights and digital displays, and life felt fresh again. For the first time since leaving her swampy home, Cyndy found herself in the company of people who were not wimpy incompetents. Cyndy was challenged again, and life had new meaning. She had a whole bunch of other thoughts too, but they started to sound like one of those self help books she loathed so much, so she kept the rest of her thoughts to herself.

“This place is really shaking,” said Hewlett, nodding to a room wherein Norse maidens primped and pruned each other in various states of undress. The maidens all blushed and giggled as the boys passed.

Cyndy had to silence him. She said:

“I don’t care how long it’s been since they’ve seen a male, Hewlett. You do not, cannot, will not interest anything female with two legs.”

Just then a small dog bounded into the corridor and tried to climb up Hewlett’s thigh.

“Ah!” he cried, trying to kick the enthusiastic mutt away. “It’s all slobbery. Get it off of me.”

Corky was not interested in getting the dog off of Hewlett; his mind was elsewhere. Without a doubt, he reasoned, Cyndy had noticed that Corky was surrounded by scores of women of all descriptions, and with a certainty, her eye was on his behavior to see whether he was a gentleman. The last thing Corky wanted was for Cyndy to get the idea that he was a masher. He politely averted his gaze when they passed the room full of maidens, and looked everyone in the eye who they encountered. That’s not to say that he was unconscious of them. Once or twice he took advantage of being last in line to discreetly fix his hair and smooth his eyebrows. It was Corky’s notion, like most people, that even a quick stroke with a licked finger across the hairdo was sure to make any passerby stop and say, “Wow!—what a very attractive person you are,” and then take a moment to consider spending a lifetime with him. Corky felt a little guilty that he was probably breaking so many hearts as he strolled through the castle with his acutely detailed eyebrows, but he deemed it essential to demonstrate his courtesy to Cyndy. He vowed that he would not take notice of any maiden’s stunning beauty, nor would he insult their presence by having a couple of eyebrow hairs not exactly parallel. Unquestionably, if he did those two things, he could not help but win Cyndy’s respect and approval.

“What is the matter with the Ostrogoth that Thin Forgot?” said Erda confidentially to Cyndy. “He does not find our fair people comely and pleasing to the eye?”

Cyndy took a quick glance at Corky. He nodded politely to her, then continued strolling with his hands clasped behind his back, his nose slightly upward and his gaze on the castle’s cunning ceiling detail. Actually it was just rough cut logs with rank sod hanging in between, but it was cunning enough to keep Corky’s eyes off the maidens.

“He seems prudish,” said Cyndy, “but I’ve found that he has some pretty hard grit down deep.”

“Posh. I think he is shy, yes.”

That had not occurred to Cyndy. A man as tough as Corky, shy? She conceded that the circumstantial evidence pointed that way, but was not convinced. Before she could argue in Corky’s defense, Erda said:

“Worry not. By tomorrow morning he will no longer be shy. I shall arrange it.”

Erda stopped at a heavy oaken door and pushed it open. “Stacks the Black Saxon,” she said. “You may quarter in here.”

Hewlett peeked into the dank chamber, dim and with the smell of wet dirt. “Ah, a little quartering,” he said. “Actually, I thought I may stop in for a sociable drink or two first. Could you point me to your nightclub?”

Cyndy’s face bent itself into an ugly shape that Hewlett was afraid of. She pointed an arm into the dark hole and burned little holes through him with her eyes.

Hewlett looked into the room again and shrugged. “It looks quite cozy,” he said, and took a torch off the corridor wall. “I’ll just borrow this. Good evening.”

“Good night, Hewlett,” said Corky, and “sleep well,” but Cyndy and Erda stood like twin Rocks of Gibraltar.

Hewlett gulped and took a few steps into the room. Cyndy kicked the door shut behind him.

“Do you have anything we can bar it with?” asked Cyndy of Erda.

The room turned out not to be as bad as Hewlett had feared, though the smell of wet dirt was definitely there. The floor was carpeted with bear and deer skins, and the well built wooden bed was heavily piled with warm furs of all descriptions. Noting that the room had its own torches, Hewlett went from one to the other and lit them all, then snuffed a couple out to give just the lighting effect he wanted.

“Ah,” said Hewlett, and let himself fall onto the luxurious bed. “A peaceful evening all to myself.”

He said it out loud, hoping that some voluptuous, nubile young lass might overhear him and pay a visit.

“Yup,” he continued, “just one handsome guy, all by myself, with no one to bother me.”

The nubile must have had a prior engagement, for she did not come.

Hewlett unbuttoned his collar and loosened his silk tie. “Alone, and shirtless…muscular…fit, but not overstated…”

The nubile remained absent.

Hewlett cleared his throat, and repeated his plea in a louder, clearer tone.

“Why don’t you shut up?” came a soft voice from the corner.

Hewlett whirled toward the sound, quickly covering the embarrassing whiteness of his exposed neck flesh.

“Who’s there?” he blurted, wild eyed and panicky.

“It is I,” said the soft voice, and a dim shape rose from a chair in the dark corner by the window, “Grimgerde, your chambermaiden.”

“Chambermaiden?”

The form came closer in the half light. She wore white robes, and her blonde hair, braided into a single long whip, caught the moonlight as she moved. Grimgerde was tall and very fit, and had a square jaw that looked like it could crush diamonds.

Hewlett scrambled backward on the bed and quickly entangled himself in a wolfskin blanket for defense.

“What is your problem, Englishman?”

“Nothing. I thought I was alone.”

“No one is alone here.” The phrasing of the sentence was beautiful and suggestive, but its delivery lacked emotion. She said it with the impatient tone of “What are you, brain dead?”

“It’s just that I wasn’t expecting a—a—”

“Chambermaiden?”

“Yes.”

“You are not the only one who had other expectations for tonight,” said Grimgerde.

“Oh?” Hewlett began to warm to the conversation. Doubtless, word of his radiant charisma had spread, and caused Grimgerde to change her plans for this evening.

“I had expected to sleep tonight,” she said, with masterful deadpanning; Hewlett’s brain raced to decipher her meaning. Grimgerde continued:

“I had expected to be in my own quarters.” Grimgerde was a sorceress of the poker face. She spoke, but her words said nothing: her face was blank, a hardness in her deep blue eyes if anything; and the intonation was as flat as an ocean.

A rush of excitement rippled through Hewlett’s body.

“Instead,” said Grimgerde, and kept her eyes locked into Hewlett’s, “instead, I am told I am chambermaiden for a night.”

“Luck of the draw, babe. Three bars across, you pulled the jackpot.”

“Lowly chambermaiden, to service honored guest.”

“I can hear the silver dollars tumbling. Las Vegas, eat your heart out!”

“To service as humble slave.”

“One million dollars and a new car!” yelled Hewlett and jumped to his feet on the bed. He ripped his shirt open and tore away the remnants. He threw his arms up, tossed his head back and shouted:

“Take me!”

Grimgerde slowly stepped to the edge of the heavy bed. She raised a long firm arm and touched Hewlett’s chest gently, running her strong, soft fingers up to his neck. Then she grabbed his head and slammed it down against the blunt top of the bedpost log.

“Ow! Hey!”

“Service the guest, indeed! I, Grimgerde, general of the longsword regiment, a chambermaiden? Never!”

She snatched her white robes aside to pick Hewlett up and slam him against the sodden wall, where she held him to yell in his face. Hewlett figured that this was as close to a good time as he was going to get tonight, so tried to enjoy it as best he could.

“Five times have I battled Fafner, five times have I bled for Valgarok,” and here she lifted her robe to reveal a fresh scar on the inside of the longest, smoothest, and most perfect thigh Hewlett had ever seen, “and Erda asks that I be chambermaiden to a boy! I!”

Hewlett’s head thunked to the solid floor timbers when she slammed it there and sat on top of him, a bone dagger at his throat.

“Good have been the times at Valgarok these many years since the men left. Think you welcome here? Say I, Grimgerde, nay!”

“Ride me like a horse!”

“Cut thy boyish throat would I, would not Brünnhilde be displeased.”

Hewlett whinnied.

Panting with rage, Grimgerde stood and looked down at Hewlett’s shirtless form. She drew a long sealskin whip, such as is used for driving a dog team. She expertly cracked the whip.

“Of course, what Brünnhilde knows not, hurts me not; and there are ways to hide marks.”

Hewlett screamed.

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Corky’s quarters were warm and bright, and near the great lodge’s merry banquet hall, so that frolicsome melodies of the woodwind and lute drifted in. Hewn into the timber wall was a great fireplace, lined with mortared rock, with crackling kindling tended by a young lass no more than five feet tall.

“Hello,” said Corky, in lieu of a clever pickup line. He had stood there a full nine minutes trying to come up with something witty yet sincere, but failed completely and settled for “hello.” Corky had no intention of “picking her up,” but he felt her beauty deserved the recognition of a pickup line. It seemed that anything less would be an insult of omission.

Her eyes were the color of painted waves at sunset. She had hair like synthetic pillow stuffing, and when she smiled he saw a row of perfect dice before they put the spots on. Her skin was the surface of evaporated milk, with only the slightest dash of freckles peppering her tiny nose.

“Göttersprache,” she said in a soft voice more elfin than girlish. “Mmm, I speak little only.”

“That’s all right. My name’s Corky.”

She smiled and curtsied. Corky didn’t remember from his cotillion days how to respond to a curtsy, but it seemed to him that a bow was appropriate. He bowed, but halfway through it felt silly, and half-heartedly aborted it so that it might be interpreted as either a slight bow or simply bending over to check on his shoes.

She touched herself in the chest where her gown was tightly stretched and said “Flosshilde. I am…chambermaiden.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Flosshilde.” It was indeed very nice to meet Flosshilde, but Corky couldn’t help but feel that it was somehow inappropriate.

The fire gave off quite a lot of drying warmth, so Corky broke the ice by moving over to it. Flosshilde sprang to the wall and pulled a chair to the fireplace. Blazing with smiles, she pointed for him to sit in it.

“Oh,” said Corky. “Thank you.”

She picked up his feet and pulled an ottoman under them, and immediately began untying his shoes.

“Thank you,” he said again, wishing he had something else to say with which to space out the “thank yous.” He wasn’t sure why she was untying his shoes. Perhaps it was the custom here not to wear shoes in one’s quarters, and Flosshilde was simply being polite and not saying anything.

“Water,” she said, brushing her arm.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mmm. Water. Wet.”

“Oh! Yes. My sweater is still damp. It was raining outside. Rain.” Corky wiggled his fingers and drew his hands down, pantomiming rain, as if it were a new concept. She didn’t respond right away, so he made wind and thunder sounds. She laughed like a forest wood sprite, and Corky marveled at how alive and bright her young face was.

Flosshilde grabbed at the bottom of his sweater and tried to yank it up, and he realized she was trying to get his wet things off. He leaned forward and tried to take it off for her, but every time he put a hand somewhere she laughed and put one of hers there first, so he couldn’t do anything. The sweater got stuck over his head, so he was blind, and since it was all wet it stuck there and smelled like a wet sheep. He waved his arms around to try and get free, but suddenly he didn’t feel Flosshilde’s hands helping him anymore.

“Help!”

She laughed a response, and then he felt her hands again…unlatching his belt and pulling his zipper down.

“Whoops,” he said, “no. No thank you.” He didn’t mind taking off his wet sweater, but all of a sudden Cyndy filled his head. Corky felt like Cyndy was right there in the room with him, watching young Flosshilde tug his clothes off of him, and it seemed he could feel Cyndy’s cold, disapproving stare.

“Flosshilde, no! Thank you no. No.”

And then, something even worse than Cyndy’s disapproval struck him. It was the worst, most unfortunate travesty he could imagine. He remembered the condition in which the 1888 dog had left his boxer shorts. Although quite sound on the front, his shorts almost completely lacked a rear. But perhaps it could be explained away. After all, every male on the planet owns at least one pair of undergarments that have outlived their useful lifespan. Many of these antiques are as much as twenty years old, and have all kinds of ventilation not included on the original model. It might be possible that Flosshilde knew this, and in fact expected it. Stretching things even farther, it was conceivable that Flosshilde would think ill of him if his boxers were not torn to shreds. However, Corky resolved that prevention was the best solution.

Still blind inside the sweater, he tried to reconnect his pants, but again, every time he reached for something, she snatched it away first.

“Here, stop. I’d like to keep those on, please.”

“Keine Göttersprache,” she said giggling.

He felt a giant zip as his pants suddenly left him. Thankfully, the boxers stayed in place. Almost at the same instant there was a pop as the sweater was snatched away and he could see again. Flosshilde stood by the fire, stretching the pants and sweater over a drying rack. She seemed much calmer now, and said:

“No water.”

“Thank you.” Corky felt Cyndy’s icy glare ease up a little with the reassurance that Flosshilde was only helping him dry his clothes, and nothing inappropriate or untoward was happening. In fact, Corky felt he liked Flosshilde a lot better now that she was less enthusiastic about tearing his clothes off, and more interested in his warmth and comfort.

His bare white calves rested on the ottoman and spread out flat, looking twice as wide as they really were. Corky felt that normally they looked quite wide enough, so he pushed the ottoman away a bit so he could just reach his heels to it, letting his calves hang free and look their normal width. He cast a quick glance to make sure Flosshilde had not seen him do it. Corky felt there was no reason to insult her beauty by looking anything other than perfectly fit, for certainly an attractive young lady like Flosshilde did not keep herself looking perfect for the company of fatsos with slovenly or unkempt countenances. He also took great pains to feel around the edges of his seat, making certain no frayed ends were showing around his caboose side.

Flosshilde held a pretend bowl to her lips and made slurping sounds, then looked at him questioningly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Soup,” she said, as the word came to her.

“Soup? Yes, please. Thank you.”

Flosshilde took a ladle from a small kettle over the fire and poured it into a mug. Corky took it and sniffed. It was a rich broth, with chicken meat and vegetables, and seemed to be exactly what would hit the spot after his long run in the cold storm. Just as he prepared his whole spirit for the rush of hot flavor, and lifted the mug to his lips, and closed his eyes in anticipation, Flosshilde leapt over to help, and the hot soup spilled all over Corky’s shirt front!

“Oh, oh,” cried Flosshilde with pitiful regret and sadness, making a feeble attempt to wipe the dark broth from his white shirt.

“It’s OK. Please, it’s OK,” said Corky, sensing her desperate remorse, “here, it will rinse right out.”

He quickly unbuttoned the shirt and handed it to her. Flosshilde’s life brightened instantly, and as she trotted the shirt over into a washing basin, it was as if the accident had never happened.

She sang happily as she scrubbed the shirt somewhere in the room behind Corky. He noticed that he was down to his undershirt and rended boxers now, and realized with chagrin that neither had been laundered since he left Thunderwood. A quick sniff at each armpit told him that this was thankfully not yet a problem, and a good thing too, because he was quite certain that if either remaining garment required Flosshilde’s deft washing, the weight of Cyndy’s disapproving stare would return in full force. Corky did not wish to displease anyone, even an imaginary presence.

Flosshilde laid the shirt out on the heavily populated drying rack. She gave it dainty little touches to make certain it was laid out just so. She turned to Corky and smiled.

Flosshilde had a ponytail coming out each side of her head, and it was easy for Corky to imagine her wearing lederhosen in a commercial for hot cocoa. The fire was very warm on his feet, the chair was comfortable, and before he knew it, Corky found he had drifted off to sleep and suddenly woke at the touch of Flosshilde’s small hands working his neck muscles. It felt so good that he almost believed there was nothing wrong in it. Almost.

“Hot,” laughed Flosshilde behind him, and he heard a garment crumple to the floor. Corky’s eyes grew very wide, he became acutely conscious of his bare bottom, and his mind raced to think of any explanation for the dropping garment other than the obvious.

Flosshilde’s hands left his neck with a final caress and she stepped around in front of him, wearing only a tiny, tiny canvas slip that was much too tight for her curves. The fire had burned lower, and her whole body was silhouetted in the soft red glow. Corky would have gulped, but he forgot.

“I can service honored guest. Yes?”

Corky stammered for words. Finally he croaked:

“Keine Göttersprache.”

She ignored the feeble attempt, probably due to his incomprehensible pronunciation. “Come,” she said. “It is sleeping hour.”

“Thank you, but I’ll just sit here by the fire a while.”

“Sleeping hour,” she repeated more forcefully, and pulled on his arm.

“No! Thank you.”

She tried to pull him up out of the chair, but he scooted backwards in it, careful to keep his bottom pressed flat. Flosshilde chased him around the room in circles as he scooted the chair around, finally coming to a dead end when he struck the wall. His face registered dread.

Flosshilde slowly approached her prey, shaking her head with a wry smile and wiggling her finger to say “no no no.” She was small, and perfect, and soft, and blond, and curvaceous, and practically popping out of the slip which didn’t matter because so much was visible anyway. Corky felt like crying. He didn’t know what to do. If he stayed where he was, she would be upon him in seconds, and he would forever be branded as a masher. If he stood to run, which was his impulse, she would see his obscene underwear and he would have to live with the guilt of being a bizarre pervert, into whips and chains, and electrical accessories, and torn boxers. Corky had no options, nowhere to turn. Corky’s mind went blank, even though that’s like saying the sky “went” blue.

“I’m a decent person!” he blurted, sobbing wholeheartedly. “I’ve never taken advantage of anyone in my life!”

Flosshilde stopped in her tracks. Even with her limited Göttersprache, she knew what he was saying. He didn’t like her soup. She had made chicken bouillon her whole life, from a family recipe handed down from her mother’s mother and her mother before her. And now, on her first attempt at chambermaidening (and doubtless the eyes of her superiors were all upon her), her soup had ruined everything. Erda’s request that Corky be treated with special warmth would go unfulfilled.

Tears welling quickly, Flosshilde gathered her gown and headed for the door without looking at him.

Corky would remember the sight for the rest of his life: halfway to the door, Flosshilde quickened her pace to a run and was gone. He knew she was crying. Corky was glad she was gone, but sorry he had made her leave. He knew that seemed illogical, but everyone had always told him he wasn’t very bright.

13

Cyndy wasn’t sure what Erda meant when she had promised to “arrange things” so that Corky would no longer be shy in the morning. It had a foreboding sense that she didn’t like. Cyndy didn’t know what Erda had up her sleeve—other than, of course, chain mail—but Erda’s confident tone made her uneasy. Probably Erda was only being hospitable as she would to any guest, but Cyndy couldn’t rid herself of the notion that there was a little something more to it. Cyndy did not wish to point any fingers at Erda, with whom she felt such a sense of sisterhood, but she couldn’t shake off the notion that Erda was trying to meddle with Corky.

Erda had given her a wardrobe full of more comfortable garments than the digital combat fatigues, and she had selected the least flowery from among them: a white silken nightgown trimmed with delicate ermine. The ermine had been trapped out of season, probably much to the ermine’s dismay, and had a touch of yellow undercoat going, which clashed with Cyndy’s short blonde hair. There were some wonderfully warm white bearskin slippers, which had the tiniest bit of yet another shade of yellow. However Cyndy had never been one to consider fashion, and was not offended, and wore the outfit anyway. Relieved of her stiff fatigues, she shook out her hair, gave her tired body a stretch, and tried to sit down to relax but couldn’t. She just plodded back and forth, making a shuffling sound with the slippers and probably wearing them out, but there was no room in Cyndy’s turbulent thoughts to consider the white bear’s welfare. If the bear was upset by the treatment its fur was getting, he would just have to lump it.

“Corky is his own person,” said Cyndy, and touched a fist into her open palm, as if stamping an idea down on paper. People who are too lazy to write things down do that; they’ll punch a finger onto the desktop as they make each point, as if that’s as good as recording it. If the idea demands punctuation, write it down. Nevertheless, Cyndy punctuated the idea twice more, but still didn’t write anything down. “People who are their own person shouldn’t have things arranged for them.”

She paced back and forth, confused by her own obsession with Erda’s suggestion about the Ostrogoth. Twice she doused her torches and got into bed, but each time found herself pacing the room again after ten restless minutes. She thought about going to Corky’s room to check on him, but realized that would be acknowledging his vulnerability, something that one of his independence would not appreciate. She even thought of finding Erda, to make sure that she was in her own room and not busybodying around about Corky. Cyndy was not proud of either idea. Mostly she simply couldn’t understand why she wasn’t sleepy, or why it was so important that Corky be allowed to be shy if that was what he wanted.

Cyndy stopped pacing and lost patience with herself. It was ridiculous to waste the entire night wondering about things. If she were to ever sleep again, she must act.

Once she decided to act, she felt tremendously relieved. She must check on Corky, but in such a way as not to insult his self sufficiency. She would go at once. Her heartbeat became audible, apparently, as she pulled a bearskin robe over the sleek nightgown and picked up a short sword. She didn’t think she’d really need the sword, but she felt that she was a Woman On the Go and as such, must be prepared for any contingency.

The Woman On the Go exited her room and pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind her. She strode purposefully down the dim corridor, her robe flowing behind her, still hearing and feeling her heartbeat but with a clear head at last. She was doing something about her confusion, and that felt good; being On the Go meant making a solution happen, rather than pacing about her room feeling troubled. Cyndy was not proud of what she was doing, but some things just have to be done, like wasting good turpentine to flush tarantulas out of combat boots.

Cyndy arrived at the door where she and Erda had left the Ostrogoth. She lifted her sword to pound on the door with its hilt, but stopped herself when she remembered she had no excuse. She couldn’t think of anything on the spur of the moment, and so paused a moment and put her ear to the door.

She heard faintly from within a sound like the Seven Dwarfs snoring, all musical like, like someone pulling open an accordion on the inhale, and three people whistling in harmony a descending tone full of vibrato on the exhale, with extra percussion sounds thrown in to give it a snappy rhythm. Cyndy thought back to the scant few days ago when she had first heard that sound. It seemed like years. She could remember the swampy warmth of the night, the buzz of the mosquitoes, the snap of turpentine in her mouth.

Like a mother checking on her child, Cyndy pushed the door open with all possible gentleness.

“Who’s there?” said Corky immediately. He had not been sleeping well; he had dreamed all night of being chased by buxom young maidens through a house of mirrors, and everywhere he turned, he saw either Hewlett, Cyndy, or his mother shaking their head with disapproval.

“It’s just me,” whispered Cyndy, noting with infinite relief that no meddling chambermaiden was present. She didn’t enter the room; just poked her head in far enough to talk—and peek.

“What is it?”

“Rats,” said Cyndy. “The castle’s full of rats. I was only checking to see if you’d been bothered.”

Corky had woken up quite suddenly, and it was quickly catching up with him. He barely heard her answer about the rats.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, not quite sure what he was thanking her for, but it seemed a good enough all-purpose answer. Unconsciousness was spilling over him quickly, like a warm blanket.

“Maybe I should stay,” Cyndy suggested in a whisper. The words were out before she knew it; she could hardly believe she’d actually said it. “In case any rats come around.”

“OK,” sighed Corky without hearing, thoroughly sunken back into his pillow. Cyndy crept in, closed and bolted the door silently, and recovered Corky with his tumbled quilts. She noted with humble gratitude that he was breaking his own rule about giving the bed to a girl, and he was actually allowing her to make herself comfortable on the firm, supportive floor. She laid her sword handy and stretched out.

While she watched waves of orange and black dance over the embers, Cyndy fell asleep with a smile on her face.

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Hewlett was cold when he awoke. Huddled in the corner, half naked and wet from a rivulet of rainwater coming down the sodden wall, his pants whipped to ribbons, black and blue in the face, he realized with shock that his usually stylish hairdo was probably quite disordered.

Grimgerde snored peacefully in his warm bed, her sealskin whip coiled tidily and hung on one bedpost, her white robe hanging on the other.

Hewlett lifted an eyebrow.

“Well, what’s for breakfast?” asked Hewlett, striding merrily into Corky’s room where he and Cyndy sat munching from a fruit plate. Hewlett wore Grimgerde’s robes.

“What in the world is that?” asked Cyndy. “Where are your clothes?”

Hewlett laughed softly and shook his head, much like a father whose infant daughter had made some cute little error through ignorance and naïveté.

“My dear child,” said Hewlett in a condescending tone which made Cyndy want to frappé him, “when you’re older, you’ll understand more about us men of the world.”

“Yeah, right,” snorted Cyndy to Corky. “I’ll bet some Amazon Valkyrie beat the crap out of him.”

After a hearty breakfast, they held a council to plan their next action. The council consisted mainly of Cyndy making logical proposals, and Hewlett looking pained and sighing each time, as if her ideas would bring inevitable disaster. Hewlett himself was in favor of “forging tighter relationships with the indigens,” as he phrased it. In the end, Corky suggested a stroll through the forest to let his two friends cool off, a motion which carried unopposed.

The heavy guard, so imposing the night before, was all but gone during the clear but chilly daylight. Only a few women paced the ramparts of the colossal timber and sod lodge, and even the front gate was left open as a few dirty girls carried baskets of gathered food or herded goats back and forth. A scattering of smaller lodges, invisible during the storm, surrounded the great castle. Here and there a cherub danced merrily with its pan pipes. The clinking of a blacksmith’s hammer rang from somewhere.

The sound led them to a great forge in an outlying lodge. The blacksmith was a brawny woman, black with smoke and grease, clad in a charred leather apron and heavy sealskin gloves. She cursed in an unfamiliar language at her apprentice, a skinny young girl who glanced briefly at Corky and turned back to her work like an automaton. She was stacking great piles of newly forged crossbow bolts. A row of broken swords and lances leaned against one wall. The stolid blacksmith watched them walk by, but once they turned the corner her hammer resumed its ceaseless pulse.

Corky chose a well traveled road into the bright green forest. A gatherer or two passed them with her cart full of greens, but after half an hour they found themselves alone in the peaceful woods. Only the distant thunk of an ax pointed the direction to Valgarok.

They sat in the mossy shadow of a great stump, long ago blasted open by lightning and cleft with a bottomless black cave. Corky spread out a few trifles he had saved from breakfast and they enjoyed a snack.

Until the giggle.

Cyndy’s hand shot to her holster from habit, but her digital energy pistol was long gone. Hewlett hid behind her nevertheless. Corky stood and peered in the direction of the hollow tree.

Something moved deep inside the blackness and giggled again. Corky took a careful step forward.

“Hello?”

“Corky! Be careful.”

The form stepped into the light, and everyone’s heart jumped into their throat. Corky said:

“Avalanche Wheeler!”

“Most profuse apologies for the way I invited you all here,” said Avalanche Wheeler. He had replaced his red tuxedo jacket with stout leather armor and a burly bearskin robe. He wore a helmet with little horns on it, like he’d read the comics once and decided what a Viking looked like. Avalanche snapped his fingers and a pair of buxom young blondes danced out of the shadows and joined him, giggling.

“Allow me to introduce my right arm, Freia, and my left arm, Fricka.” They curtsied and giggled again.

“All right,” said Hewlett. “Avalanche, I think you and I are going to become good friends. Sign me up; I’ll hang out with you here.”

Cyndy grabbed Hewlett and tossed him aside. She ran right up into Avalanche’s face and said:

“So it was you who stole the backpack!”

“Stole?” said Avalanche with a weak little laugh. “My friends, have you not the backpack now?”

“I ought to rip you into little pieces.”

“Violence? My friends! Let this be a happy reunion. True, I borrowed your intriguing backpack mechanism for a short time, but did I not immediately return it?”

“He’s right,” said Corky. “Doctor Wheeler is beyond reproach.”

Cyndy was not in the least satisfied. She grumbled, and some of her internal brimstone steamed out of her ears.

Hewlett tickled underneath Freia’s chin. “This place is OK with me. Forgive and forget, that’s what I always say.”

“A wise policy,” said Avalanche warmly, like an approving grandfather.

Still Cyndy could not be pacified. She gritted her teeth in such a way that enamel dust wafted down from her chin. “All right,” she said at last in measured tones. “I’ll bite. What did you need us here for?”

Avalanche looked surprised by the accusation. “I’m shocked.”

Cyndy tapped her foot impatiently. Finally Avalanche deflated and confessed:

“I couldn’t figure out how to use the damn machine.”

“I knew it!”

“I needed to get back home, but I didn’t have a notion where the cussed thing would send me.”

“And so you used the auto return feature to see who you would fetch back here. We’re honored to be your guinea pigs.”

“I didn’t know it would bring you three back. I was just going to ask the cherub where it went.”

“The cherubs don’t talk.”

“I’d have gotten it out of him.”

“So you used that sweet little cherub as a lab rat, and intended to beat your test results out of him?”

“Look around,” said Avalanche, and gestured at a couple of cherubs dancing through a glade in the distance, laughing and playing pan pipes, and doing little forest cherub things. “Damn things are a dime a dozen. They’d never miss one or two.”

Hewlett stepped forward. “That’s all right, Avalanche. I forgive you.” And Hewlett extended a hand for Avalanche to shake in friendship.

Avalanche let go of Freia to shake Hewlett’s hand, at which instant Hewlett snatched Freia and tried to pull her away. Freia slapped Hewlett’s face—with pretty respectable force, too—and reattached herself to Avalanche. “Well trained,” grinned Avalanche Wheeler.

Corky was intimidated by things like fighting over women, so he quickly tried to steer the conversation away to a more wimpy level. He asked:

“How long have you been here?”

“Nearly a year. The women here regard me as a great thinker and philosopher.”

“What name are you using?”

“Why, Ølåv §vënsên, of course.”

“But that’s Swedish,” said Corky, “and these people are Germanic.”

Avalanche wrinkled his brow in worry, thought hard, and shrugged:

“So?”

“I guess,” said Cyndy, “that you’re the one they learned ‘the language of the gods’ from. Instead of you learning their language, you made all 500 of them learn yours.”

Avalanche Wheeler chortled and shrugged. “I’m a doctor of science and medicine, not linguistics. Anyway the women of Valgarok are an accommodating lot, don’t you think?”

“I don’t get it,” said Hewlett. “Why in the world do you want to go back?”

“A wise question, my most resourceful friend,” said Avalanche Wheeler. “One day I took a stroll and found myself in this verdant glade. I rested my poor bones against the base of this mighty oak.” He tapped a fist against a massively solid tree that had a freshly dug hole at its roots. “Did you know that oak trees live more than four thousand years?”

“Ask me if I care that oak trees live more than four thousand years,” added Hewlett with his usual constructiveness.

“As I rested, and watched the swans glide tranquilly across the surface of yonder lake, I said to myself: ‘tis much like the boyhood home where I romped and played. Why, even the lush green hilltop rising over the forest recalls the place where I spent my youth.”

Cyndy’s thoughts seemed far away as she studied the landscape. She nodded, looked around, and said at last:

“Hill 647.”

“What?”

“That’s Hill 647. We held it for three days until we were overrun by the Happy Smileys. I remember seeing this tree from the summit. A lot of good men were beautified that day.”

Even Corky seemed distant. He listened to her story and broadened with a smile.

“This is Thunderwood.”

“Go back to sleep, Corky.”

“That’s the lake behind the College. This oak is the tree inside the Colonel’s front gate. We’re home, Hewlett.”

Avalanche seemed a bit nervous. “What, you know this place too? How do you come to know about Thunderwood, my own family’s ancestral home?”

“Maybe you lived here in cowboy days,” said Hewlett, “but we live here in a real time. In modern times.”

“Yeah, right,” said Cyndy sarcastically, “as if you turn of the century guys know anything about being modern.”

“Go slop some swamp water, bayou girl.”

Avalanche snapped his fingers. Fricka and Freia detached and, giggling, ran off toward the castle. “I have something to show you,” said Avalanche.

He knelt at the base of the oak and reached into the hole. “Here have I buried some golden treasures, which, coincidentally, were missed from the castle about the same time I acquired them. Authentic Viking relics, dating from the year 696; conclusive proof that predecessors of Eric the Red landed here some three quarters of a millennium before Columbus.”

He handed Corky a big brass plate with “ØLÅV WAS HERE, 696 A.D.” rudely scrawled on the bottom.

Corky, Hewlett and Cyndy stared. They didn’t even need to say:

“So?”

“Don’t you understand?”

Avalanche knew them well enough to know that they probably didn’t, so he continued:

“With your cunning backpack device, I can return to 1888, unearth these artifacts and be the greatest bough on my family’s ancestral tree of discoverers.”

“Golden treasures,” said Hewlett. “You’d be the richest of your family, too.”

Avalanche grinned, exposing some gold in his mouth that he would have pried out years ago if he’d only known how. He shrugged. “All in the interest of science, my dear Hewlett.”

Cyndy frowned. “And we thought you sent the cherub for us to return the backpack. We sure were naïve.”

Again, Avalanche grinned and shrugged. “There’s nothing to say you shouldn’t make a few historical discoveries of your own.”

“It’s wrong to take advantage of history like this,” said Corky. “Your golden treasures were meant for this time, and this place.”

“What’s wrong about it? Artifacts from the past often become buried over time, like the bones of thunder lizards. I just…sped the process along a tad with a shovel. Hark!—listen.”

Faint notes of harp music drifted from the great hall.

“It’s beautiful,” said Corky.

“The queen,” said Avalanche. “The banquet is about to begin. We must hurry.”

“Banquet?” said Hewlett. “Is there free food?”

“Food, drink…we must not be late. Hasten.”

“Hang on a minute. Let’s talk some more about a few historical discoveries of our own.”

“Yes yes, all in good time. Brünnhilde can be very impatient, and I warn you all not to doubt the swiftness of her judgment. We must go now.”

One whole wing of the castle was the vast banquet hall, indicating that the original designers had presumed there would be immense manly celebrations of great battles won. Instead, all the men had immediately disappeared and left the women to skirmish indecisively with Fafner. It was not a time of great manly celebrations, consequently the banquet hall had gradually filled with surplus feminine decor. Great hanging wreaths were well represented, as were flowering vines and posies of every sort. The foyer was splendidly garnished with tons of flora, and every maiden wore roses in her hair and a cape of fresh petals. Even the armored guards were opulently bedecked with fragrant blooms of every description. Cyndy felt like she was going to puke. Avalanche Wheeler directed her and the boys to the end of the line of maidens waiting to get in.

“Believe it or not,” he said in a low voice, “this is all for you. Brünnhilde heard of the visiting strangers and wanted to meet you.”

Hewlett duly nodded his head, expecting no less.

“Why so much fuss?” asked Corky. “We’re just average people, certainly not deserving of a royal reception.”

“Just smile,” said Avalanche, “and look honored. When displeased, Brünnhilde has been known to do horrible things with—”

“With what?”

“Let’s just say she can press a chair generously.” Avalanche drew the outline of a large circle in the air with his arms, and nodded to the boys as if they were meant to instantly grasp the crystalline clarity of his description.

“You saying the old lady’s a tub?” asked Hewlett.

Avalanche sprang over and clamped his hand over Hewlett’s mouth, feigning gay laughter for the benefit of some passing maidens.

“Keep your voice down,” Avalanche hissed. “Speak ill of the queen and you can throw away your house key. You’ll be able to slip yourself under the door.”

Corky reflected on the convenience this would offer.

There was a little table with a hostess writing nametags for everyone. Cyndy scowled at the adornments.

“Flowers,” said Cyndy as if the foyer had been decorated with ruptured dragonfly abdomens.

“Remember to smile,” said Corky, “and pretend you like the flowers. Don’t forget the banquet is in our honor.”

The hostess gave Cyndy a warm grin with about three hundred teeth. She had little tiny petals sprinkled in her hair. Corky feared Cyndy might do something unfortunate, and set a reminding foot on her toes.

“And what might your name be?” asked the hostess.

“Cyndy. With a Y.”

The hostess lovingly wrote “Cyndi” on the nametag, in big, scripty, girlish writing, and dotted the ‘i’ with a happy face.

Cyndy’s eyes raged red, so Corky increased the pressure on her toes.

“Thank you,” smiled Cyndy with clenched teeth. Her hand quivered as she took the nametag and painfully pinned it to her shirt. It was as if she was pouring a bucket of snot all over herself.

Once they all had their nametags, they entered the foyer. “I nearly forgot,” said Avalanche Wheeler. “Weapons and accoutrements are not allowed inside the banquet hall. Please let me take your things.”

He removed the backpack from Corky’s shoulders and felt his pockets for loose change. Hewlett gave him his wallet and comb with the air of someone well accustomed to having a servant take his things. He had a very expensive pen in his shirt pocket, and handed it to Avalanche not so much because he feared being able to slip himself under his door, but because it felt good to make Avalanche be his servant. Avalanche’s smile gleamed as he staggered away under the weight of the valuables.

They were conducted to a long table on a raised platform in the center of the banquet hall. As they sat down, light applause emanated from the hundreds of maidens seated around them. Hewlett struck what he considered a manly pose, hands on hips, looking down at the rabble, and tried to act like Yul Brynner or someone like that. Corky had never been applauded before (neither, of course, had Hewlett; but Corky didn’t know that), so he wasn’t sure how to react. Hewlett was very wise in the ways of the world, so Corky copied what he was doing.

“Sit down,” hissed Hewlett. “You’re making a fool of me.”

Corky marveled incredulously. It seemed he could never do anything right.

When Hewlett was quite finished, he waved to the crowd and laughed, acting like he had to go but the crowd wouldn’t let him. He took a couple bows as if encores were demanded of him, blushed at the imagined ovation, tried to sit down again but had to wave when the crowd called him back. Everyone had stopped applauding minutes ago, and the rustle of Hewlett’s clothes as he turned and waved was the loudest thing in the room. At last the crowd let him go, and he sat back down with his friends, face flushed with excitement.

Cyndy stood briefly and clapped her hands for the warriors who so inspired her. A tremendous roar of applause brought the house down, but Cyndy felt the women deserved it more than she and sat right back down.

“I suppose you’re happy now,” said Hewlett sternly when the noise had subsided enough to talk. “I’ve never seen anyone treat a crowd so rudely. These people came here to honor me and Corky. Remember we’re the guys, and you’re just the passenger.”

“Cram it, Mr. Man.”

Servant girls flooded into the great hall from the kitchen, weighed down with heavy plates of hot venison and greens. A general rush of approval swept over the hungry crowd as the girls dispersed throughout and served. Corky was so hungry when his plate was set before him that he almost—almost—started eating before everyone else had been served.

“Sucker,” snorted Hewlett with his mouth full.

Corky noticed Gutrune, from the castle’s main gate, pushing through the crowd. Erda was near Corky’s table, and Gutrune went to her and spoke to her confidentially.

“Fafner has just been reported in the Black Hills to the north.”

Corky did not intend to eavesdrop. Indeed he thought it quite base to do so, yet now that he had done it, he found it somewhat exciting. For now, he was a Spy. He was an Undercover Operative. He vowed to get ahold of a long curved pipe and a trenchcoat.

Erda looked shocked at the news. She looked around to be certain nobody overheard (she was in error, thought the Undercover Operative), and whispered to Gutrune:

“Does he attack?”

“Not as yet, my lady.”

“Then mention it to none but Sieglinde, that she might have her troops prepared should he move against us.”

“It shall be as you say.” Gutrune hurried away to deliver the order, and Erda threw on a big fake smile and acted like she’d never heard of Fafner.

Corky leaned closer to the others and said:

“I just heard them say that Fafner is nearby, and may attack.”

Hewlett thunked his wine goblet down and scrubbed a river from his chin with his sleeve. “Who is this Fafner everyone keeps talking about, anyhow?”

“Probably some local warlord,” suggested Cyndy. “Conflicts between feudal oligarchies were common in this period. Predated firearms, though. Mostly just heavy artillery engines like the trebuchet.”

“Local warlord,” scoffed Hewlett. “We’ll scrape some beads and trinkets together and buy him off. Maybe score some women from him, too.”

Cyndy’s combat boots had metal tipped spikes, one of which she buried in Hewlett’s shin and raked down. Hewlett’s face turned blue but he tried to act like he hadn’t felt anything.

The Undercover Operative plotted to have a bite of mashed potatoes. He then coldly calculated a swig of his beverage, and contrived the term “dashed on the rocks” for all future clandestine drink orders. Corky imagined his tuxedoed self leaning on the bar in Monte Carlo, tossing the bartender a thousand franc chip and saying “Gin and tonic, dashed on the rocks.” The next time he should meet a beautiful enemy agent, she will have read his file and would know how to order for him:

“The gentleman will have handcrafted root beer…dashed on the rocks.”

Corky will have read her file too, and would know to order:

“And the lady will have a Manhattan…swizzling hot.”

Corky enjoyed being an Undercover Operative. He would apply his new secret self and learn all he could about Fafner; perhaps even subvert his operation.

A small light blinked on Cyndy’s digital combat fatigues and she pressed a switch to turn it off. Corky, overwhelmingly intimidated by Cyndy’s easy manner with high tech equipment, completely gave up all plans of being an Undercover Operative or ever ordering a drink “dashed on the rocks,” and reverted to being an ordinary unromantic dork.

A trumpet flourish sounded from the head of the great banquet hall. All the guests rose—except Hewlett, who thought everyone was rising for him—and a strong middle aged woman, bigger and rounder than even Avalanche Wheeler’s exaggerated description, and with rough hewn features and a golden helmet, rose from a great wooden throne. She held aloft a gold pointed lance until the hall was silent, then brought it down with a resounding ring.

Brünnhilde had the look of someone who was now and always had been in charge. She could have fit into any century. If she was a second grade teacher, she would have been the type who rapped knuckles and was strict about tardiness and nose picking. Hewlett would have fared poorly in her class. Her face was all serious, like she didn’t get jokes, or else frightened people out of telling them to her. She looked bigger than she really was, like you’re watching her through a fish eye lens, because her hands were strong and her bones were thick, from wielding lances and swords and other heavyish things her whole life. The brow line of the golden helmet was shaped like horn rimmed glasses, which showed that she could have worked in a diner, and would have been the waitress who won’t let anyone have anything cooked to order, and forces everyone to get something they don’t want, and makes them wash dishes for it. Her gold trimmed breastplate was of hard leather and embossed with cryptic runes.

“Strangers,” she said in a loud, low voice, without emotion. “Come forward.”

Everyone in the room looked toward Corky and his friends. Cyndy stepped down from their platform energetically; she was quite anxious to meet the great warrior queen. Hewlett followed because he did not wish to be shown up by Cyndy, and Corky brought up the rear because—well, because it seemed like the thing to do.

Brünnhilde seated herself when the three reached her, and the whole congregation followed suit and resumed their feast. Corky wondered if they were supposed to bow, but all he could remember was that you weren’t supposed to address a queen unless she addressed—

“Hello, ma’am,” said Hewlett. “I am Stacks the Black Saxon, your humble serv—your counterpart from across the great sea, King of all Saxony.”

Brünnhilde turned a stolid eye on him. “I conquered Saxony, Normandy and Brittany decades ago. I killed Brian Boru with my own hands, and tore his still-beating heart from his breast.”

Hewlett shut the hell up and stepped back.

“And you,” said the great queen, “exactly who might you be?”

“Corky,” said Corky with a smile.

“And I am Cyndy, at your service. We,” she said, and pulled herself and Corky a few steps away from Hewlett, “are honored to visit your great land.”

“Visitors from far away indeed,” said Brünnhilde, and came as near to a pleasant smile as anyone had ever seen on her. “Ølåv §vënsên has told me much about you. The honor is ours as well.”

There was an awkward silence for part of a moment, which was really Brünnhilde’s fault, because she’d left off with a remark that required no response. Hewlett was uncomfortable during the pause, so he tried to get things moving again:

“We aims to please.”

That was also a remark that required no response, and Brünnhilde gave it none. Corky and Cyndy winced a little when he said it, though.

“The people of Valgarok live in a dark time,” said Brünnhilde, skillfully resurrecting the conversation. “Ølåv §vënsên has said you come from a land filled with miraculous implements and engines of war.”

“Avalanche Wheeler,” said Cyndy under her breath. “Where is that snake?”

Brünnhilde continued. “We live under the shadowy scourge of Fafner. Scarcely a year after my people first landed here, we began to fight him. Even since the day when the last of our husbands fought and died on the fells of yore.”

“Yore?” said Hewlett. “What’s ‘yore’ supposed to mean?”

“Our yesterdays. Yore means the times gone by.”

“Like, ‘Yore I went to the store, but I was poor, so I bought nor?’” Hewlett laughed, but it was cut short when Cyndy’s elbow knocked the wind out of him. He stood there gasping like a suffocating idiot, in genuine distress. Everyone else ignored him and went on with the conversation.

“Many die each week, as Fafner’s attacks come and come again. He is tireless. We are tireless too, but we suffer greatly. As queen of Valgarok, I ask on behalf of my people: can you help us?”

Cyndy felt the same pride and excitement that had rushed through her veins the night before. She knew what it was to feel right, and she had felt wrong for too long. It was time to feel right again. Cyndy knew now why she was here.

“My queen,” said Cyndy, and dropped to one knee. “I give myself to the service of Valgarok, until the day I perish.”

Hewlett had been standing there with his arms folded and one eyebrow propped up, looking at her all skeptically. Now he smirked.

“What…are you serious?”

“I am, Hewlett.”

“That’s rich…I believe you are serious!” and Hewlett laughed rudely, and faced the people and pointed at Cyndy, and kept laughing, as if they were all going to join in. But no one did.

“Gutrune,” called the queen.

The guard appeared at her side with several aides.

“Yes, my lady?”

“Take this one to the tower,” said Brünnhilde, pointing at Hewlett. “Hold him there, that we might have the use of him when next Fafner attacks.”

“My lady, Fafner has been reported in the Black Hills even now.”

“Forsooth!”

Corky wondered how Brünnhilde had learned a word like “forsooth.” Supposedly they only knew Göttersprache because Avalanche Wheeler had taught it to him; that meant that Avalanche went around saying “forsooth.” Oh well, Corky figured, if you’re going to teach people your language, why not have fun with it. Corky resolved that if he ever got to teach an ancient people his language, he’d follow Avalanche’s example and throw in as much flavor and variety as he could.

Brünnhilde considered the implications of Fafner’s proximity. Then she decided.

“Take the Black Saxon to the tower, and prepare him at once!”

Hewlett faked a chortle. “What?” he laughed. “What is this tower, prepare me for what?”

“Goodbye, Hewlett,” said Corky.

“Good luck,” said Cyndy.

“What do you mean, goodbye and good luck?” Gutrune snapped heavy shackles onto Hewlett. He struggled and tried to argue, but the aides gagged him and carried him away, squirming and kicking.

It seemed to Corky that Hewlett was always being carried away squirming and kicking. He marveled.

“Good Cyndy,” said Brünnhilde, “kneel before me.”

Cyndy shot an excited smile to Corky and dropped to her knees. She grinned from ear to ear like a giddy schoolchild.

“Many are the centuries past since this Ring of Power was forged by den Nibelungen. Few have seen it, as you see it now; fewer still have touched it. Good Cyndy, your heart is brave and true, and with such purity does the courage flow through your blood. Kiss the ring.”

Cyndy pressed her lips against the warm gold. Brünnhilde said:

“Rise, good Cyndy…Valkyrie.”

When Cyndy turned she faced her people. She recognized the gratitude in the tired eyes of these warriors, and took their hands in camaraderie. Cyndy, the Supreme Warrior, Valkyrie of Valgarok, was home at last.

“And now,” smiled Brünnhilde, “let us return to the merriment.” She motioned to a group of musicians, who had weird instruments like lutes and lyres and bongo looking things. They launched into a medieval tune.

Many of the guests began to dance. Cyndy looked around nervously.

“Corky,” whispered Cyndy. “Dance with me, quick.”

“All right. Why?”

“You’re the only guy in here. I like these warriors, but I don’t need to dance with one of them.”

Cyndy grew quite impressed at the way Corky handled himself on the floor. It seemed as if he was part of the music. His rolls moved gracefully like a conductor’s baton, his feet kept perfect time, and his face reflected serenity and control.

“Congratulations on your decision to stay,” said Corky as they danced. “It’s most gracious of you to offer your abilities to these people. You’ll be a tremendous asset to them.”

“You seem happy to see me go.”

“I’m happy that you’ll be happy.”

Cyndy had never heard anyone with a tongue as silvery as Corky’s. Was it just that he was extraordinarily sappy, or could he possibly be genuine? One thing she’d learned to like about Corky was his openness. What you see is what you get. She knew to conclude that he was both genuine and sappy.

“Thank you, Corky. That’s very sweet.”

When Cyndy realized that the word “sweet” had just passed her lips, her first impulse was to gag. She managed to restrain herself.

The carbon fiber of her shoulder guards rasped against Corky’s stubble as they swayed gently to the music. He only had about three pieces of stubble. He had tried to grow a beard once, and after three weeks, all he had were half a dozen strands that were each two inches long and spaced about six inches apart. It was like Fu Manchu. Corky wasn’t really one of those hairy Chuck Norris guys. Anyway the smell of the carbon fiber reminded Corky of the day he and Cyndy had picnicked on mangoes in the jungle. The sun had felt warm that morning, much as he felt warm now.

Cyndy saw the sappy look of reminiscence on Corky’s face, and feared that he was going to say something super dorky. She decided to say something fast before he made an ass of himself.

“Corky, I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Give the backpack to Hewlett, and let him and Avalanche Wheeler take their bimbos and dig up their gold.”

Corky pondered her suggestion. It left out one detail:

“What about me?”

Cyndy started to tell him the second half of her idea, but stumbled on a fear of more sappiness. Saying sappy stuff was a Cindy thing, and she’d always been a Cyndy. But she reminded herself who she was talking to. Saying something to Corky and fearing it would sound sappy was like saying “heck” to Satan and fearing the profanity might offend him. She lowered her voice so no one else would hear her say something dumb. She bent up to whisper in his ear:

“Stay here in Valgarok.”

“Oh, I mustn’t do that. I have to help restore history.”

“Let Hewlett take care of that. It’s his fault anyway.”

Corky shook his head. “I’m the one who gave the manuscript to the Poet. All this is because of me.” Corky had no trouble making the confession. “All this is because of me” was a phrase he had grown very handy with.

“That’s what Hewlett tells you. He’s not always right, Corky. You have to make your own decisions.”

To Corky, making his own decisions seemed a lot more complicated than letting Hewlett make them. Thus he did not find Cyndy’s argument very persuasive. He said:

“You’re very kind, Cyndy, but I cannot stay.”

There was Corky’s use of the word “cannot” again. In all Cyndy’s years, she’d never heard anyone actually say “cannot” in a sentence except Corky, and as she knew, he was a man of great resolution and moral impetus. Once Corky Bumberton said “cannot,” she knew he would not be persuaded.

“Corky, before you leave, please think it over.”

“I shall,” he said, with a warm pasty smile. It wasn’t very clear which was more conducive to vomiting: his warm pasty smile or his use of the word “shall.”

Corky knew that he was a good dancer. It was a bit of a stretch dancing to the medieval tune, though. Back in 696, people hadn’t learned anything about time signatures yet, and the song was being played in something like 13/8 time. The dance center of Corky’s brain automatically quantized this into three doublets over three beats each, followed by four quick eighths. His body automatically applied a slow cha cha, and as he listened carefully, he found he could treat the medieval semitones as a bossa nova chord progression.

“Wow,” said Cyndy, and had to step back. Corky was moving slow, but there was no way she could keep up. His body was not merely moving to the music. He became the music, and added so much life and grace. And when he placed one hand on his belly, wiggled the other up in the air, and gyrated his hips, many of the women of Valgarok swooned away.

“Forsooth,” said Brünnhilde, watching transfixed. Cyndy didn’t like the way Brünnhilde was looking at her friend, so she tried to get in close and dance with him.

“Hold,” said the queen, and the music died. Corky kept it going by himself for a few seconds, but without the bossa nova beat, his autopilot had no point of reference and released the controls to manual. Corky caught his balance and found himself the center of attention.

“This is a great day for Valgarok,” said Brünnhilde in her loud, low voice which echoed through the great banquet hall. “Ostrogoth that Thin Forgot, step forward.”

Cyndy had that feeling again that things were being arranged for Corky out of her control, and she didn’t like it one bit. Corky approached Brünnhilde’s throne and knelt.

“Ostrogoth,” announced the queen for all to hear, “I choose you for my consort.”

14

“You can’t claim Corky,” said Cyndy stepping forward. Two guards closed in when Cyndy got a little too close to the queen.

Brünnhilde raised her hand to silence her. “Cyndy, we welcome you to our tribe, but such outbursts cannot be tolerated.”

Corky felt like an Eggo waffle being tugged both directions by two people blurting inane catch phrases. It was a new feeling. He usually felt like the proverbial hot potato that nobody wanted. He wondered what it would be like to have warm syrup poured all over him.

“Corky’s already consorted,” said Cyndy grasping at straws. She gulped and said “To me.”

Surprised, Brünnhilde turned to Corky, who, even more surprised, turned to Cyndy.

“Ostrogoth, is this in truth?”

Corky supposed she meant “is that true.” Avalanche Wheeler had not done a very good job of teaching them Göttersprache. Corky looked to Cyndy for guidance, who nodded vigorously yet discreetly, which is not an easy combination.

“Yes,” said Corky meekly, “it is in truth.” He did not correct her grammar for fear of seeming rude.

“Then it is clear,” said Brünnhilde. “Cyndy, you must fight to keep him. If you win, he is yours.”

“And if I lose?”

Brünnhilde wondered that a great warrior like Cyndy did not know what losing a fight meant. Of course Cyndy must know what it means to be chopped into many bits; Brünnhilde figured that Cyndy’s Göttersprache must have failed her a bit, and did not answer the question.

“Sieglinde,” called the queen and raised her hand toward her warriors. One of them stepped forward and knelt.

Corky felt a knot in his throat when he saw the size of Sieglinde. She was like one of those statues that looks larger than life; just plain big all over. She wasn’t fat or stocky, just larger than life. Corky noted that Sieglinde’s legs were a great deal thicker than his own, which threatened his manhood a bit. Corky felt that a man should have thicker legs than a woman. That had never been a problem for him before.

Sieglinde looked like Brünnhilde probably had twenty years ago. As she knelt, she was as tall as Cyndy, and her sword alone was taller. Her head was big and square, and her cheekbones were really easy to see, like she was sucking her cheeks in. Her eyes were so blue they seemed fluorescent in the great hall’s dim lighting. She had this sweaty grin on her face, like she’d just had a great workout and was still pumped up from jazz aerobics and using expensive Nautilus equipment. She looked like she’d been oiled up before sweating, too. It was gross. Lots of times, big muscly people will get oiled up before sweating, so that it beads up and looks—well, oily and sweaty and really just gross. Somewhere there must be people who are impressed by that. Sieglinde knelt before the queen, but didn’t act all that humble. Her malevolent gaze turned and fell upon Cyndy, whom she examined head to toe, nodded confidently, and smirked.

The Supreme Warrior was not impressed, or if she was, gave no sign. She’d had people nod confidently and smirk at her before. It was the standard thing to do before a fight to erode your opponent’s conviction. Cyndy often did it herself, but if the other person did it first, the preferred response was to take no notice and act really bored.

Instead of the preferred response, Cyndy said “Excuse me,” and pushed past Sieglinde and stood between her and Brünnhilde, which really ticked off Sieglinde. Cyndy was hoping that it would.

“My queen,” said Cyndy, “I do not wish to fight any of my people. I wish to fight beside them, against our enemies.”

“Then you release the Ostrogoth to me?”

Cyndy was stumped. She could neither raise nor call. She glanced for the briefest moment at Corky, who stepped forward with a hand raised to command attention.

“I have a solution,” said Corky. “Let’s just all be friends.” And he put an arm around each of them.

“Silence, consort.”

Corky shut the hell up and stepped back.

Cyndy turned and looked at Sieglinde, who smiled grimly with burning eyes. She turned back to Brünnhilde who could never again be her queen and said:

“I will fight.”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Gutrune lifted Hewlett by the ears and tugged him through the hatch atop Valgarok’s highest tower. The sky was heavy with leaden clouds—if they had actually been lead, they would have been even heavier—so it looked all foreboding and impressive as if by design to frighten Hewlett. He tried to look dignified and unconcerned, but it didn’t work because he kept screaming each time someone lifted him by the ears, sunk a fist into his gut, or tied tight ropes around him.

There was a great wooden post up there, charred black and with remnants of scorched ropes dangling from it. Gutrune slammed Hewlett against the post and one of her guards, named Helmwige, wound a cord around him with all her strength. Helmwige had a lot of strength. Otherwise she would have been named Trixie or something.

Hewlett figured he might as well have fun with this, so each time Helmwige yanked the cord tighter, he let it squeeze a piece of a burp out of him.

“Pig,” said Gutrune.

“What’s all this about, anyway?” asked Hewlett.

“Fafner approaches. You will help us fight him.”

“How can I fight, tied to this post?”

“You will draw his fire.”

Gutrune climbed back down the hatch and pulled it shut with a solid thunk. Helmwige dropped onto a burned stool and immediately began loudly scraping yellow mung off her teeth with a small knife.

Hewlett watched for her a minute or two, got disgusted with her vulgarity and had to look away. He saw troops, mostly archers with iron crossbows, dispersing along the sod and timber battlements. Gutrune came out from a door and directed their movements.

He looked at the darkening sky and the many wooded hills around the castle. Somewhere they hid the foe named Fafner…Hewlett reminded himself about his idea to buy Fafner off with trinkets if the opportunity arose. Corky’s digital watch would do. Hewlett had never liked that digital watch anyway.

As he listened to Helmwige scrape her teeth, trying to get comfortable against the post and hoping the charcoal all over it would not mar his nice jacket, Hewlett wondered what in the world Gutrune had meant about drawing Fafner’s fire.

He felt like he had bad breath…and realized that his mouth was really dry.

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

The Supreme Warrior, her combat suit at Full Power and her visored helmet sending infra red ranging pulses, stood quite calmly as the Valkyrie Sieglinde charged screaming at her, flinging her longsword about her like Tommy Smothers with twelve yo-yos.

Cyndy leapt aside at the last instant and stuck out a foot to trip the mighty norsewoman. It was about the fiftieth time in a row that Sieglinde had fallen for that and landed flat on her face, and she just kept getting madder and madder. All around the arena the women of Valgarok cheered and shouted in the infernal torch light, while Brünnhilde sat emotionless in the high chair of honor with Corky at her side. A bunch of maidens had decorated Corky with lots of flowers and things, which were affecting his hay fever and making him increasingly uncomfortable.

Sieglinde decided to change her tactics. She dragged herself to her feet, wheezing with anger and exhaustion, and wiped the running sweat from her body in the red glare from the torches. Her muscles tensed to lift the heavy sword, ground diamond sharp. Sieglinde burned through Cyndy with furious blue eyes.

Cyndy pulled a stiletto from a pocket on her pants and tossed it handily from one hand to the other, and spun it around. She kept it moving because she didn’t want Sieglinde to see that it was really only a letter opener. Brom Thorn always used to make her open the volumes of junk mail they got from ordnance manufacturers to see if there were any good deals on the stuff he used to polish the one pistol he had that he never fired. Cyndy had grown accustomed to carrying the letter opener with her, and, not owning a stiletto, she had a pocket available for it.

Sieglinde took a powerful swing which Cyndy batted aside, sending a shower of sparks bursting into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed. Sieglinde brought the massive weapon down again, and it was all Cyndy could do to parry the blow with the tiny letter opener. The crowd’s enthusiasm grew, and with it the noise.

Corky became aware of a dim chant with a familiar sound to it. He listened carefully:

Smite her, bend her
Eat her up for lunch.
Strike and rend her
It thrills us all a great measure.

Many of the women of Valgarok picked up the chant and it rose higher. The energy aroused Cyndy’s enthusiasm and got her pumped—though the point of the chant was to promote her demise. Sieglinde seemed to be tiring; all of her formidable swings with the sword were being dodged or parried. Cyndy jumped and did a somersault over the sword, then opened a little compartment on her utility belt which fired a small cable. She wrenched the sword from Sieglinde’s hand, raising a tremendous boo from the spectators.

Corky looked at Brünnhilde, who stared at the contest with neither emotion nor reaction. He feared she was bored by the spectacle, and sought to boost her spirits.

“It’s terribly exciting, isn’t it?”

Brünnhilde acted like she wasn’t sure where the sound had come from; she pretended to look around, and when she noticed Corky, she made a little face like “Oh, is that all it was,” and resumed watching the fight. Just as Corky was about to feel bad that he had bothered Brünnhilde with his insignificance, he saw Flosshilde, his chambermaiden, smiling and waving across the arena. He began to wave back, but decided that he had caused enough trouble for the queen in one day.

A mighty roar and a cheer snatched his attention back to the fight. Cyndy had thrown aside her helmet, shaken out her hair and dropped her utility belt; she and Sieglinde were now grappling hand to hand. Sieglinde seemed to overpower her; as Cyndy sank backward, she suddenly put a foot against Sieglinde’s breastplate and rolled back, flipping the great warrior on her head. The crowd booed again.

Smite her, bend her
Eat her up for lunch.
Strike and rend her
It thrills us all a great measure.

Sieglinde brought an ironclad double fist down on Cyndy, who tried to punch back but struck hard armor. The crowd rose to its feet as Sieglinde, towering above Cyndy’s crawling form, drove home great booted kicks and iron roundhouses. Corky sprang to his feet and moved to help, but felt a tug on the flowery cord that bound him to Brünnhilde.

Smite her, bend her
Eat her up for lunch.
Strike and rend her
It thrills us all a great measure.

Cyndy couldn’t understand why she was getting beaten so easily. Many times had she beaten men stronger than Sieglinde, but that had been a very different time and place. Time and place?—she thought as Sieglinde picked her up and dashed her to the ground. She got all splattered with Sieglinde’s sweat. Cyndy didn’t mind; many times had she been splattered with the sweat of men stronger than Sieglinde, stronger, at least, in the BO department. This was a very different time, but it was the same place. And here, in this very same place, the Supreme Warrior would be unbeatable more than a thousand years in the future.

It was a little hard to think while rolling in the dust to avoid Sieglinde’s heavy stomps and double fisted sledgehammer blows, but Cyndy figured that there must be some advantage she could gain from her familiarity with the terrain. She had to turn the battle to her own terms, and force Sieglinde to take the disadvantage. Cyndy studied the hundreds of warriors around the arena, taunting and chanting and waving torches and throwing bouquets and stringing blossoms onto necklaces, and concluded that as it stood, she was the visiting team.

She remembered how handily she’d dealt with the Pile of muscle, using nothing but a pickup truck and a chain.

“If I had a pickup truck and a chain,” said Cyndy as she rolled to her feet, “I’d do the same thing to you as I did to Fasolt.”

Cyndy did not have a pickup truck and a chain, nor was there a great likelihood of her acquiring them in the next few minutes. Nevertheless it felt good to express the threat, and even better when Sieglinde stopped punching her and stood as if frozen.

Cyndy realized that everyone was frozen. They all looked like they’d seen a ghost. It was real quiet, except Corky’s stomach made a funny noise which really marred the gravity of the moment. He looked around with an apologetic face, but nobody seemed to have noticed the sound. They were all transfixed on Cyndy.

She did not become the Supreme Warrior by neglecting her opportunities. She quickly pummeled Sieglinde’s face to a pulp, caught her as she reeled backward and flipped her, reversing her rotation in mid-air with a drop kick. Sieglinde landed face down, out for the count. Cyndy wiped her hands and brushed herself off. She approached the queen.

“I claim Corky,” she said.

Everyone remained in shock for a moment. Finally Brünnhilde recovered enough to ask cautiously:

“Slew you truly Fasolt?”

Cyndy looked at her like she was from some asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

“She means did you kill him,” Corky translated.

“I just knocked him down with my pickup truck.”

A great gasp of awe swept through the crowd. Corky heard a multitude of whispers; apparently, the women of Valgarok thought Cyndy must be a demigod.

Brünnhilde quickly rose from her throne and led Corky into the arena. She handed his floral leash to Cyndy, and dropped to one knee.

“I beseech thee, O Cyndy, forgive us. I knew not you were she who slew Fasolt these many years hence.”

Avalanche Wheeler was hiding in a dark alcove some distance away, and he tried to quench a laugh at the words “beseech” and “hence,” but it just turned the laugh into a loud snort and blew mucus all over himself. He hurried away to find a bathroom.

“Terrible was the brother of the dragon Fafner,” continued Brünnhilde, “until he fell before your mighty pickup truck.”

“Oh, Fasolt wasn’t a dragoon,” said Cyndy, “he was a rifleman. From C company.”

“Excuse me,” said Corky. “I think she said dragon.”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Stacks the Black Saxon screamed a clear note four octaves above middle C. The great black monster swept round the north wing of Valgarok, beat its heavy wings and flew straight toward Hewlett’s tower. Gutrune signaled her archers and a hundred crossbows twanged. The flurry had the sound of a flight of rushing sparrows, and the iron bolts rattled off the black scales like hailstones on a tin roof.

Helmwige stood and swung her sword, but an orange blast that seemed to come from nowhere exploded in front of Hewlett and singed him all over. When he opened his eyes he saw Helmwige, engulfed in flames, hurtling off the tower toward the moat far below.

“A lot of help you are!” he shouted. “Useless ninny!” He doubted that Fafner would have any use at all for Corky’s digital watch.

Hewlett strained against the cords that bound him to the post as Fafner swung around for another pass. A second barrage of arrows clattered harmlessly from the great dragon’s armor.

Fortunately his class ring was of an inferior variety. Everyone at his school had been glad of the chance to drop their whole year’s savings into ordering class rings, which the salesman had assured them contained rare and valuable gemstones in the highest quality settings. Hewlett was one of the first to buy, and was certainly the first to tear open the big box when it arrived at the school, because he spent the night in the storage closet awaiting it. He dug through the cheap trinkets in disgust, trying to find one where the plastic gemstone’s blemish from being snapped off the tree was not directly on the face of the stone, but failed. The bottle cap material that the ring itself was made of was always separating into little parallel sub-rings with sharp edges, and one of these came in handy now.

The cords came apart and Hewlett dived for cover against the turret wall just as that big ugly black thing that wasn’t supposed to exist made a dive bombing run, squirting a stream of liquid flame that covered everything. Fafner pulled out of his dive and swooped over the top of the tower, so close that his wind blew out most of the flames.

Hewlett scrambled to his feet amid the smoking ruins of the turret. He marveled incredulously at the great beast. Fafner glistened black from his horned head to his spiked tail, spikes that look forged and hammered to steel hardness. The eyes glowed yellow and flickered red from the internal fires which shone out through his nostrils and long alligator mouth, which Hewlett could see held a cooked and squirming archer, snatched from the battlements on Fafner’s last pass. Against the darkening gray sky, Fafner’s heaving breath left a dotted trail of brown ashen smoke.

The Black Saxon tugged on the hatch but it seemed to have a spring mechanism from below. In terror he stood, looking for the dragon, and spotted him circling high above.

“Look!” he shouted to Fafner. “Down there—more archers!” and he rubbed his tummy and licked his chops to indicate that the archers made good eating, much better, in fact, than he himself would.

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Cyndy was just leading Corky away from Brünnhilde’s throne when the explosion burst. One whole wall of the great hall collapsed inward under the huge fireball’s pressure, and the sod and timber debris burst readily into flames. Many were killed; the rest panicked and ran in the dark, fire and toppling debris everywhere. Cries of “Fafner!” went up and weapons were vainly hunted for in the confusion.

Cyndy threw Sieglinde on her shoulder and dragged her into the human tide pouring into deeper parts of the castle. When she reached a place of safety she dumped the unconscious warrior and pulled Corky’s leash in and said:

“Find Avalanche Wheeler and get that backpack!”

Then she took Sieglinde’s mighty longsword, and pushed her way against the traffic to get back to the burning hall.

Corky looked this way and that, not because he was searching for Avalanche, but because people kept stepping on his leash and yanking his head back and forth. Then the leash snagged on a running warrior’s belt and dragged him by the flowered neck, and he gagged and tried to shout, but his muffled gasps were lost in the noise and terror.

Suddenly a sharp knife freed the leash and Corky landed on the wooden floorboards. He peered up through all the bustling legs and saw a smiling maiden with a tiny clasp knife.

“Flosshilde!”

“Come, Ostrogoth.” She led him into an alcove out of the flow of traffic, and though they were quite safe, she tried to act like it was necessary to squeeze him tightly against her to keep him out of the crowd. He wrestled himself free, saw a sad pouty face on Flosshilde, and felt terribly guilty. He let her squeeze him again and the toothy smile bloomed once more.

“Flosshilde,” he said, straining to get the words out from the pressure of her squeeze, “where is Ølåv §vënsên?”

“First, you need rest. Yes?”

“After,” said Corky. She made the pouty face again, but he assured her “After we find Ølåv §vënsên, then you can take me to my chamber.”

“I make soup?”

“You make soup.”

“I draw bath?”

Corky grimaced. Time was wasting, but the pouty face was not a good thing.

“You can draw as many baths as you like.” He considered it truthful, because he was intending that she draw a picture of a bath on paper. Or papyrus, or stone tablets, or whatever they used in Viking days. The smile was back in full force, and Flosshilde pointed to a timber staircase leading up into a dark passage.

“There is Ølåv §vënsên.”

Sure enough, Corky spotted him halfway up the staircase, struggling with the zipper on the backpack. Avalanche, sensing that he’d been spotted, saw Corky and fled up the stairs. Corky tried to pursue, but Flosshilde held tight to his leash.

“No, Ostrogoth! You promised you would rest.”

“Why don’t you go to the chamber, and I shall meet you.”

“OK,” she beamed, and flitted away through the noise and smoke.

Corky pushed through the crowd and started up the stairs just in time to see Avalanche turn left off the upper landing. Corky ran up and caught a glimpse of Avalanche trying to put the backpack on, but he was still an 1888 guy and unaccustomed to backpacks. Seeing his pursuer, Avalanche aborted the attempt and darted into a black tunnel, full of spiders and slime and other yucky things.

Corky was not keen on following him into the tunnel, so he quickly formulated an alternate plan. “Oh Professor Wheeler,” said Corky. “I wonder if I might purchase another horoscope.”

Professor Wheeler had gone about six inches into the tunnel and discovered how dark and spidery it really was. He was no keener than Corky on going that way, so he allowed himself to fall for Corky’s request—obviously a trap though it was.

“Indeed, would you, my boy?” said Avalanche Wheeler and stepped casually out of the tunnel, straightening his Viking bearskin robe and trying to look dignified, which didn’t work because his helmet was turned sideways so that the horns pointed front and back. Coupled with the fact that he had the backpack upside down across his stomach, he looked quite silly, though one would not have known it by his calm and In Control expression.

“Yes,” said Corky, swinging his flowered leash around like a fob. “Perhaps in the comfort of this den over here.”

“Indeed,” said Avalanche, much pleased with the new twist the chase had taken. They stepped into the den where a fire crackled in front of two deerskin easy chairs. The fire was from a collapsed wall ignited by Fafner, and screams and crossbow bolts and spurts of blood occasioned in through the collapse, but it did not affect the easy manner of the negotiators’ suavities. Avalanche Wheeler snapped his fingers. Fricka and Freia entered, each latching on to one gentleman’s arm.

“Cigar?” offered Avalanche, and Fricka held open a silver case.

Corky did not understand, and so observed what Freia had just picked up and said:

“Crossbow bolt.”

Avalanche forced a pleasant chuckle. Corky followed suit, relieved to get past the awkward moment.

“Please,” said Corky, “do take off your coat.”

“Indeed.”

Fricka took the heavy robe, but Avalanche couldn’t get it off because the backpack was in the way across his front. Corky held it for him while Avalanche turned to hang his helmet and coat on the rack.

“What kind of a horoscope were you interested in, my dear friend?” Avalanche turned back around, but Corky and the Professor’s machine were quite comprehensively gone.

“Blast,” said Avalanche. “Freia, too.”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Cyndy skidded out into the castle’s inner bailey and looked up at the gray sky, just as an explosion reeking of sulfur blasted several archers off the battlements. They fell burning, twisting and jerking like crazed automatons, and thudded onto the hard ground near an ox team. The oxen spooked and ran amok, chased by the little girls with the switches. One archer’s crossbow was still loaded and when it struck the ground it released its bolt, chopping into a beam only inches from the Supreme Warrior.

A giant shadow flitted across the bailey and Cyndy looked up to see a black shape disappear behind the opposite wall. It was much too big to be a dragon, or whatever they had said. It could only be an attack helo, which didn’t make any sense in the year 696. She helped to catch the oxen and drag the injured out of the open, and when she heard the archers release their many bolts again, Cyndy watched carefully for their target.

This time nothing flew overhead; instead, the archers screamed and shouted and flowed over the parapets. A sudden blast of fire blew many more from the high wall, and Cyndy had to run to get out from under the barrage of falling bodies. She flipped on her helmet, sprang to a staircase and started up with Sieglinde’s great longsword, though she doubted such a crude weapon would be much good against flamethrowers and attack helos.

The heads-up display in her helmet graphically enhanced each of the stairs and showed that all of her guns were off-line and had zero ammunition levels, which was annoying because she was quite aware that all she had was an ancient sword, and didn’t need the silly computer to warn her about her carelessness. Furthermore, she had not had a clear opportunity to update her tactical database and include the longsword in her weapons inventory. At least then she’d know how the blade was holding up, and which edge she should favor.

As she crested the top of the stairs a strange scene formed on her HUD. The battlements were blasted clear of archers; ashen debris was scattered everywhere. From the higher turrets came a constant hailstorm of iron crossbow bolts, but only one or two had been lucky enough to stick between the obsidian scales of the unworldly monster that crawled toward her now.

Fafner had the long crested head of a pterosaur and liquid black eyes which leered forward, giving a predator’s stereoscopic vision. He didn’t quite fit atop the five meter wide battlement, so had to drag his vast body by gripping the parapets with metallic claws. Each time a taloned foot grabbed the wooden parapet it crushed it with the sound of a Phoenician slave galley ramming a Roman trireme. Assuming, that is, both boats built of ash and teak, the wood of the Roman boat having been dried before construction just right to give the intended crushing sound, etc.

As soon as Fafner saw her he drew in a breath to flame broil her, but Cyndy was experienced enough not to fight reactively. She attacked before the breath was half inhaled, hacking the longsword across his chin to make him screech before he could exhale. He didn’t exactly screech, not being one to care much about such a tiny nick, but the surprise was enough to spoil his breath and give Cyndy a chance to dive beneath his belly.

She estimated twenty five meters to his vital organs and crawled 42 quick crawl steps—knowing that she averaged 6 decimeters per step. There was barely enough headroom to lay flat, but the Supreme Warrior pried two scales apart, jammed the tip of Sieglinde’s sword between them and shoved it in as far as it would go.

This time Fafner really did screech. It sounded like an elephant, a banshee and a Tyrannosaurus Rex all rolled into one. Cyndy also knew enough not to let go of her only weapon, so she hung on tight when Fafner beat his mighty bat wings and lifted off the battlement. She got dragged thirty meters or so, and then her legs were kicking against thin air and the sword got very hard to hold onto. Fafner’s black blood spilled over her hands. It was scalding hot, but the Supreme Warrior held on. As the castle spun beneath her, she saw for an instant that the archers had held their fire. Indeed, she spotted Gutrune pulling Brünnhilde herself into the bailey to see their deliverer battle Fafner.

Cyndy had never given Fafner a chance to take the offensive—he was much too dangerous to give a chance to. And she knew she had to keep it that way, so she closed her eye, clenched her teeth and held on tight.

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

Corky Bumberton struggled with the backpack straps as he jogged up the endless spiral staircase. Ten seconds behind him jogged Ølåv §vënsên the Senior Doctorate Emeritus, shouting things like “Halt, fiend!” and “I’ll get you yet,” and five seconds behind him were Fricka and Freia, their giggle machines at full tilt.

Behind them came Flosshilde, trying to catch up to the Ostrogoth, followed by Erda in close pursuit to see what her young charge was up to. And then came about fifty other assorted maidens who just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Within minutes, Corky finally had the backpack on properly as he slogged in miserable fatigue, averaging about three steps an hour. Avalanche Wheeler was four steps behind him, but unable to close, as he gasped between each hoarse, rasping breath:

“Stop…there…you…thief…I’ll…catch…you…and…then…we’ll…see…who…has… that…back…pack…”

Energetic young Flosshilde stepped over the unconscious bodies of Fricka and Freia, who had never exercised or done anything in their lives but wait for a man to come along and do everything for them.

Erda gave up the chase, figuring that her young charge could do whatever she pleased. The fifty followers had pared down to fifteen or twenty, all viciously tired and with burning thighs.

Corky reached the top of the staircase. It dead-ended into a hatch on the ceiling fastened with a complicated spring latch. He had ample time to study the workings of the latch as he painfully pulled himself the last few steps, so by the time he got there he could just open it right up.

The Black Saxon, having seen Cyndy hanging from Fafner’s belly as they flew around overhead, was frustrated that nobody had noticed the role he had been playing in the battle, and so was looking off into the sunset and pretending that Cyndy’s contribution was too insignificant to notice, when suddenly the hatch opened and the Ostrogoth that Thin Forgot poked his head through.

“Corky! It’s about time you showed up. I’ve had to fight this dragon all by myself.”

Corky clambered out of the hatch and tried to close it, but Avalanche got one arm through. “Help!” said Corky. “Avalanche Wheeler’s trying to steal the backpack.”

“Steal!” repeated Avalanche in shock, as he managed to stick part of his face out of the hatch beneath Corky’s weight. “My dear friends, I mean only to buy your clever device.”

And then a whole bunch of stuff happened really fast. The first thing was that Cyndy lost her grip on the sword and fell. Fafner saw it, rolled inverted and dove to chase her down to earth. He drew in a mighty breath, hoping to cook her before she hit, but the timing was going to be close as they were losing altitude fast. The other thing that happened was that Avalanche made a mighty heave against the hatch, flipping Corky against Hewlett, and unfortunately toppling both of them off the tower! Avalanche sprang to the wall to make a grab for the backpack, but it was too late.

But wait; stuff still happened really fast. Cyndy, who was falling much faster than the boys, struck them in mid air, thus imparting part of her momentum to them and accelerating their own fall toward the ground. Fafner saw that he was not going to be able to catch Cyndy in time, so aborted his dive much too fast and had to swerve to miss the top of the tower. There was some guy in a silly horned helmet jumping up and down atop the tower and shouting obscenities, and Fafner had the opportunity to collect him in his mouth as he swooped past. Little more than an hors d’oeuvre, really, but worth a quick snatch.

A few moments later, the hatch opened again and Flosshilde stepped out. Her Ostrogoth was not there atop the tower. She looked high and low, even checked the ground below to see if he’d fallen, but there was no sign of Corky or his friends.

Flosshilde did hear the rush of wings, and she turned and saw Fafner flying toward the Black Hills. It looked like he had something in his mouth.

“My god,” cried Avalanche Wheeler as the dragon’s hot breath roared past its massive incisors, exposing a sparkling big patch of gold, “what a filling!”

15

Darby Gillis scowled toothlessly as he tugged at the distributor cap of his rusted ‘56 Chevy pickup.

“Dang me,” he snapped, not unexpectedly. If you looked at him, and had to guess what he was likely to say, it would probably be “Dang me.”

Frustrated, he threw his wrench into the engine compartment and prepared to deliver himself of another oath. But he was interrupted by the sudden and spontaneous sputtering to life of the temperamental engine.

Darby stood there like a hound dog as the ‘56 Chevy pickup shuddered and rumbled. Not that hound dogs have any particular way of standing; it’s just that you couldn’t exactly describe someone named Darby Gillis as standing “like Venetian terra cotta.” Nevertheless, he stood dumbfounded (certainly not cleverfounded) as the engine ran as good as new. He gave a “hoot” of joy, snatched his little cap and tossed it high. Unfortunately it landed atop a rafter in the tin-roofed shed and was lost for good. Darby was not distressed. He knew he could get a new cap next time the Jack Daniels rep was in town.

Just at this moment, Corky, Hewlett and Cyndy tumbled to a stop in the dusty lot outside Darby’s shed. They found themselves clad in ill-fitting denim overalls. Cyndy had some flashy calico shirt on over her digital combat fatigues, and Hewlett spat out a corn cob pipe. Cyndy tore off the humiliating shirt and cast it aside.

“Great,” said Hewlett and whacked some dust off his overalls. “I thought we just left pre-civilization.”

Corky answered, but there was a harmonica stuffed in his mouth and it blew an abrupt chord.

Darby heard the chord and whirled, turning a sharp eye toward the open barn doors.

Corky and the others scrambled out of sight.

“Luke,” said Darby Gillis, “is that you?”

It wasn’t Luke, so Luke didn’t answer. Cyndy motioned for the others to take advantage of the cover provided by the loud engine to escape, but they froze when they heard Darby suddenly cut off the ignition.

Darby peered around the dark corners of his shed, but saw nothing that could produce a harmonica chord. He pulled something heavy from inside the ‘56 Chevy pickup and laid a strap over his shoulders.

“What’s he doing in there?” whispered Corky.

“Quiet,” hissed Hewlett. “He’s probably got some big hillbilly shotgun.”

“Luke?” came Darby’s voice from inside the shed. “That there better oughta be you, Luke.”

It better oughta wasn’t, so there was a spine chilling pause.

And then, Darby Gillis plucked some strings, in careful, measured tones. Nine tones in all.

“What’s that?” asked Cyndy.

Corky had heard it before. His face went white with dread:

“Dueling Banjos!”

Darby repeated the nine banjo notes, a bit more impatiently. Quoth he:

“If’n I don’t git me an answer, I’m gittin’ me my squirrel gun.”

Hewlett stuffed the harmonica into Corky’s face and whispered:

“Play!”

“I don’t know how to play this.”

“Play Dueling Banjos with this guy, or I’ll leave you with fewer teeth than him.”

Corky winced as he put the instrument to his lips. He closed his eyes in the face of doom, and blew. Shockingly, the harmonica repeated Darby’s banjo notes perfectly, and even added a touch of rhythm. With a thrill, Corky suddenly realized that he knew how to play a harmonica, and play it well; just as Cyndy became aware that she seemed to know some good coon recipes.

Darby grinned hugely, showing all kinds of vacancies in his gums, and patches where he hadn’t shaved very well, and places where his black, greasy hair was falling out in odd clumps from heavy moonshine abuse, and immediately picked up the next bar of the song. Corky jumped right on in, and within moments they were both lost in musical rapture.

“YeeeeHA! You blow a mean mouth organ, Luke!”

Cyndy tugged at Hewlett’s overalls. “Quick. Let’s find that vacuum tube while Corky has him occupied.”

There was a big junk pile of things like refrigerators and bedsprings and engines and big radios from the year 400,000 BC behind Darby’s shed. Tall yellow weeds poked up through holes in everything for the right visual effect. Hewlett and Cyndy dug through one or two worthless pieces of garbage, but Hewlett suddenly stopped and stepped away from the pile.

“What’s wrong?” asked Cyndy. “Help me find a vacuum tube.”

“No! It’s all spidery in there.”

“Corky can’t keep up that song forever.”

Hewlett crossed his arms and turned his nose up.

Cyndy had known him long enough to find his manipulation handles. She had only known him about a day, but he was so depthless and predictable that that’s all it took. She reasoned that if she expressed doubt about his manhood, she could get him to do just about anything. She pondered the problem a moment and said:

“Perhaps you’re right to sit out. Your soft hands would be easily punctured by a spider bite.”

Hewlett felt a pang of humiliation as Cyndy immediately resumed throwing aside big ragged pieces of rusty metal, but smelled a rat. Hewlett studied for a minute, then responded:

“Thanks, Cyndy. We’re lucky to have a woman of your sturdiness with us.” And he sat back against a tree and began chewing on a long blade of grass. Grumbling, Cyndy continued to work, but resolved to one day reach down Hewlett’s throat, grab ahold of something and pull him inside out.

“Whew-wee,” sighed Darby Gillis as he struck the song’s final chord. “Come on in here, Luke, and let’s scare us up some grub.” Darby was not a man to “eat breakfast” in the mornings; rather, he was the kind who “figgered on having him some hominy.” Corky did not know what “hominy” was, and thus was not privy to this aspect of Darby’s persona. Moreover, he was not anxious to eat anything that had to be “scared up.”

In any event, he did not wish for Darby to discover that he was not Luke, and decide to perforate him with his squirrel gun. Corky stayed outside the shed, said nothing, and did nothing to help his predicament.

“Luke?”

Darby’s tone was less friendly. Corky imagined he could feel the squirrel gun, probably loaded with rock salt, pointed right at him. Luke or not, Corky had to win Darby’s favor.

A triumphant Ta-da! blew from Corky’s harmonica as he sprang into the shed, arms held wide, as if it was a great and wonderful surprise for Darby to be visited by Corky Bumberton.

Darby staggered back a few steps, like you’d belted him with a tire iron, and tried to organize his thoughts to explain the incongruity before his eyes. It took him a few moments, which Corky used to his advantage to play a few bars of the song, stomping his foot and trying to dance like a hillbilly. Although a good dancer in general, hillbilly steps were not normally in his repertoire and he looked quite silly.

“What the—” was all Darby could manage. He was one of those guys who had to deliberately decide where to stop shaving, leaving a blatant line of demarcation all the way around his neck where the shaven area stopped and the back and chest hair started. The least that guys like him could do would be to make a fancy border, like ocean waves, for a wainscoting effect. But there must be an inverse correlation between neck hair and creativity, because most of those guys just mow a plain straight line all the way around, usually about an inch and a half above the collar.

Out in the junk pile, Hewlett jumped up when Cyndy unearthed part of a great big television loaded with vacuum tubes.

“I knew we’d find some!” said Hewlett and examined the set. He shook his head critically, trying to show Cyndy that he was expert enough on vacuum tubes to find fault even with these. He tapped a few, grunted with disapproval, read the numbers on a tube, and snorted at the audacity of the engineer who used such a tube in a television like this. It was from the 12th century, when televisions were all huge and had tiny screens that were round and black and white. Manufacturers back then must have decided that people wanted sets as large as possible with minimum viewing area. Moreover, they concluded to make the screens round, and maybe canted at a bit of an angle, and out of focus, and cheap. That’s why a lot of people didn’t have televisions back then; they weren’t of very good quality. But the internal components seemed to be good enough for the Professor.

“I’ll see what kind of tube we need,” said Cyndy. She opened the backpack and would have looked for the broken vacuum tube, but Hewlett snatched it away from her.

“Girls don’t know anything about electronics.”

“As if you do, lace boy?”

“Recent medical research,” said Hewlett, “has proven conclusively that the X chromosome carries only the rudimentary motor skills needed to talk and to curl hair. Everything else is on the Y chromosome.”

“You forgot one other ability on the X.”

“And what’s that?”

“Dicing vegetables.” Cyndy drew a serrated alloy combat knife and sprang at him. The two grappled and rolled in the dust, raising Cain and frightening Darby Gillis’ chickens.

Hearing the ruckus and still reeling from Corky’s presence, Darby “shook a leg” and moseyed outside where he could see the cause of the commotion. Cyndy’s digital combat fatigues were an immediate giveaway:

“Communists!”

Hewlett and Cyndy froze and looked. Darby whirled, nearly losing his balance which was probably pretty shaky to begin with, even without Communists around, and ran back into his shed. Corky knew what was coming. He dropped the harmonica and ran for his life, jumping right over Hewlett and Cyndy in the dust.

“Pull all the vacuum tubes!”

“Bring the whole thing!”

“Abandon ship!”

“Run!”

“Who said abandon ship?”

A tree burst into splinters with a tremendous bang. Darby Gillis reeled back from the big gun’s recoil, took aim again and fired. The television shattered into a thousand pieces, causing Hewlett to drop the end he’d been holding and express surprise. Cyndy gathered as many vacuum tubes as she could carry and took off after Corky.

Another discharge sent a burst of shot humming right past Corky’s ear. Hewlett and Cyndy caught up with him, because Corky did not have a runner’s body, and the three of them began sorting vacuum tubes as they ran.

“What’s the broken one?”

“It’s a 6AU6,” said Cyndy, reading the fine printing on the base. “Do we have one of those?”

Hewlett cast aside a couple that were obviously the wrong size as Corky held the backpack out flat as a work surface. All three of them jumped in unison to cross a fallen log, and another shot from Darby’s squirrel gun whizzed beneath them at the same moment. It would have made a cool scene in a movie.

“I’ll git you yet, you red sons-a-beavers!”

“Here’s the closest thing,” said Cyndy. “It’s a 12AU7. Is that close enough?”

Corky tapped on his digital watch buttons, hoping to figure out how to calculate whether a 12AU7 was a good enough replacement for 6AU6, but suddenly there was a new development.

A broad river blocked their way, and Darby Gillis was coming up fast from behind.

“Look for a boat. A canoe or something,” suggested Cyndy.

“No!” said Hewlett. “I’ve seen that movie. I’m not getting into any canoe.”

“What’s a movie?”

“Shut up.”

Darby Gillis skidded into range. He was pear shaped and had one suspender holding up his jeans. Long ago the jeans had been shaped like normal pants, but they had conformed to fit around the lower half of his pear, and were now shaped rather like a bucket. The suspender and everything else were a bit loose, like they were a couple sizes too big, and had the odd patch here and there of a different colored fabric. People like that don’t want to look silly by having holes in their jeans, so they patch them with big squares cut from quilts, and sew them on with garish yarn, and have generally shapeless bodies which conform to the shapes of their favorite porch chairs. Darby’s butt was bit asymmetric for this reason. His porch swing was missing a slat, and he sat across the vacancy at an angle so that he could spit tobacco juice at his hound dog. Over the decades his body had assumed the shape. Only in this small corner of the world was it actually true when mothers told their children “Don’t make that face, or it will stay like that forever.” Apparently many local residents had not heeded that advice.

Darby shouldered his squirrel gun and took careful aim. Corky was not in favor of being shot, neither was he an excellent swimmer. So he snatched the 12AU7 from Cyndy and yanked open the backpack.

POW! went Darby Gillis’ gun, and the 12AU7 burst into a trillion bits of glass dust. Corky expressed surprise as what was left it flew from his grasp.

“Now I got you, you goldern Commies.” Darby advanced cautiously, keeping them well covered. The Supreme Warrior knew enough not to try any tricks. She put up her hands and advised the others to do the same.

“Wait just a moment,” said Hewlett, stepping forward. Cyndy cringed. “What was that you said?”

Darby froze. He had not been expecting a question, and had made no preparations. His brow worked and his lower lip went in and out a few times, like he was moving his mouth while reading. Not that Darby knew how to read.

“I reckon,” he said, stretching his memory to its fullest, “I said goldern Commies.” Darby Gillis stood there all kinked over toward the side his asymmetry was on, with his legs bowed out for aesthetics.

“Goldern,” repeated Hewlett, and took a professorial step or two toward Darby Gillis. “It is a curious term.”

“What the sam hill you talkin’ about?”

“Sam hill,” said Hewlett. “There’s another one. Semantics doesn’t figure very prominently in your educational background, does it? I note the complete lack of a verb in that sentence.”

“P’raps you’ll note this here hole in your belly.” Darby turned the squirrel gun on Hewlett.

“Ah,” said Hewlett. “But look at him. Have you ever seen such a belly begging to have a hole in it?”

Darby reckoned that he hadn’t. Corky did seem to be a superior target, and so he turned the gun at him and fired.

The Supreme Warrior tackled Corky to the ground, against Hewlett’s legs, and the Professor’s machine was inadvertently switched off.

It took each of them a moment to recover from the shock of finding themselves at the Pac Man table in the coffee shop across the street from Thunderwood College, like getting a check in the mail you weren’t expecting. There’s always a minute where you wonder if there’s been a mistake, or if it’s one of those fake checks that contests send out to trick idiots into entering, but after that minute, Corky and Hewlett realized that they actually were home again.

16

“I can’t say I miss that hillbilly,” said Cyndy, “but look where we are now. This place is hideous.”

“This is where we were when we first turned on the machine,” explained Corky. “I accidentally turned it off, and so we’re back.”

“I wasn’t here when you first turned on the machine,” said Cyndy. “What am I doing here?”

Corky opened his mouth to say something insightful like “I don’t know” when Hewlett put up a hand to silence him, and shook his head with a deeply thoughtful brow, and explained:

“It’s technical. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You guys live here?” said Cyndy. “It’s so—I don’t know, closed up. So many people. Where’s all the swamp water?”

“In the swamps,” snapped Hewlett, and then to Corky, “you mean to tell me that you could have switched that thing off all along, and it would have got us back here?”

“Look who’s suddenly the expert,” said Cyndy to Hewlett, trying to defend Corky. Then she remembered that Corky was a man of mighty resolve, who needed no defending. So she shut up.

“I didn’t know,” said Corky meekly. Cyndy humphed with satisfaction and gave Hewlett a look that said “How do you like them apples?” But she felt Corky’s counterattack was not as crushing as it might have been, and so allowed her look to fade, and took a drink from someone’s water glass.

They noticed the coffee shop’s old jukebox, and positioned Corky in front of it as a shield. Cyndy and Hewlett soon extracted a 6AU6 vacuum tube from its innards and repaired the Professor’s machine. While they worked, Corky beamed his warm smile around the room, showering joy on everyone who happened to look over to see what that dork was standing in front of the jukebox for. One teenage kid came up to put a quarter in and select a song, but Corky gave him such a pasty loving smile that it scared him away.

“Dammit, Corky,” said Hewlett. “You could have at least taken his quarter.”

The returned to their table with the fully functional backpack and sat down to formulate a strategy. Corky favored taking Cyndy home, but Hewlett insisted that the business with the brunette be concluded before the machine could be used for “frivolous purposes.”

“Anyway,” said Cyndy, “I might just have a little business of my own with the Poet.” The way she said it sent a chill down Corky’s spine, but there was lots of insulation and he soon warmed again. “So what’s the plan?”

“Corky and I will go check out the note,” said Hewlett.

“Oh yes,” recalled Cyndy, “the note that made your girlfriend dump her bald boyfriend. Who wrote the note?”

Hewlett didn’t know who had written the note, so he picked up a water glass and drank as an excuse not to answer. He looked at Corky while he drank, expecting him to answer for him, but Corky didn’t. Hewlett saw that he was running out of water, and thus time as well, so didn’t drink anymore, but only bulged his adam’s apple in and out to make it look like he was swallowing. Corky and Cyndy observed the spectacle with absorbing interest for some minutes.

“I guess he doesn’t know,” said Cyndy.

“It doesn’t look like it.”

Hewlett couldn’t think of a gracious way out, so he decided to pretend nothing had happened and he had never heard the question. He set the glass down, which was now half full of his backwashed spit, and said:

“No point in waiting. Corky, do your stuff.”

Corky stood to dance, but Cyndy grabbed his arm and reminded him about the machine and the note.

“Oh,” said Corky, and carried the backpack to Hewlett’s side of the table and pressed a few bleeping buttons on the keypad. Cyndy watched as they began to look blurry and Corky took Hewlett’s hand, and she started to hear Hewlett make anti-homosexual commentary but suddenly they weren’t there anymore.

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

A bunch of stars flew by through darkness, and a shimmering nebula sifted past along with some comets and asteroids and stuff. Corky tried to reach out and grab one, but it wasn’t like at Disneyland where you can actually grab it and it’s made of styrofoam. Then it was like there was a movie playing all around them, except things were going backwards, and they saw Captain Sprat’s ship burning in reverse, and some cable cars and old black and white movies that were all shaky happening backwards.

“See?” said Hewlett. “I told you that things were actually black and white in the old days.”

“But it’s just an old movie.”

Hewlett scoffed. “We’re seeing history going backwards. Do you think that Father Time throws away actual history, and substitutes old black and white movies, like it’s a Star Trek episode?”

“Perhaps it’s more efficient for history to archive only movies.”

“Perhaps you should shut up.”

Corky did so, not because Hewlett told him to, but because an image of the Colonel’s estate was beginning to form in front of them. The image grew solid, but it was all spherical as if projected onto the surface of a volleyball. And then, with a snap, it turned inside out and surrounded them, and everything stopped moving and became very still. They found themselves standing alone in the Colonel’s upstairs hallway.

The floor seemed solid. The air had the smell of furniture polish and old guy aftershave and pipe smoke.

“Wow,” said Corky. “This is amazing.”

Hewlett would have said the exact same thing, but since Corky beat him to it, it became necessary to do him one better. Hewlett duly shrugged and acted like viewing the past was no big deal to him. He behaved as if he had experienced more realistic history viewings, and this one was of small consequence.

“We’re still in the coffee shop,” said Corky. “Our perceptions are from this past moment from the Colonel’s estate, but our bodies remain in our actual time and place.”

“I hope nobody picks our pockets or anything.”

Indeed, nobody was picking their pockets as their bodies sat in the coffee shop across the street from Thunderwood College, because they were invisible. But Cyndy was taking a restroom break, and a leather jacketed, greased-back hair guy collected what valuables they had left on the table.

Corky and Hewlett didn’t know anything about that, but they could hear a match being struck in the den at the end of the hall.

“That way,” said Corky, and they followed the sound.

The Poet sat in the big overstuffed chair like he was part of it. He may as well have been, because he was equally overstuffed, and his outfit was so out of date that it matched the chair. The Colonel had probably bought all of his furniture in the year 1463, and never bothered to turn on the TV or anything to find out that times had changed.

The Poet lit his pipe with the match, and finished the job in two seconds.

“He’s been practicing,” said Corky. “It took him much longer to light his pipe when we spoke with him before.”

“After,” corrected Hewlett. “Unless you screwed things up, we’re only minutes away from when we first talked to him.”

Actually the Poet was able to light his pipe more quickly because there was no one around to impress. And no one around to watch him write his note…

The Poet took out a notepad from an inside pocket of his jacket. It was a pretty big notepad to carry around with you. Probably because he was so fat, his hands may have been so large and bloated that it made him write really big. Anyway he took it out and started to write.

“The Poet did it,” blurted Hewlett, and scrambled over to the Poet’s chair. He and Corky stood on either side of him and watched closely. “He wrote the note that made her blow off the bald guy. She’d never go for this old fart. Would she?”

Corky stared in awe as he watched history actually happen. The Poet wrote:

My Dearest Love:

Soon my newest work will be published, and there will be nothing to keep us apart. I have seen you watching as I struggled in my study with many an intellectual demon, formulating my hypotheses and jousting with the laws of classical logic, finding some way to create a new plane of existence for us to be together; a new meaning for the forces that bind man to woman, mind to mind, teacher to student, lover to lover. At last I have triumphed and found utter success and the tranquility of perfect solution.

Now you must go at once to the place where your spirit is most at ease and wait for me. Soon my work will change the world, and we shall be together forevermore.

Yours through the ages,

Me.

Corky had been Hewlett’s sidekick long enough that he had begun to learn a few things. Among these was the art of sarcasm. Corky opened his mouth and was about to speak his first sarcastic word regarding the Poet’s letter, when he happened to notice Hewlett.

Hewlett was transfixed. He was seeing true genius at work. Almost before it was too late, he took out a small pad and began to scribble notes, copying whole passages from the letter.

“Brilliant,” said Hewlett as he wrote.

Corky decided that he had not yet mastered the craft of determining when sarcasm was appropriate, and so he shelved the new-found ability for possible future use.

“Man,” said Hewlett snapping his pad shut, “I’m going to use this stuff.”

The Poet folded the note and stood up. Hewlett moved around right in front of him and made faces.

The Poet strode out of the room into the hall and looked up and down; the coast was clear. The purse belonging to the Colonel’s grandniece was lying on a little glass table. The Poet fumbled with the zipper, when the sound of the grandniece’s approaching heels came from around the corner!

“She’s coming! Corky, see where she is!”

Hewlett scrambled to hide, slipping and sliding on the marble floor, then suddenly realizing that he didn’t need to hide. So instead he pretended he had only slipped and slid while practicing his soft shoe dance.

“She’s twenty yards down this other hall,” said Corky, “and coming.”

The Poet angrily tugged on the zipper. He had probably never touched a woman’s purse before and had no idea how to open it.

“Come on, you moron,” said Hewlett. “Open it!”

“Fifteen yards.”

The Poet shook vigorously, and momentarily lost his footing.

“Oh no,” said Hewlett. “I hope you don’t fall and splatter your head all over the place and get caught. I’d lose sleep tonight.”

“Ten yards.”

The purse came open and about ten things like lipsticks and compacts and keys came flying out everywhere. The Poet shot out his hand and caught three in one swipe, like a kung-fu guy in a movie catching flies; threw out his other hand and snatched the rest, but some bounced up from his hand and he had to catch it two or three times…

“Five yards!”

The Poet stuffed it all back in the purse, crammed in the note and zipped it closed. His feet started running but it took a second for his body to move, and then, like a charging locomotive, he sped into the den just as the Colonel’s grandniece appeared!

The open door was behind her so she didn’t see the Poet enter the den with entirely too much momentum and flatten himself against the brick hearth. He reeled back and landed in the overstuffed chair, which spun crazily. His limp body hung out one side like a dead guy on a carnival ride.

“Darn,” said Hewlett. “He made it, just like before.”

The Colonel’s grandniece walked briskly past, picked up her purse, turned the corner and went downstairs. Corky and Hewlett stood alone in the hallway.

“Now you know what the mysterious note contained,” said Corky. “Now what?”

“We know the rest,” said Hewlett. “She’ll read it when she gets to the coffee shop, and dump the bald guy.”

“What’s more, the Poet will go on to publish the manuscript, and the world will be overrun by Happy Smileys.”

“Who cares about that? That’s in the future.”

“Why, Cyndy cares. She should have grown up normal and healthy, and had all the same opportunities you and I have enjoyed.”

“Should have grown up healthy? She can kick your white ass.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

“I’ll be the judge of what you meant. Now get us out of here.”

Corky was about to switch the machine off, when suddenly the door to the library burst open and the original Corky and Hewlett slid out onto the hallway’s slippery marble floor!

“They’re gone,” said the original Hewlett. “I’ll check the stairs; you see if they went that way.”

The two original guys did a little Keystone Cops routine, repeatedly bumping into each other as they tried to go past, and ran down the hall in different directions.

“Oh,” said Corky. “Do I really look like that?”

“Yes. It’s quite sad.”

Corky reached into the backpack and turned the machine off.

As the leather jacket, greased-back hair guy was going through the valuables on the table, Corky and Hewlett suddenly reappeared in their seats. Finding himself in an awkward situation, the leather jacket guy thought quickly and made the best of things:

“Will there be anything else for you gentlemen?”

“No,” said Corky. “Thank you very much.”

“Then enjoy your evening.” The leather jacket guy picked up what money remained on the table as if it was a tip and walked away.

Cyndy came back from the restroom. “Hey, where are all my moneys?”

“The waiter took them.”

“They don’t have waiters here.”

Corky and Hewlett looked at each other.

“That’s not important,” said Hewlett. “What’s important is what we know about the Colonel’s grandniece.”

“Such as?”

“We know she dumps the bald guy because of the note. We know the note boasts of great scientific achievement. Thus, we put two and two together, and—”

That was as far as Hewlett got before the line of reasoning overwhelmed him.

“You think she considers scientific genius a desirable quality in a mate?” asked Corky.

“Yes! That’s precisely it. And the bald guy, with his…” Hewlett began to gesture, because gestures are often of great service to people with no command of language, “…theories…and his…brain…and…and…”

“Theories of quantum gravity and modern classicism,” said Corky. Cyndy scrunched up her face in repulsion, demonstrating the reason Corky had filed the bald guy’s own description of his work under Things Not to Say on a Date. Cyndy looked like Corky may as well have said “rotten intestinal squeezings fermenting in warm seawater.”

“That’s right,” said Hewlett. “We have to do better than that. We have to change the world, like the Poet said in the letter. We have to—”

“You have to return the Professor’s machine if you want her to like you,” said Corky, to which Hewlett responded with a hateful glare.

“Hewlett,” said Cyndy, “why don’t you just ask her for a date?”

Hewlett was struck dumb. For a full minute he sat and stared, then gradually closed his eyes and bowed his head. He shook it ruefully. Then, with a pound of the fist, he leapt to his feet and said:

“Amateurs!”

Cyndy stood up and gripped Hewlett by the dainty East Indian silk tie and yanked him back into his seat. While he struggled against the cinched garment for breath, Cyndy calmly took something from one of her many pockets.

“Do you see this?” she said, showing a small carbon fiber object. “It’s a standard twelve millimeter reactive armor piercing small arms round. Simple, reliable, and deadly.”

Hewlett stared at her with wild, uncomprehending eyes, to show her that what she was saying was so irrelevant and wrong as to be incomprehensible. But she knew him well enough to ignore that.

“And here,” she said, “is a twelve millimeter Leyden Cycle electroshock round. A bit longer and heavier. It’s supposed to explode and discharge forty thousand volts when the shock of entry compresses its contents. Usually it works, and it’s the most effective round in the world. But sometimes it detonates inside the firing weapon, and all someone sees is a snap of ball lightning, and a few bits and pieces of the guy with the gun land on the ground all black and smoking.”

“Cool,” said Hewlett.

“The Leyden Cycle round may be flashy and illustrious, like you’re suggesting you want to be, and spiffier than the Poet, but for the long run,” and she held up the first bullet, “give me Old Reliable.”

“That was beautiful,” said Corky, and wiped a tear.

“You think so?” smiled Cyndy.

“Oh barf,” said Hewlett and collected the Professor’s machine. “Let’s take this thing back and snitch on the Poet, and make me heir to the Colonel’s fortune.”

“That’s the Hewlett we know,” said Corky and Cyndy as one.

17

For the second time in a single day, Corky found himself stuck atop the iron fence surrounding the Colonel’s estate. Hewlett had used up his inventory of sarcastic remarks the first time, and was having trouble thinking of anything to say.

“Leg up, Corky,” said Cyndy. She and Hewlett had already made it over, and backed off a few paces because the whole fence creaked so threateningly with Corky’s mass balancing on top of it. Again the belt gave way, and again Corky plunged headlong into the hibiscus. He tried to land in the same place as before, because he did not wish to damage more of the Colonel’s lovely groundskeeping than was necessary.

Cyndy lifted Corky’s wrist and checked the digital watch. “It’s almost four hours since you got the key from the Poet. Where is he?”

Hewlett answered back over Corky’s sprawled body. Corky was accustomed to people having conversations over, around, and through him, so this was not a problem.

“The Poet said there’s a garden maze on the other side of the estate,” said Hewlett. “He said to meet him in the middle of it.”

“That doesn’t leave me much time to return the machine,” said Corky.

Cyndy yanked him to his feet and attached a carabiner to his belt.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up.”

She pulled a small mechanical pistol from an obscure pocket, took careful aim, and fired a piton into some terra cotta scrollwork above the fourth floor window. She then attached the pistol to a carabiner on her combat harness.

“Hey,” said Corky dubiously.

Cyndy pulled a lever. Some blinking lights came on and a motor whined. In a blink, Corky was whisked across the lawn.

“All right,” commented Hewlett. “I want one of those. Can it get rid of anyone like that?”

The slack was taken up in the cable and Corky was lifted toward the window. Cyndy had not anticipated the significant force he exerted, and Hewlett had to grab onto her and they both clung to a tree.

Inside the den, the Colonel stamped his cane on the floor to punctuate some point he was making. The Professor, comfortably sunken into the overstuffed chair beside the fireplace, shook his head.

“Imaginary time,” said the Professor, “is merely a complex coefficient of a variable representing a time function. You wouldn’t make all that fuss if I had alluded to imaginary gravity, or for that matter, imaginary bus schedules.”

“Blustering ballyhoo!” argued the Colonel, which seemed a very appropriate thing to say, given the fact that Corky sailed over his head unnoticed just at that moment. Corky landed on his belly out in the hall, and his pledge sweater slid most effectively on the marble floor.

Within two minutes, Corky opened the wall safe with the Colonel’s key, replaced the Professor’s machine, found his way down the many grandiose staircases, and reappeared jogging across the lawn to the supposed safety of his friends. He collapsed, huffing and puffing like a blowfish, at Hewlett’s feet. Hewlett snatched the key from Corky’s fist and pocketed it. Just as Corky was about to announce his success, Cyndy said:

“Let’s move it out.”

And she immediately took off in just the direction Corky had come from. She made a commando-like dash across the open expanse of surgically trimmed grass and tumbled to cover behind a hedge. Hewlett, not wishing to appear less commando-like than a girl, tried to duplicate her moves but his Italian shoes slipped on the wet grass and his head rang against a metal sprinkler head cover. Corky dragged himself to his feet and brought up the rear less dramatically.

“There’s the maze,” said Hewlett. “Corky, you’re the smart one. You lead.”

“Take this,” said Cyndy, and took a spool of monofilament line from a pocket and tied it off to a branch.

“What are you doing?” asked Hewlett. From his tone, one would have thought she was beating him with a bat.

“If we’re going into a maze, we’ll want to find our way out again.”

Hewlett snatched the monofilament line away from her and cast it aside. “What do you think we are? Stupid?”

Cyndy did not answer.

They pushed Corky ahead and followed him into the dark aisles of the maze. Corky noted that most of the passages ran more or less concentric, so all he had to do was head toward the convex sides and away from the concave ones, and an ultimate arrival at the center would be inevitable.

“No,” said Hewlett. “That way.”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” said Cyndy.

“Why don’t you?”

The guy who designed the maze realized that most people would figure that all one had to do was head toward the convex sides and away from the concave ones, and an ultimate arrival at the center would be inevitable. So he designed it on purpose to trick people who did it that way. Consequently, since Hewlett’s insistent irrational deviations were so wrong, they ended up getting to the middle anyway.

There was a little bench and a fountain in the middle of the maze, as if anyone would ever go through all the hassle of getting there just to sit down. If there was a bar in there, or a pile of money, more people might do it. But since it was only a bench and a fountain, which aren’t that interesting, it was likely to be a pretty private spot for a midnight meeting. It was even a hard concrete bench that was uncomfortable, as if anyone was going to go “Oh, let’s go struggle for an hour to get through the hellish maze, and enjoy the thrill of sitting on the uncomfortable bench.”

The moon cast black shadows from the tall shrub walls, and reflected from the diamond droplets of the fountain. And on one end of the cement bench, tranquilly puffing on his pipe, sat the Poet.

Cyndy’s throat went dry when she saw him. Whole centuries of bloodshed were the direct fault of this loathsome being; this man whose evil deeds were beyond those of a man, this mind that conceived things unthinkable to a human mind. Hatred and fear swept through Cyndy’s body; she went limp and dropped to her knees under the oppressive force of his aura.

“What’s the matter with you?” said Hewlett.

She tried to speak but made no sound. She could not take her eyes from the hideous shape, that magnificently horrid being that would cause so much destruction. If only she had strength, if only she had courage, if only her heart was true, billions who must die could be saved; a single squeeze of a trigger could rewrite an epic saga of terror and anguish. But no, it would not be she. Her hope wilted. Armageddon must triumph, the four horsemen of the apocalypse could not be unshod. Cyndy’s being was crushed. She had not the spirit to live.

Hewlett shook his head. “Weirdo.”

The Poet didn’t acknowledge their presence. He acted like it was a normal thing for him to come out to the maze in the middle of the night and accept stolen merchandise. Hewlett utilized the Poet’s passivity as an opportunity to Take Charge. He winked confidently to his comrades and approached the cement bench.

“Ahem.”

The Poet looked him over. To respond to Hewlett’s simulated throat clearing would be to allow Hewlett to Take Charge. Accordingly, he looked away again, since Hewlett said nothing further. For a person for whom it’s normal to come out into the maze in the middle of the night and transact clandestine business, a request more specific than “ahem” was required. Otherwise the Poet would not be able to distinguish Hewlett from the many other appointments on his clandestine calendar.

“We have your key,” said Hewlett, and thus lost any hope of Taking Charge. The Poet made a smug grin and looked at him.

The Poet took out a gold pocketwatch (the kind nobody uses anymore), shook his head sadly at Hewlett’s tardiness and said:

“Four hours and four minutes.”

As if it made any difference. But it had the effect of weakening Hewlett’s position, and the unique thing about it was that there were really no positions to take. Yet the Poet had masterfully created one for Hewlett, and weakened it.

“So what?” said Hewlett.

So nothing, as the Poet realized, so he said nothing. He simply put out his hand for the key.

Hewlett patted his pockets.

“Corky, do you have it?”

Corky searched his own pockets without result. He turned white and looked at Hewlett in fear.

“I gave it to you.”

“Oh,” said Hewlett. “Here it is.”

Hewlett did a lame magic trick and pretended to pull the Colonel’s key out of the Poet’s ear. The Poet didn’t want to act impressed at Hewlett’s trick, and so ignored it. He merely continued to hold his hand out and waited for Hewlett to finally place the key in it. The fat fingers closed.

“I trust,” said the Poet, “the evening has been equally advantageous for us both?”

“It’s still early. We’ll see.”

“Fine lad, fine strapping young lad. I bid you adieu.”

“Bid me? Like at an auction?”

But the Poet turned and dashed headlong into a shrub wall like a mole. Hewlett jumped to the spot where he disappeared and felt around, but the wall inside the shrub felt solid.

“He’s gone!”

An eclectic giggle was heard among fading footsteps which splashed ever fainter through the twigs and leaves of the maze’s corridors.

Cyndy rose to her feet. She gathered all her will and ignored the demons. She must not let the Poet escape.

“No,” said Corky, and tried to bar her way.

“Corky,” said Cyndy, “this is the reason I’m here. I didn’t understand before, but now I do. I must do this thing. I must destroy the Poet.”

“I can’t let you. Destroying isn’t nice.”

Cyndy touched Corky’s face, and not with a fist like usual, but with soft fingers. “You are a kind and loving man.”

Those were the words she spoke, and then she was gone. Little digital range finding beeps and electronic scanning sounds faded into the distance, hot on the trail of the Poet’s giggling.

Corky and Hewlett stood alone with the tinkling fountain. It wasn’t tinkling literally, like a toilet, but only metaphorically. Hewlett looked at Corky sternly, like a father at a son who spilled his milk.

“I suppose Casanova thinks he’s pretty studly,” said Hewlett scornfully.

“Who?”

“Don’t give me that,” said Hewlett. “I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at her ever since she came on board.”

Corky was puzzled. And then he realized what was happening.

“Hewlett, I think you’re jealous.”

“What! Me?”

“Cyndy is a decent human being, and said no more than any decent person would say to another.”

“Oh sure! Decent human being today, gyrating object of a twisted pervert like you tomorrow.”

“Why be jealous of Cyndy? I thought you liked the Colonel’s grandniece.”

Hewlett opened his mouth to continue the bombardment, but his magazine was empty. Instead he just shrugged. “Cyndy’s too butched for me anyhow.”

They looked around in the moonlight, selected a passage at random, and started off to find their way out of the maze. As they walked, each moping silently to himself, Corky mused:

“I wonder why the Poet wanted me to steal the Colonel’s manuscript for him?”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

“My manuscript,” said the Colonel as he poured another hot scotch for the Professor, “will explain all of this to your satisfaction. I propose we refer to the chapter on probability at once.”

“Proposal accepted,” said the Professor, and they carried their glasses into the library. “But I warn you: that whiskery chap at Thunderwood won’t be nearly so forgiving of your miscalculations as I.”

The Colonel pulled open the second drawer of the desk.

The blue leather bound volume was extremely gone.

“Egad!” cried the Colonel and reeled backward. The Professor caught him and saw the empty drawer.

“It’s gone!”

“I know it’s gone! Don’t you think I know it’s gone? What do you think ‘egad’ means?”

The Professor helped the Colonel to a seat and loosened the venerable old fellow’s collar.

“Years of labor,” said the Colonel with a quivering voice, like he was laying on a vibrating motel bed. “Lost, all lost, to the knavery of some iniquitous thief.”

The Professor paced around the Colonel’s desk, which he could circumnavigate in about three steps. He walked like a marionette controlled by a epileptic puppeteer.

“Colonel, we shall know the identity of that thief in a few moments.”

“Oh, praise you, Professor, for those invigorating words. But how?”

The Professor stopped in front of the desk and pointed at the wall safe. “Retrieve my mechanism,” he said triumphantly, “and I shall return to the instant the crime was perpetrated, and observe the cowardly burglar red handed.”

“Saved!” cried the Colonel, and sprang to his feet and pulled out his top drawer. “—And lost again! The key is missing!”

18

At that precise instant, the door to the library burst open and the Poet, huffing and puffing, brow wrinkled in agony, dropped to his knees and held out a quivering fist. He tried to stand but couldn’t, tried to speak but only managed an unintelligible syllable or two; and then, at the ultimate end of his strength, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed face first on the hardwood floor. His fingers opened slowly, revealing the Colonel’s key; and it apparently hurt more than he had anticipated when he collapsed face first on the hardwood floor, because he suddenly picked his head up and turned it to the other side, and any reasonably cognizant person could have told that he was faking.

“Dear fellow!” blurted the Colonel, and sprang to his friend’s side. “Are you quite all right?”

The Professor went over too in one big step and knelt beside the Poet.

“Isn’t this your key?”

The Professor peeled it from the Poet’s hand and gave it to the Colonel, who expressed his surprised:

“By all the powers that be,” he said, which has no logical meaning.

The Poet was probably getting tired of laying there, because he began to moan and squirm.

“How did you come to have the key?” asked the Professor.

The Poet had no good answer for this, so he acted like he was too woozy to say anything.

“Perhaps the questions should wait,” the Colonel cautioned the Professor. “He seems exhausted.”

“Indeed he does,” said the Professor, and checked the Poet for injuries. “But he appears sound enough. I say, my good man, what’s the meaning of all this?”

The Poet had only waited outside the library door for the right appropriately dramatic moment to make his entrance, and when the time came, he had merely entered in the most dramatic way he could invent on the spur of the moment, which was to collapse. He had not thought to prepare an explanation, and so, in answer to the Professor’s questions, he concluded that he must faint entirely away and remain in something resembling a coma until he heard someone say, “Talking about the Poet’s condition may prove emotionally damaging. When he wakes up, we must never mention it to him.” At which point it would be safe to groan, and act like he was all stiff and in pain, and ask where he was, and have everyone wait on him for a while.

“On your feet,” said the Professor, and lifted him up.

The Poet realized that his eyes were open and that he was standing; clearly, the coma strategy would not answer. Instead he just shrugged it off and acted like nothing was wrong.

“We must implement the Professor’s plan at once,” said the Poet in an effort to change the subject away from his apparent infirmity, which worked easily with the Colonel since his attention span was only about three seconds, but the Professor raised one eyebrow and rubbed his chin for ten or fifteen seconds.

“What plan?” asked the Professor. “I’ve proposed no plan since you’ve been in the room.”

The Poet fumbled for words. “Why, using the machine to go back and see who stole the—”

The Colonel and Professor both hung their faces in front of the Poet, expectantly waiting for him to finish.

“Stolen?” asked the Colonel. “What makes you think something’s been stolen?”

The Poet felt beads of sweat forming on the bald part of his head. That would look bad. An escape must quickly be conceived.

The Poet groaned and keeled over unconscious.

“The poor fellow,” said the Colonel. “Clearly deranged. Very well, Professor; let’s catch a thief.”

“The principles of full perspective implosion are actually quite simple,” said the Professor as he strapped the backpack on. “A simple set of polar coordinates a,b describe the location we shall view, and the length of vector c specifies the amount of time prior to the present. When did you last see the manuscript?”

“I saw it in the drawer earlier this evening, when you first showed us your clever machine. I recall setting my watch.”

“Ah,” said the Professor and typed a few digits into the keypad. “Just over four hours ago. Good bye; I shan’t be long.”

And the Professor vanished, much as he’d done before. Again the Colonel leaped back, startled at the suddenness of the disappearance.

“I say, Professor, are you still here?”

“Indeed,” came a ghostly, disembodied voice.

“What do you see?”

The Professor couldn’t see much, because the library had been quite dark four hours ago. Only faint blue starlight filtered down from the skylight, and after a moment, the Professor could make out the dim outlines of the library’s many volumes.

“Is my manuscript still there?”

The Professor strode over to the desk, but the drawer was quite shut. “I can’t say,” said the Professor. “In this condition, I’m not able to make physical contact with the desk drawer.”

“Drat it all,” said the Professor, but it didn’t accomplish very much because all was unaware that it had been dratted.

“Hark!” said the Professor, “footsteps!”

Someone seemed to stop outside the library door and pause uncertainly. The Professor sprang from side to side, due to a natural desire to hide, but had to remind himself that it was not required. He was only watching an image of what had happened; it would be like hiding from your television.

The library door opened, flooding the room with brilliant electric light and blinding the Professor. Corky poked his head in and said:

“Hello?”

Corky tiptoed in and closed the door behind him. He turned on the light and the Professor saw him very clearly.

“Someone’s just entered,” said the Professor.

“Who is it?”

“Obviously I don’t know, or I wouldn’t have identified him as ‘someone.’”

Frustrated, the Colonel swung his cane erratically.

The image of Corky opened the desk drawer quietly and lifted out the Colonel’s volume. He glanced side to side to double check if there was anyone else in the tiny room spying.

“He’s taken it!” cried the Professor, and reappeared in the Colonel’s midst when he yanked a cord from the machine. The Colonel happened to be standing about half an inch from where the Professor appeared and so leaped back with a cry.

“What does he look like?”

“He’s a young fellow, rotund of shape, rather vacant look in the eye…”

“What are you smiling about?” said the Colonel, and rapped the Poet’s knee with his cane. “Up, good fellow! To arms!”

The Poet stood, but of course he already had two arms, and so did not comprehend the Colonel’s meaning.

The Professor unstrapped the backpack and set it carefully on the desk. “Colonel, we must find a way to identify this foul cretin.”

“Colonel,” said the Poet standing beside a window. “There are some young chaps down in the garden. More hooligans from the College, perhaps?”

The Colonel and Professor strode over together. It looked pretty funny, because the Colonel always tapped along with his cane to look dignified, and the Professor walked like a spazz anyway. They looked like Fat Albert’s gang. All three of them stared out the window.

“Hewlett Stacks,” said Corky down in the maze, “I think it’s this way.”

“No it’s not, Corky Bumberton.”

The Colonel got all excited. “Write down those names,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll have a chat with the dean.”

The Professor squinted through his glasses, then took them off and tried another pair that he kept in his jacket pocket, found those unsatisfactory and tried a third pair. He started to vibrate all over.

“It’s them!” cried the Professor. “They are the culprits we seek!”

In a flash, the Colonel’s driver was summoned and all three went shuffling down the hall to meet him, waving their canes and dropping papers. No sooner were they out the library door than the skylight shattered, raining shards of glass debris everywhere. Cyndy, her face hidden under a black balaclava, slid down a slender cable and snatched the Professor’s machine from the table.

The Colonel’s driver was a very large person. He had on a black chauffeur uniform and a cap, which he pulled down so that all you could see of his face was his mustache and a frown. Normally, when he wasn’t frowning, he probably put the cap on the regular way, or perhaps tilted it to a jaunty angle and was jolly. But now he was serious, so he frowned and adjusted the cap accordingly. Using the cap as the major component of expression probably saved a lot of energy to his facial muscles. Maybe he was really ugly, or geeky so that he didn’t look threatening, and had to use the cap to hide the geeky part of his face, and just leave the frown showing. That would be enough to intimidate most people, half of whom are below average intelligence anyway.

“Turn out the guard!” said the Colonel. “Thieves in the maze.”

“We haven’t got a guard,” said the driver.

“Outside!” said the Colonel and smacked the driver atop the head with his cane. “Now, go, at once! To the rescue!”

The driver started to go but stopped when the Professor called from the end of the hall:

“Colonel! My machine’s been stolen as well—not ten seconds ago!”

The Colonel’s mouth made all kinds of stuttering motions like he couldn’t figure out what to say. He looked this way and that, and couldn’t decide which way to turn. He held up his cane like a sword and said:

“Call the police!”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

The driver bounded across the mighty lawn with a lantern and was passed by a fleet of fire eyed Dobermans. Red and blue police strobe lights flashed like a discotheque as dozens of heavily armed officers deployed through the front gate.

“Listen,” said Corky to Hewlett in the maze, “I think someone might have heard us.”

“Give me a foot up.”

Corky clasped his hands and Hewlett placed a muddy shoe in them. He poked his head out the top of the maze and saw the oncoming circus.

Hewlett dropped to the ground and thought deeply.

“Well?” asked Corky.

“It’s nothing. You stay here and call out your name every ten seconds so I don’t get lost; I’ll explore two or three more of these passages.”

Corky analyzed the various components of Hewlett’s suggestion. It was clear that Hewlett wished for him to remain here, no doubt as a decoy. Hewlett also wished to be out of Corky’s eyesight, and went so far as to give an excuse to keep Corky from becoming concerned at Hewlett’s absence. This meant that Hewlett would probably be running away as fast as he could.

Hewlett saw that Corky was thinking about it too long and realized he might as well start running now. As one, the two boys pushed over the maze wall , kicked and punched their way through two more, and were off across the Colonel’s open grounds.

“Head for the orchard!”

The driver stopped at the edge of the maze with his lantern and directed the police troops toward the running boys. Legions of dogs and police sped by like a fox hunt. The driver had a lantern because it was all he could find in the Colonel’s garage, and was fifty years old like everything else. People who know what century it is use flashlights, but the lantern did lend an air of colonial pomp to the chase. The Colonel himself brought up the rear, even though he could only run about one mile per hour, but his heart was in it and he continued to wave his cane like a sword.

“Tally ho!” shouted the Colonel. “Forward! Advance! Charge!” though everyone else had already gone by and he was like a mile behind.

The driver was grabbed from behind and pulled into the hedge. Sounds of punches emanated, and Cyndy sprung out wearing the backpack. She looked around, analyzed the situation and assembled a tactical database. Cyndy darted off into the trees.

“Hewlett,” said Corky as they jogged through the aisles of the orchard, “this isn’t any fun.”

“Oh,” said Hewlett, feigning surprise and stopping, “I wished you’d have said something sooner. Come along, let’s do something else instead. Perhaps a game of pinochle?”

“You always cheat me at pinochle.”

Cyndy rose out of a bush. Corky and Hewlett shouted.

“Shut up,” she hissed. “The entire estate is surrounded by a paramilitary unit. I estimate their strength at forty.”

“Now it’s even less fun,” said Corky.

“Let me think,” said Hewlett. “Two of us are dorky losers, and one of us is the Supreme Warrior. Hmm, now let me see: I wonder which one of us should be doing something about the police instead of talking?”

“Why didn’t I let that kung fu guy chop you in half when I had the chance?”

Corky put up his hands to silence them. “I don’t think either of you are being very constructive.”

Hewlett didn’t think Corky was being very smart. Who did he think he was to put up a hand to silence—

“The fact is,” interrupted Cyndy, “you guys have gotten us into a huge mess that I don’t see any way out of. We must surrender.”

“But we have the machine,” said Corky. “Can’t we go back and change things?”

“Of course!” said Hewlett. “We can punch out the Poet when he’s writing that note.”

“Then he’d never give you guys the key,” said Cyndy. “For us to have the machine in the first place, everything has to happen exactly as it did. You never would have gotten the key if Corky hadn’t stolen the manuscript for the Poet.”

“So we’re lost!” said Hewlett and dropped to his knees. “We’re going to be eaten by dogs in the Colonel’s orchard, and arrested, and thrown out of school, and I’ll have to get a job.”

Indeed it seemed likely. Howling Dobermans and slashing machetes closed in from all sides. Flashlight beams skittered everywhere, and the sounds of crashing boots grew louder and closer.

“I heard the Professor explain how the machine works,” said Cyndy. “There’s a set of polar coordinates defining where you go, and a vector that fixes when.”

“What do you know about polar coordinates, grotto girl?” asked Hewlett.

“You use polar coordinates to call in artillery strikes.”

“What’s in the middle?” asked Corky.

No one knew what he meant, so no one answered.

“The middle. The axis of the polar coordinate system. What’s there?”

Obviously, Corky had taken a geometry class, which neither of the others had. For a fleeting moment, Corky felt superior.

“I don’t know,” said Cyndy. “The Professor didn’t say.”

“Yeah, Corky; don’t waste our time with stupid questions.”

Hewlett pulled Cyndy down to her knees beside him, and encouraged her to help him whine and cry. She declined.

“Why does it matter what’s in the middle?” asked Cyndy.

Corky wished he hadn’t brought it up, because he didn’t know what he was talking about. He hadn’t gotten a very good grade in his geometry class, and went back to feeling ordinary and inferior. “I only thought that if we could get in the middle of everything, we might see a solution easier.”

“Oh yeah,” laughed Hewlett. “Like it’s that simple. That’s the way the universe works.” He laughed rudely, and struck Corky with dirt clods.

“I can see how that’s possible,” said Cyndy, rubbing her chin as she thought over Corky’s idea. She looked at the keypad. “These must set the coordinates, and maybe this dial sets the length of the vector.”

Hewlett perceived that enthusiasm was leaning toward Corky’s suggestion. He couldn’t think of any better plan, and so decided to jump onto the haywagon. However, he didn’t like the feeling of just being One of the Guys in the Hay, so he concluded to act like getting to the middle of everything was his idea, and thus be the Guy Driving the Haywagon.

Cyndy was helping Corky put the backpack on, so Hewlett stood and gave directions, which were entirely superfluous, but nevertheless incumbent upon the Guy Driving the Haywagon. Corky and Cyndy set all the controls to zero and punched all the correct buttons, and Hewlett looked on and pointed in a general way to portions of the keypad and made gestures describing the proper way to press buttons.

A shout went up in the distance, and flashlights were now directly visible through the trees. The dogs sounded like they could only be yards away.

Corky and Cyndy took Hewlett’s hands and Corky poised a finger to press the final button.

“Wait!” said Hewlett. “We need to actually go there. We can’t do anything if we’re just watching it, like the machine normally works. We’d be off watching some boring black and white movie, and meanwhile dogs would be here chewing our invisible limbs off.”

“You’re right. What do we do?”

“We have to get the machine to work like it did before with me and Corky.” Hewlett pulled the backpack off of Corky and looked around, finally spotting a big round rock sticking out of the ground. He raised the machine over his head…

“Don’t do it that way,” said Corky. “You might not break it the same way we had it before.”

“Corky, are you a scientist?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.” Hewlett raised the machine over his head again.

Cyndy punched him in the mouth. Hewlett reeled backward and she handed the machine to Corky.

“This is the vacuum tube that we broke,” said Corky. “All we have to do is take it out.” He unplugged it and zipped it securely into a pouch on the backpack. “Center of existence, here we come.”

Suddenly night became day as a hundred flashlight beams fell on them. Dogs came sailing through the air with a roar, as the Colonel’s face appeared and said:

“Aha!”

Corky pressed the last button.

19

Corky, Hewlett and Cyndy were suddenly aware of nothing but even brighter light and a deafening sound which seemed to come from everywhere. They looked and saw the color yellow approaching fast with a chrome grill. The three scrambled out of the way of a speeding taxi which splashed them with muddy water and trash, its horn blaring, the driver’s fist shaking. Scraps of paper and refuse swirled in the hot, quiet air.

“Where in the world is this?” asked Cyndy, looking up and down the avenue of dilapidated brick townhouses as far as the eye could see. Not a being stirred.

“I don’t know,” said Corky, “I think we may have made another mistake.”

“What you mean we, paleface?” This, of course, was Hewlett.

Corky set the backpack on the hood of a car that looked more abandoned than parked. “I wonder if we broke the machine correctly?”

“I wonder about this whole idea,” said Hewlett. “Who says we’re going to find anything in this dump?”

A newspaper blew by and he picked it up. “Queens,” he read. “Great. All that fuss, and we might as well have taken a bus to get here.”

The tranquil summer sounds of a domestic dispute with broken glass came from the nearest townhouse. Corky moved around to the other side of the abandoned car, not because he was afraid, but because there was better light there.

“OK, we haven’t found anything here,” said Hewlett. “Let’s pack it up and head back to the Colonel’s. I’ll take my chances with the dogs.”

Gunshots cracked the air from a block or two away. Cyndy dropped to the ground as her camouflage suit came up to Full Power with the blinking lights and reactive armor.

“All set,” said Hewlett, “everyone ready to go?”

“We can’t go yet,” said Cyndy angrily. “We have to find what we came for.”

“Maybe we could do it off the street,” suggested Corky, pointing to a nearby townhouse that had fewer bullet holes than most. Hewlett approved of the plan, and gathered the stuff. The three ducked low as if they were in Vietnam or somewhere, and shuffled up the steps to the door.

“Knock,” said Hewlett. “I’m holding the backpack.”

“You knock,” said Corky. “You still have one hand free.”

“I’m not going to knock. Let’s get out of here.”

He began to flee, but Cyndy grabbed him by the collar and knocked on the door. “You guys are a disgrace. I don’t know how you could have been promoted into Sergeant Thorn’s platoon.”

Hewlett was savvy enough to keep his eyes level, but Corky was weak; his gaze dropped to the backpack for an instant…

Cyndy sighed. “I might have known.”

Everyone jumped when the door opened as far as the security chain would allow. A face appeared in the gloom and looked them over.

“Already paid for my paper this month,” said a paranoid Brooklyn accent.

Corky cleared his throat. “I was wondering, sir, if we could come in for a moment.”

“You salesmen?”

“No.”

“Salvation Army?”

“No.”

“Missionaries?”

“No.”

“Blathering idiots?”

No one answered.

The guy unchained the door. “As long as you’re honest, you can come in.”

He was the kind of guy who brown bagged his lunch. He wore a short sleeved dress shirt, like an unemployed real estate agent. His pants had come from the local discount mart, and he wore white socks with dark shoes. His eyes were spastic and too close together, like a cartoonist had drawn him to look all frazzled, with a big monobrow that covered both eyes in a perpetual expression of surprise and disorder. He grew his dyed black hair really long on one side, then flipped it over the top to cover his bald head. It was all greasy, as if he had to put some gooey stuff in it to keep it glued to the top of his head. It looked really stupid. Apparently he worked at home, because the room was stacked to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of papers, dozens of filing cabinets, and loose leaf binders stuffed with unorganized pages. There was a ratty old manual typewriter on an old rolltop desk that looked like it had broken down in the eighteenth century and had been dilapidating ever since.

Hewlett leaned close to his friends. “You don’t think this is it, do you?”

Cyndy shot him an angry look which plainly said “Don’t be stupid.” Indeed, the center of existence, in a ramshackle tenement in Queens. Here they were, in some hellish dive, stuck in a room with an obsessed weirdo who wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote all day and all night, filling his house with bizarre tracts of curmudgeonly strangeness.

“Time to go,” mouthed Hewlett inaudibly to Corky. Corky answered with a “just one second” gesture, and said:

“We’re looking for the center of existence.”

“Don’t know if I’d call it that,” said the guy, “but I am the Author of Ubiquity.”

“What’s Ubiquity?” asked Hewlett. “Is that some weird novel that you’ve been writing for forty years, that really sucks and nobody’s ever going to publish it or read it?”

“You’re not far wrong, big mouth. Ubiquity is everything, the universe; as its author, I’m the one that makes it all happen.”

Hewlett nodded skeptically and looked around him. He smudged a finger along a dirty surface to verify the lack of cleanliness. He nodded again, then smiled; obviously trying to avoid letting the guy know that Hewlett thought he was an escaped lunatic.

“Would you excuse us for a second?” said Hewlett.

“Glad to. I got work to do.” The Author trundled over to his desk and resumed pecking at the obsolescent typewriter. It jammed up after he’d only hit like two keys. The Author cursed and set to remedying it.

Hewlett gathered Corky and Cyndy around him in a huddle. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

“I don’t know how he does it,” said Cyndy, shaking her head in disbelief. “I mean, if my hair looked like that, I’d shave it off.”

Hewlett nodded and considered this. Then:

“Corky?”

“I agree,” said Corky. “But I don’t think it’s like one day he said ‘This is how I want my hair to be,’ and suddenly grew it long on the one side. It’s probably more of a gradual thing.”

“You’re suggesting that he used to have a regular parted-on-the-side hairdo?”

“I think so, and he just kept combing it that way even after he went bald.”

Cyndy agreed. “I think it’s his barber’s fault. The guy’s probably gone to the same barber for the last twenty years; you’d think that one day the barber would have said ‘Gee I’m sorry, but there’s no longer enough hair on top to comb to the side.”

“No way would he have asked the barber to cut it that way,” said Hewlett.

“The barber was probably too embarrassed to say anything,” said Corky. “If he’d cut it short, the guy would have walked out of the shop with five percent as much hair as he came in with.”

“Then we agree,” said Hewlett. “It looks really ridiculous, but we won’t hold it against him.”

Corky and Cyndy were in assent.

“So you’re the Author of Ubiquity,” said Hewlett, and began to pace back and forth methodically. “What exactly does that mean?”

“I’ll tell you what it means,” said the Author, and finished typing a paragraph and yanked the sheet out of the typewriter. “You know, like when you’re watching a TV show that’s no good, and you say ‘Who writes this crap?’ Nobody ever stops to wonder who wrote them sitting there on the couch watching TV, remote control in one hand, other hand stuffed down the front of their pants, bag of Cheetohs on the table, beer can on the floor, presumptuous thoughts of grandeur running through their head. No thanks for me. Even an occasional ‘Who writes this crap?’ would be nice, but no, only the overpaid nephews in Hollywood get that. I get nothing. Hang on a second; there’s a capybara in Ecuador sniffing at a beetle; he’s about to eat him for lunch.” The Author shuffled through a stack of loose papers, found the one he wanted and rolled it into his typewriter.

“The capybara,” recited the Author of Ubiquity as he typed, “sticks out its tongue and snags the beetle. He crunches it up and swallows it.”

“Guy writes like a third grader,” said Cyndy confidentially to Hewlett.

“I heard that,” said the Author. “You try being creative twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and write visually and with impact every minute. Who are you punks anyway?”

“I’m Father Time,” said Hewlett, “and this is Mother Nature. The fat guy’s Atlas.”

“A comedian,” observed the Author shrewdly, and contemplated the group over the tops of his bifocals. Then he tipped his head back and looked through the lenses, but it wasn’t satisfactory either, so he took them off and set them on his desk.

“I know you kids,” said the Author as he slowly remembered. He tapped his chin with one fist and pinched his forehead with the other, as if that was going to make him remember better. “Sure, you’re the kids with the Professor’s machine. I forget where I left it with you guys.”

The Author opened a file cabinet and sifted through reams and reams of ruffled pages. Nothing there. He scratched his head, then dug in an overflow pile on top of an old TV.

“The story of my life sits on a stupid old black and white TV?” said Hewlett with disgust.

“Listen you preppy brat, get your rich daddy to buy me a color set, and I’ll keep the story of your life under the remote. Until then, shut up.” He kept digging through the papers. Then he turned suddenly:

“Have you been to the Old West yet?”

They nodded.

“Old West,” repeated the Author, and rummaged some more. “Did you each win forty millions bucks in the lottery already?”

Corky and Hewlett gasped and looked at each other with joy. Cyndy didn’t quite understand, but sensed their excitement and it gave her a rush too.

“Just kidding,” said the Author. “You punks aren’t going to win jack. Whoops—wait a minute. This little pebble flying through space has been getting closer and closer to the gravitational field of Ganymede. I gotta change its course a bit.” He sat down and typed:

“The pebble gradually arcs toward Ganymede, according to Tycho’s law of planetary physics.”

“I think you mean Kepler,” said Corky.

“Shut up, smarty pants. Tycho thought of it first. I should know, I wrote both of them.”

Corky could not recall ever having been addressed as Smarty Pants before. And now that he had tasted it, he took a conceited pride in it.

“One guy types everything that happens in the whole universe?” asked Cyndy.

“I hired this college kid to help me out once,” said the Author, “but he was a punk. He wanted stuff to happen his own way. He’d read one of those drama books on how to create characters, and it turned his brain into mush. Motivation? He didn’t know the first thing. I gave him the Philippines to start with, and for a while, everyone in the country ran around with a wrinkled brow, like they were all Hamlet, with tragic and profound implications to everything they did. He took this one fisherman, little skinny guy in a village who had the greatest life I ever created—never had to leave his hammock except to fish—and he made him all obsessed with catching this one grouper. So the guy sinks his boat in a storm, nearly drowns and straggles ashore one day, turns to the ocean and says:

You mock my life, you mock my purpose.
You take my being and wring it out like the sponge
Of humanity.
Like the coconut crab in winter,
You cut from my limbs the berries of my existence.

And then the guy keels over and dies. And the thing is, he says all that in English. Never heard a word of the language his whole life. All the villagers gather round to watch the guy croak, he spews all that vomit in English, and the villagers all jabber away in Tagalog, wondering what the heck the guy said. Finally I fired the kid. Anyway it was pointless; the whole time he was here, I still had to write everything the kid wrote. Hadn’t counted on that. Excuse me, I left a refrigerator door open in Bombay.”

The Author rolled a crumpled sheet into his typewriter and pecked a few keys, but the page came out blank.

“Need a new ribbon,” he said, and opened his desk drawer. “Oh great. Damn.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Corky.

“Out of ribbons,” grumped the Author and slammed the drawer shut. “And the stationery store doesn’t open until Monday.”

Hewlett stepped forward indignantly. “You mean to tell me that the whole gigantic universal scheme of things gets screwed up by something that lame?”

“Watch it, kid, or I’ll get a creative impulse and invent some new skin disease for you. Remember that guy in London who turned into a giant hairball?”

“What about the refrigerator?” asked Corky.

“What the hell,” said the Author of Ubiquity, and took the pencil out from behind his ear and tossed it onto his desk, “it’s Bombay. Who’s gonna notice if some clown’s vegetables rot. It’s an afternoon off for me.”

He pulled a Cosmopolitan out of his drawer, put his bifocals back on and threw his feet up on the desk. He rifled through the worn pages until he found a dog-eared page marking an article called What Men Really Want from Us. “Nice of you guys to stop by,” said the Author, pouring himself a full tumbler of gin. “Come again.”

“Oh, well,” said Corky, “if you have a few spare moments…”

“I don’t. Good day.”

“The reason we stopped by…”

“Beat it!”

Corky looked around for something to beat, but found himself unclear on the Author’s meaning.

Cyndy stepped forward to say something, but Hewlett, on the principle that men can handle things better than women, put up an arm to block her path and took a step himself. Cyndy gripped his tie and pulled him to the floor with it, which compressed his windpipe and left him squirming about and turning blue.

“What Corky means,” began Cyndy, “is that we’ve been fans of yours for years, and very impressed with your magnificent creativity and wit.”

The Author turned and gave her a look expressing deep hurt. He took a sheet of paper from atop a nearby stack, scanned it, then read aloud:

“‘Guy writes like a third grader,’ said Cyndy confidentially to Hewlett.”

His point well made, the Author replaced the paper and returned to his Cosmopolitan. Cyndy acknowledged her humiliating defeat and stepped back, motioning to Corky that it was, once again, his turn.

Corky pulled out a chair and sat down next to the Author, putting on his best and most businesslike face. “We were hoping you might consider thinking about the possibility of maybe considering making a change or two in one of your older, and certainly least important, documents…if, of course, it’s not too much trouble, and there’s nothing better to do, and we were to promise to pick up a new box of ribbons for you…”

“Here’s you,” interrupted the Author, and took a brief moment to avert his face like an actor preparing for a role. Then he brought his pinched fingers to his lips and took a long, long draw through them. The effect seemed invigorating, as a touch of ecstasy flitted across his face for the briefest instant. “I see,” said the Author doing his best to imitate Corky, “yes, I see the Author, on his afternoon off…working overtime, and doing special work…for me; because…” (here he inhaled deeply again, filling his spirit with imaginary exhilaration) “because…I’m worth it.”

The impression of Corky ended, and the Author turned away and kicked his feet up on the desk, again opening his Cosmopolitan.

But all was not lost; for the Author had left a door wide open, and Corky seized upon the opportunity:

“What could I do to be worth it?”

There was about a forty minute pause while a huge, self-serving, self-satisfying grin spread itself on the Author of Ubiquity’s pasty face. The magazine landed on the desk and the Author—ever so slowly—turned his chair around to point the grin at them. He wasn’t very good at being subtle. A more skillful negotiator would have groaned, and acted like it would be an impossible burden to answer Corky’s question. But much the Author cared about that. He was happy to have someone volunteer to do his slave labor, and that was that.

However, human nature still had enough influence to make him rub his chin, roll his eyes, and pretend to have to think about it for a second.

“You,” said the Author with a finger pointed at Cyndy, “into the kitchen. Whip something up. And don’t give me any crap about too much saturated fat.”

“Who the hell do you think—” she was interrupted when Hewlett, still on the floor, bit deeply into her ankle. She kicked him away, boiled internally for a moment or two, then marched indignantly toward the kitchen.

“You, grovel boy,” said the Author to Hewlett, “stop licking the carpet and refile those pages.” He pointed to a stack of boxes four deep, ten wide and the ceiling high. “Master files are in the basement. Each page should have a date and a continent written on it somewhere. Proofread them while you go.”

“Proofread?” said Hewlett. “You probably want Corky for that job. He’s the smart one.”

Hewlett’s suggestion was duly overlooked, and he soon found himself deeply involved in the refiling task. It took him about three hours to realize that it was more efficient to carry two or three boxes down to the basement at a time, instead of individually proofread sheets of paper.

Now it was Corky’s turn. The Author of Ubiquity again rubbed his chin, pretending to have to think about what he needed.

“There’s one of those office supply superstores on the other side of town that should be open today. Take the 43 bus and get me a new ribbon.”

Corky made the trip, but brought back a typewriter ribbon that was from the current century and so would not function in the Author’s machine. He made a second trip, and this time was careful only to get a bottle of ink that could rejuvenate any ribbon. The Author blew steam and made a lot of noise, saying that it was too much work to re-ink the ribbon every damn time, but Corky took the wind out of his sails when he said:

“The salesman said you either have to use this, or buy a computer.”

The Author scratched his head incredulously, awed by the fearsome prospect.

“The salesman said that?”

He took the bottle of re-inker quietly, and wandered away muttering as he read the instructions.

Cyndy was not having an easy time in the kitchen. For some reason she did not understand, the Author of Ubiquity kept nothing to eat in his kitchen, just ingredients for making low yield explosives. There was no turpentine to drink, no old combat boots to chew on, and no hemlock bark to smoke. All the Author had was stuff like sodium chloride, vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, some things like ammonia and borax under the sink, plus a lot of boxes and cans with meaningless labels in the cupboard.

She wished he had asked her to blow something up. That would have been easy. Preparing mess was not in her line. Oh, she’d peeled potatoes once or twice when she’d been in trouble, and knew how to do that, but there were no potatoes available.

Cyndy rummaged and found a large pot. She set it on the counter and began a search for food. There was a large standup ammo case against one wall of the kitchen, but when she opened it, she discovered that it was cold inside and full of all kinds of strange containers. There were some clear jugs full of white liquid, and one full of orange liquid, and some strange hourglass shaped bottles of brown carbonic peptide. They might come in handy for cooking, so she set one of them aside.

After some time, Cyndy managed to scrape together a few odd meats, some bread and plants and some spices, and mixed them all together in the pot with some cold water which came out the front of the ammo-chilling case when a lever was pushed.

The stew was ready to be cooked. Unfortunately there was no open fire handy, and no familiar cooking appliances in the kitchen like flame throwers, so again Cyndy had to improvise. She took another large pot, and collected some of the materials she had found before. She emptied the box of bicarbonate of soda into the large pot, added one bottle of carbonic peptide and some ammonia…

Twice within the last hour, Hewlett had come up from the basement and acted like he was all done. Hewlett had intentionally disheveled himself, like a newscaster reporting from the scene of a disaster area, by loosening his East Indian silk tie and mussing his hair a bit. But the Author of Ubiquity wasn’t buying it. The first time, the Author went downstairs and discovered that Hewlett had hidden some of the boxes of unproofread papers behind some other junk. He called Hewlett’s attention to it, and set him back to work. The second time the Author found that Hewlett had simply done a better job of hiding the boxes. But this third time, Hewlett dragged himself up the stairs, sweating profusely, and announced that the job was at last completed. The Author didn’t believe him this time either, but didn’t want his files to get messed up any worse by some dishonest punk, and so relieved Hewlett of duty.

Hewlett plopped himself on the couch beside Corky and said confidentially, “Boy, did I put one over on him.”

“What did you do?”

“There’s these little windows near the ceiling down there that open into the alley. I stuck about half the boxes out there.”

Large chunks of the world’s history suddenly disappeared, but fortunately it was long ago, and so was not missed.

Hewlett chuckled to himself and looked for Corky to laugh also (to alleviate his guilt by making Corky an accomplice), but instead Corky just stood up.

“I think I’ll check on Cyndy.”

A loud THUMP suddenly lifted Corky off his feet and hurled him back onto the couch, thus catapulting Hewlett into the ceiling. Flames and great billows of black smoke burst from the kitchen and Cyndy came tumbling out. She scrambled to her feet and ran back in, opened a window and sprayed water everywhere.

“Sorry,” she called to the Author.

The Author of Ubiquity stayed in his chair and merely shook his head and held his forehead as if he had a migraine.

“Grovel boy.”

“What?” said Hewlett.

“You got any money?”

Somehow, through some inexplicable extrasensory perception, Corky knew that Hewlett was going to lie, so he elbowed him in the ribs.

“Ow! Yes, a little.”

“Large thick crust, anchovies and pineapple, extra cheese and green peppers. Phone’s on the wall. And get that female out of my kitchen.”

Cyndy went out on the patio for the comforting sound of distant gunfire and the solace of the occasional close ricochet. There was a porch swing from the Bronze Age and was all splintery with peeled paint. It may not have looked as inviting as an old burned-out jeep, but Cyndy sat on it anyway.

Corky watched her through the window for a few moments. The orange light from the smoggy sunset shone on her hair and reminded him of looking through brown bottle glass as a kid. Corky hadn’t had a very interesting childhood.

He went out and sat beside her, which strained the porch swing and made Cyndy’s end lift up a bit, and they talked about Thunderwood.

“It looks too weird without the swamp water,” said Cyndy. “I can’t wait to get back to my time and have it normal again.”

It was the first time either of them had realized that sooner or later, their trio would be breaking up. She hadn’t meant to allude to that when she said it, but the words popped out and slapped them both in the face with the fact.

“I guess,” she said, “that the Author’s going to make it so you can get me back.”

“More than that,” Corky said, trying to sound upbeat. “If we’re successful, the Happy Smileys should be gone forever.”

“I wonder what it will be like? Sergeant Thorn probably won’t even be a sergeant. Rifleman Fasolt will probably be a bouncer at rock concerts. I’ll have a house and kids. I just better not have any flower gardens or minivans or wimpy stuff like that.”

“I’m sorry, Cyndy. I didn’t mean for your world to be changed.”

She patted his knee reassuringly. “The Poet has to be stopped. That’s worth losing a few hand grenades.”

The gravity of Corky’s actions began to sink in. He and Hewlett were changing history. The lives of billions would be altered forever, and all because Corky was foolish enough to listen to Hewlett. If only he’d stood up for himself in the first place, if only he’d never allowed Hewlett to make him follow the brunette to the Colonel’s estate.

“Corky,” said Cyndy, sensing his guilt. His guilt was not hard to sense. If Corky was breathing, it meant he was feeling guilty. “You’re doing a wonderful thing.”

“He’s a punk,” said the Author of Ubiquity, hanging out the door for a moment. “I’m handling the wonderful part. Let’s go, the pizza’s here.”

“That’s not true,” Cyndy told Corky. “By reconstructing history, you’ve saved millions from being beautified. I tried to get you to stay in Valgarok, but you knew better and you stuck to it. I stand by everything you’ve done.”

Corky almost smiled, but he still had one more secret to get off his chest.

“I looked at Flosshilde once.”

“Almost everything.”

Thus absolved, Corky grinned. Cyndy smiled back, closed her eyes, and rested her forehead on his soft shoulder. It was like a big pillow, and she found it quite restful. Then all of a sudden Corky felt his arm going to sleep because he was in bad shape and only had like one artery going down his arm, and she was squishing it; but he did not move for fear of disturbing her.

The pizza hadn’t gotten there within thirty minutes so Hewlett tried to get it for free, but the argument just made everyone mad because they were all really hungry. At long last, four people whose bellies were painfully full sat well satisfied.

“All right,” said the Author of Ubiquity and belched anchovies. “What is it you wanted to change?”

Cyndy gave Corky the thumbs up. Proudly he thrust out his chest, but you couldn’t really tell whether it was his chest or just more of his stomach, and began:

“There’s this girl—”

“A girl!” interrupted the Author. “If I had a nickel for every dorky mama’s boy that showed up on my doorstep wanting me to play Cupid for them—”

“No, no,” said Corky. “It’s nothing unrealistic like that. She’s for Hewlett.”

The Author was too aghast to respond.

“The Poet,” continued Corky. “He stole the Colonel’s manuscript and boasted about it to this girl.”

“Oh, the Poet,” said the Author, remembering. “I think I’m going to do great things with him. I’m not quite sure what yet, but I think it’s time for a big change.”

Cyndy said “The Poet will alter reality, and Happy Smileys will take over the world.”

The Author considered this. “Not a bad idea. Seems kind of blasé, though.”

“Anyway, this is the letter he wrote to her,” said Hewlett and handed the Author a page he had scrounged from the boxes. The page detailed the Poet’s original writing and the way he hid it in the brunette’s purse. “Isn’t it stupid?” said Hewlett with a big smile.

“Yeah, it’s pretty sappy,” the Author agreed. “I wasn’t too inspired that day. Gas, I think.”

“We need to fix it up. We need to get him to confess. We need to get the brunette to tip off the Colonel that the guy’s a sleaze. Subtly.”

“Subtly,” repeated the Author approvingly. “Rule number one. Always be subtle.”

“Damn straight.”

The Author of Ubiquity sat down at his trusty typewriter and cracked his knuckles. “OK punk, let’s see what we can’t do here. Fire away.”

Hewlett paced up and down for a moment, cleared his throat and began to dictate:

My Dearest Love:

Your granduncle’s a sucker and a clown. I have stolen his manuscript, and when I publish it as my own, you’ll fall in love with me, because I believe you are extremely gullible and shallow. If not for that dashing Hewlett Stacks, there would be nothing to keep us apart.

Yours through the ages,

That fat Poet guy.

The Author of Ubiquity pulled the paper out of the typewriter, and he and Hewlett proofread it over. They nodded, finding it acceptable.

“That’s subtle?” asked Corky.

“Shut up,” snapped the Author, irritated. “What the hell do you know?”

Corky started to answer with a few examples, but Cyndy held him back.

20

The cute brunette with too much eye shadow leapt over the closed door of her red convertible and landed in the driver’s seat. The door was pretty small and really easy to open, but she had watched too many old 60’s TV shows like I Spy and The Avengers and things like that, and took advantage of every opportunity to relive those shows. The Colonel’s estate was always dark and private at night, and here she could get away with pretending that she was driving away with Patrick McGoohan and ninjas were chasing them. She had all kinds of secret fantasies about romance and espionage and betrayal, so it was always a mystery how she got hooked up with the bald guy from the coffee shop. The bald guy had gotten some old videos of The Mod Squad and studied them minutely to make her like him, but he was never able to grasp the subtleties of why The Mod Squad was not at all the same kind of show as The Prisoner, and so the relationship was doomed to fail sooner or later. Nevertheless, the bald guy was regarded as an extraordinary intellectual, and that made it trendy to hang out with him. She was in fact on her way to meet him now at the coffee shop across the street from Thunderwood College.

She opened her purse for her keys and had a little surprise. Rolled up and thrust through her key ring was a plain piece of note paper. Curious, she took it out and read it.

Her eyes grew bigger and bigger. Reaching the end of the note, she scrunched it back into her purse and sat thinking what to do.

The brunette’s time had come. Her many hours in front of the television had not been in vain. She must act quickly if she were to save her granduncle from the foul treachery of the Poet.

From her compact she took a lipstick of rich purple and applied it carefully, making some Batgirl faces to test the effect. Her rear view mirror was always pointed straight back at her face, because it was often used for makeup application and rarely for driving. With this she was ready, and once again, sprang over the door of the red sports car.

The Colonel and the Professor stood as they often did, smoking pipes and drinking scotch in front of the massive walk-in fireplace, talking about The Great War. No one was really sure who originally came up with the idea of a walk-in fireplace, but its conception was no less inspired than the library catwalk system. Perhaps someone had once said “What a fine roaring furnace; I think I’ll stroll on into it.” Perhaps he then did so, and enjoyed the experience, and recommended it to others, and started the fad of designing walk-in fireplaces into big estate houses around the world. The Colonel had never walked into any of his large fires, but it was considered a status symbol that he could have walked in if he wished. Dandies in the roaring twenties probably did it all the time, but the Colonel had always excused himself.

The Colonel was once again declining to take advantage of this option when his lovely grandniece burst through the front door in tears.

“My dear young lady! Whatever’s the matter?”

She was all disheveled, with her makeup running and one high heel on and the other in her hand, and she dropped everything, ran to the Colonel and buried her weeping face in his shoulder. It almost knocked him down, but the Professor extended a multi-jointed arm and caught him from falling. The arm was then retracted to humanlike proportions.

Thus ended her heroic reenactment of her favorite TV shows. She hoped to make a better job of it next time an opportunity arose, and at least make it all the way across the lawn before losing it and bursting into tears.

“The Poet,” she sobbed. “Your manuscript. Look.”

The Colonel held the note out and tipped his head back to read it. His monocle was always a hindrance when reading, because it worked pretty good for far away stuff, but close up it made everything look like a fish eye lens. The Professor caught him from falling backwards again and he read the note. Halfway through, he began to quiver, and before he got to the end, he shaking with anger so much that the note tore and fluttered to the ground in tatters. He changed colors and shouted for his driver.

“Great Scott,” said the Professor when he recon-structed enough of the note to get the gist of it. “I wonder if he’s had time to do it!”

The jumbo driver entered the room in his boxer shorts and sock garters, for he had been retiring to bed when the Colonel called. He had found time to put on his cap, because it gave his desired facial expression, but deemed the rest of his costume less than crucial. Normal people don’t wear little garters around their calves to hold up their socks, and it seems implausible that the driver could have grown up without knowing this. It must have been that he took his job very seriously, even though the Colonel probably only paid him minimum wage, and then only whatever minimum wage was back in the decades when the Colonel had last had a clue, which was like 1920.

“The Poet must be found and detained at once,” said the Colonel with a swoop of his cane that made his grandniece duck, “and my manuscript must be secured.”

Hewlett had been standing at the top of the stairs watching and listening to everything, and he chose this as the right time to make his heroic entrance. He and the Author of Ubiquity had arranged to make the Poet roll up the note into the brunette’s keyring so that she would read it before leaving the premises. This would indict the Poet, and allow Hewlett the chance he needed to save the day and win the approval of the Colonel, and the hand of the brunette.

The entrance needed to be attention-getting. It was eighteen feet from the upstairs landing to the marble floor below. Without another thought, Hewlett was over the rail and plunging toward the ground.

He struck about ten feet from the Colonel. Hewlett tried to land on his feet, but he had too much forward momentum and landed more or less on his knees, moving about ninety miles per hour, and when his head bounced off the marble it sounded like a billiards break. He tried to scramble immediately to his feet and act like that was the way he meant to land, but he discovered right away that he was appallingly injured and would only have about a second before he blacked out in which to say:

“Ukdejhfy.”

With that, Hewlett was history.

“It’s begun!” cried the Colonel. “Things that probably shouldn’t happen are happening. Bodies are raining in my drawing room. Call the police! Call the National Guard!”

The driver and the Professor scrambled up the stairs. Hearing them, the Poet sprang from his hiding place behind a plant in the upstairs hallway and ran on the slippery marble, desperately clutching the binder full of wonderful and miraculous pages. He slid around a corner, and there stood Corky.

“Ah, my boy,” said the Poet, already a sweating mess from twelve seconds of exertion, “you must hide me. You must delay the Colonel. Fine lad, fine strapping young lad.”

And then the Supreme Warrior stepped out from behind Corky, charged to Full Power and blinking and bleeping and humming with stored energy. The eye slot on her helmet glowed red.

“You’re not a good role model for young people,” criticized Corky harshly. The Supreme Warrior added in her husky synthesized voice:

“You really should return that manuscript.”

The Poet gasped, not comprehending. Then he saw the laser beams dotting his abdomen, and decided not to waste time comprehending things, but to run as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.

Finding himself trapped between the Colonel’s driver and the Supreme Warrior, the Poet made a dive into a bathroom and locked the door. All the bathrooms in the Colonel’s estate had locks on the doors, which was quite unfortunate, because undoubtedly, most people might truly relish the chance to burst in on the Colonel while he was using the restroom. The Poet opened the window and punched out the screen, just as smoke began issuing from the lock on the door.

Cyndy melted the doorknob away and kicked the door open just in time to see the Poet’s feet, with badly fallen arches, disappear as he climbed onto the roof.

The Poet grasped at the loose shingles with his heart in his throat as police sirens began streaming through the estate’s front gate. With his pulse nearing maximum, he caught the crown of the roof in one hand and pulled himself up…only to see that pesky red laser dot appear on his hand.

The Supreme Warrior advanced slowly and dramatically from one side. A ladder plunked against the roof on the other side, and Corky pulled himself up.

The Poet was not giving up yet. He looked around, and saw one of the many chimneys close at hand. A couple pages fluttered out of the book, and he gasped and grabbed it tighter, then rose to his unsteady feet and slipped and slid his way to the chimney.

Corky and Cyndy walked to the base of the crumbling bricks and looked up at the pudgy man. The Poet looked down at them through his thick glasses that made his eyes invisible, but had nothing to say, and so acted like it was normal for him to cling to a chimney with numerous authorities closing in from all sides. Cyndy took off her helmet.

“I think you can relax about the future,” said Corky. “You’ve defeated him.”

“No, Corky. We defeated him.”

It was a nice moment, on top of the Colonel’s roof, with a pleasant summer breeze blowing in the night. The Poet sensed their satisfaction, and did what he could to spoil it.

“I’m going to report you to the Dean,” he said, which pretty well reflected his creativity. Corky was not impressed.

“You know,” he said, “I thought your poetry was very mediocre. I think Hewlett actually improved on it.”

For the Poet, this was a final straw. He thought hard for a good comeback, and said:

“Then I’ll report him too.”

“We’ll take over now,” said the driver as he strode up with the first of the police.

“You might wish to come with us,” said Corky, “and put some clothes on.”

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

In the fresh air of the expansive front lawn, Cyndy held Hewlett upright while Corky fanned some life back into him. Cops walked around looking busy, and the brunette stood with a blanket over her shoulders and her hair down, trying to look like a forlorn victim and hoping to attract the attention of some of the cops.

The driver pointed Corky and his friends out to the Colonel who picked his way over with his cane, accompanied by the ever present Professor. The Colonel planted himself in front of them, arched his back and extended his gut, and looked over them with approval as one would a patch of prize squash.

“Well done, my dear young people; well done indeed.”

Then he nodded a whole bunch and looked from Corky to Hewlett to Cyndy and back again, his head bouncing like a chicken, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Hewlett snatched the opportunity.

“Not at all, Colonel,” said Hewlett. “As a man of science myself, it was merely my duty to protect the works of one of my fellows.”

Corky and Cyndy looked at each other wearily.

“A man of science, you say?” said the Colonel, which was superfluous, because it was obvious that Hewlett had said that.

“Archaeopteryx,” said Hewlett, “is my game.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, until Hewlett began to suspect that he had misspoken.

“Prehistoric birds?” asked the Colonel.

“Archaeology, I think,” said Corky helpfully, but Hewlett shot him an angry glare that plainly said his interference was not wanted. Corky felt guilty.

“Archaeology,” continued Hewlett, “led me to this very spot on your magnificent estate. It was only good fortune that I stumbled across the Poet in the midst of his scandalous work.”

“My good fellow,” chortled the Colonel as he strode on over poking with his cane, “I assure you, there is no archaeology left to be done here. Generations of my family have been great scientists and teachers.”

“How well I know,” said Hewlett. “From your great great great great grandfather, Captain Sprat, who explored the world in his good ship the Flying Nudibranch.”

“A fine naval pioneer,” said the Colonel, and tried to punctuate the sentence with a tap of his cane, but they were standing outside on the grass so it punched through into a gopher hole and wasn’t very impressive. “Captain Sprat set the example for whole generations of emulation.”

“To the English side of the family, Dr. Lawrence Thistlebread, who won the Nobel Prize for his successful deciphering of the M!biki@ system of celestial navigation.” Hewlett tried to sound smooth, but he had never pronounced “M!biki@” before and botched it horrifically, but the Colonel had never pronounced it either and it sounded fine to him. But, several continents away and six feet underground, the skeleton of Dr. Lawrence Thistlebread suddenly snapped into pieces as it tried to roll over.

“A great lecturer and educator,” said the Colonel of the broken skeleton.

“And the tragedy of Avalanche Wheeler, who, if he hadn’t been such a flake and lost the estate to creditors before mysteriously disappearing in 1888, would have no doubt amounted to something.”

“You know well the accomplishments of my enviable forefathers,” said the Colonel, “and so you ought to know that there cannot possibly be any archaeology left undone on the grounds of Thunderwood.”

“Not even from pre-Columbian history? Going back to the days of European Vikings who may have landed here?”

“Yes yes,” said the Colonel patiently nodding. “It’s well proven that Leif Ericsson colonized this coast a thousand years ago. Hardly of shattering significance if you’ve found evidence of that.”

“But,” stammered Hewlett, and was out of ammunition. He turned pleadingly to Corky.

“Three hundred years before that,” said Corky. Hewlett shook an angry fist at him, warning him against further interference.

“Three hundred years before your Leif Ericsson,” said Hewlett proudly, “a Germanic tribe settled on this very spot.”

The Colonel lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

“In fact,” continued Hewlett, sensing that he had the Colonel’s full attention, “artifacts are buried not six feet from where I am standing.”

The Colonel lifted the other eyebrow.

“Dig,” said the Colonel at last.

The driver brought a shovel and everyone watched Hewlett dig. He got about a quarter of an inch before his back gave out and left him a gasping and sweating ruin, but the hardy driver took over and soon had Avalanche Wheeler’s artifacts unearthed.

The Colonel called the Professor over and they went over the treasures. “My boy,” he said proudly to Hewlett. “You’re going to be a very rich man. In fact, I’d like you to meet my grandniece.”

The Professor examined a large brass plate critically.

“ØLÅV WAS HERE, 696 A.D.,” he read. The Professor wrinkled his brow with skepticism, and twitched his nose, and had what would have to be called a face spazz. “You said a Germanic tribe. This name is Swedish.”

Hewlett was aghast at the hair splitting. He answered with whole-souled solemnity:

“So?”

The Colonel dragged his grandniece over and pushed her toward Hewlett. He was all excited and jittery and vibrating at the prospect of finding a wealthy and enterprising young gentleman for his charge that he couldn’t speak. He only gestured from one to the other, and made laughing little noises and gurgles, and threatened to swoon away, and was not the type of person one wanted on hand when meeting a nice young lady. But Hewlett tolerated it. Finally the old man pointed toward the Poet atop his roof, and indicated through more noises and quiverings that he was off to confront his arch enemy, and would leave these two young people to themselves.

“I suppose your happiness is now complete,” said Hewlett to the brunette.

“Almost,” she grinned. “The Poet told me about someone in his letter. He mentioned his nemesis, a man named Hewlett Stacks. He’s the one I really want to meet. I’m sure we all owe him a great deal.”

Hewlett chortled and savored the moment. Rarely is one worshipped as a hero; moreover, as an anonymous hero who’s not “in it” for the credit. Hewlett wasn’t about to “savor” it too long, however: he wanted the credit.

“I am he. I am Hewlett Stacks.”

The brunette clapped her hand to her mouth in a combination of shock and rapturous joy. Her voice failed her. She threatened to swoon away.

Hewlett took the brunette’s hands in his and looked deeply into her liquid eyes. “You are indeed as gullible and shallow as I had dreamed,” he said.

Corky and Cyndy cringed at the sound of the slap.

This was the first time Hewlett had seen the brunette up close, anyway, and he saw that she truly did wear too much eye shadow, and was not, in fact, all that attractive to begin with.

Cyndy stood apart from the others. Something was bothering her, and she felt reluctant to admit it. Certainly, the Supreme Warrior could not be so weak as to be emotionally troubled. But, undeniably, she felt a knot in her throat, and her eyes welled up. She turned away, pretending to admire some scenery off in the distance, to wipe the eye…probably just a piece of errant debris irritating the cornea. Cyndy tried to get ahold of herself, and not be a slave to unauthorized feelings, but either they were very strong, or she was very weak. Much weaker than she had ever been before, because now the tears came fast, and in both eyes. Probably just a chemical irritant. At any rate she must not show her defeat to the others; she took a few more steps away.

Corky noticed all this, but was too polite to say anything. Anyway, he figured, Cyndy was the Supreme Warrior; and was not likely to feel troubled or sad. Corky assumed there must be some chemical irritant in her eyes. He fished out his handkerchief, which was still clean because it hadn’t gotten dirty until the year 2122. Corky excused himself, which no one heard or cared about, and took the handkerchief to Cyndy.

“Here,” he said, hoping the handkerchief could rub whatever irritant out of her eyes. “This should help you feel better.”

Cyndy saw the handkerchief, and heard Corky’s kind words. Again he proved himself impervious to deception. Corky had detected her crying, and discreetly offered her a handkerchief without making fun, and given his best wishes for her recovery. Truly he was a unique man, a rare find, that diamond in the rough that a girl finds once in her lifetime; and once found, must be snatched up quickly, for that fleeting chance might never come again.

And it was because of this that she wept.

“Corky,” she said quietly between nose blows, “I have to leave.”

“I know,” he said. “Hewlett and I are home again, and you’re here, hundreds of years from your family and friends, cast away in an alien world. It’s time to return to those whom you love.”

How was this man able to read her mind so precisely? Except that she wouldn’t have used the word “whom” herself, Corky always seemed to know what was on her mind. Another Corky Bumberton would not come if she had a thousand backpacks with which to travel to other ages. She looked at him, and her eyes answered that he was right. As hard as it was to leave Corky, she had to get back to her own time, and see what had become of the new world, and those many loved ones who, in another future, had been so brutally beautified.

Corky nodded. Words were not needed. He took the backpack off and placed the straps over her shoulders.

“Careful with those implosion parameters,” he said. “You have to set them just right, or it can be a rough ride.”

Corky had become quite fond of Cyndy. It seemed he couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been at his side, and now that she was leaving, it was hard to imagine what he would do with himself. With whom would he sit under the jungle canopy, and picnic on mangoes? Who else would be with him next time he had to go into a saloon full of Rough Characters? Who would protect him from dragons? Corky began to feel that he was not ready for Cyndy to go. He became aware of a selfish desire to change her mind, to make her forget about her loved ones, and Brom Thorn, and turpentine, and Kung Fu guys, and swamp water, and stay here with him forever. He hated himself for being so selfish, but he had never had these feelings before and nothing seemed clear anymore. He didn’t know what to say or what to do, or what was the right way to feel.

“Corky,” came Cyndy’s beautiful voice that he might never hear again, “sometime, somehow, if there’s any way at all, I’m going to find you again.” And before he knew it, her arms were around him and her lips were pressed against his. He didn’t quite know what to do, not having much experience in this area, but with every fiber of his being he had to make the most of it. He puckered up and kissed as hard as he could, making a really loud kissing sound that everyone heard and turned to see.

They saw Corky standing there by himself kissing the thin air like a moron, and they all thought he was a fat idiot and so ignored him.

Cyndy was gone. She had melted away, back into the future, whatever it might hold, right from Corky’s grasp. He looked at his empty hands, at her last footprints in the dewy night grass at his feet, and he heard her promise again. He knew he had not seen the last of Cyndy. After all, there was the backpack, and that meant they had all the time in the world.

By now the Colonel himself had made it up to the gable window and stepped out onto the shaky roof shingles. He had about fourteen cops hanging onto him, because he was too shivery and lame to do anything by himself, except point his cane up at the Poet and declare:

“Foul plagiarist! You never did write anything of value on your own; you’ve always plundered the most banal pop to flavor your benign scribblings. With my good work of a lifetime, who knows what evil deeds you could have accomplished! To think you nearly got away with it!”

“And I would have, too,” said the Poet, wobbling precariously atop the teetering chimney, as pages from the manuscript dribbled out from the book and wafted into the breeze, “if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.”

Meddling? thought Corky. It sounded no worse than strapping. If all he had to do were strap and meddle, and everything worked out perfectly, and he’d get all he ever wanted, how hard could life be?

The End