Peeling a fresh cigar, I started to discard the plastic wrapper in the Colonel’s desk-disposal, then hesitated.
“Cuthbert, you know I’ve avoided gettin’ too acquainted with the Freenies ever since the rescue effort, but an un-settlin’ thought’s just occurred t’me..
I tied the wrapper in a single overhand knot, held it above my head, and let it drop. It floated toward the floor with a graceful, rotating motion.
“What if the Freenies, once they really get t’know me, decide I ain’t the kinda god they wanna be associated with? I mean, historically, deities get demoted pretty doggone violentlike!”
Spotting the wrapper, the housemouse dashed out from the baseboard—I snatched it from the air a foot before it hit the carpet—the little dickens ran around in confused circles, making noises like a teleprinter outa synch, bit the leg of my chair outa sheer frustration, and disappeared into the wall again. Probably never be the same.
All of a sudden, Cuthbert looked entirely too pleased, an’ I didn’t think it was because he’d come out ahead on our dealings. He steepled his fat fingers on his desk. “Well, Grandfather, just between you and me, I think people are greatly inclined to overlook any data which challenge their beliefs. Of course, yours may be the definitive case. I—”
“Yeah,” I interrupted before he could get to the insulting part, “an’ the Freenies’re people, right enough. I’m the one who made ’em that way!”
Seemed like no time at all an’ I was in the lovin’ arms of my redheaded girlfriend over in Mare Fecunditatus. Literally no time, ’cause for some reason I couldn’t seem to recall finally leaving Cuthbert’s office or anything else in between.
But did it really matter? Somehow we were in our private sunlit grove of trees at the edge of endless meadows, the breezes fresh as they stirred the knee-high grasses around us. We stood beneath a spreading, ancient oak, my beloved and 1, a songbird warbling in the leafy branches overhead. She leaned against the age-roughened bark, her warm, smooth hands in mine. I gazed deeply into her bottomless azure eyes.
The gentle wind caressed her pale blond hair. She smiled, shyly, glancing downward, dimples appearing magically in her satiny cheeks, lashes long and dark upon her milky skin. My heart began to pound, and I imagined I could see hers beating wildly as well in the breathtaking scallop of her sheer and lovely summer blouse. Her breasts were rounded and inviting. I bent to touch her, but she grinned, fumbling in an innocent, yet knowing way at the fastenings of my trousers.
Suddenly, my eager manhood—
“THAT’LL BE ENOUGH OF THAT, GRUENBLUM!”
I gasped like I’d been thrown outa bed into icy water. My private, sunlit glade had become Georgie's control deck once again, and standing over me, while my eyes came slowly into focus, was Dr. Edna Janof, the DreamCap she’d tom so violently from my head—-my ears’d he raw for a week—clutched in fingers trembling with anger.
That went well with the crazy look in her eyes. She hurled the DreamCap at me—its overhead cable kept it from connecting—turned on her heel, and stomped out of the cabin.
About that time, I discovered that I couldn’t move.
There was a good reason for that. I’d been tied down to my pilot’s couch with what looked like the decorative cording from a samurai sword. Running down my left sidebum was a sticky, warmish trickle, its source apparently the bowling-ball-sized knot of agony where something pretty hard had lately smacked me on the temple.
Bet I could guess the color of that trickle.
And I was probably staring at that “something pretty hard,” right now: a Solar Dominion, Navy-issue, X-ray laser pistol, one each, Dr. Ab Cromney’s fingers wrapped securely around the grip, directing its grimly threatening muzzle at my battered forehead.
3 Inca Dinka Doo
My EARS HURT, FROM THE CORNER OF ONE EYE, I could make out the big dual faces of my Academy-issue watch:
+ 22.8539 MAY 23 0802:13.1
+ 15.9277 OCT 05 1708:15.9
But what did I care? I wasn’t going anywhere.
“You must pardon our little Edna,” Dr. Cromney offered with incongruous cordiality, glancing distastefully toward the bulkhead door where she had made her rapid, huffy exit. “She has no small number of peculiar.. .sensitivities, and this”—the heavy pistol wavered as he motioned with it at the still-swinging DreamCap—-“appears to be one of them.”
That woulda been a swell time to jump him. I could feel the sharp-cornered outline of my .45 still under the coverall. But they never seem to tie down the stereodrama heroes near as tight, somehow, as I found myself now. Doin’ pretty well, I reckoned, if there was any feeling left in my hands and feet.
“Gotcha, Doc,” I answered instead, givin’ him my best man-to-man wink. “‘The secret fear that someone, somewhere, is happy.’ Now WHAT IN THE IRRADIATED NAME OF H1RNSCHLAG VON OCHSKAHRT ARE YOU DOING ON MY CONTROL DECK?"
Heplar chose these words of mine to make his entrance on, nodded with illuminating familiarity toward Cromney, squeezed into the left-hand control position, and began deprograming Georgie. All that painstaking coursework I’d laid in, gone with a wipe of the erasing heads. It was gonna be a real pleasure putting a bullet into that mutinous skunk.
Cromney smiled indulgently. “For a fellow sufficiently erudite to quote Mencken, Captain, you possess remarkably little self-control.” Now he wiggled his gun toward the copilot’s seat. “Your assistant here—”
“My former assistant!” I hollered, abandoning a lifelong habit of keeping my emotions outa my work. “The creep’s fired—and under arrest!”
Heplar looked up from his busy work. For the first time since I’d had the initial misfortune of layin’ eyes on him, he grinned. I could see why he didn’t make a regular practice of it: put me in minda Quasimodo’s little buddies, hangin’ off the eaves of Notre Dame Cathedral.
“As you will. Captain,” Cromney continued, unperturbed. “In any event, with commendable hardiness, you began regaining consciousness earlier than suited our purposes. Young Heplar here made the uncharacteristically astute suggestion that the DreamCap might occupy your attentions until we were prepared to make use of you. However, ample indication arose”—-he waved that Navy laser at the crotch of my uniform, and I aged ten years right on the spot—“at least in Edna’s admittedly narrow view, that you were enjoying yourself altogether too much.”
Tucking the pistol under his arm, he reached up to the overhead and snapped out the dream cassette, glancing at the label. “My, my, Captain, small wonder! She is a bit of a spoilsport where it comes to—well, I gather it’s been Professor Kent’s misfortune to discover that there has never been any woman bom with more genuine feeling than a common bath sponge. He—”
“My heart bleeds for the twerp!” I squirmed, watching my fingers turning purple as the cordage cut into my wrists. “Cromney, I’m pretty well nailed down here. Why not put away that oversized flashlight an’ tell me what the hell is
going on?”
Cromney’s hold on that Navy blaster didn’t falter. I craned my neck, trying to see what Heplar was up to. He’d finished unpushing my buttons and begun ad-libbing a few of his own with what may have been the ghost of a chuckle.
It was echoed by Cromney. “How pitiably trite. This, I take it, is the point where I, as chief among the conspirators, am expected to Tell All so that you, the presumed protagonist, may then proceed to foil our dastardly plot and save ihe world.” He shook his head with mock regret. “I’m inclined to deny you any such clarification, Captain; it would greatly please me doing so. And I assure you, there will be no opportunity for heroics on your part.
“However, it is necessary that I give you an indication of our intentions in order to enlist your cooperation, willing or—as I suspect will prove the case—otherwise.”
He paused for several pulsebeats, as if waiting for a sarcastic comeback. But—remember the difference between a sadist and a masochist?—5 didn’t give him any. I thought of severa
l, none worth being X-rayed to death by an ego-tripping crazy. I could feel a little warm pool of stickiness filling up the hollow of my collarbone—hoped it wouldn’t get to my Colt. Nothing like blood for corroding steel.
Cromney was forced to resume awkwardly. “Very well, then, Captain. We are appropriating your vehicle, with the object of transporting ourselves to a milieu where its impressive and intimidating appearance should serve us well: Eleventh-Century Cuzco, five hundred years before the advent of the Spaniards to that subsequently unhappy land.” He leaned back against the console, grinning smugly.
I groaned, despite myself. “Not another one of those! Teach-the-Incas-to-mop-up-on-Pizarro-creating-a-magnifi-cent-Indian-civilization. Tell me, Doc, why not the Caribs? Why not the Aztecs? They were friendly, peace-lovin’ folks, right after your own heart—with a ceremonial obsidian dagger!”
He waved the laser again, with a negligence that tied my stomach in a clove-hitch around my esophagus. “No, no, my dear fellow, nothing so naive as that. It could be any ancient culture, don’t you see? Any gathering of savages with the requisite numbers and resources.”
I groaned again, this time for effect. “The old Connecticut Yankee bit? Didn’t they tell you the Academy loboto-mizes a hundred would-be Sir Bosses, Jason dinAlts, and Lord Kalvans every year, each one with the same half-baked idea? Shucks, I understand, it was irresistible even before the invention of time-travel.”
Like Colonel Cuthbert, Cromney had a problem: there wasn’t enough room in the control cabin to pace back and forth, and it seemed to be getting to him. “But you’ve only the least important part of it, Captain!” He fidgeted. Was that a fanatic glint in his eye or just the lighting?
“Oh, I think I get it, Doc: with Georgie here, you an’ your friends’ll be gods in pre-Columbian Peru. Power, money, women...” I thought about those poor trusting Incas filling a room to the rafters with gold for Atahualpa’s ransom. “You shoulda asked me what it’s like bein’ God— no fun at all. Why can’t you nutsies ever think of somethin’ original?”
“Be silent that you may do what is required of you!” Guess I’d sorta pinked him on that one. His fingers whitened on the pistol grip, veins stood out on his forehead, and the big glassy eye of the laser surged a foot nearer my battered face. Not exactly a net gain for Bemie, so I shut up.
Cromney expended visible effort reestablishin’ control. “I’ll not attempt to justify myself to you, Gruenblum, nor let you anger me further. You are a lackey of the entrenched powers, and what we aspire to requires no justification. Let it suffice that I and the others represent the Non-Ideological Re-Distributionist Society, who—”
“The NIRDS? That buncha quasi-leftist weirdos? Now I understand that MarxoFriedmanite routine of Kent’s. He was feelin’ around t’see if I’d throw in!”
Cromney smiled tolerantly, though he still looked a mite pale around the mouth. “The proper acronym is NRS, Captain. And you’re correct: had you shown Professor Kent something other than the eternal sarcasm you display for all things in this universe, events might very well have ended differently for you.”
Curiosity got the better of caution. “Then why’re you keepin’ me around? Why not just knock me off, get me outa the way?”
If I could get my right hand a little looser, maybe I could reach my AS—if my fingers’d work.
“Before you answer that, Doc, why don’tcha lemme have a smoke? I promise I’ll be good, an’ you can explain NIRD-ism to me again. Denny Kent ain’t too articulate. Who knows, maybe I’ll see the light—now how’d it go? Somethin’ about ’thesis, antithesis, an’ prosthesis’?.., ”
Cromney did a number with his eyebrows. “Very clever, Captain, but of no avail. We will dispose of you in our own time, after you have served your purpose. Nor shall I loosen the least of your bonds. I am uncomfortably aware of the unarmed combat techniques taught by your reactionary masters.” He shifted to a position against the console he musta felt was appropriately professorial.
Either that or he was afraid I’d karate-chop him with my earlobes an’ was movin’ back outa range.
“Finally, Captain, the NRS has nothing, in any explicit sense, to do with Marx or any of the ancient ideologues. You see, the classic advocates of Economic Democracy did all of their writing only after the First Industrial Revolution. By that time, of course, it was far too late for a suffering humanity. The new class of exploiters was established, the masses mindlessly enamored of consumption, and there was no moral revolution to equal the merely mechanical one. We shall correct that error of timing, return to an earlier era armed with rational, collective econometrics. Only when mankind is properly prepared, shall we permit advances in technology, and then only under the strictest, most humane ...”
It was the usual. Go back in time, use a lotta fireworks an’ high-tech to impress the natives, issue a few commandments. Then skip forward a few decades t’see how things’d worked out. Lay down the law again an’ jump another generation or two, over an’ over again, until your personal idea of Utopia’s achieved an’ you can put down roots as Philosopher-King an’ resident Livin’ Legend.
Kinda thing I’d done by accident with the Freenies.
I hadda hand it to Cromney an’ his crew, though. T’my knowledge, nobody’d ever gotten this far with it before. Usually the real crazies never made it to the Moon, or at least to the Academy. Psych-exams weeded out potential problem-passengers well before they were okayed for a mission. An’ usually the pilot didn’t fall asleep on the job— could be our little Edna was right about the DreamCap.
On the other hand, the Academy’s got lotsa secrets it doesn’t share with bus drivers. Timeships just like Georgie are rumored to’ve disappeared before. Not many (I think), but enough t’make you wonder just how real history is, after all.
I had more immediate problems: Cromney, Kent, Janof, even Heplas—was everybody here a mutineer? What did they want from me? What did they intend for me afterward?
There was movement in the door behind us. Denny Kent had arrived from wherever he’d been keeping himself. Neither he nor Heplar, I noted with some amusement, was armed. So much for democracy. I turned my red, roughened, dishpan ears toward Cromney again:
“Naturally, it will be necessary at first to display ourselves in a manner to effectively enhance our credibility. In primitive cultures, this requires a show of force and wealth. But only for the sake of our eventual, benign goal, a truly egalitarian social order where such displays are unnecessary.” He threw a glance at Kent, suppressing a shudder which he somehow managed t’transform into a broad, manly wink. “Yes, Captain,” he said—more for the Professor’s benefit than mine—“and despite the cynical manner in which you chose to express it, we shall have need of many local women. An unavoidable necessity in our show of power and riches.”
He drew himself closer now, lettin’ the laser muzzle drop a bit. “Moreover, I freely acknowledge that women have been oppressed, historically. Men, owing to their superior sensibilities, are more emotionally vulnerable. In any engagement of wills, the more ruthlessly destructive party always triumphs. And women, sir, recognize no bounds to ruthlessness. Like any dangerous animal, they must be controlled, as much for their own good as anyone eise’s.” Talk like that made me a mite uncomfortable. I wasn’t prepared t’write the whole gender off, but thinkin’ back, I couldn’t recall ever meetin’ a woman who had all her oars in the water. I’d often lamented m’self—usually over the seventh or eighth beer—what a shame it was they couldn’t all be sensible, rational. Sorta like my Georgie.
He straightened again. “Also, as a practical matter, we have only one woman—”
“An’ from what you tell me, she ain’t much of a prize t’anyone, ’specially poor ol’ Kent here, right?”
There was a feral growl. Before I could lift m’shoulders an’ swivel m’head, Cromney an’ Heplar’d both jumped up, pilin’ themselves in fronta Kent t’keep him from doin’ me an injury. My harpoon’d sunk home. T
hey danced around awhile gettin’ the Professor quieted down, but I had other concerns: by now my fingernails’d started turnin’ black.
Wonderin’ how all these loonies’d gotten assigned t’gether on a mission ticked off another point on m’ worry list: I hadn’t seen the Freenies since this nastiness’d begun. They were probably the reason the Academy’d been hasty an’ careless settin’ up this excursion. I’d been afraid t’ask after ’em in the faint hope the hijackers’d somehow overlooked ’em.
How do y’tie up a Freenie, anyway?
It was suddenly quiet again. Cromney—an’ his pistol— rejoined me, his face livid, his hands shaking in fury. With nothing much to lose, I decided to risk pushing him further: “Gotta question for you, Doc. What d’you think the Academy’s gonna do while you’re messin’ around with their past—sit on their hands? Lemme tellya, the first misplaced virgin or purloined golden idol, an’ there’ll be ripples up an’ down the continuum that’ll have a fleet of planet-wreck-ers on your ugly neck so quick it’ll—”
Alarmingly, Cromney threw back his bushy head and began to bray, his lesser cohorts essaying nervous chuckles behind him.
“By heaven, Captain, I’ve looked forward to telling you this for days! It’s precisely where you come into the picture. You see, we aren’t going back directly to Cuzco. Instead, we shall spend some little time patrolling the Fifteenth-Century Atlantic Ocean, destroying any exploratory European vessel which sails within a thousand kilometers of the New World. A few decades of disappearing ships and they’ll go back to believing the world is flat!”
He turned to receive admiring glances from his underlings.
“You will direct that search and destruction, Captain, as I was severely limited in my choice of help”—he directed an angry look at my former assistant—“and young Heplar here confesses that his skills may not be up to it. In any event, only then will we sojoum to Peru—-by which time there will be no Academy to pursue us!"