greenless things. let’s make them pretty like us. give them two assholes.
yuk, yuk, yuk.
going to melt them good, is what we are going to do. can I do it?
you did the last.
did not.
did too.
did not.
They never finished their argument. Twain fired the ray from their machine, struck the Martian device solid. The windshield was knocked off whole. The machine twirled around on its legs so hard it practically braided them.
The machine went down.
“It was like before,” Twain said. “They appeared to be quarreling.”
Ned wrote:
QUARRELING CAN BE BENEFICIAL AND EVEN HEALTHY. BUT QUARRELING TOO MUCH, AND DURING TIMES OF STRESS AND IN TIMES OF NEED, IT CAN REALLY FUCK YOU UP. WITNESS THE MACHINE IN QUESTION. IT’S JUST SO MUCH JUNK NOW. IT IS BETTER NOT TO QUARREL. IT IS BETTER TO SIT DOWN OVER A DINNER OF FISH AND DISCUSS YOUR PROBLEMS. FEMALE SEALS ARE CONSIDERABLY MORE WILLING WHEN THEY HAVE FILLED THEIR BELLIES WITH FISH.
“I’ll believe that,” Twain said, working controls, helping the machine race down the street.
Other machines and their occupants had witnessed the destruction of one of their own machines by another, and now they were rushing toward our heroes.
Our heroes had the lead and —
FIRST PHASE OF THE RACE
— they’re off, and down the street they go, leaping, darting, weaving, and, oh shit, had to leap over some downed carts, and one tentacle went into a dead man’s body, and that sucker is hung on the end of it now like a wad of chewy tobaccy on the bottom of a boot. It’s throwing off our heroes a bit, and —
SECOND PHASE OF THE RACE
— here they come, the Martians, and there are seven machines, and those green, multi-tentacled, two-assholed sonsabitches, they can really work those things. Running their machines like goddamn deer, they are, closing, closing, closing —
THIRD PHASE OF THE RACE
— four to the right, three to the left, and, with a shake of the tentacle, our heroes’ machine is free of the dead body, and now Twain and Verne, they’ve got their gears pushed all the way forward, and they’re working the balance controls, and whoopie, sudden stop, and —
FOURTH PHASE OF THE RACE
— Martian machines go, oh shit, because the humans (one assholed mother-father-uncle-aunt-hive-fuckers) have stopped short, and they have tried to stop short with them, and the results are the big-double assed Martians are being smacked against their windshields.
squirty ass juice and sweaty nut balls, cries one.
One machine loses control, topples into another, their legs get entwined, down they go, thrashing about on the street and up against buildings like a stuck pig kicking out its last.
No time to help their comrades. they’re down. way down. and frankly, they don’t give a damn. they aren’t big on sentiment.
Martians turn about angry, tentacles on those ray levers, baby, but the humans, they are gone. done took off like the proverbial and legendary spotted ass ape —
THE WINNERS!
— bounding along toward Big Ben they go, and inside the machine, Twain, he actually says, Wheeee!
Of course, it doesn’t matter. The winner gets dick.
And the losers, they are not in a mood, so to speak.
And furthermore, or meanwhile, as is said in the story trade, our erstwhile heroes approach the tower clock, and right off they see there’s good news, and there’s bad news.
Good news:
Rikwalk, going his own way, over buildings, down side streets, sneaky as a Paiute Indian in a war party, has made the tower clock. He’s there.
That’s the good part.
Now for the bad news:
Rikwalk has been seen. He’s scuttling up the side of the tower, gripping a Martian by one of its legs. He has somehow broken into one of the machines (scuttled up it, smashed the glass with his fist, pulled out the Martian), and he’s dragging the creature with him up the side of Big Ben.
He’s a fast climber, Rikwalk is, and way up there he goes.
But there’s more bad news:
Machines are closing in on him.
He works his way to the top of the tower, and there, holding the Martian, he begins to use the creature as a thrash rag, slinging him from side to side, bouncing him off of the clock tower, calling out names in English and in a language our heroes do not recognize.
Rays cut the air around him.
Zip. Zip. Zip.
Rikwalk can feel the hair on his body singeing, the rays are so close. He’s so certain he’s about to buy it, he can imagine his ancestral apes sitting on the limb of the great tree of life, dicks in one hand, the other over their eyes, their mouths open, but silent.
Rikwalk starts leaping up and down on the side of the clock, hanging on to it with one hand, dangling the Martian with the other, making primitive ape sounds.
“Ooohhh, oooohhhh, fucking shit. Ooohhhhh, oooohhhh. Eat my shit. Ooohhh, ooohhhh. Cocksucking octopussies.”
“We’ve got to help him,” Twain says.
Ned, who has his eye pressed against a smaller rear window turns, writes:
WE STILL HAVE MARTIAN MACHINES ON OUR TAIL.
“One thing at a time,” Twain said.
Verne says, “Turn it. Quick.”
And they do. Now they’re facing the machines that are in pursuit. They fire rays. One of the machines takes a hit. It’s charred on the side and part of the glass is melted out, but it keeps on coming.
The two that fell, they’re still down, struggling to free their entwined tentacles.
A ray hits our heroes’ machine.
It shakes. More of the glass falls out. Now there’s just a sliver of glass in the right-hand corner.
Ned thinks: Must think of happy moments. Fish. Fish. Fish. Nookie. Nookie. Nookie. Fish. Fish…”
“Turn it back,” Twain says. “Run this thing like a bastard.”
And they do. Sprinting their way toward the tower.
“We’ll have Rikwalk leap on top of us when we get there,” Twain said.
“I don’t know that’s such a good plan.”
“You come up with another, let me know.”
Their machine sprang across the vast expanse of bricks and cobblestones toward the tower; sprang so hard the tentacles extended out in front of it like arrows being shot. Cement and brick popped up, this way and that, snapping like shrapnel.
It was quite the show, the way that machine leaped.
The Martians had never seen anything like it. They didn’t know the machines would do that, and they had built them.
got to give it to the humans, they are working that machine some good, they are, the one-assholed pieces of cosmic shit.
yes. (cough) damn. i’m getting a sore throat.
mind the controls.
i’m minding them.
mind them better.
are you trying to tell me how to (cough)…i’m not feeling so good.
now that you mention it, neither am i.
By this point, there wasn’t much left of the Martian corpse in Rikwalk’s hand, having slammed and smashed it against the side of the tower clock like he was dusting a rug. He threw the creature’s remains down at one of the machines attacking him. But it missed and fell splattering into the street.
Primitive ape behavior had taken over. Rikwalk ripped off his pants. He grabbed his dick and shook it at them. He dropped his dick and shit in his hand and threw the shit. He hit the windshield of one of the stalking towers, blurring the sight of the Martians inside.
The others closed in around the tower. They couldn’t miss with their death rays now. They lifted their heads, pointed their rays up.
Rikwalk waited for the big pop.
One moment, he thought, I am standing here, and the next moment I’ll be nothing more than a blazing hairball with a hand full of shit (for he had filled up again).
He opened his
eyes, determined to take it head on.
Then he saw bounding toward him another Martian machine. Behind it came five others. In the distance, lying in the street, he could see two others struggling to extricate themselves from one another.
The machine running toward him was the one containing his friends.
He raised the shit-filled hand, said, “Howdy, and so long.”
The Martian machines had the clock surrounded now.
They aimed their rays.
And Big Ben struck the time.
That close, the whole earth shook.
Rikwalk certainly shook.
And he fell.
The rays blasted the air where he had been.
Rikwalk let go of the handful of shit. He wasn’t that fond of it anyway.
He grabbed at the side of the clock tower, slipped (shit is greasy), grabbed again, and this time he caught a ridge, and hung there. Rikwalk dangled like a comma in a sentence.
“Help!” he said.
The Martians were surprised by the ape’s sudden drop and his loud yell. They tried to refocus their attack. And would have too, but now, things had really changed.
Not only were our heroes coming —
But so was Steam.
Only he didn’t know it yet.
You see, Steam was pressed up against the other side of the clock tower all the while.
Way it worked was like this:
The Martians thought he was part of the tower. A kind of statue standing next to the entryway. Standing tall. A symbol that let loose a bit of smoke from its top from time to time.
They didn’t know he had fire in his belly. They didn’t know he could move.
Steam stood there, hands on his hips, in plain sight all through the night and through the morning, like a statue, being passed by the Martian machines. The Martians had looked at him as if he were part of the clock tower.
Inside, where Beadle, John Feather and Passepartout waited, Beadle said, “Sometimes, I’m so smart I amaze my own goddamn self.”
“You the man,” John Feather said.
But that was then and this was now, and Steam, he moved.
Because, you see, inside of the metal man, Passepartout said, “That yell. No one sounds like that but Rikwalk. That’s his strange voice. I’d know it anywhere.”
“Then we have to help him,” Beadle said. “No matter what the cost.”
Beadle and John Feather put their hands on the controls, moved them. Steam stepped away from the clock, turned and walked around the edge of the tower, in the direction of the cry.
Simultaneously, all about and above them, the sky began ripping open in rips of red and blue, purple and yellow, and one rip of a very nice color that was somewhere between green and blue.
Twenty-two: A Ferocious Battle, Strange Happenings, Herbert Wells
“It’s happening,” Beadle said, seeing the rips through the stained-glass eyes of Steam. “Worlds are coming asunder.”
“We must concentrate on the matter at hand,” Passepartout said. “All else can wait, or happen without us.”
“Oh, it will do that all right,” Beadle said. “See there.”
Passepartout looked.
A large boat came sailing out of one of the rips, hit the street, slid, crashed into a building across the way.
“That’s just the beginning,” Beadle said. “Just the way it started on our world. And look there.”
One of the Martian machines, near the blue rip, was straining against something unseen. Then it seemed to stretch. And then —
— it was sucked up through a crack in the sky like liquid through a syphon hose.
Old cracks were closing, and new ones were opening.
“The rips still have a hard time staying open,” Beadle said.
“If our experience is a common one,” John Feather said, “that will change.”
But there was no more time for discussion. They had rounded the clock tower. Now they were looking directly at Martian machines. The machines had congregated at the front of Big Ben. Their round heads and their thick windshields were lifted skyward, toward what dangled from above.
Rikwalk.
Steam looked past them at the machines racing toward them. One of them was manned by none other than their friends Twain, Verne and Ned the Seal. They were clearly visible through the hole where the glass had been.
The Martian machines near the clock tower were so intent on their hanging prey they had not even noticed Steam’s arrival. Steam grabbed the nearest machine by one of its vining legs, jerked it off the ground, and gripping it with both metal hands, began to swing it.
Steam whirled it over his head, came around and struck another of the devices full smack-a-doodle. The Martian machines slammed together hard, exploded glass, green ichor, assholes and tentacles.
The remaining machines turned on Steam, who stood holding one metal tentacle. Rays were fired. One ray struck the metal behemoth in the neck, sliced through it like a hot knife through butter, came in like a burst of light through a bullet hole, hit Passepartout in the head.
His head went —
— POOF.
Nothing more.
A little explosion. A poof. Then there were black ashes settling to the floor. The remainder of his body collapsed, kicked and quit.
“Goddamn,” John Feather said.
Another ray struck one of the stained-glass eyes. Glass shards sprayed. Glass hit both Beadle and John Feather. A large piece went through John Feather’s cheek and lodged there, the tip of it poking through his gums, against his teeth.
Beadle snatched at the controls. Steam rushed forward, hunkered down. His fists flew.
And they made contact. The sound of metal on metal was deafening. Sparks flew from the blows. Martian machines went to pieces, were knocked about.
A ray was fired. Steam lost the metal tip of another one of his fingers.
Verne’s, Twain’s and Ned’s machine was right on top of the melee now. But instead of joining in they wheeled their machine and sent rays flying back at their pursuers.
Rays jumped out of the Martians they were attacking. The sky was dotted with light. There were so many rays, and they came so fast, it was as if someone were tossing stiff confetti.
And then a strange thing happened.
The foremost pursuer fell.
Just fell over.
Toppled and hit the ground with a thud, went skidding along on the pavement, sparks leaping up like startled red and yellow frogs.
“What the hell?” Twain said.
But there was no time to wonder. In the background, the two machines that had entangled their legs were now disengaged. They were up and coming.
Everyone and everything weighed in.
It looked like a bar fight.
Steam was throwing machines this way and that. Verne, Twain and Ned were too close to use their ray, feared they might hit Steam. But they swung one tentacle like a whip while they supported themselves on the other two.
They snapped it here. They snapped it there. Shattering windshields, popping exposed Martians. They scooped with it, jerking Martians out of broken windshields, slapping them on the ground, grabbing machine legs, tugging them out from under the machines, smashing them to the turf.
“They’re not that quick-witted,” Twain said. “They can build a machine, but they don’t have imagination. They fight like sissies.”
The other machines arrived.
The brawl went on.
The Martians didn’t mind using their rays close in.
But this didn’t work well for them. They quickly wiped out three of their own allies.
A few Martians escaped from broken windshields, or screwed open the plug trap doors, hustled down ladders (Ned thought: Hey, where’s our ladder? How come we don’t have a ladder?), scuttled onto the ground, looking for hiding places.
They didn’t find many.
Twain and Verne were pretty good shots with their ray. They cooked the M
artians on the street bricks quicker than Ned could write:
FASTER, FASTER, KILL, KILL.
There was a pause now.
The calm after the storm.
Steam extended a hand.
The machine extended a tentacle.
They shook.
Then, without really talking about it, the Martian machine Twain and Verne operated clambered up on top of Steam, stretched two tentacles high, clung to Steam with the other, coiling it around his head like a constrictor crushing its prey.
The tentacles grabbed hold of Rikwalk, who had climbed down even closer, and lifted him on top of Steam. Rikwalk climbed down the metal man quickly, stood happily on the ground.
No sooner was this done than Steam made a noise and froze up like a rust-encrusted bolt.
A ladder was dropped out of Steam’s ass. Beadle and John Feather climbed down, John pulling the glass from his cheek as soon as he descended.
Twain and Verne caused the Martian machine to coil its legs beneath its body, bringing it down to the ground. They unscrewed the plug and came out, Ned dragging the cruiser after him.
“Out of fuel,” Beadle said. “We’ll have to leave Steam. We were operating damn near off residue. We’re lucky we lasted as long as we did.”
“I think it’s time we leave our machine as well,” Twain said. “We’re a little conspicuous. And it’s taken a lot of damage.”
“We are close to Herbert’s home,” Verne said. “We must try to find him. Where is Passepartout?”
“He is gone,” Beadle said. “A ray struck him. He never knew what hit him.”
“My God,” Verne said. “Passepartout. My butler. My friend.”
“I feel for you, sir,” Beadle said, “but now is not the time to grieve. We must move on.”
The cruiser carried them all except Rikwalk. It was a tight fit in the device and it moved more slowly than usual, bearing the excess weight. It barely skimmed above the ground. But it carried them.
Rikwalk ran beside them, using his foreknuckles to propel him.
As they went, they were surprised to see Martian machines lying about. Both the stalking machines and the triangular flying craft; several of them had crashed, tearing apart, spraying the premises with residue of Martians.