Waiting for the Galactic Bus (23 page)

“Yeah. I got to, don’t I?”

“Everything must work for us now.” Drumm pointed a pudgy finger at Roy’s bloody sleeve. “Even that.”

Lovingly, Roy fingered the stained sleeve with its bullet holes as credential. “He was right, that old man, he did me a favor. Listen to them out there.” He drank in the thunder, the music. “That fucker made me God.”

With grand panache, Drumm threw open the balcony doors. The roar invaded the chamber like floodwaters from a burst dam. “Show them their God, Leader! Oh, and the blood. Cheat your left arm down — that is, be sure the wound is slightly turned toward them. After you, sir.”

Roy stepped out onto the balcony, bathing in the sweet balm of total power.

STRIDE! STRIDE! STRIDE! STRIDE!

    25   

Meanwhile, back at reality...

Woody and Milt sped Topside across the void. The first trip had been a bit unsettling for Woody, though not all that different from good science fiction movies. Once used to it, he found the whole experience a hoot, and how many nights like this could you expect in Plattsville?

“We might make another appearance sometime,” Milt supposed, “depending on how the script goes.”

“I’m worried about Char.”

“Writhing in the torment of a luxury duplex? What’s to worry?”

“It’s all phony,” Woody complained. “And Char’s a real person.”

“That ought to clue you, Barnes. She’s smarter than Roy, but still no hundred-watt bulb yet. She’s gotta learn for herself. Meanwhile you can’t complain about the scenery.”

That you couldn’t, Woody marveled: worlds and space and more worlds, colors he’d never imagined possible let alone seen, flickering through million-mile clouds of dust and gas alive with more worlds to come. Compared to this, Roy’s triumph was bush league; just that Woody knew the guy too well.

“Roy’s a dumb prick, but a dangerous one.”

“Hey — take advice,” Milt counseled as they soared through the black and silver of endless space. “My family were experts on the fascist mind. Roy’s a fuck-up like Hitler. What’s the opposite of fail-safe? Success-safe. These turkeys have got to lose because most of their thinking is off the wall to begin with. Think about it: there’s Adolf rearranging Europe like a hyperactive housewife, shrewd as they come, and still getting his horoscope done every goddamned day, which is like seriously figuring Santa Claus into the national budget. These people are not coming from common sense; they simply can’t think big. Give Stride a steady job and his own mediocrity would keep him in his place.” Milt Kahane laughed suddenly, twisting around to grin at Woody. “Now there’s a thought. If Hitler could’ve made it as an artist, we might’ve skipped a whole war — hey!”

Milt looked quickly over his shoulder as a series of flashing lights bathed them in hard brilliance, then rolled over in a steep dive. “INCOMING!”

Woody banked in a tight turn after him as the swift ship slid past them, glittering in and out of visibility before it vanished in the distance. The damn thing barely missed them. It could have... Woody felt at himself to see if the whole inventory was there and not hanging off the damn hit-and-run ship.
“Holy,
Milt. What the hell was that?”

“You got me.” Milt swerved back on course, fuming. “Dumb son of a bitch almost ran right up our tails. Just like the Long Island Expressway: long as their horn works, who needs brakes?” He bellowed his scorn after the alien ship.

“Tourist!”

Their ship had been in matter phase for the few instants Maj needed for control calibration. The two human-energy readings came up on them so quickly that she flustered for a moment. Beside her, Sorlij scanned the readouts.

“Whatever that was,” he said, “I don’t believe it.”

“Conventionalized human-energy forms.”

“Can’t be. Scanner malfunction.” Sorlij punched in a system check, then called up various star charts on the screen. “We’re getting close, I’m positive. I think it was the fourth planet in this system.”

Maj disagreed: the fourth planet could barely sustain microbe life when they visited last. “The third.”

“You’re sure?”

“How could I forget?” Maj was in a particularly seductive form now, favored by the more successful women of her kind. She shimmered like bright metal immersed in clear water, and the gently reminiscent emotions turned her to a rainbow shower. “We made love in human form there. You remember how fashionable it was then.”

Sorlij didn’t remember all that well but was diplomatic enough to share her smile of pleasurable recollection. “Who cared then where we were? But I’m sure it’s this system.”

“There it is.” Part of Maj’s rainbow elongated to a pointer as the definitely familiar clouded blue ball loomed on her view-screen.

“So it is. I wish I hadn’t been so drunk when we landed.”

“Darling, I’m glad you were. You tended to be terribly serious.” Maj’s colors dulled slightly as her mood turned analytical. “Reading the third planet now.”

Absorbed with the world growing on the screen, Sorlij didn’t notice Maj’s chromatic change from faded rainbow to the dull brown of shock. “Sorlij, listen!”

More than just listening,
they felt
 — a torrent of human energy, a cacophony of languages, mechanical and even nuclear activity.

“No malfunction,” Sorlij stated grimly. “Those were human-energy forms.”

Which raised questions troublesome as they were intriguing. “Sorlij... could it be?”

Sorlij didn’t want to believe what the readouts told him: relatively advanced human life infecting not only the planet but polarized in two distinct post-physical energy pools. “Maj, enter a problem. Precise time point of our last visit.”

She formed a delicate hand with seven agile digits that danced over the computer keyboard. “Entered.”

“Primate parameters as observed then, approximate brain development in cc.”

“Entered.”

“From elapsed time, extrapolate anthropoid development to present. Query: nuclear technology possible?”

Maj’s slender temporary fingers tap-danced over glittering inductance squares. “Computed.”

They read the dismal results expressed in formulae. Maj summarized them on a sinking note. “From our givens, some extraordinarily gifted specimen might just about have discovered the bow and arrow. However...” She broke off to scan a parenthetical insert to the results. Sorlij read it with her.

“However,” he echoed hollowly.

Based on the developmentary arc of twenty other primate species over two galaxies, the ape should have been too stupid to meet nine out of ten predictable early challenges. The few prodigies that developed beyond the point of their last visit would not have survived the probable polar tilt and the first long winter. Not to mention their penchant for intramural slaughter.

“Forced development,” was Sorlij’s inevitable conclusion.

“Oh yes.”

Nor was that the worst of it. Intellectual growth could be augmented or accelerated. Emotional growth, too random a process, could not, though its relation to the former could be stated as a fairly predictable arithmetical lag behind the logarithmic progress of intellect.

Maj ran a swift line check to verify their results. No error. If she was a hedonist in her youth, Maj was now very practical. “The disparity is monstrous. I’d say they’re technically brilliant, emotionally primitive and not a few of them quite mad.”

Even superior beings had limits to their comprehension. Sorlij was close to his. “This is not supposed to happen. It’s not my field. How do I deal with this?”

Instantly Maj was all comfort, entwining her essence with his. “There, dear. Whatever it takes, you’ll manage.”

“But how could it
happen?”

“Don’t be dense, dear. Our little lost lambs.”

Sorlij changed color dramatically as he realized the unthinkable. “Oh no. No...” He materialized a specialized rump and collapsed on it. “Barion. That disgusting, egotistical, irresponsible —”

“And as of now, criminal fool.” Maj’s reflections were weighted with delicious malice. “And his musical brother. The matched banes of existence.”

“Excuse me, Maj. I’m going to go human for a moment.” Sorlij did just that. “I want to feel sorry for myself. I was so happy, Maj. So successful with marine organisms.”

“Darling, it’s hardly your fault.”

“I left them there, both of them too drunk to move. A degree of culpability, that’s what they’ll say at home. Why, Maj? My mollusks were showpieces. I was working toward a decorative form of kelp. A really fine lungfish. Why me?”

Maj turned human to complement him, managing a lustrous cross between a sitcom wife and a centerfold. “Because you’re the best for the job and everyone knows it.”

“Yes,” he admitted with manly resignation. “That’s true.”

Maj guessed from experience: now he would say
it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

“It’s a dirty job —”

“Yes, darling.”

Sorlij glared at the energy readouts emanating from the third planet and its vicinity. They were spectacularly mad. “Those two little
brats.
There’s not even a word to do them justice.”

“Excuse me, dear.” With the flick of one delicate finger, Maj brought the ship out of jump to sublight. “The word for them is ‘finished.’”

    26   

A rescue! A rescue!

From her Jacuzzi or watching over the shoulder of the inexhaustible Randy Colorod, Charity followed the mounting TV drama of Roy’s fevered quest for her. BSTV made the most of it —

“This is Nancy Noncommit, BSTV news anchor. Top story this hour: the Paladin search continues for Char the mystery star.”

Quick cut to Drumm close-up, smoothing his little mustache. “Below Stairs is simply not large enough to hide a woman of such importance. The Black-Jewish-Catholic-Communist dissidents responsible will pay severely when apprehended. I would also like to say for the record —”

Cut back to Nancy Noncommit: “... idiot will talk all night.” (Sees her camera light on. The blank smile flashes automatically.) “Meanwhile White Paladin guards are combing the streets and residential neighborhoods for any lead to the missing fiancée of Leader Roy Stride. BSTV news is on the spot with one interrogation team.”