Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell (10 page)

Elliot was staring off into the distance. “Hmm. I believe we are about to experience a valuable clue into that matter, friend Bill.”

“Clue?” Bill turned around in the direction Elliot was facing. Sure enough, approaching them was a rooster-tail of dust.

And the cause of that upraised dust was definitely not roosters, though Bill and Elliot would certainly have cause to wish they had been, later.

They came in a clattering of hooves and a flurry of war whoops, an advancing effluvium of poorly dried animal skins, horse puckey and buffalo chips wafting out before them.

They rode strange and ferocious four-legged animals that Bill recognized from WESTERN HISTORICAL HORROR comix as being gorses or horses or something like that. The warriors mounted on the gorses' backs — or was it morses? — had eyes that were glaring wild, while their faces and bodies were streaked with war paint. Trailing backward in the wind were feathered headdresses like proud animal manes, flashing brilliantly in the sun.

Ca—rack!

Something whooshed close to Bill's ear.

Woo-HOOOOOSH!

Pointed feather shafts hurtled past them, burying their barbed heads in the sand or thunking into cactus.

“Arrows!” screamed Elliot. “They're shooting arrows at us, Bill!”

“Bullets with feathers!” howled Bill, already turned about-face and starting on the first footfall of a frantic run. “They're shooting feathered bullets at us, Elliot!”

With a clatter of hoofbeats, the pursuing war party sprinted the few remaining yards, splitting in two as they did so to surround the fleeing time travelers. Bill found himself suddenly confronted by a pair of fierce-eyed savages, pointing particularly sharp-looking lances at them.

Bill thought it wise to stop in his tracks and throw up his arms in immediate surrender. Elliot did likewise, but added the even wiser maneuver of falling on his knees in total and abjectly quivering defeat.

Seeing that this was the best of all possible recourses in their present hopeless situation, Bill tumbled as well.

The wild-eyed savages hauled on the reins of their steeds, pulling up just short of the visitors. The lances were not withdrawn however; rather, Bill, to his extreme discomfort, found a razor-sharp length of steel attempting frontier barber duty at his throat.

“Ugh!” said a commanding voice behind them.

“I thought so,” said Elliot, having difficulty talking, since an identical length of metal had been jabbed next to his throat. “Indians!”

“You mean, the kind that were playing cricket against Sir Dudley's team?” said Bill.

“No, no, Bill. Red Indians. North American plains Indians of nineteenth-century, lost-but-not-forgotten, Earth! I don't wish to brag, but I did rather well in history in Time School.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“We appear to be somewhere in an unpopulated area of the American Southwest, these guys sure look like something out of my favorite John Whine movie, FORT SCROFULA — and besides, 'Ugh' is a definite Indian word of surly greeting.”

“Utter rubbish,” said the same voice. “I was merely expressing my extreme disgust at your repulsive presences!”

Bill turned around.

Standing tall in his saddle was a particularly noble-looking redskin, his chest puffed out in a haughty manner. He had a powerful frame, large biceps wrapped in ceremonial leather straps and studs, hung with claws and teeth of long-dead carnivores. Bill had seen his type in bars, and he could usually best him in a bar brawl, since noble sorts tended to fight fair and Bill's brawling was definitely of the dirty and underhanded variety. However, all the rifles and aimed arrows, to say nothing of the razor blade beneath his chin, prevented Bill from any notion of fighting at the moment.

“Oh,” said Bill, showing his very best buttocks-bussing smile. “Hi! Great skin-paint job,” he smarmed. “Nifty clothes. Who's your tailor?”

“I should ask you the identical question!” grunted the Indian. “I have never seen such garb before, and I am a graduate of Harvard.” He scratched his head. “Or was that Yale! I confess, this blasted sun has been getting to me lately! Buffalo Billabong! My medicine!”

“Yes, oh Chief Thunder Bluster!” yapped a short, stocky man, wearing a nine-and-a-half-gallon hat with an ostrich feather stuffed in the top and corks dangling from bits of string all around the rim, as he stumped up to his master's horse. Around the medicine's man shoulder was hung a pouch, and from the puffy leather thing he drew out a bottle of sickly green fluid. “Here you go, cobber. And g'day, lads! And by the way, Chiefie — that was Kalamazoo Business Institute where you got your chief's skin.” The red-nosed man then pulled himself up a gigantic can of Foster's lager and sprayed the assembled mightily as he opened it. “Oh well. Another one of these to'dai will probably make me chunder. But what the bloody hell!”

The man lifted beer to lips and guzzled, his Adam's apple and his corks bobbing with equal enthusiasm.

Bill's eyes bugged. Boy, he wanted that beer! However, more than even beer, Bill desired to keep his carotid artery unsevered and to prevent his blood from spurting willy-nilly about the desert floor.

“You see what I mean, Bill!” said Elliot. “A classic Indian medicine man! I estimate that we must indeed be in the American Southwest — oh, about 1885, I'd say!”

“Again I must inquire,” said Chief Thunder Bluster. “Who are you? Quickly, before I slice open your bellies for those vultures' antipasto!”

“We are travelers in time, oh Great Chief! Servants of Truth and Right and Great Tonto Fans!” said Elliot in his most obsequious tone.

“We're looking for a dirty, hairy hippie back here who wants to change the very fabric of time from 100 percent cotton to 50 percent polyester and 50 percent rayon!” said Bill, and instantly shook his head and wondered why he had said it. The heat! It was getting him.

“Yes, and the entire Universe of the future has turned Nazi and only I, Elliot Methadrine, and my boon companion Bil—”

“That's with two Ls.”

“— only two-L'ed Bill and I can save it by apprehending that history-hammering hippie. Now then Chief ... what do you say? You don't want to see a universe dominated by goose-stepping sausage suckers, do you? To say nothing of foul-smelling zoned-out herbiage-smoking rebels?”

“50 percent polyester and 50 percent rayon!” said Chief Thunder Bluster. “Why, that's the exact content of my wigwam!”

“That's far out!” husked the medicine man, downing one of the buzzards with his empty Foster's can. “In fact,” he continued as he pulled out a huge peace pipe and tamped great amounts of suspiciously green shag into the bowl, “I should say it's bloody well cosmic, mates!”

“Gee —” sottoed Elliot, sotto voce to his companion. “You don't think, Bill, that the hippie might have come back to score some grass and accidentally changed history?”

“I think I'd like to score one of those beers, myself,” Bill said hoarsely.

“Say, noble Chief,” Elliot whined invitingly. “Why don't we take this pow-wow back to that bargain wigwam of yours, perhaps share a view of your brews and talk this over mano a red mano!”

“Silence!” ordered the Chief. “In a word — no! Since we do not know what is to be done with you strange dung-beings from Beyond, then we must bring it before Higher Authority!”

“Ah! You mean there's a delegation of the United States Cavalry here then!” said Elliot. “You know, Bill, my history teacher always said that the Cavalry always came to the rescue in these sort of tight spots back in the West. Except, of course, in the case of Custer's Last Stand.”

“Custard? Eating? Booze?” said one-thought-on-his-brain, maximum two, Bill.

“What I mean, repulsive strangers, is that we shall bring you up before the Altar of the Gods, where it shall be decided what shall be done with you!”

“Altar of the Gods,” whimpered Elliot. “Sounds ominous.”

With quick skill the savages hog-tied Bill and Elliot thoroughly, then started to drag them through the hot desert sand toward their date with the local deities.

All in all, Bill thought, an impressively depressing first day back in the past.

But then that wasn't precisely a surprise, since all of Bill's past was depressing.

Water splashed on Bill's face.

As much as he usually disdained the stuff, he found himself gulping at it automatically, to slake the mammoth thirst that engulfed him. For a moment he thought he was on some blissful pleasure planet, in bathing suit and water-wings, frolicking with water nymphs; such was the dementia that the baking sun had brought about. Ah yes! The resort of Blub-blub on the world of Glug; or perhaps even Splash-Splash Beach in the Snorkle-Dork system!

But no sooner had these gulps of water hauled him back up out of the depths of unconsciousness than Bill realized that not only was the sun beating down on him explicitly not of the vacation-resort variety, but that he was still stuck in this horrible desert in this wretched time, with the added burden of a good dozen cactus spines stuck in his nether parts.

“Ye — Ouch!” he said, blundering up to his feet, blinking and gasping. Well, it would seem that he'd been freed of his bonds, but that didn't necessarily mean anything wonderful. Bill wiped the water from his eyes and stumbled about, trying to get bearing and balance. “Elliot! Where are you, Elliot!” he called, trying to make out the parched environment with his bleared vision. He staggered forward a few yards, until he bumped into something ... something hard. He heard a distinct hissing sound in stereo, and he thought maybe he'd bumped into some sort of motorized vehicle with two punctured tires. He stepped back so as not to get run over, and to get a better look at this obstacle.

Groaning, Bill wiped the water from his eyes. He looked up, and what stood before him was most emphatically not what he'd expected.

“Yikes!” said Bill, forgetting the pain of the cactus needles. For, rearing above him at a goodly height of ten feet was a monolithic creature of ghastly countenance. In fact, two countenances — and both of the heads looked like serpents or alligators or something else definitely Chingeroid.

Twin serpent tongues flickered out at ridiculous lengths. Glittering eyes stared down at Bill. Nor was this the last of the terrors this outrageously repulsive creature held. Its arms held out toward Bill ended in hands like scorpion tails. Great breasts like unholstered howitzers hung from the chest: whatever creature it was, it was female. In fact, it even wore some sort of skirt. A curious fashion statement indeed, the skirt appeared to consist entirely of living, curling snakes!

No, this female was not precisely the answer to his lustful prayers!

Bill staggered back, but tripped and fell. With a great snarling, threatening heave, the monster roared toward him.

“Don't eat me!” cried Bill. “I don't taste very good! Elliot! Help! Sir Dudley! Help! Anybody! Help!”

But Elliot and Sir Dudley did not respond, nor in fact did anybody come to the rescue. The monstrous thing rolled up to Bill, hovering.

“Who.... Who are you?” asked Bill, squinting up at the thing, a bit blinded by the bright sun.

“My name,” said the creature, “is Cue-tip the mighty Aztec God, who guards this valley and consumes anyone who dares venture anywhere near that highly significant secret cave yonder that leads to someplace mysterious and highly forbidden! And you?”

“Bill.”

“Bill. A good and highly edible name.” The two pair of eyes glittered like jewels in the sun. “Bill-thing ... either you are very crazy to be here or the strong warriors of the Epoxy tribe have sent you down as a tasty sacrifice to get gulped down by my loathsome hungry self!”

“Actually, neither. I'm just — er — a friendly pilgrim in search of revelation. Thought maybe I would join your church. Religion, can't get too much of that. Any other god hereabouts besides your noble self?”

“So you seek religious succor. No way — you have to be born into the tribe. And there is no help from the others. Who include deities such as Phlegm — he's the one who favors chewing on beating hearts. And then there's Texaco, the condor beast; he likes to eat small human babies. And of course there's the noble king-god Coaxialcoitus, who devours the naked human maidens! Lots more minor deities, I suppose, but those are your basic pantheon, intruder. Now, if you'll be very still I'll just make short painful work instead of long drawn-out agony and you'll be my afternoon sacrificial supper, good and proper!”

Bill, however, had no intention of being anyone's supper, god or no god. “Look, I've got all these prickly things in me. I'll be quite rough going down your throat.”

“No problem. I'll murder you first and pluck you later!” The Aztec god bellowed the words, advancing. The snakes hissed and the scorpion claws snapped.

Bill was motivated to backpedal.

“Stay still, for there is no escape from the gods,” roared the creature. “How can I kill you if you keep scrabbling away from me?”

Keep her talking! The adrenalin-induced advice sizzled through Bill's brain cells. “But I seek guidance of the gods, great Cue-tip. Could you not reveal to a sinner exactly what's behind that door there?”

“What's behind the secret door? You mean, the door to the mysterious tunnel into an entirely different world? The one that I'm guarding? Well, I really can't tell you, now can I? That would be telling, and I'm here to guard the secret and — wait ... hey, come back here! You tricked me! You didn't really want to know! You just wanted the chance to escape from me! I bet you taste rotten! You don't really deserve to be eaten by a god!”

“I'll tell you what you can eat, Cue-tip!”

Bill was tearing away by this time, skipping yards ahead of the thing, but happy to be alive, despite the severe discomfort the cactus spines were causing. Surprised, as always, at the amount of energy he was able to invest into the continuation of his imminent personal survival, Bill tore up a long wide arroyo, strained his way up the slope, made a Herculean leap over the top, and even as he did he was gratified to hear the hissing and rattling of the guard-god Cue-tip receding behind him. He rolled down a dusty hill on the other side, gasping and heaving breaths.