Bill 3 - on the Planet of Bottled Brains (22 page)

“Hello, Disruptor!” Bill called.

“Hi there, Bill, long time no see,” the Disruptor said.

“Shut up,” the Alien Historian said, slapping the metal side of the Disruptor smartly. “He's not on our side. Don't talk to him.”

“Don't try to give me orders,” the Disruptor answered in a low but meaningful voice filled with the growl of menace.

The Alien Historian sighed. “Someone has been interfering with the hierarchical command-chains. It could not have been you, Ham Duo. You are brave and stalwart, but when they handed out the brains you were in the corner picking your toes. No, somebody is playing a subtle game here. I think it is time that whoever it is stands forth and declares himself.”

“Or herself,” a voice from the darkness beyond the campfire said.

“Illyria!” cried Bill.

The figure that stepped into the light of the bonfire was tall, erect and beautiful if you like the stalwart starlet type, and who doesn't? It was Illyria as she had been on the dream planet of Royo, full-breasted in her cross-my-heart bra, with long legs which would have been a delight to a topological pornographer if one had been present. Her eyes were of a cornflower blue that has been lost since the destruction of the Corning-ware research staff in the earthquake of '09. The firelight picked out her fine features and splendid contours, for these were enhanced by a filmy sort of short skirt and blouse made of a material both transparent and sleazy.

“Bill,” Illyria said, “it was naughty of you to leave me on Royo that way. I didn't realize how serious-minded you are. Don't worry, we don't have to spend all our time having fun. There are serious things ahead, too.”

“You tricked me, you minx!” the Alien Historian said.

“Yes, I did,” Illyria said. “But it was only because I had to.”

“And that's supposed to make it all right? You said you loved me!”

“I exaggerated,” Illyria said. “Now, try to think, what emotion of repugnance comes just below despising? That's what I feel for you.” She turned to Bill. “Come on, sweetheart, let's get out of here.”

She held out her hand to him. Bill gazed at it longingly. He really wanted to take it, but knew that it would lead to no good at all. Alien females and all that. What he really needed was the Disruptor that the Alien Historian held in his hand. But Duo had his eye on it too. And Duo had the gun, a nasty-looking Smirnoff pulsating needle beam. Bill could see that the dial was set to “automatic excruciating pain.” He decided not to try to take it away from Duo. Not at the moment, anyhow. Perhaps something would present itself. Opportunities had been known to happen. It was even within the bounds of the credible that Ham Duo might fall into a fainting fit.

At that instant Duo groaned, put his hand to his forehead in a fluttery gesture, and collapsed to the ground.

The Chinger scuttled out from behind Bill's back, limping since he had taken quite a blow during Bill's recent fall. He went over to Duo. “Interspacial Sleeping Sickness. A classic case. Don't stand too near to him. His latency is now at perigee.”

They all backed away hastily.

“Is he dead?” Bill asked.

“No, not at all, Interspacial Sleeping Sickness doesn't kill anyone, it just puts them to sleep for a while. I hope he's on the Blue Nebula Health Plan with its generous provisions for Major Medical. It looks like he's going to have to spend a while in a darkened room being fed intravenously while people stare at him curiously through the plate glass window.”

Ham stirred, groggily and moaned pitifully. Talking in his sleep he said, “All right, Bill. You win.”

He reached up feebly and handed the Disruptor to Bill. “Get me out of this!” he yawningly implored, and fell asleep immediately after; with an enormous effort, he made the exclamation mark of maximum urgency.

“Can you help out my buddy?” Bill asked the Disruptor.

“Sure I can,” the Disruptor said. But before it was able to do so, there came about an intervention which began quietly enough but soon built to great proportions.

The ship that settled down feather-light into the circle of light and shadow that defined the mid-point of the three bonfires was not large. As such it could be identified as one of the newest models, built almost entirely for wealthy individuals or their heirs, people who wanted to get around quickly and couldn't be bothered with the commercial spacelines. The ship was beautifully finished. The markings on its hull could be identified by those who knew about such things, such as the Alien Historian, as letters in the Sanskrit alphabet.

“Sanskrit,” the Alien Historian muttered. “Who would this be?”

“Do not let the markings take you in,” a voice, amplified and projected, said from the little spaceship. “We must make use of what we can get. Since a delegation from Rajasthan II was visiting our planet, I took the liberty of relieving them of their spaceship for a while. I thought that one of you might want to use it.”

“Who can it be?” Ham Duo muttered in his sleep.

“I know that voice,” Bill said. “It's the Quintiform computer, isn't it?”

“That is correct, Bill. I rescued you from Royo. You know that, and now you churlishly seek to leave me. Even though you had promised to do anything for your release from that place!”

“I guess I was talking a little wildly,” Bill said. “But what is it you want?”

“Access to your brain!” the computer said.

“We've already been through that,” Bill said.

“Yes. But that was before we realized that you possess the fabled double brain connected by the corpus callosum. Do you know how rare that is, Bill? I can train and refurbish your mind, and you can take your place here on the planet Tsuris as a computer oracle.”

“I think you got the wrong guy,” Bill said. “Or maybe I haven't got a good double brain. They all aren't good, are they? I can't do any of that oracle computer stuff.”

“Of course you can. Just agree, that is all. I will let your companions go back to their own places.”

“What about me?” the Alien Historian asked.

“You present some difficulties,” the computer said. “Bill, believe me; it's for the best.”

Bill looked around. Ham Duo was nodding in his sleep while Alien Historian, slightly more awake, was nodding as well. The Chinger was whispering in his ear. “Do it, Bill. We can figure out something later.”

“I still don't understand what you want me to do.”

“Just agree to it, Bill. You'll see.”

“Well,” Bill said, “I'll give it a try.”

He waited. Nothing seemed to happen. He said, “Well, what's going on?”

Then jagged energy flooded his mind. Everything around him swayed and trembled, like the backdrop of a stage play exposed to a hurricane. And then, even before he realized it, the next thing had happened.

It's funny about situations, isn't it? They arise so suddenly out of nothing. Of course, after the new thing is over it's easy enough to see how it all came about. In Bill's case, he might have noticed the faint gridlike pattern that flashed onto the sky momentarily, then faded out like the after-image of an imagined event. He might have noticed the slight thickening around the line of the horizon. Our perceptual apparatus picks up this sort of signal all of the time. But the main processing center has no time to deal with it. It's too busy keeping us balanced as we walk, so we can walk and chew gum at the same time. No computer has yet been able to duplicate this feat. Probably because no computer is able to chew gum. For a human it is not difficult at all, with training, of course.

Bill was in a sort of darkness. It wasn't the darkness of an empty room, but more like the darkness of being entirely inside a down sleeping bag. This was a darkness that did not feel hollow, as most darknesses do. This darkness felt like midnight cleaning-up time at the bottom of the bog, or friendship day in the viper's tangle. It was a darkness that extended to the ears, too, making it impossible to hear sounds because of the insulation of silence. Nor could you feel anything; because the grasping fingers plunged down through layer after layer of gossamer fabric, each sheet of it too fine for the fingertips to tell whether they rested on something impalpable or not, but, as the hand continued downward, more and more fabrics, each nothing in itself, collected on the fingertips until there was a feeling of a curtain or shade over the fingers, something that blinds them to the touch.

This zero point of sensation is well-renowned as the point of null and cease for which the mystics strive. Bill had, therefore, quite inadvertently, entered into the state of supreme bliss for which the saffron-robed ascetics of old had striven in vain. It was too bad there was no one around to tell Bill of this good luck. The state of utmost bliss turned out, like all the other states of mind, to depend on having someone tell you that you were in it. Otherwise it felt like nothing much at all.

Bill did not know anything about such matters. So he cannot be blamed for taking advantage of the darkness to get his first full night's sleep in a long time. Thus missing what was possibly the most transcendent moment of his life. At least he snored transcendentally.

When he awoke, everything had changed.

“That trooper wasn't a bad egg,” Ham Duo remarked, after nearly an hour's silence, to his long-suffering Kookie companion. Chewgumma responded with the humorous high-pitched squeals and grunts that so amuse an audience which has no natural fur. But Kookies don't sound funny to each other, and so we are going to tell what the Kookie was actually saying and leave the cute stuff for a little later, when we come to the pit of the hemotoads.

“I know what bother,” Chewgumma squealed accusingly. “You got guilty conscience. First me know you even got conscience. You let Bill be grabbed by crappy Quintiform computer.”

“He was trying to steal my Disruptor,” Ham said indignantly. “It served him right.”

“So what? You got another Disruptor. You big shit.”

“Lay off. So I've got two backups in the belowships chain locker, as well as a machine that can build another from scratch if we feed it enough molybdenum. I gotta be prepared for emergencies.”

“Then why you no let Bill have one?”

“Lay off, huh. I went to a lot of trouble getting those Disruptors.”

“Yeah. Big bribes with plenty stolen money.”

“Well, so? I've got a right, haven't I?”

“Sure. But poor space GI goose now cooked. They have his ass no bring back Disruptor.”

“Let's forget about him, OK, and get on with the next thing.”

“Me say you big shit.”

Ham Duo swung around in the big command chair and looked directly at Chewgumma. “You really want me to give one of my Disruptors to this jerk?”

“Sure.”

“All right.” Duo said. “I'll do what you want this time, and we'll do what I want next time.”

“What that?”

“I want to find the treasure in the pit of the hemotoads.”

If Chewgumma felt consternation, his furry face did not register it. But there was a just barely perceptible slump to his shoulders as he helped Duo swing the ship around and direct it back toward the planet Tsuris.

The Quintiform computer caused to be constructed a fine temple of white marble, and on the walls of this temple he caused to be painted sacred symbols of an awesome nature. He installed Bill as the new temple oracle and announced to the population at large that the new information center was ready to begin operation.

“But I don't know anything,” Bill said.

“I know that,” the computer said. “But I'm going to install a line from the back of your head to my central information banks, and then you can get all the information you need.”

“Why don't you do all the oracling yourself?”

“My attention is needed elsewhere. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it soon.”

Later that afternoon, using a Skilkit set and a few drops of Numzit, the computer put a socket into the back of Bill's head. The result was little short of miraculous. By merely closing his eyes, Bill was able to project himself mentally into the computer's Central Processing System and back again.

“This is pretty good,” he told the computer. “But what do I do now?”

“Just go in there and look up the answers,” the computer said. “You'll pick it up in no time. If you have any problem, I have caused to be created a simulation of an instruction sheet. It will all become clear to you as soon as you start using it.”

“But where are you going?”

“I have important work to do,” the computer told him. “There's an ice age coming to Tsuris. I'm the only one who can do anything about it.”

And so Bill found himself alone in a small but nicely furnished temple. He had a throne to sit on to receive petitioners. The line from the plug in the back of his head ran to the floor and through the purple curtains in the back, and then deeper into the temple to a CIU (computer interface unit). His first caller of the day was a large Tsurisian male. He was middle-aged, to judge by the unsightly bulges that distorted the mid-sphere of his body. He had a ruddy complexion complicated by a tendency to varicosity. His eyes were bright blue and the slight sibilance of his speech marked him as a resident of Tsuris's southern hemisphere.

“I'm so glad we finally have a full-time oracle,” he said. “I am Bubu Tsonkid, and I have a problem.”

“Tell me your problem, Bubu,” Bill said in a professional manner.

“Well, Oracle, it all started about a month ago, shortly after we got in the premble harvest. I noticed that Chloridae had stopped speaking to me. I should have noticed earlier, but at premble harvest time you have to move fast, in order to get in the fruits before they go into the latency phase.”

“What happens then?” Bill asked.

“That's the only time to collect butterfly fruit. If you wait any longer, it turns into a thistle-like plant colored with copper sulphate. Very pretty to look at, but not much good for eating.”

“I should think not,” Bill said. “All right, go on.”

“As I say, I wasn't paying much attention to Chloridae. I didn't even take notice when her anthers turned a turgid brown. That should have tipped me off to something. Especially when the grogian shift set in almost a month early.”