Bill 3 - on the Planet of Bottled Brains (25 page)

“Pretend you're delighted,” Splock hissed. “But don't touch it. Not yet.”

“Listen, Splock,” Bill said in a low, level voice, “you better stop hissing at me otherwise all hell might just break out here. You catch my meaning?”

Splock glared at him. It wasn't much, but it was better than being hissed at.

Bill turned to his host. He forced a large and rather lopsided grin onto his face. “Messer Dimitri,” he said, “how delightful it is that you have shown me this — ” He looked at the thing on the red cushion. It had strings, was made of a reddish-brown wood, and had black pegs. Bill thought it something to do with music. But it didn't look like a synthesizer. What could it be?

“Violin,” Splock subvocalized, carefully keeping the hiss and wow out of his voice.

“— this really nice-looking fiddle,” Bill said. He peered at it but was careful not to touch it. Still, he wanted to say something nice about it.

“It's really a very nice-looking one,” Bill said. “Got good color. That says a lot.”

The guests tittered in amusement. Dimitri guffawed, and said, “Our guest shows a delightful whimsy in calling this genuine Stradivarius a fiddle. But of course, he has the right. No man in our time has so earned the privilege of slighting his art as Bill Kliptorian, the violin virtuoso who got rave reviews on his recent tour of the south arcade planets. I'm sure Maestro Bill will favor us with a small recital later. A little Mozart, eh, Maestro?”

“You got it,” Bill said. Since his skill in violin-playing was in the sub-minimal level, it was as easy for him to agree to play Mozart, whatever that was, as to do a chorus of 'Troopers Trampling, Rockets Roaring'.

“That will be very nice indeed,” Dimitri said. “We have made some modest preparations here so that you can repeat for us your triumph on Saginaw IV. If that wouldn't be unduly fatiguing, Maestro?”

“No problem,” Bill said recklessly, and saw, too late, Splock's frown and negative nod of his pointy-eared head. “That is, ordinarily it would be no problem, but now —”

“You've already accepted,” Dimitri said, laughing in a good-humored way that Bill knew he would find extremely irritating ere long. “It is good of you to bring your great performance to our little backwater. Your manager and I have made the necessary arrangements. I think you will be pleased. It is exactly what your manager said you've always wanted.”

“Hey, that's neat,” Bill said, giving Splock a what-is-this look, to which Splock responded with a I'll-tell-you-later glance. Which is not easy to do.

“And now for the dessert,” Dimitri said. “Your favorite, Maestro. Zabaglione!”

When it came, Bill was a bit disappointed. He had hoped zabaglione might be a fancy word for apple pie, or maybe cherry. Instead it was something foreign. But tasty. As he bent to take his second bite, the woman on his left, the raven-haired one to whom he had passed the mashed potatoes only minutes earlier, said, in a whisper, “I must see you later. It's urgent.”

“Sure, babe,” Bill said, ever the gallant. “But tell me this. You're Illyria, aren't you?”

The raven-haired beauty hesitated. Tears formed in her violet eyes. Her lips, long and red, trembled.

“Not exactly,” she intimated. “But I will explain later.”

After the zabaglione, liqueurs were served in glass stemware, and coffee was brought in tiny cups of Meissen porcelain. Bill took a couple of drinks, despite Splock's frown; he figured that whatever lay ahead, he was going to need fortification. There were about a dozen people at the table not counting Bill, Splock, or the woman who wasn't exactly Illyria. They were all of human stock, with the possible exception of a small man with blue skin who might have been either alien or trendy. The men were all dressed formally, like their host. Bill had a natural suspicion of people who wore this kind of clothing. But he had to revise his proletarian opinion slightly after looking over this lot. They didn't appear to be effete capitalists or social spongers, the groups most addicted to formal wear. Most of them had sunburnt and wind-hardened faces that argued a life spent in the outdoors killing things. Some of them had the sorts of scars you get from tackling giant carnivores single-handed in dim forest clearings while on your way to see what lay in your traps. But that was only an impression, of course.

The women were another matter. Slender, fragile, beautiful in that purely decorative way that simple-minded men find appealing, they could have graced any gathering of humans anywhere in the galaxy, or perhaps even beyond it. They were lovely, and by no means the least lovely of them was the woman known as Tesora who had told him earlier that she wasn't exactly Illyria. It was all a bit of a puzzle, as was the matter of how Bill had gotten there and what had gone on before he got there, since it seemed apparent that Splock had been up to something while he, Bill, had been between things. Or however you call it when someone is not present for something that by rights he ought to have been present for.

Splock, meanwhile, was acting affable in a dignified sort of way, even attempting a smile now and then so as not to let down the side. But Bill could tell from the slow twitch of one of Splock's pointed and frontally-pointing ears that all was not to his liking.

After the liqueurs and coffees, and the inevitable cigars, Messer Dimitri rose and held up his arms, commanding silence. His pudgy body, which had lain indolent in the padded chair at the head of the table, now took on the rigor of one not unaccustomed to command.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Your attention for a moment, please. We have with us tonight no less a personage than Bill Kliptorian, violin virtuoso who has appeared before both headed and headless states. He has agreed, not only to give a concert tonight, but to reproducing the conditions that accompanied his extraordinary triumph on Saginaw IV. But first, a little light piano music by Stumper Rosewoodie, master of the silken strings.”

All the guests were escorted into the drawing room that accompanied the lesser library where they had been eating. There, a grand piano dominated the room from a three foot high dais; a man had mounted quickly to it, and, shooting out his cuffs, sat down to the keys.

If Bill hadn't known it was impossible, he could have sworn it was Ham Duo.

“We gotta talk,” Splock said, grabbing Bill by the arm and leading him to a deep bay window that looked out over the lunar landscape that was illuminated by the cold light of still other moons high in the sky.

“You're damn right we gotta talk,” Bill said. “Where are we? It looks like Death Valley out there. Why did you tell them I was this fiddle player? How did we get into this? How did it happen that —”

“Please,” Splock said, holding up his hand. “There is no time for questions. You are supposed to start performing in about five minutes.”

“How? What am I supposed to do?”

“That's the part we're going to figure out right now,” Splock said.

“All right,” Bill said, and waited.

After a few minutes Bill said. “Have you figured out yet how we get out of this bind?”

“I am thinking!”

“So think faster.”

“It doesn't quite work that way. Not that you would know much about thinking. This is a very desperate situation. Not that you were around to help. You were off in your unconsciousness.”

“It's not my fault if I fall unconscious during very rapid space flights,” Bill pointed out.

“There are no accidents,” Splock muttered darkly.

“You want me to figure out what to do next?” Bill asked.

“Yes. I'd like to see some evidence of this creativity I'm always hearing that humans have. Has something to do with a sense of humor, I believe. I don't have one. I don't think any of this is funny.”

“I do have a sense of humor,” Bill lied. “I don't think any of it is funny either.”

“Interesting how we come to the same perception by diametrically opposite routes.”

Tesora, the raven-haired woman who was not exactly Illyria, darted into the bay window, which had the capacity to hold them both, and several others besides. She seized Bill by the sleeve. “I must speak to you alone.”

“I was trying to speak to him alone myself,” Splock said.

“I realize that. But there's so little time. I have to say to him what I have to say.”

“Well, damn it,” Splock snapped, irritated and filled with self-pity, “What do you think I'm doing, delivering a singing telegram?”

“If it hadn't been for me,” the woman said, “you would never have gotten him out of the Dissembler and into the Reconstitutor.”

“What?” Bill blurbled.

“We didn't want to remind you of the experience,” Splock said.

“You see, things came adrift when I tried to travel without the Directional Repeater Indicater nulled along the gravity line. Luckily the instantaneous parts recall on the part of our medical robot set you right in no time.”

“Except for the one detail,” Tesora said. “By the way, Bill, the reason I am not exactly Illyria is that we haven't quite settled on possession of this body. By rights, you see, it doesn't belong to either of us.”

“Where did you find it?” Bill asked.

“It was left over at the Saturday night feast of the Thaumaturges.”

“Messer is the king of the Thaumaturges,” Splock explained. “Only by availing ourselves of the guild rule could we take refuge here.”

“What is the guild rule?”

“That only musicians of the foremost class are allowed in.”

“How do you tell they're in the foremost class?”

“By their press reviews.”

Tesora said, “The fact is, Bill, tonight is full moon and the fight for possession of my body —”

“Kindly stop interrupting with your sluttish ways,” Splock said grouchily. “Bill, soon the violin will be put into your hands. Do you remember what we told you about violins?”

“Violins,” Bill said, his voice a peculiar guttural, the rapid blink rate of his eyes a sure sign that he was either feigning or feeling a state of excitation.

“That's the stuff. But save it for the real thing.”

“What's going on?” Bill asked.

“Don't you understand?” Splock said. “It is necessary that you not know in order to fulfill your part properly.”

Just then Messer stuck his head in the door. “Showtime,” he said. “Here is your violin. The Greels await you.”

Splock gave Bill a meaningful look. At least, that was how Bill interpreted it. He didn't know what it meant, of course. That would be asking too much. He took the fiddle and marched to the drawing room.

Fear comes in different sized packages. Fear of embarrassment is not negligible. And that fear was exacerbating Bill's current mood; because he knew, as soon as he strode out under the baby blue spotlight, that he was about to make a fool of himself.

There were extenuating circumstances, of course. The fact that Bill had two right arms, and therefore, logically, two right hands, was a considerable problem in violin playing. In fact, you could go so far as to say that the violin was built specifically for the needs of players with two hands, one right and one left.

Bill, whose real right arm had been crisped some time ago under dolorous circumstances, had had to learn how to cope with life with two right hands. For a while he had had an alligator's foot, too, but that curious appendage had had no influence on the battle of his handedness.

The audience waited, gaping attentively. Messer stood on one side of the room, arms crossed, smiling unpleasantly. Several armed guards lounged in the doorways, automatic weapons cradled in their arms. They looked cruel and uncaring, and capable of anything. How Bill wished he were one of them!

The pianist struck an opening chord. Messer came forward, bowed to the audience, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin, I think I had better explain what you are about to see, for your greater delectation. Bill, you see, is capable of playing the sleep song of the Grundge critters, who, as you all know, are reluctant allies of the Chingers. The Grundge are not intelligent, however. For them, biting comes first, thinking a long way afterwards. They can be tamed momentarily, however, by the playing of the sleep song. Usually the female Grundges sing the sleeping song every night. It's the only way they can get the males to bed. Otherwise they spend all night biting trees and each other. Bill has learned this song, the first human in recorded history who has done so. He will now play it to you under the conditions that won him his recent triumph.”

Messer stepped back, leaving Bill alone in the middle of the stage. Then the stage collapsed, or rather, was pulled apart under him, and he fell a few feet into a large vat that lay directly under it. The vat was almost ten feet high, with Perspex sides so the audience would miss none of the fun.

Then hatches were raised under the stage and two basket-loads of the two-foot Grundge reptiles were poured into the vat. The Grundges fought and snapped at each other for a while, then began to look for something more interesting to do. They spied Bill. Several of the brighter ones, which wasn't saying very much, gradually came up with the thought that this tall skinny thing with the piece of brown wood in his hand might very well be worth biting.

In a sluggish tide of vein-streaked red and avocado green, the Grundges crept toward Bill, their long jaws, set with backward-pointing needle-sharp teeth, slavering, their nostrils puffing, their eyeballs bulging. A thoroughly unlovely sight, as well as being a lethal one.

Bill took one look and started stomping. His feet beat a mad tattoo of frenzy on the polished Perspex surface of the vat. At the same time, he swept up the fiddle and scraped the bow across the strings in desperation.

It screeched shrilly so he dropped it and grabbed at the Grundges.

There was pandemonium throughout the audience as Bill picked up Grundges in both hands and threw them into the audience. From the viewpoint of the Grundges, it was like being taken for a ride around the park before dinner.

Seeing the ruin on all sides of him, Messer bounded to the stage. He had a laser pistol with a jump-phaser on it. Jump-phasers were illegal in most of the civilized galaxy. Instead of drilling a neat hole through you and cauterizing the edges so that you could be killed and hardly know what hit you, the jump-phaser produced ugly jagged wounds that shocked those who had to look at them almost as badly as those who received them. The jagged beams could lay your flesh open to the bone, like other things could also do, but the jump-phasers did it in ways that really hurt a whole lot. And so Bill was faced, not merely with death, but also disfigurement and mutilation. It is to his credit that he reacted instantaneously to this threat, which, to one with less sand in his craw, might have been paralyzing.