No Small Bills Page 18

  “Same to you,” it replied in my voice, and shook my hand. Man, I’ve got to work on my grip! Then we all left the sleep cell and the doubles turned left to head back to the rec room while the real us turned right and proceeded toward the prison “wall.”

  “Okay, this is good,” Ned said when we’d stepped behind a low wall that marked off one of the work areas. He pulled what looked like a staple-remover from under his cap—they’d let him keep his baseball cap—and bent down to apply it to his own ankle cuff. There was a muffled pop and a quick flash of light and the anklet burst open. “Hey, it worked!” Ned said softly, rubbing at his now-bare ankle. “Whaddyaknow?”

  Tansy stared at him. “You didn’t know if it would work?”

  “It’s not like I could test it beforehand,” he retorted. “But I figured it should, and I was right. Who’s next?” he shattered each ankle cuff, and then we were all free and unencumbered. And had three sets of anklets with pharmeon streams between them.

  “Your turn,” Tall said, nudging me with his foot. “We’ve got an alibi and no chains. Now get us out of here.”

  “Working on it,” I assured him. I scooped up one of the anklet sets and studied it. Just as I’d hoped, Ned’s little gizmos had cracked the things enough that I was able to pull the pharmeon stream free at both ends. I did the same with the other two sets, so now I had three glowing strands of emerald glitter in my hands. “Come on.”

  I led the others to the edge of the prison’s “land.” Beyond it was nothing but gray void. Intraspace, or at least the space between the little intraspace islands.

  “Okay, this is going to be a little tricky,” I warned the others. I knotted the three strands together, forming a loop of pharmeon particles. “So get ready. On the count of three I’m gonna throw this, and Gwarmesh, you’re gonna leap on it—but only once it clears the prison wall. Tall, you hold onto him with one hand and Ned with the other. Then me, then Mary, then Tansy—you’ve got wings so it makes sense to put you last. Ready?” I cocked my arm back.

  “Wait!” Tall put up a hand to stop me. “What?”

  But Ned was staring at the loop I held. “That’s ingenious,” he whispered, glancing up at me. “Amazing! How’d you come up with that?”

  “Something Tall said, actually,” I admitted. “When we were bickering that one time and he said if he found an exit he’d throw me through it, and I replied that he’d just get pulled out after me.”

  “Of course!” Ned beamed. “This really should work! Fantastic!”

  Now Tall looked really annoyed. “Right, does someone want to explain it to me?” he demanded. Beside him Gwarmesh rumbled his agreement. Even Mary looked a little confused. Tansy didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  But I shook my head, enjoying the role-reversal for once. “No time for that now,” I claimed. “We’ve got to move before anyone spots us—if they see us those doubles won’t be worth a damn. Ready? Let’s go!”

  I turned back toward the prison’s edge and pulled back my arm, but this time Gwarmesh stopped me. “Let me,” he rumbled, and held out one massive clawed hand. Well, yeah, that made sense—it’s not like I was a champion discus hurler or anything. So I gave it him and took my place between Ned and Mary.

  Gwarmesh nodded, hefted the pharmeon loop once, then flicked it away with a quick, practiced motion. The second it was out of his hand he was leaping after it. The loop flew toward the invisible prison boundary—

  —and sliced right through it. Because it was nothing but pharmeons, and they could pass through anything.

  Gwarmesh’s jump carried him past the boundary as well, and it didn’t stop him, because now there was something else out in intraspace besides the prison. The loop. Matter was already collecting around it, and when his huge foot finally touched down in the center of the loop it was more of a disc, solid below the glowing rim. Tall had leaped right after him, and the rest of us had half jumped and half been pulled but it worked, especially since more intraspace was forming below us as we passed out of the prison’s influence. Gwarmesh shuffled forward to the very front edge of the new space, and we all squeezed in behind him. I glanced back. We were maybe two hundred feet from the prison wall.

  “Right,” I said once I’d caught my breath. I picked up the loop—because it was just pharmeons it came out of the collected matter around it without a problem. “That worked well. Let’s do it again.”

  And we did.

  And again.

  And again.

  We jumped a half dozen times, each leap carrying us a hundred feet farther away. The great thing was that, as soon as we’d left one island behind, it dissipated because it no longer had anything from our world to hold it together. And the in-between space here, the null or void or whatever it was, actually had a faint haze to it, like a thin fog. So by the time we were four hundred feet away we couldn’t see the prison at all.

  And hopefully that meant they couldn’t see us, either.

  Finally, after the sixth jump, we stopped. “That should be far enough away,” Ned judged. “Tansy?”

  “On it,” she replied. Her wings flapped and she rose into the air in front of us. Then her antennae twitched, as did her nose. And a small spot of color appeared between us and her. It grew rapidly, twisting around itself as it did, and before long we were looking at a circular portal of the same purplish energy we’d seen back on the Galactic Authority ship. The portal that’d brought us here.

  “Free!” Gwarmesh shouted as soon as the portal was big enough, and dove through it. Tall shrugged and followed him. Ned went next, and I ushered Mary through and stooped to scoop up the pharmeon loop before taking the plunge myself. Tansy brought up the rear, since it was her portal.

  I stumbled through, colliding with Mary—strange how that keeps happening—and fumbling a bit before collapsing on the ground beside her. Tansy was right behind me, and the portal winked out the second she was clear, making a sound like a water droplet as it went.

  “Wow.” I took a deep breath and glanced around. “We did it!”

  “We really did,” Ned agreed. “Hell, you did it! That was incredible!”

  “I still don’t understand how you did it,” Tall grumbled.

  “It was the pharmeons,” I explained, holding up the loop. “They aren’t solid, and they can pass through any material, so I figured if anything could cut through the barrier around each intraspace island it was them. And once they were past it and into the gap between, they started collecting matter themselves, forming their own island. But we could remove the pharmeons from there and toss them before the island dissolved, and jump to the next one as it formed. Which meant we could then make the leap from one island to the next.”

  Tall stared at me for a second. “Wow,” he said finally. “That’s actually . . . brilliant.”

  “It really is,” Mary agreed. She gave me a smile that almost made my head explode. “Your solution may well be the answer to travel through intraspace—ships could be equipped to shoot pharmeon disks ahead of them, skipping from one to the next, and thus could travel across intraspace with impunity.” She shook her head. “In freeing us from prison you may have singlehandedly revolutionized space travel.”

  “Really?” I tried to wrap my brain around that but couldn’t. “Cool.” Then I finally looked at our surroundings. “We can talk about making money off this idea later, though. Right now, where are we?”

  The others looked as well. We were lying on a sidewalk, though it was the same particles as the superhighway we’d used earlier. There was a road alongside it, not the superhighway but a smaller thoroughfare, and as I watched some kind of ship slid past, followed by two others. So we were back in the world, and not in the middle of traffic. Nice.

  “This should be the path to Proximi Garn,” Tansy told us after a few seconds. “I aimed for it because I know it, I thought it’d be near where the prison was in our world, and I figured it was a good crossroads no matter where everyone was going.”<
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  “Proximi Garn?” Mary actually looked excited as she picked herself up and dusted herself off. I bit back an offer to help. “That is only a few light-years from the matrix! We are almost to our destination!”

  “And I doubt we lost much time,” Ned added as he got to his own feet. “We were in intraspace less than a year. That’s maybe a few hours out here.”

  “We need to get some real clothes,” Tall pointed out as he stood up. “These stand out, and some people might know they’re prison garb.”

  “Proximi Garn is a reasonably large population center,” Mary assured him. “We will be able to find more suitable attire there, and to arrange for transportation the rest of the way.” She turned to me, and so did Ned and Tall. “Shall we?” When she offered me a hand, how could I say no?

  “Thanks,” I told her as I straightened up and reluctantly let go. “And thanks to you guys as well,” I added to Tansy and Gwarmesh. “Where’ll you two go now?”

  Tansy shrugged. “I don’t have any plans,” she admitted. “Could I come with you guys? At least for a little while? I can help!”

  I glanced at Mary, who nodded. “We welcome your company, and your aid,” she assured her former bunkmate.

  “What about you, big guy?” I asked Gwarmesh. “You heading our way?”

  “For now,” he replied. Back to short responses, apparently.

  “Right.” I lifted the pharmeon loop and eyed it for a second before untying one of the knots and retying the whole thing around my waist like a makeshift belt made out of glow strips. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Ned led the way, and the rest of us fell in behind him. It was weird to think that we’d been in prison for almost a year and only a few hours had passed here. Also weird to realize we’d almost reached our goal. I had no idea what’d happen once we did, or after that. But if the events so far were any indication, it was probably best not to think about it too long or too hard. Otherwise I might wish I was back in that cell.

  I wondered if any of my new credit cards had reached my apartment yet. And how the “Chasing the portable centrifuge” championships had turned out. I’d have to find a paper somewhere—I was rooting for the Three-sided Wallopgawkers. What can I say? I’m a sucker for underdogs.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Does that come in a size-mology?

  “Okay,” I said slowly, “this is one of those ‘your brain can’t handle the truth’ things again, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Tansy asked. She was fluttering in place beside me.

  “This is Proximi Garn, right?”

  “Yep,” Ned answered on my other side. Mary was in front of me, just where I liked her.

  “So what does it really look like?”

  “What do you see?”

  I blinked a few times, but the image in front of me didn’t change. “Uh . . . a Wild West frontier town.”

  “That’s it, then,” Ned agreed.

  “What?” I rubbed at my eyes, and considered rubbing at his too. With a cheese grater. “Oh, come on! This is outer space! Not just that, we’re in the heart of the Galactic Core! The densest part of the entire universe, the center of everything! And you’re telling me your ‘reasonably large population center’ comes equipped with a dirt road, horse rails, a whorehouse, a small bank, and a saloon?”

  Ned shrugged. “Why not?” Then he laughed at my expression. “What, not high-tech enough for you?”

  “Not even remotely!”

  “People do not need to cluster together in large numbers,” Mary informed me over her shoulder. “There is all of space to inhabit, and even though there are millions of different races and trillions upon trillions of individuals, compared to the vastness of space there is less than one being per ten square light-years. Most live alone or with immediate family only. This,” she gestured in front of her, “has at least three dozen residents, perhaps even as many as one hundred. For space that is a reasonably large population center.”

  I shook my head. “I hear what you’re saying, but I still can’t buy it. This isn’t even a podunk town back home—it’s too small! I was expecting gleaming skyscrapers, floating fortresses, glittering transport tubes, and a huge number of beings from all different races, all zooming about on their daily business.”

  Ned laughed again. “You’ve been watching too many science fiction movies.”

  “Apparently so. But why does it look like something from the Wild West? Specifically our Wild West?” I gestured at Tall and myself, and at Mary as well—she was human too, even if it was a modified version. “Explain that one!”

  Tall answered before Ned could. “Transmissions.” Ned nodded. So did Mary. Even Tansy did. Gwarmesh just grunted.

  “Transmissions?” I didn’t get it. “What, you mean car parts? What does that have to do with anything? Are you still pissed about the whole Corvette vs. Mustang thing?”

  “Not that kind of transmission!” It still amazes me how clearly he can talk through grinding his teeth. He must practice a lot. Actually, I was his cellmate for months—I know he does. “Television transmissions!”

  “Oh.” And then I got it. “Oh! You mean all that hooey about us beaming I Love Lucy out into space is real?” Everyone else—except Gwarmesh—nodded again. “And so this is based on, what, Gunsmoke? Maverick?”

  “Something like that,” Ned agreed. “You have to admit, it’s a great visual.”

  “Personally, I’d have preferred Hawaii Five-O,” I argued. “Beaches, bikinis, drinks with little umbrellas in them.” That reminded me of our last little sojourn on a desert island, though, and the Shrimp From Hell, and what that had led to, so I quickly tabled that notion. “Okay, fine,” I sighed. “So where’re we going? The saloon? Do you think they have a decent sarsaparilla?”

  “First things first,” Mary replied. “We need suitable attire.”

  “Non-prison clothes, right. Which means what, the general store?”

  She gave me a smile over her shoulder. “Precisely.” Then she led us into the town itself.

  There wasn’t anybody about, which was probably a good thing given our appearance. It did surprise me, though. I’d thought there’d at least be some irascible old coot perched on the rail outside the saloon, spitting tobacco and swigging from a jug of rotgut. Hey, I love all those old westerns!

  I was relieved, however, to not see one familiar Western staple—the steely-eyed lawman, leaning calmly on the porch beam outside the sheriff’s office. There was a sheriff’s office, but if he was in he stayed in. Which was fine by me. I didn’t want to wind up staring down the barrel of the outer space equivalent to a Winchester.

  I amused myself on the walk through town—the general store was on the other end of Main Street—by cataloging the differences between Proximi Garn and the typical town setting of an old Western movie. For example:

  • There were tying rails but no horses. I did see what looked a lot like a mechanical kangaroo, with a cross between a saddle and a gazebo on its back. There was also some sort of space-cycle, which was actually pretty cool-looking—it was a lot like a Harley touring bike, the low-slung kind with the huge chopper handlebars, but instead of wheels it had circular pads almost like flattened bells, which glowed purple and blue and floated the bike a few feet off the ground.

  • The road—which picked up from the space-particle superhighway about a hundred yards past the town in both directions, the two of them nestled up against each other like they’d been glued along the edges—was dirt but it wasn’t old Earth dirt. It was a glittering black and more like finely ground crystal, or really coarse black sand. Or Folgers crystals. I resisted the urge to lick it.

  • The buildings all had signs in English—except they weren’t. When I glanced away I could see the signs flicker out of the corner of my eye, the text changing to something totally unreadable. But as soon as I looked back it was English again. “Neurempathic signage,” Ned answered when I asked him about that. “It beams its content direct
ly into your brain, which then translates it into your native language. What you’re seeing when you’re not looking at it directly is the base language, which is whatever the programmer spoke.”

  • The entire town was filled with a soft hum, which intensified as we reached each building and faded slightly whenever we were between structures. “Sonic barriers,” Ned told me. “A home defense system, basically. It’s usually keyed to the owner’s biometrics, and anyone else can walk up to the door without trouble but try approaching the building anywhere else and Zap! It hits you with enough hypersonics to stun a mastodon.”

  • In addition to the saloon, whorehouse, sawbones, sheriff’s office, general store, hotel, stables, and bank, there were places that really did belong in a sci-fi film: “biometric adjustor,” “galactic broadcast station,” “shuttle teleport pad,” and something called a “universal waste extraction unit.” Though after a minute I realized that last one was just a public toilet. It was the crescent moon carved into the wooden-plank door that convinced me.

  We ignored the other places and headed straight to the general store. It had a bell on the door and everything, and a big fluffy cat that rubbed up against us as we entered. Okay, the cat had purple and green polka-dots and six legs, and said, “Hey, welcome, strangers! If you need anything, give a holler!” but it was close enough.

  I gawked, of course. I couldn’t help it. This place was too cool! I would have loved to set foot in a real Old West general store, complete with the glass jars of candy and the bolts of gingham and the six-shooters in the glass case up front. I also would have loved to visit a high-tech outer space equivalent, with gleaming metal counters and spacesuits and laser pistols next to jet packs and forcefield belts.

  This place? It was the best of both worlds.

  Looks-wise, it was the Old West general store, down to the dust in the corners and the big barrels of corn meal and flour and salt. And it did have some of the stuff I would’ve expected in a place like that. But most of the wares I could see were more appropriate to a space station than an Earth frontier town, and most of the weapons in that glass case up front did not look like they’d been made by Smith & Wesson.