Billy and Reave finally wound up at Miss Ettie’s Sporting House, saying a special goodbye to some of the whores. The whores looked at them thoughtfully, but didn’t shake their heads and say they were crazy.
The next morning saw them bright and early inside Eli’s Store, clutching their final payments from the Welfare Bank. Eli shuffled out from behind the counter rubbing his hands together.
‘Hear you boys are leaving town.’
‘That’s right, Mister Eli.’
‘Nobody leaves this town, can’t recall anybody leaving in years.’
‘We’re going to do it, Mister Eli.’
‘Rather you than me, boys. It’s supposed to be pretty dangerous out there. You wouldn’t catch me going out into the wild lands. A couple of years ago a drifter came in on the train …’
Billy interrupted.
‘The train doesn’t go anywhere, Mister Eli. It just goes round in a circle.’
Eli appeared not to hear. Nobody in town was sure whether Eli was deaf, or just didn’t want to listen to anything that conflicted with his own ideas.
‘This old boy came in on the train, and the stories he told. You can’t count on nothing out there. If you drop something you can’t even count on it falling to the ground, you won’t even know if the ground is going to be there from one minute to the next.’
Billy grinned.
‘We’ll take a chance on it, Mister Eli.’
Eli stroked his bald head.
‘That’s as maybe, but I can’t stand here all day chatting with you boys. Did you want something?’
Billy nodded patiently.
‘We want some stuff, Mister Eli, we want some stuff for our trip.’
Eli shuffled vaguely round the store.
‘Plenty of stuff here, boys. That’s what I’m here for. Stuff’s my business.’
Billy and Reave wandered up and down the shelves and displays, picking things up and dumping them on the counter.
‘One leather jacket, two pairs of jeans, two shoulder bags, a pair of cowboy boots.’
‘You got any camping rations?’
The old man stacked a pile of packets on the counter.
‘How about stasis machines? You got a couple of porta-pacs?’
Eli peered at a high shelf.
‘Don’t have much call for them.’
Billy began to get impatient.
‘Have you got any?’
‘Don’t take that tone with me, lad. I think I’ve maybe two of them somewhere.’
He picked up two chrome boxes about the size of a half pound box of chocolates, and blew the dust off them.
‘I knew I had some somewhere. Is there anything else?’
‘Yeah. You got any guns?’
‘Guns? I haven’t been asked for a gun in a long time. I’ve got some shotguns, and a couple of sporting rifles.’
Reave glanced at Billy.
‘I don’t much fancy toting a rifle all over the place.’
Billy looked at Eli.
‘You got any hand guns?’
Eli scratched his head.
‘I think I’ve got a couple of reproduction Navy Colts somewhere in the back.’
The old man shuffled out. Billy looked round the store. Its dark, dusty, cluttering interior seemed to stand for everything that was driving him to leave Pleasant Gap. Old Eli came back holding a pair of long-barrelled revolvers from another age. He placed them on the counter beside the other things. He reached under the counter.
‘I’ve got two belts here. They have holsters that will take the guns, and some sort of do-hickey that will hold the porta-pacs. Reckon you’ll need them.’
Billy picked up one of the belts, strapped it round his hips, and picked up one of the pistols. He spun it on his index finger, dropped it into the holster, and drew it in a single fluid motion. He grinned at Reave.
‘Neat, huh?’
Reave nodded.
‘Neat.’
Billy turned back to Eli.
‘Okay old man, how much is all this stuff?’
Eli stood calculating under his breath.
‘Three hundred and seventeen, boys.’
Billy pulled a roll of notes out of his shirt pocket.
‘We’ll give you three hundred. Call it a cash discount.’
Eli grunted.
‘You’d make a poor man of me, but I’ll do it, seeing as how you’re leaving.’
Billy handed the old man three one hundred bills.
‘Nice to do business with you, old man.’
They stuffed the food, spare clothes and ammunition into the shoulder bags and strapped the gun belts round their hips. Billy pulled on his new cowboy boots, and shrugged into his leather jacket.
‘How do I look, Reave old buddy?’
‘Heavy.’
Billy pushed his fingers through his curly black hair.
‘Just one more thing, old man. You got any sunglasses?’
Eli placed a pair of dark glasses on the counter.
‘You can have those, son. Call them a going away present.’
Billy grinned.
‘Thanks, Mister Eli.’
He put the glasses on. They seemed to make his pale face look even sharper under the mass of black hair.
‘I guess we’re about ready.’
Reave nodded.
‘It looks like it.’
‘So long, Mister Eli,’
Eli shook his head.
‘You boys have got to be crazy.’
***
She/They floated free across the smooth chequered plane of Her/Their control zone. The light, ordered by Her/Their passing, shone brightly but without apparent source, casting no shadows except for a pale smudge below where Her/Their feet hung over the smooth surface.
Slowly She/They drifted forward, and although no other being heard, the motion was silent, and although no one watched, She/They adopted the regular triple form. The Trinity. The three identical women, who looked as one and moved as one. Their slim erect figures were concealed by the white ankle-length cloaks that swayed gently with their motion, each in identical folds to the other two. Her/Their heads were encased in silver helmets with high crests and plates that curved round to cover the nose and cheek bones, leaving dark slits through which Her/Their eyes glittered steadily.
The control plain stretched, in regular dividing squares, uniformly to the horizon. Overhead the sky was bright, cloudless and a perfect white. Only a faint, tumbling, distant haze where sky and plain met gave evidence that Her/Their power to control was finite, limited by distance, and around the zone were the twisting chaos fringes.
She/They halted and appeared to gaze intently at a point on the dark, twisting fringe. At the point of Her/Their gaze the dark area appeared to expand, stretch out into the plain and rise a little into the sky.
‘Disruption.’ The word seemed to hang in the air displacing the silence.
‘Possible rupture,’ a phrase took its place.
‘Freudpheno possible.’
The structure of the turbulence at the horizon changed; it began to revolve forming an almost regular circle. The centre of the circle began to assume spatial depth. The silence that had resumed after the passing of the word was filled by a low hum that seemed to originate from the growing tube on the horizon.
More words cut across the hum.
‘Freudpheno imminent.’
The hum grew louder, became a roar, and suddenly, straight from the mouth of the tunnel rushed a herd of rhinoceroses, close packed and charging straight for the triple form of Her/Them. The surface of the plain trembled under the rhinos’ armoured weight. In their wake the fabric of the zone rose in boiling moiré patterns.
The centre unit of Her/Them raised the hand that held the energy wand. A yellow stinger of light flashed towards the rhinoceroses, who slowed to a halt and stood for a moment blinking, and then turned and trotted back the way they had come.
She/They lowered the energy wand, and watched as the animals disappeared back into the fringes. More words occupied the silence of the zone.