The Best Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Gunslinger in the Whole Damned Galaxy (2 page)

      
Tojo himself pressed a button on the side of the machine, and ten knives flew across the ring and embedded themselves in the dummy's head and torso.

      
A whisper of apprehension spread through the crowd as Tojo resumed speaking.

      
“Each knife has a bell on the handle, similar to the circular metal hand protector you see on this sword”—he held a fencing foil high above his head— “and should Billybuck Dancer fail to hit even one of the bells while the knives are in flight, this will be the last performance he ever gives. Each of his guns holds six bullets, so even disregarding the time factor he has almost no margin for error."

      
The Dancer drew his guns, twirled them until they were pointing towards the top of the tent, and fired one shot from each.

      
“Correction!” added Tojo, grateful that the translating device masked his stammer but unhappy that it also edited out the excitement and inflections he was trying to instill in his voice. “He has
absolutely
no margin for error!"

      
He waited for still another drumroll, then turned to the Dancer. “Billybuck Dancer—are you ready?"

      
A slight, almost indiscernible nod was the only indication the audience had that the Dancer hadn't fallen asleep, so casual and relaxed did he appear.

      
“Audience—are
you
ready?"

      
A single sound was hooted in chorus.

      
“Then,” cried Tojo, reaching once again toward the firing mechanism, “let the battle begin—Billybuck Dancer versus the Killing Machine!"

      
The Dancer's fingers inched downward toward his holsters.

      
“Look at him,” said Flint, shaking his head. “You think he can keep awake for this?"

      
“The man is brave,” commented Mr. Ahasuerus, leaning forward in his chair. “That much I will grant him."

      
“The man is
crazy
,” responded Flint.

      
Tojo's finger reached the button no more than a tenth of a second before the Dancer's hands reached his pistols. Then they were out and blazing, deafening the crowd with their explosions. It was over in less than four seconds: not a single knife had come within twenty feet of him before the bullet found the bell.

      
This time nothing could contain the birdlike creatures. They stormed off their benches like some feathered purple wave and carried the Dancer around and around the tent on what passed for their shoulders. Finally, after fifteen loud and exuberant minutes, they allowed him to make his exit, looking—as he always did—slightly uncomfortable to be the center of so much attention and adulation.

      
“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried Tojo, as the Dancer paused by a tent flap to take one last unenthusiastic bow, “I give you Billybuck Dancer, the best rootin' tootin' shootin' gunslinger in the whole damned galaxy!"

      
And then he was gone, and the crowd began filing out as Max Bloom, now seventy-five years old and slowing down almost daily, came out in his Emmett Kelly clown's garb and put on a brief pantomime entertainment for those members of the audience who had decided to wait until the aisles cleared out a bit before leaving.

      
“What was the count tonight?” asked Tojo, joining Flint and the blue man in the lighting control booth after the crowd had emptied out. Flint was drinking beer, while Mr. Ahasuerus was sipping coffee and studying a computer printout.

      
“Damned near six thousand,” replied Flint. He turned to his partner. “I think we're going to have to go to three shows a day until your friends at the Corporation deliver our new tent."

      
“
Another
new tent?” interrupted Tojo. “We've only had this one for a couple of months."

      
“You asked the wrong question,” said Flint.

      
“I don't understand."

      
“The count is
always
damned near six thousand. The operative question is: how many purple birds did we have to turn away?"

      
“Well?” persisted the hunchback.

      
“About twice that many,” said Flint.

      
“That's wonderful!” exclaimed Tojo.

      
“We've come a long way in five years,” beamed Mr. Ahasuerus. “I can remember when we could barely afford fuel for the ship, to say nothing of not being able to meet our payroll."

      
“Nothing up here to spend it on anyway,” muttered Flint, finishing his beer and pitching the can into a darkened corner of the booth.

      
“That's not the point,” said the blue man. “We've turned a fly-by-night operation into a solid money-maker. It is not something I would have anticipated, based on our first meeting."

      
“I still remember the first time I saw you,” said Tojo. “I was never more frightened in my life."

      
“I can safely say that the feeling was mutual,” replied Mr. Ahasuerus, thinking back to a frigid October morning in Vermont.

      
“And now here I am,” continued the hunchback, “talking and telling jokes to a bunch of aliens.
Me
—ugly, misshapen, fumble-mouthed Tojo, the carny barker! It still seems like a dream!"

      
“Let's not forget who are the aliens on this world and who are the natives," said Flint. He shook his head. “Lord, but they're homely! I wonder if they molt?"

      
“They probably wonder if you shed your skin,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.

      
“Probably,” agreed Flint with a sigh. “I don't suppose it makes a hell of a lot of difference what they do, just so long as they spend their money."

      
“They were lined up before sunset, just to get into the specialty show,” said the hunchback.

      
“I know,” said Flint. “It seems that our friend Wyatt Earp is getting himself a reputation."

      
“It must be wonderful to be known and loved on hundreds of different worlds,” said Tojo wistfully.

      
“I'll settle for just getting rich off him,” responded Flint, lighting up another cigarette.

      
“Be truthful, Mr. Flint,” said the blue man. “Wouldn't you like the admiration?"

      
“Not if I had to face the Killing Machine twice a day to get it,” said Flint devoutly.

      
“Still,” said Tojo, turning his homely face toward the flap through which the Dancer had disappeared, “he must be a very satisfied man. Just think of it: ten years ago he was doing God knows what in Texas, and five years ago we were all working for peanuts back in New England, and now he's the most famous entertainer who ever lived."

      
As they spoke about him, the handsome blond marksman walked down the Midway toward the carny ship, signing an occasional autograph. He entered the airlock, tipped his hat to two of the girls who were sitting in the mess hall, and walked to an elevator. He emerged on the fifth level, walked down the curved corridor until he came to his door, pressed the combination code on his computer lock, and entered the room. He sat down on a hard wooden chair, stared blankly at the posters of Jesse James and Doc Holliday and John Wesley Hardin that hung on his walls, and sighed deeply.

      
And then the best rootin' tootin' shootin' gunslinger in the whole damned galaxy, the most famous entertainer who ever lived, walked over to his bed and lay down on it.

      
And cried.

 

 

Chapter 2

 

      
"Pick a card—any card."

      
Thaddeus Flint, who had been sitting about a quarter of a mile from the ship, propped up against a small, gnarly tree and thoughtfully sipping a none-too-cold beer, looked up and saw a dapper man in his fifties, wearing a derby hat, a white shirt, carefully pressed gray pants, a bright red satin vest, and a pair of diamond rings that sparkled with the same intensity as Beta Epsilon IV's low-hanging sun. Flint stared at the proffered deck for a moment, then resumed looking at the barren brown landscape that stretched away from the Midway in all directions, highlighted here and there by the dull midday sun.

      
“Three of spades,” he said in a bored voice.

      
“You're supposed to pick one, and
then
I got to guess what it is,” Jason Diggs explained patiently.

      
“Rigger,” said Flint—Diggs was in charge of the carnival's fifty-six games of chance, and had long since earned the sobriquet Digger the Rigger—“I hope to hell you didn't traipse all the way out here to show me a goddamned card trick."

      
“Of course not,” replied Diggs, masking his disappointment and putting the deck away.

      
“And don't look so heartbroken,” added Flint. “That's a stripper deck: it hasn't
got
a three of spades. What it's got is twenty-six queens of hearts, all shaven, and twenty-six other cards, all sevens and higher."

      
“Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Diggs, withdrawing the deck from his pocket and examining it. “I hadn't even noticed."

      
Flint snorted. “Yeah. It probably would have escaped your attention while you lost some one-dollar bets, and would have come to you in a flash the second we upped the stakes to fifty.” He finished his beer and tossed the empty can out onto the sparse brown vegetation.

      
“You figure to leave a few cans on
every
planet in the galaxy?” asked Diggs.

      
“Ten minutes after we're gone, that's the only way they'll ever know we were even here."

      
“Well, I can see you're in a bright mood today."

      
“And I can only assume you're here to add to it,” said Flint. “What seems to be the problem?"

      
“You got a mighty unhappy cowboy on your hands, Thaddeus."

      
Flint chuckled.

      
“What's so funny about that?” demanded Diggs.

      
“Rigger, you aren't exactly a prime candidate for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. We've been out here—what?—five years now, and you're just coming to the realization that the Dancer isn't the happiest person you've ever seen?"

      
“He's getting worse."

      
“He never talks to anyone, he's spent half his waking hours for the past ten years staring off into space, he probably hasn't had a woman in even longer than that, he doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, and the next time he swears will be the first. How much worse can he get?"

      
“He keeps to himself all the time."

      
“He always did,” replied Flint, lighting up a cigarette.

      
“Damn it, Thaddeus, I'm trying to tell you that your superstar is crazy!"

      
“I never said he wasn't,” said Flint. “He's been crazy since the day I met him. So what? He's harmless.” He turned and pointed to two figures that were walking down the middle of the Midway, engaged in animated conversation; one was human, one was very definitely inhuman. “You want to see someone who's
really
crazy? Try him."

      
Diggs squinted and peered off toward the Midway. “Which one do you mean—Jupiter or Batman?"

      
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Flint responded. “They spent eight months trying to kill each other in the ring and damned near wrecked the carnival. Monk'll never walk right again and Batman's wings look like a piece of cloth that's been shredded by the wind."

      
“But that's all over."

      
“You think so, do you?” said Flint. “You think it's perfectly sane for Jupiter Monk to give up training animals so he can spend the rest of his life working the Bozo cage with a refugee from Creature Features? Hell, they spend every penny they make trying to dunk each other, and I don't think either of 'em has said more than ten words to anyone else during the past year. Give me a pleasant, pixilated catatonic like the Dancer every time."

      
“Maybe you'd better talk to him, then,” persisted Diggs, pulling out a cigar and shielding his match from the warm breeze.

      
“I've known him for the better part of ten years and I haven't found any subject that interests him yet,” said Flint. “Except Billy the Kid and the Younger Brothers and that whole crowd,” he added wryly. “If you know anything about the O.K. Corral,
you
go talk to him. My experience with cowboys and Indians begins and ends with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood."

      
“It's not my job,” said Diggs defensively. “Hell, I've been with you longer than
he
has. I know what he's like."