The Outpost (52 page)

“Well, sure, if you want me to keep you,” I answered.

“Oh, yes!” she whispered.

“Well, as long as we’re man and ship, how about heading over to Barleycorn II?” I said.

“Done.”

“As simple as that?”

“Well, you
could
get us there faster by adjusting the navigational control,” she said.

“How do I do that?”

A wall panel slid into the floor, revealing a whole new bunch of flashing lights and buttons and controls and such.

“Do you see that little wheel on the Q-valve?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Turn it to the left.”

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

I walked over to it and gave it a quick spin.

“Oh my oh my oh my!” she shrieked.

“Did I hurt you, ma’am?”

“No!”

“Is that it, or is there anything else I should do?”

Well, I never knew you had to fiddle with so many controls to adjust a navigational computer, but finally I must have hurt her because she told me she couldn’t take any more, and I said that was okay, if we got there an hour or two later it wouldn’t be no problem.

The trip took two days, and she was just the sweetest thing you’d ever want to meet or travel with. She insisted that I eat three meals a day, and we kept working on that navigational system whenever I had a chance, and then finally we touched down on Barleycorn, and suddenly I noticed a note of concern in Leonora’s voice.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m off to visit an old friend,” I told her.

“Will I ever see you again?”

“Sure you will,” I said. “I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life on Barleycorn II.”

Actually I just planned to spend one night there, renewing an old acquaintanceship with the Evening Star, a lady embezzler who doubled as an exotic dancer. I took her out to dinner, and during the course of the meal I mentioned Leonora, and nothing would do but that I took her there later in the evening so she could see the living ship for herself.

“She’s certainly cute,” she said as we stood in front of Leonora.

“So are you,” I said, kind of gently nuzzling her neck and ear and starting to subtly remove her tunic. “And you got racier lines.”

“My, you’re impetuous!” she said, giggling and slapping my hand—but not so hard that I took it away.

“Could be,” I replied, since I hadn’t never seen my birth certificate. “But my friends call me Catastrophe.”

Well, we started renewing our friendship in earnest, right there in the shadow of the ship. We kind of did a little of this and a little of that, and by the time I took her back home she decided that no woman in her right mind would ever call me Catastrophe again.

It was when I came back to the ship that the trouble started.

“I’ve never been so insulted in all my life!” said Leonora.

“What are you talking about?”

“The second I turn my back you seduce that ugly little tart!”

“She ain’t ugly, and besides, I done it in front of your back,” I said, figuring I had to speak up for the Evening Star since she wasn’t there to speak up for her own self.

“And you’re filthy!” continued Leonora. “Get out of those clothes and take a bath immediately!”

“You’re sounding a lot more like a mother than a spaceship,” I complained.

“Did I upset you?” she asked.

“Yeah, a little.”

“Good!” she snapped. “Then we’re even!”

Well, from that moment on things just went from bad to worse. Every time I gave her a new location to visit, she gave me the old third degree about what woman I was planning to ravish. She wouldn’t send or accept any subspace radio message that had a female at the other end. If I talked in my sleep and mentioned a lady’s name, she’d wake me up and demand to know who I’d been talking about.

Finally, after three or four more days, she announced that she was taking me back to the Plantagenet system.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I can’t stand it anymore!” she said. “I can’t concentrate on navigation! I can’t compute my fuel consumption! I can’t focus on meteor swarms and ion storms!”

“You got some kind of headache?” I asked.

“I have a case of unrequited love, and it’s driving me crazy!” she said. “You are my every thought, and yet I mean nothing to you.”

“Sure you do,” I said.

“As a woman?”

“As a spaceship.”

She screamed in agony.

“I’m sorry, truly I am,” I told her. “I wish I wasn’t so goddamned attractive and irresistible to women, but it ain’t something I can control. It just seems to go with being a practitioner of the hero trade.”

She didn’t say another word until we entered the atmosphere of Henry II. Then she asked in a very small voice: “Would you adjust my gyros, just once, for old time’s sake?”

“Sure,” I said. “Where are they?”

A couple of knobs started flashing.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” I explained. “I thought you used them to home in on different radio frequencies.”

I reached out and started turning the knobs.

“Mmmmmm!” said Leonora.

I spun the left-hand one.

“Ohhhhhh!” she said.

I twisted the right-hand one.

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!”
she screamed. Then: “Was it good for you, too?”

We landed a couple of minutes later, and then she let me out and took off for parts unknown.

And that’s the true story of the Ship Who Purred.

“Did she give you any hint about where she might be going?” asked Hurricane Smith.

“No,” answered Baker. “Last I saw of her, she was heading out toward the Quinellus Cluster.”

“How much of a start did she have?”

“On who?”

“On
me
, damn it!”

“Ain’t you got a lady friend what’s fast running out of oxygen on Adelaide of Louvain?” said Baker.

“Never interfere with someone else’s romance!” said Smith severely. He looked around the room, and finally his gaze fell on Billy Karma. “You’re broke, right, Reverend?”

“Well, I always got the Lord and the Good Book,” replied Billy Karma, “but truth to tell, neither of ’em will bring all that much of a price at a pawn shop.”

“How’d you like to make a quick two thousand credits?”

“Who do I have to crucify?”

“Just fly to Adelaide of Louvaine and pick up my … uh …. this female alien named Sheba, and bring her back here.”

“It’s a big moon, and I assume she’s just a normal-sized godless alien heathen,” said Billy Karma. “How will I find her?”

“I’ll transmit her position to your ship’s computer.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Billy Karma. “But I’ll want the money up front.”

Hurricane Smith pulled out his wad and peeled off a pair of thousand-credit notes. He handed one to the Reverend and one to me.

“Half up front, and Tomahawk will give you the other half when you show up with Sheba. And Reverend?”

“Yeah?”

“Leave right now and go as fast as you can. If she suffocates, I’m going to want my money back.”

“I’m on my way,” said Billy Karma, running to the door.

“I’d better go with him,” said Big Red, getting up from his table.

Hurricane Smith looked at him curiously.

“I assume you want her brought back intact as well as alive,” explained Big Red.

“If possible,” answered Smith without much interest.

“You ought to know that you never send the Reverend out without a chaperone.” Big Red took Billy Karma by the arm and walked out the door. “Let’s go, Rev.”

Hurricane Smith turned to Baker. “The Quinellus Cluster, you say?”

Baker nodded his head. “That’s right.”

He walked to the door. “Wish me luck.”

Then he was gone.

“Best luck I could wish him is that he never finds her,” said Baker, emptying his glass.

“But it would make a nice story,” remarked the Bard.

“Yeah, it probably would.” Suddenly Baker turned to him. “I want you to sell that goddamned book before you die.”

“I’ll do my best,” said the Bard, surprised. “But why do you care?”

“That book’s my immortality,” continued Baker. He took a deep, heroic breath. “And on days like this, I feel like I just might want to live forever.”

“Trust me, you will,” promised the Bard. He patted his notebook. “I’ll see to it.”

Those who were left drank and told stories deep into the night. Then, one by one, they began leaving.

Little Mike Picasso offered to capture Silicon Carny on canvas. She liked the notion, and they went off together to his studio on Beethoven IV.

Bet-a-World O’Grady remembered that there was a high-stakes game on Calliope, the carnival world, and decided that if he left at dawn he just had time to make it.

Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull went home to spend a little time with the other Injuns and replenish their cash supplies.

Truth to tell, I don’t know where the Cyborg de Milo went. One minute she was sitting there, and the next she was gone. I never even saw her leave.

Einstein announced that he’d come up with a new approach to transmuting base metals into gold that was even more efficient than the last such method he had devised, and Gravedigger Gaines offered to fly him into the Commonwealth so he could register it at a patent office.

Catastrophe Baker stayed a few hours longer, but I could tell he was feeling restless. Finally he decided it had been too long since he’d encountered any Pirate Queens, so he borrowed a ship and went out looking for some at the edge of the galaxy.

So it was just Three-Gun Max and the permanent residents—me, Reggie, and the Bard—for an afternoon. But this is the Outpost, and it never stays empty for long.

Doc Arcturus showed up at twilight, followed by Treetop Quatermaine, and the Sapphire of Sappho, who could have given Silicon Carny a run for her money. By sunset they were arriving in force, Cyclone Jim Crevich and the alien Br’er Rabbit and Spidersilk Sally and Billy the Blade and the Titanium Kid and a couple of dozen others.

Before long there wasn’t an empty chair in the place. Then Snakeskin Malone walked in, strode across the floor like he was still outside on one of his beloved jungle worlds, and had Reggie pour him a tall one.

“Hi, Snakeskin,” said Max. “Long time no see. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“I’ve been out making history,” he replied.

“Let’s hear about it,” said the Bard, pulling out his pen and notebook so he could graft yet another story onto his epic chronicle before both the adventure and the adventurer were lost forever.

That’s pretty much what we do at the Outpost—live a little history, make a little history, tell a little history. It’s not an easy place to find, but if you ever get here, I think you’ll agree that it was worth the effort.

About the Author

Mike Resnick is, according to
Locus
, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He is the winner of 5 Hugo Awards (from a record 37 nominations), plus a Nebula and many other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Croatia, Poland, Catalonia, and Spain. Mike is the author of more than 70 novels, close to 300 short stories, and 3 screenplays, the editor of 42 anthologies, and is currently the editor of
Galaxy’s Edge Magazine.
He was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon.