EPILOGUE

BACK OFF THE SADDLE AGAIN

"Nice foot you got there, buddy," said the bartender. "Same again?"

"Yeah," mumbled Bill.

"You're gonna have to sit up to drink it, pal. That's the canteen's rules, I'm afraid. If you can't sit up straight, we can't serve you."

"Oh," said Bill. "Yeah, sure."

The bar was a regulation lower-ranks canteen with plastiwood bar, neo-outhouse decor and a brace of beer taps, neither of which worked. In dark corners zonked Troopers slept the sleep of alcoholic bliss, escaped from the military until they reluctantly sobered up. A jittering, malfunctioning robo-mop slipped and slid and scurried about the off-yellow linoleum floor, mopping up spilled drinks and Fakey-Potato-Drips packages, cigar butts and anything, including shoes and caps, that got in the way of its inhaling nozzles.

The canteen was called "The Kill-Cat Club" because of the trophies of stuffed cats decorating its bar and its walls. Bill would have taken the turbo-tunnel into town, but the bars were even worse there — a horrifying thought! — and besides he was running out of money. And he had something important to do early tomorrow, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what the bowb it was.

He looked up blearily, trying to recall, as the robo-mop wetly slapped his face with its greasy cleaning attachment.

No wonder the bartender was admiring his foot! It had been propped up on the bar edge, while Bill had been lying firmly on the floor where he'd passed out a few moments before. Bill managed to rearrange himself, putting his head where his foot had been, and placing the latter back on the floor. It was still a cloven hoof, but Bill didn't care so much about that anymore.

Bill didn't care about anything.

When Bill was situated properly, weaving only a little, the satisfied bartender upended the bottle of Olde Paint Remover and Worm-Killer into Bill's shot glass, filling it to the brim.

Bill drank it.

It sure wasn't Holy Grail Ale, but hell, alcohol was alcohol.

Oblivion was oblivion.

"And I like your fangs, too," said the bartender, a non-com it was revealed by the stripes stitched poorly onto his wrists. Probably worked the bar for extra creds. "You're the acting DI, aren't you?"

Bill grunted.

"There's a new shipment of recruits comin' in about right now! You must be the one who will work them over?"

Bill grunted again, a pig imitation he usually enjoyed. So that's what he was doing tomorrow. He pushed his shot glass out for another drink.

"Say, aren't you drinking a little too much if you have to get up at four in the morning?" the bartender pointed out.

"Puts me in the proper sadistic mood. Fill the glass and shut up," he smiled.

The bartender shrugged. "Here you go, pal. This one's on the house. You look like you just lost your woman to your best buddy!"

Bill's eyes shot wide. The shot-glass spilled as he leaned over, grabbed the man by his shirt and pulled him halfway across the bar. "What? Does every bowbing Trooper know?"

"Gasp!" the barman gasped, slowly expiring. Bill's grasp loosened a bit and he sucked in reviving, though foul, air. "Stop! I don't know diddly-bowb about you! Sorry, I must have hit the nail on the head! Look, be my guest, keep the whole bottle!"

Bill grunted and let the guy go. "Her name was Irma. And she was the nova in my galaxy!" He shook his head and poured the whiskey and just stared at it for a moment. "But all good things pass and the end of a lovelorn Trooper is always a tragedy. She left me, Rick, it was Dumpsville for good old Bill, bad-karma gravity-hole of the universe!"

"Gee, Bill. Sorry to hear about it!"

The "Gee" earned the bartender serious scrutiny by Bill. No, there was no seam on his head, so he wasn't a disguised Chinger. Besides, Bgr the Chinger had stolen a lifeboat and escaped not long after they'd dimension jumped out of the Over-Gland. They never had found the fabled Over-Brewery, either. But they had drunk all the booze in the ship, which, by hindsight, had been Bill's downfall. Rick had found Irma more attractive than the booze, which certainly must have endeared her more to him than the unconscious and sozzled Bill. At least he guessed that's what had happened.

All he knew was that he had woken up back on Colostomy IV, a note of regret pinned to his tunic and the MP's just approaching with houndlike bays of success.

And that, as the obvious but oft repeated aphorism stated, was that. There was a shortage of Drill Instructors; the last one had been eaten alive by the recruits. So they shipped him here to Camp Brezhnev, double-time, to grind the new recruits through the boot camp meat grinder and kill off the chaff.

He couldn't help now but remember, as he killed what few remaining bacteria were left in his stomach with another swig of Olde Paint Remover, what Bgr the Chinger had said in his note that Bill had found stuffed in his ear the morning after the little guy had split.

"Sorry about the misadventures and such and any trouble I might have caused by tying up with that fruitcake of a doctor. All I wanted was a kinder, gentler universe. As, I assume, do we all, with the exception of the military. Signed Your Chinger pal, Bgr."

What bowb.

"The Chingers are our enemies!" he mouthed incoherently at the bartender.

"Yeah, pal. They sure are."

"Loose lips sink drips!"

"Right. Maybe I'd better take that bottle back now, huh?"

Bill grabbed the bottle and snarled.

The bartender backed off.

"There ain't no justice," Bill whined.

"So don't expect any."

"You're right." Bill looked down at his mood foot, sighed and belched. And reached for his glass. He raised it, started to drain it — and stopped. Something was wrong. Or right. But what? He tiptoed sluggishly through his brain cells trying to find the answer.

Foot.

Foot what?

Foot, mine.

"Foot!" he cried aloud and blinked down at his mood foot. The cloven hoof.

Cloven no more! Where the hairy thing had been was now a good solid Trooper's boot that matched exactly the one on his other foot. The foot had caught his mood!

He had given up. There was no escape. He was back in the Troopers for good, doomed to bash the barracks square forever. And his mood foot had caught that mood and provided the foot to fit the man.

Or had it? Horrified he looked back at his foot and saw the boot. But, surely, ha-ha — it was one more GI boot — and was there a foot inside. Wasn't there? But maybe he was doomed forever to have a boot instead of a foot. Which would sure look funny when he took a shower, and would play hell with his love life.

He reached down to open the boot and his horrified fingers trembled and stopped.

No! He had to find out. Whatever was stuck to the end of his leg, he had to know.

He reached down and tugged.