CHAPTER 6

No, it wasn't.

Actually, the guy just looked like the hippie from Hellworld who had taken a shot at Bill and had incinerated Elliot's arm. Although he wore the same long hair, headband, and bell bottoms, he was a good deal taller and huskier, pimplier and grayer.

And of course, over all this, the repulsive joker was wearing a dress — a very unattractive flower-print muu-muu, actually.

"It sucks," said the man adamantly. There was a wild gleam of anarchy in his eye.

"I thought I told you hippies I didn't want to see you around my place," said Uncle Nancy.

"Gee — I don't know, it sure looks like a real good book," Elliot ameliorated. "What kind of books do you prefer?"

The guy ground his teeth and snorted. He smelled of Kona gold and psychedelic tea. His breath, other than possessing a case of terminal halitosis, was redolent with macroantibiotic food. "I like..." he said the words with a fierce defiance. "Horny-Porny!"

"Well, yeah," said Bill, taking an agreeable swig of beer. "I like horn-po too!"

Without warning, the guy grabbed Bill by the front of his dress. "Don't call it that, man! It's not ho-po or horn-poo or any of those prole acronyms, hear? It's just good old down country horny-porny!"

"Gee, Mister!" said Elliot. "No need to take offense!"

Normally, Bill would have just belted the guy and started up a nice, proper barroom brawl. However, Bill felt uncomfortable with the idea of fighting in a dress — it wasn't ladylike. And the dress might get torn. "Sorry, old buddy. Didn't mean nothing. Buy you a drink?"

The guy looked nervous. "Yeah. I guess maybe I could use a stiff drink."

"A stiff's drink — that's like formaldehyde, right?" barked Uncle Nancy sarcastically. "I think that's a good idea, bud. Too bad I only have good liquor here."

Bill, who had indeed imbibed formaldehyde before and seriously felt that even the dead shouldn't have to take it, shook his head. "Ah, Uncle Nancy. Let's keep things pleasant here." He was relaxing into a glowing alcoholic stupor and wanted everyone to enjoy it. "I'm having a good time, let's all have a good time. Why don't you just give my hairy friend here the most alcoholic brew you got on tap or inna bottle!"

"Comin' up in a jiffy!" The bartender pulled open a drawer, and pulled up a small bottle with a red wrapper. On the wrapper were the words, in Olde English Calligraphy, Olde Mortality, and in very small print Ye be informed no person hath ever lived to finish ye whole bottle.

"I want one too," Bill intoned with alcoholic greed.

"Me three," Elliot said in the same voice.

"Last one," Uncle Nancy told them. "But I got three bottles of fermented yak's milk I will gladly share with you. A favorite tipple of mine this time of day." He quickly opened the bottles, seized one by the neck and passed the others over. "Here's to a good yak," he said, almost draining his.

The drink tasted like nothing Bill had experienced before, settling to the pit of his stomach and exploding there. But good!

Bill's eyes watered with joy. He tried to express his joy, but when he tried to speak all he could say was "Mooo!"

"Yep," said Uncle Nancy, wiping away tears of his own. "This stuff is the real stuff — Moo!"

Elliot Methadrine could only sip his. But the hippie sneered at this abstemiousness and drained his own drink all the way down in a single gulp. Plumes of steam seemed to rise from his ears. But instead of being more relaxed — or dead — the guy's eyes just looked a little wilder. Apparently, not for the first time, the commercial had lied.

"So anyway," said Uncle Nancy, folding his arms together on his chest with disapproval. "What exactly brings a thing like you into my joint?"

"Hey, man, don't rag me," muttered the hippie. "I'm tryin' to remember. I'm so spaced out, man. Must have been something I smoked. Or drank. Or shot up. Or something."

Bill drained his bottle and banged his empty pint down onto, the counter. "Better fill me up with regular. Draft. Lasts a little longer." Bill was feeling positively buoyant. Usually alcohol hammered closed the lid on the loose stuff slogging around in his head. This dark, delicious stuff was actually exhilarating him.

"Gee," said Elliot. "None of that sounds very good."

"It ain't man, it ain't. I think I downed, like, a blotter of acid, man."

"That must have burned."

"Not too bad," said Bill. "Can be tasty if properly diluted. Still, I'll never be able to touch it now. This stuff is spoiling me."

A big frown wrapped around Uncle Nancy's face. "I think the guy's talking about the lysergic dyethelamine variety."

"Huh?"

"A psychotropic substance that alters one's perception of reality," said Elliot, hazarding another sip of his potent drink.

"Hmmm. Sounds interesting," said Bill. "What proof is it?"

"Oh, man. This dude is bumming me out!" said the hippie. His eyes seemed to bug from his head, as though pulsing with angst from within. "Man ... those books up there ... they're bumming me out too. No good, no good."

Uncle Nancy snarled in annoyance and, fed up, was reaching under the bar for his leather-bound club when the hippie suddenly stood up straight, raising his hands up into the air with an attitude reeking of 'Eureka!'

"I remember! I remember now! I remember what I'm supposed to do here!" he cried joyfully.

"What?" said Uncle Nancy, still clutching the club. "Pray tell, what's that?"

"Gimme a shot of Old Overcoat!"

Clearly unnerved by the man's fierce insistence, Uncle Nancy obeyed, pouring the amber stuff into a double shot glass. The wild-eyed man belted it back with an enthusiasm truly unbridled. He reached over the bar, grabbed the bartender by bodice and bra and pulled him toward him. The club was torn from Uncle Nancy's grasp before he could use it.

"You got a little boy's room, man? I gotta go!"

Stunned, Uncle Nancy pointed to the rear of the establishment. Before anyone could do anything, the hippie grabbed the almost-full bottle of Old Overcoat and bolted for the toilet like a man truly obsessed.

"Geronimo!" he cried.

And he was gone.

"Don't know why," said Uncle Nancy. "But I got a really bad feeling about that guy!"

"Gee —" Elliot supplicated. "So do I."

Bill spilled and dribbled beer with happy incontinence. "Sounds like that guy had a good idea," he muttered. He took another long sip of his beer. He happily let the alcoholic stuff run down his throat, gurgling like an unfettered stream of Bacchus. He knew now that when he died, he wanted to die choking to death on this wonderful brew.

When he brought his smacking lips away from the rim of the mug, he noticed that things seemed ... well, mighty different.

At first, Bill ascribed the difference to a state of extreme inebriation on his part. But then he realized that usually when things got this strange, he was usually flat on his face staring at the floor. Now, however, he was sitting in a perfectly upright position, if not sober then fully in control of his capacities.

The whole bar had changed.

Gone was the dusky, comfortable wood, the dark, smoky mood. In its place were bright lights, the sheen of metal, plastic and glass, the flash of mirrors. The air smelled not of beer and chintz and tobacco, but of sweat and talc and spandex.

Bill blinked at how bright it was. His astonishment turned to alarm. In any situation of panic, and if there is alcohol close by, a good Trooper knows what to do. Finish your drink.

Bill grabbed the glass in front of him and drank liberally of its contents....

And spit it out, gasping.

It was some strange combination of fruit and yogurt and the Devil knew what else. Bill had heard of this kind of nonalcoholic and disgusting libation before — but he'd never let it close to his lips.

He wiped his mouth free of it on a sleeve. He'd just drunk (gasp!) a health shake!

What had happened to his beer?

He looked to Uncle Nancy for explanation, and was startled to see that the bartender no longer wore a dress. Rather, he was wearing a dark blue sweat suit, open at the neck to let part of his plethora of salt-and-pepper chest hair out. Bill looked down and saw that he was no longer wearing a dress, nor was Elliot Methadrine. They both sported bright green and red gym shorts and T-shirts.

Grunts brought Bill's attention over to the far side of the room, where mammothly muscled males were in the process of lifting weights.

"This isn't Barworld anymore," said Elliot, without a shred of his previous tentativeness. "It's turned to Barbellworld!"

"My dress!" a man cried. And another plaint: "What happened to my lovely dress!"

"The hippie!" said Elliot, snapping his fingers. He pointed toward the Men's Room. "That bathroom wouldn't happen to be the location of the Time/Space Resonation Nexus?"

Uncle Nancy blinked. "Well, yeah, maybe — I mean, all the bars use Time/Space Plumbing system — I don't know about no nexus."

"That's it, Bill! That must be it!" Elliot intoned loudly. He pulled off his bright purple bandana and threw it onto the floor in disgust. "What we were looking for was right under our noses, and we didn't even notice. You were so insistent upon getting your stupid booze!"

"What's wrong with that?" Bill whined defensively. "It is Barworld. Or it was, anyway." He cast a doubtful and blurry eye toward the men working out with weights. On the far wall were posters depicting Mr. Planetary and Mr. Nebula and Mr. Light-speed, flexing muscles like mutated melons.

"My books!" cried Uncle Nancy.

"What — are they gone?"

"No — but look, they've ... they've changed."

Bill looked down. Sure enough, they had changed. At first he didn't see it, but when he looked more closely, he saw exactly how they had altered.

What had once been DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens was now PECS GALORE by I. Liftem, while WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy had become BICEPS AND TRICEPS by Bod Builder.

"My books. My great literature!" cried Uncle Nancy, even more disturbed over this than the loss of his dress. "It's all been changed into muscled moron crapola!"

"I smell a time-changer at work!" intoned Elliot Methadrine. "Definitely the work of that crazed hippie who just left — but how did he do it? I haven't got the faintest idea."

Bill didn't have the faintest idea, either. He was too busy undergoing, first, shock, then the distinct beginnings of an anxiety attack. Imagine — a lifelong search for the Fountain of Youth (well, the Fountain of Vermouth, anyway) only to have that luscious flow yanked untimely from one's mouth. Horrors! He'd found Barworld and yet all that there was to drink was — he shuddered at the thought — health shakes?

"What.... What could that bowbhead hippie possibly have done?" he queried incoherently, his jaw flapping like a bar door in the wind.

"I'll tell you what he did!" Elliot intoned grotesquely. "I mean, really, are you that dense? He's gone back to the past and, changed history."

Uncle Nancy looked despairingly at his books, tearing out handfuls of hair from his rapidly balding head.

"Does this mean — we've failed?" Bill mumbled, losing track of things.

"I don't know. Let's find out." Elliot strode over to a hunk manfully gulping Evian water, dabbing at a sweating forehead between sets. "A question, sir. Is there still a war going on with the Chingers?"

"Chingers," said the man with a definite Austrian accent. "Oh! Ja, ja. I remember them from my school lessons. Ja! Dey vere viped out like the wermin dey vere. A hundert years ago!"

"Well," said Bill, "that's good news anyway."

"Ja, unt dat vas by der Fourth Reich, too. Sieg heil!" said the Austrian, saluting a picture of a man with a very tiny mustache on the wall. "Der Glorious Fourth Reich, who also abolished alcohol unt tobacco. Und put der barbell on the map of history."

"No more alcohol!" wailed Bill, dumbstruck. His personal universe had just ended.

"This calls for radical action," said Elliot. He pulled out an ID badge. "My name is Elliot Methadrine and I'm with the Interdimensional Time Crime Enforcement."

"The Time Cops!" said Uncle Nancy, clearly impressed. "Hey, you guys used to stop in all the time for free drinks and bribes.

"I thought you were with the GBI," said Bill.

"No need for that cover now, Bill," said Elliot, suddenly all business. "I was following a lead but it has just gone south. Too late to stop it now." He turned back to the bodybuilder. "I need to requisition street clothing and weapons."

"Ja. Sure," said the muscle-bound fellow. "Vee got dat real love for der Police. Vee respect der Authority on Barbellworld. It vas der vish of our founder, St. Arnold, that ve be good, clean, reverent, sadistic muscle pumpers!"

"Fine, fine," said Elliot. "Uncle Nancy — how does the Time/Space Plumbing work? Clearly the hairy guy did something in there. Where are the guts, the controls to the thing?"

"Well, hell if I know," said Uncle Nancy, his big beefy face growing red. "I'm not a Time Sanitation Plumber. We use Chronos Sewage ourselves, and they take forever to get out here. We'll just have to go take a look, won't we?"

"Come on, Bill," said Elliot Methadrine. "Let's get a change of clothes and then go have a look."

Bill grimaced and shook his head woefully.

Talk about things going down the tubes!