CHAPTER 8

Bill was familiar with the concept of failing upward. Certainly his graduation to his present position in the Troopers showed that this was basic to the law of bureaucratic mobility. However, never before had he ever had the sensation of falling upward — which was exactly what it felt like; what was happening now.

Nor was it remotely like drifting in zero gravity.

No, it was as though the universe had suddenly turned around 180 degrees and he'd been pushed off some cliff and was headed up, not down, at a steadily accelerating speed toward ominous rocks above. Rocks that felt like they were below.

Wobbly stomach, butterfly brain — rushing of air, smell of rotting gym bag, scream of fear.

Then, at the last moment, the rocks veered away and Time itself came hurtling into this meaningless maelstrom.

And then Bill struck the ground — soft as the foamiest feather.

For the briefest of moments, he seemed to lose consciousness, and when he awoke it was with the light-headed feeling as though he were recovering from a faint. Which was a hell of a lot better, actually, than waking up from a massive hangover, or waking up dead, but was still disorienting.

Where the bowb was he anyway, Bill pondered puzzledly as he looked around.

He seemed to be in some sort of valley, surrounded by a vista of pine-topped mountains.

A bright sun shone hot and fiery and merciless in an infinitely azure sky.

The ground he was on was dry, fringed with scatterings of brown grass and spattered with stands of beautiful flowering saguaro cacti.

A desert! He was in some kind of desert. He felt around for a canteen, hoping that there was something cold and liquidly alcoholic inside. No canteen, no beer. Oh, well. Hadn't he read in his favorite book, his bible, A HEAVY DRINKER'S GUIDE TO HEAVY DRINKING, that tequila was made out of a kind of cactus? Plenty of the latter around. Must be a few bottles at least of the former.

But before Bill could begin his traditional search for drink, he was distracted by a sudden thump and a startled "Ooff!"

He turned to find Elliot Methadrine facefirst in a pile of sand, rear end prickly from an unfortunate run-in with a cactus limb on the way down.

"Ouch!" expostulated Elliot, slowly climbing to his feet and twisting his head around to try and inspect his rear. Gingerly, he began pulling the spikes from their pincushion placement.

"Yow! You must have a high pain threshold!" said Bill, cringing with posterial empathy at the spectacle. "Me, I'd like a strong drink before I tried that." He turned around and looked at where they'd landed. "You know, Elliot, I'm afraid I don't see a whole lot of history that can be changed around here!"

Elliot ploinked the last cactus needle from his backside, then looked about doubtfully. "You haven't seen that hippie around here, then."

"No. All I see are those pretty guano birds hovering up there. Maybe they're the intelligent aliens of this planet and they're here to greet us."

"No, Bill," said Elliot. "Those are buzzards. I'm afraid they're waiting for us to die so they can eat us. Beak straight up the arse and soft guts first. Eyeballs for dessert."

"Don't talk like that!" Bill quavered, then looked back up at the hovering things with alarm. "That's not the way I want to die. In fact — I don't want to die at all! Anyway, where the hell are we, Elliot? Have you got a clue? And when you get the clue — what do we do?"

"I'm not totally sure, but it looks a hell of a lot like Duneworld or Desertplanet or, if you can believe the holohistories, a desert back on long-gone-but-never-forgotten Earth. You know what would be real nice right about now?"

"A beer ... no, two beers. Make that three beers!"

"Shut up, Bill. I could use a talk with that Time Portal, Dudley Do-Do."

"Maybe he'll bring us a six-pack," Bill said doubtfully. Already, that scorching sun was getting hot on the back of his neck and he could feel his sensitive scalp broiling under the heavy-duty burner heat waves that sizzled him.

"Did I indeed hear my honored name being taken in vain, gentlemen?" came that proper British accent.

Bill and Elliot spun around.

There, in a spot judiciously distant from prickly cactus plants, materialized none other than the aforementioned Sir Dudley. In a halo of shimmering lights the Time Portal dipped into this particular reality.

"Speak!" Bill cozened. "Where the hell are we?"

"Is this where that hippie went?" demanded Elliot.

The crystalline array of controls inside the Portal winked and blipped and danced to a tune curiously similar to the Colonel Bogie march. The TV set flashed images of historical periods, then seemed to get stuck for an endless period on a monumentally dull cricket match.

The Portal was mute then for a suspiciously long period of time.

"Dudley?" said Elliot. "Sir Dudley. We presume you are checking your controls to answer our question?"

"Hmm? No, actually I was watching England playing India. Damned foreigners are thrashing us. Pardon me?"

"You're supposed to be checking on that hippie who's changed the universe!"

"Well, you'll have to excuse me, but cricket hasn't changed a jot! Longest, most boring game really, cricket. Gets in the blood though. That is, it would get in my blood if I had any. An intellectual sport perhaps —"

"Shut up!" Bill hinted as he scratched his cooking head, burning his fingers in the process. "I don't want to hear about games — I want to hear about out of here!"

The Time Portal, rapt and fascinated by its monologue, ignored him. "I have thought a lot about the game of cricket. It's eternal, so it doesn't really count as a game. But back to that hippie bounder, eh?" The lights began their antic parade once more, finally flashing all at once in a climactic paroxysm. A John Philip Soused march (Bill's favorite) sounded from the speakers.

"You've found him! You've found him!" said Bill.

"Well, frankly, no, I haven't. Curious. Seems to be a bit of a commotion back at Central."

"Central?"

"Yes. The Paradox Processor seems to be overloading. Oh dear, I'm being summoned back!"

Sir Dudley the Time Portal began to tremble and shake. Then, slowly, he began to fade into thin air.

"Wait! Come back!" cried Elliot.

"At least leave us something to drink!" cried Bill.

"Sorry, gentlemen! I shall make every effort to return. I do hope you survive on this godforsaken —"

And then, with an imploding plop the Time Portal plopped out of existence. An arid wind whined mournfully in his place, stirring up a dust devil — and then all was still.

Elliot shook his head. "Damn! If that doesn't beat all! The bastard didn't even bother to tell us where the hell we are. Not the place, the year, the date, the time ... absolutely nothing. We can only presume that somehow this is the place where that hippie went. And this is where he changed Time, the future and the past. Where he did the dirty deed that we must reverse."

"What about that Time Ticker of yours, Mr. Time Cop?" asked Bill.

"Ah, yes. Little problem with that item!" Elliot pointed down. The mechanism was on the ground, dial faces cracked, obviously inoperative.

"Well, at least you can try and fix it!" said Bill, screaming with incredulity. "I mean, we've got to do something to find out where we are!"

Elliot was staring off into the distance. "Hmm. I believe we are about to experience a valuable clue into that matter, friend Bill."

"Clue?" Bill turned around in the direction Elliot was facing. Sure enough, approaching them was a rooster-tail of dust.

And the cause of that upraised dust was definitely not roosters, though Bill and Elliot would certainly have cause to wish they had been, later.