CHAPTER 16

Bill fell.

Being a borderline alcoholic, Bill had of course fallen before. But never quite like this. Sometimes he felt like he was falling up, sometimes he felt like he was falling down. Sometimes it felt like he was falling north, south, west and east and all the various combinations, blown by the wildest winds imaginable across skies filled with clouds and unimaginable colors. Skirling music and swirling smells enveloped him. He heard music and voices dopplering all around him, as though he were inside some gigantic radio and some idiot was twirling the channel selector crazily across the wave-band selector.

Bill fell for a long time.

He lost consciousness several times, although he didn't realize it, since the rules didn't seem to work the same here.

Colors, colors, colors.

Music, music, music.

Voices, voices, voices.

Voice: "You there, I see you and I am talking to you."

Bill looked around and saw no one else, so he realized that the voice must be talking to him. He also realized that he was no longer falling. And was sitting in some sort of cloud bank.

"Me?" said Bill.

"You see anyone else I might be talking to?" snapped the voice. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, there was this Time Portal and Bgr the Chinger said that we were supposed to go back to talk to somebody or something. And then —"

"Never mind. That's enough to let me know that things are in their usual mess around you." The voice had a booming, numinous quality — like an admiral on the P.A. system in a starship with reverb. For some reason it made Bill shiver. He looked around him worriedly.

As far as he could see, clouds stretched away in all directions. In the distance, between cracks in the clouds, Bill could see stars. From a break in the clouds above, a single shaft of light shone down like a pillar of fire.

Bill did not like this, was more than a little worried. "Would you, sir, let me know where I am —"

"Shut up!" the voice commanded. "I am going to tell you a joke, Bill, a joke that might give you a clue. Here's the joke." The light quivered mysteriously. "What does an agnostic dyslexic insomniac do?"

"Uhmmm — that's a tough one," he muttered.

"Try harder, Bill. Put some of your so-called brain into it."

"Maybe he doesn't do anything?"

"What a true idiot you are. You're supposed to say, 'I don't know.'"

There was a heavy bass on the voice. The clouds rumbled and quivered, and Bill rumbled and quivered right along with them. The situation was getting more than a little worrying.

"I don't know," Bill finally quavered.

"That's better. Now I deliver the punch line!"

Bill flinched, expecting a fist to appear from nowhere. Stranger things had happened.

"An agnostic dyslexic insomniac stays up all night, wondering if there's a dog!"

The clouds thundered with laughter.

Bill didn't get it, but he figured he'd better laugh too.

"Pretty funny, huh, Bill?"

"You bet, wow, a real yak!"

"I wish I'd made that joke up myself, Bill, I tell you. But I told you that joke for a reason. I generally don't make appearances before people, so when I do I at least try to be slightly oblique about it."

"Oh ... yeah. I get it," he said, not getting it at all.

"Bill, don't you understand?" rumbled the voice, groaning with exasperation. "There is a dog!"

"I never had a dog," said Bill. "I had a robo-mule, though!"

"This borders on the believable. I bet that you can't walk and talk at the same time. Do I have to spell it out for you? Do I have to burn a bush or knock you on the head with tablets or — wait a minute. I know...."

Bill was hardly listening. He was really thirsty and sure could use a drink. And he still hadn't the slightest idea what the invisible voice was talking about. A beer — a really frosty large mug of beer obsessed him.

Zoroaster, he certainly could use one of those!

Suddenly, with a slight pinging sound, a mug of beer materialized before him, just as he'd imagined it!

Bill's reflexes went into gear before his thoughts could engage. He reached out, grabbed the beer and had sucked it halfway down before he realized the miraculous quality of what had just occurred.

"That's pretty good — how is it done?"

The voice seemed fairly writhing with frustration: "That is not the point, you moron. Think about it, my boy. If you can. Think of your previous, unspoken thought. Whose name did you take in vain, wishing for that beer?"

Bill blinked. "Oh. Zoroaster, I think." He continued drinking the beer. And then it hit him.

He spit out a spume of beer.

"Zoroaster! Is that you? I mean I'm sorry, sir — that is I mean — gulp — is that really you out there? — you really exist!"

"Finally caught on, Bill. This is your god speaking — because you've been a rather bad boy, haven't you? Drinking and chasing girls — and catching them! — and killing Chingers and fragging officers ... all the things quite against the way you were brought up in your church. Am I wrong?"

Bill's insides turned to jelly. Old childhood terrors and tales of hellfire suddenly spasmed up to the surface of his mind and festered there. He hadn't thought about Zoroaster for a long, long time he realized — he'd backslid! Of course there were chapels and stuff in the service, but they were there only to reinforce the concept of the Emperor as God Incarnate and to spike the communion wafers with training-reinforcement drugs. As a child, Bill had been a model altar-boy sort, the pride of his Mother and the lead soprano in the children's choir.

"I haven't been a good Zoroastrian," moaned Bill, head bowed penitently.

"And what happens to my downsliding children?" said the Voice.

"They are chained to a rock in a sea of fire for a thousand years."

"Bill, I'm reaching for the chains." There was a hideous metallic rattling and Bill's stomach dropped into his boots.

"Don't say it, no! You mean ... you mean I'm dead?" With a hideous groan he dropped to his knees, bringing his hands up into contrite prayer. Unfortunately he forgot that he had a half-full mug of beer in his hands and drenched himself.

The Voice tsk-tsked. "Now that's a waste of good beer, Bill."

"Please! Please! A second chance — that's all I want. Let me live and I promise to live a better life, far far better than I lived before!"

"That certainly would not be hard. But actually, Bill, you're not quite dead yet."

"I'm not?"

"No. In fact, you're a pretty healthy guy. You've got to be to take the kind of punishment you've been giving yourself. I see cirrhosis eventually, definitely, but another mortal's liver would have been deep-fried by now!"

"I'm alive!" Bill said, laughing, and dancing around. Suddenly, though, he stopped. "But if I'm not dead — where am I, then?"

"It's a little difficult to explain, Bill, particularly to someone with your attention span. Did you ever push the 'Pause' button on a Holo-VCR?"

"Sure. I have a good technical background."

"You certainly do if you could master something that intricate." There was an edge of sarcasm to the disembodied voice. "Let's just say that's what I did, Bill. Let's just say that I wanted to have a word or two with you."

Bill nodded contritely. "I can understand that, oh mighty in your wisdom and kindness, great Zoroaster. I'm listening. Real carefully. You want me to stop drinking? I'll stop drinking. You want me to stop cursing? I'll stop saying 'bowb' forever. I'll start going to chapel again. But no rock! No chains!"

"Not to fear — that's not my bag. It's a scam some priests dreamed up to keep the peasants in line. Just a myth, actually, Bill. Anyway, I'm not here to threaten you. I thought you'd be interested in an opportunity for salvation, redemption, and double-value for your eternal prayer collection."

Bill nodded eagerly. "Anything you say, Mr. Z."

"I pulled you out of a major goof-up, while you were diving back through the Stuff between Time and Space, so you were pretty accessible. I don't usually take too much notice of mortal affairs, but this business you're involved in is pretty important. So I grabbed the chance to have a word or two with you."

"My pleasure, oh mighty Zoroaster!"

"That's more like it, Bill. A little obsequiousness and writhing goes a long way to cheer a god. I consider myself a pretty lenient deity, as deities go. None of my buddy Jawah's stuff about being vengeful and remorseless — or Allah chopping off hands and so forth. My philosophy toward all universal creation has been pretty hands-off. Free will. Stuff like that. The mess that humanity has gotten itself into is pretty much its own fault. Right?"

"Right, bang-on, sir."

"War, murder, officers, infanticide — they're kind of hard to ignore. But I do my best."

"But killing Chingers, that's great, right, sir? I'll kill lots of Chingers for you! I'll even blast Bgr, if you want!"

"Well, actually, Bill, that's not quite what I had in mind. Particularly since Chingers are actually a lot better creatures than you human beings. Sometimes I think I dropped your prototypes on their heads or something. No, Bill, not Chingers!"

"Horny-porny comix. They'll have to go."

"Not if I have my way. Good fun. I'll miss reading them — but you are close. I suppose they are for the knackers, though. My thanks, my boy, for pointing this out. Perhaps you're smarter than I thought. No, it's certainly not horny-porny, Bill. It's the Nazis."

"The Nazis."

"Yep. The Nazis. Talk about excrescences. They've got to be stopped, or they'll take over the Universe! I feel them breathing down my neck already."

"But —"

"Good question, Bill. Why should they bother Me? Well, I'll tell you. The whole thing is really My fault. If a god could feel guilt, I would even feel guilty. You see, I was cooking up a stew of morals and clean living for a new world I'm designing and I left it in the sun and it turned sour. Not thinking, I just threw it away. Unhappily this mass of decay hit Earth, a country in particular called Germany, and that was it. Need I say more?"

Bill blinked. "So what happened?"

There was a celestial sigh. "Well, obviously I do have to say more. Must I explain everything to you? Obviously, yes. The rot spread, and voila. Nazis. Imagine! Nazis, even a lower form of life than lawyers, Emperors or Second Lieutenants."

"So what do I do, Zoroaster?"

"Simple. Fight Nazism. According to my classified sources, they're the ones behind all this Time Slip business. Stamp them out, Bill, you've got my permission and instructions, do that and my light will shine on you!"

"I'll do it, great Zoroaster! All my Trooper training will be put to the test. But I'll do this. But it would help with the transport problem, if you could tell me where they are, get me in touch with the Nazis."

"Well, Bill, as much as I would like to, and I really and truly would, there's the problem of intelligence here. I hate to admit it but I really don't know exactly what's going on! Some other deity seems to have a hold on this particular thread of your life, and by golly if he's not doing some fancy cross-stitching with you —"

"But — but —" Bill butted fairly incoherently.

"I know, Bill, it hurts to hear that. I may be immortal but I'm not omnipotent. So you're on your own — although my best wishes go with you of course. So — go get them, tiger!"

And then the clouds parted beneath Bill's feet and he fell once more into total confusion.