CHAPTER 19

When Bill awoke, he immediately noted two things.

The first was that he didn't have a headache.

The second was that he was stone cold sober.

Both of these facts were quite remarkable. He felt quite good physically, rested and fit. He felt in top shape, like he used to feel back on a holiday on Phigerinadon II after a good sleep-in. In fact, he would have just lain where he was, reveling in his good feelings, were it not for the fact that he suddenly and unequivocally realized that he hadn't the faintest idea where the hell he was!

Bill opened his eyes.

Above him was a metal wall of riveted panels. A soft alarm rang behind him, and he angled his gaze to take in some kind of instrument panel with dials and digital readouts.

He heard the sound of soft footsteps padding toward him.

"Well, then! You're awake," said a clear, precise voice. "How are we feeling today?"

"Okay," said Bill suspiciously, noncommittally. He looked up at the speaker, saw a nondescript man in a short haircut, a bland angular face wearing a doctor's smock. The man carried a clipboard, and this he consulted.

"Well, guy, whoever you are, you were quite a mess, internally. Trooper's tummy we call it. We can't have that kind of thing, no sir. So we cleaned you up chemically. You're no longer physically addicted to alcohol. That liver of yours isn't in great shape, but we didn't have another on hand, so you're going to have to make do with it. Just no more booze for you. Which is okay, since it's unlikely you'll get any where they're sending you."

"Where are they sending me?" Bill demanded, sitting up in bed. All about him was the telltale antiseptic smell of a sick bay.

"From the hospital the Troopers are usually sent to Deathworld 69. And you're a Trooper all right. We know that. Who else would have vat-grown surgically implanted tusks, two right arms and a metal foot? You belong to us, body and soul. But the question is, just who are you."

"Trooper Bill! That's who I am. I'm on assignment with the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. What year is this?" Bill was unused to thinking and speaking clearly, but it certainly helped in this odd situation.

"9435.24 Standard Galactic," said the man.

"That's about two years ago!"

The doctor gave him a puzzled look. "Two years ago. I don't understand what you mean."

"Two years from when I go back in time. Like I say, I'm undercover for the GBI."

"I repeat, Trooper. Who are you?"

"Bill. Trooper Bill."

"Yes. So your retinal patterns and fingerprints would have us believe. However, we checked the records. Trooper Bill is presently recovering from foot surgery. In fact, anticipating your awakening, we've got him on Visual Ultra-Light High-Speed Space-Transmission Television." The doctor snapped his fingers. Two orderlies pushed over a television set. The doctor turned it on.

The picture was of a bar. Sitting at the bar, in front of a drink, Bill immediately recognized a man who was clearly himself.

"Pardon me," said the doctor to the television screen. "Pardon me, Trooper!"

The man at the bar blinked, yawned, then looked up blearily toward the TV camera, toward them. "Wuzzsha?" He inquired incoherently.

"What is your name, Trooper?"

"Bill. Trooper Bill. Thash's with two L's, and don't you forget it, bowbhead..."

"Doctor Bowbhead! I mean Doctor Magnus Fraud! Intergalactic Medical Corps. Sit to attention, shut up — and listen. We've got a slight problem, Trooper Bill. There's a trooper here that claims he's Trooper Bill. We thought you might help us out."

"What?" said the man at the bar, working to understand what was happening. "I'm here!"

"Do you recognize this man beside me?"

The man at the bar shook his head to focus his eyes, blinked a few times, then reached for his beer. "Never saw'm before. Too ugly to be me." He drained the glass.

Bill was aghast. "Hey, listen, you sodden moron. It's me! Don't you recognize me?"

"No chance," said the younger edition of Bill. "You look a little like me. But I'm here, you're there. Goodbye."

"Have you ever been cloned, Trooper Bill?" the Doctor asked the television screen.

"Not that I know of."

"I see. We found this man unconscious because he seemed to have landed on his head — and we don't know where he came from. Are you sure you can't help us?"

"Nope. If you decide to dismantle him, though, I want one of his feet."

"I got foot trouble just like you, idiot!" said Bill Prime. "Here, look! This got shot off on Veniola. Remember?"

"Hey. Veniola! That's something. I got mine shot off on Veniola too."

"Of course you did — because you're me! Only two years ago. I mean, I'm you — two years from now. I'm traveling in time!"

"Yeah? Pull the other one."

There was a sudden transmission problem. Bill lifted a finger as though about to say something —

And then he keeled over backward on his barstool, falling into an unconscious heap on the floor.

"Okay. That's enough, more than enough," said the doctor. "He didn't recognize you. You must be an impostor. You're human enough, though."

He went to switch off the television.

"No, wait! Bill!" cried Bill. "Wake up, Bill. You're my only hope. I don't want to go to Deathworld 69, Bill!" His only answer was a snore.

"That's it," the doctor said as he snapped off the set. "Time's awasting. You are off to Deathworld 69." The doctor nodded at the orderlies, who immediately applied the necessary restraints to the errant and unidentified Trooper.

"Take this cannon fodder and chain him up, lads. He'll do his duty to the Emperor, all right — and probably die horribly doing it!"

Bill struggled, but to no avail. Soon the orderlies were dragging him off.

"Oh, and Trooper Not-Bill," said the doctor, wagging a finger. "Just remember. No more drinking. It's bad for your health."

The MPs grabbed him with great glee and, kicking and screaming, hauled him onto the deathship that was his destination, chaining him firmly into place in a dank and awful level. Only then did Bill finally remember about the bracelet that Bgr and Sir Dudley had given him.

Groaning, he turned over on the bed of straw where he'd been hurled and examined his wrist. Sure enough, there was the bracelet, all right. But where were his Time/Space pals, who'd promised to come and get him if he went astray?

Then he remembered.

Bgr had said that this thing wouldn't work around impervium — and this whole time he'd been in nothing but impervium spaceships and transport boats.

They couldn't get him out because there was no way they knew he was here!

Bill lay back in the straw with a sigh of despair. After all this work, here he was, stuck in a boat, headed toward a Deathworld, probably much like Veniola, where he'd blown his foot to smithereens to get off. Only the type of Chinger-battling he was going to do on Some Godforsaken Planet — Deathworld 69 — would have no such escape. If he blew off his feet, the Troopers would just make him fight on his knees.

Bill lay moaning in the dank, smelly straw.

Oh, what a life!

And he was going to have to deal with the whole trip stone cold sober!

The days crawled slowly and arthritically by.

Bill subsisted on his old and all-too-familiar diet of absolutely chemically pure water in which were dissolved eighteen amino acids, sixteen vitamins, eleven mineral salts, a fatty acid ester and glucose.

It was hideously repulsive — but it kept him alive.

Without any comix to read or anything alcoholic to drink, he soon grew bored beyond words. The only thing he could do was to relive his life in flashbacks, and since his memory was so poor because of all the years of drinking, this took about forty-four minutes.

On the hundred-and-second reliving of his life, Bill became so unutterably bored that he finally gave in to the Unthinkable.

He pulled his ear and accessed his lobe implant so he could have someone to talk to. Even if the someone was a pretty artificial artificial intelligence. He was immediately rewarded with a wail of country and western music.

"Hi there, pardner! This here AI was worrying some since you-all warn't accessing me like you used to."

Bill didn't bother telling the thing that he really had forgotten about the implant, which was a marvel of bio-electronics directly plugged into Bill's cerebellum. He had forgotten that it also had a store of ethnic music it insisted on playing. But it also had an amazing database of knowledge and some intelligence, and could also be used as a handy pocket calculator. He had forgotten too how irritating the thing was. It was apparently equipped with all manner of sensor devices hooked to Bill's nervous system: nanochip memory, a rudimentary artificial intelligence, a nasal voice simulator. He cursed the demented programmer who had designed the system, who also had a love for the ethnic music of long-vanished Earth. He must have tapped a digitized databank from one of the ancient spacers and had dumped it into the RAM in Bill's ear. But he had written such crappy software that bits of the music leaked through into the rest of the programs.

"Give me the word, pard," the AI whined nasally. "Where we at? What's going on? How's the mission going? You got that Time Hole problem straightened out? Hope so. I'd like to go back to central."

Bill almost turned the thing back off, but then he remembered how bored and miserable he was. Maybe he could learn to like the rotten ethnic music that was playing forever in the background.

Maybe he could learn to enjoy getting repeatedly kicked in the head by robo-mules, too. Well, at least it would make him enjoy the silence a lot more, when he finally had to switch the implant off.

"I'm chained on a starship going to Deathworld 69 — Some Godforsaken Planet," Bill explained self-pityingly. "And I've been kicked back in time as well. It's going to be two years until I have the interview with J. Edgar Insufledor. Two years until they put you into me. Two years and many light-years away."

No immediate response. The news had clearly put the implant into a state of electronic shock.

"That's a bummer, old hoss," it said finally. "Talk about being at the wrong place at the wrong time!"

"I'll say."

"Trooper Bill. I detect something quite different about you."

"What? Complete and total misery as opposed to mere black depression?"

"No. You seem, I don't quite know how to spit this out — but y'all seem sober."

"That's because I haven't been drinking lately, you idiot AI. Drinking nothing except the sludge they call food here."

"Good buddy, it's more than that. You seem ... well, now that I check my neurofilament registers, I see that they show the same horse sense too — your IQ has improved!"

"My what?"

"Your intelligence quotient, sonny! Not that ah wants to lecture, but —" There was a quick burst of a tarantella and the AI's accent changed again. "I'ma talkin' bought how you cabeesh mathematics, science, philosophy, linguistics! Do a queeck check — Mamma Mia! — you gotta da IQ she go from about a 90 to well over 170!"

Captivated by this discovery the Al gave a quick squirt of Country Gardens that segued into Green-sleeves. "It does appear that the drinking you were so skilled at must have been suppressing your intelligence. According to my records, you were a farmer, a robo-mule jockey, with a burning desire to become a Fertilizer Technician. Maybe it was the chemicals in that fertilizer that suppressed the growth of your neo-cortex. In any event, it now seems to be growing at an increasing rate. Perhaps you received a significant temporal radiation blast during these recent travels in time as well."

Bill related the whole sad story from the elevated heights of Barworld to the present depths of the dismal starship.

"I must say, that's rather grim stuff."

"Now — any ideas for the future?" asked Bill.

"You've tried breaking your chain and escaping?"

"I see why they call your intelligence artificial. Think, you electronic nitwit — if I broke the chain, where would I go to? We're in the middle of deep space, on our way to Some Godforsaken Planet."

"Deathworld 69. I know. Depressing. Look at it this way, though. At least you'll have a chance there."

"A very small one. I've been to Veniola. That's a Deathworld. Troopers last a week there, tops. Why do you think they've got people chained up in here? They'd try to mutiny for sure. They know where they're headed."

A few moans sounded in the distance, as though doomed Troopers had been listening and were reminded of their fates.

"Dreadful. But presumably the voyage takes a while."

"Presumably." Bill felt the stubble on his cheeks and then the growth on his head. "I've already been here a while."

"We must do our best to keep you sane when all about you are losing their heads."

"You can start by not playing that crummy music all the time then!"

"Be delighted to. And as long as there's nothing else for you to do, we might as well educate you."

"Educate me?"

"Yes. You should realize that stored in my data banks are all of the encyclopedias of the galaxy, the technical texts — everything needed for a complete education. And, dare I say it, I'm rather a pretty good teacher, too."

"All in all, I think I'd rather have a beer."

"All in all, I'd rather be listening to the only two kinds of music in the galaxy — country and western. Cheers."

A little pop, and the voice was gone.

Silence.

"Well, bowb you too, buddy," huffed Bill, folding his arms stubbornly over his chest. But then, after just a few moments of dead silence and boredom, he yanked once again on his earlobe.

"Are you there, old buddy? Sorry I got carried away. Yeah, sure. Let's talk. You teach, I'll learn. What do you say?"

Nothing.

Bill yanked harder on his earlobe. This time he got an ear-splitting jolt of jazz.

"Okay. Groovy, dude. You wanna start with 'A' — or do you just wanna go potluck?"

"Potluck sounds good," Bill said, his salivary glands watering at the gustatory allusion.

And so, with the AI's help, Bill learned, sifting through the memory banks containing the knowledge and wisdom of the ages.

Bill learned the history of the human race. He learned the stories of the great religions. He learned about the development of science. Soon he was engaging in long Socratic dialogues with the Al, and when he was through with his course in philosophy, he engaged in a debate with the earlobe implant over the respective merits of Kant's ethics as opposed to Kierkegaard's epistemology.

Bill learned biology, mathematics and advanced mathematics. He learned physics from the Newtonian principles well through quantum mechanics. He even began to understand how starship drives worked, which was a considerable accomplishment since even the creators of those drives hadn't the foggiest. Bill learned xenobiology, and he learned xenosociology and xenosewage principles. Bill finally began to understand some of the beauties of the universe. He understood Bgr's society now, and saw the tragedy that had visited the Chinger worlds in the guise of humanity.

For weeks upon weeks, Bill learned, sucking up knowledge as a sponge sucks up water.

When the starship landed, the AI, who had been sorting through plans of survival, came up with one so simple it worked. There were mounds of kicked-up straw and Bill burrowed beneath the filthy stuff. Sure enough, when the imprisoned cannon-fodder Troopers were herded out, the guards simply passed by Bill without seeing him in the darkness.

This was the beginning of a new existence for Bill. His sordid environment didn't matter. Bill discovered that he loved knowledge. And adored wisdom. All the subjects that the AI implant taught him. Suddenly, the universe was a great and wonderful place, full of fascinating truths and incredible mysteries.

Bill began to marvel at the secrets of life itself, and with the help of the implant began to piece together all of the parts of that great alchemical riddle that had stumped all of mankind, perhaps even all of being kind throughout the ages:

The Meaning of Life itself!

His mind and intellect marvelously expanded, Bill came upon a simple truth that had somehow eluded the philologists, philosophers, and great theological thinkers throughout history.

Life had a meaning, all right.

But because it was hard to figure out, you just couldn't put it into normal GalSpeak words.

No, the Meaning of Life, to be properly understood, needed its own language mathematical. Since necessity is the mother of invention — no one knows who the father is — he invented that language. It was directed toward a single goal: to ferret out and elucidate those elusive little morsels of meaning that comprised the greater whole. The Meaning of Life.

Finally, after weeks, months, yes even years, two to be precise, Bill was able to boil down all the wisdom and knowledge into one short mathematical statement. He scratched it on the wall with a nail, read and admired it. This was it. The meaning of life. At last. When the time came, he would share this knowledge with the galaxy.

Roughly translated in GalSpeak this translation read:

Life != Bowb.

Life doesn't mean Bowb. Brief. Profound.

Brilliant.

Bill had no idea where he was when he wrote down the equation. They had landed many times during his imprisonment, and Bill had always hidden under the filthy straw, always to be passed over. He'd lost count of the days that had passed, because there were no days — only an eternal dimness, punctuated by the moans and chain-clankings of the imprisoned Troopers.

He admired the equation from all sides. His mind became aglow — no, absolutely incandescent! He was afire with this sudden Truth, and that fire raged through him with a fierce burning clarity that would solve all the problems in the universe.

The Meaning of Life was the solution to all of the galaxy's ills! It would put a stop to all pain, all suffering. If he could only get off this hellboat, and communicate it to the governments of the Chingers and to the Emperor himself, then the Chinger and the Human Empires would at long last be at peace.

No more Galactic Troopers!

No more war!

No more hate and fear and blood and death and mayhem! No more reason to drink yourself to oblivion. It would be a universe of peace, of music and art and literature! A universe of cooperation, of universal good.

"Life is incredible!" he confided to the AI. "Only I suspect that I would enjoy it even more if I could get something decent to eat and get off this ship!"

"You're right. But how?"

Bill didn't know. He therefore turned his burgeoning, light-filled mind toward other pursuits. Since the normal galactic would take a lifetime just mastering the principles of his equation, let alone comprehending its subtleties, Bill began to work on the problem of how exactly to translate the Meaning of Life into words that normal people could understand. This was no easy proposition, and he came to a number of dead ends before he even saw a hope of accomplishing his goals. For he well realized that if he could not communicate the Meaning of Life to others, then it could not exercise its healing powers.

And then one day, while he was working on a particularly difficult exegesis, a man ran past him, tripping over the chain that attached him to the wall, breaking the chain in two.

Bill had a sudden attack of semi-deja vu.