Castle War

Thirty Garage

“How you comin’ under there, Dolbert?”

Dolbert gibbered happily as he turned a ratchet wrench.

“Okay, keep ’er up.”

“How’s he doing?” Jeremy asked.

“He says he almost has ’er licked.”

“Good.”

Jeremy went to the picnic basket and pulled out another leg of fried chicken — at least he thought it was chicken. It tasted a little strange, but good. Very good. The food had been supplied by Mrs. Gooch, the Gooch boys’ mother, a tall, unsmiling, white-haired woman in a faded flower-print dress. She had brought the basket and left it without a word. Luster invited Jeremy and Isis to dig in, as he wasn’t hungry and Dolbert was too busy. Isis had declined but Jeremy had been famished. Besides chicken there were biscuits and corn bread and several cold bottles of soda pop.

Something occurred to Jeremy as he munched. It made him put the chicken down and look at Isis.

She raised her eyebrows questioningly. Jeremy motioned her outside.

“What is it, Jeremy?” Isis asked when they had stepped through the door.

“How the heck are we going to pay for this? I completely forgot.”

Isis frowned. “I hadn’t thought about it. That is a problem, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, they’ve been so nice.”

“We could give them an IOU.”

“Boy, I sure wouldn’t trust me if I were them. And it’s going to be hard to get back here to pay them even if they did.”

Isis chewed her lip. Then she brightened. “The backup rectifier coil for the graviton polarity generator is wound with gold wire. We could do without it.”

“Yeah! What do you figure it’s worth? I mean, in Earth money.”

“Well, there’s approximately twenty troy ounces of pure gold.”

“Wow,” Jeremy said. “That works out to a bundle!”

“I suppose so.”

“If they’ll take it.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know. All I know is, this isn’t Earth. A while back I made some crack about Luster’s ancestors losing the Civil War. And he said, ‘Whut civil war?’ Maybe they don’t deal in gold here.”

“Gold is universally valued,” Isis said.

“Let’s hope it’s interuniversally valued.”

They went back in to find that Dolbert was bolting the access plate back on. When he was done he squirmed out from under the craft. He went to the picnic basket, pulled out a bottle of soda, bit the cap off, and spat it out. He upended the bottle into his mouth.

Luster poked his head out of the hatch, grinning triumphantly.

“Computer says everthing’s workin’ fine now. That grav-eye-ton polarity gizmo just had some metal shavin’s cloggin’ it up, and that thermocouple gadget weren’t cracked at all. It was just busted off its mount. Dolbert put in a new bolt, and she’s as good as new.” Luster climbed down. “Ah don’t know whut we would’ve done iffen we’d’ve had't’get parts for this here thing. Would’ve took months't’order ’em.”

“Would have taken a little longer than that,” Jeremy said. “Anyway, you guys did a great job.”

“Weren’t nothin’,” Luster said.

“It was marvelous,” Isis said. She took Luster’s face in her hands, brought his head down, and kissed his forehead.

“Wull, thank you, ma’am,” Luster said, beaming.

Isis approached Dolbert. Looking startled, he took off for the back of the garage.

“Dolbert’s shy with the women folk,” Luster said.

“Okay,” Jeremy said. “What do we owe you?”

“Well, now, I’ll have't’do some figurin’.”

“Look. Uh … we don’t have any money.”

Luster smiled. “Ah kinda figured that.”

“We can give you gold.”

Luster guffawed. “Gold? Whut the hay-ull would we do with gold?”

“It’s not worth anything around here?”

“Shore, iffen yore the gummint.”

“The … you mean only the government can have gold?”

“That’s plumb right. It’s illegal't’own the stuff, ’cept fer a little jewelry. Now, there’s some folks that deal in it, on the side, like. Know whut ah mean? But Dolbert and I, here — wull, we don’t do nothin’ whut’s agin the law.”

“No, no, I …” Jeremy scratched his head. “Then I don’t know how we’re going to pay you.”

“Hmm.” Luster took off his cap and scratched his head. “Now, that shore is a problem.”

Isis took Jeremy’s arm. “Will you excuse us for a moment?”

“Shore will, ma’am.”

Outside, Isis led Jeremy behind a stand of rusting iceboxes.

“Jeremy, I’m going to offer myself to him.”

“Huh? You can’t do that.”

“It’s the only way.”

“No. I’m the captain of the ship. I say you can’t.”

“Jeremy, we have to get back, and soon.”

“No! There’s gotta be another way.”

“There’s no other way, Jeremy.”

Jeremy opened his mouth to retort, then closed it. He looked stricken.

“I still love you,” she said, and kissed him.

She went back into the garage.

Jeremy sat down on an upturned wooden bucket and stared off into the bedsprings and the fenders and the piles of old tires.

A few moments later Isis returned with a strange look on her face. Jeremy stood up.

“He wants you.”

Jeremy’s mouth dropped open again.

He steeled himself and went into the garage, where Luster awaited him with an enigmatic smile.

“Take us for a ride,” Luster said.

“Huh?”

“Take us for a ride in that there spaceship of yores.”

“Oh. Well, I can’t do that. First, I don’t know if we can get back home. Second, I might not be able to bring you back here.”

“That’s fine by me.”

“Really? But …”

“Shore would like to ride in that thing. Besides, you owe Dolbert and me forty-seven fifty.”

“Uh, yeah. Well, heck, okay. There’s room for two if you squeeze.”

“Dolbert! C’mon. These here space people say they’ll take us for a ride.”

Dolbert came out of the oily shadows tittering his delight.

“Stand by to engage thrusters,” Jeremy said.

“Standing by,” the Toshiba said. “But we’re not going to have any better luck this time than we did before.”

“You have coordinates for the castle.”

“Thing is, we’re going to have to negotiate the interuniversal medium again, and it’s all screwed up.”

“We’re not going to hang around in it this time. We have the readings. Don’t we, Isis?”

“We have tons of good data,” Isis said.

“So, what’s the problem?” Jeremy said.

“The problem is that the supercontinuum is undergoing so much instability that it’s going to make vector analysis an iffy proposition. That means there’ll be no computing our relative velocity and therefore our momentum at the point of entry into the metrical frame of the destination subcontinuum.”

“Spit that out again in English.”

“We don’t have any goddamn brakes on this thing.”

“Oh. Well, do the best you can.”

“R-r-roger!”

“Engage thrusters!”

“Engaged!”

The inside of the garage disappeared from view, replaced by a shifting, inchoate nothingness.

“Shore is pretty, space,” Luster said.

“That’s nonspace,” Jeremy said.

“Shore is pretty, anyway.”

“Hold on to your chitterlings, brothers and sisters,” the Toshiba said gaily. “It’s going to be a rough ride.”