Slide cut the illusion as fast as he had started it and, back in Art's Snooker, his hand was around Nuygen's thin right wrist. He twisted, she cried out, and the needle gun went flying. The fifty caliber was up beside her head. Slide fired again, but she was not the target. Again the busting of the cap was a hazard to eardrums, but it was worse for the first native cop who went flying backwards, effectively headless, with blood, brains, and skull fragments sprayed over an elliptical area being him. Slide fired again, and the second cop replicated his companion's arc of final flight. Only then did he step back and place the muzzle of the huge automatic hard against Nuygen's left temple.
"So, my dear, what were you saying about taking my head?"
Slide could not recall ever seeing Nuygen von Bulow looking apprehensive before, and even then it only lasted for a split second. Her previous combination of loathing and contempt returned almost immediately. "I can't be killed."
Slide smiled unpleasantly. "I know that, but one of these hollow points could fuck you up royally for a while. You'd be living without a head."
Doc Zen moved towards the two of them. "Let her go Yancey."
"I don't know about that."
Doc ignored Slide. "Just get out of here, Nuygen. Walk out of here, back to you limo and your Humiliation, and don't say a word. Slide isn't going to shoot you."
"I'm not?"
Zen returned Slide's glance with a look of one who knows he will be calling the shots for there on in. "No, you're not. You have more than enough troubles already."
With a shrug, Slide withdrew the pistol and slid it into the back of his pants. "Whatever you say, Doc."
As Nuygen von Bulow walked stiffly to the door, the body of Sharkboy slowly dematerialized, fading to nothing and leaving no trace. When she was gone, with the double doors slapping behind her, Doc Zen whistled. "Man, she really had that kid in the full thrall. Even dead, he doesn't even exist without her."
The blonde who had been playing nine ball with Zen looked round the pool room with an expression of distaste. "This joint is really messed up."
Zen snapped his fingers. "Ernst, get a bucket and mop."
One of the synthetics scowled. "Why do I always have to do the grue-wipe?"
"You're a synthetic aren't you? Why else would I have acquired you."
"You don't have to rub it in.
The blonde sighed. "We've still got two dead cops here."
Doc Zen failed to catch the drift of her argument. "It's their own fault for walking in here when they did."
"Whoever might or might not be at fault, the bodies still have to be disposed of."
Now it was Zen's turn to shrug. "So someone will drive them out to the storm sewers and feed them to the CHUDs."
"CHUDs?"
"Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers."
Slide blinked. "I didn't know you had CHUDs in this C21."
"How do you think we keep the Mole People at bay?"
Zen busied himself setting his team to work at cleaning up all evidence of the mayhem in the pool hall. Then, when everything in motion to his satisfaction, he slipped on his frock coat and turned his attention to Slide. "I guess you see by now that you can't possibly stay here. I'm not being inhospitable, but what just happened could become a constant condition of life if you stick around."
"I seem to be attracting more than my fair share of attention."
"What I mean is, old friend, that you have to get the fuck out of here like now. This minute."
Slide sighed. "I'm hardly in any shape to be leaping from one fucking dimension to the next with bounty hunters all around me. I'm telling you, Doc. I need a hole-in-the-wall for a spell of recuperation. If I have to lam out the hard way, it's only going to be a matter of time before one or more of them catches up to me. Then I'm for the Negative Zone or even the Edge of Entropy. If that's all I have to look forward to, I might as well make my last stand right here and save myself a whole mess of hard traveling."
Zen looked sideways at Slide. "You're threatening me? You're threatening me with deliberately staying and having a showdown right on my turf?"
Slide shook his head. "No, man, I'm just tired, and it's the only card I have left to play…"
Doc Zen thought for a while. "Mars might be a good place to hole up."
"Mars? What the fuck are you talking about. There's nothing on Mars but rocks."
"Stop thinking so temporally, my boy. Eight million years ago Mars was fucking humming."
Slide frowned. Eight million years ago on a clearly defined Other Planet was a
stretch by any standard of reality-jump. He groped for what he recalled about Mars eight million years in the past. He was relieved when Doc Zen helped him out. "It was when The Slimy Things were tossing their time-cylinders full of fighting machines at Earth and Venus, and the Jedwars and warlords were fighting among themselves. The neo-Victorians are there already. They have themselves a nice little Raj going."
"I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for."
"You're not choosing a vacation, Yancey old son. You're looking for a place to hide. It would seem to be a point on the Martian timeline when they went about their own business without too much truck with Imperial entanglements. And besides, I heard that Miss Mina Murray is up there."
Slide's eyes narrowed. "Mina Murray that…"
"Mina Harker that was."
"She who mind melded with Count Dracula?"
Zen nodded with an express of inscrutable amusement. "The very same."
"No bullshit?"
"No bullshit."
"So they've got vampires up on Mars?"
"They're Victorians aren't they?"
They both knew how Slide felt about vampires. They both knew that Slide was intrigued, but form dictated he should raise one more objection. "How the fuck am I supposed to get to Mars in the shape I'm in? Not to mention the almighty goddamned timeleap."
Doc Zen trumped the problem "We have a Carter Machine out back."
"A Carter Machine?"
"Right."
Now Slide was really impressed. "Where the fuck did you get a Carter Machine?"
"I bought it from a traveling Gnostic who was a Dealer in Devices.
"You're kidding me?"
"How do you think I got Ernst and the other Hormad synthetics?"
Slide and Zen exited by a rear door and descended into a sub-basement by means of a freight elevator. Doc Zen's domicile was also larger on the inside than the out, and the basement was like that of a major museum, with irregular lines and groupings of large and dusty, drop-cloth shrouded objects, and long ranks of warehouse style selves on which the smaller items were stacked in piles. Doc Zen had a reputation for hoarding all manner of stuff and especially devices of arcane obscurity, and usually of little or no relevance to the time period in which he was residing. For a minute or more he stood frowning, as though unable to recollect where the hell he had put the damned thing. Then memory seemed to reassert itself. He walked with increasing confidence among the remarkable and extensive collection of junk, finally halting in front of something looked like a sheeted-up hotdog stand with its parasol still open. With a collector's pride, he whipped away the cover, revealing the umbrella canopy of a Gridley Wave generator above a comfortable 19th century style, padded leather armchair with a hinged set of brass and crystal controls that could be swung in front of the seated operator/passenger.