Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (18 page)

Our guard had not drunk or eaten anything. Obviously he was in on the plot. At the moment, he was watching the aircraft.

“Back up to me and spread your bonds as far as they’ll go!” Ralph whispered.

I did so, and his teeth snapped down on them, the lips brushing wetly against my wrists. He had the powerful jaws of a German shepherd and even more strength than the average because of his size and the genes of his wolf grandfather. Two snaps, and the thin ropes were severed.

“Stand still! Wait!” Ralph said. “The timing must be of the exquisite!”

I couldn’t see him, but I could imagine him moving back to get some slack in his leash. It had a concealed breakaway in it, designed for just such emergencies as this.

Giftlippen was nearing the hatch. Smigma and the woman were by the table. I supposed they were anticipating objections from the crew. Both now held submachine guns they had picked up from under the table. A dozen more men had crashed upon the deck. Those still on their feet were swaying or reeling crazily around.

Of the U-boat and the bag it was towing, there was no sign. It must have dived as soon as possible.

Giftlippen stopped and looked at his wristwatch. “We have ten minutes before the bomb goes off!” he shouted. “Everybody below!”

The guard turned for one last check to us. I did not move. Still carrying his rifle, he hurried toward the hatch. Smigma and Saugpumpe threw down their weapons and trotted toward it also. Giftlippen turned and yelled at us,
“Bon voyage!”
and he broke into that maniacal laughter.

“Ready, set, GO!” Ralph said. He lunged; the leash snapped; he sped past me, a black and brownish-gray blur, silent death.

Smigma and Saugpumpe yelled and stopped. Giftlippen whirled so fast he fell down, his feet caught in the floor-length robe. The guard spun, firing the rifle before he had completed his circle. Ralph gave a bound, and his jaws closed on the man’s throat.

I was already charging across the deck, intending to pick up the automatic rifle. But as I did, I saw Cordwainer Bird pop up from the hatch.

The guard was on his back, his throat torn open. Ralph wasted no time on him. He sped growling toward Giftlippen, who was back on his feet by now. Smigma and the woman turned and ran back toward their weapons. Giftlippen yanked a huge automatic pistol from beneath his robe and pointed it at Ralph. I yelled a warning to him, but Ralph didn’t have a chance unless Giftlippen missed him. At that short range, it was not likely.

Bird had seen this, however, and he made a split-second choice. Instead of going after the others, he hurled himself at Giftlippen. In what is called in American football a blocker’s tackle, I believe, or perhaps it was an illegal clip, his shoulder took Giftlippen’s feet from under him. Giftlippen flew backward screaming, and crashed upon the deck. His automatic skittered, spinning out of his reach.

Bird was up on his feet as if he were made of rubber. Ralph ran by him, his target Smigma and Saugpumpe. Bird, passing by the fallen man to assist Ralph, kicked out sideways. The side of his foot struck Giftlippen in the face, and he collapsed again.

I picked up the rifle and fired several rounds into the air to get the attention of the villains. Everybody ignored me. Ralph leaped high and knocked Smigma sprawling. Saugpumpe bent down to get her submachine gun, but Bird was flying through the air. As if he were broad jumping, his feet preceded him. She rose and turned to fire at us, just in time to receive Bird’s feet in her face. She performed a splendid, if involuntary, backward somersault. Thereafter, she took no interest in the proceedings.

“I always wanted to do that to a woman!” Bird yelled exultantly from the deck where he had fallen. “Anyway, she looked like my sixth wife, the bitch!”

Smigma had gotten to his feet. Ralph crouched for another leap. Smigma grabbed the nearest thing he could find for a weapon, the enormous bowl of antipasto. He lifted it above his head, and the contents spilled down, blinding him. Smigma, shrieking, cast the bowl hard but missed Ralph. Ralph leaped, but this time not for the throat. He grabbed the man’s arm and bit down. Then the two were thrashing around on the deck.

Giftlippen rose, crouching. I stared in horror at his face. It had been broken by Bird’s kick, literally crumbled. As I stood frozen, he reached up and tore away the rest of the covering. I could not believe my eyes. Then he quickly doffed his robe and kicked off his slippers. I was even more incredulous. This state of shock, I am ashamed to admit, was my undoing. Before I could lift my rifle and start firing, his hand moved and the sinking sun glittered on something streaking toward me.

The fellow, if I may call him that, had depended upon the shock of recognition to paralyze me. It succeeded just long enough for him to pluck a knife from the scabbard at his belt and hurl it. I felt a shock in my right arm; the rifle clattered on the deck; I was suddenly weak. I looked down. The knife had penetrated the muscle of my right shoulder. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it certainly was unnerving.

Giftlippen, chattering, was on me then, had knocked me down, had gone on. I sat up while Bird and Ralph ran toward the poopdeck. I groped for the weapon, could not find it, and thus was unable to prevent Giftlippen’s escape.

He was quick, oh, so quick! Even the speedy Bird and the swift Ralph could not catch him in time. He had leaped into the wheelchair, punched some buttons on the control panel, and then was gone. Hidden, rather, I should say. Panels had slid up from the sides of the enormous wheelchair and closed over him. Behind a glass port, his mouth worked devilishly. The two giant front teeth, incisors like daggers, or perhaps I should say, a rodent’s, gleamed.

His hands moved again, and the muzzles of two automatic rifles sprang out of the sides. I rolled off the slight elevation of the poopdeck, falling to the deck. Bullets chopped off pieces of the teakwood and then were spraying the deck. Bird dived down the hatch, head first, the deck exploding around him. Ralph raced forward and then rolled in toward me, safe from the fire.

He looked at the protruding dagger. “Are you hurt, buddy?”

“Not severely,” I said. “But what next?”

“He could hold us here, but he’ll abandon ship at once. The bomb’s too close to going off. Ah, there he goes!”

The rifles had suddenly ceased their terrifying racket. A few seconds later, there was a splash. Ralph stood on his hind legs. He said, “All clear now.”

I stood up. There was no sign of the wheelchair or the thing that had been in it. But it was obvious where they had gone. The railing had been destroyed by the rifle fire to make a passage to the sea.

“There’s no use trying to get him now,” he said. “That wheelchair is obviously submersible, and it’s also jet-propelled. He’ll go underwater to the shore. But, unless he has another disguise cached away somewhere, he will be easily spotted.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s nothing that will attract more attention than a six-foot-six-inch-high squirrel.”

There was no opportunity for explanations. Somewhere in the barque, a time bomb was ticking away. We could have escaped in the mini-sub, but that would have meant leaving sixty or so people to perish. They did deserve to die, but we would not abandon them. It was impossible to carry them into the submarine in the little time left. Besides, there wasn’t room for that many.

Bird stuck his head out of the hatch. Ralph shouted at him to look for the bomb. There was only five minutes left. We would help him after we secured Smigma and Saugpumpe.

Bird said, “Right on!” and he disappeared.

Both the culprits were still unconscious. I tied up the woman while Ralph stood guard in case the man aroused. Then I used his belt to bind him. He was a sorry-looking mess, covered with lettuce, mushrooms, anchovies, sliced peppers, and a garlicky oil.

Ralph chuckled and said, “I smote the saladed Polack.”

“A slightly altered line from a speech by Horatio,
Hamlet,
Act I, scene i,” I said. “Good heavens, Ralph, this is no time for your atrocious puns.”

We hastened below deck where we found Bird frantically opening boxes. Though handicapped by my wound, I pitched in. Ralph, cursing his lack of hands, paced back and forth.

“Jumping jellybeans!” Bird said. “Only two minutes to go!”

“It’s too late to get into the sub,” I said. I was sweating profusely, but I like to think that that was caused by my wound, not panic.

“Sixty more seconds, and we’ll have to jump into the sea,” Ralph said. “Wait! I have it! Quiet, you two! Absolutely quiet!”

We stood still. The only sound was the lapping of the waves against the hull. Ralph stood, ears cocked, turning this way and that. He had a much keener sense of hearing than we two humans. Even so, if the timing mechanism was not clockwork or if it was covered with some insulating material...

Suddenly, he barked. Then he said, “Damn! My instincts again! That box on the pile by you, Doc! Third one under!”

I toppled off the top two with one hand while Bird and Ralph danced around. “Forty-five seconds!” Bird shrilled.

The third box was of cardboard, its top glued down. Bird jumped in and tore it open savagely. Ralph stood up on his hind legs to look within. All three of us stared at a curious contrivance. It was of plastic, cube-shaped, and had two small cubes on its top. On the inner side of the left-hand one was a metal disk. Moving slowly from the inner wall of the other one was a thin cylinder of steel. Its tip was only about two-sixteenths of an inch from the disk.

As we stared, the slender cylinder moved a sixteenth of an inch.

“Quick, Weisstein, the needle!”

I snatched my handkerchief from my pocket, but I wasn’t quick enough to satisfy Bird. He grabbed it from me and interposed a corner between the disk and cylinder. One more second, and the electrical contact would have been made. I shudder even now as I write of this and a certain sphincter muscle tightens up.

Bird threw the bomb overboard. “Whew! Okay, I’ll get the sub going, and we’ll mosey back to Venice. But first,
what
the hell was Giftlippen? I know what I saw, but I still don’t believe it.”

“I had suspected for some time that it was Nucifer,” Ralph said. “There were clues, though only I had the background to interpret them. You see, one of the institute animals supposedly wiped out by the explosion was a giant squirrel. Nucifer, Professor Sansgout called him. Nut-bearing. From the Latin.

“Obviously, he wasn’t killed. He took to a life of crime, murdered the real Giftlippen, and took over his gang. Smigma joined the gang after Giftlippen was well launched on his career, you know. He may have been surprised to find that his friend and agent was now a giant rodent. On the other hand, Giftlippen was always a little squirrelly. I should feel bad about the Liechtensteiner’s murder... but, after the way he murdered my book... well, no matter.

“Anyway, when Giftlippen—Nucifer, I mean—decided on the Venetian caper, he set up a whole new identity. He triggered off that landslide... cold-blooded massacre of the villagers... and emerged as Granelli, the reincarnation of Doge Dandolo.

“But now he was in the public eye. So, he put on a wax-and-putty head to conceal his bestial features and gloves to disguise his paws. He stayed in a wheelchair when on display, covering his unhuman legs with the tigerskin. He stuck his bushy tail down a hole in the chair’s seat. When he was in that Arabian costume, he strapped his tail to a leg, as you saw.

“He also made sure that his distinctive squirrel’s odor was covered by a heavy perfume. He knew that I was on his trail and that I could expose him after one whiff.”

“But why did Smigma also use perfume?”

“Same reason. After Smigma’s accident, he suffered a metabolic imbalance, you know. He emitted a cheesy odor which even humans could detect.

“The immobile features, the covering of the legs, the gloves, the perfume all suggested to me his true identity. His addiction to nuts cinched the matter.”

“Elementary,” I said.

“No, alimentary.”

Bird started away. I said, “Wait a minute. However did you manage to appear so conveniently—for us—inside the barque?”

“Easy,” Bird said, grinning. Then: “Well, I won’t lie to you; it wasn’t a breeze. I swam toward the sea to give the impression I was escaping that way. But I returned, working my way through the fallen blocks of stone. Then I swam through the tunnel to the cave. I almost didn’t make it. I got to the mini-sub before the bandits came down. I hid in its engine room, behind the batteries. When everybody left the sub, I came out. I used the sub’s radio to send a fake message that I’d been captured. I was taking a chance. If the chopper overheard me, they’d warn Smigma. But Smigma turned the walkie-talkie off right after he got my message.

“First, though, I listened in on him and the chopper. That way, I learned the code words they were using for identification. Giftlippen’s—Nucifer’s—was California. Isn’t that strange? No other names of states were used.”

“The squirrel’s a double-dyed villain,” Ralph said. “But he has a sense of humor. California has the world’s biggest collection of nuts.”

Nucifer eluded detection. Smigma later escaped from prison and rejoined Nucifer. How Ralph and I caught up with them is described in
The Four Musicians of Bremen.

Bird used the walkie-talkie to summon the police. They arrested the few crooks in the cave. I say few because, as Ralph had suspected, the gang in the plastic bag had been drowned by their compatriots in the U-boat.

All the art treasures were recovered. And it turned out that Nucifer had lied about the acidic effect of the plastic spray. The authorities would have had no way of knowing this, of course, and undoubtedly would have paid millions for a useless formula.

We stayed two weeks for the festivities in our honor. We were made honorary citizens of Venice, and a local artist was commissioned to cast in bronze a commemorative monument of us. It can be seen today in St. Mark’s Square. It’s well done, though it always causes children, unacquainted with our story, to ask why the dog is grabbing the big squirrel by its tail. Artists, like TV/movie directors, feel no obligation to be historically accurate.