The Big Time, Fritz Leiber [book recommendations website TXT] 📗

But don’t come through Door, marry go by Refresher. I’ll not trust a single Demon of you in this sector with me until much more has been shown and settled.”

“Siddy, you’re wonderful,” I said, starting toward him. “As soon as I got the Maintainer unsnarled and looked around and saw your sweet old face⁠—”

“Back, tricksy trull! Not the breadth of one scarlet toenail nearer me, you Queen of Sleights and High Priestess of Deception!” he bellowed. “You least of all do I trust. Why you hid the Maintainer, I know not, ’faith, but later you’ll discover the truth to me or I’ll have your gizzard.”

I could see there was going to have to be a little explaining.

Doc, touched off, I guess, by Sid waving his hand at me, threw back his head and let off one of those shuddery Siberian wolf-howls he does so blamed well. Sid waved toward him sharply and he shut up, beaming toothily, but at least I knew who was responsible for the Spider wail of displeasure that Sid had either called for or more likely got as a gift of the gods and used in his act.

Beau came circling around fast and Erich shoved the Major Maintainer into his hands without making any fuss. The four Soldiers were looking pretty glum after losing their grand review.

Beau dumped some junk off one of the Art Gallery’s sturdy taborets and set the Major Maintainer on it carefully but fast, and quickly knelt in front of it and whipped on some earphones and started to tune. The way he did it snatched away from me my inward glory at my big Inversion brainwave so fast, I might never have had it, and there was nothing in my mind again but the bronze bomb chest.

I wondered if I should suggest Inverting the thing, but I said to myself, “Uh-uh, Greta, you got no diploma to show them and there probably isn’t time to try two things, anyway.”

Then Erich for once did something I wanted him to, though I didn’t care for its effect on my nerves, by looking at his Caller and saying quietly, “Nine minutes to go, if Place time and cosmic time are synching.”

Beau was steady as a rock and working adjustments so fine that I couldn’t even see his fingers move.

Then, at the other end of the Place, Bruce took a few steps toward us. Sevensee and Maud followed a bit behind him. I remembered Bruce was another of our nuts with a private program for blowing up the place.

“Sidney,” he called, and then, when he’d got Sid’s attention, “Remember, Sidney, you and I both came down to London from Peterhouse.”

I didn’t get it. Then Bruce looked toward Erich with a devil-may-care challenge and toward Lili as if he were asking her forgiveness for something. I couldn’t read her expression; the bruises were blue on her throat and her cheek was puffy.

Then Bruce once more shot Erich that look of challenge and he spun and grabbed Sevensee by a wrist and stuck out a foot⁠—even half-horses aren’t too sharp about infighting, I guess, and the satyr had every right to feel at least as confused as I felt⁠—and sent him stumbling into Maud, and the two of them tumbled to the floor in a jumble of hairy legs and pearl-gray frock. Bruce raced to the bomb chest.

Most of us yelled, “Stop him, Sid, pin him down,” or something like that⁠—I know I did because I was suddenly sure that he’d been asking Lili’s pardon for blowing the two of them up⁠—and all the rest of us too, the love-blinded stinker.

Sid had been watching him all the time and now he lifted his hand to the Minor Maintainer, but then he didn’t touch any of the dials, just watched and waited, and I thought, “Shaitan shave us! Does Siddy want in on death, too? Ain’t he satisfied with all he knows about life?”

Bruce had knelt and was twisting some things on the front of the chest, and it was all as bright as if he were under a bank of Klieg lights, and I was telling myself I wouldn’t know anything when the fireball fired, and not believing it, and Sevensee and Maud had got unscrambled and were starting for Bruce, and the rest of us were yelling at Sid, except that Erich was just looking at Bruce very happily, and Sid was still not doing anything, and it was unbearable except just then I felt the little arteries start to burst in my brain like a string of firecrackers and the old aorta pop, and for good measure, a couple of valves come unhinged in my ticker, and I was thinking, “Well, now I know what it’s like to die of heart failure and high blood pressure,” and having a last quiet smile at having cheated the bomb, when Bruce jumped up and back from the chest.

“That does it!” he announced cheerily. “She’s as safe as the Bank of England.”

Sevensee and Maud stopped themselves just short of knocking him down and I said to myself, “Hey, let’s get a move on! I thought heart attacks were fast.”

Before anyone else could speak, Beau did. He had turned around from the Major Maintainer and pulled aside one of the earphones.

“I got headquarters,” he said crisply. “They told me how to disarm the bomb⁠—I merely said I thought we ought to know. What did you do, sir?” he called to Bruce.

“There’s a row of four ankhs just below the lock. The first to your left you give a quarter turn to the right, the second a quarter turn to the left, same for the fourth, and you don’t touch the third.”

“That is it, sir,” Beau confirmed.

The long silence was too much for me; I guess I must have the shortest span for unspoken relief going. I drew some nourishment out of my restored arteries into my brain cells and yelled, “Siddy, I know I’m a tricksy trull and the