On the Planet of Bottled Brains Read online

  "The computer did it. He realized it was the only possible way of getting you back. So he helped me to get aboard here. He provided me with energy. Everything I needed he supplied, except, of course, a body. That is beyond his powers. But he figured I could probably find one here that wasn't being used."

  "Most of the people I know," Bill said, "use their bodies all of the time."

  "I know that now," Illyria said. "Everyone I saw here was really getting plenty of work out of their bodies. Even when they slept they use them for dreaming. Bill, these people are extremely active, are they not?"

  "I suppose so. But tell me about the Chinger."

  "Well, after looking all through the ship, I thought I was out of luck. Everybody was using his body for something or other. Some of them were using their bodies together which I found both highly amusing and interesting. You must tell me —"

  "Later," Bill sighed, not really interested in explaining heterosexual — homosexual? — athletics to a disembodied intelligence occupying a lizard's body.

  "I'll remember to ask. I went on and detected this body in a hidden compartment in the ship's hull. It appeared comatose and I just slipped in and took it over."

  "No problems?"

  "None whatsoever. They are actually very easygoing lizards, Bill."

  "For you maybe, but don't try telling that to the joint Chiefs of Staff. Can you take over any body you want?"

  "Well, of course. But that's not because we're such great intellects. It's just that we're used to living in a purely mental state, and most other creatures are not."

  "That's really interesting," Bill muttered half to himself. His eyes narrowed as a hazy idea began to form in his mind.

  "Bill, why are you squinting?"

  "I was thinking. I'll tell you about it later. Listen, Illyria, something is terribly wrong."

  "It'll be better soon. If not, just throw it away. What's one body more or less? I know where I can get a really nice body without having to break any of the ethical rules that prevent us Tsurisians from taking over any old body we please."

  "That's great. But I didn't mean that. I mean, something is terribly wrong with all of the people on this ship. I've always thought Captain Dirk was a famous hero. But here he's planning to do terrible things to innocent people on some planet we are coming to."

  "Most unusual, I guess. Since I have never heard of him before I will just have to take your word for it. How do you account for it?"

  "I don't know," Bill said. "When I asked him, he said he wasn't Dirk at all. He was Counter-Dirk."

  "What did that mean?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea."

  "Perhaps I should ask the Quintiform computer."

  Bill looked interested. "You can do that?"

  "Oh, yes, I told you the computer wanted to help you. It has maintained a link with me. I'll ask it now."

  The little green lizard who was Illyria curled up into a ball from which only its snout and eyes peeked out. Its eyes half-closed, its jaws relaxed, its paws exhibited waxy flexibility.

  "Hey, Illyria," Bill said. "Are you OK?"

  "She's fine," the lizard said. "This is the Quintiform computer speaking now. Bill, I want to apologize. I was just playing with you, sort of. I'd really like you to come back."

  "I didn't really enjoy being part of your mind," Bill said. "No offense, but I just like being me."

  "I suppose that's understandable," the computer said. "And you are right, your brain is much too valuable to go to waste."

  "My brain?"

  "Yes. It has two lobes."

  "Oh," said Bill. "I think I remember that a lot of human brains are built that way."

  "Do you know what that means?"

  "I don't think so."

  "It means that your brain is capable of becoming as powerful as a computer all by itself, without having to be part of me."

  "Oh," Bill said. He thought about it for a moment. "That's great."

  "You see, the computer really has your best interests at heart."

  "That's nice," Bill said. "But you were going to tell me what 'counter' means."

  "In this context," the computer said, speaking through Illyria who was inhabiting the body of a Chinger lizard, which is a pretty exotic telephone connection when you get down to it, "it means that there are two Captain Dirks, the real one and the counter one. You were right about Captain Dirk acting strangely in terms of your usual civilized norms. The man commanding this ship is not the real Captain Dirk, just as this ship is not the real Gumption."

  "This is getting a little complicated," Bill said, frowning in concentration. "If this is the Counter-Captain Dirk, where is the real Captain Dirk?"

  "I knew you'd ask me that," the computer said, "and so I got the information from the computer which runs this ship."

  "The counter-computer, you mean," Bill said.

  "Yes, exactly. Oh my dear fellow, you must come back to Tsuris with me. It's such a pleasure talking with someone who understands."

  "We'll discuss that later," Bill said, sensing that he was in a position of power, though for the life of him he couldn't figure out how or why. "Meanwhile, I'd like to know where the real Captain Dirk is."

  "This will amaze you," the computer said.

  "Don't worry. At this point I'm amaze-proof."

  "Captain Dirk is at present in the ancient Rome of the long-lost planet Earth. The year is approximately 45 BC."

  "You're right," Bill said. "That amazes me."

  "I thought it might," the Quintiform computer chuckled, sounding more than a little pleased with itself.

  "What else did the ship's computer tell you?"

  "It also told me why Dirk was there, and how his being there had been the cause of the Counter-Dirk appearing here."

  "Told you all that, did it? Obliging little box of transistors, wasn't it?"

  "We computers are all brothers," the Quintiform computer said. "Pure intelligence knows no skin color."

  "Don't rub it in," Bill said. "Why is Captain Dirk in ancient Rome?"

  "He has an important task to perform there."

  "Obviously. But what is it?"

  The Quintiform computer sighed. "I know there's a great deal you don't know. But really, we must hurry along. I'm not trying to rush you for my sake. I've got plenty of time. This sort of conversation requires only a tiny part of my brainpower. The rest of me is back in the computer doing all the stuff I usually do to keep the planet functioning. But I know from what the ship's computer told me that as soon as Dirk and his men get through plundering and pillaging the new planet they've just found, they are going to turn to you and do whatever they have to do to get the secret of the displacing effect from you. Since you don't know the secret, it's going to be a little tough on you. But don't let me rush you."

  There was a long silence. For a while Bill thought the computer had broken off contact with him out of pique. The Chinger lizard just lay there, its eyes closed, looking more dead than alive. It was impossible to say where Illyria was. And he, Bill, was in a lot of trouble.

  "Computer?" Bill said after a while.

  "Yes, Bill?"

  "Don't get sore at me, OK?"

  "I am a computer," the computer said. "I do not get angry at people or things."

  "You sure give a good imitation of it."

  "Simulation is part of the job. Look, to explain properly about why Dirk is in ancient Rome I'll have to tell you the story of the Alien Historian. It's just that I don't think we have time for it right now."

  Bill could hear the heavy, threatening, stomach-turning, end of hobnailed boots marching down the corridor outside his cell. There was a clashing sound as of weapons being grounded sharply. Then the grating sound of a key in his door.

  "Please, Computer, get me out of here!"

  "Hang on, then," the computer said. "This may be a little difficult — on you, I mean. It's a technique I haven't had much opportunity to practice and some of my defaults may be set wrong.
"

  "I don't care whose de fault!" Bill screamed, going hysterical as the door slammed open and Dirk and Splock stood there, hands on their hips, sneering, clad now in black uniforms with evil emblems pinned here and there, and a squad of black-clad soldiers behind them.

  "Hello there, chicken," Dirk said, and Splock laughed in a sinister manner and the black-uniformed men behind them giggled suggestively.

  "Computer!" Bill screeched.

  "Yes, yes, all right," the computer said testily. "I guess it must go like this perhaps..."

  Captain Dirk swaggered into the room, and Splock minced in beside him. The black-clad soldiers followed carrying the antelope prods and a cauldron of fried chewing gum.

  At that instant Bill felt his alligator foot begin to grow. It burst through the few metaphoric rags with which Bill had wrapped it out of a perhaps misplaced sense of common decency. It grew to the size of a cantaloupe, a watermelon, a three-year-old pig, a sheep before shearing, a piano, a one-car garage, and when Dirk and his men beheld it in its atavistic ugliness and menace, they cowered back. Bill couldn't do much except cheer his foot on since at this point it weighed more than he did and seemed to have a will of its own.

  "I'll change modalities," the computer muttered, and Bill's foot rapidly shrank back to its usual dimensions. But something else was happening now. Bill found that he was growing very tall. It was a curious feeling, growing like that, longer and longer and skinnier and skinnier, until he felt himself resembling a sausage an inch in diameter and perhaps ten or so yards in length, like an eccentric model of a roundworm done for laughs.

  "Don't just stand there gaping!" the computer said. "Find the wormhole!"

  Bill didn't know what the computer was talking about. But he did see, just above his head, a small black hole, or at least very deep gray, and it looked like a tunnel into which he could just fit his head. He did it, and promptly fell into the middle of space. And that he found amazing.

  Falling like this was strangely uncomfortable. But at least he wasn't alone, for falling next to him was an elongated green worm which was obviously the attenuated form of a Chinger occupied by the intelligence of an alien computer. Obvious? Things were really getting out of hand when something like this could be obvious.

  He was still pondering this imponderable when everything went black, or some color very much like black, and he blacked out as well.

  Chapter 6

  Consciousness returned, and with it memory. Bill felt pretty good, considering what he had gone through. Not that he was really sure what had happened, other than that his dim memories of the occasion were pretty crappy. He blinked and looked about — and discovered that he was standing on a grassy plain, the grass very much the same color as the Chinger who squatted beside him. There was a dust cloud on the horizon that very quickly resolved itself into a group of men with lances and armor and plumed steel helmets. Bill knew at once that they were Romans. He had seen enough prehistorical movies on Interplanetary Super Feature, the galactic cable network, to know that these were indeed Romans, and not to be confused with the Germans of that period, who wore bearskins and had long mustaches. These men were clean-shaven. In the middle of them, borne on a hammock, and looking puzzled but resolute, was Captain Dirk.

  "Hi, Captain Dirk," Bill said. "Are you a prisoner?"

  "No," Dirk said. "What made you think so? And, in addition, who the hell are you since I have never seen you before?"

  "Perhaps I should make the introductions," the Chinger-cum-computer said. Or maybe it was Illyria. Whichever of them was home in the body at the time.

  "That's a Chinger!" Dirk shouted, reaching for his sidearm. Bill, seeing that in another moment Captain Dirk, well-meaning though he might be, would destroy the lizard, thus finishing off Illyria and ending his link with the computer, burst through the armed Romans and grappled with Dirk for his sidearm.

  "Don't shoot!" Bill shouted.

  "Why not?" Dirk grimaced, struggling to free himself.

  "It'll take me too long to explain!"

  "Try me. I got plenty of time." He pulled at the weapon.

  The Chinger opened its mouth and said, "I'm not your enemy, Captain Dirk. I'm Illyria of the planet Tsuris and I have taken over the body of this lizard in order to help Bill here."

  Captain Dirk looked at Bill. "Any truth in what this repulsive alien is saying? And have we met before?"

  "I've met the Counter-Dirk," Bill said. "He looks just like you."

  "That is really rotten news. We came here to stop the despicable creature known only as the Alien Historian. But no sooner do we get here than we run into a mirror reversal. It traps us here, and, since matter cannot be destroyed and energy is merely information, it produced the Counter-Gumption and the Counter-Dirk back in our own space and time. I must get back to stop them."

  "But what about the Romans?" Bill asked. "What are you doing here?"

  "Trying to sort out the fate of a thoroughly unpleasant man named Julius Caesar," Dirk said. "I am very much in a dilemma as to his fate. The Alien Historian is trying to save Caesar in order to change the history of the Earth to our great disadvantage. We can't permit that. On the other hand, if I stop the Alien Historian, I would be an accomplice to Caesar's death at the hands of Brutus. You can see what a moral dilemma it presents to me."

  "You mean you're thinking of letting the Alien Historian stop Brutus from killing Caesar?" Bill knew his Roman history from watching a lot of really bad films about the Romans which had been really popular for a while.

  "Well, it is quite a moral problem, as even one with a forehead as low as yours can probably see," Dirk said. "What would you do in my place?"

  "Bump off the Alien Historian," Bill said simply. "Then I'd go back to my own time and kick that Counter-Dirk right up the arse."

  "That's what Splock said."

  "He was right."

  "But Splock doesn't understand human emotion!" Dirk said.

  "It works the same with or without emotion," Bill said. "Your job is to get the Earth back into its rightful time track."

  "You're right, you're right," Dirk muttered. "I've been under a considerable strain lately. They said I'm all washed up, but they're wrong. I can still cut it. You know what I mean?"

  "Sure I do," Bill said. "What has to be done?"

  "We have to grab Brutus before he can kill Caesar."

  "When is all this supposed to take place?"

  Captain Dirk glanced at his watch. The Romans stared. They had never seen a watch before.

  "We have about two hours," Dirk said. "At that point, according to Splock's calculations, that's how much time the Alien Historian will need to realize we've made an end run around him, and reset his machine to send him back to before we arrived here. That would give him time to thwart us."

  "But then you could go back to a time before he came!" Bill said.

  "Theoretically, yes," Dirk said. "Actually, we ran our batteries down considerably just getting here. You have no idea how difficult it is to get a trickle charge in 45 BC. No, Bill, whatever is to be done, it has to be done now."

  "Then let's do it!" Bill cried.

  "Me too," Illyria the Chinger said, pouting, which is pretty hard for a lizard to do, feeling very much out of it since they had overlooked her. Literally.

  "You'll help?" Dirk asked.

  "Of course!"

  "You are an experienced trooper, I believe, and therefore trained for hand-to-hand combat?"

  "Well, yeah, I suppose so," Bill said, remembering all the battles he had been in, the ones that he could not avoid of course. "I have had the odd experience on the field of battle."

  "Great. And you can command men?"

  "Now wait a minute," Bill said, "I'm no officer. I was one once. I had a field promotion. Then I had a field demotion. I think I have had enough of that old officer bowb."

  "Not as an officer. I mean on the squad or platoon level."

  "Yeah, sure. Lots of that. I was even a DI. But
anyway, so what? You're an officer. That's what captain means, doesn't it? So you ought to take charge yourself."

  "Oh, I will," Dirk said. "But I must stay behind the lines where I can consult with Splock. But you see, I need a commander in the field, someone who will convey my orders to the troops."

  "Now wait just a minute," Bill protested. Knowing that even before the words had left his mouth it was too late.

  So that was how Bill found himself leading the Fifth and Second (Valerian) legions against Genghis Khan and about a million of his Huns.

  Since the Alien Historian had already changed the history of Earth by protecting Julius Caesar from assassination by Brutus and his buddies, many opposing political factions had sprung up. Caesar, of course, was the outstanding military genius of his age, perhaps even better than Alexander, so he had kept supremacy over most of these hordes. That was up until now.

  Not that Splock thought so. "This is not going well for Caesar, Captain. Or for us."

  "You are a negative old pointy-eared bastard, but have summed up the situation with precision, Mr Splock."

  "Thank you. I have no emotions, so neither your praise nor your insults means anything at all to me. But I thank you anyhow for respecting my intellect and ignore with disdain, if I had the emotions to show disdain, your stupid remark about my ears."

  "What are we going to do?" Bill asked, easing slowly backwards away from the approaching army. His only answer was silence.

  As they watched with more than a little interest, the forces of Genghis Khan advanced on their armored yaks. They bore fearsome spears and weapons of every sort and variety. They had huge kettle drums, one to each side of a horse, and cadaverous warriors beat these drums and other even more cadaverous warriors blew trumpets and howled in a thoroughly obnoxious Asiatic manner. Their armies charged along the bank of the Tiber, extending in their serried ranks as far as the eye could see. The Roman troops were looking resolute but nervous, like men who have been brought unfairly into trouble not of their own making. Some of the foremost men were already backing away from contact with these screaming, grinning devils with their horses and camels and strange weapons and their spirit of plunder and murder. Cooties and lice and maybe even crabs and spiders on their unwashed bodies and lank filthy hair.