have to tell me what it means. I ain’t stupid just because I grew up on a dusty old farm in the middle of nowhere and sometimes say ‘ain’t.’”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Never mind. Y’all are right, I’d better learn to be a little less prickly, before I get into a fight with somebody bigger than me.” Katie paused. The silence and the shadows thickened still further. When she spoke again it was in such a low whisper than Rachel had to lean forward until their faces were practically touching. “What do you think, Rachel? If we wanted to go back home, could we?”
“I haven’t got any ruby slippers, if that’s what you mean.” Rachel remembered wistfully seeing “The Wizard of Oz” that final summer before the war broke out. “And I know this seems hard to believe, but I don’t understand what’s going on any more than you do. I didn’t make up this bar, and if I had, I wouldn’t have made it a filthy, disgusting hole like this.”
A faraway look came into Katie’s eyes. “Maybe I did.”
“Maybe you did what?”
“Maybe I’m responsible for this bar. It looks a lot like the place in Abilene my daddy took me to for my first drink, on my fourteenth birthday. Even smells like it.”
Rachel stared. Her breath caught in her throat. “But it’s my story!”
Katie shook her head. “Huh-uh. It’s just as much my story, ain’t it? I mean, once you write it, the reader’s got to imagine it in her own mind. It ain’t as if I had a TV I could watch it on, like in the old days.”
“What’s a TV?” Rachel frowned. “So everything in this world is made up by either you or me?”
“Could be,” Katie said. “And then that means, if we ever want to go back home, we’ve both got to click our heels three times. So to speak.”
Rachel looked across the room. Jack, Anya, the bartender, and the semi-conscious drinker were still visible, but their outlines wavered like trees seen through a heat haze. “Do you want to go home so we can help our parents?” she whispered.
Katie hesitated. “Not yet. Not till we know more. Otherwise we’re both liable to get into the same pickle our folks are in. But I miss my parents so much. I don’t know what the Dixies did to them. I wish I could bring them here.”
“And my parents,” Rachel whispered. “The Germans.…” Katie’s gaze fell to the floor. “What? What is it?”
“I—I don’t know if I should tell you,” Katie whispered.
“What is it? Why not?”
At that moment, the outside door burst open.
Chapter 4
Through the door came two big men armed with zap-guns.
“Anya Olympulska, we arrest you in the name of the crown,” said the shorter of the two, who had a nasty scar down the right side of his face. He and his taller companion both had little bristly chin-beards. Jack’s right hand twitched. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you, Flash,” said the tall intruder, pointing his gun steadily at him.
“Venus has no extradition treaty with Mars. This is kidnapping,” Jack said.
Scarface grinned nastily. “Take it up with the Mayor Bellini after we’re gone, Flash. But I think you’ll find yourself on the business end of the Corrector if you make too much of a fuss.”
“What is this Corrector thingie?” Katie asked Rachel, who shrugged.
“Let’s go now, princess,” said Scarface, grabbing her by the right forearm and hauling her to her feet. “I think you’ll find the Corrector we have back home is the latest model, not like the one Hizzoner the Mayor has on this backward planet. You’ll be serving the Emperor in no time.”
“Ah, now there I musht dishagree with you, shirr,” a voice slurred. Everyone turned to see the drunk staggering to his feet. “Our shcum-shucking rulersh are jusht ash shcummy ash your sho-called lord any day!”
“Stay where you are and hold your tongue, sir,” Scarface said, waving his gun for emphasis.
The drunk kept staggering toward him. “But you have not yet tashted Venushian hoshpitality, my good man!” he cried, and threw his beer in the Martian agent’s face. The man cried out and let go of Anya’s arm to aim his weapon, but the drunk was already tackling him and the bolt went wild, sizzling a hole in the bar. At that Adrian, who had ducked down behind the bar when the invasion began, growled and launched himself over it. The other Martian agent pointed his weapon at him only to have Jack kick it out of his hand. He yelped, and as the girls advanced on him he turned and ran out the door.
“You know, that’s something I’ve always admired about the agents of Ares.” Jack walked to the man on the floor. “Your rugged individualism. You don’t waste energy covering each other’s backs, do you? If your colleague had been the one to go down, you would have been just as quick to desert him, isn’t that so?” The trapped agent glared at him but said nothing, so Jack shrugged and clapped the man straddling him on the back. “Eagle-Eye Eddie, you son of a gun. I didn’t know you were in town.”
“Just hoping my ex-wife’s lawyers can’t trace me here, Flash,” he said. “It’s a long way from Ganymede, even for someone as greedy for alimony as she is.”
“And you’re busy falling off the wagon again, I see.”
“Hey, I can handle the sauce perfectly well.” The Martian agent tried to wriggle free, and Eddie punched him in the throat without even looking.
“Business first, Eddie, then we can catch up later.” Jack walked around the prostrate spy until his boot tips brushed against the man’s cheekbones. “Now I’m going to ask you this just once, desert rat. How many of you little sneaks did Ares send to this planet?”
The man on the ground grinned a slow, wicked grin, revealing a mouth that would have put a dentist’s offspring through college unto the third generation, if its possessor had had any money.
“I see,” said Jack. “Well, you can tell your master when you see him again—if you see him again—that Princess Anya will always be safe from him, and he should check the temperature of the throne before it burns his bottom.”
“Sure we shouldn’t just clean his clock for him, Flash?” Eddie growled.
“Nah, let the law deal with him. I understand the jail is suffering from an infestation of lightning lizards.”
“What are lightning lizards?” the Martian agent asked.
“Let’s just say if one of ’em jumps on you while you’re sleeping, you’ll never know what hit you,” Jack replied.
“All right, what’s the harm, you’ll never get off this planet alive anyway,” the agent decided. “There are dozens of us in Afro-Port. Dozens. The Emperor isn’t taking any chances. And he’s paid off the Mayor, so security at the space port, such as it is, will be looking the other way when we load our cargo. We have orders to kill anyone trying to protect the traitorous Pretender, and some super-groovy drugs on board that mimic the effect of the Corrector so she’ll be nice and docile when we get her home. It’ll be good practice for her,” he chuckled. “As soon as she finishes getting the full Corrective treatment to cure her of her ridiculous and illegal ideas, she’s going to marry the Emperor in a big, beautiful ceremony so the mob finally accepts once and for all that he is the planet’s true and rightful ruler. Then he’s going to take her back to his chamber and—” Jack punched him hard in the mouth.
“Now you do realize,” Eddie said mildly, looking at the blood trickling from the unconscious agent’s mouth, “that that’s exactly what he wanted you to do.”
“Jack, here you are lecturing Katie about temper, and look how you go and act,” Anya added.
“Pile