"Undermind" by Garon E. Whited

The rider watched as the sign grew closer.  The sign was small, hardly more than a board nailed to a post.  It was off some country lane in the middle of a woodsy nowhere, aimed down a gravel road.  The white paint was faded by sun, wind, and weather, but still visibly pointed the way to some town called “Undermind.”  Beneath that was “Population,” followed by a pale, illegible smear.

The horse was a gigantic mare, oddly uniform of color:  golden-brown and slightly gleaming, as though metallic.  She paused as the rider tugged on the reins.  The horse snorted faint, dark smoke and pawed restlessly at the cracked asphalt to leave a deeply-scored mark.

“Stop that.  I know it wasn’t like this when we came this way before,” said the rider.  “The road looks like something from my old home, but I have no idea where we are.  It’s certainly not Rethven.  At least the sign implies civilization, or people, at any rate.”  He shrugged his shoulders to resettle the scale armor more comfortably.  The horse shook her mane with a metallic tinkling.  The rider loosened the sword in its scabbard before he gently urged his mount off the asphalt and down the gravel road.  With every step, the gravel crunched alarmingly.

The pair sauntered along, winding slowly through the forest.  The man was obviously the more disturbed of the two.  He kept looking around and frowning, as though he expected something unpleasant and dangerous to spring.  For miles, nothing happened.  There was only the steady crunch of gravel crushed beneath hooves, the rustle of wind in the leaves, and the occasional sounds of birds.  The rider only grew more suspicious.

The road met a small town, so small that it might better be called a hamlet, or a village.  The road ran through the center of the village and stopped abruptly at the front of some sort of temple.  A glass-fronted store sat opposite a squat police station.  A mechanic’s shop was next to the store, and a converted railroad car served as a diner opposite that.  Then came a hotel, opposite a bank.  Smaller roads, dirt roads, branched from the gravel and wound away into the forest.

The horse stopped without prompting as the town came into view.

“Bronze?” asked the rider.  Bronze—the horse—shook her head again and laid her ears back.  The man regarded the town with a critical eye.  The temple was the largest structure and looked like the Parthenon might once have looked.  The storefront would not have been out of place in the American West, and the police station belonged somewhere in the 1950’s or 60’s.  The diner was harder to place, but the neon sign with a stylized space shuttle made it lean closer to the end of the twentieth century.  The hotel looked like something from an upscale part of Paris, while the bank had all the architectural finesse of a block of concrete with a door.

“Weird,” the man admitted.  “Let’s go.”  He urged Bronze on and she walked forward.

A policeman stepped out of the station and closed the door behind himself, whistling cheerfully as he did so.  He wore a revolver and a nightstick, and his uniform was dark blue, with a double row of shiny buttons up the front.  As he came down the steps, the caught sight of the newcomer.  The policeman waved, nodded, and smiled at the armored man on a metal horse.  He then walked, still whistling, next door to the diner and vanished within.

The man glanced down at his hip.  The sword was in plain view.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he noted.  They passed between the police station and the store.  The station’s windows revealed another policeman, hat cocked forward over his eyes, feet up on his desk, apparently asleep.  The store’s main window showed a puffy-sleeved clerk in a white apron and a black tie being held up by a cowboy in a serape.  The weapon was a long-barreled six-shooter of ancient design.

The rider came off the horse in a flash.  He kicked open the front door to the store and dove in immediately, rolling forward as he hit the floor, only to spring with inhuman quickness onto the gunman.  Both went down in a heap.  With the gunman pinned beneath him, the rider managed to get the gunman’s right wrist in a grip, then hammer the knuckles against the floorboards once, twice—

Another pistol, in the gunman’s other hand, was neatly socketed in the rider’s right ear.  The draw was fast enough to be invisible.

“Now you listen for a spell, son,” said the gunman, calmly, conversationally.  “I don’t take too kindly to people knockin’ open Chuck’s door; he’s a good friend of mine and don’t deserve that kinda grief.  I don’t much care to get throwed about none, neither.  But I’m a peaceable man when I can get away with it, so you’re not wearin’ your brains all over Chuck’s fancy dis-play of holographic greetin’ cards.  You do anything that might make me regret not makin’ a mess and I’ll have to do something about it, jack-quick.  You get me, son?”

The rider, frozen, did not try to nod.

“I get you.  But—”

Whatever the rider would have said was lost in the noise.  A crunching, shattering, splintering sound came from the front of the store.  The horse—Bronze—was far too large to fit through the door, so she simply didn’t bother with subtlety.  She walked calmly through the wall, letting lumber and glass rain down around her.

The cowboy looked startled for a fraction of a second.  Then, quicker than any eye could follow, the weapon that was once held against the rider’s head was flipped toward his horse.  The cowboy fired with deadly accuracy.  Three shots spanged off the horse’s forehead in less than a second, the slugs bouncing from the metal and ricocheting upward into the ceiling.

The rider rolled off the cowboy; the cowboy, hand loosed, lay on the floorboards and fired from both guns.  Six shots in the space of one second, all with a precision made more incredible for the speed.  Bullets glanced off the metal orbs of Bronze’s eyes, scratching and scoring them, but doing no serious harm.

“Hold it!” shouted the rider.  The horse stopped.  The cowboy stopped.  Chuck, who had taken out a double-barreled shotgun from under his counter, stopped.

“I think,” said the rider, “that there’s been a mistake.”

“That’s not half right,” Chuck replied, “and you made it, mister.  Ernie, you want to go get Hughes?”

“If’n I can get past this here pony,” Ernie replied, still covering Bronze with both guns.

“Who’s Hughes?” asked the rider.

“Police Chief,” Chuck replied, just as Ernie answered, “The sheriff.”

“Oh.” He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts.  “I’m slowly getting the impression that—Ernie?—wasn’t trying to rob you?”

“Of course not!” Chuck replied.

“Then why did he have the gun out?”

“We have a game we play where I try to out-draw him, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Then I’m very sorry,” the rider apologized, humbly.  “I thought you were being robbed, and I tried to stop it.  I apologize, and will do what I can to pay for the damage.”

Ernie, still eyeing Bronze, holstered one gun, rose to his feet, and started reloading the other.

“What’s your name, stranger?”

“Eric.”

“Pleasure,” Ernie replied.  “Earnest Brondike.  That’s Chuck Waggon.”

Eric blinked at Chuck.  Chuck rolled his eyes.

“Yes, like the cook wagon on a cattle trail,” Chuck said.  “Please don’t start.”

“I wasn’t going to say a word,” Eric assured him.  “Bronze, maybe you better wait outside, before you put holes in Mr. Waggon’s floor…”  Bronze backed carefully out through the hole and avoided further damage to the shop.

“Mr. Waggon—”

“Everyone calls me ‘Chuck’.”

“Chuck.  I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your store.  I said I’d pay for the damage.  I have some gold, but not much, and I don’t know what it’s worth here.  Is there someplace I can trade it for local money?”

“Up at the temple, if you’ve got lots; they’re used to it.  Banker doesn’t deal in gold, usually.  But I can handle gold for something as small as this.  Oh, hello, Hughes.”

The policeman Eric saw upon entering town stood in the gaping ruin of the store’s front wall.  He looked sad.

“My lunch is getting cold,” he observed.  “Anyone want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Seems a newcomer to town thought I was a holdup artist,” Ernie said, guns reloaded and safely in their holsters.  “Decided to take the law into his own hands and beat me like I was a two-bit stickup man..  He’s got a hell of a grip, I’ll tell you that for nothin’.  Might even have a bruise on my knuckles come morning.”

Hughes regarded the gaping hole and asked the question with his eyes.

“Mr. Brondike got the drop on me,” Eric admitted.  “My horse came through the wall to rescue me.  She does that sort of thing.”

Hughes turned to regard Bronze.  Bronze perked her ears forward in her best expression of horsey innocence.  Hughes approached her, patted her shoulder, looked thoughtful.

“Okay.  I believe that.  Chuck?  Ernie?  Charges?”

Ernie shrugged.  “It ain’t like I never been knocked around.”

“He’s offered to pay the damages,” Chuck said.  “I can understand an honest mistake, and he did mean well.”

Hughes nodded.  “All right.  Mister…?”

“Marid.”

“Mister Marid, welcome to Undermind.  I think you’ll find the place is very peaceful, by and large, but I admire your community spirit.  I can’t think of anyone in town who can’t handle themselves, but if anyone needs help, they’ll shout.  Feel free to butt out until then, but come running if someone does yell.  Comprende?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.  Now, how about you and Chuck work out a deal, then you can come visit me at my nice, cold lunch in the diner, or at the station if it takes longer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.  Have a nice day.”  Hughes walked across the street to the diner.  Eric watched him go.

“I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a cop that reasonable,” he mused.

Ernie snickered.  Chuck just smiled.

“Maybe you better get your money,” Chuck suggested.  Eric nodded.

“I’ll mosey on out to the homestead,” Ernie said.  “Give yer missus my regards, Chuck, and let her know that Elaine’s got a fresh batch of bread.”

“I’ll do that.”

Eric came back into the shop with a fist-sized sack of coins.  He dumped most of them on the counter with the characteristic ringing of gold.

“Okay, what’s the exchange rate around here, and what’s it going to cost to get that wall redone?”

Chuck shook his head.  “Mister, you don’t know the first thing about bargaining.”

“I don’t usually haggle,” Eric admitted.  “Even if I did, I wouldn’t.  It’s your shop.  I broke it.  I’ll pay for it.”

Chuck took a coin, bit it, buffed it on his sleeve, regarded it critically.  Then he selected six more, stacked them neatly and put the rest back into the bag.  He handed the bag to Eric.

“You’re new here,” he said.  “You’ve got a good way about you, and I like that.  I could cheat you something awful, but I won’t.  Seven of these oversized bits will cover everything except the wear and tear on my nerves, but you can’t buy me new ones.  We’ll call it even.”

“Thanks, Chuck.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Eric walked outside and rubbed Bronze’s forehead.  The metal was scratched, but not dented.  Her eyes were also scratched, slightly, but a look of concentration crossed his features.  He rubbed one eye briskly, his mouth in a tight line, eyebrows drawn down and together, and Bronze’s eye was soon polished once more to a superlative mirror finish.  He repeated the process with the other eye, regarded them critically, and nodded in satisfaction.

“Good girl,” he said.  “It’s my fault for starting something without understanding.  You did just fine.”

Bronze licked him across the chin and mouth with a hot, metal tongue.  Eric jerked away, laughing, then hugged her neck for a moment.

“Okay, I have to go talk to the nice officer.  This time, wait outside.  Got that?”

Bronze nickered and stomped once.  Together, they crossed the street.  Bronze, as instructed, waited outside.

Inside, Eric found the officer seated at a booth.  Before he could do anything, however, a silver-skinned man approached, wearing a frilled apron and a perky cap.

“Good afternoon, sir, and welcome to the Green Cheese Diner.  Our special today is the Dark Side Cake, with flakes of chocolate in the frosting to simulate the rough and jagged terrain on the dark side of the Moon.  Guaranteed to be geographically correct or we’ll rearrange the Moon to match!  Care for a slice?”

“Actually, I’m here to talk to officer Hughes…” Eric replied, eyeing the waiter.  Upon close inspection, it was obvious that the man—the thing—was mechanical.

“One Jailbird Special, coming up!” sang the waiter, and walked back behind the counter.  Eric looked worried for a moment, then went over to the officer.  He took off his helm and held it in the crook of one arm as he approached, then stood at the end of the booth’s table.  Hughes glanced up and nodded toward the padded bench.

“Have a seat,” Hughes said.  Eric sat down opposite him.  The helm found a spot on the seat next to Eric.  The sword hung outside the booth, trailing back almost to the next.

“I hate to start off wrong,” Eric began, “but this place seems a little weird.”

Hughes dabbed at his mouth to catch some mustard from his hamburger before answering.  His eyes roamed over Eric and then glanced outside.

“You’re wearing steel scale armor,” he observed, “along with a hand-and-a-half sword.  You’re fast enough to tackle Ernie, at least when he’s not watching out for you, and you’re strong enough to actually hurt him.  You ride a horse made out of metal—and it’s not a robot; there aren’t any joints on it like there are on Andy, the waiter.  So I’m thinking it’s a golem.  That makes you either a magic-worker or a close friend to one.  Am I close?”

“Yes.”

“And you think this town is weird?”

“I see your point.  Yes, the town is weird.  Just because I’m weird doesn’t mean the rest of you aren’t.”

“Fair enough,” Hughes agreed, chuckling.

“So, what did you want to talk about, officer?”

“Call me Carl.  This is a friendly town.”

“Okay, Carl.”

“It seems to me that you’ve got off on the wrong foot.  This is a good town, a place where people can relax and be themselves and not have to bother or be bothered.  Get me?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Down at the temple, you’ll find a high priest of Athena who doesn’t preach.  In the mechanic shop you’ll find Max, a man who could rebuild the pyramids with six feet of string and a pointy stick—and he generally doesn’t do much more than hammer out occasional dents.  Chuck used to run an interstellar shipping company for his grandfather, at least until he came here.  Ernie was once the deadliest shootist in the world, and tougher than sheet steel—and his family thought of him as ‘the bleeder’ of the bunch.  My deputy, Gideon, used to be a private investigator that chased supernatural things through the Chicago night.  Are you beginning to get the picture?”

“I might.  What did you do?”

“I was the commanding officer of the only existing lunar base when World War Three blew the Earth back to the Stone Age.  Not a fun job, by any stretch of imagination.  I like it better here.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Maybe.  I think.  This is a place where… where people go when…” Eric groped for a word.  “…when they’re tired.”

Carl nodded.  “In a manner of speaking.  Go on.”

“It’s not just for anyone,” Eric continued.  “It’s for people who aren’t, what’s the word, normal.”

“That’s one way to put it, yes.  So what makes you something other than normal?”

Eric smiled.  Then, quite slowly and deliberately, he extended his fangs.

Carl nodded.  “That’ll do it.  Welcome to Undermind.  You’ll want to get a room in the hotel before you do anything else.  If you’re looking for a permanent place, you’ll want to talk to the banker.”

Eric blinked at him.  “That’s it?”

“What do you mean?”

“No screaming?  No arresting me as a public hazard?”

“Would you like some screaming?  I can probably find someone who’s never seen a vampire before, if you like.  Or I can arrest you first, then find someone, if that’s more to your taste.”

“No!  I mean, no, thank you.  I was just wondering why—”

“—I’m not more upset that a blood-drinking night-predator is loose in my town?” Carl finished.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes.  I’m not used to people being blasé about it.”

“Son, I’ve got aliens from other planets, refugees from galactic empires, time-travelers, androids, mutants, mythical beasts, retired gods, and Things from the Outer Darkness living around here.  Nobody comes here without the need for some peace and quiet.  Sometimes a newcomer, such as yourself, takes a little while to settle in.  That’s fine.  What I’m saying is that when you’ve seen the things I have, a couple of fangs and red-glinting eyes just don’t mean much, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you can still call me Carl.”

The silver-skinned waiter appeared at the end of the table and neatly placed a plate and drink in front of Eric.

“Management’s compliments,” he said.

“Thanks, Andy,” Carl said.  “Tell Elenendora that we appreciate it.”

“Of course, Officer Carl.”  He hurried off into the kitchen.

Carl shook his head.  “That boy never will learn to just call me by my given name.  Something about his programming.”  He shrugged.  “Eat up.  No sense in letting your steak get cold.”

Eric tried the steak.  It was delicious.  The potatoes were drenched in real butter, with just a hint of sour cream.  The drink, though, was unusual.  He was halfway through the glass before he realized that he was drinking blood during the day.  He sniffed at the blood, tasted it again, nodded to himself.  Real blood, definitely human.  Mildly disturbing, but real.

Carl finished his lunch, put his hat on, and tapped the table to get Eric’s attention.

“Remember, get a room.  That’s important.  Then try to relax for a while.  Most people are pretty tense when they arrive.”

“Yessir.  I mean, okay, Carl.”

“Good.  Oh, and don’t mention to Ernie that you’re a vampire.  He had a really bad experience with one, once.  I’m not too clear on the details; he doesn’t talk about it.”

“I won’t mention it until he does,” Eric assured him, remembering the sudden, almost magical appearance of a gun in his right ear.

“That’s probably best.  If you have any questions, I’m usually over at the sta—”

A horrendous shrieking sound, as of tearing metal, went through eardrums like fingernails on a chalkboard.  Carl clapped his hands over his ears, sighed, and slowly rose to investigate.  Eric gulped the rest of the blood and hurried after him, already aware of the cause.

Out front, Bronze was nose-down in a bucket, chomping away at metal ingots.  Andy was just coming back inside as Carl stepped out.

“Just feeding the horse,” Andy said, cheerfully, between Bronze’s swallow and fresh bite, and then whisked within once more.

Carl shook his head and walked over to the station.  Eric suppressed a smile and went back into the diner to finish lunch.