1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) by George Wier, Billy Kring Read Free Book Online Page A

glanced behind the bar, the bartender raised a knowing eyebrow, to which Billy nodded his agreement with the assessment. At the bar sat Jack Ross. Jack stared at a shot glass filled with amber liquid.
    “You going to drink that, Mr. Ross, or just glare at it?” Billy asked.
    “Right now I’m glaring. I haven’t decided to ingest it yet.”
    “What’s the difficulty?”
    Ross turned to Billy, who took a barstool beside him and propped his elbows up on the bar. “There’s no difficulty. It’s simply a contest.”
    “What’s the contest? I only ask so I can know which side to bet on.”
    Ross turned his gaze back to the glass. “It’s a contest of will. Do I ingest it, or do I not? If I do so, does it ingest me, and thereby do I lose the will to turn down another? Or do I win and call it quits before I start?”
    Billy scratched his head. “That’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it?” Billy reached out and touched the glass with the tip of his finger, pushed it forward to tip just a bit, then released it and watched the whiskey slosh around inside it. “But it seems to me, Mr. Ross, that what you’re looking at is an inanimate object with no will of its own. It can’t influence you any more than the ceiling.”
    Ross lifted his metallic arm and dropped it on the table. “This thing,” he said, “is also an inanimate object. Does it have a will? Not really, or at least it has no more will than I lend it. But why, then, is it so damnably ugly?”
    “Does it beat having empty space where an arm used to be?” Billy asked. He looked at the bartender, who shook his head in the negative: Don’t go there, lad , was the clear message.
    “Maybe, when I have real need of it. I guess the answer is, not by much. My luck hasn’t been so good.”
    “I think it was one of them Europeans that said, the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. Something like that.”
    “Shakespeare, Mr. Gostman. Julius Caesar. ” Ross pushed himself back from the bar with his mechanical arm and stood. “I think I’ll go back to the Arcadia . Run a final check of the transmogrifier. Abby is probably wondering where I am. I’ll let you finish the game for me, Billy. Tell me later which one of you wins.”
    Ross patted Billy on the shoulder with his synthetic arm.
    Billy shivered inside at the cold touch, but kept any outward show of displeasure in check. “I’ll take you up on that,” he said. “See ya, Jack.”
    “See ya, Billy.”
    Billy slid over to Ross’s vacated stool, propped his elbows on the bar and put his head in his hands and glared at the glass.
    Once the batwing doors of the bar ceased to swing from Ross’s departure, the bartender took a step forward, propped both of his arms along the bar opposite Billy and said, “Now don’t you continue any of his bullshit, Billy. Drink the damned thing!”
    Billy looked up and grinned. “That’s all I needed to hear.” He scooped up the glass, spun around to the rest of the room and yelled, “You hear that boys? This here’s a bar, and there’ll be no contests with the bottle. You’re to drink up what you’ve got in front of you!” Billy tossed the contents of the glass down in one whack.
    There was a ribald cheer from the cowpunchers at the end of the bar and the poker players looked up for a moment, then went back to playing.
    At that moment the batwing door swung open and a man came in.
    “Good God! There you are, Billy!”
    Billy turned to see his old drinking friend, the circuit-riding judge.
    “Well hello, Oliver.”
    “I’ll have a whiskey, barkeep,” the judge said, then to Billy, “I hear you’re working for Merkam’s outfit.”
    “That’s right,” Billy replied.
    “Then you’d better have another whiskey. Or maybe two.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because things are about to heat up around here.”
    “What the hell are you talking about, Oliver?”
    “Have you ever heard of an Army General by the name of Custer?”

     
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