Mick Farren - Slide On The Run

needs, along with an equal number of human attendants, all underdressed for the chill of the Martian night, in the style of the seraglio paintings so popular in the colonial 1800s. Mina herself was barely clothed in a loose jeweled robe that could have been designed by Gustav Klimt, and might have been considered more suitable for the bedroom than the throne room. The garment used abstract mosaics of small glowing gems that, coupled with the movements of the wearer, produced constantly shifting shimmer patterns, but Slide suspected that at least some of the crystals could only be radioactive, and, if the Queen was, to any degree still human, they were probably wreaking havoc with her cell structure. The robe was also heavy and tended to fall open whenever she leaned forward, affording Slide a clear view of the dark nipples of her small but firm breasts. He could only assume that this was a private audience, unless of course Queen Mina was the pace setter of the local decadence, or attempting to emulate Catherine the Great. The small compliment of courtiers certainly indicated that whatever matter had caused the Queen to summon Slide to her presence was hardly for public consumption.

Aside from the guards and servants, just six individuals waited on the monarch's pleasure, five humans and one Martian, and the arrival of Slide and Lupo raised the total to eight. After introductions had been made, Slide found that he was in the company of Bolivar Morlock, an obvious Captain of Industry, the stereotypical fat capitalist, red faced from over indulgence in whores and vintage port, and arrayed in frock coat and solid gold watch chain. Sir Hubert Guest was the elderly commander of the Royal Martian Air Force, while the even more antiquated General Cairngorm, was the senior officer of Queen Mina's imperial staff. An admiral would have completed the set, except that, on Mars, with its scarcity of water and complete lack of seas, high or otherwise, a navy was clearly redundant; something that Slide knew must have been a blow to this faux-British collective consciousness. On the Red Planet, Britannia had no waves to rule.

The two men were formally attired in full dress uniforms, blue and scarlet respectively, and all but bowed down by decorations and gold braid, and, Slide would quickly learn that they shared a common and aggressive stupidity that it was near-miraculous that the Slimy Things had not wiped out Extrosylvania long ago. A conniving oaf called Captain Harry Flashman was the human commander of the Throne Room's Red Martian guards, while a mute young woman who was referred to only as Prudence the Kitten, and whose function Slide was never to learn or fully understand completed the human representation. The ranking native in the throne room was Jalja Hajd, the Red Jeddak of Amhor, and Master of Indigenous Regulars. Queen Mina, however, totally ignored these supposedly familiar courtiers and concentrated exclusively on Slide. "You are said to have the ability to exist and function in multiple places at multiple times?"

Slide shook his head. "That is not strictly true, Majesty. It might appear so, but only because of the relativity of time and the singular perpetuation of the observer."

"We are not sure we understand."

"And I'm not sure I could explain without expounding a brief history of time and the separation of parallel dimensions."

"We have neither the time nor inclination for a history of time."

"That's why I hesitate to attempt it."

"We have heard that they hunt you in other realms of the continuum." "That is true, your Majesty."

"It is said that you deliberately caused disastrous alterations in an entire swath of very important time lines."

"It is said, ma-am, but that does not make it true."

"Then you are a fugitive from retribution for a crime that you did not commit?"

"That is my story, your Majesty."

"And you're sticking to it?"

"I am, ma'am."

"You must have been relieved when brought we you to our realm."

Slide resisted giving himself away by raising a cynical eyebrow. Either someone was deceiving the Queen about the reason for Slide's presence on Mars, or some temporal discrepancy had come into play. At his side, he heard Lupo let out a faint exhalation as though he knew that the Queen might be misinformed. As far as Slide was aware Dr. Zen's Carter Machine had hurled him across both space and time on the Gridley Wave, and he had been slammed naked into the hard sands of Mars with not even Mahdjfb the Fygglhgis to witness his actual arrival. No one in the Turquoise Tower, or anywhere else on the planet, could have had a hand in the event, although he knew, from his perception of the subjective present, that could easily not be what they firmly believed. Thus Slide's reply was thought-out and guarded. "I would certainly rather be here than in some of the other places I have recently found myself."

"But are you grateful to us, Yancey Slide?"

Slide half bowed and smiled. He might as well play along with the illusion for the moment. "Yes, you majesty. I am extremely grateful."

"Grateful enough to be of service in return?"

Yeah, well, he might have known. Nothing was for nothing, anywhere in space-time. Again he bowed. This time lower and with a greater flourish. "I am at your service, you Majesty."

Slide knew he was entering the art of the deal, but this was doing it the hard way, when the first phase was clearly going be waiting for Queen Mina and her coterie of courtiers to define exactly what the deal was all about. Like those who hunted him, and those from whom he ran, the Queen seemed to be under the delusion that Slide had the power to alter history and change the course of the future. It was nonsense, of course. Just part of the bad rap that had been laid on the idimmu almost since infinity. Sure, they could mightily fuck things up by the classic "Stepping On The Butterfly" time paradox, but any entity with

temporal jump capacity could emerge into a particular era, inadvertently destroy one crucial factor, and wreak havoc in another. Like the story went, he could step on butterfly in one time zone, and cause towers to fall millions of years later on the same timeline. The trouble was that survivors of the cataclysm would not remember that the towers had ever existed in the first place, because, in their reality, the towers never had.

The whole business of rearranging time was all an academic conundrum, with no practical application, no matter what his enemies might claim. He imagined that the Queen had some scheme in mind whereby he expected him casually to hop back a few eons, and eliminate the source of the Slimy Things, or whatever else might threaten the kingdom, but such an operation was never going to happen. Even if he had the power, the timelines in this neck of the nexus were almost certainly inalterably fucked up already. Only the Ancient Ones could know what havoc Mina and her Victorians had wreaked on the ecology of nearby time when they'd arbitrarily set down their imperial dog and pony show on antediluvian Mars.

The truth was that Slime didn't have half the power with which he was so often credited. Without the help of technology like the Gridley Wave and its more advanced cousins, he had no way of controlling, or even knowing, where his time jumps might take him. The myth that idimmu could navigate the streams of time, as opposed to merely jumping and hoping, was as specious as their supposed immortality. Sure they could handle immeasurably more wear and tear than humans, but, if he was sufficiently unlucky or careless enough to run into his own specific Instant of Termination, he could find himself as non-existent and effectively dead as any deceased mortal. He wasn't about to tell the Queen any of that, though. While Mina and her crew went on thinking that he was the solution, and not just another itinerant problem, he at least had a hole in which to hide, here in out-of-the-way Extrosylvania. His only alternative was to jump out, cold and discorporate, back down into the Gantenbrink matter and the sub-atomic foam, and that was something he had no desire to do.