Free The Venus Belt by L. Neil Smith Page B

expanding circle. Napkins, liquids, curses flew. Somebody threw a punch. In seconds, while my erstwhile antagonist barfed all over the floor, the saloon erupted in a joyous free-for-all, a hundred combatants gaily socking everyone around them. A chimpanzee swung from the chandelier, bombing people with onion dip. The stripper stopped, di s gusted at losing her audience, gathered up her clothing, and sat down on the stage, feet over the edge, kicking anyone who stumbled near.
    Baap! Seeing sudden stars, I shook my head, swung to grab the shoulder of a tall form looming over me. I raised a fist.
    “Whoa...Pilgrim, I’m on your side!” He cocked his head and grinned a crooked grin, holding a little chimp—the guy who’d socked me—by the scruff, then casually tossing him out into the riot to fend for himself. “Plucky, but too small—had t’throw ’im...back.”
    I gave someone behind me an elbow in the guts, snap-kicked a bo t tle-waver coming at my head, and turned to my now familiar ally. “Say, you’re not really...” I recognized this seamed and ugly-beautiful mug, the big R o man nose, and crinkled squint. “Mike Morrison?”
    He snatched a pair of fighters, cracked their heads together, and easily side-stepped a wildly thrown chair, which bounced harmlessly off the mirror behind the bar. “Guilty,” came the answer in that famous sandy-textured voice, cadence plodding forward in oddly shaped chunks, “but don’t tell nobody—headed out t’make m’first...space opera.” He shook his head, a sour look passed across his leathery face. “Only thing th’ people wanna see, these...days. Feels downright silly ’thout a...horse under me— unh! ”
    Someone brained him with a serving tray. He crossed his eyes and swayed in little circles, a big hand on the bar to right himself, then grabbed the astounded tray-wielder by the lapels. “Mister, somebody oughta smack you fer that.” His eyes narrowed in anger, slanted, almost Mongolian. “But I won’t, I won’t...like hell I won’t!”
    Crack! The unfortunate assailant followed a ballistic curve across the room and landed in a fountaining of drinks and pretzels. Morrison blew on his battered knuckles, shaking out the sting, and sort of looked direc t ly at me, sideways. “Pilgrim, I like a good...dust-up, but let’s— look out! ”
    I whirled, by reflex whipping out my Rezin. The pale “sophisticated” lady, composure vanished with a snarl, was shoving something at my face. It snapped into focus—a tiny gun barrel, bullet glinting visibly deep i n side the chamber. I slapped the gun aside, left-handed, she lunged, carried by m o mentum onto my extended blade.
    The weapon sank to the guards with a ghastly sucking noise, pommel jammed against my hip. Her eyes, an inch from mine, widened abruptly as if she were just waking up. She gave a tiny gasp, looked down at her midriff, the ultimate despair written on her face, stumbled backward off the blade, and crumpled, her life coursing onto the floor.
    Silence swept the room.
    I threw the knife aside, her little gun still in my other hand, and knelt beside her in a pool of smoking blood. Not a sound, not a movement. I felt for a pulse—nothing. She was gone. I’d killed a woman, and she was gone.
    A huge rough hand descended gently on my shoulder. “She walked right into it, Pilgrim, some kinda...suicide, I’d call it. C’mon, get up outa there.” He pried me away from the floor, hooked a chair with the toe of his boot, and slid it under me, carefully extracting the little pistol from my hand and laying it on the bar.
    I closed my eyes hard, and opened them again.
    Morrison stood slowly shaking his head, hands spread on his narrow waist, a finger curled and locked into the high side of his canvas-like gu n belt. The big, plain military automatic perched where his right hip pocket should have been, rendered tiny by his sheer, larger-than-life presence, its smoothly worn ivory stocks checked and