Farkin Plisp!

Plisp strode towards Jed as if the dark dust wasn’t there. Suddenly the street was empty. If the townsfolk were watching, they were keeping themselves out of sight. Deputy Dawson, at the general store window, kept his weapon trained on the emaciated figure. If he could fire off a shot and give Jed the advantage, he would.

Plisp’s coattails flapped as he walked. A breeze rippled through the brim of his black hat. Jed fought to contain an involuntary gasp as he glimpsed Plisp’s face.

It was like looking at an ice sculpture of himself.

Plisp’s face was colourless, like water, but behind his eyes there was a glow of red, like fire trapped under glass.

Jed’s hands burned in sympathy with the pulse of that red glow. Jed found he couldn’t move them. It was all he could do to keep his arms clamped at his sides; they seemed liable to raise themselves in the air, surrendering to Plisp.

Damned if I’m going to stand here like a sitting duck, Jed thought wildly. He took steps towards Plisp. They met at the dead centre of the street about ten yards apart.

The two men held eye contact. Jed’s blue eyes looking into Plisp’s empty marbles. The red glow in Plisp’s head flickered like flames licking hungrily at kindling.

“Nice Horse.” Plisp didn’t speak. The words appeared in Jed’s mind - and, given the snicker that arose from Horse, in its mind too.

Jed’s hands twitched, ready to draw. He wondered if he’d be able to shoot, if his hands would cooperate. The pain in them was worsening. Hot spikes of agony from fingertip to wrist. He tried to give no outward sign of his suffering; Plisp was watching him, his head tilted with a kind of vacant curiosity.

“How’s the hands?” The question arrived in Jed’s mind like a punch to the brain.

“Fine,” Jed said aloud.

Plisp’s glassy lips curled in a sneer of amusement.

The gunslinger lies! The red glow burned brighter. It gained tinges of orange and gold, fuelled by Jed’s pain.

“Leave these people alone, Plisp,” Jed growled, struggling to speak. “Let’s settle this between us. Just you and me.”

Plisp’s clear marble eyes rolled. Slowly, he raised his hands. He removed one of his black leather gloves. Jed’s eyes grew wider as a metal claw was revealed, gleaming silver digits articulated by cogs and cables. Plisp clicked his middle finger against his thumb. A cymbal crash filled the air.

And Jed and Plisp were gone.

***

A desert landscape, flat and featureless beneath a starless night sky. Jed and Plisp were face to face. There was nothing else.

There is no need for us to fight.

The voice of Farkin Plisp entered Jed’s mind and strolled around as if it owned the place.

We are the same, you and I. We should be working together.

Jed spat in the dirt.

Don’t be like that! Plisp chuckled in Jed’s head. Let me show you something - let me show you everything! Then you can make an informed decision. I guarantee you will no longer oppose me.

Jed remained silent.

There’s no point thinking about drawing your guns. They won’t work here. And don’t tell me you weren’t getting around to it. I know how your fingers itch. After all -

Plisp’s glassy face split in a grin, a treacherous crack on an icy pond.

-they are my fingers too.

Jed tried not to react but a sudden tingle surged from his fingertips and up his arms. He watched, his eyes growing wide as Plisp shrugged off his long coat. His metal claw rolled up his sleeves and pulled off his remaining glove. The other hand was a crude tool, a pincer, battered and rusty.

An early attempt, Plisp turned the thing over, the second was more successful as you can see.

Jed couldn’t help staring. The pain in his hands became more insistent. He looked at his hands, what he’d thought of for a long time as his hands. In fact, he couldn’t remember the hands he’d had before them.

Correct! Plisp declared although the realisation was still dawning in Jed’s mind.

“Yours!” Jed stared at his hands, backs and palms, over and over.

Once upon a time. You really have no recollection, do you? Oh, Jed; we have shared many things, you and I, and I’m not just talking about body parts. Cast your mind back - go on - as far as you can. What about your childhood? No... nothing there. How did you come to be who you are today? How did you get your start as a gunslinger? Who taught you to shoot?

You really have no idea, do you, Jed?

You don’t know who you are.

The gunslinger looked into those strange glass beads. The glow behind them was cooler, a deep purple rather than the blazing red of earlier. The glow was the colour of the empty sky. Jed found it difficult to tear his gaze away. He looked around at the vacant landscape. There really was nothing as far as the eye could see in all directions. He looked back to those marbles.

“Show me,” he said.

The glow in Plisp’s head seemed to move, to grow, until it was larger than the head that surrounded it, and larger than the two of them, surrounding them, engulfing them, an intangible blanket. Jed swooned. He felt the hard grasp of Plisp’s claw and pincer, steadying him, holding him upright.

Even with his eyes closed, Jed could see a light approaching, pale at first but gaining in intensity. Despite the pain, he opened his eyes. The column of light he saw before him was strange and familiar.

“Where are we?”

Where it all started, Plisp replied at Jed’s side. The hub of the wheel.

***

And so it was! The very centre of the city of Wheelhub but as it had been at one point, before the ship landed, before Vultures’ Moon.

Jed’s heart was beating in synchronisation with the pulsations of the column of light. It was exhilarating. He turned away from it, taking in the vista. Everything was pristine and perfect. Gleaming surfaces, lights and screens... Jed had a dim sense of recognition although there was nothing like it in his experience - not that he could recall anyway - but still these things, these instruments were vaguely familiar.

Like coming home, isn’t it? I can tell there’s a flicker inside you, Jed. Let it build. Let it grow. It will all come back to you.

Jed moved towards a desk of lights and colours. He ran his hand - whose hand? - over the surface. The light panels were cool to the touch. Something changed.

It knows you! Plisp gasped and laughed. Or rather it remembers me! Marvellous! Wonderful!

“I don’t understand,” Jed looked across the rows of similar desks, rising up on all levels in all directions. “How can I know this place? How can this be?”

Put your head in my hands.

Jed frowned at the uninviting metal hoozits extending from Plisp’s shirt sleeves.

No; my hands!

Jed lifted the hands he’d known for years but now felt as foreign as the ice sculpture of a man beside him. He placed his palms over his eyes and cheeks.

A jolt ran through him like a rattlesnake bite to his nervous system.

He remembered...