The Old Man!

The men marched Jed across the courtyard - rather stiff legged, Jed noticed. He tried to look around as best as he could but the fort was silhouetted against the lightening sky and two of his captors kept pushing his head down. They don’t want me spotting escape routes, he realised. This cheered him; it meant there must be escape routes.

They shoved him into a barracks even though Jed was certain that in a place like this there would be a perfectly serviceable guardhouse. This long, low hut was full of bunks, stacked in twos and threes and all of them containing a man. There was the stench of rotting meat and carbolic soap. Jed was forced to sit on a lower bunk and his hands were tied to a bedpost. Satisfied their prisoner was secure the soldiers left him. None of them had uttered a word.

The morning sun stabbed its way through the slats of the window shutters, illuminating dust motes in the air, but also affording Jed a better look at his new roommates.

Some of them were waking and although it didn’t look like any of them were bound to their beds, none of them moved. Those nearest to him looked in a bad way; pallor and sweat were the least of their troubles. Livid wounds untidily stitched together ran around their throats or down their faces or circled their eyes. One fellow had a gash running down the centre of his face from forehead to chin via the bridge of his nose - it looked like two halves of different faces had been botched together.

The place was more of an infirmary than a dormitory. No, Jed amended the thought; more of a laboratory. A shudder ran through him. He’d been brought here for the same reason. They were going to chop him up and put him back together again.

Good luck with that, he thought bitterly. There ain’t much of me left that hasn’t already been swapped with someone else’s.

This was an exaggeration. The hands were the biggest operation he’d undergone. The skin of his back and legs was a patchwork of grafts. Most of them were a perfect match in tone but if he caught the sun, a couple of places would remain defiantly pale. His left eye had belonged to someone else, although - and this was true of all of his operations - Jed had no memory of the incidents or accidents that had led to these replacements. He could have had a new ear or two if he hadn’t declined Doc Brandy’s offer. Why had he declined? Jed concluded the reason for that was the same as the reason he wanted to escape from these butcher’s barracks: he was afraid of losing himself, the real, original him that made him who he was.

He rubbed the rope that bound his wrists up and down the bedpost, hoping its rough-hewn edge would cut through. Or the friction would generate enough heat to burn through. Or - he gave up when he realised all he was doing was wearing away the bedpost. The rope must be reinforced with something stronger... Where had these soldiers come across such rope? It was another gap in the picture.

There most likely wasn’t time enough to use the enhanced rope to wear away the bedpost completely. Jed slumped against it, trying to think.

The poor fellow in the next bunk stirred. His eyes, one pale and clouded, the other bright and piercing, fell on the newcomer. He raised a hand from under his blanket and pointed a finger that was clearly not one he had been born with, at Jed. The effort exhausted him. He swooned and collapsed into unconsciousness.

“What?” Jed frowned, with the uncomfortable suspicion he had something on his nose. With his hands tied to the post, he couldn’t touch it to find out. He cast his gaze around. And above.

On the upper bunk lay a fellow, unconscious and scarred like the rest. What was significant was he was wearing boots. One of them was hanging over the edge. Jed saw what the fellow with the new finger had been pointing at: On the heel of the boot was a spur, a sharp-pointed wheel. Jed couldn’t reach his own and they were blunt anyway; Horse responded to other forms of persuasion. He was mighty pleased to see his bunkmate was not so squeamish about cruelty to critters.

Jed got to his feet and edged his bonds up the post. He was several inches shy of the boot heel. Dang it! Momentarily flummoxed, he put his brow against the upper bunk.

Others in the room were waking. Groans of pain accompanied their movements. Some cried out in alarm to see a stranger among them. Their wordless cries and the looks of confusion that distressed their stitched-up faces goaded Jed as if he’d been kicked with a spur himself. He jumped up onto the straw pallet that served as mattress and hooked an elbow over the toe of the boot. He climbed up onto the upper bunk, lying top to toe with the inhabitant. At last he was able to work the spars of the spur into his rope. Rubbing frantically, Jed had almost cut through the metal-coated fibres when the fellow in the bed rolled over, almost kicking Jed off the bed.

Cussing under his breath, Jed cocked his leg over the prone figure, trying to keep him still.

“Well, now,” said a voice, a female voice, from the floor, “having quite the party, ain’t we?”

Jed looked up from his labours. A blonde head was looking up at him. A flicker of recognition passed between them.

One of the girls he had saved from the bandits! She’d been with a redhead and a little old man. What in Hell’s name was she doing here?

“Allow me,” she smirked. She produced a tiny pistol with a wide barrel. Jed cringed, trying to distance himself as far from his wrists as possible. The blonde fired one blast. It seared Jed’s skin but, more importantly, freed him from his bonds.

He sprang from the bunk. The blonde was alone; he could make a run for it - were it not for the fact that the pistol was now trained on him.

They spent a while eyeing each other up and down. The woman blew across the barrel of her firearm before putting it away. She had decided Jed presented no danger or flight risk. She could tell his curiosity would keep him in place.

“Fancy running into you again,” she spoke with a drawl. Jed looked at her lips, the colour of rubies. But were they painted that way or had they been made like that?

“I’m guessing you ain’t a prisoner here,” he replied.

She smirked.

“And it’s thanks to you I’m here at all. Those hoodlums you kindly shot for me were about to take us back to Wheelhub County Jail.”

Jed’s blood ran cold and his throat felt thick.

“Whut?” he managed to get out, although he was beginning to get a horribly clear idea.

“Oh come now,” the woman showed her even teeth; a flash of snow in a poppy field. “Bright boy like you! You don’t think those good ole boys were the aggressors, do you? Oh, I can tell by the set of your jaw that you do! You thought you were doing the decent thing and my sister and me were damsels in distress, just waiting for a knight on a shining Horse to come by and rescue us!”

She laughed. It was like a songbird going through a mincing machine. Jed decided he didn’t like her.

“You’re stunned!” she pouted. “You had no idea! Instead of foiling a crime you were perpetrating one. The law is looking for our accomplice even now. And here you are, turned up voluntarily. It’s delicious.”

Jed’s hands moved imperceptibly closer to his hips, but the blonde caught the movement.

“Your guns won’t work here. Try it, if you don’t believe me.” She arched an eyebrow, knowing full well the gunslinger would try a bit of gunslinging before he took her at her word.

In a flash, Jed’s guns were in his hands and aimed at the blonde’s smirking face. He squeezed both triggers but, like before, nothing happened. He tried again. The guns were useless, even though they indicated they were still fully charged.

“Dampening field,” the blonde glanced around at everything and nothing. “Only specially calibrated weapons work in this place. That way, if anyone should attack, it will be little more than impromptu target practice for us. Come with me.”

She turned on her heels and walked out, without waiting for him to follow, confident that he would. Jed would have liked to have proved her wrong and stayed where he was but his infernal curiosity got the better of his pride. He ambled from the barracks with a casual, rolling gait. He didn’t want to appear keen.

The scene of their first encounter played in his mind. How had he got the situation so completely wrong? How had he misjudged what was going on? How had he misread the signs?

He straightened his back. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing he was troubled.

She led him to a building at the centre of the yard. This had been the original heart of the stockade, but like the poor fellows who were now being chopped and changed inside it, it had been altered and built on over the years. She paused at the door for him to catch up, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked back across the yard. The sky was bright but Jed could only feel a chill right through to his marrow.

The deaths of the men he had shot by mistake weighed heavily on his mind. He had never felt so ashamed and disgusted. He would have to turn himself in - there was no other way.

When he had made some amends by putting a stop to whatever was going on here at Fort Knightly.

“Gramps’ll be tickled when he sees you,” Blondie said flatly.

“Not by me he won’t,” Jed muttered. He made an ‘after you’ gesture and then followed the detestable woman inside.

***

The old man looked even smaller, dwarfed by the grubby oilskin coat he was wearing. He turned away from his workbench to greet the gunslinger. His dark eyes twinkled wickedly, enjoying the other man’s evident discomfort.

Jed was doing his best to keep his expression neutral and his revulsion hidden. He glanced around at the workbench and the room beyond. Unidentifiable things in murky jars lined free-standing shelves. Arcane instruments and tools hung from the low beams and littered the desk top, catching the gleam of the lamplight that was concentrated on the old man’s workspace. For the most part, the utensils, barbaric though they appeared, looked clean at least. Jed tried to un-see the pink lump of gristle he saw attached to the curve of one spiked blade.

“Welcome, gunslinger!” the old man crowed, regarding Jed’s presence as some sort of personal victory.

“The name’s Jed.”

“Jed...” the man repeated but did not take up the implied invitation to introduce himself. “It is an honour, sir, to have such a prestigious visitor, such a prime example!”

He cast an appraising eye over Jed’s physique, lingering at the hands. Twitching with self-consciousness, Jed put his hands behind his back.

“Your medicine, Gramps.” Blondie offered the old man a brown glass bottle with a pink encrustation around the cork. The old man struggled to uncork the bottle so Blondie snatched it back, pulled the cork out with her teeth, and then returned the bottle to her supposed grandfather. The old man swigged thirstily from the bottle, smacking his lips in appreciation.

Instantly, he seemed invigorated. He stood a little straighter but still had to crane his neck to look Jed in the eye.

“The right one...” he surmised. “The right one is not...original.”

Jed returned the stare, unblinking.

“Both of your’n,” he observed. The old man clucked like a happy chicken.

“Remarkable!” The old man thrust the medicine back at Blondie who re-corked it. “I’d like to conduct a thorough examination. Kindly disrobe and -” he swept the clutter from his bench top with a broad sweep of his arm, “- and hop up onto the table here.”

Jed didn’t move. Blondie cocked her pistol at his head.

“Best do what the old man says,” she muttered. “He can just as easily examine your cadaver.”

Jed unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. The blonde watched impassively but the old man took a more active interest.

“The quality of those skin grafts...” he marvelled as the lamplight bounced off Jed’s torso. Jed unbuckled his belt and let it drop to the floor. He kicked off his boots and unfastened his trousers. Wearing only his undershorts, he sat on the workbench.

The old man donned a pair of spectacles with thick, adjustable lenses. He hooked the arms of a stethoscope into his ears and placed the metal disc against Jed’s heart. He listened and was impressed by what he heard.

“Good...strong...regular...Original too. That should last you, my boy. Accidents and bullet wounds notwithstanding.”

He measured Jed’s biceps with a pair of callipers.

“Implants?”

Jed shook his head.

“That shoulder though... Do you mind telling me how you came about that?”

He traced the barely visible scars that betrayed ancient surgery. He moved the lamp to get more light. You could see the skin was a slightly different shade and texture. It had come from a completely different person and not grafted from the gunslinger’s own body.

“Shootout,” Jed shrugged. His original and replacement shoulder moved in perfect unison.

“Ha-ha!” the movement delighted the old man. “You truly are a work of art, my boy.”

“Not your boy,” Jed murmured.

“Lie down, please.”

Jed lifted his legs onto the table and lay back. The old man adjusted the lamplight again, spotlighting Jed’s chest and abdomen.

“Internally?” he asked.

“All me,” said Jed. The old man looked downcast.

“I would love to open you up and have a footle around inside you - oh, I’d put you back together again; don’t you worry about that! - but there simply isn’t the time.”

He took on the appearance of a child who had been given a brand new toy for his birthday but was denied the pleasure of playing with it.

He prodded and pressed Jed’s belly with his fingers.

“Hale and hearty!” he declared. “What I wouldn’t give for a set of innards like those!”

Jed would have guessed the old man would surrender his desiccated cadaver in a heartbeat and it would be no sacrifice. He wondered if the old man had the knowledge and the skill to transfer the brain of one man into the body of another. Was that why Jed was being kept alive?

But the old man had mentioned being short of time. Why?

Blondie stepped closer to the workbench, admiring the view. She still had her pistol trained on Jed however.

“Get dressed,” the old man sighed. “We can resume on another occasion, perhaps.”

Jed sat up then hopped down from the workbench. He wondered how many had done that same action before him. And how many had had to be carried away?

He got dressed quickly. The old man was no longer watching. He was whispering something to the blonde woman. He sounded urgent and concerned. She, by contrast, was cool and collected.

“You ready?” she turned to Jed. “I’m taking you to a holding cell. Until we figure out what we’re going to do with you. Or with parts of you, anyways.” She laughed, humourlessly.

Jed put on his hat.

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he looked the old man square in the eyes. “I’m not sure I want to know. But I will stop you. You can take that to the bank.”

The old man’s puckered mouth twisted upwards. His black eyes shone with malevolence.

“Hasta la vista, Jed,” he sneered. He watched the gunslinger follow the blonde woman out of the workroom. Such posture! Such a gait! The old man breathed out through his hooked nose with satisfaction. Feeling inspired, he got back to work.

***

“You’re a liar,” the blonde accused him as they stepped out into the sunshine. Seeing how this caused him to bristle, she added, “Lying to yourself, leastwise.” He didn’t speak so she continued. “I think you do want to know what’s going on here. I think it’s eating you up inside. And it’s all you can do to keep yourself from begging me to let on. Go on; ask!”

Jed stopped walking.

“And give you the satisfaction of keeping your yap shut? No, mam.” He touched the brim of his hat.

“Well, you don’t know that and you won’t know that, unless you ask.”

“Oh, I know,” Jed replied. “I see you well enough.”

It was the blonde’s turn to bristle.

“Foolish male pride!” she snarled, her face and throat reddening. “I’ll leave you to work it out for yourself, if you can.”

She unbolted the door to a squat shack and gestured with the pistol. Jed ducked his head and stepped into the shack. The door closed behind him, shutting him in darkness. At least it was cool in there.

Priority one: to get out.

Priority two: to put a stop to the old man.

Priority three - How many priorities can you have before they cease to be priorities?

Had any of this anything to do with Farkin Plisp?

Questions crowded Jed’s mind but he put them aside as he explored this new place of confinement. A wooden construction. A dirt floor. If his guns were working, he could blast a wall to smithereens or even tunnel his way out.

There was no furniture. Evidently he was expected to squat on the floor. There was not so much as a bucket, so any long term incarceration could get more unpleasant very quickly. Not that Jed expected to be cooped up for long. He had seen how the old man had looked at him. Old Gramps wouldn’t be able to keep away. He’d want Jed back on that table as soon as possible. Jed thought about the tools and the things in jars. He would have to get out of the shack and away from the fort as soon as possible.

And then what?

He would need Sheriff Marshall’s approval to get a posse together. Although what that posse might do, Jed had yet to figure out.

One thing at a time, he told himself.

With his eyes now accustomed to the gloom, he looked up at the ceiling. The roof was a couple of sheets of corrugated tin, tacked together. When the sun reached its peak it would be unbearably hot in that little shack.

Jed’s mind raced. He flattened himself against the back of the door and then hooked his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and whistled.

It did not take long for the tin roof to begin to rattle. The temperature inside the shack increased rapidly. Jed began to sweat. The centre of the roof glowed red and then orange and then white. And then the clear blue sky was visible; the roof had been vaporised. Jed moved to the centre of the floor and prepared himself. He threw back his head and stuck out his chest. He felt the tug and his feet lifted from the floor. Slowly he was drawn into the air. As soon as Jed was clear of the shack, Horse swooped so the gunslinger could climb into the saddle. Horse shut off its tractor beam.

“Hello, boss,” it said. “Hold on tight.”

The reins flew to Jed’s hands and he gripped them, wrapping them around his wrists. Horse rumbled, ready to shoot away. A look of surprise clouded its face. It shuddered and began to tumble. It engaged full thrusters in each hoof to countermand the fall but even so, it came clattering to the ground, clumsily, landing with its chest and neck in the dirt. Jed was jolted from the saddle but the reins meant his parabola was interrupted and he was yanked back towards Horse’s torso.

“What the Hell?” Horse shook its head, a little dizzy.

“Dampening fields,” Jed freed himself from the reins. “Guns don’t work neither.”

“Thanks for the head’s-up,” Horse muttered, standing up. “Why have you got your hands up?”

Jed gestured with his head. Horse saw they were surrounded by dozens of soldiers training dozens of weapons on them.

“Oh,” Horse said.