Chapter 13

“So, Peter, are you with the Sante Fe & Colby Railroad Company or Interworld Conglomerates?”

“And what makes you think that, Caroline?” the urbane doctor, if he was ever even a doctor, offered a question instead of an answer.

“Well, everyone here knows you as the mysterious and elusive Doctor G Hollywell, who has been on a long trip Back East, while I know you as the charming Doctor Peter George from my home town. You’re the first person I’ve met who, like me, occupies two different worlds. There must be a reason for that, and my guess is that you’re up to no good.”

“And are your reasons for being here ... good? I saw you ride in here on a pony and now you’re in a gig. Going somewhere in a hurry are we?”

“Simply worried I might have left the gas on at home, you know how it is.”

“I know.” The Doctor dismounted and tied his horse up against a nearby hitching rail. “I was actually about to ride out to see you at the ranch, when the posse gathered together in town. Looks like they are becoming a lynching mob.”

Caroline noticed as he dismounted, his long grey coat flapped open, revealing no visible gun around his waist, or holster strapped to either leg.

“Unarmed, Doctor?” Caroline asked, coolly.

“I am a man of medicine, as you well know, not war, Ma’am,” he answered, with a dip of his head.

It was amazing, Caroline thought, this transition to this dream world of largely her mother’s making from her own world. Doc Hollywell was fully thirty years younger than Doctor Peter George had appeared to be in her Cotswold town. Although he was clearly charming and carried himself with an inbuilt confidence in either setting.

“Rumour has it that Willy the Kid, pardoned as feeble minded in gunning down my father in cold blood, has returned with agents from the Railroad Company to force my brother and I to give up our ranch, therefore opening up the possibilities of the Railroad coming through.”

“Those seem to be the facts of it or at least part of my interpretation. And do you believe, Ma’am, that I am a party to this impending range war over this world?”

“Well, it is said that it is breaking the rules of these worlds to introduce inappropriate technology. And I understand you recently had some large heavy trunks delivered.”

“Ah, so you think there may be a way to screen containers in order to beat any contraband regulations?”

“It is always a possibility, Peter, George or whoever you are.”

“Indeed, there may well be opportunities to misuse technology. You appear determined to always show me in a bad light, Caroline, and I am not entirely sure that is fair. I did after all believe you, when you explained the circumstances around being with your husband when he suffered his recent episode.”

Before they could continue their exchange further, Sam interrupted them.

“The Posse are quickly moving down the street,” Sam strode quickly up to his sister to say, “if you are going to Colby, you need to go now.”

But then, the shooting started in earnest, and clearly some of the rounds being discharged were the distinctive sound of rapid fire automatic weapons.

The Injuns, who were already on the roofs of the buildings opposite the Liberty Livery Stables, started to fire arrows down the street. But a hail of bullets in their direction forced the Injuns to keep their heads down, and that had the effect of taking them all completely out of the game. Now the Cowboys from the Lazy C were heavily outnumbered and clearly outgunned. The Cowboys were firing from behind horse troughs and water butts but the automatic fire went right through them, leaving wounded men littering the street and leading to a general retreat from the murderous rain of lead, with their colleagues dragging the wounded with them.

“Fall back to t’stable, lads,” Clint cried, blood soaking a wounded arm, “it’s made o’ solid timber, we’ll make our last stand there.”

“Alice, get down and take cover in the stable,” Caroline ordered the terrified girl, “go right to the back.”

The girl stepped down, “What yah gonna do, Miss Caroline?”

“I am going out there to shoot every single one of them gunmen stone dead!”

“She is too, Alice,” grinned the Doctor as he climbed into the seat vacated by the girl, “well ma’am, let me take those reins so you can concentrating on your shooting.”

With that, he grabbed the reins and yelled “Giddy up!”

The horse, and the gig it towed, lurched forward into Main Street and was steered to the right, heading down the dirt road straight into the jaws of the approaching gunfighters.

As soon as Caroline drew bead on each machine-gun carrier, she squeezed the trigger to send a single slug of lead through one forehead after another, the last being Willy the Kid, who started crying even before the lead projectile blew the top of his head off. The rest of the posse, made up of farmers and shopkeepers, turned tail and ran down the street, leaving just Marshal Tom Denton standing defiantly alone.

He had both pearl-handled pistols in his hand, pointed at the co-owner of the Lazy C ranch. He barely hesitated before firing both pistols simultaneously. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The adrenalin coursing through Caroline gave her the impression of slowing time down, she was staring down those twin barrels and seeing the smoke puffs one after the other discharge and the deadly hail of lead coming towards her. Meanwhile she calmly used the Winchester Repeating Rifle’s lever action to discharge the old cartridge and present a new one to the firing pin, and she drew a bead on the errant Marshal.

She could see that was now impossible: before she could squeeze that trigger and get a shot off, most of the six .45 slugs heading her way would hit her. She wouldn’t even have time to blink before experiencing oblivion in this world. And who knew if she still lived in hew own world?

Then a beam of green light, maybe a couple of inches high, a couple of feet wide, and at a forty-five degree angle, played over the flying lead, melting each one until they vaporised before her eyes. Her finger inexorably squeezed the trigger of her Winchester repeating rifle, expelling a slug down the Main Street.

The green ray of light played over Marshal Denton, a diagonal line appeared across his torso, which stopped him in his tracks. A stripe of white ash appeared from hip to shoulder, imparting a look of shock to his face, until his eyes glazed over. The top of his torso slipped to his right, his pearl buttons no longer aligning, his right hand and left arm holding the heavy six-guns fell away, but then the top of Denton’s skull blew off as Caroline’s slug slammed into his forehead. The body crumpled in two parts onto the dirt of Main Street.

Caroline looked at Doctor Hollywell, who was pulling the gig to a complete stop with one hand, and holding what looked like a television remote in the other. The gig came to a halt just prior to the mess now laid on the ground. Looking around, the six desperadoes employed by the Sante Fe and Colby Railroad Company were all lying dead where they fell.

But a further look around showed the devastating effects the gunmen had had, wounded Injuns and Cowboys everywhere, smashed windows and bullet holes in the buildings.

“Code 17B, need at least six teams of medics and a full restoration squad, now!” said Doc Hollywell, “all seven perps taken out, only friendly natives left plus a few who may be deemed accessories. Need to freeze, reassess and rewind. Thanks. Out.”

“So, who are you, Doc Hollywell?” Caroline asked, “because you don’t seem to be a 19th century doctor, nor a 21st century doctor, for all that.”

“No, you’re right,” the doctor smiled, “I’m not. I learned my medicine in the equivalent of the 25th century.”

All around them, futuristic ambulances started materialising from thin air, medical teams emerging and running to the injured.

“I need you to put this on, Caroline, now,” he held out a palm-sized pad in the shape of a solid figure 8, with two prongs at one end, “put the prongs in your nose.”

He had a similar one in his other hand. He stuck the prongs up his nose, so she did exactly the same. The prongs expanded, blocking her nose entirely, while the bottom part of the pad shrink wrapped to her skin as if attracted to it like a magnet, and covered her mouth completely. Around them, Cowboys, Injuns, and emerging townsfolk dropped to the ground. The new arrivals, medical staff, all had similar masks, and started putting the uninjured into recovery positions, and loaded the injured ones onto floating stretchers and propelled them towards their vehicles, where nurses pulled them inside. The ‘ambulances’ didn’t depart, so Caroline assumed they were operating theatres.

Caroline panicked, unsure if she could breathe. She tried a breath, and filtered air came through the nose plugs, fresh, sweetened with a hint of apple blossom. She looked back at the Doc, who was counting on his fingers, up to his fourth finger, he carried on the other hand, then through both hands again.

‘Twenty?’ Caroline thought, ‘was he counting up to twenty?’

He ripped his mask off, so she ripped off hers. Once she tugged determinedly at one corner, it came away easily. The air she breathed was normal again.

“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping out of the gig and surveying the carnage. Several more ambulances/theatres were arriving by simply materialising.

“I am an enforcement agent with IDEA, Caroline,” the Doctor answered.

“IDEA? What is that?”

“Inter Dreamworld Enforcement Agency. There are thousands of these worlds in existence and new ones start up all the time. Although they start out as fantasies, they have to obey certain rules and they have to pay their fees and regular taxes, the same as everyone else. My agency and the Agents are paid for by those taxes and fees and we keep any undesired technology out of these primitive worlds.”

“Like machine pistols?”

“Exactly. But also we protect and restrict access along the lines of the designers’ wishes, I have full access to this world’s files, the origins, the comings and goings, the occasional transgression that your mother has fallen foul of. For instance, your mother inherited the right to enter a dream world through her grandmother. When her grandmother died in your world, she was happy to live on in her rather sleazy Victorian world. Your mother was left the technology and the applications to start up Sweetwater Valley. She got advice and help initially from our agency and away she went. She arrived here in a near desert and conjured up her mother and father from the ashes she brought with her. It’s quite a simple procedure. Let’s go into my office, so we can keep out of the way while everyone works on putting this mess right.”

Caroline followed him across the street. A number of the newcomers nodded to him as he passed, one or two saluted, he raised his hat in acknowledgement. When they reached the steps to his office above a store, he waved her up the stairs first. The office door was unlocked, so she walked into the waiting room of his surgery. There on the floor were the two trunks that she saw the Stagecoach had brought in, a week or so ago.

“Would you like a drink of water, or perhaps to sit in one of the chairs?”

“No, I’d rather stand.”

“Fine,” he smiled, he opened the first trunk, it contained a skeleton wrapped in a blanket, which he unwrapped sufficiently to show Caroline what it was. Around it were several rolled up posters. He unravelled one and showed her it was the respiratory system.

“I was going to put this one on that wall, and the one showing the muscles on that wall,” he smiled, “the other trunk contains my clothes. No room for automatic weapons, as you can see.” He opened the other trunk as he spoke, it was bulging with clothes suitable for a Victorian western town, most of which, she noted, would need a decent pressing before wearing.

“And your ... ray gun?”

“Agency issue.” He showed her the remote control, turned it over, it was inscribed ‘IDEA’ inside a shield.

“So,” Caroline said, looking at the trunk with the clothes, “you were intending on staying on here in Sweetwater for a while?”