Filthy lucre...
 

Fantastic Mars
by Erin Halfelven
 

 
-4- Coins of Mars

I knew my magic had just healed the wound in Hote’s side and Seejay had called me ‘girl,’ again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It sounded dismissive, I’d known these guys for years, and they certainly knew my name. Then again, anything Seejay said seemed to have a strange effect on me, as if touching me somewhere inside.

Hote had been sitting up the whole time, but he tried to get a look at his wound. “Maybe I can finish the job in a bit, now that I’m not bleeding and hurting.” Some raw flesh showed where the wound had not been healed completely. “Hey, these clothes are all clean? Even the bloodstains are gone.” He fingered the rip in the shirt where the knife had gone in. “Do you sew, too?” he joked.

“I smell Old Spice,” Trike commented behind me.

They were looking at me. I shrugged. “I think I could probably have mended the shirt, but I kind of ran out of gas there. And at least he doesn’t smell like lavender and roses or something?”

They all laughed, and a giggle escaped me. My tail waved around, apparently enjoying the joke, too.

I felt a little tired, but not a lot. Most of the energy, magical energy is called mana, came from the jewels in my mouth, I supposed. At least, that’s how it would likely work in Artie’s system and would explain the piercings there without having to think of other reasons. My personal energy had been used a bit but maybe more just from getting so excited. I did feel like I could do the heal again in a few minutes.

“I could try again?” I offered.

Hote shook his head. “No. Let us both save our magic in case of another emergency of some kind. Don’t use yours unless you feel you have to, to save us or something. At least for today.”

“Uh, huh,” I agreed with that. It made sense. “I don’t even know what I can do with it. Both the distract spell and the healing were more or less surprises.”

Trike shook his head. “Boy, howdy,” he drawled and we all laughed quietly.

Something else occurred to me. “Hey, you guys are both wearing clothes? Where did you get them?” I asked. They even had shoes, or clumsy looking boots, maybe.

“Uh…” said Hote.

“We killed someone for the guns and clothes and stuff,” said Seejay in a flat voice. “We brought some other things, too, and now,” he gestured at the dead bodies right in front of us, “now we’ve got some more stuff.”

I made a face. Did I want to wear some dead guy’s clothes? Did I want to keep walking around naked? I swear I couldn’t figure out which was the worse choice at the moment. How could I have become so comfortable with being a naked girl in front of a bunch of guys so quickly? I suspected magic. At any rate, wearing someone’s clothes after my friends had killed them creeped me out in a weird way.

Hote stared back toward the hallway they had explored. “Four guys jumped us; we had to kill them.”

“How? You had nothing but maybe some rocks in your hands?” It was turning into a truly bad-ass story.

“I remembered my judo,” said Hote. “I threw one guy into two others, Seejay stomped on some necks and the other guy ran away.”

Seejay looked grim but the memory obviously bothered Hote more. More badassery, Seejay looked dangerous and hot as…. Down, down, girl.

“I bet you didn’t find anything I can wear?” asked Trike.

“Actually, we did,” said Hote. “It’s sort of a fur jockstrap. I think they had looted some of your people earlier.”

“My people,” said Trike, as if the idea were completely new to him. But yes, if we were stuck in this world we would eventually meet more green—and red!—Martians. How would Trike and I react to such meetings and how would the natives react to us?

Seejay took up describing the loot they had acquired. “We found a pistol that’s too big for either of us to hold, too, and a six-foot-long sword. We didn’t bring everything because we heard the gunfire down here,” said Seejay. “Let’s check out what these guys have and then we can go look at the other loot we got.”

He went to the first body, that of Red, the Scotsman, and started going through his pockets, “Some coins,” he grunted.

“If you find twelve dollars, it’s mine,” Trike joked.

* * *

The coins on the bodies turned out to be very interesting. Well, interesting in a bloodless way, in contrast to what else had happened.

But also frightening.

Neither Trike nor I could read the inscriptions on the coins.

We recognized the eagle and George Washington on what had to be an American quarter, and the lady on similarly sized coins looked a lot like Queen Victoria to me. But the inscriptions meant nothing. I had the best spoken Spanish in the group but that writing was a cipher to me, too, and in fact, I couldn’t even recognize the language or guess what it might be from the appearance of the unfamiliar coins. I had to be told which ones were in Spanish.

“Makes sense,” Seejay said. “You two are from barbarian races that don’t have written languages.”

“That might make sense but… I sure don’t have to like it,” I said. What the heck? This world probably didn’t have as many situations where not being able to read would be a big handicap but it didn’t offer any advantage either. And I had been a reader all my life, since before I started school.

“You both have designed characters with just that limitation. Remember, we’re in the games we used to play? There are probably other things like this that are going to bite us.”

I made a noise. I still didn’t have to like it.

Trike shrugged, top and bottom. “I guess there are tradeoffs. Maybe you can play the ukelele now?” He grinned.

I could play the ukelele, or at least I used to be able to. “If they have ukeleles here,” I said. I could feel my lower lip sticking out and knew I was pouting.

Seejay looked at me with a peculiar expression.

“What?” I asked.

He did a slow grin and I guessed what he was about to say. “You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

They laughed and I made a show of still being grumpy but I couldn’t keep it up and ended up giggling. Considering what else had happened to me so far, not being able to read was kind of minor in our present circumstances.

“We have lots of clothes now,” said Trike to me. “You should pick something to wear.”

I shook my head. “I can’t wear a dead guy’s clothes. Besides, all this stuff would fit me like a tent.”

Trike seemed to be considering that. “It is kind of creepy to dress in the clothes of someone you watched get killed. But what about shoes? Boots? You’re barefoot and there might be snakes or scorpions around?”

I winced. “You had to say that, didn’t you? I’ll watch where I’m going but walking in a dead man’s shoes would be even worse than wearing his guayabera. And a worse fit, too.”

“With the other spells you’ve got, maybe you can alter clothing or something, huh? When you get your magic back.”

I nodded, not mentioning that I thought I had only run up to a limit on how much I could spend at one time, I was pretty sure I had more magic left than I had already used. And I was even surer that I didn't want to wear any of the clothes we had.

Hote continued sorting stuff, including the coins, while Seejay went through the nasty task of examining our “loot.” I avoided watching what our leader was doing and hung around Hote while he counted the money.

“We’ve got seven of the larger, quarter-sized silver coins, most of which are the Victorian schillings,” said Hote. “And we have a bunch of these nickel-sized copper ones that say ‘one penny’ on the English ones and it looks like ‘dos centisimos’ on the Spanish ones. Though they aren’t exactly the same size.
“We have some other copper coins, bigger and smaller, and some small silver coins. Altogether, uh, it would add up to probably less than… than three dollars? Then we have this one tiny gold coin that says it is ‘One U.S. Dollar’ all by itself.”

The darn thing was smaller than a dime, but being gold probably weighed more. For some reason, I was even more annoyed at the banditos after seeing just how big a dollar was in this world.

Our other loot consisted of a bunch of knives, and some rather crude looking swords and pistols. All were revolvers, except one that had several barrels, and according to Hote, was called a duck-foot. Clothing, belts, shoes, some odd pieces of metal that might be tools of some kind, and various scraps of leather made pretty poor pickings.

The men all had canteens and flasks, with water in the larger ones and the smaller holding liquor of some kind. We didn’t find any food except what looked like a small biscuit folded around a greenish-looking piece of jerky.

Trike volunteered to eat the disreputable biscuit and meat. “I’m hungry,” he explained. None of us wanted to argue so we let him have it. Hardly more than a morsel for someone his size, it disappeared into his maw, serving only to remind us that we might all get hungry before we found more food.

Trike tried the water in the canteens, too. “Smells funny, but tastes okay,” he pronounced.

Hote took a sip of the liquor. “It’s rotgut whiskey, just what you would expect,” he said. “Tastes like moonshine, 150 proof or more.”

I had turned down the odd-smelling water. Nobody offered me any whiskey, and I didn’t ask.

* * *

Seejay finished his grisly task and stuffed all the plunder we were going to keep into bags made of clothing tied together. “Let’s move our camp out of this open chamber and into those rooms we found down the hall,” he said.

I had been resting and staying out of the way but had gotten up to look at Trike’s wounds. Bruises and scratches mostly, except for the bullet in his thigh. “Does it still hurt?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said but he didn’t seem concerned. “I can walk on it,” he added.

“You want Hote or I to try healing?”

He shook his head. “Let’s wait till later. Hote isn’t recovered yet, either, and he hasn’t healed the rest of his own gash that you worked on.” He looked at me. “And I think you both are still tired.”

I nodded, willing to let it wait. I wasn’t really tired. I had cast two spells and felt sure I could cast two or three more if I had to. The gemstones in my tongue piercings seemed to hold magical energy, too, and mostly I had used those.

“Besides,” Trike added, with a small grin around his tusks, “I might end up smelling minty.”

I sniffed but it was funny. My tail poked him in the lower set of ribs and he made a startled yawp noise that caused me to giggle. Jeez, I did that a lot.

Seejay organized us to move out. “I’ll lead, Hote will bring up the rear with another shotgun loaded. Trike, you carry the loot and watch out for the girl. Stay in the middle of the party. Maybe you can take some of these swords to use as knives.”

Now I was ‘the girl’? I wanted to say something but I had no idea what.

Trike tied the bags of loot around his waist and took a sword in each hand. “Hilts are small,” he grunted. “I’m liable to cut myself if I have to use them.”

“Just look fierce,” Hote suggested. “It should be enough.”

Trike made a comical face, and we all laughed.

Seejay handed me the duck-foot. “Think you could use this, girl?” he asked.

“I guess so,” I said. “Oh, ye little fishies! It’s heavy!” I took it, surprised at the weight and the greasy feel of the metal.

He nodded. “No heavier than the revolvers. They’re all larger calibers, even though this thing has four barrels. They’re all loaded, too, but not cocked.”

“How do you…,” I started to ask but suddenly wanted no part of the thing. “No, thank you.” I handed it back. I had a sudden image of the explosion, the rounds from the gun tearing into someone, the blood and pain it would cause. “I don’t think I could do it.”

He pushed the weapon toward me again. “You sure?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’s as heavy as a bowling ball to me. I don’t think I could aim it.”

“That’s why I offered you the duck-foot. Pull the trigger all the way back and it fires all four barrels, you don’t have to aim. And it’s double-shotted, so it would be like a shotgun….” He trailed off watching my expressions.

Somewhere inside me, something was objecting to even the idea of using a weapon. My tail came up from between my legs and wrapped itself around my wrists, pulling my hands down. I felt a bit sick, like I needed to urp.

“Like that, huh?” Seejay said. “Maybe it’s a class restriction like mages in D&D not being able to wear armor?” He grinned.

“Artie’s system didn’t have classes, but it had vows. Maybe I have a vow to not use weapons?”

“Could be,” he said. “You don’t seem as upset about not being able to use a weapon as you were about not being able to read.”

I made a face. “Being a reader sort of defined me, uh, the old me? And I never was into weapons much.”

“What happens if we run into an ambush? You going to depend on your magic?”

“If someone jumps us again, I’ll just do another striptease,” I said, wagging my tits at him. I knew I must be blushing again but being near Seejay did things to me.

He laughed. “Girl, you’re already not wearing clothes,” he pointed out.

“Saves time,” I said, trying to keep my face straight.

Trike made a noise like an avalanche chuckling and Seejay turned away, still grinning. And, of course, I ended up giggling.

We fell into line behind Seejay and started down the corridor. I had a great view of his butt almost the whole way.