(concluded from part two...)
***
"She ain't seein' anybody," said the small, sun-blasted woman in the pink robe and ragged green slippers blocking the front door with nothing more than the sheer force of her stern expression. "Believe me, if *I* can't get in, the lot'a you don't stand a chance."
Bonnie matched the woman's fierce glare with her own. Thanks to biology, it was easy.
"Mom," she said, as normally and not-irritated-to-the-point-of-lifting-up-her-phone-and-repeatedly-stabbing-her-cast-fireball-app-shortcut as she could, "she let Erin in. And we're with him."
"Erin's her doc," Bedalia Cooper replied, as she brushed aimlessly at her permanently-frizzy white-grey-and-black hair. "He's got't look at her particulars. What he's here for."
"Mom," Lemon said, "I don't mean to be rude--"
"For once," Bedalia noted.
"--but Aunt Shade's never been particular about her particulars before. Is she really that bad off now?"
The look Bedalia gave Lemon made Bonnie glad she'd brought her brother along after all. Two adult children couldn't hope to blunt the force of her disapproval, but they could dilute it if they were together. Unless things went really bad, and they ended up doubling it. Always a risk.
Bonnie wasn't prepared to see her mother's expression soften, though. A chill went up her spine, despite the intense heat beating down from the sun.
"Yes," Bedalia said. "She is. She hides it, the dear, but... yes." Then she scowled. "I don't suppose you know where her no-good scaly man is these days, do you, mister superspy? An' before you ask, your sister didn't spill, I can just tell lookin' at'cha."
Lemon looked at Bonnie for explanation. But it was Tom McCavish-Laffalot that supplied it.
"Slithis's been gone six months now," he said. "Just up and left one day. Shade said to let 'im go. Wouldn't say anything else, or let anyone do anything else."
"The way they always carried on," said Lemon, "I can't believe they were having problems like that."
Ragna Rok, who'd gone silent as soon as they'd arrived at Shadebeam's house on the southern end of the stretch of tract housing and business lots that qualified as Malaga, shifted uneasily on his feet. The case he held looked as if it was growning heavier, though Bonnie couldn't fathom why it seemed that way.
"They weren't, that we knew of," said Bedalia. "People said the same thing after Auggie an' me split. Never saw it comin', they said. 'Cept they never *sounded* surprised when they were sayin' that. 'Cause they did see it, even if they didn't know it before it happened."
Bonnie glanced at her brother, at the moment he glanced at her. While it was true their neighbors hadn't seen Bedalia argue with her then-husband August Rydell, they could hardly have avoided hearing them, even if they closed all their windows and cranked the A.C. and the T.V. They both had voices that carried like a PhootDash driver desperate for overtime pay, and while they were never violent with one another, their kitchenware suffered by proxy.
A memory flashed before her, unbidden. An argument, the last one. Dad was going back to L.A., this time for good, and why the hell did she want to stay in a scratch-on-the-map like Malaga. Just because she could brew potions here that did things potions brewed anywhere else couldn't.... He wouldn't look at either her or Lemon, and she managed to hold back on the waterworks until Lemon drew her back from the hall and to their room. Mom had come to them later and tersely told them how it was going to be -- a divorce, split custody, already decided, so shut your pie-holes. Bonnie had wanted to comfort her, even though Lemon's eyes had gone cold, but Mom would have none of it. Her comfort was in a cup by her recliner, already cooling.
"Look, seein' my two favorite ingredients again," said Bedalia, "reminds me my tea's waiting back home." For a second, Bonnie wondered if her mother had remembered the same thing from the other side. Bedalia gave Bonnie a look that was almost not a glare, then went to full-fury when her eyes lit on Lemon. "I can find my own way, thank you very much. Don't need no son who's never around to escort me back."
Lemon sighed. "Mom..." he started.
"He's been doin' good," Bonnie interrupted. "If we didn't have pressin' business, we could stay and talk about it. But I need him to come back to L.A. with me after we talk with Aunt Shade, so..."
Bedalia looked from Lemon to Bonnie.
"Hmph," she said, before nodding once at Bonnie, then heading diagonally over the sandy rock of Shadebeam's nominal front yard to the street. Tom watched her thoughtfully for a few seconds, then headed after her.
"I've got to stay outside and flag down the translocation service when it arrives for my son and your children, Ms. Cooper," said Tom. "Y'mind if I walk with you a bit?"
"Come on, then," said Bedalia. "Maybe you can look at my hot tub on the deck, too. Somethin' green an' glowin's been comin' up the drain, and it ate my best bikini..."
She accepted his arm. Everyone watched them go.
"Her two 'favorite ingredients?'" Erin asked, as he poked his head out the front door.
Bonnie shrugged. It wasn't a secret, exactly. Anyone who'd ever seen her driver's license already knew.
"She named us after the two ingredients she likes most in her tea," said Lemon. "'Lemon' being one of them."
"But... 'Bonnie?' I... wait, you don't mean..."
"Yeah," said Bourbon Annaliese Rydell. "Can we talk about something else?"
"And can we come in as we do?" Ragna asked.
Erin nodded. "I'm all done with the medical portion of this visit," said Erin, sticking his head out. "Come in, everybody. We got maybe fifteen-to-twenty minutes until Thane and Kalabash show up to take us home."
He looked at Lemon, then over his shoulder.
"Everyone means *everyone,*" a sharp voice declared. "Even that dorkbutt in the mibbie suit."
Erin opened the door the rest of the way. One by one, the group filed in to the adobe-brick ranch-style house.
Time passed as Bonnie's eyes adjusted to the darkness within. Every window was closed, every blackout curtain drawn. What light there was in the book, kitchenware, and disc-laden living area was cast by a glowing ball hovering above the wet bar, casting everything in the most jaundiced light Bonnie could imagine. The air had been conditioned to within an inch of its life, and she could hear both of the home's A.C. machines humming grimly as they did their work.
"Sit your asses down," the voice directed. Bonnie realized it was coming from the darkened bedroom. "I'll be out in a sec."
"Okay, Aunt Shade," said Bonnie.
She, Lemon, Ragna, and Erin turned to the fraught business of finding someplace to sit that wasn't already occupied by books, ashtrays, or computer equipment. Whatever her mother was doing for Aunt Shadebeam these days, Bonnie thought, it wasn't housekeeping. Or maybe it was, since she could see a few clean plates in the open cabinets in the adjoining kitchenette.
After some brief rearrangement and moving of stacks of things, they were all seated in a rough triangle of couches and recliners. By unspoken agreement, they left the recliner nearest the bedroom door and closest to the darkened television set empty. Ragna drummed his fingers on the case he had brought over.
"Someone still loves us," said Lemon, gesturing to the nearest wall, which was packed with frames of varying size and tackiness. "Our pic's still up."
Bonnie followed his pointing finger to the picture he indicated, taped to the wall between wooden frames. Her twelve-year-old, black-tank-top-wearing self was on the left, jamming a lit glowstick up the right nostril of her shirtless grinning fourteen-year-old brother in the center. On the right side, fourteen-year-old Esteban Veracruz, surprisingly solemn-looking despite having two green glowsticks partially up his nostrils, made rabbit ears with his fingers behind Lemon.
"The fourth Burning M00se," said Lemon. "Este's second year. Time went sideways, because of that time-looped autobuffet, an' there were up to five of us running around and into one another at any point." He paused, and looked at the darkened doorway.
"That... was a good year," Ragna said, after the expected affirmation didn't come.
The painting in the frame next to the picture drew Bonnie's eyes next, though she couldn't say quite why. Maybe because it had been dusted, or the light was hitting it just right. Maybe because of who was in it: Aunt Shadebeam, then a young short-haired blonde woman of twenty-five, smiling and cheerfully giving the bird to the portrait painter. Her twin sister Radian, black-haired, bone-white-skinned, severe-looking though not cold, hugging Shadebeam to her side. A ten-year-old girl with similar bone-white skin and goth-black attire sat in Radian's lap. A ten-year-old wickedly-grinning girl in a pink sun-dress, idly brandishing a switchblade, leaned in over Shadebeam's shoulder. An Indian gentleman of indeterminate age leaned in on Shadebeam's side, while someone who looked a lot like David Carradine in a tuxedo leaned in on Radian's.
Looking at the painting, Bonnie struggled to remember that it was Radian who'd been the one born in 000SUPERGUY. Though they came to think of one another as sisters, after Shadebeam arrived, they had actually been the same person as born in different universes. Radian was gone now, a superguy-turned-dark-goddess-turned-fugitive whose sacrifice had somehow prevented a global apocalypse before Bonnie had even been born. Shadebeam was the only 'Akane Moroboshi' around after that, though she never went by the name. As for the others, she remembered Shadebeam saying who they were once, and why only a painting could capture their likenesses, but she'd been too busy planning revenge on her brother for feeding her old action figures to Shadebeam's pet abomination, Roog, to pay much attention. All she could remember was the painting had been done by some guy called 'Alexei.'
"I brought it," Ragna Rok said, louder than necessary, speaking in the direction of the doorway and drawing Bonnie's attention away from the painting. "Your suggestion worked."
A thump came from the bedroom. Then a dragging sound.
"No shit, Hunter," said Shadebeam Moroboshi, as she half-walked, half-dragged into the room. "I felt the pulse when it hit 'full' from here."
Much of Shadebeam Moroboshi, and all of her particulars, was hidden by a thin-but-voluminous robe decorated with stylized images of Elvis Presley's face. Her shoulder-length hair looked as bottle-blonde as it did in the painting, though Bonnie remembered her mom saying it grew out that way for reasons Shadebeam never explained. Her skin was darkened by her decades living in New Mexico's unforgiving desert. Her robe fell open as she moved, exposing her lower legs up to the scar on her left kneecap. Her face was age-lined and a little less taut, the gold ear-to-nose chain in the painting long since discarded. But the cyncial, amused eyes were the same, as was the curl of the edges of her mouth, as if holding back a torrent of sarcastic commentary.
She wasn't the invalid at death's door that Bonnie had been expecting. If anything, Bonnie felt a wiry strength in her movements, as if she was holding back.
Then she stumbled, and her eyes widened in alarm.
Erin McCavish was out of his chair and at Shadebeam's side, catching her before she could fall. Shadebeam scowled, but didn't resist his help as he righted her and guided her to the recliner that awaited her. Shadebeam muttered beneath her breath, then nodded thanks to Erin as she laid back. In the yellow light, she almost seemed to merge with the chair.
Ragna Rok held out the metal case. Shadebeam eyed it, warily, then gestured to the coffee table before her. Reluctantly, Ragna set the case down.
Erin, she noticed, was looking at Shadebeam with apprehension. For some reason, it didn't feel like it was her health alone that was behind it. He'd gone in ahead for her exam, and whatever it was he'd found had wiped the optimistic insistence from his expression.
In fact, Bonnie thought, if she didn't know better, he looked a bit scared.
"Jesus," Shadebeam said, looking from Erin to Bonnie to Lemon and finally to Ragna. "I know what I look like. I've been under the weight of havin' to live here an' not go anywhere lest I go coo-coo for R'lyeh Puffs. What's *your* excuse for lookin' like you do?"
"Gettin' old after decade's of playing a young man's game," said Ragna.
"Hormones, surgery, and a family that loves me as me," said Erin.
"I got whupped by the pretty stick," Lemon said, drawing a snort from Bonnie for quoting their mother's old line. "I don't want to be rude, Aunt..."
"Too late," everyone except Erin interjected.
"...but something happened in L.A. this morning, and we don't have a lot of time before we have to go back."
"Erin told me about it," said Shadebeam. "The salient bits, anyway. Said you lot had some questions that I have answers to." She signed, looking at the end table next to her as if expecting a drink to materialize. "So ask. I'm about as effervescent right now as I get these days, and I'm told I go down well before sunset. And not in the fun way."
As she spoke, she looked directly at Bonnie, while Erin sat down. Bonnie went over the questions in her head, summarized them all, and said, "What the fuck happened?"
"You may want to drill down on the specifics of the fuck, my dear," said Shadebeam, unperturbed.
"Cendra got a chance to chat with the Galaxy Hunter and the superguy you sent our way this morning..." Bonnie started.
"Psywave," Erin added.
"...and says the Hunter just arrived yesterday, the day of the Burn, sans armor and a tale of a Reptiloid conspiracy that stole one of the seven Hidden Hearts from the Ottsamaddawiduan Treasury..."
"The Heart of Hy Brasil," Erin interjected.
"...which they brought to Earth because they somehow think it'll shortcut them to galactic rulership. The Hunter knows Psywave from some past interaction, convinces her of what's going on, and they together convince you and O.G. Hunter here..."
Bonnie looked at Ragna, to see if he would add anything. Ragna just nodded.
"...and somehow you conclude they're going to use the Heart of Hy Brasil to find the Heart of Mu, hidden up until this morning on the _Subtler Than Light_. Ragna here can't go himself, but he happens to have a spare suit of Hunter armor lying about that fits the new Hunter, whoever she is, to a tee. She and Psywave decide they have to put a rush on getting to the STL first, and you, Aunt Shade, despite your serious condition, are able to cast some quickie translocation spell that gets them most of the way there, only not quite in time. Now, thanks to the ill-considered intervention of this twerp's monkeys..."
She gestured at Lemon, who merely shrugged and nodded, though Bonnie was unsure as to at what part.
"...the Heart of Mu is in the wind, in the possession a sentient utahraptor called Kazza Lamissk, a former protector of the subterrantean city of Sol Selegna, who's trying to get back to Terra Subterrene with it and lay it at the feet of someone whose feet shouldn't be anywhere near it."
Bonnie inhaled deeply, having nearly exhausted her voice in expositing all that.
Shadebeam considered this, then fished a pack of cigarettes out of her robe.
"Oh," she said. "*That* fuck. Should'a figured."
Bonnie knew Shadebeam was baiting her, just a little, and held her tongue. Shadebeam tapped out a cigarette, tossed the pack onto the end table, and whispered something. The tip began to glow and smoke.
"I thought you quit," Lemon said, an eyebrow raised.
"I quit quitting, if that's what you mean," said Shadebeam. She took a puff, her face briefly twisting as she inhaled. Now, I may be no longer at my peak, and well on my way to my valley, but I'm getting the sense that you think there are parts of that story that don't add up." She flicked ashes at Ragna. "And you couldn't've just explained?"
Ragna gave her a baleful look. "You were pretty concerned, before..."
"The Scaled Order has been at work on Earth for some time," Shadebeam said. "Slithis learned about it from some of the Reptiloids who came to Earth for Burning M00se a couple years back. We both agreed it was the stupidest thing we'd heard of since 'Baconnaise.' Then... more of them came around last year." She looked up at Erin. "Same year you nearly screwed the pooch for all of us."
"Hey," Erin said, anger overtaking his until-then reserved face. "You told me the only thing I did wrong was get caught."
"No shit I did," Shadebeam snapped. "An' no shit *you* did. Just 'cause you got your medical degree at twenty-two doesn't make you Doogie Howser gettin' it right all the time, 'kay? You simultaneously did right and fucked up, something I know how to recognize well, since with my history I could be a goddamn life coach for it. Now jam your gorge back down your gullet and listen."
Erin fumed, but didn't speak further. The disturbed look that had momentarily vanished when he'd defended himself reappeared.
"Slith decided he was gonna try to figure out how serious these Scaled Order yobbos were," Shadebeam went on. "Said he was worried. The things they were saying, names they were dropping..."
"T'shamka," said Erin. "Either the Reptiloid scientist who stole the Heart of Hy Brasil a century plus ago or a wannabe successor... and apparent current leader of the cult."
"Kid, if I wanted annotations, I'd call VH-1," Shadebeam said.
"Sorry."
"Right... so Slith gets in with them... maybe *too* in with them." Shadebeam took a long drag off her cigarette. Something sparkled near her eye. "Not all of them went back when last year's Burning M00se ended... and Slithis kept talking to them. And eventually going out to their meetings. Until one day... he didn't come home."
"Jeez, Aunt," said Lemon, "I'm sorry..."
"Yeah, everybody is," she said, "even though I don't tell 'em what I just told you. That's when I contacted Ragna, using some tech that *I* shouldn't have, and *don't you say it, Mister!*"
Erin hesitated, then closed his mouth.
"You want to take it from here, Uncle?" Shadebeam asked. "I'm... getting run down a little early."
"We talked," said Ragna, his aged face betraying none of the impatience he'd been showing earlier. "Came to Earth with Rellanal... my wife now, Lemon, seeing as you're keeping score... on the pretext of doing a survey of Earth cults for the Galactic Registry she's putting together. I was half-hoping Rel'd talk some sense into Shade, but instead she said, naw, the Scaled Order is some bad news, and they need to be smoked like a brisket. She went back to Hottentot this morning for a staff meeting, otherwise I'd say she could tell you more than I could about the Reptiloids skulking in the shadows on Earth. She's the one who figured out they were gonna move on the Treasury, and that they had someone on the inside."
"And instead of doing the sensible thing," said Lemon, "which is alerting the Hottentottians and maybe preventing the theft in the first place--"
"I tried," Ragna interrupted. "I was told everything was in hand, there was no way the Treasury would ever be breached after how security was upgraded following what happened in your nineteen-nineties, and that maybe I was getting a little long in the tooth to keep presiding over the Hunter Corps, even in the symbolic role I occupy now." He sighed and looked away. "So I contacted one of the Hunters I could trust. Called in a few favors, got her assigned to investigate. Nearly got her killed in the process, but luckily she doesn't hold it against me."
He turned to Lemon. "The reason I had armor waiting for her was because it was for her to operate where she might have to go, to open a path only she can, in case the initial plan to shut 'em down on Reptilos failed. Happy path, she could've done it at leisure, guided by Shadebeam and myself." He shrugged. "As you can surmise, we are not on the happy path. She got the armor, but not the final piece that will power her systems to break through to the... uh..."
"The Charnel House," said Shadebeam. "I know I'm supposed to add reverb, but I'm too tired for that."
"Why does she want to go there?" asked Bonnie. "I've heard rumors about it... stories from a century ago, way out in Gothopolis..."
"Among many other things," said Shadebeam, leaning in, "it's a waypoint to other places... including Terra Subterrene. The one door they can't close, like they have virtually every other."
Bonnie looked at her brother, whose eyes gleamed in the yellow light. *This* was why he had come all the way to Malaga to learn. She couldn't say how, but she was sure of it. Just as sure as she was that they'd regret letting the secret slip.
But Lemon wasn't satisfied with that alone. He nodded at the case on the coffee table.
"What's in there?" he asked.
"A complicated question," Shadebeam said, the smile leaving her face as she assessed him. "An unanswerable one, even."
"What?" Bonnie, Lemon, and Erin simultaneously said.
Shadebeam didn't answer. Instead, she coughed.
"At least tell me why the case is built out of metal taken from the ancient elevator," said Lemon, "and why the new Galaxy Hunter's armor is made of that same metal."
"Ah... *what?*" Erin asked, startled from his furtive contemplation of Shadebeam. He leaned forward, studying the case. "It just looks like grey metal to me." He studied it a few seconds more. "I mean, it's the same color, but I thought it was really hard to cut, let alone forge into armor... and cases."
"We couldn't," Ragna admitted. "Until what's now *in* the case was put in our hands, and Rellanal and I worked out how to interface it with some power cells I brought down on the q.t. It was like slicing tin cans after that."
"So your Ron Popeil device worked," said Lemon. "Why did you need *that* metal for either the case or the armor? What aren't you telling--"
At that moment, the door slammed open, and four white-feathered dodos wearing colorful headbands dashed in, grim purpose lighting their eyes.
Bonnie raised her phone. "Alexa, battle mode," she said.
"Battle mode initiated," her phone replied. "Identify--"
"The dodos," Bonnie said. "Flash seven... now!"
The phone made a 'bong' sound, and around a dozen loose DVD discs shot from where they were laying toward the sudden attackers.
The marauding poultry from centuries past flicked left and right to dodge the shining missiles. One jumped up and ran along the kitchenette wall, jumping against a bookcase and flipping over to come hurtling at them from a new angle. One kong-jumped over a pile of magazines and kicked Ragna in the chin, ricocheting off him and into the air. A third slid under Erin's lunging hands. The fourth dodo slipped on a loose pile of old 'Key and Yury: The Super Life" DVD box sets and skidded into a closet.
The first dodo struck Bonnie's phone hand, knocking her phone away as they hit the carpet and vaulted over Erin. The speed-running flightless bird grabbed Erin's arm and swung around on a trajectory for the coffee table and the metal case. To their squawking surprise, they took two fuzzy slippers to the face, light but at a velocity sufficient to deflect them into Lemon's swinging foot. The dodo smacked into the one that had just come down from the ceiling and soared into the kitchenette, where it was received by the sounds of shattering plates. The second dodo, meanwhile, landed in a bookcase...
...only to shoot out a second later, where it ran into Erin's fist and dropped into the ground.
"This is not... look out!" Ragna yelled, as the dodo Erin had initially missed swiping slid under the table and past, but not before grabbing a couple table legs and yanking it with him. The case flew into the air...
...where the fourth dodo, vaulting from floor to lamp to bookcase to couch in a blink, snatched it, struck and ran along the photo wall for a few seconds, then leaped for the open front doorway.
"Alexa, smite that dodo!" Bonnie yelled.
"Smite initiated," her phone told her from beneath the stack of magazines it had skittered into.
Electrical bolts shot from the lamp and the television and the kitchenette, striking the dodo with a flash of light. Charred feathers flew, as did the case...
...which struck the ceiling and flew open.
"Awwwk!" the three non-smote dodos yelled, as a foot-long, two-and-a-half-inch wide cylindrical object shot out, arcing toward Shadebeam. She stretched out an arm to catch it...
...and gasped as it stopped in mid-air, inches from her hand.
Even the dodos were taken aback by this. And dodos are hard to take aback, let me tell you. Nobody has their receipt.
Lemon recovered first, and tried to snatch the object out of the air. It spun to evade his fingers, then spun again to avoid Erin's arm, Ragna's leap, and a flurry of dodo wings.
It shot toward the ceiling, and hovered.
Though the mellow light made details difficult to discern, Bonnie could make out deep spiral grooves on one spinning end. It looked nothing so much to her like a worm gear that might have been in one of the old tractors that her northside neighbor used to haul things with. But those things were heavy, and here it was, spinning like a combat staff wielded by an invisible martial arts expert.
As she stared, she realized it had stopped spinning. And though it had no eyes, Bonnie felt the sensation of hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Which is bad enough as it is, but even worse when it becomes a full-body sensation...
...which it did when it shot through the air at her.
"Bonnie!" Lemon yelled, lunging toward her.
She got her hands up in time, and the object slapped her palms.
Then Lemon struck her, late in his effort to knock her out of the way.
They fell...
...and cold howling eons and the gnawing void ate her alive.
It was old, so old, spinning in her mind. Through it, she saw things she knew better than to try to comprehend.
A glowing green alien engine, in which it was a mere part, awash in the mind-twisting energies of something she could only think of as kitsch...
A part in a soaring ship of terrestrial design, streaming quantum absurdity through its unknown interior, where one could squeeze the bulb of cosmic irrationality or get spashed in the face with it, but never both...
An opener of portals to weird dimensions, including one so weird it was known as the Weirdness Dimension...
A prison for beings of metal energy and unlimited insanity...
A selenium omniwave energy field disruptor, made by aliens called Kreeps, one of many, only it wasn't, because there was nothing like this one...
A revered object in another time where the wheel had never been invented and the aliens that had brought it to Earth in hers had never come, and yet here it was, tearing open holes in time and space, and just look at those tomatoes...
An object forged in a far-off universe by the pawn of a lord of creation and sent to a gleaming space station... an absolute *unit* of a spherical space station, with the emblem of a bird on the side facing away from the sun... as a piece in a complex game of cosmic import...
A millennia-old hunk of metal touched by the maddening hand of Dagon himself for purposes too mind-disintegrating to even speak aloud...
A worm gear from a 1962 diesel tractor, stripped for parts in 1989...
And more. So much more. On and on and back through time and space, backward, forward, side-to-side, through countless dimensions and altiverses. It had been so many things. Would *be* so many things. Would be discovered to actually be things other than what it was thought to be again and again until all meaning of 'was' became as nothing before its immutable existence in the now.
Bonnie felt the world snap back into existence. The dimly-yellow-lit walls of Shadebeam's house reasserted themselves to her perceptions. She became conscious that she was holding the object, and it was cold and very heavy. She also heard someone screaming.
It took a few seconds for her to realize the screaming person was her.
The realization made her stop. She looked at the object, then at the people and flightless, parkour-skilled birds around her. All but one were gaping at her as if she'd grown a second head. She patted around her shoulders with a free hand to be sure she hadn't.
The only non-gaping person, Shadebeam Moroboshi, considered her with an inscrutable expression, as she took a long drag off her cigarette. Then she exhaled the smoke, and said into the ringing silence, quietly and with a hint of exasperation, "Fuck me sideways with a Golden Grunion."
"Sis," said Lemon, who was getting to his feet. "You... you okay?"
Bonnie took a breath, as if to test that her lungs worked.
"Think so," she said. She looked from her brother to the gobsmacked dodos, then to the equally-gobsmacked Erin, then to the if-not-gobsmacked-then-stoically-tested Ragna, and finally to Shadebeam.
"What just happened?" she asked.
"It chose you," Shadebeam said, as she got to her feet. Smoke wreathed her head as she shuffled around the coffee table to look Bonnie in the eyes. Erin seemed alarmed at this, though Bonnie wasn't sure why.
"Is that bad?" Lemon asked.
"Depends," said Shadebeam.
"On?" Bonnie asked.
"On if you can get this to the Galaxy Hunter now in Los Angeles in time," said Shadebeam. "She's the one who needs it. She's the one Uncle Ragna was charging it up for. Thought I'd have to get it to her myself... somehow... but looks like I was wrong. *You* do."
Shadebeam glared at the cylinder in Bonnie's hands, then flipped it off with her free hand. Then she turned and started hobbling toward the doorway leading to the bedroom.
"Your ride's here," she called back, not turning around. "Get out."
"But, Aunt," Lemon said, "we still need to know..."
"No," said Bonnie, cutting off her brother. Who, for once in his misbegotten life in her presence, stayed cut off.
She turned to glare at the dodos, all four of whom were quivering.
Bonnie hefted the object.
They bolted for the front doorway.
"Heya in there!" a gruff voice called. "Are we gonna get a move on or whaaaaaaaa--"
Kalabash Strode, Master Sorcerer, was completely unprepared for four dodos streaking toward him. He toppled as the birds ran over him and out of the house. Erin and Ragna rushed to where he'd fallen.
"Thane!" he gurgled from the floor. "Where are ya, ya great chucklehead? Get those birds!"
"You're okay, Mr. Strode," said Erin, as he and Ragna helped the sorcerer stand. The web-shaped tracks going up the sorcerer's robes and indignantly angry face aside, he appeared to be uninjured. "Bonnie, Lemon, let's go."
"But..." Bonnie started, looking back at the door Shadebeam had gone through.
Then she nodded, and looked at her brother.
"What is Galaxy Hunter supposed to do with that?" Lemon asked, gesturing at the gear-like cylinder. "Fix her Galaxy Tractor with it?"
What Bonnie said next surprised even her.
"The Unanswerable Question," she said. "I know what it is, now."
This earned a patronizing noise and look from the squat mage.
"Look, missy, just because you listened to my podcast..." Kalabash started.
"I know what the question is," Bonnie insisted. "The answer is hard, and changes with a verbalized word... but the *question* is easy. Deceptively, but still."
"What is it, then?" Ragna asked, as he picked up his now-empty case.
She looked down at the object. Though she held it firmly in her hands, the grooved end looked at though it was spinning. Which it wasn't. And yet...
"The only question I can even *think* to ask at this point," said Bonnie.
Silence awaited her answer.
"What *is* this Damn Thing?"
WELL? WHAT *IS* THAT DAMN THING?
DOES THE CAPITALIZATION GIVE IT AWAY?
IF SO, WHAT'S IT DOING IN MALAGA, NEW MEXICO?
BESIDES THWARTING CAREFULLY LAID PLANS AND FRIGHTENING FLIGHTLESS THOUGHT-TO-BE-EXTINCT BIRDS, THAT IS?
WILL SHE GET IT TO GALAXY HUNTER IN TIME?
IN TIME FOR WHAT?
WHY DOES GALAXY HUNTER HAVE ARMOR MADE FROM ANCIENT ELEVATOR METAL?
DOES GALAXY HUNTER HAVE A GALAXY TRACTOR?
OH, AND WHAT'S UP WITH THAT BESTIARY CAMILA WAS LOOKING AT?
Answers, possibly, strangeness, definitely, in the next episode of SUBTLER THAN LIGHT, on your one-stop-shop for epic nonsense... SUPERGUY!
--
Subtler Than Light #6 (c) 2024 by Gary W. Olson. All Rights Reserved. Thane and Professor Rudolf Polinski were created by Bill Dickson in 'Team Cynical' and are used with permission.
Gary W. Olson LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/gwox
Superguy List: https://lists.eyrie.org/mailman/listinfo/superguy/
Superguy/Sfstory Discord: https://discord.gg/xuhYChvAPK
Superguy/Sfstory LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/superguysfstory
***
"She ain't seein' anybody," said the small, sun-blasted woman in the pink robe and ragged green slippers blocking the front door with nothing more than the sheer force of her stern expression. "Believe me, if *I* can't get in, the lot'a you don't stand a chance."
Bonnie matched the woman's fierce glare with her own. Thanks to biology, it was easy.
"Mom," she said, as normally and not-irritated-to-the-point-of-lifting-up-her-phone-and-repeatedly-stabbing-her-cast-fireball-app-shortcut as she could, "she let Erin in. And we're with him."
"Erin's her doc," Bedalia Cooper replied, as she brushed aimlessly at her permanently-frizzy white-grey-and-black hair. "He's got't look at her particulars. What he's here for."
"Mom," Lemon said, "I don't mean to be rude--"
"For once," Bedalia noted.
"--but Aunt Shade's never been particular about her particulars before. Is she really that bad off now?"
The look Bedalia gave Lemon made Bonnie glad she'd brought her brother along after all. Two adult children couldn't hope to blunt the force of her disapproval, but they could dilute it if they were together. Unless things went really bad, and they ended up doubling it. Always a risk.
Bonnie wasn't prepared to see her mother's expression soften, though. A chill went up her spine, despite the intense heat beating down from the sun.
"Yes," Bedalia said. "She is. She hides it, the dear, but... yes." Then she scowled. "I don't suppose you know where her no-good scaly man is these days, do you, mister superspy? An' before you ask, your sister didn't spill, I can just tell lookin' at'cha."
Lemon looked at Bonnie for explanation. But it was Tom McCavish-Laffalot that supplied it.
"Slithis's been gone six months now," he said. "Just up and left one day. Shade said to let 'im go. Wouldn't say anything else, or let anyone do anything else."
"The way they always carried on," said Lemon, "I can't believe they were having problems like that."
Ragna Rok, who'd gone silent as soon as they'd arrived at Shadebeam's house on the southern end of the stretch of tract housing and business lots that qualified as Malaga, shifted uneasily on his feet. The case he held looked as if it was growning heavier, though Bonnie couldn't fathom why it seemed that way.
"They weren't, that we knew of," said Bedalia. "People said the same thing after Auggie an' me split. Never saw it comin', they said. 'Cept they never *sounded* surprised when they were sayin' that. 'Cause they did see it, even if they didn't know it before it happened."
Bonnie glanced at her brother, at the moment he glanced at her. While it was true their neighbors hadn't seen Bedalia argue with her then-husband August Rydell, they could hardly have avoided hearing them, even if they closed all their windows and cranked the A.C. and the T.V. They both had voices that carried like a PhootDash driver desperate for overtime pay, and while they were never violent with one another, their kitchenware suffered by proxy.
A memory flashed before her, unbidden. An argument, the last one. Dad was going back to L.A., this time for good, and why the hell did she want to stay in a scratch-on-the-map like Malaga. Just because she could brew potions here that did things potions brewed anywhere else couldn't.... He wouldn't look at either her or Lemon, and she managed to hold back on the waterworks until Lemon drew her back from the hall and to their room. Mom had come to them later and tersely told them how it was going to be -- a divorce, split custody, already decided, so shut your pie-holes. Bonnie had wanted to comfort her, even though Lemon's eyes had gone cold, but Mom would have none of it. Her comfort was in a cup by her recliner, already cooling.
"Look, seein' my two favorite ingredients again," said Bedalia, "reminds me my tea's waiting back home." For a second, Bonnie wondered if her mother had remembered the same thing from the other side. Bedalia gave Bonnie a look that was almost not a glare, then went to full-fury when her eyes lit on Lemon. "I can find my own way, thank you very much. Don't need no son who's never around to escort me back."
Lemon sighed. "Mom..." he started.
"He's been doin' good," Bonnie interrupted. "If we didn't have pressin' business, we could stay and talk about it. But I need him to come back to L.A. with me after we talk with Aunt Shade, so..."
Bedalia looked from Lemon to Bonnie.
"Hmph," she said, before nodding once at Bonnie, then heading diagonally over the sandy rock of Shadebeam's nominal front yard to the street. Tom watched her thoughtfully for a few seconds, then headed after her.
"I've got to stay outside and flag down the translocation service when it arrives for my son and your children, Ms. Cooper," said Tom. "Y'mind if I walk with you a bit?"
"Come on, then," said Bedalia. "Maybe you can look at my hot tub on the deck, too. Somethin' green an' glowin's been comin' up the drain, and it ate my best bikini..."
She accepted his arm. Everyone watched them go.
"Her two 'favorite ingredients?'" Erin asked, as he poked his head out the front door.
Bonnie shrugged. It wasn't a secret, exactly. Anyone who'd ever seen her driver's license already knew.
"She named us after the two ingredients she likes most in her tea," said Lemon. "'Lemon' being one of them."
"But... 'Bonnie?' I... wait, you don't mean..."
"Yeah," said Bourbon Annaliese Rydell. "Can we talk about something else?"
"And can we come in as we do?" Ragna asked.
Erin nodded. "I'm all done with the medical portion of this visit," said Erin, sticking his head out. "Come in, everybody. We got maybe fifteen-to-twenty minutes until Thane and Kalabash show up to take us home."
He looked at Lemon, then over his shoulder.
"Everyone means *everyone,*" a sharp voice declared. "Even that dorkbutt in the mibbie suit."
Erin opened the door the rest of the way. One by one, the group filed in to the adobe-brick ranch-style house.
Time passed as Bonnie's eyes adjusted to the darkness within. Every window was closed, every blackout curtain drawn. What light there was in the book, kitchenware, and disc-laden living area was cast by a glowing ball hovering above the wet bar, casting everything in the most jaundiced light Bonnie could imagine. The air had been conditioned to within an inch of its life, and she could hear both of the home's A.C. machines humming grimly as they did their work.
"Sit your asses down," the voice directed. Bonnie realized it was coming from the darkened bedroom. "I'll be out in a sec."
"Okay, Aunt Shade," said Bonnie.
She, Lemon, Ragna, and Erin turned to the fraught business of finding someplace to sit that wasn't already occupied by books, ashtrays, or computer equipment. Whatever her mother was doing for Aunt Shadebeam these days, Bonnie thought, it wasn't housekeeping. Or maybe it was, since she could see a few clean plates in the open cabinets in the adjoining kitchenette.
After some brief rearrangement and moving of stacks of things, they were all seated in a rough triangle of couches and recliners. By unspoken agreement, they left the recliner nearest the bedroom door and closest to the darkened television set empty. Ragna drummed his fingers on the case he had brought over.
"Someone still loves us," said Lemon, gesturing to the nearest wall, which was packed with frames of varying size and tackiness. "Our pic's still up."
Bonnie followed his pointing finger to the picture he indicated, taped to the wall between wooden frames. Her twelve-year-old, black-tank-top-wearing self was on the left, jamming a lit glowstick up the right nostril of her shirtless grinning fourteen-year-old brother in the center. On the right side, fourteen-year-old Esteban Veracruz, surprisingly solemn-looking despite having two green glowsticks partially up his nostrils, made rabbit ears with his fingers behind Lemon.
"The fourth Burning M00se," said Lemon. "Este's second year. Time went sideways, because of that time-looped autobuffet, an' there were up to five of us running around and into one another at any point." He paused, and looked at the darkened doorway.
"That... was a good year," Ragna said, after the expected affirmation didn't come.
The painting in the frame next to the picture drew Bonnie's eyes next, though she couldn't say quite why. Maybe because it had been dusted, or the light was hitting it just right. Maybe because of who was in it: Aunt Shadebeam, then a young short-haired blonde woman of twenty-five, smiling and cheerfully giving the bird to the portrait painter. Her twin sister Radian, black-haired, bone-white-skinned, severe-looking though not cold, hugging Shadebeam to her side. A ten-year-old girl with similar bone-white skin and goth-black attire sat in Radian's lap. A ten-year-old wickedly-grinning girl in a pink sun-dress, idly brandishing a switchblade, leaned in over Shadebeam's shoulder. An Indian gentleman of indeterminate age leaned in on Shadebeam's side, while someone who looked a lot like David Carradine in a tuxedo leaned in on Radian's.
Looking at the painting, Bonnie struggled to remember that it was Radian who'd been the one born in 000SUPERGUY. Though they came to think of one another as sisters, after Shadebeam arrived, they had actually been the same person as born in different universes. Radian was gone now, a superguy-turned-dark-goddess-turned-fugitive whose sacrifice had somehow prevented a global apocalypse before Bonnie had even been born. Shadebeam was the only 'Akane Moroboshi' around after that, though she never went by the name. As for the others, she remembered Shadebeam saying who they were once, and why only a painting could capture their likenesses, but she'd been too busy planning revenge on her brother for feeding her old action figures to Shadebeam's pet abomination, Roog, to pay much attention. All she could remember was the painting had been done by some guy called 'Alexei.'
"I brought it," Ragna Rok said, louder than necessary, speaking in the direction of the doorway and drawing Bonnie's attention away from the painting. "Your suggestion worked."
A thump came from the bedroom. Then a dragging sound.
"No shit, Hunter," said Shadebeam Moroboshi, as she half-walked, half-dragged into the room. "I felt the pulse when it hit 'full' from here."
Much of Shadebeam Moroboshi, and all of her particulars, was hidden by a thin-but-voluminous robe decorated with stylized images of Elvis Presley's face. Her shoulder-length hair looked as bottle-blonde as it did in the painting, though Bonnie remembered her mom saying it grew out that way for reasons Shadebeam never explained. Her skin was darkened by her decades living in New Mexico's unforgiving desert. Her robe fell open as she moved, exposing her lower legs up to the scar on her left kneecap. Her face was age-lined and a little less taut, the gold ear-to-nose chain in the painting long since discarded. But the cyncial, amused eyes were the same, as was the curl of the edges of her mouth, as if holding back a torrent of sarcastic commentary.
She wasn't the invalid at death's door that Bonnie had been expecting. If anything, Bonnie felt a wiry strength in her movements, as if she was holding back.
Then she stumbled, and her eyes widened in alarm.
Erin McCavish was out of his chair and at Shadebeam's side, catching her before she could fall. Shadebeam scowled, but didn't resist his help as he righted her and guided her to the recliner that awaited her. Shadebeam muttered beneath her breath, then nodded thanks to Erin as she laid back. In the yellow light, she almost seemed to merge with the chair.
Ragna Rok held out the metal case. Shadebeam eyed it, warily, then gestured to the coffee table before her. Reluctantly, Ragna set the case down.
Erin, she noticed, was looking at Shadebeam with apprehension. For some reason, it didn't feel like it was her health alone that was behind it. He'd gone in ahead for her exam, and whatever it was he'd found had wiped the optimistic insistence from his expression.
In fact, Bonnie thought, if she didn't know better, he looked a bit scared.
"Jesus," Shadebeam said, looking from Erin to Bonnie to Lemon and finally to Ragna. "I know what I look like. I've been under the weight of havin' to live here an' not go anywhere lest I go coo-coo for R'lyeh Puffs. What's *your* excuse for lookin' like you do?"
"Gettin' old after decade's of playing a young man's game," said Ragna.
"Hormones, surgery, and a family that loves me as me," said Erin.
"I got whupped by the pretty stick," Lemon said, drawing a snort from Bonnie for quoting their mother's old line. "I don't want to be rude, Aunt..."
"Too late," everyone except Erin interjected.
"...but something happened in L.A. this morning, and we don't have a lot of time before we have to go back."
"Erin told me about it," said Shadebeam. "The salient bits, anyway. Said you lot had some questions that I have answers to." She signed, looking at the end table next to her as if expecting a drink to materialize. "So ask. I'm about as effervescent right now as I get these days, and I'm told I go down well before sunset. And not in the fun way."
As she spoke, she looked directly at Bonnie, while Erin sat down. Bonnie went over the questions in her head, summarized them all, and said, "What the fuck happened?"
"You may want to drill down on the specifics of the fuck, my dear," said Shadebeam, unperturbed.
"Cendra got a chance to chat with the Galaxy Hunter and the superguy you sent our way this morning..." Bonnie started.
"Psywave," Erin added.
"...and says the Hunter just arrived yesterday, the day of the Burn, sans armor and a tale of a Reptiloid conspiracy that stole one of the seven Hidden Hearts from the Ottsamaddawiduan Treasury..."
"The Heart of Hy Brasil," Erin interjected.
"...which they brought to Earth because they somehow think it'll shortcut them to galactic rulership. The Hunter knows Psywave from some past interaction, convinces her of what's going on, and they together convince you and O.G. Hunter here..."
Bonnie looked at Ragna, to see if he would add anything. Ragna just nodded.
"...and somehow you conclude they're going to use the Heart of Hy Brasil to find the Heart of Mu, hidden up until this morning on the _Subtler Than Light_. Ragna here can't go himself, but he happens to have a spare suit of Hunter armor lying about that fits the new Hunter, whoever she is, to a tee. She and Psywave decide they have to put a rush on getting to the STL first, and you, Aunt Shade, despite your serious condition, are able to cast some quickie translocation spell that gets them most of the way there, only not quite in time. Now, thanks to the ill-considered intervention of this twerp's monkeys..."
She gestured at Lemon, who merely shrugged and nodded, though Bonnie was unsure as to at what part.
"...the Heart of Mu is in the wind, in the possession a sentient utahraptor called Kazza Lamissk, a former protector of the subterrantean city of Sol Selegna, who's trying to get back to Terra Subterrene with it and lay it at the feet of someone whose feet shouldn't be anywhere near it."
Bonnie inhaled deeply, having nearly exhausted her voice in expositing all that.
Shadebeam considered this, then fished a pack of cigarettes out of her robe.
"Oh," she said. "*That* fuck. Should'a figured."
Bonnie knew Shadebeam was baiting her, just a little, and held her tongue. Shadebeam tapped out a cigarette, tossed the pack onto the end table, and whispered something. The tip began to glow and smoke.
"I thought you quit," Lemon said, an eyebrow raised.
"I quit quitting, if that's what you mean," said Shadebeam. She took a puff, her face briefly twisting as she inhaled. Now, I may be no longer at my peak, and well on my way to my valley, but I'm getting the sense that you think there are parts of that story that don't add up." She flicked ashes at Ragna. "And you couldn't've just explained?"
Ragna gave her a baleful look. "You were pretty concerned, before..."
"The Scaled Order has been at work on Earth for some time," Shadebeam said. "Slithis learned about it from some of the Reptiloids who came to Earth for Burning M00se a couple years back. We both agreed it was the stupidest thing we'd heard of since 'Baconnaise.' Then... more of them came around last year." She looked up at Erin. "Same year you nearly screwed the pooch for all of us."
"Hey," Erin said, anger overtaking his until-then reserved face. "You told me the only thing I did wrong was get caught."
"No shit I did," Shadebeam snapped. "An' no shit *you* did. Just 'cause you got your medical degree at twenty-two doesn't make you Doogie Howser gettin' it right all the time, 'kay? You simultaneously did right and fucked up, something I know how to recognize well, since with my history I could be a goddamn life coach for it. Now jam your gorge back down your gullet and listen."
Erin fumed, but didn't speak further. The disturbed look that had momentarily vanished when he'd defended himself reappeared.
"Slith decided he was gonna try to figure out how serious these Scaled Order yobbos were," Shadebeam went on. "Said he was worried. The things they were saying, names they were dropping..."
"T'shamka," said Erin. "Either the Reptiloid scientist who stole the Heart of Hy Brasil a century plus ago or a wannabe successor... and apparent current leader of the cult."
"Kid, if I wanted annotations, I'd call VH-1," Shadebeam said.
"Sorry."
"Right... so Slith gets in with them... maybe *too* in with them." Shadebeam took a long drag off her cigarette. Something sparkled near her eye. "Not all of them went back when last year's Burning M00se ended... and Slithis kept talking to them. And eventually going out to their meetings. Until one day... he didn't come home."
"Jeez, Aunt," said Lemon, "I'm sorry..."
"Yeah, everybody is," she said, "even though I don't tell 'em what I just told you. That's when I contacted Ragna, using some tech that *I* shouldn't have, and *don't you say it, Mister!*"
Erin hesitated, then closed his mouth.
"You want to take it from here, Uncle?" Shadebeam asked. "I'm... getting run down a little early."
"We talked," said Ragna, his aged face betraying none of the impatience he'd been showing earlier. "Came to Earth with Rellanal... my wife now, Lemon, seeing as you're keeping score... on the pretext of doing a survey of Earth cults for the Galactic Registry she's putting together. I was half-hoping Rel'd talk some sense into Shade, but instead she said, naw, the Scaled Order is some bad news, and they need to be smoked like a brisket. She went back to Hottentot this morning for a staff meeting, otherwise I'd say she could tell you more than I could about the Reptiloids skulking in the shadows on Earth. She's the one who figured out they were gonna move on the Treasury, and that they had someone on the inside."
"And instead of doing the sensible thing," said Lemon, "which is alerting the Hottentottians and maybe preventing the theft in the first place--"
"I tried," Ragna interrupted. "I was told everything was in hand, there was no way the Treasury would ever be breached after how security was upgraded following what happened in your nineteen-nineties, and that maybe I was getting a little long in the tooth to keep presiding over the Hunter Corps, even in the symbolic role I occupy now." He sighed and looked away. "So I contacted one of the Hunters I could trust. Called in a few favors, got her assigned to investigate. Nearly got her killed in the process, but luckily she doesn't hold it against me."
He turned to Lemon. "The reason I had armor waiting for her was because it was for her to operate where she might have to go, to open a path only she can, in case the initial plan to shut 'em down on Reptilos failed. Happy path, she could've done it at leisure, guided by Shadebeam and myself." He shrugged. "As you can surmise, we are not on the happy path. She got the armor, but not the final piece that will power her systems to break through to the... uh..."
"The Charnel House," said Shadebeam. "I know I'm supposed to add reverb, but I'm too tired for that."
"Why does she want to go there?" asked Bonnie. "I've heard rumors about it... stories from a century ago, way out in Gothopolis..."
"Among many other things," said Shadebeam, leaning in, "it's a waypoint to other places... including Terra Subterrene. The one door they can't close, like they have virtually every other."
Bonnie looked at her brother, whose eyes gleamed in the yellow light. *This* was why he had come all the way to Malaga to learn. She couldn't say how, but she was sure of it. Just as sure as she was that they'd regret letting the secret slip.
But Lemon wasn't satisfied with that alone. He nodded at the case on the coffee table.
"What's in there?" he asked.
"A complicated question," Shadebeam said, the smile leaving her face as she assessed him. "An unanswerable one, even."
"What?" Bonnie, Lemon, and Erin simultaneously said.
Shadebeam didn't answer. Instead, she coughed.
"At least tell me why the case is built out of metal taken from the ancient elevator," said Lemon, "and why the new Galaxy Hunter's armor is made of that same metal."
"Ah... *what?*" Erin asked, startled from his furtive contemplation of Shadebeam. He leaned forward, studying the case. "It just looks like grey metal to me." He studied it a few seconds more. "I mean, it's the same color, but I thought it was really hard to cut, let alone forge into armor... and cases."
"We couldn't," Ragna admitted. "Until what's now *in* the case was put in our hands, and Rellanal and I worked out how to interface it with some power cells I brought down on the q.t. It was like slicing tin cans after that."
"So your Ron Popeil device worked," said Lemon. "Why did you need *that* metal for either the case or the armor? What aren't you telling--"
At that moment, the door slammed open, and four white-feathered dodos wearing colorful headbands dashed in, grim purpose lighting their eyes.
Bonnie raised her phone. "Alexa, battle mode," she said.
"Battle mode initiated," her phone replied. "Identify--"
"The dodos," Bonnie said. "Flash seven... now!"
The phone made a 'bong' sound, and around a dozen loose DVD discs shot from where they were laying toward the sudden attackers.
The marauding poultry from centuries past flicked left and right to dodge the shining missiles. One jumped up and ran along the kitchenette wall, jumping against a bookcase and flipping over to come hurtling at them from a new angle. One kong-jumped over a pile of magazines and kicked Ragna in the chin, ricocheting off him and into the air. A third slid under Erin's lunging hands. The fourth dodo slipped on a loose pile of old 'Key and Yury: The Super Life" DVD box sets and skidded into a closet.
The first dodo struck Bonnie's phone hand, knocking her phone away as they hit the carpet and vaulted over Erin. The speed-running flightless bird grabbed Erin's arm and swung around on a trajectory for the coffee table and the metal case. To their squawking surprise, they took two fuzzy slippers to the face, light but at a velocity sufficient to deflect them into Lemon's swinging foot. The dodo smacked into the one that had just come down from the ceiling and soared into the kitchenette, where it was received by the sounds of shattering plates. The second dodo, meanwhile, landed in a bookcase...
...only to shoot out a second later, where it ran into Erin's fist and dropped into the ground.
"This is not... look out!" Ragna yelled, as the dodo Erin had initially missed swiping slid under the table and past, but not before grabbing a couple table legs and yanking it with him. The case flew into the air...
...where the fourth dodo, vaulting from floor to lamp to bookcase to couch in a blink, snatched it, struck and ran along the photo wall for a few seconds, then leaped for the open front doorway.
"Alexa, smite that dodo!" Bonnie yelled.
"Smite initiated," her phone told her from beneath the stack of magazines it had skittered into.
Electrical bolts shot from the lamp and the television and the kitchenette, striking the dodo with a flash of light. Charred feathers flew, as did the case...
...which struck the ceiling and flew open.
"Awwwk!" the three non-smote dodos yelled, as a foot-long, two-and-a-half-inch wide cylindrical object shot out, arcing toward Shadebeam. She stretched out an arm to catch it...
...and gasped as it stopped in mid-air, inches from her hand.
Even the dodos were taken aback by this. And dodos are hard to take aback, let me tell you. Nobody has their receipt.
Lemon recovered first, and tried to snatch the object out of the air. It spun to evade his fingers, then spun again to avoid Erin's arm, Ragna's leap, and a flurry of dodo wings.
It shot toward the ceiling, and hovered.
Though the mellow light made details difficult to discern, Bonnie could make out deep spiral grooves on one spinning end. It looked nothing so much to her like a worm gear that might have been in one of the old tractors that her northside neighbor used to haul things with. But those things were heavy, and here it was, spinning like a combat staff wielded by an invisible martial arts expert.
As she stared, she realized it had stopped spinning. And though it had no eyes, Bonnie felt the sensation of hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Which is bad enough as it is, but even worse when it becomes a full-body sensation...
...which it did when it shot through the air at her.
"Bonnie!" Lemon yelled, lunging toward her.
She got her hands up in time, and the object slapped her palms.
Then Lemon struck her, late in his effort to knock her out of the way.
They fell...
...and cold howling eons and the gnawing void ate her alive.
It was old, so old, spinning in her mind. Through it, she saw things she knew better than to try to comprehend.
A glowing green alien engine, in which it was a mere part, awash in the mind-twisting energies of something she could only think of as kitsch...
A part in a soaring ship of terrestrial design, streaming quantum absurdity through its unknown interior, where one could squeeze the bulb of cosmic irrationality or get spashed in the face with it, but never both...
An opener of portals to weird dimensions, including one so weird it was known as the Weirdness Dimension...
A prison for beings of metal energy and unlimited insanity...
A selenium omniwave energy field disruptor, made by aliens called Kreeps, one of many, only it wasn't, because there was nothing like this one...
A revered object in another time where the wheel had never been invented and the aliens that had brought it to Earth in hers had never come, and yet here it was, tearing open holes in time and space, and just look at those tomatoes...
An object forged in a far-off universe by the pawn of a lord of creation and sent to a gleaming space station... an absolute *unit* of a spherical space station, with the emblem of a bird on the side facing away from the sun... as a piece in a complex game of cosmic import...
A millennia-old hunk of metal touched by the maddening hand of Dagon himself for purposes too mind-disintegrating to even speak aloud...
A worm gear from a 1962 diesel tractor, stripped for parts in 1989...
And more. So much more. On and on and back through time and space, backward, forward, side-to-side, through countless dimensions and altiverses. It had been so many things. Would *be* so many things. Would be discovered to actually be things other than what it was thought to be again and again until all meaning of 'was' became as nothing before its immutable existence in the now.
Bonnie felt the world snap back into existence. The dimly-yellow-lit walls of Shadebeam's house reasserted themselves to her perceptions. She became conscious that she was holding the object, and it was cold and very heavy. She also heard someone screaming.
It took a few seconds for her to realize the screaming person was her.
The realization made her stop. She looked at the object, then at the people and flightless, parkour-skilled birds around her. All but one were gaping at her as if she'd grown a second head. She patted around her shoulders with a free hand to be sure she hadn't.
The only non-gaping person, Shadebeam Moroboshi, considered her with an inscrutable expression, as she took a long drag off her cigarette. Then she exhaled the smoke, and said into the ringing silence, quietly and with a hint of exasperation, "Fuck me sideways with a Golden Grunion."
"Sis," said Lemon, who was getting to his feet. "You... you okay?"
Bonnie took a breath, as if to test that her lungs worked.
"Think so," she said. She looked from her brother to the gobsmacked dodos, then to the equally-gobsmacked Erin, then to the if-not-gobsmacked-then-stoically-tested Ragna, and finally to Shadebeam.
"What just happened?" she asked.
"It chose you," Shadebeam said, as she got to her feet. Smoke wreathed her head as she shuffled around the coffee table to look Bonnie in the eyes. Erin seemed alarmed at this, though Bonnie wasn't sure why.
"Is that bad?" Lemon asked.
"Depends," said Shadebeam.
"On?" Bonnie asked.
"On if you can get this to the Galaxy Hunter now in Los Angeles in time," said Shadebeam. "She's the one who needs it. She's the one Uncle Ragna was charging it up for. Thought I'd have to get it to her myself... somehow... but looks like I was wrong. *You* do."
Shadebeam glared at the cylinder in Bonnie's hands, then flipped it off with her free hand. Then she turned and started hobbling toward the doorway leading to the bedroom.
"Your ride's here," she called back, not turning around. "Get out."
"But, Aunt," Lemon said, "we still need to know..."
"No," said Bonnie, cutting off her brother. Who, for once in his misbegotten life in her presence, stayed cut off.
She turned to glare at the dodos, all four of whom were quivering.
Bonnie hefted the object.
They bolted for the front doorway.
"Heya in there!" a gruff voice called. "Are we gonna get a move on or whaaaaaaaa--"
Kalabash Strode, Master Sorcerer, was completely unprepared for four dodos streaking toward him. He toppled as the birds ran over him and out of the house. Erin and Ragna rushed to where he'd fallen.
"Thane!" he gurgled from the floor. "Where are ya, ya great chucklehead? Get those birds!"
"You're okay, Mr. Strode," said Erin, as he and Ragna helped the sorcerer stand. The web-shaped tracks going up the sorcerer's robes and indignantly angry face aside, he appeared to be uninjured. "Bonnie, Lemon, let's go."
"But..." Bonnie started, looking back at the door Shadebeam had gone through.
Then she nodded, and looked at her brother.
"What is Galaxy Hunter supposed to do with that?" Lemon asked, gesturing at the gear-like cylinder. "Fix her Galaxy Tractor with it?"
What Bonnie said next surprised even her.
"The Unanswerable Question," she said. "I know what it is, now."
This earned a patronizing noise and look from the squat mage.
"Look, missy, just because you listened to my podcast..." Kalabash started.
"I know what the question is," Bonnie insisted. "The answer is hard, and changes with a verbalized word... but the *question* is easy. Deceptively, but still."
"What is it, then?" Ragna asked, as he picked up his now-empty case.
She looked down at the object. Though she held it firmly in her hands, the grooved end looked at though it was spinning. Which it wasn't. And yet...
"The only question I can even *think* to ask at this point," said Bonnie.
Silence awaited her answer.
"What *is* this Damn Thing?"
WELL? WHAT *IS* THAT DAMN THING?
DOES THE CAPITALIZATION GIVE IT AWAY?
IF SO, WHAT'S IT DOING IN MALAGA, NEW MEXICO?
BESIDES THWARTING CAREFULLY LAID PLANS AND FRIGHTENING FLIGHTLESS THOUGHT-TO-BE-EXTINCT BIRDS, THAT IS?
WILL SHE GET IT TO GALAXY HUNTER IN TIME?
IN TIME FOR WHAT?
WHY DOES GALAXY HUNTER HAVE ARMOR MADE FROM ANCIENT ELEVATOR METAL?
DOES GALAXY HUNTER HAVE A GALAXY TRACTOR?
OH, AND WHAT'S UP WITH THAT BESTIARY CAMILA WAS LOOKING AT?
Answers, possibly, strangeness, definitely, in the next episode of SUBTLER THAN LIGHT, on your one-stop-shop for epic nonsense... SUPERGUY!
--
Subtler Than Light #6 (c) 2024 by Gary W. Olson. All Rights Reserved. Thane and Professor Rudolf Polinski were created by Bill Dickson in 'Team Cynical' and are used with permission.
Gary W. Olson LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/gwox
Superguy List: https://lists.eyrie.org/mailman/listinfo/superguy/
Superguy/Sfstory Discord: https://discord.gg/xuhYChvAPK
Superguy/Sfstory LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/superguysfstory