Adults were stupid, Camila Veracruz thought as she dropped down from the overhead duct. Even ones she liked, such as Johnny Clark. He'd taken her from the office of her mother--Cendra Seconds, the manager of the perma-grounded airship _Subtler Than Light_ and a shapechanger like Camila--to the on-ship suite she and mom shared, and left her there without even pretending to consider her idea of sneaking off the ship and over to see which of her friends was at the nearby skate park, or even her idea to visit the closest ice cream stand on Ventura Beach.
He'd even made her promise she'd stay in the suite, rather than sneak out on her own. All because the STL had had a bomb go off on it earlier that day and there were demon monkeys roaming around outside and it was dangerous outside for an eight-year-old girl like her even if she *was* a werewolf and bla bla BLAAAAhhh.
She'd been scandalized that he even suspected she'd do something like that, but said she'd be good. Then, as soon as Johnny left, she pulled off the closest ventilation grate and crawled in.
The duct system was *part* of the suite, after all. And the ducts went through the whole ship, which meant the whole ship was *technically* part of her residence.
Navigating the ducts was more of a challenge on the ship than outside it. It had been built by a non-human race from a dimension where aetheric physics explained things, and as such did not obey the tendencies for ducts in buildings on Earth's surface in her mechanistic dimension to be wide enough to be comfortably crawled by infiltrating secret agents. It wasn't entirely *unfriendly* to them, either--narrative necessity was apparently as much a law in the Hidden Empire as it was for the surface world--but it didn't make the same allowances for size and limitations in flexibility. It was also clogged with strands of multi-colored yarn connecting faded pictures, enigmatic scrawls, newspaper clippings, and weird pictograms, which she knew all ultimately converged in Dr. Gigawatt's conspiracy-charting chamber adjoining Sickbay. Sometimes she rearranged bits and pieces just to mess with him, but she had no time for that at the moment.
Camila brushed the dust from her tank top and furry arms, then sniffed the air. She was in the Sickbay, she realized -- no other place on the ship smelled like protoplasm, electricity-singed flesh, alfalfa, and oolong tea. At least, not to such a degree. The motion-sensor-powered lights flickered to full luminescence as she looked about.
*Hello,* a mellow baritone voice murmured, more in her head than her wolflike ears. *I was wondering if you'd be around to visit.*
"Hi, Tony," Camila said to the green gaseous vapors in the floor-to-ceiling glass tube before her. "You heard what's been going on?"
*Some,* Tony replied. *Bhossi, Cla'rabhelle, and Shelby have been in and out all morning, talking about it to one another. Never to me, though. They just gave me breakfast and started running around.*
Camila looked at the empty tray in Tony's tube, which had likely earlier held a large ham before being raised into Tony's enclosure, where the vaporous being--a flesh-eating spore, if you wanted to be technical--gobbled it up. She wished she could've seen it.
*I take it this is not a sanctioned visit,* Tony said, his voice hovering in her head without a question mark at the end.
"They're worked up because I was in the bookstore earlier," said Camila, rolling her eyes. "I just went in 'cause that's where the dinosaur lady went and fought those monkeys in suits. Kazza, I mean. She's the dinosaur lady. She snuck into Bonnie's bookstore and I just *had* to stalk her a bit. Her feathers were so pretty! But does mom understand?"
*Of course not,* Tony commiserated. *No matter how often I ask my mothers for a pony for dinner, they never give me one. They're all 'You want to devour a live pony? How cruel! Now maybe a Ryan Seacrest, we can get you one of those once they're finished curing in the rapid-grow tanks.' And then they complain when the filters clog with denture strips and hair gel and they have to get the plunge-bots to clean out... hsst! Hide, quick!*
Camila quickly slipped behind Tony's tube as the Sickbay doors slid open and Bhossi levitated in, followed by a non-levitating Johnny Clark.
"...can't stay," Johnny Clark said, as he followed the bovine scientist with the brains sticking up out of her skull. "Bonnie's waiting for me in the lobby. We're supposed to go out to Malaga to get some background info on this new Galaxy Hunter that turned up here..."
"Tell them to go without you," Bhossi tersely said through speakers hidden by the necklace around her neck. Though the Mu'Kao could telepathically speak the way Tony did, she often preferred to use a device that translated the thoughts she sent it to audible words. "Dr. Gigawatt is having another episode, and you're probably the only one immediately available who can talk him down from the psychotronic generators without getting turned to ashes in the process."
Camila peered around the tube. Johnny fumed, but ultimately nodded. He set the book bag he'd been carrying down on the edge of a sink, next to a set of empty beer bottles, then touched a button on a wall.
"Patch through to the Lobby speakers," he said. "Bonnie, you there?"
Camila picked up a tinny sound of someone shouting.
"Bonnie, I can't make it now," he said, even as he let Bhossi usher him through a door. "Gigawatt's frothing about something, and I gotta... look, I'm sorry. Now, did Cendra give you the rundown of what she got from Psywave and Hunter in her office...?"
The door closed, cutting off the conversation.
Camila stepped out, making a beeline for the book bag on the desk. She recognized it as the bag the desk officer on the STL's bridge had handed to Johnny as he and she left her mom's office, the same bag that her dad--Miguel Veracruz, who like her was a werewolf, who unlike her preferred to go around as a human more than not--used to carry the book he'd gotten for her that morning. She wondered why he hadn't left it in her suite, and guessed the officer had told him on her mother's behalf to hand it off to the Mu'Kaos and Dr. Gigawatt, who might be able to make more sense of it than she would. Mom delegated where she could, she said, to keep from going crazy. It was part of being an adult.
As she pulled down the book bag, it knocked a couple of the empty bottles into the sink. She heard the 'ploosh' that told her the sink wasn't empty and winced. Given that she was in Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle's lab, the sink could be filled with anything from cold water to warm sea serpent blood.
*Those bottles were just brought in from the site in Emerson Park where The Programmer was hiding,* said Tony. *I didn't catch much, but I think they were hoping to analyze them for clues...*
"I didn't knock them *all* in," Camila said, as she withdrew a thick leather book from its bag, dismissing the knocked bottles from further consideration.
*What is that?* asked Tony. *It looks... old.*
"It's the book that Dad picked up from Bonnie's bookstore this morning," said Camila, as she opened it up. "I remember the smell." She pressed her muzzle to the aging, battered pages and sniffed. "It's... I can't even describe it. It's old, but..."
Spots appeared before her eyes. She shook her head to clear them.
"It smells kind of like you, too."
*I ingest Lysol daily to keep that in check, thank you...*
"I mean, it smells... hungry."
Tony considered this, as she leafed through the pages.
*Be careful,* he finally said. *It may not have my discerning palate.*
Camila snorted. "I don't mean literally, silly. It's just a book."
*What kind of just-a-book is it supposed to be?*
"A bestiary," said Camila, as she stopped to look at an illustration of what looked like a lion with the head of a goat and the wings of a bird of prey. "Dad told me about them. They used to be written hundreds of years ago when nobody knew what animals were real or made up, so they made up stuff about real ones, and made up some others and said they were real."
*Sounds... complicated.*
"Mom's always looking for these. She's a shape-changer, but not like me or Dad. She doesn't just turn into a werewolf -- she can become a dragon or a manticore or a badger or lots of other things. Things that are either mythical or what people used to think were mythical."
*Things in bestiaries?*
"She thinks one of them might help her understand why she shapechanges the way she does, even when she isn't trying to... though she can control it now. Dad gets the hard-to-find ones for her through Bonnie's store 'cause he thinks mom might like him again if he does."
*Will she?*
Camila shrugged, unable to answer such a question. Adults were stupid. And though she loved her parents, they could adult like no one's business when they really wanted. Like her dad did when he adulted with Miss Rydell and made Mom sad a long time ago. Especially on days like today, when things were blowing up and dinosaur ladies were sneaking around and monkeys were appearing and disappearing and everyone was screaming.
She flipped through a few more pages, and was about to put the book back and go see what was growing in the spore vats in the back of the lab when something caught her eye.
She stared at the illustration of the dragon at the bottom of the page, frozen by sudden recognition.
Her mother had looked like that in the battle from that morning. Not just a little. Not just kind of.
Exactly like that. Down to the exact pattern of light on scales, and the look she'd had in her narrowed golden eyes when Kazza had almost accidentally leaped into her mouth. The text at the bottom identified her as 'Zarsarei, Destroyer of Life.'
Camila looked at other pages. Chimera. Cephalophore. Siren. Bluebird of Happiness. And so many others. She'd seen her mom change into many of them at one point or another, and she had looked like all of those illustrations. All of them. Down to the pose, down to the expression.
*What is it?* Tony asked, sensing her apprehension.
Ignoring him, she turned to the cover. The title was in faded gold lettering, hard to read... but doable in good light.
"'A Bestiary of the World Going On Underground,'" Camila read aloud. "'Including the Many and Diverse Animals of the Empire of the Hidden, and Informed Speculation Upon Their Provenance.'"
No author was listed, so she flipped to the first page.
There, she saw a reproduced engraving of a tight-skinned face of a human with her mother's eyes.
Below it was a name, identifying him as the author of the book. Ellis Jonesy.
She remembered her mother telling her once that, before grandpa Eivandt and grandma Alice had adopted her at age ten and changed her last name to Seconds, her name had been 'Cendra Jonessey.' Not identical, but it felt close. Especially given the look of the eyes.
"No... way," Camila said. "I gotta show this to Mom right away!"
*But then, won't she know you're out of your...*
She would, Camila thought as she sprinted through the Sickbay doors and out of Tony's sending range, book cradled in her arms.
But this was *important.* And worth a scolding if she could get mom to actually *look.* And *listen.*
She ran faster, toward the lift tubes that led to the _Subtler Than Light's_ main deck and her mother's office.
***
SUBTLER THAN LIGHT
Episode 5
[Hidden Hearts, Part Six]
"The Unanswerable Question"
by
Gary W. Olson
"I've learned how to paint my face
How to earn my keep, how to clean my kill
But some nights, I still can't sleep
The past rolls back, I can see us still
You've learned how to hold your own
How to stack your stones, but the history's thick
Children aren't as simple as we'd like to think"
- Dessa,
"Children's Work"
***
It was entirely possible that they'd arrived in the New Mexico desert, Dr. Erin McCavish thought. The mid-day temperature that suddenly enveloped him--hot as hell and twice as dry--felt right. The problem was that his goggle-protected eyes were open, but he couldn't see the desert. There was too much sand in the way.
"Oh, man!" he heard someone next to him shout. "You sent us to the netherworld for real this time, Kal! Hold on, I think I've got a few coins for the ferryman here someplace..."
"Jesus Murphy, Thane!" snapped a rougher voice, this one on his other side. "We're here! It's just windy! They must'a relaxed the fair weather spellin'."
"What?" Thane asked. "The burn was just yesterday. They never drop the weather control spells so soon."
"Ne'er mind Thane," said the rougher voice, which Erin recalled belonged to a squat, ruddy, black-bearded man who'd introduced himself as 'Kalabash Strode, Master Sorcerer of the Dark Passages, Cohost of 'Whose Revolution?', Available on PhootPods or Wherever You Get Your Podcasts, Please Listen, Subscribe, and Review.' "'E's new. Ah'm mentorin' him in the calculatin' of the latitude an' the longitude an' the altitude an' the velocitude for translocatin', but specifically now to *not disturb th' payin' customers* by stipulatin' to the fiddly bits a' what may or may not've gone south after the translocatin's done!"
Kalabash Strode, Master Sorcerer Etcetera Etcetera, stepped closer, emerging from the sandy gusts. His beard and his robes were already sand-caked. Erin brushed some sand from his own goggles, which he was now glad they'd had him put on.
"Is everybody here?" Bonnie Rydell asked, from somewhere at his back. Erin turned to regard the frizzy-blonde-haired woman whose Tuber account had summoned the translocation service they'd just been provided by Kalabash and Thane. "Everybody intact? Count your organs, or at least make sure they're still inside you."
"Hmph," hmph'd Thane. He became visible as the wind shifted, though Erin thought the overall effect was debatable. A brown-haired, goateed, middle-aged mage in a flannel shirt, was sandblasted so thoroughly he almost blended in with the desert now exposed behind him. "It could be worse, Bonnie. We only did that the one time, and only because you were using the free version of the Tuber app."
"She wrote the app," Agent Lemon Rydell said, as he pulled off his goggles. Erin was surprised to see his black suit was barely touched by any sand. "Which is what she's about to--"
"I *wrote* the *app!*" Bonnie snarled. "And your company decided to inject some additional spellcode before deploying!"
"Boss told me it was just some light advertising pictograms," said Thane, his voice maddeningly calm to Bonnie's ears. "And you know we giggers don't have any control over that."
"Exceptin' o'course what we need to to collect payment an' a *five-star review,*" Kalabash said, shooting Thane a pointed look. "Stop debatin' the customers, ya chucklehead! Oh, an' before I forget..."
"Listen, subscribe, and review," said Lemon, who flashed a disarming smile. "Already did. Hey, which episode was it you said you talk about who the real dark mages are?"
"Seventy-seven," Kalabash replied, sounding at once startled and happy that someone had identified themselves as a listener. "The one about 'the Unanswerable Question,' if yer lookin' it up. Y'pardon me for asking, but is that somethin' spookfolk such as yerself pay much attention to?"
"*Everything's* of interest," Lemon told him, with an expansive wave. "Though my interest's more personal than professional. I was even thinking of showing up at the next Revolution reenactment, if Bob's city council reverses their ban on people using the old Correctional Institute for that."
"Heh, great," said Kalabash, whose face betrayed no agreement to said greatness. "Thane, let's get over't th' giggers tent an' check in. Bet a six some cake eater's got a bum carpet an' is about't put in a req."
"Hope so," Thane said, as he lifted his goggles and looked around. "Nora wants me back in Seattle by three today. She's got a few days off from the South Pacific climate project and recalibrating it to compensate for all the new volcanic activity along the rim. Which is a little weird since it's the Kilaueas we're going to see performing at the High Dive tonight, but..."
"A'course, lad," Kalabash said, holding up a hand to Thane while looking at Bonnie. "Y'put in for your return trip yet, Bonnie? We can pick it up an' be ready for ya if ya do."
"Already in the queue for a couple hours from now," she said. "If you pick it up, we'll be at Shadebeam's over townward."
At the mention of Shadebeam Moroboshi, Kalabash's face clouded. Due to sand encrustation, it was hard to tell if Thane's face clouded, but it did seem to scrunch.
"Aye, we'll pick it up," said Kalabash. "Y'know she made it out to the Burn last night. Dolled up real nice, an' everyone was glad t'see her." He shook his head. "Real glad," he said, as if trying to assure himself, before shaking his head. "C'mon, Thane, let's scoot."
Kalabash and Thane headed in a direction that, as far as Erin could tell, was a mix of people in khaki shorts and no tops carrying multicolored canvases, giant ants toting translucent pipes that fluctuated in color, and a line of vehicles of perplexing shape and eyewatering decoration heading toward a shimmering rectangle in the distance. He looked back at Bonnie, whose face had grown pensive at Kalabash's last words.
"They're just worried," said Erin. "She wasn't bad, last time I was around for an exam. You'll see."
Bonnie nodded, smiling without quite looking at him.
"I know," she said, after a few seconds. "And Slithis'll be back from wherever he's gone any day now, right?"
Erin frowned, but Bonnie continued before he could reply.
"'Kay, let's not dawdle," she said. "We're here for a reason, not just to feel sorry for our collective Aunt. Is there a Radian 'round here? Gotta get a fix on where Ragna is."
Erin nodded, as he shifted his gaze to the playa. The gusts of beige sand were subsiding, revealing the remnants of the annual gathering known as Burning M00se.
It had been a good year, if the twenty-foot tall blue marble statue of Chuck Woolery in a Compromising Position with Pat Sajak and a Penguin was any indication--mainly because Erin strongly suspected it had started out as separate statues, and because of the efforts the cleanup crew was making to uncurdle space and time around it. Farther on, he could see blue smoke rising from a part of that year's festival that, if he recalled correctly, had been assigned to a mixed group of alchemists, biopunks, and hardcore pan-fluters, and wondered if they'd had to be chiseled out of a slab of pulsing crystal. Again.
"Sorry you missed it?" Lemon asked.
Erin glanced at Lemon. He'd never met the man before, though he'd heard stories from Cendra and from Miguel. And pointedly *not* from Esteban, who preferred not to talk about him at all. It was funny... up close, he didn't *look* like someone who'd steal an enchanted emerald just to see if it could really turn water into Colt Malt Liquor, or someone who'd once talked a delegation from a planet called Partyworld into giving him a cut from all the slot machines he'd convinced them to replace in Las Vegas.
He *did* look like someone who'd break your heart and make you want him to do it again. The glint in his black sunglasses, the curl in his lips, the way his blond hair waved in the dying breeze... he felt he understood why Esteban stayed silent.
"I didn't miss it," said Erin, returning his gaze to the small, half-dismantled city before him. "It kicked me out. As I'm sure you already know."
"Yeah, that was some bullshit," Lemon replied, apparently oblivious to Erin's appraisal. "You appealed, right?"
"For all the good it did. Can we talk about something else?"
"I'm sure we can," Lemon said, with a wink.
Erin's eyes returned to the work being done to take down that year's Burning M00se, a day earlier had an enormous wooden pyramid-with-antlers over it, lit by alien neon slithers and technomagical beetles in the days leading up to the finale. Something large was moving behind it. As he tried to figure it out what it was, he blurted out the first conversation-changer he could pick out from recent memory.
"What's 'the Unanswerable Question?'"
"Trying to remember," Lemon said, after a moment. "It wasn't 'who are the real dark mages,' thankfully. Something that's been going around in mage circles. This year, especially. It's kind of tricky, and I'm not sure I really followed it, not being a magic-user. It's... let me think... it's a question where the answer can be known... but if you tell someone the answer is... no, that can't be right."
"What can't be?"
"Answering the question... changes the answer, so the answer you just gave was wrong."
Erin considered this.
"So knowing the answer doesn't change the answer... but saying it does?"
"Or thinking it, if a telepath is listening in. I guess. They kind of got in the weeds with the hypotheticals, and I may have tuned out after a while. Kalabash's pod came out just this past spring, if it helps."
"I'll have to check it out," said Erin, who immediately made plans to never check it out.
"Incoming, by the way," said Lemon, taking a brisk couple steps back.
"Incoming?"
Something blurred past Johnny and tackled Erin in the chest. Erin rolled, hanging on to his attacker for a bit before flying free and landing on his butt at Bonnie's feet. Immediately, he pushed himself into a standing position, his eyes widening as he realized who he was facing...
...and instinctively spun to avoid a second assault from his left.
His other attacker wobbled as his attempted arm-grab missed. Erin grabbed him by the back of his tan vest and pushed him forward, while his other hand found the ruffian's belt and gave it a swift, hard upward tug.
"Yoowww!" the ruffian yelled. "Art, do something!"
The other attacker, Art, was doing something. Namely, holding a hand up to his mouth to stifle an outburst of laughter.
"Told you that wouldn't work, Max," Art said. "He knows the routine."
"Well, then, why'd you suggest it?"
Max looked down at his firmly-wedgied tan shorts, the look on his face indicating a realization of the answer.
"Hey, bro," said Max to Erin. "Sorry about that. We didn't know you'd be here, otherwise we'd'a come up with something sneakier."
Erin rolled his eyes. "Art only got me 'cause it's been a day. You couldn't get me on your best day!"
"My best day was three years and change ago," said Max. "An' I was busy then, an' ever since. Your niece and nephew say 'hi,' by the way."
"Excuse me," said Bonnie, "but who the hell... oh, no. You guys."
"The Brothers McCavish, my Bonnie Lass," said Art McCavish, essaying a mock bow, which briefly sent his long brown locks cascading over his slightly sunburned, otherwise bronzed and bearded face.
"Reunited once more," said Max McCavish, who lacked any hair to send spilling, and pulled Erin to him by the waist and applied a skillful noogie. This lasted two seconds, before Erin spun him around and wrenched his arm behind his back. Max yelped and flailed.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Erin asked. "The festival's done."
"We were Radians this year," said Art. "Peacekeepin' an' helpin' folks what needed it, coordinating the teardown now. I got another three days before I gotta zip back to the SDF-1 and my man Kinji, an' Mom's lookin' after Max and Celia's rugrats 'til he, Cel, an' Dad can get back to Miami so she can get out to L.A. to keynote the super-med conference at Pethas Scott Memorial." He took a breath, then moved his lips silently as if checking to see if he'd gotten all the nouns and verbs in the correct order. "Speakin' a' which, congrats on the paper you co-wrote with her."
"'Moss Side Story: On the Experimental Replication in Non-Metahumans of the Effect of Transvective Synthetic Flesh-Regenerating Funguses on High-Absurdity-Quotient Beings,' by Dr. Laura McCavish-Laffalot, Ph.D., M.D., and Dr. Erin McCavish, M.D.,'" quoted Max, a lilt in his voice. "Rolls trippingly off the tongue, it does. Can't wait to see the Netflix doc."
"I wanted to call it 'One Fung Low,'" Erin said, grinning. "Mom overruled me."
"Anyway, Kalabash and Thane sent us over," said Max, as he slipped out of Erin's relaxing hold. "Said you wanted to know where Ragna Rok was. We were just on our way to him anyway. He an' Dad are cleanin' up the burn zone an' workin' on something."
"Wait," said Lemon, tilting his head. "I met Laura a few times. You guys... you're the McCavish-Laffalot triplets, right?"
Erin nodded. Their hairstyles were different (or absent, in Max's case), their builds shaped by the different paths in life they'd taken, but he and his brothers were a lot more similar than dissimilar.
"That's us," said Art. "But by general consensus, we chose 'McCavish' as a last."
"I thought one of you was a girl," said Lemon.
Erin sighed.
"I was," he said, "up until I figured some things out. What about it?"
Lemon shrugged. "I've been out of circulation, so I gotta catch up. Knew I should've read your Mastodon feed." He didn't wink this time, but gave Erin a look that passed for one. Erin knew at once that Lemon probably could quote his Mastodon feed back at him, toot for toot. Including the ones where he talked about his transition.
"Still fight like a girl, though," Max said with a half-smirk, before Erin could say anything back to Lemon. "I--owowowowow! Okay, bro!"
Erin re-released his brother, who rubbed his arm and unstuck his shorts but didn't stop smirking. Art semi-apologetically thumped Erin's back.
"Come on," he said. "We can talk and walk. Dad'll be glad to see you."
"Will he, now," Erin muttered, too low for even Art to hear.
If it wasn't the Unanswerable Question, Erin thought, it was at least one whose answer he couldn't guess.
(continued in part two, following...)
--
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.
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He'd even made her promise she'd stay in the suite, rather than sneak out on her own. All because the STL had had a bomb go off on it earlier that day and there were demon monkeys roaming around outside and it was dangerous outside for an eight-year-old girl like her even if she *was* a werewolf and bla bla BLAAAAhhh.
She'd been scandalized that he even suspected she'd do something like that, but said she'd be good. Then, as soon as Johnny left, she pulled off the closest ventilation grate and crawled in.
The duct system was *part* of the suite, after all. And the ducts went through the whole ship, which meant the whole ship was *technically* part of her residence.
Navigating the ducts was more of a challenge on the ship than outside it. It had been built by a non-human race from a dimension where aetheric physics explained things, and as such did not obey the tendencies for ducts in buildings on Earth's surface in her mechanistic dimension to be wide enough to be comfortably crawled by infiltrating secret agents. It wasn't entirely *unfriendly* to them, either--narrative necessity was apparently as much a law in the Hidden Empire as it was for the surface world--but it didn't make the same allowances for size and limitations in flexibility. It was also clogged with strands of multi-colored yarn connecting faded pictures, enigmatic scrawls, newspaper clippings, and weird pictograms, which she knew all ultimately converged in Dr. Gigawatt's conspiracy-charting chamber adjoining Sickbay. Sometimes she rearranged bits and pieces just to mess with him, but she had no time for that at the moment.
Camila brushed the dust from her tank top and furry arms, then sniffed the air. She was in the Sickbay, she realized -- no other place on the ship smelled like protoplasm, electricity-singed flesh, alfalfa, and oolong tea. At least, not to such a degree. The motion-sensor-powered lights flickered to full luminescence as she looked about.
*Hello,* a mellow baritone voice murmured, more in her head than her wolflike ears. *I was wondering if you'd be around to visit.*
"Hi, Tony," Camila said to the green gaseous vapors in the floor-to-ceiling glass tube before her. "You heard what's been going on?"
*Some,* Tony replied. *Bhossi, Cla'rabhelle, and Shelby have been in and out all morning, talking about it to one another. Never to me, though. They just gave me breakfast and started running around.*
Camila looked at the empty tray in Tony's tube, which had likely earlier held a large ham before being raised into Tony's enclosure, where the vaporous being--a flesh-eating spore, if you wanted to be technical--gobbled it up. She wished she could've seen it.
*I take it this is not a sanctioned visit,* Tony said, his voice hovering in her head without a question mark at the end.
"They're worked up because I was in the bookstore earlier," said Camila, rolling her eyes. "I just went in 'cause that's where the dinosaur lady went and fought those monkeys in suits. Kazza, I mean. She's the dinosaur lady. She snuck into Bonnie's bookstore and I just *had* to stalk her a bit. Her feathers were so pretty! But does mom understand?"
*Of course not,* Tony commiserated. *No matter how often I ask my mothers for a pony for dinner, they never give me one. They're all 'You want to devour a live pony? How cruel! Now maybe a Ryan Seacrest, we can get you one of those once they're finished curing in the rapid-grow tanks.' And then they complain when the filters clog with denture strips and hair gel and they have to get the plunge-bots to clean out... hsst! Hide, quick!*
Camila quickly slipped behind Tony's tube as the Sickbay doors slid open and Bhossi levitated in, followed by a non-levitating Johnny Clark.
"...can't stay," Johnny Clark said, as he followed the bovine scientist with the brains sticking up out of her skull. "Bonnie's waiting for me in the lobby. We're supposed to go out to Malaga to get some background info on this new Galaxy Hunter that turned up here..."
"Tell them to go without you," Bhossi tersely said through speakers hidden by the necklace around her neck. Though the Mu'Kao could telepathically speak the way Tony did, she often preferred to use a device that translated the thoughts she sent it to audible words. "Dr. Gigawatt is having another episode, and you're probably the only one immediately available who can talk him down from the psychotronic generators without getting turned to ashes in the process."
Camila peered around the tube. Johnny fumed, but ultimately nodded. He set the book bag he'd been carrying down on the edge of a sink, next to a set of empty beer bottles, then touched a button on a wall.
"Patch through to the Lobby speakers," he said. "Bonnie, you there?"
Camila picked up a tinny sound of someone shouting.
"Bonnie, I can't make it now," he said, even as he let Bhossi usher him through a door. "Gigawatt's frothing about something, and I gotta... look, I'm sorry. Now, did Cendra give you the rundown of what she got from Psywave and Hunter in her office...?"
The door closed, cutting off the conversation.
Camila stepped out, making a beeline for the book bag on the desk. She recognized it as the bag the desk officer on the STL's bridge had handed to Johnny as he and she left her mom's office, the same bag that her dad--Miguel Veracruz, who like her was a werewolf, who unlike her preferred to go around as a human more than not--used to carry the book he'd gotten for her that morning. She wondered why he hadn't left it in her suite, and guessed the officer had told him on her mother's behalf to hand it off to the Mu'Kaos and Dr. Gigawatt, who might be able to make more sense of it than she would. Mom delegated where she could, she said, to keep from going crazy. It was part of being an adult.
As she pulled down the book bag, it knocked a couple of the empty bottles into the sink. She heard the 'ploosh' that told her the sink wasn't empty and winced. Given that she was in Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle's lab, the sink could be filled with anything from cold water to warm sea serpent blood.
*Those bottles were just brought in from the site in Emerson Park where The Programmer was hiding,* said Tony. *I didn't catch much, but I think they were hoping to analyze them for clues...*
"I didn't knock them *all* in," Camila said, as she withdrew a thick leather book from its bag, dismissing the knocked bottles from further consideration.
*What is that?* asked Tony. *It looks... old.*
"It's the book that Dad picked up from Bonnie's bookstore this morning," said Camila, as she opened it up. "I remember the smell." She pressed her muzzle to the aging, battered pages and sniffed. "It's... I can't even describe it. It's old, but..."
Spots appeared before her eyes. She shook her head to clear them.
"It smells kind of like you, too."
*I ingest Lysol daily to keep that in check, thank you...*
"I mean, it smells... hungry."
Tony considered this, as she leafed through the pages.
*Be careful,* he finally said. *It may not have my discerning palate.*
Camila snorted. "I don't mean literally, silly. It's just a book."
*What kind of just-a-book is it supposed to be?*
"A bestiary," said Camila, as she stopped to look at an illustration of what looked like a lion with the head of a goat and the wings of a bird of prey. "Dad told me about them. They used to be written hundreds of years ago when nobody knew what animals were real or made up, so they made up stuff about real ones, and made up some others and said they were real."
*Sounds... complicated.*
"Mom's always looking for these. She's a shape-changer, but not like me or Dad. She doesn't just turn into a werewolf -- she can become a dragon or a manticore or a badger or lots of other things. Things that are either mythical or what people used to think were mythical."
*Things in bestiaries?*
"She thinks one of them might help her understand why she shapechanges the way she does, even when she isn't trying to... though she can control it now. Dad gets the hard-to-find ones for her through Bonnie's store 'cause he thinks mom might like him again if he does."
*Will she?*
Camila shrugged, unable to answer such a question. Adults were stupid. And though she loved her parents, they could adult like no one's business when they really wanted. Like her dad did when he adulted with Miss Rydell and made Mom sad a long time ago. Especially on days like today, when things were blowing up and dinosaur ladies were sneaking around and monkeys were appearing and disappearing and everyone was screaming.
She flipped through a few more pages, and was about to put the book back and go see what was growing in the spore vats in the back of the lab when something caught her eye.
She stared at the illustration of the dragon at the bottom of the page, frozen by sudden recognition.
Her mother had looked like that in the battle from that morning. Not just a little. Not just kind of.
Exactly like that. Down to the exact pattern of light on scales, and the look she'd had in her narrowed golden eyes when Kazza had almost accidentally leaped into her mouth. The text at the bottom identified her as 'Zarsarei, Destroyer of Life.'
Camila looked at other pages. Chimera. Cephalophore. Siren. Bluebird of Happiness. And so many others. She'd seen her mom change into many of them at one point or another, and she had looked like all of those illustrations. All of them. Down to the pose, down to the expression.
*What is it?* Tony asked, sensing her apprehension.
Ignoring him, she turned to the cover. The title was in faded gold lettering, hard to read... but doable in good light.
"'A Bestiary of the World Going On Underground,'" Camila read aloud. "'Including the Many and Diverse Animals of the Empire of the Hidden, and Informed Speculation Upon Their Provenance.'"
No author was listed, so she flipped to the first page.
There, she saw a reproduced engraving of a tight-skinned face of a human with her mother's eyes.
Below it was a name, identifying him as the author of the book. Ellis Jonesy.
She remembered her mother telling her once that, before grandpa Eivandt and grandma Alice had adopted her at age ten and changed her last name to Seconds, her name had been 'Cendra Jonessey.' Not identical, but it felt close. Especially given the look of the eyes.
"No... way," Camila said. "I gotta show this to Mom right away!"
*But then, won't she know you're out of your...*
She would, Camila thought as she sprinted through the Sickbay doors and out of Tony's sending range, book cradled in her arms.
But this was *important.* And worth a scolding if she could get mom to actually *look.* And *listen.*
She ran faster, toward the lift tubes that led to the _Subtler Than Light's_ main deck and her mother's office.
***
SUBTLER THAN LIGHT
Episode 5
[Hidden Hearts, Part Six]
"The Unanswerable Question"
by
Gary W. Olson
"I've learned how to paint my face
How to earn my keep, how to clean my kill
But some nights, I still can't sleep
The past rolls back, I can see us still
You've learned how to hold your own
How to stack your stones, but the history's thick
Children aren't as simple as we'd like to think"
- Dessa,
"Children's Work"
***
It was entirely possible that they'd arrived in the New Mexico desert, Dr. Erin McCavish thought. The mid-day temperature that suddenly enveloped him--hot as hell and twice as dry--felt right. The problem was that his goggle-protected eyes were open, but he couldn't see the desert. There was too much sand in the way.
"Oh, man!" he heard someone next to him shout. "You sent us to the netherworld for real this time, Kal! Hold on, I think I've got a few coins for the ferryman here someplace..."
"Jesus Murphy, Thane!" snapped a rougher voice, this one on his other side. "We're here! It's just windy! They must'a relaxed the fair weather spellin'."
"What?" Thane asked. "The burn was just yesterday. They never drop the weather control spells so soon."
"Ne'er mind Thane," said the rougher voice, which Erin recalled belonged to a squat, ruddy, black-bearded man who'd introduced himself as 'Kalabash Strode, Master Sorcerer of the Dark Passages, Cohost of 'Whose Revolution?', Available on PhootPods or Wherever You Get Your Podcasts, Please Listen, Subscribe, and Review.' "'E's new. Ah'm mentorin' him in the calculatin' of the latitude an' the longitude an' the altitude an' the velocitude for translocatin', but specifically now to *not disturb th' payin' customers* by stipulatin' to the fiddly bits a' what may or may not've gone south after the translocatin's done!"
Kalabash Strode, Master Sorcerer Etcetera Etcetera, stepped closer, emerging from the sandy gusts. His beard and his robes were already sand-caked. Erin brushed some sand from his own goggles, which he was now glad they'd had him put on.
"Is everybody here?" Bonnie Rydell asked, from somewhere at his back. Erin turned to regard the frizzy-blonde-haired woman whose Tuber account had summoned the translocation service they'd just been provided by Kalabash and Thane. "Everybody intact? Count your organs, or at least make sure they're still inside you."
"Hmph," hmph'd Thane. He became visible as the wind shifted, though Erin thought the overall effect was debatable. A brown-haired, goateed, middle-aged mage in a flannel shirt, was sandblasted so thoroughly he almost blended in with the desert now exposed behind him. "It could be worse, Bonnie. We only did that the one time, and only because you were using the free version of the Tuber app."
"She wrote the app," Agent Lemon Rydell said, as he pulled off his goggles. Erin was surprised to see his black suit was barely touched by any sand. "Which is what she's about to--"
"I *wrote* the *app!*" Bonnie snarled. "And your company decided to inject some additional spellcode before deploying!"
"Boss told me it was just some light advertising pictograms," said Thane, his voice maddeningly calm to Bonnie's ears. "And you know we giggers don't have any control over that."
"Exceptin' o'course what we need to to collect payment an' a *five-star review,*" Kalabash said, shooting Thane a pointed look. "Stop debatin' the customers, ya chucklehead! Oh, an' before I forget..."
"Listen, subscribe, and review," said Lemon, who flashed a disarming smile. "Already did. Hey, which episode was it you said you talk about who the real dark mages are?"
"Seventy-seven," Kalabash replied, sounding at once startled and happy that someone had identified themselves as a listener. "The one about 'the Unanswerable Question,' if yer lookin' it up. Y'pardon me for asking, but is that somethin' spookfolk such as yerself pay much attention to?"
"*Everything's* of interest," Lemon told him, with an expansive wave. "Though my interest's more personal than professional. I was even thinking of showing up at the next Revolution reenactment, if Bob's city council reverses their ban on people using the old Correctional Institute for that."
"Heh, great," said Kalabash, whose face betrayed no agreement to said greatness. "Thane, let's get over't th' giggers tent an' check in. Bet a six some cake eater's got a bum carpet an' is about't put in a req."
"Hope so," Thane said, as he lifted his goggles and looked around. "Nora wants me back in Seattle by three today. She's got a few days off from the South Pacific climate project and recalibrating it to compensate for all the new volcanic activity along the rim. Which is a little weird since it's the Kilaueas we're going to see performing at the High Dive tonight, but..."
"A'course, lad," Kalabash said, holding up a hand to Thane while looking at Bonnie. "Y'put in for your return trip yet, Bonnie? We can pick it up an' be ready for ya if ya do."
"Already in the queue for a couple hours from now," she said. "If you pick it up, we'll be at Shadebeam's over townward."
At the mention of Shadebeam Moroboshi, Kalabash's face clouded. Due to sand encrustation, it was hard to tell if Thane's face clouded, but it did seem to scrunch.
"Aye, we'll pick it up," said Kalabash. "Y'know she made it out to the Burn last night. Dolled up real nice, an' everyone was glad t'see her." He shook his head. "Real glad," he said, as if trying to assure himself, before shaking his head. "C'mon, Thane, let's scoot."
Kalabash and Thane headed in a direction that, as far as Erin could tell, was a mix of people in khaki shorts and no tops carrying multicolored canvases, giant ants toting translucent pipes that fluctuated in color, and a line of vehicles of perplexing shape and eyewatering decoration heading toward a shimmering rectangle in the distance. He looked back at Bonnie, whose face had grown pensive at Kalabash's last words.
"They're just worried," said Erin. "She wasn't bad, last time I was around for an exam. You'll see."
Bonnie nodded, smiling without quite looking at him.
"I know," she said, after a few seconds. "And Slithis'll be back from wherever he's gone any day now, right?"
Erin frowned, but Bonnie continued before he could reply.
"'Kay, let's not dawdle," she said. "We're here for a reason, not just to feel sorry for our collective Aunt. Is there a Radian 'round here? Gotta get a fix on where Ragna is."
Erin nodded, as he shifted his gaze to the playa. The gusts of beige sand were subsiding, revealing the remnants of the annual gathering known as Burning M00se.
It had been a good year, if the twenty-foot tall blue marble statue of Chuck Woolery in a Compromising Position with Pat Sajak and a Penguin was any indication--mainly because Erin strongly suspected it had started out as separate statues, and because of the efforts the cleanup crew was making to uncurdle space and time around it. Farther on, he could see blue smoke rising from a part of that year's festival that, if he recalled correctly, had been assigned to a mixed group of alchemists, biopunks, and hardcore pan-fluters, and wondered if they'd had to be chiseled out of a slab of pulsing crystal. Again.
"Sorry you missed it?" Lemon asked.
Erin glanced at Lemon. He'd never met the man before, though he'd heard stories from Cendra and from Miguel. And pointedly *not* from Esteban, who preferred not to talk about him at all. It was funny... up close, he didn't *look* like someone who'd steal an enchanted emerald just to see if it could really turn water into Colt Malt Liquor, or someone who'd once talked a delegation from a planet called Partyworld into giving him a cut from all the slot machines he'd convinced them to replace in Las Vegas.
He *did* look like someone who'd break your heart and make you want him to do it again. The glint in his black sunglasses, the curl in his lips, the way his blond hair waved in the dying breeze... he felt he understood why Esteban stayed silent.
"I didn't miss it," said Erin, returning his gaze to the small, half-dismantled city before him. "It kicked me out. As I'm sure you already know."
"Yeah, that was some bullshit," Lemon replied, apparently oblivious to Erin's appraisal. "You appealed, right?"
"For all the good it did. Can we talk about something else?"
"I'm sure we can," Lemon said, with a wink.
Erin's eyes returned to the work being done to take down that year's Burning M00se, a day earlier had an enormous wooden pyramid-with-antlers over it, lit by alien neon slithers and technomagical beetles in the days leading up to the finale. Something large was moving behind it. As he tried to figure it out what it was, he blurted out the first conversation-changer he could pick out from recent memory.
"What's 'the Unanswerable Question?'"
"Trying to remember," Lemon said, after a moment. "It wasn't 'who are the real dark mages,' thankfully. Something that's been going around in mage circles. This year, especially. It's kind of tricky, and I'm not sure I really followed it, not being a magic-user. It's... let me think... it's a question where the answer can be known... but if you tell someone the answer is... no, that can't be right."
"What can't be?"
"Answering the question... changes the answer, so the answer you just gave was wrong."
Erin considered this.
"So knowing the answer doesn't change the answer... but saying it does?"
"Or thinking it, if a telepath is listening in. I guess. They kind of got in the weeds with the hypotheticals, and I may have tuned out after a while. Kalabash's pod came out just this past spring, if it helps."
"I'll have to check it out," said Erin, who immediately made plans to never check it out.
"Incoming, by the way," said Lemon, taking a brisk couple steps back.
"Incoming?"
Something blurred past Johnny and tackled Erin in the chest. Erin rolled, hanging on to his attacker for a bit before flying free and landing on his butt at Bonnie's feet. Immediately, he pushed himself into a standing position, his eyes widening as he realized who he was facing...
...and instinctively spun to avoid a second assault from his left.
His other attacker wobbled as his attempted arm-grab missed. Erin grabbed him by the back of his tan vest and pushed him forward, while his other hand found the ruffian's belt and gave it a swift, hard upward tug.
"Yoowww!" the ruffian yelled. "Art, do something!"
The other attacker, Art, was doing something. Namely, holding a hand up to his mouth to stifle an outburst of laughter.
"Told you that wouldn't work, Max," Art said. "He knows the routine."
"Well, then, why'd you suggest it?"
Max looked down at his firmly-wedgied tan shorts, the look on his face indicating a realization of the answer.
"Hey, bro," said Max to Erin. "Sorry about that. We didn't know you'd be here, otherwise we'd'a come up with something sneakier."
Erin rolled his eyes. "Art only got me 'cause it's been a day. You couldn't get me on your best day!"
"My best day was three years and change ago," said Max. "An' I was busy then, an' ever since. Your niece and nephew say 'hi,' by the way."
"Excuse me," said Bonnie, "but who the hell... oh, no. You guys."
"The Brothers McCavish, my Bonnie Lass," said Art McCavish, essaying a mock bow, which briefly sent his long brown locks cascading over his slightly sunburned, otherwise bronzed and bearded face.
"Reunited once more," said Max McCavish, who lacked any hair to send spilling, and pulled Erin to him by the waist and applied a skillful noogie. This lasted two seconds, before Erin spun him around and wrenched his arm behind his back. Max yelped and flailed.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Erin asked. "The festival's done."
"We were Radians this year," said Art. "Peacekeepin' an' helpin' folks what needed it, coordinating the teardown now. I got another three days before I gotta zip back to the SDF-1 and my man Kinji, an' Mom's lookin' after Max and Celia's rugrats 'til he, Cel, an' Dad can get back to Miami so she can get out to L.A. to keynote the super-med conference at Pethas Scott Memorial." He took a breath, then moved his lips silently as if checking to see if he'd gotten all the nouns and verbs in the correct order. "Speakin' a' which, congrats on the paper you co-wrote with her."
"'Moss Side Story: On the Experimental Replication in Non-Metahumans of the Effect of Transvective Synthetic Flesh-Regenerating Funguses on High-Absurdity-Quotient Beings,' by Dr. Laura McCavish-Laffalot, Ph.D., M.D., and Dr. Erin McCavish, M.D.,'" quoted Max, a lilt in his voice. "Rolls trippingly off the tongue, it does. Can't wait to see the Netflix doc."
"I wanted to call it 'One Fung Low,'" Erin said, grinning. "Mom overruled me."
"Anyway, Kalabash and Thane sent us over," said Max, as he slipped out of Erin's relaxing hold. "Said you wanted to know where Ragna Rok was. We were just on our way to him anyway. He an' Dad are cleanin' up the burn zone an' workin' on something."
"Wait," said Lemon, tilting his head. "I met Laura a few times. You guys... you're the McCavish-Laffalot triplets, right?"
Erin nodded. Their hairstyles were different (or absent, in Max's case), their builds shaped by the different paths in life they'd taken, but he and his brothers were a lot more similar than dissimilar.
"That's us," said Art. "But by general consensus, we chose 'McCavish' as a last."
"I thought one of you was a girl," said Lemon.
Erin sighed.
"I was," he said, "up until I figured some things out. What about it?"
Lemon shrugged. "I've been out of circulation, so I gotta catch up. Knew I should've read your Mastodon feed." He didn't wink this time, but gave Erin a look that passed for one. Erin knew at once that Lemon probably could quote his Mastodon feed back at him, toot for toot. Including the ones where he talked about his transition.
"Still fight like a girl, though," Max said with a half-smirk, before Erin could say anything back to Lemon. "I--owowowowow! Okay, bro!"
Erin re-released his brother, who rubbed his arm and unstuck his shorts but didn't stop smirking. Art semi-apologetically thumped Erin's back.
"Come on," he said. "We can talk and walk. Dad'll be glad to see you."
"Will he, now," Erin muttered, too low for even Art to hear.
If it wasn't the Unanswerable Question, Erin thought, it was at least one whose answer he couldn't guess.
(continued in part two, following...)
--
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.
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