(continued from part one...)
***
"You remember when we were kids?" Lemon Rydell asked as Bonnie fell in beside him, a few yards behind where the McCavish triplets were walking with, bumping against, tripping up, noogieing, or back-thumping one another. "Striking the city was as fun as putting it up or when the week was in full swing."
Bonnie Rydell looked up from her phone at her brother. The small sandstorm that had greeted them on their appearance in Burning M00se's Translocation Zone had, for no reason she could fathom, failed utterly in besmirching his black business suit, white shirt, or black tie. It had to be something about the material, she thought. Growing up, he'd been a dirt magnet, even discounting how much he loved running through sand and mud, and she'd accrued her share by running with him--after, away from, or beside, depending on the day. She considered her own sand-caked 'Rasputina' concert t-shirt, and wondered why she'd bothered going back to her apartment above her bookstore to change into it, other than the necessity of flipping over the store's 'Closed' sign.
"I remember you cut your leg open when you tried jumping from the top pole of the body-switching tent onto the deck of the atomic mega-cow," said Bonnie. "Mom grounded you for a *month,* and you had to drink her healing potions all that time."
Lemon grimaced. "I forgot about those. They tasted like... I don't even know *what* they tasted like, except it was probably found dead by the side of the road on a planet where all life evolved from ass. I'm not surprised *you* remember that, though."
"Of course not. That was an awesome month."
"Dad didn't think so."
Dad. Father. August Rydell, leader of a wolfpack that had, until recent days, ranged throughout Los Angeles and surrounding environs and counted her friend and occasional benefit Miguel Veracruz as a member. She didn't have to close her eyes to picture August's ragged beige coat over his broad frame, his pepper-grey hair or the jet black irises in his wide eyes, almost bugging out as he shouted at their mother, who matched his fury in response despite being half his size. She thought of the cloves he kept in his coat, kept to amelieorate the wolf-scent that clung to him even in human form.
"Dad still thought he could get us into his pack," Bonnie said. "Even though Mom was already giving us potions to prevent it."
"Without even asking us," Lemon noted. "I would'a liked being a were. Could you see me turning furry and hunting?"
"As your likely prey, yes," Bonnie said. "But what Mom did is reversible. Said just say the word once we were grown and she'd mix the antidote potion herself. You think you're gonna go were now?"
"Maybe someday," her brother answered, "when I want to give Dad a way to control me. So... make that no day." He shook his head as they danced aside to avoid a sudden rush of toads in tiny red robes who were levitating a box full of what looked like colorful, overlicked bretheren. "How is Mom, anyway?"
"She asks about you every time I see her," Bonnie said. Then, arching an eyebrow at her older brother, she added, "Sometimes she says your name without turning the air blue."
"Joy."
"Quite."
"Lucky for you I knew no better about what the hell you were up to than she did. I would'a told her."
"And embellished some details."
"Like you wouldn't?"
"*My* embellishments are fun," Lemon said. "*Yours* usually include something like 'drank something squamous and now he's belching up starfish.'"
Despite herself, Bonnie giggled. "I remember that one."
"That only happened once!" Lemon protested. "And they were just goldfish."
Up ahead, the McCavishes, having calmed down somewhat, came to a halt while a troupe of Hottentottians, identifiable by their conical horns and ragged orange outfits, swept by, pulling along several hovercarts piled with strange-looking alien devices and stranger-looking bottles of bubbling liquids. A few of them noticed the triplets and gave them sour looks.
One of them in particular, Bonnie knew.
"You know, I heard what happened last year," said Lemon. "Did Erin really think he could get away with what he did?"
"Did you think *you* could get away with everything you tried to get away with?"
"That's different," Lemon said. "I'm a genius when it comes to getting away with things. Unlike him... and unlike you."
Bonnie glowered at him, even as they reached the McCavishes. Erin glanced back at them and shrugged before slipping past a white-feathered, melancholy-eyed dodo on a post and proceeding down the lane with his brothers.
"Hey, *I* didn't give you and Miguel away," Lemon added. "Not intentionally, I mean."
"You blackmailed him when you found out."
"Only because he found out about me and Rumi and was going to tell Esteban." He frowned. "Tell me, now that it doesn't matter any more... how *did* Este find out I was with her that night? He should've been out at Hal's fundraiser gala for the human-size kaiju refugees until at least midnight..."
"I was getting settled in my dorm at U.C.L.A.," said Bonnie. "Nowhere near the drama that exploded in my absence. Ask Esteban."
Lemon flinched.
Bonnie was surprised she felt no pleasure at seeing even a moment's expression of genuine pain cross her brother's usually smug face.
"I don't think he's down for talking to me," Lemon said, as the moment passed and his cockeyed grin returned, leavened with a measure of wistful, staged regret. "Especially not after what he said this morning."
Bonnie remembered. ("I'm sure I don't have to tell you... but don't believe a damn word this guy says.")
"I was hoping not to see him at all," her brother went on, almost rushing the words out. "I knew it'd be a wrench. Old girlfriends sometimes forgive me, but old boyfriends never do."
"He wasn't any old boyfriend, and you know it." He had no answer for this, so she added, "I thought maybe you'd make it official someday. The way you looked at each other..."
"I'm not the monogamous kind," Lemon interrupted. "He never accepted that. Maybe *that's* why..." He trailed off and sighed. "Besides, if we did, you'd've come up with some trick to make a mess of the big day."
"Of course!" Bonnie agreed, unable to avoid adding a note of exasperation. "None of my elaborate plans to prank you on your wedding day will work if you don't get married!"
Lemon nodded. "I don't suppose there's any chance you and Miguel..."
"No," Bonnie answered before he could finish asking. "Even if I had a romantic bone in my body..."
"Miguel's--"
"Don't say it!"
Lemon bit his lip to stop from saying it. Despite herself, Bonnie was impressed. She'd never known her brother to even nibble his lip to keep something provocative from spilling out before.
"He's still hung up on Cendra. Even though she's moved on."
"To...?"
Bonnie side-eyed her brother. "There's something you don't know yet?"
"I thirst for your tea."
"Erin," she said, gesturing to the doctor.
Lemon studied Erin McCavish, who at the moment was telling Art and Max what sounded like a complicated story that, from the illustrating gestures, was either a difficult surgery or a pub crawl to remember.
"So did he use some of what he stole on himself, or...?"
Erin gave no sign of having heard Lemon's rude question. She shot Lemon an angry look.
"Nobody's business but theirs," she snapped, then willed herself to stand down. "Look, can we talk about something else? Like what you're doing in a government agency being, what'd he call it, 'spookfolk'?"
"This incarnation of the Bureau isn't official," said Lemon. "It's... the Director built it up out of discarded scraps and a blueprint straight out of the 1800s. Says it was inevitable the old M.I.B. would get torched the way it did. 'Cause they forgot they were supposed to be temporary... not an end to themselves."
Bonnie thought about this for nearly a minute, as they navigated piles of canvas and avoided trailer trucks and heavily-laden, one-twentieth-Epcot-Center-sized Mini Chias.
"So what's the deal with the monkeys?" she finally asked, in lieu of being able to work out anything else she could put into words.
"Unlike the old M.I.B., we're not funded by the gov, on-or-off book. We got some monetary sources, but it's nothing like the old days. And the Director's firm about not employing anyone who was *in* the old M.I.B." He shrugged. "The monkeys cover our manpower..."
"Monkeypower."
"...shortfall. They're mercenaries, but they're good at 'spookfolk' stuff. Plus, they provided their own tailored suits. You saw 'em, right? Weren't they sharp?"
"Adorable," Bonnie said, slightly exasperated. "You know Mom's gonna throw a fit when she finds out your working for a gov... well, a secret agency, right? If she doesn't already know?"
"Who's gonna tell her?"
She scowled. He grinned.
That was the rule, growing up. They could go hammer and tong at one another--and oh, they did, so many times--but when it came to Mom and Dad, in truly serious matters, they'd learned a united front was the only front that afforded any kind of protection. From her backing the flighty lies Lemon gave for broken mixing bowls and windows to his standing between her and Dad in the times even Mom couldn't lance his fury...
...to his vanishing for seven years and leaving her to the increasingly futile task of reassuring Mom he was alive.
"You're just lucky the smite system on my phone was set to non-lethal," she said, at last.
"Non-lethal smiting?" Lemon laughed, then rubbed the back of his head. "Could'a fooled me."
"It's meant to scare intruders," Bonnie interrupted. "Which you were. Not kill them, or you, despite the terminology. If I could've gotten the full blast to center on you, you'd'a looked like Wile E. Coyote after a dynamite stick went off in his hand, and it woulda hurt like a mofo for a while, but no permanent damage." She thought back to the incident. "And you might've reported it to Amazon, like you threatened... but not to Mom."
As she spoke, and he nodded, she stepped around a melancholy-eyed, white-feathered dodo, this one atop a dozing mage, then stopped and looked at it again. Was it the same one they'd slipped past earlier?
The dodo's expression grew dour. It raised a webbed foot, and tapped the screen of the tablet secured under its wing, all while never breaking eye contact. This done, it carefully hopped off the mage and waddled off.
Despite the desert heat, she shivered. The encounter didn't feel random at all.
"What say we put a pin in the personal discussions for now," she said. "We're almost at the burn zone anyway."
Lemon nodded. They hurried on.
***
"...an' you saw those pics from Capetown, right?" Max McCavish asked Erin, as he gestured nebulously with his hands. "The Gibbon just took apart half of the Green Point Skrappers, just 'cause they ran out of McCulture, which they need to run their mechs when Papa Tesla isn't beamin' 'em energy. So Dad says to 'em, he says..."
"'Next time, just shake up a can'a Yoohoo 'an stick it in!'" Art exclaimed in Erin's other ear, making him wince.
"Hey," said Max, as he, Art, and Erin rounded a stack of runestones that were energetically evading a group of tired-and-sunburned mages trying to get them onto a handcart. "Who's telling this story? You skipped the whole setup..."
"Oh, look, we're here," said Erin, louder than necessary, as the cathedral-sized wreckage of an ancient grey-metallic elevator came into view. Though it was a familiar sight, to him and anyone who'd been to more than one Burning M00se through the years, it never failed to give Erin a sizable shiver down his spine when he laid eyes on it. It had been old when the Earth was young, or so it was said, used by servants of the Old Ones (and/or the Elder Gods... Erin was a little hazy on the difference) to reach their Temple in the center of the Earth. When, in the late 1980s, Dangerousman used his atomic-explosion-generating powers to destroy what he thought at the time was a world-incinerating bomb in said Temple at the surprisingly well-appointed and roomy Center of the Earth, he'd blasted the elevator and numerous cathedral-sized chunks of rock out through the ancient passages and into the air, destroying a couple cities in the process. The elevator landed deep in the New Mexico desert, near the vanishingly small town of Malaga (which nevertheless failed to be obliterated by its landing, which just goes to show there's no accounting for things sometimes).
The Malaga locals had been content to just leave it alone. Up until a mage named Shadebeam Moroboshi had come by on a nostalgia tour, Reptiloid significant other in tow, and was drawn to it... and *something* happened that compelled her to make Malaga her home, and have a large wooden pyramid with antlers and a dopey grin built over it and burned down every summer, on pain of going barking mad if she didn't. Someone called Leviam00se had revealed all this to her in a dream, she'd claimed.
From this, the annual Burning M00se festival sprang. Mages and superguys and supervillains and aliens and ordinary humans and shapeshifters and undergrounders and so many more soon made it an annual event, smaller than other events with centrally-located Burning Things, but wilder and stranger as well. (Not to mention far less expensive to attend, thanks to unobtrusive sponsorship from the Moroboshi Intergalactic Foundation for Partying On Dudes.)
There had been twenty-one such events, including the one concluded just the day before. Erin couldn't accept the rumors that the twenty-second would be the last.
He wouldn't.
"Guess you'll have to tell me all about what Dad said later," he said, before Max and Art could start chattering. "As in when we're all in the retirement home and my hearing's gone and I don't have to listen."
"We'll be sendin' you radio messages to the chip you'll have in yer head by then," Art cheerfully noted. "Now, act smart, Dad's inside and he'll flip when he sees you."
"But in a good way!" Max insisted. "Probably."
Erin looked back at Bonnie and Lemon Rydell, who looked like they'd arrived at, if not peace, something at least close to a familiar sibling detente. It reminded him that as stressed as he could sometimes get with family, they had his back. Most of the time. Not something to take for granted, the way he knew he too often did.
As he watched, Lemon looked down at something on his collar. Whatever it was doing didn't look like it made him happy. With barely a word to Bonnie, he stepped away, pulled at his collar, and started talking low.
"This better be important, Agent Link," said Lemon, either unaware or uncaring that Erin's sharp ears could hear him. "Did you find ki Kazza Lamissk?"
Whoever Agent Link was didn't give Lemon the answer he wanted.
"I see," Lemon hissed. "Who witnessed the Dweller's appearance?"
He moved out of hearing range. Erin sighed.
"What's with the prettyboy?" asked Max. "He looks like one'a them old mibbies."
"He's a new mibbie, I think," said Erin. "Bonnie's brother. We met him a couple times, ages ago, probably never said anything better than 'hi' and 'bye.' Malaga local, or was at one time. His folks split, they half-and-halfed it between here and L.A. until he and then she reached sweet eighteen. Lemon's an old squeeze'a Esteban. Ended bad, I heard."
"Dad was sayin' somethin' about the new mibbies," Art noted. "Uncle Manny filled him in on 'em last time he was up at Harxxon HQ in Los Requemados..."
"Yeah, yeah," Max said, cutting his brother off. "I see Professor Polinski. Lemme ask him... hey, Professor! Hey!"
The thirty-foot-tall giant before them lifted the charred remains of a massive log on his brawny shoulder (temporarily devoid of the tweed jacket the Professor normally wore), securing it with one hand while gingerly using a massive brush to dust off the ancient, somewhat-still-intact elevator underneath it with the other. A rumbling hum came from his lips, cascading through his thick, brown, well-trimmed-though-at-the-moment-disheveled-and-colorfully-dyed beard. He looked about, as if wondering who was talking to him. Then he looked down at them, nodded, and removed the pipe from his lip.
"Ah, the McCavish triplets!" Professor Rudolf Polinski exclaimed, his voice booming across the playa. "I had feared I wouldn't see you at all this year! Especially you, Erin my fine fellow. Were you here all along and I just failed to notice?"
"No, Professor," said Erin. "My ban ended the night of the burn. How was it this year, by the way?"
"By jove, it was splendid!" exclaimed the prehistoric Professor (originally from the University of Alaska-Anchorage, circa 24,000 B.C., give or take a few centuries, and currently at the University of Washington, where he taught Extremely Ancient Literature, History, and Geology). "Rendered less splendid only because my brother couldn't be here this year. I'm afraid my acumen at constructing wooden pyramids with antlers is nowhere near young Michael's."
"Hey, Prof," said Lemon, waving. What business he'd been discussing with 'Agent Link' had evidently concluded. "Mike didn't make it up this year?"
"Ah, Mr. Rydell!" Professor Polinski said, after lifting his bifocals long enough to focus on his face. "No, I'm afraid he could not. All that general rot about that lot in Terra Subterrene closing down every route to and from their realm. He elected to stay with... well, not mother, though he calls her that..."
"We saw some dodos..." Bonnie started.
"They're probably the few who made it up last year on the Burrollans final visit," said the Professor, as he hefted his log. "Very enterprising and resilient, your basic dodo. Escaped extinction by migrating to the underground world of Terra Subterrene, as so many thought-to-be-extinct surface species have. Isn't that right, Thomas?"
"That's the word," said a new voice from just behind Professor Polinski's tweed-covered left calf. "I remember Shadebeam was saying something about 'em, yesterday, can't remember what."
"Hey, Dad," said Erin. Lemon raised an eyebrow at him, as if detecting Erin's reduced enthusiasm in the greeting. If it was noticed by Tom McCavish-Laffalot, he gave no sign. Then again, he looked more focused on keeping the platter of glowing blocks in his armor-covered arms from slipping.
"Hi, Tom!" Bonnie said, with greater cheer. "Art and Max here said Ragna was around, you know where he is?"
"He'll be here in a bit," said Tom, as he set his platter on a stretch of dry desert next to several other platters, these heaped with globes, small pyramids, and bricks of uncertain purpose. "Then we can get these loaded up and take them down for analysis and storage in Malaga until next year."
"You're not still trying to harvest energy from the burn, are you?" Lemon asked.
"How would you... oh, it's you," said Tom, as he looked at Lemon. "What are *you* doing here?"
"Counting how many people say that when they see him," said Erin. "I'm starting to understand the feeling."
His father flinched, and Erin at once felt bad for the comment. Art gave him a pointed look, but Max just guffawed.
"What?" Tom said. "I... oh, come on, son. I thought we made up last Christmas. You're not still sore about what the committee decided, are you?"
"I *thought* I wasn't," said Erin, as he walked up to his dad. "If I didn't have to be here today, I might've even been able to shrug it off. But coming back here... you know me."
"Yeah," said Tom, a smile spreading over his ruddy features, partially obscured by his thick beard. "Stubborn as a mule an' twice as likely to spit in yer eye. Can't imagine where you get it from."
This brought a smile to Erin's face. He gave his dad as much of an embrace that the lightweight mechanized suit Tom wore would allow.
"If it helps any," said Tom, "the committee voted to cancel the ban going forward this morning, so you can be here next year. Even old Mysanga was in favor of it."
"Is that because of Aunt Shadebeam?"
Tom's smile disappeared, and he nodded.
"Now, I know what you've told us," he said, as his armor opened up at the chest and the legs, revealing a torso that was not nearly as well-toned and in-shape as it had been during the years where he'd once superguyed as the armored hero MicroVax. "But she's gotten worse... even since last month when you saw her. It's a widespread opinion that next year... the burn is going to be her funeral pyre." He paused, measuring his next words. "And if that happens... it'll be the last Burning M00se."
"What?" Bonnie asked. "She'd take off your head if she heard you talking like that! Says it's about much more than just her."
"It is," said Tom. "But only if they believe. And right now... they don't. They don't say it out loud, but... it's in their hearts. Unless Shadebeam makes a dramatic, unlikely recovery... the twenty-second Burning M00se is gonna be the last one."
"We'll see about that," Erin said.
"Erin," said Tom, "it's not like what you did with the Ottsamaddawiduan tech." Erin opened his mouth to protest, but Tom held up a hand. "Their docs had a go at her, remember? Even though it was against the treaty that keeps Earth safe from being carved up by the galactic powers. Hypocritical, yeah, especially after what they punished you for doing the same with their precious superior tech, but... the point is, she's beyond even their ability to heal. Same way as no healing magic of any color or hue can fix whatever's going on inside her."
"I've urged them to think positively," Professor Polinski interjected, as he passed by on his way to the rear section of the elevator. "Lady Shadebeam is far tougher than she looks, we all know that. And there is every possibility the final gambit will work. She is most adamant that it will."
Tom gave Polinski a sour look, one the giant either didn't see or chose to ignore as he rumbled past.
"What 'final gambit?'" asked Lemon, ignoring the irritated look his sister gave him. "Or should I say, 'what final gambit *this* time?' I grew up here. She's tried all kinds of weird-ass things to diminish the hold that elevator has on her." He gestured at the massive metallic cage less than a hundred yards away. "She still can't even leave Malaga for more than a couple days without descending into gibbering insanity. It's kept her chained to this place all this time. And she still keeps saying there's one more thing to try."
"This time," said a rough voice, from the direction of the crashed elevator, "she may be on to something."
He was thinner than Erin remembered. His hair was thin and grey. His body, while still fit and sinewy, increasingly showed the strains of navigating his seventh decade. His t-shirt was sweat-stained, his jeans ripped, his prosthetic left leg making occasional sparking and snapping noises as he approached.
But his eyes were sharp, his gaze was penetrating, and his air of command undiminished. Even without the armor that had once defined him, he had a formidable... even regal... air.
Ragna Rok, the original Galaxy Hunter.
Erin bit his lip, his face becoming more pleasant than he felt.
"Ragna," he said. "It's good to see you,"
"I'm glad you think so, Erin," Ragna replied. "You weren't so happy last year when I sided with the committee in banning you from this year's event."
"Hey," Tom started, "could we just skip..."
"The superior technology of the Ottsamaddawiduans and the other visiting space races are good enough for parlor tricks," Erin said, as he felt his face flush with a surge of anger. "But not for healing people, or even taking away their pain."
"The Genocidal War of the late nineties taught a harsh lesson," Ragna replied, firmly but without rancor. "Lady Awe-Inspiring had enough of an advantage without capturing our tech or that of the Xolchipalians. If it wasn't for some fast thinking on Hal's part, the tech in his restaurant alone..." He paused, and Erin could tell he was restraining himself. "What you were doing... was good, was right... but your righteousness won't mean a thing to the next Lady to come along."
Erin fumed. But Bonnie stepped in before he could respond.
"We're not here to re-litigate last year," she said. "Your people have to abide by your treaties with other powers, and it could've gotten... ugly... if an unfriendly galactic power got wind you were letting something stronger than 'parlor tricks' loose on Earth again. Earth with its high concentration of absurdity and magic and the metahumans and mages it produces scares the galactic powers enough without adding super xeno tech to the mix in greater quantities than it already has. Now that that's all re-said, can we get to why we're here *today?*"
Ragna looked at Erin. Erin took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded.
"This is about the Galaxy Hunter that went to Los Angeles this morning, isn't it?" Ragna asked.
"Did she message you we'd be here?" Lemon asked.
"I saw reports of what happened on my newsfeed, and figured you, or at least someone, would be here soon to ask the pertinent questions. I..." He looked down at his hands and scowled. "Hey, Art, Max... I left a case inside the elevator. Can you bring it out?"
Art and Max looked at one another, then at the elevator, then at Ragna.
"On it," Max finally said, with audible reluctance. He and Art headed for the wreckage.
"I can't believe anyone's afraid of that thing," said Lemon, rolling his eyes. "It's just old metal."
"Ancient metal," said Erin. "Old when the world was young, and horrible powers stirred the primordial soup, adding their eldritch cracker bits. I know Shade says the energies of the Ancient Ones or Eldritch Gods or whatever are drained, that it's no more dangerous than it looks, but... there's something *about* it. Just looking at it for too long..."
"I know," said Ragna. "Why do you think we keep trying to get something out of it?" He gestured to the empty orbs on the ground nearby. "We've tried nearly everything... but until this year, nothing worked."
"Oh, well, that's good," said Lemon. "Now... uh... wait, what?"
"What?" asked Ragna.
"'Until this year?'" quoted Bonnie.
"Shadebeam presented us with something... new... to try," said Ragna. Erin thought he saw a flash of discomfort cross the old Hunter's face. "I don't know where she found it, or alternately who she got it from... but both it and the tech she gave me to use... it drew down something. Whether it's something *good* or not... remains to be seen."
Art and Max reappeared, walking from the elevator wreckage. Max had a foot-and-a-quarter-long grey metallic case in his right hand, held away from his torso as if he was worried it would stick if he held it too close.
"The Hunter in Los Angeles *is* a Galaxy Hunter," said Ragna, as he watched the brothers approach. "Though if you inquire with Hunter Central, they may disagree."
"Why would they?" Lemon asked.
"Oh, she was killed on Reptilos in a battle with the Scaled Order, so she can't possibly be who she says she is, blah blah blah," said Ragna, the intensity of his gaze--fixed on the approaching case--belying his casual words. "But she is one. I forged her replacement armor myself, and stocked and wired its weapons systems. I trust her."
He then looked from Bonnie, to Lemon, and to Erin.
"You should, too. As much as you would trust me, if I was the one beneath the metal."
"Was that what you intended?" Lemon asked. "To wear the armor yourself?"
Ragna gave Lemon a hard look, and didn't answer.
"Since this Hunter only just arrived on Earth a day ago," Lemon went on, "and you couldn't possibly have slapped together a new suit tailored to her that quickly. Especially given how... striking... the metal you used is."
Ragna gave no answer, though his look of discomfort increased.
He's hiding something, thought Erin. Something he *doesn't* agree with... but won't betray. And Lemon Rydell could smell it. Vital secrets, hidden in plain sight. They were what drew him out to Malaga with Erin and Bonnie instead of leading the search for Kazza Lamissk in Los Angeles.
"You sure this thing is okay?" Max asked, as he handed the case to Ragna. "I thought I heard something knocking around inside."
"Sounded like something big," Art added, looking at the case and shuddering. "Which doesn't make sense. I mean... what could fit in there that'd..."
Something thumped the case from within. Art and Max took brisk steps back.
Erin belatedly realized he had as well, without even being conscious of doing so.
"What's inside?" Erin asked. "And... how does it help Shadebeam?"
"It's her business if she wants to give you the answer to either question," said Ragna. "I'm heading there now. You're all welcome to accompany me... though she might not let you in."
"Max and I have to get back to work," said Art.
"Say 'hi' for us," Max added, "and let her know we'll be by this evening to check if what ate the motorcycle in her garage is still there. We know it can't be Roog, 'cuz he's back on the farm in upstate Leng, so..."
Erin glanced at Bonnie. She nodded, her eyes not leaving the case.
She looked shaken, he thought.
He hoped he wouldn't regret learning why.
(concluded in part three...)
--
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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***
"You remember when we were kids?" Lemon Rydell asked as Bonnie fell in beside him, a few yards behind where the McCavish triplets were walking with, bumping against, tripping up, noogieing, or back-thumping one another. "Striking the city was as fun as putting it up or when the week was in full swing."
Bonnie Rydell looked up from her phone at her brother. The small sandstorm that had greeted them on their appearance in Burning M00se's Translocation Zone had, for no reason she could fathom, failed utterly in besmirching his black business suit, white shirt, or black tie. It had to be something about the material, she thought. Growing up, he'd been a dirt magnet, even discounting how much he loved running through sand and mud, and she'd accrued her share by running with him--after, away from, or beside, depending on the day. She considered her own sand-caked 'Rasputina' concert t-shirt, and wondered why she'd bothered going back to her apartment above her bookstore to change into it, other than the necessity of flipping over the store's 'Closed' sign.
"I remember you cut your leg open when you tried jumping from the top pole of the body-switching tent onto the deck of the atomic mega-cow," said Bonnie. "Mom grounded you for a *month,* and you had to drink her healing potions all that time."
Lemon grimaced. "I forgot about those. They tasted like... I don't even know *what* they tasted like, except it was probably found dead by the side of the road on a planet where all life evolved from ass. I'm not surprised *you* remember that, though."
"Of course not. That was an awesome month."
"Dad didn't think so."
Dad. Father. August Rydell, leader of a wolfpack that had, until recent days, ranged throughout Los Angeles and surrounding environs and counted her friend and occasional benefit Miguel Veracruz as a member. She didn't have to close her eyes to picture August's ragged beige coat over his broad frame, his pepper-grey hair or the jet black irises in his wide eyes, almost bugging out as he shouted at their mother, who matched his fury in response despite being half his size. She thought of the cloves he kept in his coat, kept to amelieorate the wolf-scent that clung to him even in human form.
"Dad still thought he could get us into his pack," Bonnie said. "Even though Mom was already giving us potions to prevent it."
"Without even asking us," Lemon noted. "I would'a liked being a were. Could you see me turning furry and hunting?"
"As your likely prey, yes," Bonnie said. "But what Mom did is reversible. Said just say the word once we were grown and she'd mix the antidote potion herself. You think you're gonna go were now?"
"Maybe someday," her brother answered, "when I want to give Dad a way to control me. So... make that no day." He shook his head as they danced aside to avoid a sudden rush of toads in tiny red robes who were levitating a box full of what looked like colorful, overlicked bretheren. "How is Mom, anyway?"
"She asks about you every time I see her," Bonnie said. Then, arching an eyebrow at her older brother, she added, "Sometimes she says your name without turning the air blue."
"Joy."
"Quite."
"Lucky for you I knew no better about what the hell you were up to than she did. I would'a told her."
"And embellished some details."
"Like you wouldn't?"
"*My* embellishments are fun," Lemon said. "*Yours* usually include something like 'drank something squamous and now he's belching up starfish.'"
Despite herself, Bonnie giggled. "I remember that one."
"That only happened once!" Lemon protested. "And they were just goldfish."
Up ahead, the McCavishes, having calmed down somewhat, came to a halt while a troupe of Hottentottians, identifiable by their conical horns and ragged orange outfits, swept by, pulling along several hovercarts piled with strange-looking alien devices and stranger-looking bottles of bubbling liquids. A few of them noticed the triplets and gave them sour looks.
One of them in particular, Bonnie knew.
"You know, I heard what happened last year," said Lemon. "Did Erin really think he could get away with what he did?"
"Did you think *you* could get away with everything you tried to get away with?"
"That's different," Lemon said. "I'm a genius when it comes to getting away with things. Unlike him... and unlike you."
Bonnie glowered at him, even as they reached the McCavishes. Erin glanced back at them and shrugged before slipping past a white-feathered, melancholy-eyed dodo on a post and proceeding down the lane with his brothers.
"Hey, *I* didn't give you and Miguel away," Lemon added. "Not intentionally, I mean."
"You blackmailed him when you found out."
"Only because he found out about me and Rumi and was going to tell Esteban." He frowned. "Tell me, now that it doesn't matter any more... how *did* Este find out I was with her that night? He should've been out at Hal's fundraiser gala for the human-size kaiju refugees until at least midnight..."
"I was getting settled in my dorm at U.C.L.A.," said Bonnie. "Nowhere near the drama that exploded in my absence. Ask Esteban."
Lemon flinched.
Bonnie was surprised she felt no pleasure at seeing even a moment's expression of genuine pain cross her brother's usually smug face.
"I don't think he's down for talking to me," Lemon said, as the moment passed and his cockeyed grin returned, leavened with a measure of wistful, staged regret. "Especially not after what he said this morning."
Bonnie remembered. ("I'm sure I don't have to tell you... but don't believe a damn word this guy says.")
"I was hoping not to see him at all," her brother went on, almost rushing the words out. "I knew it'd be a wrench. Old girlfriends sometimes forgive me, but old boyfriends never do."
"He wasn't any old boyfriend, and you know it." He had no answer for this, so she added, "I thought maybe you'd make it official someday. The way you looked at each other..."
"I'm not the monogamous kind," Lemon interrupted. "He never accepted that. Maybe *that's* why..." He trailed off and sighed. "Besides, if we did, you'd've come up with some trick to make a mess of the big day."
"Of course!" Bonnie agreed, unable to avoid adding a note of exasperation. "None of my elaborate plans to prank you on your wedding day will work if you don't get married!"
Lemon nodded. "I don't suppose there's any chance you and Miguel..."
"No," Bonnie answered before he could finish asking. "Even if I had a romantic bone in my body..."
"Miguel's--"
"Don't say it!"
Lemon bit his lip to stop from saying it. Despite herself, Bonnie was impressed. She'd never known her brother to even nibble his lip to keep something provocative from spilling out before.
"He's still hung up on Cendra. Even though she's moved on."
"To...?"
Bonnie side-eyed her brother. "There's something you don't know yet?"
"I thirst for your tea."
"Erin," she said, gesturing to the doctor.
Lemon studied Erin McCavish, who at the moment was telling Art and Max what sounded like a complicated story that, from the illustrating gestures, was either a difficult surgery or a pub crawl to remember.
"So did he use some of what he stole on himself, or...?"
Erin gave no sign of having heard Lemon's rude question. She shot Lemon an angry look.
"Nobody's business but theirs," she snapped, then willed herself to stand down. "Look, can we talk about something else? Like what you're doing in a government agency being, what'd he call it, 'spookfolk'?"
"This incarnation of the Bureau isn't official," said Lemon. "It's... the Director built it up out of discarded scraps and a blueprint straight out of the 1800s. Says it was inevitable the old M.I.B. would get torched the way it did. 'Cause they forgot they were supposed to be temporary... not an end to themselves."
Bonnie thought about this for nearly a minute, as they navigated piles of canvas and avoided trailer trucks and heavily-laden, one-twentieth-Epcot-Center-sized Mini Chias.
"So what's the deal with the monkeys?" she finally asked, in lieu of being able to work out anything else she could put into words.
"Unlike the old M.I.B., we're not funded by the gov, on-or-off book. We got some monetary sources, but it's nothing like the old days. And the Director's firm about not employing anyone who was *in* the old M.I.B." He shrugged. "The monkeys cover our manpower..."
"Monkeypower."
"...shortfall. They're mercenaries, but they're good at 'spookfolk' stuff. Plus, they provided their own tailored suits. You saw 'em, right? Weren't they sharp?"
"Adorable," Bonnie said, slightly exasperated. "You know Mom's gonna throw a fit when she finds out your working for a gov... well, a secret agency, right? If she doesn't already know?"
"Who's gonna tell her?"
She scowled. He grinned.
That was the rule, growing up. They could go hammer and tong at one another--and oh, they did, so many times--but when it came to Mom and Dad, in truly serious matters, they'd learned a united front was the only front that afforded any kind of protection. From her backing the flighty lies Lemon gave for broken mixing bowls and windows to his standing between her and Dad in the times even Mom couldn't lance his fury...
...to his vanishing for seven years and leaving her to the increasingly futile task of reassuring Mom he was alive.
"You're just lucky the smite system on my phone was set to non-lethal," she said, at last.
"Non-lethal smiting?" Lemon laughed, then rubbed the back of his head. "Could'a fooled me."
"It's meant to scare intruders," Bonnie interrupted. "Which you were. Not kill them, or you, despite the terminology. If I could've gotten the full blast to center on you, you'd'a looked like Wile E. Coyote after a dynamite stick went off in his hand, and it woulda hurt like a mofo for a while, but no permanent damage." She thought back to the incident. "And you might've reported it to Amazon, like you threatened... but not to Mom."
As she spoke, and he nodded, she stepped around a melancholy-eyed, white-feathered dodo, this one atop a dozing mage, then stopped and looked at it again. Was it the same one they'd slipped past earlier?
The dodo's expression grew dour. It raised a webbed foot, and tapped the screen of the tablet secured under its wing, all while never breaking eye contact. This done, it carefully hopped off the mage and waddled off.
Despite the desert heat, she shivered. The encounter didn't feel random at all.
"What say we put a pin in the personal discussions for now," she said. "We're almost at the burn zone anyway."
Lemon nodded. They hurried on.
***
"...an' you saw those pics from Capetown, right?" Max McCavish asked Erin, as he gestured nebulously with his hands. "The Gibbon just took apart half of the Green Point Skrappers, just 'cause they ran out of McCulture, which they need to run their mechs when Papa Tesla isn't beamin' 'em energy. So Dad says to 'em, he says..."
"'Next time, just shake up a can'a Yoohoo 'an stick it in!'" Art exclaimed in Erin's other ear, making him wince.
"Hey," said Max, as he, Art, and Erin rounded a stack of runestones that were energetically evading a group of tired-and-sunburned mages trying to get them onto a handcart. "Who's telling this story? You skipped the whole setup..."
"Oh, look, we're here," said Erin, louder than necessary, as the cathedral-sized wreckage of an ancient grey-metallic elevator came into view. Though it was a familiar sight, to him and anyone who'd been to more than one Burning M00se through the years, it never failed to give Erin a sizable shiver down his spine when he laid eyes on it. It had been old when the Earth was young, or so it was said, used by servants of the Old Ones (and/or the Elder Gods... Erin was a little hazy on the difference) to reach their Temple in the center of the Earth. When, in the late 1980s, Dangerousman used his atomic-explosion-generating powers to destroy what he thought at the time was a world-incinerating bomb in said Temple at the surprisingly well-appointed and roomy Center of the Earth, he'd blasted the elevator and numerous cathedral-sized chunks of rock out through the ancient passages and into the air, destroying a couple cities in the process. The elevator landed deep in the New Mexico desert, near the vanishingly small town of Malaga (which nevertheless failed to be obliterated by its landing, which just goes to show there's no accounting for things sometimes).
The Malaga locals had been content to just leave it alone. Up until a mage named Shadebeam Moroboshi had come by on a nostalgia tour, Reptiloid significant other in tow, and was drawn to it... and *something* happened that compelled her to make Malaga her home, and have a large wooden pyramid with antlers and a dopey grin built over it and burned down every summer, on pain of going barking mad if she didn't. Someone called Leviam00se had revealed all this to her in a dream, she'd claimed.
From this, the annual Burning M00se festival sprang. Mages and superguys and supervillains and aliens and ordinary humans and shapeshifters and undergrounders and so many more soon made it an annual event, smaller than other events with centrally-located Burning Things, but wilder and stranger as well. (Not to mention far less expensive to attend, thanks to unobtrusive sponsorship from the Moroboshi Intergalactic Foundation for Partying On Dudes.)
There had been twenty-one such events, including the one concluded just the day before. Erin couldn't accept the rumors that the twenty-second would be the last.
He wouldn't.
"Guess you'll have to tell me all about what Dad said later," he said, before Max and Art could start chattering. "As in when we're all in the retirement home and my hearing's gone and I don't have to listen."
"We'll be sendin' you radio messages to the chip you'll have in yer head by then," Art cheerfully noted. "Now, act smart, Dad's inside and he'll flip when he sees you."
"But in a good way!" Max insisted. "Probably."
Erin looked back at Bonnie and Lemon Rydell, who looked like they'd arrived at, if not peace, something at least close to a familiar sibling detente. It reminded him that as stressed as he could sometimes get with family, they had his back. Most of the time. Not something to take for granted, the way he knew he too often did.
As he watched, Lemon looked down at something on his collar. Whatever it was doing didn't look like it made him happy. With barely a word to Bonnie, he stepped away, pulled at his collar, and started talking low.
"This better be important, Agent Link," said Lemon, either unaware or uncaring that Erin's sharp ears could hear him. "Did you find ki Kazza Lamissk?"
Whoever Agent Link was didn't give Lemon the answer he wanted.
"I see," Lemon hissed. "Who witnessed the Dweller's appearance?"
He moved out of hearing range. Erin sighed.
"What's with the prettyboy?" asked Max. "He looks like one'a them old mibbies."
"He's a new mibbie, I think," said Erin. "Bonnie's brother. We met him a couple times, ages ago, probably never said anything better than 'hi' and 'bye.' Malaga local, or was at one time. His folks split, they half-and-halfed it between here and L.A. until he and then she reached sweet eighteen. Lemon's an old squeeze'a Esteban. Ended bad, I heard."
"Dad was sayin' somethin' about the new mibbies," Art noted. "Uncle Manny filled him in on 'em last time he was up at Harxxon HQ in Los Requemados..."
"Yeah, yeah," Max said, cutting his brother off. "I see Professor Polinski. Lemme ask him... hey, Professor! Hey!"
The thirty-foot-tall giant before them lifted the charred remains of a massive log on his brawny shoulder (temporarily devoid of the tweed jacket the Professor normally wore), securing it with one hand while gingerly using a massive brush to dust off the ancient, somewhat-still-intact elevator underneath it with the other. A rumbling hum came from his lips, cascading through his thick, brown, well-trimmed-though-at-the-moment-disheveled-and-colorfully-dyed beard. He looked about, as if wondering who was talking to him. Then he looked down at them, nodded, and removed the pipe from his lip.
"Ah, the McCavish triplets!" Professor Rudolf Polinski exclaimed, his voice booming across the playa. "I had feared I wouldn't see you at all this year! Especially you, Erin my fine fellow. Were you here all along and I just failed to notice?"
"No, Professor," said Erin. "My ban ended the night of the burn. How was it this year, by the way?"
"By jove, it was splendid!" exclaimed the prehistoric Professor (originally from the University of Alaska-Anchorage, circa 24,000 B.C., give or take a few centuries, and currently at the University of Washington, where he taught Extremely Ancient Literature, History, and Geology). "Rendered less splendid only because my brother couldn't be here this year. I'm afraid my acumen at constructing wooden pyramids with antlers is nowhere near young Michael's."
"Hey, Prof," said Lemon, waving. What business he'd been discussing with 'Agent Link' had evidently concluded. "Mike didn't make it up this year?"
"Ah, Mr. Rydell!" Professor Polinski said, after lifting his bifocals long enough to focus on his face. "No, I'm afraid he could not. All that general rot about that lot in Terra Subterrene closing down every route to and from their realm. He elected to stay with... well, not mother, though he calls her that..."
"We saw some dodos..." Bonnie started.
"They're probably the few who made it up last year on the Burrollans final visit," said the Professor, as he hefted his log. "Very enterprising and resilient, your basic dodo. Escaped extinction by migrating to the underground world of Terra Subterrene, as so many thought-to-be-extinct surface species have. Isn't that right, Thomas?"
"That's the word," said a new voice from just behind Professor Polinski's tweed-covered left calf. "I remember Shadebeam was saying something about 'em, yesterday, can't remember what."
"Hey, Dad," said Erin. Lemon raised an eyebrow at him, as if detecting Erin's reduced enthusiasm in the greeting. If it was noticed by Tom McCavish-Laffalot, he gave no sign. Then again, he looked more focused on keeping the platter of glowing blocks in his armor-covered arms from slipping.
"Hi, Tom!" Bonnie said, with greater cheer. "Art and Max here said Ragna was around, you know where he is?"
"He'll be here in a bit," said Tom, as he set his platter on a stretch of dry desert next to several other platters, these heaped with globes, small pyramids, and bricks of uncertain purpose. "Then we can get these loaded up and take them down for analysis and storage in Malaga until next year."
"You're not still trying to harvest energy from the burn, are you?" Lemon asked.
"How would you... oh, it's you," said Tom, as he looked at Lemon. "What are *you* doing here?"
"Counting how many people say that when they see him," said Erin. "I'm starting to understand the feeling."
His father flinched, and Erin at once felt bad for the comment. Art gave him a pointed look, but Max just guffawed.
"What?" Tom said. "I... oh, come on, son. I thought we made up last Christmas. You're not still sore about what the committee decided, are you?"
"I *thought* I wasn't," said Erin, as he walked up to his dad. "If I didn't have to be here today, I might've even been able to shrug it off. But coming back here... you know me."
"Yeah," said Tom, a smile spreading over his ruddy features, partially obscured by his thick beard. "Stubborn as a mule an' twice as likely to spit in yer eye. Can't imagine where you get it from."
This brought a smile to Erin's face. He gave his dad as much of an embrace that the lightweight mechanized suit Tom wore would allow.
"If it helps any," said Tom, "the committee voted to cancel the ban going forward this morning, so you can be here next year. Even old Mysanga was in favor of it."
"Is that because of Aunt Shadebeam?"
Tom's smile disappeared, and he nodded.
"Now, I know what you've told us," he said, as his armor opened up at the chest and the legs, revealing a torso that was not nearly as well-toned and in-shape as it had been during the years where he'd once superguyed as the armored hero MicroVax. "But she's gotten worse... even since last month when you saw her. It's a widespread opinion that next year... the burn is going to be her funeral pyre." He paused, measuring his next words. "And if that happens... it'll be the last Burning M00se."
"What?" Bonnie asked. "She'd take off your head if she heard you talking like that! Says it's about much more than just her."
"It is," said Tom. "But only if they believe. And right now... they don't. They don't say it out loud, but... it's in their hearts. Unless Shadebeam makes a dramatic, unlikely recovery... the twenty-second Burning M00se is gonna be the last one."
"We'll see about that," Erin said.
"Erin," said Tom, "it's not like what you did with the Ottsamaddawiduan tech." Erin opened his mouth to protest, but Tom held up a hand. "Their docs had a go at her, remember? Even though it was against the treaty that keeps Earth safe from being carved up by the galactic powers. Hypocritical, yeah, especially after what they punished you for doing the same with their precious superior tech, but... the point is, she's beyond even their ability to heal. Same way as no healing magic of any color or hue can fix whatever's going on inside her."
"I've urged them to think positively," Professor Polinski interjected, as he passed by on his way to the rear section of the elevator. "Lady Shadebeam is far tougher than she looks, we all know that. And there is every possibility the final gambit will work. She is most adamant that it will."
Tom gave Polinski a sour look, one the giant either didn't see or chose to ignore as he rumbled past.
"What 'final gambit?'" asked Lemon, ignoring the irritated look his sister gave him. "Or should I say, 'what final gambit *this* time?' I grew up here. She's tried all kinds of weird-ass things to diminish the hold that elevator has on her." He gestured at the massive metallic cage less than a hundred yards away. "She still can't even leave Malaga for more than a couple days without descending into gibbering insanity. It's kept her chained to this place all this time. And she still keeps saying there's one more thing to try."
"This time," said a rough voice, from the direction of the crashed elevator, "she may be on to something."
He was thinner than Erin remembered. His hair was thin and grey. His body, while still fit and sinewy, increasingly showed the strains of navigating his seventh decade. His t-shirt was sweat-stained, his jeans ripped, his prosthetic left leg making occasional sparking and snapping noises as he approached.
But his eyes were sharp, his gaze was penetrating, and his air of command undiminished. Even without the armor that had once defined him, he had a formidable... even regal... air.
Ragna Rok, the original Galaxy Hunter.
Erin bit his lip, his face becoming more pleasant than he felt.
"Ragna," he said. "It's good to see you,"
"I'm glad you think so, Erin," Ragna replied. "You weren't so happy last year when I sided with the committee in banning you from this year's event."
"Hey," Tom started, "could we just skip..."
"The superior technology of the Ottsamaddawiduans and the other visiting space races are good enough for parlor tricks," Erin said, as he felt his face flush with a surge of anger. "But not for healing people, or even taking away their pain."
"The Genocidal War of the late nineties taught a harsh lesson," Ragna replied, firmly but without rancor. "Lady Awe-Inspiring had enough of an advantage without capturing our tech or that of the Xolchipalians. If it wasn't for some fast thinking on Hal's part, the tech in his restaurant alone..." He paused, and Erin could tell he was restraining himself. "What you were doing... was good, was right... but your righteousness won't mean a thing to the next Lady to come along."
Erin fumed. But Bonnie stepped in before he could respond.
"We're not here to re-litigate last year," she said. "Your people have to abide by your treaties with other powers, and it could've gotten... ugly... if an unfriendly galactic power got wind you were letting something stronger than 'parlor tricks' loose on Earth again. Earth with its high concentration of absurdity and magic and the metahumans and mages it produces scares the galactic powers enough without adding super xeno tech to the mix in greater quantities than it already has. Now that that's all re-said, can we get to why we're here *today?*"
Ragna looked at Erin. Erin took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded.
"This is about the Galaxy Hunter that went to Los Angeles this morning, isn't it?" Ragna asked.
"Did she message you we'd be here?" Lemon asked.
"I saw reports of what happened on my newsfeed, and figured you, or at least someone, would be here soon to ask the pertinent questions. I..." He looked down at his hands and scowled. "Hey, Art, Max... I left a case inside the elevator. Can you bring it out?"
Art and Max looked at one another, then at the elevator, then at Ragna.
"On it," Max finally said, with audible reluctance. He and Art headed for the wreckage.
"I can't believe anyone's afraid of that thing," said Lemon, rolling his eyes. "It's just old metal."
"Ancient metal," said Erin. "Old when the world was young, and horrible powers stirred the primordial soup, adding their eldritch cracker bits. I know Shade says the energies of the Ancient Ones or Eldritch Gods or whatever are drained, that it's no more dangerous than it looks, but... there's something *about* it. Just looking at it for too long..."
"I know," said Ragna. "Why do you think we keep trying to get something out of it?" He gestured to the empty orbs on the ground nearby. "We've tried nearly everything... but until this year, nothing worked."
"Oh, well, that's good," said Lemon. "Now... uh... wait, what?"
"What?" asked Ragna.
"'Until this year?'" quoted Bonnie.
"Shadebeam presented us with something... new... to try," said Ragna. Erin thought he saw a flash of discomfort cross the old Hunter's face. "I don't know where she found it, or alternately who she got it from... but both it and the tech she gave me to use... it drew down something. Whether it's something *good* or not... remains to be seen."
Art and Max reappeared, walking from the elevator wreckage. Max had a foot-and-a-quarter-long grey metallic case in his right hand, held away from his torso as if he was worried it would stick if he held it too close.
"The Hunter in Los Angeles *is* a Galaxy Hunter," said Ragna, as he watched the brothers approach. "Though if you inquire with Hunter Central, they may disagree."
"Why would they?" Lemon asked.
"Oh, she was killed on Reptilos in a battle with the Scaled Order, so she can't possibly be who she says she is, blah blah blah," said Ragna, the intensity of his gaze--fixed on the approaching case--belying his casual words. "But she is one. I forged her replacement armor myself, and stocked and wired its weapons systems. I trust her."
He then looked from Bonnie, to Lemon, and to Erin.
"You should, too. As much as you would trust me, if I was the one beneath the metal."
"Was that what you intended?" Lemon asked. "To wear the armor yourself?"
Ragna gave Lemon a hard look, and didn't answer.
"Since this Hunter only just arrived on Earth a day ago," Lemon went on, "and you couldn't possibly have slapped together a new suit tailored to her that quickly. Especially given how... striking... the metal you used is."
Ragna gave no answer, though his look of discomfort increased.
He's hiding something, thought Erin. Something he *doesn't* agree with... but won't betray. And Lemon Rydell could smell it. Vital secrets, hidden in plain sight. They were what drew him out to Malaga with Erin and Bonnie instead of leading the search for Kazza Lamissk in Los Angeles.
"You sure this thing is okay?" Max asked, as he handed the case to Ragna. "I thought I heard something knocking around inside."
"Sounded like something big," Art added, looking at the case and shuddering. "Which doesn't make sense. I mean... what could fit in there that'd..."
Something thumped the case from within. Art and Max took brisk steps back.
Erin belatedly realized he had as well, without even being conscious of doing so.
"What's inside?" Erin asked. "And... how does it help Shadebeam?"
"It's her business if she wants to give you the answer to either question," said Ragna. "I'm heading there now. You're all welcome to accompany me... though she might not let you in."
"Max and I have to get back to work," said Art.
"Say 'hi' for us," Max added, "and let her know we'll be by this evening to check if what ate the motorcycle in her garage is still there. We know it can't be Roog, 'cuz he's back on the farm in upstate Leng, so..."
Erin glanced at Bonnie. She nodded, her eyes not leaving the case.
She looked shaken, he thought.
He hoped he wouldn't regret learning why.
(concluded in part three...)
--
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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