SG: Rad #99 (2/4): Internet

[Gary W. Olson]

(continued from part one, preceding...)

                                 ***

     The howls and cries of the demon monkeys had not faded enough for
The Programmer's liking, but he felt he could stay where he was no
longer.  The underground base once controlled by the Mega-Intelligence
Bureau was now empty, all humans and humanish beings within having
been taken or chased by the monkeys to the hub area at the base's
center--all save him.  Logic suggested that he would be prudent to
wait for the monkeys to finish their task--which was evidently to get
everyone out of the base and back to the surface--so that he could
make his way to the underground highway by which he had come to the
base.  But there was a chance that the monkeys would seal off the path
to the highway as well as the path to the surface, which would trap
him in the base forever if he waited too long.
     Besides, logic and he had not been on good speaking terms ever
since the never-detailed accident that made him into a computer-
motifed criminal mastermind over fifteen years ago.  Plus, lurking in
the shadows was kind of boring.
     The idea of whole civilizations lurking below the Earth's
surface, not just in isolated patches but all over--or under--every
inhabited continent enthralled him as few things not involving
programming or nubile cheerleaders ever had before.  They had been
below all this time, serenely uncaring as the world writhed through
two world wars and a large number of local ones.  Whole swaths of
people there were innocent of the upheavals on the surface in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, knowing nothing of superguys,
super-powered villains, or their struggles.  (Almost nothing--he was
sure that the nuclear consequences of Dangerousman's visit to the
center of the Earth in the late eighties had not gone unnoticed.)
People to whom horrors such as the Industrial Revolution, the
Genocidal War, and 'baconnaise' meant nothing.
     People with no idea how to defend themselves or their underground
territories against crafty villains such as he.
     This time, The Programmer caught himself before his maniacal
cackle got too loud.  He kept his hands firmly clamped over his mouth
until the last chortle passed.
     The corridor he was in was the ring outermost from the hub, on
the upper level of the three-level base.  The rooms in this place held
the equipment used to broadcast to Wader's and Fancy's radio-chip-
controlled ninjas and zombies on the surface.  It was far from the
entrance to the underground highway that he most desired, but it
held the means by which he might overcome the obstacles between him
and said highway.
     He found the door he wanted, placed his hand over the keypad,
closed his eyes, and focused.  He could feel the pathways in the
keyboard circuits, and knew the sequence it expected and the alarms it
would trigger if numbers were punched incorrectly.  With a thought, he
pushed the recognition circuit into the 'correct entry' pathway, and
the door unlocked.
     The Programmer let out the breath he had not realized he was
holding.  Ever since he had interfaced with the nectarisite-based
circuitry installed by Erasmus Fancy and Dana Wader, he had been able
to accomplish such feats, though he had no idea how.  Long ago, he had
created a circuitry-laden shirt that allowed him such direct mind-to-
computer access, but that had been destroyed years ago.  Something had
changed him while he had mentally been in the nectarisite network's
'C-Space,' something even more wanting of explanation than the accident
that had originally made him a villain.  It had, so far, only proved
useful for unlocking electronically-locked doors, but he was about to
put it to a bigger test.
     The room consisted of eight booths, each with a microphone, a
control board, and a laptop computer.  The booths were barely larger
than the cubicles in The Programmer's former place of employment.  The
one time he had been here before, The Programmer remembered, all eight
booths had been occupied, with young-looking M.I.B. agents speaking
orders or lines to the chip-implanted people they were controlling.
None of the booths were occupied now, and all the systems were off.
     "I just need one," The Programmer muttered to himself.  He sat
down in the armless office chair closest to him and switched on the
CPU with a glance.  He was dismayed, though not surprised, when the
monitor informed him that the operating system was Vista.  With the
former Most Totally Evil Woman in the Galaxy calling the shots, he had
expected as much.
     Even with his enhanced ability to interface directly with the
computer, The Programmer had a difficult time getting through the
thicket of suck that was Vista.  He wondered, idly, if Hell was using
Microsoft as a front again, as they had once in the early nineties,
but decided they were probably just Microsoft's biggest customer.
     Finally, he found what he wanted.  The master systems that
controlled the broadcast to the chip-controlled people on the surface.
It was not his work--his had been with the nectarisite chips that
received the radio signals--but it was adequate for his purposes.  He
saw the changes required, and made them with ease.
     He withdrew his mind from the system.  Now, all he needed was a
palm-held transmitter.  There had been one in the equipment closet on
the far side of the room, he remembered.  If it was still there, he
knew, the system would be his.
     Six demon monkeys appeared in the room, three on his left, three
on his right.  The Programmer stopped laughing, and realized he had
forgotten to cover his mouth this time.
     The demon monkeys latched onto him.  He dodged and spun, his
awkward flail proving surprisingly effective against an enemy whose
training had not covered 'spaz attacks.'  Three monkeys got tangled up
in one another's limbs, while the other three held on to his limbs and
screeched.
     A further flail dislodged two, and The Programmer dashed for the
door to the equipment closet.  He mentally reached out and tried to
access its keypad code-entry circuit with his mind, but failed.  Did
he have to be closer, or...?
     The door turned out not to be secured with a keypad.  It was, in
fact, not secured at all, and flew open as soon as The Programmer
grabbed the handle and yanked.
     "Ha ha!" The Programmer exclaimed.  "Na--whoah!"
     A demon monkey was now beneath his shirt, sliding around on his
back.  Sharp claws dug into his skin.  The Programmer had no idea how
the demon monkey could contrive to teleport in this way, pushing out
his shirt as it appeared, but did not think this the time to ask.  He
stumbled, smacked the door frame with his back, and heard the monkey
yowl.
     "Now you see," The Programmer jeered, "that there is no--hey!  No
reaching around!  Don't twis...yeeeeowwww!"
     He crashed and flailed around the equipment closet.  More demon
monkeys appeared as he fell to his knees.  As tears stung his eyes,
he saw what he sought.
     "Gotcha," said The Programmer, grabbing the small transmitter a
second before the demon monkeys teleported out of the room.

                                 ***

     "It looks... busy," said Esteban Veracruz, as he peered through
the grating.  Lemon Rydell, on Esteban's right, let out a low whistle
of agreement.  Rumi Moroboshi, on Esteban's left, narrowed her eyes
and said nothing.
     The grate they were looking through was on the wall above one of
the entrances into the underground base's hub area.  The hub was a
wide circular room, two hundred feet in diameter, with a one-hundred-
foot-by-one-hundred-foot square drawn around its center.  The square
was currently packed with two busses, a limousine, about fifty or so
M.I.B. personnel, and about as many demon monkeys.  Many of the M.I.B.
guards, agents, and technicians were on the busses, bound to their
seats with rope, cable, or whatever else the monkeys had found.
     Eivandt Seconds, Alice Seconds, Tom McCavish-Laffalot, and Miguel
Veracruz were on the floor next to the farther of the busses, along
with a few M.I.B. guards and a couple technicians--those among the
last to be captured, Rumi surmised.  As far as she could tell, they
were unharmed.  The monkeys had relieved them of their guns, and had
also relieved Eivandt of his busted banjo.  Miguel had reverted back
from his werewolf form to human, and seemed unconscious.  Rumi
remembered that she had seen him teleported away by a large number of
demon monkeys, and guessed that the resulting disorientation he had
experienced had been more severe than what a similar teleportation had
caused her.
     This notion was soon confirmed, as The Programmer and six demon
monkeys appeared in a circle that had apparently been kept empty for
such a purpose.  The monkeys teleported off of The Programmer to the
ground, and watched as he staggered out of the circle.  He collapsed,
at which point a monkey bound his hands behind his back with a length
of bright orange extension cord.  They then left him where he had
fallen.
     Her mother, Glum, was not in sight, nor was Cendra Seconds.  Both
had still been fighting demon monkeys when Rumi had been teleported
away, and Rumi hoped their lack of presence now meant they had
successfully fended off their attackers.  Similarly absent were Dana
Wader and Erasmus Fancy, though Rumi doubted they would stay away.
That would be too convenient.
     "Oh, Este, before I forget," said Lemon, reaching into his back
pocket.  "The reason I screwed things up with Shadebeam's
translocation spell--not intentionally, I just... well, you know.  I
remembered I had this for you."
     He handed a thin book with a yellowing cover and red-edged pages
to Esteban.  Rumi peered at the cover.  It was an issue of 'Arousing
Adventure Tales,' its cover showing a large gorilla lunging at a dark-
dressed man, while another man wearing a cloak seemed about to pull a
lever intended to cause a wicked-looking machine do something
diabolical and scientific to a curvaceous blonde woman strapped to a
table.  Words near the bottom of the cover breathlessly described the
illustrated scene: 'Dick Carter fights the Gothopolis Gorilla to Save
the Lady Carmilla!'
     "Dude!" Esteban exclaimed.  "You found it!"
     "I traded for it," Lemon replied.  "You've got all of 'em now,
right?"
     "I think so," Esteban said.  "Unless it turns out that 'Dick
Carter Versus the Spy Ring of Death' actually was written by him.  I
still don't think it was."
     "'Him' who?" Rumi asked.
     "My great-grandfather," said Esteban.  He held up the book.
"James Cartier.  He wrote the early Dick Carter dime novels, based on
the cases of his real uncle, Richard Cartier.  Only he made 'Dick
Carter' a two-fisted detective and master of disguise, and not an
occult detective like Richard was.  My brother and I inherited some of
his stuff, and I've been trying to get the rest... but only the stuff
my great-grandfather really wrote.  Anything anyone else wrote under
the 'Herbert Yale' pseudonym is completely made up."
     Esteban looked at the book again, grinned, then slid it into his
backpack.  He looked at Lemon, and Rumi sensed he wanted to say
something else.  Or, perhaps, do something else.  But he glanced at
Rumi, and then away, and then said and did nothing else.
     "So what do we do?" Lemon asked, gesturing at the grate that
separated them from their friends and family.  "Fly in, bust some
monkey heads, that sort of thing?"
     "There's too many of them," said Rumi.  "And we might not need to
do anything.  The Programmer told me that the central hub has a built-
in elevator--that big square they're piling everyone onto--and that
the monkeys are just trying to force everyone out of the base en
masse."
     "Why?" Esteban asked.
     Rumi shrugged.  "He didn't say.  Probably didn't know.  So, since
the monkeys aren't trying to hurt anyone, except to subdue them, and
since what they want and what we want is about the same..."  She shook
her head.  "No.  I can't go down there while my mom and Cendra are
still unaccounted for."
     "It's okay," said Lemon, placing a hand on her shoulder.  "We'll
find them again.  Right, Este?"
     "Yeah," said Esteban.  He said it, Rumi noticed, without sounding
as if he had heard what Lemon had said.  He was looking down at his
brother, a distant look in his eyes.  Rumi thought back to what she
had seen just before Erasmus Fancy and Dana Wader attacked her.
     "Hey," she said, "are you two together?"
     Esteban's reaction was not what she expected.  His head snapped
up, alarm in his eyes.  He looked like he was having trouble breathing
for a moment, but managed to get out a "What?"
     "I just thought I should ask," said Rumi, forcing her voice to
stay calm.  "I heard you two talking as I was trying to find you, and
I saw you... well, it was dark, but it looked like..."
     Now Esteban looked like he would be sick.  Rumi felt like she was
ready to panic herself, not knowing what she had said wrong, but
knowing it was something irreversible.  She could not bring herself to
finish her sentence... but found she did not need to.
     "Kissing," said Lemon.  He did not seem alarmed in the least,
either by what Rumi had said or by Esteban's reaction.  "You got good
nightsight.  Natural or enhanced?"
     "Um... natural," said Rumi.  "So... um..."
     "We're 'sort of' together," said Lemon, giving Esteban a sideways
glance.  "Not officially, though."
     "Oh," said Rumi, realizing what he meant.  "So he's got another
boyfriend... or girlfriend, but doesn't want them to know he's also
got you."
     "Mmmm, no," said Lemon.  "And it would be just 'boy' for him, if
there was, right, Este?"
     "Lem," Esteban said.  "Don't---"
     "She saw," Lemon interrupted.  His tone was now the same she had
heard before, in Malaga, when he had calmed Esteban's panic attack
over being ready to be a superguy.  Smooth, low, not a whisper yet
barely audible.  "It's okay.  You can trust her.  Remember what the
Green Lady said?"
     Esteban looked like he wanted to say something else, but just
nodded.  He seemed, however, far from convinced.
     "What about you?" Rumi asked, looking at Lemon.  She thought of
how he had flirted with her in Malaga, and hoped he had not been
acting.  She had also not meant to ask while Esteban was right
there... but the words were out.
     "I'm more flexible," Lemon replied, giving her the same
insouciant grin she remembered from that time.  This drew a sharp look
from Esteban.
     But if there was no one else... why was he so scared?
     "I don't get it," she said.  "Esteban, I'm really trying not to
scare you, but I don't know why you're reacting like this.  Is it
something I---"
     "No," Esteban gasped.  "No."  He took two deep breaths, and
something in him seemed to settle.  "It's okay.  I... I'm in the
closet.  Except for Lemon, Cendra, the Green Lady, and now you...
nobody knows."  One more deep breath.  He met her eyes, trying to see
if she understood.  "You can't tell anyone."
     Rumi did not answer, as she was trying to remember if 'in the
closet' had been covered in any of the reports she had studied during
the trip from Planet California to Earth.  If her link to her house's
Expert System had been up, she could have asked, but it was not.  As
near as she could remember, it meant 'a stupid place to hide from the
killer if you're in a horror movie.'  But somehow that did not seem to
quite be what Esteban was....
     No, wait.  There was mention of a closet of some kind in the
report that Ottsamaddawiduan anthropologists had written on the mating
customs of Earth humans.  It had been mentioned in the context of a
condescending--and irritation-laden--explanation of why humans mating
habits were rife with ritual, taboo, superstition, and overly-
complicated uses for rope.  The anthropologists, while they had been
keen enough at the start of their studies, had apparently grown
frustrated with the task of trying to make sense of why humans were so
wound up about something so basic.  Eventually, they decided that even
'the crack'--the taking of which was their explanation for the bizarre
behaviors that passed for politics on Earth--could not explain why
Earth humans were, on average, such raving, neurotic, and/or bigoted
loons, and switched to studying Earth alcohol until their grant money
was used up.
     Lemon sighed.  "Look.  You, Rumi, grew up in a society where, if
you're not sure if someone you're talking to likes guys, girls,
squidlets, or what-have-you, you ask.  Saves a lot of wacky confusion
later on, right?"
     "Well, yeah," said Rumi, wondering why Lemon was stating the
obvious.  "But I don't understand..."
     "And if your subject seems reluctant to answer," Lemon went on,
"you figure it's because there's someone else in the picture that he
doesn't want finding out.  Not that he doesn't want *anyone* finding
out because then they'll look at him in disgust."
     Rumi vaguely remembered the report saying something about this,
and thinking it a clear exaggeration--or even a misunderstanding of
some sort, like the ludicrous passage that suggested that some humans
advocated teaching their offspring nothing about sex or its
consequences with the idea that somehow this would keep them from
going at it anyway.
     "Don't mind him," said Esteban.  He was looking down, not meeting
her eyes.  "He... I know I shouldn't be afraid.  And... mostly, I'm
not.  Except... except about Miguel."
     Rumi could hear it in his words, how the small exception was
everything to him.  It was not that 'anyone' finding out was bad... or
more bad than he could take.  It was that the more who knew, the more
who could let slip the secret to his older brother, who would... do
what?  Say what?
     "Now, I don't care who knows about me," said Lemon.  "But Este
does care who knows about him... so I play it cool with him in
public."
     Esteban said nothing.  Rumi felt so awkward, she could not find a
word, let alone a sentence, to convey it.  And Lemon, somehow, knew
exactly where her head was at.
     "I meet kids from the Confederation," he said.  "They come with
their parents for Burning M00se.  They read the same stuff you did, I
bet.  I mean, they're open-minded and all that--you gotta be if you're
coming to the carnival, no matter what planet you're from--but they
don't *get* how we got how we are.  They're just here to party with
the exotic primitives, then zip back to the familiar.  And then they
talk about how we're so screwy and weird, but maybe someday we'll
become civilized like them and... well, hey, let me ask this.  What do
you think about alties?"
     "What?" asked Rumi.  She knew what an 'altie' was, of course, but
was startled that Lemon did.  "What does that have to do with---"
     "Look," Lemon went on, "you generally produce DC current, right?
Like an electric eel?"
     "Not me, specifically," Rumi replied.  "My ability to use
psychokinetic energies blocks the bioelectric projection ability I'd
otherwise have inherited from my mom."
     "Well, you know what I mean," Lemon went on, undeterred.  "DC is
what Hottentottians generally use.  But... but!"  He waved his finger
to block an objection she had not raised.  "Some will deliberately
alternate their currents, right?  Particularly when they're getting it
on with someone?  It's supposedly unnatural, but not one Hottentottian
I've met can explain why.  Not so I can understand, anyway."
     "And he asks," said Esteban, now sounding faintly embarrassed.
"And asks."  Rumi got the feeling this was not the first time Esteban
had heard a variant on this argument.
     "My point is," Lemon said, "that you can't just judge us without
knowing us, like those dudes who wrote those reports you all read.
You won't understand why he's afraid of being outed, anymore than I'd
understand why AC is some kind of taboo.  Am I making sense?"
     Rumi considered her answer.  Though she had never been able to
project any current, direct or otherwise, all her playmates growing up
could.  And they talked about those they thought were 'alties.'  She
had never experienced it, and never had someone offered to give her
the experience... yet she thought she knew what it would be like, and
felt a small shiver of revulsion on contemplating it.  And she
realized that she, like the others, could not explain why.
     "Yeah," she said.  "I think so."
     "You won't tell, right?" Esteban asked.  His voice was faint,
nearly a whisper, but insistent.
     "I won't tell," Rumi said.  The relief in his answering smile was
palpable.  She turned back to the grate, to see if her mother and
Cendra, or anyone else, had arrived while she and her companions were
hashing things out.  As she did, she reflected on why this--more than
teleporting demon monkeys, more than people being mind-controlled to
pretend they were zombies, more than anything else--was the strangest
thing she had so far encountered about life on Earth... and the thing
she most wished she understood.

                                 ***

     Rad flew low and surveyed the scene.  Perhaps fifteen armed goats
were in the parking lot, forming a rough semi-circle facing roughly
twice as many armed demon monkeys.  Three goats were on their sides,
not far away from their fellows.  If any monkeys were out of the
action, their comrades had pulled them behind the defensive line they
formed around the elevator shaft leading to Erasmus Fancy's
underground base.  Rad had expected more action, but figured that the
floating nectarisite sphere-ships hovering overhead--piloted by yet
more demon monkeys--had given the goats cause to regroup and reassess.
     There was no sign yet that the elevator that the monkeys were
waiting for was on its way.  Rad set Silas down close to the semi-
circle, then took off again, looking for his friends.  They were not
far away... and appeared to be having problems of their own.
     "Brains," said several of the people who Rad thought of as
pseudo-zombies, owing to how they had been commanded to dress once
they had received their nectarisite-chip implants.  "Brains!  We are
zombies.  OoooOOOOooo!  We want brains!  We attack!  Grrr!"
     The ones who were being made to think they were ninjas were
faring no better.  "Hai kiba!" they declared.  "We are ninjas!  We
stay in shadows, strike like death and stuff!  Talk to the katana!"
     Despite these belligerent assertions, they had not made much
headway in breaking through the loops of celluloid that Criticalman
had spun around them.  But as the existence of the celluloid was of
limited duration, Criticalman was having to continually regenerate it,
and the effort was taxing.  At the height of his powers, Rad knew,
Templar could have handled it.  But he had been on the downslope from
that peak for some time.
     "Rad!" Confusion exclaimed.  "You're all right!"
     "Hey, dude," said Rad, as he landed next to his former sidekick.
"Like, what's going on, like, y'know?  I thought these, like, zombie
and ninja dudes were, like, totally not receiving their signals
anymore."
     "So did we," Confusion answered.  Manny looked worn out to Rad--
not surprising, given that he, also, had been out of the superguying
business for quite a while.  There were sweat stains on his beer-
bottle-pattern shirt, and a cut on his cheek that had already dried.
"Someone flipped them back on, it looks like... but if we let them go,
they'll get slaughtered."
     "What happened to their big ship?" asked Guido, the
anthropomorphic donkey and former mercenary once-but-no-longer known
as Badass.  If the stress of being in battle after a long standdown
affected him, he did not show it.  "Looked like Mighty Guy nailed it a
couple times, but it's still not down."
     "It's, like, been abandoned, dude," Rad replied.  "They, like,
came down here in, like, those sphere-ships, y'know?  I, like, heard
from China, like, that the _Vander Harkness,_ like, is gonna try to,
like, steer it into a soft landing, like, and stuff."
     Confusion looked like he was about to say more, but was
interrupted when lighting erupted from several of the sphere-ships.
Asphalt sprayed into the air, and goats scrambled out of the way of
the strafing beams.  At the same time, at least half of the massed
demon monkeys teleported to the other side of the goats' line and
charged at them.
     "Whoa, dude," said Rad.  "Those are, like, some shocking balls,
like, y'know?"
     "They're hanging way too low for my comfort," said Confusion,
sounding as if he had been saving that comment for a while.  "Are the
goats our allies now?  I saw you dropping one of 'em off."
     "Like, yah," said Rad.  "Goat dudes are, like, from the Hidden
Empire, out to arrest that heinous babe Capella, like, who is totally
not, like, on official Hidden Empire business."
     "Damn," Confusion replied.  "And here I was, so looking forward
to hearing ninjas and zombies again declare their need to get low,
low, low, low, low, low, low."
     "Like, what?" Rad asked.
     "Radio interference with their chips," Confusion replied.  "Never
mind.  You ready to go back and help the goats out?"  Rad nodded,
peering in the direction where he had left Silas.  The goats were in
the thick of combat with the monkeys, and appeared to be having a
rough time of it.  "Guido!  Give Rad some cover!"
     Without waiting for a reply, Rad took off toward the battle.
Confusion did not follow, nor did he need to.  As Rad flew, he
observed demon monkeys appearing, post-teleport, in random positions,
orientations, and velocities.  Some struck goats, some struck sphere-
ships, some struck pavement, but none seemed to know what the hell was
happening to them.  Rad felt briefly bewildered as he swooped in to
pluck a couple monkeys off of Barnaby's back, though it soon faded as
Confusion shut down the disorientation field he had projected.
     "Thank you!" Barnaby declared.  "I thought I--look out!"
     A group of demon monkeys appeared in a pack above them and
dropped down.  Rad blasted three away, and darts from Barnaby's
gunbelt knocked out two more.  Guido's gunfire strafed the rubble,
causing a number of the closer monkeys to teleport away.
     "Just want to let you know, Rad," said China via the radio link,
"reinforcements are on their way.  We're also reading a power surge
from the elevator shaft--looks like their getting ready to send it up.
If Erasmus Fancy's on there, the monkeys won't be holding back."
     "Like, gotcha," Rad replied.  He looked overhead at the closest
sphere-ship, just as a rush of white-hot burning plasma struck it.
The metallic nectarisite that made up the hull went bright red for a
few seconds before returning to bronze-gold.  HotFlash, the source of
the plasma, flew up to it a second later and kicked the side.
     "No fair!" she exclaimed.  "You're supposed to go all melty!"
The roar of flames rising from her leather-bodysuit-clad form made it
difficult to make out her expression, but Rad guessed annoyance and
frustration were major components.  He lifted off to join her.
     "Like, hey, Yury," said Rad.  "I think, like, I can help.  Like,
try that again, y'know?"
     HotFlash grinned at him, then at the sphere-ship.  Her burning
plasma washed over its spherical form.  Rad hit the bright red glowing
area with full force psychokinetic blasts that tore holes in the
softened nectarisite.  As the sphere-ship fell, its demon monkey crew
teleported away, screeching monkey vengeance as they did.
     "Not bad," said HotFlash.  "You think we can take the rest---"
     Huge electrical blasts from three of the closer sphere-ships
struck her, sending her hurtling over a group of damaged Harxxon
choppers.  Similar blasts struck Rad a second later, but failed to
punch through his psychokinetic shields.  He could not resist being
knocked back, however, and bounced off the hull of one of the sphere-
ships with a resounding 'klang!'  He recovered in time to stop his
fall, ending up in a hover six feet above the ground.
     "There you are, lad, steady on!" a familiar voice shouted as Rad
regained his bearings.  "That oddly shaped helmet you're wearing seems
to have protected your head from unnecessary trauma!"
     "Like, Silas dude," Rad replied, "it's, like, not a helmet.
It's, like, my hair, like, y'know?"
     "Indeed?" Silas asked.  "But it seems completely immobile, even
in the wind!"
     Rad, who knew that his many decades of use of high-quality hair-
styling products were responsible for the inpenetrability of his thick
mane of eighties-style surfer-dude hair, decided that now was not the
time to discuss said hair with a goat.  Rad flew higher, and surveyed
the area that the demon monkeys were protecting.
     It seemed impossible to Rad that the sheer numbers of demon
monkeys he was seeing could all have come from the _Subtler Than
Light._  They well outnumbered Silas's crew and Rad's crew combined,
and had proven their tenacity and toughness in battle.  And they were
*packed* around the edges of the shaft---
     The bronze-gold light erupted across his chest.  Again, his
shields protected him from the worst of it, but he felt pain from the
heat of the blast.  As he fell, fighting to stay conscious, he saw
Capella flying down at him.  Murder in her eyes.

(continued in part three, following...)
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Copyright (c) 2009 by Gary W. Olson.  All Rights Reserved.
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Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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