SG: Rad #98 (2/3): Not to Be

[Gary W. Olson]

(continued from part one, preceding...)

                                 ***

     There was nothing to be seen in the dimly-lit corridor besides
an overturned computer-monitor cart and a body, but The Programmer
stayed where he was.  To be fair, he could not have moved, as his as-
yet-unidentified captor was keeping him in place.  She peered around
the corner as he did, as if she could see more than he could.  Which,
for all he knew, was possible.
     He tried to talk, but could not, as her left hand was still
pressed against his mouth.  He tried to move her hand away, but she
kept her grip.  For a teenage girl, he thought, she was amazingly
strong.  He just wished he knew what she was waiting for.  He had told
her the lab was just past the junction she was staring at---
     A moment later, six demon monkeys appeared around the body.
Martial in their bearing, grim in their purpose and expression, yet
somehow adorable in their little black uniforms.  They collectively
lifted up the body--a tech of some kind, she guessed from his not-so-
adorable brown jumpsuit.  The tech let out a slight groan, indicating
he was still alive, but The Programmer could not tell if he was hurt.
     The next moment, both the tech and the demon monkeys were gone.
     They waited, but the monkeys did not return.  The Programmer
continued to try to dislodge his captor's hand.  She lifted it away,
and he exhaled.
     "Why did you do that?" he whined.  "I was trying to tell you to
look out for demon monkeys!"
     "That's what I *was* doing," she replied.  "Some appeared, took
the body that was around the corner, and left.  I didn't want your
babbling to attract their attention."
     "It's like I told you," said The Programmer, either ignoring or
not perceiving the last jab.  "The monkeys are moving everyone to the
central hub.  Guards, techs, it doesn't matter."
     "But why?"
     "No idea," The Programmer answered.  "Maybe they own this place
and just want everyone to leave."
     "Maybe," said his captor.  "The junction is clear now.  Take me
to the lab."
     She allowed him to stand.  He made a point of cricking his neck,
then his back, and then his knuckles.  He thought she would belt him
if he attempted light stretches, so he passed on that idea.  Gingerly,
wary of the shadows, he moved toward the now-open junction.
     As they crossed the junction, the demon monkeys returned.  In
greater numbers, The Programmer saw, five on each side.  They were
surrounded.
     He tried to hide his pleasure at this development.  The monkeys
would take them to the central hub, and from there, he was confident
he could slip away and get to the underground highway he had seen on
his way in.  The underground highway would lead to the underground
city, and likely other underground cities, all of which would be
filled with strange people and dinosaurs and necktie-wearing apes and
dodos and who knew what else.  All unaware of his power.  All ripe for
conquest.
     He became aware that the girl who had caught him, plus all the
monkeys, were now staring at him.  He realized his mouth was open as
far as it could be.
     "Um," he said, after closing it some.  "Was I... um... you
know..."
     "Maniacally," said the girl.  She appeared both surprised and
annoyed, which The Programmer thought odd.  She was clearly a
superguy, despite her youth, and unless she was completely new at it
had surely heard maniacal laughs by now.
     The demon monkeys got over their distraction first.  Three
appeared on The Programmer--one on his back, one on each arm.  The
Programmer made no attempt to shake them off.  Two more appeared near
the girl, only to get blasted back.  The blasted monkeys hit walls,
disappeared, then appeared on the ground, seemingly none the worse for
wear.
     "Come on, then," said The Programmer.  "What's the hold up?"
     He looked over his shoulder at the demon monkey on his back.  The
demon monkey was looking over *its* shoulder, so The Programmer tried
to see what had its attention.
     It was massive and shadowed and had two gleaming eyes fixed right
on him.  The demon monkeys that had been in that part of the junction
were suddenly no longer there, allowing it to step into the light.
Black fur over massive muscles, moving with a surprising liquid grace.
On two legs, like a man, but with a wolf's head and--of more
immediate concern to The Programmer--long and nasty claws on both
hands.  It wore black swim trunks that were clearly being strained by
the containment job they had been given, and it was this last bit that
identified the creature to The Programmer.
     "Miguel...?" he asked.
     The werewolf looked down at him, snarled, then looked up at the
demon monkeys.  They were also taken aback by Miguel Veracruz's sudden
appearance, but were not about to back down.  As Miguel surged into
the junction and raised his clawed hands, several appeared before him.
     "Miguel!" the girl exclaimed.  "Don't let them bait you!"
     Miguel swiped at the demon monkeys.  Predictably, they
disappeared, and reappeared on the wolf's back.  Less than
predictably, the wolf ducked down, turned on his heel, and continued
the swing of his hand, hitting two of the three monkeys and grazing
the third.  The two struck flew back, hit walls, fell, and did not get
up or disappear.  The grazed one screamed as blood flew from its
belly.
     The Programmer mentally replayed the move, and realized that
Miguel had sensed the reappearance of the monkeys before he had seen
it happen.  Possibly before it had even finished happening.  No wonder
the monkeys had been caught.
     If afflicted by a similar realization, the other demon monkeys
did not show it.  The junction exploded in combat as the demon monkeys
swarmed over the werewolf, over the girl, and--of most importance to
The Programmer--over The Programmer.  He immediately sprang into
inaction, curling into a tight ball next to the overturned computer
cart.  He was not sure, but he thought the demon monkeys clinging to
him did roughly the same thing.
     The combat went on for quite a while, and featured a fair amount
of screeching, growling, and the odd sound of air displacement that
came from the bolts the girl fired.  At some point, the hissing of an
enormous snake was added, as were rifle shots and the unmistakable
sound of a banjo being used as a melee weapon.
     After several minutes of this, the monkey screeches lessened,
then stopped altogether.  The Programmer lifted the hand over his left
eye, peered out, and saw a massive snake tail slither by.  He
immediately covered his eye again.
     "Oh, get up, you wuss," said a new voice.  The Programmer
realized he had heard it before.  He lifted his hand once more, opened
his eye, and saw the snake body.  More importantly, he saw where the
snake body ended and the woman began.  "Miguel," she said.  "Would
you...?"
     Massive hands gripped The Programmer and lifted him from the
meager protection of the computer cart.  One hand withdrew, leaving
him dangling from the other by his shirt collar.  The Programmer, as a
tall person, was unaccustomed to situations where his feet could not
touch the ground, and felt himself panic as he tried to run but failed
to move anywhere.
     "Programmer!" yelled the girl who had initially captured him.
"It's okay!  Just calm do---"
     "*The!*" The Programmer interrupted.  "*The* Programmer!"
     "--wn... right.  *The* Programmer.  Whatever.  You've met Cendra,
right?"
     The Programmer paused, and looked at the woman again.  Black
hair, brown skin, defiant expression, naked torso... yes, this was
definitely the woman he had seen brought in earlier as a prisoner
by... wait.  The Programmer mentally backed up to the 'naked torso'
part of the inventory and re-checked it.  Though she had her arms
crossed over her breasts, it was, in all other respects, a naked torso
that was naked in its nakedness.
     "Dude," Miguel snarled in his ear.  "You seriously need to start
looking someplace else."
     "But---"
     "I'm a naga right now," said Cendra, sounding as if she had
explained this several times already.  "Eventually it'll wear off,
I'll change back, and my clothes will reappear from wherever they go
when I turn into a random mythical beastie.  And then I'll devour a
plate of cheeseburgers because is my second involuntary shift today
and I am hungry as hell right now!"
     "I told you," said Miguel, "you should've tried some free-range
demon monkey when you had the chance."  Cendra scowled at this, then
rolled her eyes, reached out, and scritched his side.  Miguel grinned,
giving The Programmer an unnerving view of his sharp teeth.
     In addition to the girl who had captured him, the werewolf
Miguel, and the snake-woman Cendra, there were three others in the
junction.  One was Eivandt Seconds, the vaguely Belgian man who had
been captured and brought in the same time as Cendra.  The Programmer
remembered he used to be a member of CalForce named Doubt, and later
Willwarp, though he had lost his powers more than a decade ago.  He
clutched a seriously damaged banjo, which The Programmer did not
remember him as having before--which meant someone else on the base
had gone to enormous and inexplicable lengths to bring banjo music to
their once-secret underground world.  Next to him was Tom McCavish-
Laffalot, the former MicroVax, who seemed enormously entertained to
see The Programmer in a helpless position.  Finally, there was an
armor-wearing, automatic-rifle-toting M.I.B. guard, who was in the
midst of removing her mask.
     "We'd better keep moving," said Eivandt.  "There's no telling...
er, Rumi.  What are you doing here?"
     Rumi.  The name reminded The Programmer of something.  There was
a superguy named Rad who left planet Earth back in the early nineties.
According to the Weekly World Schmooze, he and his wife Glum had had
twins, followed by a third, named...
     "Rumiko Moroboshi," said The Programmer, looking at the girl who
had been his captor before Miguel had ably stepped in.  "So the woman
you're looking for is Glum.  Your mother, right?"
     "Yes," said Rumiko, sounding annoyed.  The Programmer could not
fathom why.  "Look, everybody, it's a long story.  I was magically
transported here by Shadebeam Moroboshi, along with Esteban and
Shadebeam herself.  Something happened and we got split up, but I'm
sure they're around here some---"
     "Esteban's here?" Miguel asked.  He swung around, as if expecting
to see someone else close by.  The Programmer yelped as he was swung
about in the process.  "Why would Shadebeam bring *him* here?  He's a
boy!"
     "We needed the family connection for the magic to find you," said
Rumi.  "The idea was, we'd come in, find you, then she'd send us back
and help you guys get out.  But the spell circle got messed up, and I
showed up alone.  And ran into him."  She pointed to The Programmer.
     "Can you put me down?" The Programmer asked.  "Please?  While my
neck still works?"
     "Set him down, Miguel," said the woman in the armored uniform.
The same guard, The Programmer realized, he had thought seemed kind of
familiar earlier on, when prisoners were first being brought into the
underground base.  As Miguel obeyed her, The Programmer remembered
where he had seen her before.
     "You're the Coiling Woman, aren't you?" he asked.  "You were in
Society.  I remember!  Alice something-or-other, right?"
     "Seconds," said Alice, who scowled.  The Programmer wondered why
no one seemed pleased to be recognized by him.  "Willamette, back
then.  Society and Coiling Woman were both a long time ago for me.  I
made it here through luck and fast thinking.  I got pulled outside by
those pseudo-zombies during the fight at his apartment---"  She
gestured at Miguel.  "--and saw the bus they had come in on.  Snuck
over, knocked out one of the guards who were waiting, which was when
the zombies brought out him and Glum and my husband.  I took the
guard's armor, got on the bus, and pretended to be a guard to get in.
Then, when things went crazy down here, I let those two out of their
cell---"  She gestured at Cendra and Eivandt.  "--and found those
two---"  She gestured at Miguel and Tom.  "--wreaking havoc in the
mess hall.  Glum was the only one of our people still missing, or so
we thought, so here we are."
     The Programmer, who had not really wanted all the details, just
nodded and tried to look thoughtful.  Alice turned her attention to
Rumi.
     "And if all Shadebeam needed was just a family connection," said
Alice, "why not just you and her, Rumi?  Mother-and-daughter, brother-
and-brother, does it make that much of a magic-kinda difference?"
     Rumi shrugged, seemed about to say nothing, then shook her head.
     "He wanted to be here," she said.  "He was going to find
Miguel... find all of you... one way or another.  He wants to be a...
a superguy, and Shade saying 'no' wouldn't've stopped him."
     Miguel looked doubtful at this, inasmuch as a werewolf could look
doubtful, but ultimately nodded.  "So he got Los Pantalones working,
at least?"
     "Yeah," Rumi confirmed.
     "Lucky thing you found Shadebeam," said Tom.  "Was she in L.A.,
or...."
     "We'll get the details later," Cendra interrupted, looking from
Tom to Miguel and back to Tom.  Miguel seemed not to notice the look;
Tom noticed but had no more idea of what it meant than The Programmer.
"We came to rescue Glum, so let's do that, then figure out our next
move."
     "Which door is it?" Rumi asked, looking at The Programmer.
     Seeing no way out of it, he led them into one of the corridors,
down to a set of sliding double-doors that from the outside seemed no
different than any of the others.  There was no handle, only a keypad
next to the doors.
     "You wouldn't happen to have the combination," Eivandt said,
indicating the keypad, "would you?"
     "Prisoner," said The Programmer.  "Sorry."  He paused in
calculation.  As loathe as he was to help the side of good, they were
now his best chance to reach the central hub of the base.  And his
best chance of sneaking away into the underground highway would come
if they were not closely watching him.  If they already had what they
sought.
     He saw that Tom and Eivandt were about to do something to the
keypad with a banjo string and one of the portable circuit readers The
Programmer had earlier seen Tom using.  He stepped quickly in and
placed his hand over the keypad.
     "Let me try something, first," he said to their questioning
looks.  "I was exposed to this system for a long time.  I think I can
recall the combination, if---"
     He stopped as he felt his hand pulse.  His palm felt abruptly hot
and dry.  He lifted it up, saw the skin was undamaged, then looked at
the keypad.  The light was green.
     "Um, yeah," said The Programmer.  "I think... I think that did
it."
     Alice regarded him with a suspicious frown, as did Rumi.  The
Programmer lifted his hands as if in surrender.  His mind was too busy
racing to even try to dissemble about what had just happened.  Some
power had leapt from his hand into the keypad and had allowed him to
mentally bypass the entry code and unlock the door.  He remembered the
sensation from his years as a villain in the nineties, but back then,
it had been the cyber-shirt he had engineered and worn that had
provided the ability.  And somehow, he had known it would happen.
Somehow... the nectarisite interface, of course.  Someone had used it
to draw him into c-space earlier, allowing him to witness Glum being
brought to this laboratory and hooked to the nectarisite pile.  There
had been an energy surge that kicked him out of c-space... but what if
it had done more than that?  What if, while he had been working in
c-space, someone else had been working in him?
     "That's really annoying," said Rumi, who was looking directly at
him.
     "What is?" he asked.
     "The maniacal giggling," Tom said.  "More precocious than
villainous."
     The Programmer scowled.
     "Stand to the sides," Eivandt instructed.  "When this door opens,
there could be someone waiting to fire at us."
     Miguel grabbed The Programmer--by the shoulders this time, though
in no less rough a manner--and drew him to the left of the doorway,
where Tom waited.  Eivandt, Rumi, and Alice stood at the right doorway
edge.  Tom pushed a button on the keypad.
     Before the double doors even finished sliding apart, a flood of
electrically-supercharged bronze-gold light erupted from within the
lab and slammed into the opposite wall.

                                 ***

     On entering the room he had been told was the 'bridge' of the
_Subtler Than Light,_ Rad wondered if Capella had made a mistake.
Ship bridges, in his experience, did not have chandeliers--even the
small, low-hanging kind, of which this one had two.  Or demon monkeys
serving canapes.  Or wet... no, check that, he *had* been on a few
bridges with their own wet bars, though none with their own
bartenders.  The demon monkey behind the bar paused in pouring what
looked like a lime mojito to gesture for Rad to sit at the bar.
Capella had him firmly by the arm, however, and steered him toward the
far end of the bridge, where a more traditional wall screen, control
chair, and assorted workstations waited.
     "What's the situation, Chochim?" Capella asked, addressing the
black-uniformed demon monkey sitting at a console next to the command
chair.  As Chochim regaled Capella with monkey noises recapping 'the
situation,' Rad walked up to a large screen next to the main wall
screen.
     One section of the subdivided screen showed the exterior of the
_Vander Harkness,_ still trailing smoke and fire from the last
wounding shot the _Subtler Than Light_ had given her.  Rad was glad to
see that it had sustained no further damage, though this was
apparently because the _Subtler Than Light_ had not sought to inflict
any.
     The other three subsections showed aerial views of the combat
under way in and around Dodger Stadium.  Or rather, what was left of
it.  Dozens of demon monkeys surrounded the shaft that led eight-and-
a-half miles down into the Earth's crust to a lair currently occupied,
though not originally built by, Erasmus Fancy.  The pseudo-zombies and
pseudo-ninjas, who earlier had been in close combat with the demon
monkeys for control of access to this shaft, were huddled on the
periphery of the parking lot.  Between them and the monkeys were ex-
CalForcers Confusion, Criticalman, HotFlash, and Guido.  Rad wondered
where MeltDown and Mighty Guy had gotten to.
     "Erasmus Fancy's so-called ninjas and zombies have ceased to
behave as such," said Capella.  "It seems the strike team we sent in
earlier was successful in disrupting Fancy's radio chip control
operations.  Since they are, in fact, innocents used by Fancy and his
allies for their insidious schemes, your human and... humanish...
allies had to choose between keeping control of access to the shaft
and protecting their lives.  Predictably, they chose the latter."
     The demon monkey on the opposite side of the command chair from
Chochim made howling noises.  Capella smiled, and sat in said command
chair.
     "We have a video and audio link with your _Vander Harkness,_"
said Capella.  "Come.  We must strike a truce before things have a
chance to erupt in violence again."
     Rad took a place next to Capella, though he remained standing.
This seemed to annoy Chochim, who had to look around him to see the
main wall screen.
     The screen lit up with an image Rad recognized as being broadcast
from the command center of the _Vander Harkness,_ due to all the
damaged cubicle walls in the background.  In the foreground was
Chalandra Harkness, formidable and cool in her tailored suit, her
centuries giving her an aristocratic edge that easily matched
Capella's, despite her youthful appearance.  On her left was Elizabeth
Tirkoff, formidable and cool in her not-tailored-yet-fitted-very-well-
thank-you Red Sox t-shirt and blue jeans, regarding Capella through
her red-rimmed glasses with no sign of emotion.  Closer to the bottom
of the screen was China Kyoko Moroboshi, who might have looked
formidable and cool in her black 'Juno Reactor' t-shirt if she had not
been blowing a large purple bubble with her gum.  To Chalandra's left,
looking neither formidable nor cool, yet impeccably sciency in his
white lab coat, Dr. Giuseppe Gigawatt seemed in the midst of deciding
what he should do with his hands.
     "I'm Chalandra Harkness," said Chalandra.  "This is Elizabeth
Tirkoff, that's China Moroboshi, and this is..."
     "Bosley," Gigawatt suggested.
     "Doctor Gigawatt," Chalandra finished.  "Whom am I addressing?"
     "My name is Capella Sandoval Ookanaptra, of the clan Ookanaptra,"
said Capella.  "You may address me simply as..."
     "Capella, yes," said Dr. Gigawatt, who had gone with the classic
behind-the-back handclasp while Capella spoke.  "We know who you are."
     "You are... well informed," Capella said.  Rad could tell she was
not pleased about this fact.  "May I ask...?"
     "You may ask," said Chalandra, "but we won't answer."
     "Rad," said China.  "You all right?"
     "Pretty much," Rad replied.  "Though my speech has gone all
weird.  Are you sure you understand what I'm saying?"
     "We'll manage," said Elizabeth, with a bit of a smirk.  "Dr.
Gigawatt believes he knows what's happening to you."
     "It's the aetheric field, is it not, Capella?" Gigawatt asked.
     If Capella had been nonplussed before, she seemed close to fury
now.  Anger seeped out in the otherwise tightly controlled voice she
used to speak.
     "You are... very... well informed," said Capella.  "Someone from
our realm has been telling tales."  Gigawatt opened his mouth, but
Capella raised a hand.  "It is as you say.  Our ship generates an
aetheric field that allows us to operate as if we are in our
dimension, instead of yours.  The fine control we maintain over it
allows us to harden it to deflect attacks, or admit..."  She paused,
and glanced at Rad.  "...potential ambassadors."
     "Why Rad?" Chalandra asked.
     "Opportunity," Capella replied.  "We identified him before, but
had no means to signal our intentions to him.  When he flew over our
ship, we had our chance, and let him in.  We were surprised when he
stopped flying and started falling."
     "But you must have known *something* would happen," said
Gigawatt.  "Something always does, when one from our dimension enters
yours, does it not?"
     "Does it?" Rad asked.
     "Aether," said Capella, "is the medium through which everything
passes in our dimension.  It is similar to aetheric theories once
believed in on Earth, before they fell out of favor.  I'm sure, being
so well informed, you know how this happened."
     "It had to be a fluid, so as to fill space," Gigawatt said.  He
cocked his head, as if trying to remember the rest.  "But a fluid
millions of times more rigid than steel, so as to support the high
frequencies of light waves.  Also, massless and without viscosity, so
as not to affect the orbits of the planets.  And completely
transparent, incompressible, continuous at small scale, non-
dispersive, etcetera, etcetera.  That merely describes the problems
with the theory of luminiferous aether, the last of the aethers to be
taken down by scientific observation.  The others, such as the
gravitational aether posited by Le Sage and later revived by Lord
Kelvin, the temporological and absurdelicious aethers championed by
the now-largely-forgotten contemporary of Newton, Sir Natural
Science---"
     "Doc," said China, looking over her shoulder, "skip to the part
where there's a point."
     Gigawatt paused, frowned, then stroked his goatee.  Rad wondered
if he would ever add a mustache so that it would be a proper Van Dyke.
     "The point is," he said, "that aether explains nothing... in this
dimension.  But it does in yours, Capella.  In particular, I am
considering the functioning of the brain.  Electrical signals between
synaptic connections, for instance.  A brain that functions in a
certain way in our dimension, suddenly immersed in another dimension
where an aether of some kind actually affects transmission speeds and
other properties... well.  I would posit that it would make things...
and I use the scientific term here... 'screwy.'"
     "Regrettably, this is so," Capella answered, sounding as if she,
in fact, held little regret about the matter.  "In Rad's case, it has
inhibited his ability to exercise his psychokinetic abilities, and,
though I'm not sure why he thinks this, his speech patterns.  There
may be other differences in his thought processes--there always are,
when your kind are in the aether.  Motor and logic skills sometimes
exhibit slight degradation or enhancement--I do not know enough about
Rad to say if that is the case.  Most often, the changes seem to be
subtle, and not immediately evident."
     "Rad," said Chalandra, "any changes you've noticed?"
     Rad, who had stopped paying attention while considering
Gigawatt's facial hair, and was now considering a selection of canapes
offered by a demon monkey in a tuxedo, looked up.
     "Like, what?" he asked.
     "Never mind," Chalandra replied.  She then glanced away at
something off-screen before returning her regard to Capella.  "Lady
Capella," she said, "what do you propose we do about the current
situation, now that we are satisfied with the... Ambassador's...
health?"
     Rad tuned out again, as Capella began outlining a plan that used
words like 'cooperation' and 'mutual benefit' but largely seemed to be
about the _Vander Harkness_ backing off so that the _Subtler Than
Light_ could send more demon monkeys down in bubble-ships that were
insulated from the elevator shaft's defenses, for the purposes of
capturing Erasmus Fancy.  He moved slowly away from Capella's side, as
if drifting toward the bar.  Chochim made a gesture of thanks as he
got out of the demon monkey's way.
     "Like, hello?" Rad asked, as quietly as he could.
     *Rad,* Elizabeth's voice came into his mind--telepathic, not the
radio contact he had expected.  *Are you receiving this?*
     He looked at the screen.  Elizabeth was still looking at Capella,
but as he looked, she glanced in his direction.
     *Yah,* he thought back at her.  Though he was not a telepath, he
knew Elizabeth, once she had established and locked contact, could
'hear' him well enough.  *Like, what's going on, like, y'know?*
     *Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle are testing something they've cobbled
together,* Elizabeth replied.  *A vortex wave modulator, they said.
Right now it's just focused on your area of the ship.  Your speech is
back to... um... what passes for normal for you?*
     *Like, yah,* thought Rad.  *Does this mean, like, I have, like,
my powers back?*
     *Hopefully so,* Elizabeth said.  *Be ready to be disruptive.  But
wait until negotiations have broken down.*
     *Like, why can't you, like, do telepathic, like, things, like,
y'know?  Like, mess with their, like, heads?*
     *Tried,* she replied.  *Even now, I can't lock on to either
Capella or the demon monkeys.  Not sure why.*
     *Like, okay,* Rad replied.  *I'll, like, be ready, like, okay?*
     *Okay.  Good luck.*
     Rad casually walked back to Capella's side, to the great
annoyance of Chochim.  Capella was winding up her proposal on the
post-capture mutual interrogation of Erasmus Fancy, which seemed to
come down to her interrogating Erasmus and possibly later telling the
_Vander Harkness_ what he had said.  Chalandra seemed to mull this for
at least five seconds, then shook her head.
     "I'm going to have to run this past my advisory panel before I
sign on," she said.  "Will that be all right?"
     "Take your time," Capella replied, making a gesture equally
expansive and dismissive.  "I will be---"
     "Here they come now," said Chalandra.  She and Elizabeth moved to
the right side of the screen, while Dr. Gigawatt moved to the left.
Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle, their white lab coats flapping against their
bovine bodies, telekinetically hovered from off-screen to center
screen.  Their brains, which extended a full foot above their heads
and were protected by transparent caps, were pulsing an almost lime-
green color.
     Capella's reaction seemed harsh to Rad.  She emitted a sound
somewhere between a screech and a hiss, and bared her teeth at the
screen.  The superintelligent cows--or Mu'Kaos, to be proper about
it--seemed unmoved by this, and spoke.
     "Mistress Capella," said Bhossi, though her mouth did not move,
"we meet again."  Rad realized the sound was actually coming through
the speakers for the audio-visual linkup with the _Vander Harkness,_
and guessed the Mu'Kaos had some kind of invention for translating
their normal telepathic speech to regular audio.
     "Only now," added Cla'rabhelle, "you are no longer our Mistress,
and we no longer cower beneath your rage... you left us to wander and
die, in the tunnels beneath Giza... but we have survived!"
     "So I see," said Capella, all superior bearing gone now.  She
looked, to Rad, ready to leap through the screen at them.
     "Because we are people of the land!" Bhossi declared.  "We are
the Kaos of the Lost Continent of Mu!  We are... Mu'Kaos!"
     "Mu!" Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle declared in unison.  "Mu!  Mu!
*MU!*"
     All was silent on both bridges for several moments after this
declaration.  Almost silent, anyway--Dr. Gigawatt, his hands clasped
over his mouth so tightly he was starting to turn blue, could not
contain his reaction, and several guffaws escaped before he gave up
and fell over.  China looked over her shoulder at the now-chortling
doctor, rolled her eyes, and looked at Cla'rabhelle.
     "It sounded better when you were doing it as Dame Judy Dench,"
she said.
     "How was my Streep?" Bhossi asked.
     "Enough!" Capella exclaimed, drawing all eyes again.  What they
saw was an expression of barely-contained ferocity, though she was at
least trying to recover by adopting an arms-folded noble posture of
defiance.  "I see now how you have become so well informed about me
and the Hidden Empire.  Our negotiations are at an end.  Stay out of
our way or we will destroy you."  She made a gesture at Chochim, and
Chochim pressed something on the bronze-gold panel before him.  The
main viewscreen went dark.
     Rad only had one question.
     "Like, what's going on, like, y'know?"

(continued in part three, following...)
--
Elizabeth Tirkoff appears with permission of Eric A. Burns-White.
--
Copyright (c) 2009 by Gary W. Olson.  All Rights Reserved.
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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