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This is Tuesday's episode, honestly. It's already Tuesday where the Hooded Hood is.
Mon Mar 14, 2005 at 08:31:27 pm EST
Subject
#205: Even More Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan Still


#205: Even More Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan Still: Part Eleven – Alright You Alien ***holes, In the Words Of My Generation, "Up Yours!"

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This chapter takes place after CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s tie-in story Just’a Good Ol’ Boys, Never Meanin’ No Harm … and Killer Shrike’s tie-in story Epitome for Freedom.


    Four thousand alien spaceships were heading towards Earth to capture or kill the rogue Caphan, Vaahir, who was wanted for crimes on a dozen worlds. The Caphan war fleet led by Prince Aarmus and the mercenary ships responding to the bounty placed on the fugitive by the Lovetoads of Frammistat Eight weren’t particularly choosy about whether there was still an Earth there after the arrest.
    In response, Earth had sent the leader of the Lair Legion, crusty old Sir Mumphrey Wilton, to discover a diplomatic solution. And the United States of America that had footed the bill for Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises to create a temporary transportation teleportal to get to the alien armada had sent along Dominic Clancy, Mr Epitome, to represent their interests.
    And neither of these ambassadors was a very great supporter of the politics of appeasement.
    The formal diplomatic session took place in the silk-swathed comfort of Prince Aarmus’ command yacht, where a dozen warlike Caphan lords attended to hear the pleadings of the Earth delegates. The Lovetoad Trademaster Sluurg wallowed in the corner in a mudpool specially fitted for his comfort, with a pair of body slaves to sluice his reptilian skin as the negotiations went on.
    The cushions provided for Sir Mumphrey and Mr Epitome to squat upon were noticeably lower than those on Prince Aarmus’ dais, so the Earthmen ignored them and remained standing. It was clear that the Caphans felt confident in their military superiority and were expecting an act of submission from representatives of a world that had hardly mastered space travel yet and had not even discovered the transnuclear weapon.
    Mr Epitome launched off Earth’s response. “Prince Aarmus, my government wishes to convey to you that should you or any of your operatives enter Earth airspace, or an envelope within 200,000 miles of our planet, we will not only consider this an act of aggression by invading our sovereign territory, but also that any slaves you may have brought into our domain would then be free, and deserving of all the aid and support we can afford them. You have been warned.”
    That cut through the diplomatic niceties fairly effectively. “And how can you aid and support any when your own military is so weak, your technology so primitive that you can hardly send a rocket to your own satellite?” asked Prince Aarmus.
    “We have other technologies,” replied the paragon of power. “We arrived here, hundreds of light years from our home world, via a transportation method I notice you don’t have readily available to you. And of course we have metahuman assets of whom I think you are aware, since they rather prominently won the Transworlds Challenge.”
    “And we have a long and honourable tradition of kickin’ bullies and overthowin’ petty tyrants,” Mumphrey added in a gruff grump.
    “You are harbouring the mass murderer Vaahir,” Trademaster Sluurg accused. “This criminal detonated transnuclear bombs in our capitol, causing the death of thousands!”
    “Hmph,” scowled the eccentric Englishman. “Yes, you mentioned that at our last session, so I had Amazin’ Guy wander over to your planet and ask a few questions. You know Amazin’ Guy, what? Chosen Protector of the Parodyverse and all of that?”
    The Lovetoad blanched an unpleasant vermilion. “He has invaded our world without authorisation…”
    “Big cosmic chappie called Eggo the Living Waffle authorises him to go wherever he wants,” Mumph answered brutally. “Take it up with him, if you want to.”
    “We felt we needed independent intelligence,” Epitome joined in. “Amazing Guy has visited both Caph XI and Frammistat VIII for us. On your homeworld, Trademaster Sluurgh, he did indeed discover the mass destruction of property you mention. And there were casualties. But you fail to mention they happened because slaves were being used to transport valuable items from the blast zone at the time the weapons detonated, despite you having sufficient notice to allow a full evacuation.” There was a note of rough anger in Clancy’s voice. “So I wonder who the murderer is in this case, really?”
    “Are you condoning an act of terrorism, Mr Epitome?” Prince Aarmus challenged.
    “As the Caphan Emirate Council did when Prince Oodan slaughtered the House of Daarthon after breachin’ a sacred truce of hospitality?” Sir Mumphrey suggested. “You seemed willin’ enough to overlook the slaughter of Lord Toosin and his whole household. But then, after his murder spree Prince Oodan ceded a lot of Daarthon’s lands in Jaaxa to you, didn’t he Prince Aarmus?” he caught the look on the Caphan ambassador’s face. “Yes, Amazin’ Guy went to Caph, and then I had the Librarian of the Lunar Public Library check up on the proceedings of the Emirate Council.”
    “You are defending Vaahir?” screeched Sluurg, splashing his mud in his agitation.
    “I’m sayin’ if you want to convince us to help you catch a criminal, tell the whole story, sirrah,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton demanded.
    “This is all neatly avoiding the central point of this conversation,” Prince Aarmus pointed out, “which is that we are coming to your Earth whether you will it or not, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you resist us we will destroy you. We will take whatever measures we must to reclaim the rebel Vaahir…”
    “And the nine properties stolen from our late and beloved Grand Lovetoad – and any items they were wearing at the time,” added Tradmaster Slurg hastily.
    “And if you are fortunate then we will leave some part of your world unscathed and some portion of your people intact,” concluded Aarmus.
    Dominic Clancy bristled. “My nation – my world – does not take kindly to threats, Prince Aarmus.”
    The Caphan ambassador shrugged at Mr Epitome. He was confident in the might of the mercenary fleet who at least loosely followed Caphan leadership in their thirst for pickings, and he was safe from physical threat from this genetically modified Earth creature because of the neural inhibitors laced into the walls of the conference chamber that could shut down the higher brain functions of any non-Caphan at a single word from him. Besides, his personal mistress Kriige had engaged Mr Epitome in conversation earlier and had discovered his weaknesses.
    “But your nation does not speak for your world, does it, Mr Epitome?” Prince Aarmus pointed out. “You have no unifying world government. Your nation has not yet recognised its destiny to lead your planet into its future as one of the brotherhood of spacefaring worlds.”
    “The United States of America operates under codes of conduct which prohibit territorial expansionism,” Dominic Clancy answered.
    “Tell that to Haiti, or Afghanistan, or Iraq,” Mistress Kriige suggested. “Or Viet Nam.” She really did do her research thoroughly. “Or shall we discuss economic expansionism?”
    “Even though I have overwhelming military superiority here, Mr Epitome, it is not my wish to destroy your planet if it is not necessary,” Aarmus conceded. “I would prefer unquestioning co-operation from your government. And in exchange I am willing to make available technology that would place your United States at such an advantage that it could unify your planet thereafter.”
    “Conquer it, you mean,” Sir Mumphrey snorted. “We have enough of that with McDonalds and Pizza Hut, thank you very much!”
    Mr Epitome shook his head. “I don’t think my government would be interested in becoming a puppet state and doing the dirty work of what is frankly a fairly backwater planet on the fringe of the galactic civilisation you refer to. I have to decline your offer, Prince Aarmus.”
    “Backwater?” the Prince hissed. “You mud-dwelling…”
    Trademaster Sluurg made an unpleasant noise in his throat.
    “You don’t seem to realise that you have no negotiating position here,” the Caphan warned the Earth delegates. “None whatsoever.”
    “Balderdash!” responded Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “You’re talking utter balderdash, man.”
    “What?” Prince Aarmus went pale with anger at this contradiction.
    The eccentric Englishman hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pocket and glared at the Caphans. “We’ve heard what you’ve got to say. Now listen to what I’m tellin’ you. You’ll stop your fleet now. You’ll pay off your mercenaries and send ‘em home. You can keep station here well away from Earth if you want, and when we’ve caught this Vaahir chap we’ll let you know. Then we’ll give him a decent trial and if he’s found guilty of Earth crimes we’ll punish him for ‘em. If you can bring evidence that he should be extradited to you we’ll consider it the same as we consider it between nations.”
    “And why should we do that, Earthman?” scorned Prince Aarmus.
    “Because otherwise,” threatened Sir Mumphrey Wilton, “I’ll send Lisa Waltz, Dancer, Yo, and the Sorceress to Caph. And they’ll talk to your slave-gals there and perhaps put some new ideas into their heads, eh? And you’ll find those four ladies a damn sight harder to cope with than your Vaahir ever was, I can promise you that.”
    Mr Epitome snorted agreement.
    “And then we’ll contact our good friends the Crystaxians,” Mumph went on. “They recently migrated to a new planet, and they’ve got millions of miles of unoccupied land out there, and not enough people to help them tame it.. We’ll have Al B. Harper’s EEE company set up say a dozen permanent transportation gateways between Caph and New Crystaxia, so that any serf or slave that wants to try bein’ free can go through and be given a new home.”
    “You can’t do that,” Aarmus said in a horrified tone.
    “If everybody on your world is happy with your society the way it is then there shouldn’t be any problem, should there?” Mr Epitome argued. “And if our operatives do encounter any kind of unpleasantness then we have a very strong alliance through another of our former members with the extraplanar Amazon nation. A few hundred motivated young independent warrior women who think men are the weaker sex might be something of a culture-shock for Caph XI, wouldn’t you think?”
    “Then we talk to our friends the Xnylonians,” Sir Mumphrey continued remorselessly. “Their spiritual leader Ziles is a Legionnaire, don’t you know, and she’s very good at getting into places people would prefer remained secure. We’ll ask her to borrow the financial accounts of Frammistat Eight – the real financial accounts that is, plus client lists, bribe manifests, illegal transactions and suchlike - and then we’ll donate them to our other member, Lee Bookman, to go into the public records of the Intergalactic Library Service.”
    Trademaster Sluurg made a strangled noise.
    “I’d recommend we also deploy some metahuman investigation force on the ground on Frammistat Eight,” added Mr Epitome. “Fin Fang Foom, the Dark Knight, Banjooooo, NTU-150… maybe Nitz the Bloody and Donar just to bulk out the numbers. They won’t be anything like as nice as Dancer and Yo might be. But they’ll get the job done.”
    Prince Aarmus was grey under his green tan. “You… you wouldn’t.”
    “You just threatened our Earth with conquest or oblivion, sirrah,” Sir Mumphrey told him. “So now we’re takin’ the kid gloves off.”
    “Even if the Caph fleet turned back,” Trademaster Sluurg prevaricated, “the mercenaries wouldn’t. They have scented profit, and they will pick your world clean.”
    “Revoke the bounty,” Mr Epitome ordered the Lovetoad. “Now.”
    “And remind ‘em,” Mumph added, “that the last time in invasion fleet flew towards our world – or was it the last but one, I forget? – it was stopped dead in space by one single human.” He leaned forward. “Me.”
    Prince Aarmus took a step back. This had gone far enough. He gestured for Kriige to activate the neural shutdown mechanisms.
    The neural shutdown mechanisms had been spotted by Mr Epitome’s x-ray vision and moved into the future by virtue of Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s temporal pocketwatch.
    “I could just freeze this whole fleet in time,” the eccentric Englishman warned Prince Aarmus (although technically he’d have needed to return and retrieve the other instruments of the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity to perform so large a task, and it would be in breach of the rules of his office; but he felt no need to mention that). “But then again, I could shift the whole fleet five minutes into the future. The ships, you understand, not the occupants.” He glared at the pale Caphan. “Stop your armada, sir. Huntin’ season on Earth is over,”
    Mr Epitome folded his arms over his chest and glared at slaver and emir alike. “Well, I think this has been a very productive first session,” he declared.

***


“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”
Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, 1862

***


Next time: Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu vs the Manga Shoggoth! Vaahir vs the Manga Shoggoth! Nyalurkotep vs the Manga Shoggoth. All in all, a pretty bad day for the Manga Shoggoth, in Survival Is the Ultimate Ideology.


Image by Hatman

    
    Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.





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The Hooded Hood hastily drops the next chapter to keep the wolves at bay
Tue Mar 15, 2005 at 08:07:24 pm EST
Subject
#205: Even More Still Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Twelve – Survival Is the Ultimate Idealogy

#205: Even More Still Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Twelve – Survival Is the Ultimate Idealogy

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    In the depths of the Pacific ocean Great R’Martu stirred, its alien mind starting to shake off the supposedly-eternal sleep that had been imposed upon it when reality was changed to exclude the Fairly Great Old Ones. Beneath Paradopolis the city-sized Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, the Groper out of Grossness, reacted by reflex and reached out the smallest of his appendages to crush intruders from the parasites nesting on the planet’s surface. Beyond the rim of the solar system, Yog-Frogoth twitched uneasily on the brink of wakefulness and prepared to send out his clarion alarm call to the elder brethren. And far in space, blind Azafroth writhed like a planet of worms as it spun on its insane axis in dimensions it created on a whim, and prepared to once again rule the Parodyverse.
    The very words on the pages of the Necronasticon danced now, writhing around each other like mating insects, caressing the hand of the man in black (who was not a man) as he traced his palm across the ancient tome. With each syllable he intoned the moment of return drew nearer. All that was needed now was innocent blood.

***


    “Aia! Aia!” screamed the High Priest of Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, dancing wildly as his master’s tentacles shattered the walls of the old house where the Cult of the Groper had met a mere day since with the messenger of the Fairly Great Old Ones, dread Nyolurkhotep. This trap was of the dark one’s making, set to destroy any would-be heroes who tried to retrieve the stolen Necronastycon.
    “Can someone please shut him up?” Con Johnstantine begged over the shrieking of the utterly insane High Priest. “He’s really getting on my tits.”
    Just then Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu’s tentacles wrapped around the noisy High Priest and shredded him to offal before sucking him through gibbering orifices to fuel the elder being’s awakening.
    “Thank you,” Johnstantine told the Fairly Great Old One.
    “So much for the High Priest retirement plan,” noted Ebony of Nubilia, a rather different kind of High Priestess for the Manga Shoggoth. She had pulled a stick of chalk and was hurriedly trying to reinforce the protective circle around herself and the two companions she’d brought to the old Griffon House.
    “How can you joke?” Liu Xi Xian demanded, clutching her forehead and trying to blank out the sensations she was getting off the flailing tentacles. “How can you joke with that thing there! Can’t you feel what it’s doing to reality around it?”
    “Don’t panic, darlin’,” Con Johnstantine advised her. “If the buggers are trying to kill us this much we’ve got to be doing something right.”
    “I’m not panicking,” the young elementalist answered. “The ceiling’s not fallen in and crushed us yet, has it?” She found that holding the weight of the house from collapsing the shattered cellar was no real strain; but the screaming elder being that folded in all the dimensions she could perceive around her was another matter.
    Ebony watched the last of the unprotected cultists get torn apart by the Groper’s tentacles. It was very possible that Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu never even realised he had worshippers. This was more by the nature of a sleeper slamming his hand down on the alarm clock. “It’s gone far enough,” the woman judged. “Time to call in the big gun before that thing works out it can manifest right through the chalk of the circle itself and have us for desert.”
    “It’ll eat us?” Liu Xi flinched. Those tentacles were getting awfully near, groping blindly for the life they sensed. The girl felt the pathways of escape being blocked as quickly as she perceived them.
    “You hope it’ll eat you,” Johnstantine warned her, “And that it’s not woken up horny.”
    “Shoggoth,” Ebony told the amulet she wore at her neck, “now would be an excellent time to guest star. Shoggoth? Hello?”
    But no Shoggoth came.

***


    “Aaaahh!” contributed Nats to the general melee where the Lair Legion were surrounded by bits of waking Great K-Martu. Already the elder being’s sunken mall was flickering back to life as it rose up from the stygian depths of the Challenger Deep. Special offers were beginning to impinge on the fragile minds of the humans trapped in the many-angled city.
    “What he said,” agreed De Brown Streak. “So what do the Legion usually do when they’re up against a waking elder god and are about to be driven insane by his multi-dimensional presence?”
    “Take readings?” suggested Al B. Harper, frantically stabbing away at the buttons on his scanalyser.
    “We get out of here,” Hatman noted.
    “But not back to the sub,” Dancer added quickly. “We came here to get Kerry, and she’s supposed to be just over there in that big temple building.”
    “That’d be the one with all the tentacles coming out of it, yeah?” Trickshot checked. “Of course it’s the one with all the tentacles coming out of it.”
    “In the mall of D’Leyh Great K-Martu lies dreaming,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! quoted. “Boy, I wish I hadn’t loaned Chupa to Sir Mumphrey. He’d just have loved to see this.”
    “Be listening to Yo now!” commanded the field leader of the Operations Team. “Is to be important. Is to be everyone listening to Yo and to be being of happiness, so as to be nobody is going insaning, okay? Yo is not to be letting of cute friends to be driven mad by uncute loathsome elder nastying.” The pure thought being was quivering with the conceptual effort of shielding his/her friends from the rising K’Martu.
    “Yo’s got our backs,” Hatman realised. “We have a very small window to get Kerry out of there while s/he can shield us from the effects of this place. So Nats, CSFB, you’re on keeping-away-the-tentacles duty. DBS, you’re accelerating us so we can make a run for the temple. Tricky, you’re making us another way in, because I don’t like the doorman. Dancer, you’re making it possible for us to find Kerry despite the massively alien geography. Al, you’re marking our trail back. Shoggoth…”
    “He’s not here,” Nats realised. “He was here a moment ago.”
    “He was to be being terrified by waking of old master of him,” Yo recognised.
    “We carry on and hope he joins us later,” Hatman decided. “We have a plan so let’s…”
    Then the mile high doors of the black temple burst open, and Great R’Martu slithered out to inspect his reviving mall.
    “…fight the impossibly big tentacle-headed elder creature,” Hatman sighed.

***


    Vaahir plunged forward against the nauseating tide within the unpleasant red umbilical his mentor Petar Tyolanh had spawned to take the young Caphan to the conceptual sanctuary of Lemuria. It was a mental as well as a physical effort to breach that guarded shore.
    After an uncountable amount of perceptional time Vaahir tumbled out onto the golden sands of the Sanctuary.
    This, the Manga Shoggoth told him, was a singularly bad idea.
    The Caphan hero looked up at the angry gelid house-sized blob that towered above him. “I have come to rescue Kaara and her slave-sisters,” he swallowed, dragging himself to his feet and raising his sword. “I claim the rite of balek gorn.”
    Here that translates roughly as ‘suicide attempt, the Shoggoth warned him. But he was puzzled why the mere sight of his unshielded form wasn’t driving the mortal insane. This must be a particularly strong-willed human, and one that has been specially trained.
    “All the same, I’m here to save them from your vile clutches, monster,” Vaahir insisted, taking a defensive stance.
    I really don’t have time for this, the Shoggoth sighed. I have other places to be. Don’t you know what’s happening out in your mundane reality? The Fairly Great Old Ones are stirring. Some idiot’s reading the Book of Rude Names, and that always acts like the metaphysical equivalent of ripping the bedclothes off.
    To further illustrate his point, the appendages he’d burrowed into the sand beneath Vaahir suddenly burst up and enveloped the young Caphan.
    And the elder signs on the mortal’s body activated. The Shoggoth screamed as the geometrical formulae played havoc with his interior structures, disorienting him for a moment, rendering him blind, deaf, dumb.
    Vaahir took his opportunity and lunged forward with the blade Petar had prepared. The Caphan plag gar duelling weapon sliced into the elder being’s cellular structure and spawned a fast-acting cancer that ate into the Shoggoth with all the malice Nyolurkhotep could conceive; and since Nyolurkotep had been there when the Fairly Great Old Ones had first twisted the Shoggoths together he knew exactly how to rip them apart again.
    The Shoggoth acted on blind instinct, drawing parts of his essence from elsewhere, using them to reinforce his disintegrating biomass. Vaahir slashed again and again, each time shedding another curse into his stricken enemy. “How…?” bubbled the disintegrating Shoggoth in disbelief.
    Then he recognised the flavour of the malice that was destroying him. “Nyolurkhotep!”
    The final slash rended open a clear portal between the many-angled mall and the Lemurian sanctuary. The triumphant man in black was able to reach right through and drag the Shoggoth to him, to grasp in his palm. “You called, little creature?” the herald of the elder gods asked.
    With infinite care and millennial skill, Nyolurkhotep dragged every single strand of linked Shoggoth biomass from anywhere and anywhen into the quivering lump between his hands. The other personas of S’Ron and C’thandra were folded in; even the tiny droplet in Ebony’s jewelled necklace. And when the man in black was certain he had every single drop of Shoggoth essence he looked down at the runaway slave and laughed.
    “Die,” he told the Shoggoth.
    And the Shoggoth had to obey.

***


    The skies of Lemuria went dark. There was a bubbling in the bay, then the sunken city of D’Leyh rose up in its primal loathsome glory. The blue skies turned blood purple and the Sanctuary was lashed with tempest.
    And Great K’Martu was hungry.

***


    Nyalurkhotep brushed the grains of dead Shoggoth from his hands and turned back to the stricken Kerry Shepherdson. “Now I believe it’s time to do terrible, wicked, obscene things to you,” he promised his captive.    
    Kerry shouted terrible, wicked, obscene things back at him. But she was bound fast, her powers neutralised; and the man in black had a curved dagger that hummed in anticipation of the feast.
    “This is my favourite part,” Nyalurkhotep confided as he leaned over her.
    Then there was a cracking noise like a bullwhip and Lisa Waltz and Visionary tumbled through to the temple’s inner sanctum. And a querulous voice was saying, “…can’t believe you stole that dimension-slashing whip off Maladomini, Lisa!”
    “I think of it as the spoils of war,” the amorous advocatrix answered smugly. “It’s not like that bitch was going to need it any more, was it? And it did just get us away from the vegetarian’s revenge to wherever Vaahir and his creepy pal dimension-jumped before, right?” She spotted Nyalurkhotep crouching over Kerry. “In fact there’s Creepy now.”
    The man in black smiled, gestured, and sent Lisa spinning to the floor unconscious. “Oh,” he beamed ecstatically, “this just gets better and better.”
    And Visionary stepped forward to battle the ancient herald of the Fairly Great Old Ones alone.

***


Next time: Terror comes to the Lemurian sanctuary, the Lair Legion face terror personified, Ebony’s situation becomes more terrifying, and Vizh does something terrible; all in There Is a Difference Between Knowing the Path and Walking the Path.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.





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The Hooded Hood outlines a few anticipated encounters
Wed Mar 16, 2005 at 11:01:39 pm EST
Subject
#205: Even More Still Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Thirteen – There Is a Difference Between Knowing the Path and Walking the Path

#205: Even More Still Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Thirteen – There Is a Difference Between Knowing the Path and Walking the Path

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    “Can anybody make sense of this satellite telemetry?” demanded Hallie, frustrated again at the limitations of a human body rather than her previous computer intelligence form. She glared at the scrolling screen of the Lair Mansion Operations Room and said a bad word.
    “You’re still the expert,” Asil Ashling pointed out, although she did manage to refine the imagery to give some indication of the reality distortion spreading out from the Pacific basin. “We’re still getting an intermittent tracking signal from the LairSub in the middle of that, and there’s still occasional bleeps from that tracker we tagged to Vizh’s coat, also from that area.”
    Flapjack handed over the new and worrying seismic readings to Amber St Clare with a sigh. “This isn’t what I do,” he complained. “At the most I’m supposed to strap on the electrodes and cackle while the master pulls the big lever. We really have to get more interns.” He paused for a moment then drooled. “Cute female ones would be best,” he advised. “I’ll do the interviews if you like.”
    “We’re not ready for more support staff after… last time,” Amber replied tersely. “We just need to make sense of what’s happening down in the Pacific. It’s as if there’s a whole continent appearing that wasn’t there before, and the ocean floor is rising to the surface.”
    Which was pretty much right.

***


    “Is that Lemuria?” asked De Brown Streak as the sunken city of D’Leyh bubbled to the surface of the storm-lashed ocean. Less than five miles off, the great bay crescent that was the tip of the Shoggoth’s Sanctuary was weathering fifteen foot waves and gale force winds. “I thought that was supposed to be hidden?”
    “It’s not a good sign,” Nats suggested. “And the lack of Shoggoth defending it isn’t good news either.”
    “Reality’s collapsing,” Al B. Harper warned his team-mates. “Let’s face it, it was never that stable to begin with.”
    “Plus there’s, y’know, the big waking elder god,” Trickshot suggested, gesturing at the slimy horror emerging from the temple at D’Leyh’s centre. “And the end of the world.”
    “I know how to deal with this,” CSFB! assured them. “I’ve watched Legend of the Overfiend, after all.”
    Hatman didn’t comment. He just pulled on his Giants cap and hauled off with a left hook into the central wad of Great R’martu’s tentacles. Yo followed up with a rapier swipe and a swift scolding.
    “Don’t worry, Dancy,” Trickshot assured her as he went in against a sanity-mangling blasphemous ender god with a custard arrow, “We’ll just polish off this walking sushi then we’ll get to rescuin’ your friend’s little sister, okay?”
    Sarah Shepherdson cartwheeled forwards, somersaulted over the tentacles that flailed for her, and planted her foot in a vulnerable-looking nerve node. “I’m already helping her,” she answered fiercely. “You think my powers have any geographical limit when I’m really cross? Any at all?”

***


    “Something’s wrong,” Ebony of Nubilia shook. “Something terrible!”
    “No, really?” Con Johnstantine asked as the tentacles of the waking Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu pressed in on the frail chalk circle defence around them. “Because I was just thinking how well things were going.”
    “I can’t sense the Shoggoth!” Ebony confessed. “I think… I think he’s dead.”
    “Dead?”Liu Xi paled. “What could kill a Shoggoth?”
    “Nyalurkhotep,” suggested Con. “Without breaking a sweat. And that leaves us in a bit of a tricky situation, to be honest.”
    “The Shoggoth is gone?” Liu Xi repeated. “Murdered?”
    “I… I don’t know,” gasped Ebony. “I don’t know!”
    Liu Xi felt the anger rise up in her like a burning tide. “Point it that way,” Johnstantine advised her, swivelling her towards the writhing mass of feelers probing their protection circle. That was just the barest fragment of the Groper Out of Grossness, which extended through time and space and even in mundane physical terms was twenty miles in diameter, sprawled out through ancient tunnels beneath Paradopolis.
    Liu Xi didn’t care. She squeezed her fury into one dazzling burst and hurled it at the creature. “Burn!” she told it.
    The creature wasn’t of mundane matter, but the nearest tendrils were converted to plasma fire. The whole elder being convulsed as its nervous system was seared.
    Liu Xi crumpled into Johnstantine’s arms. “Did I do it?” she asked through a throat that felt thick and dry. “Did I kill it?”
    The tentacles reformed, thicker than before; and now new stalks bore eyes that searched out the cause of the former pain.
    “I’d say you royally pissed it,” Johnstantine judged. “Does that count?”

***


    “As you can clearly see,” Squibb told the members of the Juniors Lair Legion training programme, “the Lovetoads have called off the bounty on this Caphan mammal. There’s no reason for me to be here any more, so I’ll just be off.”
    “Surely,” agreed Harlagaz pleasantly. “If thou wantest to leave thine limbs behind in mine grasp.”
    The galactic bounty hunter’s ageing planethopper jinked as Hacker Nine got the hang of the control surfaces, but mostly he mastered the alien systems as if they were one more computer game. “I’ve got the readings,” he reported to his companions. “This whole place might smell like a reptile house that got turned into a kebab shop and these systems seem to have had curry poured over them, but they’re better able to detect alien tech than anything we’ve got.”
    “You can find Kerry?” Ham-Boy checked urgently, “Or at least that energy dampener they put on her?”
    “We must move quickly and rescue her,” Glory the wonder dog yipped. “Although we have full faith in our teacher Visionary to recover her safely,” the mutt of might added quickly.
    “Didn’t anybody ever teach you Earth children that stealing is wrong,” Squibb complained. “I still have six hundred and forty payments left on this little beauty.”
    “You’re paying them?” H9 asked in surprise. “For this? Seriously?”
    Fashion Accessory smiled her best Californian smile at the bounty hunter. “We could let you go if you want,” she offered. “That way we don’t have to cut you in.”
    Squibb stopped in mid complain. “Cut me in?” Some words were hardwired into his cerebral cortex.
    “You know, on the loot,” FA added casually. “We were thinking maybe 5%.”
    “There’s loot?” Squibb checked. “What loot? And it’s my ship, so we’re talking 50%.”
    “Everyone knows there’s boundless mineral wealth inside an elder god,” Samantha Bonnington lied like one born to it. “Why do you think we’re stopping off at Perth to pick up what we need? We might let you have 10%. If you co-operate.”
    “Boundless wealth?” repeated Squibb “How boundless? And I couldn’t accept less than 40%.”
    “Well, elder monsters are pretty big,” FA pointed out. “I’d have to say pretty boundless. 20% is my best offer.”
    “Thirty,” bargained the bounty hunter. “Nothing less.”
    “Done,” agreed the blonde girl, rather literally. “H9, get us to Australia. We have a transnuclear weapon to find.”
    “And hurry,” Ham-Boy added. “Poor Kerry’s in deep trouble, and all alone.”

***


    “Are you okay?” Visionary called to Kerry Shepherdson as he confronted Nyalurkotep, the immortal herald of the Fairly Great Old Ones.
    “I’m missing my MTV,” the probability arsonist called back. “Oh, and this guy is actually some kind of maggot-faced monster trying to wake up a bunch of even creepier monsters with even more special effects. I guess he never got dates in high school.”
    “Visionary,” scorned Nyalurkotep. “I’ve seen into what you call a mind. How do you expect to prevent me from slaughtering this child as a technical virgin sacrifice to awaken my lords and masters?”
    “Technical?” Visionary frowned.
    “Tell everybody, why don’t you?” Kerry complained.
    “Perhaps I should just possess your body and have you abase and dissect her?” mused the man in black, glaring at Kerry’s would-be rescuer with cold alien eyes. “Yes, that would be amusing.”
    Visionary flushed angrily and lurched forward to grab the herald. Nyalurkhotep casually lifted the possibly-fake man with one hand and sent him crashing to the floor. “I only kept you awake so you could see what I did to the child,” he muttered.
    Visionary crawled back, scrambling painfully to his feet. He casually pushed his hand into his pocket; not the pocket that had formerly been filled with Shoggoth, the one with his other contingency in. And as he staggered upright he slid the contingency quietly across the slick chitinous floor to Kerry.
    That’s how worried he was.
    “You think just because you’re an all-powerful supernatural nasty and I’m Visionary I’m not going to stop you from hurting Kerry?”
    “I think the time has come for you to pick up the knife and begin to carve.”
    Visionary felt a cold, ancient mind press down on his own, stifling and cruel. His hand jerked out for the ceremonial dagger, then jerked back. “No,” he spat, his whole body trembling.
    “Willpower?” Nyalurkhotep chuckled. “Who would have thought it?” And he redoubled his will, hammering down to crush the spirit that resisted him.
    Kerry looked down at the little plastic object that had skittered across the floor to where she lay in chains. It was a cheap disposable cigarette lighter. Her face blossomed into a wicked, delighted grin.
    “You’re doing well,” Nyalurkotep congratulated Visionary as he walked the possibly-fake man like a jerky puppet to where the knife lay. “I’d expected to exploit all those suppressed nasty little urges you had for the virgin, but you appear to be filled with soft weak sentiment instead. That will be far more fun to corrupt.”
    Kerry flicked the lighter. There was only one really flammable thing nearby, but it was also the thing guaranteed to get the villain’s attention.
    The Necronastycon, the Book of Rude Names, called to her mind to read its dark mysteries. Against the other option in the girl’s head of setting fire to its crisp ancient pages it really had no chance.
    “Hey,” asked Kerry, “can you guys smell something burning?”
    “What?” yelped Nyalurkotep, releasing Visionary in his distraction. “The book!”
    It was too late. This incarnation of the Book of Rude Names was destroyed. It flared in livid brightness for a moment, then passed from reality to reform in some other place at some future time.
    “Oops,” said the probability arsonist insincerely. “Still, at least it wasn’t a new book.”
    Nyalurkhotep turned angrily to Visionary, who was staggering over to the shackled Kerry. “I don’t need the book anymore,” he spat. “Just her blood.”
    “Kerry’s not allowed to be sacrificed on a schoolnight,” Lisa told the villain. Then a dimensional lash caught him across the face, and before he could recover from his shock the first lady of the Lair Legion had rent dimensions and dragged Vizh and Kerry through the gash onto Lemuria itself.
    And that was when the man in black got angry.

***


    The Lemurian Sanctuary was in turmoil. Already Blair Atoll and Kathryn had dragged most of the refugees up to the high ground around the forum, but there were still stragglers trying to salvage their huts from the rising seas or trapped by the turbulent winds.
    Then the shambling octopoids lurched out of the sea, half-human half-cephalod, the woken children of Great K-Martu, hungry for flesh.
    “Get those children to safety!” Miiri called to Deela, Sayaana, and Philaana as the triplets tried to gather frightened Japanese refugees and pull them away from the incoming menaces. “Luuma, Noona, help that old man. Losiira, Odoona, run ahead and warn Blair there’s monsters coming and to prepare defences.”
    “What defences?” Odoona asked in a panicked voice.
    “Whatever he’s got,” Losiira told her. “This is our House now and we help defend it.”
    “What about you, Miiri?” shrieked Noona over the howling wind.
    The girl unsheathed her needle-like houri daggers from their places on her ornamental wristlets. “Somebody has to distract these horrors. Now go.”
    “But…”
    “Go!”
    Miiri watched her slave-sisters retreat with the helpless up off the beach, and moved down to tackle the first of the octopoids. It had thick pulpy flesh and she didn’t know the right vital spots to stab. She had no illusions how long she was going to last.
    A glowing plag gar blade sliced through the creature from behind, then was reversed to dispatch the two that followed.
    “What?” Miiri blinked, sprawled in the shallows and realising she was still alive.
    “It is alright,” the handsome Caphan standing over her assured her. “You are safe. I have slain the Shoggoth and I will destroy his spawn. I have come to rescue you. I am Vaahir.”
    Miiri looked up at the tenth Caphan. “You’re an idiot,” she told him.

***


Next Time: Liu Xi vs Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, the Juniors vs K-Martu, the LL vs Nyalurkotep, and Miiri vs Vaahir. That’s in our concluding chapter, This Time John Wayne Does Not Walk Off Into the Sunset With Grace Kelly.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.




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