Previous Post Saving the Future – Part 11: An Age Undreamed Of Previously: The Lair Legion, their Mansion, the island it stood upon, and the SPUD helicarrier have all vanished in a bright flash of light. Our heroes have awoken scattered across strange savage lands filled with monsters and mystery. Liu Xi Xian has found herself in the presence of a mysterious old mandarin who claims to be her ultimate grandfather. Previous Chapters are listed below. ***     Know, o Prince, that between the years when the fires consumed Orichalchus and the gleaming cities and the years of the rise of the doom of nihility there was an age undreamed of, when broken landscapes lay spread across the world like discarded toys beneath the red sun – Shongar, Truvelo, Aspinar, Golgamoria, Umarr with its ancient reptiles and ruins of far antiquity, swamp-curséd Zothar with its mud-dwellers, Xanotu, that led down into the mines of Nashtir, Ur-Vakir with its squid-headed brain eaters, Lost Tavan whose pirates rode lizards that flew; but the most terrible kingdom of the worlds was Abadonn, where the ancient dead ruled supreme.     Hither came the Lair Legion, displaced, lost, far from home; heroes, scholars, champions, with gigantic burdens and gigantic joys, to tread the jewelled thrones of the earths under their booted feet. ***     Dawn came up swiftly, turning the orange skies to blue and waking the jungle to life. Birds squawked and monkeys chattered in the high forest canopy. Game came down to the river to drink. And the village of the mud people awoke and began the work of carving up the mighty lizard that their champions had brought back the night before. Meat was plentiful and there would be a feast.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good morning,” Hatman called, striding out of the grass-and-clay hut he’d been given last night. He waved a hand over at Sally Rezyliant who was making her way back from the bathing pool reaffixing her leather bikini.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Heya,” she called back. “Sleep well?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Better than I expected,” Jay admitted. “I wasn’t murdered in my sleep, for example.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like you didn’t take precautions,” snorted Silicone Sally.     Hatman had. “Still, I appreciate you not trying to murder me,” he told the fugitive supervillainess. “We’re in this together right now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You don’t trust me,” Sally recognised, “but I know I can trust you.”     Jay remembered that Silicone Sally’s pliable plastic form had allowed her to disguise herself as Citizen Z’s uniform and stay with the disguised Baroness von Zemo for many months inside the Lair Mansion. “You know me,” Jay had to confess.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I do. I’ve had hours of pleasure watching those tight buns. But not just your buns. That’s why I knew it was no good sneaking up on you while you slept.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I’d be prepared for a surprise assault.”     Sally snorted. “Not the kind of assault I do when I sneak into a guy’s bedroom,” she winked. “But I know you’re not that kind of man, Jay. Besides, you’re still jonesing after Zdenka Zarazoza.”     Hatman realised she really had been paying attention during her sojourn at the Mansion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you change your mind I wouldn’t mind a bit of bedroom sneaking,” Sally assured him, “but I somehow think you won’t.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, thanks for your… offer,” Jay told her, “but you’re right.”     Sally laughed out loud. “You puzzle me, you guys,” she admitted. “How can you heroes control yourself so much? Those strict moral codes, doing what’s right all the time…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You did see CrazySugarFreakBoy! while you were in the Lair Mansion, right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, he’s got one of the strictest codes of all,” Sally argued. “It’s just different than most people’s. But could you see Dream beating up a woman, or cheating a friend, or turning his back on somebody who was hurting, or running away from a bad guy just because he’s going to get killed?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never,” agreed Hatman, smiling despite himself.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” declared Sally. “I know all of you now. I’m even a little bit in awe. I never expected that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In awe? Of us? You’ve seen us at breakfast?”     Sally shuddered. “You really shouldn’t allow the Shoggoth at the breakfast table,” she admitted. “Doing that to fruit loops is just wrong.”     Hatman looked at the blonde-haired young woman. “You spent all that time with us, pretending to be a hero’s costume. Watching us. Assessing us. Didn’t it have any effect on you?”     Sally looked a little uncomfortable. “If it did I’m sure it’s nothing that a bottle of sangria and six hunky guys can’t help me work out. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m done with Beth von Zemo. When you’ve been that close to somebody, literally been their skin, you kind of… well you know them pretty well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a start,” Hatman accepted. “And you’ve been protecting these people in this tribe since you got here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wherever here is. It’s just mutual preservation. Convenience. It’s not like I was trying to help them.”     Hatman felt that Sally was protesting just a little too much.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not really a morning person,” Silicone Sally admitted, catching his glance. “Or a jungle person. Have you figured out how we can get out of here?”     It had been dark when they had returned to the camp where Sally had found refuge all those weeks ago after finding herself in this strange land. Hatman had only been trapped here one night and he was already worrying about home. “I’m running through my diagnostic hats,” he promised. “It takes a little while for me to reset between each one when they change my mindset so radically. I should be done by noon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And then we go back to Earth?” Sally asked anxiously. It was evident from the big dull-red sun rising in the East – presumably in the East – that they were far from the world of their birth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll try,” Jay assured her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And then I’m under arrest?”     Hatman nodded. “Like I told you yesterday, you’re wanted for questioning about the Baroness’ take-over of Earth during the Parody War. And for quite a few other things.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I did fight the Parody Master as well,” Silicone Sally objected. “I was right there with you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But it’s not like you were trying to help,” Jay reminded her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I… got caught up in the moment. I do that sometimes.”     Suddenly Hatman spotted a plume of coloured smoke rising far to the south. “Purple vapour?” he puzzled. “That’s not just somebody’s campfire.”     Sally peered in the direction he was pointing. “Since I’ve been here I’ve seen dinosaurs and pterodactyl-riders and iguana people but I’ve never seen purple smoke,” she admitted. “Are we going to look at it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am. Do you want to come?”     Sally hopped into his arms and wrapped her arms round his neck. “What?” she asked the surprised Jay Boaz, “You’d rather I morphed to be your costume? Remember Zdenka.”     Hatman manoeuvred on his jets cap, noting that his hatility belt’s dimensional space seemed sluggish in this strange new world. With Sally clinging to him he shot off into the air towards the purple plume. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, purple smoke!” grinned Dancer. “Purple smoke is probably interesting.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Does it indicate the presence of a five star spa and luxury monorail system to get me home?” complained Amber St Clare, sitting on a rock and picking bits of gravel from the soles of her bare feet.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can but hope,” Dancer told her cheerfully. “Come on. It can’t be more than forty miles.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Forty miles,” Amber repeated. “I hate you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh you’re only saying that because you’re a bit out of condition. This kind of jungle survival exercise is excellent toning for the legs and buttocks, and a great cardiovasc workout. By the end of the third day of our trek you’ll be loving it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold it there while I find a large enough rock to pound in your skull.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re only saying that because the exercise is doing you good. All the people I help with exercise threaten me sooner or later.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And yet you keep on inflicting it on people.”     Dancer grinned. “Come on. We need to find our way to that place where the smoke is. And maybe a sushi bar. This way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dancer, I’m trying, but I’m not a superhero. My feet hurt, my back hurts, my legs hurt…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not a superhero either any more, Amber. We’re just two girls hiking in the woods.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Isn’t that when the slasher starts stalking us? Or the killer dinosaur?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well if it is, there’s another incentive for you to get fit enough to run faster than me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A big rock. I need a really big one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or,” sighed Dancer, “we could just wave at those guys flying overhead on those big winged lizards and hitch a lift?”     Amber looked up into the dazzling azure sky. Three huge reptiles glided overhead, and on their backs sat three men.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello!” called Dancer, jumping up and down in the clearing and waving her arms. “Hey! Down here! Hello!” She stick her thumb up in the air and jiggled it about.     The sky raiders spotted the two nubile women down in the forest below and prepared the slave-nets. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Speak up then,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton demanded. “Who are you, how did you get here? Name rank and number!”     Chadwick L. Swiss waved companionably at the eccentric Englishman who’d just discovered him but didn’t speak.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Another foreign johnnie, eh? Me Sir Mumphrey. Me look long time for granddaughter. About yea big, school uniform. Can’t miss her.”     Chad shook his head.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps those brain suckers already got to you,” Mumph frowned, referring to the tentacle-headed beasts he’d just taken down a few minutes before. “You poor chap, left a mindless wandering imbecile.”     Chad gave a gesture to indicate that he’d quite like to find his friend Ronnie, his missing accordion, and then get home to feed the hamster Little Cat.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Try not to have an epileptic spasm, old thing,” Sir Mumphrey advised him. “Best you just tag along with me till we can get you to a sanatorium.” He looked around and saw a distant plume of purple smoke. “Hmm. Either a signal or some fashion-conscious redskins,” he noted. “Samantha could see that signal as well and head towards it. Right, come on, young idiot-me-lad. Let’s see about getting back to civilisation and retrieving my grand-daughter.”     And my accordion, signed Chad. ***     Lee Bookman saw the smoke in the distance but he wasn’t interested. The Librarian had the gift of sensing large collections of books, and his library-sense told him that the Lair Mansion’s own archive was in a different direction completely. He travelled along a forest track, pausing only to examine some ancient dolmens that were strewn around a clearing where nothing grew.     The stones were half as high again as a man, and while most were now scattered, three of them were stacked in the familiar Stonehenge pi-shape. They were almost entirely overgrown with thick green moss, but when the Librarian scraped a bare patch he was surprised to see the stone beneath was laced with a tiny filigree pattern of parallel lines of a different colour. It was almost like…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Circuitry,” Lee Bookman thought out loud. “Silicone circuits, but grown not constructed. Most interesting.”     He checked several of the fallen stones and found them similarly striated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But what did you do?” he wondered. He touched the trilithon with his fingertips, calling on his Librarian’s gift to absorb data. Sure enough, this stone had once been a part of a circuit, had once carried information. But it was very badly degraded.     Lee sighed. Whatever data the trilithon had once held, whatever programming it had received, was long gone.     He continued his hike. His legs were aching by the time the gorgonopsid decided to make him a late lunch. The hulking bull-sized reptile quadruped burst out of the forest and made straight for the Librarian. Bookman downed it by transmitting the entire text of Much Ado About Nothing into its tiny mind. Unable to cope with the cutting banter of Beatrice and Benedick the monster keeled over and slid to a halt in the undergrowth.     Lee paused only long enough to classify the creature as a Permian-era theraspid then pushed on. He needed to find books to find out what was happening. ***     Thungore the Mighty hacked his way through the overgrown brambles and peered out at the haunted manse of the Evil Enchantress. “It’s big,” he admitted. “But not as big as the fortress of Sath Harakin, and I burned that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d really prefer you not to burn it,” Marie Murcheson told him. It was, after all, her home. She knew it as the Lair Mansion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not till it’s looted, no,” agreed Glumkeep, companion of heroes. Well, companion of heroes who had treasure, anyway.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You shall come to no harm, maiden,” Thungore assured the former Lair Banshee. “Still your quivering breast.”     Marie blushed and regretted again the lack of proper Victorian corsetry. These modern contraptions might be comfortable and not provoke fainting fits but they also lacked the necessary support a young woman might wish to have in the presence of an amorous muscle-thewed barbarian. “I mean that I don’t want you to get hurt,” she explained. “And if you try to burn the mansion I’m rather sure that you will be.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fear not. This is a standard seduce-the-enchantress-then-plunder-her-booty scenario,” Thungore assured the maiden. “But don’t worry. There’ll be time for you too.”     Then the Evil Enchantress turned the stunulators on them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yipe!” cried Glumkeep as he dived for cover.     Thungore turned the first of the blasts away with his magic sword and raced forward, dodging the beams and heading for the front door. Marie scurried after him. The taser bolts bent aside to avoid her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait!” she called. “Don’t break the door down! It’s…”     There was a thunk as Thungore bounced away from the great entrance doors whimpering.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…made of adamantine,” Marie concluded.     The green-hued enchantress flickered into being in front of the Mansion. “I’ll only say this once “ she said irritably. “Go away and don’t come back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Gaaaaaaahhh!” screamed Thungore, swinging his broadsword to decapitate the villainess. His blade passed straight through her immaterial neck without harm. “What manner of witchery is this?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She has no shadow!” cried Glumkeep. “She is but an illusion.”     Hallie looked down. “Oh, sorry. That was careless of me. I’m not myself at the moment. Maybe 60% me.” She quickly created a hologram shadow.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie, it’s me!” cried Marie, running forward. “Hallie!”     The Lair Mansion’s resident artificial intelligence turned to look curiously at the girl in white. Another part of her mind was correlating the zero success probabilities of a top-rank stunulator targeting program missing this girl three hundred times.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How do you know I’m called HALLIE?” demanded the hologram.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How?” Marie puzzled. “Because I know you. We are friends. You taught me how to use the dryer of hair and the opener of tins.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think you’ve got me mistaken with some other computer sentience,” Hallie assured her. “Just tell me where Jarvis and the others are and I’ll let you go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Die, witch!” cried Thungore, who was not one to give up on an idea easily. He slashed again at the projected image.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you sort of blur your eyes those clothes she’s wearing kind of fuzz out,” Glumkeep offered helpfully.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie, I don’t know what you mean,” Marie told the A.I. “Jarvis is dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, right,” snorted Hallie. “And so are Enty and Finny and DK and spiffy and Lisa and Starseed and Donar and Yo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh no,” Marie assured her. “Enty and Finny and DK all went off into the Happy Ending to be reborn. Donar’s regent of Ausgard. spiffy’s ruling Badripoor. Lisa’s the new Destroyer of Tales. Starseed ascended to be, um, something very ascended. Nobody knows where Yo is but he/she’s sure to be back one day.” Marie brightened. “Visionary’s still around, though. I think he might wish to court you, Marie. That is what Flapjack confided to Amber, only he did not use the word ‘court’.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you talking about?” demanded Hallie. “Vizh isn’t courting me. Cheryl would kill him. Besides, I’m just a computer program. He’s quite possibly real.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Have you had a blow to the head, perhaps?” Marie worried.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She will if she’d just… become… solid…” shouted a read-in-the-face Thungore, still swinging.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have a few circuit board problems,” admitted Hallie, “but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie, as far as I know this is the year of our lord two thousand and eight,” Marie told her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Two thousand and…” Hallie had no way of verifying the information, of knowing if seven years of her life were missing from her data banks. The stars in the skies above the Mansion matched no known configuration. There were far fewer of them anyhow. Hallie’s range of perception extended only a hundred yards or so beyond the perimeter of the land that had been Parody Island.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, you know the evil enchantress!” Glumkeep realised. “You could be in league with her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The maiden can not betray me yet!” objected Thungore. “I haven’t even slept with her so far!”     Hallie got irritated by the blade constantly slicing through her head and dropped the barbarian and his companion with two pinpoint-accurate neural pulses.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why should I trust you?” she asked Marie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, because the Lair Mansion defences will never harm me, however much you instruct them to,” the girl answered. “But also because… Hallie, I am your friend. And you need a friend.” She smiled at the worried-looking hologram. “Please?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There it is!” Griffin pointed as he lead Natalia Romanza out of the jungle down to the beach of a vast lake. “The helicarrier!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well done,” the SPUD superspy responded. If she’d had any doubts about the kid’s abilities they were gone now. “How did you manage to locate that?”     The boy shrugged. “Us Griffins are good at finding things. Now if only I could find Maggie and my dad and mom then we could sort this whole mess out.”     Natalia scanned the fallen vessel with field glasses she’d captured from the Nazi velociraptors earlier. “It looks rusty,” she frowned. “How long has it been here?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve only been in this place for about a day,” Griffin objected.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But I’d been here a week before I met you,” Natalia responded. “And I found the remains of a spud agent that were at least three weeks old, so I’m guessing we didn’t all get here at the same time.”     Griffin looked at the huge rotting hulk. “Do you want me to go invisible and intangible and check it out?” he asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” the spy answered. “The carrier usually has defences against people doing things like that. If any of the systems are still active… well, I don’t want to explain to your father how I got you vaporised burgling UN property. We’ll go in together.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are we looking for? Information about what happened to us? Sensor logs to show where everybody else is?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All of that, yeah,” agreed Natalia. “And also to see if any other agents made it back here.” She smiled. “But mostly I was looking for a working shower and then I want to borrow a flying car. Preferably the Maserati.” ***     Ronnie Beesleyhuxtoy froze as he felt the gun barrel press into the back of his neck and heard a power pack charging up to discharge. “Hold it, trespasser,” said a rough male voice. “You’re breaking in to government property.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t see any signs,” Ronnie answered, raising his hand slowly and waggling his finger. “Only a big rusty flying ship half buried in the sand. So I thought I’d look in here for my friend Chad. Have you seen him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re sayin’ there’s more than one intruder on my helicarrier?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t know. Can you hear an accordion?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Name,” Dan Drury, head of SPUD demanded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We haven’t really given it a name. We just call it accordion. Although Felix is nice. Felix or Rupert.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your name, numb-nuts.”     Ronnie frowned. “It can’t have my name. That would be confusing. We wouldn’t know who people were talking about. Ronnie isn’t a good name for an accordion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I could just pull this trigger and do the gene pool a favour, kid,” Drury warned. “Now tell me your name.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ronald Arnold Gerronimo Besselyhuxtoy,” said Ronald Arnold Gerronimo Besselyhoxtoy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your real name.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is my real name. It’s sewn into my underwear. I can show you if I have to.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No. Keep your pants on. Really.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have no idea how long it takes to stitch a name like that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shut up. Now listen kid, this is a desperate time. It calls for desperate measures. I need some back-up and I’ve not got much to work with. I got no choice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No choice about what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ronald Arnold Gerronimo Besselyhoxtoy, I hereby depute you as an acting Agent of SPUD.” ***     By the following morning Lee Bookman’s belly was aching with hunger. “I never thought I’d actually miss A.L.F.RED,” Lee noted as he drank some rainwater from a standing pool. A seditious part of his mind suggested that he should have killed and eaten the lizard yesterday. A more practical part pointed out that he had no knife, no tools, no way of cooking a creature whose biosystem might be full of parasites, and no desire to eat something like that anyway.     The Librarian customarily retained a score or more of texts in his memory. He checked his current internal library and decided that the most useful right now were the 1912 Encyclopaedia Britannica and Lord Baden-Powell’s Scouting For Boys. He decided to keep an eye out for two sticks to rub together later.     Late that afternoon he came to the edge of a great mere. His library-tracking gifts told him that the Lair Library lay across that green-coated water, but a brief examination of the lake indicated the presence of a number of blood-sucking leeches and other unpleasant aquiforms. Lee Bookman decided it might be best to ring around the shore.     By nightfall Lee was exhausted and he felt he was father away from the Mansion than he’d been four hours ago. He was almost ready to drop when he found another trilithon. Unlike the other one, this stone was free of moss and seemed to be in good condition. His tiredness forgotten, the Librarian hurried forward to read its data.     It took his a moment to translate what he was scanning. The coding was very alien, unlike anything he’d encountered in his studies before. That in itself was fascinating. He struggled to get some sense of the purpose of the stones.     He was so engrossed with his intellectual puzzle that he failed to hear the two squid-headed bipeds gliding towards him. They had octopoid craniums with flailing tentacles above their mouths. Their fingers were long and multi-jointed. Their skins were slightly translucent, revealing livid purple veins beneath. Their eyes were cold and dead, like those of a fish.     They reached out with their minds and seized control of Lee Bookman, locking his muscles and holding him in place so they could examine him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey!” objected the Librarian. “What do you think you’re doing?”     The octopoids glided up to him, one in front and one behind. Their tentacles traced the circumference of Lee’s skull, assessing how easily it would crack open.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excuse me. This is no way for civilised beings to behave!” Lee objected.     They understood him. He could hear the contempt in their voices. “Kath s’vak stoss vin kala s’tarthiss!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Last warning,” Bookman told them.     They extended their mental domination to paralyse his vocal chords. Those sharp-tipped brain-boring facial tentacles reached out.     The Librarian used the psychic link they’d established on him to stun them both with the Oxford Dictionary of Saints. They toppled to the ground, twitching a little.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I warned you,” Lee told them, able to move and speak again. But he was worried how quickly the creatures were recovering from the sudden traumatic download of information to their brains. He suspected they were actually a hive-brain, and his assault was being coped with by far more than just the two specimens who quivered before him.     It was time to be somewhere else.     Lee stepped back, passing under the archway of ancient stones. And suddenly he was somewhere else.     It was the same orange sunset sky, but the distant volcano bole was much nearer. The trees were different and the land was much marshier. Lee found himself wading through eight inches of brown water.     The other difference was the presence of Al B. Harper, studying the stones. ***      “I am not sure this is wise,” the entity formerly known as the Manga Shoggoth noted as he followed teenaged Samantha Featherstone out of cover to confront the seven foot high bipedal lizards in Nazi uniforms. “I have not yet adjusted to being confined to this human body. I am having difficulty balancing my internal gyroscopes to counter the rather rude effect that gravity is having upon my biomass. And I haven’t even started upon these processes to break down hydrocarbons in this inner sack I appear to have sloshing around inside my four dimensional signature. You humans really know how to complicate things.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Later,” Samantha told the now-human Shoggoth. “Right now we’re needed.”     The hunters had surrounded a man, woman, and two children who had been gathering berries at the swamp’s edge. The predators looked like velociraptors in smart black leather uniforms with silver insignia. In fact Sam couldn’t help but be reminded of the SS uniforms she’d seen in pictures and movies.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You disapprove of the social interactions occurring between the human and sauriform entities?” the Shoggoth noted as he stumbled after the girl. The Nazi dinosaurs were shouting at their captives, demanding they kneeled on the floor and surrendered. The man tried to shield his wife and children from the marauders and was knocked to the floor with a bloody gash to the face.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, I disapprove,” Samantha told the Shoggoth. “Those lizards are trying to enslave that family.” She knew which buttons to push.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are they now?” growled the Shoggoth. “Then I must remonstrate with them.” He looked a little bit puzzled. “How do I replicate this form to swallow them?” he asked plaintively.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Humans can’t do that,” Sam answered. “Give me your Legion comm-card.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have not been able to contact any of the team up to this temporal node,” the ex-loathsome elder beast pointed out. “It is rather didactic of radio waves to insist on travelling only in straight lines, typical really of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. So unimaginative. And it refuses to listen to suggestions from this bioform I’m somehow stuck in.”     Samantha wasn’t listening. Instead she was remembering Kerry Shepherdson’s impromptu lecture on Three Easy Ways To Make a Commcard Explode.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, let them go!” she called to the Nazi raptors, breaking cover.     There were three of them and they were quite disciplined. Two of them came at her, instinctively spreading left and right to bracket her. The third remained with the captured family, covering them with his firearm.     Sam hurled the commcard and dived for the ground.     The explosion was fairly impressive. The wafer-thin commcards had originally been designed by NTU-150 with a point-source microgenerator to power the transmitter, then revised by Al B. Harper to include some upgraded features. That meant they were unstable on two counts. All Sam had done was reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and suddenly two unconscious velociraptors were flung aside like puppets.     The third Nazi reptile was unaffected. Samantha hadn’t been able to include him in the blast because he stood over the captured humans. He raised his machine gun to take the teenager down.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hii yaaahh!” shouted the Manga Shoggoth, bursting from the forest to the left. He attempted to do a feet-first manoeuvre from Akira and discovered that physics was once again not co-operating. Instead he tumbled to the floor and rolled spluttering into a crumpled heap.     The distraction was enough, though. Sam closed the distance with a cartwheel and brought her foot into the reptile’s neck just like Yuki had taught her. The saurian went down with an ugly gurgling sound. “I’m sorry,” Sam told him, concerned, “but you started it.”     The three hunters carried manacles with them to bring back live prey, so Sam and the Shoggoth used them to restrain the velociraptors.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you humans free now?” the Shoggoth asked the cowering family.     The captives looked at him and Samantha with big wild eyes. They asked something in a guttural language that meant nothing to the visitors.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just get us out of here?” Sam suggested. “This was a patrol, which means there’s probably more of these things.” She picked up the lizards’ weapons and checked one of them to see it was loaded and the chamber was clear, then safetied it and slung it over her shoulder. She plundered canteens, spare ammunition, a chunky pocket torch and a backpack that contained a diode radio. She disconnected the radio’s power source in case it also had a homing signal.     The Shoggoth examined the velociraptor’s shiny leather boots. He quite liked them but couldn’t seem to morph his feet into the right shape to fit them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No compass,” Sam frowned. “But why not? No magnetic field? But look at this.” She unfolded a packet of maps. The writing was undecipherable but there were sixty or more marks that were surely settlements of some kind. “Now if only we knew where we are we could find one of these.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aren’t we here?” puzzled the Shoggoth, looking round. “Where else would we be?”     The humans grabbed up their things, gave the velociraptors hasty kicks, then fled off into the forest.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or we could follow them,” suggested Samantha. ***     The corsairs dressed in tanned leather and stolen silk, and their ear-rings and nose-rings were gold. They carried wicked curved scimitars and barbed metal lariats and they flew atop huge pterosaurs. The reptiles’ wingspans were forty feet across.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fascinating,” admired Anna as the phalanx of sky-pirates circled the village and came in to land in the central square. “Those creatures are Hatzegopteryx, of the family Azhdarchidae, of the suborder Pterodactyloidea and the order Pterosauria, in the class Sauropsida of the phylum Chordata.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the villagers are scattering in all directions,” Yuki Shiro pointed out, “because they’re terrified.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah.” Sometimes Anna needed help to work out the priorities. “I’ll just record images on my internal hard drives for later, then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“These are those pterodactyl raiders the people here were talking about! Come on!” Yuki pulled on her jacket and vaulted over a wattle fence to approach the corsairs.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Listen up, me bravos!” called the pirate leader. Anna’s translation programme had already identified the local lingo as some bizarre derivation of Portuguese, so now his speech was comprehensible to the visitors. “This is Red John Bloodhand talking to ye, here on behalf of Mad Will Hancock himself, old Blackchin! We’ve had word that this village has been holding out on the Free Corsairs.”     Anna raced after Yuki as the cyborg P.I. approached the riders.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Word is you’ve got yourselves two lovely new goddesses,” called Red John. “And you know the rules. Any womenfolk of your village when they come of age, they spend a season as guests of the Brotherhood. That way your women get to learn what a real man is like and your village doesn’t get fire stoned! And right now you owe Mad Will two pretty goddesses!”     Then he saw Yuki and Anna. “Ah… and here they are.” He admired the women. “Oh yeah, the Brotherhood is going to enjoy having you in the stronghold. Hook Nose Morgan might boast of all the booty he gets raiding women from Umarr’s ruins but this is going to put Red John Bloodhand right on the map!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“See,” Yuki told Anna, admiring the huge flying reptiles that the corsairs bestrode, “you might see Hatzegopteryx of the Azdarchidae of whatever the hell you said it was. I see my new ride.” She cracked her knuckles and grinned at Red John. “About ninety seconds from now.” ***     Flapjack exaggerated his lurch a little as he approached the gothic entrance porch. The high house on the clifftop seemed to demand it.     He looked admiringly at the tall thin manor built out over the jagged peak. It was of black stone, with steeply climbing slate roofs and a large tower with a copper ball atop it to catch the lightning. It was visible all the way along the valley, but the mud men and the swamp trolls and the prehistoric monsters all knew to stay well away. Flapjack hadn’t been able to resist.     He pulled at the door chain, stepping aside quickly in case the porch concealed a trap door. Somewhere deep inside the house a sonorous bell tolled. Flapjack approved.     The door creaked open in regulation fashion. A hunchbacked butler peered out. “You rang?” he lisped.     Flapjack hunched over more so he had the superior hump. “Is the master at home?” he asked.     The butler bent over further, and allowed some drool to dribble from his lips. “The master is busy in his workroom. He is not to be disturbed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can wait,” answered Flapjack, allowing his face to twitch and ensuring that his hands trembled with palsy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What is the nature of your business?” demanded the butler, letting his tongue hang loose from the edge of his mouth-gash.     Flapjack’s eyeballs wildly swung around in different directions. “I’m just a benighted traveller seeking shelter from the storm,” he replied. “I saw a light in the tower.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’d better come in,” conceded the butler at last. “Walk this way.”     Flapjack did.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can wait for the master in the dungeons,” the butler declared, suddenly pulling a large lever that dropped the centre of the room down into the cages beneath.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lovely,” agreed Flapjack, falling into the darkness.     The fall wasn’t too bad. Visionary and Garrick were quite soft to land on. ***     Liu Xi Xian followed the man who claimed to be her ultimate grandfather down a long hall filled with life-size human sculptures. “You wished to know about your lineage,” the old man said. “It is here.”     Liu Xi recognised the first pair of carvings. “Mother and father!” she exclaimed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” agreed the mandarin. “Their parents are next down the gallery, and their forebears before them.”     There were thousands of sculptures and the gallery receded as far as the eye could see.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t understand, grandfather,” Liu Xi admitted. “If you have been watching over our family all these centuries, awaiting the birth of a child who could manipulate the void in the way you wish, why… why did you not save me when I was enslaved?”     The old man led her on down the hallway. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” he replied. “Your experiences with your false husband, with the Doomherald, with Doorman, with Vincent De Soth, all of those have prepared you for what is to come.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Without that trauma I would not have manifested my powers?” the elementalist reasoned. “I would have been normal and happy?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You would have been less than yourself. It would have been wrong for me to rob you of your life’s experiences.”     The images Liu Xi was passing now were dressed in much older styles, the peasant garb of centuries gone by. “You’ve prepared a long time for me,” she noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Longer than you could imagine, grand-daughter. When the first of your line was born to me she was placed in the care of a noble family of the Xia dynasty, eighteen hundred years before Christ. She grew to marry the son of that house, and so your line continued.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And some of them were elementalists too?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course. The talent emerges every few generations, in the female line, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker. Often mastery over a single element.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Until me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Until you. And you will serve your family’s purpose in one of two ways, grand-daughter.”     Liu Xi almost balked at that, but she had been drilled in family obedience all her childhood. She had obeyed even when she was sold away from them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There is a certain task for which I will require the manipulation of void,” answered the Void Scholar. “Success is essential if the Parodyverse is to be saved. If you can help me achieve it you will have justified all my long years of labour and vigilance.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing is certain. Sinister forces work against me. The Chronicler of Stories, for example, so sure of his authority, so arrogant that only he knows what is best. It may be that you will not be allowed to succeed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What happens if I fail?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then your daughter will triumph,” replied the old mandarin.     Liu Xi stopped abruptly. “What? My what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Come, grand-daughter,” answered the Void Scholar. “I have arranged good matches for all these your ancestors. Are you now going to break with tradition, disobey your patriarch, and deny your grandfather’s wisdom in finding you a suitable husband?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I… hadn’t really considered it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But I have, Liu Xi Xian. I have. A most interesting young man. Your alliance will bring together two mighty bloodlines and your child will be unstoppable.”     Liu Xi wasn’t sure how to react. “May I know who this man is?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In due time you shall,” promised her grandfather. It was too early to reveal all to her yet, and Daniel Lyle would take some manipulating before he was ready. He’d need to be detached from Kerry Shepherdson, for example, but that matter was already in hand.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then may I know who my ultimate grandmother was?” Liu Xi enquired. They’d reached the end of the hall, where a statue of the Void Scholar stood alone.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why child,” the old man replied. “Your ultimate grandmother was the Celestian Madonna.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But there is no statue of her, like all the rest.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All the rest are dead by your time,” the Void Scholar pointed out; whereas the girl he intended to suborn as his bride to engender the line that would lead to Liu Xi’s mating with Danny Lyle was somebody Liu Xi knew. “And now we shall return to your studies.” ***     Magweed’s leg made travel slow. The girl limped along as best she could, but the Mouse Guard insisted that she stop frequently, claiming they needed to scout ahead. Magweed suspected that they were just giving her time to rest.     Travel was difficult. In the six days since she’d appeared in the mountainous barren desert she’d made her way through a chain of valleys along the edge of a high basalt cliff but hadn’t yet found a way to get to the top of it. Small waters tumbled down the ravines at infrequent intervals and there were some nuts and berries that the Guard had proclaimed fit to eat. There had been snakes but they’d gone away when Magweed had asked them to.     Sometimes in the azure skies she’d seen great flying creatures with leathery wings, but her instincts accorded with those of the Mouse Guard to hide in the shadows when those beasts rode the thermals overhead.     Magweed kept on stoically, reminding herself that there had to be some hardship in adventures or they weren’t adventures at all. She worried about Griffin and knew he’s be fretting about her. She wondered if she’d be rescued or if it was her job to rescue everybody else.     On the evening of the sixth day they came to a lush crevasse that showed signs of habitation. The Mouse Guard scouted and found a dumpy hut with a turf roof. Smoke curled from a hole at the apex. There were three young boys playing in the yard, and a woman singing.     Magweed made her way down to the roundhouse and sat on a low stone just outside the hurdles that formed a fence. The three boys spotted her and came rushing over.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who are you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where did you come from?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aren’t you coming in.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My leg hurts,” Magweed told them. “Go fetch your mother.”     A handsome, friendly-looking woman in a long skirt and a pinafore bustled from the house when the boys called. She saw Magweed and hurried over. “Well, now, isn’t that a lovely, strange thing to be finding outside out gate? Come in, dear, and we’ll make you welcome.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think so,” Magweed told them. “Not until you drop the illusion anyhow.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The what?” puzzled the mother.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The glamour. It’s not very good, anyway. One of my mothers does them much better.”     The woman’s face changed, and so did that of her children. “Oh, a clever one, is she, who won’t enter and eat and drink and dance of her own free will and thinks that saves her?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That won’t save me,” Magweed admitted, “but it stops me being enslaved. Knowing other things saves me, Clamdemise, and your children…” She looked very carefully into their hearts, “Yawnwold, Ekrithan, and Pandrummor.”     The family flinched as if they’d been lashed. Suddenly the cottage was a rotting pile of sticks and the humans were small, spindly twig creatures with saucer eyes and hungry mouths.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mercy!” cried Clamdemise. “Mercy, sweet mistress! We did not know you had the naming of us! We did not know who you were!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who is she, mother?” shrieked Yawnwold. “Her names sting us! They tangle us like thorns!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bow down to her!” shrieked Clamdemise. “Bow and beg for our lives! This is the Fairy Princess, come to judge us for our ways! Mercy! We will release our captives and flee from this place but you let us live!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Release them, then,” Magweed commanded.     The goblins did as she commanded, leading two young men and a young woman up from a hole beneath their hovel and unclasping plaited ropes from around their necks. Then, before Magweed could question them or command them further, Clamdemise and her brood scuttled away to the walls of the ravine and scampered up them like spiders and were lost.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where are we?” a dark-skinned girl in a tattered tunic asked confusedly. “There was a dance…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There was food,” one of the boys frowned. “It tasted so good.” His brown head was shaved except for one long scalp-lock.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Pull yourselves together,” said the third, checking to see if any of his equipment remained. It didn’t. “We were captured by some kind of magic. Tricked. Enslaved. Who knows how long we’ve been imprisoned with our minds in chains.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, you’re free now,” said Magweed, giving them a little wave. “Hi!”     The three young adventurers stated at her with open mouths. “You!” the third adventurer gasped. “It has to be! Magweed!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why yes!” the girl admitted, almost as surprised at her name as the goblins had been at theirs.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve found the one we were looking for!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were looking for me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve found Magweed, daughter of the promised one!” ***     Dreamcatcher Foxglove rode out of the jungle on a scutasaurus waving at the surprised archaeologists who thought they were concealed in the treeline beyond the smoking signal fire. “Hiya guys! It’s just your friendly neighbourhood CrazySugarFreakBoy! dropping in for the barbeque.”     Champagne rose from cover (CSFB! hasn’t spotted her) and walked out to see him. “Hello there. So the rest of the Lair Legion is scattered around here somewhere.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is?” Dream grinned. “Fantastic! Now we can totally do the Land That Time Forgot!” He gestured to the huge creature he was riding. “I borrowed a dino. Chupa wasn’t too keen on carrying me. I last saw him chasing a T-Rex or something.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lovely. Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you the Space Fandom? Only we had a bit of trouble of that kind here last night.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not,” CSFB! said. “Then again, if I was I wouldn’t be admitting it, would I?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s a simple test,” Champagne assured him. “CSFB! has photographic memory, right? So if I inscribe this number puzzle on the ground here, like this, two hundred and fifty one-figure digits in a mathematical square, then scrape it away like so, all you have to do is write out the solution.”     Dream looked at the ground and frowned. “I could do that,” he agreed, “if it wasn’t incredibly boring.”     Champagne smiled at him. “Congratulations. You passed the test. A Space Fandom could duplicate your eidetic memory and cascade reasoning but he’s not likely to also have your massive attention deficit.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yay me,” laughed CSFB!     Champagne looked to the horizon. “So what did you see out there? What did you find? Any clues to what’s happening?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not really,” admitted the wired wonder. “Just seven days of walking, all alone, with nothing happening. It was the worst torture of my life. Of course, there was that incident with the flying jellyfish, and the thing with the glass tree, and the vapour rats, and that whole episode with the wood nymph. Oh, and the razor troll as well, then the plankton that walked like a man, although I’ve got to say if a man walked like that in some states he’d get beaten to a pulp. But that’s pretty much it. You?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Evil murdering disguised Space Fandom in mysterious pre-human temple, that’s all. I thought if we lit a big fire we might be able to gather people together and pool our resources. I ground up some indigo and tossed it on the flames to make the smoke more distinctive.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Great call. It’s only a matter of time before the gang’s all here. In fact…”     The archaeologists were shouting and pointing down the slope. Around fifty spear-wielding barbarians had emerged from the jungle, war-painted and looking for trouble.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think they’re here to see you,” Champagne advised CrazySugarFreakBoy! ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello,” said the Lair Legion’s archscientist, tracing the run of the silicone circuitry with the stem of his bubble pipe. Al didn’t seem to think it was remarkable that a team-mate the Librarian had just appeared through a prehistoric trilithon gateway.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to go,” Lee told him. “There are some psionic bipedal cephalopods with designs on my brain just through the dimensional door.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fascinating bit of work, isn’t it?” Al admired. “It’s pinching two locations together like a stitch. I found another one a ways back but it’s defunct now, probably because the location it led to no longer exists.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So did I,” added Bookman. “Did I mention these creatures are a hive mind that could possibly adapt to my data transfer defence? And that they have razor-tipped trepanation tentacles?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is relevant information,” agreed Al B,. reluctantly allowing himself to be led away from the stones. “This doesn’t seem to be a very friendly place. Earlier some natives tied me to a stake to burn me alive.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How did you avoid that?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I refracted the sun through my spectacle lenses onto the straw roof of their headman’s hut, then used the cheeswire in my watchstrap to escape while they tried to stop their village burning down. It was very basic stuff. Elementary physics. Do you have any idea where we are?”     They sloshed on through the greasy swamp while they talked. The horizon was blurred by pungent mists.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nowhere I’ve got a record of,” the Librarian admitted. “It’s not Earth in prehistoric times, or Savage Park, but the animals I’ve seen are mostly from some time in Earth’s history.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The place has some strange properties alright,” Al B. agreed. “A weak and rotating magnetic field, some huge geological discrepancies like the whole place is a patchwork quilt carved from other places, and an absence of any useable connection to the dimensional substrata or hyperspace.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is odd,” ceded Bookman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I need my lab,” the archscientist mourned. “I’ve got the primary data but now I need the diagnostic tools. There’s only so far I can get with fruit and a chunk of quartz.”     Lee extended his senses again. The Lair Library was now so distant as to be right at the outer edge of his senses. “Well, the Mansion’s that way,” he indicated. Then he swing round. “But the nearest repository of information is right over there.”     Al and Lee looked through the mists out over the waters of the swampy lake. Rising up in great livid purple domes was an organic-looking structure of the same texture of the squid-heads’ flesh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That looks like a dangerous place,” noted Al B. Harper.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“With secrets never yet learned by man,” added the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Certain death for all who trespass, probably.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It would be suicide to explore it.”     The Librarian and Al B. Harper exchanged looks.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re going in there, aren’t we?” Lee said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Damn straight,” agreed Al B.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excellent.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Rest for five,” snapped Agent Jackson. “Larch, Svenson, take watch.”     There were twenty-one of them now, trained Agents of SPUD struggling through the swamp trying to stay alive. In the last three days they’d lost eleven men.     Jackson was the ranking officer, a twenty-three year old data analyst from Americus, Georgia who’d been recruited from college two years before because he’d written an impressive thesis on computer encryption. He’d done the survival training and had graduated from officer school but this was nothing his background had prepared him for. Agent Kolanski had been much better suited to gather together the scattered men and women who’d been on the SPUD helicarrier ten days ago, but Kolanski had died when the squid-headed things had attacked three days past. Since then everyone looked to Andy Jackson, and Jackson did his best.     Sure, he thought bitterly, tell that to Davis, Crennson, Swan, and Blake.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sir, I think we’ll need to find fresh water soon,” Agent Santilli warned him. “Most everybody’s canteens are empty now, and we’re out of purification tablets.”     Jackson looked across at the petite bedraggled tech-agent from Rexburg, Idaho. He’d shared a few classes with her at the SPUD academy at Paget Point in Guam but he’d never dared ask her out because she was way out of his league. Now her life depended on him like everybody else’s.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll keep heading north as best we can,” Jackson told her. “Keep using the sun for sighting and calculating by the time on our watches. This swamp can’t last forever and something must be feeding it. We’ll head for the mountain range on the horizon. That’s the plan.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sir.” Carol Santilli thought that Jackson was out of his depth; but then who wasn’t. He was a nice guy, and some other time she’d have been happy to toss down a few drinks with him or catch a game, but right now she wished she could trade him for that grizzled one-eyed martinet who ran SPUD with an iron fist. “I guess we know now why the Colonel always insisted we wear full combat uniforms, sidearms, and equipment pouches even on helicarrier duty, huh?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We didn’t know what we were bitching about,” Jackson agreed. “We’d have been dead a week ago without our gear.”     Santilli had been appointed unit quartermaster back when Kolanski had been in charge. “Um, we have some other problems,” she reported hesitantly. “Shaw’s leg is weeping again, and the antibiotics are gone. And most everyone’s laser packs are down to less than five percent. If those hunting monsters catch up with us again…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We deal with it,” Jackson cut her off. “But to save the power packs we’ll cut down on the broadcasting comms. Send the call out every other hour from now on. But don’t stop altogether, not while we have any cells left at all. There might be more of our people out there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You go it,” Santilli nodded. She even managed him a kind of half smile. He was doing his best.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, ladies!” Jackson called, forcing himself to his feet again. “Tea-time’s over. Form up on me, Thompson at point, Renfern, Slater, Parkin, Cooper flank. Copello, Stround, rearguard. Tovis, Hansen, help Shaw. Time to move on, people. We don’t want to make this swamp our retirement village.”     The staggered to their feet an followed him because they were SPUD agents. Drury only recruited the best.     Then there was a howling noise from nearby. The thick swamp-weeds parted and one of the carnivore reptiles that had been tracking them for two days now broke out and splashed towards them.     It was around the size of a compact car and it had a ridge along its scaly back, but all the SPUD agents knew was that a creature just like it had bitten one of their number in two yesterday. Five laser bolts cut it down before it could close.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Watch guard to fire only!” shouted Jackson. “We’re trying to preserve ammo, damn it!”     There were more roars from nearby. Before it had died, the predator had called up the back.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re all around us,” breathed Santilli.     There was no escape.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Defensive formation,” Jackson decided. There was no option, other than breaking and running and losing the hindmost. “Form a square.”     Twenty men and woman covered each others backs and knew this was probably the end.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You did okay,” Carol Santilli told Jackson as she saw his face.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not okay enough,” replied the young man; born in Americus, Georgia, about to die in some unknown swamp on some unknown world for reasons he couldn’t even begin to guess.     The howling came nearer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Pick your shots,” Jackson called out. “Make every laser charge count.”     Someone starting singing Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. Remember the Alamo.     There was a rustling in the bushes, then a snarl and a yelp.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold fire!” shouted Jackson. “Wait till you see your targets!”     There was more snarling, the sounds of a vicious fight. A dispute over pack precedence?     More of the creatures where joining in. Slater got a shot off that dropped one of the beasts as it moved too incautiously and broke cover to reach the conflict.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s going on?” asked Santilli, her hands trembling on a handgun that registered a two percent charge – five shots maximum.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Everybody hold your positions,” Jackson ordered. “Stand firm.”     There was more howling and the crunching of bones.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s something else out there,” Thompson realised. “Something worse.”     A panicking hunting reptile burst out from the thick yellow swamp-grass, heading straight at the SPUD agents. Santilli took it down. She’d never fired her weapon in real combat until ten days ago.     Then everything went quiet.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sir?” asked Thompson.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold,” Jackson said. “Just… hold.”     A medium-sized black-and-white collie dog trotted out of the swamp grass and barked at them. She was matted and bedraggled and her muzzle was dripping with blood, but her tail was wagging.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A dog?” said Santilli, her eyebrows rising. “A sheep dog? Here?”     Glory barked at them again and turned away. She moved a few steps and looked back at them, as if waiting.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think she wants us to follow her,” Thompson noted in surprise.     Glory barked again.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How can a dog be here, in this place?” Santilli demanded. “It could be a trap.”     Jackson made a command decision. “Follow it,” he ordered. “Same formation as before, but let’s see where that mutt wants to take us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re following a dog?” Santilli objected.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have a better idea, Agent Santilli?” asked Jackson.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe Timmy’s got trapped down the well?” snickered Thompson.     Oh, like I haven’t heard that one before, barked Glory as she led the SPUD agents back to the rest of the groups that she’d assembled. ***     Hallie looked at all the evidence: the electro-encephalogram and biometric readings that suggested that this Marie Murcheson was telling the truth; the contents of the bedrooms at the Lair Mansion; the automated training programmes and performance monitoring logs; the video capture data showing strangers breakfasting in the Lair Kitchen; the physical alterations to the property, including some designs that were more sophisticated than the state-of-the-art that Hallie remembered the Mansion to be at and a previously unsuspected belltower of dubious structural integrity. “You may be telling the truth,” she admitted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am, Hallie! I promise you. You’ve just… got amnesia. Like the time we all got reverted to sixteen years old.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The which?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When you were a cheerleader?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was never a cheerleader.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think it was all to do with you dating Mr Epitome.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dating who?” Hallie thought again. “Dating?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was a while ago. Mr Epitome’s with Katrina now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Most people expect that you’ll eventually go courting with Visionary. You’re very well suited really.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vizh? He’s a married man.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think his wife ascended to a higher plane to fix the Parodyverse. After that he romanced a Caphan love slave. And then a super-villainess. And Dancer, I think, but that was when they were sixteen. But you brought his twins to term and gave birth to them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I might be having a systems malfunction,” Hallie admitted. “I seem to be having hallucinations.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that bit all got a bit confusing. I think it had to do with the Movie Gun.” Hallie made an instinctive check and discovered something horrible. “The Movie Gun! It’s gone!” “Oh yes, we know. Don’t worry. It was dismantled for security reasons then blown up to stop the Parody Master. In the Parody War.” Marie saw the expression on Hallie’s face. “I’m not making a very good job of this, am I?” “Well, clearly a lot has happened,” the A.I. admitted. “How much of it was spiffy’s fault?” ***     It was much easier travelling with company, Magweed had to admit. And although Ophelo could be a bit bossy and stern, Koom was funny and Chelena was nice. She got to know them quite well on the way, and each one told her their story.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I was a slave,” Koom admitted candidly. “I was given as tribute to the sky raiders by my village. I don’t even know which village. I escaped when I was ten by, um, falling down the cliff that the stronghold is perched atop. I was lucky that I was found by a wandering band of traders from the Free City of Golgamoria, and they took me in. I’m a merchant second class now, and soon I’ll get my guide’s knots so I can strike out on my own.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My father was an adventurer,” Chelema confided. “He wasn’t exactly married to my mother, but she was very happy he rescued her from the squid-heads and nine months later I came along. Dad kept in touch, saw we were okay, right up to when the reptiloids got him. Then I took work as a guard and then I got involved with the Order of the…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t say it,” Ophelo snapped. “We don’t say that name. We never say that name.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I got involved in the Wise One’s plans,” Chelema said, poking her tongue out at Orphelo.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Wise One has saved us all,” Orphelo admitted later in the journey. “Without the Wise One’s intervention the Free City would have torn itself apart by now. That’s the trouble with a Free City. No law and order. But now the Free City is the last united against the oppression and domination of the Nightwalkers of Abadonn. That’s why I journey there, across nine stitch-gates, to join the Wise One in the last battle for freedom!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Wise One sounds very wise,” Magweed agreed. “And he sent you out to find me, did he?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She” sent us,” Chelema replied. “She said if we found you or your brother and brought you to Golgamoria it was only a matter of time before the Promised One showed up.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She called him the Promised One?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She named him the Visionary,” Koom remembered. “Or something like that. She said getting you safely back to her was the most important thing in the world.”     Two days travel led to a cleft in the cliffs and up a steep scramble to the tops of the long wall that ridged the desert. Another day of climbing and the trail dropped into a defensible pass with a sheltered valley behind it. Golgamoria was nestled between the rocks, sheltered from aerial attack by the unpredictable thermals, protected from ground assault by the terrain and some sturdy fortress towers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Everyone is welcome here as a visitor,” Chelema explained. “That’s why the Eternal Empress and the Great Brain and the Pirate King and the Uberfuhrer and the Mad Doctor and the Low Troll allow it to exist. There has to be a meeting place, a market place.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There has to be a home to the resistance,” Orphelo said fervently. “If hope is found anywhere in the remaining thirty-two worlds then it is here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Remaining?” Magweed puzzled; but Orphelo led them on through the gates of Golgamoria.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe you should tell me a little more about this Wise One?” Magweed asked, getting nervous as they approached the house they were aiming for. It wasn’t the biggest or the richest of the wooden structures that formed the heart of the Free City. It didn’t seem sinister, and Magweed’s companions seemed open enough. But perhaps they too had been fooled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“See her for yourself,” Koom encouraged. “She’ll be delighted to see you.”     Magweed entered cautiously.     The Wise One was delighted to see Magweed. “Maggie!” the Wise Once cried out, scattering papers everywhere and rushing to hug the little girl. “Is wonderful to be seeing of you! Is marvellous! You have to be growing so big! Now is Visi to be coming and bringing of cute-Lair Legion so we can be saving of the worlds!”     Magweed burst into delighted laugher and hugged her Auntie/Uncle Yo right back as tightly as she could.     The adventurers of the Order of the Fuzzy Bunnies of the Happy Place couldn’t help but grin. ***     The Eternal Empress swirled her fingers in the black waters of her Watching Pool then turned to her attendants. “There is something new in the lands,” she said.     The pale men and women who watched her bowed. A few cockroaches skittered over her pale beautiful flesh as she turned back to the pool.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps some new disobedience in Golgamoria, perfection?” suggested one counsellor. “Perhaps the game there no longer amuses?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not the Fellowship, no,” the Eternal Empress said. Her voice was exquisite but it had the echo of the grave.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Truvelo, then. The Bloodwalkers we sent there to bring tribute have not yet returned. The Novicemaster believes he felt their ends.”     The Empress considered that. “Send some Elite,” she commanded. “Have them teach a lesson.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As you ordain, perfection.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Umarr, perhaps?” another counsellor spoke. “The far-watchers and the mouths of the damned have told of a new ruin added to the collection. They say it is still infested with mortal cattle.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bring the mortals here to be bled and read,” commended the Empress. “But there is more. I can sense it. The ripples warn me. Change is here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I shall contact the Spawn of Umshath,” declared another counsellor. “The Master Brain and its squid-men may have gleaned something with their mind-probings.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ask Umshath by all means,” agreed the Eternal Emperess, “but this is something more. It lies not only in Ur-Vakir, not in Umarr, nor Golgamoria. There is more, far more.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We shall seek, perfection.”     The Eternal Empress dabbled her fingers in the black pool again. The fluids clung to her hand, slippery like blood. “There are strangers,” she said at last. “Powerful strangers, who have not yet learned to fear, who do not yet know submission. They have gifts and treasures that will be useful to us as the red sun dies.” She looked up and her eyes were scarlet. “Discover them. Drink them. Make them mine.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They shall be yours, perfection,” the dead men promised. “They shall serve you in Abaddon, unliving slaves for all eternity.” *** Coming Next: It’s back to Earth and the unveiling of the New (official) Lair Legion and open season on Danny Lyle, public enemy number one, and his degenerate allies and minions. Look for Lair Legion versus Lair Legion versus Lair Legion in The New Lair Legions (what else?) *** Things People Could Write: Well, I already know we’re going to see Dancer vs Hook Nose Morgan. All the rest of the situations are up for grabs. Where are they now? A number of heroes are converging on the pre-Incan ruins in the rain forest of Umarr, drawn by Champagne’s smoke signal. CrazySugarFreakBoy! is already there, joining Champagne and lost archaeologists Dr Loring, Toby Barrett, Zane Freeman, and Lindsay Portman. Another of their number, Sharon, was “carried away” by the deserting porters three days ago. Hatman and Sally are on their way there. Mumphrey and Chad are on their way there. Dancer and Amber were headed there but may be delayed by Hook Nose Morgan and his sky raiders. The Librarian and Al B. are sneaking into the brain-eaters’ organic domes city of Ur-Vakir, home of Umshath the Master Brain and a number of other unpleasantries. Hallie is in possession of the Lair Mansion at an undisclosed location, and Marie is also there with local heroes Thungore and Glumkeep. Colonel Drury has located his downed SPUD helicarrier by the shores of Lake Aspinar and had drafted Ronnie to help defend it. Natalia Romanza has recruited Griffin and has also located the carrier. The Shoggoth and Samantha are following locals in the territory under the brutal boots of the Raptor Nazis, probably Truvelo. Yuki and Anna are encountering Red John Bloodhand of the Free Corsairs out of the mountain fortress of Lost Tavan under the command of old Blackchin himself, Mad Will Hancock. Flapjack has located Visionary and Herbert P. Garrick in the dungeons of the Mad Doctor. Magweed and the Mouse Guard have made it with their friends Ophelo, Koom, and Chelena back to the Free City of Golgamoria and has been reunited with the Wise One, also known as Yo. Glory has rounded up quite a lot of SPUD agents in the swamps of Zothar, including Agents Andy Jackson and Carol Santilli. We didn’t cover her this time, but Grace O’Mercy continues to harass the Bloodwalkers and Plaguemasters from Adadonn, City of the Dead; in fact the Eternal Empress is informed of some of her actions in this chapter. I expect the Eternal Empress to be the major threat next time we visit our heroes in the Land That Common Sense Forgot. We didn’t cover him this time, but Sergeant MacHarridan has recruited a pack of ur-trolls and is training them. Liu Xi remains with her grandfather. Any stories which link up our cast at the pre-Incan ruins, at the Mansion, or at the helicarrier would be most helpful. There’s no reason why bad things should happen to any of our baddies except the Eternal Empress. Of course, any stories at all are welcome. It’ll be a couple of weeks before I address these characters again, and at that point I expect to move the plot on past the current situations. *** Previous Chapters: #1: “And just when did Danny find time to take over the Parodyverse?” by Dancer #2: "Sometime you have to turn flammable again!" by Visionary #3: That’s the Way the Story Goes by the Hooded Hood #4: See No Evil by the Hooded Hood #5: Whodunnit by the Hooded Hood, Visionary, Killer Shrike, and Jason #6: Suspicious Behaviour by the Hooded Hood, Jason, Hatman, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! #7: Accusation and Denial by the Hooded Hood, JJJ, Jason and L! #8: The Final Solution by the Hooded Hood and Dancer #9: The Land That Common Sense Forgot by the Hooded Hood #9.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #9.2: Chad and Ronnie by L! #9.3: “In addition to cappuccino and personal hygiene these tribespeople have not yet invented underwear.” by Dancer #9.4: Lone Lost Boy & Heroines Hanging Together by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #9.5: From Dross into Gold by Killer Shrike #9.6: Old Friends and New Allies by Visionary #9.7: Taking a Swim by L! #9.8: A Post-Swim Chat by L! #9.9: Champagne and the Land That Common Sense Forgot by Champagne #10: The Age of Villains by the Hooded Hood #10.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.2: The Baroness #55 by JJJ #10.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 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.

Lots of fun scenes in this one, and I certainly didn't mind the hodgepodge construction of the chapter one bit. Especially since it returned Yo to the Parodyverse! (well, sort of). That was a pleasant surprise that really caught me off guard.

I also was quite amused by Glory doing her best herding and protecting the SPUD agents. Something worse than carnivorous dinos indeed... That would have been quite the epic CGI fight sequence.

Also nice to see some of the cast beginning to drift together, whether heading for Champagne's signal fire or gathering at the helicarrier. I really doubt that much good could come from the title of Ronnie, agent of SPUD, but then I suppose I shouldn't second guess Drury. Probably. I'm not sure what two super-spies, an 11 year old boy and a crazy person might do with a downed aircraft carrier, but I'm sure it'll be eventful.

Hallie's efforts to come to grips with the present seem like they should be fun, as is her complete lack of effort in dealing with meddlesome heroes who think with their swords. I liked the fact that none of the stunnulators would hurt Marie.

Vizh, Garrick and Flapjack, eh? Ouch.

Personally, I'd be happy to see Sally give heroing a try. I'm assuming you've had a talk with JJJ based on the line that she's done with the Baroness. It'll be interesting to see where she goes from here, if it's not with the Legion.

Dancer's workout regimen is truly hell, I have no doubt. Poor Amber definitely doesn't get paid enough. On the plus side, it seems like we're due another Dancer story, so what could be better?

The Shoggoth's efforts at anime styled attacks was definitely fun. I fear for his first nosebleed as a human.

And Liu Xi's "grandfather" is the Void Scholar, eh? So does this mean that this story will finally identify the Celestial Madonna? I really have little concrete idea which character it will be at this point.

As I said, this collection of stories and scenes was great fun! I look forward to seeing where people take things from here...