ATHENS HANGAR.
Gunshots sounded. Sharp stabby splotches of cyan filled Non’s mind.
“Time to get back to Bearwarden,” said Yoke, trotting off in a thunderstorm of teal.
Ñ̰ CAN FALSE DICHOTOMY HELP AGAINST MIND CONTROL? OR MIND READING?
Ᵽ YES. I’LL WORK ON IT WITH TYCHO. YOUR MEMORY MAY BECOME UNRELIABLE.
║ I’LL WORK WITH PICOID. WATCH FOR OUR RADIO SILENCE AS A SIGN WE’RE PROTECTING YOU.
With Icosian helping his balance, Non could hobble forward. A normal gait returned after fifty meters, but the pain remained. Balanced pain, as Yoke had promised. A glaring window in his mind turned into Picoid’s vision of the hangar roof opening over the zeppelin. Loud pings signaled snapping cables.
Just past the entrance, the weasel seized his leg. “Get down!”
----------------------------------------
The world rewound itself.
Just past the entrance, the weasel seized his leg. “Get down!” ‘Was I just here? Where did all the pain go? What just happened?’
A wall of blueprints caught fire as a green laser cut across them. Non ducked down.
“Your Dad’s gone crazy!” said the weasel, pointing to a cuffed hand. “Get me out of this!”
Non broke the chain to the first aid cabinet with his staff, then turned to see the laser source.
His father stood at the zeppelin entrance. Ping. A cable snapped. Blood covered the left side of Lagen’s face. ‘Why are bandages on Dad’s head? Why is his eye glowing?’
“Sire, what are you doing?” asked Non. ‘Why is his eye green and bloody?’
A beam from Lagen’s eye connected to a cable holding down the zeppelin. For a few seconds, Non watched as the cable over him glowed red. Ping. The red hot end of a cable knocked the first-aid cabinet onto Non’s side.
[https://i.imgur.com/an8vuuk.png]
“Glad I wasn’t under that. Do something, Agent! Don’t just stand there!” yelled the weasel. The left rear hoof of the Erymanthia zeppelin hovered nearby. Above, the vast dome opened noisily.
“My Dad has a laser eye!” Ping. “He’s not himself!”
“Thank you, Agent Obvious,” The weasel opened a fabric door on the boar hoof. “I’m gonna hide. You go do whatever. This is meant for someone light. Not a horse.”
“Yes. Time to do what no one will expect.” Non forced his staff under his surcingle, then used vector forces to make himself light before pulling himself into the crawlspace.
WHAM. Far above, the hangar roof finished opening, drowning out gunfire.
“I’m not sure I want to go on this ride,” said the weasel.
Ping. Ping. Ping. The zeppelin lurched, then started upward with the removal of the last cables.
The weasel crawled onto Non. “You can float within a half-meter clearance? Oh. Nobody expects outlandish equiposition? Your chief weapon is surprise and ludicrousy?”
Background sounds vanished as the zeppelin rose above the hangar.
“Speak quietly,” said Non. “I wasn’t going for that. Someone hacked my Dad’s eye out.” ‘You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.’ Non brought up the mental blueprints.
“Left Rear Leg. Stenciled right there,” said the weasel. “But be careful, these walls are fragile.” The weasel put a claw to the wall under the stencil and ripped a slit to make his case. “Oops.”
“Testing, testing, testing, dammit, dammit, dammit,” said Non, his voice going into higher registers. Glue? Stitching? Something for a patch? The weasel’s jacket stank as the air got weirder. He found the gyro wrapper in his feedbag, fed it through the slit and unrolled it on the other side. With his hoof knife, a cut on his left arm added blood, then more blood and paper on the near side. Patched.
Drifting deeper, the air cleared as he reached a more open space at an access tunnel branch.
“I’m Ricki,” said the weasel, pointing at the name on his jacket. “We’re gassed for a heavy load, but no passengers, cargo or luggage are on board. Let’s split up here.”
“I get it. If we go too high, boom. I’ll try to save my Dad. He can fix this. Good luck, Ricki.”
Non kept moving, past an empty kitchen, then over a music room. Vectors lowered him down.
‘How much time do I have?’ Non flipped a fancy hourglass. ‘Cargo Prep is close. Maybe start there?’
Forward through the hallway, port, down, down. Past 3D Printing and Crew Only. Cargo Prep.
Large silk packets labeled Rope, Cable, padding blankets and so on. A wall of packed parachutes next to a big table with bloodstains. Wrapping robot. An open crate held a hydra head on ice, missing an eye.
“Boss, I’m in cargo prep,” said a voice. “The equitaur walked in. His ears are pointed right at me.”
Non reached behind the parachutes and captured an anthro mouse. Murphy Roths Large. He snatched away the headset to speak into it. “My Dad can fly this craft if you let him.”
END MEMORY
----------------------------------------
“NO! NO! LIAR!” A dissonant voice filled his senses, pulling him from his memory.
Non found himself bound, his hands and legs tied, laying on his side, painful belts over his horse body, something hard under him, mouth taped shut and his feedbag under him.
Non tied to a table [https://i.imgur.com/cTYaOES.png]
A giant nautilus in a tank loomed over him. Non was trussed to a table in Cargo Prep.
“Where did we go wrong, Sten?” asked a tall humanoid. The longer Non looked, the more the ‘oid’ part rang true. A blood-spattered tool apron held blades, forceps and saws. Powerful arms had a patchwork of different skin types, pelts and furs. Unmatched teeth of a dozen species filled the wide smiling mouth.
“Subject did not capture Murphy or take the handheld comm. There is no headset,” said the nautilus. “No cut on left arm. That memory was an invention of–”
“Lying! Thank you, Sten. Agent, you suggested your Dad a half hour ago. He’s flying the ship.”
‘The nautilus is reading my mind! The rein in my mane has a chain on my brain!’
‘AMMONITE!’ mind-screamed Sten. ‘No wordplay! First She-Taurus. Now YOU with endless painful–’
“Agent Ñ̰, your badge doesn’t activate,” said the humanoid. “Please tell us why a guardian of the galaxy gets plastic now? GCC badges used to be metal!” It dropped the Ñ̰ badge into the tank.
A hand composed of varied species of fingers, just two of them human, gripped Non’s nose, then tested the packing tape wrapped behind it. “Equines have such soft noses. Better than mine.” The monster surgeon gestured. “Don’t I have a pretty face? When you look like this, everybody smiles at you.”
Dr. Mayhem [https://i.imgur.com/kxaU3zx.png]
The quilted nightmare had yellow and blue eyes, with a bloody socket and cheek freshly stitched around the blue one on the left. Mounting horror let Non see everything, the shock of it forcing him to his senses. ‘He’s the voice in the helmet! He has Dad’s eye!’ Squirming in the bonds, he tried to get farther from the body part stealing monstrosity.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Subject recognized your latest surgery, sir,” said the dissonant voice. The thing in the fishtank moved its pedipalps on Non’s temples.
“Do you like how the taur eye looks in me?” The mosaic monster winked with it. “It’s your fault for mucking up the plan. You somehow broke my control of She-Taurus. Then I see you running down the avenue towards us. Right now, we’re enacting Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, rooting through your memories. We have many questions.”
‘The Jim Carrey movie?’ Non tried to scream, but hard, weirdly shaped metal filled his mouth and tape tightly bound his muzzle. ‘Who are you?’ thought Non. ‘My mouth is taped shut and I can’t scream.’
“Thoughts: a Harlan Ellison story about cans and who you are,” said the cephalopod. “Induce pain?”
“Myself, my favorite topic! On Earth, I was Usher Ravensbourne, a Yorkshire mortician that stitched together perfect families. Later, at Wakefield prison, I read a Swee the Troll book. In it, Swee caught a colt named Nonce Equitaur and lopped a leg off to toughen up his regeneration. While reading, fellow cutthroats visited my cell for menacing smalltalk and murder. One of them, Hefner Housos, upset that I’d killed his brother, asked about my reading material. Your pun became my final words—’Nonce Equitaur, Non Sequitur’—before Hef drew this out.” The monster showed a crude prison knife.
“Fifty times, Hef stabbed me with ‘nonce?’ as a die-die-diacritic on every jab. The tabloids loved the Murder Mansion Massacre and gave your name a new meaning. Meanwhile, here, I’d studied scientific body mergers. Agent Yaga got me the full mind-meld amid a prison riot. She encouraged me to … bet on your former name. It paid off. I now continue my stitchwork as a chimera. Dr. Mayhem, at your service.”
‘The word nonce got ruined by Usher, Swee and me?’
“Subject horrified,” said the ammonite.
The creature smiled sardonically, then drank from a fancy 2L bottle of Lerna Springs Select. “Want some? It’s the best. Apologies for your Dad. I couldn’t manage a hydra eye, not enough copper. So I swapped with him. It worked! Everybody’s in the play, still. But I digress. What’s our question list, Sten?”
“Unicorn’s location process. Fetlock attack. Weasel location. Sand trail. Bloody hoofprint in the steward’s storeroom. Mediocre quality weapon. Missing announcement. Usage of Portals book.”
”We want those portals. Today is the day we’ve waited for!” said Mayhem, pacing over ropes on the floor. “Why can’t you just extract these, Sten?”
“Telepathic apperception tricky, SIR. Answers locked via a multistate mind,” said the dissonant mental voice.
“Multistate mind. That’s the prereq I needed for harvesting the multihead ability. Murphy should have reported that. Heard it through Fetlock before losing control.”
‘A multistate mind. False Dichotomy. That’s it.’
“Don’t care. But a mental lock has keys. Found it.”
A grid of arrows printed under the water tank on wheels.
A multistate maze [https://i.imgur.com/jARiOEN.png]
“What is this hogswallop?” asked Mayhem, grabbing it.
“A multistate maze. Two start in the upper left room. Either can move one space as directed by the other person’s room. Get both to the lower right,” said Sten.
“Does he have the solution?” said Mayhem, giving up after ten seconds.
“No. But I can coax him to solve it. Person 1 is forced to move east thrice. Then person 2 is forced to move east twice. After that–”
A lightning strike rattled the zeppelin, masking the rest of the sentence.
“How long will this take? I have a storm to deal with.”
“About an hour, sir,” said the ammonite, moving the wheeled water tank.
“Bah!” Mayhem slapped the table. “Where’s Murphy? He’s good at mazes. He’s a son of Algernon!”
“He’s hunting for the weasel. Most of our crew are too big for the tunnels.”
“The horse managed them somehow! Did that bloody Gyro wrapper patch really happen?”
“Yes, see the map. Wait, the elevator shaft had the weasel’s vest. Team members coming down.”
With a chime signaling arrival, the up-down freight doors began parting. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning seared the sky nearby, plunging the room into stroboscopic silhouettes. A huge metallic wing and a sharp talon emerged through the aperture, then wrenched the doors apart with a metallic cacophony that rivaled the storm’s fury outside. Shining in the darkness were large red eyes, while blue sparks danced around the metal talons clanking on the deck. As the power flickered back on, a robotic secretary bird unfolded to its full three-meter height, dominating the scene with a formidable presence.
Octavian [https://i.imgur.com/qx1kVtK.png]
With a sweep of a metallic wing that could cut through necks, the secretary bird keened with a voice as sharp as its feathers, “Within thirty seconds, I want an explanation about the deviations to the plan, this blasted thunderstorm we’re in and why both Non and Lernea 3’s head are present in this room!”
Avoiding the slicing arc of the bird’s agitated wings, Murphy Roths Large stepped from behind the bird to drop the weasel’s vest on the wrapping robot. “We found the weasel’s jacket, but not the weasel.”
Mayhem nervously chugged down more Lerna Springs Select spring water. “Octavian, his brother attended the book fair. You’re hours behind. Murphy, solve this while I catch up our new bird friend.” He shoved the maze into the mouse’s hands.
“I’m not supposed to be here, Mayhem,” snarled the tall bird. “This recycled elevator is filthy.”
“Part of the plan. We got in as the cleaning crew for it. Octavian, I’ll get you caught up on the bridge, and then we can sweet-talk Taranis more. The main part of the game plan still might work, especially if we can access portals.”
“What main part? We’ve already done the main part! And Taranis? How far off the rails is this?”
Murphy looked at the maze as they left on the elevator, but then the ammonite pressed a pedipalp to his head while staying connected to Non. Mouse and equine saw each other in their memories as they looked into the other’s eyes. Once synchronized, their memories rewound and combined.
----------------------------------------
REPLAY MEMORY
Murphy studied his map, wondering what level Mayhem wanted him on. But a trail of sand on the floor seemed odd. One way led up the stairs, the other way–
*clank* Non’s badge deliberately hit a wall.
“Hello?” said the mouse, following the trail of sand to Cargo Prep.
In the 3D Printing room, Non listened as the mouse walked by, tied down his tail, then pulled a replica of his badge out of its molding gel as it finished printing. He opened the door and stepped into the hallway, following the mouse. Through Sten, Murphy and Non watched each other’s memories as the taur failed to be stealthy. Non coughed with his lower set of lungs, then reached back to feel blood on his lower set of nostrils. Murphy heard and hid behind parachutes while the lumbering equitaur was distracted.
Non scraped his hand onto a hoof, then opened a Crew Only closet to wipe off his hoof inside. From the tools available, he grabbed a long pole near the squeegees.
“Boss, I’m in cargo prep,” said Murphy. “The equitaur walked in. His ears are pointed right at me.”
Non’s eyes lingered on the prep table, then the hydra head in ice. “Hey, you, behind the blankets. My father can fly this craft if you let him.”
As if on cue, as he spoke, the zeppelin groaned around them.
Murphy stood up from the blankets with a walkie-talkie. “Did you hear that, Boss?”
“I don’t think your Dad will cooperate,” said Mayhem, through the device.
“Let me talk to my father,” said Non, holding a pole between himself and Murphy.
“Go ahead. He’s here on the bridge with me,” said the walkie-talkie. The mouse’s other hand held a rapier as he switched back and forth between send and receive.
“Sire, this is Non. I’m on the zeppelin. It’s rising much too fast. I don’t know if they have a pilot, but if they don’t, you need to keep us from exploding.”
“Did I hurt you, son?” said Lagen’s voice. “He forced me to burn those cables!”
“A first aid cabinet fell, but I’m fine,” said Non.
“You almost made me kill my son!” yelled Lagen.
“You’ll soon be doing that on your own,” said Mayhem.
“I’ll save the craft. Stay alive, son,” said Lagen. The transmission clicked off.
“Are you surrendering?” asked Murphy, hopefully, eyeing exits.
Reaching into his feedbag for anything to help, Non felt and removed a simple can opener. ‘Why do I have this?’ Then he lunged for the mouse.
Murphy dodged to the left, swinging his rapier at the taur.
Non dodged but tripped, slamming head-first into the wrapping robot’s operation area, which displayed an outline of the equine head with options.
Sensing an opportunity, Murphy jumped to press the WRAP button as Non flailed, his muzzle rapidly wrapped in many layers of shipping tape. Non felt a point at his neck.
“Stop moving or this knife finds an artery,” said Murphy.
Non slumped in defeat. He tried not to notice an object in his mouth.
As Murphy looked at his conquest with pride, he hit the broadcast button on his walkie-talkie. “I captured the equitaur in Cargo Prep.” Click off. Click on. “Someone come help me.”
END MEMORY
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The visions ended as Sten released the mouse’s head.
“Why did you do that?” Murphy yelled. “Do you know how awful that mind stuff is?”
“Where is the can opener?” said Sten. “He thought of cans in an ice cave from an Ellison story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. In his memory, they starved without a can opener. It’s the key.”
Murphy scoffed. “What difference does it make? It’s a can opener. He printed a fake badge!”
The ammonite pushed a pedipalp between the taut, taped lips, past Non’s teeth, and into the space in his mouth behind them, finding the tool pressed against the equitaur’s tongue. “It’s in his mouth.” Sten cut some tape and wrenched the can opener from Non’s mouth, then dropped it into Murphy’s paws.
“A sidecut can opener,” said Murphy. The equine writhed in his bonds as the ammonite agitated. “It has SIDECUT stamped into the handle. But it’s just a … is something happening?”
The ammonite’s tank roiled and bubbled. “Cryptoconchoidsiphonostomata erupt into this de-realized wordscape with unforgiving regularity!” screamed Sten.
“What?” asked the mouse.
The room’s ramp opened. Wind whipped into the room. The water tank rolled down the ramp as the ammonite wrapped around Non’s head. The bound equitaur struggled on the table as it moved, the turquoise falcon in the feedbag grinding uncomfortably under him.
“Stop that! Sten, what’s going on? Where’d your tank go?” The mouse drew his blade as he watched the watertank roll down the ramp to fall away into the high winds of a dark thunderstorm. On both sides of the ramp, the gale pulled out parachutes, which violently deployed in the storm, yanking the ropes Mayhem had walked over. The ropes dragged the heavy table to the ramp, then down.
Murphy held onto the wrapping robot and saw a thick strap between it and the table. The strap went taut when the table-bound equitaur fell into the storm. As Non dangled by the strap, the giant ammonite wrapped its pedipalps around the equine head and bit its powerful beak into the taur’s scalp. The table banged against the deck as the parachutes ripped away.
Murphy held on amidst the sudden violent winds. Outside the zeppelin, in the thunderstorm and securely bound to a table, dangling from strap, the equitaur seemed to be in much worse shape.
The ramp closed.
‘Neverheedthemhorseluggarsandlisteltomine,’ said the ammonite from outside, telepathically.
After several bangs against the underdeck, the strap snapped. Then silence except for the storm.