Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition

by Matthew Howard

  Patches rubbed against her leg and mewed. She loved to hear Mags sing, but the smell of something like fish was exciting her, too. What was it, she wondered, and did it taste as good as it smelled?

  Tarzi walked up behind her, activating his headlamp with the touch of a button. “Do you think they could pick a longer access code?”

  “It’s not too tough. Just the first fifty digits in the decimal of pi. Backwards.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to bring it up on the tablet and have me read them to you?”

  Mags stopped typing numbers. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I didn’t lose my place chatting with you?” Her finger paused over a three, then hovered over a five. Then back to the three. “Besides, I memorized the first five hundred after losing a bar bet to Celina in 1993.” She settled on the three and went back to typing.

  “Mags?”

  “What, Tarzi?”

  “Do you think you could you help me with trig sometime?”

  She grinned and typed the last few digits. “As soon as you realize it’s just algebra about triangles mapped on a circle, you are going to be dangerous. Have you ever tried memorizing log tables in your trance?”

  As the door slid open, Tarzi’s light fell on several more layers of the mesh they had sawed through at the front door. “Not more of this stuff,” he complained. But layer by layer, like curtains, the mesh slid to one side or the other. “Nice.”

  Mags turned her light on, too, pointing it towards the dark doorway. “Here goes nothing. Be careful and stay close, you two.”

  Patches let out a long, plaintive mew. She dashed into darkness beyond the lights from the headlamps.

  “Or, just run headlong into danger,” said Tarzi.

  “Or that. Let’s go.”

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  “Tarzi, look at this.” In the light of Mags’ headlamp, her gloved hand traced smooth curves in the stone walls of the cavern. The circle of Tarzi’s light rose from the ground to join hers on the wall. A few meters to the right loomed a sharp drop-off into blackness.

  Tarzi placed his left hand on the wall. “Are those carved?” His seahorse faithfully circled in the air around him. The green lines of its circuits glowed in the darkness, faintly illuminating the curves of its metallic surface.

  “I don’t think so, dear. Look.” Mags traced a series of repeating formations. “These are the plates of a trilobite shell. These points on both sides of the plate? Legs. Here is its head. And here, where it ends.”

  “That’s one of the buggers? Mags.” His light climbed up the wall, all the way to the top, and then up to the jagged ceiling of rock. “The whole wall, it must be hundreds of them.”

  “Thousands. Tarzi, these went extinct seventy-five million years before the dinosaurs!” Her tail switched back and forth sharply in the darkness.

  “Aren’t they pre-, what is it, Precambrian?”

  “Early Cambrian. Close enough. But what the hell are they doing in the Belt?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s take some.” Tarzi pulled his pistol from its holster. He flipped it to “torch.” He found the rough point of a small outcrop and slowly sliced it off. The slice of rock fell into his open hand, and he held it in the light. “Oh, nice souvenir.”

  In the black and grey speckling of the asteroid rock, two distinct trilobite shapes swam past each other, only partially obscured inside the stone. Even darker black minerals had replaced their bodies. With a polish, they would shine like obsidian.

  “Pretty,” said Mags. “You know, that fossil wouldn’t cost much on Earth, but they never get out to the Belt. We might have to come back with proper tools.”

  “And make millions selling trilobite paperweights to space miners?”

  She laughed. “Think bigger, dear! I can think of a few mining tycoons who would spring for a statue carved from this rock.”

  Patches mewed loudly and rubbed Mags’ leg.

  “What’s the matter, kitty? You just ate!”

  Patches jumped onto a small ledge of stone at the bottom of the wall. Lowering her belly and arching her tail, she pinned her ears back. Her paws rhythmically kneaded the stone, first one, then the other, claws outstretched.

  She howled and bolted into the darkness.

  “Come on, dear. Let’s keep going. We can excavate later.”

  They continued down the rough pathway carved into the rock. Mags kept her light straight ahead, shining a wide circle on the pathway, illuminating the edge of the wall and the edge of the drop-off. Tarzi’s light slowly scanned beyond the edge of the drop-off into the abyss. He could not see any bottom to it, though he thought he could make out the wall on the other side.

  Mags sniffed several times.

  “You smell something?”

  “Seafood. It’s what Patches is freaking out about.”

  Patches darted along the edge of the wall through the arc of light, then into darkness behind them. “Mrooowwwl!” She darted back the other way, leaving them behind again.

  “Something’s alive on this rock,” said Mags. “And it’s making me—Whoa!”

  Tarzi’s foot slipped on the rock. His hand shot out to grab her forearm. “Sodding slippery!” But wrapped around his other wrist, he felt the firm grip of Sparky’s tail.

  “Careful!”

  The tail unwrapped and released his arm once he regained his footing. “Got it.”

  Mags returned her light to the path. “Okay, watch your head. The ceiling is lower right here.” She crouched, and Tarzi crouched behind her. They moved forward slowly, staying to the wall on their left.

  Her headlamp shone on the path for about a meter in front of them. Tarzi’s headlamp mostly illuminated the back of Mags’ thighs and her boots, her tail swishing calmly back and forth. Sparky’s faint green glow lit up the wall each time he circled around.

  The ledge under their feet widened out another meter, then another. But just ahead, the wall came to a jagged end. The low ceiling opened into a much larger cavern.

  “It turns out my map isn’t as bad as I thought. This must be the land bridge that connects to the main lab.” As they pressed on, the doorway at the far side of the bridge came into view. “And there it is.”

  Tarzi’s light moved toward the door, which was recessed a meter deep in an alcove barely wider than he could stretch out his arms. Like the exit door from the first room, it had a security panel. It was the same shiny plastic instead of metal. He raised his light above the door.

  “Mags! Look!” The circle of her spotlight drifted up to meet his. They saw, carved into the stone, an animal shaped like a dolphin but forty meters long, with a thin snout full of daggers. “What kind of fish is that?”

  “Damn, Tarzi, that’s no fish. That’s an ichthyosaur!”

  “A fish lizard?”

  “Literally. A swimming reptile. But look at its skin.”

  All along the sides of the monstrous reptile carving ran lines like the circuitry on Tarzi’s seahorse. Instead of scales, it had smooth plates, like the outlines of Sparky’s metal panels. “Is that what they were making here? It’s huge!”

  “Can you imagine if something that size could generate an electric—”

  Patches howled.

  Just then, they were slammed and lifted from the ground. The curved edge of a tentacle as thick as a bullet train assaulted them bluntly. Their bodies flew through the air past the edge of the drop-off. They fell into darkness.

  Tarzi saw random flashes of the caverns in his headlamp’s light before he realized he was falling. He cried out, arms flailing, legs kicking at nothing.

  Mags’ spine twisted her body around in mid-air before she had a single thought. Instinctually, her joints expanded like a cat’s so she could absorb the impact of landing. She heard Tarzi scream. The circle of light from her headlamp swung around in the direction of her fall.

  Her eyes brought the bottom of the pit into sharp focus, but she could not believe what she saw. Oval tubes stuck out at all
angles from the rocky walls of the pit. They glistened, translucent, a pale green in the falling light. They coated the entire bottom of the pit. Something moved inside them.

  Mags hit the bottom feet-first with a loud splat. She sank into gelatinous goo and her fingertips touched the bottom.

  Tarzi slammed on his back into the slime beside her.

  Her head broke the surface. She tore off her mask and gasped for air. The force of the blow had knocked the wind from her lungs, and the gel had clogged the mask’s filters. She took two quick breaths and reached her hand down into the goo to pull Tarzi up.

  She tore his mask off so he could breathe.

  “Ow! Sod it!”

  “Ugh! Here, take your mask. You can still use the light.”

  As he caught his breath, she ran both hands through her hair. It was filled with gel. Drawing it through her closed hands, she squeezed out as much of the goo as she could. “Gross!”

  “Auntie,” said Tarzi, shining his light around him. “What in the actual fuck?”

  “Look!” Mags shone her light directly onto one of the oval tubes between them. Like the others surrounding it, it stood more than a meter tall. She had damaged it in her landing, and the translucent outer shell was torn open to reveal tentacles. “They’re eggs.”

  “Oh, my god.” He stared at the smooth, glistening tentacles, following the orderly rows of suckers along their curves. There, a single eye stared back at him.

  Patches howled from the top of the pit. Far above them, her tiny face glowed in the seahorse’s light. Her mouth opened to squeeze out another plaintive mew.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Mags. “Damn it! I have this goop in my socks now.” She scooped a handful of it from her chest and flung it at the wall.

  Tarzi slicked back his mohawk and tossed aside more goop. He pulled his cap from the slime. Thick blobs dripped from it. “Disgusting!” He shoved the cap into his pocket and spit to one side.

  “Patches,” Mags shouted, “Take cover! Hide!”

  Patches howled again then bolted out of sight. But the glow from the seahorse began moving down the wall.

  “I’ll be—check it out, Tarzi.”

  The seahorse drifted down into the darkness. Holding out his arm, the young man invited it to land like a hawk.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  “Don’t worry. He won’t shock me.” Tarzi’s cybernetic friend proved him right. It hovered over his hand and curled its tail around the young man’s wrist. “See? He—whoa! Hey!” Tarzi struggled as the seahorse tugged on his wrist. “Cut it out!”

  It only tightened its grip and lifted him into the air.

  “Tarzi, stop fighting for a second. See if it can pick you up.”

  “What if it drops me?”

  “If it goes nuts, I’ll blast it out of the air.”

  He stopped resisting. “That is so reassuring.” Below the seahorse’s grip on his right wrist, Tarzi took hold of his arm with his left hand. “Watch my one-handed pull-up.” He pulled steadily against the seahorse’s grip, breaking his feet free from the eggs and goop with a loud splorch.

  “Ten out of ten, great form. Okay, do you think he can get you all the way to the top?”

  “What? Oh, sod it. How else are we getting out of here? Come on, Sparky. Take me up!” And with that, the two of them rose into the air.

  “Hang on tight!” Mags solemnly watched her nephew. A halo of green light shone around him. Her asteroid exploration kit contained nylon ropes, hooks, spikes, and a small hammer. But climbing out of here covered in this slippery gel presented a problem. She was sure she could handle it. A few bruises, maybe worse, but nothing she couldn’t walk away from. But Tarzi? When had he ever climbed vertical cliffs?

  She smiled when the light reached the top of the drop-off.

  “Made it, Auntie! Yes! I’ll send him down for you.”

  Again the green light grew larger and larger as the seahorse descended into the pit. Mags held her wrist up to it. The seahorse’s tail uncurled, wrapped around her wrist, and tugged. Her feet rose a centimeter from the floor of the pit, two centimeters, and then BAM. She fell back to solid ground.

  “Come on, buddy. Try harder than that.”

  The seahorse pulled. Again, Mags rose into the air one centimeter, then two, but dropped to solid ground.

  “Tarzi! Can’t you make it go any harder!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It keeps picking me up and then setting me down.”

  “Maybe you’re too heavy.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Sorry, Auntie. I just meant—”

  “I bloody well know what you meant! Now let me think.”

  “Oh, holy shit! Mags!”

  “What?!”

  Tarzi scrambled away from the edge of the drop-off and out of her sight. Three flashes of laser light burst from his pistol. “It’s huge! Whatever hit us, it’s still in here!”

  A massive tentacle appeared at the edge of the pit. It snaked down the wall faster than the eye could follow. Mags drew her pistol, disarming the safety, but it was too late. The tentacle came right towards her and wrapped her up. Suckers gripped her flesh. They tore the pistol from her clenched hand as the cold and slimy thing pulled her out of the pit, past the edge, and up into the air above Tarzi’s head.

  Then she saw the horrifying thing that lived on the other side on the rocky bridge. From the depths of another pit, an enormous head swelled up. Its tentacles waved in the light of her lamp. A beak that could cut a school bus in half clacked angrily. She screamed.

  The tentacle brought her up to a pair of eyes set in a gelatinous globe of a head. The pupils focused on her, and her light shined into their caverns.

  With a heart-wrenching howl, a calico blur shot through the air. Patches landed on the tentacle which gripped Mags. She ripped into it with her claws. She tore a chunk free with her teeth.

  Then Patches felt something she had never felt before, a powerful presence for which she had no words. It pulled at her mind like a magnet. She stopped her attack to look into the eyes of this giant thing which smelled like fish but was not. Then Patches went limp. A second later, so did Mags.

  “Mags!” Tarzi shouted. He aimed his pistol at the swollen globe of the monster’s head, knowing the tentacles had crushed his friends and killed them. In his rage and sadness, he fired.

  But Tarzi could not have been more wrong.

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  A great tableau unfolded before Mags, like a scroll containing images from the life of the octopus. The images came to life. Tentacles undulated. Figures in lab coats conducted experiments. The ocean surf splashed and kissed her face. Then she was drawn in.

  She swam through this projection of the life of the octopus, now all around her. The cold pressure of the sea surrounded her. Down she dove. Her arms and legs flexed, now boneless and lined with suckers.

  A light suddenly pierced the waves above. Mags looked up into its glow. Scores of baby octopuses and small fish interrupted the beam, casting shadows below them. She reached out a tentacle to touch the newborn octopuses.

  A hose snaked into the water, coming straight for her. Mags propelled herself out of the way, but the sea creatures were not so lucky. The hose sucked them up, not choosing any ones in particular, vacuuming up anything in its path.

  Then a calico torpedo plunged into the sea. Mags saw Patches’ body deformed like hers, reshaped like an octopus, shooting down from the surface of the water. Patches attacked the hose violently. She wrapped herself around it, trying to dig in her claws. But she had no claws. She tried to kick her back legs and shred the hose, but she had no legs. Only tentacles.

  Mags thrust forward to join Patches in the rebellion. But when her strange limbs touched her cat, the hose sucked them into its pull. Up, up, up it took them before retreating from the sea. A white light obliterated everything.

  “Patches? Patches!”

  The indestructible calico he
ard Mags’ voice, but not from any particular direction. All around her, the impenetrable white light shone with it.

  “Patches! Where are you?” Mags heard her from everywhere all at once. “Patches!” Again, the mewing. She tried to close her eyes and concentrate, but she had no eyes. She tried to touch her hands to her face, but she had no hands, nor any body at all.

  Somehow she could look into the light in any direction, but she could not see anything, not even herself. “Bloody hell,” she said with no mouth. And then she was born.

  Patches arrived at the birth of Meteor Mags and relived her entire life in a flash. She saw Mollie hold her new baby for the first time. She lived through the uprising in Spain, and the terrible days in Barcelona. Patches held Mollie in her arms as she died from gunshot wounds. She met Celina and sailed to the United States. She danced.

  Patches joined Margareta in preparation for the invasion of Normandy, and later met John Coltrane. She witnessed the development of the GravGens at La Plaza Margareta and rode a motorcycle on Gramma’s last night on Earth. Patches joined Mags in her quest to get off-world, her return to a life of smuggling, and the building of her club on Vesta 4.

  Then a kitten was born.

  As the calico relived her own life, Mags lived it with her too. They witnessed the tragic train wreck etched upon Patches’ mind as her first memory. From her vantage point, Mags could see the truth behind this awful wreck, a truth not even Patches understood.

  But Patches suddenly did understand, and Mags felt her understand. Then both of them realized what was happening to them.

  “Kitten, we’re inside each other’s minds. Do you feel it?”

  Patches mewed and imagined herself in Mags’ arms. Purring, she licked Mags’ nose and nuzzled her.

  “My baby kitty.”

  Together, they watched Patches’ life unfold from the inside. Patches learned how Mags had become trapped in the storage room in the spaceport on the day they met, and together they purred as they relived their first meeting.

  As the life they had lived together replayed before their eyes, they felt a rush of understanding. Everything they had ever known, everything they had ever felt, everything they had ever sensed or touched or deduced—all of it was laid bare before them, shared completely.