She felt like she had slept for days. It was normal for her to need extra sleep after an especially intense adrenaline rush. But she could not recall ever waking up confused about who she was. She set her brush down and walked to the window. Out there, on a rocky slope of Vesta 4 behind the club, her nephew and her calico cat sat by a sculpture in the dark. She decided to join them.
“Morning, little man. What are you two up to out here?”
Tarzi sat cross-legged on the ground, scratching Patches’ face. “We’re waiting for the sun to come up. You’ve been out for like a day and a half. Are you okay?”
“I guess so. I feel fine, but I just woke up thinking I was Patches for a minute! It kind of freaked me out.”
“Weird.”
She noticed the lack of Tarzi’s typically enthusiastic tone. “Totally weird. What have you got here?” She waved her hand at the sculpture.
“Just something I sketched that night we got back, after everyone had gone to bed. The guys helped me make it in the machine shop.”
“Fuzzlow’s about as handy with tools as he is with a microphone, isn’t he?”
The base of the sculpture stood a meter tall, bolted into the rock, a metal obelisk with the top sliced off to form a flat plane. Above it floated a metal sphere with rings like a planet, slowly spinning. Mags admired the handiwork.
“Fuzzlow came up with the idea of installing magnets to make the planet float. We buried—” The young man sighed. “We buried what was left of Sparky under it.”
Mags knelt beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Tarzi.”
He sniffed. They sat together quietly for a moment. Then the sun broke the asteroid’s horizon, casting long shadows across its rough terrain. Fingers of light crept over Vesta 4. When the light reached the sculpture, its metal surface glowed red, just as Tarzi’s seahorse had in its final moments. A small hologram of Sparky appeared, circling the sphere. It, too, glowed red in the morning light.
Tarzi stood and cleared his throat. “I wanted to read something I wrote for him.” He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and opened it. Patches bumped against his leg. Mags stood, too, bowing her head in respect. She listened as the young man spoke.
Red metal at dawn
pounded smooth by solar hammers:
a monument to your sacrifice.
No star will shine as bright without you now
but all of them shine brighter
in the eyes of those you freed.
Let us not waste this gift.
Let us remember the price
with which you bought our lives.
Red metal at dawn:
We weather the storm
and still we press on.
Mags put her arm around him. “You wrote that, dear?”
“Patches helped.”
The bushy calico looked up and blinked. She licked her paw, rubbed it over her ear, and licked it again.
Mags chuckled softly. “I’m sure she did.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s a fine poem, Tarzi, and a fine memorial.” She patted him on the back. “You did good, little man. It’s good to remember your friends, and to honor them.”
He smiled.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said back at the lab.”
“About helping me with trig?”
“Silly, you know I’ll help you with that anytime. I mean about getting someone’s ten-thousand-year-old voice mail in English.”
“Oh! Yeah, it just seems—impossible. But after what we’ve seen, who knows? Prehistoric fossils in space? Giant octopuses that can read your mind? I don’t even know what to think anymore.”
“I think you were right. It was impossible. Because that message should have been in whatever language the manual was in, you know? It’s that simple. Octopus I can believe. I was there. I was in its mind. But this?” She looked into space and sighed. “So, there’s only one thing I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
“Something Great-gramma said to me once, the first time she ever appeared to me.”
“You mean that time with the gravity thing?”
“No, no. That wasn’t the first time she came to me. This was long before then, back in 1938.”
“Damn, Mags! Just how old are you, anyway?”
“Tarzi, I’ll be a hundred and six years old this November. And you’d better not miss the party!”
“A hundred and—wait. When’s the party?”
“Don’t worry, dear. I’ll come pick you up! Anyway, the first time Great-gramma came to me, she told me something. She said she would always be watching over me. And sometimes I can feel her, even when I can’t see her or talk to her. I just know she’s with me, watching out for me.”
“And you think she had something to do with the message we got from the Ghost Moon?”
“What I think is, that message was never in English at all. I think she just made it so we heard it that way. So we could save Patches.”
“Mags, I don’t get it. I thought Mad Dog was dead. Are you saying she’s a ghost? Or that she isn’t dead at all?”
“I’m not sure how to say it, really. It’s like she’s gone, but she isn’t. Tarzi, I think it’s time I told you what happened to Mama.”
And there, at Tarzi’s memorial to his departed pet, Meteor Mags told him all about it.
9
The Curtain of Fire
I would rather be ashes than dust.
I would rather my spark burn out in a brilliant blaze.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
Every atom of me in magnificent glow,
Than a sleepy and permanent planet.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
—Attributed to Jack London by Ernest Hopkins;
—San Francisco Bulletin, 1916.
PROLOGUE: THE GIRL WITH A TAIL
February 1938: USA.
Bertrand stared at the girl dancing on his stage. He raised his hand, as if to pose a question. But he could not find the words.
Meteor Mags wore some of Celina’s clothes, and they were a little too big. She explored the stage, smiling, doing a few dances her mother taught her.
“Celina, does your friend have a—wait. How old is she?”
Celina, seventeen years old at the time, replied, “She’s eighteen, same as me.”
“Oh, bullshit. Listen, I love your mom and pops, but don’t bullshit me. I’ve been in the club business sin—”
“Since before I was born. I know, Uncle Randy.” She took a sip from a bottled beer. “Go, Mags! Go!”
Mags smiled and waved back.
He rolled his eyes. “Puh-lease don’t call me that in front of the customers!”
“Please don’t call me on my bullshit, when you know damn well it’s the right answer if vice pays a visit. Bert.” Celina unsnapped her purse, which she had sitting on the high-top table between them. “Don’t get so cross. I brought you a prezzy.”
He lifted his chin and eyed her purse skeptically.
She knew better than to play the “close your eyes” game with him. Bert was a decent man, but he could be no fun at all if you teased him too much. He had extremely profitable arrangements with Celina’s parents, acting as a distribution point for smuggled goods into the States, and he deserved a certain level of respect.
His eyes lit up when she opened her cigarette case. “A-ha! You’ve come to do more than give me a hard time.” He took a cigarette and produced a lighter, but he lit Celina’s first.
She nodded her thanks. “Bert, she doesn’t even want to dance here. We talked about it. So don’t you worry about how old she is or isn’t.”
He took a long drag, inhaling some of the smoke through his nose. He breathed it out. “Does your friend have a tail?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Mags, as if she had never noticed. “You litt
le ripper! I think she does!”
Bertrand shook his head. “It’s an amazing costume. I mean, your clothes don’t fit her, but she’s what? Thirteen? Fourteen? She’ll fill out someday. But the tail is—the tail is so lifelike. How does she do that?”
“Well,” said Celina, “it appears to be attached to her spine. Imagine that.”
Bertrand set his hand palm-down on the table. He leaned in and said, “Attached?” His looked back and forth from one of her eyes to another. “She can take it off, right?”
“Take it off? I told you she doesn’t want to dance here, Bert.”
“Not her clothes, goddamnit! The tail!”
“Shhh!” Celina put her finger to her lips. “Bert,” she spoke slowly. “My friend. Has. A tail.”
He rubbed his chin and then his mouth and then his whole face. He made a fist and released it like he set something free. “Okay. Okay. I get it.” He watched Mags for a moment more. “Is she doing some kinda flamingo?”
Celina laughed and shook her head. “Flamenco. It’s all the rage in Spain, from what she tells me. Don’t see much of that down under.”
“No. No, you don’t.” His eyes studied the girl on stage like a surgeon studies anatomy. He had become jaded by constant exposure to naked bodies of all shapes and sizes in his club, male and female, young and old. But this girl in her ill-fitting skirt and her clumsy shirt, dancing barefoot on his stage and swishing her tail back and forth? This was unlike anything he had ever seen. Imagine what she’ll be like when she grows up, he thought.
“So, you don’t mind if she stays in my room? She speaks fair English, but a lot of stuff seems to go over her head. I worry about her on her own.”
“Celina, I can’t even understand half of what you call English.”
“Don’t be such a knocker!”
“See what I mean?” He sighed. “As long as she can pull her own weight in the kitchen, I guess the extra bed is no biggie. And I’ll put her on a cleaning crew that comes through when we’re closed. She just can’t—we can’t have her out here when the club is open, Celina.” He leaned in again. “Listen. If people see a girl with a tail in here, this place will turn into a shithouse riot. I guarantee it. And I mean in minutes. Seconds. You gotta find a way to—cover her up or something.”
“Bert, she isn’t some kind of freak!” Her eyes misted over.
“Aw, Celina, I didn’t mean it like that. Hey.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Hey. This is your Uncle Randy talking to you, okay?”
She smiled. “Okay.”
“And all I am saying is to put some pants on her, and put the tail down the pants leg, or strap it to her leg, or something. Put her in boy clothes. People will absolutely lose their shit when they see her, and she’s too damn young.”
“Your brilliant plan is to have a ‘boy’ bunking with me?”
He lowered his face into his hands. Then he sat up. “Look, we’ll figure something out. Are you sure she doesn’t want to dance here? She seems to like the stage.”
“Bert, after what this little sheila has been through, this hotel is like a World’s Fair exhibit.” Celina exhaled, shaking her head. “You can’t even imagine.”
“Her mother died, you said?”
“I did. And I don’t think I’ve heard the half of it. All of Europe’s going to bloody hell right now.”
“It sure is. I’m glad we’re not involved.”
“So am I,” said Celina, watching her new friend. “So am I.”
PART ONE: VIVAN LAS ANARQUISTAS
1936: Spain.
Mags held her mother’s hand. She threw another piece of wood onto the fire. The church blazed before them in the night. Flames sparkled in the child’s eyes.
Her mother, Mollie, smiled with wicked satisfaction. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Maggie?”
“Yes, Mama. But why do we have to burn it down? Maybe people could live here. Or make a home.”
“As Durruti likes to say, ‘The only church that illumines is a burning church.’ Do you know what that means, Maggie?”
She lifted her eyes away from the inferno to look up at her mother. “It doesn’t make light until we set it on fire?”
Mollie laughed softly. “That’s true, too, dear. But it also means illumination as in truth. The light of truth, you see?”
Mags squeezed her mother’s hand. “People come here for the light of truth, but it isn’t here?”
“That’s right, dear. People come for the light of truth, but all they find is the yoke of tyranny. These churches all across Europe, they make me bloody sick.” She spat on the ground. “If you want to conquer a people, Maggie, first you send the missionaries and then the sword. You rob their minds of freedom, then crush their bodies if they resist. The churches of Spain are nothing but symbols of subjugation. They aren’t fit to be homes for anyone.”
Mags gazed upon the inferno. “They don’t sound very nice, Mama.” Embers rode the updrafts into the night sky. She thought they looked like little stars. “People should be free. Are there many more of them?”
“Churches? Oh yes, Maggie. Many, many more.” She picked up a scrap of lumber and tossed it onto the church’s burning wreckage. “How would you like to help me burn every last one of them to the ground?”
Mags rested her head on her mother’s arm. If these were evil buildings, she thought, then they deserved to burn, even if people could live in them. Perhaps after the evil was destroyed, then people could build new homes. Homes where they could be free. Homes where they might find the light of truth for real.
The church collapsed upon itself, timbers crashing into a fireball. The heat pressed against her face like a thousand suns. A galaxy of fiery stars exploded, rising in a twisted column up to the sky. Mags envied them in a way. They seemed so free to fly.
She hugged Mollie tightly. “I’d like that, Mama. I’d like that very much.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
The steam locomotive thundered across the Spanish countryside towards Barcelona. Mags sat by her mother on the unforgiving wooden bench that served as their seat. She watched the landscape speed past her and fall away. She held her mother’s hand.
“Maggie, let’s go over your multiplication tables.”
“Mama. Do we have to?”
“Yes, we do. You know how important your education is.”
She sighed. “I know, Mama.”
“You’ve been doing so well. Today we can start with sevens. Seven times two is?”
“Fourteen, Mama. But I—”
“Seven times three is?”
“Twenty-one. But—”
“Seven times four is?”
“Mama!” Mags stomped her feet.
Mollie watched her daughter’s tantrum. She shook her head, then leaned in towards her child. “What’s bothering you?”
Mags turned her gaze back to the window. “You don’t want to listen to me.”
“Of course I do. This is just so important for us to—”
“See? You don’t even want to listen.”
Mollie stopped and took a deep breath. “Alright, dear. I’m listening. What’s bothering you?”
Mags looked into her mother’s eyes. She saw frustration, but she also saw love. “Mama, how many prime numbers are there?”
“Prime numbers? Maggie, I—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I—”
“They start at two. Then three. Five, seven, eleven, thirteen. But when do they end? And what happens if you add all of them up?”
“Where did you learn about prime numbers?”
“It’s in one of the books you gave me. The geometry book by Euclid. He wants to know how many prime numbers there are. But I don’t understand his equation. Why does he add one to the product of all the primes, and how does he know he can multiply all of them when he doesn’t even know how many there are?”
Mollie held a hand to her mouth.
“What is it, Mama?�
�
“Oh, Maggie. I am so sorry. I didn’t realize. You’ve been reading Euclid?”
“Yes, Mama. Curved space instead of flat planes. Parallel lines don’t behave the same there. They act like they’re on a sphere and they intersect, not like in the other geometry books where they never meet. But I don’t understand his notation on so many things.”
Mollie threw her arms around her daughter. “I am such a fool. Please forgive me.”
Mags returned her hug. “For what?”
“Here I’ve been drilling you every day on your multiplication tables, and I had no idea.” Mollie pulled away from her daughter. She looked into Mags’ eyes and rubbed a hand over her hair, brushing it back. “I promise you, I will help you answer your questions. We don’t need to do multiplication any more. You just tell me what you have questions about, okay?”
She smiled. “Okay, Mama.”
Mollie leaned back in her seat. “My precious child.” She felt an enormous pride. Her hopes had become reality.
Mollie remembered when Mags’ father had come to Barcelona thirteen years before. She had determined to meet him, for Mollie’s revolutionary impulses led her to believe that the future of the world’s workers depended on a strong leader. And though Mollie was possessed of an inner strength nearly unequalled in her time, she knew the revolution required more. The revolution required superb intelligence, especially with the growing wave of science that had swept the globe. Mollie had convinced herself she needed to mate not just with any man, but the smartest man on the planet. And, as luck would have it, in 1923, he booked a room at a hotel owned by her mother.
She looked again to her child. Mags had grown into such a wonderful young woman. But Mollie knew this was just the beginning. In time, her daughter’s intelligence would outstrip them all, even Margareta and her mother before her.
“Mama? Will we visit Gramma soon?”
Mollie squeezed her hand. “Yes, dear. We will. But we have things to do in Barcelona first. The workers are fighting, and they need our help.”
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 25
