Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  Knowing who they were was important. She needed that for the next phase of her plan.

  Drip

  Again, her tongue took in the minuscule amount of moisture. It hadn’t become irritating yet - the memory of that thirst was still fresh. However, she no longer needed it. That Hunger had been satiated. But those drips of water would serve one more purpose, so Bast could endure as long as necessary.

  Eugene and Cassandra were in the room now. They’d been quiet for the last few minutes, the only sounds the gentle pecks of fingers on keyboards and the constant song of their beating hearts. Eugene finally broke the silence.

  “I’m going to take this batch of ichor to the centrifuge, not that it’ll really get us any new data. Going to, though, just so I can log it. Shouldn’t be more than twenty, tops.”

  “Okay!” Cassandra chirped. “I hope the experiment goes well! You never know, today may be the day we have a breakthrough.”

  Bast’s mind raced. Twenty minutes. She had decided that Cassandra was the easiest mark, so this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.

  Drip

  She licked her lips once more. Now it was time to act.

  Bast subsumed her pride and called upon that crystalized feeling from earlier, the stored joy at having her thirst quenched that nearly made her cry. She let herself fully feel the memory now, that joy causing her eyes to fill. Once the tears were running, she let out a noise. It was high pitched and muffled, a pained sound more suitable to a wounded animal than a goddess - or even a human.

  Cassandra shrieked and glass shattered. Bast wanted to curse, desperately hoping no security would come bursting in. But the only sound was Cassandra’s pounding heart. Lub-dub-lub-dub-lub

  Drip

  Lub-dub. Lub-dub. As Bast cleaned away this latest drop, Cassandra came closer. “Did...did you say something?”

  Twit, Bast thought, and let out the noise again. Cassandra leaned over her. Better than Bast had expected. It had felt like an eternity since Bast had last seen anyone’s face.

  The woman wasn’t precisely what Bast had pictured. She was bespectacled, which fit Bast’s mental image. However, Bast had imagined her being blond and sunny. While her face wasn’t unfriendly, Cassandra had jet black hair and heavy eyeliner that darkened her eyes.

  That didn’t matter. What was important was the way Cassandra’s face contorted with a mixture of concern and surprise. “Oh my God, you’re crying!” the woman exclaimed.

  Bast moved her head as much as the restraints allowed. It was barely anything, but enough to get a message across. Cassandra looked torn, and Bast could imagine why. If these four hadn’t been able to divorce themselves of their humanity, they wouldn’t have been chosen for this task. But there was a difference between ignoring the corpse-still body of a monster and ignoring a moving, weeping figure who had been strapped to a table for who-knew-how-long.

  Cassandra bit her lip, and her brows pulled down. “I can’t... what’s wrong?”

  She recoiled slightly from the anger in Bast’s eyes, pulling herself out of Bast’s line of sight in the process. “Of course. You can’t speak. I don’t-”

  Drip

  Cassandra’s face reappeared, her jaw set. Whatever she had decided, she’d decided it firmly. It was almost adorable, like a puppy certain it was going to catch its tail this time. “Know what...wait, did water just fall on you? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  Bast gave a single blink.

  “Is that the problem? Is the water bothering you?”

  Blink-blink.

  “I’ll let maintenance know. How long has that been going on? Oh, duh, you can’t tell me. Sorry, I...sorry. I’ll go tell maintenance.” She stood up, and Bast felt a surge of panic that lent real fear to this sound, more of a plaintive one than before. Cassandra froze.

  “You... don’t want me to go?”

  Blink.

  “You’re lonely, aren’t you? No one to talk to?”

  Bast blinked again, and Cassandra shook her head. “Of course you are. We’ve had you strapped down here for ages now, and we were told not to talk to you no matter what.” Cassandra hesitated. For a moment, Bast feared she’d stop there, but Cassandra plunged ahead. “I suppose this doesn’t count as talking to you. More…talking at you. Anywhere, there hasn’t been any evidence that your powers are conversation dependent.”

  Drip

  Bast licked the water away as Cassandra continued to chatter. “It’s not that we don’t want to talk to you - I mean, if you’re really Bast, you must be over three-thousand years old, I can’t imagine what you’ve seen, what you could tell us! But they’re worried about what you could use against us. We still don’t completely understand how your power works.” She let out a nervous laugh, and a few seconds of silence followed.

  Drip

  That seemed to spur Cassandra to action. “Why don’t I just email maintenance, but I’ll stay here? I can talk to you while I work - we’re trying to identify the chemical composition of your blood. Er. Well, it’s not blood. It’s ichor. It’s fascinating - have you ever analyzed your own blood?”

  Blink-blink.

  “Oh, my, well...” She started talking about amino acids and exotic chemicals. Bast clung to every word with the same desperation she had felt licking those drops of water as they fell.

  And slowly, as slowly as those pathetic drips had taken care of her thirst, this near-incomprehensible technobabble began to help Bast to feel less alone.

  Two Hungers down.

  Drip

  ***

  Dale stood at the head of the room, watching a video feed, his hands clasped behind his back. He watched his soldiers engaged with Anansi and Ryan until the room exploded into a ball of fire and the image froze. “Your camera was damaged after this, correct?” he asked, his eyes still on the screen.

  Roger Evans cleared his throat before speaking. “Yes, sir. The damage from shrapnel was extensive.”

  “Then please,” Dale said, turning around to face the room, “explain to me what happened next. Most importantly, explain to me why we do not have a confirmed kill on either of these entities.”

  Dale looked around the room at the moment of silence that followed. It was the first full meeting of the Myrmidon Team since the operation in Ghana. Dr. Pivarti was sitting at the other end of the table, her fingers steepled in front of her face. Lazzario and Jake were side by side, of course, looking at some notes on a tablet instead of directly at the Rear Admiral. Kathleen had one of the Myrmidon’s uniforms spread across her lap, her curled hair hanging around her face as she studied the fabric. Dale could barely see her lips moved as she put a finger through one of the holes. Carmen, at least, knew how to behave at a meeting, and was sitting with her attention fixed on the four Myrmidons.

  For their part, all four stood at attention.

  “The building collapsed, sir,” Roger said, picking his words with the unique care only used by men delivering bad news to their superior officers. “We hoped that would prove sufficiently fatal. And, more importantly, Hector was caught by some debris. Had a piece of rebar driven through his gut. It was my assessment that we should preserve the life of one of our own, even at risk of failing the mission.”

  Bridges noted the subtle emphasis on the possessive pronoun there and gave Roger a slight nod of approval. “I appreciate it when a man can own their fuckups, Evans.”

  Roger’s face hardened. “Sir?” he asked, that perfectly innocent question that always means “I don’t want to get in trouble for saying ‘have you lost your damn mind, sir?’”

  “Your concern from your men is a credit, soldier. I’ll grant that. However, and correct me if I’m wrong, your concern was for Hector Ross, yes? The same Hector Ross who, not eight hours after what you describe as an impalement, is standing right there to your left, correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roger said, and Dale once again found himself approving of the man he was dressing down. You made a bad call, Roger, and I can
’t let that slide. But I can’t fault the logic behind that call.

  “Tell me, Corporal. Do you now believe Hector Ross was in any immediate danger?”

  “Not knowing what I know now.”

  Dale pursed his lips. “And did the explosion also damage your radio equipment, Corporal?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I see.” Dale paced the room, then turned to put his attention fully on Dr. Pivarti. “Doctor, let me ask you. If Roger had radioed back for assistance, what would you have told him?”

  “That the injury was nowhere near as severe as it appeared. There was plenty of time for termination of the two hostiles.” If Dale looked annoyed, Dr. Pivarti’s face was a thundercloud. “There was no reason to abandon the mission.”

  “If I’d been briefed on how quickly we heal, I would have radioed,” Roger snapped, temper finally flaring. “I was only told we were tougher than before. That did not indicate to me any kind of improved healing ability.”

  “If you had read the full report-” Dr. Pivarti began.

  Roger wasn’t interested in letting her finish. “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he said in a tone that meant he couldn’t care less if he had her pardon, “but we were given seven hundred pages of briefing material. All known myths on Anansi. All known information on Ryan Smith. Everything we knew they had been up to since emerging. Everything you knew about our abilities. Everything we could knew or suspected about other known hostiles, including Athena, Ishtar, Moloch, and several deities we haven’t even seen yet. I had to prioritize the reading material and delegate. I gave Hector the folder on our abilities.”

  “So you’re blaming him for your decision being misinformed?” Dale demanded.

  “No sir,” Roger said, his tone icy. “He had a foot long piece of steel shoved through his gut. I’m shocked he remembered his own name.”

  Dale took a deep breath. “Have a seat, all of you. I understand, Roger, I do. And Hector, I’m glad you’ve made a full recovery. But you need to understand that injuries that would normally cause a withdrawal no longer apply.”

  “At what point, then, do we pull out?” Roger asked, his voice a shade warmer. “Doctor, do you know what we can and can’t recover from?”

  Dr. Pivarti shook her head. “The only way to know for certain would be to subject you to various injuries and watch you recover. I imagine everyone here agrees that would be a bad idea.” She didn’t wait for the nods before forging ahead. “However, I think there’s a good standard to apply. As long as you still have power in your harness, anything short of an injury to the brain or heart should allow you to heal.”

  “And what if power is running low on the harness? Will we heal without it?”

  Dr. Pivarti sighed. “I’m not certain, to be honest. We’d need more testing to be sure.”

  “Do the tests you can without risking anyone’s life,” Dale said briskly. He motioned back to the screen, where the video switched to an aerial view of the ruined building using thermal imaging. “As you can see here, two heat signatures crawled out of the wreckage. Before a response could be launched, they entered a door and vanished. Can someone explain that?”

  No one spoke up immediately, and Dale crossed his arms and waited.

  “Oh...wait.” Lazzario’s voice broke the silence, and he leaned forward, drumming his fingers on his desk. “Is it really that simple?”

  “Is what simple?” Dale asked.

  “They have portals,” Lazzario said, snapping his fingers, alive with excitement. “That’s how they get around so quickly, and why they’re so hard to pin down! They can open portals. One...hang on. Admiral, zoom in on the doorway they went through, at the moment they did.”

  Dale did. Lazzario studied it, his smile spreading. “See right here,” he said, pointing to one side of the door. “The temperature changes right as they step through, like they’d opened the door to somewhere cooler.”

  Jake nodded. “It fits the available data. It explains those structures they built on Graham Island, too; they must have needed them for rapid transportation.”

  Dale frowned. “Explain.”

  Jake looked at Lazzario before speaking. “Well...they stepped into a doorway, yes? Maybe they need a real doorway to vanish. So they built those big fortresses so they would have doorways if they needed to make a hasty retreat.”

  “It’s possible,” Dr. Pivarti added. “Although we don’t have enough data to support the idea that doorways are needed. I do think we can agree they have some sort of ability to create portals.”

  Carmen frowned. “There’s...enough lore to support it, I suppose. Most of the myths weren’t concerned with how gods got places, except for chariots and boats for various sky deities.”

  “Which means,” Dale said, picking up the conversation and wrestling it back onto the most important topic, “that once we engage, we cannot guarantee they’ll return to a given location. We have to assume that once they escape, they could be anywhere.”

  “Not anywhere,” Lazzario said. “We’ll need to pinpoint where they go. They could have a limited range, and we might be able to exploit-”

  “It rained on Mars,” Kathleen said, almost too softly to be heard.

  Everyone turned to look at her. She didn’t look up from her sketchbook, despite suddenly being the center of attention.

  “I read about it. It rained on Mars. Had scientists all over the place wigging out.” She shrugged. “Gods going to Mars and making it rain could explain it.”

  Lazzario frowned and glanced at Jake, who was nodding furiously. “They could be anywhere,” Jake said mournfully, “and that shoots my doorway theory to hell. Unless...there are structures on Mars?”

  “Sir, if I may?” Roger Evans asked, interrupting before Jake started spinning conspiracy theories. He was holding up a folder labeled “Ryan Smith”.

  Dale nodded for him to go ahead.

  “Trying to chase beings that can teleport between cities - all the way to Mars, potentially - is going to be the next best thing to impossible. We need to get them to come to us.” He pulled a photo from the folder and tossed it onto the table. “Or we just wait somewhere they’re bound to go. It won’t work with most of them, but we have data on Smith’s previous life.”

  Dale picked up the photo. It showed a short-haired woman in her twenties who he recognized immediately. Agents had been dispatched to interview her, but she’d been useless. “You want to bring her in?” Dale asked.

  Roger shook his head. “We do that, Smith comes at us with every single being he’s buddy-buddy with and raises eleven different kinds of hell, sir.” Lazzario and Jake both nodded in agreement. “So we put a small team on watching her. We wait for him to show up. Then…” Roger held up a hand and curled it into a fist. “One less ‘god’.”

  Chapter 10

  Brotherly Love

  “Kind of like old times, isn’t it?” Ryan asked with a smile. They were back in Crystal’s nanoverse, the stars dancing around them. It looked different from the first time he’d seen it. Younger, full of bright stars and spiral galaxies that danced and spun in intricate patterns. He remembered that she had restarted her nanoverse after Graham Island and reflected that there was something extraordinary about an early universe.

  “How do you figure?” she asked, following his gaze to the galaxies above them. For a second, he thought he saw anxiety flit across her face, but it was gone so quickly Ryan assumed he had imagined it.

  “Just riding in your nanoverse,” he said, “with no immediate tension looming over our heads. No reason to worry that when we step out, someone is going to ambush us…Is it weird to be nostalgic about a few weeks ago?”

  Crystal put her tablet aside and smiled at him. “No, love, it isn’t. Nostalgia’s a funny thing for us - when the years start losing meaning, you can get nostalgic about five minutes ago and not have any of us laugh at you.”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t lost meaning to the years yet,” Ryan said. “Yet here I am, t
hinking about last month as ‘man, those were the days’.”

  Crystal chuckled. “Well, what did you expect? Your entire bloody life was boring as sin, from what you’ve said. Then you were constantly in danger. So, of course, you romanticize the one time in between those two points when things were interesting but not terrifying.”

  Ryan considered for a moment and nodded. “I guess that makes sense. And hey, even better, it’s a time before my sister has ripped my face off.”

  Crystal rolled her eyes. “Ryan, love, I completely understand your desire to avoid facing the music there. I also don’t care.” She went back to working on her tablet.

  “Uh…”

  “I had a family once.” Crystal’s voice was harsh, and she stabbed at the touchscreen like she was going to put her finger through the device. “Back in Lemuria.”

  Ryan grimaced. This entire time, he’d been complaining about having to go see his sister, stressing about how angry she would be, and Crystal was...well, he wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but it didn’t take a genius to put together that it wasn’t anything even on the same planet as good. “What happened?”

  Crystal didn’t look up. “That’s the thing, Ryan. It’s been a million years. I don’t know anymore. I don’t remember my brother’s name, my parent’s faces, my sister’s laugh…I don’t even remember if I had more than one of each.” She shook her head. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I had to have multiple brothers and sisters. We laid eggs, so it’s pretty obvious we had clutches. I probably had more than one of each. Probably. But I don’t have any idea.” Crystal stabbed her tablet a few more times, and Ryan was left to wonder if she was actually doing anything with it, or just using it as a prop to hide her anger. Poorly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.

  Crystal sighed. “I realized I couldn’t remember them around seven hundred BC. I tried for a while to recall anything, any detail…but after a while, it hit me. I was mourning the idea of them. I’d actually mourned the people hundreds of thousands of years before. But if I had a chance to go back and see them again, to remember them? I’d do anything for that.” She looked up, and Ryan could see what she had been trying to hide. Her eyes were glistening with repressed tears.