Lavabull

by Piers Anthony

  “Yeah,” he said, drawing her in close. “Same’s you handle my being half bull.”

  “That’s why I came here. I figured you’d understand about how I’m different.”

  “Yeah.” He absolutely loved having a real live girl in his arms. One who could handle him.

  “I think I should handle your finances, because—” She stopped, because he agreed. He gave her back the money.

  She laughed. “How can we have a comprehensive dialog if you agree before I finish my thought?”

  “What I want doesn’t require much talking.”

  “Don’t I know it! You see me as a heifer in heat. I’m hot all right, but not quite that way. However—”

  The phone rang again. She took it, again. “The Bull’s residence. His assistant speaking.”

  “Girlfriend,” he said loud enough for the phone to pick it up.

  “I am calling from the limousine parked outside your house,” the voice said. “Please join me immediately.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Lavender protested. “We don’t find these jokes funny.”

  “Read my mind.”

  He knew about that? She reached out and caught the mind in the limo. It was at the edge of her range, but that was enough. “Oh, my.”

  “Say nothing,” the voice said. “Just join me. Both of you.” The connection quit.

  “Huh?” The Bull asked.

  “That was a representative of the Secretary of Defense,” she murmured in his ear. “We need to meet with him in the limo, which is secure from electronic surveillance. It is not a joke.”

  “What has any such person to do with me?”

  She put her finger against his lips. “I think we’re in deeper than we know.”

  They went out to the waiting limo. The door opened and they got in, joining a seated man.

  “Read my mind,” he repeated.

  She did. Up close she had a much better take on him. He was absolutely legitimate. But it was so complicated that she backed off. “Maybe you’d better spell it out aloud,” she said. “The Bull is not a mind reader.”

  “Of course,” he said as the chauffeured limo moved out. “The recent broadcast, as nearly as we can ascertain, was not a joke. True, it was put on by hired hackers, but they are losing their appetite for it as they come to realize that they, too, are included in the destruction. We are up against a homicidal madman. I use that term advisedly, as we are not at all sure he is human.”

  “We’re not exactly human either,” Lavender said sharply.

  “Exactly. That’s why we need you. Villainous seems to be the representative of a group of, for want of a better term, crossbreeds, though they are not exactly that. We call them animen, though they are female too. One of you is a merger of human and lava, the only cross with the inanimate we know of. The other is a merger of human and bull. This sort of thing has been happening rarely, but all over the world. There are crosses with orcas—that is, killer whales—elephants, giant squid, bears, and perhaps others we don’t yet know of. They all have human intelligence and animal strengths. You, Lavender, are the only telepathic one we know of; perhaps that is a quality of the volcano that sired your mother. The one who calls himself Villainous seems to be a human-polar bear merger. The polar bears are in desperate straits as human-caused global warming melts their icy habitat and human settlements encroach on their arctic domain and human over-fishing depletes their food supply. He hates mankind and means to exterminate it.”

  He paused for a breath, then continued. “It seems they have devised a kind of gaseous poison that affects only primates, killing them within hours. Human beings are primates. Their problem has been distribution. Now, if the broadcast is to be believed, they have found a way: insert it in the lava chamber of a volcano, and let a subsequent eruption disburse it into the atmosphere. Global air currents would spread it across the globe soon enough, bringing human death wherever it goes.”

  “Wow,” The Bull said. “Why tell us?”

  “Because you represent a unique combination of talents that we desperately need for this mission: strength and telepathy, with a volcanic connection. We need you to locate the key volcano and remove the poison before it erupts. Once it erupts it will be too late. Humanity may be doomed.”

  “You mean, unless they’re bluffing,” Lavender said.

  “We can’t afford to take the risk that they’re bluffing.”

  “You don’t know which volcano?” The Bull asked.

  “That’s right. We don’t know. We will provide you with all necessary transport to any and all volcanoes, and all assistance you require. You will be top secret agents, as of now.” He smiled briefly. “If you are concerned about money, we will pay you ten thousand dollars a day, or more if you demand it. The service we require is of course priceless.”

  “Well,” The Bull started.

  “We need to consider,” Lavender said.

  “Of course. Will an hour do?”

  “It should.”

  The limo drew to a stop right before The Bull’s residence. They got out and walked to the house. “What’s this about considering?” he asked inside. “Of course we want to help save the world, and the money’s good.”

  “Big decisions of any nature should always be considered carefully,” she said. “Here’s the thing: we are what they call animen. We’ll probably be immune to that poison. We’ll surely be welcomed into the new order, if it comes.”

  “So?”

  “Which side are we on?”

  Chapter 6: Animen

  We had an hour. I only needed seconds, but I could see that Lavender was having a tougher time with it.

  “Isn’t your father human?” I asked.

  “He is, but perhaps we can convince Villainous to spare him.”

  “And you would want to negotiate with a man—or animan—who is willing to kill billions of people?”

  She shook her head, and I saw literal steam waft up from under her collar. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was—”

  I took her perfectly formed face and cradled it in a hand that could, if called upon, crush skulls or snap trees. And her face was “formed” too. I had no doubt that Lavender could take on any shape she wanted. That she had picked such an appealing form was a form of manipulation of course. I wondered what her natural form looked like. Or was I seeing it?

  Didn’t matter, not with a creature who could take on any shape she wanted—and the shape she had chosen was a damn fine one indeed.

  “Thank you, big guy, now where is all of this leading?” she said, following my train of thoughts.

  “It’s understandable that you would want to be like others of your own kind—hell, picturing myself with other half-breeds, and being accepted—is damn appealing. But being accepted is one thing. Killing billions is another. I can live as an outcast. But I couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t try to stop this madman.”

  “Point taken. I really am a good person. I just had...”

  “A momentary lapse?”

  “I was going to say a rough life. I was mostly alone. Kids avoided me, especially after I threw one of them into the sea.”

  I laughed at the image, then grew somber as I remembered the very real threat we were all facing, human and non-human. After all, what kind of world would remain, if run by this madman?

  “Good point,” said Lavender, picking up my thoughts like a champ. “So what’s the plan?”

  Admittedly, I liked seeing her human side. It was a pleasant change from her smoldering lava side, which she’d been laying on kinda thick since her arrival. I also liked seeing her uncertainty, too. As tough as she came across, she was no superhero. Not yet, anyway. I liked being needed, and I also liked taking charge, too. I’d only been in the superhero business for a short time, but I had more experience at it than she did.

  “First, let’s tell the representative we’re in.”

  We did so, and were told that a military transport p
lane was waiting at the nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, along with a crack team of Navy SEALS who would be assisting us. Apparently, another team of superheroes—a more famous team whose exploits were often featured on the big screen, were given the task to find Villainous himself. Two teams: one searching for the rigged volcano (us), and another searching for the bastard himself. Seemed about as effective a plan as we could have, under the circumstances. Of course, Villainous had had years to concoct his own plan, and to put safeguards in place. I suspected finding him and his lair would be a challenge, even for an experienced team of superheroes.

  “Never mind that,” said Lavender, reading my mind, as usual. “We have a volcano to find.” She shot a glance at the representative. “Speaking of which, how did you know I was here? More important, how did you know about my family’s volcanic roots? And, quite frankly, how did you get here so fast? The message was only recently aired—” She paused, reading his mind. “The apartment is bugged. You’ve been listening to us.”

  My mouth dropped and I felt the heat rising in my face. I am quick to anger, as bulls are wont to be. And when I get angry, I tend to want to destroy things. Take that last house for instance.

  The representative’s smarmy smile faltered when he saw me puff out. No doubt my face was taking on a shade of red, too, which tends to happen. More than anything, I see red. Blinding red that fills me with rage and hate.

  “Easy, Bull,” he said. “We try to keep tabs on all superheroes. At least, all new superheroes. We have to know whose side they are on. We have to know if they pose a threat and need to be neutralized. You have proven, time and again, to be on the side of good. And, yes, Lavender, we were aware of your arrival this morning. We’ve been frantically looking into your background ever since, and were shocked, to say the least, by your ancestry. There’s not a lot of people on earth who can say their grandfather is a volcano.”

  “That doesn’t explain how you got here so fast.”

  “I’m based out of Davis-Monthan. We received advanced word that something big was about to get announced. That the world media had, in fact, been hijacked. We were all put on alert. Lavender’s arrival can only be described as serendipitous.”

  “Seems legit to me,” I said.

  Lavender scanned his thoughts some more, frowned, then said, “You’re hiding something else, Mr. Brookstone.”

  The representative smiled, and some of his oiliness returned. “We have been well-versed in compartmentalizing our secrets from mind readers, Ms. Lavender. You are not the only telepath on earth. And we have many, many secrets.”

  “Cut the crap,” I said to him, sitting up. “The way I see it, we need to find this rigged volcano, and fast.” I looked at Lavender. “Any ideas?”

  She bit her lip in a way that I found adorable. Finally, she nodded. “I do. Take us to the nearest volcano. Active or dormant, it doesn’t matter.”

  Mr. Brookstone blinked, then pulled out his phone, swiped it on, used his thumbs to rapidly do a Google search, and reported: “The closest is Sunset Crater Volcano, just north of Flagstaff, about one hundred miles away.”

  “Then that’s where we need to go.”

  “I’ll let the pilot know.”

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  She rested her hand on my thigh. “We’re about to awaken a dormant volcano.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “For me, yes. But the volcano might be annoyed.”

  “You speak as if it’s a person.”

  “It’s a kind of person. It’s an entity all its own, and it might have answers for us.”

  Chapter 7: Volcano

  The plane oriented on a private strip near Flagstaff, and Lavender admired the Painted Desert nearby before they landed. She liked landscapes, being half rock herself. An inconspicuous mini bus took them north to the Sunset Crater Volcano. “This should be interesting,” Brookstone remarked.

  Lavender didn’t respond to his borderline sarcasm. She knew what she was doing. What she didn’t know was how the volcano would react to being roused from its slumber. She was in a position to know that volcanoes could be irritable; if one got angry, it was best to be far away. She would have to tread carefully, physically and mentally. But this was the only way she could see to make progress on their mission.

  They pulled up at the fringe of the volcano. Lavender saw immediately that it was only a shadow of its former greatness. Its contours had weathered down and brush had overgrown much of it. That brush would not have dared encroach, in the volcano’s heyday.

  “What now?” The Bull asked.

  “I need to commune with the mountain. It’s asleep now. It may not like being waked. The rest of you should probably withdraw a space.”

  “How far is a ‘space’?” Brookstone asked snidely.

  “Three miles should suffice.”

  He laughed. “How about three hundred feet?”

  That was ludicrous, but she was annoyed. “Suit yourself.”

  The bus backed off about a tenth of a mile, leaving the two of them. “Maybe you should join them,” she told The Bull.

  “I’m with you. A little shaking won’t hurt me. Besides, I’m curious what you’re up to.”

  She liked him, but he too maybe could use a lesson. “As you wish.”

  Now she doffed her clothes and sat on the ground, increasing her contact with it. She let her posterior melt somewhat, melding with the soil beneath, which had formed from an ancient lava flow. There was an affinity.

  “Wow,” The Bull said appreciatively. “You’ve got some ass. I mean that in the most admiring way.”

  “I know it. Now please be silent while I commune.”

  He shut his mouth, but his eyes remained on her bare body, and his thoughts were rampant.

  “Your mind too,” she snapped. “This isn’t your bedroom.”

  He tried to stifle his thoughts, managing to mute them somewhat. That helped.

  Lavender reached out with her mind, the way she did when communing with her grandfather. She searched down through the layers of igneous rock, seeking the heat below. There would be a magma chamber, sealed over, quiescent, but still the mind and heart of the volcano.

  She found it. Mountain mind, she thought. Hearken to me!

  There was a stir of awareness. Who are you?

  I am Lavender, half human granddaughter of an island volcano. But Grandfather is far away, so I must commune with you instead. I apologize for waking you, but my need is dire.

  The awareness expanded. A powerful mind force coalesced around her. There is lava in you.

  Yes. I am imperfect, a crossbreed, but I stem from volcanic lineage.

  What volcano?

  She presented the mental signature of her grandfather.

  I know of him. All volcanoes connect via the subterranean labyrinth.

  Yes. Grandfather told me that if I were ever in desperate need, far away from him, to come to whatever volcano I could reach and he would help me. So I have come to you.

  The mind intensified. What need is this?

  She could have told him about the threat to human existence. But she knew that volcanoes hardly cared about human concerns; men were mere flies on the hide of elephants. Instead she told him about the way the animen were using a volcano. How they were planting chemical bombs that the heat of the erupting volcano would disperse into the atmosphere. The humans do not like this. They may nuclear bomb volcanoes to get rid of the chemical. She sent an image of the kind of destruction such a bomb could do to an innocent volcano.

  The volcano reacted. The nerve! We do not want this!

  Of course not, she agreed. But it is the plan of the animen. They are using you to destroy their enemy.

  The volcano pondered. The more he pondered, the hotter he got. His magma chamber swelled, pushing the rock above it upward. Bushes and trees were shaken.

  “Yow!” That was The Bull, reacting to being jostled by a small earthquake. The government men were out of read
y telepathic range, but she got a mental jolt as their bus was bounced and shaken. Well, she had warned them.

  What do you want of me? the volcano asked.

  I want to eliminate the poison vapor bomb, so that the humans will not fear volcanoes and seek to decimate them. It is in a volcano, but I do not know which one. It is my hope that you can commune with your brethren and learn which one has been been molested by the animen. Then I can go to remove the vapor bomb, and there will be peace between the volcanoes and mankind.

  The volcano considered. His heat continued to grow, and the ground shoved upward and cracked open. Super-heated gas speared out from the new vents, incinerating the remaining vegetation. The Bull danced about, avoiding the steaming cracks; even he was not immune to this kind of heat. It did not bother Lavender, of course.

  The government men had finally gotten the word. The bus was speeding away from the action, seeking the three-mile distance she had recommended. They were learning.

  I am contacting the network, the volcano reported. Querying for such intrusions.

  Thank you, she thought, relieved that he had decided to cooperate. It certainly could have been otherwise.

  Well, there’s a certain hot sweetness about you, lava child, he thought.

  Lavender had practiced using human sex appeal on human men. Did it work also on volcanoes?

  The ground she sat on lifted higher as the heat of the volcanic outreach increased. Lava welled up, filling the cracks, flowing down the new slopes. An acrid cloud of gas floated just above the level of her head. The Bull danced closer to her, ducking down, realizing that her perch was relatively stable.

  Three volcanoes have been molested, the volcano reported.

  Three! Where are they?

  The volcano projected a spherical map of the globe. The spots were widely scattered around it. Lavender grabbed it with her mind, making it her own. Thank you! she repeated.

  Now let me sleep in peace.