Lavabull

by Piers Anthony

  Now at last she had it: when an animan heard those two words, the logic gate would open the channel for the animal, and internal hell would ensue. It was a ready way to nullify any or all of them.

  She withdrew from The Bull’s mind, carefully, trying not to disturb any of the muck or incite the sexual interest that lurked throughout. It was like backing out through a deep dark cave haunted by myriad ghosts. She had never been this deep in anyone’s mind before, and hoped not to have to do it again soon, if ever. She felt like taking a shower. It wasn’t just The Bull; she knew that plumbing this deep in any male mind—and maybe in any female mind too—would be like this. Minds were best left to their filthy privacy.

  “I felt you tramping around in there,” The Bull said. “Weird. What did you find?”

  “I found the answer,” she said. “Now I know why Villainous wants you promptly dead.”

  “Why?”

  “There is a logic gate in every animan mind that—” She paused, picking up his blank response. “It’s like a stoplight at an intersection. The logic gate does for thoughts what the light does for traffic. It directs the flow so that there’s no trouble. If the light malfunctions, such as by showing green both ways, the cars will crash and there’ll be a mess, and that intersection will be blocked for hours.”

  “There’s a stoplight in my head?”

  “The equivalent, yes. If it receives the signal 'Mark Twain,' it will malfunction, and the man and the animal will struggle for control of the body. That’s like crashed traffic.”

  “Who?”

  “Mark Twain. It’s the pen name for the American writer Samuel Clemens.”

  “Why didn’t he use his own name?”

  “Writers are odd. They like to use other names.”

  “They’re ashamed of what they do?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. The best ones use pseudonyms.”

  “But why?”

  She was getting impatient. “You’d have to ask them.”

  “I mean why put the stoplight in my mind?”

  Oh. She should have read his mind. “To put you out of commission.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry. Your stoplight is broken. It’s locked on you regardless. Otherwise when I said the words, you would have gone kaplooey.”

  “Okay. So my stoplight’s broken. Is that reason to kill me?”

  “Oh, yes! Because it means Villainous can’t control you. Worse, for him, you can put any other animan out of commission in a hurry, just by saying those magic words. In fact, we could broadcast those words across the globe and put any animan or aniwoman who heard them out of commission.”

  “But why wouldn’t they wipe out mankind first, then come after me, since I’m only a detail?”

  “Because even after mankind is gone, you could still wipe out any other animan with those words. And if you tell the human authorities those words now, you can bollix the whole animan campaign. Any human will be able to take out any animan just like that. So they need to take you out before you can do any such thing.”

  “But how do they know I know the words?”

  “They don’t. Yet. They want to kill you so you won’t have a chance of learning them. Once they learn that you’re still alive. That’s why we need to stay dead as long as we can.”

  He nodded. “Okay. You can poke into my mind anytime, you marvelous creature. Just feeling you in there made me get ideas.”

  Didn’t she know it! “Thanks, no. If we could take the sex out of your mind, there would hardly be enough left for you to function. But we do need to protect ourselves, to take out some insurance, because once they learn we’re not dead, they will be totally committed to our extinction.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Such as writing out the words and what they do and sending the letter to a newspaper to publish—if we die. Or maybe better, putting them into the Internet with a logic gate triggered by our deaths. Maybe we’ll have to send our own code words every few hours or it will send out the words anyway. So that Villainous will know that he can’t simply rub us out. He will have to negotiate.”

  “I don’t think he’ll negotiate.”

  “Then we’ll broadcast the words and wipe out his nefarious project.”

  He nodded again. “I like it. Now—”

  She laughed. He really had never left his favorite subject. “Well, I guess I’ve been poking into you pretty intimately, so it’s only fair to let you poke me in return. I wonder if I could wear out your sexual interest for a few hours so we could focus on more important things for a while.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “There is nothing more important.” Then he grabbed her, and she did not resist at all. She was ready for some diversion herself. She was already shoring up her torso and cooling her core for some serious interaction.

  But she knew that their battle with Villainous was just beginning.

  Chapter 17: The President

  Okay, now I know I broke the bed. In fact, it was little more than padded kindling at this point... with scorch marks, of course.

  “Oops,” said Lavender when she got up from the broken bunk. “I think I might have enjoyed myself more than I let on.”

  I grinned and noted the deep grooves in the walls, the punctures in the bedding, the knocked over lamps and dislodged sconces. I had even managed to tear up the carpeting. “John and Marsha are definitely getting a nasty letter from the cruise ship.”

  “I doubt they care,” said Lavender, who had been too quick to don the terry cloth robe hanging in the bathroom. I had only been able to admire her backside for the briefest of seconds. “The cruise ship has insurance, and I’m sure the lava couple is keeping the pair of them busy. That is, if Thera has recovered enough from the explosion. And no more admiring my backside, or any side, until this business with Villainous is done. You do realize he threatened to scorch the earth, right? For all we know, the world is in flames while we’ve been canoodling.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t canoodling. That was—”

  “I know what it was, Cow Brain. My point is, we have to get serious about this threat. Villainous is not someone—”

  “Or something,” I cut in.

  “—to take lightly. He’s already proven himself capable of getting his hands on one nuclear weapon. What makes us think he hasn’t gotten a whole arsenal at his disposal?”

  “Because only a handful of countries had that capacity to blow up the world. No way in hell Villainous was also busy making enough nukes to blow up the world.”

  “Well, he was busy designing a new race…”

  “Exactly. Too busy to also be in the bomb-making business. Besides, the United States has eyes everywhere. No way someone is making that kind of weaponry in secret.”

  “Then how else would he hope to torch the earth?”

  I didn’t know, but I just caught a peek of Lavender’s robe opening—an opening that was promptly closed. Geez, that woman was in my head.

  “No need to be in your head to see what you’re leering at, Bull Boy. And I just had a thought.”

  “So did I...”

  She ignored me. “Just because Villainous couldn’t have made the bombs, perhaps he has access to existing bombs.”

  “It would take a lot more than one suitcase nuke to incinerate the earth.”

  “Exactly. Like, say, all the nukes in the United States’ arsenal?”

  I laughed and nearly reached for the woman sitting at the edge of the broken bed. Or was it called a bunk? “Only the President of the United States can launch those nukes, don’t you know? There are some serious safeguards in place. I read about it once. No one, but no one, can walk in there and launch those nukes.”

  “No one but the president,” said Lavender, and she had a far-off look in her eye that had nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with mischief.

  “What are you getting at, lava girl?”

  “Villainous h
as already managed to place a high-ranking mole in the Department of Defense—”

  “We don’t know for sure if Brookstone is—”

  “No, but it’s likely. For now, let’s assume he is.”

  “Or we can assume that Villainous is full of hot air, and the rigging of Thera was his best chance at world domination.”

  “And what if we’re wrong? What if Villainous has one more trick up his sleeve?”

  “Then we leave it to the people who can do something about it. Namely, the military. No way he’s getting close to the nukes.”

  “He may not be... but the president can.”

  “Now, hold on—”

  “Like I said, he already managed to get Brookstone in—and for all we know, he’s an animan himself. Maybe there’s a cat tail curled inside his suit. My point is, he could be something smaller, less obvious than...”

  “A bull?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you know how crazy this is, Lavender? Are you suggesting that the President of the United States is an animan, too?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m suggesting. But I am guessing that if Villainous could get to the president, he could get to the nukes...and that would be the end of it all.”

  I paced the small confines of the cabin. “Just craziness. You know that right?”

  “Hear me out, Bull. Villainous has already proven to be a master geneticist. Hell, he created his own subspecies of man and animal. You’re living proof of that. How much harder would it be for him to create, I dunno, a clone of the President?”

  “A clone? Did you just say a clone?”

  “I did, and I’m being serious. What if he had... and even now, this clone was about to replace the real President of the United States… What if, at this very moment, the president is being held captive in secret, while his clone is about to launch enough explosives to destroy this world many times over?”

  “I would say I just made love to a crazy woman.”

  “There was no ‘making love’ about any of this,” said Lavender, pointing to the destroyed furniture.

  I stopped pacing and eyed the open laptop on the desk. It had been left by John and Marsha. I knew what she was saying was ludicrous, but there was just enough doubt in me to sigh heavily and sit at the desk. “I saw on the news last night that the president was vacationing in the Mediterranean. On a heavily guarded and remote island. Not very far from us, in fact.”

  “Perhaps that’s why Villainous chose Thera, knowing the president would be nearby, just in case the volcano eruption plan fizzled.”

  I didn’t like this. I didn’t like any of this. I especially didn’t like the idea of knowing that life on planet earth might be destroyed, all because of one crazy bastard. “Fine,” I said. “So what do you propose we do?”

  Chapter 18: Yot

  Lavender’s mind was spinning. She hated having to come up with world saving plans on the spur of the moment. In fact she hated having to do it at all. All she wanted was to settle down to eating, sleeping, and cuddling with a good man who was comfortable with her nature. Saving the world required too much thought and effort.

  “I propose we warn the president, so that he can avoid the clone and not contribute to the end of the world as we know it.” There; that was pretty simple, once she got it formulated.

  “But he’s thousands of miles away.”

  “No. I told you. He’s nearby, on his yacht.”

  “Oh, yes. What’s a yot?”

  “A big pleasure boat. Y A C H T.”

  “Oh, a yaw-chet.”

  He had not made the connection between the sound and the spelling. He was an inland guy, unfamiliar with the fancy craft that came to the island she had been raised on. It wasn’t worth a hassle at the moment. “Whatever.”

  “Isn’t he surrounded by secret service men who won’t let anyone get close to him?”

  “Unless it is someone they already know about,” she said. “So they let him through.”

  “If we have trouble reaching him, wouldn’t the clone have trouble too?”

  “Good question. Maybe they sneaked the clone into his bathroom, and when he goes there to defecate—”

  “To what?”

  “Poop. Something you fully living folk do a lot of. The clone can be waiting there, and take his place, and the secret service folk may never know the difference. So what we need to do is get to that bathroom first, and take out the clone. Then he’ll be able to poop in peace.”

  “Does he know about us? So they’ll let us in?”

  “I don’t think so. We’re largely anonymous, by design. But maybe—” She trailed off, an idea coming to the fore.

  “Maybe what?” he demanded impatiently.

  She silenced him with a kiss as she focused on the elusive thought. It related to the volcano. On the way the two lava figures had connected to John and Marsha. Something about that had differed from the way she related to The Bull. They were telepathic, yes; so was she. So that wasn’t it.

  The Bull managed to free his mouth. “But—”

  She kissed him again, harder, and goosed him for good measure. The lava folk’s telepathy reached farther than hers, because they were first generation magma, while she was diluted second generation. She could do what they could, but slower and not as well. Even so, there was something—

  He escaped again. “What—”

  She pushed him down on the battered bed, tore open the front of her robe, whipped out a hot breast, and jammed it against his face. She held him tightly in place so he couldn’t breathe, let alone interrupt her thinking. He hardly struggled at all; he liked breasts and he could hold his breath for a long time. His body relaxed. Better yet, so did his mind. He liked keeping abreast of the situation.

  What were they doing that she was not? How did it relate to the present challenge? They had reached out to John and Marsha to reassure them—

  Now he was licking her nipple. It was ticklish. She suppressed her reaction and held firm.

  And there it was. The lava folk had not merely read the human minds, they had projected their own thoughts, so that John and Marsha got to know them in a hurry, from the inside out. Lavender couldn’t do that; all she did was read minds.

  And he was sucking. Okay, that was distracting. She bore down harder, filling his mouth with more of her breast. She doubted he could take the whole thing in, but he was trying.

  Yet wasn’t she lava too? Diluted, but still a child of the volcano. If they could project, why couldn’t she?

  She reached out to the lava couple, questing, hoping they would read her. How do you project?

  The answer came immediately. Like this.

  Suddenly the ability was in her mind. It was indeed like this. She had had it all the time, but somehow never thought to invoke it. It was not as strong as theirs; she would have to touch a person physically to project a thought into his mind, at least until she knew him. But she could do it.

  Thank you! she projected. She could do it long distance, with a lava person, because they had minds like hers, only more so.

  Welcome, the female thought. She was in a rather intimate clinch at the moment, having cooled her core, but her mind was free.

  Marsha’s fun, the male thought. But your breast notion is fun too. I will ask for hers.

  “Welcome,” Lavender murmured, laughing. She pulled her own breast out of The Bull’s mouth. “I need to save some of that for myself, before you swallow it whole,” she told him, tucking it back into her gown.

  Now he could talk. “What—?”

  “I will project to the secret service folk I encounter,” she said. “Reassuring them that I’m legitimate. And when we get to the president, all I need is to touch his hand, to familiarize myself with him. Then I will be able to project the danger. To warn him about the clone. So he can protect himself.”

  “Okay.” He did not understand the details, but was satisfied that she had worked out the program.

  They got on i
t immediately. They donned swim suits, borrowed tourist scuba diving gear from the cruise ship inventory, fitted it on, and dropped into the sea. They were headed for the president’s “yot,” only a few miles away. Lavender didn’t actually need the gear to breathe, but the fins did help her swim without sinking. So did the little paddle motor. Mainly it was camouflage: they needed to resemble innocuous tourists diving for shells.

  Their minds, too. Just in case there was an enemy telepath in the vicinity. Remember, she thought to him. We are the honeymooning couple John and Marsha, and all we have on our minds are love, sex and shells.

  Got it, he agreed, not thinking to be surprised by receiving her thought. Maybe he didn’t fully realize that it wasn’t his own thought. Then: shells?

  We’re shell diving. It’s what tourists do when they’re not in the bedroom.

  He considered that. How about underwater?

  He was not thinking of shells. No. We don’t want to tear up the Mediterranean the way we did the cabin.

  Oh. He was of course disappointed, but also flattered by the implication that their lovemaking could tear up the seascape. Men—what could you do except love them?

  They swam toward the president’s boat. Lavender ranged out with her mind, seeking animen. She found some scattered around, but they were neither telepathic nor thinking of her. They could be bypassed and ignored.

  Closer to the craft there were straight human lookouts, actually secret service personnel, male and female, routinely scanning for any potentially hostile craft. None were looking under the water.

  They made it to beneath the “yot” without raising any hue and cry. So far so good. Were she in charge of presidential protection, she would damn well be scanning underwater too; it was sloppy. Maybe the ones assigned to do that were off having a wild party with call girls and all. The secret service had a reputation to maintain, after all.

  It was dusk. No one’s watching aft, she thought to The Bull. We can climb the anchor chain, same as before.

  They did, The Bull carrying her over his shoulder, gear and all. They made it to the deck. So far so good, again. She doffed her fins, set down her motor, and scanned and located the president alone in the master cabin. Actually they didn’t need to approach the president himself, just the lavatory (interesting word) to take out the lurking clone. Because there was indeed a presence there.