A Time and a Place

by Joe Mahoney

“It’s pretty big.”

  “Seriously, that’s the best you can do?”

  “I can tell you we’re inside a mountain.”

  Intrigued, I stood and moved to the wall. It was all of a piece, grey and perfectly cut. Stroking it with my fingers, I realized it wasn’t stone after all. It was too smooth, too warm to the touch. I wandered along it, feeling with my hand for imperfections. I felt none. Out of the corner of my eye I was aware of the spider pacing me, but it made no move to stop me as I moved away from the stream. I wondered how far it would allow me to go.

  I hadn’t gone far when I became aware of a growing pressure in my bladder. Secure in the knowledge that we were alone, I unzipped and unleashed a frothy yellow stream against the wall. Sadly, traversing the universe through mysterious gates on the heels of enigmatic aliens had not resulted in the suspension of such mundane activities. If anything I had to pee more often.

  “Do you mind?” Sebastian asked.

  This had been an ongoing issue the day before. “Try not to look,” I said.

  “The least you could do is put me in your pocket.”

  “Just relax.”

  “If you get any on me —”

  “I told you I was sorry about—damn!”

  We weren’t alone after all. A beautiful blonde woman in violet fatigues looked on as I fumbled with my zipper.

  Iugurtha.

  “You! Where’s my nephew?” I said, as much to conceal my embarrassment as anything else.

  She held a book in her hands. The book. She strode swiftly toward me, her intent unclear. I suspected she was much stronger than she appeared.

  “What?” I asked, bracing myself.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said, and threw the book in the air.

  It opened and expanded. I felt a connection to it. I felt empowered by it. Images flitted before my eyes with incredible rapidity. Information surged through my mind. I did not understand all I was seeing but I understood a good portion of it. I saw many worlds, many universes, even infinite dimensions and times. In only a small number of them could I survive as me.

  I did not see Iugurtha move until it was too late. Until she grabbed me with both hands, heaved me off my feet, and tossed me through the air into the gate. The gate latched on to me and yanked me forward. Sucked into it like a mote in a wind tunnel, I caught an upside down glimpse of Iugurtha’s expressionless face before I was whirling, sliding, tumbling head over heels into a featureless black void. I flailed wildly, desperate for something to grab on to, but there was nothing. I passed through a thin film of agony, and just like that the work of a lifetime was undone, peeled off in one excruciating instant. Just like that, the part of me that had been Barnabus Jehosophys Wildebear was gone.

  X

  Invaders

  I came to in someone else’s mind.

  I could feel their presence all around me—living, breathing, dreaming, being. It was as though instead of throwing me through the gate, Iugurtha had thrown me into the deep end of a pool, and I couldn’t swim. I was drowning in the sea of someone else’s consciousness.

  A solitary spark of me persisted. A kernel of life from another place, another time. I struggled to remain afloat, to find something upon which to hang the loose ends of me, but there was nothing.

  Desperate for a connection with the physical world, for anything that might allow me to retain my idea of self, I clutched at this other body’s senses, but nothing smelled right, or looked right, or sounded right. Incredibly, Iugurtha had placed me in the mind of another person, forcing me to see the world through their eyes, via their unique senses. But whose mind? And why? And why me?

  “Calm yourself,” a voice said.

  Iugurtha. I couldn’t see her—what little I could see was chaotic, confused, and difficult to make sense of. Nor could I hear her, exactly. But I registered her, like the ever-persistent voice in my head, except that it wasn’t my voice or my thoughts I was registering, it was Iugurtha’s.

  “What have you done to me?”

  “I have placed you in the mind of a young T’Klee. Soon you’ll be able to make sense of her thoughts just as you can mine.”

  “The gate can do that?”

  “The gate can do a lot of things.”

  “What’s a T’Klee?”

  “An inhabitant of the planet C’Mell, distantly related to the cats of Earth. Unlike their cousins on Earth they have evolved opposable thumbs and can wield tools, like humans.”

  “This is insane. I’ve gone mad. I’ve completely lost my marbles.”

  “In my estimation you have never been entirely sane but you are no more insane now than you’ve ever been.”

  “This T’Klee. Does she have a name?”

  “She would be called Sweep in your language.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s short for Sweep of the Paw, because she sweeps her paw in front of her face when she’s upset.”

  “No. I mean, why have you done this to me?”

  “Because Ridley wanted you to understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “What he is fighting for.”

  “I don’t care what—”

  “Shhh,” Iugurtha said, or the mental equivalent. “It has begun.”

  “What? What’s begun?”

  I smelled them long before I heard them: strong overtones of excrement mingled with sweat and a hint of vomit. I registered it all through Sweep’s senses as though through my own. Someone—a T’Klee—cried out in pain. Sweep’s heart caught in her throat. T’Klee do not normally make sounds, I would come to learn—they speak with a twitch of the ear, a flick of the tail.

  Sweep had been out gathering berries not far from her family’s farm. She raced frantically back home, taking the shortest route possible through prickly underbrush. She tore out of the forest with her tail high and her eyes wide. The sight that confronted us was like running full tilt into a barn wall. There, in the space of half a dozen heartbeats, we glimpsed enough horror to last a lifetime.

  Impossible beings dredged from the muck of somebody’s worst nightmare. Pulsating bags of yellow skin depositing trails of golden slime behind them wherever they slithered. Enormous tentacles wielding slender silver wands that sent Sweep’s family into convulsions at a mere touch. Sweep herself stood frozen in shock, watching the unthinkable—her brothers and sisters, her parents, utterly helpless before this overwhelming foe.

  Necronians.

  The name popped into my consciousness from out of nowhere. No, not out of nowhere—back in my basement, in what seemed another lifetime, the scientist Giorgio had spoken of such creatures. Evil beings from beyond the gate that existed solely to wreak havoc on the universe. Awful, tentacled things he called Necronians. There was no doubt in my mind that’s what we were dealing with here.

  Sweep watched her eldest brother Whitepaw leap, his dagger-sharp teeth and claws bared for the kill. Except his opponent had no throat. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Whitepaw bounced right off the creature before he even seemed to touch it. In a stunning display of martial athleticism, he twisted in mid-air and launched a second attack the instant he hit the ground. It didn’t help. The monster connected with a silver wand and Whitepaw careened off the monster for a second time. This time he crashed to the ground and lay there convulsing.

  I heard a long, plaintive wail. It wasn’t until the sound ended that I realized it was Sweep herself. She was only a child. I felt her terror as though it were my own. The monsters were all around her, striking down her family, destroying their farm, razing their crops, and slaughtering their herd of rawk, the bison-like beasts upon which they depended for much of their sustenance. Another of Sweep’s family fell. So viscerally did I feel Sweep’s anguish that it was as though a member of my own family had fallen.

  Something grabbed Sweep by the scr
uff of the neck and yanked her violently off her feet. Instinctively she curled into a ball. Whatever had hold of her had no problem carrying her. I couldn’t see it, but as we loped through the forest I suspected from its gait that it was another T’Klee.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Iugurtha, inside Sweep’s mind. “Who’s got her?”

  “Half Ear. Her uncle. Really he’s her father but she doesn’t know that.”

  I knew about Half Ear, I realized. I knew it because I was tapped into at least a superficial layer of Sweep’s thoughts. If I wanted to I could root around in her mind and learn even more, but I didn’t. That would have felt invasive and wrong. Still, it was impossible to completely shut out her thoughts. There was plenty I couldn’t help but know.

  “What you’re showing me—is it happening now?”

  “No. It happened ten years ago your time.”

  “Will Sweep be okay? What happens to her?”

  But she would reveal nothing more.

  I couldn’t hear the battle anymore when Half Ear finally set Sweep down. The reason for Half Ear’s name was immediately obvious—the grizzled old fighter was missing the better part of his left ear.

  “Let’s go,” he told Sweep with a flick of his head.

  I watched through Sweep’s eyes as Half Ear led her further into the forest than she’d ever been. Over brooks, through almost impassable underbrush, up and down hills and valleys, never out into the open. We never saw another T’Klee, and we didn’t see any monsters either, though we saw much evidence of their passing: trails of dried slime, yellow and smelling strongly of urine.

  “Look,” I said to Iugurtha. “I get it. Sweep’s people were invaded by these Necronian creatures. It’s sad, and it’s not like I don’t care, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. I just want my nephew back.”

  “You don’t want to see what happens to Sweep.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No,” I admitted. Not if it was something bad.

  “Too bad,” Iugurtha said. “Pay attention.”

  “Can’t we at least skip ahead?”

  “This isn’t a movie,” she said. “It’s real life.”

  “Real life that’s already happened,” I reminded her. “So, why don’t you use your gate to fast forward a bit?”

  Somewhat to my surprise she complied, returning to real time when Half Ear finally stopped at a stream for a gulp of water.

  “Where are we going?” Sweep asked him.

  Instead of answering, Half Ear handed her a pouch. She reached inside and grasped a handful of food with her incredible paw with its opposable thumb, just like a human would. The food tasted like ashes accompanied by the memories of what she had seen.

  She tried Half Ear again. “What were those things? Where did they come from?”

  Half Ear took so long answering that I didn’t think he was going to respond to these questions either, but finally he said, “Near as I can tell, they came from above. Crawled out of the belly of great birds that flew down from the sky. I was hunting when they came, a flock of the biggest birds I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then I saw that they weren’t birds at all, but monsters. Right then I knew I was dreaming. A waking dream—a test, maybe. I followed them to see what the test would be. Thought it might have something to do with hunting. But it was no dream. There are hundreds of them,” he added. “Attacking everywhere at once.”

  He fell still, leaving Sweep and me to think about what that meant.

  He took a long drink of water. “Thought we might head south,” he said afterward.

  Sweep made the characteristic gesture for which she was named. “What about our family? What will happen to them? Are we just running away?” She made no effort to conceal the scorn in her expression.

  Half Ear regarded his young charge. “Listen to me, little one. There’s nothing we can do for our brothers and sisters now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because by now they will have already have been skinned, gutted, and their pelts hung up to dry.”

  Sweep stood stunned. I saw a mental picture form in her mind of her mother’s beautiful violet pelt without her mother inside it.

  If Half Ear noticed the slack-jawed horror on Sweep’s face he did not acknowledge it. “Let’s go.”

  Sweep didn’t move. When she spoke it was all she could do to make the gestures happen. “Did you—see them do that?”

  “I saw it happen to others, yes.”

  “What would they do with our skins?”

  Half Ear shook his great head. “I can’t imagine.” He leapt onto a big rock, preparing to cross the stream. “Now come on.”

  “But what if—I don’t want anyone to take my skin!”

  Half Ear didn’t do anything for a moment. Then in a single leap he was back at Sweep’s side. Two enormous paws cradled her face. I thought he was going to comfort her, tell her a white lie or two.

  “Listen to me, little one. Our lives may well depend on this. When I tell you to do something I need you to do it. Okay?”

  “But my sisters, my brothers—”

  “We’re going to Burning Eyes.”

  Burning Eyes? I knew from exposure to Sweep’s thoughts that she had grown up listening to tales of Burning Eyes: a fickle creature whose origins were shrouded in myth. Who changed appearance and character often, and who could only be recognized by eyes that were said to burn like embers. But Burning Eyes had not been seen in many years. Most T’Klee suspected he had long since passed from this world, if ever he had existed at all.

  “What can Burning Eyes do about monsters that come out of birds in the sky?” Sweep asked. “Monsters you can’t even touch? Why hasn’t he done anything already?”

  “Don’t talk about Burning Eyes like that. He might be able to hear you.”

  I could see that Sweep wasn’t quite sure what she believed about Burning Eyes, but she certainly didn’t believe that. The idea that Burning Eyes could help her get even with monsters that had destroyed her family appealed to her enormously, though. “Do you really think Burning Eyes will help us?”

  “Burning Eyes honours his debts.”

  As near as I could tell from Sweep’s thoughts on the matter, the stories concerning Burning Eyes frequently involved transactions of some sort. T’Klee would leave Burning Eyes gifts in return for services such as assistance with crops, or the elimination of a threat. Some stories even involved offering up living sacrifices. But such stories were from long ago, little more than legends. It was difficult to see how Burning Eyes could still be around today if in fact he had ever lived at all. If he did still live there was no guarantee that he would honour any debts. And even if he did, the legends I gleaned from Sweep’s mind suggested that doing business with him could be a dangerous proposition.

  “Burning Eye’s appreciation for beauty is legendary,” Half Ear added. “He won’t let creatures as ugly as these monsters live anywhere near his mountain. Now come on.”

  So Half Ear had a sense of humour. It was good to know.

  It gave Sweep just enough strength to follow him.

  I am not the most astute of individuals at the best of times, and trapped inside the mind of an alien cat I was decidedly not at my best. Even so I could not miss the similarity between Iugurtha and the creature Half Ear referred to as Burning Eyes. True, in the legends Burning Eyes was male and had lived for generations. But Iugurtha had placed me here through the gate, and could certainly be described as having eyes that burned. Could it be coincidence that I should come across talk of someone who resembled her?

  “This Burning Eyes,” I asked her, from within the confines of Sweep’s mind. “Is he related to you in some way?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Father? Grandfather?”

  “I am Burning Eyes.”
<
br />   “How is that possible? Burning Eyes would have to be ancient, wouldn’t he? You’re female. He was male. Except for the eyes you look completely different.”

  “I have come in many different shapes and sizes over the years.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor will you, if you don’t pay attention. Be silent.”

  I did as I was told. The longer I existed in Sweep’s brain the more adept I became at translating her senses, and as I did so I began to make connections. I recognized the forest through which Half Ear was leading her. The colours were different through Sweep’s nocturnal eyes—more vivid, the oranges a flaming red and the greens practically fluorescent—but I recognized the trees with their great trunks and expansive canopies. I was definitely on the planet that Iugurtha had taken Ridley, and from which Iugurtha had flung me into Sweep’s mind—the same planet ten years in the past.

  Half Ear was leading us toward a mountain, he told Sweep. He knew the way—he had delivered offerings on behalf of his family several times. As we drew closer to the mountain and I saw it jutting over the horizon I realized that I had been to this mountain before. With Sebastian, another alien cat, and a giant mechanical spider.

  The Necronians only seemed to come out during the day, so Half Ear and Sweep travelled at night. They slept during the day, hiding as best they could and taking turns watching over one another. Everywhere we went, evidence of the Necronians greeted them. Tracks of decaying slime, farms burnt to the ground, rawk mutilated for no reason that Sweep could see. Several times she stumbled across dead T’Klee before Half Ear could whisk her away.

  As Sweep staggered behind Half Ear, trying her best to keep up, her thoughts were on her family. She had seen her brothers and cousins struck down. She didn’t know what had become of her sisters and mother, but she had a pretty good idea. T’Klee don’t cry but they have other ways of making their suffering known.

  Ahead of us, Half Ear could not see Sweep compulsively twitch her tail and ears. At ground zero inside her mind, I was almost overwhelmed by her grief. I wanted to help her, but there was nothing I could do to ease her pain. I could not hold her. I could not speak to her soothingly. She didn’t even know I existed. Were I capable of making my presence known, somehow I doubted that she would find the notion of an alien living inside her mind comforting.