The Furry MEGAPACK®

by Huskyteer

  The tableau is one to remember, the okapi with the look like someone who’s just seen the bus bearing down on him, and the warthog in his corner with an anguished grimace breaking across his face, hand on the towel.

  Vanero resumes play, and the punch hits again, no less devastating the second time around. Ronmo’s knees buckle and he has the sense to fall back against the ropes as Balus presses the advantage. The bell saves him before the bull can score more, but he’s scored enough. Balus is rubbing at his nose in pain, but Ronmo is unsteady on his walk back to his corner.

  “The fight goes on for another a round and a half, but that’s the real moment you knew who was going to be champ. He told me later, he let Ronmo land that punch on his nose clean, and went back to the ropes to guard. Good ears on that boy, said he’d heard every word Ronmo’s corner was saying. I ask him why he let Ronmo hit him so bad, and I’ll never forget the way he laughed. He said: ‘I like being underestimated’.”

  The fight plays out as Vanero says, the fourth round proving to be a more one-sided contest. Ronmo rallies briefly only to find his accurate punching still can’t do more than irritate Balus, while every punch the bull is landing hits with punishing power. Mid-way through the fifth round, a tired and winded Ronmo takes a clean punch to the liver and falls to one knee. He doesn’t beat the ten count.

  Vanero snubs out his cigarette. “It’s a damn shame the reorganization didn’t come sooner. That Ronmo was really good. But by the time the big split came, he was past his prime. He’d probably have been a top-lister in the okapi circles there. Good fighter, but my boy was too much for him. Not as polished, Balus, but he had the body and the heart. Ronmo didn’t even have it in him to put my boy down, much less keep him there.”

  Is he disappointed Balus never turned pro? “No. The boxing world was a different place, and I trained him knowing there wasn’t anywhere for him to go in the real world, past the pro-am levels. But that’s okay. He fought hard, and he did right by the sport. World could do with a few more folks like him at the pros.”

  Vanero waves to the screen. On it, Balus is helping Ronmo to his feet, and the fighters embrace, pat each other’s backs, and say a few words. They touch gloves again with respect in their eyes.

  It’s a proud moment for the young bull, but when the belt is passed to him, he hands it back to his coach and hoists Vanero overhead, respecting the ratel’s legacy, the legendary ratel who’d helped him survive hard years as a boy.

  The Vanero Boxing Gym is in a rough part of town: road construction lingers unfinished, streetlights are in disrepair, and nobody keeps a green lawn. Barred windows and doors abound, clubs can be seen on most of the steering wheels down the street. The boxing gym to this day remains a refuge of destitute young creatures looking to learn to fight, to defend themselves, and some even to learn the sweet science.

  Despite the run-down appearance, the gym is a busy place, filled with the young hopefuls and hopeless alike, finding something they need in the sound of leather on a heavy bag, or the whisk-slap of a skipping rope. Some come for the sport, some because they’re warriors. Others come because it’s the exorcism for what haunts them. Some just come because it’s the only place they have left to go.

  As I finish saying my goodbyes to George Vanero and step out into the heat of an early Texas summer, I can’t help but check the front door of the gym.

  There’s no lock.

  AS BELOW, SO ABOVE, by Mut

  He’d found the note clipped to Thomas’s bunk with a magnet. It had been written in an urgent, passionate scrawl as uncharacteristic of the rat as the words. It spoke of sacrifice and redemption, temptation and past sins and a new world. Several times he wrote of Spirit talking to him, testing him, giving him instructions. At the end he apologised profusely to Jake, and hoped he might be forgiven.

  Jake had put it out of the airlock along with the body, suiting up to send both drifting towards the graveyard Earth. He suspected he would regret that later, but that he would have regretted keeping those last, confused words more. Back before, there would have been no question: a death on the Station would have been an international scandal. Getting rid of evidence like that would have had the brass, the politicians, the press, and anyone with a keyboard and time on their hands after him. He would have been on trial as soon as they could figure out what law applied to this place. But now, none of that mattered. He did not feel liberated.

  The recompression cycle took a long time, and the rat’s body was almost invisible by the time he was out of his suit and staring out of the cupola window. His gaze slid away from the grey-blue planet, but he forced himself to stare even after he could no longer tell Thomas from the flecks of dust and debris. He let his mind drift, very carefully not thinking about the events of the past few days. He concentrated on making his tail wag slowly back and forth, on perking his ears up, on breathing in and out.

  It was the noise that finally broke apart his meditation. It had been bothering him for a couple of days now: an intermittent, irregular clicking. The Station made a great many noises, from the low hum and high-pitched whine of electronics to the regular whirr of fans to the gentle pinging of metal expanding after it passed out of the Earth’s shadow, but this one was new. He’d asked Thomas about it but the rat hadn’t been able to make it out. They’d gotten sidetracked by a discussion of the hearing sensitivities of rats and foxes that Thomas, predictably, had ended by claiming expertise in all things biological. Probably he’d been right, but now he was gone and Jake was still here, and so were the noises.

  He kicked off from the window with practised ease and floated across the room, grabbing a handle as he passed through the doorway and bringing himself to rest with his paws against the wall. His ears twitched, flicking back and forth. That way, he decided, and pushed off again.

  He let his instincts and his muscles do the work, leading him towards the source. He was having a dumb fox moment, a detached part of him decided. There were a dozen other things he should be prioritising, starting with the communications systems. Depending on when Thomas had—on when he’d last been on duty, they might have gone unchecked for eight, ten hours. If, improbably, someone was still down there and had managed to get a signal up to him, they’d need a reply urgently. He leapt onward anyway, nose questing too now. He didn’t want to deal with matters of life and death for a while; he wanted a nice, simple engineering problem to bang on.

  Jake slowed down as he found himself heading into the experimental area. Even before, they hadn’t come here often. It was a relic of another time, when the Station had had a larger, international crew. Some of the experiments were still live—still taking data, he supposed, counting cosmic rays as they flashed through—but anything that required the astronauts’ participation was long gone. He wondered briefly whether he should shut the rest down, but shook his head. It would be disrespectful, somehow. Besides, there was no shortage of power; the boxes could go on counting long after the food ran out.

  A scent he couldn’t quite place caught his nose and he swung to a halt. It was almost like a person’s—a dog or wolf, perhaps. It happened sometimes, up here, that the air recirculation system would play tricks, spreading smells through the Station faster than they had any right to travel, or trapping them in a loop so that you caught dull, mechanical hints of the past. He sniffed again, but it eluded him—but then the clicking started once more, and he knew what it was. Not one click but four together. Impossible footsteps. His tail wormed its way between his legs. The childhood stories came back to him: stupid, careless fox, caught in a dog’s trap, jaws go snap-snap. He could smell it again.

  He growled at himself. Stupid fox indeed. Couple of hundred miles of vacuum away from whatever life was left, and he was worried about not being alone enough. He kicked off hard in the direction of the sound, flipping through the doorway and coming to rest in a crouch on the floor. He glared around.

  There was a she-wolf.

  What his eyes, nose, and ears
were telling him was not just impossible but ridiculous. She was naked and heavily pregnant, belly and teats both swollen, and yet somehow also on the verge of heat. She smiled at him. Jake put a paw over his nose automatically.

  “You look tired, Jacob of Fox. Be at peace. You are safe with me.” Her voice was low and soothing. Underneath it, Jake could hear not only her heartbeat but two or three more in her belly. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “Look, lady, you can’t be here. I mean, literally, you cannot be here. So either I’m going crazy—which, not unlikely—or you have pulled some major shenanigans to get here. Either way, I don’t exactly feel ‘at peace’.” He sighed through his nose. “Let’s start with who you are and how the hell you got on board.”

  She lowered her ears. “My poor child, you have been ill-used. I am Merra She-Wolf. I bore the world. I bring comfort, warmth, love, cubs, food, life. I did not get here, but have always been here. I am everywhere that my children walk. Or float,” she added with a smile.

  Jake felt his ears splay again. “Crazy it is. So, okay, you’re from the stories my mom used to tell me. Kind of makes sense, although her version had a lot less nudity. Not quite sure why I imagined you instead of Feyat. Must be just a teeny bit homesick.”

  “My brother?” Her ears raised. At the same time, the scents in the room changed somehow, but with his paw over his muzzle Jake couldn’t make it out. “Do not worry about him. As for me, I am very real. Let me show you, child.”

  She began walking towards him, hips swaying. Something about the motion was off; he was already hauling himself up with one of the doorway handles by the time he understood. She was walking. As soon as he saw it, it was obvious; even the way her stomach hung down suggested a weight that was just not there in orbit. She was not real. Jake grinned with relief at the realisation, even letting his tongue hang out, right up to the point when she took his forearm in her paw. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

  “You see? No need to fear. I am flesh and bone and oh so much more. Do not hide your nose from me, fox; I want only what you want.”

  “Oh really?” Jake let her lower his paw. That other scent was stronger now. Mustelid, male. “’Cuz what I want right now is for my husband and family and friends and colleagues and everyone I spoke to or met or saw or heard of to not be dead. Is that what you want, lady who—Spirit on a stick, I can’t even say your name, it’s that stupid. If that’s what you want, I’m getting some seriously mixed messages here.”

  “Yes, that is what I want. That is exactly what I want,” Merra replied, tail swaying slowly. “This world is dead, and you are all that remains. I would birth it anew. It will be filled with new life, and we will begin again, just as it was once before. But first,” she continued, slipping Jake’s arm down further so that his paw rested on her belly, “you must worship me.”

  “Lady—Merra—I’m really not the worshipping kind. Card-carrying atheist, that’s me. Or I would be, if I believed in carrying cards around for that stuff. But, uh, bringing everyone back to life, that I like the sound of. So let’s maybe talk about that once you have let go of my arm, which I would really appreciate, please.”

  She held on for a fraction longer, then released him, smiling brightly. “Nothing to worry about, dear fox. It comes naturally to all men to worship me.”

  “To most men, Sister. Not all.” The source of the other scent, a tall and muscular weasel, sauntered through the room behind Merra, easing around her as he approached Jake. He wore more than her, though not by much, and carried a spear as long as he was.

  “Feyat,” she snarled, hackles raising. “I have this one. I bade you stay hidden.”

  “You did,” he replied cheerfully, “but I find I am not so easily bidden. He is not one of yours, so the claim falls to me.” He thumped the butt of his spear against the floor and bowed to Jake, who simply stared. “Feyat, at your service. As you are at mine.”

  Merra had shifted her stare to Jake, teeth still bared. He ignored it as best he could. “Uh, well. I’m pleased to meet you, Feyat. And honoured. Really. You were always one of my favourites, and—wait, is that Quill? You carved it from a yew that had been struck by lightning, and it was sharp as a needle and strong as rock? And you threw it at the sun and it was dark for a hundred days?”

  “It is,” Feyat answered, lifting it into the air for a moment before lowering it casually between Merra and Jake. “Not my most inspired decision, but I have learned a few things since then.”

  “Well, that’s good. Listen, um, about what you and your sister were saying before, and us being at each others’ service?” Jake spoke carefully, sensing the jaws of another trap. “I’m flattered of course, and honoured. Did I say that before? Well, I’m still honoured. You’re a very handsome weasel, and I’m, well, I’m just a fox. But, you understand, I’m still in mourning for—still in mourning.”

  The god laughed and clapped him on his shoulder. “You two are as bad as each other,” he said with a grin, pointing with his spear at the she-wolf, then at the fox. “Always it is about sex. No. You belong to me because you are a warrior,” he continued. “Major, UCAF. You fought, did you not?”

  “I did. But I’m a civilian now. That was a long time and a very long way away.”

  “Hah!” This from Merra. “Not one of yours either then, Brother? Perhaps he is mine after all. He was born from a womb.”

  “Be quiet, Sister. I am not done yet. No, once a warrior, always a warrior. Blood calls to blood, and he has spilled it. His heart is mine,” the weasel said, tapping Quill against Jake’s chest for emphasis. “Unless, I suppose, he has no heart,” he added, letting the tip linger. “In which case he would be of no use to me. Do you have a heart, fox? Shall we investigate?”

  Jake’s tail froze. “No, that’s fine. So you want me to…worship you too? Tell me, O Feyat, what would I have to do? Exactly?”

  “You answer a god’s question with a question? Very rude.” The weasel made a tutting sound. “Fortunately for you, it is a question I like. There is a little ritual which has unaccountably fallen out of favour with warriors today. Some words, some deeds. Some blood, not too much. No sex, do not worry!”

  “And then…you would remake the world? Like her?”

  “I would remake it, but not like her. Bigger, better, stronger, fiercer. It was weak, this world. One short war and it falls. I fought the night itself, and pierced it a thousand times with my spear. The next will not be unworthy.”

  “And those who died?” Jake asked. “They were all unworthy, were they?”

  “Oh-ho! Did I prick your pride, fool of a fox? Your lover was no warrior, and your warriors were no good. Worthy of you, maybe, but not of me.”

  “I understand now. Thank you. One last question, O Feyat, and then I think my worries will be at an end. Tell me, what would happen to your new world if I died, here and now?”

  The weasel tilted his head for a moment, then narrowed his eyes and raised Quill. Merra snarled and leapt forward, jaws seizing his arm, but he flipped the weapon across to his other paw. Jake pushed himself away from the doorway but misjudged his balance, spinning backwards tail-over-head into a wall. Feyat lunged after him, stamping his foot down as he thrust the spear forward. Jake had just enough time to wonder at how little pain he felt before the shaft of the spear whipped up from the shallow cut and slapped him hard across the muzzle.

  “This is not over, fox!” Feyat shouted. “You are mine, you will be mine, the next world will be mine! Do not forget it.”

  * * * *

  He must have stormed back off to wherever it was that the gods kept themselves, because when the pain in Jake’s snout had quieted down enough for him to open his eyes again, the weasel was nowhere to be seen. Jake was vaguely aware of patted and cooed at, and of something cold and damp pressed lightly against his muzzle. He gave a painful start upon realising that Merra was there, and tried to shuffle away but was pushed firmly back down by someone on his other side.

  �
�Easy there.” A new voice, older, female. His nose couldn’t make out much beyond Merra and his own blood. “She’s behaving herself, aren’t you, poppet? And she’s sorry for before.”

  “I am very sorry.” The wolf didn’t sound it to his ears, but he didn’t feel in a position to argue.

  “Who are—” he began, and regretted it at once.

  “Tch, I said easy. That fool broke bones in there, and it’s not so easy knitting them back together. My fingers aren’t what they used to be. So don’t you talk.” He felt movement over to his right, and a moment later saw the face of a rat peeking out of a hooded cloak, fur greying but eyes still jet black. “Curiosity satisfied, hm? Good, then let me get back to work.”

  Work seemed to consist mostly of sitting back next to him and sucking on a pipe. “Funny time, though,” she observed after a while, “when a weasel’s the fool and a fox outwits him. O’course, every man’s a fool when his dander’s up, you know that as well as I do, I ’spect, but even so. Doesn’t work like that in the stories, now does it? I knew you’d best him, though. Had my eye on you for a while, I have. You may have been a soldier for a bit, but you were a tinkerer first. Engineer.” She stretched the word out as though savouring it. “Wise man. One o’ mine. Oh, don’t you worry, I ain’t gonna hook my claws into you or anything. Wouldn’t be respectful. Professional courtesy, call it. Like you an’ our Feyat. I could’ve stepped in, told him no, I got a claim on this one too. He would’ve laughed, but I could’ve said it. But you were smart, got yourself out without help, proved it for me. And if you hadn’t, mm, wouldn’t’ve been mine after all. Same deal now: you’ll come to me yourself, thinking I’m the right choice, or not at all. Oh, but where’s my manners? I’m Skarra. Though you probably knew that, eh?”