Posted by PK on January 16, 2004 at 16:56:23:
"Stupid question, right. When, exactly?"
"You've got three seconds," was the unhelpful reply she got.
"Until what?" Sam said irritably. "I meant, what time is it? To the second. Who are you
people anyway, the marmalade police?" She moved her right hand into guard position. That's
when somebody shot her, and not with a projectile weapon. Interesting. This is getting really
weird, Sam thought. The shot had no effect, of course. The Poltroyan dwarf-wrought hauberk
she wore (those little guys did good work) was proof against most kinetic energy weapons
and most EM field effects. She fought down an urge to chop the heads off these idiots - her
father would have done it without a second thought - and - oh fuck it. Why bother?
"If that's all you have to say, I'm off," she said. "See you last Tuesday."
She hoped the Anastasia was still partially anchored. Maybe Dr Summerfield had been right,
she should have waited. On the other hand, she had evidence that might help. Not entirely a
wasted trip. Before she left, Buffy had told her the other anchor was about thirteen minutes
ago and roughly in the same space. Then something about a regression but she'd always had
problems with recursive functions. Too heavy.
Alysande grunted in relief or disappointment. She levered herself out of Albert's mouth. How
had she got in there? Naked and slippery with Space Toad saliva she went about her errand.
It was her duty as a conscientious shopkeeper.
Alysande was sitting on the counter when Albert licked her foot. Alysande sensed Albert's
enjoyment as he licked her foot with that cute, slithery tongue. It tickled her all the way up.
What a Bad Boy. Marmalade or Me? Sauce for the goose? Or...hang on a minute. She had
an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Destiny? Not exactly that either. Alysande slipped her
dress over her head. "How do you eat people?" she asked. "Like this?" She opened her legs
and preened. The tongue penetrated her and she moaned in ecstasy or despair. Again.
Albert enjoyed the furry sensation on his tongue as he slipped it into Alysande. She didn't
shave. All the way up to her cervix.
"What happens next?" Alysande asked, panting. She knew she was crazy but there was
nothing she could do about it. Her bare feet braced themselves against the Space Toad's
head. Her elbows were on the counter, her head thrown back, opening the throat. She knew
perfectly well what was next. She'd been getting ready for it, listening to Albert's stories.
"Ah, well," Albert mumbled, "If you'd just put your legs together - only a bit - "
Alysande relaxed and a pair of scaly forelimbs took her by the ankles. Popped her feet into
the pretty froggie's mouth.
"I shouldn't really be doing this," Albert said as he sucked her up. "I didn't mean.."
"I know."
"It's just..."
"It's going to take more than a formal solution," Sam said. "We don't have time."
"Dear child, time is all we have," the Prof said. "Beginning with..."
Albert reached for the last jar. Not the good stuff, just Robertson's, but so old it still had the
golliwog on it. That alone made it a collector's item.
Drunk. DA. The meaning of Liff. (DA, SK) Doa. Doh.
"Fuck, stoned again," Albert thought. Again? When was I before?? Feedback from his NN
translator. It knew where it was even if he didn't. That was the precise moment when he
premoted that a daughter of Ishtar was coming for him. Of course, he didn't know what one
of those was exactly but he intuited it and then built it up logically from the feel. As you do. It
added up to get the fuck out of here, and he had no cause to doubt his conclusion. Deja Vu.
Where was Alysande? he wondered. Inside or outside? Is there a difference? Yup, definitely
off my trolley.
"Oh dear me, they've killed Apophis again," the Prof said.
Buffy was never sure whether the comment was inspired by the TV show or the hash in his
briar. He had settled down in a battered armchair to contemplate the problem in his own way,
while Dr. Summerfield did it in hers. His (apparent?) lack of a sense of urgency was perhaps
due to his unconventional view of time. Not unreasonable, given his history, but a pain in the
ass at times. She had run the diagnostic a thousand times but still couldn't pin down the
source of the disturbance.. she shook her head. Cobwebs. Overall, a faint scent of burnt
orange peel. "We're still destabilising," she said, trying to keep the carping tone out of her
voice. Shouldn't we DO something instead of goofing out in front of the goggle box? she
didn't say.
"Sitrep," the Prof snapped. "Condensed." Then he added, more mildly, "Nice tits."
Buffy attempted to reconcile this. Contact trip? Exhaustion? Lucid dream? Refocus. She had
been working on the Annie's faulty reality anchor for how many hours? Need a drink. Half a
pint of one department of her mind almost decided to say "Chauvinist pig." The other half
was working on 'Thanks" but abandoned the idea when she saw that he wasn't looking at her.
Some bitch on the screen. Bloody hell, that rejuv, the hormones....should have known...
Definitely need a rest. Sitrep? Where was he getting this carp? No, crap. Carp, crap,
frogspawn. REALLY, Definitely need a rest.
"Albert, we really have to do something," she said. "The Annie is looping and the recursions
are causing time branches. Anchor points are breeding, back, forth and sideways. I don't
know if Sam will be able to get back in. She's overdue."
"My name isn't Albert," the Prof pointed out. "And don't worry overmuch, Sam always finds
her way home."
What is she, a cat? Buffy wondered. Just then, the wardrobe door slammed open and our
heroine burst in.
"Okayyyy...Pops, back thirteen minutes. No, better make it..."
Sam frowned. "Fifteen? Twenty three?" She paused.
The Prof gazed at her fondly. "More alien invasions?" Looped.
Sam stared back. Her sword should have been covered in green slime. But she hadn't...not
yet. If ever. Okay...
"Timeline shock," the Prof said. "Cup of tea?"
Buffy stared at both of them as if they had transformed into grasshoppers. "You do this all the
time?" she inquired.
"Not on Thursdays," Sam said, coming to herself. "That's when I polish my sword and
worship Thor in my father's name. Look, Pops, we have to go back. See if you can get the
door into the thirteen minutes ago mode again."
"I thought it was Ishtar," Buffy muttered. "I'm not big on theology."
"That was my mother. Or will be, technically. I'm a Daddy's girl. Prof?"
The Professor's mien was sober. Stoned, but sober. "I don't think we can do it," he said. "I'm
sorry. We have to preserve the timeline."
"But the girl, she gets eaten. Has done, will do. You know. We have to save her."
"Sam, we're causing a vortex. We have to get out of it now, or..."
"Or what?"
"Save who?" Buffy wondered.
"Shit, I don't know. There's a space monster and some weirdos with asynchronous or
anachronistic tech, and I'm pretty sure..."
How was she sure? Had she already been there? Anomalies all over the hog show.
"We're causing it," the Prof said. "This isn't our own timeline, I suspect. Our presence here is
disrupting it."
"Which means?"
"The end of the Universe," Buffy said. She was on familiar theoretical ground. "This one,
anyway. The usual."
That required at least a cup of tea for the Prof. "Vortex," he muttered, staring into it.
Brownian motion. Ripples in spacetime. Even the cloves in it bobbed up and down. Wouldn't
it be nice. Beach Boys. If what?
"Milk, no sugar, right?" Buffy enquired.
"Or exactly the opposite," the Professor said. The opposite of a great truth is another great
truth. Niels Bohr. There was something missing from the equation.
I meant the tea, Buffy thought. He was off on a tangent again, and the orange juice she'd
gotten for herself wasn't about to inspire her to wherever he'd gone. "Want anything else?"
"Toast."
"Anything on the toast?"
"Um, end of the Universe?" Sam wondered. "Bit of a bother, that. Anything I can do?"
"No rind," the Prof said, glancing at the juice glass. "Unpeeling." He didn't quite understand
that, so he invoked a Helper. "Unhalfbricking," he requested. It was a sideline, he knew, but
he had to check it. Buffy put the album on the stereo. Fairport Convention, late sixties.
The answer was staring them all in the face. It was in a small glass jar in the pantry.
"Not right now," Buffy said. "Just get some rest. Burnish your sword. Whatever that means."
"I'll be in the Library," the Prof said suddenly.
"We don't have a library," Sam pointed out gently. She made a face at Buffy involving
twirling fingers pointed at he temples.
"Um. Pantry. My study. Somewhere else."
"You take his his feet," Sam said. He was heavier than he had been, and she knew why. Her
wicked stepgrandaunt had done it with her pheromones. Rejuv. And she's so tall, she thought
enviously. Sam's Cretan mother had stunted her genes.
Definitely not the time for a displaced Electra complex, she thought again. and she's really
very nice really. then she thought toad fallout and everything went fuzzy for a second and
something else..
"How long have we got?" she asked.
"Off the top of my head? About minus thirteen minutes, external time. In here, I don't know.
We're drifting backwards. Dilation factor, unknown."
Shipwrecked.
"You ate them all, right?"
Albert started. Where had he been? Deja vu.
"An entire Japanese volleyball team?"
Still here, Albert thought, not halfway through Jupiter. Bloody hell, this stuff really worked.
Back again. What the frell was happening? Hadn't he already?
"Not all of them," he heard himself saying. "It wasn't that simple."
Alysande had sensed Albert's enjoyment as he licked her foot with that cute, slithery tongue.
It tickled her all the way up. What a Bad Boy. Marmalade or Me? Sauce for the goose? Or...
Her toes went in first. Feeling the way. Of course, he wanted to eat her. Who could blame
him? Cute and warty, fast and bulbous. Deja wrecked. She passionately longed for his lips on
her legs, the slurp as her tits went inside the mouth. Sloop...Contact trip. Too late, she knew.
It's the rind. Tiptree marmalade leaves the rind in. No fat-free. Full shred.
"Fuck this," Sam said. Her Anglo-Saxon side came to the fore, brandishing a sword. "You
deal with the details. I'm going to save the girl."
"But..."
"But me no buts. DO it. I'm going back out."
Samantha arose from the stellar cellar steps bearing arms. Bare arms. Loaded for bear. Four
bears. Armed for toads, too. One, the dwarf-wrought hauberk, two, Andvaranaut, three, the
jewel-encrusted bracelet on her left arm, four, the bright blade of her forebears in her right
hand. She was spoiling for a fight. She was going to get it right this time.
This time, Albert saw her. I'm hallucinating, he told himself. He hoped it was true.
"Er..." he mumbled, Alysande sticking out of his mouth. Don't alarm her, he thought. She has
pointy sticky thing. What could he say? I'm just eating the shop girl? No offense? She wants
it?
"Let her go," Sam said. There was no room for negotiation in her voice. It wasn't a request.
Albert spat the girl out. He stayed still, wary. The armed female pointed the stick - no, sword -
at him and advanced. Oh shit. Oh serious, serious shit. BAD trip..
"Ouch," Alysande said. She had banged her head slightly as she fell. 'Sorry,' she felt Albert
say.
Alysande, naked, on her arse and elbows, knees up, stared at another hallucination. There
was some sort of Warrior Princess attacking the Space Toad that had been...
...eating her? She blinked. The woman, she noted, wasn't very tall. Not aware that Sam was
half-Cretan.
Albert backed away hastlly. No use, he realised. Humans are too fast, too agile. He was
bigger but she had the pointy thing humans are so good with. He tried for an empathic link
with the undersized Amazon but it was no good. She wasn't susceptible. Doomed. "Look," he
said desperately, "I only came here for the marmalade. I'll go. Just don't..."
Right then, the door burst in. Several dark suited men entered carrying what could only be
weapons. "Stay right where you are," one of them said.
Sam, poised to slay the monster, paused. Albert, thinking he couldn't possibly be in any
worse trouble, welcomed the distraction. Until he saw who it was. This was all he needed.
For one eternal moment, the Space Toad and the Avenger glanced at each other in some
approximation of mutual understanding/incomprehension. Sam's time-frazzled memories
kicked in. "The marmalade police?" she inquired sotto voce.
Albert considered that in a split second. Close enough. The extraterrestrial affairs bureau, or
whatever they called themselves, might well be interested in contraband. He considered
explaining that terrestrial marmalade was illegal on Aldebaran IV. "Men in Black," he hissed.
Seeing incomprehension he tried again. His NN translator chip came up with the goods at
last. "It's the fuzz."
"Got it," Sam nodded.
"Take it easy, lady," one of them said. "Just put it down, nice and easy."
Suspicions confirmed. "America?" Sam inquired brusquely, not lowering her blade at all.
"Just put down the pig-sticker," her interlocutor demanded. He made a gesture Sam assumed
was supposed to be threatening. She wasn't impressed.
"Stupid question, right. When, exactly?" She knew she had said that before. "How long
since.." Of course, they wouldn't know. The Toad was still here this time. He hadn't been the
last time. Her earlier arrival must have delayed him, if this was the same reality at all.
"You've got three seconds," was the unhelpful reply she got.
"Been there, done that." Sam said irritably. "Who are you people anyway? What year.." She
moved her right hand into guard position. That's when somebody shot her, and not with a
projectile weapon. Again. No effect, again. She still had dwarf-wrought armour. "Will you just
stop doing that? It's really annoying." She resisted the impulse to kill them all with an effort,
her father's blade of good Saxon steel was singing to her. She tried diplomacy. "Will
somebody tell me what's going on here? Or do I have to wring it out of the last one of you
with life's last breath in his bleeding carcasse and his guts on the floor?"
Albert backed away. He didn't want to get between the Avenging Daughter of Ishtar, if that's
what she was, whatever that was, and the spooks in black. He just wanted his marmalade. A
quiet life. Eating a few tasty human females when he could. He wished he was home with his
nice old larder full of pretty Earth girls. When they ran out, he could use the royalties from
his books to buy a few nice, docile little Kuari females. This was just getting too scary.
"We're here to investigate a temporal infraction," one of the spooks said. Albert noted with
relief that the spook wasn't looking at him, but at the armed woman.
"You wouldn't know a temporal infraction if it bit you on the arse and sang three verses of a
song to the tune of 'I am a Pirate King' called 'I am a temporal infraction,' " Sam said. Her
sword arm lowered a bit. She smirked. He smirked. Blackadder. Meeting of minds. Sam and
the spook talked.
Alysande and Albert were out of the loop. Higher powers were deciding their fate. Neither of
them liked it.
"I don't like it," Sam was saying. "If we just reset - assuming we can - "
The spook shrugged. "Got a better solution?"
Sam's nose twitched. She didn't like this at all. "I could just kill the lot of you."
"That won't solve anything."
"Works for me."
"All of you, go away," Alysande said. "Just go away." Albert was a bit miffed. Even him? He
had felt that he and Alysande had a rapport.
"This works for us," the spook said. He produced a small device from his pocket which
flashed briefly.
"Mnemonic scrambler?" Sam guessed.
"Got it in one," the spook said.
"Doesn't work on me."
"I got that."
"Swords always work," Sam pointed out.
"Your point being?" the spook asked, pretending not to view Sam's tempered steel blade with
extreme trepidation. He didn't have any gadgets that would stop that.
"The girl goes free. The Toad gets the marmalade and buggers off. The Prof deals with the
temporal infraction.You back away and forget this ever happened. Alternatively..." She made
a minimal twitch with her sword hand that adequately communicated the concept 'I cut your
heads off'.
Albert would have liked to say that he'd prefer to resume his relationship with Alysande where
it left off, but he couldn't quite remember where that had been, and he certainly didn't want to
deal with a really serious pointy thing wielded by an expert. He'd seen what a human could
do with a pointed stick.
"It is a nexus and we can unhalfbrick it, to coin a phrase" The Professor said ascending the
cellar steps. At least, that's what Alysande thought he said. The pipe he was smoking
distorted his voice.
"You mean?" Sam said.
"Buffy's recalibrated the frammistat again," the Prof muttered. "We must all become warbs. It
will still be loose. I'm sorry my dear," he said to Alysande. "There may be a residual
dimensional nexus in your basement."
Alysande considered saying "I can live with that."
Sam looked disgruntled. "Just for once, can't you say 'Kill them all'?"
"Just to the left of the jars with the golliwogs on," the Prof continued.
"This works for us," the spook said. He produced a small device from his pocket which
flashed briefly.
"They're outside the inner time loop," the Prof continued. "Move."
Still here, Albert thought, not halfway through Jupiter. Bloody hell, this stuff really worked.
Back again. What the frell was happening? Hadn't he already?
Albert woke up.
It had all happened yesterday. He'd got his marmalade from that nice young lady. Nobody
had seen him, he was sure of that. All that stuff about Avengers and Time machines...just a
dream. This stuff was really good. He'd almost believed in the hallucinations. He prowled
around the ship . Nothing much to do. Hyperpace was boring, just grey murk and
occasionally disturbing visions. Alysande's toes, dripping with..
Fantasy. That hadn't happened. Munchies. Um....
He did have a nice little salesgirl in the stasis locker. Emergency rations. Suffice it unto the
day...
It took a while, coming down.