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                              RADIAN & SHADEBEAM
                                  Episode 51
                          (Mass Confusion, part one)
                                "Queasy Rider"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson

                                    -<=*=>-

     The single-lane highway uncoiled under their wheels like a snake.  The
light of the stars and the moon was the only light visible, the roar of their
motorcycles' engines the only sound.  There was a light snow on the ground,
and the stiff chill in the air stung their exposed faces, despite the defenses
that each had against the conditions.
     Akane Moroboshi took in a breath of the chilly air, and adjusted her
body temperature slightly.  Riding in Oregon in winter was a daunting enough
prospect -- having to ride at night was even more daunting.  Still, at this
time of the year, just two days before the solstice, there was far more
darkness than light, which was ideal, given their status as fugitives from
the law.  The night had helped them make the careful, gradual trek through
northern California, eluding the searches that had been set up by law
enforcement agencies on all levels.
     As the weeks passed, the searches abated somewhat, as the feeling grew
that the most wanted duo on the planet had once again managed to confound
the best efforts to capture them.  The news reports on them had grown
increasingly curious, with initial reports that Chalandra had aided their
escape being contradicted by later reports that she had not, that her
absence from CalForce's roster was due to an extended leave she had taken.
Even the Schmooze's coverage, while it brought in such disparate elements
as quantum physics, GATT, world soccer, and an eight page photo expose on
HotFlash and MeltDown, glossed over the subject.  HAL told her that Manny
had nothing to do with the strange reporting pattern, and that he could not
determine what was responsible.
     It was puzzling, and Akane didn't want to think about it any more.
     Their headlights were off, but Akane could see her companions riding
along, slightly ahead of her, through the infrared portion of the spectrum.
Chalandra was in the lead, the cold having no effect on her undead body as
she negotiated the curving road.  Shadebeam, to the right of her and about a
half-yard behind, had her coat pulled around her tightly, using as little
magic as possible to keep warm.
     Akane touched her sister's mind, through the psi-link that they shared.
Shadebeam acknowledged the touch, tiredly.  She was tough, but the long nights
of riding through silent back roads and hiding in the daylight hours was
taking a toll on her human body in ways that Akane and Chalandra could not
feel any longer.
     It was one hour before sunrise.  Perhaps they had traveled enough for one
night.
     *China,* Akane thought, *tell Chalandra that it's time to look for
shelter.*
     China materialized alongside the speeding motorcycle, this time in the
form of young Vrik.  She had started adopting this form, sporadically, in
recent weeks, alternating between it and her more familiar form.  She had
stopped taking the form of the older, post-adolescent version of herself, at
least for the near future.  Akane never asked her why; she could sense that
it was a private matter.
     The bone-white-skinned child drifted ahead of Akane's bike effortlessly,
pulling up alongside Chalandra.  She spoke to Chalandra, and Chalandra nodded.
Minutes later, Chalandra signalled for them to take a left, and they did,
driving onto a neglected dirt road that couldn't have been all that visible
even in daylight.  The ground showed signs of activity, none of it recent.
     The road widened slightly, and Akane wondered if they were slipping into
another dimension, the way travelers sometimes did in cliched ghost stories.
Perhaps they would meet a hitchhiker along the side of the road and take him
to his destination, only to find that he had died thirty years before in a
car crash.  Perhaps they would encounter an old settlement come to life again,
or a headless guy on a pogo stick.
     As it turned out, they encountered none of these things.  Instead, they
encountered a rather decrepit wooden building, which seemed to owe what
it had left to the fact that it was well shielded by the surrounding forest
from the wind and rain.  They pulled up alongside and cut their motors.
     The silence of the air pressed into their ears, and they sat for several
moments, letting the roar of their engines drain from their hearing.  Chalandra
stood from her Harley first, getting a wooden block the size of a briefcase
from the back.  As Akane put down the kickstand of her cycle, she felt a
stirring on her back.
     -Morris, you unscrupulous bastard,- the voice purred, sleepily.  -I know
you're hiding an ace in your fur...-
     "Hey, cat, wake up," Akane said, reaching behind her back and slapping
the warm cat body in her backpack a couple times.  "We've stopped."
     -Mrrrrfootball practice!- Andro exclaimed.  He peered out of the backpack,
and made an unimpressed sort of sneezing sound.  -The Hilton again, I see.-
     *Just be glad it's not another graveyard,* Symon opined.
     -Are you kidding?- Andro asked.  -Graveyards are great!  It's like an
all-day buffet of mice, birds, rats, and other delights.  I'll probably be
lucky to get a field mouse, here.-
     "You *could* just eat the sandwiches and milk we leave for you," Shadebeam
suggested.
     -That barely lasts him past breakfast,- Kyoko interjected.  -He ought to
go on a diet.-
     -Ha!- Andro replied.  -I'm a natural predator, sleek and sinewy.  Not an
ounce of fat on me.-
     Akane coughed, deliberately.
     -Don't you start too,- Andro groaned, as he leapt from the backpack to the
ground.  -So what is this place?-
     "Cabin of some kind," Akane said.  "Probably used by trappers, long ago."
     "It's been used recently, too," Chalandra said.  "Footprints, see?"
     They looked at the footprints, made by boot-covered feet, which led into
and out of the remains of the cabin.
     "Several days old," Chalandra added.  "They're not here now, though.  We
should be safe enough."
     The musty air inside the structure wrapped around them as soon as they
entered.  It didn't seem so bad on the outside -- some repair work had been
done, and under the portion of the roof that still existed, a crude stove and
sink rested, with a metal pot atop the stove.  Wooden stairs descended into
the structure, which Chalandra tested before walking down.
     She emerged again, several minutes later, and smiled, beckoning for
Akane and Shadebeam to follow.  Shadebeam looked at Akane and shrugged,
following the vampire down the creaky steps.
     At the base of the steps was an unlocked door.  It looked like no one
had opened it in ages, but Chalandra opened it with ease, reaching her
fingers into a hidden crevice and squeezing something inside twice.  The room
inside seemed jarringly out of place, spartanly furnished, but clean, with
only a minimal layer of dust to indicate the time that had passed.  Several
mattresses were stacked neatly along one wall, and an antique desk in the
corner supported a small black-and-white television set, several paperback
books, and a quantity of notebook paper.
     There was a sign on the wall, nestled among a startling variety of color
and black-and-white photographs.  It read: 'For the use of all.  Take what
you need, leave what you can.'
     "You knew we'd find this place, didn't you?" Akane asked.
     "I thought we'd find a place like it," Chalandra said.  "They're
around, if you know what signs to look for, particularly in this part of the
country.  See these pictures?  All people who have stayed here, over the
decades."
     Akane looked at the photographs, her eyes sliding over the faces that
looked back out at her.  There was no predominant theme; photos of sixties
radicals were mixed with those of seventies adolescents and aged drifters
from no particular era.  Some photos featured more than just those who had
passed through.  The room had been the home of a short lived commune, the
setting for a rather unimaginative orgy, and the final resting place for
a group of heroin addicts in its storied history, and Akane suspected that
only scratched the surface.
     Most striking of all were the photos of the coffins.  Some were well
crafted, but most seemed cheap, constructed for quick travel by the vampires
who used them, much like the fold-a-coffin that Chalandra was currently
unfolding.  It made sense, of course; a vampire couldn't be photographed, so
the next best thing would be to take a picture of the casket.
     "Sunrise in a half hour," Chalandra said, as she finished assembling her
casket.  She sat down atop it and pulled off her jacket.  "Nice, isn't it?
You don't usually find them this neat.  Last people here must have cleaned
it well."
     "Who told you about this...places like these?" Akane asked, as she
removed her jacket and pulled off her dingy shirt.  "You've been up here
before?"
     "Almost five years back," Chalandra said.  "The person who told me about
them is the person we're going to be visiting."
     "How long will it take to get to this guy?" Shadebeam asked, as she
looked through the drawers of the desk.
     "Not much longer," Chalandra answered, a tired note starting to enter her
voice.
     "You've been saying that for the last week," Shadebeam said.
     "Sometimes I say it all century," Chalandra replied.
     -Try the bottom drawer,- Kyoko suggested to Shadebeam.  Shadebeam opened
the bottom drawer, and smiled widely.
     "Good eye, kid," she said, as she withdrew several cigarette-shaped
objects from the otherwise empty drawer.  She sniffed one, and wrinkled her
nose.  "Oh well, any port in a storm."
     "You could save them for tomorrow," Akane suggested, as she bundled her
coat into the shape of a pillow.  Andro padded around the room, sniffing at
the dust, while Chalandra unwrapped some tuna fish sandwiches and poured out
some milk from a thermos.  Shadebeam put her treasure into a small pouch on
her belt, save for one, and looked through the suitcase she and Akane shared
for a lighter.  She scowled, not finding one.
     "Here," Chalandra said, lighting a match.  Shadebeam lit her joint and
inhaled.  Seconds later, she forcibly exhaled, her face turning vaguely green.
     "Maybe I will wait," Shadebeam commented, as she extinguished it.  "Ack."
     "Hey, cat, you want your bowl inside or outside?" Chalandra asked.  "We're
going to be keeping it locked while we sleep."
     "Outside," Andro purred.  "And you could remember my name, at least.  'Cat'
seems so impersonal.  And you can leave it outside the door -- after being
cooped up in a backpack all night, I need to stretch."  With that, he walked
out of the room, bounding up the steps.  Chalandra shrugged, and carried the
meal and milk to the doorway.  After setting them down outside the border, she
shut the door and placed a wooden bar over the braces, to lock the door from
the inside.
     Shadebeam pulled a mattress off the stack and stretched out on it, not
even bothering to remove her jacket.  Akane pulled another mattress off the
stack and placed her jacket on one end, laying her head down on it as she
stretched out.  Chalandra opened her casket's lid and stepped inside.  She
looked back at Akane, who was lying motionless on the mattress.
     "Try to get some sleep today, will you?" she asked.
     "I always try," Akane said.  "It's the doing that eludes me, sometimes."
     "Still thinking about it?"
     "They just...slipped away," Akane whispered, her voice amplified by the
acoustics of the room.  "Into something, some state of being I can't even
describe.  And Glum was dying...and Rad was changing, merging with his divine
power again..."
     "And he and Dar are going to emerge, I know," Chalandra sighed.  "You
told me.  And figuring out how to stop them means you have to find this
TransDemesne, and figuring out what the deal is with that..."
     "Do you know how powerful they're going to be, when they emerge?" Akane
asked.  "They'll be far, far more powerful than Ian and Chelsa apart from
Rad and Dar.  It's like when I drank China's blood, the way the magic in it
interacted with the magic inside me.  Both will be as powerful as I was at my
prime, and they won't make the mistakes I made."
     "It hasn't happened yet," Chalandra told her.  "Now get some sleep.  We've
got a lot of ground to cover after the day's done."
     "Okay," Akane said, turning to smile at Chalandra.  "Good night, Chal."
     "Good night, Little Fang," Chalandra replied, as she shut the lid.
     Akane rested on her mattress, staring up at the wooden ceiling.  Light
snoring emanated from where Shadebeam was sprawled, distracting her tired mind
from slipping off into dream.  She traced along the contours of her breasts
with a finger, and sighed.
     Perhaps some music, she thought.  She rummaged through the suitcase and
pulled out her cassette player and a pair of headphones.  Some more rummaging
produced several erratically-labeled cassettes, which she sorted through idly
before settling on one.  She placed the cassette in the player, slipped the
headphones over her ears, and pressed play.
     As the opening notes of a good-quality bootleg of Ramrod's final concert
reached her ears, she lay back on her pillow, and looked up at the ceiling
again.  She formed a gun-shape with her fingers, and whispered 'pow...gotcha.'
She smiled slightly, and closed her eyes...

                                    -<=*=>-

     Karina opened her eyes, and saw Sutherland and Atkinson looking back at
her, expressions that could either be concern for her health or concern for
their careers evident on their faces.
     "Sorry," she apologized, almost automatically.  "Just had to...close my
eyes for a bit."
     They nodded.  They had gotten used to her occasional lapses over the
past weeks, and had adjusted their habits accordingly.  Ever since she
revived from witnessing...it...she had been fading in and out, as though...
it...was still calling to her.
     It had drawn her out of the van she had been in when it had started, as
though it had hooked her eyes and was pulling her towards the fissure.  The
black sun, the cities falling, the way Radian changed in appearance, becoming
the Dark Goddess again and then shifting into the body of a ten year old girl,
before returning to her current body.  Radian appeared to be unaware of her
physical transformation as it occured, and Karina wondered how much she had
seen that Karina had not.
     Sutherland and Atkinson told her they found her standing outside the
van, in a trance.  They carried her back inside the van, where she woke up.
They claimed it took her a full hour to speak, but she remembered talking from
the moment she opened her eyes, describing what she had seen in excruciating
detail that neither of them remembered.
     In the weeks to follow, they coordinated the searches for Radian and
Shadebeam in northern California, with her approval.  They seemed to ascribe
her condition to exhaustion, and had more than once suggested she take a
break.  But a Special Special Agent for the Mega-Intelligence Bureau,
especially ones with an eye on the directorship, didn't have the luxury of
taking vacations, for stress or any other reason.  So here she was, in her
office, struggling to keep up appearances.  The only blessing was that
Richard Less was staying away, despite the fact he had to know what condition
she was in.
     "You were saying...?" she asked.
     "We think Radian, Shadebeam, and Miss Harkness have left the state of
California," Sutherland told her.  "We're concentrating our search in Oregon,
since we know that they're heading north."
     Karina nodded.  "Good.  You're dismissed."
     "But sir..." Atkinson started.  Sutherland shushed him with a glance.
"Thank you, sir," Atkinson said instead, as he and Sutherland left the
office.  Karina watched them go, and closed her eyes again.

                                    -<=*=>-

     Harris McElton chuckled to himself as he set down the phone receiver.
It was official, now -- he wouldn't have to pay for rear-ending old lady
Willis's Roadster in the parking lot of Colonel Fong's.  He could afford
the good lawyers, and she couldn't.  And since it was his word against
hers...
     There was a knock on the door.  Harris looked up, his eyes narrowing.
His wife was out of town, and he hadn't been expecting any visitors.  And
while crime wasn't much in this sleepy Portland suburb, it was something
everyone kept in the backs of their minds.
     Harris pulled his putter out from under the couch and walked over to the
door.  He opened it, peered out, and gasped.
     Someone had tossed toilet paper all over, through, and around his
front lawn trees.  But the offender hadn't just stopped with toilet paper -
he had used spray cheese, silly string, confetti, and crepe paper, and had
nailed over a dozen pictures of Richard Nixon into the bark.  Harris fumed,
angrily.  Who could have...?
     Then, he saw him.  He was standing in the middle of the street, next to
a motorcycle that was colorfully festooned with orange, red, and yellow
crepe paper.  The man himself was festooned in a similar fashion, and the
expression on his face seemed to be one of deranged glee.
     "Ha ha ha!" the man exclaimed.  "Vengeance is mine!"
     Harris gasped.  He had heard dark rumors of the man in the street from
several people he knew, including one of his buddies on the bowling team
and his coach on the Tri-State Belching Squad, but he'd always dismissed them
out of hand.
     "No," he whispered.  "Not...not..."
     "Yes, it is I!" the man in the street exclaimed.  "Zaratharawallawalla,
the Spirit of Minor Vengeance!  The wrong you have committed has been avenged!
So there!  Thphhtphtphtphht!"
     The Spirit of Minor Vengeance danced about a bit and gave him the
raspberry some more before hopping onto his cycle and taking off into the
darkness, crepe paper creating a not-at-all-convincing fire effect behind him.
     Harris closed the door, and made a beeline for the liquor cabinet.

                                    -<=*=>-

     Shadebeam was sure that it was her imagination that the air was colder
than the night before.  The spell she had cast was keeping her warm, but just
barely -- she knew she had to have something more powerful than an Eye of
Newt Gingrich Speeches Spell to keep the air under her coat heated.  Andro's
sleeping form was warm against her back, which helped a little.
     She could only remember a few times when the days and nights had blended
like they seemed to be doing for her now.  The days following her separation
from her parents...the days following Remmy's abrupt departure from her
life...the days she had spent on Barbados, Planet of Physical Delights...and
this.
     "This sucks," she said to herself.
     *Cheer up,* Symon told her, as he materialized alongside her bike.  *It
beats getting shot at and falling from great heights, doesn't it?*
     "I'll have to get back to you on that," Shadebeam said.
     *Why, I'll bet that adventure and excitement are waiting just over that
rise,* Symon speculated.
     "If you weren't immaterial, I'd give you a hell of a wedgie," Shadebeam
told him, candidly.  "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to suffer in si--
yiiiii!"
     There was a figure looming in the road, tall and menacing.  She
swerved to avoid hitting him, and nearly skidded out of control.  The figure
calmly turned to watch her, and Shadebeam, after she got her cycle under
control, rolled back to get a better look at him.  Akane and Chalandra, who
had roared past, were turning around and coming back.
     "You oughta be more careful," the deep voice told her.  Shadebeam knew
she had heard the voice before.  "Never know what you'll run into, riding
without headlights like that."
     Akane and Chalandra switched on the headlights of their cycles as they
drew up to where Shadebeam and the figure were.  The harsh glare from the
lights reflected off of the figure's shades, along the length of his
extended, donkey-shaped face, and on his long, black trenchcoat.
     He smiled.  It wasn't a pretty smile.
     "Going my way, Chal?" Badass asked.

WHAT'S BADASS DOING IN OREGON?
WHO ARE RADIAN, SHADEBEAM AND CHALANDRA GOING TO SEE?
WHAT MANNER OF BEING IS THIS SPIRIT OF MINOR VENGEANCE?
WILL HARRIS DARE TO PUT ONE OVER ON OLD LADY WILLIS AGAIN?
WHAT'S THAT BEHIND DOOR NUMBER THREE?

Hell, Inc.  Where do you want to go today?

(blink)

Er, sorry, wrong blurb.  I don't know where my head was.  But since I don't
seem to have anything else on hand, I'll just say...um...SUPERGUY!

Yay!
--
Gary W. Olson         swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu         swede@drycas.bitnet