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                              RADIAN & SHADEBEAM
                                  Episode 30
                             (Timeline, Part Four)
                              "Inner Geometries"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson

                                    -<=*=>-

     The Grand Hall of the Imperial Palace was breathtaking, of course, but in
a very different way than the jungle outside the city, or the city inside the
city.  For one thing, it looked like a city itself, or at least a room big
enough to hold a city.  The ornately decorated walls vaulted upwards into the
dim, phosphorescent orange light, projecting a feeling of eternal strength.
It was almost impossible to tell that Captain Hardeharharlock's Video
Arcadia had crashed through the ceiling just four months ago.
     Everywhere they looked, amazing varieties of humanoid and non-humanoid
life mingled, dancing, talking, gambling, swinging from hovering chandeliers
that were there for just that purpose.  Somehow, they made their way to the
buffet and the drinks, which they had initially mistaken for a small
continent.
     "Wow," Andro' said, looking around.  "I thought I'd seen some amazing
parties on Partyworld, but..."
     "Oh, Partyworld does have bigger parties than this," Akane said.  "But
outside Partyworld, and maybe planet California, this is as big as it gets."
     "Well, there *are* the parties in the Third Sphere of Megathalalos
Yabonga, in the Kate Galaxy, about five centuries ago," Zen said.  "But
that's no fault of the Ottsamaddawiduans -- I don't think you could even *get*
a glitteroid belly dancer in here, given the parameters of the Hall..."
     "Never mind that," Carmine said.  "This party is plenty for me."  Akane
watched as his eyes scanned the partying crowd, abruptly stopping.  "Um...
who is that?"
     "Which one?" Shadebeam asked.
     "The one with the black hair and almost no clothing," Carmine said.
     "Like she asked, which one?" Karina inquired.
     "I think he means Key," Akane said.  Her sharp eyes focused on her
former teammate as she danced with what appeared to be no less than five
Xolchipalian officers, who bore a suspicious yet completely coincidental
resemblence to actors on the 'Babylon 5' show.  They weren't good dancers,
though, and appeared to be tiring out, not able to keep up with Key's
high-energy pace.  "Why not go over and introduce yourself?"
     "Aw, no," Carmine said.  "I wouldn't stand a chance with someone like
her."
     "Don't know till you try, fuzzyface," Akane said.
     Carmine sighed.  "Well, I don't suppose it would hurt.  Lemme get a
drink, first."  He picked up a cup filled with a sinister, greenish liquid
and drank it.  "Hmm, not bad."  Karina picked up a similar cup, which contained
similarly sinister liquid, and, following his lead, drank it down.
     He took a step forward, and very nearly fell over.
     "Urk!" he exclaimed.
     "What did you drink?" Andro' asked, looking at the table.  "I could use
one of those."
     There was a ripping sound.  Carmine felt himself rising to his four
feet again, almost as if the expanding mass was pushing him u...
     Expanding mass?
     Four feet?
     "Yipes!" Carmine exclaimed, upon seeing that his koala paws had been
replaced with hooves, and that his backside now extended a full yard behind
him, and had its own pair of legs to support it.  His arms and upper
torso had not been transformed, and were still covered in a tuxedo, but
the bottom half of his tux was shredded.
     "Hmmm," Shadebeam said.  "According to the sign, what you just drank was
a Random Morph Cocktail."
     Karina started coughing, and looked at her empty cup, wide-eyed.
     "I had one of those once," Zen said.  "Changed me into Ted Cassidy."
     "So I'm now a koala'taur?" Carmine asked.  "How do I change back?"
     "Don't worry," Zen said.  "It wears off in twelve hours."
     "That's not going to happen to me, is it?" Karina asked, sounding
considerably alarmed.  She looked at Zen with her eyestalks, questioningly.
     It then occured to her that she hadn't had eyestalks a few moments ago.
A sound somewhere between a sign and a groan escaped her lips.  Zen shrugged.
     "Well, why are they sitting out here looking like everyday beverages?"
Carmine asked.  "And where did all this extra mass come from?"
     "They're standard party favors," Akane said.  "My brother told me
about 'em.  They're made by the Lanalusians, a species which has a rather more
relaxed outlook on physics than most races in the galaxy.  They aren't any
good as far as building spaceships or weapons goes, but they've done wonders
for the pleasure industries."
     "Well, where's the pleasure in *this*?!?" Carmine asked, wobbling
unsteadily on his new hoof configuration.
     "I've heard..." Andro began.  He whispered the rest into Carmine's ear.
Carmine's eyes grew wider.
     "But that's...that's..." Carmine protested.  "Hmmm.  You don't suppose
she'd..."
     "Wouldn't put it past her," Akane said.  Carmine considered, and
straightened his tie as he began to trot onto the dance floor, toward where
Key was dancing.  Andro' considered another RMC, but decided against it,
instead heading over towards the darkest, smokiest section of the Grand Hall,
from which the sounds of gambling and boozing emanated.
     "Well, there they go," Shadebeam said.  Akane noticed she was putting
a large number of small cylindrical objects into a pouch on her belt.  "Hey,
looks like a conga line is forming!  Let's..."
     "We're going to find Zen's van," Akane told her, firmly.
     "But...but..."
     "Let's go," Akane said, tugging her by the elbow.  Reluctantly, Shadebeam
gave way, allowing herself to be guided by Akane through the revelry,
following the rather obscure path that Zen Navigator was blazing, with Karina
following at a discreet distance, all the while trying to keep both her eye-
stalks looking in the same direction.  Peter Noone was singing a Herman's
Hermits song, backed by three of the Monkees and GLADYS.  They navigated
around the severe damage that Mighty Guy had caused in one of his dance
attempts.  Akane looked at him on the sidelines, and had to remind herself
that at this point in time, he and Key weren't an item.  But he was watching
her, as she danced with Carmine.
     She could see more, as she moved.  Timmy 'no use on the dance floor'
O'Larson was clumsily attempting to lambada with Yury, while Hardeharharlock,
Badass, and Eivandt were forming the backbone of the conga line (a backbone
that wobbled and staggered like jello, but a backbone nevertheless).  Chalandra
and Manny were slow dancing.  And Faith...
     There he was.
     Akane opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

                                    -<=*=>-

     Shadebeam noticed that Akane had abruptly stopped when she abruptly ran
into her.  Akane was staring at the largest gathering in the room, where
several people were in the process of getting up and heading out onto the
dance floor.  Shadebeam recognized one of them.  Faith.
     Zen was walking right up to them, smiling broadly.  Oh, hell, she thought.
     "Oh, excuse me!" he was saying.  "I am ZEN NAVIGATOR, and we're just
passing through.  If you could point us in the direction of the parking lot,
we could find our psychadaelic VW minibus more easily..."
     "Faith!" Akane exclaimed, finding her voice.  She started towards him.
Shadebeam pulled her back, firmly.
     "Radian, he's not the one we're looking for," she hissed.
     *He's got both his shoes,* China pointed out.
     *We should leave here immediately,* Symon cautioned.
     "But, Shadebeam..." Akane protested, softly.
     "I know, I know," Shadebeam said.  "But we've been through this.  Remember
what you told me - we have to be careful not to mess up past history, or a
disaster on the scale of the Magic Wars could occur."
     -We haven't been through this,- Kyoko said.
     *I saw it on Star Trek,* Shadebeam thought at them.  *It's one of those
things they go on about.  Now shaddup.*  She looked back at Akane, and saw the
pain on her face.  The mask was down, and everything was written on her pale
cheeks, in the straining around her eyes.
     Shadebeam looked at Akane, the one who belonged in this time, the one
standing beside Faith, standing so close.  They were in love, even though they
hadn't yet acknowledged it.  And they were on a mad slamcar ride to oblivion.
     Zen was moving again.  If he had gotten the information he had needed,
Shadebeam had not seen it.  Nevertheless, he was plunging into the revelry
again.  Shadebeam tugged on Akane's elbow, and Akane reluctantly followed.
     She looked back, at Faith, at Akane, and at a taller, very extremely
tan male who was watching them with a mix of quizzicality and inebriation.
She recognized him.  Rad.
     "Mama buy me that," Shadebeam mumbled.
     "What?" Akane asked, distractedly.
     "Nothing," Shadebeam said, hurriedly, pulling at Akane's elbow.  They
weren't following.  Good.

                                    -<=*=>-

     Karina groaned, as she woke.  Her back felt stiff and sore, and her eyes
felt like they'd been wobbling up and down all night.
     Her eyes...
     She touched her eyelids, and was relieved to feel two eyeballs resting
firmly in their sockets.  The potion had indeed only lasted twelve hours, as
Zen had said.
     Where was she?  Karina looked around, realizing she was on the bridge of
Carmine and Andro''s freighter, alone.  She vaguely remembered losing Akane
sometime after she, Shadebeam, and Zen stopped to talk to Rad, around the
time the kick-line kicked by and swept her up in it.  By the time she got away
from it, she was back at the drink table, her eyestalks were wobbling like
weebles, and the alcohol in the Random Morpher was just kicking in.
     She had lost.  Akane had escaped, and she was stuck on a strange planet,
a year in the past, with two eccentric starfarers who might or might not be
able to guide her back to Earth in time to get fired.  Why--
     The hissing sound of the hatch opening made her up.  Radian, Shadebeam,
and Zen Navigator were entering the bridge.  Zen seemed purposeful.  Shadebeam
seemed concerned.  And Radian...
     Radian looked like she had seen a ghost.
     Karina stood up, forcing her tired legs to work, blocking Akane's path.
"What was the big idea of dumping me he--hey!"  Akane grabbed her by the
throat and threw her into the wall, without breaking stride.  The sound of the
cabin hatch closing somehow made it through the ringing that Karina heard in
her mind.
     "Ow," she said, finally.  "I'd say I deserved that, if I knew what was
going on."
     "We encountered her past self...the one who belongs in this time,"
Shadebeam said.  "And her brother, Rad.  And...Faith."
     "I see," Karina said, remembering the incident.  "Did you find the
minibus?"
     "Yes, we did!" Zen announced, as he pressed some buttons on a console.
"It took me half the night to convince the authorities that I was the true
owner of the bus!"  Some scopes lit up, showing an exterior view of the ship.
The exterior cargo bay doors were opening, directly above Zen's psychadaelic
VW minibus.  Zen pressed another set of buttons, and a tractor beam began to
pull it into the hold.
     "Hmmm," Karina said.  "Looks like its almost morning outside.  The party
must be breaking up."
     "Yeah," Shadebeam replied.  "Wonder where Carmine and Andro' are?"
     -I'm right here,- Andro purred.
     "No, not you," Shadebeam said to the cat.  "Andro'."
     -Whatever,- Andro sighed, curling back up on the armrest of the couch.
     *I believe they are arriving right now,* Symon said.
     "Why now?" Shadebeam asked.
     *If they didn't, this scene would just keep dragging on,* Symon told her.
*Dramatic plot necessity, you see.*
     -Not that dramatic,- Kyoko interjected.
     "We're baaaaaaaaaackk!" Andro' called, as he and Carmine ascended the
ramp and entered the bridge.  More accurately, Carmine was doing the
ascending - Andro was riding on Carmine's back, and was for some reason
wearing a sequinned ballroom gown, in place of his silver-grey tuxedo.
     "Get off my back...now," Carmine told Andro'.
     "Yeeha!" Andro' exclaimed.  "Giddyap!"
     "I will kill you slowly," Carmine seethed.  Andro' fell sideways off
the koala'taur's back, onto the couch, forcing Andro to leap out of the way.
     "Have a good time?" Karina asked, an eyebrow raised.
     "I had no idea you could get that many bizarre chemical agents into whipped
cream," Andro' gurgled, face down on the couch.
     "Bizarre chemical agents?" Shadebeam asked.  "I thought they were showbiz
agents."
     "Feeling better?" Carmine asked.  "I had a couple busbeings carry you back
here after you stumbled by me on the dance floor, mumbling something about
gardening at night."
     Karina frowned.  The anti-intoxicant implants in her body obviously didn't
counter the particular alien beverage she had consumed.
     "And how did your encounter with Key go?" Shadebeam asked Carmine,
scritching behind his ears.
     "We danced for a while, but she left," Carmine said.  "Just after that,
though, I encountered a group of Catherine II impersonators, and..."
     "I have loaded the minibus onto the ship!" Zen interrupted.  "We are
ready to proceed!"
     -Yay,- Andro purred, without enthusiasm.
     "When does that wear off, anyway?" Shadebeam asked, indicating Carmine's
temporarily equine lower half.
     "Any moment," Andro' said, as he managed to claw himself to a seated
position.
     Suddenly and without warning, it wore off.
     "Ah, that's better," Carmine said, as he tested his legs.  "Okay, is
the minibus secure in the cargo bay?"
     "Yes!" Zen replied.  "I'm going to go down there to inspect it now.
Please let me know when we are within range of the Notoriously Unstable
Dimensional Vortex."
     "Will do," Carmine said.  "Okay, Andro', if you could take your place
at the helm, I'll initiate liftoff procedures, and we can go boldly where no
sentient has gone bef...why is everyone staring at me like that?"
     "Pants, Captain Kirk?" Andro' asked, holding out a pair of emergency
trousers.  Carmine, grumbling, put them on, ignoring the barely stifled
giggling from those present, real and delusional.

                                    -<=*=>-

     It was hard to say if there was anything different about the Notoriously
Unstable Dimensional Vortex, Akane thought.  It certainly looked the same,
even though she was viewing it from the bridge this time, instead of from the
adjoining cabin.  Andro' was in there now, still sleeping off his partying
excess.  Karina slept on the couch, and Carmine kept watch over the
instruments, while Zen stood impressively in front of the helm and entered
bizarre instructions.  It was a small bridge, designed for a two-person crew
so that one could watch the readouts while the other slept, and certainly
hadn't been intended to hold this many people comfortably.
     The Vortex was...bent, somehow, Akane thought, as she pushed Shadebeam's
elbow out of her face.  Bent in a way it wasn't before, as though an invisible
cosmic crowbar had wedged itself inside.  Zen didn't seem disturbed by it,
though, so it probably wasn't dangerous.  At least, not to him.
     She thought back to the encounter in the Imperial Palace, on how much it
had hurt to see Faith again.  She thought she'd put that behind her, thought
that her contact with him on the psi-plane had released her from needing him.
It had, she realized, but that didn't make it hurt less.
     It was, of course, given that she would encounter him like this.  She
remembered when she had been on the other side of time, when she had been the
one looking into pain-stricken eyes and wondering what could have happened
to tear her apart so.  Magic was just something she had begun to learn, with
Symon coaching her, warning her that she needed to learn it for the upcoming
Magic Wars.  Then the Wars came, and the Songs, and the Transcendence...
and the aftermath.
     A circle had been completed, a link with the past forged.  It seemed
that her life was a series of nested circles, each one arcing farther and
farther outward, but always coming back.  Or maybe they were ovals, since
some of the turns were long and gradual, and the other turns were short and
sharp.  There was a triangle in there as well, somewhere, she realized, and
probably a pentagon or two.
     Destiny had a very annoying fondness for geometry.
     Akane thought about Rad, whom she had also seen next to Faith, but had
been too stunned to talk to.  She hadn't seen him since last summer, when
she rescued him from suffocating in space, following the transcendence of
Obelisk.  What news HAL gave her of him was encouraging - he had been hit,
heavily, by the pain of what she had done, but he was managing to go on, and
not let it eat him up.  She felt the need to talk to him just then, to talk
to someone who loved her unconditionally, who would listen to her without
prejudgement.  Right now, he was the one stable element in her life.
     "We are about to reach the vortex!" Zen Navigator announced.
     Akane looked out the viewport at the warping, twisting volume of
nothingness before them, just as the ship reached it.  They were going on an
angle, more extreme than before.  It was the proper angle, she felt, without
knowing quite why.

                                    -<=*=>-

     An hour later, they were through.
     "We have exited the Vortex!" Zen announced, unnecessarily.  Everyone
already could tell that they had exited the Vortex, by the way that their
cellular structures had stopped doing the cellular equilvalent of the
lambada (the forbidden dance!).  Fortunately, no one had vomited.
     "I have readings on a planet, dead ahead," Andro' said.  "Planet
California."
     "That's odd," Carmine said.  "This time of the cycle, California should
be on the other side of the suns.  That is...IF we're in the right year."
     "You *doubt* the powers of ZEN NAVIGATOR?!?" Zen asked, incredulously.
     Andro' whapped the nav'puter, snarling at it.  "It's not coming up with
the proper time, or even the year, for that matter.  It shouldn't take it this
long for it to extrapolate...ah, wait, here it is."
     Lights flickered for a moment, then resolved into a date: 8:12 p.m.,
May 5th, 3,005 B.C. (Earth time).
     Everyone looked at the day and time for several moments.
     "Ehrm," Zen finally said.  "I seem to have been in error."
     "No kidding, chump," Karina said, returning to the couch.  Shadebeam
started looking alarmed.  Akane began to feel alarmed, as well.  She had never
heard Zen admit to having made a mistake before, and from what Shadebeam and
others told her, he never did that.  Ever.  Everything, in some way, was
explained in his Zen outlook on life.
     Except this.
     "I'm scanning for the Vortex," Andro' said.  "Scans are negative."
     "We're out of range?" Zen asked.
     "No," Andro' replied.  "It simply doesn't exist."
     "Uh, guys..." Shadebeam began.
     "How can it *not exist*?" Carmine asked.  "We came through it!"
     "Take a look for yourself," Andro' said.  "It's just not out there."
     "Well, what is out there?" Akane inquired.
     "Guys..." Shadebeam said, louder than before.
     "The scopes say the planet, a couple'a moons, the local stars, and two
large, warring space armadas," Andro' told him.
     "Two *what*?" Karina asked.
     "Those!" Shadebeam exclaimed, pointing out the viewport.  Everyone looked
up, in time to see two monsterous, spacegoing battleships bearing down on them.
     "*Ulp,*" Zen commented, with complete necessity.

HAVE THEY TRAVELLED BACK MILLENIA JUST TO GET TURNED INTO SPACE DEBRIS?
HOW DID THEY GET THERE, IF NOT THROUGH THE VORTEX?
DID ZEN, IN FACT, MAKE A MISTAKE? (gasp)
DO YOU FIGURE THAT THE SHIP ACTUALLY INTENDS TO INVITE THEM TO A PARTY?
DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT THE WARRING ARMADAS ARE ACTUALLY PLAYING SOME SORT OF
     SPACE VOLLEYBALL?
NO?
WELL, THEN, TUNE IN IN TWO DAYS TIME, SAME SUPERGUY TIME, SAME SUPERGUY
     CHANNEL!

+-------- Gary W. Olson --------+        "All roads lead *away* from Ankh-
| swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu  |         Morpork, but sometimes people just
+----- swede@drycas.bitnet -----+         walk along them the wrong way."
                                          - Terry Pratchett, _Moving_Pictures_