The Cuteness That Came To Asgarth

The Cuteness That Came To Asgarth A H.P.Lushcraft story, transcribed and re-typed by Simon Barber, 1995. WARNING. This story contains scenes of explicit and gratuitous Cuteness. Specific Life Insurance cover should be arranged before reading. It is one of the few saving graces in that tiny portion of all possibilities that we call Life, that so few people bother to sit and truly think, about the world around them. Though poets today may complain of the lack of Vision, and scientists worry about the dearth of true inspiration, perhaps it is better so. The difficulty is, you see, that once you begin to put the pieces of the jigsaw together, you can never really stop, whether you like the emerging picture or not ..... But I must start from the beginning. I was in my second year at the ancient University of Asgarth, in the high market town that nestles on the Northern moors. The town lay in a great scooping bowl bitten out of the hillside, like a six-mile crater in a landscape half eaten by the cold waves of the North Sea. Very old and grand were the buildings there, and often in Winter you could look out over the ocean fogs lying heavy below like a great white blanket for the grey waters beneath. It was on such a day, that I met her. To make my meagre grant cover expenses, I had taken a part-time job using my degree subject, as a Quantum Mechanic. In my Virtual Helmet, I was viewing the underside of a half-fried chip that someone had picked up while their fur was freshly brushed and charged with static .... shaking my head, I began to pack up the (extremely small) toolkit. This was a replacement job, not a repair. "Hidy !" There was a voice in the shop. I scooted out on the Virtual; trolley, and pulled off the nanoscale helmet. My ears pricked up higher than ever - I'm a canine, greyhoundish generally, but with sharply erect Jackal ears. Mother once spent a holiday in the Nameless City in the Sahara, but that's another story. The visitor was shortish, just over a metre high, and of definite lepine stock. Over-long, floppy ears waved cheerfully, her golden-blonde fur mostly hidden by the heavy-looking metallic suit she wore. I straightened up, and wiped my hands clean. Second customer of the day, I told myself - and far the nicest. "Can I help you ?" I asked her. For a second, She turned a flashing glance on me. It felt - much as I imagine a modern aircraft's computer feels, when a radar scans it. I got the feeling that she was analysing me minutely, from the bones outward. But then she smiled, and the feeling evaporated. "I'm 'aving some trouble weeth my left paw," she said shyly, extending a chubby arm. I looked down, and saw what she meant - it was not designer armour she wore, but a powered suit, the left wrist of which was held stiffly. I ran through the possibilities, and decided to check out the servo-motor controller circuits. "Staying her long, ma'am ?" I asked her as I gently popped the electronics package and slid it into the analyser. She nodded, her huge ears bobbing. "I am - you say, just arriving 'ere. I 'ave started at the Universitee this week." She flashed me another of those glances, and a pink tongue ran over brilliantly white chisel-teeth, sparkling as if they were brand new. "Ze suit, I need it to be - in shape. I am glad to find you open, eet is a new town for me." Unbelievably long whiskers twitched.

In a few seconds the analyser reported what I had expected: a micron-sized break across half a dozen transistors in one of the power chips. Setting the quantum drills going to dig a new electron tunnel, I turned to her. She intrigued me. That accent was almost French, but like the rest of her, there was something - definitely Different, about her. "It's going to take half an hour to fix," I told her, not forgetting to add fifty percent for labour. Then I glanced up at the clock. "If you're new in town - would you like help with Lunch ? I know a great place just round the corner" Her ears pricked up markedly. From what I could see of her, she was built on the rounded side, yet seemed light, as if from a forced diet. Her huge eyes twinkled at me. "Thank you ! I'd just LOVE to. I 'ave always ze - appetite." I pulled on my jacket and shut up shop, my heart pounding. This promised to be interesting: Asgarth is a small place, and at the University we all see a lot of each other. Gods, if only I had known ! "I thought rabbits were vegetarians," I commented in surprise as we ordered lunch. Fish and chips for me, as usual. But she had asked for prime steak, cooked so rare, "if eet kisses ze pan twice, I will be jealous." She looked at me from under those unbelievably long lashes. "Ah. I am not all I seem." Again, that half-mocking stare. Then, while we ate and the red blood ran down her stubby muzzle from the half-raw and bleeding meat, she told me her tale. Her parents had been French - or more accurately, she had been born in North-West France, her father being from somewhat further afield. Her eyes had twinkled when she told me her birthday; I happened to know the lepine gestation period, and counted back to Midsummer Evening. Nothing unusual, and it explained a lot about her odd shape, with the myriad possible genetic combinations in that sort of mixed marriage. "You ought to meet my room-mate," I said jokingly. "He might be a relative of yours - on your father's side, that is. " Her eyes flashed in alarm. Ears went half rigid, and then strained to flatten as she forced them down. "We 'ad, ze family quarrel," she said hurriedly. "But, my family 'ome, it was too near the border - when they came over from Belgique .." she shuddered. My own tail drooped in sympathy. Just after the Millenium, the EC had tightened its grip, welding Europe into one massive slave-state ruled from the beaurocrat-complex dug deep beneath Brussels, its flooding problem and national unemployment solved by toiling bucketgangs labouring millions-strong day and night. Folk had wondered how they had forced the Accelerated Unification Directive through: almost too late, the world had found out. Pacts had been made with Others from far beyond the friendly voids off Formahault and Algol that we knew so well - pacts to rewrite the Regulations concerning Time and Space completely. And they had been stopped just in time - I remembered as we all did, the Night of The War, when the skies had lit up around the Western hemisphere. Fortunately, only a few old fission bombs had been used, and when they had proven useless, the anti-iron hollow charge warheads had worked against what clawed up from the Brussels crater. Everything they had scored direct hits against had died, whether the main plush or the side-seams were penetrated. She shrugged, and tapped her armour. "I was wounded, in ze war. My

people say, I may recover - but I will need this for a time, until I 'ave back what I lost. " Huge eyes fixed me with a half-bashful stare. "I am told, I must pay attention to what I eat - and I was a long time in 'ealing. I 'ave to make sure I 'ave - company." We finished our meal, and returned to the workshop. Reluctantly I fitted the repaired wrist servo to her suit and watched her cheerfully wave goodbye with it. As I watched her metal-shielded rump bobbing up the steep stone streets towards the campus, my head swam with strange thoughts. "My, she's pretty," Came a voice from behind me. I wheeled, and saw the grinning snout of Aelfric, the third-year otter who dropped in from time to time to have the custom chips on his Artificial Omniscience projects tweaked. "I've seen her up at the Uni - new student, you think ?" I nodded, and became aware that my tongue was hanging out. "She's studying biology, she says - she's really something." Aelfric watched with me as she disappeared from view. "Like her taste in clothing," he murmured. Then his whiskers went rigid. "Now, where could she have had THAT built, I wonder ?" He mused to himself. "I've seen that design before." He flashed me an amused glance. "You won't find it in "Jane's All The World's Fighting Mecha", though. I've a few publications you might like to read - if you want to have something more to talk about with her." That Saturday, I closed up shop and went out to stretch my legs before returning to an evening of hard studying. But as I hiked vigourously up the steep slopes of the Pendenmas Peak, my mind was in a turmoil. I thought of nothing but Fuzzelle, and the way she moved even in her powered armour - and even the technical side of me appreciated what an excellent piece of machinery that was, fitting so well, and moving almost silently without the usual click and hiss of the servos. Her family must have been unusually rich, I thought fleetingly, to have a suit like that made for her. Yet something Aelfric had said, came back to me. I had seen medical suits before, giving full mobility to folk who would otherwise be irretrievably immobile. Those were discreet exoskeletons built of jointcuffs linked by slim alloy tubes, that could be worn under fairly conventional clothing, save for the backpack power source. Fuzzelle did indeed wear something like the full armour suits in the fighting mecha digests. I found my thoughts dwelling on what she looked like inside it. I thought of her honey-gold fur, of the enormous length of her silky lop-ears, of her tail - yes, even her tail had a separate rounded bulge built into her armour. Shaking my head as if to clear it, I turned back towards town. One more distraction in my busy schedule, I could do without. Night was falling as I looked down the hallway of the splendidly Neo-Neo Gothic mansion where I stayed. It was an authentic 16th Century fortified manor, built on the ruins of an earlier 20th Century shopping mall. As I cautiously advanced towards my room, the feeling that I was not alone grew ever stronger. I stopped - grasped the handle and jerked the door open, leaping back instantly. IT was there ! Falling from the beamed ceiling to the spot where I would have incautiously been standing, a great tarry mass of writhing liquescence splattered like a dropped skip full of midnight

jelly. Drawing itself together, it rose up, towering before me, shaping itself into pseudopods that twisted and knotted in and out of alien dimensions. Hundreds of eyes like iridescent bubbles boiled and vanished on its insubstantial skin, as it loomed over me. I grinned at my room-mate. "Better luck next time, Tick-Lee." Half an hour later, we were immersed in our studies. Or, to be more accurate, I was studying, while the amorphous viscidity lying pooled in the bathtub gleefully read the latest in Pulp Fiction. Eventually I yawned. "Quite a day for me. There's a lepine lass just joined us - she's really something. She's one of the refugees from the fall of Belgium, she says - convalescing over here. Have you seen her ? Wars a power-armour suit." Tick-Lee manifested vocal organs to suit. He can produce any shaped extension of three-dimensional matter desired by changing his real form, like a shadow-puppet cast on a wall. It makes him very popular with the ladies. But he gave a dyspepsic-sounding grunt. "Had a ( )ache all day," he complained. "Feels like someone's messing around with a high-energy portal. You know if they're doing anything in the High-Energy Sorcery department ?" I shook my head. The last major experiment had been the month before, and had led to some of the staff being fired. A commercial contract to supply mercenaries from unregulated parts of spacetime had turned rather sour, and the Department were still living it down. (Despite claiming that the troops they'd recruited in a One-Dimensional Continuum, would perfectly fulfil their role as Line Infantry ....) "Fuzzelle..." I said dreamily. "She's quite a girl. There's more to her than meets the eye..." I met her again a few days later - It must have been Wednesday, because it was Exotics on the menu again. I shuddered as I grabbed a tray. Though the native fast-food dishes of the Japanese East Coast colonies are pretty bad when served as takeaway - given a determined cook and several hours alone with helpless ingredients, the results can be little short of lethal. Selecting instead a stainless steel bowl of Tripe Tindaloo, I turned round to look for a table - and there she was. "Hidy !" She waved, her eyes open wide. She must have Manga genes in one side of her family, I thought fleetingly. She beckoned, and I came. "Is the - hand, working properly, still ?" I prompted. She giggled. "Thank you - it's fine." I felt a metal-cased foot reach out and slyly caress my leg. "I am, you say, grateful. " Then she sniffed delicately, and her gaze locked on my bowl in delighted surprise. "What is zat - it smells Delicious !" She exclaimed, her ears going rigidly erect. "Ahem." I heard Aelfric's voice by my side. The otter had wisely stuck to one of the standard fish dishes: our biolabs breed Combat Halibut for the Albanian Navy, and nothing goes to waste. "You don't want that, mam'zelle - it'll burn your fur clean off." Fuzzelle cast me a bashful look. "I am, only a little bunny," she looked up at us, two solidly built carnivores. "But I think I will try eet." I offered her a helping of the delicious honeycomb tripe, swimming in red-golden sauce, and she tossed it down her throat like fuel down a scramjet. We waited for her to start choking, or at least for to start panting. The cooks here are specially licensed, Bradford's finest - and we are one of the few places insured to serve full Tindaloo dishes. But she smiled, her tiny pink tongue slowly moving from one side of her

muzzle to the other. "Ah - I am made of sterner stuff than you think, eh ? Some, they can take it hot. You would be amazed - how hot." Her gaze was suddenly direct and piercing: for no rational reason I felt a hot rush of sheer elemental panic. Then she shrugged daintily. "Delicious. But my digestion is - you say, Delicate ? My people say I must eat everything fresh, to get my strength back. And the more alive the better, to put new Life inside." We noticed the freshly picked fishbones on her plate: from the colour of the tiny scraps of flesh remaining, she had eaten it not just rare, but raw. Aelfric gave an embarrassed cough. "Right. I'll leave you to it, then." He winked at me as he passed, and I heard him murmur "In your room." as he left. Fuzzelle's lop ears swung engagingly as she turned to face me. "I am - settling in, you say ? But I wondered - would you show me around ? It is very unfamiliar, not like - " she hesitated "not at all like, where I come from." I nodded, my heart racing. "How's your suit holding up ? Those power packs need a lot of recharging." For a second she looked startled. Then smiled, her shoulder-width whiskers twitching engagingly. "Oh. It ees holding up. Zat is not really a problem - not for me." From then on, I saw her every day: when classes were done, we would go up together on the wide, rolling moors - a fine and wild place to walk, to talk, and indeed to fall in love. She would say little of her past; half the time she would talk with wild enthusiasm about her Biology classes, with the fanatical concentration of an explorer mapping new territory. "Eeet will be a big help to me," She claimed proudly, one clear evening when I had heard more than I really cared to know about protein breakdown and synthesis. "My digestion, eet is not parfait. But - I am working on it. And much else." She cast me a long, smouldering look from beneath those improbable lashes. "One day, I will be well again. And then - I will go back, and 'elp my people." She rolled over on her back, her rounded form sparkling like a stainless steel statue fallen into the deep brown heather. I felt my breath hastening as she looked up at me. Aelfric had been quite right - he HAD recognised that suit design. But it was neither a medical prosthetic, nor yet a military hardsuit - though it was famous enough to anyone who subscribed to "Cyberphile" magazine, with its range of fascinatingly multi-function androids (special custom jobs available extra.). The suit must fit her like a glove - for a second, I had a bizarre image of her being poured into it. "What actually - happened, to you ?" I asked gently. There was a long silence, as she stared down the coastline, roughly South-East towards Europe. "Eet was in the war, at the end," she said softly. "The night Belgium ended - when 'zo much was destroyed. We 'ad been hiding, and we were just coming up - when the bombs fell. The place - " she shrugged. "Ze place burned, where we were. Many of us were trapped - I escaped, but hurt zo bad, I barely stayed on Earth." She patted her smooth steel carapace. "This ees for support, and protection, till I recover. You would not like to see me, inside it now." I protested, and she flung her short arms around me with incredible vigour for someone so badly injured. The fresh air and raw food must be doing her good, I decided.

"You're not the only one a long way from home," I tried to reassure her. "Come round and meet Tick-Lee, some time . He's not even FROM this dimension. You'll get along fine." She froze like the sexy statue her suit resembled. "Ah, no. I am shy, of 'zose so exalted." A smile crept back to her face. "You might say, my family, zey 'ave come up in the world, but recently." The next day being a Saturday, I sat behind the counter of the Quantum Mechanics Shop, daydreaming. My marker pen doodled bunnies nanometers wide on germanium wafers, as my mind wandered. Just then, Mr. Grimesthorpe, the proprietor, strolled in carrying a new delivery of Write-Only memory chips. He was a tall, slender greyhound, much like myself in outline - but I hoped never to look too much like him. He twitched and jerked spasmodically: every sound had his ears flinching up in terror, and he spent his days with a permanently terrified expression on his face. I remembered what someone had told me, of how he got that way. "Mr. Grimesthorpe," I asked politely. "You were in Belgium, weren't you ? I've a friend who got out, like you did. What was it LIKE ?" At the first syllable of that dread name, his face froze in a mask of terror, and I thought his already bulging eyes were going to pop out of his head. "That. Place." He said hollowly, pressing his back against the wall, and looking round wildly. He fumbled in his pocket, brought out a bottle of pills, and swallowed a handful. I winced. I had also heard that like most of the few survivors of the final campaign, he had tried to drown his sorrows. It had reached the stage when his body became literally immune to alcohol, and he was forced to drink paraldehyde instead. Most people would have been dead long ago - but then, most people who had gone into Belgium already were. His eyes cleared slightly as the drugs took effect. Sidling over to the door, he slipped the sign to "Closed", and fixed me with a stare that seemed focussed on the furthest quasar behind me. Then he slumped into a chair, and began to talk in a low, drained monotone. "You want to know what it was - LIKE ?" There came a dry humourless laugh like the crackling of breaking bones. "Oh. It wasn't like anything before or since. I tell you that. I'd thought I'd seen it all: it was at the end, when we'd thrown the EC out, we'd linked up with the Albanian 756th Shock Army on the Marne. I'd been with the Regiment since we'd got re-nationalised, three years fighting, it was time to end it. Everybody who was left, all came in together. The flank of our group was a block of Maus 19's, we'd only found out about the Thulians from under Mount Erebus when they'd driven ashore in Spain, they'd forded the Antarctic and South Atlantic oceans just to get here." He drew in a deep, sobbing breath. "Nobody'd understood how the EC'd done it, you see, not till we actually got into the Heartland, and - found out, the hard way. Under Brussels was the place - we all knew that. But we didn't know how far down it really went - or that some of the tunnels were dug COMING UP FROM BELOW ! They'd made a deal, for the power they had. With the - Others, you see. The EC were going to rewrite the Regulations to suit themselves - and I don't mean the trading laws, but the LAWS. Physics, you know ? And they'd found some - forces, that were going to let them do it." His eyes seemed to go very distant. "We knew there wasn't much time left. If THEY got out, it'd sort of snowball - they bring their reality with them, it all gets easier and easier. As they blend with us - they get harder and harder to spot. But still - we only had to face the least

of them, the things that'd been people once. You could just about kill those ones." Mr.Grimesthorpe slumped, his ears dangling over his eyes as if to shut out some intolerable vision. "We were thirty miles into the border, and it'd been too quiet. We'd got a skirmishing line, spread out half a mile in front of our "tank fist" - they were convicted skateboarders, they knew it was this or the bulldog ants, and this way was quicker. They were wired up for sound, and they'd all got this gyro-compass device, so we'd know which way they were looking. " "Ordinary sensors don't detect what we knew would be out there. When the first of our picket line started screaming, we had one directional fix, the others turned to look - and it was a triangulation fix, as long as they lasted. So we slammed in the ground spades till they hit bedrock and stoked those 410 mils' for all they were worth half a minute and we'd burned off a tonne and a half of ammo, mostly phosphorus and binary cryogenic hydrogen/fluorine shells. We'd a pretty good idea what it took to stop them, even then." He gave a choking sob. "It wasn't enough . One of them got over the crest line - Cthulhu save us, but it looked right at us ! The Smurf Destroyer on my left blew up when the Cuteness smashed straight through their frontal armour - the crew just had time to set the self-destruct device, you see. But we ..." he began shaking violently. "Of course, it was only one of the lesser ones - and of course I didn't actually SEE it, eye contact. The muzzle flash of our 410 on full auto had set everything on fire, that was what saved us - the smoke, and the heat haze, I just caught a glimpse, of the shape...... before a lucky burst from one of the Maus 19's main guns managed to chew through its side seam. " He was now literally gasping for breath. "And we all knew, you see, that wasn't the worst. The native-built stuffies, they had to take on with TV-guided negamass bombs. It's not the material damage, that hurts them - because they aren't really here, tied to this space and time - they're just squeezing in, from the place they come from, and it takes that much spatial distortion to send them back. If we'd met one of THOSE ..." his eyes glazed over, and with a terrifying howl, tore across the room and out, up towards the hallowed protection of the moortop temples. I knew I was in for a bad evening when I got back to my rooms to find the note on the door. "Report to ME, Immediately", signed by the principal. Firstly, I knew that august personage (a) ignored the likes of me unless we'd done something terrible, and (b) made a habit of going home at weekends. It would take "Something pretty dam' devastating", as I mumbled the Scripture, to make him want to see me without waiting till Monday. I added (c) to my list of worries as I tried to open the door. My own room keycard had been invalidated. The principal's office was in the oldest part of the building, a 1950's temporary structure that had become permanent. It had great gurgling white-painted radiators, single glazed metal-framed windows, and by a combination of cleaning fluids that could hardly be accidental, smelled just subliminally of stale vomit. I felt fairly sick myself. Osric Oughtershaw was "well-known for being famous", as we say round here, but a sweet and charitable personality was not his claim to fame. "You. I've heard you fancy yourself a prankster - but this is IT. You've gone too far. And your own Room-mate !" I wish he'd have shouted at me. His low, hissing voice, like the

sizzle of acid eating through metal, was far worse. But my own ears were pricked up in defiant interest. "Just what, sir, are you talking about ?" He flung a handful of engraved grey stones onto the desk. "THAT's what I'm talking about. Sabotaging Tick-Lee's Stability ritual - don't you know, he won't be able to come back for another whole Year ?" I looked down at the rune-graven symbols from Ancient Mnar, and suddenly things clicked horribly into place. Unlike most of his kind, Tick-Lee was capable of continuous existence alongside us - but it depended on a monthly "Stabilisation" ritual that took place at every New Moon. Such as tonight. I picked the offending sigil up. "You mean, sir - someone spiked the altar with - these ? There's enough to kick him clear into the seventieth plane ! That's terrible !" Osric Oughtershaw pulled out the polygraph from his desk drawer. He smiled humourlessly "Come over here and say that." As I left there half an hour later, we were both in a filthy mood. He, that I had passed lie-detection, and given unshakeable alibis for the whole day, and I for having lost (for a third of my course) my best friend here. "Ahem." I turned round - and there was Fuzzelle, standing at the corner as if she had been waiting for me. "My - you look ratty." I suppressed a snarl barely in time. She looked up at me, and those huge eyes seemed to expand like great blue lakes, inviting me to dive in. A tiny pink nose twitched mischievously. "Oh, my. You DO need cheering up." Fuzzelle's room, I discovered, was one of the few single ones in the building. It had been part of an attic once, and the low, sloping roof was only suited for someone of her petite build, as I painfully discovered. Rubbing my bruised head, I looked around. She had interesting tastes in pinups: flayed and dissected biological specimens, copied (I supposed) from her course texts. But one painting and a sculpture were definitely hers - and like her, they were fascinating. "You like the picture ?" She hopped from one big foot to the other. "I call it "Judgement on Mercury". It's a sci-fi piece." The picture showed a nightmarish landscape - no, for it showed little more than a giant cauldron of white-hot bubbling rock, in a Dantean furnace of a world seemingly lit from just above the upper frame by a white sun almost close enough to touch. And yet there was one tiny figure, visible if you looked very closely - seemingly an astronaut in great insulated boots, round helmet on head, the metal of his suit glowing a ghastly pink in the eye-searing light. It was a masterly picture - somehow, the colours seemed to suggest that it was no normal brilliance that lit that canvas, but something savagely Other. "And there's this. I did it," she gestured toward the sculpture. I believed her. It was a small, green-glazed pottery thing, and very simple. A pair of reaching hands clawed up out of a bubbling, boiling morass, like a victim caught in quicksand and drowning. I shuddered, as I remembered what Fuzzelle had told me - of how she had escaped from the holocaust of the burning building, but how some of her relatives had been trapped inside. I found her rounded hands wrapped tight around my waist. She glanced up at me, then batted those huge eyes bashfully. "Welllll... she said in a small voice. "Now you're here, you might

as well see ... everything..." She pulled me down on the bed, with that surprising strength, and kissed me. "Shall I - help you take that armour off ?" I asked, dry-mouthed, my heart pounding. "Off ?" She cocked her head on one side, and one of those adorable ears flopped over her face. "It doesn't - I mean, it doesn't have to come off. You see, this suit is one I really can do ANYTHING in." She cast me one of those strange smiles, and wriggled comfortably. "See here ? It just sort of rolls up, like a roller blind ..." I discovered then, that she had taken the shell of the companion robot design I'd seen in that copy of "Cyberphile", and used it. Exactly how it was first designed to be. I awoke the next morning to find her already up and happily watching the wide-screen that was the sole amenity in the room. I recognised the canned laughter soundtrack of one of the 24-hour Emergency Surgery cable channels, though she switched it off as soon as she saw me stirring. I looked round the room, and thought of going back to my own alone. It didn't appeal. "Fuzzelle," I asked gently. "You know, Tick-Lee's gone ? Would you like to - move in with me ? My room's four times the size of this - and it's a lot better furnished. If you'd like to." She cocked her head on one side, and again I felt that curious shudder, as if something very cold and sharp was hovering in front of me, just pricking my skin. For a minute she looked at me, while a range of expressions flowed across her face like an android running through testing patterns. Then she gave that gleefull, almost squeaking laugh, and shook her head. "Ah, but a girl, she must 'ave some - mystery." Again, that pause. "I think I would not be good for you, all day and all night. Besides", she shrugged. "I like it 'ere." I glanced at the ripped-up cushions and mattress. "You DO ?" She threw herself onto the protesting bed, eyes wide in mischievous glee. Her wide, soft paws plunged deep into the spilled stuffing, that she let cascade down sensuously like a cartoon miser fingering a golden horde. "I think this is ... exciting." Then she turned to me, one eyebrow raised. "But you would never understand. Eet ees an - ethnic, thing." The weeks passed happily enough, and between my days immersed in my studies and many of my evenings spent with Fuzzelle, I counted myself lucky indeed. Oddly, she insisted on a set ritual that I followed - she would only let me come up to her room, she would never take off her allcovering suit, and she insisted that I showered thoroughly, immediately after, in strong detergents that played havoc with my fur condition. But as she was the one doing the cleaning, I never objected. Still, all good things have their price. My health was feeling the strain of the exams: nausea and stomach problems, with a flu-like inflammation of the throat. There never seemed time to visit the medical centre, right on the far side of town: every minute counted, and what was not study time, was Quality time. Fuzzelle, on the other hand, grew stronger day by day, and hinted that her health was getting better much faster than she had hoped. It was in the middle of exam week, that the first shadow fell. I was doing well, as was Fuzzelle - though I had heard other students whisper at the strange and speculative approaches she took, in certain

aspects of digestion, and cell assimilation, as practiced by more-orless primitive life forms. By this time I knew far more than I really wanted to, about how certain invertebrates can partly digest the living stinging cells of jellyfish and sea anemones, to set them up, still functioning, on their own skins. Bizarrely enough, she was making thorough studies not only of animals but of plants - or rather of lichens, those strange and utterly intimate assemblages of plant and fungal life. I never understood the mixture of awe and secret dread that the others in her course obviously held her in. There was something not quite right about her, they insisted - something in the way animals cried and children howled when she got too close. The rumour of her being able to damage electronics just by holding them, though - that was confirmed, as various people turned up to have blasted chips repaired at my Quantum Mechanics shop. It was after the last exam, that - but no, I'll tell you exactly what happened, without any of the things I later read into the events that followed. Hindsight is a wonderfully accurate thing, and in truth, what happened first was nothing very extraordinary. We'd gone out to the off licence, to buy in drinks for the postexam party our block held at the weekend. I was busy calculating prices, wondering whether to go for the Johnny Walker or Dexter Ward whiskies, when I heard Fuzzelle give a strained gasp. I decided to take the case of Charles Dexter Ward, and added it to the cask of almontillado on the list, as I turned round. She was staring wide-eyed at the local news screen on the counter, her ears right up, and for the first time since I'd known her, she looked afraid. "What's up ?" I asked, at her side in an instant. She hit the "change channels" button so fast I could barely see her paw move - odd, I found myself thinking - that sort of suit generally doesn't HAVE that reflex speed. But she smiled up at me sweetly. "Oh. Eeet is just, that I realised - eet is a special party, and " - she ran a soft paw down the mirrorfinish of her suit "I have not a thing, to wear !" Alone in my room that night, I was overwhelmed with curiosity. I'd glanced at the channel the shop's display had shown as we went in: on my own screen I replayed what had been showing in the afternoon. I frowned. It was the local news, and nothing too remarkable. A delegation of ghouls had been protesting at being under-represented in the upcoming Undead legislation, the Necro-Diversity Treaty. Traffic wardens were complaining about having to call out a warning before shooting to kill. And - there was one piece, very local. The local beach below the University, had registered radioactive pollution - on an incredibly minor scale, but the isotopic mix was "a matter of some bafflement" to the investigators. I was on my way to the off-licence to take delivery of the party drinks, when I suddenly felt my stomach heave. Staggering to the roadside, I threw up violently - and noticed, as I stood crouched and trembling, traces of blood in the sour pool. "This is not good." I told myself. "I think it's time I paid the medical centre a visit." I managed to stagger over there, century older than usual. I might have passing out - I can't remember. What I medical bed, while someone ran a probe savagely. A face loomed up. "You're awake.

feeling drained and about a made it into reception before do recall, is waking up on a over me that ticked and hissed We've given you a blood

transfusion, and a hefty dose of antibiotics - your white blood cell count was way, way down. We'd like to know, right away, everywhere you've been in the past month." "Been ?" I stared up at the white, distant lights on the ceiling. "Been here, Asgarth. Haven't even been home. Exams to study." The doctor nodded, her ever-active ferret muzzle twitching nervously. "You're not the only one like this. Come on - you've been near a reactor, hmmmm ? Not a well-shielded one, either - leaking fission products like that." I shook my head as vigourously as I could. "No, no. Ask Fuzzelle. She's been with me, most of the time. " Just then, I recognised the face of Mrs. Heptonstall, the University's Chief Doctor. The motherly skunk bent over me, and waved the others aside. Her striped face was wrinkled in concern. "No, it wasn't a reactor, we know that,". She stopped, and frowned. "But I'm afraid, you've received rather a high radiation dose - and we've found on you, very minor particles of some very exotic elements. Someone you've had - intimate contact with, recently. Would that be Fuzzelle ?" I nodded, and suddenly struggled upright. "Fuzzelle ! She must be in danger too ! You've got to find her ..." My strength failed me, and I collapsed, gasping. But the skunk's face was grave. "The young lady helped you in here - she carried you up the stairs as if you were so much straw. All the more surprising, since I happen to notice the power leads on her armour were unplugged. She's a very - exceptional - young lady. I'd like to know more about her - you see, she's not registered with us. She's never allowed herself to be examined - says, it's "an Ethnic thing"." I told her. I don't call myself a poet, but I wish I'd got the transcript of what I said then - for half an hour I surrendered myself to the praises of the mysterious lepine who had come to mean everything to me. When I stated, quite plainly, that I would give my life for her, Mrs. Heptonstall gave a sharp cough, cutting me off in mid-declamation. "You may yet. I don't claim to understand it, but - from the beach, from random air samples and from - not you alone, you'll be sorry to hear - we've recovered various - evidence. Heavy, transuranic isotopes, including some of the "island dwellers" up past element 150 - and decay products that were Einsteinium, Lawrencium and half a dozen others I'd never more than heard of last term. This term -" she gave a grim cough "we've had to find out. You don't get those out of a reactor. There's only one way they've been produced - in an anti-matter triggered fusion bomb. And the sheer concentration," she shrugged. "I'd expect it in a chunk of green tritinite glass, picked out of a fresh crater. We've dated it by the decay curve; there's only one place that fits the bill. That came out of Belgium." "Fuzzelle," I must have croaked horribly. "She was near the border - she must have been contaminated... fall-out...." But she shook her head again. "Not like that, and still be alive. To pick up that sort of dose, she'd have to have been standing at ground zero." Then I definitely DID faint. The medical records recorded it. That night, I thought I dreamed. But then I awoke, in the arms of Fuzzelle. She was out of her armour for the first time: I ran my fingers through the pink fur of her wonderfully soft body, marvelling at the strangely artificial pattern where from her neck upwards, and even at her loins it was incongruously yellow-gold. She snuggled her short snout under my chin, the way I loved, and

purred sorrowfully. I put my arms around her. "Fuzzelle," I almost cried. "You're here ! You've got to let them help you, or ..." She sat up, and smiled shyly at me. Then she removed her contact lenses - and I saw that her eyes were red. "Ah, no. Zey will not be finding me. I 'ave come to say farewell. " She sighed, and looked up at me. "I did say, I would not be good for you. But - I did not think it possible, but - I love you. I did nevair theenk it possible, that I could love one of your kind. So, I am going back to my people - now that I am -better." My eyes filled with tears. Then a thought struck me. "How did you get in here ? And without your armour ?" Fluffy ears crossed like the bones on a pirate flag, as she handed me an envelope. "Ah ! You will know that. Please, read it tomorrow after I am gone, and they will not find me. I have a long way to travel - to a place you cannot follow. I will not be lonely, though - my people are alive, and I will free 'zem." She kissed me goodbye - and then the dream turned to a nightmare, and I fainted. But the next day, I awoke with the envelope clutched rigidly in my hand, and the medics frantically decontaminating the room as well as certain - traces leading towards a ventilator grille. What was in the envelope ? What did I see ? I can only tell you the story that she wrote on paper, and for what I saw - the mind has a saving grace of blanking out what would otherwise linger and eat its way through sanity like so much hot acid. It was all there. Why she had to wear the armour, not to protect herself, but to prevent it being - obvious, what she was. Much of the shape that she had originally possessed had been destroyed, and she had taken long to regain it. I had wondered about her liking for raw, preferably living meats, even while wondering how she afforded to treat me to oysters, down at the quayside. And I had thought it odd, her obsession with digestive systems - and her joking asides about having to absorb life - the RIGHT KIND OF LIFE. For she needed to - replace things, you see - and I believe that she left here with as efficient a digestive system as any of us - and possibly other systems as well, for she had been here long before her interest in me could become physical. But how much of that did she have, at the start of term, I wondered ? Tick-Lee had to go, I understood that as I read the letter. She had claimed to be fathered by one of the Outer ones such as he - and with his unearthly set of senses, he would soon have found out her deception. She was neither half-eldritch, nor even half French. "Eet was the time," I read the last page of her note "the time I and my, sisters, were ready to come up. I did not lie to you - about the fire, and the building collapsing. In my room - you have seen." It was then that my nerve broke, and without waiting to read more, I ran back to the attic room as fast as I could. The clues were there. I had seen them, and now I understood, far too late. For Fuzzelle had gone back to the place she came from - back to Belgium. It had been the Night Of The War, she had told that truthfully. My Fuzzelle had come to Earth with her relatives, and those deep pits beneath Brussels had echoed to a daemonic squeaks of squeaks and chirping, as the corridors flowed with an upswelling tide of ghastly plush. And my Fuzzelle - possibly she had been a minute ahead of the crowd, who can tell ? She had been almost at the surface, striding up, when the thirty-five megatonnes of a more mundane brand of Hell had punched through the paving stones of Unification Plaza, burrowing deep

through the rottenness of tunnels and pits before burning the heart out of that accursed place with the cleansing flame of a thousand suns ! "Some can take it hot," Fuzzelle had said mockingly - and still I could almost hear the peculiar mocking note in her voice, as she said it. She did not die, since the thing she is, is almost deathless on Earth - but what part of her was matter as we know it, was destroyed or irradiated with the very heart-blood of the warhead's fury. Goddess, but she must have been right inside the fireball ! The picture on the wall stared at me, and I understood it. The tiny figure struggling out of the crater minutes later, wading through the molten rock like a castaway struggling up a muddy beach, dreadfully burned but still able to crawl to shelter before the revealing tracks in the flowing tritinite proved there had been a survivor. And what of the second statue ? I looked at it, and my heart lurched within me. Hands clawing up out of green glass. What had she said of her relatives who did not escape in time ? Why did I assume that she was so much tougher than they, when she might only have been nearer the surface ? For though we knew from the rest of the Belgian campaign, that their toughness was almost infinite, their strength was not - and that horde who had been minutes away from spilling out into the mortal world WERE STILL THERE, ALIVE, trapped in the congealing glass like flies in amber. Was she the only one who walked among us ? I knew that much of what she had said was truth. What of her relatives, who had sent her here and who she was returning to, now that her body had merged with mortal flesh in a blend like the lichens she had studied so avidly ? I do not know. They found her power-armour empty and irradiated, outside the medical building that morning. I begged them not to destroy it, for it is all I have left to remind me, that and three hundred Rads whole-body exposure. The suit was a fake in some ways - the main power lines had never been connected, and the rest were only used for "special occasions" to establish her credentials. I say the suit was empty. I do not mean they found it disassembled, as you or I would take it off - it was intact, like a headless steel statue. I remember how they all puzzled how she got it off, or why she rebuilt it afterwards. But I know, or think that I know, unless it was all nightmare. She had entered the building, despite the locked doors and window grids, all of which were undisturbed. And despite everything, I cannot think that she was wholly evil, even if it was a mere consequence of assimilating mortal flesh and living amongst us. She came to kiss me goodbye, and there was nothing mocking about that. But then - as I watched, I saw the reality behind the armour. She had said she was resting, and getting "in shape". Indeed, those were her words, and well-chosen. For as she waved goodbye, I saw the TRANSFORMATION into what was her native form. Putty - a cascade of liquid fluff like a tumbling roll of fur fabric spilling onto the floor - formless, boiling, seething, primordial stuffing ! How she had laughed and smiled as she had ripped the cushions open in her room and spilled their contents in tribute to some dark and nameless God of Plush ! The shape - that slick of unnameable Cuteness spreading out over the floor towards the ventilator leading outside, before it ALL CAME TOGETHER AGAIN ! But the mind is a wonderfully healing thing. I have not told the authorities of that last sight I had of her, for they would believe me. They say that nothing moved out of Brussels, that that part of her tale must have been a lie. I do not think so. I would go to that blasted green bowl where

stood Unification Plaza, but I fear what I would find there. [End transcript #972]