Plaything Of The Damned  - a Plushie Tale.

					By Simon Barber

		(Note: This is set in the Toho Academy timeline, and
		fits into their history at about the same date as Sea
		Vixen. It's the year 2036, in other words, and the
		future is furry but grim.........)
				


	"So, what to YOU think ?"  The question came from the tourist next 
to me, looking out over the railing of the airship gondola to the green 
jungle below. "I've heard it said that all this "- he waved a hand at the 
regular lattice of the craft above us "All our precious technology, it's 
just based on a chance result of probability. There's other universes out 
there where where the laws are TOTALLY different."
	There were three of us there, looking down on the dawn breaking with 
tropical speed on the jungle, from the passenger airship on its way home 
to New Tokyo. The one who had asked me was a tall, thin-faced human with 
the saddened air of one who had asked too much of reality. Hence, I 
suppose, his question.
	I stirred, and looked back into the main gondola, where two hundred 
cramped passengers were starting to stir as the light came through the 
windows, bleared by one complementary saki too many. It seemed a good 
time to answer; in half an hour the talk would all be of souvenir 
hunting, and the bars and hotels recalled from a previous year.
	"If the laws were just a fraction different..." I said slowly "then 
the world wouldn't be here. Suppose gravity was just ten percent 
different either way ? The stars wouldn't burn, or they'd collapse far 
faster, before Life had a chance to get started. Assuming planets could 
still form, which I doubt. But you're right - there doesn't seem to be a 
good reason why it couldn't be different elsewhere - just that we 
wouldn't expect to be around to see it happening."
	"The Anthropic Principle," he nodded glumly. "I've read those 
physics books too. Or, as they used to call it, The Blind Watchmaker. The 
Universe all seems to run smoothly, like a well-designed clock - and 
there's billions of ways to make a clock that doesn't quite work, to 
every one that will."
	"Ah." It was our third companion who spoke, the panda priest in 
saffron robes. To the best of our knowledge, he had been up all night - 
and probably a silent starlit vigil was as good a rest as trying to sleep 
in one of the cramped, sweat-stained economy class seats in the cabin.
	We waited as he smoothed the robes down onto his rotund form, and 
looked us searchingly in the eyes.
	"It is written. The world is a fleck of foam on the ocean of All 
That Might Be, and just a little way beyond those walls is chaos. For 
every law that Is, are legions of That Which Must Not Be beyond it. You 
say there are many ways which this world's clock might not work - and 
that is so. But -" and his gaze was troubled "there are Other designs. 
And Other laws which say they would work. And the fleck of foam that is 
our world is not the only one on the waters."
	For a minute we all gazed out onto the vibrant, healthy-looking 
verdure as if it had become a mask that could be ripped off at any 
instant to reveal the mocking horrors Behind. Then the priest began to 
speak, his voice barely loud enough to be heard above the steady drone of 
the turbofans on their booms to each side of the airship.
	"You are wanting story ? I not saying this story true. I saying this 
is believed by man who told it. And I go to main Temple in Kyosho, repeat 
it to Priests there. I say it story, but in many story is thing must be 
told."
	"Was two week ago, on Burma border, farmers bring in round-eye human 
man, find naked out in jungle. Deep jungle. Old stones and ruins not good 
to explore, out of Old Times best forgotten. Many many stories of things 
come from there, stay little time, go back to where came from. This man 
he speak French, like some old farmers still do from Colonial times, he 
speak plenty, like man in fever. Then next day ask where he is - no 
remember what he told before. "
	The priest drew in a deep breath, and began to recite what he had 
obviously committed to memory, word for word.

			..............................

	"Jacques Berol, is my name - I'm a reporter for Bretonne Libre, our 
local magazine. At least, I WAS a reporter - I'm not sure my nerves will 
be able to stand it any more, knowing I might accidentally uncover - My 
Gods ! The horror of it all ! But I'll have to start from the beginning.
	"It didn't look like much of an assignment. I'd been assigned to  
one of our sister magazines covering the area South-West of Paris, to 
work for a month on Local Colour articles - you know, trade fairs, folk 
festivals, that kind of thing. And any Sapient Interest stories I might 
come across on my way, of course.
	"I suppose I should have expected this to have started on a dark and 
stormy night, with my bike breaking down miles from anywhere. At least, 
that's how all the stories are meant to start, aren't they ? But it was a 
scorching hot day, and I'd pulled in on the outskirts of Valledur-le-
Compte, a little industrial suburb full of cement silos and half-empty 
rail yards. It wasn't even that run-down, just a normal shabby little 
town where I stopped for a beer in the first bar I came to.
	"That night I was planning on reaching Le Mans, so I'd got the maps 
out and I was taking the opportunity to spread them on a flat tabletop 
out of the wind. Just to the South-West, I noticed right on my route - 
all the roads made a big detour. It was like the grain around a knotted 
piece of timber; everything just curved right round that area.
	"Hey, Garcon!" I was sort of annoyed. When the waiter came over, I 
pointed at the map "How do I get across here without going twenty 
kilometers out of my way ? " He just looked at me as if I'd complained my 
bike couldn't fly.
	"M'seu, it is closed. Forever." He shrugged. "They say one of the 
bombs fell there in the war of '06..... it is a place you go around."
	"Now, I'm no happier than anybody else about poking round a hot 
crater - I saw enough of them when I served in the Peace Corps, in Ohio - 
so I just finished my drink and got on the bike. That bar was about an 
hour behind when I got to the place where the roads bent away. And they 
did bend away. It was one of those empty concrete roads that look as if 
they'd been built for some grand project that never got finished; three 
lanes wide, with grass growing between the cracks. And just a few 
agricultural vehicles on the roads, a few dusty industrial lorries.... 
almost no cars. No bikes. Nobody going there unless it was on their way. 
Except me.
	"Like I said, the road bent. It was three-lane concrete - then in 
the middle of a flat plain, it turned almost ninety degrees, and went 
down to two lanes, which was about right for the traffic. The bent road 
was newer, I could tell - and there was just a wall of trees ahead, and 
an earth bank. Big earth bank, like an anti-tank ditch, cutting the view 
off ahead.
	"Well, what do I do ? I'm a reporter, right ? So I wheel the bike 
off the road, and start to climb up the bank. It's steep and loose, and 
must be ten metres out of the ditch, but I get up there. And then things 
start to make a funny kind of sense.
	"The road had gone on straight into the trees. I could see big 
chunks of concrete poking out between the roots, sort of heaved up. Down 
I went, and started to push through, following the concrete. It was 
thirty years since the war, and I figured it'll be safe enough to spend a 
few hours walking around. Crops were being harvested just the far side of 
the bank, so it couldn't be that hot any more, right ? Unless there was a 
crater.
	"And there was a crater, all right. In fact, there were dozens of 
them. As soon as I got out of the thickest part of the wood, I saw them. 
Not nuclear, like the chap in the bar had said. Remember, the concrete in 
the trees was all heaved up ? 
	"Somebody had made sure that road could never be used. I've seen 
what runway-cratering bombs do - and I know how much they cost. But they 
can tear up a road like ploughing a field, and they do it FAST. Without 
having to send living troops in on the ground. Somebody had thought it 
was Very important to do EXACTLY THAT.
	"Looking back on the forest wall, something else hit me. You grow a 
forest nowadays, it needs firebreaks, access roads, right ? I mean, you 
want to get in there sometime and thin the trees out, check how well 
they're doing. And you've guessed it. No firebreaks. Just a solid, dense 
barrier of fast-growing evergreens around the whole place - and that 
wasn't all I found. I'd been treading on these brittle old plastic tubes 
all the way in, before I recognised what they were. I'd covered a 
mountain reafforestation programme a few years back - you could load a 
sapling into one of these and drop them in bundles from a helicopter, 
with most of them taking root where the spike stuck in..
	"I'd remembered their advantages. You could quickly plant on 
mountainsides where you couldn't carry the saplings on foot - and one of 
the older foresters had said something that had struck me oddly at the 
time.
	"This way," he had said " the good woods can spread where good men 
fear to tread. Trust the forest, Jacques - forests are innocent. But 
their roots may hold down a multitude of sins."
	"It was maybe the middle of the afternoon. I could see the road 
where an old cutting pierced a ridge about two kilometers ahead - no way 
could I get lost. Even in a thick fog, I could just follow the concrete 
trail, all the way back through the shielding pines and to the road where 
drivers never seemed to stop and rest. And it was a bright sunny day - it 
looked so peaceful ! Maybe the place really had been hit in the war, and 
the contaminated land used for a year or two as a firing range - that 
would explain everything . And that was what I kept telling myself, all 
the way through the long grass and scrub, all the way to the ridge. Then 
it was too late. Then I knew where I was standing.
	"The barman had been right, in a way. The place had been Closed, 
rather than Destroyed - when the world changed at the start of the 
Milennia, some places had become - focal points - for the Horror. This 
had been built as a place of fun, a place of innocent enjoyment for 
children, and so it should have remained. But Euro-Dingey was more than 
that. Millions of minds had come there to Believe in a commercial 
fantasy. And I've heard it said that every Belief impresses its weight on 
the fabric of existence, like every grain of dust in space bends 
spacetime by whatever mass it has. Millions of minds, all passionately 
Believing ; in the decade and a half that its doors stood open, they 
rubbed a thin spot in Reality. And the trouble with thin spots is, 
whatever is on the other side, tends to leak in through them.
	"It was still early. I wasn't planning on being caught after dark 
here, but I could just see the article taking shape. Not a front-pager, 
but maybe enough to get a full page with pictures and some editorial 
copy. You know, "Two Generations Of Children Born Since Children Walked 
These Streets.." - the usual sort of thing they put on shots of sunken 
wrecks or unsealed bunkers, unless of course the inhabitants are still 
there making the place look untidy. So I strolled down there - it wasn't 
as if the place had been crowded with people when whatever happened to it 
happened - and if there were any bones around, well, I was sure I could 
find other directions to point the camera.
	"Ten minutes later, I was amongst the first buildings. Some of them 
were far gone; just scorched shells and tumbled roofs. But others looked 
in a surprisingly good state of repair, when you examined them closely. 
One doorway leading down to some service tunnel or whatever, had a 
strange sort of smell to it. Wet paint. But it looked as rusted and 
flaked as any of the others around - until I touched it.
	"The rust and flakes rubbed off in my hand, and a smooth sticky 
surface was underneath - this HAD just been painted. With paint that was 
designed to look OLD !"
	"Just then, there was a sound behind me. A sort of grunt and squeak, 
like someone jumping in the air wearing new shoes. And then - they hit 
me. And I was out like a light."

	"It was dark when I came round, with a head that rang like every 
bell in St.Malo. There were things moving in the shadows, just off the 
line of vision. I tried to move - and I discovered I was tied down. Then 
one of the shapes moved into view, and I wished it hadn't.
	"There's something more horrendous in the familiar than the alien. 
If it had been some ten-legged beast with glittering carapace, or the 
slimy tentacled things that used to be shown as villains before the 
milennia, I could have coped with that. Sure. "Unfriendly Aliens Occupy 
Abandoned Site" is the sort of thing reporters dream about stumbling 
into, and they just assume they'll get out alive to send in their copy. 
Hey, you get out alive or you don't - one way or another, you won't worry 
about that.  But this .... it was a million-fold worse. It was something 
nobody will ever believe !
	"She was short - I mean really short, less than a metre. The first 
instant she came into focus, I thought she was a human midget, one of the 
sort with stunted legs - they just weren't in proportion at all. Then I 
saw everything.
	"She was a bear, or ursinoid at any rate. But the proportions were 
all out - imagine if you'd built an android version without access to 
realistic joints or even a very good photo of the original. Her body was 
almost inflated, like stuffed sacks - or like a stuffed toy. She kneeled 
on my chest, and thrust her fanatically grinning face close to mine, and 
I saw that her nose appeared to be covered with some kind of fabric 
patten...... and she was no toy, she must have weighed fifty kilos at 
least !
	"For a minute she inspected me, and stood up. As her hips bent, I 
realised that what I thought were creases were actually hinge joints, as 
if she really was an android. But then she bent over, to untie some of my 
bonds, and there was no mistaking that whatever she was, she was 
functionally fully female. As were the six others that suddenly appeared, 
their faces bright with anticipation and sharp with hunger.
	"The one kneeling on my chest turned, and fixed me with a feral 
gaze, like a snake on its prey. A fabric-seeming tongue caressed teeth 
that looked very real indeed, as she squatted purposefully over me.
	"We are the Spare Hares," her voice was an almost melodic squeak, as 
if someone had taken the wave pattern of a rusty gate and worked it over 
for a month in a recording studio. "We're the Toys Of our Gods ... and 
they gave us YOU to play with. First we'll play till we tire of you - 
then we'll play with you till you die."

	"I don't like to think of what happened next. It was a horrible 
travesty of my earliest memories, cuddling a soft and loved toy animal. 
But these Spare Hares, as not just the Flopsies were called, had more in 
mind than cuddling me.
	"One of them, Fuzzine, she called herself, took a special interest 
in me. "My favorite toy - so big, and fragile...." she'd call me, as 
she'd frogmarch me off to some dark corner "even when you're one of us, 
I'll keep you in one piece."
	"You might wonder why I didn't just knock one of them flat and run 
for it. Well, the very first time they untied me, Fuzzine gave a whistle, 
and about twenty Spare Hares just popped into view. Males, these - and 
looking extremely annoyed to see me. 
	"Oh, I'd like you to escape now, if you can," Fuzzine said, lowering 
her long lashes and shuffling her outsize paw in the dust, as if she was 
bashful. "You've got MUCH longer legs and everything than they have ... 
I'm sure they've got no chance... I'll even give you this, just to make 
up for the numbers..." She handed me a cartoon-looking sabre like in the 
pirate films - but it hefted like a real one, and I found the metre of 
steel sharp enough to whittle with. "Ohh .... and the bet is they can get 
you back here without even injuring you too much. We've even given you a 
head start."
	"I tried. I got to within a hundred metres of the outer trees, I 
could even hear the traffic on the road ! Then I heard them laughing  
ahead of me. So I tried to fight it out - and I should have known it was 
a set-up. 
	"Spare Hares aren't made of flesh and blood. They don't even have to 
eat, though they enjoy it. I took the heads off the first two like 
dandelion flowers - it wasn't blood, or stuffing that came out, but 
something like that quick-setting plastic foam. And the other Hares just 
put their comrades together again, and they came back to life ! That's 
when I knew I was doomed. I don't know what could kill them, but I'd try 
fire or acids. I don't recall that I saw a fire in the whole four months 
I was there, as it turned out... they don't seem to need warmth either. 
But they get their strength somehow; it only took two of them to truss me 
up again and trot back in the pitch dark to the old Service Tunnel where 
the rest were waiting for me.
	"Towards Autumn, as I saw by the trees, a couple of the Hares 
actually started to talk to me, rather than just tell me what they 
wanted. I'd got to feeling very low; every week or so I'd try another 
escape - and sometimes I'd even get into the outer trees. These Chaotic 
Evil Cutes didn't even seem to form close friends amongst each other - 
except for Minsey and Furrina, a pair of kittenish things with huge eyes 
and whiskers the length of their tails.
	"Fuzzine's going to Convert you," Furrina announced proudly one day, 
in much the tone that they announced I had half an hour's head start to 
escape "she says she wants to take you back home to Chuckee, where she 
won't have to share you."
	"Right !" Minsey chimed in, her tail swivelling aside like a real 
feline "you've already got us almost to the Road - then we'll be able to 
have playthings all of our own. If we're careful, you Breakables won't 
notice until we make the hole through to the Land Of Chuckee - then we 
won't care any more about WHAT you do."
	"Over the next few weeks, the pair of them seemed extremely pleased 
with themselves. "Now Fuzzine won't be able to catch us," Minsey purred, 
as the pair of them pressed their hot plush to my skin "We're going to 
tell you how to really escape. In a month it'll be out, and we'll be able 
to get to the road - but won't she throw a fit when she finds out you've 
gone !"
	"They took me to the vault of the mock tower, a place I had never 
been allowed in before. Here was the weak point, through which the Spare 
Hares had laboriously squeezed through from some nether hell of stuffed 
horror; right in the centre of the entire complex. And the break led to 
other places than the Land of Chuckee from whence they came.
	"This is where we're going to go when we're ready," Furrina's great 
wide eyes took on an evil glint "soon there'll be enough of us to really 
start on converting you Fragiles - every one will make the way to Chuckee 
easier for the rest of us to come in. And it's all thanks to you!" They 
hugged me almost convincingly, before Minsey playfully kicked my feet 
from under me and I resigned myself to my fate. 
	"But, see," she continued afterwards "you won't be able to go to 
Chuckee yet. If you went through that Gate as a Fragile, you'd just come 
out somewhere else over here - and Fuzzine wouldn't be able to follow you 
! The Gate's not set up like that yet. Just wait till next week - then 
you'll see."
	
	That week was a nightmare. Word got around that I was going to be 
"converted", and I suppose that meant I'd get their immunity to pain and 
damage. The males definitely went after me like I was going out of 
fashion ! Evil Cutes seem to have most of our darker emotions; I can 
vouch for their jealousy, at any rate. One of them, a monkey-like thing 
called Unga, I actually beat in a fair fight, for the first time ever - 
the difference being, that while he could be reassembled from his 
component parts, I wouldn't be able to survive a similar defeat. I still 
recall the look he gave me when his head was put back on.
	"When you're in Chuckee," he hissed "I'm going to scatter you over 
the ENTIRE landscape. You'll live - but you WON'T like it."
	"So, at last it was the Night they'd chosen. Minsey and Furrina had 
primed me on what to do - it would not be obvious to human sight when the 
Gate was open. After that, they assured me, they only needed wait a few 
more months before they could get to the Road themselves, and soon after, 
the Land Of Chuckee would have a permanent and unshakeable bridgehead on 
Earth. 
	"There must have been fifty of them by this time, crowded into the 
basement cluttered with rusty pipes and cold air-conditioning plant. 
Their scent was a sweetish, rather "off" smell, like candy floss found 
long abandoned, or cream beginning to spoil. I was brought into the 
centre of the room, to await Fuzzine's arrival, along with "what she 
has", as I heard them whisper to each other.
	"I hadn't seen Fuzzine in the light for more than a month - and 
suddenly, she was there. Suddenly too I Understood - and, breaking free 
of my captors, dived into the Gate, not caring whether it would lead me 
to safety or certain Death."

"Well, now. I had days of wandering in the jungle; luckily the Spare 
Hares had let me keep the sabre with me. It amused them, I suppose, that 
I kept trying to escape. And escaping stopped me thinking too much about 
what else was going on.
	"You remember what I said, about so many people's Beliefs building 
up to wear a weak spot in reality ? That isn't the only way it can be 
done. Spare Hares don't belong here; the reason they could only go so far 
from the Castle was that it supplied whatever it is their unutterably 
alien life-forces feed on. By themselves, there's nothing that can anchor 
them to this place, where our laws restrict them.
	"But in that one second, it all became horribly clear. I knew how it 
was that they could range further and further from the castle every week, 
and why they so looked forward to having an unrestricted supply of 
"Breakable" playthings. They had something up their sleeves, so to speak 
- I should have known by the knowing glint in their plush faces, that 
they were waiting - expectantly.
	"For I saw Fuzzine - and the phrase "stuffed toy" sprang to mind in 
more ways than one. It was not her that would open the Gate; the wholly 
alien Spare Hares had not that power. It was THAT OF MINE WHICH SHE 
CARRIED, which would be of two worlds, and would make the two worlds 
one."

				..............................

There was a strained silence, if the constant engine note of the airship 
could be called silence. The priest folded his hands almost placidly, and 
stared out over the deceptive green jungle. One of the minor Gates from 
the accursed castle in France had led to an almost deserted part of the 
world, but it was certain that others must exist. 
	"But surely they wouldn't risk staying around with Jacques on the 
loose," I protested "You know the French - they'd put a REAL warhead 
straight through the portcullis, the moment they believed him."
	The priest nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe we have time. Maybe other 
gates no lead to places can contact people. Gates to Icecap, ocean floor, 
if lucky. No contact, no can make mixing. tTime to prepare, a little time 
to pray." His inscrutable panda face might have shown relief.
	But the tourist next to me gave a strangled, choking cry. From a 
hidden pocket, he pulled out a data disc, advertising the thousandfold 
fleshy and furry delights of Thailand's PleasureDome Nine.
	"Page ninety-nine, Exotics..." his face was pale and beaded with 
sweat, as he keyed in the disc and displayed a description that all of us 
recognised with a sick horror.
	"It says there's male and female models available." His voice was 
faint. "I didn't, but ... I know people who did. Androids ! That's what 
they said they were ! Androids ! Folk said it made a nice change ... they 
hardly seemed to want to take any money....."
	Below, the green jungle canopy looked up at the blue skies. I kind 
of liked it that way round. And wondered how long it would stay that way.



		## End Tale  ##