Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  “She’s in that! Who is she? The nurse? Why, she’s famous! And her phone was cloned. The very idea! Well, we’re going to do something about that.” Peter smiled slightly. MJ was going to love this. “And you tell her she has to come up and see me. She has a fan. Why, she must meet such interesting people, and do such interesting things.”

  Peter let her rattle on. It was plain that one of the reasons Doris was so good at her job was that she loved gossip. No scrap of information, not the most petty detail, was too insignificant for her attention.

  He sat with her for what must have been the better part of the afternoon, and after the rather dodgy company of last night, she was a pleasure. But more to the point, the more he talked to her, the more he realized that under her little-old-lady exterior she was a serious professional, and a power to be reckoned with. She told him about ways that cell phones were being illegally used in the city that even he, with his daily exposure to the criminal element, had never dreamed of. Not just drugs and gambling and money-laundering, but coordinating times for burglaries, bank robberies, and even simple street muggings. One criminal gang had even been using them as detonators to blow up the gas stations they had just robbed.

  “A lot of people just don’t understand electromagnetics,” said Doris, “much less what the various frequencies can do.” She eyed Peter keenly over the rims of her glasses. “But some of us do understand. That’s one of the reasons why I bought this place.”

  Peter glanced around him. “Well, it’s a really nice apartment,” he said, “and the view—”

  “No, not that. Come out this way.” They stepped out onto the terrace together. Doris’s terrace went all the way around her penthouse, and it had emitters, microwave receivers, and relays that made the setups on the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center look seriously inadequate. Peter had never seen so many antennas together in one place in his life.

  “I’ve got line of sight into three states,” she said, “and from here I’ve also got line of sight down into three-fifths of the city’s streets. That means a lot of the time I can do a direct ambient-radiation trace on any cell phone in use. It’s really very useful.”

  Peter was feeling much better, reassured as well as slightly awed after seeing the quiet room that had looked so much like a starship’s bridge. He was still thinking about MJ’s phone bill, but also about the other phones that he had taken from the Russian thugs last night—and Galya’s bizarre, threatening laughter. I wonder, is there any way to get her to look at that one? he thought as they went back inside to sit at the table again.

  “More tea?” said Doris, already reaching for the pot.

  “Uh, thanks, Doris, but I really think I should be going.”

  “Well, bring that phone up for me—as soon as you can get it away from your famous wife.” She smiled at him. “I really would love to meet her sometime.”

  “And I’m sure she’d love to meet you, too. I’ll get the phone just as quick as I can. By the way, there was a sort of crank call to it, just last night. Is there any way to find out where it came from?”

  “That’s fairly simple, as a rule. Once I’ve got the phone itself, I can look into it.” She saw him to the door, shook his hand, and told him to have a nice day—then went back inside to resume her secret identity as a senior-citizen spook.

  Peter shook his head. Little old ladies just weren’t what they used to be.

  * * *

  SUNDOG Productions was a small, four-story brownstone in the middle Forties, near Third Avenue. She buzzed the door, and a voice said, “Yeah?” It sounded like Jymn Magon.

  “It’s Mary Jane Watson-Parker, for Jymn Magon,” she said.

  “Oh, hi there, Mary Jane! Come on up.” The lock buzzed, then clicked, and MJ pushed the heavy wooden door open. She swung it shut behind her, then proceeded to climb four levels of stairs straight up from the street. There had been other doors leading off on each floor, but those were all boarded up.

  The topmost door had another buzzer, and a glass window overlooking the reception area. A friendly-looking woman waved at her through the window, and buzzed the door open as she approached. MJ was fairly fit, but even so she was panting a little as she stepped inside.

  “Some climb,” she said.

  “Yep,” said the other. “But it tires the burglars out as well. Come on in. I’m Harriet.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  The door of one of the inner offices opened, and Jymn Magon came out. “Hi, Mary Jane,” he said. “Come in, please.”

  “Call me MJ if you like.”

  “Glad to. Now, if you’ll just step this way, into our corporate lair.” He led her through the reception area and out to the back of the brownstone. One side of the room had a spiral staircase leading down from it into the areas beneath, and this upper floor had been partitioned into offices.

  “We keep the studios downstairs,” said Magon. “All the doors and windows are sealed. It’s not just for security; we had to install a lot of anechoic insulation for the voice recording, because of the usual traffic noise—and because we’re real close to Grand Central and all five gajillion trains that use it. Even so, we’ve got some of the quietest studios in the city here.”

  He ushered her into a comfortable office whose walls, where they weren’t covered with framed animation cels, were decorated with children’s drawings, and offered her a chair. “Sit down, and tell me what you’ve done.” Behind his own desk was a big poster entitled the six stages of a project. MJ glanced at it briefly, then gave him a quick verbal résumé of her work.

  He was most impressed with the Secret Hospital work—less for the work itself than because she had survived in one piece. “I’ve heard what a zoo that place was,” he said, grinning. “I hear about it every time I meet someone who was ever on the show.” They also talked briefly about yesterday’s lipstick shoot, and about the “director of death.”

  “All right,” said Jymn, “so the field has a tradition of eccentric, egocentric directors. But they’re not all De Mille, and they certainly don’t all have his talent. So they’ve earned the occasional dressing-down by irate lipstick models.”

  MJ smiled modestly.

  Jymn went on, “But, while everyone appreciated the words, I also appreciated the voice that uttered them. You’ve got really good timbre. When your voice drops, it gets very dry, and there’s a strong sound to it. Too often, female talents think they need to shout when they’re voicing a strong character, and they end up sounding like early Margaret Thatcher, all squeaky and nasal. It took years to get her to drop her voice low enough to get the men to listen to her, apparently; and once she got it right, they hated her twice as much. She was too good at making them do what she wanted.”

  “What exactly did you want to audition me for?” MJ said.

  “Well, right now we’re starting work on a new syndicated series: sixty-five episodes. It’s a super hero show called The Giga-Group.”

  MJ raised her eyebrows. “I thought the super hero trend was getting kind of old.” With so many super heroes making headlines and lead news stories, people seemed to have grown tired of the fictional versions.

  “No, the pendulum’s swinging back again. Go figure. In any case, we’ve got a nice syndication deal, so someone thinks the trend’s not dead—and insists on giving us their money as a proof of confidence—and I for one have no objection to finding out. Right now it would be ‘casual’ or ‘fill-in’ voices that we’d want you for: not running characters, but ones who appear in specific episodes as one-time characters, super villains, things like that. Do you think it’s something you could do?”

  “I could certainly audition for you, and we’ll see how it turns out. But,” and she smiled, “I’ve always been kinda fond of the super hero thing.”

  “Good. Character identification already. Come on downstairs. We’ll do a brief set of readings from some scripts that have either been shot, or are about to be, and see how you sound. Oh,
and one last thing: your SAG membership is current?”

  “Yes.”

  “One less thing to worry about, then. Let’s go.”

  She followed him down the spiral staircase and into the reception area for the third floor, a central windowed area overlooking four separate recording suites. Two of them were already occupied: people were sitting inside manipulating soundboards, and beyond, through yet another set of glass windows, other people were sitting in director’s chairs with music stands in front of them, microphones hanging from the ceiling, and intent expressions on their faces.

  “Some of our leads, in there,” said Jymn, pointing to the suite on the left. “Mike Bright, Chris Clarens, and Orkney Hallard. They’re three of our good guys. The bad guys are out to lunch. Anyway, come over here into Four, we’ll get you comfortable, and then you can read some stuff for me.”

  MJ went along happily enough. This was the least tense audition she could remember having for a long time. Jymn brought in a stack of scripts and riffled through them, pulling pages out.

  “Since we’re working on such short notice,” he said, “and you haven’t had a chance to read any of this material ahead of time, I’m not going to give you anything too substantive. I’m looking for emotion here, the kind of crazy voice that you were doing yesterday when our friend was yelling at you. Big reactions, over the top; don’t be afraid to shriek.”

  She gave him a wry look. “Would you believe that shrieking is the one thing I’ve tried to avoid most in my entire life?” she asked.

  “Good. Then you’ll do it here, and get it out of your system—and if this works out, you’ll get paid for it.” Now there’s an interesting concept. MJ smiled. She was liking this better and better all the time.

  “Most of these characters are bad guys, so don’t be afraid to ‘nyah-hah-ha’ a little. Unfortunately, our broader viewing public is not yet au courant with the concept that bad guys don’t necessarily sound bad, but it’s gotten into the culture and right now we’re stuck with it. Please God, twenty years from now when everyone’s reading Tolstoy and Kipling again, all this will seem very silly. Okay, I’m going to shut you in here for the sound. Do you have any problems with claustrophobia?”

  “Not at all. I live in a Manhattan apartment.”

  Jymn chuckled. “Just thought I’d check.”

  MJ spent the next hour reading what seemed very fragmentary lines in various funny voices: high, low, mean, menacing, scared, funny. It was surprisingly easy—or maybe it was that the director was surprisingly good. Jymn had a talent for drawing out tones and colorations of voice that you didn’t know you had. It helped that he had quite a talent in the voice line himself. If you couldn’t actually understand the sound he wanted, even after five minutes of explanation that could vary from earthy and graphic to highly technical, he would make it at you. Then all you had to do was imitate, and you were home free.

  “Aha!” MJ would cry, pronouncing it with more or less exclamation marks as required; and “Now I’ve got you!” in every shade of meaning, including some that were highly inappropriate to a children’s animated show; but there was something about the way she said, “Resistance is useless!” that on at least one occasion, Jymn pitched face-forward onto the mixing board and pounded it with his fists.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Should I read that one again?”

  Jymn hit the talk button that let him be heard inside the soundproofed studio, and though more or less back under control, MJ could still hear tremors of laughter running up and down his voice like a piano hit with a brick. “Yes,” he said. “Oh yes. The same way as last time, but louder!”

  So it went, for a cheerful hour and more, until Jymn stopped, keyed his talk button, and said, “Are you thirsty? Can I get you an ice water or something?”

  The thought had occurred to her in midcackle of some villainous laugh or other, about ten minutes or so ago. “Oh, yes, please,” she said. “I’d love it.”

  “Sit tight,” said Jymn. “I’ll be right with you.” He got up from the mixing desk and vanished out through the sound-room door.

  Trapped, thought MJ. I’m trapped. Not so, of course. The heavy baffled door wasn’t even locked, staying tight shut as much by its own ponderous weight. But the studio was so quiet, its anechoic tiling soaking up every sound. She sat for a few minutes and just listened to it. New Yorkers forget, sometimes, just what real quiet is, and if taken out into the country they lie awake at night, missing the distant or nearby sounds of subway and traffic, and the endless subliminal roar of ten million other human beings packed together into the confines of the city who were just getting on with their lives.

  In here, you could almost believe that human beings weren’t outside anymore. Almost, but not quite: the listening ear could detect a truck going by or the rumble of a deep train, even though it was a sensation more felt than heard. She put her hand on the tabletop nearby, but there was nothing. Complete stillness. A total lack of noise.

  I wonder, thought MJ with a grin, if we could get these people to redecorate the apartment. The grin went mischievous. Or at least the bedroom.

  Jymn came back in, carrying a Coke for himself and a tall cup of ice water for her, and brought them through to the studio. “Listen,” he said, his voice oddly dull and lifeless as the tiles flattened all the subtleties out of it, “we don’t need to do any more today if you don’t want to.”

  “Okay. Whatever you like.” She took a drink from the Styrofoam cup and glanced at him over the rim.

  “Sorry about these things,” he said. “Déclassé, I know, but we haven’t been able to get up to the Gristede’s for the good plastic ones.” He sat down in another of the director’s chairs. “You’re very flexible,” Jymn told her. “You take direction brilliantly—and you’re very good-natured. It surprised me yesterday when I saw you in that madhouse. I was wondering what someone so calm could be doing there.”

  “Toward the end of the day,” said MJ, “I was beginning to wonder myself.”

  “Anyway, are you available?”

  “How soon?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight?” MJ blinked. “So soon? I presume you’re not talking about dinner.”

  Jymn laughed. “No. We’re taping a Giga-Group episode tonight, and we lost a couple of our voices. Business, sickness, the usual annoyances. I can use you as an interim voice. I’d like to do that, and I’d also like to have you work with our people a little bit, because I suspect we could use you as a regular. Semi-regular, at least. Our main character voices are all spoken for, but we’ve got some recurring villains, and one of them is female.”

  “Villains? Hey, fun!”

  “Yes, I thought I heard that when you were screeching before. You don’t get much chance to be baaad, do you?”

  MJ chuckled, but couldn’t really tell Jymn why. The thought running around in her head right at the moment was that, being a super hero’s wife, you mostly concentrated on being goood, just as good as you could be. It meant maintaining your own career, while attempting to make sure that a man largely unconscious of his own needs—and especially his own stomach, even when it was growling the loudest—got enough food, enough rest, and enough love to make up for what he didn’t get in the violent dark world outside that he inhabited.

  “No, and I don’t see that tonight will be a problem.”

  “Okay. As far as I can tell right now, we’ll be starting at the usual time. That’s around eight; it gives the city a chance to get quiet. I have to warn you, these taping sessions do run late, usually eight to midnight or a little over. We contract in four-hour blocks, we pay Guild scale per four hours, if we run past midnight, we pay Guild-and-a-half. Does that suit you?”

  She did a brief bit of mental math and realized that at the moment, Guild scale for four hours was about $500 per hour. “That’s fine,” she said. “Do we need to sign the paperwork?”

  “C’mon upstairs. We’ll cut it, get the signatures—do you work throug
h an agent?”

  “Not for voice.”

  “You may want to look into that at a later date. If you start working with other companies”—he smiled slightly, as if remembering something—“you’ll find that some of their terms aren’t as advantageous as ours, and it could be in your own best interests to get an agent with great big teeth and a loud voice to do the screaming on your behalf. We can recommend a couple if you like; otherwise talk to the talent. They’ll be more than happy to tell you horror stories.” Jymn rolled his eyes. “Endless horror stories. Other than that, let’s go write you a contract and sign it. Do you need an advance?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again, shrugged, and said, “Why not?” Then added, carefully, “You’re awfully, er, easygoing about this.”

  “Oh, absolutely. We know where you live. If it doesn’t work out—we’ll sue your butt. In the meantime, I’ve got work to do; I’m clear that you like this work, and I know you’re good at it. We’ll see how you work with a group, but I’m confident enough to advance you one night’s salary. We’ll go down to the cash machine and fish it out, give you a chance to do your shopping before we start work.” He gave her a look. “I know how awkward it is. Arranging the rest of your life gets rather interesting when you’ve neither days nor evenings free.”

  “Well, thank you,” said MJ. “Thank you very much. Has anyone ever told you that you’re very, well, nice?”

  He gave her a look that was appreciative of the compliment, but somehow ironic. “Not recently. But then, after our friend yesterday, Attila the Hun would look nice.”

  Chuckling, she agreed, and followed him out.

  * * *

  ELSEWHERE in the city, other people were also arranging their evening. Eddie Brock had been a busy man since the previous night. He was staying in a small, quiet hotel on the Lower East Side and had spent the better part of the afternoon going over the paperwork and copies he had brought back from the Bureau of Records.

  Hunting down the actual ownership of a company can sometimes be deadly dull work; at other times it can be a good deal more exciting, especially when the trail starts heating up. There are shells within shells, share percentages, and beneficial and beneficiary owners in a paper trail that can sometimes lead halfway around the world in twenty different languages. And if it should involve one of the countries that really take their banking secrecy seriously, like Liechtenstein, then the trail can run up against a wall that no amount of digging will ever penetrate, and the ownership of a given firm will never be truly known.