Like in all good pubs, the room was frugally lit. Not enough light to read by, just enough to recognize people by face. Up close. A half-dozen tables dotted the front area while the bar with stools (traditional backless, semi-comfortable bar stools) took up the rear two thirds of the basement.
The place was almost empty. Dave and Dave, two self-proclaimed ancient veterans of these "Possibility Wars" (and several wars before), sat at their usual table in the corner. Nobody knew how to tell one Dave from the other, but they were never seen apart so it didn't matter. Truthfully, they'd never been seen outside The Watering Hole. Rumor had it that they were either part of the decor (perhaps bought from white slavers when they were younger and stronger) belonging to whomever owned the bar, or mass hallucinations brought on by too much beer with too much formaldehyde.
Otherwise, there was only a party seated on the last four stools at the bar. On the first two stools were Jack Pantheon, a visiting professor of archeology, and Rex McMasters, a local private detective. The other two stools held, barely, the girth of the Amazing Dr. Zap, a self-proclaimed super-hero.
In fact, everyone in the bar was a hero of one sort or another. That was the clientele The Watering Hole attracted. It was a place where people who fight the just fight could gather for comradeship and momentarily escape the never-ending pressure and danger of their lives.
Philip was never quite sure why they let him in. He had never done anything exciting, let alone adventurous. He had never saved a child from a burning building or saved the city from certain doom. He cringed at the thought of physical violence and avoided danger at every turn.
But he did help his selfless friends at every opportunity. He would repair broken devices, and improve them if he could. From time to time he even invented new tools to aid the heroes in their war on evil. Actually, that was the reason the had come tonight. He was meeting Bob Foster so that he could give him a new weapon for Bob's alter ego, Sandstorm. But Bob was even later than Philip.
"Phil," called Rex McMasters. "C'mon down and pull up a stool."
Dr. Zap waved stiffly, as though he were overly conscious of every move. In a blustering pseudo-narrative, he said, "Striking a nonchalant pose, our hero invites the newcomer to join him —" and then, in a more "normal voice," "Hey, Phil, want a beer?"
"Thank you, no, Doctor. I'll stick to my usual." To the bartender he said, "A pot of Darjeeling, please. Well steeped."
"Relieved at not having to share his precious nectar, the Incredible Dr. Zap prepares to imbibe once more." The stools underneath him squeaked.
One of the strangest heroes to prosper in Cairo, it was a habit (bordering on compulsion) of Dr. Zap's to maintain a running play-by-play of his own actions. This had the effect of unnerving his enemies (and most of his friends, too) giving him the unofficial, but well deserved, title of "World's Most Annoying Hero."
"Dramatically lifting his drink to his mouth," said Zap, as he grabbed a nearly full pitcher in a meaty hand and poised it, very dramatically, on his lips. "The Scourge of the Underworld slakes his mighty thirst with the amber liquid. Tasting sweeter than ." The rest of his narrative became heaving gargles as Zap somehow succeeded at getting the beer in while forcing his words out.
It was clear by the stains on his uniform and puddle under his stools that Zap had been doing this for some time. It was equally clear from Rex and Jack's expressions that, as far as they were concerned, it had been far too long. They looked about ready to foreswear their oaths of heroism and fair play in order to gain a little peace and quiet.
"You know," Philip said to no one in particular, but loud enough to be sure Dr. Zap could hear clearly. "On my way here I saw the most adorable kitten stuck in a tree."
Dr. Zap stopped drinking and listened intently.
"The little girl who owns it was desperately trying to get the poor thing down, but it was too frightened."
Rex and Jack looked at each other quizzically. As far as they knew, there were no little girls with cats in the neighborhood, and there certainly were no trees. Dr. Zap, however, had apparently drunk enough to temporarily forget these facts (if indeed he had ever noticed).
Staggering off his bar stools, Zap struck a wobbly stance that, somehow, still managed to be awe-inspiring.
"Obviously, some evil fiend thought to get away with this heinous deed while our hero broke bread with his comrades in arms."
"We haven't eaten anything," Jack pointed out.
Zap frowned and wobbled some more.
". While our hero knocked a few back with his comrades in arms," he continued. "Vigilance is ever my duty. Let evil beware! Dr. Zap is on patrol."
Due to truly heroic strength of will, the three others at the bar resisted laughter when, on his way to the stairs, the six-hundred-pound hero walked through a table, knocking it over and breaking two legs. Table legs, fortunately. Tim opened the door to let Zap out without running into anything else.
As he made his way to street level, the corpulent hero's voice could still be heard:
"Bringing all his Zap-Power to bear, the Savior of the Oppressed concentrates on the task at hand. His Zap-Senses straining to their limits, our hero sets out to find the frightened feline ."
Dr. Zap's voice was drowned out by the laughter of the three friends. Dave and Dave chuckled to themselves cynically and even Tim, mighty Tim, was smiling.
Things were just quieting down when Bob gave the password five minutes later.
He apologized for being late and then asked, "Does anyone know why Dr. Zap is walking around outside meowing?"
* * *
The Watering Hole was full almost to capacity when Philip and Bob left three hours later.
The night had cooled considerably. It was about eighty on the street as the two worked their way up the long zig-zag back to Philip's workshop.
Traffic could no longer be heard, but occasional gunshots and screams replaced it as the accepted background noise. For Philip, this was always a chilling reminder that barely half of Cairo's business was done during conventional hours. What's more, the majority of these "normal" corporations were merely fronts protecting and legitimizing the numerous crime czars.
Most of the local businesses, and practically all of the big money deals, took place after dark in smoky back rooms or at exclusive clubs and closed-door casinos. Hundreds of thousands of royals exchanged hands every night through drug deals, prostitution, illegal gambling and just about every other unsavory method imaginable. And sixty percent of this money eventually found its way into the pockets of the richest two percent of Cairo's syndicate bosses.
These realizations left Philip numbed to the soul. It was at night that he questioned he sanity for having stayed in the city for so long. The dark gave him nothing but fear. Just the opposite of the reaction most of his friends had. Especially Bob.
Bob was a tall, slight man of about thirty years. American by birth, he had told Philip that, before the Maelstrom Bridges landed, he had been a postal carrier in a small Nebraska town. But he had always dreamed of being something more.
When the Possibility Raiders landed, all kinds of rumors were spread. Tales of ogres in Oxford and dinosaurs in New York. Things too outlandish to believe. But Bob wanted to believe. Especially the stories about Egypt. About how men and women, ordinary men and women, suddenly put down their pens and papers, walked away from their jobs and histories and became heroes.
Bob left for Cairo the next day knowing that this was what he had waited his whole life for. And, here in this city of sin, he never felt so alive as he did at night.
About two blocks from his building, Philip began to notice that there was an unusually large number of people walking the streets. Some were walking in the direction he and Bob were coming from, herding sleepy children in front as they carried suitcases and sacks of personal belongings. Others were milling about as though they were waiting for something, and would occasionally glance hopefully in the direction he and Bob were going.
"It can't be a fire," Bob observed, "or we'd have smelled it."
"These are my neighbors," Philip said in a hollow voice. He'd never actually talked to any of them, as his Arabic vocabulary was not up to anything more complex than, "Good day. My name is Phil." But he knew which family lived where, which children played together, and whether each man worked night or day shifts. Seeing their fear and uncertainty put a lump in Philip's heart.
As they got within sight of Philip's lab, the cause of the local anxiety became obvious. The roads were blocked off by wooden sawhorses and the secured area was teeming with men wearing golden headdresses in the ancient style, white skirts, and carrying automatic weapons.
In Cairo, it was a rare occurrence to see shocktroopers from Dr. Mobius' Imperial Militia. For reasons unknown to Phil, the mad Emperor had all but abandoned the largest city in his realm. There were several garrisons of soldiers stationed throughout the city, but they served a purely symbolic role. Their message to the wheeler-dealers of Cairo was simple: carve the city amongst yourselves as you see fit, but do not overreach your grasp. Interference in Imperial matters would never be brooked.
But the morale of the troopers stationed in Cairo also had to be maintained. Give a soldier too much time with nothing to do and open revolt was inevitably the result. So the companies were sent systematically from neighborhood to neighborhood securing the area and weeding out any treasonous or revolutionary factions and stealing anything that might be of use to Mobius and his minions.
Generally, the residents of an area would have at least six hours warning through the grapevine to prepare for being searched. Obviously, too little had been turning up in the latest raids and so the grapevine had been fed misinformation. This retrieval sweep had come with no prior warning. As a result, the haul was considerable.
In the center of the street were two large trucks with canvas canopies. Shocktroopers were coming out of buildings carrying all manner of items, from children's toys, to small printing presses, to roast chickens, and throwing them into one of the flatbeds (although the foodstuff was invariably consumed before reaching the truck).
"This is distressing," Philip said half-aloud.
"Why? This is routine, isn't it?" Bob whispered back. He was ever-conscious of how close the troopers were.
"Well, yes," answered Philip, "but I usually store all my finished products in a floor-safe before an inspection. In this case I had no reason to expect a search, so I left everything lying about."
Bob's eyes widened. If the soldiers found incriminating or dangerous materials in the lab, Philip would be arrested immediately.
"What did you leave out?"
"Nothing much," Philip said hesitantly. "Just some dummy skeletons, power sources ... and your new belt."
"Ouch!" Bob's eyes darted back and forth and his forehead crinkled. "How dangerous does it look?"
"Oh, not at all. It's just a belt."
"Good." Bob was relieved.
"A thick, armor-plated belt," Philip added.
"... oh."
"A thick, armor-plated belt that's plugged into a heavy-duty recharger."
"Is that all?" Bob's tone was less sarcastic than desperate.
"It has a blinking red button on the buckle."
"We're in trouble."
"I'd tend to agree," said Philip looking over his shoulder.
One of the troopers doing crowd control had noticed the two fair-skinned men among the darker natives. He was stepping out of the restricted zone and walking toward them.
"They must already know that lab is yours," hissed Bob. "This is your neighborhood. Do you know an escape route?"
Philip stared wide eyed at the approaching soldier. "Yes," he said quietly.
The trooper, thinking that Philip meant that he was willing to answer questions, stopped and began his inquiries. A few garbled consonants were all he got out as Bob spun on his heels and punched the man squarely in the face.
"Go, go, go!" yelled Bob as the shocked soldier's helmet went flying and the crowd, already disgruntled, cheered madly.
More shocktroopers were making their way through the crowd as Philip set off at an ungainly, but rather quick, sprint. Bob followed with no trouble, and gave much more the air of someone accustomed to being chased (or, more likely, to giving chase).
They ran to the second corner, about seventy yards, and turned left into an alley that ended with a fifteen-foot stone wall.
"What are you doing? I thought you said you knew your way around!"
"I do," said Philip breathlessly. "Climb in."
He was ambling into a large garbage bin, the only thing in the whole alley large enough to hold the two men. There were many smaller trash cans and even some wooden crates, but nothing else to divert immediate attention from the dumpster Philip was now standing in.
"Phil, get out of that thing! If we break now we can still find a way out of here, but we've got to hurry!" Bob, used to tough situations, was controlling his voice very well. But he was worried. The soldiers had stopped to tend to their fallen friend but would be there any minute. If he and Philip were to avoid being trapped in the alley they had to leave immediately.
"I've got a way out!" insisted Philip, who had crouched out of sight. His voice had a fine edge of panic in it. "Please get in the bin or we may not make it."
Sure now that they would be caught, Bob considered the tactical error of letting a research engineer plan his escape. He could hear the troopers getting closer and decided that the dumpster at least provided enough cover to put up a good fight.
"Maybe they'll think we jumped the wall," he said while climbing in, " 'cause no one in their right mind would hide in this . Philip? Where are you?"
Bob stood in the bin alone. In one corner was an empty six-pack of beer and in another was some waste paper and Philip's head and shoulders.
"Get down here!" the scientist chided. "I've got to close the hatch. This bin is the first place they'll look!"
It was then that Bob noticed the circular hole Philip's torso stuck out from. Down the tunnel he could see a ladder that his friend was straddling, making room for Bob to go down first.
The troopers' voices were clear now so Bob, a thousand questions on his lips, quickly decided the ladder. Philip shut an iron door over the hole and bolted it.
The two now stood, stooped really, in a earthen tunnel lit eerily by a few yellowed bulbs. It was impossible to tell how far the tunnel went as only the entranceway was lit.
"I didn't know this section of the city had sewers." Bob said in amazement.
"It doesn't," Philip chuckled. "I built this. It backtracks into my lab. Of course, I rather expected it to be used for escape, not entrance. Be quiet and stay close. The lab is only fifty meters away."
The air was much cooler down here; almost seventy. Perhaps that was why Philip shivered as he led the way home. But the sweat on his brow and palms defied that theory.
Light shone down as they neared the drainage grating that was the entrance to Philip's home. Two men could be heard arguing in the room above.
"There's nothing here," one voice said. "Let's go search the room upstairs. The wife there cooks like a gourmet."
"Look at all this equipment," said a deeper voice. "It must be used for something."
"So the guy likes to make model airplanes. So what?" The first voice was saying. "Let's go get something useful, like food."
"Sala, this equipment is not used for models. And just look at this belt."
"So?" the first voice was pleading. "Maybe he's building a diving suit. It doesn't concern us." He paused. And even in the tunnel you could feel the weight of the deeper voice's stare. "If it bothers you so, take the belt. But the only good it will do is to hold up the sergeant's pants after he steals it from the bins."
As the two soldiers left, they walked directly over the grating. The belt passed within three inches of Philip's nose. Now that it was unplugged from the charger, the activation button no longer bli
nked and looked like a faux-ruby set in the buckle.
After climbing onto the floor Philip did a quick inventory. The shocktroopers took nothing other than the belt and half a sandwich left over from lunch.
"We must get it back," he said to an empty room. He heard the toilet flush.
Moments later, Bob stepped into the room, transformed. Gone were his blue jeans and plaid shirt. Instead he wore a full body suit the color of the Sahara, with leather gloves and thigh-high boots. His face was covered with a pull-over mask that matched his suit, and covering his eyes were obsidian goggles. Just for flair, he had a soft leather cape. Emblazoned on his chest was a stylized picture of a dust devil.
In truth, this was no longer Bob Foster — it was Sandstorm. Philip had noticed that most of his friends who were involved in adventuring — who were heroes — showed a noticeable change in posture, gesture and tone of voice when they were on a case or in costume. It was as though they really were two different people. The average man, his friend. And the hero, defender of the downtrodden.
He supposed that everyone had a hero inside waiting for the right moment to save the day. It simply took the right combination of stimuli and encouragement to bring it out.
Or, he thought dejectedly, crush it out forever. Back in school that's what I was really doing. Killing the adventurer inside me. Slaying the hero that could be me.
"We must get it back!"
"Eh?" Philip had almost forgotten that Sandstorm was in the room.
"Your invention. My new belt. We must retrieve it." Sandstorm said this with such enthusiasm and charisma that Philip forgot that he had said it first. "Have you got everything you need?"
Philip felt every pocket twice.
"I think so," he finally said.
Mysterious Cairo Page 12