Doug managed to keep a smile on his face, but just barely. He was grateful when Hank turned his attention back to the controls, giving him the opportunity to turn around and look out the cockpit’s side window. Really, though, he was just trying to hide his expression from the former X-Man.
Even those that knew what his mutant power was, even those who’d seen him use it time and again, still didn’t really understand what having a mastery of language really meant. Sure, Doug could learn to speak any dialect, or read any written form, in no time at all. Yes, he could familiarize himself with any programming code in a matter of minutes, if he applied himself. But it wasn’t just words or numbers that he could understand; no, his power extended to all language.
What even Kitty failed to realize, Doug was sure, was that a language was any system for representing data. That data could be anything from thoughts, feelings, wants, quantities, qualities, you name it. And the system could be encoded using words, numbers, hand signs, arrangements of flowers, strings of beads, even unconscious gestures. It was this last that everyone seemed to forget, even though they had all doubtless heard of body language.
It wasn’t unerring, to be sure, Doug’s ability to read unconscious gestures. When he was in situations in which he was personally nervous, for example, he found it difficult to concentrate on the subtle cues, the slight movements that expressed another’s unspoken thoughts. When he was with Betsy, for instance, he always felt the same way he did when first peering into a text written in Linear B: I can’t possibly understand this/ Around her he fumbled, tongue-tied, and was sure he misread every sign and gesture.
On occasions like this, though, in relatively calm, relaxed environments, Doug’s comprehension of body language was much more complete. At times, it seemed to him, it almost approached the ability to read surface thoughts, at least when dealing with someone whose movements were undisciplined. (There were some, whether dancers like Stevie Hunter or fighters like Logan, who never betrayed anything, so measured and careful was their every move.)
So when Hank gave him the verbal equivalent of a pat on the back, figuratively tousling his hair like one would a child, Doug was scarcely reassured, since Hank’s unconscious gestures were clear, practically shouting, We’re all going to die.
29
At that moment, fifteen hundred miles to the east, another supersonic plane blazed across the sky. Scott was at the controls of the Blackbird, piloting the spy plane to the Sargasso Sea for the second time in as many days.
In the copilot’s seat beside him was the imposing Russian, Peter Rasputin, while the blue-furred German, Kurt Wagner, crouched in the space between them, an arm draped over the back of each of their seats.
“What are you working on today, mein Freund, ” Kurt said, glancing at the sketchpad propped on Peter’s knee.
Peter blushed, his cheeks going a deep red, and Kurt for the millionth time was forced to resist the urge to mock his stalwart Russian friend. Even with all that they had seen and done these past years, the places they’d been and the foes they faced, still and all did Peter Rasputin so often seem like a little boy stuck in a man’s body. A towering, well-muscled man’s body, to be sure, but a little boy, for all of that.
So it came as no surprise that, having been caught sketching a devastatingly attractive woman with a Mohawk hairdo, in a state of casual undress, Peter would stammer like a school boy caught out by a scolding teacher.
“Who is she, then?” Kurt said. “The heroine from one of Katzchen’s fantasy novels? A fierce warrior princess or a maiden to be rescued?”
His hands still on the controls, Scott glanced over casually. “Those are Fall People markings, aren’t they?” Peter blushed deeper, the red of his cheeks intensifying, and nodded. “She is Nereel.”
“Ah,” Kurt said, understanding dawning. He reached over and, gesturing for permission, took the sketchbook from Peter’s hands. “That girl in the Savage Land. I remember her now.” He looked up at Peter, a lascivious grin on his lips, sharp canines exposed. ‘Am I mistaken, Herr Rasputin, or did you not spend some . . . quality time with this attractive young lady?”
Peter averted his eyes, suddenly finding something of great interest in the featureless waves passing beneath them. “Perhaps,” he finally replied.
Kurt’s grin widened, and he regarded the sketch admiringly. Then, casually, he flipped to the previous page. It was a drawing of the same woman, with the same Mohawk and lax dress code, only this time she was carrying a small child in her arms, its hair and eyes dark little more than an infant, really.
“A Savage Land Pieta,” Kurt said, nodding appreciatively. “A primordial Madonna and child. Peter, I believe you missed your calling when you chose world-saving as a vocation, and not the pursuit of art. But tell me...” He handed the sketchbook back to Peter, open to the picture of Nereel and the child. “Why portray Nereel with a child? I don’t recall her being a mother.”
Peter accepted the proffered sketchbook, and gazed at the drawing for a long moment, as though seeing something in it he recognized, but being unable to say precisely what. “I’m not sure,” he answered at length. “It just... felt right.”
“Okay, gentlemen,” Scott said, his tone pure business. “We’re coming up on our destination. We’re approaching from opposite Julienne Cay, and coming in so low they shouldn’t be able to spot us, but if they do, this could be a very short trip.”
Kurt returned to his seat, buckling the safety straps around him.
“There already?” he said. “But I was given to understand there would be beverage service on this flight, and I’ve yet to be given a drink.”
Scott didn’t answer, but kept his gaze focused as straight ahead as a laser, but Kurt was gratified to see that Peter smiled, if slightly, before returning his attention to his sketching.
30
It was midmoming when Vox Septimus and three other servitors, all wearing similar robes of varying shades and hues, all carrying identical crystal rods, came for Lee and the others.
“This one offers apologies,” Vox Septimus said as he stepped through the newly opened door. “But there are other uses to which this space will be put. Besides, now that the other specimens have been relocated here to Dis, it is simplest to relocate you and your companions to the general population.”
For a brief, futile moment, Merrick put up something resembling resistance, but it took only a minute gesture with one of the crystal rods for him to fall in line, with a guilty glance at Frank. For his part, Frank kept his eyes on the ground, and did everything he was told.
Vox Septimus walked in the lead, Lee and her crewmen following, and the other three servitors bringing up the rear.
“Where are you taking us?” Lee asked as they were ushered down a twisting corridor to a wide, sloping ramp that spiraled from the tower’s base to its crown. Lee and the others had been brought this way the day before—had it really only been a single day?—but in the excitement and fear of the moment, very little of their surroundings had registered with her. Now, more composed and aware, she took careful note of everything they passed, of all of the branching corridors, of the doorways and passages.
“As this one indicated,” Vox Septimus answered casually. “You are being relocated to the general population.”
They passed a broad landing, about halfway down the ramp, where a trio of strangely dressed individuals lingered. Silent, their mouths unmoving, they gestured dramatically with their hands, pulling broad expressions. Compared to Vox Septimus and his fellows, this trio were uniformly larger, more muscled, and the fabrics of their exotically cut clothing were ofbrighter hues.
Lee noted with interest that, as she and her crew were led by, the trio regarded them with something like disgust, laced with an almost naked hostility. This was hardly surprising, given their circumstance. However, what was surprising was the thinly veiled contempt with which they regarded Vox Septimus and the other three servitors.
As they drew n
ear, Lee saw that Vox Septimus kept his eyes averted, not looking at the three. When their course brought them the closest they would come, only a few yards away, one of the trio pointed at Lee, scowling. In response, another pointed at Vox, whereupon the other two laughed out loud. Hearing their laughter was unsettling, after so long a silence, and Lee realized that they must have been communicating telepathically all along.
Without warning, the trio leapt into the air. Zipping past Vox Septimus, coming only inches from him, they jetted out to the empty space at the middle of the tower, and with a dark glance back in her direction—or in Vox’s?—they flew up toward the tower’s crown at speed.
Vox, startled by their close passage, faltered, almost stumbling and falling. So near the edge of the broad, rail-less ramp were they that he might any second tumble over the side, no doubt falling to his death, hundreds of feet below.
Lee acted without thinking, and reached out and grabbed hold of Vox Septimus’s elbow, righting him and preventing his fall.
“You will return to the line!” shouted one of the servitors at the rear of their train, waving his crystal rod menacingly.
“All is well,” Vox Septimus said, raising his hand. He seemed shaken, out of breath. His fellow servitor returned to the end of the line, and then Vox Septimus regarded Lee, a strange expression on his face. Finally, he said, his voice somewhat strained, ‘You have this one’s thanks.”
Lee shrugged, not failing to see the tight grip Vox Septimus retained on his crystal rod. “Don’t mention it.”
Vox Septimus nodded slowly, and then turned and continued on their course down the ramp. Lee followed behind, trying to work out the implications of what she’d just seen.
They reached the ground level, where she and the others had entered the tower the day before, and continued downward. Lee knew from her previous visits to the city that beneath its foundations were massive spaces, akin to giant natural caverns, but lined on all sides with strange shapes of metal and crystal, punctuated here and there with enormous statuary, the same massive, inhuman grotesqueries that decorated the city above.
The ramp on which they now trod continued down a sloped spiral toward one of those massive spaces. When they emerged into this cavernous space beneath the ground, the walls fell away on either side. The lights were somewhat dim, but even though Lee could see before and behind her with little trouble, she could not see a wall or barrier in any direction, no matter how hard she strained. The vast, empty spaces swallowed the sound of their footsteps, and it seemed to Lee for a moment that she must have gone deaf.
Finally, they reached another landing from which projected a narrow bridge or walkway. At Vox Septimus’s insistence, Lee and the others were marched across this narrow bridge, which could not have been more than three or four feet wide. Risking a quick glance over the side, Lee could not see any ground or floor below, only a crazed network of other ramps, landings, and walkways, with strange, bulbous structures here and there at the intersections. It was to one of these bulbous structures that they were being led. It resembled nothing so much as a human organ—a liver, say, or a kidney—constructed of steel and crystal and enlarged to an immense size. It was a huge structure, capable of fitting the trawler Arcadia a dozen times over.
At what appeared to be the structures’ entrance, three walkways met at a wide platform. As they drew near, Lee saw that another group of prisoners was being marched to the left, with crystal rod-wielding servitors before and after. But these were not the ordinary men and women she’d glimpsed down in the courtyard, just a short while before. These were super-heroes.
Their uniforms, though ripped, scorched, and dirtied, were those of costumed crime-fighters. Lee could see that at a glance, even if their stature and muscular profiles weren’t a give away, in and of themselves. At a distance, Lee didn’t recognize any of them, but as both their party and hers drew nearer the platform, and the bulbous structure beyond, one or two of them grew more familiar to her. One was dressed in red, white, and gold, and Lee recognized him as Sunfire. Two wore identical uniforms of red and black, a triangle emblem on their chests, and Lee remembered Magneto once describing uniforms matching that description, and saying that they belonged to students of the Massachusetts Academy. Finally, there were three wearing uniforms of yellow and black, and not only did Lee recognize the design, but also their faces; she remembered having seen pictures of them during a brief visit to see Magneto in New York, before she’d broken off their relationship. They were students at Xavier’s school, Scott Summers’s old alma mater.
For the briefest instant, Lee allowed herself to hope. She entertained the fleeting thought that, if students of the Xavier School were here, then that meant that Scott, and a rescue, could not be far behind. But then she saw the dispirited way that the Xavier students shuffled along the walkway—the same, listless gait adopted by Sunfire and all the others—and she recognized the way in which each of their uniforms differed from those she had seen before, or had described to her.
All of them, without exception, were wearing broad silver collars around their necks.
It didn’t take long to make the guess that the dispirited expressions and slow movements of the super-heroes—to say nothing of the fact that they willingly allowed themselves to be herded along like regular people, like her—had something to do with these strange, oversize silver collars. There was some property of the collars, Lee supposed, that was serving to dampen, if not completely nullify, the heroes’ powers.
All of which suggested several factors in rapid succession.
First, that the Kh’thon did possess the ability to nullify a mutant’s abilities.
Second, that things in the outside world were going worse than Lee might have imagined.
And lastly, that their chances for escape from the city of Dis had just grown much, much more complicated.
31
Kitty wasn’t sure at what point traveling into outer space had become so routine for her, much less what that said about her lifestyle. Most girls her age were worrying about what college they’d go to, or obsessing over some boy in their class, or anxious about whether they’d pass their midterm exams.
Not Kitty. She was strapped into a bleeding-edge space plane, rocketing into cislunar space, and finding the whole thing just a little boring. It was when she realized that she’d just as soon get the whole saving-the-world thing done and over with so she could get home and catch up on some much needed sleep that Kitty realized that her standards had shifted somewhat these last few years.
It wasn’t all that long ago that she’d been a regular suburban kid in Deerfield, Illinois. In the years since, she’d traveled in time, gone into space a time or two, adopted a dragon, kissed a boy, become a ninja, and saved the world more times than she could count. After a while, it all just got to be old hat. Kitty imagined this was how child stars must feel about Hollywood when they grow up; what seems magical and glamorous to outsiders is just another job to a kid who grew up doing it.
Of course, Kitty liked to hope that she’d be a little luckier when she grew up than most child stars. Assuming she grew up at all, that is. If she survived the next few hours, and the world didn’t get blown up in the process, she had no intention of ending up on the news, a few years down the line, having gotten arrested trying to knock over a Quick Stop.
But then, Kitty ruminated, if she put her mind to robbing a convenience store, she’d do it right.
“Approaching the alien fleet,” said Colonel Alysande Stuart over the ship’s communication system, interrupting Kitty’s reverie. “If you lot have a secret plan for keeping us from getting blown out of the sky as soon as these buggers notice we’re here, you might want to get it into motion.”
“Ah,” Betsy said, raising a gloved finger, like someone placing a bid at an auction. “That would be me.” Betsy struggled to unbuckle the straps that kept her secured to the acceleration chair.
“Today would be nice, I think,” said Raphael,
his tone oily.
“Blasted ...” Betsy wrenched at the buckles and straps unsuccessfully. “I can’t...” She threw down her hands, and looked up, her expression through the helmet one of exasperation. Then, in a small voice, she said, “I’m stuck.”
“Hmph.” Logan, who’d been sitting with his eyes closed, his head lolled to the side of his helmet, made a noise somewhere between a grunt of annoyance and a bark of laughter. He raised his left hand, and a single adamantium blade slid out from the special pressurized seal Kitty had rigged in the glove of his suit shortly before take off. He reached over, bringing the razor-sharp tip of the claw near Betsy’s straps. “Lemme fix it. . .” “Logan!” Kitty batted Logan’s hand away, like a mother scolding a child for sampling a cake’s icing before it was time for dessert. “I’m sure there’s an easier way.” Kitty reached over and took hold of the strap, wrapping her hand around the buckle. Then, without any visible effort, she phased her hand, the buckle, and the straps to which it was attached. With the straps intangible, Betsy was able to climb out of the acceleration chair without difficulty.
Kitty solidified again, and when she released the buckle, it floated back toward the seat, moving with an unexpected grace in the cabin’s microgravity.
“See, Logan,” Kitty reproached. “Not everything has to be hack and slash, you know.”
“Hey, ldddo,” Logan grinned. “I’m gonna be making some cuts before this caper is over and done, so might as well get used to it now.”
Kitty blew Logan a raspberry, fogging up the inside of her helmet, while Betsy maneuvered with surprising elegance to the rear of the cabin. There, their Exemplar prisoner was secured by straps to a kind of gumey, in a pressure suit of her own.
“If what I was able to extract from our guest’s memories this morning was correct,” Betsy explained, her voice buzzing over the speaker’s in Kitty’s helmet, “then virtually all ship-to-ship communication in the
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