“NO ONE CAN CATCH LIFTO!”
“Then, by all means, catch him. Skip the battle.”
“But, I have to bravely defeat him in single combat.”
“You do not. Look, I don’t care if you want to hurt him. But why not just grab him and fly away? Batter him senseless in a vacant lot. Perhaps the top of a mountain? Where property will not be damaged and Lifto will not be able to capture the inevitable hostage.”
Excelsior thinks about this for a second.
“Whose side are you on?” asks Lifto.
“It’s all the same to you, you can’t be caught,” snaps Edwin.
“But, I am paying you!” Something wasn’t right here. Lifto couldn’t put his finger on it. But something certainly wasn’t right.
“If you can’t be caught, why are you concerned about being caught?” says Edwin.
Now Lifto is totally boggled. While it’s not possible to know the mind of another, we will not go too far astray if we imagine that Lifto is programmed in BASIC and the program reads like this:
5 REM I am Lifto’s smarts-o-matic thought-thinking program.
10 goto 5
Edwin turns back to Excelsior. “So what do you think about my open area suggestion?”
“But then he wouldn’t be able to elude me in a maze of narrow buildings,” Excelsior says slowly.
“So you see the benefits?”
“It doesn’t seem very sporting. And isn’t your whole thing to help the villains?”
“Oh no, I’m not prejudiced. My services are available to anyone who will pay me.”
“And villains pay better?”
“Something like that. Now, how about leaving my office in peace?” Edwin takes Excelsior’s elbow and attempts to direct him towards the door.
“But, I must defeat Lifto,” says Excelsior looking over his shoulder.
At the mention of his name, Lifto is knocked free of his infinite stupidity loop. He realizes that no one is paying attention to him.
“Hey, Lifto is HERE!”
“Yes, but you don’t actually have to fight him to do that. And even if you do, you don’t have to do that here.” This a level of reasonability with which Excelsior is not comfortable.
“You’re right. I don’t have to. In fact, they’ve given me specific instructions not to harm you. But Mr. Windsor, I want to. Do you understand? I want to. I’ve been thinking about what you told me in the desert. And it made me angry. Angry, because you were right.” Excelsior turns and considers a priceless Chinese vase that is displayed on a plain pedestal. “This is a very nice office for a criminal mastermind.”
“I’m not a — ” Edwin winces as Excelsior knocks the vase off the pedestal and it shatters on the floor. “I’m a consultant,” he says through clenched teeth.
“You don’t like that? You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you show an emotion, Mr. Windsor. Why so upset? I chose to do that. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to make my own choices?”
“I’m not sure destroying a part of the artistic heritage of mankind is what I had in mind,” says Edwin.
Excelsior turns and considers the slab of beautifully carved marble on the wall. “Hmm, looks heavy.”
“Heavy? The work of these unknown craftsmen represents the pinnacle of human achievement during the golden age of Greece. A time when wisdom and excellence were rewarded and the potential of mankind was properly channeled.”
“Still, it looks heavy to me.” Excelsior lifts the sculpture from the wall. “Ah, it’s not so bad.”
“Please be careful.”
Excelsior locks eyes with Lifto. “Let’s do this thing.”
Lifto! LIFTO! LIEEEEEEEEFTO!” roars the hairy man as he lifts Edwin’s desk from the floor once again.
Edwin dives for cover.
Lifto steps forward, holding the desk above his head. His plan is to throw the 600-pound desk across the room as one would snap a soccer ball back onto the field. But he doesn’t quite make it. Excelsior bounds forward and shatters the desk with one mighty swipe of the Elgin Marble. The desk is thrown through the three story wall of glass.
Lifto plunges his hands into the floor and grabs one of the beams that forms the skeleton of the building. As he rips up a hunk of steel, Excelsior loses his footing and releases the sculpture. Edwin watches, powerless, as the slab of stone hits the floor and shatters.
Feeling a pain deep within him, Edwin closes his eyes. The floor heaves and twists underneath him. The sound of shearing metal comes to him from miles away. He opens his eyes and sees the world in slow motion. Excelsior has pounded Lifto into the floor. Lifto raises his powerful arms to free them from the concrete and the floor splits wide open. Edwin watches the crack run the length of his office and then into the center of the building.
“No! NO!” Edwin cries. But the sounds of impact and twisted metal are so loud that no one hears him. Edwin is filled with rage. Rage at his powerlessness. At the raw stupidity of it all. He wants to hurt them. To harm them. To put them down by force and restore order to his world. He even takes a step towards them. But of course, there is nothing he can do.
Except flee.
He races the crack along the hallway. In the floor he can feel the building vibrate as tremendous blows are struck. When he reaches the lobby Edwin sees the crack run all the way to the elevator shaft. No good. He dives into the stairwell. As he descends his feet barely touch the stairs.
The abuse of the building echoes throughout the shaft. The stairs buck under Edwin’s feet and he collapses on a landing. A pain in his knee makes him nauseous. He lies there and fights for breath, worried that his heart may explode. He pounds the wall in frustration. Why? Why must he be a mere man? Why must he be so unbalanced? So strong of mind and weak of body? For the first time in many years, undisciplined thoughts tear through his mind.
He hears a terrible noise. The worst noise that he has ever heard in his life. Later, he will realize that this is the sound of a portion of the tower splitting from the rest of the building. It is the sound of building scraping against building. It is as if Edwin is trapped inside a violin on which God is playing a eulogy for the end of the world. He wonders if he will die. Then realizes he does not have a care for himself, but what of Agnes? What has happened to Agnes?
Edwin leaps to his feet and begins to climb. He ignores the pain in his chest and legs. Fear coats his hands with a cold sweat. From his chaotic thoughts he resolves a purpose. As the noise in his mind drops away and the pain in his knee grants him clarity, he feels something fierce kick within him. He sucks the stale air of the stairwell into his lungs and climbs.
“Agnes!” Edwin cries as he throws open the door to the lobby. The spectacle stops him cold. Half of his entrance is gone, along with what looks to be a third of the building. Inexplicably, some of the fire sprinklers have activated. Along the edge, exposed wires crackle and snap ominously. The wind claws at Edwin. In mere moments, his office has been transformed into a savage place. What little hope remains in Edwin’s heart now drowns in bile.
“Agnes!” he cries again. As he approaches the edge, a large section of it gives way and tumbles into the empty air. The wind pulls at him seductively, beckoning the tall man into the abyss. For a moment, he considers yielding to the impulse and letting himself fall away from the cares of the world. Then he hears a soft cry.
He finds Agnes lying on the floor in the kitchen, collapsed in the ruins of her tea service.
“Edwin. You are unharmed?” Agnes asks with difficulty. Her face is drained and pale. Clearly she is in shock.
“Agnes, I’m sorry.”
“Shh, shh, dear boy,” Agnes says, coughing up a little blood, “Promise me…”
“Anything,” says Edwin.
“Be good.”
Edwin is unable to speak. The moments drag into minutes. Agnes closes her eyes and dies. He cradles her in his lap and says nothing.
He can hear sirens far below. In the distance are helico
pters. As the last rays of sunlight fade, spotlights descend from the flying machines. They circle and circle, their lights highlighting all the tragedies that they are powerless to stop.
Perhaps Lifto still struggles against Excelsior. Perhaps the struggle is over and the rescue crews are simply dealing with the collateral damage. It matters not. Edwin knows the broad strokes of it. Lives have been lost. Property has been damaged. Resources have been squandered. Few, if any, will notice. They are too busy watching the explosions to ask what it might cost. It is entertainment for the masses already swollen with entertainments. Why have bread and circuses when you can have the Superpowered?
But Edwin will count the cost. He will count everything. As he holds Agnes and weeps, he even counts his tears.
Chapter Forty-Three
Edwin Dresses for the Funeral
Steam rolls over the white tiles as Edwin Windsor stands, absolutely motionless, in the vortex of a six-headed shower. Although his long frame does not move within the womb-like embrace of the warm water, his mind ranges farther, ever farther. As if this white cell was not a bathroom, but rather a chamber in some sophisticated steam engine designed to harness the heat generated by his thoughts as they spin around the circumference of his brain.
Somewhere deep within himself, Edwin comes to a conclusion. His eyes open and his body becomes animated again. With the shower still running, Edwin steps onto the impossibly clean white tile. As he stands in front of the mirror, he can see himself only as a vague abstraction in the steamed surface. And there, before he even has a chance to grab a towel, a thought traverses the depths of his mind. Like a glimpse of a large fish in murky waters, he barely sees enough to describe it.
He searches his reflection. What if this undefined form — this sloppy, imprecise, ungraspable view of the world — is reality? What if sharp outlines are merely illusions created by strong minds? What if there is no precision? What if there are no terms? No categories? What if all of it is merely the play of light across a steamed mirror? Is that why everything seems to fall apart? Is that why it was all apart to begin with?
He wipes the mirror with a towel and opens the door to let the moist air out. He whips shaving cream to a lather with a badger hair brush and applies it to his face. The warmth of the lather and the reassurance of the ritual is soothing. Only after his face is prepared does he open the drawer. Alone in the center of the long drawer is the razor and nothing else.
He touches the cold steel to his neck, and for a moment, all thought focuses on the question of suicide. Of course he asks it. No man has ever felt an edge across his jugular and not, with varying degrees of sophistication, considered his own mortality. Crude men think of death as a bodily function, as unpleasant as kicking over a full bedpan. Ordinary men try to cover it over with bad analogies — a snake sloughing off the skin or the timeworn relation between caterpillar and butterfly. Religious men think of heaven. Impious men of unfinished revenge. But Edwin Windsor is not like any of these.
In Edwin’s mind, death is exact. He can imagine it for what it is, a quick slip sideways, the sudden warmth on his neck and chest, lightheadedness, ringing in the ears, but no pain. Then the cold of the tile as he lies down and the warm stuff of his life sullies the floor. Peaceful. Inevitable. Definitive.
At the edge of this grim reverie, he imagines a function stretching out over time. The accretion of money and utility that all the moments of his life have brought and will bring. The part that came before is lost forever. Childhood and yesterday were, after all, only sunk costs. And the future, unknowable, but not inestimable. And where he stands in a perfectly white bathroom with a razor at his neck is the impossibly sharp edge of the now. Valued by the expectation of all future worth discounted back to this moment — a series, a summation, the equation of the value of his life. And with this in his mind he slides the razor along his skin, instead of through it.
The hair is parted from his face with a crackling whisper. He wonders if there isn’t something else. Something unmeasurable. If he takes the summation and subtracts the crude utility of his life from it, will there be something left over? A something which makes all other measures truly and perfectly ridiculous? The immeasurable. The incommensurate. The soul. The a priori behind and yet still somehow beyond all biological demands.
Edwin splashes water on his face, and searches for his soul as plainly and practically as one might look for a spot that he has missed shaving. Edwin finds nothing.
In the next room he dons a broadcloth shirt and closes it with platinum cufflinks. He selects a black silk tie and turns to the new suit laid out on the bed. Mr. Giles has brought it himself, carried in his hands all the way from England. This time not at Agnes’ request, but for her funeral. When Edwin had asked him if it needed further work, Mr. Giles had shook his head no. With great emotion, he said, “It is perfect.”
The fabric of the suit is black. So black, it seems to suck light from the room. The line of the shoulders is so soft and alive, it moves like water deep underground on a moonless night. As Edwin slides the jacket over his shoulders it is as if darkness has been poured over his frame. He bends to tie a pair of shoes that have been hand-made for him by a wrinkled Italian cobbler who speaks no English.
Finally, he tucks a handkerchief into his breast pocket. Not a gaudy pocket square, but a full handkerchief of Egyptian white cotton. There will be tears, but Edwin will cry no more. His grief is absorbed by purpose. He adjusts his tie, tugs his cuffs into place, and goes to Agnes’ funeral.
Chapter Forty-Four
A Eulogy for Agnes
“Who can find a virtuous woman? For her worth is far above rubies,” Edwin says. It is from Proverbs, 31:10. As Edwin says it, he can feel the dust of dry pages rolling around in his mouth. “I like to think that Agnes would have enjoyed those words, but I can not know. All I know is that I have lost.” Edwin pauses, trying to find the words. But there is no adequate vocabulary of loss.
“I have lost,” he says, attempting the sentence again. The words on the paper in front of him seem meaningless now. He cannot bring himself to say them. Everything feels heavy. His elegant frame sags. The strongest will might never bend, but even the hardest heart will surely break in the end.
And then, even though he knows it’s not possible, he hears her voice. It swells within him. Filling, for the moment, the empty place in Edwin’s soul.
“It was never supposed to be like this,” he hears Agnes say. And then he feels his lips move, and the words come from his mouth.
“It was never supposed to be like this,” says Edwin.
Now he says her words as she does. “The brave men and strong women of generations past did not sacrifice for this.” Now he knows the rest. He leaves Agnes behind, as he must. As is right and proper for a funeral, and speaks on his own.
“She, in particular, deserved better. She saw the best in all of us, even when the best wasn’t there. I am sad to say that in many ways, her life must have been a terrible disappointment. But she never gave up. She never flagged in her defense of what was sensible. She believed that to the best and brightest among us, falls the duty of keeping the Grand Synthesis.
“In the end, the world did not come to her rescue. She was taken from us. She was taken from me. And we are all the poorer for it.
“When I was twelve, I lost my parents in a tragic accident that was beyond anyone’s power to prevent. An unfair twist of an unfair universe. And I, being young, intelligent and privileged, could not comprehend it. And not comprehending, I gave up.
“It was Agnes, then, who came to my rescue. She did not coddle or comfort in the expected way. She gave me a question, ‘Young Master Windsor,’ she asked me, ‘What will you do with your life?’ I told her that there was nothing worth doing. That there was no point to any of it. Against the overwhelming forces of cruel fate and relentless time, a man could do nothing. We were all powerless. All else was comfortable illusion.
“And she told me that there
is always a way to oppose, if not the instance, then the principle of a thing. And that it is in principle that true strength is found. The strength of character that can transform ordinary people into something more.
“At the time, I thought I knew what she meant. I was mistaken. And, at the time, I am certain I did not fool her. But finally, I have learned her lesson. I know what it means to oppose a thing. I know what it means to rise to meet a principle, however cruel and demanding it may be. No matter what it might require. I know what it means to become something more than you are in the service of an idea.
“It is small consolation. She is gone. And once again we are left behind to make what sense we can of the world.”
Edwin steps down, but does not return to his seat. He walks to the back of the church and stands in the shadows. He observes the ritual, but derives no comfort from it. There is no belief or fantasy that can prevent him from seeing things as they are. Edwin knows his complicity. He knows he is an accomplice in the murder of Agnes Plantagenet. One of many. He does not want his guilt removed. He does not want his sin expiated. One does not expiate the truth.
When the service is over, the priest approaches Edwin. “Those were very kind words for a very special woman. I have always found Proverbs to be my solace in times of trial. Are you familiar with chapter two, verse ten? ‘The way of the LORD is strength to the upright: destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity. The righteous shall never be removed: the wicked shall not inhabit the earth.’”
Edwin looks at the priest. “Unfortunately, my work does not leave me time to read popular fiction.” The priest straightens up as if he has been slapped. He does a double-take. There is nothing humorous about Edwin’s manner, yet there is no tone of insult. The priest walks away with his confusion, saying nothing else.
“Those sure were nice words,” says Topper, “I’m not sure I know what they meant, but those sure were nice words there, E.”
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