by Stan Lee
* * *
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34
35 36 37
Afterword
* * *
* * *
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
For more information about STAN LEE’S RIFTWORLD see the
Worldwide Web site at http://www.byronpreiss.com
And to see the STAN LEE’S RIFTWORLD comics come to life, see The
Microsoft Network. Go words for the forums there are ByronPreiss
and VirtualComics.
Special thanks to Lou Aronica, Ginjer Buchanan, Keith R.A. DeCandido, and Steve Roman.
STAN LEE’S RIFTWORLD: ODYSSEY
A Boulevard Book A Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, Inc. Book
PRINTING HISTORY
Boulevard edition / January 1996
All rights reserved.
Text and art copyright © 1996 Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, Inc.
Afterword copyright © 1996 Stan Lee.
Stan Lee’s Riftworld is a trademark of
Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Edited by Howard Zimmerman.
Back matter art by Dave Gibbons.
Cover and interior design by Claude Goodwin.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, Inc.,
24 West 25th Street, New York, New York 10010.
ISBN: 1-57297-069-3
BOULEVARD
Boulevard Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
BOULEVARD and its logo are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
* * *
INTRODUCTION
His name was John—John Cameron. At least there seemed a flicker of recognition from deep inside his consciousness. Recognition, yet doubt...
Ah. It was an invented name, an assumed identity. A wall of amnesia cut across his sense of self. Conscious recollection stretched back little more than two years. The question was, what of those two years could he remember? With sudden clarity, he understood it was vitally important to recall as much of his limited history as he could ...
A flash—himself, standing naked by a rural roadside. That was his beginning. Other memories trickled into a consciousness that, in self-defense, had turned in upon itself almost to the point of catatonia.
John had been held prisoner—paralyzed in a high-technology hell that made sensory deprivation seem like a mental massage. His consciousness had been enclosed in a sphere of impalpable force, divorced from his body, unable to reach out. Now that his mind had finally been freed, its reconnection to the flesh had resulted in sensory overload. His psyche had retreated nearly into unconsciousness, trying to regroup.
His choices in captivity had been either insanity or shutdown. As John sorted through his memories, he wondered if shutdown had come too late. Some of his recollections seemed like the daydreams of madness.
John remembered finding his way to New York City, where he got a job with a comic-book company, the Fantasy Factory—the largest in the business. Perhaps that added to his problems with recall. His memories appeared to be infiltrated by cartoonish fantasies.
John’s Fantasy Factory job seemed normal—even menial. He’d been a general-purpose clerk—a gofer. Yet those workaday memories were interspersed with recollections of bizarre powers. John had been able to detect other people’s thoughts. It wasn’t mind-reading, exactly. The effect was more like hearing a blaring radio through cheap wallboard.
He’d felt the frustration and embattled emotions emanating from the company’s head, Harry Sturdley. The memories of that younger John were tinged with a respect verging on hero-worship for the creator of such comics heroes as the Rodent and the Sensational Six. And then there was Peg Faber. John had averted his mental gaze around Sturdley’s pretty red-haired assistant, attracted yet afraid of revealing his confused emotions and extra-human abilities.
For mind-reading, John discovered, had been the least of his uncanny talents. He’d developed a capacity for—not teleportation, exactly. It was an ability to visit unguessed locations by way of a dimensional anomaly John called the Rift. John’s first transition into the Rift had been a terrifying accident. His mind had gone blank, he’d somehow twisted his perceptions, and suddenly found himself falling endlessly through an infinite gulf. Exerting all his will, he’d returned to the real world, sweaty and shaking. In learning to master the necessary mental knack, John discovered he could return from the Rift to other Earthly locations—even faraway places he’d never visited before. Then he’d discovered currents in the Rift’s emptiness. By following these, he’d landed in strange new worlds—outlandish, unearthly realms.
There was the world that seemed trapped in perpetual winter, where the human inhabitants were locked in a class system based on size. Humans of normal stature were called Lessers, slaves to their equally human but twenty-foot-tall Masters. A more pleasant destination was a world of rolling parkland punctuated by cities of gleaming towers, airy spires that soared half a mile or more into the sky. Vastly complicated three-dimensional traffic flows filled the air around the cities—human figures in what seemed to be flying armor. John had visited this locale again and again, filling sketchbooks with futuristic cityscapes. When Harry Sturdley had seen these ...
But he was getting ahead of himself. Carefully, John worked to sort his memories chronologically. The turning point had come at a vituperative Fantasy Factory staff meeting. John had delivered coffee to find Harry Sturdley bitterly wishing that there were real superheroes. Perhaps too eager to please, John had used his immaterial powers to find a pair of titanic fugitives on the world of the giants. He’d brought the pair, Robert and Maurice, to Earth via the Rift.
Sturdley didn’t know that the giants had arrived at his wish. But they certainly were the answer to his prayers. He christened the pair “Heroes” and entered into a Faustian bargain with Robert. The Fantasy Factory could issue comics relating the Heroes’ real-life adventures ... if John Cameron would bring more giants to Earth. Yes, during the transit through the Rift, the pair of titans had been able to pinpoint John as the dimensional manipulator using their own, somewhat lesser, mental powers.
John had Rifted himself away after his unconsidered action, fearful of the consequences. An unforeseen result of his disappearance was that Peg and two Fantasy Factory artists, Elvio Vital and Marty Burke, had been ordered to track down the suddenly errant John Cameron. They hadn’t succeeded, but the air of mystery around John—the way he’d vanished, his assumed identity—had sparked Peg’s interest.
She had helped John negotiate a deal with Harry Sturdley. If John transported more giants to Earth, he’d be given a shot at writing and illustrating the first of the Heroes’ comic books—The Incredible Robert.
John had Rifted over another forty-eight giants—followers of Robert—all refugees from their homeworld’s bloodthirsty politics.
The fifty giants had settled in to become real-life vigilantes and four-color superheroes, despite internal sniping from
Marty Burke—and external attacks from newswoman Leslie Ann Nasotrudere. Sturdley had made the mistake of embarrassing the powerful television reporter. Her quest for payback had taken the form of a vendetta against the giants. But despite journalistic probes into what their real motives might be, the giants made a dent in New York crime, and their comics sold like crazy.
Sturdley and the Fantasy Factory were riding high. But John, too, worried about the giants’ private agenda. Robert, the leader of the giants and the hero of John’s first comics title, had a will to power, and his followers were culturally conditioned to think of normal-sized humans as cattle. Some of the more hot-headed were openly contemptuous of humans’ rights. John feared that behind the veil of public service lay a master plan with ugly consequences for the world.
Harry Sturdley, however, wouldn’t hear a word against his brave new profit center. He planned to enlarge the Heroes line, launching new books at the San Diego Comics Convention, the world’s largest conclave of comics professionals and fans.
John brought Peg to the West Coast convention by way of the Rift, and had a wonderful time as an artistic rising star—until he was shot by a group of assassins hired by Robert. The giants had targeted John because he alone controlled the power that had brought them to Earth—which could just as easily send them back. Wounded, John rescued himself, Peg, and Sturdley by going into the Rift. But he was forced to drift with the Rift currents—and ended up on the giants’ homeworld. He’d blacked out during the Rift transit, and the three of them had been scattered across the surface of a hostile planet.
Fortunately, John landed in the one place on the primitive world where healing was available. He found himself in an underground, computer-run installation in what the giants called the Forbidden Zone—forbidden because it contained the forgotten secret of the Masters’ beginnings.
The self-aware computer running the hidden base healed John. But it hoped to use his genes to fulfill its programming and create a new race of caretakers for the planet. Fearing that John would use his mental powers to escape, it had sealed his mind in an inhibitory field—the featureless prison that had nearly cracked his brain ...
... Unless his brain was already cracked, and the history he’d just pieced together was totally delusional. But no—he had been freed from the shining sphere that had imprisoned his mind, and in the howling onrush of sensory data, he became aware of the mental presence of his fellow castaways, Peg and Harry. Somehow, their passage through the Rift had stirred the pair’s latent psionic abilities.
Mind-to-mind, John had picked up fragmentary glimpses of their separate journeys across an inimical landscape. Sturdley had cowed an entire tribe of savages. Peg had mentally bound a male Lesser who’d attacked her, making him her personal slave.
Following a psychic spoor, the terrestrial exiles had tracked him to the Forbidden Zone, been captured by the computer, and compelled to participate in its chilling program. Peg, it seemed, had been filled with hormones to induce a pseudo-pregnancy as preparation for the implanting of a gene-altered fetus.
Peg and Harry were attempting an escape before this technological rape. And they needed John to get them into the Rift.
But—he couldn’t. After months of a silence more profound than that of the tomb, normal sensory stimulus struck at him in dizzying bombardment. His response had been to retreat to this near-catatonic state.
Of course, a cold, reasonable voice in the back of his head pointed out, you could be safely in a mental ward somewhere, and all this rigmarole merely the dementia of a true catatonic.
He flinched from the thought. And at that moment, the shields he’d thrown up to protect his consciousness were breached. Desperate, clumsy fingers of immaterial force probed his mind. It was Peg, twining into his consciousness more closely than any embrace. Very, very real.
John, if you want to Rift, what do you use? she asked frantically.
He steadied a little in the maelstrom of incoming data, showing her the knack of transition. Her mental probes seemed to sink into his brain, to the exact neurons that fired to initiate the Rifting.
John was too weak, his mind still too disassociated, to achieve the transit. Peg added her mental energy to the process, but it still wasn’t enough. Then John felt the presence of Harry Sturdley’s mind as well. There was a fourth presence identified only as Mike—the primitive would-be rapist whom Peg had enthralled.
Their combined mind-force managed the dimensional twist, and then came the all-too-familiar feeling of neverending vertigo. The four of them were falling through unbounded nothingness.
They were in the Rift. And with John only semiconscious, their destination was unknown.
* * *
PROLOGUE
“So,” Robert said, his hands on his hips, “you’re back.”
“That’s right,” John Cameron responded, staring up at his adversary. “I’m back.”
Cameron had to crane his neck to look Robert in the eye. Although John topped six feet, he barely came to the level of Robert’s knees.
Robert and his people had established giant-sized reputations as superheroes. They’d made giant fortunes through their licensed comics deal with the Fantasy Factory, and even gotten a movie contract.
But Robert had even larger plans. He’d used his popularity to gain access to the lawmakers of the Lesser Domain known as the United States. By twisting these leaders to his will, he expected to precipitate a catastrophe that would cull the Lessers’ numbers and reduce their vaunted technology.
Unfortunately, obstacles existed between Robert’s conception and his plan’s execution. One of his followers, the giant called Gideon, had tried to go over to the humans’ side, attempting to warn Sturdley. The traitor had been captured and neutralized. But Sturdley had begun to doubt that the Heroes were altogether altruistic.
The main antagonist, however, had been the Lesser known as John Cameron. His memory was maimed—though his body was twenty years old, he barely recalled two years of his past. But this nondescript human had the strange ability to control the Rift—the pathway between worlds.
With that power, he could banish the Heroes—or open the gateway for Robert’s enemies. Robert couldn’t afford to allow such a Lesser to remain free. He’d schemed with some New York criminals to have Cameron eliminated, but the Lessers had botched the job. John Cameron had vanished into the Rift, taking with him Harry Sturdley and another Lesser—Sturdley’s female assistant, Peg Faber.
Since that disappearance, Robert had feared Cameron’s eventual return ... and planned for a final solution. Now the upstart Lesser had come back. And Robert was in a position to deal with him.
The giant’s hands snapped out, seizing Cameron and yanking him into the air. Cameron did not resist. There was little he could do. In relation to Robert, the human was the size of a one-year-old.
Cameron’s ribcage just fit in Robert’s palms. Smiling, Robert squeezed, exerting crushing force. Harder, harder ... but there was no satisfying crunch of bone, no sudden implosion of heart and lungs. Cameron hung relaxed in Robert’s grasp. But the Lesser’s body shifted, seeming to expand in the giant’s straining hands.
How could the Lesser’s ribs now be larger than Robert’s palms? Panicking, Robert dismissed reasons. He went for the soft tissues of Cameron’s throat, trying to mash them with his thumbs. The muscles in his forearms quivered, but he couldn’t pulp the vulnerable air passages. A cold thought crashed through Robert’s mind. Had Cameron somehow managed to develop the shields of immaterial force Robert’s people used to protect themselves?
Robert tried to seize the human by his feet, meaning to swing him like a club against a nearby tree trunk. Novice shielding sometimes buckled under serious stress. And the threat of having one’s head smashed in certainly qualified.
Cameron still didn’t resist ... but Robert couldn’t pick him up. The human was more than half his size now! How could he keep growing?
Then Robert finally noticed that the t
ree he’d aimed to dash the human’s brains against was also growing. That was flatly impossible.
Unless ... they weren’t expanding. Robert was shrinking.
He tried to flee this madness. But Cameron, now the same size as the former giant, ran him down and tackled him. Robert tried to escape, but his opponent, now grown larger, blocked his every move. Cameron still wasn’t fighting with him. He seemed merely to be playing with his dwarfed foe.
Finally the disparity in their sizes reached the point where Cameron could pick Robert up, the former giant dangling between the human’s hands like an infant. Then Robert wound up perched on one hand, staring at the ground that seemed a terrifying distance below.
At last, he sat on a broad plain he knew to be Cameron’s palm. Vast shadows congealed overhead—the human’s fingers, bending inward to make a fist. The world vanished in blackness as the fist engulfed Robert, making him one with his enemy ...
Robert rose bolt upright from the greensward where he’d bedded down, shuddering from the realism of the nightmare, his mouth distorted in the rictus of a silent scream. Beside him, his mate Barbara stirred uncomfortably, her minimal mental powers detecting his distress.
With desperate precision, Robert extended a scalpel-like tendril of mind-stuff, quelling her mind. Then he redoubled his own mental shields and lay back again. But sleep did not come as Robert lay sightlessly staring up at the fall foliage of the trees overhead.
His people had never been ones for prophecies and portents. But something in this nightmare struck Robert as a breath of prescience. Did it herald Cameron’s return? Did it foretell the ultimate result of the battle between them?
Robert lay stark and slightly chilled. For once he didn’t feel like the leader of this band of giants—their would-be Master of Masters. All he wanted to do was cling to the soft, perfumed form sleeping beside him, as a drowning man might cleave to the piece of driftwood holding him afloat.