by Stan Lee
“Ell-ay?” Penelope asked.
“That’s what the natives call the largest city out there,” Victor told her with a smile. “They seem to think it’s the most important part of this whole land. For instance, because there’s another great water out there, they call where they live ‘The Coast,’ as if it were the only coast.”
Penelope shuddered a little. “These wild Lessers,” she complained, “make no sense at all. The sooner we bring them to heel, the better.”
“G-good morning, Mr. Sturdley.” Wendy Wentworth glanced timorously over the screen of her word processor.
It had taken her a while to understand that the old coot she’d treated so badly was actually the big boss at the Fantasy Factory. Now she was terrified that she was out of a job.
She wasn’t, but Harry wasn’t about to tell her so.
Marty Burke could keep his little office playmate. Harry didn’t want anyone handling his private phones and correspondence whose first loyalty was to Burke.
Harry had thought very hard about the Burke problem since announcing himself. He’d even done his best to help Marty the Genius save face. Today, after more than a week back, he was finally reclaiming his office. He’d discussed it with Burke, figuring that was more than enough time.
Burke would be moving to an empty office down the hall, a space kept for occasional visitors from the Fantasy Factory’s London operation. It wasn’t on executive row, but Marty now rejoiced in the resounding if meaningless title of “Editorial/Artistic Consultant.” And, of course, he was the only writer/artist who had a secretary, the bounteous Wendy. That far Harry was willing to go in hopes of assuring some peace in the workplace. He rubbed his hands together as he headed for the office door. Now it was time to start kicking some butt.
Harry turned back to the secretary, his hand on the doorknob. “Is Mr. Burke in already?”
She shook her head. “He called and said he had a dental appointment.”
Sturdley nodded. Burke would probably enjoy root canal more than seeing Harry back in place. “You know where Burke’s new office is, don’t you?”
Big blue eyes got wider, and her pink mouth made a little O. “Marty—I mean, Mr. Burke—told me to stay here and help out till you got a new assistant.”
“I’ve got one of the kids ready to fill in, Wendy. You can go—what the hell?”
Harry had finally taken a look inside the office. His usually immaculate desk was overrun with what looked like a diorama of toys, four large action figures surrounded by a sea of knee-high people.
He began to distinguish likenesses as he came closer. The giants were quite recognizably Robert, Barbara, Thomas, and Ruth, all clad in shiny white spandex. They were a foot tall, while the smaller dolls were about a third their size.
Harry picked up one. It appeared to be made of clear blue plastic, with white bones inside—Skeletone. Harry frowned. The toy’s face bore an uncanny resemblance to Jeff Gold-blum. And here was Madam Vile, in a considerably more modest costume than she wore in the comics. Of course, when a character is drawn, you don’t have to worry about such practicalities as how a costume would be kept on—or up, in the case of most female characters.
Sturdley now knew what these were. They had to be prototype action figures from the Heroes movie. His face tightened. Burke had left them here to rub in his success—and also to make the point about mixing the real-life Heroes with the Fantasy Factory’s fictional villains.
Stepping behind the desk, Harry grabbed the wastepaper basket. He swept his arm across the table, batting the figures into the trashcan.
“Sir?” a nervous voice came from the entrance to the office.
“I’m glad you haven’t left yet,” Harry said, walking over and depositing the basket in her arms. “It seems that Marty was playing with his toys and forgot to take them.”
Wendy nodded, hugging the wastebasket to her ample chest. “There are a bunch of guys from the mailroom—”
Beyond the girl, Sturdley heard a voice mutter a little too loudly, “Burke may be a bastard, but he’s a real connoisseur of ass.”
As he watched Wendy turn bright red, Harry realized things had really slipped around the office. He stalked to the doorway and stepped outside. “I don’t know which of you garbagemouths just said that,” he announced pointedly, scanning some very embarrassed faces with angry eyes. “But I’m sure all of you will have a bit more respect for this office—and the people who work here—in the future.”
Wendy fled, and a very chastened group of mailroom types carried in the boxes of personal stuff Harry wanted back in his office.
“Sorry, Mr. S.” Tony, the head mail guy, brought up the tail of the line, carrying the biggest box. “I shouldda been on the guys about their mouths long before this.”
But Burke could care less, Harry thought, so why bother?
Tony hefted the extremely well-wrapped package. “Jeeze, what have you got in here, a suit of armor?” As he put the box down, it clanked loudly.
Sturdley smiled. “Exactly, Tony. I thought a suit of armor over in the corner would be a nice touch. Sort of ‘A man’s office is his castle.’ What do you think?”
Tony laughed. “That might be a good idea. You could wear it to staff meetings.”
Still chuckling, he stopped in the doorway. “Oh. You want me to leave some of the guys to help you unload?”
Harry shook his head. “Nah. I’d like to handle it myself.”
As soon as the door closed, Harry set to work opening the box Tony had brought in. It did contain armor—Harry’s Ar-gonian flying suit. He quickly assembled the pieces and hid the armor in his coat closet.
He stared at the suit, silver-gray and white, with its slightly squiggly psychedelic blue S blazoned on the yellow shield. Just having it here made him feel safer, although he wouldn’t have much time to get into the suit if an unfriendly giant hand came through the window.
Harry sighed and headed to the desk for a scratch pad. At the top of his “to do” list he added getting a lock for the closet door.
Marty Burke had no dental appointment that day, it was merely an excuse to come in late. He was now seated in the coffee shop across the street from the Fantasy Factory’s offices, gathering his forces.
Burke took a sip of coffee and ran his napkin across his mouth, thinking a little belatedly that a jelly donut is not the thing to eat when you’re plotting. He inconspicuously tried to brush powdered sugar off his chest while listening to Thad Westmoreland speak.
“So the board of directors rolled right over as soon as Sturdley came back? That’s some thanks for lining up this movie deal.” Thad leaned across the table. “How about the giants? If Robert backed you up—”
“I called Heroes’ Manor. They told me Robert had flown to the coast to take care of his part in the movie. But when I called Silikis’s people—waking them up, I might add—they said Robert wasn’t expected till tomorrow.”
“So you don’t know where he is.”
“Wherever he is, I guess it’s not near a phone.” Burke stared down at the tabletop. “Besides, if we’re really going to stick it to Sturdley, we’ll have to pick fights we can win. We’ve got to reorganize.”
Westmoreland shook his head, a frown on his thin face. “That’s easier said than done, Marty. You stepped on a lot of guys’ toes while you were running things.”
“I did what had to be done,” Burke said. “Do you think the artists—especially the young guys—are going to be any happier under Sturdley?”
“Maybe not,” Westmoreland said. “But I don’t think you realize just how much you sounded like Sturdley sometimes.”
“Why are we going out for coffee?” Zeb Grantfield asked as Kyle Everard steered him into the coffee shop. “We never go out for—oh.”
A flush came to the artist’s acne-scarred face as he saw who was sitting at the table.
“Sit down, Zeb,” Marty Burke invited.
To Grantfield’s eyes, Burke looked a lit
tle wired. That could be from the situation he found himself in, or maybe it was just from too many cups of coffee while he sat here talking with people. Grantfield did notice that Burke’s trademark black suit had little white flecks all over it today. Dandruff?
Burke waited for Grantfield to sit, and then began what had become a standardized pitch. “I’m sure as an artist you can’t be delighted to see Harry Sturdley back running things at the Fantasy Factory.”
Grantfield shrugged. “Well so far, Sturdley hasn’t tried to ration illustration board—or told me I was getting too tired to work on Jumboy.”
“We’ve had our differences, Zeb—I’ll be the first to admit that. But we’re artists. What does Sturdley know about art?”
“Just what he’s picked up in thirty years of publishing it,” Grantfield said.
“Think back, Zeb. Think back to what things were like when Sturdley was running the show. Are you sure you want to go back to that?”
Grantfield kept a poker face, nodding at Burke’s spiel. He may not have been a hundred percent happy with the Sturdley regime, but he hadn’t noticed any particular improvement with Burke in charge. The fact was, Sturdley ran a tighter ship.
“So what do you want, Burke?” he finally asked.
Burke gave him an “I like a man who’s straight to the point” smile. “Just because Sturdley is back doesn’t mean I’m going to stop fighting for what’s best for the company.”
“I’m sure you’ll do a great job as Wartist Consultant,” Grantfield told him.
Burke’s face puckered. “Wartist?”
Grantfield shrugged. “Just a contraction for ‘writer/ artist.’”
“Well, if I’m going to succeed in helping the company, I’ll need your assistance.”
“Well, if it’s for the company,” Grantfield said, standing up.
“Thanks, Zeb.”
Grantfield bought a cup of coffee to go and crossed the street. All the way up in the elevator he frowned, deep in thought.
When he arrived at the Fantasy Factory’s floor, he headed straight for executive row. Burke’s bimbo was still sitting outside Sturdley’s office. She looked up in surprise.
“I’ve got to see the big guy,” Grantfield said. “Now.”
Harry stood in the middle of his office, a frown on his face. He’d made it his own again, but he wasn’t happy about some of the stuff that was missing.
If Burke thought he could glom onto that autographed Rodent art, he had another think coming. That wasn’t just a collector’s item, it was a treasured memento. He and Rip Ja-coby had signed the sketch of their creation thirty years ago, celebrating the height of a rare collaboration. The sketch was a piece of their lives, not an investment for Burke’s old age fund.
Harry glanced unhappily at his desk. And where was the file of reports from that private investigator, Quentin Farley? They weren’t in the file drawer, they weren’t under the file drawer, and they hadn’t been sent to Myra.
So who had them, and what were they doing with them?
Harry would have worried some more, but at that moment his intercom buzzed.
Maybe I’ve been hanging around the edges of comics too much, Leslie Ann Nasotrudere told herself. A store with the name Harvey’s Survival World doesn’t seem so weird.
Since finding the Farley file in Sturdley’s office, her newswoman’s antennae had been sensitized for anything giant-related. When she’d returned to work, her face healed, she’d pounced on the clipping that came across her desk.
It was from a local Rockland paper, with a headline reading “GIANT APPETITES?” The story was an interview with Harvey Bentziger, proprietor of Harvey’s Survival World, relating how he’d gotten an order for tons of freeze-dried and irradiated foodstuffs ... and been paid with a check from the Heroes’ account.
Leslie Ann had expected to find Harvey’s Survival World in a rural setting—maybe a log cabin. Instead, she found herself parking her car in front of a failed strip mall, the stores all knocked together into Harvey’s survivalist emporium.
Bentziger himself was a surprisingly pudgy man for a would-be Rambo. “Where are the cameras?” he said, looking slightly disappointed in a camouflage suit that pulled across his waist.
“This is just a preliminary interview,” Leslie Ann assured him. She was working alone on this story until it came time to hit up the network brass. Because somewhere in this giant thing, she was sure, lurked that Pulitzer Prize she lusted after.
Still, Harvey proudly gave her a tour of the place, showing off racks of shotguns, camping gear, and high-tech, low-maintenance food that would be necessary after the fall of civilization.
“What gave you the idea that the food order was going to the giants—aside from the size of it?” Leslie Ann asked.
Bentziger shrugged. “Kinda hard to miss. The check came from the Fantasy Factory—it even had a little drawing of that Robert guy on it. Look, I even took a copy of it.”
Leslie Ann frowned at the photocopy. “Can you get me another one of these?”
“Sure, I’ll zox it right up.”
Following him to a tiny, but well-stocked office, she asked, “Where did you send all the food?”
Bentziger glanced back from the copier. “Survivalist country,” he told her. “Somewhere out in Idaho—I’ll copy up the bill of lading, too.”
The distortions caused by the intrusion of the higher-order dimensions extended across the Earth-nexus, both the macro-universe... and the micro-universe ...
Once, Huang Dingbang had been a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Peking. Then had come Tienamen Square, and now Dr. Huang was a digger of holes in the Gobi Desert—holes used for underground testing of nuclear bombs.
Thus, the dirty-nailed, raggedly-dressed professor was somewhat surprised to be called before the officers running the latest test.
“Huang, you are a physicist,” the heavy-jowled general behind the desk said.
Huang nodded.
“We need a physicist.”
Huang looked at the group in white coats behind the officer. “With respect, Comrade General, you seem to have a number of them.”
“An expendable physicist, Huang.” The general looked a little hangdog. “Our bomb—it did not detonate.”
Huang nodded. “It has been known to happen sometimes, Comrade General. An incomplete fission reaction—instead of an explosion, there is merely a localized shower of radiation.”
“Our detectors have sensed no radiation, but they may have been damaged,” the general said. He looked at Huang. “Which is why we are sending a human observer—a physicist—an expendable physicist.”
Heading down the dark tunnel in a protective suit, Huang almost laughed to himself. This was the most freedom he’d been allowed in years—going to poke around in a possibly misfired atomic bomb.
The geiger counter in his hand didn’t emit a single chatter as he approached what was supposed to have been ground zero. So it wasn’t a misfire. Huang reached the housing, examined the warhead, pursed his lips in disbelief—and got out of there very quickly.
“Comrade General,” he reported, “the two pieces of plu-tonium have indeed been slammed together. Critical mass was achieved.”
The officer backed away. “And the radiation?”
Huang shrugged and pointed to his geiger counter. “None detected.”
“Then why was there no explosion?” the general burst out.
“There are some exotic theories in quantum physics that would explain, in certain instances, how fission might not—for want of a better word—fizz.” Huang frowned. “But it has never happened before. This is most anomalous.”
“What do you suggest we do with this bomb?” the general asked. His tame physicists muttered nervously among themselves.
“Comrade General, the device down there could be described as a cocked revolver with a hair trigger. If you send people down there to move or unload it, the weapon may explode.”
“Then what shall I do?” the general demanded.
“I’d leave it there,” Huang said. “Perhaps we can study it... or perhaps it will go off in its own time.”
“In its own time,” the general echoed. He turned to the head of the official physics delegation. “Is this so?”
The scientist dithered in his white lab coat. “Possibly,” he offered. “B-but we should remember, the other nine test shots went off perfectly.”
“Ninety percent effectiveness,” the general frowned and clenched his fingers. Coming to a decision, he fixed all in the room with a fierce glare. “This is a classified matter,” he declared. “If we cannot be sure of our deterrent, we want no one else having doubts about it.”
A week later, China declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.
* * *
CHAPTER 18
The tractor-trailer had an open bed, edged with wooden stakes. There was also, despite the owner’s assurances to the contrary, the faint smell of animal manure wafting from the floorboards. Robert had not plumbed the man’s mind for the truth of the matter. Some things were better not known. Besides, this had been the only available vehicle that could accommodate his size when he had diverted the 747 to the Idaho airport.
The flight was supposed to bring him directly to California, and all through his time in the air, he’d studied the script for the movie he was to participate in. But the film people were actually expecting him the following day. Robert had carefully scheduled the time for this side journey to visit what he considered his promised land. After giving the driver a map and detailed instructions, he’d arranged himself in the spartan accommodations of the open truck and set off.
They had driven through a chill upland night, the coldest Robert had encountered since coming to this world. It reminded him of wintertime back home, a season to adjust one’s aura to hold more heat against bare skin. Moving deeper into the mountains, he settled back, reveling in the magnificence of the night sky—so many of the stars were hidden by city lights, even in the giants’ haven in West-chester. At last the sun rose, painting the hills with rosy splendor. Robert gazed with pleasure across the wide, grassy lands. His agents had done well. Here he could bring all his people to escape the nuclear doom he was planning. Sheltered and supplied, they would survive, to sally forth and domesticate the technologically and numerically reduced Lessers.