by Stan Lee
Harry stared at her in silence for a moment, then finally nodded his head. “Okay,” he said. “I wasn’t there. But I have been here for weeks now, so let me bring you up to date.”
The pair sat on the couch as Harry began reporting on the situation he’d found on coming home. But the older man had barely started the recital of his actions before John began shaking his head.
“You’re only telling us what’s happening at the Fantasy Factory. What about the real problem—the giants?”
“I’ve reestablished surveillance on Heroes’ Manor—at a far enough distance so the giants can’t read the minds of the watchers,” Harry said. “No way was I going to take on Robert and company by myself. Besides, there are other considerations. The Hero books are still one of the best-selling Fantasy Factory lines—”
“We’ve got to get rid of them,” John interrupted flatly.
“I agree,” Harry said. “Now that you two are here, we can begin coming up with a plan. Something that will get rid of the giants with a maximum of safety for us, the people of this world, and, of course, the Fantasy Factory.”
“Harry—” John bit back the impatience in his voice. “I’ve only been back a few hours, but I’m getting a sensation of—wrongness—in the air.”
“Bad vibes, man?” Harry tried to joke.
“Whatever the giants are up to, it can’t be good for anyone under fifteen feet tall—and it will be a lot worse for the Fantasy Factory than the loss of a few titles.” John leaned forward, the scar snaking down his face suddenly catching a gleam of light. “We’ve got to start fighting them. Remember what happened the last time you made us fight with one hand behind our backs? You didn’t do the planet Argon any favors.”
“Look—” Harry bit off the second word he’d been about to say—kid. The face confronting him was not that of a kid. It was that of a warrior, demanding immediate action.
Harry tried again. “I admit it, John. I messed up on Argon. But that was because I had no intelligence about the enemy. We won’t make that mistake again. I want to know what Robert is up to before I start a total war. So, unless the giants start trouble, we lay low while we scope them out.”
John didn’t even have to voice his disapproval. It flooded the mental airwaves in the room, making both Harry and Peg stir uneasily.
“Now that you two are back,” Harry went on, “we can take a more overt hand in checking out the giants. I’m not saying we should do nothing. I’m just saying we should be... circumspect.”
John looked as though he were trying to swallow a large, very bitter pill. “All right,” he finally said, begrudging every word. “But I think pretty soon we’ll be taking direct action.”
“When the time is right.” Harry decided to change the subject. “You two look well. Any problems here on the home front? Do you need money? A cash advance?”
“I need a place to live,” Peg’s voice was a little unsteady. “John kept his apartment, but mine got rented out, my stuff sent back to Pennsylvania—Harry, my parents think I’m dead.”
“We’ll fix that,” Harry soothed. “You can stay here, and we’ll make a phone call to your folks pronto.”
He wondered what Myra would say to having his curvy red-headed assistant as a house guest. There was one advantage, though. “I’m keeping my armor in the office. Maybe you should keep yours here—as a security measure.” That would put some miracle Argonian technology to work protecting the house—and Myra.
“I’ll get it,” John said. He closed his eyes, and both Harry and Peg felt the tug of mental vertigo that indicated the Rift at work.
A second later, Peg’s armor swam into existence on the living room floor. It lay just as Peg must have divested herself of it, the long john-like undergarment draped over the segments of plast-alloy.
“We changed at John’s place,” Peg said, a little color rising in her face.
Harry chose not to comment on that. Instead he excused himself to tell Myra about their new tenant and to get the guest bedroom squared away.
“Guess I’ll be going,” John said. “Do I see you in the office tomorrow, or do we stay invisible?”
“Come to the office,” Harry said. “If anybody asks, you got away on a boat owned by a doctor and hid out in Mexico.”
John nodded, then stepped forward to kiss Peg good-bye. She shifted position fractionally so the kiss landed on her cheek instead of her lips. John’s face tightened, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he vanished into the Rift.
Harry looked at his erstwhile assistant until the silence became uncomfortable. Peg’s color heightened. “It was just a good-bye kiss, Harry.”
“From the looks of it, he was expecting a bit more from your end,” Sturdley said. “What happened on Argon after I left?”
Peg let out a big breath. “A lot of things.” When she didn’t elaborate, Sturdley headed for the door, only to stop when she spoke again.
“Harry. This whole crazy—whatever. Does it remind you of something?”
“Remind me of what?” he asked.
“It’s like something you would have scripted.” Peg frowned, and Harry noticed that little lines had engraved themselves between her brows.
“Not me.” Sturdley raised a disclaiming hand. “You know Sturdley’s Law: When in doubt, more hitting. But I don’t do wholesale bloodshed, Red. There’s been too much of that on this adventure.”
Peg shook her head. “I just meant it feels like we’re trapped in a comic book. Giants, for chrissake. Those cheesy science fiction worlds. As for what’s happened on them—no, it’s not your kind of story. But it is the kind of blood-and-guts storyline you’d fight about at staff meetings. The kind of story the young guys might write—the k-kids who don’t know anything but comic books—”
She broke off.
“Peg, what are you trying to say?”
She stared at him, apparently gathering courage for what she had to say next. “We know John has an incredible mind, with powers and abilities—”
“Cut it out,” Harry interjected. “That’s copyrighted, I think. But, granted, the kid can do amazing things. We just saw him warp your armor here.”
“Maybe he’s warping reality,” Peg said in a small voice. “We don’t know what he can do—I’m not even sure John knows. It’s too bad you weren’t there for the end on Argon. When we squared off against the head Deviants, I recognized them. They were comics characters, Harry. Skeletone. Megalomanik. And a half-dressed blonde who looked like Madam Vile.”
“What?” Now it was Sturdley’s turn to stare.
“The adventure didn’t just feel like a comic book anymore—we were actually fighting with super-villains. It made me wonder. Suppose they were projections of John’s subconscious? What if this whole disaster—all we’ve suffered—is coming out of John’s head? The two of us—the whole world—may be trapped in a blood-soaked daydream triggered by too many comic books.”
“You’re beginning to sound like old Doc Wertham,” Sturdley said.
“Harry, I’m serious,” Peg insisted.
“More than that, you’re scared,” he said. “I sure as hell can’t explain what’s happened to us. The giants’ world was like no comic I ever wrote—or wanted to. And if you saw Fantasy Factory villains on Argon, well, I don’t know what to say. Maybe the next world over has Dynasty Comics characters running around. Maybe we’d have met Ram-Man, Herowena, and the Straight Arrow. What we’ve gone through doesn’t seem to have rational rules. But I’m sure of one thing. John would never let anything happen to you— not even subconsciously. He may be spacy, but he’s solid that way.”
Peg looked dubious, but she didn’t say anything else. She began assembling her armor—her only luggage—as Sturdley went to tell Myra about their new living arrangements.
John Rifted his way to the roof of the Astoria apartment building he called home. He went down the stairs and knocked on the door of the Putnik apartment, to find that Mama Putnik was now home. Her r
esponse ranged around the subjects of his inconsiderateness in disappearing and how thin he’d gotten. But underneath, John’s immaterial senses noted a certain gladness that he was still alive. Probably something to do with the difficulties in Finding a new tenant, he thought.
Filled with some surprisingly spicy Balkan stew—a corollary of the “too thin” tirade—John finally retired to his room and lay on the thin confines of the surplus Army cot. He’d gotten too used to more luxurious sleeping accommodations—not to mention company in bed.
John closed his eyes, trying to ignore the prickle of thought teasing its way through his brain. What was the reason for Peg’s coldness on the train ride to Manhattan? Why had she turned away when he’d kissed her at Harry’s? Had she been embarrassed that their boss might see their new intimacy? Or was that intimacy over?
‘Wow that things are normal.“ John had been so excited to hear Peg say that when they’d first arrived back home. He’d thought it meant they had a future. But maybe it meant that what they had was in the past. They weren’t on Argon anymore. Peg now had a world full of normal men from which to choose.
John pushed the thought away, lying with his eyes closed. His attention wandered. When he sensed the harsh klick-chack! of the pistol’s action being worked, it took a moment to realize it was a mental rather than auditory stimulus.
Sitting up in the bed, John sent probes to zero in on the sound.
It came from a housetop almost a block away. Three young thugs stood on the roof. One was working the action of a newly-purchased 9 mm pistol. The others were setting beer bottles on the cornice overlooking the street, creating an impromptu shooting gallery. Each punk reveled in the weight of new pistols tucked into the waistbands of their pants. None of them seemed to care that their planned target practice would send stray shots flying through the neighborhood.
John rose from the bed and donned his armor, then Rifted out of his room, taking a position high over the rooftop. He dropped a few yards before the gizmoidal drive took hold. Maybe he could knock out the punks before they really saw him. If not, to hell with Harry’s call for circumspection. John knew what he had to do.
The guard at the jewelry store’s receiving entrance stared at his video monitor in puzzlement. The blonde standing outside the door was easy on the eyes. But she was nearly falling out of an outfit that would have looked more appropriate in a sleazy sci-fi movie than late-night on Fifth Avenue. Maybe she’d been at a costume party—
The woman’s face on the screen took on an intent expression even as her eyes went unfocused. And suddenly the guard’s will was no longer his own. Moving as if he were a puppet with tangled strings, he tottered to the inches-thick steel door and opened it.
Even as he moved, the guard’s mind was being raped for details of the store’s security system.
By the time the Argonian Deviant named Matavi stepped into the store, she already knew about the security cameras covering the entrance and the control center up on the fifth floor. As quick as thought, mental tendrils shot for the guard manning that desk. His hand was halfway to the button that would call the police as Matavi exerted control.
Trying to control two minds at once strained her talents beyond the breaking point. The nearer guard’s mind began to break free. He turned to her, features distorted with terror, his hand fumbling for the crude weapon on his hip. Putting all her power into holding the more distant guard still, Matavi plucked a dart from the bandolier she wore and flung it into the would-be attacker’s face.
Instant oblivion. The guard dropped, his eyes rolling up into his head. At the same moment, Matavi’s Deviant partner Emsisdin burst through the door, the heavy force cannon in his grip swinging to cover the collapsing security man. “He won’t even remember what happened,” Matavi said. Her voice sounded distracted. Lines of effort appeared on her perfect face. “But I perceive that everything is being recorded. I’ll have to take care of that.”
In the control center, her new mental slave began turning off cameras. Although firmly in Matavi’s mental grasp, the guard’s fingers fumbled over the controls for the recorders—fine motor control was difficult from a distance. Soon, however, all the video evidence had been erased. Then the guard slumped at his desk, his own memory expunged.
Freed of the need to focus for control, Matavi spread wide her psionic nets. “There are four other watchmen in the building.” She compared the mental picture to the map she had extracted from the guards. “None are near the vault we want.”
The two intruders rose silently on Argonian gizmoidal drives and flew through empty corridors. Soon they reached the destination Matavi had chosen—a vault door whose steel in earlier days might have been used to armor a battleship.
Neither of the guards she’d questioned knew the combination—in any event, the vault had a time lock. But no matter on Earth could resist the destructive power of the force cannon.
Emsisdin quickly blasted a human-sized hole through two feet of steel. Unfortunately, he also cut a number of circuits attached to the door. Alarms began to scream.
“Take what you can,” Matavi ordered curtly. “I’ll monitor the approach of the other guards.”
Her heightened web of psychic probes detected not only the approach of guards, but of the police. “That will have to do,” she told Emsisdin. “We don’t want them to see us.”
Emsisdin came out of the vault and followed Matavi’s path upward. The forces of law were gathering to surround the building. They wouldn’t expect ordinary jewel thieves simply to fly away.
In moments, the store and the converging guardians were hundreds of feet below them. Matavi moderated her upward motion and banked eastward, in the direction of a towering hostelry. Earlier, she had sifted the thoughts of passersby on the streets, pinpointing this “Walldoaf‘ as a desirable place to stay. A few mental commands to the staff had arranged for a luxurious suite to remain vacant, even for a window to be opened.
She flew through the open casement and landed on thick carpeting. Emsisdin followed a moment later, force cannon in one hand, a bag of loot in the other.
“Sorry about those alarms,” he apologized. “These Astawyans are so primitive, I have a hard time not underestimating them.”
“Nooyawkas,” Matavi corrected him. “In this area, they call themselves Nooyawkas.”
“Well, how do Nooyawkas turn on the lights?” Emsisdin asked, running a hand over an obvious lamp, then snapping a finger at it. “It doesn’t respond to power pulses—”
Matavi reached out with her mind. Most of the occupants of nearby rooms were asleep. She caught the tide of their unconscious dreams. Ah, several floors below there was a couple awake in bed. Very awake. Very busy. Just as well. They were so bound up in their rutting, they didn’t even notice her mental intrusion.
Withdrawing her mental probe, Matavi went to the lamp, found the switch, and then there was light. Emsisdin removed his helmet and gave Matavi a cocky grin. Treasures glittered around the lamp’s base as he dumped out the loot.
“This was just what I could get my hands on,” he told her. “I don’t think it’s even the very best. But once we get acclimated here—take on some local help ...”
His self-satisfaction was so strong she barely needed a probe to catch his thoughts. A new, improved gang, with a technological edge over this world’s barbarous security systems. A mind reader to spy out opportunities, ensure gang loyalty—and, inevitably, warm the gang leader’s bed. Emsisdin was sure it would happen. After all, he was the only Argonian on this world.
Emsisdin stretched, unclasping his armor. “Ah. Now time for rest.”
From the images flickering in his brain, his idea of “rest” matched that of the couple downstairs.
“There are several bedchambers in this suite. Choose whichever you want,” Matavi said coolly. “I’ll choose one of the others.”
For a second, Emsisdin’s cocky grin faltered. All right, not now, his thoughts whispered. He could play along. S
ooner or later ...
True to form, he chose the largest bedroom. Matavi chose the one farthest away. Before she stripped for the night, she set up psychic triplines at door and window to warn her of intruders. To make sure Emsisdin got the message, she also imprinted a psionic aversion pattern into the bedroom door.
Matavi sighed as she slipped between the crisp sheets. Emsisdin’s expectations could become a problem. “The only Argonian on this world.” Matavi had no fond memories of Argon. Even among the Deviants she had been an outsider, a mind reader, a gene-tinkered freak. There had been all too few telepaths among those consigned to the Sphere of Exile. Most of them had died rather than endure the thoughts of those around them. Matavi had survived, but she no longer thought of herself as Argonian.
In the Sphere of Exile and during her subsequent escape, she had merely been genus Survivor. Now, however, she could transfer her allegiance to a new race. Not the stunted normals of Astawya or Nooyawk. Matavi’s race was the small circle that could use mental energy.
They’d have to make sure the powers bred true.
Matavi fell asleep wondering how it would feel to breed with John Cameron ...
* * *
CHAPTER 21
Marty Burke took a sip of coffee, grimaced, and stared blearily at the television set. It used to be easy to make coffee in his house—two spoons of instant, hot water from the tap, and there you were.
That was before Leslie Ann Nasotrudere came into his life. Now there were boxes of gourmet beans in the kitchen, a grinder, a drip-filter pot—and to Burke’s palate, the coffee tasted like asphalt. Maybe it was the reheating—Leslie Ann had brewed the pot at five A.M. and flown out of his apartment soon thereafter. He’d lain in bed half-dead, his usual response after a night with the voracious Ms. Nasotrudere. Now was the 6:55 newsfeed, and Burke had learned from painful experience not to miss watching so he could comment on Leslie Ann’s big story.
She appeared on the screen in her network news blazer, looking perky and perfect, her full lower lip pressed tight in a puzzled frown.