by Stan Lee
“Sounds fascinating,” John drawled. But even as he spoke he was reorienting himself. “Nothing else to report?”
“Nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow. I’m heading to bed.”
John streaked downward till he was over the highway in the Twenties. An old gas guzzler—an Impala nearly as old as John—was careening up the road, pursued by three police cars.
What am I doing here? John wondered. I’ve spent the whole night out and fighting, and for what? When you come down to it, I stopped a few piddling crimes.
Maybe he’d saved several people from being hurt, but that was not his immediate goal. Given a free hand, John would have grabbed the Deviants and shoved them through the Rift back to Argon. Then he’d be out picking off giants and shipping them back to their homeworld, as well.
But there were Harry’s plans to consider, people to protect ... the Deviants had once almost succeeded in kidnapping Peg. And that Emsisdin guy’s indiscriminate shooting with the force cannon had shown how little he valued the safety of New Yorkers in the street.
Then, too, there was the new instability in the Rift. Could he even penetrate to the worlds where the Deviants and giants came from?
Instead, John battled street crime and chased probable drunks who’d run red lights. He fought back a wave of disgust. If this kept up, he’d be New York’s first armored dog-catcher.
Keeping pace with the speeding car, John dropped down to the point where he could hear police sirens. The Impala sideswiped a Volvo that didn’t pull out of its way quickly enough. Behind the wheel of the big car, the driver waved something. John kicked up his visor magnification. The object in the driver’s hand was a MAC-10 submachine gun.
Great, John thought, when the cops get close enough, he’ll spray them with bullets. The stakes were now an order of magnitude higher than they’d been a moment ago. Previously, John had given some thought to the question of how to stop speeding cars. He believed plast-alloy armor could survive a ninety-mile-an-hour impact. But he wasn’t sure whether the occupant would survive the concussion.
Plan B was a bit more ambitious. He swooped in over the Impala’s left fender, went lower, and grabbed for the exhaust pipe. Using his exoskeletal strength, John squeezed, hoping to close up the pipe and choke the engine to a stop.
Instead, he wound up with a handful of rusty debris.
John’s third plan was a bit more risky. He rose up, making sure he’d be seen in the rearview mirror. The driver swerved wildly, one hand on the wheel, the other trying to aim his gun, his eyes turned away from the road ahead.
The guy was speeding right up the rear of a little Ford Escort that seemed determined to maintain its forty-five-mile-an-hour right of way.
John had to make his move.
The back windshield blew out in a hail of glittering shards as the driver opened up with his gun. John shrugged off the bullet impacts, boosting his speed so he came right through the gaping hole where the glass had been. One armored arm wrapped around the driver’s neck. John grabbed the steering wheel with his left hand. He activated his exterior speakers.
“We’re going to pull off the road and stop. I’ll steer, you apply the brakes.”
John began twisting the steering wheel to the right, to the slow lane and the concrete retaining wall that overlooked the East River.
The driver neither slowed nor stopped. He kept the gas pedal to the floor as he tried to wrestle the wheel to the left. He was no match for John’s exoskeletal armor.
In panic, the guy smashed his gun butt on John’s hand, with no effect. He aimed the gun and opened fire. Bullets tore out the front windshield and ricocheted off John’s armor. One errant round bounced off and tore a path across the gunman’s cheek. Screaming, the driver planted the gun flush against John’s faceplate and fired.
The plate went black against the muzzle flare. John couldn’t see, and he’d run out of patience. He tightened the grip of his arm around the driver’s neck, and the shooting stopped.
Either the driver was unconscious or had been hit by another ricochet. John could care less. When his vision came back, the Impala was headed into a sharp turn, aiming straight for the retaining wall.
John saw only one way to avoid a crash. He let go of the sagging driver—at least the man’s foot was now off the gas—and boosted the lift on his gizmoidal drive. John’s back pressed against the roof of the car.
Well, he thought, here’s where we see just how strong they built ‘em way back when.
With a definite wobble, the Impala took off from the highway, just barely clearing the concrete wall. Its forward momentum took it yards out over the water. But without more gas being fed, the engine’s revs dropped. Fighting two tons of dead weight, John swung around in a wide curve, heading back onto the highway.
The pursuing police cars slowed down, blocking the road and opening a space for him to land. Behind them, frustrated drivers began to honk their horns. One guy was already leaning out his car window, aiming a camcorder.
John brought the Impala in for a bouncy landing, downshifted, and turned off the ignition. When the car came to a stop, he flew out through the wrecked windshield and waved to the cops. He turned to the amateur cameraman, made sure the S on his chest was visible, then flew off.
Peg Faber stared in shock when John rounded the corner of the corridor leading to Harry’s office, swinging his portfolio. The figure stumping forward to his eleven o’clock meeting was as far as possible from the John she thought she knew.
His skin was sallow, his eyes red and squinting from obvious exhaustion. Still worse was the tight, frustrated set of his lips and jaw.
She wished there was something, anything, she could say that would relax the clenched set of his muscles.
“I hear Stalwart did a real job last night,” she said. “That Impala he saved from crashing was loaded to the gills with drugs. And the driver had three murder warrants out on him.”
“Um-hm,” John responded. He barely seemed to be listening.
She lowered her voice. “Couldn’t you sleep at all?” Peg herself had suffered through a rotten night, with bizarre nightmares about being suffocated and squashed in invisible bands of force.
“Sleep?” His lips twitched in something more like a rictus than a smile.
Bad question for a guy you used to sleep with, Peg suddenly thought.
“You ever read about earthquakes?” John suddenly asked. “They say that dogs start to act strangely weeks before a tremor actually hits. That’s how I feel. Restless barely begins to cover it. I don’t sleep.”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “And the Rift is almost closed to me. There’s too much weird shit going on in there.”
Peg turned away from the torment in his face. “I—I’ll see if Harry’s ready.”
Sturdley immediately appeared in the doorway and waved them both into his office. “Close the door, please, Peg,” he said pleasantly. “How’s it going, champ?”
“Like hell,” John replied flatly. “I can’t sleep, I’ve got a headache that makes a trip through the Rift feel like a Spring day, I’m wasting my nights playing undercover superhero for you, and by day I pencil goddamn comic books featuring ‘Heroes’ that I know are villains.”
Peg watched Harry’s face go from forced joviality to outright testiness. “Look, kid. Nobody’s got a bed of roses around here. I’m having lousy nights myself—”
“Tell him about the Rift,” Peg interrupted, looking at John, who shook his head.
“What about the Rift?” Sturdley asked in alarm.
“That’s not what we’re here to talk about now.” John opened his portfolio. “Here’s the pencil work for the Amazing Robert. I’ve finally wrapped up the story arc that Burke stuck us with. The problem is, where do we go from here?”
“I’ve been thinking that maybe you, Ximenes, Grantfield, and Nagel might put your heads together, get a crossover story running through Robert, Barbara, and Thomas. How about an antigiant assas
sination plot that Robert and Barbara discover and thwart out in California, but in New York, the bad guys manage to get a shot off with an antitank rocket—”
John surged to his feet, staring at his onetime mentor. “Are you for real?” he demanded. “We’re supposed to be fighting these guys, but you want me to help concoct a whitewash for what happened on the night of the premiere?”
“It would let us portray the Deviants as the villains they are, and it would make a great introduction for the Stalwart.”
“No. No way.” John shook his head as if he were trying to get something unpleasant out of his ears. He glared at Harry. “Are sales that bad?”
“They’re leveling off after a bit of a decline,” Sturdley admitted. His face tightened. “A bit of a steep decline.”
“Then why not let me off RobertT John said. ”Put somebody else on. Someone who’ll let you rewrite history.“
Sturdley raised a placating hand. “Kid, I know how you feel about the giants. Hell, I feel the same way. But the comics—they’re something else again. I’ve got a responsibility—”
“To the company and everyone who works here,” John finished for him. “So if you’ve got someone who can’t stand working on them anymore, you should let them go.”
“Actually, I agree.”
Both John and Peg gawked at Sturdley in surprise. Peg knew John had been trying to get off Robert since his return from Argon. What had suddenly changed Harry’s mind?
“Let’s face it, all the Heroes titles will probably become losers. They’re not selling the way they did even with big guns working on them. So, logically, I should let them go, move in second-line talent, and allow the books to wither—”
“Like what happens with Glamazon every time we give the character her own book,” Peg couldn’t help saying.
Sturdley shot her a dirty look, but returned to his discourse. “I mean, that’s the best thing to do for the company. The books die out—”
“And we finally move against the giants,” John said.
Sturdley nodded. “Of course, we still have our obligations. We want the company to be healthy. That means we’ve got to develop new ideas, and have I got a development job for you: Stalwart!” He gave John a big smile. “Is this a natural, or what? All the reference you need is in the mirror. We’ll go with the real-life adventures angle, and this time we’ll get it right! The whole story can be told from Stalwart’s point of view—and we already have the beginnings of great stories! That bit you did with the car last night will make for spectacular art. And we have to include your run-in with the Deviants. The collapse of the corner of that building—that will look good, too. It will also help establish them as the series villains—”
John stared at Sturdley as if he’d never seen him before. “You’re serious,” he said slowly. ‘The whole blasted world is in trouble. We’ve got a hostile force of twenty-foot-tall aliens who hate people our size in general and us in particular. They’re ruthless and up to something about which we haven’t got a clue except that it’s almost killed one of them and certainly won’t be good for us. To top it off, we’ve got a new set of aliens—those damned Deviants—who’ve made a career out of trying to wreck the planet Argon. Lord knows what they’re trying to do here—except, again, I don’t think it will be good.“
The longer John spoke the louder his voice became. “There’s a food shortage developing in the city because the truckers who are supposed to supply the stores aren’t moving. They claim their big rigs are blowing up for no reason whatsoever. And on every streetcorner, people are passing along the latest rumor about some unlucky bastard who had some modern convenience turn on him. People aren’t riding the trains, and when they buy something, they ask nervously, ‘Is it electric?’ New York City, America ... everywhere is going to hell in a handbasket.”
He stabbed a forefinger at Sturdley. “And what’s your big concern? Launching another goddamned comic book!”
“That’s the business we happen to be in, kid.” Harry’s voice was loud, hot, and angry, too. “And it’s been damned good to you. I’ll thank you to keep a more civil tone. You weren’t pulling this holier-than-thou crap when I gave you your first break. Remember, I made you—”
“But now you just make me sick!” John broke in. He dumped his portfolio on Sturdley’s desk. “Use anything you want in there, but I don’t want to hear from you again. I quit!”
He left and slammed the door. In the silence that followed, Peg took a step after John, but stopped at an abrupt hand motion from Sturdley. He sat at his desk in white-faced fury for another speechless moment. Then he broke out in a barrage of cursing and swearing. Peg watched, fascinated by his inventiveness in stringing together the same old Anglo-Saxon terms into whole new forms of opprobrium.
At last Harry remembered she was in the room and subsided, turning from pale to bright red. “Sorry about that, Peg,” he apologized. “I don’t usually—”
“I know,” she said. “Even Marty Burke never generated an outburst like that.”
“I never trusted Burke,” Harry growled. “But the kid— talk about ingratitude! He’d be nobody if I hadn’t—”
“If you hadn’t been pushed by me into giving him the chance you promised him.” Peg matched glares with her boss. “You might be brilliant at writing comics, but you’ve got a bad habit of trying to rewrite reality.”
“What is this, dump on the boss day?”
“You’re going to listen, because I’m not going to quit on you, and I don’t think you’re going to fire your first assistant to last more than six months.”
“Does that include our luxurious vacation on the giants-world and Argon?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, it doesn’t,” Peg replied. “But I think our time there is the problem with all of us.”
Now Harry was the one staring as she went on. “We’ve gone through some pretty bizarre adventures—being hunted, fighting to pry John loose from that computer-run hell, getting dumped into the middle of a high-tech civil war. I know the one thing that kept me going was the thought that if I held on, I’d manage to get back to a normal life. Now we’re home, and the problem is, nothing is normal. We’ve got giants, we’ve got Deviants, and you must be hearing the same weird rumors I have.”
She took a deep breath. “But we both try to act as if everything is normal. You’re back running the company ... and I—I sit on my thumbs wondering if this is all John’s fault.”
Peg brought her chin up. “So what are we going to do about it?”
Sturdley sat in mute concentration for long minutes. Finally, he spoke. “I think maybe we should try the jobs we proved ourselves best at. I’ll go back to Intelligence—not just spying on Colby, but trying to find out what all the bad guys are up to.” He looked at Peg. “And maybe you should start suiting up and going out with John when he’s on patrol.”
Her jaw dropped. “Jeeze, Harry, where did you get that? Out of the Superheroes’ Manual? Or is it an old Ex-Wives plot? We’re in too deep to try something just because it worked in the comics.”
Sturdley shook his head. “I wish I had a plot that fit this situation, but I don’t.” He sighed. “We’ll have to wing it, Red. That’s one reason why I want you keeping an eye on our boy John.”
His face was grim as he looked at her. “We’ve just lost control of him at work. I think it might be a good idea to have someone riding herd on him when he puts on that damnfool superarmor.”
Peg gave him a suspicious look. “This isn’t some cheap ploy to create a new superteam? The Stalwarts?”
“Now that’s an idea,” Harry began enthusiastically. Then he shook his head, hard. “Sorry. Old habits. Look, I know you’re not wild about dressing up and playing superhero. But that won’t be your real job. You’ll be out there for damage control in advance.”
An image of John, bitter, angry, and backed with all the might of Argonian technology, flashed through Peg’s mind. “Damage control,” she assented, �
��for a loose atomic cannon.”
* * *
CHAPTER 32
More and more, accidental interactions occurred between the four-dimensional nexus called Earth and the universes swirling through the Rift. Sometimes a brush with the alien physics embodied in the higher-order cosmic fragments caused minor annoyance. Other times, even the merest connection meant catastrophe.
“All right,” Leslie Ann Nasotrudere said through clenched teeth. “Sound check—again.”
She spoke into her microphone, glaring at her cameraman. If this were an actual take, it would be disastrous for her career. Network newswomen were not supposed to look like bitches on wheels.
But this was just another test run, the latest in an apparently endless cycle as either the microphone, the camera, or both would act up.
“Well?” she directed a frigid glance toward the technical part of her team. “Did it work this time?”
“Your voice isn’t tracking on the tape,” the young video technician said in bafflement.
“Maybe you should put a fresh tape in,” Leslie Ann suggested.
“I’ve tried three new tapes already,” the technician replied. “It shouldn’t—”
“We’re out in the middle of East Armpit, our Suffolk County office is miles away, and you stick us with bum equipment. Why the hell didn’t you check it out before we left Manhattan?”
“I did check it,” the technician said in injured tones. “The equipment tested out fine.”
“So we have fine equipment, okay videotape, and no damned audio,” Leslie Ann’s voice was scathing. “What do you think the problem is? Were the laws of magnetism repealed to discriminate against my voice?”
The cameraman shrugged. “Or maybe we got a touch of whatever happened in there.”