by Stan Lee
As John plummeted downward, he set his priorities. First, the auctioneer. Then the weapons. The bidders were a distant third. Without guns, they would be basically harmless. And even if the auctioneer had a loaded sample, it would be useless against Argonian armor.
Appearing over the car, he cued his exterior speakers to the word that was sure to scatter the buyers. “Freeze!”
The auctioneer swung a sawed-off shotgun from under the oversized raincoat he wore. But he used his weapon to cover his stock, not John. Instead, the man yelled, “Yo, Wally!”
From the back seat of the Caddy popped a short figure— Wally was little more than a kid. But he was toting a Stinger hand-held antiaircraft missile. Reluctantly, John brought his hands down in the tridigirector. But Wally was already triggering the rocket.
Unfortunately, the auction’s protection system was electronic. John felt a ripple run through reality—a sensation of otherness attacking his Rift-heightened senses.
The missile blew up on the ground, killing Wally instantly. The explosion ignited the car’s gas tank, destroying the guns in the trunk, the auctioneer, and several slow-moving bidders. John boosted gizmo, soaring off ahead of the expanding blast wave.
It never happened this way in the comics.
The image on Marty Burke’s television shifted, again, and again, and again as he tapped on the remote. Tap—a dumb sitcom. Tap—cop show. Tap—dumber sitcom. Tap—some T&A show about models.
He left that on, always happy to get some new figure reference. Too bad he was in the midst of working on a male giant. Burke felt a little groggy, having spent the whole day at the drawing board. He carefully began touching up his rendering of the giant.
The phone rang four times before he put down his pencil and answered. “Burke here.”
“Mr. Burke, this is Kimberly Knudsen at INC?” Kim-berly had an odd lilt to her voice that turned every sentence into a question. “I’m trying to get hold of Leslie Ann Na-sotrudere? She’s not answering her pager, and she left your number as a backup?”
Burke blinked his eyes and glanced around his studio as if to find Leslie Ann hiding. Then he shook his head. “Wait a minute. Leslie Ann is working for you guys tonight. She told me this morning.”
“Um, sir, I don’t think so?” Kimberly lilted in reply. “She worked very late last night, so she’d have gotten tonight off?”
“Well, Leslie Ann isn’t here. You want to leave a message in case she calls in?”
“Just that we’re looking for her?” Kimberly said.
“That’s Kimberly Knudsen?” Jeeze, Burke thought, she’s got me talking in questions now.
“That’s right. Thank you!” Kimberly almost cooed as she broke the connection.
Burke glanced over at the television. The models were gone, replaced by a car ad. He picked up the remote, preparing to go surfing again, then abruptly turned off the TV.
Tossing the remote aside with a frown, Burke bent over his drawing board.
* * *
CHAPTER 34
Peg Faber was stifling a yawn as Sturdley came down the hallway to his office. “A matched set,” he said, putting his hand over his own mouth. “I don’t think I got a wink last night—and I saw the light coming from under your door about five A.M.”
“I gave up pretending to sleep.” Peg set her jaw against another yawn. “And pretended to read, instead.”
“Maybe a little exercise,” Harry said, scanning the hallway for possible listeners. “I understand John Cameron goes for midnight runs.”
Peg gave her boss a dirty look. Harry was trying another shot at getting her out on patrol and after John. “Right,” she snorted. “I should have jumped up in my PJs, and come down for—”
She caught a flicker of movement at Bob Gunnar’s office door.
“For, uh, special equipment,” Peg finished as the chief editor stepped into the corridor.
“Harry, Peg,” Bob greeted them. They both yawned in reply. “I’ll leave you insomniacs in peace,” Gunnar said. “I’m seeing a print broker with Yvette Zelcerre.”
“Must be the excitement of the case,” Sturdley said sheepishly as his number-two man marched off to the elevators.
“Case?” Peg repeated.
“We go to court today!” Sturdley burst out, dumbfounded. “Where do you think I was this morning? Down at Mohe, Lorenz, & Kirley, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. I’ll be at the courthouse this afternoon. Don’t you look at my desk diary?”
“Harry,” Peg replied, “I look at your diary every day. You haven’t written anything on it in the past week.”
“Busy,” Sturdley harrumphed.
“The wheels have certainly been spinning, but have we been getting anywhere?” Peg looked hard at her boss. “Those appliance accidents have gotten people crazy. They’ve just about turned that Moncke guy who died into a martyr, and antitechnology groups around the country are calling themselves Monckeys now. Cities all over have had Monckey demonstrations turn into food riots. There was one over in New Jersey last night.”
She took a deep breath. “And what are we doing? I’m charting the number of appliance accidents being reported, and you’re starting a new comic and suing Dynasty over stealing some characters.”
Sturdley’s face tightened to a collection of planes and angles. “I suspect this must be leading somewhere.”
“I just get this weird feeling that something very wrong is about to happen, and I’m wondering if we’re paying attention to the right things. What if John was right—”
“Oh, sure you’d think Mr. Studmuffm is right,” Sturdley snarled. “Too bad he quit when we needed him to help take care of business.”
Peg felt as if she’d just taken a punch to the stomach. It took her an instant to get her breath. And when she finally did, she was in no mood to be conciliatory. “Sure, Harry. Gotta build up that business. That’ll be a great help when giants come smashing our way, or Deviants come with blasters, or a starving mob starts to burn the place down.”
Silently, Sturdley stepped round her desk and into his office. A few minutes later, he came out. “I’m on my way to court,” he said, making no reference to her outburst. “It may take a little longer than usual to get downtown.” He disappeared down the hall.
Muttering words that would never find their way into any Fantasy Factory-publications, Peg shifted piles of paper from one side of her desk to the other. Then the phone rang. Peg picked it up. “Harry Sturdley’s office.”
“That you, Peg?” She recognized Lew Irvine’s voice on the other end of the line. “I thought I’d give Harry a buzz and suggest he get an early start. Cabs are a little thin on the ground today.”
They certainly were, she thought. A lot of cabbies had quit en masse when several of the yellow vehicles had exploded for reasons unknown. Then, too, several Monckey mobs had overturned cabs farther uptown.
“He’s already on his way,” she said.
“Oh. Good.” Lew’s voice took on a more seductive note. “You know, I’ve been thinking it might be a good idea for us to get together on this case. Maybe dinner and whatever sometime this week? I think I could benefit from your input.”
It was the same confident tone he’d used in their college days, the senior talking to the naive freshman girl. Yes, a cynical voice mocked inside Peg’s head, he always enjoyed inputting with me.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“What?” Lew’s voice didn’t sound confident now—he seemed in shock.
“I don’t want to wind up as a research expense on Mohe, Lorenz, & Kirley’s bill,” Peg said coolly.
“I, ah, was thinking of something a bit more informal.” Lew stumbled over the words.
“And on the personal side, I’m not in the mood for any ... ‘inputting,’ however you want to call it.”
“Hey, it’s just—well, we had such a nice time the last time we got together—lunch—I thought.... You’re not going out with somebody, are you?”
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Once upon a time, she might have been amused at the spectacle of Lew Irvine, master of the spoken word, reduced to babbling drivel. But his words did strike home. Peg’s eyes widened. Why was she acting this way? Was she still hanging on to what she’d had with John? But even over the phone, Lew’s come-on suddenly seemed just too damned transparent.
“I think we both have work to do,” she said crisply, “and I don’t want that messed up by some old-time’s-sake grabass.”
Peg heard a long breath being taken over the phone. “Yes,” Lew finally said. “I see.”
What a rotten thing to do to him, she thought, right before he has to go to court. “Good-bye, Lew,” she said.
The phone went dead in her ear. Peg gave the handset a sour smile as she put it down. She’d have bet her next month’s pay that from here on, all calls to Harry would come by way of a Mohe, Lorenz, & Kirley secretary.
She shifted a few more papers, then smacked one pile with her outstretched palm. She had nothing to do here. Almost without conscious thought, she stepped into Harry’s office, locking the door behind her. Peg stepped up to the closet behind Harry’s desk, the one with the shining new keypad on it. She input the combination, and the door opened. Two sets of Argonian armor gleamed in the office’s indirect lighting. One was Harry’s. The smaller one was Peg’s, smuggled in piece by piece.
Peg began slipping out of her clothes. Whatever this restlessness was, she felt there was only one way to stop it.
She pulled on the long john-like undergarment, then started donning the rest of her armor.
Sturdley arrived at the courthouse in a bad mood. He’d had a struggle getting a cab, only to end up with a driver who spoke absolutely no English. Perhaps that’s why the guy was still driving amid all the antitech hysteria.
And the gremlins that seemed to be infecting all machinery were still hard at work. As they headed down the East Side drive, the taxi meter had made a belching sound and dropped four dollars from the fare. But then, just before they pulled up at the courthouse, the box had made a ruder noise and added twelve bucks to the total.
The cabbie had silently pointed at the unwinking red numbers, and Sturdley had paid.
He’d rendezvoused with a rather subdued-looking Lew Irvine and several partners from Mohe, Lorenz, & Kirley and they set off for the courtroom.
Sturdley had expected something large and imposing in dark wood with lots of room for a jury box and seats for interested parties. Instead, the courtroom was small, brightly lit, and starkly modern. The judge’s bench was little more than a modestly raised desk, and a video camera took the place of a court stenographer. Microphones sprouted from the judge’s bench and from the pair of tables facing it.
Sturdley and the team from Mohe, Lorenz, & Kirley took the right-hand table. One of the partners glanced over at the people seating themselves behind the other and nodded. “Fein & Dante have brought in some big guns. Mr. Colby will be paying heavily.”
Sturdley was disappointed in the judge. He’d never have sat behind a bench in a Fantasy Factory comic. The guy didn’t look judicial at all, a middle-aged nonentity with a fringe of gray hair. One of Rip Jacoby’s background characters would have had more presence.
Lew Irvine rose and began making lawyer-noises about precedents, citing National Periodicals Vs. Victor Fox and the Captain Marvel litigation. “A straightforward case of copyright infringement,” one of the partners whispered to Sturdley.
Blowups of various artists’ treatments both of Madam Vile and M-16 were supplied. The villainess had joined the Fantasy Factory’s universe in the early Seventies, in the initial burst of public interest in psychoactive drugs. M-16 had been a creation of the big-gun boom of the early Nineties. Copies of various comics were entered, proving the characters’ appearances in print years before the coming of the Deviants.
A smooth-looking character rose from the other table and told the judge that there was no basis for a copyright, that far from creating new characters, Dynasty Comics was merely recording the activities of real people.
From the looks on his lawyers’ faces, Sturdley got the notion that Fein & Dante was earning its pay. The smooth character beckoned, and a team of technicians wheeled in a high-tech version of the old high school AV cart. This gleaming implement bore a large-screen TV with connected VCR. After being arranged for maximal view and plugged in, Colby’s lawyer operated a remote.
The screen filled with the image of a pair of flying figures—Matavi and Emsisdin. Colby’s lawyer quickly pointed out that neither Fantasy Factory character flew. He was about to point out the few minor differences in costume—Matavi was a bit more covered up than the latest incarnation of Madam Vile—when the picture suddenly froze. The pair of Deviants turned bright green, then brown, then black, and then the screen dissolved in snowy static. The pungent smell of burning videotape filled the room. Smoke began to pour from the VCR.
At the defendant’s table, a sweating lawyer hit various buttons on the remote. “Your Honor, I don’t understand what happened here. We tested this equipment not half an hour ago in our offices—”
Finally, he whisked a finger in a cutting motion across his throat. One of the technicians pulled the plug. As the wire left the wall, a large blue spark leapt from the plug to the socket. The technician jumped back, and the smell of ozone replaced that of burning tape.
“Counselor, do you with to SQUAAAAAAAAAWRK! WHEEEEK! SQUEEEEEAL! RIZZZZDIZZZZDIZZZZ POOOOOOOM!” The judge’s amplified voice disappeared in a cacophony of electrical noise and feedback. He tapped his microphone, creating a sound effect reminiscent of the Crack of Doom. Sturdley noticed that the electric clock on the wall overhead was now running backward.
The amplification abruptly cut off, and the judge’s normal voice, weak even for the small room, began to launch into an apology. He was cut off, however, by the shower of sparks from the recording video camera.
Fein & Dante’s technicians managed to get that mechanical difficulty under control, one of the men yanking off his jacket to wrap around the camera.
There was a brief recess as a court attendant brought in a new camera, then a longer one as that machine promptly blew up on being plugged in.
In the end, a hard-faced older woman with a stenographer’s pad sat in a borrowed chair, scribbling away as the proceedings began again.
“Your Honor, in addition to our abortive action presentation, we also have photographic representations of the protagonists of Deviant Comics.” Sturdley had to admit that the man from Fein & Dante had managed to retain his smoothness despite the technical problems besetting his initial address. “For purposes of illustrating our case, we suggest a simple comparison between these photos and plaintiff’s drawings.”
Sturdley burned at hearing his evidence made to sound like something childish.
The lawyer went on. “First, allow me to point—”
“Hold it,” the hard-faced stenographer intervened.
Some of the smoothness left the lawyer’s delivery. “Pardon?”
“You’re going too fast,” the woman said. “I’m only up to ‘comparison,’ and you’re already pointing things out.”
“Your Honor—” The man from Fein & Dante turned to the judge.
“While I regret the various exigencies, we face a full calendar, and must try to conduct this case as best we can—with whatever recording process available. Therefore—“
Throughout the judge’s speech, the lights in the courtroom began to fade. With no windows, the place quickly became pitch-dark. Whatever the judge had to say was lost in a buzz of rattled voices until the sharp crack of the gavel rang out.
“Court’s adjourned until tomorrow morning,” the judge barked. “Now somebody find the damned door.”
John Cameron blinked, wondering how sand could have gotten into his eyes when he’d spent the past twenty-two hours sealed inside his Argonian armor. Of course, he thought, that might have something to do with the grainy state of his eyes
.
Never would he complain about the boring nature of New York City street crime. The action of the last few days had shown him there were far worse alternatives. Monckeys, the adherents of the growing antitechnology movement, had established control over huge tracts of the cityscape below. In the evening, their enclaves were easy to spot—they were the areas devoid of lights except for the large bonfires.
The areas without lights and bonfires were probably suffering from one of the periodic blackouts that mysteriously afflicted every developed country on Earth. The darkness had nothing to do with power availability. Whole districts just went out, with no rhyme, reason, or detectable sequence. Sometimes the blackouts encompassed a single house, a couple of blocks, or square miles. The outages were bound neither by local boundaries nor by power grids. The lights and everything else electrical simply went out.
John suddenly spotted flames rising in an area he’d noted as being blacked-out. When he flew down to investigate, he found a group of torch-wielding hardies robbing a supermarket. These characters weren’t after the store’s money, although that was probably easily available in the electronically locked safe. No, this was a new sign of the times. The thieves emerged carrying food.
For those living in big cities, the first sign of unraveling technology came when they were put on an impromptu diet by the failure of food deliveries. Exploding trains and big rigs meant no foodstuffs were getting into town. Some enterprising New Jerseyans had made a good buck (and a nice picture for the declining TV audience) by organizing a horseback cattle drive across the George Washington Bridge. But for the most part, Manhattan was short of vittles.
Things were even worse on Staten Island, because food shipments destined for that borough were hijacked in Newark and Manhattan.