Odyssey

by Stan Lee

  Manville began to sweat. “They’re taking this to the wire.”

  The countdown droned on. Manville began typing. “What are you doing?” Dalking suddenly demanded. “I’m asking for confirmation. Something’s wrong here. We should have stopped.”

  “Make sure your ID is on that. I’m not taking the blame for that sort of pussy stunt.”

  Manville stopped, then started typing again. “You checked the authorizations. Are you sure they were all right?”

  Dalking’s hand slammed down on his console. “Soldier—shut up and soldier.”

  “B-but those coordinates. Those are capitals of some of our allies.” Manville turned a sweat-streaked face toward his superior. “We can’t be launching a first strike!”

  “We’ve suffered two strikes already,” Dalking said grimly. “They blew up the Stock Exchange and attacked our lawmakers on the floor of the Senate. Looks like we don’t know who’s responsible, so we’ve decided to smear ‘em all.”

  Manville fumbled for his sidearm. “You can’t—” Dalking was already drawing his gun. “This is mutiny.” The younger man was a hair faster. Manville’s gun blasted, smearing the major’s brains across the main display. The lieutenant clawed the dead man out of his way, reaching for the abort button, but he was too late.

  The whole control room shook to the power of ten ICBMs launching.

  Manville’s face was streaked with tears as well as sweat. He reversed his service pistol and placed it in his mouth ...

  Sturdley pushed his Argonian systems to the limit flying to Washington, using so much gizmo that the armor began to shudder alarmingly. Framistat warnings blinked inside his helmet display until he had to throttle back.

  He had feared there might be some sort of broadcast power fluctuation so far from the Hoozits, but his gauges read constant as he passed the outskirts of the capital. Whatever was going wrong with Earth technology just made Argonian products work to greater and greater tolerances.

  Half an hour after leaving his office, Harry streaked down Pennsylvania Avenue, aiming for the White House. Peg was on the air with him, having passed along the few tidbits of information she’d been able to rescue from the ruins of Andrew’s mind.

  “Apparently it has something to do with binding—that’s what they call taking over someone’s mind,” she said. “What happened to Andrew—that was sort of an extreme example.”

  “So Robert’s been brainwashing people down here. The prez will be really upset to hear that,” Sturdley said. “They were shown palling around on several—”

  “Oh, my god!” Peg breathed.

  Harry didn’t want to think about it. “Here I go,” he said. “Let’s hope they don’t think I’m trying to pull a kamikaze act.”

  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Secret Service thought. Machine-gun fire opened up from several spots on the White House grounds, tracers arcing their way into the sky. Harry didn’t mind the bullets. But he did get a little annoyed at the SAMs they launched.

  He dodged one missile, aiming a tridigirector upward to explode it harmlessly in midair. The other he didn’t have to worry about. The damned thing blew up at roof level, causing a few hundred thousand dollars worth of structural alterations to the home of the presidents.

  Throughout this whole episode, Sturdley tried to establish radio contact with the defenders on the ground. The only answer to his desperate appeals was an increase in small-arms fire.

  He detected somebody about to fire a Stinger, and in disgust blasted the thing while it was still on the ground.

  “Obviously,” Sturdley said, “I’m having trouble with the lower-level functionaries. I’ll have to jump over their heads and talk to the big guy myself.”

  He extended immaterial probes into the building, searching for the President. No one in the Lincoln Room. The TV room no longer had a roof, thanks to that SAM. Bathrooms unoccupied. So was the Oval Office.

  Finally, in a secure underground bunker, he detected signs of life—a very frightened junior agent, and with him was the President.

  Harry took a peek through the agent’s eyes. Depending on the party, the Chief Executive had a sly, shifty mug, or a very expressive face. But the face Sturdley saw now seemed pensive, with a faraway look in the eyes that reminded Sturdley of the emptiness he’d seen in Andrew.

  A red telephone sat on the desk in front of the President, its clamor cutting through the tiny bunker. The President never answered the Hot Line, however. He continued to stare, seemingly unaware of it.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 37

  To put it mildly, John Cameron had not had an easy day. After nearly twenty-four hours in armor and on patrol, he’d bumped into Matavi, been caught in a psychic trap, and nearly become the unwilling father of a new race. His response after being rescued had been to thank Peg rather inanely for saving him. Then he’d flown home and collapsed.

  John was in a deep, dreamless sleep when a brusque hand seized him by the shoulder and tipped him out of his cot. He hit the floor hard and scrambled up, hands and mind ready for a fight, especially when he saw an armored figure looming over him.

  But when his first probes brushed a mental shield, he rec? ognized Peg. “What’s the big idea?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  “The war with the giants has gone from cold to hot.” Her voice was almost too calm as she spoke through her suit’s speakers. “Robert sent someone to kill Harry.”

  John shrugged. “He sent people to kill me, too.”

  “But this time he sent a giant. Harry laid him out, and wants me to sort through his mind. Whatever he found on a once-over-lightly has him going to Washington.” She reached down and pulled John upright. “I thought you’d want a look inside this head, too.”

  John rose, running his fingers through his hair and rubbing his face. There was a dent in his right cheek that almost matched the scar on his left. Only the dent, put there by a crease in his bedsheets, would go away. He went to the closet where the one-piece undersuit for his armor hung. John wasn’t playing the modesty game. Whatever Peg was seeing, she had seen and enjoyed before.

  His nose wrinkled as he pulled the undersuit on. It was getting a bit gamy, but there was no time to put it in the wash. Peg was tapping her fingers impatiently against her armored thigh.

  John methodically donned his armor the quickest possible way, then turned to the window Peg had used as an entrance. Once it had been solidly shut with generations of dried paint. But when he’d made his home his crime fighting base, John had sprung for fresh glass and an entirely new frame—a frame that opened and closed soundlessly. But when he headed for the opening, Peg raised a hand. “We’ve got to get there fast,” she said. “Let’s go by Rift.”

  “That’s not the best—” he began, but he could feel her determination. Sighing, he reached out, took her armored gauntlet in his, and began the vertiginous transition into the Rift.

  John had always wondered what it would feel like to be in the tornado scene from The Wizard of Oz. Their appearance in the Rift was like living it. Currents in the one-time void tried to tug John and Peg apart with cyclonic force. They whirled helplessly for a moment until he pulled them into an eddy where they merely shook a bit. All around them, flotsam of alien realities swirled resistlessly, constructs built according to dimensional laws that did not apply on the world they knew. The alienness was palpable. Even the outward boundaries of these bubbles were governed by a geometry that human intellects couldn’t grasp. Eyes used to dealing in three dimensions merely found it painful to behold.

  “What the hell—” Peg began.

  “Pretty much,” John grunted in agreement. He’d gotten his bearings now, and found a current that would take them in the direction they wanted. It was still a rough ride, especially when John had to drop them out of the Rift before they were flung into a vastly deformed island universe.

  They exited the Rift four blocks from the Fantasy Factory and a half-mile up in the air. John immedia
tely activated his gizmoidal drive to hold them in place until Peg boosted her suit, too. “Sorry about that,” he said, “but I didn’t know what going through that bubble would do to us.”

  “Close enough,” Peg said, starting in the direction of the office building. It appeared the authorities had made some sort of response to the reports of an unconscious giant. Several police cars and an EMS ambulance were parked down in the street. A handful of cops and technicians who barely came to Andrew’s knee clustered around the giant, looking palpably baffled.

  “They’re not going to move him anytime soon,” she said in relief.

  “Not until he either wakes up or they get a couple of cranes in place,” John agreed. He stared at the odd, contorted position Andrew had gotten himself into. One foot rested on the ground, the other had kicked in a groundfloor window and was resting in the sill for leverage. Andrew’s right hand was in one of the windows of Harry’s corner office. The giant’s left arm, his shoulder, and most of his head were poked into the other window, frozen in the act of reaching into a constrained space.

  They landed atop the building next door, scanning the giant’s mind—what there was of it—from a distance while the city workers commenced a desultory search of the Fantasy Factory offices. As if in confirmation that the giant would be there a long time, some homeless people began setting up camp at Andrew’s feet, using his dangling leg as a windbreak.

  John was sickened as he saw the amount of damage that had been done to Andrew’s mind. The personality was completely snuffed out, but the record of what had happened, step by step, was still recorded in dormant brain cells.

  Peg, he knew, had hit on the scheme of using mind control when she had been stranded on the world of the giants, essentially binding a man who’d attacked her and turning him into her servant. But the method she had utilized was far different from the hack-and-slash method Robert had used. She sounded close to throwing up as she said, “We’re supposed to look for memories of Robert—anything about his plans.”

  They dug for a while long-distance, but when the police left Harry’s office, the armor-clad pair unobtrusively flew over to the roof of the Fantasy Factory’s offices and entered the building for some closer work. Peg led the way down the darkened hall, stepping past her desk and into the open doorway of Harry’s office. Using the infrared filters on their helmet visors, they could see Andrew clearly enough. He seemed unconscious and jammed in place. The emergency crews had done some first aid—John noticed bandages and some sort of ointment spread on burnt flesh.

  Peg headed straight for the giant, detaching a gauntlet and opening her helmet. “Ugh!” she muttered as Andrew’s stertorous breathing wafted toward her. Averting her face, she nonetheless went straight to Andrew and got a hand on his cheek.

  John, come in and help me, she sent.

  John carefully kept his consciousness separate from hers as they sifted through memories. Most of the recollections of the Andrew-personality offered only hints—Robert’s assurance that something would be done about the Lessers on this world, the fact that his visits to Washington would further his plans. The childlike memories of the caretaker-construct, indefinite and uncolored by emotion, gave the real story. They found the discussion by the fireside, and another combination pep rally and threat where Robert went into some detail on his plans while offering Andrew as an example of what would happen to those who didn’t follow orders.

  Peg finally stumbled back, her face pale. “Lord help us all,” she whispered. Grabbing John’s arm, she steered him away from the giant and down the hall to his own office—rather, he corrected himself, the office he’d used when he still worked for Harry Sturdley.

  Putting her helmet back on, Peg got on the radio to relay the information they’d gotten. They heard Harry reach the White House. Before Peg could warn that the President might be bound as well, Harry came under fire.

  “Looks like the Prez is out of it,” Harry finally reported. “I’ll have to go in and see if there’s anything 1 can do. If there is, I’ll let you know.”

  The radio connection cut off.

  Peg tore her helmet off and confronted John. “Get out of that damned thing,” she demanded. “I want to see your face.”

  He undid the connectors for his helmet and removed it. Peg looked at him long and hard. “Maybe I’m not the one who should ask,” she said. “But because of what we once had—can’t you stop it?” She almost seemed to be pleading with him.

  “Stop what?” he said. “Robert’s plan? We don’t even know enough about it—”

  “Not that,” she said. “Or maybe I should say, not just that.”

  John stared at her. “I know you’ve been blaming me for a lot of stuff since we got home, but this I have nothing to do with.”

  “Are you sure?” Peg pressed. “The Fantasy Factory, our lives, the whole world—they’ve all gone topsy-turvy. What’s the connection?”

  “Me—or rather, the Rift,” John amended.

  “We’ve gone on a hell of a ride and accepted a lot of things at face value. At least I did, until I saw the leaders of the Deviants on Argon. You remember them?” Peg prompted.

  “Skeletone, Megalomanik, Emsisdin, and Matavi,” John said. “It looked like a Fantasy Factory rogues’ gallery.”

  “Like something made up,” Peg pressed. “Images in someone’s mind come to life.” Her face was tight, and her gray eyes were bigger than ever. “How could that happen, though? Whose brain would it come from? I’d like to think that any villains I’d think of would be a bit more ... classical.”

  A brief smile tugged at her lips, then she grew serious again. “Harry might think in terms of supervillains, but he wasn’t on Argon anymore.”

  John began to follow her drift. “That leaves me. You think I created those guys?” His face looked very young for a second. “No, it’s more than that. You believe everything is my fault. Mike, all the people who died on Argon and in this mess here on Earth, your kidnapping, your folks thinking you were dead—” His voice cut off as bile rose in the back of his throat.

  She seized his hands. “I don’t know, and it’s been driving me crazy! What if you don’t know, either? Obviously, you’ve got—powers. And you told me right at the beginning that you’re not sure how you do a lot of the things you do. Maybe using your powers causes shifts in reality—a side effect. It’s not a conscious decision, but things in your head leak out—”

  She fumbled for a concept, trying to explain, then shrugged. “You ever see the movie Forbidden Planet?”

  “Sure. Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielson before he started playing comedy. It was supposed to be based on Shakespeare, wasn’t it?”

  “Right, but I was thinking more about Walter Pidgeon. He hooked himself up to an alien machine that could do anything he wished—”

  “But his subconscious used that power to kill people,” John finished. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”

  Peg looked at him, fear and pleading in her eyes. “I think that power brings responsibility—and danger.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

  “I can’t believe what’s happening to all of us,” Peg said. “That giant sonofabitch is trying to kill everyone!”

  “But it’s not because of me,” John protested, but his voice sounded weak even to himself. “I don’t want this to happen. I sure as hell didn’t want these weird powers. I don’t even know where they come from.”

  He was all but begging her for assurance, and from the look on Peg’s face, she couldn’t give him any.

  “It seems there’s a lot you don’t know about yourself,” she said. “You told me your first memory is standing naked on a road in West Virginia a couple of years ago. So 1 put Quentin Farley to work checking for missing persons in the states nearby for that time period.”

  “And?” he asked, his voice tight.

  “He couldn’t find a match,” she replied. “It’s as though you came into ex
istence right then and there—or invented yourself.”

  “Peg, I swear to you—”

  “Words are cheap.” She rubbed her eyes and her fingers came away wet. But her voice was brusque, even cold, as she said, “We need actions now.”

  Sturdley’s voice came out of the speakers in her helmet. “I’m with the President and snapped him out of whatever spell he was under. But it’s too late. Missiles have already been launched.”

  John and Peg looked at each other in shocked silence.

  “You there?” Harry’s voice inquired.

  “John and I are both here,” Peg replied, her voice sounding numb.

  John suddenly stirred, reaching for his helmet. “Stay with the President and get as much information as possible on what got launched and what the targets are.”

  “Where are you going?” Harry asked.

  “Very high up in the atmosphere,” John said. He glanced at Peg. “We’re going to try and take some action.”

  A moment later, the pair of armored figures linked hands and vanished from the office. Marty Burke felt a sort of sucking at his stomach and mind, as if he were being pulled off an endless cliff. The feeling subsided, but he still walked as if he were on the thinnest of ice as he stepped from behind the partition and glanced around his old office.

  He’d taken his new secretary, Wendy Wentworth, along with him to Deviant Comics. But ample as Wendy’s charms might be, an organized mind was not part of the package. She’d left a bunch of idea and sketch files in Burke’s old office, and now that he’d finished the first Deviants title, Marty had decided to try and retrieve them.

  As the former head of the Fantasy Factory, he’d not only gotten a key to the office and the executive john, but keys for the groundfloor entrance, fire keys to run the elevators, the whole schmear. He’d also been prudent enough to make copies before he’d turned the keys back to Harry Sturdley.

  He’d just planned on an evening of gentlemanly burglary, but that had changed when he found the giant half-hanging out of Sturdley’s window. After waiting for the cops to finish their search, he’d sneaked in, gotten his files, and was about to poke around in Sturdley’s office when the Stalwarts arrived.