by Stan Lee
Burke dropped into his old desk chair and took a deep breath. The world was indeed going topsy-turvy. John Cameron and Peg Faber were the armored Stalwarts. Maybe Sturdley, too. They must have spent at least some of the time after their disappearance on the planet that Emsisdin and Matavi came from. John even seemed to know them.
And John Cameron, goofy gofer, had incredible powers and abilities—Burke shook his head. No. He didn’t want to reduce this to comic book cliches. Whatever forces Cameron controlled, Peg believed he’d caused the chaos now overtaking the world just by existing.
And then they had flown off to try and stop World War III.
Marty Burke heartily wished them good luck, and not merely because he was doubtless sitting at ground zero for a significant proportion of the world’s nuclear arsenal. He wanted to be able to survive and make a comic book out of tonight’s activities ... Burke began to chuckle ... even if no one would believe it was reality-based.
Ham Belcher’s piggy little eyes tightened with glee as he saw a passenger get off the bus. His partner in crime, Birdie Jockum, was already rising from the bench outside the old Toad and Stool, the local pub for the village of Weald on Wold in Merrie England.
Birdie was short and skinny, barely coming up to Ham’s shoulder, with blond hair and fine-drawn, almost elfin features—a great help when he and Ham went to nearby cities for a bit of ponce-bashing. He could lure the poofters down a nice, quiet alley while Ham did the heavy work.
Ham was built for heavy work, big and porky, with coarse black hair in thick bristles on his head, arms, even in his nose. His features looked as if they’d been chiseled by an extremely inexpert sculptor on very porous stone.
They waited until the bus had pulled away, then Birdie approached the target. “A stranger in Weald on Wold,” he said with a smile. “This is a red-letter day.”
“Not many visitors?” the dark-skinned visitor asked in a flat accent. Ham felt a little disappointed. He had expected to hear heavily accented sing-song coming from the stranger’s mouth.
“Nor many places to stay,” Birdie picked up quickly.
The traveler adjusted the rucksack on his back. “I thought the local inn—” He glanced over at the Toad and Stool.
Ham’s disappointment grew. If he got in there, and the regulars spoke up...
“Oh, not at all,” Birdie said in a deprecating voice. “It’s a bit on the dirty side, I’m afraid. And I wonder how often they change the sheets. I could show you a bed-and-breakfast place,” he offered. “Small, but clean. For comparison’s sake.”
With a guileless smile, he led the stranger off.
For a small town, Weald on Wold had its share of back alleys. The perplexed traveler and his cheerful guide had reached a dead end in a particularly squalid one when Ham appeared to block the exit. Now the fun could begin. “Bloody Paki,” he growled.
“What?” The stranger glanced from Ham to Birdie, looking for some support.
“‘E said ’bloody Paki,‘ you dumb brown bugger,” Birdie amplified. “We want none o’ your kind in Weald on Wold.”
“Go back to Injah, or wherever the hell you come from.”
“India?” the traveler stupidly repeated. “I’m from from New Jersey, on a walking tour—”
“We’ve enough Yanks already, thank you very much,” Birdie jeered. “They come down from the R. A.F. base every weekend to throw their almighty dollars around and try their arms with our girls. And they’re white.”
“That’s no real Yank. Look at ‘is kinky hair. He’s some sort of nigger or yid.” Ham set a hand in the stranger’s chest and shoved. Birdie deftly yanked the rucksack free.
“Hey!” The protest ended as Ham caught the Yank, or Yid, or whatever across the mouth with a backhanded blow. The stranger flew back against a rough brick wall and stood there, blood leaking from a split lip. His face was pale under his heavy tan.
Birdie quickly inventoried the contents of the pack. “Pullover, change of clothes, knickers—” He dropped the items one by one into a mucky puddle. “A Yank passport.”
“I still say he’s a brown bastard,” Ham insisted.
“Travelers checks.” Birdie disgustedly let them flutter down into the mire. “Ah, and some real money.”
He extracted the lot, perhaps fifty pounds, from the traveler’s wallet and slipped it into his own pocket. “Think of it,” Birdie said, “as your voluntary contribution to the fiscal well-being of Weald on Wold.”
Ham grinned, imagining how many pints that contribution would buy at the Toad and Stool.‘
Birdie dropped the rucksack. “That will do,” he said briskly. “On your bike.”
The stranger squatted to retrieve his sodden belongings. They always did. “What?”
“Move your bleedin‘ arse out of town,” Ham translated, adding a kick for emphasis.
The traveler tumbled into the filthy puddle. He stared up, his face mucky and scared.
“Hop it!” Birdie yelled as the Yank grabbed what he could and stuffed it in the bag.
They left the worse for wear traveler at the edge of town, on the main road. “Thumb yourself a ride,” Birdie said. “If we see you in town again, our local constable here—” he reached up to pat Ham’s shoulder—“will do you for vagrancy.”
It was an outrageous lie, but their victims rarely put it to the test. The stranger silently put out his thumb. Ham heard a lorry pull to a stop as he and Birdie walked away.
The boys were the stars of the Toad and Stool, buying drinks for the NCOs from the R.A.F. base and relating how they’d gotten the better of the Wandering Yank.
“I still say he was some sort of Paki,” Ham insisted, thrusting out his glass for a refill. “Those brown bastards—”
He was interrupted by a rumbling in the distance. An R.A.F. warrant officer ran to the pub’s door. “Those are the missile silos!” he gasped.
The patrons crowded to the door, watching the ICBMs rise from beyond a copse of trees. They couldn’t see the natural anomaly, a pocket universe barely larger than an adult pig, which happened to intersect with the nose of one missile. The warhead entered a new reality, where nuclear fission was a much easier proposition.
Birdie, Ham, and the others never saw any changes in natural law. They did, however, see a searingly white light as the fissionable core of the warhead suddenly detonated. Then onlookers, pub, village, and considerable countryside around disappeared in nuclear fire.
The heavy truck labored up an incline. Sitting in the passenger’s seat—which would have been the driver’s seat in his home country—Marv Leiber was blinded by a distant flash in the rearview mirror. Blinking his eyes, the recent victim of a rural mugging finally focused on a growing mushroom cloud rising from the road far, far behind.
“What the hell was that?” he asked as the rumble of the air shock reached them.
Clad in Earth-style clothing and carrying his armor in a gym duffel, Emsisdin frowned as he unlocked the door and walked into the apartment he and Matavi maintained for their civilian identities. The air was filled with savory smells, much too savory. His suspicions were justified when he entered the kitchen to find his partner opening bags of takeout food.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt if you’d cook every now and again,” the male Deviant said.
“It could hurt you if you start that tired argument,” Matavi snarled.
Emsisdin hurriedly retreated. His partner’s temper had become ever-shorter of late. Perhaps something on this planet disagreed with her.
Matavi pursued him. “Food preparation isn’t automated here the way it is back home,” she continued. “And if you think I’m going to put on a pretty apron and cook for you, you’ve been watching too many commercials on the 2D.”
“Television,” he corrected, then wished he hadn’t.
“Yes. You like the television here. You’ve got everything you want on this world. Wealth, a position as a hero—even a little blond slut to spread her legs for you.”
Emsisdin’s head went down in an almost ducking motion. Trust the bitch to read his mind. “You didn’t seem to want—”
“Did it ever strike you to enquire what I do want?” Matavi raged. “What I need, and whether those needs are being met? Whether you could help—”
Abruptly, her tirade ceased and she collapsed over the table.
“Seven hells and devils,” Emsisdin cried, leaping forward to clutch her arm. “Matavi, what’s happened to you? Is it some Earth-illness? Are you all right?”
“Dead,” Matavi said in a choked voice. Her face was white as chalk, and unbidden tears flowed from her eyes. Hundreds ... thousands ... dead. Far away, but I feel—“
Her hand slipped into his. “I feel their pain.”
The panel truck had once been painted white, but that was many years ago. Its color now was a shabby, scabby gray. There were dents on the side and a hole had been torn in the metal at the front, where the boxy panel overlooked the driver’s cab.
That hole had been punched mere minutes before by a giant hand wielding the truck’s tire iron. The driver had sat in docile silence behind the wheel while Robert had prepared a peephole for himself. Then the giant had climbed inside and given the bound trucker the order to proceed.
The truck jounced uncomfortably as the driver maintained top speed heading out of Washington. Robert’s posture, half-crouched as he peered through the hole, didn’t add to his sense of ease or well-being.
They had already crossed the Beltway when a psychic scream impacted the giant’s mental shields. Normally, even his enhanced senses wouldn’t have had the power to detect death. But these were the death-screams of thousands of people, dying in totally unexpected agony, in terrible violence.
Robert frowned. His research had indicated that it would take the better part of an hour for the missiles of death to reach their destinations. Something must have gone wrong, somewhere.
It didn’t matter. The cleansing of this world had just begun a little earlier than he’d planned.
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AFTERWORD
It’s strange how we live in a world of opposites.
We have big and small, hot and cold, up and down, strong and weak, light and dark ... the list is endless.
Yet, there are two opposites which are extremely difficult to reduce to absolutes, even though at first blush they seem to be totally dissimilar. I’m referring to good and evil, or, to put it into Fantasy Factory terms, heroes and villains.
From the outset, one of the unique things about Marvel Comics has been the fact that it dealt with a number of villains who occasionally possessed redeeming virtues, as well as heroes who were not without their own flaws. For example, one of Marvel’s mightiest heroes is Iron Man, the alter ego of multimillionaire inventor/industrialist/bon vivant, Anthony Stark. One of our most successful Iron Man series dealt with the time he succumbed to alcoholism, an affliction which almost destroyed him. Of course, being the hero he was, he managed to overcome his alcoholism and rehabilitate himself.
Similarly, we’ve had stories in which it was revealed that the despotic Dr. Doom, one of Marvel’s all-time greatest villains, despite his relentless quest for world domination, was truly a villain with his own code of honor and integrity. He might attempt to destroy a civilization, but once he had given his word, no power on Earth would make him renege on a promise.
Yes, the more you study human nature, the more you realize that neither heroism nor villainy is a total absolute.
Another thing that has always fascinated me is the origin of legends. In every part of the planet, in every culture, the legends of mankind have so much in common. There is always the hero, the one who is nobler, braver, more virtuous than any foe. And, in juxtaposition, you will inevitably find the villain, whether man, beast or demon, with but one motive—to inflict pain and suffering upon hapless victims. This combination of good and evil, eternally in conflict, has stirred mankind’s imagination and haunted its dreams since the dawn of creation and will undoubtedly continue to do so till the end of time.
Perhaps that’s why the underlying theme of Riftworld so appeals to me. Just like the comicbook world itself, which furnishes the springboard for our series’ action, Riftworld is a mysterious melange of heroes and villains, ever in flux, yet always constant in the sense that the battle never ends.
Another element of Riftworld that I find intriguing is the careful attention paid to character development. Just as you and I grow and evolve with each passing day and each new experience, so do those who inhabit our ever-changing world of fiction. Perhaps the greatest changes of all are in store for John Cameron, whose past is still steeped in mystery and whose destiny seems to involve far more than his own personal fate.
If I don’t stop now, I’m liable to spoil some of the startling surprises in store for you in our following volume.
So, till we meet again, on the brink of Riftworld...
Excelsior!
Stan Lee
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TK scanned and proofed. (v1) (html) December 2013
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