Batman 4 - Batman & Robin (4 page)

“Right you are.” Bruce unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “Let’s dig in.”

He was just picking up his knife and fork when he caught a glimpse of something through the window. Turning to it, he saw a beam of light stabbing at the lowermost layer of clouds.

Where the light made contact, there was a black shape. The shape of a bat, its wings outstretched as if in flight. Bruce knew it all too well.

And since he’d come to live with the billionaire, Dick knew it, too. He followed Bruce’s gaze, saw what he was looking at, then took a last, lingering look at his dinner.

“We go?” he asked. It wasn’t really a question.

“We go,” Bruce said, confirming it anyway.

Together, they put their napkins on the table and traversed the ample interior of Wayne Manor. Circumnavigating the magnificent central stairway, they made their way to the study at the far end of the house.

Inside it, there was a grandfather clock, its face open and exposed. It said 6:51. But Bruce reset its hands to 10:47—a time that had great significance for him. After all, it was the hour and minute at which his parents had died.

The clock swung aside, revealing itself as a disguised door. Beyond, there was a dimly lit cascade of stone stairs that wound down into what seemed like the bowels of the earth. Bruce descended with Dick right behind him, the clock door closing automatically in their wake.

Their footfalls echoed as they followed the winding of the stair. Finally, it deposited them on the floor of a cavern—a place where the stalagmites had long since been cleared away, but sharp stalactites still hung overhead.

A cavern where a huge copper penny gleamed under the glare of suspended lights. Where a vast array of computer consoles sat beneath three large screens, monitoring all that went on in nearby Gotham City and its environs.

This was the Batcave, known to only a few people in the entire world. Home to a creature of the night most people still didn’t believe in. But Bruce Wayne believed.

He had to. He was that creature.

Crossing the floor of the cave, Bruce headed for his costume vault. Removing his clothes in semidarkness, the billionaire reached for the nearest of the several uniforms hanging in front of him.

Though it looked like black rubber, it was actually a suit of lightweight, flexible armor, molded to the contours of his body. There was a bat emblazoned on his chest, just like the bat he’d seen against the clouds.

He pulled on his boots, snapped his gauntlets into place, and whipped his cape over his shoulders. Then he took his yellow-gold Utility Belt off a rack, encircled his waist with it, and locked the buckle in front of him.

But for the moment, he was still Bruce Wayne. Still a man, no more and no less, until he included the final detail.

Reaching for the cowl that was attached to the neckline of his suit, he pulled it forward over his face. Suddenly, he felt it. He was transformed. Bruce Wayne was gone—in his place, a denizen of the night.

Batman.

As he emerged from his vault, he saw Robin do the same. The boy was wearing a new costume he and Alfred had been working on. Instead of the red tunic he had worn as a member of the Flying Graysons, Robin sported a red-bird insignia that spread across his chest and ran down the outside of his arms.

Batman grunted as he approached his computer array. “Nice suit. And today you are . . . ?”

“Nightwing,” said Robin, joining him at the central console. “Scourge of darkest evil.”

Taking a seat, Batman tapped into the police band, wanting to know what had prompted Commissioner Gordon to unleash the Bat-Signal. But with a part of his mind, he continued their banter.

“This is all about fashion for you, isn’t it?”

Standing by his side, Robin leaned over the console and chuckled. “It’s the gear,” he said, with just a hint of irony in his voice. “Chicks go wild over the gear.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Batman responded.

As Alfred descended the stairs into the Batcave, a tray of lobster-salad sandwiches and tea in hand, he sighed.

He had gotten used to the sight of a masked avenger sitting before the mighty Cray computers, his eyes glinting in the glare of a trio of oversize monitors, his cape catching the light of a dozen smaller surveillance screens situated on the opposite wall.

That is, Alfred had become accustomed to
one
such figure. But now there were
two
of them, God help him.

Two young men in masks and dark, molded body armor, ready to risk life and limb for a common purpose. A common cause. Or a common insanity, depending on how one looked at it.

Batman and Robin. Sworn enemies of the Gotham criminal underworld, impelled by fate and circumstance to aid the innocent and protect those who could not protect themselves.

And their fearsome accoutrements? Their dire appearances?

They were essential to the task of fighting crime—or so his employer had explained to him time and again. Criminals were a superstitious and cowardly lot in Master Bruce’s estimate. Hence, the more imposing one’s appearance, the more effective a crime fighter one could be.

At least, that was the theory.

Of course, neither Master Bruce nor Master Dick was inclined to tend to the
laundering
of their accoutrements. Nor could they entrust them to the local dry cleaner. That part in the Great Undertaking fell to Alfred.

Not that he was complaining. He
never
complained about how they were taking care of their clothes. Only about how they were taking care of
themselves
—or failing to, as the case might be.

Still descending, Alfred cleared his throat. “Taking back the night again, are we?”

His voice echoed through the immensity of the cavern, eliciting a whisper of wings from the swarms of bats in the outlying caves. They had retreated to those recesses when Master Bruce claimed this space as his own, and retreated still farther when he enlarged it recently.

The crime fighters turned to him. Only Robin smiled in his mask, which covered less of his face than Master Bruce’s cowl.

“Hey, Al,” he said, gracing the butler with a little wave.

“Indeed,” said Alfred. Master Dick was the only one on earth who could call him that with impunity. “If I may ask, what is so interesting that it caused you to abandon my lobster thermidor?”

“Ten police cruisers,” Batman said without looking up. “Frozen solid on the Gotham Expressway.”

His protégé peered at the central monitor, reading the information scrolling by in a corner of it. “A giant drilling truck burrowing under the city,” he added.

Robin was making an effort to affect the Batman’s clipped, efficient rhythms. He was still falling short.

“Mr. Freeze,” Batman concluded.

Robin nodded. “The Batcomputer tracks him heading for the Gotham Museum. What’s there?”

Batman thought for a moment, the muscles rippling in his jaw. “The new antiquities exhibit. Including the Second Sun of the Sudan, on loan from the British Museum in London.”

Robin laughed triumphantly. “Of course. He’s going to steal that giant white diamond.”

Batman shook his head. “No, Robin,” he said with absolute certainty. “He’s going to jail.”

Before the echoes of his promise had died away, there was a blast of steam on the other side of the cave, the byproduct of a powerful hydraulic system. As Batman strode toward it, the steam cleared and revealed a sleek, redesigned Batmobile resting on a huge metal pedestal.

He touched a stud on his Utility Belt and the hatch opened to admit him. With characteristic grace and agility, Batman swung inside and drew his cape in after him.

Alfred called out from the bottom of the stairs. “Do call if you’re going to be late, sir. You know how I worry.”

It was a joke between them. But there was a note of seriousness in it as well, and both of them knew it.

The Batmobile’s turbo-charged engines roared, sending out one resounding echo after another. A moment later, the vehicle shot away through the stalactite-ridden arches of the cavern’s access tunnel.

No sooner had it departed than the surface of the pedestal split open like the petals of a flower—revealing a sleek, turbo-charged motorcycle. It was Robin’s bike, the Redbird.

Alfred called out again. “Drive carefully, Master Dick.”

Robin winked at him with calculated abandon as he straddled the powerful machine. “Don’t wait up, Al.”

Then the Redbird’s engine exploded into life, and the bike shot out through the tunnel after the Batmobile. Alfred watched it go until it was lost to darkness and distance.

He hated the idea of what they would face out there. But at the same time, he understood the desperate need for someone to face it. And the desperate need within Master Bruce and Master Dick that made them want the responsibility.

Suddenly, he felt an excruciating pain in his side—an agony so overwhelming it forced him to drop his tray of sandwiches and drinks. The cups of tea shattered on the hard rock floor of the cave, sending liquid flying in every direction.

Alfred himself staggered forward, barely able to support himself, and grabbed the edge of the massive computer console. His suffering went on for what seemed like forever. And he remained there, gasping for air, teeth clenched against it, until the pain at last began to subside.

My God,
he thought.
My God.

Still, he was glad neither Master Bruce nor Master Dick had been present to see his discomfort. Gathering himself on trembling legs, he took out a handkerchief to remove the sweat that had accumulated on his brow.

My God,
he thought again.

Then he recovered his tray, got down on one knee, and began to pick up the shards of glass. After all, the Batcave was part of Wayne Manor—part of the home with whose care he was charged. And he wouldn’t allow a mess to remain there one second longer than it absolutely had to.

Clayton Krupzic had ice water in his veins.

At least, that’s what he liked to tell people back in Waumagansett Falls. “Nothing scares me,” he’d add, impressing the hell out of the old geezers who liked to gather at the filling station. “Nothing in heaven or hell or on God’s green earth.”

But it was a hard thing for a farm boy like Clayton to prove. After all, the scariest thing in Waumagansett Falls was
him,
and after that it was his twin sister Coleen.

It got to the point where he’d go to other towns and pick fights on Saturday nights. But he didn’t find much of a challenge in those places either. No one big enough, no one mean enough.

So as soon as he finished the twelfth grade, Clayton hightailed it for the big city—despite the warnings of everyone in town—and applied for a job in law enforcement.

Why not? Gotham didn’t require a cop to attend any kind of academy. If you’d finished high school, it was considered a bonus. In fact, it made you detective material.

Trouble was, the Gotham Police Force was in the middle of some down-and-dirty budget cuts when he arrived. Someone suggested he go into security work until the department started hiring again.

At first, Clayton was too proud for that. He hadn’t come to Gotham to be a rent-a-cop. But his pride lasted only until his savings ran out, which wasn’t long at all. Then he had to look for a job—or face the prospect of going back home and working at the filling station.

Eventually, he found gainful employment at the Gotham Museum, a sprawling stone-and-glass palace set on the edge of Gotham’s Central Park. Unfortunately, the work was even more boring than he’d feared. Just a lot of strolling through big, empty corridors with nobody but the mummies for company.

Oh, he saw some of the other guards sometimes at the stairways, their flashlights probing the darkness just like his. But that wasn’t more than a half dozen times a night. If not for the periodic walkie-talkie buzz from the main station, Clayton would’ve gone stark, raving nuts.

So it took him by surprise one night when the building began to shiver, and the air was split with a high-pitched whine.

At first, he thought it was an earthquake causing the commotion—even though there was no record of any earthquakes in Gotham’s history. Then he heard the frantic voice of Sanchez, the old guy down on the first floor.