Masked (2010) (57 page)

The collapsing rubble was nearly on him. He had no time left, and the only thing he could quickly think of was a giant version of one of his mother’s old metal mixing bowls covering him.

Did I get it in time? That was his last thought as a section of
wall came crashing down on him.

S is for Saint George

The World’s Greatest Knight

Saint George watched Eleanor Eastman slowly transition back to consciousness.

“Don’t try to move,” he said. “There’s an awful lot of rubble over us and it’s not stable. Plus, I think one of your legs may be broken.”

“What happened?” she managed to croak out. Her mouth was full of dust and grit. Saint George was lying close to her. They were in a small cavity, dim and dusty, but lit by one of his undamaged floodlights.

“Building collapse,” he said. “My emergency power systems kicked in just as everything came crashing down on us. I was able to blast some of it away and get you tucked under me, but—well, you can see the result. Not too bad, all things considered.”

“How long have we been down here?” she said.

“Couple of hours. They know we’re here and have already started digging up above. Slow going, though. Have to be careful not to cause a secondary collapse.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve got pretty sophisticated sensors. I had time to do a thorough internal scan on you too, while waiting for you to wake up. No major internal injuries, you’ll be happy to know. You’ll be fine, Eleanor. Some pain, but mostly you’ll be bored, waiting for them to dig us out. I’m working on a way to get a water tube over to you, so no worries on that front.”

That’s when Eleanor realized the giant steel girder pinning Saint George had also entirely crushed both his upper legs. They were as flat as pounded tin.

“Your legs were severed!”

“No, I’m okay.”

“You have to be in terrible pain!”

“Calm down, sweetie. I’m fine.”

She looked hard at him for a long time, and he could see the calculation and journalist’s curiosity begin to supplant her momentary panic. He could almost see each fact fall into place for her.

Finally she said, “So that’s your secret. That’s why you never let me see the man inside the armor. There was never a man to see. You’re a robot, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, you got me. You finally figured it out. I was one of Strangeface’s killer robots, but there was a short circuit during a mission into Romania. Luckily some magical gypsies found me and, since they couldn’t repair me mechanically, they placed a human soul and self-awareness inside me. I became sentient, independent, learned to repair and improve myself, and thus a superhero was born.”

“Seriously?”

“No, of course not, you gullible twit. I’m not a robot. I’m really just a guy in here, like I always told you. Only I’m not quite the guy you imagined, and—”

“And what?”

“Here come the big national secrets I was never allowed to reveal.”

“And what?! Spill!”

“And I’m not alone in here.”

“What do you mean? Not alone?”

“Saint George was never a superhero, or a robot, or a man in a suit of powered armor. Saint George is the name of a very advanced battleship—the ship I happen to serve in, along with about forty other crewmen. I’m not even the captain. He mostly runs the combat operations center. I’m one of four officers who stand a rotating watch at the con. That’s military lingo for the main driver’s seat.”

Eleanor could think of nothing to say, and so said nothing.

“Okay,” he said. “I see I’ve surprised you pretty thoroughly, so I might as well go all the way. You’re about to see some hatches
open here and there and a bunch of crewmen come out. They need to do some external repair work, investigate this cavity a bit more to make sure it doesn’t decide to come crashing down after all, and run that water line over to you that I promised.”

Hatches did begin to open. Small doors popped up, all over the exterior of Saint George’s body. Tiny men and women crawled out of the various hatchways.

“I also need to send a medical team through any small passageways they might find, to see if Razorheart is still alive. He ended up about thirty feet away from us to the west-southwest, and six feet lower. We aren’t receiving any life signs from him, but that could be due to all sorts of things. The nature of the material separating us. Interference from embedded power lines. Anything at all, really. Better to check and make certain.”

The miniature men and women were scrambling all over the surface of Saint George by this time, pulling power lines into place, working with small diagnostic computers, and performing other complex and indecipherable duties.

“Anything you want to ask me, Eleanor?”

She considered for a moment and then said, “Who are you people?”

“Creatures of myth and legend,” Saint George said. At least that’s what the voice said that came out of one of his still-functioning speakers. “In our own tongue we’re the Yerremorden, which means ‘the wrathful people.’ Another proper name would be the Pinnanshee, which roughly translates as ‘bottle faeries,’ but that mostly applies now to those of us in the military service, in general, and those of us who crew these battleships, in particular.”

“Some bottle,” she said.

“Indeed. Basically any time you heard about sprites, or brownies, or little people in general, they were probably talking about us, whether they knew it or not.”

“So you’re not magical folks in little pointed hats with bells?”

“Some of us still dress in traditional costume, especially during festival days and such. But, no, not so much anymore. We moved
on. You big folks made lots of technological and scientific advances over the years, and so have we.”

Some of the little soldiers had run the water line over to Eleanor by this time. She took a few sips from it, coughed up some dirt and phlegm, and then sipped some more. When she spoke again, her voice was considerably less strained and frog-like.

“And, in the past,” she said, “when you acted so attentive and caring, that was when you were the one on duty, running the ship.”

“I knew you’d figure it out. By the way, my name’s Awan. And even though I couldn’t quite find the way to explain it to you— military secrets and all—I was really, genuinely crazy about you. Always have been, since that first time we met, during the Korean nuclear incident. I’d come out now and wave hello to you, so you could finally get that look at me you always wanted, but I can’t leave my post.”

“And then, when you acted so cold and aloof at times, that was because someone else was on duty.” She didn’t ask it as a question.

“Right. Mostly it was Lieutenant Commander Jerob on those occasions. He can be quite the jerk. A real tool. And then sometimes Lieutenant Carnovan had to be overtly standoffish to you too, but only because he’s already married to a woman in the crew, and she gets hugely, insanely jealous of you. I can hardly blame her of course, but—”

“Hold on. I think I’m going to be sick.”

And she was, but all of Saint George’s crew still outside the ship were able to scramble to safety in time.

After a while she said, “I was right about one thing. You really were just playing mind games all along, since nothing could ever have come from your pretense at romance between us.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been petitioning the Admiralty and the Ministry of—well, I shouldn’t tell you their name—for use of one of the new full-encounter suits. It’s not a battleship like Saint George. It’s more of an artificial man that can pass as human, on any inspection short of a really invasive medical workup, and it’s fully functional. And best of all, it needs only a single driver, so it really would be an intimate occasion just between the two of
us. It was always my intention to find some way to follow up on my—uhm, advances.”

That’s when Eleanor first screamed, and she did it for a long time.

Two hours later, when she was calm again, and had been for a while, and when they could begin to hear sounds of the rescue efforts from above, she said, “When we get out of here, I don’t want to ever see you again. Any of you.”

“Fair enough,” Saint George (or, more properly, Awan) said. “But at least in the time remaining can I talk to you about the possibilities of keeping all of this secret?”

T is for Thunderhead

A Most Frightening Sight

As far as I could tell, I was the last villain standing. Most were dead or captured. Professor Hell had disappeared and shortly thereafter I saw Strangeface activate his teleporter belt and disappear too, in a more literal way.

For a while I’d watched Achilles battle a giant wolf-like beast, but one with saber fangs and a tail that had long spikes sticking out from it. All sorts of bizarre things happened around them as they fought. The ground erupted in localized earthquakes and upheavals of molten magma. A fall of meteors rained down on them for about ten minutes, but none of them hit the beast, and the ones that hit Achilles would knock him down sure enough, but he’d always get right back up again. Then Achilles burned for a long time, but when the flames finally died, all they had done was to leave him naked, but still unharmed. Finally Doc Jerusalem joined in and beheaded the creature with a single stroke of her sword. That was something to see.

That’s about when I started seriously looking for a way to leave the area. Discretion wasn’t possible—not when one looks as alien
as I do, with nothing but a churning dark cloud where you’d expect to find a head—so I had no doubts I’d have to fight my way out, to one extent or another.

I picked a direction that seemed to promise the fewest obstacles—both living and inanimate—and started out. Almost immediately I spotted Underman up ahead and blasted him with a lightning bolt. Underman went down. I didn’t pause to see if he was dead or not. I adjusted direction and continued on.

Unstable Boy was next. He landed in front of me and demanded my immediate surrender. His eyes were glowing. I knew he was about to start shooting those miniature radioactive glowy-globe things at me—or worse yet, cause them to grow directly inside of me and start eating their way out—so I shot him quick with a bolt at extremely close range. The thunderclap was deafening. This time I knew I’d killed the guy, because there were at least three separate pieces of him staining the ground in front of me. I ran for it while everyone nearby was still moaning and holding his ears.

Before I could get very far, this new girl I’d never seen before landed in front of me, just like Unstable Boy had done. Why’s everyone on their side able to fly these days? I didn’t wait. I zapped her instantly.

But she wasn’t harmed at all. Sure, she had tears in her eyes, but they were already there when she’d landed.

“He was my boyfriend,” she said, and then the tears really began to flow. She was sort of cute. Skinny, and probably too young. No more than sixteen or seventeen. Cute costume too. Dark blue. Pleated skirt. Petite cape. She was going for sort of a retro look, I guessed.

She picked me up in one hand and threw me into the sky.

In a minute or two, when I didn’t slow down at all, I realized she’d actually thrown me into space.

I’m not kidding.

At first I was scared to death. Then I was overcome with awe. You’d have to see what I see to understand. Then (who knows how much later?) the awe remained in full force, but also I began to get
bored. Apparently you can feel both things at once.

Now I’m stuck up here in some sort of erratic low orbit. I see continents and blue oceans sliding by under me, repeating about every thirty minutes.

Before this, I had no idea I wouldn’t die without oxygen, or air pressure, or whatever else folks usually need, but which isn’t available in space. I wonder how long I can last up here.

I wonder if I’ll burn up on reentry someday when my orbit starts to decay.

U is for Underman

The King Down Below

In ancient days, while the supercontinent of Pangaea was just starting its tumultuous breakup, the three smaller continents of Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis suffered the cataclysms that sank them beneath the waves. But they were great civilizations all, allied even then, and advanced in every form of science and sorcery. And so they survived for the most part. Over the ages they adapted and transformed themselves, that they might flourish in their deep and watery homes.

Today the earth isn’t a world of vast continents, inhabited by diverse cultures. Rather it is that, but hardly just that. Why not describe a python as a creature with two eyes? Such a description would be accurate, as far as it went, but hardly comprehensive. Now open your eyes and look at our earth in another way. It’s actually a water planet, filled with marvelously advanced and venerable civilizations, that happens to also have scattered incidents of dry land, which are peopled with primitive tribes of barbarian hominids, genetically and structurally similar (and perhaps related in fact) to their decidedly superior undersea cousins.

It’s a matter of perspective.

If the envoys of vast galactic civilizations were to decide to
contact the people of Earth (as they have), they’d ignore the relatively primitive land dwellers and proceed directly to the political centers of the cities under the seas (as they have). Want to know who runs the world? It’s not your American president, or the so-called United Nations. It was never an emperor, caesar, tsar, pharaoh, or overly ambitious Macedonian conqueror. Small potatoes, all. It’s the King of the Seven Seas who rules the world. It always has been, for longer than human beings have existed. They’ve just never seen the point of educating the surface dwellers to that fact. Why bother?

For the past twenty-odd years Warrender Norris was the reigning King of Kings, ruling over the seven united undersea kingdoms (which is what gives us the tradition of the seven seas, although there are certainly many more, depending on how one decides to divide and categorize them), and their combined three thousand cities, towns, and smaller settlements.

King Warren, as he liked to be called, preferring the diminutive that made his given name sound more like that of a surface dweller, was a half-breed, a miracle baby or a scientific oddity, depending on your mood, disposition, and politics. His mother was the previous reigning Queen, while his biological father, one James Norris, was a North Alaskan salmon fisherman. She’d suffered catastrophic engine failure of her personal subscooter while out on a private jaunt one day. There was an explosion (possibly due to sabotage, but that’s a tale for another time). James was there to fish her unconscious body out of the drink, not knowing she was in no danger of drowning. Sparks flew. There was a short affair, followed by a long scandal.