The Ultimate X-Men (19 page)

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When he saw that Beast had fallen to the pheromones, Bishop ran to the pair and stepped between them. Bishop’s own involuntary powers reflected the Acolyte’s pheromones back upon himself, with quick results. The Acolyte fell to the ground, screaming, the visions in his head taking control of him, immobilizing him as effectively as he had Beast.

Bishop picked up the now-helpless Spoor and looked at his fellow X-Man. “I can handle him. You help Storm.” He strained to be heard above the roaring winds of Storm and Katu’s battle.

Beast rose to his feet, the effects of the pheromones quickly wearing off. A few quick hops brought him behind Katu. The Acolyte was completely focused on his intense battle with Storm and didn’t even notice the Beast until the X-Man delivered a quick blow to the back of the head. The Inuit mutant fell unconscious and the Beast carried him into the bungalow.

Exhausted, Storm drifted back to the ground, landed, and trailed Beast into the building, followed in turn by Watkins. Bishop deposited Spoor in the room off the main entrance and stepped aside to let Beast enter with Katu. Both Acolytes were unconscious and likely to remain that way for some time.

Leaving their foes in the cottage, they walked back out onto the patio. The radio was still on the table.

It was Storm who first noticed the clock on the stereo. “Look! That’s not the time! It’s counting down.”

Watkins handed Beast the vial of counteragent. “We have to be ready to release this should the need arise.”

Bishop turned to Watkins. ‘ ‘You can stand over there in

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the doorway and keep an eye on those two while we try to defuse the bomb.”

Watkins was surprised. “Stand guard over them? Me?” Bishop nodded. “Just watch them carefully and let us know when they start to wake up.”

Beast moved into place to dispense the counteragent should that be required. Still weakened from her stalemate with Katu, Storm steeled herself to contain the expelled bacteria should the bomb accidentally detonate during the disarming process. Watkins could feel the tension in the air as Bishop removed the radio casing, carefully placing it to one side.

Uncovered, the bomb proved to be an intricate series of multicolored wires in elaborate and confusing combinations. Slowly, Bishop snipped one wire after another. Wire cutters poised over the final series of connections, he stopped and whistled softly. “Tricky litde fiends. Thorough too,” he muttered under his breath. “They almost fooled me. They’ve connected a second trigger mechanism, but it’s very subtle.”

“Should we be worrying?” Beast asked.

Bishop shook his head. “Not yet. It’s just going to take a little longer for me to disarm.”

Distracted from his watch by Bishop’s difficulties, Watkins failed to notice Spoor’s stirring in the room behind him. Without warning, he felt a flood of heat surround him and smelled smoke. He felt the flames charring his skin, and in a blind panic to escape the blaze, ran full speed toward the ocean—straight at Bishop, who was engrossed in the delicate process of disarming the second trigger. “Jerome, what are you doing?” Beast cried out. He leapt

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forward in a desperate attempt to intercept Watkins, but was too late.

With one sweep of his arm as he tried to force his way to perceived safety, Watkins brushed the wire cutters in Bishop’s hand against the trigger mechanism. In the brief seconds before the explosion, Spoor lost consciousness again, and Watkins and Bishop were face to face, eye to eye.

Bishop stared in horror at the man before him, then saw something he didn’t expect. He saw true sorrow reflected in Watkins’s eyes. The shame of being responsible for the bacterium’s creation plain on his face, Watkins turned away in the last moments and threw himself over the bomb.

The explosion threw Watkins in one direction and Bishop in another. Storm reacted immediately, gathering the bacteria in a funnel of wind and fighting to contain them. “Quickly, Hank! Release the counteragent!” she yelled over the force of the wind.

Beast released the stopper on the vial and fed it into the wind funnel, watching its light color mix with the darker shades of the consumer bacteria. He turned and saw Bishop rise, slightly shaken, but unharmed. Not that the bomb would have harmed him in any case; Bishop’s power allowed him to absorb any energy he was hit with. But Watkins had no way of knowing that.

The Beast ran to Watkins then, who lay still on the ground.

“H-h-help me, Hank,” the scientist managed to cough out. Gently, Beast helped Watkins to sit up.

They all watched anxiously as Storm fought to contain the mixture of destruction and hope, her limbs drooping

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slightly as her strength began to flag. Fearing the worst, they watched the plastic-consuming bacteria begin to make their mark on the patio furniture, which, as the umbrella and table began to dissolve and small puddles of goo filled the seats of the chairs, began to resemble a Dali painting.

Storm’s strength completely depleted, she collapsed on the ground, releasing the swirling cloud of bacteria. No longer artificially contained, the cloud dispersed out into the island’s natural wind pattern. Bishop went to Storm’s side, raising her to her feet and letting her lean on him as they walked toward the Acolytes’ transport. Beast picked up the injured Watkins, ci'adling him as a child, and followed the other X-Men down the path to learn if the world as they knew it would continue.

The Acolyte plane was on the far side of the bungalow, and as they watched, the wings began to droop towards the ground as the compound dissolved. Soon half the wing was melting, hanging limply in the air. They held their breath and waited.

Seconds passed, and then minutes, the silence broken only by Watkins’ strangled breathing, but there was no further deterioration of the plane.

“It worked, Hank.” Watkins’s voice came out garbled, his breathing heavy and labored. “We were able to stop it.” Beast looked down at the man in his arms. “That we did, friend.”

Watkins grasped Beast’s furred hand, squeezing it tightly. “We made a good team.”

Beast nodded once and watched as Watkins' eyes slowly closed and his breathing slowed. “Jerome?”

Then the sounds of breathing stopped. Dr. Jerome Wat-

kins was still and silent, his goal accomplished and his conscience, if not cleared, then relieved, as he let himself slip away.

Beast took a deep breath and lifted the body of his friend and colleague, preparing to carry him out to the beach to the
Blackbird.

“You ruined our best chance for a mutant society this day, X-Men,” Katu’s voiced boomed out from behind them, more sorrow than anger in his words. “You could have let the bacteria do its job. It would have given us freedom!” Beast looked back only once. He stared at Katu for a moment, then down at Watkins’s body in his arms. “I would not pay this price for your ‘freedom.’ It would bring no peace, only violence, hatred, sorrow, and regret. There will be no true freedom until we can work together.”

With that, the X-Men moved toward the beach.

“What about the Acolytes?” Bishop asked. “What shall we do with them?”

“Leave them,” said Beast. “They have to live with themselves. And they have ‘nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.’ ” “Shakespeare?” Storm asked.

“Robert Frost,” Beast replied as they walked away.

Three days later, Beast sat alone in his laboratory, reading over a new medical journal when he glanced up at the video monitor. On the screen Graydon Creed, the leader of the mutant-hating Friends of Humanity, pounded a small wooden podium like a crazed evangelist. His mouth worked furiously, and out of a sense of morbid curiosity, Beast turned up the volume.

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“I tell you people, without mutants and their kind we would not be subjected to threats like the one we had last week. We would not need to live in fear of one of their plagues robbing us of our future, like a thief in the night. We would not have to constantly guard ourselves against this evil if the government would put them into forced labor isolation centers, as we have repeatedly advocated. If I am elected to office, I will write a bill that places all mutants in a controlled environment, so as to keep our country safe for the American people—for
humans
.”

Beast shut off the monitor, unable to listen to any more of the venomous speech. For a moment he felt a pang of sorrow that so many humans saw things in the same light as Creed. Then he remembered Jerome Watkins and his sacrifice. Until the fresh summer breeze of change did come, Watkins’s sacrifice would give him hope and faith that change was possible.

lift IS BUI A DREAM

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Illustration by Rick Leonardi & Terry Austin

All of this happened, give or take.

The sun was shining and a brisk wind blew marshmallow clouds across its face, painting the suburbs in light/shadow/light, giving everything a shutterbox effect.

There were the hypnotic drones of electric lawn-mowers, and the smell of freshly cut grass and timothy hung sweetly on the air. A radio in the dash of a ’65 Mustang that a shade-tree mechanic was restoring proclaimed the good news that the Cincinnati Reds were winning the first game of a scheduled double-header against the Pirates.

A bird perched on the rim of a stone birdbath in the Beckers’ front yard; he dipped his bill into the cool, clear water and tipped his head back, allowing the water to trickle down his throat. Afterward, refreshed, he trilled an unbroken string of notes. Somewhere down the neatly manicured block, in a tree in a yard bordered by just-cropped shrubbery and a newly painted white picket fence, another bird answered.

There was a steady whip and whir of a lawn sprinkler, and, in someone’s backyard, on an orderly red brick patio, hamburgers and hot dogs cooked over an open grill.

The sun broke from behind the last of the clouds and its light on the water of the backyard pond looked like scattered coins.

It was one of those rare and perfect days, thought Rogue, that couldn’t go any farther toward proving God’s existence than if He had left His fingerprints all over everything.

Rogue looked away from the window' set above the kitchen sink and adjusted the flow of water from the faucet.

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She was scrubbing and peeling potatoes, starting to get things ready for tonight’s dinner. She had already put the rack of lamb in the Dutch oven and basted it once with a mint sauce she had made, but she would need Remy’s help if she was going to have supper ready, the table set, and have a hot, relaxing bath before the guests arrived.

Behind her, the Frigidaire clunked as it proudly made another ice cube and started cheerily on making another, not content to rest too long upon its laurels.

At the thought of Remy, she glanced at the drain board of the double sink and the simple gold ring sitting there, where she had put it when she started supper. Apart from these rare times, she had not taken it from her hand since that day when, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, Remy had placed it there.

“We’ve had the worse and we’ve had the poorer,” she spoke to the sun-washed, airy kitchens, “now we have the better and richer to look forward to.”

She was pulled from her reverie by the crack of a softball against a bat and the cheers of children. She looked out the window just in time to see Remy waving the runner on to second. He was always involved with the neighborhood kids in some fashion, refereeing them in a game of touch football or coaching them in a game of softball. He was surprisingly at home with children—the kid in him, Rogue supposed. She didn’t mind him spending his Saturday afternoons with them, since it seemed most of the other parents were too busy for them, but she absolutely drew the line at his trying to teach them to gamble.

“Life’s a big gamble,” he had said trying to sweet-talk his way around her when she put her foot down. “Don’

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think so? Then how come half of ‘life’ is made up of ‘if’? ~ ' Hey, why you t’ink life is but a dream?”

Rogue had laughed and responded, “I can play that one, too, swamp rat. ‘God is love, love is blind, Ray Charles is blind, therefore, Ray Charles is God.’ ”

“He
is
God!” Remy replied then. “Ray an’ Charlie Parker.”

“Head for home! Head for home!” Remy now shouted at the runner. The boy crossed the plate to the sound of cheers, just a split second ahead of the ball.

“Remy!” Rogue called from the opened back door. “Time f’you t’head home too, lover.”

Remy smiled and waved at her across the vacant lot. “Right dere,
petite filleV'
He said something else to the children and started jogging for the house. The sun, sailing toward the west where clouds waited to devour it, threw Remy’s shadow out long behind him, like a small, frightened child racing to catch up.

“Forks on de left or de right?”

But Rogue didn’t hear him. She was too busy checking the last of the arrangements. For the hundredth time.