by Diane Duane
Dusting, though, was not on Peter’s mind at the moment. The new strobe slave was. Peter made his way back to the darkroom, unloaded the developing chemicals and the paper, and went back out to the front of the apartment to see what the answering machine had for him. Two invitations to subscribe to the New York Times (which they already did), one offer to clean their carpets (there weren’t any), two anonymous please-call-this-number messages (probably bill collectors: sighing, Peter took the numbers and wished the machine had thrown one of its occasional fits and lost the messages). No offers of work, no parties, no sudden legacies, no good news.
Oh well. Tonight….
Peter got up and went back to the table where he had dropped the new strobe slave. It was often difficult to take decent pictures when you weren’t behind the camera, but in front of it as Spider-Man. It was tough to pay much attention to f-stops and exposure times when you were duking it out with some bad guy. It was the devil to keep the camera pointed at the action when you were swinging by your webline from one rooftop or another. Also, criminals, both the elite super villain types and your ordinary garden-variety crooks, were generally not very amenable to staying in the camera frame while you were having it out with them. Peter had been trying to find a solution to both of those problems for some while.
Now, though, I might have one. On the table, left over from where he had been fixing MJ’s sunglasses the other night, was a set of ultratiny screwdrivers which he also used for jobs like maintenance on his web-shooters and getting the faceplate off the microwave when its LEDs failed. Now he picked up the third-largest of the group, undid the screws on the bottom and sides of the strobe, and carefully pried the backplate off, taking a long look at the insides. It was a fairly straightforward array, though some of the soldering on the chip at its heart was slapdash. A transistor, some assorted diodes, all labeled for a change; an LED to tell you when the gadget was armed; the light sensor; and a bypass circuit to take it out of commission when you had some other triggering mechanism jacked into the input.
Fair enough. Peter had one other piece of hardware which would communicate with this readily enough, with some programming. Miniaturization had worked enough wonders of late, but there was one that not a lot of people but researchers in the sciences knew about. To take up less room on the lab benches, some bright guy in the Far East had taken a whole PC computer motherboard and worked out how to fit it on a board the size of two cigarette packs laid end to end. That, with enough RAM chips, was enough machine-smarts to run a fairly sensitive motion-control apparatus—and that was what Peter had been working on for a while now. The Engineering Department at Empire State University had assumed that one of the doctoral candidates was doing a little good-natured slumming when he came down to pick their brains about the fine points of motion control programming. Privately they thought that the guys up in Nuclear Physics were getting twitchy about handling the radioactives themselves, and were trying to teach the computers how to do it for them. They could hardly have suspected the real purpose of Peter’s visits. Pretty soon, though, he would have something of considerable use to a photographer who was also a crimefighter. Bit by bit, he was building a camera which, with the right motion sensor attached, would turn by itself to follow the action taking place around it, and which could be remotely triggered, and which (if the aforesaid crimefighter got too busy) would follow his movements and fire at preset default intervals. Once this creature was built, his bosses at the Bugle would have fewer complaints about the poor composition of Peter’s shots compared to other photographers’.
And his credit card company would be much happier with him.
For half an hour or so he fiddled with the slave strobe. The actual movement-controlling hardware, the guts of an old portable telescope’s cannibalized and much-altered clock drive, had been ready for a while. All Peter had needed was a suitable actuator. This new slave would do fine until something more sophisticated came along. The afternoon shadows moved across the apartment, and finally the windows lost the sun. Peter barely noticed, finishing his adjustments to the slave itself and then going to fetch the system’s moving parts and the camera itself. It was his best one, a Minax 5600si, with an extremely advanced automatic exposure- and shutter-control system—which it would need, when its owner was hanging by synthesized spiderweb from the top of some building, swinging after a crook, tens or even hundreds of yards away. The camera screwed into a little platform with a ball-and-socket joint able to yaw, roll, and pitch. That, in turn, screwed into the top of a small collapsible tripod which had the motion-control motors and the teeny PC motherboard, each bolted to one of the tripod’s legs in a small shockproof case. The whole business, when collapsed, would fit comfortably into a backpack or one of the several elastic pouches that Peter had built into his costume over time.
Finally, there it all stood, ungainly looking but theoretically functional. He took the camera off its stand, popped off its back, rooted around in a nearby desk drawer for some of the time-expired film he used for tests, loaded the camera, and seated it on the stand again.
The instant the camera was turned on, it whirled on the stand. The camera’s inboard flash went off as it took his picture, and another one, and another, and another….
“Oh jeez,” he muttered, “cut it out.” He stepped away, trying to come around the setup sideways to turn off the slave. Unfailingly the camera followed, taking pictures as fast as it could wind itself, about one per second. The flash was beginning to dazzle Peter. He jumped over the table and took a few steps further around it. The camera tried to follow, fouled itself on its own motion-control cables, and got stuck, still taking picture after picture, its motor making a pitiful and persistent little hnh, hnh, hnh noise as it tried to follow him right around the table. Peter reached out and caught the tripod just as it was about to fall over.
It hnh, hnhed in his hands for a few more seconds before he managed to pull the motion control system’s jack. Well, it works, Peter thought, turning back toward the table. Even if it is a little light on the trigger. I’ll take it out tonight and see how it does.
A key turned in the apartment door, which then obligingly opened. The camera in Peter’s hands flashed. MJ stood in the doorway, caught open-mouthed with a couple of heavy bags of groceries, and looked at Peter curiously.
“It’s not my birthday,” she said. “And I don’t remember calling the media. What’s the occasion?”
“Your glorious homecoming,” Peter said, putting the camera down. “C’mere. I want a hug.”
MJ offloaded the bags onto a table near the door, and Peter collected the hug, and a couple of serious kisses, while behind them the camera flashed and flashed and flashed. After a few seconds, MJ detached herself by a few inches, took his face between her hands, and said, “Gonna run the batteries down that way.”
“What, mine?”
She laughed. “Not yours, lover. Eveready, that’s you. Just keeps going, and going, and…” Peter poked her genially in the kidneys, and MJ squealed slightly and squirmed in his arms. “What, what, why are you complaining? It’s a compliment. Lemme go, the frozen stuff’s going to defrost. It’s like an oven in here. Didn’t you turn the air-conditioning on?”
“I didn’t notice,” Peter said, letting her go. He picked up one of the bags while MJ got the other, and they headed into the kitchen.
“It may be just as well,” MJ said as she started unpacking one of the bags: salad things, a couple of bottles of wine, ice cream, sherbert. “I turned the air conditioner on this morning and it didn’t go. Made a sort of gurgly noise for a while, but no cold air. I shut it off—thought it might recover if I left it alone.”
Peter sighed. “That’s what it did the last time it broke. The compressor, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. The guy said it might not last much longer….”
She reached down into the bag for a couple of cheeses, then picked the bag up and started to fold it. Peter opened his mouth to say something abo
ut how they really couldn’t afford to have the air conditioner break just now, there were too many other bills… and then he stopped. MJ looked so tired and woeful. Perspiration and the heat of the day had caked the makeup on her, her hair was all over the place, and she had a run in her stocking. He knew she hated looking like that, and she was so worn down and miserable that she didn’t even care.
He went to her and hugged her. Somewhat surprised, MJ hugged back, and then she put her head down on his shoulder and just moaned softly, a little sound that hurt him as badly as any super villain tapdancing on his spleen.
“Nothing today, huh?” he said.
“Nothing,” MJ replied, and was silent for a little while. “I can’t stand this much longer. I hate this. I’m a good actress. At least, they all used to say so. Were they just saying that because they wanted to stay on my good side? And if they weren’t just saying it, why can’t I find another job?”
Peter didn’t have any answers for her. He just held her.
“I’ve been all over this town,” MJ muttered. “I’m either too tall, or too short, or too fat, or too thin, or my hair’s the wrong color, or my voice is wrong somehow. I wouldn’t mind if I thought the producers knew what they wanted. But they don’t know. They don’t know anything except that I’m not what they want. Whatever that is.” She breathed out, hard. “And my feet hurt, and my clothes stick to me, and I want to kick every one of their sagging, misshapen butts.”
“Oh, come on,” Peter said, holding her away a little now, since her voice told him it was all right to. “Their butts can’t all have been misshapen.”
“Oh yes they can,” MJ said, straightening up again and reaching for the second paper bag, while Peter still held her. “You should have seen this one guy. He had this—”
“Who’s all this food for?” Peter said suddenly, looking at the counter, which was becoming increasingly covered with stuff. Chicken breasts, more wine—dessert wine this time—fresh spinach, cream, fresh strawberries. “Is someone coming over for dinner, and I forgot about it? Ohmigosh, you said we were inviting Aunt May—”
“It’s for us,” MJ said. “Why do we only have to have nice dinners when people are coming over? Besides, May is next week. You have a brain like a sieve.” She folded up the other bag, picked up its partner, and shoved them into the bag drawer.
“No question about that whatsoever,” Peter said, abruptly glad of an excuse not to have to tell her immediately about the bank, or the credit card, or the answering machine. “Sieves R Us. What’s for dinner, sexy?”
“I’m not telling you till you set the table. And tell your little droid friend out there that he doesn’t get a high chair. He can sit in the living room and I’ll give him a can of WD-40 or something.” She hmphed, an amused sound, as she pulled a drawer open and started taking out pots and pans. “Flashers. I have enough problems with them in the street without finding them at home.”
Peter chuckled, picked up the camera tripod and its associated apparatus and carried it into the living room, where he left the camera with its face turned to the wall. Then, humming, he went to get the tablecloth.
Tonight, he thought. Tonight we’ll see.
Much later, well after dinner, the lights in the front of the Parker apartment went out.
The lights in the back were still on. MJ was in bed, propped up in a nest of pillows, reading. If someone heard about this tendency and asked her about it, Peter knew, MJ would tell them one version of the truth: that she was just one of those people who found it constitutionally impossible to get to sleep without first reading something, anything. The other truth, which she only told to Peter, and no more often than necessary, was that she needed to do something to take her mind off his “night job,” as opposed to his day job. His night job’s hours were far more irregular, the company he kept was generally far less desirable, and sometimes he didn’t come back from it until late or, rather, early. Peter knew MJ restrained herself from saying, much more often, how much she feared that one night he would go out to the night job, and never come back from it. He had learned to judge her level of nervousness by how big a book she took to bed with her. Tonight it was The Story of the Stone, a normal-sized paperback. So Peter went out in a good enough humor, as relaxed as he could be these days, when he was no longer quite a free agent.
It was perhaps more strictly accurate to say that Peter Parker opened the window, and turned off the lights. Then, a few minutes later, someone else came to the window and stood for a moment, the webbed red and solid blue of the costume invisible in the darkness to any putative watcher. It was always a slightly magical moment for him, this hesitation on the border between his two worlds: the mundane standing on the threshold of the extraordinary, safe for the moment… but not for long.
Tonight he hesitated a shorter time than usual. The camera and its rig were collapsed down as small as they would go, slipped into the back-pouch where they would stay out of his way. If anyone caught sight of him on his rounds tonight, they would probably find themselves wondering if they were seeing some new costumed figure who had decided to emulate the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He chuckled under his breath at the thought. Would one more costumed figure attract any attention in this city anymore? he wondered. Lately the place had been coming down with them. Meanwhile, there would be the usual stir if one of the natives spotted him, one of the more familiar, if not universally loved, of the super heroes in town.
Under the tight-fitting mask, he smiled. Then Spider-Man slipped out the window, clung briefly to the wall, and closed the window behind him, all but a crack.
Carefully, as usual, he wall-crawled around the corner of the building—theirs was a corner apartment—and around to the back wall, where MJ’s bedroom window was. The window was open, in the hope of any cool breeze. He put his head just above windowsill level, knocked softly on the sash. Inside, on the bed against the far wall, the reading light shone. MJ looked up, saw him, smiled slightly, made a small finger-waggle wave at him: then went back to her book. She was already nearly halfway through it. I still wish she could teach me to read that fast, he thought, and swarmed up the back corner of the building, making for the roof.
He peered cautiously over the edge of the roof balcony. There was no one up there this time of night: it was too hot and humid, and their neighbors with air conditioners seemed to have stayed inside to take advantage of it.
Can’t blame them, he thought. It was a heck of a night to be out in a close-fitting costume. All the same, he had work to do.
About a third of a block away stood a tall office building. Spider-Man shot a line of web to a spot just south of the roofline near the building’s corner. And we’re off, he thought, and swung.
He had five different standard exit routes from the apartment, which he staggered both for security—no use taking the chance someone might see him exiting repeatedly and figure something out—and for interest’s sake. Security was more important, though: he didn’t want to take the chance that someone would find out where he was living by the simple expedient of following him home.
By now the business of swinging through the city had become second nature, a matter of ease. Tarzan could not have done it more easily, but then, Tarzan had his vines hanging ready for him. Spider-Man made his swinging equipment to order as he went. He shot out another long line, swung wide across Lexington and around the corner of the Chrysler Building, shot another line way up to one of the big aluminum eagle’s heads, and swarmed up the line to stand atop the head and have a look around.
This was a favorite perch: good for its view of midtown, and it had other attractions. This was the particular eagle-head on which Margaret Bourke-White had knelt while doing her famous plate photos of the New York skyline in the late forties. Spidey stood there a moment, enjoying the breeze—it was better, this high up—and scanned his city.
It moved, as always it moved: restless, alive, its breath that old soft roar of which he never tired, the pulse visible ra
ther than audible. Red tail-light blood moving below him in golden-lined sodium-lit arteries, white light contesting the pathways with the red; the faint sound of honking, the occasional shout, but very faint and far-off-seeming, as heard from up here; the roar of late jets winding up, getting ready to leap skyward from LaGuardia; lights in a million windows, people working late, home from work, resting, eating meals with friends, getting ready to turn in. Those people, the ones who lived here, worked here, loved the place, couldn’t leave—those were the ones he did this for.
Or had come to do it for. It hadn’t started that way, but his mission had grown to include them, as he had grown.
Spider-Man breathed out. While Spidey had never established a formal communication with the various lowlifes, informants, and stoolies that populated the city, he still heard things. Over the last couple of days, he’d heard some rumblings about “weird stuff” going on on the west side. Nothing more specific than that, just “weird.”
Spidey slung a long line of web at the Grand Hyatt, caught it at one corner and swung on past and around, halfway over Grand Central, then shot another line at the old Pan Am building, swung around that, and headed westward first, using the taller buildings in the upper Forties to get him over to Seventh Avenue, where he started working his way downtown. That was something he had learned fairly early on: when traveling by web, a straight line was often not the best way to go. It wasn’t even always possible. Buildings tall enough to be useful are not necessarily strung for a webslinger’s convenience in a straight line between him and his destination. Over time Spidey had learned where the tall buildings clustered and where they petered out. He learned to exploit those clusters for efficiency, discovering that an experienced slinger of webs could gain as much speed slingshotting around corners as he lost from not being able to go straight as the crow flew.
