Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  “How long have you been here?” he heard his companion say to one of the other men.

  “About an hour. What kept you?”

  Satch’s companion gestured back at him with his head. “He’s not exactly an Evinrude,” he said. There was some snickering about that. Satch chose to ignore it. There were a lot of things you had to ignore about this business if you wanted to keep doing it, keep making the money. And Satch had a family to support. Hard enough to find honest work these days, and any other kind, even that was hard to hold on to.…

  “Okay,” Satch’s companion said. “Here.” He reached into one pocket, came up with an envelope which he handed to one of the two waiting men.

  “You want to open one up and have a look?” said that man.

  More chuckling at the suggestion. Satch’s companion laughed. “You want to count that?”

  Less chuckling. But the man now holding the fat envelope did it nonetheless. “Price is going up, seemingly,” he said, conversationally enough.

  Satch’s companion shrugged. “Supply and demand. When’s the next pickup?”

  The counting man shook his head, tucked the parcel away. “You’ll be notified in the usual way.”

  Satch’s companion showed no change of expression. He turned to Satch. “Come on,” he said, “get these in the boat.”

  Satch sighed and did as he was told. He went to the first of the barrels, beginning to roll it slowly, edge-on, across the soft sand. Satch grunted with the strain; he never got used to how heavy these things were for their size. And when you got them down into the wet sand, it was even worse. Satch huffed and puffed and set himself low, as best he could, and grunted as he got the first barrel heaved up into the boat.

  The others were speaking in low voices now as Satch made his way back for the second barrel. He could never shake the feeling, on these outings, that they were talking about him. That some dreadful joke was being made at his expense. He wondered if it had been smart for him to take this job at all… wondered whether he was actually playing the part of one of the poor schmoes in a pirate movie, who digs the hole and does the work to bury the treasure, and then gets shot or buried alive to keep the secret. Certainly, if he saw any indication of that coming, he would run like hell. But in the meantime, the money was good enough. Besides, he thought, it’s not like anybody’s getting killed.…

  He got hold of the second barrel and started rolling it back to the boat. At least the hours are okay, Satch thought. It wouldn’t take much longer tonight. They would row a little farther down the coast until they met the boat that would make pickup on this stuff. Then they would collect their own payment and be gone. His companion would set him ashore down at the docks, and he would catch a late bus back and see Marie and the kids.

  Satch heaved the barrel into the boat, turned, and started slogging his way back to the shore. His back was killing him. His companion had turned a little away from the others and was looking toward him. “Hurry up!” he hissed. “You want to be here all night?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Satch muttered. He grabbed the third barrel, said “Oof—”

  Someone else went “Oof” too. Surprised, Satch looked up. One of the three men they had met, the one who had been covering up the dug hole, was standing strangely, with a shocked look on his face, and he looked taller than usual, somehow. Or there was something dark behind him, a shadow. Satch thought it was a trick of the light, at first, but there seemed to be something sticking out of the man’s chest—

  But there was. The breath went out of Satch with a whoosh as the scene suddenly made sense. The something was black, and it glistened in the moonlight, and then vanished as swiftly as a snake’s withdrawn tongue. The man fell. The other two, and Satch’s companion, took several quick steps back from him as a fifth form rose over the crumpling body.

  It was a guy in a black suit, a big guy, with some kind of design or logo painted on the front of him. Satch swallowed as the thing grinned, white in a black face, and grinned, and grinned—a mouthful of great knifelike fangs that seemed to go right around to the back of his head, until the top of it looked likely to fall off because of that dreadful grinning.

  Satch’s companion pointed that huge shiny gun at the man. He never got a chance to fire. Satch didn’t even see what happened. One minute the gun was in his companion’s hand. The next minute there was a dreadful choked-off scream, as hand and gun were flensed off by some kind of knife that leapt away from the guy in black. Satch’s companion bent down. Another breath, a half a scream, and that knife—it wasn’t a knife at all, it was an arm or tentacle of some kind, and another one followed it, how could anyone have so many arms?—whipped out from the man’s body, seemingly from a place where there hadn’t been anything a moment before. It whipped itself around Satch’s companion’s head.

  The other three men turned to run. Satch was frozen where he stood. Running did the others no good. More of those weird flexible arms shot out like glistening black rope, knotted around the men, pulled them back leisurely. The man who screamed the loudest stopped screaming first. Satch had to watch it, had to watch it all. He didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He just watched.

  The thing in black dropped the second man and went for the third. It spent more time over him, like someone savoring a lunch break. Eventually he let the rest of the pieces fall, and turned to Satch.

  Satch stood and watched. He couldn’t move. The thing in black came to him, grabbed him by the lapels of his poor polo shirt. It shredded in the grip of the claws that held him. Odd, though, how delicately they did it, as if intent on doing him no more harm than was absolutely necessary.

  “Now, then,” said a horrible fangy voice. “We want you to take a message for us. Take it to your boss, to the person who pays you. Tell him we said, ‘Cut it out.’ Tell him Venom says so. You do recognize us?”

  “Fuh, fuh, muh, muh,” was all that Satch could say.

  Those claws came up, and patted Satch’s cheek, almost an amused gesture. “The dangers of celebrity,” Venom said. “And you—you cut it out, too. So you have something to tell your grandchildren about. We won’t tell you twice.”

  Venom let him fall. Satch collapsed to his hands and knees in the wet sand, panting, and didn’t dare move, because if he did, he would see what had happened to the others… and then he would throw up. He hated throwing up. But mostly he felt as if he should just be very still and small, do nothing, make no sound. He held still.

  That dark shape stood above him, and the voice said, very deep, very amused: “Now. About these…”

  It was dawn before Satch got up off his hands and knees, mostly because he had to; the tide was coming in. An early jogger was approaching him along the beach, and Satch thought it would be good to get away. As he stood up, as the jogger got closer, and saw what was on the beach, and ran toward him with a horrified look on his face, Satch looked around and saw that the drums were gone. The boat was gone. Everything was gone.

  * * *

  DOWNTOWN Miami can be a very chic, very stylish-looking place on a Monday morning. Well-dressed people come and go, hot cars and expensive ones pass by, and everything is beautiful.

  Richard C. Harkness was one of those who found it all beautiful, as a matter of course—as something he deserved. He had worked hard on his way up the corporate ladder, had sucked up to the right bosses, signed the right reports and found ways not to sign the others, and had kept his nose clean in the best corporate tradition. He was good at what he did, which was making money without getting his hands dirty.

  He drove his Porsche into the parking garage at 104 West Seventh, one of those sleek glass-and-steel constructions that had risen above the smaller, less grandiose buildings of Miami these last few years. He stowed the car in the space with his name painted on it, pulled the thin briefcase out of the back, shut the car, set the alarm, and walked away. Only six steps or so took him to the executive elevator. He stepped into the shiny little lobby, put his key in and signal
ed. The elevator arrived quickly. This, too, was something he deserved and which he now accepted as a matter of course: the right not to have to waste time waiting, not to have to be crammed in an elevator with people in the company’s lower echelons on his way to his office.

  The elevator whisked him up to the thirtieth floor. Harkness stepped out, crossed the hall to the glass and gilt entrance to the front lobby. The door opened for him. The receptionist, sitting behind her big glass-brick and Italian plate-glass desk, nodded deferentially to him as he passed. “Good morning, Mr. Harkness.”

  “Morning, Cecile.” He didn’t ask her about any messages; she wouldn’t be trusted with such. Down the cool gray hall, along the thick maroon carpet toward the executive offices, he made his way. There was the thick mahogany double door that had his name on it. It opened in front of him, Cecile having alerted Mary Ellen that he was coming.

  “Good morning, Mr. Harkness.”

  “Good morning, Mary Ellen. Twenty minutes, and then you can come in and give me a report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He walked past her desk, past the door of the little anteroom in which her own secretary worked. The door to his private office was shut. No one touched it without his permission. He opened the door, tossed the briefcase onto the leather sofa next to it, shut the door behind him, and turned to examine, with the usual great pleasure, the view out onto the morning city, the sea, the world of business into which he had fought his way and which he handled so well.

  Between him and the window stood a tall black shape. Harkness’s mouth fell open in outrage and astonishment. On his five-thousand-dollar Persian carpet stood three big dirty wet barrels, shedding sand and muck onto the Kilim weave.

  That dark shape looked at him, took a step closer, and said, “We believe these are yours.”

  * * *

  PETER met Vreni that afternoon for lunch, but it was less of a lunch than he had been expecting. He stood around at the entrance of the restaurant, waiting for her, and finally at about twenty after twelve, went in and sat down, got himself a Coke, and waited. At nearly twenty of one, she appeared, hurrying across to his table. She didn’t sit down.

  “I have some things to take care of this afternoon,” she said. “It’s not stuff that I’ll need pictures of… not yet anyway. Do you mind taking the day off?”

  “Mind?” Peter laughed. “No problem. When should we meet again?”

  Vreni thought, then made a helpless gesture. “I couldn’t say. I’ll leave you a message, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  And she was off again, half running. As Peter watched, it occurred to him that he didn’t remember seeing her ever go anywhere at anything less than a fast walk. She drove herself the way she drove her car. Possibly the secret of her success. Or possibly, he thought, as the waitress stopped at his table, it has more to do with being shot at.… That was something Peter could sympathize with.

  All the same, it left Peter with an extra day to call his own. Among other things, he could spend a little more time poring over the Connorses’ bank statements. And there was also the matter of his piece of smoke. Which to attack first?

  The smoke, he decided—if only because it was more mysterious. Peter had a sandwich and a salad, then headed up to his room to make some calls, and have another shower—this was one of those sticky mornings; even in the hotel’s air-conditioning, the humidity got at you. While undressing, he flicked the TV on to one of the news channels to see what the world was up to.

  “—reports of Spider-Man being seen in the east Everglades have been confirmed by Ochopee police this morning. The enigmatic super hero, or villain, depending on your sources of information, made a brief appearance near Deep Lake—”

  Peter chuckled and headed into the bathroom. But he had no sooner gotten into the shower than a voice said from the next room, “Dade County police are this morning investigating an incident scene near Matheson Hammock Park. Early reports are that a jogger stumbled on the aftermath of a massive assault. Police are questioning one man, Arnold Warren Campden of Miramar, who, initial reports say, was found near the scene of the incident. Police sources say that at present they have no confirmed suspects, and no indication of a motive, though there is speculation that the crime may have been drug-related—”

  This by itself would have sounded fairly dry, had Peter not climbed far enough out of the shower to look around the door into the room and see, on the TV, the news channel film crew’s shots of the beach area. A patch of beach some forty feet by forty was yellow-taped off. The sand there was much churned up, as if by a struggle, and great brown splashes of blood were everywhere. Off to one side was a hole which seemed not to have been completely filled in, and there were marks in the sand leading to or from the beach, as if something heavy, several somethings, had been dragged a short distance.

  Peter got back in the shower, frowning. The thought of all that blood was on his mind. He knew people who left such scenes behind them. If people is the word I’m looking for, he thought.

  Never mind that now. He got out, toweled off and dressed, sat down at the room’s table again, and tipped out the contents of the “thermos” once more. As MJ had, he poked it, found that slight springiness, but it gave only so much. There was an odd strength to it, for all its ephemeral appearance.

  Peter reached for the room phone with one hand and his address book with the other. What I need, he thought, is a specialist in materials science. And I don’t know any materials scientists.

  He paged through the book for a moment. At least it’s Monday, there’ll be someone up there. He picked up the receiver, dialed nine, and then a longer number.

  After some ringing, there was an answer. “Empire State University.”

  “Hi. Physics department, please?”

  “Thank you.” A pause, then another ring. “Physics.”

  “Rita? It’s Peter Parker, from Biochem.”

  “Peter! How you doing? You were in last month, but you didn’t stop by.”

  “It was a little crazy, Reets,” he said.

  “Tell me! With Hobgoblin and Spider-Man and Venom ripping the place up? That’s one word for it. Who’re you looking for?”

  “I was wondering if Roger Hochberg was on campus right now.”

  “I think so. I certainly saw him yesterday. Any idea what department, though?”

  “Not sure… he was talking about changing majors.”

  Rita laughed her deep dark laugh. “He does that about once a week. Wait a minute! Renee? Renee, by any chance do you know where Roger Hochberg might be?”

  “Uh—” said another voice.

  “Tall skinny guy, glasses. The one with the weird haircut.”

  “Oh, him! He’s up in the main research library. I saw him go in about an hour ago, anyway.”

  “Pete? Did you hear that?”

  “Yup,” Peter said. “Can you put me through?”

  “Sure thing. You come see us, now! It’s not like you’re that far away.”

  Peter laughed. “I’m in Florida at the moment.”

  “Oooh, how’d you swing that? Never mind, don’t want to know. Putting you through. Bye!”

  “Bye, Reets.”

  Peter waited, while yet another number rang and a seagull planed past outside his window, burning white in the sun. “Library.”

  “Roger Hochberg, please? I think he’s up there in the stacks.”

  “Just a moment, I’ll page.” He heard the library’s soft paging system say Roger’s name, and then the librarian said, “Oh, there you are. Call for you.” The phone changed hands.

  “Hochberg.”

  “Rog, it’s Peter Parker.”

  “Hey, how ya doing?” said Peter’s former lab partner, his everpresent smile almost audible through the phone. “Haven’t seen you for weeks.”

  “It’s been busy. Listen, I have a question for you. What looks like smoke, but it’s solid?”

  “Huh? What do I win if I get this right?�
�

  “A cookie at least. I saw this stuff the other day—on TV,” he added, to avoid complicated explanations, “and I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s been driving me crazy. I’ve got to find out what it is.”

  “Okay. Sounds mineral, rather than animal or vegetable.”

  “I’d say. But past that I wouldn’t venture a guess.”

  Peter described the stuff to Roger in more detail, and finally—on hearing about the stuff’s odd unsolid look, and its minuscule weight—Roger said, “Wait a minute. You saw this on TV? I see! They must have gone public.”

  “Who? With what?”

  “I’ll tell you. There’ve been papers about something that’s supposed to look this way. It’s called ‘hydrogel.’”

  “What’s it for?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s sure yet. They cooked this stuff up out at Livermore Labs, out west—I think as part of their superconductor research program. The stuff is apparently no good as a conductor, but they think it may have other uses. I don’t know much more about it, it’s not in my line. I only read the article abstract.”

  “Okay. Rog, who would I talk to about this stuff—to get some detail? I’m working on a story right now, and it may actually be of some use.”

  “Well, let me think.” A pause. “Trouble is, he’s not exactly local.”

  “Well, define local. I’m not at home, either. I’m in Florida.”

  “In this weather? Jeez. You poor guy. Never mind; Florida’s not bad. There’s a guy I know, an alumnus, who could probably talk you through what you need to find out—he was always such a journal hound, he’ll have to know about it.”

  “Where is he?” Peter said, hoping the man wasn’t up in the panhandle somewhere.

  “South of Miami, I think. Wait a sec—” There was a moment of scrambling. “I’ve got the laptop here with me. I think I have his address.”

  “What’s this guy doing now?”