by Diane Duane
“Hi, this is Peter Parker. I spoke to you a few minutes ago about getting an authorization code so that I can discuss my wife’s account. I have that number now.”
“Thank you, sir. What is it, please?” Peter read it out, then waited through the inevitable pause.
“I’m sorry, sir; that number isn’t showing on our system.”
All the phone calls my wife didn’t make are sure as hell showing on your system, Peter wanted to say, but he didn’t. “Maybe that’s because she just got the number?” he suggested. “The authorization number, I mean.”
“That wouldn’t normally be the case, sir—uh-oh.” This time the pause was far longer than usual.
“Uh-oh?” Peter echoed mildly. That was not a noise he liked hearing from anybody who was so plainly dominated by the technology surrounding him.
“I’m sorry, sir. The system’s gone down. Can I get you to call us back in, say, ten or fifteen minutes?”
“Certainly,” said Peter and hung up as gently as he could.
That exchange set the tone for the next hour. He called back three times to find the system still down. The fourth time, it was refreshing itself and wouldn’t be back online for another ten minutes. That response was the first sensible thing he had heard all morning. Refreshment.
Peter got up and made himself a cup of coffee, very strong, with a lot of sugar. Then he sat at the table again, and stared at the phone, and drank his coffee very slowly, thinking that maybe Mel Ahrens’s attitude to modem technology wasn’t quite so eccentric after all. He also couldn’t help hoping, at least a little, for some kind of emergency to crop up that required Spider-Man’s presence. Web-swinging—not to mention hitting something very hard—carried a certain amount of appeal just now.
Gamely, he dialed again, battled his way through the voice mail, and this time, to his relief, failed to find Hello-this-is-Brian-nursing-his-hangover.
“CellTech-Customer-Services-this-is-Alan-how-may-I-help-you?” Well, this one sounded bright and eager to please. It made a pleasant change. He greeted this-is-Alan courteously enough, gave him the authorization code, and this time not only was it in the computer, but the computer stayed up and running.
“So, how can I help you, Mr. Parker?”
“I’m trying to work out what can be done about this particular phone bill….”
Slowly and patiently, Peter told the whole story, while Alan listened and made encouraging noises. But finally he said, “I’m sorry, there’s not a great deal I can do to help you. Under the present regulations, your wife remains responsible for the calls, and when the bill comes due, she’s going to have to pay it.”
“That’s going to be a real problem.”
“I understand it’s going to be a problem for you, Mr. Parker. But please bear in mind, this kind of thing is a problem for us as well. We still have to pay the government a tariff on every minute of telecommunications used by our service on the frequencies which they lease to us, and this year already CellTech has paid over two million dollars to cover what have been fraudulent calls. We have to recoup those funds somehow, and I’m afraid that until the regulatory structure changes, it has to come from our clients.”
“But isn’t there anything that can be done to establish where the calls came from, or who did this, or even just to prove that they weren’t made by my wife or with her permission?”
They went back and forth over it, and Alan was understanding, very understanding indeed. Professionally so, Peter thought. But it always came back to the same response: there was nothing that could be done. Finally he fell silent, and in that silence thought he sensed Alan twitch just a little bit.
“Mr. Parker,” he said, “I’m sorry for your trouble. I really am.” There was another silence. “I can do this. I can add—we’ll call it an adjustment period—two weeks onto the due date of your bill. That way you won’t have to pay until the fifteenth. Would that help you a little?”
“It’s certainly better than nothing,” Peter said. “And it might even give us a chance to establish where those calls really came from.”
“If you can get the police to help with that, it would be your best bet,” said Alan. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but that’s about all I can do.”
“Listen, I guess it’s as much as we could have hoped for. Do you have an ID number or something, so that we can call you back?”
“No, sir. Just ask for Alan. Alan Soames.”
“Thanks again for your help, Alan. I really appreciate it.”
“Anytime, Mr. Parker. Thank you for calling Cell-Tech. Good-bye.”
Peter hung up, feeling both disgusted and at the same time guilty about his disgust. The guy had really been trying to help, and had sounded genuinely sorry that he hadn’t been able to do more. Now he was left with the same problem as before, except that the date of execution had been postponed a little.
If we still have to pay this, he thought, then there goes our safety net.
But if those extra couple of weeks gave either him or MJ or both of them the chance to make some extra money, then it might not be so bad. He stared at the coffee cup, still a quarter full of now-cold, sweet coffee, then got up, went to the sink and emptied it out, then poured himself another cupful and over-sugared that, too.
No solution for this problem, not yet. But boy, if I ever catch the guy who cloned MJ’s phone…. He shook his head at himself, and sat down. Murder was of course out of the question, but when the guy or guys were turned in, and if Spider-Man was responsible for their capture, then he intended to make sure they got a little wasted first. For MJ’s sake, as well as for his own.
The sound of keys in the lock brought his head up suddenly. At least, it sounded like keys. Was someone trying to pick the lock? The first deadbolt was thrown, then the second; and the chance of anyone doing that with a lock pick was pretty minuscule.
The door opened and MJ stalked in. She looked around, saw him sitting at the table, and threw him an expression of such fury and sadness and upset that he stood up and went straight to her. “MJ, what’s the matter?”
“I cut my hand,” she said and waved her bandaged left hand at him as if it were something offensive. “I cut my hand!” This time it was more of a wail.
Having received his share and then some of bruises and cuts during his career as a super hero, Peter assumed the worst. “Let me see. Is it bad? Do you have to go to the hospital? Will it need stitches?”
He took her hand gently between both of his, turned it over, and eased off the bandage. Then he let out a long sigh of relief. There was a gash running across the first and second knuckles, but it was thin and shallow, already dry and clotted. He hadn’t known what to expect, but at least this was no worse than any kid might pick up after a fall in the schoolyard.
“Want me to kiss it and make it better?” he said.
She glared at him. “Better not. If you start it bleeding again, then I might really lose my temper.” She flumped down into the chair, looking flushed and angry beyond all reason.
“You’re back early,” said Peter.
MJ snorted. “You’re damn right I’m back early. I can’t work anymore today. God knows if I’m going to work anymore, ever!” She reached for his coffee cup and eyed the contents. “Sugar?”
“A lot.”
“Good.” She took a long swig. “We were shooting, and things were fine, until about half an hour in. Just after we talked. Then somebody tripped over a lighting tripod behind me. You know, the tall ones with the spots on top? They fell, the tripod went over, and I tried to catch it. I should never have done that, never. Always trying to be helpful.” She took another gulp of coffee. “One of those big knurled locking nuts had a rough place on it. It caught the back of my hand as it went over. So now I’m out of work.”
“What? Did they fire you just because you cut your finger?”
“Well, what else could they do? Anyway, they didn’t fire me. They just—let me go until this thing
heals. But they’re on a tight schedule. They’re not going to be able to hold the shoot for me, and no one’s going to use me for anything anyway until this is better. And what if it scars?”
Her frustration was palpable. Peter sat down with her, and took that hand again, and held it. “Have you ever scarred before? I mean, you must have cut your hands. Lots of people do.”
“I don’t, usually. At least, I don’t think so.” She looked at both hands. “I can’t even remember the last time I got a good cut. But it doesn’t matter. Scar or not, it’s going to be weeks before this heals so you can’t see it anymore, and at least a week before they can even think of covering it with makeup. Anyway, even if they could use makeup, it would have to be waterproof because of the suds and things, and waterproof makeup’s far too thick for the sort of close-up shooting that they need…. Oh, Tiger.”
She put her head down on her folded hands and let out a long breath. “So much for a thousand bucks a day.”
“Aren’t they even going to pay you for what you did today?”
“I don’t know. When I left, they were still discussing whether they could use the footage they had, or scrap it and bring in another model. I assume that union rules mean I’ll get paid for the couple of hours’ work this morning; but I doubt I’ll get the whole day’s worth.” She sighed. “This is so infuriating. Never mind. How did you do with the phone company?”
“Better than I expected, but nothing like as well as I had hoped.” As he explained, her face fell further. “They were pretty good about it, but I’ve a feeling there’s only so much slack they’ll cut us. We’ll have to cope. But I did get one scrap of information last night that might be of use.”
“Yeah, last night. I was too dozy to pay much attention when you came in.”
“And I was too tired to tell you much, so you didn’t miss a thing.” He told her briefly about his meeting with Mel Ahrens. When he got to the bit about the Russian Mafia, MJ started to shake her head.
“Those are not nice people,” she said.
“Well, I would have thought that came as part of the job description.”
“No, I mean… There’s been so much about them in the news lately. And they’re not like the Italian gangsters—they always seem to be more careful about involving innocent bystanders. But these guys—if they even think you’re any sort of threat at all, they’ll shoot you.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies. They’re all crooks, they’re all dangerous, and they’ll all involve as many bystanders as they need to get the job done. Besides, I’m not that easy to shoot. Some of them found that out last night.”
He told her about the Kalashnikov-toting ram raiders. She tsked at him—then looked slyly at him from the corner of one eye. “All that jewelry, and you didn’t bring me any.”
“Now, now. Some of the police are uncertain enough about Spider-Man as it is. All it would take would be me seen lifting one little stone, or one pretty necklace, and that would be it. Open season on web-slingers.”
“I guess so.”
“Hey, you’ve got a girl’s best friend already. You don’t need any more diamonds than the one you’ve got on your finger right now.”
“I don’t know about that! You know what they say: you can never be too thin, too rich—or have too many sparklies.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard that last bit before.”
“Maybe not. But all the same, I like this diamond a lot. And I like you a lot.” Then she grinned. “But what was this other lead you were talking about?”
Peter tapped Sergeant Drew’s card, lying on the table among the other paperwork left over from last night. “It seems he has somebody coaching him where cell phone fraud is concerned. I’m supposed to give him a call today or tomorrow, then go talk to his technical adviser. Whoever he is.”
“Or she,” MJ put in.
“Okay. Or they. Drew was walking a company line; the police are always pretty closemouthed about ‘private contractors.’”
“Do you think he-she-they can help us?”
“I don’t know. But it’s worth investigating, anyway. Even just for the sake of general information.”
MJ got up and went over to the coffeepot. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I’m going out with Ahrens tonight, to cover an interview with some disgruntled Russian crook who might spill a few cans of beans on his ex-comrades.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, the sunlight from the kitchen window catching in her hair and setting it ablaze. “I really don’t like this, Peter,” she said. “It’s bad enough that Spider-Man has to deal with crooks and gangsters, but if you’re going as Peter Parker—”
“Spider-Man comes too. Even if he doesn’t show. You know that. If I have to move fast to get out of harm’s way, then I’ll move first and look for explanations afterwards. An adrenaline rush or something like that. Look, Ahrens was being cautious, but I didn’t get any feeling that he was worried about his safety.”
“That’s fine for him,” said MJ. “But it’s your safety that I’m worried about.”
“He wasn’t concerned. Not for his life, or mine either.”
MJ poured her cup of coffee, went to the fridge for milk, then stirred fiercely. “So he’s always right about things like that, is he?”
He shrugged. “Well, he’s still alive.”
MJ came back to the table. “Did you say that he thought the Russians were connected with this CCRC organization?”
“There may be a connection. We’ll know better after the interview. The guy Ahrens is talking to didn’t want to say a lot up front.”
“It couldn’t be a trap, could it?”
“I don’t think so. If they wanted to shoot him, they’d just shoot him. They wouldn’t invite him to their hideout and then shoot him.”
“Why not? If you wanted to keep it private…”
“No. At least, not if you ever wanted to use that place again. Killing people in it would count as fouling the nest. He says that they’re trusting him not to have a tail—whatever ‘trusting’ means in the circumstances. Still, he’s never let his contacts down before, so I suppose he’s got a reputation to maintain.”
MJ stirred her coffee again, then looked up. “Did you catch the news this morning after I left?”
“No. I was either in the shower or holding in cell phone hell.”
“Then you didn’t hear about the nuclear test?”
“What nuclear test?”
“In upstate New York.”
“What?”
MJ nodded, looking somber. “It seems that somebody detonated a small nuke in a little town upstate.”
“Dear God. Was anybody hurt?”
“No. It seems they did it underground, in some mining facility like the French did last year in the South Pacific. Mururoa Atoll, wasn’t it? And the authorities are ‘refusing to comment’ on who they think might have been responsible.”
“Meaning they haven’t a clue.”
“Or don’t want to start a panic. Either way, the AEC won’t even say how big the ‘device’ was.” She made quotes in the air with her fingers. “But CalTech said that the shock wave they detected was equivalent to a yield of about one kiloton.”
“Sheesh,” muttered Peter.
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with your Russians, would it?” said MJ.
Peter shook his head and got up to see if there was enough coffee for a refill. “No way to tell at the moment. Not until the authorities are more inclined to talk about what they’ve found. And they may not do that for a while.”
He leaned against the kitchen counter, remembering what Ahrens had said about the Russian hunger for hard currency, about how an armaments industry that had once been supported by one of the largest armies in the world was feeling the pinch along with everyone else—and was very reluctant to make that final connection even in the privacy of his own head.
“Whoever exploded the bomb,” said MJ, “was not very
considerate.”
That struck Peter as one of the great masterpieces of understatement. “In what specific way was a nuclear explosion, ah, inconsiderate?”
“Well, the local community had just started some new commercial venture up there. Mining quartz or something like that. And now all the rock is radioactive. Literally too hot to handle. And it’s going to be that way for fifty, a hundred years. So everyone’s out of a job again. A whole little town with a new lease on life, destroyed just like that. Whoever could do something like that is a bad person.”
Of course, thought Peter grimly, there’s destroyed and then there’s destroyed. Whoever fired off the device could as easily have done so above ground. But he nodded in agreement. “There’s no telling who it could have been,” he said. “But at least the last person we caught messing with nukes is still locked up safe in the Vault.”
Hobgoblin had made a determined attempt to blow up New York City, or at least most of Manhattan, and Spidey had been lucky enough—though with Venom’s often-reluctant help—to stop him. But just because one super villain had been locked up, it didn’t necessarily mean that there weren’t others with equally grandiose schemes.
MJ stared at her coffee cup. “If I drink much more of this stuff,” she said, “I’m going to get so wired that I won’t sleep for a week. And it’s just too early for me to be home.” She held up the injured hand and wiggled her fingers, looking at the cut with much milder annoyance than when she had first come storming through the door. “I think, given the state of this, that I might as well just go down to a couple of the restaurants where the ‘resting’ models hang out, and pick up some gossip about other work.”
Peter looked at her affectionately. “You are just so persistent,” he said. “How do you do it?”
“Right now? Probably to keep from crying.” She wiggled the finger again. “The last time I ever came to another human being and bawled ‘I cut my finger!’ like that, I can’t have been much more than six. It’s just too funny.”
