Zephyr Box Set 1

by Warren Hately

  I’m still getting over the shock at his potty mouth, so Seeker stands in for me with a “Sure, professor,” and Prendergast shuffles at a fair clip from the room.

  “Well I knew something was going to happen,” I tell her.

  In the ensuing silence, Miss Black drops her invisibility and gently clears her throat.

  *

  PEOPLE SLOWLY START back into the smoky reception room. Among them is the mayor and straight away I march over and front him up. For the sake of appearances, I don’t go grabbing him by the lapels like I’d like. Pykes and I have been here before. I keep my voice low, malevolent.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Pykes? That damned robot could’ve gone berserk and levelled half the city.”

  “Really, Zephyr? With you here?”

  “Drop it, Roland,” I sneer. “That scientist’s already left. How sure are you about him?”

  “Look Zephyr, we’re grateful to you that a crisis has been averted. We’d appreciate absolute discretion as far as dealing with the media goes.”

  “It’s not gonna benefit anyone to go calling the press in,” I lie wildly.

  “Fortunately the Squadron saved the day, hmmm?”

  “We were the Sentinels, Pyke. Now tell me what you were thinking, calling the old team together without even consulting me about it?”

  “We spoke about this, Zephyr.”

  “Not that I recall,” I reply, possibly getting even angrier. “Who do you think you are, trying to pull strings like that? You weren’t even mayor then. God knows, Aaron Spelling wouldn’t ever pull a trick like this.”

  Alison Kirkness keeps most of the people away, but Miss Black and Seeker are close enough to angle in for a listen. There’s still no sign of the others.

  “Zephyr,” Pykes says, and he pitches his voice low and lets his eyes get all droopy with sentimentality. “This city needs you all. All of you. United.”

  “Don’t you think there are better ways to get that result than just tricking us all into the same room together?”

  It’s Miss Black who speaks and I’m glad for her. It’s nice to have another monkey flinging the brown stuff around for a change. Pykes is used to flipping me off and it’s clear he’s a little more lost for words taking it in the ass from a twenty-something girl magician.

  “Well, I’m . . . We never meant. . . .”

  “Some of us have higher responsibilities than a mere city, mayor,” Seeker says, all the otherworldliness she can muster shining through in her haughty voice. I have to confess she makes a convincing sight with that hair of hers writhing slowly upwards.

  “I’m . . . sorry,” Pykes moans.

  “Well there’s a first.”

  I turn away and the mayor grabs my arm.

  “Zephyr, please. Consider what I’ve said. We can talk about it again – under proper circumstances.”

  I relent, nodding.

  “And please, the utmost discretion.”

  I look around. Senator Keenan inclines her head towards me with her mouth half full of pickle sandwich I’m pretty sure she salvaged off the floor.

  “Good luck keeping it a secret in a city of forty million people, but sure, Roland. Just remember you owe me one . . . and no more surprises.”

  The mayor and his team disperse to shore up support among the other guests and Animal Boy limps in with Nautilus and Vulcana, both of whom look a little frayed.

  “This is bullshit,” Connie mutters.

  “Why are you limping?” I ask Animal Boy.

  “. . . caught my foot on the way down.”

  “Jesus,” I say. “Aqua – I mean, Nautilus, you OK, pal?”

  “That fucking robot, man. Next time I see it I’m turning him into a waffle iron.”

  “Yeah,” I laugh. “Well apparently he’s a super-intelligent computer in a state-of-the-art military robot shell. I’m guessing he’d be tough to tackle if he had a brain in place. That N-dimensional energy seems like a bit of a . . . whaddayacallem? You know.”

  “An Achilles heel,” Seeker says in monotone.

  “Right.”

  I look at the others and there’s a lull and someone in the background, a woman, starts laughing moronically, and I vaguely recognize her from an old morning television program. All eyes eventually return to the floor in the middle of our circle.

  “Pykes wants us to reform.”

  “Man, that ain’t ever gonna happen,” Nautilus laughs too quickly and then, frowning, asks, “Right?”

  “I’ve kinda . . . moved on,” Miss Black says sheepishly.

  “And I’ve got college,” Animal Boy says.

  “No offense dude, but I wasn’t really thinking about you,” I say.

  “Really?” He frowns and looks torn between being incensed or actually upset.

  “Zephyr’s right, man,” Nautilus says. “First sign of danger and you’d turn into a cat and high-tail it. What use is that?”

  Animal Boy blushes and Vulcana growls at Nautilus.

  “Hey, everyone’s power has a part to play in a team.”

  “This from the lady who turns into rubber, for chrissakes,” Nautilus barks.

  If color could come to her cheeks, I’m sure it would. Instead, Vulcana slaps the ex-Aquanaut hard across the face and precisely because of her altered molecular state, Vulcana’s hand bends as she slaps and it makes a loud and almost rude noise and it’s so absurd Miss Black, Animal Boy and I burst into laughter with Nautilus only a moment behind. Vulcana, however, remains irritated.

  “God, you lot were always so puerile. I can’t believe I even entertained the idea.”

  Looking good in her high black boots and leotard, Vulcana waves half-heartedly and leaves the room.

  “It wouldn’t be the same without Vulcana. Sorry dudes. Love me or leave me, I’m out of here,” Animal Boy says.

  “You mean it wouldn’t be the same without her to stick up for you. Take a hike then,” Nautilus says.

  “Feeling’s mutual, creep,” Animal Boy says and morphs into a dog and cocks his leg and sprays pee all over Nautilus’s feet. Nautilus jumps back and the dog, aka Animal Boy, bounds from the room.

  “That’s real superhero behavior,” Miss Black mutters.

  “When you make your decisions, I will be in touch,” Seeker says, beginning to turn insubstantial.

  “How are you going to know?” I ask the wind.

  “She’ll know,” Miss Black sighs.

  “I guess Chamber and Lone Wolf are out,” I say eventually.

  “I didn’t think Adrian looked too good.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I’ll catch you dudes later,” Nautilus says.

  He slips me a business card and then jogs like a Superbowl champ from the room, issuing waves. Miss Black makes a pained face.

  “Want this?” I hold up the card.

  She snorts. “Hardly.”

  “How about this?” I offer her one of mine and she takes it pensively, chewing the inside of her cheek. “You wanna get a coffee or –”

  “Actually, I’ve got to go. Thanks Zephyr.”

  I get a kiss on the cheek that makes me feel like a granddad and then I’m the only mask left in a room full of council employees and politicians. A janitor starts sweeping up plaster.

  I slip from the room and text Salvador Doro: usual place, midday.

  Zephyr 1.7 “Knowing When To Fold”

  I LAND ON the roof of the Jenssen Building without a sound. Having extricated myself from the pomp and formality of the mayor’s little shindig, my bladder aches, as do my ears from Senator Keenan’s profuse thanks. I’m still not sure she was suggesting what I think she was suggesting when she slipped me her card. The fact she tried to put it in my back pocket herself is suspicious. And I don’t have any back pockets.

  I scout around in case Sal is early, which wouldn’t be unusual. Instead, it’s just me and the pigeons on the roof, so I start thinking about trying to change the ringtone on my phone and I scoot around behind t
he protruding back of the roof stairwell to take a leak.

  For a moment I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing. Then what I first think is a corpse and then realize is a desiccated human being steps, disturbed, from possible hibernation behind the half-open janitor’s cupboard at the back of the roof projection. Huge, nictitating brown eyes bat at me. I’m too stunned to notice the fist. It hits me with surprising strength and then the creature backflips, taking me in the chest with both feet on the way round. I go a good five yards and wind up hanging backwards over the edge of the building as I scramble back up one-handed, gobsmacked, this thing like a moss-colored, year-old cadaver with misty bits of cobweb or something drifting off it.

  I can do no more than yell “Hey, wait!” before a long, weird, slightly unlikely-looking pair of insectile wings unfold from the figure’s back, a pattern like an owl’s eyes on them, and they’re buzzing like a saw mill and he lifts up and away, over the edge of the building, disappearing, a moth-man, with no explanation.

  I peer over the ledge dumbfounded, and I’m still there, kneeling, a little less awed and more contemplative when Salvador Doro comes puffing and cursing out the other side of the roof.

  “Zephyr, Jesus, it’s about time we found another place for this.”

  “You could be right.”

  Sal moves across the roof and it’s only a minute or so before he’s smoking. I accept the offer and marvel at the rank taste in my mouth, the sensation of my bronchioles scorching, the almost fizzingly palpable way my body goes into action repairing the damage. It’s not hard being superhuman, just weird. Sal waves an envelope in my face.

  “This better be on the money,” he says.

  “Hey, don’t bat that fucking thing at me. I’m no crack whore.”

  I snatch the envelope and check there’s five hundred inside along with the Chronicle’s joke, a tax invoice, and I gut the package like a fish and tuck away the important bits. The rest becomes a crumpled ball, flash fried.

  “So what’s the story, morning glory?” Sal asks.

  We have a special kind of relationship and he knows he’s not up here for his good looks. He is, at least, a relief from the reporters too star-struck to remember what’s off-the-record. A 35-year veteran of the boroughs, Sal Doro was writing about supers in this city back when Captain Atom left the army and Divine Grace was still a three-dollar girl who could only make a sparkle with saliva and a whole heap of elbow grease.

  “Did you catch that show at City Hall yesterday?”

  “The Hermes Foundation gig? One of the cadets went along. Marv got some photos of that shiny new robot. Impressive.”

  “I don’t have to tell you this doesn’t come back to me, right?”

  “Sheesh. For the millionth time, Zephyr. . . .”

  A guy’s gotta pay the bills somehow, especially with my wife always ready to remind me that hero-ing isn’t exactly an income. So I lay the scene out for Sal, the tussle with the robot, an inexplicable malfunction – no need to go putting sensitive information out there for the next jumped-up malefactor – and of course Zephyr gets a good mention. This time I’m generous: I concede Seeker, Vulcana and the old Aquanaut came up with the goods. The others don’t rate a mention. Sal’s smart enough to know there’s an angle in this and asks me about the coincidence, every card-carrying member of the Sentinels in the same room. Then he raises an eyebrow and sits back to listen.

  He’s disappointed.

  “You got another one of them envelopes in there?”

  “Jesus, Zephyr,” the hack coughs and flicks away the dead stub of his smoke. “I don’t even know this is worth it, let alone paying for another.”

  “Worth it? You say that all the time, Sal, and then my quotes are on your front page, right beneath that photo byline the lino boys mocked up in the Stone Age when you still had your own teeth. Trust me, ‘Robot rampage’ might even be an easy fit. Tell the headline guys. All caps.”

  Sal quietens down to ask a few pertinent questions and I give him what I can, describing the professor and even throwing a few more names at him, this Dr Martin Thurson as well. Sal jots it all down in six-point type and offers me another cigarette which I decline.

  “You hear what Nate Simon’s been writing about you?”

  “Like I’ve got time to read the Post. I hate broadsheets, you know that. Too damned hard to fold.”

  “Real cultured, you.”

  “So what does he say?”

  “Jeez,” Sal stands and makes a face, stretching his back in the obscene way only men coming on sixty and two-twenty pounds can manage. “Maybe I oughta let you read it for yourself.”

  “Spit it out, Sal.”

  “Well let’s just say the words out on a certain fruity ringtone that makes people wonder whether Zephyr doesn’t bat for the other club.”

  Blood, among other things, drains from my face.

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “Look into these baby blues,” he says, pulling down one vaginal lid.

  “Shit. You know it’s not true.”

  “Maybe I just ain’t your type.”

  “It’s this stupid phone. It’s a default setting.”

  “You should get someone to look at it,” Sal laughs, turning to go, waving with a folded up newspaper I didn’t even notice him carrying. “Let me know if you wanna Sal Doro exclusive on why the Sentinels aren’t reforming. I hear the mayor’s been having hush-hush luncheons with half the city’s masks.”

  I shake my head and let him go. Over time, my gaze turns. For home.

  *

  CALLING HOME IS overdue. Not my home, I mean the home I grew up in. They used to call it Astoria, before the whole area got wallpapered over as Pierce (carrying on the presidential thing, you know, for Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857 – I know it’s not exactly the most memorable name, but unlike Cleveland and Washington, he didn’t have a major city named after him already). The grey streets are much the same as they were when I was a troubled teen, unable to confide to anyone why I blew all the fuses in our semi-detached every time I had a wet dream. Or at least that’s how I remember the area. Truth be told, the old town and I ain’t exactly on best terms these days, though it’s nothing to do with Max and George. Something about being a world-class, ball-busting badass superhero means you don’t go back to the suburbs as often as reminiscence might otherwise dictate.

  So, twenty-first century telemetry has to do the trick. In the wallspace again, I fire up Zephyr’s iMac supercomputer and wonder how I managed to be conned into such a slackwire gizmo. The only thing I can download that runs on the damned thing is porn, but my guy in New Hampshire swore by it and so the Apple billionaires get another penny in the fountain thanks to some nameless schmuck who bought the thing outright one day, just walking in off the street with a wad of cash, the accompanying Tribune pay slip nothing but a smoky residue.

  My guy – let’s call him Niall, it’s his name after all – runs the message board for me gratis ever since I saved his girlfriend from a flying car during a downtown slugfest with Crescendo. (See how naturally I managed to slip that word there into this, this whatever it is we’re having, this conversation?) It was her first trip shopping in the big city on her lonesome. A cute little thing she was too, those tight little buns in my big hands as we flew to safety, the bad guy buried under rubble it took the city Works Dept three days to clear. Whew. Girls who look like Japanese animation aren’t really my thing, but if you met Niall, well, you’d know how the rest of the stories goes if you can’t guess already. Let it just be said the man does a fine line in sophisticated web artistry I’d frankly be too embarrassed to master myself.

  There’s not much happening on the Zephyr message boards. I put off the inevitable for as long as I can and then place the call, adjusting the webcam so it doesn’t catch the old red-and-white get-up still moldering on its hook. Max and George were web-savvy before anyone even decided on a name for the Internet, so it doesn’t surprise me when one of the dear old dykes
picks up on the third ring.

  Maxine already has the headset in place. She looks distracted for a second, gazing off-screen and giving me an unguarded look at the fine lines and wrinkles that come with the territory of being an ordinary schmuck. Poor old bird (imagine the English accent). The haircut is as fierce as it is trendy, undiminished by the natural steel wool color or the grey that seems to bleed into her cheeks. All the same, a genuine twinkle wipes twenty years off those bespectacled blue eyes that once melted hearts around the MIT Gender Studies Department water cooler. Or so she used to tell me. Georgia may have carried me to term, but it was Maxine who came through in the mothering stakes, as much as I would otherwise be tempted to call it an even race.

  “Hi mom.”

  “Joseph,” she smiles. “So nice to hear from you. I’ll have to tell your mother all those things she said about you last night really were misplaced.”

  I chuckle. I never stopped pausing over that habit of them speaking about themselves in the third person. You blink and the fucking signifier’s changed to the other one. Spivak pronouns be fucked. Other kids in the club had mums and godmothers, aunties, birth mothers, and craziest of all, one even had a dad (after the operation). In our family of three we just settled on mum and mom, Georgia with her Irish lilt, and Max with her ability to cut to the chase and otherwise read me like a book.

  We shoot the shit for fifteen minutes. This is me assuaging guilt, so it’s OK that I’m not big-upping myself. I’ve carried on a family tradition by never coming out to either of my parents. Though Maxine has always given me a knowing twinkle I couldn’t shake, I figured if it was good enough for them to hide me and each other from their respective families until they were all safely in the ground, I can keep myself and Zephyr separate too. The only problem this leaves is me having to answer the occasional curly one about myself that hits on the issue of my life being a complete disaster if you don’t have the fact of being an ass-whooping household name to fall back on. Quite apart from explaining how the fuck an ordinary Joe like me fills the day, being a work-from-home freelance writer and a practically unemployed one at that means I don’t exactly glow in the “make mommy proud” stakes. Max has her own bodyweight in degrees, diplomas and honorary positions of merit. George is a published author of cringingly erotic fiction and a prolific visual artist to boot, though – and it sort of comes with the territory – while she’s apparently mellowed out a heap since her student days, more often than not her pieces require a pretty spirited defense whenever they make it out into public. Some artists can get away with hand-making everyone their Christmas gifts. With some of the shit (and piss, and menstrual fluids) my mum has messed with over the years, you’d be begging Santa to go on the Naughty List once you got a delivery from her.