Zephyr Box Set 1

by Warren Hately

  “Astonishing, isn’t it?” St George says.

  “Quite,” Sting replies.

  “It’s like they took John and, I don’t know, sort of made him an American overnight,” the former Beatle says. “He doesn’t exactly look like him, with or without the mask, but there’s something about that bloody swagger. . . .”

  “I didn’t know John as well as George here, Zephyr, but we can agree on one thing,” Sting says.

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s a bloody menace,” George cut in. “And a danger to the whole world.”

  “We want to help you, Zephyr,” Sting says.

  “We want to help you to help us. We want to take down the Preacherman for good.”

  “You want to . . . to. . . ?”

  “That’s right,” George says. “We want to kill John Lennon.”

  Zephyr 4.12 “Thwarted Godheads”

  I SPEND A few minutes contemplating the latest announcement. Sting goes to the sideboard and mixes four very large snifters of brandy. I don’t think to comment on the curious number until later.

  “Kill him?” I repeat again, eventually – my roundabout way back into the conversation.

  “As reprehensible as it may be to you or I to take human life,” Sting says, giving me my first serious doubts he’s actually rooted around too far inside my brain, “in this instance – and thinking of the greater good – it’s hard to envision a better solution.”

  “What the world does not know is that we have already repelled two more of the Doomsday Man’s attacks on civilization,” George says. “In each instance, we’ve only narrowly escaped with our lives.”

  “It’s actually thanks to him, indirectly at least, that our little group came together,” Sting says, neatly picking up the narrative while George fossicks around inside one of his sizeable nostrils with some sense of urgency and then inspects the results.

  “We came together in a fairly impromptu fashion to defend the UK against the first attack,” Sting says. “Of course, we were ready when the second came.”

  “After that, we told Her Majesty she might as well relax and let us take care of any future incursions,” George says, flicking something away into the far corner of the carpeted room. “You could say we’re single-handedly responsible for the fairly serious decline in superhuman crime in the United Kingdom since.”

  “What have the Jacks got to say about this?”

  “Those ingrates?” Sting laughs.

  “Well really, we’re not sure they’ve noticed,” George says with more of that wry, sardonic, sad-faced act of his. “Between their book deals and celebrity diet endorsements, I’m not sure the Union Jacks have noticed that any superhuman crime bar a few bank robberies have pretty much stopped in the last few years.”

  “The country needs us,” Sting says, “but it’s not enough.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No,” he says and looks at Harrison, as if the elder in the room might be better able to explain it.

  “We’re thinking of the bigger picture, Zephyr,” St George says. “It’s not just your father. It’s space. Deep space. Alternate realities. Extra-dimensional consciousness. Thwarted godheads. You name it.”

  “We’ve already fended off three serious, global-sized disasters this year,” Sting says, some of the money dropping from his voice as the passion takes over. “Only one of them was even focused on the UK.”

  “North America?” I ask.

  “Na, Greenland and Russian tundra. Never mind,” he continues. “I think the point stands. Your dad’s a threat. A global threat. But it’s not him alone. We need to expand. A global operation. A safety net for the entire planet.”

  “You’re talking hundreds of masks,” I reply, thinking of my own nascent team and the inevitable bickering. “I don’t think . . . well, unless you’re planning to mind control all of them, then I don’t see how you’re going to do it.”

  “Our plan doesn’t involve hundreds, Zephyr,” St George says. “Just a few. A few like you.”

  “Um, what does that mean?”

  “You’re the son of the Preacherman, if you’ll excuse the pun,” George says with a wistful smile. “An incredible power runs through your veins.”

  “And you probably don’t even realize it, son,” adds Sting.

  “Go on. . . ?”

  “Your father and I knelt before the Maharashi, Zephyr,” George says. “We learnt the same techniques. The same openings.”

  “I’ve been there too, mate,” Sting says. “We could teach you. To open up. To your true potential. We don’t need an army. Just a few good men.”

  I am about to say something insightful when a coarse voice, invisible in the ether, chimes in with, “Oi, isn’t you bein’ a bit sexist wiv jus’ wantin’ a few good men?”

  I’m not prepared for the two supers to break into laughter. I’m only marginally more prepared for the figure in canary yellow sportswear who materializes into view standing in the middle of the conversation and carrying one of the earlier-mentioned snifters of brandy. He hoists it and tilts the swirling goblet at me.

  “Aiiiiight?”

  “Zephyr, this is the third member of our elite cadre,” George says.

  “DJ Ali.”

  *

  I TAKE A few nervous steps back in the room and almost put my butt into the fire. The newcomer has a faggotty little beard and moustache and yellow-tinted goggles over his eyes, an elasticated cap of some sort drawn down over his hair. Around his neck rest a pair of the biggest headphones I’ve ever seen, yet the bungee cord loops over his shoulder and down to the belt of his parachute-fabric pants seemingly without connecting to anything. The jacket’s of the same material, bright yellow as I said, and emblazoned with a gigantic letter G. A relatively modest amount of bling also dangles around his neck.

  “You’re a . . . DJ?”

  “You think these headphones is just to make me look like science fiction, bro?” the Yellow One replies.

  I gesture to Saint George and Sting.

  “You’re in with these guys?”

  “For real.”

  “Ali is perhaps the most powerful of all of us, Zephyr,” Harrison says. “He is an infopath.”

  “De data master,” Ali says in his weird, probably contrived British gangsta voice which is part West Indies, part Upper Shrewesbury, both filtered through a public education system ruled by fat children stuffed full of crisps and red cordial keeping the teachers at bay with raised chairs.

  “So . . . information,” I say in that hesitant voice I just can’t shake. “You’re like the human Internet or something?”

  The DJ smiles. His expression is suddenly less ridiculous and more sinister. He steeples his ring-heavy fingers together.

  “Lesson one.”

  That said, he vanishes again from view. Moments later, he re-appears alongside me. I do not flinch, even when Sting and the other even older codger break into grim chuckles.

  “Lesson two. Close your eyes.”

  I look between him and the others for a second and shrug and do as he asks. There’s a feeling, perhaps a butterfly caressing my face, and when Ali says to open them again I am astonished to find my nose bleeding quite heavily. George hurries across the room and gestures at my face, telekinetically staunching the blood flow and unbeknownst to me repatching the capillaries at the cellular level. I wipe off the excess flow with the back of my hand and calmly take a napkin from a little silver roll of them on the mantelpiece.

  “What was that?”

  “I’m guessing Ali suppressed the flow of information between your nerve endings and your face,” Sting says from near the billiards table now. “As I understand it, he could make the information flow fatal. The slap was . . . pure theatrics.”

  “Do you have to ask many of your opponents to close their eyes before you can get the better of them?” I ask coldly.

  The DJ shrugs cartoonishly. “Lesson three.”

  He snaps his fingers
and I go blind.

  Great.

  *

  THE TECHNICAL EXPLANATION barely registers as I suppress the nearly incoherent urge to level the mansion and DJ Ali with it. It’s only knowing I’m in such august company that I’m able to restrain myself. The info-mage in leisure wear can clearly read my intent – this information flow, into which he is globally connected, is also an extension of his powers – and he’s obviously not that all-powerful that he can shrug off the prospect of copping a flogging from yours truly. I sense he’s more like the kooky eccentric or the nerd in the wheelchair or the cutesy nerd/goth girl in this team, rather than one of the front-line hitters, no matter how easily he managed to bloody my nose.

  I absorb a few more lines from Sting and Mr Harrison as they explain how DJ Ali invited himself on to the team after Saint George’s UK-wide telekinetic radar came to the attention of his world-spanning psionic information-processing powers.

  “TK-UK,” Ali says from the other side of the room and snaps his fingers again, this time nothing happening except an emphasis to his words. “It’s the best brand name you ain’t never heard of.”

  “So between the three of you, you’re keeping the whole UK under wraps?”

  “Between my telekinetic far-sensing, Ali’s real-time information flow, and Sting’s global telepathic abilities, we have the place wrapped up pretty tight,” Harrison nods.

  “Tighter’n a nun’s ass,” the Yellow One says.

  “Let me guess,” I say to him. “You’re in on this yoga schtick too?”

  “Na, man,” he says and lifts his second snifter of brandy. “Me ain’t into tha’ sort of beeswax.”

  “Actually, he did ask us if he’d be able to suck his own dick,” Sting laughs.

  The other Brits redden, Ali responding with, “Oh yeah, man,” in an irate and defensive voice. “You is always goin’ on about how you is makin’ the sexual moves wiv your old lady for days on end. Don’t tell me you ain’t tried lickin’ da winkie.”

  I can only shake my head at this. While I sympathize with his feelings on the yogic arts, the stupid soap opera I’ve quite literally landed in’s been going on long enough.

  “Well look,” I say a tad louder than I need to, just to derail the argument I sense about to begin. “I’ll think about what you’ve said to me, and your offer. It’s very good of you to consider me, even if mind-controlling me halfway across the countryside seems a little extreme.”

  “Don’t go yet, Zephyr,” Sting says.

  “I’m on my way to find my half-brother, Julian,” I reply. “I understand he’s got a castle in Normandy. Not bad, eh?”

  “Aren’t you just going to Julian to find your father, Zephyr?” Sting asks.

  “Not entirely,” I say, on the defensive again. “Though I get the feeling you’ve already reamed me enough to know my reasons.”

  “You are after your father,” Sting says slowly.

  He’s not asking, but confirming what we both know to be true.

  “Your daughter encouraged you, didn’t she? But you also want to meet your brother. The brother you never had, growing up in that lonely house.”

  “Please,” I say in a stiff voice.

  I don’t know if it’s because he’s left the door open on his way out of my brain or what, but the tears don’t feel too far away.

  “Go to your brother then, Zephyr, and good luck to you,” Saint George says from the opposite side of the room. “Go to your brother and when you have an answer to our . . . invitation . . . come back.”

  “I will,” I reply, not really meaning it until their next words come.

  “And then we will tell you where to find your father.”

  Zephyr 4.13 “Clandestine”

  IT’S UNNERVING THAT Sting insists on seeing me out. We walk side-by-side through several rooms of the mansion, me consciously aware this is a superbeing who has influenced so much about the way dudes in spandex do business today. Yet he is curiously devoid of spandex or any suggestion such fabric has ever been necessary. He’s a handsome man, even up close and in person, and yet something ageless about him also gives the impression of a mummy or a preserved cadaver. A cadaver in peak physical health.

  “So where the hell did you dredge up that fucking DJ?” I ask candidly.

  Sting raises a wan smile. There’s affection there for the freak, I know it.

  “His real name’s Sasha. Go easy on him. I don’t think … I think his powers, you know, gaining them, may have pitched him off his axis a little.”

  “Christ.”

  “I hope you can understand what we’re trying to offer you, Zephyr,” the Englishman says. “I know you’re a skeptical chap. You probably think I’m fluffing you if I said we were thrilled to have the chance to meet you. We really admire what you’ve done.”

  “Yeah, I’m finding that a bit hard to believe.”

  “No, really, mate,” he says and shrugs as we move through a French doorway and out onto an internal deck, Persian rugs the dominant flavor. “It’s possible to admire something without seeking to emulate it. You’ve been on the frontline for so long, when George and me, we just pick and choose.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What I want you to understand . . . what I really want you to take away from this meeting, Zephyr, is that we’re not just asking for your help. Your compliance. We’re offering the keys to the kingdom. Do you understand?”

  “Um, possibly not.”

  We halt. The sinewy blonde puts his hand on my leather-clad shoulder. We’re the same height and his vibrant blue eyes bore into mine with a power that is more than a mere suggestion of aesthetics.

  “I’m talking about immortality.”

  I have nothing to say to this. Dying is not something I fixate on. Based on some of the things I have seen, while I am one hundred per cent convinced there’s no real afterlife as people see it in standard religious terms, I also know or at least wouldn’t be surprised to know we live on in some form, however unpredictable or intangible or abstract. It’s never what you’d expect and yet the end results are roughly the same: that’s what I’ve learnt so much about life, and I guess death’s the same.

  “Uh, really? That’s cool. Yeah, that’s cool, Sting.”

  “We know the pathway. I’m living proof of it. George is living proof of it. He should be dead at least twice over now, some of the problems he’s had. But we’ve conquered it in the same way we’ve expanded our powers. And honestly, I don’t think there is an end to that escalator, Zephyr. It’s not a stairway to Heaven. It’s an endless path. And we’ll happily deal you in, if you throw in with us.”

  “I’ll, um . . . there’s a lot to think about.”

  “Of course. And your father, of course.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Sting nods, encouraged, and we’re distracted from our serious conversation by a metallic voice. A big shiny robot with an even bigger metal face and glowing blue ears comes hitching around the corner. It’s voice is weird: deep and ululating.

  “What the. . . ?”

  Sting’s hand is gentle on my arm and for the first time I wonder if it’s possible he’s gay.

  “Shhh,” he says. “We’re a bit of an old people’s home for lost souls around here. This is Metal Mickey. I don’t suppose the name means much to you as an American.”

  “Can’t say it does,” I agree.

  “Poor bugger,” Sting says.

  We watch as the robot swivels its bits and steers off across the open space and finally stops before a glass doorway, perhaps incapable of negotiating the sliding door to the outside.

  “He was one of the first machine heroes of the early 1980s. Perhaps the first self-aware cybernetic organism in the recorded world. Fought with the Union Jacks, the Freedom Front, even partnered with Champion for a bit when he came out of retirement.”

  “Name doesn’t ring a bell,” I say. “What’s his problem?”

  “Ran out of memory,” Sting replies.
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br />   I nod and he gives a sad smile and that seems about all there is to say.

  *

  I LEAVE THE meeting with a bad taste in my mouth, mitigated by neither the fine brandy nor the flavor of my own blood. I expected more from an encounter I never expected in the first place and the only thing that can come of such a situation is disappointment.

  I have a GPS on my belt and DJ Ali gave precise co-ordinates to Julian Lennon’s address. In a lazy twenty minutes I have passed over the Jersey islands and battered the crusty Norman coastline with the sonic signature of my passing. Big seabirds cavort in the foam thrown up by the rough Atlantic, and as I vector across the silent moonlit townships of the Normandy uplands, the damask’d fields, the post-medieval steeples, the silent barns, the slumbering horses, cows and tractors, the cobbled town centers which betray precious few indicators of the passage of time other than electric lights, the odd late-looming French hoodie checking in with maman on the cell. A weird peacefulness enters my chest and I slow, still faster than a speeding bullet, but able to drink in the gallant breeze and the normally imperceptible echo of the land in its barometric shadow, bubbles of sensory data which burst and are absorbed through my chest as I crest each hill and rise. I wonder if this is any part the serenity my yet-stranger half-brother feels in the place that he makes it his own. As the shape of a giant chess piece looms silhouetted on the moon-brilliant horizon, I know I will soon have the chance to find out for myself first hand.

  Chez Lennon is a single-tower reconstructed fourteenth century motte-and-bailey castle which has been gentrified over the years and then given a clandestine sweep of genuine twenty-first century tech. State-of-the-art security systems give me the once-over as I land in the big walled courtyard, now big enough to house ten times as many of the vehicles that are parked there: a restored antique Bentley and a carbon black BMW. Two-hundred years back they built a superstructure connecting the stone tower and the Seventeenth Century stables, incorporating the two in a piece of bastard architecture that is one part manor house and three parts observatory. Athwart where the horses would’ve once been, there is now a dome, repository for all that tech as well as the forty-foot telescope jutting from the mechanized opening.