‘Oh, the computer thing.’
‘Computer thing?’ Svetilo asked.
‘We’re having an alien computer transplanted into the house,’ Cygnus explained. ‘I still don’t know how, but Hugh says he’s got it all planned out. They’re going to, somehow, get it under the house. Then they’ll connect it into power and data lines, and we’ll have a pretty awesome computer system.’
‘I was thinking,’ Andrea said, ‘maybe we could set things up a little like San Francisco. Using the new computer, I mean, and a bit less formal. If we could get everyone else signed up, we could have a proper, city-wide network for New Millennium’s Ultras to use.’
‘I bet we could get the police and fire departments on side.’ Cygnus was looking quite keen on the idea.
‘If you wear camisole top to more fires,’ Svetilo said, ‘then you can get fire department to do anything, but I think Andy would agree to it.’ The Russian sighed. ‘I could spend more evenings like this. Is good times.’
‘Happy days,’ Cygnus agreed, looking up at the sky.
‘Da. Happy days.’
Interlude: Seven Princes
Washington, DC, 16th November, 2014.
From the outside, it appeared to be nothing more than seven wealthy men meeting for a somewhat eccentric Sunday lunch. They sat at a large, round table so that no one appeared to have seniority over anyone else, though one of them was, technically, their leader, and one of them had more space on either side of him than the others which gave him an appearance of seniority.
They were an eclectic bunch. Most of them were at least moderately attractive, some quite handsome, but the one who sat on his own was obese with a squashed nose and sallow skin, and the reason for the space around him was his general lack of personal hygiene. All of them possessed power, but for some it was projected in the form of charm, others gave off an air of menace, and for some it was simply physical presence.
Perhaps the most eccentric feature of the dinner was the serving staff. They were all female, all quite beautiful, and all dressed in tiny red skirts, push-up bras, and high heels. They all had little red horns on hairbands, and curved, pointed Devil-tails attached to their backs. Every last one of them went about their tasks with the blank looks of mind-controlled zombies.
‘We’re agreed then? We make a move to consolidate control of New Millennium City.’ The speaker was a tall, blonde-haired man who considered himself the leader of the group. He was their best strategist, and he liked to chair meetings.
‘I believe we are, Lucifer. I’ve been wanting to open another club for a while and New Millennium is begging for it.’ This one was Lucifer’s polar opposite, the dark to his light.
‘Your club will act as our spearhead then, Asmodeus,’ Lucifer said, nodding. ‘However, Belphegor has been running drugs into the city for a while… Belphegor?’
The fat man appeared reluctant to stop stuffing his face long enough to speak, but he said, ‘The loss of the cocaine plant here put back that operation, but I’m just about back up to speed. If we can put distribution centres into New Millennium… Makes life easier.’
‘Which does bring us to the major problem with that city. Beelzebub? Where are we with political neutralisation of the problem?’
An attractive, mid-height man who had been pecking at his meal wiped his mouth on a napkin before speaking. ‘We had to pull back from pressing the UID investigation. We were drawing too much attention. If they come after us here, I can cause problems for them without too much difficulty, but there’s nothing much to be done outside DC.’
‘Leave them to me,’ Asmodeus said, a malicious smile on his lips. ‘I believe I can handle a couple of attractive Ultrahuman girls without too much difficulty. In fact, I think I’ll rather enjoy it.’
Part Two: Frozen Death
New Millennium City, MD, 17th November, 2014.
Doctor Ultimate was chattering away as he emerged from the wormhole. ‘…excavation done, we can… cabling shouldn’t be an… setting compound will need to be…’
His wife, Alice by birth but known to the Union of Ultrahumans as Patience, emerged a second later with an indulgent smile on her face and said, ‘Hugh, you’re just going to have to say it all again. In order this time.’
Ultimate stopped and turned around. ‘Oh. We went through. Ah. Yes. I’ll wait. And hello, Cygnus. Good morning, June.’ Cygnus and June, standing outside their house with grins on their faces, returned the greeting and then the third member of the team stepped out of the wormhole before it collapsed. ‘Elaine will be joining us later,’ Ultimate said, ‘but this is our geology and excavation expert, Cottontail.’
‘Hello,’ Cygnus said, knowing she was staring at the girl. ‘Welcome to Maryland.’
‘Thanks,’ Cottontail said, her voice a little muffled by the band of waxed cloth fixed over her mouth. It was attached to a huge, trapper-style hat and the rest of the outfit was just as eclectic: green breast band and short shorts, gloves which were short and fingerless on the right hand and elbow-length on the left, work boots with what looked like wool stockings, the right one around her ankles, but then her right knee had a pad on it as did her elbows, and there was a leather apron of sorts over the breast band. Under the clothes was a mid-height, very slim girl with a fit, lightly built body, but about all you could see of her face were large, brown eyes. Cottontail apparently kept her identity secret. ‘Uh, the Union guys call me Bugs,’ Cottontail added. ‘You can if you like.’
‘Do you like?’ June asked.
‘Well, it’s shorter than Cottontail. I don’t mind.’
‘Okay,’ Cygnus said. ‘Shall we go inside. I figure you want to see the basement so you can work out how you’re doing this. Also, coffee.’
‘Or tea,’ June added. ‘We learned tea.’
‘I heard,’ Alice said. ‘Viviane is agog. Hugh and I will take tea, if you would be so kind.’
‘Coffee,’ Cottontail said. ‘The blacker the better.’
‘I think we can manage both,’ Cygnus said, starting for the door. ‘You know Andrea’s at work, right?’
‘Indeed,’ Ultimate said. ‘A comic store, isn’t it? Appropriate. Perhaps I’ll get time to visit. Haven’t been in one in years. Student habit.’
‘That was when you were six or something? And doing your first doctorate?’
Ultimate laughed. ‘I was not quite that precocious. My early teens.’
‘And doing two degrees,’ Alice added. ‘He was almost that precocious.’ The redhead’s gaze swept around the hall with its open ceiling. ‘This is quite an interesting house.’
‘Well, Bobby designed it,’ Cygnus supplied. She pointed up. ‘That leads up to the dojo and then you can go up again to the master bedroom. We don’t use that, but I spar with Twilight in the dojo, and practise my aerobatics.’ They walked through into the large, more or less circular, living space. ‘And in here we have the lounge, kitchen area, and the doors off lead to the bedrooms. They used to be the guest rooms, but now June and I use one and Andrea has another. Uh, we allocated one for you, Hugh and Alice, and I’m not sure what we’re going to do with everyone else.’
‘Oh, I’m not staying,’ Cottontail said. She glanced around, noting the closed blinds on the windows, and then reached up to unsnap her mask and then pull off her hat. Beneath was a mop of auburn hair and a cute face. She looked quite young with hollowed cheeks, a pert nose, and very full lips. ‘I should be done with all the digging by the end of today. Well, hopefully. Worst comes to worst, I can sleep on the floor.’
‘I’m sure we could arrange–’ June began, but Cottontail held up a hand.
‘I’m kind of used to it. I spend a lot of time out in the desert. Arizona. I’m from Arizona.’
‘Oh. So it’s Desert Cottontail?’
The girl grinned. ‘My favourite animal. I have rabbit powers. And just to be absolutely clear, because I get this a lot, that doesn’t mean I go like a power drill.’
‘Though, i
n fact, you do,’ Ultimate said. ‘Just not that way.’
‘Well, yeah. Desert cottontails don’t actually dig their own burrows. They use rodent burrows instead. And my digging technique is more Tasmanian Devil than Bugs Bunny. You’ll see.’
‘Okay…’ Cygnus said. ‘Well, how about we look downstairs while June makes the drinks?’
‘Please proceed,’ Ultimate said.
‘I’ll help June,’ Alice said, smiling. ‘You’ve picked up pushing Hugh back on track quite well, Cygnus.’
‘Adaptable, that’s me.’ Cygnus stepped to the side of the main kitchen counter and then reached under it to press a concealed button. A section of the nearby floor dropped a couple of inches and then slid back. Lights came on to reveal a staircase.
‘Interesting,’ Ultimate commented.
‘Bobby had the wine cellar and his collection of martial arts manuscripts put in down here. The collection is fairly valuable, so it’s in a locked, temperature-controlled vault. Plus, you have to know where it is.’
‘Very interesting.’
At the bottom of the stairs was a small room with an arched doorway, minus the door, off to the left and a fairly solid-looking metal door on the right. Racks of wine were visible through the arch. Cygnus went right and tapped out a six-digit code on a pad beside the door, which then opened on motors. Beyond was a room lined with shelves with a reading table in the middle of it. The shelves contained books, scrolls, and various other methods of recording writing.
Ultimate walked into the vault and frowned. ‘Quite a collection,’ he said, ‘but sadly there are no walls we could punch through. I was hoping to simply beef up the security on that vault door a little.’
‘We could go down,’ Cottontail suggested, pointing at the floor. ‘Or up. All that stuff you’re talking about can’t come through the house. I could cut an access in from outside, under the house, and you can backfill once you’ve got everything in. Then I cut an access in here from below. The soil around here isn’t exactly great for tunnelling, so the deeper the better. More compacted.’
‘As long as we don’t disturb the air conditioning, that should be fine,’ Cygnus said.
‘And it would make setting the antennas easier,’ Ultimate said, nodding.
‘Antennas?’
‘Yes…’ It did not look like he was going to explain and his next words confirmed that. ‘I’ll take some measurements and come up for tea. We’ll organise things from there.’
‘Okay,’ Cygnus said, a little bemused. ‘You’re the expert.’
~~~
The house was surrounded by trees and Cottontail and Doctor Ultimate spent a good thirty minutes deciding on the exact spot within the circle to start digging. They wanted a spot where access to get the heavier equipment in would not be a problem, but it had to be far enough from the house itself to avoid disturbing the foundations and give a workable slope into what would be the new, lower basement.
‘Here?’ Cottontail asked, her voice once again muffled by her headgear.
‘I believe so,’ Ultimate replied. ‘You can go straight down for… two or three metres. Cygnus can handle the weight in flight, I believe.’
‘Probably,’ Cygnus agreed.
‘Then we’ll slope down at twenty degrees… You’ll need to cut a double width.’
‘Got it,’ Cottontail said, nodding. ‘You’d better stand back.’
Ultimate immediately did. Figuring that he had seen Cottontail at work before, Cygnus joined him and watched, fascinated, as the woman in the post-apocalypse survivalist outfit got ready. Twisting, Cottontail seemed about to go into some sort of pirouette dance move, and then she unwound it… Suddenly, Cygnus found herself looking at a tiny, whirling tornado in green, brown, and flesh tones which was cutting into the soil, throwing dirt out as she went down.
‘Wow,’ Cygnus said. ‘That’s…’
‘I managed to run some portable scanners on her once,’ Ultimate said. ‘She’s shrouded in cosmic energy. For want of a better description, she turns herself into a cosmic drill bit. It’s a little tiring, but she can keep it up for about fifteen minutes without too much strain and she’s become quite adept at building a secure tunnel as she goes.’
Cottontail was not simply going down: she was circling, widening her excavation as she went. After a few seconds, she had a hole maybe three yards across and a yard deep, and she just kept going.
‘This is not going to take very long at all, is it?’ Cygnus asked.
‘Assuming the ground is stable enough, I would say she will have completed her task by this afternoon. I’d like to get the chamber sealed this evening, if possible, but Elaine says she can handle that with a little help. Elaine also has some cable-laying robots which can handle the tunnelling for the antenna, power, and data cables… Yes, we should be ready to bring in the actual equipment by Wednesday. Then it’s just a matter of getting it all working.’
‘Uh-huh… You mentioned antennas before. Why does it need antennas?’
‘Ah! I didn’t explain, did I? No, of course. And “antennas” is perhaps the wrong term. We decided… Well, I decided really that there were a couple of other components which would be both useful and appropriate, so we are not just moving the computer in. We’re putting in the whole communications and sensor system, but those are fairly integral so, perhaps, not a surprise. In addition, we’re going to put the force field generator in. It’s quite capable of protecting your whole property and it needs force transducers.’
‘The force screens? Wow, that’s… That would be great.’
‘It isn’t like they are teaching us anything new. A number of Ultras can project protective fields. You can do it.’
‘Well, yeah, true. Doesn’t the screen need–’
‘A cosmic power source, yes. Which is why we’re putting the working reactor in to power the generator, computer, and your house. You’ll be entirely off the local network.’
‘Uh… Thanks. Surely you can learn things from the reactor though?’
‘Which is why I’ve organised an entire suite of monitoring equipment to go around and in it. I’ll get far more from seeing it in normal operation anyway and I hope you won’t mind me dropping in once in a while to run the odd test.’
Cygnus giggled. ‘Honestly, Hugh, I can think of a lot worse people to have visit than you. Just call before you drop in.’
‘Of course. Unlike Viviane, I tend to ring the doorbell.’
‘She did last time, but she came to talk to June about a new costume.’
Doctor Ultimate raised an eyebrow. ‘Viviane wants a new costume? I’m not entirely sure I can cope. She’s worn that dress since I’ve known her.’
‘She said something about taking on an apprentice and wanting to be more serious.’
‘Ah, yes. Cassandra. Quite a fascinating case. Something of a troubled young woman and Viviane has worked wonders with her. Our wayward sorceress has demonstrated how far she has come since her days of villainy.’
‘She’s always been– Well, she’s never been that nasty to Andrea, even if I think they both still worry about the really dark side of Twilight.’
Ultimate nodded. ‘They possibly have a right to be concerned. Andrea’s last EEG showed three distinct thought patterns instead of two. Her dark persona is more active now than it was, even if it remains fairly quiet.’ He flashed Cygnus a grin. ‘She’s hardly the only member of the Union with a dark side. You’ve never seen Brightstar when she’s really annoyed about something.’
‘Huh. Somehow I don’t think it’s quite the same. What Andrea’s dark side did at the castle…’ Cygnus shuddered. ‘A lot of people died.’
‘Quite. Thankfully, Brightstar does not get properly angry too often.’
~~~
‘So… Rabbit powers?’ June asked.
Cottontail was taking a break having used up a lot of energy, and it was lunchtime anyway so she was eating salad. She was, strangely enough, a vegetarian. ‘Yeah… You know
what mutant powers are like. You kind of get what your subconscious thinks you should get and I do love cottontails.’
‘Like? I mean, there’s the tunnelling thing…’
‘Case in point. Even rabbits that burrow don’t burrow like that. But… enhanced hearing and reflexes, reduced water consumption and other adaptations to desert living. Oh, and I can talk to most mammals.’
‘Do rabbits have much to say?’
Cottontail grinned. ‘Depends whether it’s mating season or not. Mostly they just talk about grass, leaves, water… To be honest, they’re not the brightest creatures in creation.’
‘We think Twilight has some cat powers. Under all the darkness stuff, but she’s still got them.’
‘Oh, now cats… I don’t talk to cats much. You get the odd nice one, but mostly it’s all just me, me, me.’ Cottontail paused and frowned, pursing her lips. ‘It’s kind of like talking to Brightstar, now I come to think of it.’
‘You know, she seems to get a bad rep for that,’ Cygnus said, ‘but she’s been fairly nice since I joined up. She was actually pretty easy-going in San Francisco.’
‘Oh, that’s easily explainable,’ Alice said. ‘Adamantium is coming to help shift the equipment around. Brightstar will be with him, you can bet on it. When they get here, you’ll see why she’s turned into a pussy cat.’
‘The rumours really are true?’ June asked.
‘I don’t think the rumours tell even half the story, my dear.’
~~~
‘I have no idea how they put up with that!’ Elaine said as she watched the wormhole collapse behind her. ‘It’s like walking into a magic trash compactor.’
‘It isn’t the most pleasant of experiences,’ Cygnus agreed. ‘Better than six or seven hours on a plane though.’
‘Says you. I’ve got plenty of padding.’ Elaine patted her behind and grinned. ‘Maybe I should get you to fly me back instead of risking my molecules again.’
‘Come on in,’ Cygnus said, turning for the door of the house. ‘Twilight flew Air Cygnus, and she described it as scary as Hell, so you may want to rethink that.’
Frostburn (Ultrahumans Book 4) Page 6
