Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  "They had to do that because Baron Mortis has been a black man since the second world war, and they needed to remind the grievance industry that half them were white. Though they should have focused on the fact that the criteria has nothing to do with skin tone."

  "We couldn't sell a cool poster that way," Donny said. Of course, the Fund got the proceeds from the merchandizing.

  "If you keep buying your own merchandise, people are going to think you have an ego problem," I said.

  "You've seen Miss Pain's room, right?" Donny asked. "One or two isn't going to compare to wallpapering your room with your own face."

  Before I could respond to that, there was a knock at the front door. Donny rolled up the poster and I went to answer it. It was Jack, looking relieved when I opened the door. "For a moment I thought I was in the wrong place," Jack said. "It's been so long since I've been to your family's house."

  "Come in, take a seat. Donny's here, but no one else is." I stepped away from the door. Jack stepped in and looked confused at the mismatched furniture. in the living room. The love seat with its back against the kitchen peninsula was green, with a coarse weave fabric. The couch was a dull brown microfiber, and too close to the TV because we wanted a walkway behind it. Dad's chair by the front window was red, and a bit ratty at the seams. Jack sat at the end of the couch, and almost visibly reminded himself that we were at best lower-middle class.

  "What brings you out here?" I asked.

  "Phil Rinaldi, over at Westbrook. He's a friend, sort of, not a good enough friend to give my real name to, but you get the idea."

  "What about him?"

  "He told me about your test and that you didn't know how to fly. Since I was your official sponsor for joining the Fund after all."

  Donny laughed. "Of course he doesn't, no one in this family can fly."

  "That used to be true," I mumbled.

  "Didn't you use the line launcher to get up on Firegod?" Donny asked.

  "The line launcher would have bounced off the lightning shield, the way I almost did," I said.

  "No fair! Why do you get to fly? I would kill to be able to fly."

  "You can have it," I said. I didn't want to openly admit I had more than a little problem with heights. "I don't intend to use any of this crap if I can help it. Any bright light and it all turns off."

  "Are you kidding me?" Donny asked.

  "No."

  "Why would you, or rather, why wouldn't you use your own powers?"

  "They're not reliable."

  "Even so," Jack said. "You should at least learn how to use them. Just in case."

  "That doesn't sound like you talking," I said.

  "Okay, I confess, those were Lenny's words. But he can't fly, and someone has to teach you."

  "No good trying in daylight," I said.

  Jack pulled the curtain back and peered outside. "It'll be dark in a few hours."

  I frowned.

  Mount Kline wasn't actually a mountain, it was the tallest hill around New Port Arthur. The only structures on it were a water tower and a broadcast antenna. An access road wound up to the relatively flat summit. The sides were steep, so the city had grown around the hill instead of over it. The empty patch of gravel where we parked was perfectly positioned to overlook the southern half of the town. That is, the poorer half. The least poor neighborhood around Mount Kline was New Garden to the East. That was a newer development, built on the old landfill.

  I drove, because Jack had no idea how to find the access road. We were in costume, and he could have flown there easier. His costume was mostly green and gold, save for the long white cape, and the white '38' in the middle of his chest. It was an inside joke. The form to change codenames was the BA-38, so in the community, changing a codename was called 'taking a thirty-eight' or some variation thereof. Jack had done it so many times he'd just changed his name to Mister Thirty-Eight. I parked and we climbed out of the car.

  Light pollution hid most of the stars, but the brightest still shone through the sky. For a moment I tried to find Mars. That stopped when I reminded myself it was on the other side of the sun. I was facing the wrong direction. I sighed.

  "So, now what?" I asked.

  "The most straightforward way to teach a fledgling to fly is to push them out of the nest."

  "I don't like metaphors."

  "You need to just take off and practice."

  "Then why are you here?" I asked.

  "As a safety precaution."

  "What makes you think I can even fly properly? Maybe all I can do is turn into a projectile."

  Jack pointed off into the distance. All I saw was more of the city.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "The southeast tower of the Shining Future is still missing some of the facing stones where I threw a certain shadow into it. The same shadow who had no difficulty hovering or changing direction mid-air. You might not have been in control, but those were your powers. So don't try to weasel out of this."

  "What makes you think--"

  "I've known you since you were born."

  I sighed. Regular old Jack was an easygoing guy. I'd almost forgotten he had a mentor mode which was almost nothing like his normal self. I could have mocked his attitude shift, indeed, the impulse was there, but that would only draw out this uncomfortable situation even longer than it needed to be. "All right. So what do we do first?" I asked.

  "Try to gain some altitude, we'll go from there."

  I sighed and wrapped myself in shadow. There was a subtle change in Jack's expression as I did so. The world became a canvas of flat colors as darkness and shadow disappeared. I could make out the shapes of distant little buildings that were hidden within the patchwork of lights that made up the city. I ignored them and looked to the sky. Where before light pollution had blotted out the stars, now I saw the myriad twinkle of distant fires and the smear of the milky way running across the heavens. It was just about the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I stood captivated until Jack prodded me between the shoulder blades.

  "Go on already."

  Steeling myself, I inhaled deeply and launched myself into the air. I got up to about the height of the blinking red light atop the broadcast antenna before gravity's pull tugged me back towards Earth. I fell long enough to get angry at Jack for not doing anything. He only caught me when I was three-quarters of the way to the ground. Instead of easing me back to Mount Kline, he dragged me up to the height of the blinking light again.

  "Lets try this again," Jack said. "This time, catch yourself."

  Jack dropped me.

  As I plunged towards the ground, anger welled up inside me. A second later, my fist connected with Jack's jaw. It wasn't enough to hurt him, even with my momentum. I'd seen him take a semi-truck to the face before.

  "Why did you drop me!" It wasn't really a question, logical me knew the answer, he'd explained it once already,

  Jack crossed his arms over his chest. "Tell me, what are you standing on?"

  I looked down and promptly started to fall. Jack snagged me by the arm and pulled me back up to the height of the beacon again. "Stop trying to stand on air and just stay up," he said. It was the most useless piece of advice I'd heard.

  "Don't let go of my wrist!" I said. That portion of my mind that wasn't frozen with fear was scrambling to figure out how to not just fall again.

  "I can't hold your hand forever, and you've already done it once this evening," Jack said. He promptly dropped me again.

  "What kind of technique is this?" I asked. It was a redundant question, but I was getting pissed off. Jack just crossed his arms smugly and let his white cape flap in the breeze for a moment or two.

  "One that works," he finally said. "After all, here you are." I looked over my shoulder a
t the antenna beacon still blinking behind me. I refused to look down. If I did, I was going to fixate on the fact that there was nothing holding me up and... and I fell.

  This time, I caught myself.

  I banked, shifting from a downward trajectory to a lateral one. It wasn't nothing holding me up, I was holding myself aloft. I shot out over the city, trying to convince my logical self that it all made sense, that I shouldn't fall because--

  I smacked into the side of a building before I could finish the thought.

  The tempered glass shattered on impact. I plowed through sheetrock, snagging aluminum framing studs and a tangle of wires before wrapping myself around the end of a large wooden table. The table shifted five feet and tapped a set of shelves. I coughed and sputtered as I flopped onto the floor. Scraps of paper and powdered gypsum wafted through the air as the building's internal pressure blew them towards the hole I'd made.

  I really should have watched where I was going.

  The building I'd hit was as office tower. Which one, I had no idea, but the low off-hours lighting didn't burn off any of the shadowstuff. The room I'd stopped in was a conference room of some sort. The shelves at the far end held a mass of self-congratulatory awards. I disentangled myself from the wires and the aluminum joists. I couldn't begin to estimate how many thousands of dollars of damage I'd just done. I stood up and sighed. Footsteps sounded in the hall. A security guard in a light blue uniform shined his light through the hole I'd made in the wall. It wasn't strong enough to dissipate the shadowstuff, but I dissipated it to avoid scaring the poor man. He looked back at the broken window then at me again. "Huh," he said. "First time I've seen tights hit the building."

  "I'm terribly sorry about that," I said. "I have insurance to cover the damage."

  "Well, you're going to have to stick around while we file a police report," the guard said.

  "What building is this?" I asked. "I didn't exactly see it before I hit."

  "Dreadmere Plaza, tower two," the guard said. Dreadmere Plaza was a set of five black glass obelisks looming over downtown. From what I recall, tower one was the big one in the middle, making this one of the smaller four around it.

  "Thank you," I said. While we waited for the police, I phoned Jack to let him know where I'd ended up. This training was not going to help lower my premiums any time soon.

  Part 4

  Dad's disapproving gaze was withering on its own. There was a strong family resemblance between us. He looked like an older, leaner version of me. He had salt-and-pepper hair, though with more salt than pepper. Lenny Colfax normally wore a friendlier expression when out of costume. I managed to explain the events of the evening.

  Dad leaned back in his red chair. "Good. Now we can talk about the Mars problem."

  "Anything in particular?" I asked.

  "I'm responsible for it as Regional Coordinator, but I'm too busy to lead the operation. Eighteen months ago, I'd have a bevy of choices for the role. But Agent Six is dead. Minispell is unavailable for personal reasons. Arclight, well, you know what happened with him. This isn't the sort of task suited to Molot's style."

  "So who is leading?"

  "Omegaburn. She doesn't have much experience with aliens, but this shouldn't overwhelm her."

  "You have to be distracted if you're sharing your thought processes with me," I said.

  Dad chuckled. "You can say that. Anyway. The people we're sending are you, Omegaburn, the Scyan diplomat, Wolfjack, and Ranger Roy."

  "Isn't he still one of your Junior Redemptioners?" I asked.

  "Yes, but he and Wolfjack will be the least inconvenienced by the low gravity."

  "Okay. I guess that makes sense."

  "The board may have mentioned this, but one of the bigger objectives is to make sure the gate doesn't shut down on us. If we can manage that, it's an opportunity to set up a research station for both the alien tech and the planet while saving billions of dollars."

  "What's bugging you?" I asked. "You're not acting like yourself."

  Dad sighed and sat back. "It's been five years since your mom died," he said. "I wasn't looking to get into a new relationship, but I've landed in one anyway."

  "And you think I'd take it badly?"

  "It's not even that simple."

  "Why not?"

  "It's jumped ahead of even where we expected," Dad said.

  "You're talking around the issue."

  "Her name is Bianca, and she's pregnant."

  "What?"

  "We were caught off-guard too," Dad said. "We're both already parents, so we've decided that we don't want to hear any talk about not keeping the baby."

  "So you just happen to stumble into a new girlfriend, and before you've even told your children that you're dating again, you've progressed onto having a baby?"

  "The pregnancy was unintentional, but you're not about to lecture me on personal responsibility. We both know full well what we're getting into. You're living proof of that on my part."

  I glared at him, but he returned my gaze with an intensity I couldn't match. He had years of practice at it.

  "Can I step in on this discussion?" Donny asked. We both turned out attention to where he stood in the doorway. "I was curious if it was a boy or a girl, and when we'd get to meet the mother."

  "It's too early to tell gender," Dad said. "The second question is a bit trickier. Bianca's a member of the community, and there's the whole codename issue to discuss."

  "If she knows your real name, she knows who we are," I said. "So you've already given that away."

  "This is why I didn't know how to tell you," Dad said.

  "Travis was rude, but he had a point," Donny said. "Unless she doesn't know your codename, she knows who we are."

  "All right," Dad said. "I know Travis has already met her with masks on. And it would behoove him to treat her nicely. Bianca is Minispell, and as I understand it, she is still close friends with a certain former sidekick of hers."

  I winced. While Dad had put it rather bluntly, it was true. Being rude to my girlfriend's former mentor would not end well for me. I tried to ignore Donny's smirk.

  "Have you told Nora?" Donny asked.

  "Not yet," Dad said. "I'll tell her when she gets home."

  "So the personal reasons she can't go to Mars would be the pregnancy?" I asked.

  "Magic and the unborn don't mix," Dad said. "So she's on maternity leave for safety's sake."

  "Mars?" Donny asked.

  "It's a long story," Dad said. "You can ask Travis later. At some point we're going to have to introduce you guys to Bianca's children. But we're still working these things out."

  "How many does she have?" I asked.

  "Not counting the current pregnancy, she has two, a pair of twins. They're slightly younger than you. Their father divorced her and is God-knows-where."

  "That's all well and good, but I still want to know about Mars," Donny said.

  "What's this chatter I'm hearing about Mars?" Jennifer asked.

  I set her plate down on the mess hall table and continued down the row. The mess hall was the largest room in the residential dome. The ceiling had been opened up to the second floor, leaving a balcony along the perimeter. A short wall that didn't reach the full ceiling height separated it from the atrium. An open slot in the wall separating it from the kitchen allowed for uninterrupted pestering while I was cooking. Much of the team was congregating around the table now that external power had been restored.

  Jennifer was the tallest member of the team, a blond girl with an athletic build and exceptional long legs that she was determined to show off. She always wore a headband, which was also her psychic focus. The one she was wearing right now was blue. The other one was gold. I tried not to look at the headband. I could only think of how
much it had cost to replace after I'd broken the previous one.

  I set Stephanie's plate in front of her and snuck in a kiss on her cheek. She blushed slightly, having been engrossed in her reading. The flush of color contrasted with her pale skin. She pushed her glasses back into place. Her dark hair was pushed back casually behind her ears. "Warn me next time." Her accent melted in my ear with an almost hypnotic effect. I knew she could turn it off and sound like everyone else in an instant, but I liked the way it sounded.