Sighing, Jean brushed a loose strand of bright red hair away from her face, tucking it back under the green kerchief that covered the top of her head, and gazed around her latest war zone: the library. As beachheads went, it wasn’t the hardest to defend—that honor was reserved for the living room of their split-level apartment on Manhattan’s Upper
East Side, mainly because its colorful indigo-and-red Persian carpeting was so tempting to their two miniature dachshunds, Sturm and Drang, they of the bottomless stomachs and overactive bladders. Still, the library presented enough problems of its own, since the mahogany bookcases and leather-bound editions acted as magnets for every dust particle on the lower floor, and the shelving ran from floor to ceiling, as well as along the length of the room. As for the liquid plasma television set mounted on the northern wall, it had already accumulated a fine coating of motes on its thirty-six-inch screen after this morning’s wipedown. So many nooks and crannies for dirt to gain a foothold in her stronghold ... It also smelled of the cigars Scott and his fellow officers often indulged in after a hearty meal when they entertained, in spite of Jean’s numerous attempts to scrub the odor from the carpet and drapes, or the fact that Scott hadn’t been home in almost two months.
But Jean wasn’t the sort of person to give in so easily. Dressed in her traditional combat gear of one of Scott’s old T-shirts—this one emblazoned with the washed-out logo of Beer Hall Putsch, one of his favorite East German rock bands back in his college days—knotted just above her bared midriff, faded blue Capri pants, and low-topped sneakers, armed with an assortment of cleaning products and the most powerful vacuum cleaner in five boroughs, she stepped forward, prepared to launch a first strike against her archenemy-—
—and came to an abrupt halt.
Slowly, she gazed around the room—at the towering bookcases, piled high with volumes; at the antique desk, its surface covered with congratulatory telegrams from Scott’s admirers and paperwork from the Ministry of Space to be addressed upon his return; at the plaques and framed medals and autographed photos—shots of him standing beside some of the most respected members of the Party. There was nothing of her in this place, she realized with a start. No evidence that Reichs-major Scott Sommers had a wife; no sign of any sort that she even existed. This was a shrine to his world, his life—the accomplishments he had achieved, the victories he had won, the glories bestowed upon him.
Jean looked down and stared at the yellow rubber gloves covering her hands, the fingers of one oversized mitt grasping the vacuum cleaner hose, the others clasped around a red plastic bucket brimming over with polishes and sprays and paper towels. A tremor ran through her body, and the bucket and hose slipped from her hands, to clatter mutely on the thick carpeting, as the reality of her situation finally struck home. Cooking. Cleaning. Trying to make babies. Following the commands of her husband without question. Doing everything expected of the good housewife, as outlined by the tenets of the Nazi League of German Women—principles created almost six decades ago, but still in effect today. Giving everything she had, without question, without hesitation, until there was nothing left of herself to keep for herself.
This was her world, then. Her life.
A wave of depression suddenly swept over her, and she allowed its undercurrent to pull her down, not even bothering to put up a token struggle against the black thoughts that now flooded her mind. When she eventually opened her eyes, she discovered that the tide had cast her upon the leather couch in the center of the room.
Jean stared at the darkened television screen across from her, and at the fiery-haired young woman with the dour expression who looked back at her from the glass. There was a sadness in that woman’s eyes, a haunted expression that marred her otherwise beautiful features; you could see it in the way her lips bowed, in the dull gleam of light on once-bright green pupils, in the sag of her shoulders. Here was someone without direction, without meaning being given to her listless days and solitary nights, without hope. A woman to be pitied.
Jean hated that woman.
It wasn’t her—never should have been her. The Jean Grey who existed long before she ever heard of Scott Sommers had been an energetic woman, eager to do her part for the Reich as a science teacher at the prestigious Frost Akademie, located just outside Boston, Massachusetts. It was one of a baker’s dozen of such Political Institutes of Education scattered across North America, though this facility differed from most in that it focused on shaping the minds of the Jungmaedel, or “young maidens,” of the Reich. Like the girls she instructed, Jean had spent her formative years in such a school, learning all she could from her teachers and military instructors, then spending a year working on a farm as part of the Labor Service, followed by a Household Year, in which she provided domestic service for one of the Empire’s more prosperous families. And all the time, it was made clear to her that it was her duty—both morally and as a patriot—to marry and bear children for the Empire. It was a lesson she carried into adulthood, as she so often reminded her students: serve the Reich to the best of your ability—whether you’re a housewife or a warrior, all are doing their part for the Empire, and their Emperor.
And when Scott Sommers entered her life, it seemed as if she’d at last have her chance to do hers. Unfortunately, she hadn’t taken into consideration the very real possibility that, in order for her to serve her Emperor well, she would have to abandon the life she had once so happily led.
Now, five years later, her hopes and dreams—her very life—had apparently reached a dead end. Oh, there was no doubt in her mind— or heart—that she truly loved Scott, and that he felt the same toward her. She enjoyed every moment of their time together, made even more precious because of his frequent trips to the front line, as the Empire continued to expand its boundaries. And she understood his commitments and responsibilities to the Reich and his Emperor; she just wished there was more time for themselves. The longer Scott spent away from Earth, the more distant they had started to become as a couple—first, the love letters he used to sent via hypermail had dwindled to nothing, then the daily conversations they used to have at the end of his watch— brief to begin with, so the transmissions couldn’t be used by enemy vessels to track the movements of his fleet—became weekly, became.
... She hadn’t heard from him in almost a month now, and, not for the first time, she’d started to wonder if she’d made the right choice in putting her life on hold indefinitely in order to show support for Scott while his military career took centerstage.
Maybe if they’d a child by now, she often thought, there wouldn’t be such a sense of division between them. They’d tried—Woden knew they’d tried often enough—but nothing seemed to work, no matter how passionate their lovemaking, no matter how many specialists they had seen. As far as the Reich was concerned, the problem lay not with Scott—he was a virile, able-bodied warrior, after all—but with Jean. Obviously, it was decided—from doctors on down to her own parents— that something must be wrong with her. No one had thought to consider Scott’s background, for that was one of the darker secrets of the Empire, one that only Jean seemed to be aware of: that Reichsmajor Scott Sommers, the poster boy of the space fleet, the living embodiment of the “true German,” was a mutant—a filthy, bottomfeeding aberration. A freak of nature, unfit to live among the genetically pure—or so press releases from the Ministry of Science often stated in newscasts, in the papers, on billboards and the Internet.
Perhaps it had something to do with the amounts of radiation his parents had absorbed while working in the Chicago munitions factories, preparing weapons for the Empire’s starships—the same radiation that gave him the ability to project force beams from his eyes; an uncontrollable ability, however, which was why he was forced to wear ruby quartz lenses in order to harness the destructive power. But it wasn’t something Jean could ever discuss with anyone—not unless she wanted to risk both of them facing an execution squad for what would certainly be considered an embarrassment for Emperor Schmidt.
And so, for both their sakes, she had no choice but to quietly live with the stigma of having failed her husband and her Reich—a useless trophy wife suited for nothing better than dusting bookshelves and mopping floors . ..
Jean sighed, feeling the strength drain from her limbs, and flopped bonelessly against the couch cushions, letting her head roll back and forth across the metal support bar. She gazed up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time a spider’s web that had formed across one comer. Idly, she wondered if the step ladder in the kitchen would provide enough height for her to reach it with a broom . . .
Her eyes snapped shut, and she moaned softly. Couldn’t she even stare into space anymore without having thoughts of housekeeping fill her mind?
Opening her eyes, she immediately turned her head downward, before the dust particles collecting on the TV screen drew her attention, and spotted the glossy cover of a magazine laying on the teak end table beside the couch. It was last week’s Der Television Guide, its cover story an interview with Elisabeth Braddock, an Asian actress who starred in one of the Reich’s more popular programs: Kwannon, Bushido Mistress. Then again, any program that showed the Empire cannily destroying its enemies in a display of gaudy, cheaply-produced special effects could be considered popular. Jean wrinkled her nose; she’d never been one for fantasy shows, especially when there were far better reality-based ones to watch, like The West Brandenburg Gate and Crime and Punishment: Blitzkrieg Unit.
And yet, there was something about the photograph of Braddock on the cover that held her attention. The deep-blue latex costume, the so-obviously dyed lavender hair, the strange, blood-red-colored symbol that ran along the left side of her face, from just above her eyebrow down to her cheekbone—there was something . . . familiar about them. She couldn’t put her finger on just why that might be—she’d never given any mindfulness to the show, never seen more than a few seconds of any episode beyond what she caught while switching channels—but she was suddenly struck with the sense of having seen them, and Braddock, too, in a different setting. In person.
Jean frowned. She hated when something like this happened—now she’d probably spend the rest of the day driving herself crazy, trying to remember where she’d seen them before. It was almost as bad as getting a lyric from a particularly bad song stuck in her head, having it repeat over and over again; it’d taken her the better part of a week to get the words to Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again . . . Naturally” out of her thoughts the last time this annoying little problem cropped up. Had she ever met Elisabeth Braddock? A possibility. Maybe at one of the functions Scott was always dragging her to, when the Reich was eager to congratulate its most photogenic officer on yet another victory. When exactly that might have occurred she couldn’t say—they’d been to three such extravaganzas in the past year, and so many people were in attendance it was difficult to keep track of them all. Or maybe it was at one of those youth rallies the Akademie often held while she was teaching— those usually drew a number of celebrities as guest speakers, their words meant to bolster the spirits of the students, preparing them for a bright future as productive members of the Empire. Or . . .
Jean exhaled sharply. No, it was no good. She just couldn’t recall where she’d seen Braddock before, and trying to force herself to remember wasn’t going to help. She’d have to let the question linger in the back of her mind; the answer would probably pop up when she least expected it—usually when she was distracted by something else.
Unconsciously, her eyes drifted back toward the ceiling—and the spider’s web hanging in the comer. It taunted her, nagged at her, whisper-thin strands swaying hypnotically in the slight breeze that billowed from the vents of the building’s central air conditioning unit.
With a groan, Jean rose from the couch and headed for the kitchen to retrieve the step ladder. Any potential memories of an encounter with Elisabeth Braddock were soon forgotten as another thought loomed large in her mind: whether anyone’s life could be as incredibly, frustratingly dull as her own. ...
Dust.
Dust and sand and grit as far as the eye could see, covering everything. It was a view Ororo Munroe had grown so tired of gazing upon she’d often wondered why, every morning, as she dragged herself from bed, she still managed to have hope that something—anything—of even minor interest might appear to divert her attention from the wearying monotony of her days, and the endless wastes that surrounded her.
Taking residence in Araouane, a village in the West African state of Mali, had not been her idea—Ororo had always been, for all intents and purposes, a city girl at heart, bom in a New York hospital, raised among the manmade cliffs and valleys of that hectic metropolis for the first six years of her life, then moving to Cairo, Egypt, with her parents—her father, a photojoumalist named David Munroe; her mother, N’Dare, an African princess. For a six-year-old child, the thought of living in a two-room, mud-brick shanty on the edge of the Sahara Desert, like the ones that comprised the village, might have sounded like a great adventure—for a time—but the initial excitement would have quickly faded, once it was made evident that there was really nothing to do there. However, for a twentysomething woman used to commanding weather patterns across the globe and soaring through the skies, borne aloft on winds she controlled—a woman who had been worshipped as a goddess for a few short years—the thought of such “adventure” wouldn’t have even been a consideration, not when there was an entire world to explore.
Unfortunately, being black on a world for which racial equality usually meant having the same white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes of your neighbor, the notion of traveling freely anywhere was out of the question, especially once the Schutzstaffel Race and Resettlement Bureau had begun forcibly instituting its policy of “repatriating” most of the planet’s black population to Africa during the 1980s—“the better to keep an eye on them, having them all in one place,” as the Emperor Schmidt had commented at the time. Being a black woman had its own complications, especially since the female population was seen as nothing more than property to be bought and sold by the Empire’s wealthiest families—or to be used as mistresses for some of the Reich’s more lascivious powerbrokers. And, of course, as Ororo had learned over the years, having been bom a mutant was the greatest sin of all: a genetic defect no better than the “untouchables” of Hindu beliefs, whose very touch was considered a form of pollution—although, based on the “evolutionary chain” once devised by the Reichminister of Health, Amim Zola, and his assistant, Dr. Henry McCoy, in order to give students a clearer understanding of the tenets of “genetic purity,” even that lower caste ranked higher than Ororo and her kind.
No, settling in Araouane hadn’t been her idea; it was where the SS had forced her to go after they had stripped her of her powers, to keep her from “infecting” any large centers of population. Why they hadn’t just killed her was a question that still haunted her from time to time. Was she to be part of some Nazi plan to be implemented in the future? Was she considered too valuable to eliminate?
Or was it that she just hadn’t been worth the effort of killing?
The memories of her fall from godhood still tore at Ororo’s heart: the betrayal by worshippers she’d come to think of as friends; the blast of sonic power emitted by the villain Klaw that had knocked her from the sky, and into the hands of the SS; the pain of the surgery she’d had to endure—performed without anesthesia—that had forever stolen the skies from her. Unconsciously, she placed a hand at the small of her back, feeling the ever-present, gumball-sized lump of the neural inhibitor that had been welded to the base of her spine. Small it might be, but it was powerful enough to shut down her element-controlling abilities—and it couldn’t be removed without killing her.
Would that be so bad, though—to die at least in trying to free herself before this sand-washed purgatory could finally claim her soul? She couldn’t help but wonder. She had felt empty enough when she’d lost her powers of the storm, but when she’d been robbed
of her gift of flight. . . For someone who had soared with the birds, played tag with the clouds, chased the moon through nights ablaze with the light of billions of stars, being confined to the ground was the worst sort of punishment imaginable. There were days when the sense of loss became almost too much to bear. Days when her heart ached as she watched the lowly vultures spinning in lazy circles through skies so blue it seemed as though the Bright Lady herself must have painted them. Days when the slightest of breezes gently ruffled her waist-length hair and she heard the winds softly call her name, the clouds urging her to come play with them ...
Ororo shook her head, angered by allowing herself to fall into yet another pitiable bout of useless reverie. Yes, she missed the freedom she’d once taken for granted, the powers she’d possessed, but pining for their return was a waste of time. This was her life now, and she had never been the sort who gave in to bouts of depression for long. She tightened the sash of her once-white robes and held her head high, determined not to lapse into any further periods of morbid daydreaming.
“A good day, is it not, my lady?” asked a pleasant female voice.
Ororo turned. Standing beside her was a tall, narrow-waisted African woman iij her thirties, wrapped in a blanket emblazoned with yellow, blue, and green patterns set on a red field. Her face alight with an infectious smile, she ran a hand through her short, dark hair, shaking loose the particles of sand that had settled in it, carried by the humid breeze; in her other hand she held an oversized bowl.
Ororo smiled. “And what makes you say that, Abena Metou?”
Her companion gestured at their surroundings. “A blue sky, a light wind, a desert at rest, allowing me to spend time with my family.” Her smile widened. “Is that not proof enough that the Bright Lady blesses us?”
Ororo slowly nodded. “Indeed ...”
Abena Metou had been a resident of Araouane long before Ororo had arrived and—so far as the former goddess could tell—had apparently never set foot outside its boundaries. For her, the world was a sand-covered oasis no more than a mile in circumference, in which life was lived through an endless progression of stiflingly hot days and chillingly frigid nights, where having pantries stocked with sufficient amounts of water and food for one’s family was considered far more important than amassing wealth, and where the only sort of war that mattered to its inhabitants was fought between the slowly advancing dunes of the Sahara and a handful of women armed with nothing more than large bowls to sweep them away—primitive weapons, to be sure, but more than effective in holding the line. And yet, Abena accepted this existence without protest, happy enough that, no matter how frustrating her daily skirmishes with the desert might become, she would still receive small payments of rice and sugar from the other villagers for her efforts—enough for her family to live on.
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