A Hero By Any Other Name

by Stackpole, Michael A.

  “There you are, Hardin.”

  “Uncle Gaylord, I am always here.”

  “In a geological sense of time, yes, perhaps; or in a probability equation sense, yes, you would be here, but always is rather inaccurate and sloppy, don’t you think?” The man thrust his hands into the jacket’s pockets. They emerged again with what appeared to be bronze cuffs. “Good afternoon, Mr. Stone. Quite the bruise.”

  “Yes, Doctor Peck.”

  The two young men exchanged glances. When Hardin’s uncle—and Grant wasn’t sure if the man was Hardin’s uncle or his father’s uncle—came up in discussions, they generally referred to him as “His Lordship.” It covered the man’s unpredictable nature, and was decidedly more kind than things others in town called him. Everyone knew Gaylord Peck was a scientist, but no one was quite sure what he was researching. He didn’t come into town much, which was fine with most folks, as he angered most of them, and they him. Six centuries earlier he’d have been burned for being a warlock. Now they just hoped he could help establish a moon colony so he’d travel there as soon as possible.

  His Lordship snapped the cuffs in place on his nephew’s wrists. Hardin couldn’t have stopped him if he’d tried. His expression warned Grant off interceding. Gaylord Peck might have been odd and social awkward, but no one thought him capable of hurting so much as a fly. As the man seemed devoted to helping his nephew overcome his disease, Hardin had long since abandoned any pretense of stopping his uncle.

  Hardin stared down at the two inch wide, half inch thick bronze cuffs. “What are these?”

  “Just data collection, Hardin. New and improved.”

  “There is no catch. How do I get them off?”

  “You don’t have to take them off. I will collect them in a week or so.” The man patted his nephew on the head. “I need round-the-clock data, Hardin. For the sake of science.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good day, Mr. Stone.” Doctor Peck gave Grant a nod, then breezed back out as quickly as he’d come in.

  Grant lowered his voice. “I know he’s your uncle and all…”

  Hardin smiled. “You want to know if he’s one of those uncles that shows up at Thanksgiving drunk and full of weird ideas?”

  “I guess.”

  “Not as bad as that. Never drunk.” Hardin sighed. “But never just on Thanksgiving. But he means well and, maybe, this will help.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You were going to tell me about the hero you saw in the bank. Gray hood, brown clothes, white trim, kind of Robin Hood. Used a staff, flash grenade and smoke bomb. What else did you see?”

  Grant forced himself to frown, giving him time to edit information for his friend. He didn’t like lying to Hardin, but he had no choice. “He’s maybe as tall as me, same build. There was fog in the vault when it opened.”

  “What did it smell like?”

  Grant cocked his head. “The vapor, I didn’t get any smell. The smoke bomb, that was chemical-smelling. No sulphur, no rotten eggs. I didn’t hear much after the flash grenade blinded me. Just grunts. I guess he attacked with the stick.”

  “That is what the reports said.”

  “Any idea who he is?”

  Hardin shook his head slowly. “He does not match anyone I have read about. I have some ideas. No one saw signs of tunneling in the vault, so maybe he teleports.”

  “Like on Star Trek?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he dressed from the past.”

  “It is just an idea. Now, if my father finds other signs of entry—the time lock is keeping the vault closed until Monday—then maybe he was a thief who interrupted the other thieves.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Grant shrugged. “If I was a thief, I’d not break into the vault during the day, when it could be opened. I’d have waited until the bank closed and had all Sunday to rob the vault. If I’d heard the sound of the vault being opened, I’d have taken off.”

  “Agreed, but we cannot rule that out.” Hardin nodded. “Another option is that we have a brand new hero here, honing his skills, before moving to Capital City.”

  “Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  “As long as it does not put my dad out of a job.”

  “I can’t imagine that happening.” Grant hunched forward, elbows on knees. “Anything else on the New Vision Army?”

  Hardin kept his voice low. “My father let me see an FBI advisory. A man calling himself Commander Seven is the NVA leader. The FBI thinks there is a slight chance that he was an American soldier taken captive in Cambodia and brainwashed in Peking before being sent here to run the NVA. The FBI is hoping Marta Coulden can give them information about him.”

  Grant nodded.

  Hardin stared at him. “Are you going to do something stupid?”

  “Huh?”

  “You always listen to me talk about heroes and villains, but you never ask about them, until now.” Warm highlight glowed from the bronze cuffs. “I appreciate your humoring me.”

  Grant sat back up. “You do the same thing when I talk about farm stuff.”

  “That is true.” Hardin blushed. “Friends do that, right? Listen to each other even though they are not always 100% interested.”

  “I think so.”

  “Your being interested in the NVA, and your brush with them, and the bruise on your cheek from being a hero… I want to make sure you are not going to do something silly like watch over the jail.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Just as well, because I have the north and west faces covered from here.”

  Grant laughed. “You’re as stoked about this as I am.”

  “Well, we have revolutionaries, maybe a superhero, and the FBI coming to town.” Hardin’s smile blossomed broadly. “Most towns would not want criminals, but this is pretty exciting.”

  “It is, but...” Grant shrugged. “Getting hit in the head with a rifle butt isn’t much fun. I swung wide to avoid the jail when I came here. I have had quite enough NVA.”

  “Spoken like a true Lyttletonian.” Mischief sparked in Hardin’s eyes. “But if you see anything weird while you’re heading home, you’ll let me know?”

  “Sure, right after I report it to your father.”

  “Well, I guess that’s okay.”

  Grant left his friend and retreated to the fiction stacks. He snagged the books his sister wanted, and then started searching for something he wanted to read. He really didn’t feel in a mood to try something new—he wanted a story he loved from before and could retreat into. He gravitated to the wide swatch of shelf-space devoted to Edgar Rice Burroughs. He’d read most of the Tarzan novels, and all of the Mars books. He thought about choosing one of them, but settled on The Mucker.

  He liked the book not only because of the pure adventure in it, but because Billy Byrne, the hero, confirmed his sense of reality. Byrne, who had grown up on the mean streets of Chicago, and had become a criminal of sorts, proved, in the end, that he had a heart of gold. Grant felt that this was true of all people, that they were inherently good and just needed the chance to let that goodness show.

  More importantly, Grant found himself identifying with Byrne. Their backgrounds and upbringings could not possibly have been more different. Even so, to be his most noble, Byrne had to hide his true nature beneath an impenetrable facade. He had to pretend to be the person he was not, and that was a struggle Grant went through every day.

  Byrne ended up being thought a criminal by friends and despised by the woman he loved. Grant put up with others thinking he was pretty much a sissy, since his sister Polly stuck up for him. Bullies who picked on Grant actually feared her. Others looked down on him with pity. Even though he understood the necessity of letting that happen, it rankled.

  That was one of the reasons that he and Hardin had become friends. Hardin had a body that didn’t work well. Grant had a body that worked too well. Their abnormality meant they just put aside differences there and just had
a meeting of the minds. It didn’t hurt that they both liked history and the same sort of fiction and played war games down in the Library basement—using an old ping-pong table to spread the maps out. He really wished he could confide his secret in Hardin, but his father had made abundantly clear down through the years, that trusting anyone outside the family would be a grave mistake.

  Grant sat in the stacks and started reading through the story. It wasn’t until he was a quarter of the way through the book that he realized what he was doing. He was delaying his return home until the last moment because even though he’d done the right thing at the bank, because it threatened to expose his secret, his mother would look at him as if he’d done something gravely wrong. Grant could understand her feelings, but he didn’t think she was being fair.

  He thought about reading just one more chapter, but instead closed the book. He scooped it up with the ones he was getting Polly and checked out. He strapped the books to the small rack on the back of his bike, loosened the front nut again, and started home. He almost turned left, heading north toward Town Hall even though he lived south of town, but remembered what Hardin had said. So he turned right, rode past the jail’s western face, and turned east into the alley behind it.

  A little thrill ran through Grant as he rode down the alley. It ran behind the jail and beyond it to the Courthouse. He turned up north to the alley between them. The jail and Courthouse had side doors which enabled the police to more easily convey prisoners out and back. Beside that door in the jail, someone had left an olive drab duffle bag.

  Grant got off his bike and leaned it against the courthouse wall. His heart began to pound as he walked up to the duffle and crouched. He pressed a hand to the canvas and felt the unmistakable cylindrical outline of a rifle barrel. He didn’t even bother to unclip the bag. He just tore the canvas apart, revealing a couple of rifles, a shotgun and several pistols. Beneath them lay a layer of civilian clothes.

  In a heartbeat he knew why the bag had been left by the jail. Then the door burst open and the four male bank-robbers poured out, chased by shouts for help. The quartet of revolutionaries stared at Grant and the open bag at his feet.

  They rushed him.

  As strong as he was, and as fast, he froze with surprise. Whenever he’d acted in the past, even in the bank, he’d had a moment to think and plan. They gave him so such opportunity. They hit him in an avalanche of flesh and bone. One tackled him around the ankles while the others hit him high, and he went down.

  One of them straddled his chest, raising a fist to pound his face in. Grant knocked the punch aside then twisted to throw the man off. That move worked well enough. The man half-flew across the alley, knocking one of his comrades down. As they shouted and disentangled themselves, the other two went for the guns.

  A silver ball exploded over the collection of hardware. The flash grenade blinded the pair arming themselves. Two more spheres bounced down the center of the alley, then burst into thick clouds of white gas. Grant looked to see the revolutionaries and the man from the safe, but the gas was different. It was hot enough to render his infrared vision useless.

  I’m as blind as the robbers.

  Clearly the man from the bank wasn’t. Two thumps and groans, accompanied by the twin thuds of bodies hitting the ground, took care of the robbers at the heart of the alley. Then one of the other robbers, still swiping at his watering eyes, flew out of the smoke and into Grant’s arms. Grant caught him and twisted, smashing him into the jail’s wall.

  A quick gust of wind blew the smoke south. Chief Peck, gun drawn, stood in the jail doorway. All four robbers were slumped to the ground. The man from the vault had retreated to the courthouse side of the alley and had a hold of a line snaking up to the roof.

  He pointed the other hand at Grant. “There are your escapees, Chief Peck, and their accomplice. You’ll find his explanation of his presence incredible, I’m sure.”

  Grant, astonished, stared disbelieving. “I just happened by… I was at the library.”

  “You just happened by with a cache of guns and clothes?” The man from the bank laughed. “As I said, incredible.” He tightened his fist and shot up the line to the roof.

  Grant wanted to dart after him. He wanted to grab the rope and yank it free, but… Chief Peck would see…

  The man from the bank disappeared onto the courthouse roof.

  Chief Peck faced Grant, but had lowered his gun. “I know you’re a good boy, Grant, but even you would allow as how this looks suspicious. I’m afraid I’ll have to take you into custody until we can sort this all out. Come along quietly and I imagine you’ll be sleeping in your own bed tonight.”

  Lyttleton’s jail only had four cells. Grant had been given one all by himself. The NVA members had been housed in pairs, handcuffed to chain belts and shackled by the ankle to each other. They woke up in an ill humor, yet took great delight in Grant’s pleading with them to tell Chief Peck that he hadn’t been helping them out.

  “Why would we do that, Comrade?” Their leader smiled at him. “Just because you failed does not mean we’d disown you.”

  Grant snarled, but kept it quiet. His discomfort just made the NVA men happier. Their insolence and arrogance really had him boiling. The fact that he could have kicked the cell door open and beaten any of them to a pulp with the flick of a finger made things worse. They were just punching the buttons that every bully had ever punched in him, and he didn’t have his sister there to drop-kick them.

  Not that her presence would make me feel any better.

  What really pissed Grant off was the man from the vault pointing him out as an accomplice. If the guy had been watching the scene, then he had to know that Grant was an innocent bystander. He’d have seen whoever dropped the bag. And if they NVA hadn’t chosen that moment to escape, Grant would have gone around the front, reported the bag’s presence to Chief Peck and forestalled the whole escape attempt. Grant knew he was innocent, assumed the man from the vault knew it, too.

  So why am I being railroaded?

  It wasn’t until night had begun to fall that a deputy brought Grant to Chief Peck’s office. Grant hesitated because his father was already there, dressed up in the suit he saved for marriages and funerals. The look on his face made it seem as if someone had, in fact, died.

  Chief Franklin Peck sat behind a hand-carved oaken desk. He wasn’t much older than Grant’s father, but had gray coming in at the temples. His hair remained a rich brown otherwise—matching his eyes and the desk. On the wall behind him hung a number of plaques, most dating from a decade earlier when he’d been a detective in Capital City. Lean, with a long face, he couldn’t help but appear serious.

  Chief Peck nodded Grant to a chair, then turned to his father. “Hank, I’ve asked Grant what happened and I talked to my son. His story checks out—at least the library part. I don’t believe Grant was helping those men escape. If the FBI weren’t in town talking to the Coulden woman, I’d have sent him home long since. Since this is a Federal case however, and my own son is his basic alibi witness…”

  Hank held a hand up. “You’re in a delicate position.”

  “I really ought to wait for him to be arraigned in the morning. I don’t think Judge Simpson will ask for anything but your word that Grant will appear. So, I think I’m safe turning him loose to you tonight.”

  Grant smiled for the first time in hours.

  “Frank, I appreciate that, I really do. And I really appreciate Hardin sticking by my son.”

  Chief Peck arched an eyebrow. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

  Grant shook his head. “There shouldn’t be any ‘but.’”

  Hank didn’t look at his son. “I had a talk with Grant after the robbery this morning. I told him to forget about all the excitement, that we didn’t need it, and that he didn’t need to be messing with it. Apparently he didn’t get that message. I’m very disappointed in him. Deeply. This isn’t an easy decision.”

  “What decision? Dad, I’
m innocent.”

  Hank’s face closed. “No, Grant, you’re not innocent. You may be not guilty, but you’re hardly innocent. Chief Peck here is willing to stick his neck out. It speaks well of him, but I won’t have him getting into trouble because you didn’t do what I asked you to do. You shouldn’t have been anywhere near this jail. You need to think about that, Grant. Think long and hard.”

  Hank looked back at Franklin Peck. “To save you the trouble, Frank, and to give Grant some time to think, I’d like you keep him in jail overnight. To Monday, I guess, since I don’t imagine Judge Simpson will really want to come in tomorrow. Just let me know what board is, I’ll pay it. And if you need the cell, I’ll come get him, but I really think this is an experience he needs.”

  Chief Peck nodded solemnly. “I admire your resolve, Hank. I believe you’ve raised a good boy. I understand why you think he needs this lesson. If you change your mind, I’ll leave word with the night officer to release him.”

  “I’ll take his bike and the books with me, save you the trouble of watching them.” Both men stood and shook hands. Hank took a look at his son, and then glanced down and away, shaking his head.

  Grant’s throat thickened. “Dad, I’m sorry.”

  “I hope so, Grant, I truly hope so.”

  His father left the office, and the wooden door thumping behind him sounded colder than the cell door clanging shut.

  Chief Peck came around and sat on the corner of his desk. “Listen to me, son. What your father just did took more courage than shooting it out with robbers or running into a burning building to save someone. He knows you’re innocent, and knows he’s hurt you. That goes against every fiber of his being, but he’s hoping that in hurting you a little now, he can save you from hurting yourself a lot, later. I always believed, deep down, your father had steel in his spine.”