Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  The main cabin was full—Jack Frost, K-Strike, SaFire, Black Powder, and Gantry had boarded before takeoff—and I took my seat. Closing my eyes, I tried to think about answers and not dreams.

  Chapter Fifteen

  South Side Chicago was rocked this morning by a mass-shooting involving minions of the Brotherhood and Sanguinary Boys street-villain gangs. The shooting is believed to be revenge for the slaying of a young Brotherhood minion, Ethan Douglas, although police have yet to name a suspect for that crime. Three known Sanguinary minions are dead, as well as one Brotherhood minion and one bystander, Franklin Green, age 12.

  Chicago Morning News

  * * *

  There’s nothing quite like the terror of looking out at nearly three hundred faces looking at you. The only thing worse is nearly three hundred people waiting for you to say something profound. At least I’d started well, with the obligatory story and joke before getting serious. I just had to keep my mind off the morning news and on the Career Day assembly.

  “Atlas always said, ‘When you wear the cape, you do the job.’

  I could have heard a pin drop as I drew a deep breath and nervously gripped the podium tighter.

  It gave a protesting squeak. Thankfully, it was reinforced (Hillwood, after all), but still.

  “Ajax believed that we live our best lives in the pursuit of arête, the ancient Greek concept of realizing our full potential in the service of our community. I had the privilege of being taught by both Atlas and Ajax. I was there the day that they gave what President Lincoln eloquently called their ‘last full measure of devotion.’

  Pause. Smile. Look at the room. Don’t cry!

  “But their sacrifice that day is not what made them heroes. Atlas and Ajax became heroes the instant they decided to use their powers to serve the citizens of Chicago. And they led heroes, fellow Chi-towners with new powers or with only their hands and what tools they could reach. They led with their famous appearance before Congress, where Ajax spoke for us all. They led in their decade of exemplary service, and they embodied what it means to wear the cape in the United States of America.

  “Crisis Aid and Intervention teams are above all first-responders. CAI capes respond to emergencies and perform acts of peaceful public service far more often than they fight ‘supervillains’. Most capes don’t expect to ever be in a fight like the one we saw at Whittier Base. If they are, live or die, it will not be that single day that defines them. Superheroes are defined by every decision they make, every battle they fight, every life that they save. They are defined by all the days, from the day they put on the cape to the day they take it off. Or are buried with it.”

  A few kids shifted in their seats. Good. It wasn’t all celebrity photo-ops and saving the day, and I didn’t want any student leaving the hall thinking it was.

  “As I said at the beginning, I’m so happy to be here. Not just for the chance to sound all profound in front of a bunch of high schoolers, some of whom are only a month or two younger than me. Yes, I graduated from high school. No, I didn’t graduate early.” More laughter. “I’m happy to be here because, in just a few months, some of you will be wearing the cape. Or at least trying it on to see if it fits. And I’m here to tell you that most of the job is training, meetings, studying, training, responding, reports, training, and oh yeah, training. You’ll wish you were back in school.”

  That got laughter and groans, the right kind. Time to wind it up.

  “But despite that, despite the endless training and awful hours and the pain (because you will be hurting, one way or another), I can’t think of a higher purpose than service. And I look forward to seeing many of you out there, embodying arête, whether it’s wearing the cape, helping humanity advance into space, defending your country, or providing a service you and only you, with your unique gifts, can perform. Thank you, and good luck.”

  “Nailed it.” Shell whispered as the Hillwood faculty and student body rose for a standing ovation. I kept the smile on my face, counting the seconds until I could step away from the podium without looking like I was running away. The Headmaster had to take the stage before the audience quieted, smoothly allowing me to yield the podium with a handshake and final “Thank you.” Finally allowed, I escaped to the wings where Gantry and Black Powder waited along with my guides.

  The school had assigned two second-year kids to show me around, Alecia and Brandon. They wore Hillwood’s house uniforms: gold and tan for Brandon’s Carlton House and black and green for Alecia’s Gilmore House. Alecia was an animator; I’d seen Myst, the tiny fairy-winged dragon riding her shoulder, come out of her sketch book. Brandon was the only non-breakthrough student in the school—here because of his older brother If-Man, a Hillwood coach and his only family.

  If-Man was my faculty guide and despite the season he wore red spandex shorts and a white athletic shirt with IF in big red letters. He liked to “giraffe,” stretching his body from the waist up to stand head, shoulders and chest above everyone around him. Introduced to me, he’d shaken my hand from halfway across the room.

  “You did good, kid,” he said, giving me a wide smile and two thumbs up. Alecia nodded shy agreement. I’d seriously thought the pretty brown-haired girl was going to faint when we’d met last night.

  “Thanks, guys.” Three years of experience hadn’t made me any more comfortable with the spotlight, but I could fake it to make everyone happy. “And you guys have been great.” They had; Alecia and Brandon had represented their houses at the private welcoming dinner last night. Two guides had been chosen from each house, a diverse group of fourteen first and second year students assigned to orient and assist everyone here for Career Day. This morning they’d given me a tour of the school and talked about Newton, the whimsically named new community built on the former US Army base to serve the school.

  “What’s going on back home?” I asked Black Powder. I’d introduced Shell as my Dispatch wingman and made sure she could feed him news updates through his earbud.

  He shrugged. “Nothing from the shooting—the Guardian teams are keeping an eye out for Brotherhood and Sanguinary action. Mirth just hit a diamond market. Your town always this exciting?”

  “Hardly ever.” SaFire, Jack Frost, and K-Strike had a few more hours of group presentations and floor-time at the Chicago CAI booth in the school gym. Done with my one programmed event, I debated flying home now.

  But I wouldn’t be in the field even if I was home, and I had a quest to finish first.

  “We should get out of here before the assembly ends,” Brandon suggested diffidently. “It’s going to be nuts in the halls after that. Do you want to go back to the gym?”

  I looked over my entourage. When did I get an entourage?

  “Not yet . . . What I’d really like to do is go see Ozma.”

  “You want to see the Wicked Wi—” Brandon’s protest sputtered into a cough. I tried not to laugh.

  “I can’t talk to a student, here?”

  “Sure—I mean, yes but . . .”

  If-Man chuckled, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I think Brandon’s asking why you want to.” He twisted his rubber neck all the way around to look at the stage where the Headmaster had almost finished wrapping up. “C’mon.”

  “Wow, laid-back much?” Shell quipped as we headed out. I just smiled. If-Man was uncomplicated. I wanted to see a specific student, I was a guest of the school, there wasn’t a rule against it since I wasn’t asking for her in an official capacity, so we were golden.

  In Brandon’s defense, Ozma’s description of her school days made his confusion totally understandable. After all, Ozma claimed she was a fictional character, from a fictional world. And everyone knew that delusions could shape breakthroughs, right? So she was crazy and thus a social pariah, despite being super powerful, poised, and pretty (unspeakably beautiful, really). In a school that pretty much revolved around powers and looks, she’d formed a clique of one. Well, four, counting Grendel, Nox, and Nix.


  At least nobody had tried to bully her. Not more than once.

  If-Man led us upstairs and into the wing of the main building obviously set aside for more high-energy education—chemistry, science, classes requiring labs or extra precautions. Hillwood’s founders had gone to a lot of effort to make the entire place feel like an Ivy League prep school, but all its fine wood paneling and decorative molding couldn’t hide its “robust” design. It was designed to survive “incidents.”

  He stopped us in front of a door with a light over it, currently green, and knocked.

  “Come right in,” the door said, opening by itself.

  “Thank you.” I led our little troop into Ozma’s lab.

  Ozma and Grendel had ditched the optional assembly—no surprise since neither of them had been planning on a CAI career after graduation or been fans of the cape-scene. Grendel sat closest to the door, a troll in a Carlton House uniform, collar undone and tie loosened to hang over the textbook open on the lab bench in front of him. Ozma had taken off her school jacket and wore a light green lab coat. Nix sat on Brian’s shoulder, but Nox stood by the optical lens grinder Ozma bent over.

  Her Most Excellent Majesty, Princess Ozma the Sixth, Defender of the Emerald City and Empress of Oz, pulled down her surgical mask to smile sunnily at us.

  “Good morning, everybody. Brian, would you please make sure everyone has seats? I will attend you in a moment.” She raised her mask again and returned to the green-tinted lens she held in her fingers. Brian closed his book and stood to pull up more lab stools and only Black Powder didn’t accept one. Brian and Eric exchanged the kind of look I was used to seeing in Ajax-Types meeting for the first time, sizing each other up.

  I used the opportunity to look around. I’d never seen Ozma’s Hillwood lab, but I wasn’t surprised to see touches I recognized from her lab in the Dome. Her red oak cabinet sat in one corner, and a table full of grow-lights and young plants sat in another. An antique globe and a clockwork orrery and astrolabe sat by a map and mirror-filled wall. Just sitting in this new but familiar room made me feel a little less out of place.

  Ozma set down the lens and turned off the grinder a minute later, pulling off her safety goggles and mask. “Thank you, Brian. Well, this is quite the party! I would offer refreshments, but I don’t entertain in the lab. That is a lovely new costume!”

  I smiled innocently back and slipped into social mode. “Thank you, your majesty. And is that a pair of Seeing-Specs you’re working on? They’re so handy.”

  She didn’t blink, but bright eyes narrowed minutely and Brian straightened up with a scowl on his fearsome face. Score one for me.

  “They are. Are you familiar with them?”

  “Only from you. A few years from now you’re going to learn that the Wizard, Oscar Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Immanuel Ambrose Diggs—” I took a breath, rather proud of remembering all that “—is being held in a labor camp on the Cascades in Quadling Country. Mombi and the Nome King are forcing him to help them build a tick-tock army.”

  Ozma inhaled sharply. “Oscar is alive?” I nodded and just for a moment her composure cracked and she looked young, like the sixteen-year-old girl she was physically and according to her had been for a century.

  “I think so,” I clarified. “You and Brian will go and free him, and he helps the Quadlings in the camp flee to Jinxland and the Resistance. I have three years of memories of stuff that hasn’t happened. Have you recovered Glegg’s Box of Mixed Magic yet?”

  * * *

  It turned out that while Ozma might not entertain in her lab, she did keep tea and sodas.

  She didn’t do anything as barbaric as drink from a can, of course.

  I was getting a little tired of being Future Girl, but she accepted the explanation a lot more easily than I’d expected. I should have expected it; she had plenty of experience with dealing with people who disbelieved but humored her. She also had a century of diplomatic experience—if she thought I was certifiable I’d never be able to tell—and she wanted to believe it.

  I didn’t bother trying to sell it to the rest of the room. Eric had already heard it, Black Powder had been briefed, and If-Man, Brandon, and Alecia listened like it was the hot new twist on Sentinels. Brian. . . wasn’t buying it, but he wasn’t going to step into Ozma’s conversation.

  And she had Glegg’s box.

  “Have you thought of what you want to ask the Question Box, then?” she asked. “I believe that you will get at least one answer, but I can’t promise more.”

  I shrugged. “I know. It has a mind of its own.” It did; Ozma had told me that, a lot of the time, it wouldn’t even let you open it. Other times it offered unsolicited notes. The thing had an agenda, but it was never wrong and that was what mattered. I needed answers. Even just one.

  “Well.” Ozma stood. “I think it’s time for you to get what you came for.” The oak cabinet opened for her when she stepped over to it and she took out Glegg’s box, a marvel of gold-wire filigree. Whispering to open it, she pulled out trays and boxes, more than could ever fit inside the little box. Last she removed a tiny silver box with a single drawer, acid-etched with the words Glegg’s Question Box: shake three times after each question.

  She held it out and my hands shook only a little as I took it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Members of Citizens for Constitutional Rights and Humanity First staged a protest outside the Dome late this morning. Benjamin Trent, the breakthrough involved in the fatal altercation with Astra, and Ethan Douglas, the identified fatal burning victim of an unknown breakthrough, were featured prominently on their protest signs. A spokesman for the protest pointed to the “Government indifference to tragedies inflicted by unaccountable and even unknown superhumans.”

  Chicago News at 12.

  * * *

  If I only had one question, what should it be? How did I get here? What should I do? The big questions could all lead to just more questions, and the Question Box was pithy and enigmatic at best. I’d lain awake most of last night, in my Hillwood guest-room, thinking about it.

  Swallowing, I held the box up. “Why am I here?”

  I shook it three times, slid the little drawer open. Inside lay a piece of paper the size of a fortune-cookie fortune. Plucking it out and returning the box to Ozma, I carefully unfolded it.

  Lebensborn

  I turned the paper over but that was all, just the one word. I looked up helplessly.

  “May I see it?” Ozma extended her hand and I passed the paper to her. She read it.

  “Lebensborn. It’s archaic German, it means ‘fount of life.’ And it doesn’t mean anything to you?” I shook my head.

  “Well.” She held out the box. “Shall we try again?”

  I accepted it and asked the first fallback question I’d planned, “What am I here to do?” and shook it again.

  It didn’t open, and I stopped trying to force it before I broke it.

  Ozma accepted return of the box and put it away. “There are a number of oracular methods I can try to learn more about your answer, if you can stay.”

  “That—” I cleared my throat and tried again. “That would be great. Will you excuse me a moment?” I waved for everyone to stay seated, and headed for the door. Only Black Powder followed me out. A few students wandered the hall, but with career day in full swing the room across the hall—a more normal chemistry lab—was empty.

  “Stay here,” I told Black Powder and stepped inside, shutting the door.

  I put my back against it—thick, plenty able to mute most sounds, for that matter armored well enough to seal the classroom if necessary. “Talk to me, Shell.”

  “Are you okay?” She faded in, no funny stuff now.

  “Yes.” I hugged myself and focused on my breathing, thanking Chakra. If I could control my breathing, I could work outward from there, push down the crushing disappointment. “Tell me everything there is to know about Lebensborn.”

  She nodded. �
�It means what Ozma says it does. But I just looked it up and it’s also got a nasty history.”

  “Nasty, how?”

  “It was part of the Nazi’s whole master-race, Übermensch business. It started before the war and the idea was to breed more pure-blood Germanic types, more Aryans. Part of it was banning abortion and establishing maternity homes for unwed mothers of the right stock, forcing adoptions of their children into pure Aryan families. During the war the Nazi SS kidnapped Poles, Scandinavians, Yugoslavs who looked ‘German’ enough and put them in German homes to be raised believing they were German. Thousands of them. Hope?”

  My face felt like ice and I had to be pale as death. A moment ago I’d nearly lost it just because, after all my hopes, the answer I’d gotten from the box hadn’t made any sense. Now I wished it still didn’t and I was going to be sick. Well, at least the lab had lots of sinks. Breathe.

  “Übermensch,” I said when I could. “That’s over-man, right?”

  “Yeah, a twisted steal from Nietzsche. Hope, you’re not okay.”

  “You think? Is the goal of increasing the number of breakthroughs Lebensborn enough? Call Blackstone. Tell him Veritas needs to move as fast as he can on Dr. Pellegrini and the Ascendency. And yeah, you can tell him it’s because of an answer from a magic box!”

  * * *

  It wasn’t quite that simple—Shell wound up patching me through with Veritas to confirm my story, and that explanation took a couple of minutes. He ended it with a thank you but no suggestion of what he was going to do with the new information. Returning to Ozma’s lab, I found Eric telling everyone how we met. Apparently, taking him down on a drunk-and-disorderly call after he’d thrown his TV through his living room window and across the street, was a good story.