Kingdom Come

by Elliot S Maggin

  “Really? Me?”

  “Well, sure, Cla— Kal. Hey, let me try that. Can you get that big rock over here? That one, the one about the size of a fist.”

  “This one?”

  “Thanks. Now what do you do, give it a little topspin?”

  “All in the wrist. I’m not like a King. At least not on purpose, I’m not.”

  “You don’t have to do anything on purpose, Kal. You were born to it. When I first met you, and there were all these articles everywhere about you, somebody wrote that if Krypton never had blown up, you might have grown up to be a plumber or a schoolteacher.”

  “I wrote that. Clark did, the first time I ‘interviewed’ myself. What’s wrong with plumbers and schoolteachers?”

  “Nothing. But they’re a metaphor for ordinary people, and I don’t think even you believe there’s a circumstance wherein you ever would have grown up to be ordinary. Not on Earth or on Krypton or even on Apokolips if it came to that.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You think so?”

  “I mean the spin you put on that toss. Your meteor hit sixteen rocks in the swarm before it cracked apart and spun out. Ever play baseball?”

  “No. Never. Kal, I was talking about something.”

  “I know. It makes me uncomfortable, Diana.”

  “And since when was your own comfort of any consequence to you?”

  “I was just talking about your island and your mom. How did it get around to me?”

  “Because what my sisters judged I failed to do is something you succeed in doing without even trying.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Get people to change their behavior for the better, just by being better than they are.”

  “Oh, come on, Diana.”

  “I mean it. If you were really uncomfortable with this role, you never would have put on the costume.”

  “It was my mother’s idea.”

  I figured as much. But look, couldn’t you plug as many volcanoes and stop as many floods and fight as much crime and save the world just as often without anyone ever knowing you were there? A gust of superbreath? A bolt of heat vision? An invisible superspeed intervention, and nobody’s the wiser? I know you do things like that all the time—or did, anyway—but still you wore the costume and let people see you floating through the sky on patrol like Apollo riding his chariot.”

  “An ounce of prevention, I thought.”

  “And you were right, Kal. You were always right. And it worked for you. Always. Then when you left and I stayed and the world tumbled into the sink, my sisters put me on trial. I pled my case, but they decreed that I had not changed Man’s World. It had changed me. They saw—they saw quite correctly, I expect—that my version of the woman on horseback out to save civilization wasn’t working.”

  “You believe that?”

  “How could I disagree? The Amazons believe in peace through strength. Too often I relied on an olive branch and not a cestus.”

  “I always admired your gentility.”

  “It didn’t get the job done. The world isn’t any better. Everybody put on a costume, but it was all a reflection of your glory. Nobody really caught on but you.”

  “I’m sorry. You all must have hated me for it.”

  “We loved you for it. How could we do otherwise?”

  “I’m just uncomfortable with the—”

  “We hated you for leaving us. That’s what we hated you for. And nobody ever gave any more of a damn about your comfort than you did.”

  He let that sink in. He pitched more stones. Then he grew impatient with waiting for them to float by, so he reached over and unrolled the golden lasso at her waist and she did not stop him. He wondered later whether she would trust anyone else—her sisters, her mother, anyone—with that lasso. She must have been startled, just a little, that he would take it. He was, too. It was magical after all. Superman objected to the supernatural as a concept in virtually any form; he denied the unknown when its reality presented itself, even in the form of a tool in the hands of a dear friend. The lasso reputedly made liars speak the truth. It would bring no conflict to Superman.

  But he tossed the noose around six big chunks of busted rock in space and yanked back on it with just the right twist. He must have done the math in his head as absently as a first baseman does it when in a split instant he figures out the vector of a coming baseball and where to stand to catch it. A beam of ultraviolet heat pulsed from his eyes to fuse the rocks back together into one.

  It was better to build than to destroy, his action told whoever might have been watching. He thought only Diana was watching, but the Spectre and I and who-knows-who else watched his absentminded lesson in physics and morality. Certainly all of us watchers caught the point.

  Diana got the message, too, and perhaps she was a little annoyed by it. She reached for her lasso, and he pretended for a moment not to notice, not to let go.

  “How can I do it, too?”

  “Do what?” he asked.

  “Whatever it is you do. Whatever magic you work.”

  “No magic. Just principles. Magic makes me crazy.”

  “What principles, Kal? I’ve got principles. I’ve got a hundred thousand years of heritage and philosophy. For Olympus’ sake, Kal, my people invented philosophy. Did you know an ancestor of mine was Socrates teacher? And another was the mistress to Alexander the Great?”

  “His mistress? An Amazon?”

  “You do what you’ve got to do. Amazon philosophy. Go with what you’ve got. You’re so invested in American culture, you think that’s Jeffersonian pragmatism. He got it from us, and so did you. We invented civilization, and now our failure to get the message across—my failure to impose order and grace—presides over civilization’s end.”

  “And your solution to civilization’s imminent demise is the Gulag?”

  “You bought in, Kal. Gentility on the left hand and a sword in the right. Look at the Great Seal of the United States. The eagle has an olive branch in the left talon and arrows in the right.”

  “It’s the other way around.”

  “What way?”

  “Arrows in the left talon and the olive branch in the right, actually.”

  “Whatever. We gave America its symbol.”

  “Don’t tell me: Ben Franklin had an Amazon mistress, too.”

  “A teacher, not a mistress, believe it or not. I’ll introduce you to her someday. You know something, Kal? Your adopted country has always been a special project of the Amazons—the way Greece was when it first got started. That’s why they sent me.”

  “Really.”

  “And you know what else, Kal?”

  “What, Diana?”

  “It’s why They sent you.”

  “Who? The Amazons from Krypton?”

  “No, Kal. I mean it. We all have a mission, and yours and mine are the same one.”

  “No, it’s not, Diana, because I don’t buy the baggage that comes along with it.”

  “Not baggage. Philosophy.”

  “Right. Philosophy. First try to teach them, and then if they don’t learn it, ram it down their throats.”

  “That’s not— You said it yourself, Kal: ‘We are warriors. We have an obligation to wage combat.’ ”

  “Yes, I’ve said that and I’ll stand by it. But here’s another thing you might take to heart: If what you want to be is a role model, then you’re going to have to learn that it’s your gentility that people will respond to, not your force of arms.”

  Finally, she yanked away the rope from his loosening hand.

  But it was he who kept talking: “Given who we are, Diana, given the power we possess, our obligation to keep the peace is greater than our obligation to wage war. War—particularly the war we wage today—is not some glorious struggle. It is a failure of negotiation.”

  She looked at him with her head atilt, wondering whether she wanted to disagree with him, not even considering how she might if she chose to do
so. Then it was too late.

  “Only the weak succumb to brutality,” he said, and flew Earthward.

  *

  They—that amorphous “they” who sent out the signals for the weekly news magazines and wrote the billboards for the local newscasts—used to call Captain Marvel “the World’s Mightiest Mortal,” and he may well have been. All the super hero celebrities had catchy nicknames in those days. Batman was “the Caped Crusader” in the supermarket rags, “the Dark Knight” in the tabloids, and “the Batman” in the Times, with a lower-case t on the omnipresent article before his moniker, as if to highlight the editorial contention on the part of “The Paper of Record” that he was just another costumed vigilante whose real name no one knew. Superman, of course, was “the Man of Steel” everywhere except in his biographies, where he was “the Last Son of Krypton.” We had an “Amazon Princess,” a “Scarlet Speedster,” an “Emerald Warrior,” and a “Battling Bowman.” Now I fancied that I knew all these people I followed around in this spirit state. But this Captain Marvel—this man who, as a boy, had derived his powers through the machinations of the ancient wizard Shazam, one of the Quintessence—was someone nobody seemed to know very well.

  Certainly he did not know himself very well.

  “Our other guests are beginning to arrive, Billy,” Luthor said firmly as he walked through the door to the factory catwalk, where he found the Captain and the Bat. “Why don’t you see to their entertainment while I talk with Mr. Wayne?”

  “Yes, Mr. Luthor,” and Billy scurried off the catwalk.

  “You didn’t tell me that you’d initiated triple-shifts,” Wayne asked as Luthor joined him overlooking the robot production facility.

  “It’s not as though we have to worry about union rules,” Luthor said.

  “As a matter of fact, Luthor,” prominent technocrat Bruce Wayne offered, “I have found in those few enterprises where I have had to hire nonunion tradespeople, that productivity actually increases when I invest in the sorts of humane working conditions that unions mandate.”

  “Yes,” Luthor said, “I read about the eight-hour workday you strapped on that factory in Phnom Penh. Positively antisocial.”

  “Along with the day-care center, the alcoholism and depression clinic, the annual two weeks’ paid vacations, and time and a half for overtime, and people all over Cambodia are beating down the doors to come work for me. It’s become the most productive ceramics plant in all of Southeast Asia.”

  “LexCorp has a similar plant in Singapore that’s a third as productive and has a tenth the labor costs.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’ve never gotten as rich as I have, Lex.”

  “Oh, Brucie Brucie Brucie. You did have a head start. Eight or ten generations’ worth, by my count. And it’s taken you this long to learn that there’s strength in numbers. Just look at this production facility.”

  It was impressive. It was a secret loft in the middle of Metropolis, three stories high and the area of two city blocks. From the catwalk, Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor could watch the entire assembly line as it produced three complete flying Bat-Monitors a day.

  “Magnificent, aren’t they? Between your design and my production,” Luthor said, “the Justice League doesn’t stand a prayer of survival. Soon we’ll crush them with a flotilla of unyielding steel soldiers.”

  “I can feel your pulse throb from here, Luthor,” Wayne said with a snort. “Don’t double-cross me. Our objective is world order, not world domination. Don’t forget the agenda.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Ridding the world of the League is a necessary evil. Humankind was never meant to bow before a Kryptonian and his ilk.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Wayne sniffed condescendingly. Condescending sniffing was a genetically communicable talent that I have seen before in people in Bruce Wayne’s class.

  “Well, you arrived early, my dear Batman.” Luthor ignored his ally’s mild slight. “I do believe we have a meeting.”

  And the catwalk faded from my sight as another room came up around my taciturn spirit guide and me.

  CHAPTER 22

  Summit Meeting

  “Once Superman and his toadies are our of the way,” Luthor said, his grin involuntarily getting bigger as he said it, “the Mankind Liberation Front can seize power. And with your little Bat-Knights keeping peace, we will return the reins of civilization to the humans.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Then again, couldn’t we just drop a K-bomb on Big Blue’s spit curl?” Oliver Queen asked between sips of herbal tea.

  “All right, Ollie, a little decorum,” Bruce Wayne snapped. “He was a friend of yours.”

  “Sorry, Bats,” Queen said after a pause.

  “Strife, my old friend,” Luthor said. “Heartwarming.”

  It was Luthor’s war room, and Bruce Wayne was curiously at home here. The conference table was smaller than the one upstairs, but the space was bigger. Electronic displays of maps, grids, and constantly changing graphs girdled the room.

  Around the table were the principals of the Mankind Liberation Front and Bruce Wayne’s three closest friends: Oliver and Dinah Lance Queen, and Ted Kord, who hovered around the walls clucking over the enormous sophistication of the information-gathering systems here.

  “Sadly, Mr. Queen, the problem with kryptonite is that it no longer packs the punch it did in the good old days—as I learned the hard way.” Luthor went on, “Chalk it up to the solar radiation Superman’s cells have been guzzling all these years. He has never been more powerful. Gentlemen, ladies, we would not be competent if we allowed the strain of our association to affect the work that we have come together to accomplish.”

  “Oh, Ollie’s been jealous of that spit curl since he had hair of his own.” Dinah Lance rubbed a hand up and down her husband’s arm, and Bruce Wayne smiled.

  Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, took his seat as the others of Bruce Wayne’s team began to arrive.

  “Once war begins, Batman,” Luthor wanted to know, “can your players advance to the front lines if necessary?”

  “We will be in place, Luthor. Obviously we cannot match the raw might of Superman’s army,” the Batman said as Jade, Nightstar, Tula, Obsidian, young Black Canary, and the others began to move into the room and assemble behind him, “but we have the fire of youth on our side. Among our partisans are the sons and daughters of many of the Justice League.”

  “And these people,” Xu’ffasch said, not a little bit astonished, “are prepared to fight tooth and nail with the generation who sired them?”

  “Aren’t all young people? I believe I’m speaking for all of those who have come to our side,” Bruce Wayne told the heir to the greatest of his enemies, “that it is their world and their century that we are here to build. Not Superman’s. We are all prepared to fight when I give the signal.”

  Xu’ffasch raised an eyebrow. Then he saw Nightstar.

  “Mr. Luthor,” Bruce Wayne said, “here in this room and in the production facility above us are our force of arms. I expect you have devised a collection of strategies that somehow involves the Gulag? Are you prepared to share them with us now?”

  “Why … why, yes,” Luthor said. “Yes of course.”

  “Details?”

  “Soon enough.” Luthor vamped. “In fact, I’m awaiting word on a few details myself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to step out for a moment, and you all need to meet one another.” And Luthor was gone.

  Bruce Wayne walked by Oliver Queen, squeezing his shoulder and saying, “Well done,” on his way to speak with a tall weathered man who’d come in with the young people and now stood in a dark corner of the room. “Hi, J’onn,” Bruce Wayne said to the man, “how’re you feeling?”

  J’onn nodded, but did not smile.

  Xu’ffasch stood and introduced himself to Nightstar. Ollie and Dinah both put an arm around young Black Canary, their daughter, and asked what she had been up to. Billy, grinning, walked
around the room passing out hors d’oeuvres and asking if everyone was all right. No one answered him, and he did not seem to notice. A few people pointed at him and nudged one another as he went by, but no one spoke to him. They knew.

  “I know what you’re thinking. I do,” J’onn, in his corner, told Bruce Wayne.

  “Of course you do,” Wayne said, “and because you do, you know how we all feel about you, old friend.”

  “Yes,” J’onn said, “but I know what else you’re thinking.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Help me.”

  “You’re thinking maybe I can’t.”

  J’onn’s hands shook just a little bit. He was suffering, but for all I tried I could not figure out from what.

  “I’m thinking maybe you can,” Bruce Wayne corrected. “But let’s not do this telepathically. You won’t stay focused.”

  “May I have that?”

  Wayne handed J’onn his cup of black coffee but was careful not to let go of it, and for good reason. J’onn’s unsteady fingers passed through the cup like those of a ghost. Like those of my own. But J’onn could touch it if he concentrated, and he did. He needed the coffee.

  “Talk to me. Just relax and talk,” Wayne told him. “Here, let me take that for you,” and Wayne caught the cup that fell from his friend’s lips and through his fingers just in time.

  “Who is he?” I asked the Spectre.

  “He was once a Martian champion. Now he is not much of anything,” the Spectre said, but I knew the answer was more complicated than that. The Spectre explained that this everyman was of a race of people who once had colonized our neighboring planet, who’d become of that planet as easily as a key fits in a lock. I saw briefly what he really looked like: seven feet tall, green skinned, powerful. When his race had scattered, and J’onn found himself among the Earth humans, he’d tried to fit in as well here, using his abilities of telepathy and illusion on this world of scattered emotions and chaotic thoughts to such an expanse of effort that he shattered his own emotional infrastructure.