There was a tapping outside the tent. One of the Secret Service men poked his head out in the direction from which the tapping came. A flustered-looking young man came bounding into the meeting tent, past the musicians and directly behind the President as she said, “Of course it has a purpose, Ambassador Rifkin,” and he handed the President a folded slip of paper.
President Capper opened the note as she said, “High-level, high-visibility goodwill tours such as this focus the energies of local agencies on the immediate problems.” She looked the note over. “They allow heads of state and heads of departments and ministries to coordinate signals to mid-level operatives about priorities,” and then she stopped. “You all will have to excuse me a moment,” she said, and turned and left the tent.
She walked less than fifty yards toward her temporary office quarters in the Old EOB, turned, and came back. When she returned, the delegates were murmuring, puzzled.
“Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen,” the President said as she strode toward her seat at a large round table among the company, “it would be more appropriate to share this information with all of you before I act on it through my own resources. We’ve all heard the intelligence reports about the construction of some sort of structure the size of a small city at Ground Zero in the former American Commonwealth of Kansas.”
Already, the delegates were impressed. For one thing, it was the first time any of them ever had heard her allude to the notion that her country now had one fewer state. She had their attention.
“A brief report now confirms for me that the so-called Justice League has in fact constructed a detention center—a prison, a Gulag—on that site. It further informs me that the walls of this containment facility are no longer secure.”
A general hubbub erupted among the delegates. Forks clattered. Pill cases opened and closed. Water pitchers poured, and one fell and broke in a million pieces. Voices murmured. Matters did not calm down that moment when the Secret Service agents, as one, murmured something inaudible. Four agents scrambled out of the tent, and the remaining two gathered warily to either side of the President.
“What?” she said, and one of them shrugged and the other tilted a head at the tent exit. She stuck her head out of the tent, then stepped out, motioning dismissively in the air. “Superman, Diana, hello,” was what most of the delegates heard her say.
“Madame President,” Superman said.
“President Capper,” stated Wonder Woman as they followed her back into the tent.
Now the delegates were quiet again.
“We went to United Nations headquarters and found that the Security Council was meeting with you,” Superman said—President Capper could not tell whether that was by way of apology or just explanation.
“My agenda’s shot to hell,” the President said as she plopped in her seat. “The floor’s yours.”
“We thought”—Superman turned to the assembled delegates—“that we ought to report to you on our current activities in the irradiated areas of the American Midwest.”
“We beat you,” Wyrmwood said, sitting at the President’s table. “The President’s just told us about your concentration camp. We’re flattered that the mighty Justice League has finally deemed the human race worthy of conversation.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm, Secretary-General,” Wonder Woman snapped.
“Sarcasm?” The Secretary-General laughed. “Forgive me. We’re simply no longer accustomed to being advised or consulted. Forgive me, delegates, if I speak as an American for a moment. And forgive me as well, oh great and mighty ones, but imagine our surprise and apprehensiveness to learn of the presence of a metahuman prison in the very center of United States national territory.”
“We have taken every possible step to secure it,” Superman said. He was falling back into the familiar patterns of the skilled public figure by now. “We have taken redundant steps, in fact. The Gulag’s labyrinthine layout is familiar only to its designer, Mr. Scott Free, who is also its codirector.”
“With you?” the President asked.
“With Dr. Adam Blake,” Superman answered. “Captain Comet.”
For a moment, the President was impressed again. Dr. Blake had declined her offer of a cabinet post a few years ago, but had not turned down a job with the Justice League.
“All right, Superman,” the Secretary-General continued. “Are you here to report that your detainees are fully docile and eager to acclimate?”
“Eager? No. We’re working on that. Docile? No, that’s why we built the facility. Again, however, we have taken this step to secure the world’s safety, not—”
“Then you’re telling us, hard as this is to believe,” the Secretary-General interrupted—and the President gave no indication that she thought he should not interrupt—“that with the unauthorized and unlicensed use of American territory and private property for a government-controlled function, you have diminished the prevailing danger of the metahuman presence to nil?”
Superman did not answer. Wonder Woman wanted him to say something. So did the delegates, but he did not.
“Aren’t you telling us even that the end justifies these grossly irregular means? Is that true, Superman?”
“Not entirely,” Superman said. “The Gulag is a work in progress. It is our duty—the League’s duty and the duty of those responsible people whose gifts involve extrahuman abilities—to guide those of us who insist upon working against the common good. I admit there is some danger, still. There is less danger than there was without the Gulag. I chose to put the renegades together where we can monitor and teach them.”
“Inside an enormous powder keg,” the Secretary-General said. “Superman, Wonder Woman, we have lots of prisons in Montana. Federal prisons. State prisons. Local jails. Detention centers. People—normal, nonsuperpowered people—find a way to get out of them all the time. But we’ve learned something about prisons where I come from. One of the most important, basic things we’ve learned is that you don’t put the slyest, craftiest, most escape-prone people you’ve got all together in one place. Because if one of them gets out—and one of them will, somehow, get out, that’s pretty much the rule—then in that case the rest of them are always going to follow. Why didn’t you maybe pick up a phone and ask us about that? Are metahumans—are you, Superman—the only source of information and wisdom worth consulting now?”
“We’re consulting you now,” Superman said. “Up until now we’ve been kind of busy.”
“Oh, and you come today because you’ve got time on your hands? You’ve got an insurrection in progress and you’re just trying to soften the spin,” the Secretary-General said with some restraint. “Superman, the confidence and hope your reemergence engendered is fast eroding.”
“Perhaps,” came a low-pitched rumble voice from the far end of the tent. Lord Wainwright supposed, because of his own near-deafness, that nobody heard him when in fact everybody did, so again he said, “Perhaps.”
The President urged everyone else to quiet down as the ancient Englishman rose slowly on the hand-carved cane that Churchill himself had once cracked over the head of an annoying Labourite.
“Global economy is still catastrophic,” said the senior member of the Security Council. “Worldwide trauma is staggering. Confidence in institutions is at a historic nadir. Neither this body nor any government on Earth can afford another Kansas, I promise you that.”
Superman prodded, “You’re saying, Lord Wainwright…”
The ancient diplomat did his best to strip away decades of tact and forbearance and managed this much: “Perhaps it is time that we began to decide some things for ourselves. Good day.”
*
“Stop it,” Diana said to him as the White House and Foggy Bottom receded behind them and became a dot on the face of the blue globe beneath them.
“Stop what?” He pretended he wanted to know.
“Stop looking so stunned. Did you seriously think they’d want us to sit there and re
ason this out with them at our leisure?”
“Well, that is their purpose, right? They’re the United Nations, after all.”
“They’re scared, Kal. And their fears may soon outweigh our solutions. We have to act.”
“I don’t have the luxury of fear.”
“Nice turn of phrase, my old journalist, but it doesn’t dismiss the problem. Whether you like it or not, you’re a world leader now, and even the League members are getting tired of waiting for you to adjust to that role.”
“I’m an old guy. I adjust slowly.”
“Well, guess what, Kal? I’m older. And as far as I’m concerned, if the situation with the Gulag prisoners—”
“Residents. Students. Detainees maybe. Not prisoners.”
“—if it gets one micron worse, then the League will be forced to take final, decisive action.”
This time she flew off ahead of him, and he let her.
CHAPTER 25
Pandora
Bruce Wayne and Ibn al Xu’ffasch had to be amused that they were wearing the same suit, but neither appeared to notice.
Lex Luthor had left the room a few minutes before in the middle of a conversation with Zatara. They were talking about the relative merits of a mechanical army versus one that Zatara conjured through an elaborate supernatural process. Then Luthor had left that discussion in a hurry, and Zatara had finished the conversation by himself. Now Luthor burst back into the room—filled to the discomfort point with all manner of bizarre creatures from Catwoman’s pet Riddler, Eddie Nigma, to that ineffably beautiful hybrid creature Nightstar, who doted on Bruce Wayne as if he were the grandfather he would have wanted to be.
“Good news!” Luthor bellowed. “The moment has come to begin our final strike! The Gulag is in turmoil! The inmates are—dare I say it?—revolting!”
The most significant malefactors of his lifetime and a couple dozen costumed do-gooders were assembled in his conference room, and Luthor was about to throw down his trump. This was the tastiest moment of his life.
Around the table were the Mankind Liberation Front. Against the walls and windows were the last of the living, free metahumans who’d rejected Superman’s Justice League: the second Zatara, grandson of the first, whose family heirloom is knowledge of the arcane constellation of forces that the fearful still call “magic”; Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, tough as nails and still stinging like a bee at sixty-something; Dinah Lance Queen, his wife, as deadly a martial artist as there was on Earth; Darkstar, the son of Donna Troy of the Justice League and her estranged husband; Nightstar, who gave Bruce Wayne constant back rubs and called him “Gramps”; the Huntress, an archer in jungle camouflage; Red Hood, the relentlessly agile daughter of Roy Harper of the Justice League and the late villainess Cheshire; Fate, sorcerer of the gold face helmet and one of the dozen or so most powerful people on the planet; Jade, the green-skinned ring-wielding daughter of the Green Lantern who’d built New Oa; her brother, the dark and brooding Obsidian; the fourth Flash, who fancied herself the daughter—after some fashion—of Wally West, who now fixed the wind-retardant goggles to her eyes; Wildcat, the human/feline hybrid who was attracting the fascination of Selina Kyle; Tula, the scantily clad Atlantean merwoman; and more. Not even Luthor knew all of their names. The ripest presence here, though, was the ever-loyal valet standing by his side.
“Superman’s prison has become a cauldron of hate and chaos. That’s our cue to deploy our steel legion,” Luthor said, “but not before someone tips that scalding cauldron right onto the Justice League! Someone I’ve been saving for just such a task. Isn’t that right?” he said, turning toward the imposing figure of his assistant.
“Me? But all our talks?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, by now you all no doubt have figured out that my assistant is not simply a manservant. Many of you who know him haven’t seen him since he was much younger. Introduce yourself, son.”
“Mr. Luthor, I thought—”
“Introduce yourself to our friends.”
“Nice to meet you all. I’m … I’m…”
“It’s as I’ve always said, young man,” Luthor went on in that telltale teacher-to-slow-pupil tone, “the superhumans are evil. You can’t argue with that.”
“Yes, but I—”
“Only you can ensure their destruction, isn’t that right?”
“That’s what you told me, Mr. Luthor.”
“And that makes it true, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m ordering you to demolish the Gulag so that its prisoners roam free. Free and angry. And easily eradicated in a war that no one can win … save us. So tumble down the walls of Jericho, boy. You remember that story, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Luthor.”
Bruce Wayne stood slowly from his seat, spirited his way around the room through the crowd of colorful colleagues, edging silently, invisibly in plain sight, toward Luthor. Nightstar leaned over to whisper something to her friend Xu’ffasch, who looked back at her in silent alarm as she squeezed his upper arm. Everyone else was transfixed by this scene.
Luthor reached up to press on the lobe of his servant’s vulnerable ear and said, “Do it and worry no more about losing control. You won’t. I’ve seen to that. Go ahead,” and he paused. “I insist.”
Suddenly the piledriver fist of the Batman slammed against the jaw of the bigger, younger man as he folded over the floor. Before the big child-man could gather a thought, Bruce Wayne crouched on his rib cage and held tightly to his throat.
“Sorry, Billy,” Bruce Wayne said as his charge tried to expel a word. One word would have been too much.
“He—he’s not—?” Oliver Queen was indignant. “You’re kidding me! All this time we’ve been in mortal fear of Billy Batson, not Captain Marvel?”
“I’d suspected it for a while,” Bruce Wayne explained, “and J’onn’s telepathic probe confirmed it. It seems Marvel’s dual identities are in quite a bit of mental conflict. All these years as Batson grew to manhood, Luthor kept him in check by turning him into a stew of schizophrenic psychoses.”
Luthor swarmed over the Batman’s back, pounded at his shoulders and neck, yanked at his cyborg framing, all to no effect. It may as well have been Superman Luthor was trying to fight hand to hand.
Ted Kord, the nerdy hack who used to put on the Blue Beetle outfit just so he could be someone else, grabbed Luthor by the scruff of the neck and threw him against a wall and enjoyed doing it.
“But our goals?” Luthor said through his aching face.
“My only goal in allying with you,” the Batman snapped, “was to unravel your connection with Captain Marvel and undo it. In this entire global conflict, he was the wild card. And I hate wild cards.”
“You—you double-crossed me!” Luthor shouted. “You double-crossed me first.”
“An amusing notion.” The Batman smiled. “I learned from you.” Then he looked around the room—at everyone frozen in place. He held tight the larynx of the man who was Captain Marvel.
“Then may we assume you’ve given the signal?” Darkstar asked.
“Absolutely. Strike.”
And the room exploded in combat.
Selina Kyle rose to elbow Tula in the chest and bolt for the door. Jade caught her in a will-induced green bolo.
The Riddler tried to duck under the table, but before he could, his chair spun around fourscore and seven times. When the Flash finally stopped it, she thought she might have to give the little guy a heart massage.
The Wildcat dove across the table onto the immortal Vandal Savage.
Nightstar spirited Xu’ffasch off into an adjoining room.
Obsidian enveloped the King of Spades in his cloak, and the evil one emerged unconscious on the floor and still quivering.
Lord Naga tried to rise from his seat and found himself with his own clothes tacked to a wall by half a dozen arrows from the bows of Red Hood and the Huntress.
Luthor jammed out the door, distracting the Batman e
nough for Billy to grab at his foot and topple him off his chest.
“Ted!” Bruce Wayne called. “Follow Luthor. Don’t let him get to the Bat-Knights!”
Luthor huffed and puffed his way down the hall toward his production loft.
“That’s where I want him, Bruce,” Ted called back from halfway down the hall, yanking something from out of an inside pocket. “You worry about Marvel.”
And the Batman did. Billy Batson, scared as a rat in a cathouse, barreled into a stairwell in the direction of the spare little bedroom off Luthor’s biology lab.
Luthor himself lumbered onto the open elevator platform to the floor of the bat-robot production facility. Standing on the catwalk above him, Ted Kord, the mechanical genius, smiled.
In his hand, Kord held a remote control the shape of a big blue bug. He pressed a button, and Luthor’s platform stopped halfway between the catwalk and the floor.
“What?” Luthor said. “What the— Who’s here?”
Not that it would have mattered, but Kord did not answer. Instead, he pressed another key.
Around the room, thirty-four completed Bat-Knights flashed on their pairs of eyes and advanced at Luthor.
Luthor, high of cholesterol and ample of girth, climbed off his platform and tried to get down its superstructure. He caught a trouser leg on the elevator gate and lost his footing. A twelve-foot-tall robot caught him halfway down, and the others congregated around. “No!” Luthor screamed.
On the catwalk above, Ted Kord grinned and played with his toys some more.
*
“Billy, stop! Please!” Bruce Wayne called after him.
Billy ran on without a word. Then he got caught in a dead end in the lab, and Batman was in the door holding a tranquilizer pistol in his hand, and both of them stopped. The safe thing to do would be to put a dart in Billy’s neck and ask questions later, but there was too much Wayne needed to know immediately—and Billy had enough poking and prodding and things sticking out of him to suit an Abkhasian’s lifetime.
Keep him silent, Bruce Wayne told himself. Lower the tone here. He spoke softly: “Billy, you don’t have to run anymore. I figured out what Luthor did to you. Captain Marvel retired early, didn’t he, Billy?”
Kingdom Come Page 28
