Gauntlet Run: Birth of a Superhero
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“Your quickness on the uptake does your parents and teachers credit, child. Of course, the society we have built for ourselves aggravates rather than alleviates the evil effects of universal affluence. A predecessor in my Chair at Harvard, Daniel Bell, said we are a divided society in which the economy and technology become increasingly organized on the principles of functional rationality — meritocratic, technocratic and so on — while alongside the industrial superstructure exists a culture that becomes increasingly apocalyptic, anti-intellectual and sensuous, that seeks only the new and experimental and has rejected all traditional bourgeois notions of rationalism and sobriety, a culture in which instinct is all, in which impulse and pleasure alone are real and life-affirming.”
“Wow!” said Henty. “You must have thrilled your students.”
“The few who could be bothered to listen rather than talk,” the professor said sadly.
“People can still fight the system,” Henty said.
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“The System is part of it. With the Watcheyes everywhere, there can be no privacy, no guilt, no shame, no standards. The System connives at and furthers the disease, like a surgeon implanting pleasure-diodes in the brains of degenerates. There is an intensely adverse relationship in our society and the only outlet for people’s natural urges is not in achievement but in violence.”
“Yesterday I saw The Caring Society medics bind up protesters and Pacifiers side by side and send them out to fight again.”
“You learn fast, child. It is to everyone’s benefit to channel the violence only in politically approved ways. Look at you: you wanted to provide better medicine for your son than The Caring Society is willing to afford. That makes you a striver after achievement and a criminal. In turn you become a Gauntlet Runner and a focus for the nation’s violent hatred.”
So enthralled was Henty by this sage that she didn’t even look to see if the Fist was uncovered or wonder how he knew she was the Runner.
“It was much better when our energies were guided towards conquering hunger or increasing the gross national product or even the conquest of space, an otherwise useless activity. Now we are the victims of our own boring success,” he concluded and poured more tea.
“Thanks,” said Henty. “Don’t stop now, just when you’re going well.”
“What a delightfully perceptive child you are. All right then. Let us take the police. They are a prime example of how an institution in a technological society can become distorted when it follows the example of machines and adopts efficiency as its only goal. What do the police do?”
“They protect society against criminals,” Henty said promptly.
“Indeed. And to do so efficiently, they must anticipate and forestall crime. And to do that, they will keep as many citizens as possible under surveillance. They will also tend to become independent, forming a closed, secretive, autonomous organization in order to operate in the most effective way and not be hindered by subsidiary considerations like the law or privacy or liberty. They will create an atmosphere and an environment, a model of social relations in their own image. And to ease their task, they will induce a climate of social conformity, again in their own violent image. And, once the politicians surrender control or worse, encourage police "efficiency" as the ultimate aim... well, you've seen the results. You should read Jacques Ellul’s ‘La Technique’. Oh dear, what am I thinking of. You have other things on your mind and anyway you don’t read French.”
“No,” Henty said. “But thanks for flattering me all the same. Tell me, Professor, why are you heading for Chicago?”
“That’s easy. In my youth, Chicago was the crossroads for all us fashionable speakers on the lecture circuits. My own specialty was the danger of the police state.” He laughed hollowly. “Except I was looking for it in the wrong place. I thought affluence was our first and finest and ultimate guardian against an American police state.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He screwed the nested cups back on his thermos and packed it away in the cane picnic basked that seemed to be his only luggage. “Thank you. We must leave this train before it actually stops,” he told her and pointed.
Henty turned around to look.
“Grain robbers,” he told her.
She stared for a moment at the crowd overturning the grain trucks and burning them.
“Why do they want wheat? I thought nobody went hungry in The Caring Society.”
“In theory, you’re right. In practice, a few slip through the interstices of the bureaucracy and die of starvation all the same.”
“Poor people!” Henty exclaimed. “But then why burn the grain?”
“These aren’t starving or even hungry. It’s this week’s fad in Chicago, wrecking grain trucks. See those little bags they carry? It’s to take home some wheat to prove to their friends they were here. Most of them will leave before the Pacifiers come.”
Henty rewound the bandage around the Fist. “All the same, I’m not keen on mobs.”
“I think we’re going slowly enough now to get off,” the professor said. Immediately he suited words with action by swinging over the side of the carrier with his picnic basket and disappearing from sight.
Henty followed him.
He was standing beside the track, waiting for her when she rolled and jumped up. “You've done this before,” she said.
“Practice makes perfect. Sadly, we must now part. Don’t tell me where you are going. What I don’t know the bounty hunters cannot extract from me. I hope you do get to the Mint and that your son gets better.” And with that he ducked under the still rolling wheels of the train and out the other side in one superbly-timed smooth motion.
Henty clapped her hands in delight and bent so that he could see the applause — he certainly couldn’t hear it over the clacketyclack of the train. What Henty saw under the train horrified her. While the professor had been saying his goodbyes the train reached the fringes of the crowd and they were now shouting, “A dandy hobo!” and trying to force the professor back under the train where, without his superb timing, he would be mangled by the razor sharp wheels.
Without stopping to consider what she was doing, Henty ducked and rolled between bogies. For a second she lay under the rolling train between the rails, listening to the professor’s piteous cries as he struggled in the hands of a large number of overfed rioters. Then she rolled again.
Her timing was off and one arm was still behind her when the next wheel slashed up and right over her wrist. Henty was brought to a dead halt. Frantically she jerked her arm but the second wheel of the bogey was already on it.
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She wrenched her arm free just before the next truck arrived. She already held her other hand ready to stem the flow of blood from her stump of a wrist when she saw there was nothing wrong with her hand: the Fist was whole and intact and the fingers wriggled when she wanted them to.
“No, no, no!” shouted the professor as he struggled against his tormentors who almost had his head on the rails.
Without hesitation, Henty waded into them with fists and feet: there were so many of them, she needed all her limbs. Surprised by the sudden onslaught of violence, and those hit by the Fist seriously hurt, they let the professor go and fell back. But they were already rallying to fight: they were many against an old man and a twist of a girl.
Henty heard the train gathering speed behind her and had an idea. She grabbed the professor by the collar of his tailcoat with one hand and by his belt with the Fist and hoisted him bodily into the next grain truck that came by. Then she put the Fist on the earth and straightened her arm suddenly and sent herself flying to fall flat on her back next to the professor in the very last truck of the train.
But not before a grossly fat, bejeweled woman had grabbed at her and gotten hold of the tattered remains of Henty’s modesty bandage, ripping it from the Fist, which glinted black for all to see.
“It’s the Runner!” the fat woman shouted
and threw her little bag of symbolic grain after the disappearing train.
“Thank god they like fancy breads on the West Coast,” the professor heaved. “And thanks for saving me.”
“What did they have against you?”
“I had just arrived, so I must be an outsider. I dress differently. I’m old and therefore not strong.”
“Poor man. You lost your picnic basket.”
“No matter. It is my lost faith in people that hurts more.”
“Yes,” Henty said thoughtfully. “I’m beginning to understand what you mean.”
“Well, thanks again and I’ll be getting off when the train slows for that bridge.”
“You’re not staying in Chicago after that?”
He drew himself up to his full dignity. “I am not diverted from my determined course by any hoi polloi. Anyway, every place is as dangerous as every other place for a stranger.”
“Well. I’ll stick with this train as long as it heads west.”
“I doubt whether that’s wise. Within minutes it’ll be public knowledge which train you’re on, headed in which direction, on which railroad.”
“Sure. But the people who took my son will be able to find me and tell me what they want to return him.”
“Ah. Well, good luck,” and once more the professor was gone, saying over his shoulder as he jumped. “Remember, things must get worse before they can get better.”
“Yes,” Henty said to the thin air where a moment before the professor had stood. “That makes a weird kind of sense.”
With that, Henty settled down to sleep again and didn’t wake until just east of Moline where, as it crossed the Rock River, the train was blown up by bounty hunters.
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The police will create an atmosphere, an environment, even a model of social relations. — Jacques Ellul
“And I was having such a pleasant dream,” Henty said aloud in that awful stillness that always follows a really big explosion, in that moment of absolutely no movement in which the train hung suspended by nothing but thin air over that river.
Then the grain truck fell away from under Henty and she saw the water below her and the bounty hunters on the shore opposite shooting off zipguns and shotguns and deer rifles at her.
“Between the devil and the deep blue sea,” Henty said aloud. Her grandmother had always said it on Sundays when she had to choose between two equally tempting deserts. Except Henty had no choice. She was falling towards that broad stretch of water and the bounty hunters were shooting at her.
While Henty fell, several other superfluous charges went off and the whole of the bridge, a part of the embankment (and several of the bounty hunters) were blown to smithereens. Henty, not knowing it, had her hands over her ears as she fell into the water. The bounty hunters, mistaking this for the thrown-up arms of a person who has been hit, cheered and then started arguing among themselves about who had hit her: the argument soon led to shooting and a few more bounty hunters bit the dust before unanimity of a sort once more descended on the river bank and they got around to launching the inflatable with its outboard.
Henty used this small break to swim underwater as far as a truck that was floating upside down, and hiding behind it. The Rock River, here so near to its junction with the mighty Mississippi, was broad and fast flowing and very frightening. Henty looked longingly at the far shore, where all the bounty hunters had blown themselves up by clumsily overdoing the dynamite but it was too far and the water too swift for her limited swimming skills. Besides, the bounty hunters would be able to see her all the way and have ample opportunity to shoot her in the back.
So Henty stayed where she was and in trepidation awaited the heavily armed bounty hunters coming out in their boat.
“But I’m not going to go down without a fight,” she told herself to keep her spirits up.
She had an idea and cast around for an implement to put it into practice. A sharp-ended baulk of wood came floating by and she waited until it passed as dose to her as close to her as it was going to get before hauling it in. It was too heavy for her and jerked her clear of the grain car she was hiding behind. At the very last moment she changed hands on it and used the Fist to haul in her weapon while clinging to the battered railway car with her other hand. Then she bided her time fearfully. It would be one last desperate gamble.
“I knew a woman would never make it.” A loud mouth pinpointed the bounty hunters for her just before they came around the corner of Henty’s sheltering grain truck. She pushed off with the Fist and her feet and stove the raggedly pointed end of the baulk of timber into their inflatable so hard that it came out the other end of the dinghy, which immediately gave up the ghost with a terrifying Whoosh! And sank. Henty didn’t hang around to see if they could swim: she was already striking out for the river bank at her best stroke. Several of the bounty hunters could not only swim, they had managed to hold onto their firearms. They swam as far as the grain car Henty had just deserted, climbed aboard, settled themselves comfortably — and paused to take bets on who would bag the easy target first.
“It’s like shooting ducks when I was a boy,” one said.
“All together now,” another said. “Then we won’t have any arguments about who got her.”
“But first, let’s reduce the number who’ll share,” another said. “She’s going nowhere with this current.” And with that, he turned his rifle on the bounty hunters still struggling in the water and zapped several before the others joined in. Then they turned their attention back to Henty.
“All together now,” said the one who was trying to promote concerted action.
And with this fine sentiment on his lips, he zapped the other three men on the inverted grain truck in the head with his zipgun. He caught the rifle of the last one before it could fall into the river.
“It doesn’t need more than one hero,” he said with satisfaction as he clambered higher up his makeshift raft to find better elevation. “She’s less than fifty feet away.” He spread his feet and took careful aim. His finger squeezed the trigger in the approved gentle manner, caressing it almost lovingly. “Ten million dollars,” he whispered as he fired. “All for me.”
Just then Henty swung the Fist over arm and as it dug into the water, much stronger than her other hand, it dragged her to one side. Instead of thudding into her defenseless back, the bullet skipped across the water.
The bounty hunter cursed and fired again. This time, because he hadn’t paused to take proper aim, he struck the Fist.
Henty turned over in the water to face her end. Over the rifle she could see the coarse red face of the bounty hunter.
“Murderer,” she shouted at him but he merely tightened his aim and caressed the trigger.
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Suddenly Henty threw both arms in the air and sank under the water.
The bounty hunter grimaced but didn’t take the rifle from his shoulder. Sooner or later she would run out of air and when she came up she'd present a nice stationary head shot. He even smiled to himself in keen anticipation. He enjoyed his work.
Henty’s lungs were bursting. She went to the surface as quickly as she could. She burst out of the water, gasping for breath. It was going to be many seconds before there was enough air in her lungs to go under again.
Through the haze over her eyes she saw the bounty hunter draw another bead on her and squeeze the trigger with obscene care. She was still gasping. If she went under now, she would drown. It was no choice at all.
“Goodbye Petey,” Henty said, for she fancied she saw him lying on his hospital bed on the bank of the river.
Just as he squeezed the last minute fraction of an inch on the hair-trigger uptake of the professional bounty hunter’s rifle, the red-faced freelance killer staggered backwards as he was hit a tremendous blow in the chest; he was lifted clear off his feet and flung into the river while the rifle went flying the other way.
Henty heard the bullet buzzing by like an angry
hornet and ducked — too late, of course. When she came up, spluttering, she nearly went under again from the fright the smack! of the rope on the water gave her but stopped herself just in time. Anything was preferable to drowning. She clung on while she was hauled in.
“Now maybe you’ll recognize who your true friends are.”
Henty looked up from the toes of his green lizard skin shoes into the face of the man from the Syndicate, Jimmy Twoshoes. In his hand dangled the rifle with which he had zapped the bounty hunter.
“With friends like you, I need no enemies,” she said as her eye fell on Petey, lying in a clear plastic life-support system twenty paces away.
She came groggily to her feet, shrugging off the gangster’s helping hand, and walked over. Petey was awake. With thumb and forefinger he made her a circle: he was okay. The surgeon who had operated on him stood nearby. Henty turned to him.
“They took me too,” he said. “They’re looking after Petey well. They’re also threatening to kill me if anything happens to him.”
“Yeah. I guessed. I’m sorry you got dragged in, Chris, but if a doctor had to be kidnapped to look after Petey—”
“—I'd rather it were me too.”
“Thanks.”
“Think nothing of it. Could you manage to let Linda know I’m all right?”
“First chance I get.”
“Okay,” Jimmy Twoshoes said decisively. “You've seen the boy and you've heard the doc’s report, now—”
“— now here’s what you’re trying to blackmail me into.”
“Doan innarupt da boss,” one of his henchmen told Henty, who ignored him.
“You know what we want. Just a little control of where you take your fall.”
“Nevada,” Henty said. “Okay, you let Petey go and you got a deal.”
“We’ll let him go when you've taken your fall. But not in Nevada. In San Francisco, in sight of the Mint.”
“Hell,” said Chris, the surgeon, “if you let her get that near and then zap her, people will take the whole country apart.”