Little Gods (20 page)

I remove the wrapping and look at the scar. There is a large, pale knot of scar tissue in the center, where the monster's knife went in. I look at my thigh sadly. The waste of all my work. The face of God, marred forever.

“Daddy,” Crystal says, touching my scar gently. “It's an
eye
."

I look at her, then at my scar, and I begin to smile.

She's right. The monster's stabbing wound has not ruined my bonsai scar, but has instead
completed
it, provided the final touch, formed the pupil of an
eye
.

“One eye. Like a Cyclops,” Crystal says.

I think of the monster, the way I stabbed his eye out. Monsters have only a single eye, but my scar is not meant to reveal a monster's face.

I am blessed. The face of God is forming on my body, responding to my devotions.

But I have vastly underestimated the
size
of God's face. I will need more than one thigh to reveal it.

I will need my entire body; chest, arms, head, legs.

Looking at my daughter, at the fascination in her face, I realize something else—that the revelation is not meant for me. I am only the
medium
for revelation. I am the book, not the reader.

My body will become the face of God, and my daughter will look upon me and know the secrets of life, the ways and means of earth and heaven.

My disappointment is brief and selfish, and then I am glad. For what more could a father want? What better reason is there to sacrifice, but for the good of your child?

“Bring me my bag, darling,” I say, and when she does, I take out a knife.

Daughter and Moon

The moon disappeared last week and the world is shuddering like a wet cat. Cows sleep badly and the milk is sour. The tides have gone insane, arriving and departing without reason, like a secret alcoholic with a part-time job. Blood flows (or doesn't flow) in unusual ways, streams rush uphill and lovers bicker on park benches everywhere.

The moon is in my house. It is no bigger than a dinner plate or a basketball, and is much grittier than it appears in the sky.

My daughter says she lured it with a trail of jelly beans (no black ones) and that it will go home when it gets bored.

Meanwhile it eats the fresh butter, nestles in the bathtub, rolls across the shag rug and chases our dog, who howls.

The farmers don't know when to plant. Our president suspects the Arabs. Dubious astronomers check and re-check foolproof instruments. People on the street shout that the end is near, but the economy has never been better. All the spells chanted under the dark of the moon are coming undone. My daughter dresses our satellite in bonnets and her dead mother's scarves.

Today I asked her (she is nine, with pig-tails and crooked teeth) what it all means, why the moon came to us, and she laughed. She ran down the hillside this morning and the moon floated behind her. They play tag like old friends.

My daughter will never be this young again. I wonder if the moon is telling her secrets. I suspect that it is.

Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters

Shortly before I met Captain Fantasy, I sliced the end of my forefinger off while dicing cucumber for a salad. I shouted and shook my hand, splashing blood on the counter and tearing the thin strip of skin that held my fingertip on. The tiny lump of flesh tore loose and flew into the sink, down the garbage disposal, gone.

I cursed, then concentrated on my nerve endings, switching off the pain. My whole finger went numb. I had trouble controlling the nerves on such a small scale. Holding my finger in the air like a “we're-number-one” fan at a basketball game, I urged new flesh to grow over the wound. I'd make a few big hamburgers to go with my salad, supply some mass and calories for the healing ... my new fingertip should be grown by morning, though the nail would take longer, and I'd have to either keep the nerves dead or be careful not to scrape the sensitive under-nail skin.

The phone rang. I answered it left-handed, clumsily. I expected my director, Jack Harrah, to call and remind me of that night's dress rehearsal, as if I'd forget. I was playing Orestes, the lead, at Harrah's Greek Revival theater. “Hello?"

“Hi, Li,” Brady Doolittle said.

I almost hung up. But why bother? They'd found me. “Boss,” I said, neutrally. “I tendered my resignation."

“Not accepted,” Brady said cheerfully. “We need the best Metamorph available, and that's you. We let you run loose for nearly a year, never bothered you. Be grateful for that."

So they'd kept tabs on me all along. Well, of course. The Facility didn't lose track of people. “Tomorrow's opening night. Can't it wait until—"

“Your understudy, Bill Monroe, he can handle it. By tomorrow night, you'll be playing a much more important part."

Brady knew everything. Always. That's why he ran the Facility. I looked at the spots of blood on the counter and gave in. “When can I expect you?"

“A car's waiting outside. Pack a bag.” He paused. “I think you'll like this one, Li."

“Sure.” I hung up. I didn't have to pack a bag; I already had one ready, a change of clothes, travel-sized toiletries. Old habits die hard.

Walking to the car, an anonymous government sedan, I thought, “I'm like Orestes, trapped by cruel fate.” I had to smile at that. Such melodrama. Even if I had to play the part of secret agent again, I didn't have to ham it up.

Several hours and a plane trip later, I found myself back in the Facility.
You never get away
, I thought.

“What did you do to your finger?” Brady asked, bushy eyebrows raised over his boyish face. He motioned me into the elevator. “Nice face, by the way. Very Greek."

I grunted and stared at the elevator doors, listening to the Facility hum around me as we descended. Brady didn't speak again, didn't try to draw me out, and I finally asked the question that had been plaguing me. “Is this about Kelli? Has she done something else?"

“Yep. Makes the rainy day affair look like tea time, too."

I had a hard time believing that. Kelli, with the help of the mad Dr. Nefarious, had wreaked havoc with the world's weather the year before, until I stopped them. We'd captured Dr. Nefarious, but Kelli, the mastermind, had escaped. What could be worse than endless rain drowning the world?

The doors opened and Brady led me down a long white corridor. “Is that why you said I'd like this?” I asked. “Because Kelli is involved? You think I want another chance at her?"

Brady shook his head. “No. I know you aren't the vengeful type. There's another reason you'll like it.” Brady stopped at a reinforced door. He touched a palm reader, pressed his eyes to a retinal scanner, spoke his name loudly, and punched a long string of numbers into the keypad. I watched with interest and apprehension. Extreme security measures, even for the Facility, which meant—

The door slid open, revealing another corridor. Floor, walls, and ceiling were all the color of used motor oil, and cameras bristled every couple of feet. “Welcome to the Black Wing, Li."

I didn't step inside. “I heard you've got Bludgeon Man locked up in here. And Junior Atwater's brain, in a jar."

“Yeah, I've heard those, too,” Brady said. “People believe any damn thing, don't they? Now come on. If this door stays open too long, alarms go crazy, and we'll be neck-deep in very tense guards."

I stepped over the threshold. The Black Wing was like the inside of a tumor. No wonder mental institutions favor soothing colors to pacify the patients. These walls had the opposite effect; they could drive a sane person mad. The Black Wing surely held a few mental patients, the ones with extraordinary powers. The ones who could enforce their delusions on the world, if they got free.

“Is Kelli here?” I asked as the door slid shut.

“No, but we've got a room all picked out for her. She's been here recently, though. She broke someone out.” Brady smiled at my shocked expression. “That's top secret, you understand.” He pressed a finger to his lips.

“That's impossible!"

“Yeah, we thought so, too, until she did it. She had inside help, of course, and it couldn't happen again, but once was enough.” He led me around a corner, to a black golf cart. Brady got behind the wheel and I sat beside him. The cameras turned and followed our progress like the heads of watchful jackals. We drove past blank metal doors set at regular intervals.

“How many inmates are there?” I asked. I'd served with the Facility as a field agent for years, but I'd never seen the Black Wing. Metamorphs are masters of disguise, born impostors, and our usual assignments don't require access to the holding-cells for super-powered criminals.

“Way too many and not nearly enough,” Brady said. We turned a corner, and I finally saw something that broke the monotonous black. One of the cell doors, bent and twisted, leaned against the wall across from a gaping doorway.

I whistled. “How did that happen? I don't see any marks from explosives."

Brady stopped the cart. “Carl Spandau, one of our guards, a Strongman with a titanium-alloy skeleton. We spent a lot of money giving him a set of bones that could support the strain his power put on his body. Then he betrayed us. We found him with his arms broken from tearing off the door, crying, but not from the pain. He'd disabled the teleport-dampeners, the quantum-entanglement disrupters, all the failsafes. Stuff he shouldn't have known about, codes he'd spent months ferreting out. Kelli bounced in, snatched up our prisoner, and teleported away—without Spandau. That's why he was crying. He said he loved her, and refused to believe she'd just been using him."

I nodded solemnly. Kelli could make you believe anything. I didn't ask what happened to Spandau. I know how the Facility deals with traitors.

“Who'd she break out?” I asked, not irritated at Brady's vagueness, simply needing to know so I could do my job. Seeing the Black Wing breached, hearing about poor stupid traitorous Carl Spandau's arms, had changed my resentful resignation to acceptance. I'd do what I had to.

“Josef Mengele got away,” Brady said.

I stared at him, as uncomprehending as if he'd said Rasputin had escaped, or Vlad Tepes. “Mengele? The Angel of Death, the mad doctor of Auschwitz? But he's dead, they found his skeleton in ‘85, it was all over the papers!"

“People believe any damn thing,” Brady said quietly. “We've had him for years. He's almost 90 now, frail but physically healthy, considering."

“Why?” I demanded. “He should have been tried at Nuremburg! He was the worst of the war criminals, so
cold
, and the experiments—” I broke off, staring at Brady.

Brady looked away. “Yes. The experiments. Mengele studied the limits of special powers, did things no ethical scientist could, but the knowledge...” He shrugged. “We needed it."

I nodded, disgusted. The Facility depended on people like me and Spandau, Metamorphs and Strongmen, as well as mind-readers, Pyrokinetics, Teleporters, Invisibles, all the extraordinary ones, and Mengele had studied our kind, dissected us, tested us to destruction. The Nazis, fascinated with the concept of supermen, had a special interest in such individuals. Just like the Facility did. “You want me to bring Mengele back."

“In a nutshell."

“But why me? What, I disguise myself as the Fuhrer, say ‘I didn't die in that bunker, Josef, come with me?’ Why do you need a Metamorph?"

“We need you to impersonate someone, of course.” Then, sounding doubtful for the first time: “That's the part you'll like.” Brady drove past the torn door. “I want you to meet somebody."

“Who else do you have in here? Stalin? Genghis Khan? Colonel Kurtz?"

“You don't want to know,” Brady said.

Even without the familiar costume, I recognized him immediately. Hearing about Mengele had stunned me. Seeing this man, here, left me literally incapable of speech.

The Captain looked just as he had in the old pictures and newsreel footage from World War II. He should have been at least 75, but he looked no older than 30.
He doesn't age
, I thought, chilled and awed at the same time. No one had ever known the full extent of Captain Fantasy's reality-altering powers. In the war, he and his sidekick Spaceboy had routed the Germans time and again, though Baron Von Blitz managed to kill Spaceboy near the end of the war, and they said the Captain was never the same after that.

Captain Fantasy sat behind a white table. He was a massive red-haired man dressed in green clothes that resembled intern's scrubs. A red and blue plastic top spun before him on the table. He stared at the toy intently, his teeth clenched in concentration.

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” Doolittle said.

The Captain looked up, and I glimpsed his bewildered expression, quickly replaced by a broad smile. “Why, you must be a doctor.” The top fell over.

I looked at Brady, unease crawling like a worm in my stomach. In his jeans and black t-shirt, Brady looked nothing like a doctor.

The Captain lowered his voice. “Was it a mortar, doc? From Baron Von Blitz's artillery?” He tapped the side of his head. “I heard Spaceboy yell, and then, poof! Everything black. I must have taken one right to the head, huh?"

Brady didn't say anything, just stood with his arms crossed. I looked at Captain Fantasy, my childhood hero, and my throat closed up. Spaceboy had been dead for forty years. I remembered watching Captain Fantasy deliver the eulogy on television. That was before my time, of course, but even in the ‘60s, when I grew up, Captain Fantasy was a celebrity, with films and books, cartoons and lunchboxes, all chronicling his wartime glories.

When Brady didn't answer, the Captain's grin faltered, and that disturbing look of naked confusion returned.

Doolittle turned on his heel and left the room. With a last look at the Captain, I hurried after him.

“Is it amnesia?” I asked when Brady closed the door. But that didn't seem right. The Captain remembered Spaceboy and Baron Von Blitz, and I didn't doubt that he remembered Goebbels and the Hitlerbot and Mengele's homonculi ... just nothing after the battle when Spaceboy died. I narrowed my eyes. “Or did the Facility do this to him?"