Little Gods (22 page)

I wet myself, and if the Captain hadn't held me, I would have swum away as fast as possible. I hadn't signed up to face monsters—at least, not inhuman ones—and my thrill at fighting by the Captain's side didn't include facing something like this.

The Captain tossed me aside with a bellow. I hit the water, sank, and emerged in time to see the Captain leap from the water and drive his arm up to the elbow in the shark's good eye. He crouched on its snout, heedless of its snapping jaws, and pulled out a handful of red and gray matter. The tentacles lashed spastically, and I occupied myself with avoiding them. After a few seconds they stopped moving, and I looked back at the Captain.

His arms were bloody to the shoulders. He waved jauntily at the dead shark-thing's camera-eye, then ripped out the metal and tossed it into the water. He jumped off and sidestroked casually toward me. The shark rolled over and floated, belly to the sky, tentacles trailing beside it like catfish whiskers.

“Looks like one of Dr. Morlock's creatures,” the Captain said.

I blinked at him, looked at the shark, and said “Jumping jackals, Captain, you're right.” Dr. Morlock had worked with Mengele, but his experiments involved “enhancing” natural predators. One of his creations had killed him in ‘46 or ‘47, if I recalled, so he couldn't be responsible for this monster. But if he hadn't made this shark, why the crude stitching, Dr. Morlock's signature?

I looked at the Captain. My bowels clenched. The Captain believed it was 1945. Had the force of his belief acted to alter local
time
? Could he be so powerful? Had he plunged us into a long-past sea battle with Dr. Morlock?

It's impossible
, I thought, but knew with Captain Fantasy anything could happen.

The Captain tenderly pulled my face mask down over my eyes. He touched my cheek and smiled. “Come on. I think Mengele and Morlock are below us.” Then, without so much as taking a deep breath, he dove beneath the waves.

I've always wanted to see a U-boat
, I thought miserably, and followed.

If I hadn't already emptied my bladder, I would have wet myself again.

Not a submarine, as I'd expected. A submerged
city
.

Specifically, the squat metal starfish of the Nazi Unterseeburg, the Reich's main submarine base, the bunker to which Goebbels fled during the German collapse. The Captain swam toward the dimly phosphorescent building and I frogkicked after him, letting the smartsuit do most of the work. Faced with this impossible artifact from the past, my mind reeled. I stared at the dark metal sprawl, thinking “No, no, no."

The Unterseeburg clung to an artificial reef, only a few hundred yards below the surface. The Allies had torpedoed that stronghold, and Goebbels with it, at the end of the war. There should have been ruins, twisted metal beams grown thick with barnacles, but not a complete city. Its presence confirmed my fears. Captain Fantasy's delusion had become reality, and we'd gone back in time.

Would I become Spaceboy, next?

Before I could give in to despair, or simply freeze in light of the situation's enormity, frogmen streamed from an airlock, and I had to fight. I dodged speargun bolts, astonished and terrified by my own agility, seeing it as another indication that I was becoming Spaceboy. The smartcloth alone couldn't account for my new lightning reflexes and dexterity, astonishing even underwater.

The Captain moved more ponderously, but dealt with the divers efficiently, tearing aside their antiquated (to my eyes) gear, slamming their heads together, kicking them in the stomachs. When the last frogman fled toward the surface, I joined the Captain at the divers’ airlock. The Captain punched through the reinforced steel and peeled it back, gesturing for me to go through the hole. I slithered in, and the Captain widened the hole and followed.

Once inside, he tugged the ragged edges back into place and rubbed his hand rapidly in circles across the torn metal. After a few seconds a red glow appeared beneath his hand, and the water around the door began to boil. The steel under Captain Fantasy's hand turned molten in the cracks, and the Captain stopped rubbing. He'd created enough friction to melt steel and make the airlock watertight again. He hit the decompression button and the water level in the lock sank.

I felt triumphant, just being with the Captain, forgetting for a moment the temporal situation. It occurred to me an instant later that the exultation I felt might be Spaceboy's, and wondered how the change might happen, a transformation of my personality into that of the Captain's dead sidekick. Would I feel it happen, the last of my self dissolving, finally becoming my role as I'd never managed in the past?

The Captain kicked right through the interior door, tearing a wide opening. I followed him into a well-lit, narrow corridor that curved away after a few yards. Clunky surveillance cameras observed us. The Captain whooped and smashed the cameras, hopping to reach them.

I grinned around my mouthpiece. The Captain had so much
fun
fighting the forces of evil—that joyfulness accounted for most of his popularity.

When he'd killed all the cameras in that deserted length of corridor, the Captain took me in his arms and kissed me full on the lips.

Stunned, I didn't react at all, even to resist. The Captain's stubble dug into my chin, and his huge arms held me tight. He put me down, gently, and said “Let's go get Mengele.” Then he ran, boots pounding.

I followed, things coming clear in my mind. That first embrace, the Captain's extremity of grief when the real Spaceboy died, the way he'd raged and destroyed Baron Von Blitz and his artillery on that sad day, the Captain's bachelorhood, maybe even Spaceboy's skintight silver costume, all those things made sense, now. In the ‘40's, homosexual heroes wouldn't have been tolerated, and even now no one would accept a seventeen-year-old boy lover. I doubted Brady knew about this, or that anyone else did.

I probed myself for signs of arousal. If I felt attracted to the Captain, would that indicate a step in my transformation? I couldn't discern any reaction other than shock.

Somewhat reassured, but much more conscious of my skintight suit, I followed him.

Several corridors later the Captain battered his way through another door, and shouted in triumph from the other side. I hurried after him, and at the far end of a low oblong room, I saw Dr. Morlock and the Storm Troupe waiting for us.

That proved it. We'd gone back in time.

We faced the German Ubermenschen, the high-profile PR warriors, the Reich's answer to the Allies’ Captain Fantasy and Fat Man and Corporal Justice. Baron Von Blitz stepped toward us, sneering in his blue uniform, silver lightning bolts on his sleeves, huge black goggles covering half his face. His lieutenants flanked him, Krieger and Alder, massive twins, one a Strongman, the other a Flier. They wore contrasting red and white costumes. The rear guard, Brickhouse, didn't move. He'd once been an American citizen, but had become a Nazi sympathizer and defector. His invulnerable skin gleamed like red metal under the harsh lights. Off to one side, the diminutive Dr. Morlock in his white lab coat rubbed his hands together and giggled.

I stopped a few paces behind the Captain, and for a long moment we faced the Troupe.
This is it
, I thought, a tight ball of fear in my belly. The sort of thing I'd dreamed of as a stupid kid—fighting genuine villains beside a true hero.

The Captain, that unparalleled man of action, broke the pause. He charged them.

I noticed the long slots in the floor then, laid at right-angles, a crazy gridwork that made no sense but alarmed me anyway. I shouted a warning, and in mid-cry metal walls rose from the slots with the sound of smooth hydraulics. I jumped aside to avoid being cut apart, seeing the light gleam from the razor-sharp edge on top of the wall in front of me. I stared at my reflection in the mirrored wall and understood. The slots in the floor, the bizarre gridlines; this was a maze, separating me from the Captain. I tried to remember the layout of the slots, but I'd only seen them for a moment, and couldn't recall anything useful. Would the Captain maintain continuity without my presence, faced only with his reflection, or would he wander lost in the maze? Did he even need me for continuity anymore, since his delusion had become reality?

A great crash and the shriek of stressed metal interrupted Dr. Morlock's continuing titter. I grinned, unable to help myself. The maze hadn't daunted the Captain at all. He simply smashed his way through, not altering his course a bit. I wanted to join him. With my smartsuit (and a hint of Spaceboy's agility) I could clamber over the walls ... and be sliced in two by the razor-sharp edges. But wasn't there a trick to mazes, taking only right turns, or something? If I could reach the place where the Captain started busting through walls, I could follow his route. The crashing sound of his progress went on.

I hurried down the corridor and turned right into a cul-de-sac. But not an empty one.

Baron Von Blitz leered at me. My heart hammered. He'd killed the original Spaceboy, and now he'd kill me. I had to run, to escape—and then he reached out, holding a stunstick, and struck me over the heart. My muscles contracted, and I fell to the floor, blacking out. My last thoughts weren't panicked, or angry, or regretful. Instead, my mind made a cool observation.

They didn't have stunsticks during World War II. They hadn't been invented yet.

I woke up slowly, like a man swimming out of a black pool into the light. I jerked against the cords holding me to a straight-backed chair, startled by the closeness of Dr. Morlock's pale face, his watery eyes staring at me.

Up close I could see through his disguise. Not Dr. Morlock at all. I couldn't remember his real name, but he called himself Brainchild, and he occupied a respectably high position on the Facility's Most Wanted List. In my time. He'd shaved his head and put on horn-rimmed glasses, heightening a natural resemblance to the infamous doctor, but the disguise didn't hold up under scrutiny. Still, close enough.

Close enough for jazz.

I began to understand the whats, though the whys still escaped me.

“He's awake, Kelli,” Brainchild said, his breath puffing the smell of butter and cheese into my face. He pinched my cheek, hard. “You look just like Spaceboy. Good job, scout."

I barely heard him, straining against my ropes to look for Kelli. Author of my despair, the pretty stiletto, the birthday-girl playing some bizarre party game of her own devising. Playing with the world, but playing more immediately with me.

Brainchild scuttled away and Kelli stepped into my field of vision. Beautiful, made up like a ‘40's movie star in a sea-green silk party gown. She looked like Veronica Lake, full blonde hair falling to her shoulders, a just-so beauty mark over the corner of her mouth. She laced her hands together and smiled at me maternally. “David,” she said, then wrinkled her nose. “I finally found out your first name. It's too boring! Let's stick with Li. So macho, so ... monosyllabic. You probably wonder why I brought you here—and in such a complicated fashion."

“You wanted the Captain,” I said, trying to sound bored. “You knew about his condition, you knew how to create continuity by surrounding him with familiar people and things. You built this replica of the Unterseeburg, you got your cronies to dress up like famous period Nazis...” I inclined my head, as much as possible against the ropes, toward Brainchild. “I figure Thunderhead is the one posing as Von Blitz ... I'm not sure about the others. And it worked. Where's the Captain now?"

“In a white room, of course. Living in the now.” She seemed amused. “Anything you don't understand, oh wise Mr. Li?"

Lots of things, but I asked the question most pertinent to my mission. “Why did you free Mengele?"

“To execute him. We ejected his body—what remained of it—into the water this morning.” She lifted one elegant eyebrow at my surprise. “Shocked? He was hopelessly senile, worthless to us anyway. Mengele's execution came as a condition of Brainchild's cooperation. Without him, we couldn't have built this base, or engineered that monstrous shark we used as a prop ... Brainchild wanted Mengele dead, and I could deliver, so we made an arrangement."

I remembered Brainchild's real name, then. Itzak Goldberg. I didn't know anything about his relatives, or where they'd been during WWII, but I could make certain guesses, and even sympathize, a little.

“I got an hour alone with him,” Brainchild said, looking down at his pudgy hands, making fists and then relaxing them. I shivered. Monster or not, war criminal or not, I didn't want to think of senile Mengele in Brainchild's vengeful hands.

“I thought it made a nice bit of misdirection, too,” Kelli said. “Let them think I had some plans for Mengele. His relationship to Captain Fantasy, however tangential, served to make the distraction plausible, don't you think?"

I grunted.

Kelli leaned forward, put her hands on my shoulders, and looked into my face. I could read nothing in her green eyes. “There are things Brady didn't tell you, Li. Imagine! Your own superior, lying to you! Did he tell you about the Tourette's? About the neurological disorders?"

I didn't answer. Name, rank, serial number, I thought. That's the way the Captain would play it. I'd said too much already.

“I know he didn't. Captain Fantasy has Karsakov's syndrome, you know that. And he warps reality, you know that, too. You had no reason to think of those facts in combination. It's a well-kept government secret. Prolonged exposure to Captain Fantasy results in neurological damage, Li. It's like a radiation he gives off.” She smiled. “Spaceboy, the original, had Tourettes. You know about that condition? A brain disorder. Symptoms include vocal and physical tics. ‘Leaping lizards, Captain!'” She mimicked Spaceboy with vicious accuracy. “Touretters often have amazing reflexes, too. They're attracted to shiny things, and things that move quickly. Some of them make a game of darting in and out of revolving doors, they're that fast. Ah, the light dawns. Been feeling frisky and fidgety, have you, Li? Yes, you've got Tourettes, too, though not as severely as Spaceboy did."