Authors: George Earl Parker
The Subatomic Kid (4 page)
***
Hunter lounged in the back of a limousine smoking a fat cigar; beside him on the seat was a huge black box labeled: SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT—HANDLE WITH CARE
.
He wasn’t a sophisticated man, he never had been; he went where the wars were, did what he had to do, and returned home. He didn’t have time for causes; causes were the politics of war. Whether his side won or lost was unimportant; he liked to fight and he liked to get paid. He was a soldier of fortune and proud of it.
It mattered little to him that the outcome of his adventures could affect thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.
Life is a crapshoot
, he thought—a roll of the dice. He knew there was a war going on inside him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and that war had been fought since the day he was born in just the same way it was fought inside every other person on the planet. Drought, earthquake, pestilence or plague—life was all about cause and effect. A long time ago he had figured out it was better to be a deliverer of cause rather than a recipient of effect.
Life couldn’t be better than this
, he thought. He was no longer getting lost in jungles or trying to hide out in deserts; he was going to war in a limousine, with good Cuban cigars, a drinks cabinet and a video monitor. It occurred to him that he was no longer a soldier of fortune; now he was a soldier of good fortune. He puffed on the cigar and smiled at the thought.
As he gazed out the window idly wondering what this strange piece of equipment was that was sitting beside him, the telephone rang and he picked it up.
“Hunter,” Amelia Moon said, “are you there yet?”
“No,” Hunter replied, “but we’re getting close.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’ll find a video in the player; please review it.”
He reached over and checked that it was indeed there. “Got it,” he chirped.
“That will give you all the background you need to know about the project,” she explained.
“Okay, but what am I here—a delivery boy?”
“Oh no, not at all,” replied Miss Moon. “We’ve pumped a small fortune into this so far, and we haven’t seen any results. We need you to impress upon Doctor Leitz the importance of sharing his findings.”
“Just how much impressing do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Don’t go too far, just exert a little pressure,” she replied smoothly.
“You got it,” Hunter said, smiling as he hung up the phone.
***
John and Kate climbed off the bus and wandered toward the gate.
“So I’ll see you on Saturday morning,” Kate confirmed.
“Yeah; around nine?” John asked.
“Sure,” she replied, “that sounds good.”
They smiled awkwardly at one another and the moment became pregnant with silence. John found himself tripping over the thoughts that danced through his mind; there were so many things he wanted to say, but he felt goofy. It was a feeling he didn’t quite understand, and just as he made up his mind what he would say, she spoke.
“Bye,” she said simply and walked away.
He watched her disappear into the crowd and frowned.
Girls are strange
, he thought as he turned to head across the street to the store and found himself face-to-face with Tex and Cal.
“So, Romeo,” Tex taunted, “how’d it go?”
“I got a date,” John replied with all the confidence he could muster.
“Yeah,” Cal yelled, “I knew you could do it!”
“Shut up,” Tex warned. “He could be lying.”
“Sure, you just don’t want to pay up.”
“That’s not it at all,” Tex told Cal. “I just want to make sure he’s telling the truth. I think we should observe the date.”
“What?!” John blurted.
“You got a problem with that?” Tex asked in an intimidating tone.
“No,” John sighed, “no problem at all.”
“Okay, tell us when and where,” Tex demanded, pulling his phone from his pocket.
“My house,” John told him. “Four fourteen Maple, nine o’clock Saturday morning.”
“We’ll be there early,” declared Tex as he fed the time and address into his tiny phone.
“You’d better be telling the truth,” Cal warned him, “or you’ll regret it.”
“You can go now,” Tex commanded.
John turned and hurried away, followed by hoots of laughter from the two bullies.
***
As he crossed the street to the store, John noticed a long black limousine pull into the parking lot.
It’s odd to see a limo here at this time of the morning,
he thought to himself. Inside the store, he headed for a rack of comic books. Comics were his one true passion in life; he loved the exploits of heroes with superhuman powers—they seemed to speak to him. On the surface they were obscure individuals, unlucky in love and unable to fit into society anywhere, but in truth they were selfless. It was impossible for them to fit in because they harbored a dark secret, and at any time they might be called upon to use their special power to help others in distress. They also had to protect their secret identity at all costs or they would be branded as freaks, and that was certain death to a superhero.
John picked up a copy of his favorite comic and headed to the counter as he skimmed through it. He stood behind a husky guy in a black suit buying coffee and cigars. He looked up just as the guy turned to leave and saw the man’s jacket catch on a magazine rack. He couldn’t believe his eyes; when the jacket opened, he saw a gun in a shoulder holster. The guy glanced down at him and John looked away, but as the man left, John turned his head back and watched him walk to the limousine and climb in behind the wheel.
“Come on, buddy, there’re people waiting,” the store clerk nagged.
John turned back, paid for the comic book and left.
***
A paradigm is a theoretical model; it’s a coat hanger on which scientists drape their latest fashionable theory. Normally the whole scientific community subscribes to the latest paradigm, but Doctor Aaron Leitz found himself in somewhat of a quandary; he was flying blind, he was sworn to secrecy and he had no one in whom he could confide.
The theory was simple; things were only different because of their atomic structure. Change the atomic structure of lead and it would become gold, change the atomic structure of death and it would become life. That was the basis of the Stone of Knowledge: eternal life and the ability to make your own money.
It was a radical theory that would no doubt change the world, and if the secret ever got out, it had the potential to destroy the world. He shuddered at the thought, not because it could ruin society—he could care less about that—but he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone! He wouldn’t be able to win a Nobel Prize, or get any recognition for the most important discovery of the twenty-first century, and that made his blood boil. Once again he had been stymied by his half brother, and he was beginning to get the feeling he was being used.
***
Hunter waited for Doctor Leitz in an oak-paneled study that looked like it had been transported from the nineteenth century. Everything was antique: the chairs, the desk, the bookcase and books, the globe, the rugs, and the paintings on the walls. He was standing at the window smoking a cigar and admiring the view when the door opened and Doctor Leitz entered.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, crossing to the desk and taking a seat.
Hunter turned from the window and smiled. “Nice place you have here, Doc.”
“Yes, it’s very satisfactory,” Doctor Leitz replied tersely.
“Expensive?” Hunter asked blatantly.
“The investment is worth it, Mister Hunter,” he snapped. Hunter stalked across the room to a chair in front of Leitz and took a seat. “How long have you been here?”
The doctor leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Let’s dispense with the niceties, shall we? I’m sure you’ve been briefed.”
“Yeah,” said Hunter. “Then I’ll be blunt; GLOBAL ELIXIRS INC. feels that the return on its investment is nonexistent. They’re getting worried.”
“You mean my half brother is getting antsy,” Doctor Leitz laughed.
“If you want to put it that way,” Hunter said. “I need to see something—anything that shows you’re proceeding in the right direction.”
Doctor Leitz leaned forward. “Did you bring the piece of equipment I designed?”
“Sure, it’s in the car.”
“Then have it brought in please,” Doctor Leitz ordered.
“I’m not sure you understand me, Doc. The party’s over, the bath water’s cold and I’m here to pull the plug,” Hunter quipped.
“Mister Hunter, have you ever had an idea of your own?” Doctor Leitz asked sarcastically.
“I’m following orders, Doc, that’s my job.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have been present when Edison discovered the light bulb, or when Einstein perfected his theory of relativity?” Leitz stared at him and imagined the tumblers of thought clicking in his mind.
“Well, who wouldn’t? Those were great discoveries,” Hunter smiled enigmatically.
“You have that opportunity now, Mister Hunter, because that equipment represents the last piece of the puzzle, and if you don’t let me have it, I won’t be able to show you anything.”
“Well, of course, I know that,” Hunter said good-naturedly. “I’ll bring it up, but you’d better not be trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”
“I can assure you, Mister Hunter,” Leitz said coolly, “nothing could be further from my mind.”
***
At the Leitz Academy of Educational Excellence, class size was small; there were no more than twenty-five kids in each classroom at any time. Teachers could give individual attention to the students and there was less rowdiness during lessons.
The first class of the day was world literature: the study of novels and poetry from a variety of countries. Reading the poem the teacher had chalked on the blackboard, John immediately noticed the coincidence; it was haiku.
The poem read:
The black cat’s face an unexpected dawn
Has swallowed midnight in a wide pink yawn.
“Each haiku is a moment of enlightenment portrayed in words,” began the teacher, Mr. Jenkins. “The pure essence of a situation is rendered down to its most poignant poetic moment using seventeen Moras
,
or On
,
that emphasize the magic hidden within the normalcy of day-to-day life. An On is not the same as a syllable, and therefore the often stated seventeen syllables is incorrect. The true structure of Haiku is five-seven-and five On, containing both a seasonal reference and a cutting word.”
As the teacher lectured in his droning voice, John’s attention wandered. He gazed out the window and noticed the black limousine he had seen earlier in the schoolyard, and two men struggling to remove a big box from the back seat. Once they pulled the box out, they carried it through the front entrance of the school building.
There is something very odd about this
, he thought.
What are they delivering to the school in a limo?
It was then that he realized the classroom was far too quiet, and he whipped his head around and came face-to-face with the stern-looking Mr. Jenkins.
“Would you mind summing up the lesson so far?” the teacher asked with his usual touch of sarcasm.
John felt his face flush as the other kids in the room laughed at his misfortune.
“You weren’t listening to me, so what was so important it warranted your complete attention?”
“There’s something weird going on,” said John apprehensively. “There are two guys outside with a box, and one of them has a gun.”
The bespectacled Mr. Jenkins smiled at John’s outlandish statement and the class broke into unbridled laughter. “Come see me after school,” he whispered.
“Yes, sir,” John answered.
The teacher turned away and walked to the front of the class. “Haiku seemingly snatches poems from mid-air, and that fact is never more apparent than in one of my particular favorites by Kyoshi, titled
Inspiration
.
“
The autumn leaves; wind patterning the air; and for the poet, haiku everywhere.”
John wished he could slide down off his seat and hide under the desk.
***
For the rest of the day John kept to himself. He had been thoroughly humiliated by the incident in the classroom, and he continued to be harassed by any kid that caught sight of him. He decided he hated being a teenager; it was a huge no man’s land between being a child and becoming a man, and it was fraught with problems. It was hard to express yourself because you didn’t really know an awful lot; everything was an experiment: the clothes you wore, the things you said. He felt like a huge fake.
He made his way to the classroom for his detention appointment with the literature teacher, every step seeming to drag, and his mind kept telling him to run away. But he knew running away would be admitting defeat, and he wasn’t about to do that; so he decided that even if he was a coward, he was going to be a brave coward.
Mr. Jenkins sat hunched behind his desk, marking a stack of exercise books as John entered the room and stood in front of him. “What are you doing here?” the teacher asked, head bent attentively on his work, never bothering to look up.
