Clad in running shorts, sports bra and t-shirt, Beth Dewdrop began her second lap around the Off-Central Park Reservoir jogging track. Although she was no longer the guest of Mr. Herbert Garrick’s office, she had decided to stay in Parodiopolis with the help of the tiny inheritance she had received from her great-uncle [1]. Thanks to the endorphins from her exercise, the feeling of impending evil that had plagued her since she had arrived in the maleficent metropolis was finally ebbing away.
As she began the long first turn toward the arched stone bridge known as “Divorcees’ Drop,” she noticed a small, silvery object buzzing near her ear. She raised her arm to swat it, and it sped ahead. Moments later, she saw a new jogger on the path, loping forward at about half her pace. Her new companion was wearing a clean, perfectly creased jogging outfit without the slightest trace of sweat; as Beth approached, she noticed that the jogger seemed to be a typical young woman of about her own age – except that her exposed arms and legs were a greenish-olive color better suited to a military camo outfit than flesh.
Beth caught up to the jogger just at the arch of Divorcees’ Drop and they climbed the arch side by side. Just before the top, her companion turned to her. “Let’s stop here for a second. I could use a rest.”
Puzzled by the jogger’s odd complexion, Beth decided to stop and find out more. Moments later, the two women were side by side, leaning on the parapet and looking down at the limpid water. Below, a few rings, brooches and other keepsakes glittered at the bottom of the deep hole. “It’s sort of a tradition in Parodiopolis,” explained the jogger. “After you’re divorced, you dump something here to show you’ve dumped the guy.”
“Uh, huh,” replied Beth, staring at the other woman. For somebody who said they needed a rest, this woman looked as if she hadn’t run five feet. Not only was her clothing crisp and clean, there wasn’t a drop of sweat on her, and she was breathing as if she had been sitting down for an hour. ”You know,” she said, “are you really a runner, or is this all an excuse for trying to meet me?”
“Oh.” Hallie didn’t blush, but the olive green of her face took on something of a darker glow. “That was pretty clumsy of me. I was trying to meet you, and I didn’t take the time to properly compute the parameters. I’m Hallie,” she went on before Beth could make a remark, “and you’re Elizabeth Dewdrop.”
“That’s right, although it would have been more polite to let me introduce myself. Well, since you’re so anxious to talk with me, why don’t we skip the small talk and get to what you’re so concerned about?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not that good at small talk, yet. And what should I call you? Ms. Dewdrop? Elizabeth? Beth? Baroness?”
“Baroness? What do you mean?”
“You’re the new Baroness von Zemo, and you spent yesterday with Herbert Garrick but couldn’t tell him anything useful about your great-uncle’s papers. “
“You’re spying on me!”
“Hardly. But Garrick’s office is ridiculously overconfident about their message encryption. And I thought I might be able to give you a little help that they couldn’t.”
“You’re awfully smug, you know that? What makes you think that I want any help from you, or that pompous twit Garrick, for that matter?”
“Because I work for the Lair Legion, the people who fought your great-uncle to a standstill and saved the world from him over and over again. And you still haven’t told me how you want me to address you.”
“Preferably on an envelope,” muttered Beth. “All right, just call me Beth, like everybody else does. This “Baroness” thing is just a stupid joke as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Beth,” replied Hallie, with the first overtones of friendship in her voice. “The last thing this world needs is somebody grabbing for the von Zemo legacy.”
“Was he really that bad? Heinrich von Zemo, I mean.”
“Well, compared to a lot of the adversaries we’ve been dealing with recently, he wasn’t so bad. All von Zemo wanted to do was to take over the world and enslave everybody else – when he wasn’t trying to thaw out his frozen wife or one-up the Hooded Hood. Now, the Gamesmaster or Galactivac or the Skree-Lump, they want to annihilate the human race and turn the planet into gravel. Compared to them, Zemo was almost a friend.”
“Ewww,” Beth winced. “You make it sound like a presidential election – who’s the least –rotten choice. And so – Hallie? – you’re here to see if I know anything about his plans for world domination, or turning his family into popsicles, or doing something with a hood?”
“Not yet. I’m hoping that if you do figure any of that out, you’ll come to me first. But trust is a hard thing to create. I’m still finding that out for myself. So, I just wanted to introduce myself, and pass on some information about your family that Mr. Taliaferro and the rest don’t know about. You ought to know what you are getting into.”
“I’m not getting into anything, “ Beth replied. “I’m going to spend my inheritance on two or three more days of good times in Parodiopolis, see the big banana, as it were, and then go home to North Dakota and start on my Ph.D. thesis. You can worry about the Galactic Hoover and the rest of them. And how do you know so much about my family?
“As I said, I work for the Lair Legion. Four or five years ago, Baron Zemo and his family were the biggest menace they faced, and I’ve been keeping track of them all along. [2] And believe me, they were all menaces. You were told that your grandfather, Baron Ottokar Attila Kublai Tamerlane von Zemo, had married Fanny Sweetpea Dewdrop of Grovers Corners, N.H. just before the war. Your grandmother Fanny returned to the U.S. just a week before World War II began and raised their son, Frederick Sweetsap Dewdrop, under her name. Right?”
“Don’t use my father’s middle name. He hated it.”
“Sorry. Anyway, how did your father get the money to not only go to college but also graduate school? Your grandmother took in laundry to pay the heating bills up there in New Hampshire. Yet somehow, whenever your father needed something, some cash would mysteriously turn up from some anonymous donor, right?”
“So?”
“It’s just anomalous. And, speaking about anomalies, has anyone told you what happened to your grandfather, Baron Otto? When he was teaching at Heidelberg, his colleagues spoke of him as a potential Nobel laureate. Then World War II comes around, and he joins the Wehrmacht. Except he didn’t do any fighting. Instead, he had himself posted to central Rumania as a military observer. In February 1944 they found his body. The military examiner noted the presence of deep claw wounds and lack of blood. The local coroner reported several pairs of scars, about 3-1/2” apart, on the neck. The mortician covered up what appeared to be a dueling scar that oddly enough ran 360 degrees around his head, and scars in the shape of ancient runes on his chest and back. The family servants who maintained the vigil by his open coffin later told stories about the leathery webbing that they saw between his fingers and between his armpits. During the viewing, his jaw sagged open, and the Countess von zu Krankenheit swore she saw salt on his tongue. There was a silver crucifix on his chest, and the Landgraf von Schnauze was later quoted as saying there was scorching underneath it. In short, his body had indications of practically every occult monster you can think of. Face it, Beth, you are getting into some very complex ju-ju.”
Instead of replying, Beth took a long swallow from the water bottle strapped to her belt. As she replaced the bottle, she looked Hallie in the eye and responded in a low, determined voice.
“I don’t scare easily, Hallie, or whoever you really are. And I don’t need your help to deal with my family. Thanks for the information, but you and your friends in the Lair Legion – if they are your friends – can just leave me alone. I have my own plans.” And with that, she turned her back on Hallie and resumed her run.
Hallie lingered a moment on the bridge, computing the cost-benefit ratio of following Beth, and then vanished. A silvery, fly-shaped orb buzzed its way back toward Parody Island.
Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo:
J. Jonah Jerkson
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Footnotes:
[1] Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop learned in part 1 that she was the legitimate grand-niece of none other than the late (for the seventh time) Baron Heinrich von Zemo. After six previous encounters with the death tax departments of half the planet, though, there was only $3,546 left for his only known heir.
[2] Hallie was a bit disingenuous here. According to “Who’s Who in the Parodyverse," she was “originally created by Dr Vishnar at the behest of Baron Zemo from the engrams of dead computer scientist Helen MacAllistair.”
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