Tom Black #1: Sins of the Father
In which the Lair Legion receives an unwelcome visitor,
and the visitor receives and unwelcome legacy
“He’s here,” reported Hallie, focussing the main screens of the Operations Room to show the young man getting out of a cab at the gates to the Lair Mansion. “I’m running a full spectrum sensor analysis on him right now.”
“I’ve got the cab registration and its chassis number,” Yuki noted, jacked into the police computer system. “I’m running it now. Seems legit.”
“Matching his retinal scans with known records,” called Mr Epitome. The paragon of power didn’t bother using a computer. He relied on his enhanced vision abilities and his eidetic memory. “He seems to be who he’s supposed to be.”
“And we’re still letting him in here,” complained Visionary. “We still have stunlators, don’t we? Stunulate him! Stunulate him to ashes!”
“That might be just a bit of an overreaction,” Hallie suggested, still tracking the young man as he passed the security checkpoint and began to walk over the long bridge that linked Parody Island with mainland Paradopolis. “But not by much.”
“He seems baseline human,” Al B. Harper chimed in, looking up from the scanalysers with a frown. “Either he’s perfectly normal or he’s clever enough to baffle our state-of-the-art sensors.”
“We could always dissect him and find out,” suggested Yuki.
“But instead we’re going to invite him into the Mansion and make nice with him,” complained Vizh. “Well he’s not getting any crullers.”
On the screen Thomas Bradford Black reached the door of the Lair Mansion and rang the bell.
***
“You are only alive,” Sergeant MacHarridan warned the visitor, “because so far ye ha’ failed tae trigger any of the hundred or so defences set to lethal if you make the slightest false move. Ah’m here to warn ye that if you so much as glance in the wrong direction I will have the greatest pleasure in hammering yew inta small squelchy pieces on the groond.”
Tom Black had never been threatened up close by a talking bidedal hippo before. He stepped back a pace, but only one pace in case the stunulators were still active. “Fair enough,” he agreed. “Message received and understood.”
“If ye come this way, mindin’ yuir Ps and Qs and keeping any villainy ye might be plotting in the dark clammy depths o’ ye mind then I’ll take ye ta see CrazySugarFreakBoy!”
“I’ll keep my entire alphabet under control,” Tom promised. He padded along beside the Detonator Hippo, keeping his interested glances at the Lair Mansion covert lest he be stamped into jam.
Sergeant MacHarridan led the way to the office of the Deputy Leader of the Lair Legion. Flapjack answered the knock. “Will you be wanting anything to drink while you’re visiting the masters?” the hunchback leered, showing off his new scar tissue courtesy of the Parody Master.
“Well…” began Tom.
“Because if you are, tough luck,” Flapjack concluded. “I wouldn’t widdle on you if you were on fire.”
“Ah. Right. Thanks for that, then.”
Tom found himself pressed into the cluttered office. He recognised CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Asil Ashling at once. Neither one seemed to be happy to see him.
“Do ye want me tae stand here beside him and rip his heid off if he steps oot of line?” Sergeant MacHarridan offered helpfully.
“That’s okay, thanks,” CSFB! told the hippo. “I’m pretty sure we can cope with this guy if we have to. If he gives us an excuse.”
Tom Black frowned. “I’m sensing a lot of hostility in this room,” he noted. “Maybe if…”
“We’ll ask the questions, thank you,” Asil interrupted him brusquely. For this meeting she’d adopted a more mature age, somewhere in her mid-thirties with a tightly wound bun to make her look even more severe. “Sit down.”
Tom Black hesitated, then took the chair that had been positioned for him in the centre of the room. “Since it’s you asking, Ms Ashling, I will,” he agreed. “Ask your questions.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! flipped open a dossier. “You’re Thomas Black, born 1984 in Winchester, England, educated at Rugby and Merton College, Cambridge, net current worth around forty-five million pounds, six feet tall, one hundred and…”
“I know all that,” Tom cut in. “Let’s agree I’m smart, rich, handsome, and talented and get on.”
CSFB! shot him a glower. “What did you do in the Parody War, Tom?”
The young man shook his head. “If it’s not in that dossier of yours I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?” challenged Asil.
“Need to know,” he answered. “If you need to know, talk to the British security services, to Mr Bradbury. I can’t tell you.”
“Dominic’s still working on getting those files,” Asil muttered in CSFB!’s ear. “He did something in Analysis, apparently, recruited straight from college.”
Dreamcatcher Foxglove turned back to his visitor. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of H.E.R.P.E.S.?”
“No.”
“What about B.A.L.D.?”
“No.”
“The Heck-Fire Club?”
Tom shrugged. “Been a few times. Bit stuffy for my tastes.”
Asil and CSFB! exchanged significant glances. “Have you ever plotted to conquer the world?” the wired wonder demanded. “Do you own a fluffy white cat?”
“Of course not. I don’t see why all of this is important,” Tom argued. “All I want to do is reclaim papers you confiscated the best part of a year ago, finish up family business here in the States, and get back to my studies.”
“And you have no plans to murder, torture, or rape anybody at all,” challenged CrazySugarFreakBoy! sceptically.
“Not really, no.”
Asil’s scowl intensified. “We don’t have much choice, Dream. He filed the right papers with the right offices and he’s entitled to his things. Let’s get him to sign the receipts and I’ll take him down to the warehouse lock-up.”
“I suppose,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove agreed reluctantly. “But if he makes one false move…”
“I’m getting that a lot today,” sighed Tom.
They led him out of the room again, but the door opened onto a teenage girl with piercing eyes who blocked the exit and stared at the visitor.
“Samantha…” Asil began worriedly.
“I just wanted to look at him,” Sam Featherstone said, holding Tom’s gaze with her own. “I just wanted to see his face.”
“Um…” Tom said.
Samantha leaned forward. “That way, if he ever harms an innocent person I can hunt him down to the ends of the Earth and destroy him,” she said.
Tom swallowed hard. “Samantha… Featherstone, right?” he realised. He’d done his research. “My great grandfather murdered your parents.”
“Right in front of my eyes,” Sam agreed, unblinking. “The grandfather whose papers and personal possessions you’ve been so very keen to retrieve, with all your busy lawyers. So I just wanted to see you. That way, if you turn out to be anything at all like Erskine Black I can hunt you down.”
***
“It’s like this,” Visionary told Tom at the doorway to the Lair Mansion. “If you try to harm Asil, if you upset her in any way, I will have a two hundred pound Ausgardian using your head as a toilet bowl.”
“Thanks for that image,” the visitor shuddered. “I’ll file it with the rest of the threats.”
“Let’s go,” Asil said. “I’ve called a cab for us.” She didn’t look at Tom except when she had an especially good glare ready.
“You treat her like gold,” Visionary warned Tom as he vanished down the drive. “Otherwise you end up in that black hole with your ancestor!”
Tom walked in silence for a while beside Asil. At last he said, “Well, I’m disappointed.”
“That you didn’t get beaten to a pulp and posted back to England in an envelope?” Asil asked coldly.
“That the Lair Legion didn’t give me a fair chance,” he answered. “Or you. I thought Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s amanuensis would have learned a little bit about fair play.”
“Sir Mumphrey Wilton would have had you horsewhipped round the courtyard,” Asil answered angrily. “And I was on the list of people your great grandfather intended to rape and murder.”
Tom nodded. “Granted,” he admitted. “But I never did that, Miss Ashling. I never tortured that poor girl’s family to death before her eyes. I never caused the suicide of Sir Mumphrey’s sister. But you folks are acting as if I did.”
Asil’s face tightened. “Well,” she conceded, “I guess we are a bit uptight about it.”
“I can see why,” Tom told her. He held the door open for her to climb into a cab. “Erskine Black did all those terrible things and you never really got the chance to punish him enough. There is no ‘enough’ to punish him for what he did. Even after all these months you’re raw and angry about it, looking for someone to take it out on. And then I come along.”
“You came along,” agreed Asil. “With your depositions and your legal arguments to reclaim the papers we confiscated when we investigated all the nasty things your ancestor was doing with the Shadow Cabinet.”
“The point there, of course, is that I was within the law, within my rights to have my family’s papers back,” Tom pointed out. “I’ve not done anything illegal, or immoral, but you’re treating me like I’m Hitler reborn. Or my great grandfather reborn.”
“But why would you even want those papers, access to those boxes, Tom?” Asil demanded, “Unless you were planning something nefarious?”
Tom showed the very first signs of temper. “Because I want to tidy up my father’s affairs after he got killed fighting in the Parody War,” he snapped. “Because my mother asked me to do it before she died of a broken heart.”
Asil swallowed. “Sorry,” she said. “That was in the dossier, of course, but it didn’t seem as relevant on the printed page.” She paused, then added, “I think maybe we do owe you an apology, Tom.”
Tom relaxed. “I’m the one who’s sorry, for speaking so sharply. I guess I still have a few raw edges.” He smiled a little at his companion. “You’re very easy to forgive.”
The cab pulled up before one of the big warehouses on the South Shore. “Wait, please,” Asil asked the cabbie. She led Tom to a roller doorway and placed her palm on a DNA sensor. “Codewords Thong, Peekaboo, Kool-Whip,” she said.
Tom shot her a very intrigued glance.
“I’m a clone of Lisa Waltz,” Asil blushed. “We have the same DNA, so I use her codewords, that’s all.”
“Of course.” Tom stepped back as the warehouse door rumbled open.
“I’m resetting this keypad now,” Asil said. “Everything in storage here is yours. You can clear it out over the next couple of days.”
Tom peered into the darkened interior of the warehouse. “Thanks,” he said. “You know, this is my first visit to Paradopolis, and the only place I get to see is a warehouse.”
“You saw the Lair Mansion,” Asil pointed out. “That’s usually considered one of the sights.”
“I saw stunulators,” Tom Black countered. “And a very overwhelming hippopotamus.”
“Well, under the circumstances…”
“I know,” Tom sighed. “We all got off on the wrong foot.” He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Tom Black. I’m new in town. And you are…?”
“Asil,” the girl smiled, returning the handshake. “Asil Ashling. Ashling means…”
“A person, in old English. Yes, I know. Will you have dinner with me tonight, Asil, and show me the sights of your wonderful city?”
Asil recovered her hand from Tom as if she’d been stung. “I don’t…” she stammered. “I can’t. It’s… I had a friend, you see. And he died.”
“George Gedney?” asked Tom. “Come on, you know I worked in intelligence for the British government during the Parody War. Of course I checked up on the Lair Legion and their support people before I came out here.”
“Yes, George,” agreed Asil. “That’s why I… It’s not you, it’s just…”
“You realise I was suggesting dinner and a coach ride round the park, not a lifetime commitment with marriage and children, right?” Tom checked with an infectious little smile.
“All the same…”
“And you wouldn’t want to leave me with the impression that you were prejudiced against me just because of my ancestor,” Tom went on. “We should ask a person’s worth, not the accident of their condition.”
Asil looked up sharply. “A Great Man said that.”
“Well then,” Tom grinned. “Why not have dinner with me? Look, I’ve got a long afternoon sorting through these crates. Why don’t I pick you up around 7.30 at the Lair Mansion? If you decide you don’t want to come then you can always set your stunulators to liquefy.”
“That’s their default setting,” Asil confessed.
“I’ll risk it. I think it might be worth it.”
Asil couldn’t think of a good way of saying no.
***
Tom rummaged through box after box of disorganised papers and household junk. Erskine Black had been buried alive for most of the last hundred years, but since his exhumation at the orders of the Shadow Cabinet he seemed to have acquired – or reclaimed – an awful lot of junk.
The young man glanced at his watch and realised it was after six. If he wanted to get back to his hotel and change before braving the Lair Legion to liberate the fair Asil he needed to be finishing up.
There was one large packing case still to do, and Tom almost put it off until tomorrow. Instead he decided to spend a couple of minutes finding out how much there was to inventory inside before he made good his escape. He crowbarred the side away and peered in.
The box was mostly packed with straw. In the centre was a black casket with jade marquetry inlay. It was very old, probably far Eastern, and very dusty.
That puzzled Tom. The rest of the materials here were all disarranged by the hands of diligent searchers who had gone over every shred of his great grandfather’s possessions. Why had they ignored this particular crate?
Curious, Tom eased the box out from its protective wrapping. It wasn’t heavy. There was a hinged lid and a silver clasp. Someone had sealed down the clasp with red wax, but the image on the seal was long since crumbed to illegibility. “Very strange,” Tom said aloud.
He wondered for a moment if this was an elaborate hoax, some kind of perverted prank from the Lair Legion. It didn’t seem likely.
He snapped away the wax and lifted the box lid.
Green fire burst up from the box’s interior, clinging to his fingers like napalm. Tom dropped the box but the flames were spreading across his palms, up his arms. He felt his hair catch light. He heard himself screaming.
He realised that the flames were making him cold.
He realised that the flames were telling him what they were.
“Kaos energy,” he spoke, standing unharmed in the pillar of crackling icy fire. His mind darted back to most secret intelligence reports on Count Armageddon, science villain from the parallel dimension of the Technoverse. Armageddon had been composed of kaos, a kind of polluted twisted composite of raw chaos and corposant fire. Armageddon had been destroyed, his energy lost. Kaos energy was inherently evil.
The flames dwindled down, and then they were gone. Now Tom Black only felt cold inside, where the Kaos energies lay.
He replaced the empty box in its packing crate, sealed up the warehouse, and went off to prepare for his date.
***
Continued in Tom Black #2: A Date With Death
***
Now God, Stand Up For Footnotes:
The Lair Legion are the Parodyverse’s greatest heroes. They and their support staff are mostly described in the Who's Who in the Parodyverse.
Asil Ashling is a clone of former Legionnaire Lisa Waltz but has a very different character. One side effect of the technique used in creating her is that she can change her physical age at will. Asil’s almost-boyfriend George Gedney recently died in the terrible Parody War, in Untold Tales #301.
Erskine Black was a Victorian bounder who managed to drink from the Fountain of Youth and become immortal. Amongst his villainies he seduced then betrayed Sir Mumphrey’s sister, who later killed herself. He was entombed alive by Mumphrey until very recently, when he was released to wreak his revenge on Mumphrey’s family before being defeated and disposed of inside the event horizon of a black hole. These events were chronicled in Untold Tales #259 and #268
The Shadow Cabinet is a mysterious uber-conspiracy who were behind the recent release of Erskine Black.
Samantha Featherstone is Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s teenaged grand-daughter. Erskine Black tortured and murdered her parents before her eyes before being captured by Mumphrey. Samantha is now preparing to become a crimefighter in her adult years, knowing that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot.
Count Armageddon was a powerful crimelord “science villain” from the alternative universe of Technopolis. He became a being composed of Kaos Energies, making him a nigh-indestructible superman. On Parody Earth he rose to be ruler of the Pacific Basin city-state of Badripoor before finally falling in battle with the Lair Legion and being destroyed in Untold Tales #169.
Other Parodyverse Stories are archived at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
I admit, I was wondering why the guy was being given such a hard time... - Hatman - Wed Oct 10, 2007 at 04:36:56 pm EDT