"Martin-GiantsInTheEarth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Michael A)

MICHAEL A. MARTIN

GIANTS IN THE EARTH

Captain Paradox's calls always came at the most inopportune times. Fiona and I
had just collapsed, en-twined together on her cool sheets, after a show, a quick
Moroccan dinner, yet another argument about my lifestyle, and finally a furious
bout of lovemaking. Sleep was settling over my eyes like a heavy gauze when the
beeper I'd left on the dresser made its distinctive "ping!" sound.

"Don't answer, Craig," she groaned, grabbing my arm.

I carefully disentangled myself from the sheet, and from Fiona. "I'm afraid I
have to." I began to put on my trousers, started searching for my shoes.

"A story?"

I nodded, trying not to look guilty. I hated lying to her.

"Could be a Pulitzer," I said, as always. I donned my shirt and shoes and kissed
her on the forehead. She was still pouting, as always, when the apartment door
closed behind me. Another perfectly wonderful Sunday, ruined.

The morning sun was just beginning to paint the sky yellow and blue. I ducked
into 'an alley half a block from Fiona's apartment. No one was there.

"Is it bad, Paradox ?" I said into the beeper after thumbing the transmit
button.

"It's bad all right," came Paradox's deep resonant voice, preternaturally clear
even through the tiny speaker. He always sounded like he was doing an impression
of Sergeant Preston of the Mounties. But Captain Paradox was the genuine
article. He really, actually, genuinely sounded like that.

It scared me sometimes.

"How bad?" I asked, as if I didn't know what he was going to say next.

"I have finally finished my work on the Probability Key," he said, his voice a
dignified, rolling ocean. "At long last we can begin to make the ... adjustments
we've discussed."

That sounded too much like good news. "What's the bad news, sir?"

The Captain's voice took on the somber tones of the sepulcher. "Thibodeaux is
back," he said. "He wants the Key, lad, and very badly. His appearance will
either bring our plan to a swift denouement, or else it will destroy it utterly.
Get here as quickly as you can, Quantum Boy."

Dramatic, as always. But it didn't sound good. I flicked another button on the
beeper, releasing a minute trace of the quantum foam from its magnetic bottle.
Frost-bitten millipedes ran up and down my spine as probabilities rearranged
themselves. My jacket and slacks liquefied and flowed around me, then solidified
into a familiar skin-tight lemon-lime costume.

"On my way," I said and stuffed the beeper into a belt-pouch. My cape billowed
with a flourish as I vaulted into the brightening sky, meditating on how much I
had come to hate the name "Quantum Boy."

Captain Paradox kept his lab and secret headquarters discreetly hidden behind
the facade of a third-floor apartment on Portland's fashionable Northwest 23rd
Avenue. The Captain's discretion, outright secrecy really, isn't all that
unusual for a Super. It's been de rigueur for the Super lifestyle since the
Great Lawrence Whoops created most of us back in the early 1970's.

In those early days, Supers had been considered freaks, heresies, even
blasphemies. Now, only a couple of short yearns remain on the Millennial clock.
To some, the Supers represent salvation. Others see us as the Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.

The Willamette River sparkled serenely beneath me, and for a moment I recaptured
the heady adolescent thrill of flight for its own sake. I stretched my body taut
in the wind, limbs outstretched like a child imitating an airplane. I watched
the river, as yet undisturbed by boats, as it dropped away behind me.

The early-morning traffic had already begun its westward bustle across the
Morrison and Burnside Bridges. Horns honked and arms gestured from a dozen
vehicles beneath me.

Fans or detractors!

My flight path curved downward over the avenues of the Northwest quadrant of
Portland. I grazed the rooftops and could see a few early risers unlocking their
offices and storefronts, getting ready for the day. A heavyset woman in a
flower-print dress looked up and saw me, an "0" of surprise instantly forming on
her lips. A block away, a paperboy on a mountain bike flung a newspaper and
gestured a one-handed "thumbs-up" to me. Across the street, a dour-faced man in
a business suit flipped me the hairy bird.

I decided to ignore my adoring public and concentrate on the improbable act of
flying. I knew as well as anybody that Supers have threatened public safety as
often as they'd preserved it, so it never surprised me that certain folks had no
use for us, whatever our ideology.

Their resentment is understandable. These days, it seems all I ever read about
in the papers are stories of meta-human thieves, terrorists, and world-beaters
and all the havoc they wreak. Sometimes they're captured, or killed, or driven
off by the more altruistic Supers. Other times, there simply aren't enough
benevolent Supers around to land the crippled jet, or to defuse the terrorist's
bomb, or to keep the downtown skyscraper from being anti-gravved from its
foundations into Low Earth Orbit. On occasions such as these, a whole lot of
civilians are toast. Their resentment is understandable.

I could see from the air that half of Captain Paradox's roof was missing,
flensed from the four walls as though by some impossibly sharp carving knife. I
could see into the lab, which resembled a three-dimensional cutaway diagram,
strewn with upended computer equipment. My pulse raced. What the hell could have
done this?

I touched down, landing in a careful crouch on the roof of the Captain's lab.

I pulled the beeper out, whispered into it. "Captain Paradox?" I tried again.
Nothing. I closed my eyes behind the little domino mask and saw Fiona, still
pouting. Craig Cavanaugh, Quantum-fucking-Boy. Why the hell was I still doing
this shit at thirty? Taking a deep breath, I very deliberately jumped through
the gap in the roof, my cape trailing behind me like an emerald contrail.

The lab had evidently been ransacked in a hurry during the ten minutes it had
taken me to fly from Southeast Portland across the Willamette and north along
the shore into the Northwest quadrant. Computers and monitors and glass piping
and aluminum conduits were scattered and shattered, as though they had been not
only thrown about by something strong and malevolent, but had also exploded from
within. But there was no sign of anyone else in the room.

I wondered which of Captain Paradox's many foes could have been responsible.
There was no shortage of hostile Supers whom Paradox had, over the years, given
cause for revenge. The colossal destruction was consistent with some of the
physically powerful Supers, like Red Rampage or Pallet Jack. I tried to cross at
least a few of Paradox's enemies off the list: If Top Quark had been the
attacker, for instance, it was likely that nothing would remain of the whole
block but a crater lined with radioactive glass. T.E.N.D.R.I.L. agents were
usually more subtle than this, but who knew?

I wondered if a clever scientific-Super, somebody like Vitriol or Wishcraft,
might camouflage his search of the place with gratuitous destruction, simply to
throw me and Paradox off his scent.

Then I noticed Captain Paradox's costume lying amid the rubble. The cowl, the
red tights, and the yellow gloves and boots were all attached, as though he had
been standing in the lab in full costume when...

I carefully picked the costume off the floor, and reached into its
still-attached utility belt. A few white crystals, like sugar cubes, pattered
from the limp scarlet cowl to the floor. I dropped the costume then, in
revulsion.

"Welcome to your death," rasped a sandpaper voice from behind me. I hadn't seen
him standing there, but it stood to reason that I couldn't be all alone in
Captain Paradox's lab. Not after what had evidently happened here so very
recently. That would have been ... improbable, to say the least.

"Professor Thaddeus Thibodeaux," I said, feigning calm. I turned very
deliberately toward him, watching him carefully. I wanted to be ready for
anything any quick motion, any sudden grab for a weapon.

He smiled, reptile-like. I thought of the Grinch as he made a deep,
mock-courteous bow. He was thin, old, cadaverous. Thibodeaux could only be
described as classically, melodramatically Evil.

I tried to sound threatening. "What the hell have you done with Captain Paradox?
If you've hurt him, I swear..."

Thaddeus Thibodeaux tsk-tsked at me, still grinning that nasty grin. "My boy,"
said Thibodeaux in that oh-so-carefully cultivated mid-Atlantic accent. "The man
to whom you refer is, or rather was -- how shall I say it -- always an unlikely
sort. Now, it appears he has at last been rendered impossible."

That rattled me, and gave Thibodeaux a brief advantage, which he pressed. He
produced a small pistol from inside his tidy white lab coat. He leveled it at my
mid-section. I tensed, but didn't move. Nearly twenty feet separated us. Could I
close the distance before he nailed me?

I had to keep him talking. Buy some time. "Why, Thibodeaux? You've always had
more class than this. First you wreck Captain Paradox's lab. Then, you threaten
me with a pistol. It's not your style."

Thibodeaux marginally lowered the gun. I heaved an inner sigh of relief that I
hoped he wouldn't notice. I knew that villains can never refrain from talking
about themselves, or resist describing the minutiae of their plans for world
domination.

Thibodeaux chuckled almost benevolently. "There are a great many, myself
included," he said, "who would happily kill both you and Captain Paradox to
obtain his most puissant weapon: the Probability Key."

Shit!

* * *

"You're thirty, Craig," Fiona had said over a mouthful of grape leaf-wrapped
dolma. "It's silly for you to still be running all over the country to write
stories about this superannuated Saturday matinee hero and his teen sidekick."

I tried to pat her hand, but she pulled it away. "It's important work," I said
lamely, ending in a shrug while she chewed very slowly and glowered at me.

Important work? Maybe. Improbable work? Certainly. It was improbable that news
editors continued to pay such good money for stories about the Supers years
after they had become commonplace. I sometimes wondered if that's as improbable
as having a fiancee who doesn't recognize you just because you happen to be
wearing tights and a domino mask.

"It's not real life, Craig," she said. Her eyes were getting very blue and
moist. "Real life is settling down, getting married. Kids, maybe. A career with
some predictability. Something that doesn't involve hanging upside-down from
helicopter runners, or nearly getting sacrificed to some volcano god for the
sake of a few exclusive photos."

I didn't have an answer for her. And I couldn't tell her the real truth. Captain
Paradox needed me. The universe needed me.

Getting shot might have been a less painful option than the one I chose. But
instead of absorbing the bullet, I concentrated with every erg of power at my
disposal on Thibodeaux's gun-hand. With a cry, the stick-thin old man dropped
the gun to the wreckage-strewn lab floor. He clutched his useless right hand,
which now resembled a sea lion's flipper, in his other hand.

Altering probabilities to the extent of actually changing the shape of an
adversary's body had always put a huge strain on me. Besides being contrary to
the Captain's overly solicitous sense of heroic ethics. Still, it wasn't
something I'd do lightly, at least under normal circumstances. Captain Paradox
had always cast a long, moderating shadow across my more volcanic impulses.

But now I stood face to face with the man who in all likelihood had just killed
Captain Paradox. I walked over to Thibodeaux, trying not to weave as I moved. I
summoned all my remaining strength and grasped the old man by his collar,
dragging him to his feet.

"I ought to finish you right now for what you've done to Captain Paradox," I
hissed. How many times had Captain Paradox sagaciously talked me down from this
precipice?

Thaddeus Thibodeaux only laughed, but with an incongruously beneficent tone. He
dropped his left hand into his coat pocket. I grabbed his wrist, felt the bones
creak and grind like dry kindling. Something was in his pocket, a weapon
perhaps, and I wanted to see it. I released his wrist and pulled the object from
the depths of his jacket, letting Thibodeaux crumple to the lab floor.

It was a foot-long, notched metal rod, and it gleamed an unnaturally bright
silver. It should have weighed ten pounds or more, but it had virtually no heft
at all. I remembered some of Captain Paradox's pedantic descriptions of the
thing's inner workings: super-light wafers, separated by a mere hydrogen atom's
width. Quantum effects. My eyes widened behind the opaque white eye-slits of the
domino mask. An errant wind from outside the ruined ceiling made my cape rustle
and whisper around my knees.

I'd never held the thing in my hands before, or even seen it up close. But I
knew it had to be Captain Paradox's Probability Key.

Thibodeaux sneered up at me from the floor. But his face didn't bear quite the
same hatred I remembered from our every other encounter. From the time I'd first
seen Thibodeaux's wrinkled death's head expression, it had imprinted itself on
me as the very definition of evil.

I'd been a little kid back then. Was it pity I saw now in his eyes, rather than
malice?

"You jock-strapped idiots," he said, shaking his head. "Fools wearing your
underwear outside your pants. Do you think this is the way the world is really
supposed to be? Endless, inconclusive fights between costumed heroes and
costumed villains?

"Before the Great Whoops, the world made sense. A prosaic, dull sort of sense,
but the universe at least had a kind of dignity. Little triumphs counted for
something. Gods in spandex couldn't move planets from their orbits on a whim."

I swallowed, but my throat felt like a gravel road. I remembered when the world
made sense, too. And I remembered being a kid. A misfit teen who saw in the
newly changed post-Whoops world a way out. A kid for whom saving the world with
Captain Paradox became both a divine calling and a source of entertainment that
not even the very best comic books and video games could provide.

"You were there beside Paradox when the Whoops happened, weren't you?"
Thibodeaux said. "He was your uncle, and your late mother had placed you in his
care."

I blanched. How did he know this? When had he had time to raid the Captain's
private files? Before Captain Paradox had become Captain Paradox, back when he
was simply Dr. Harold Harwood, he had led a research project at the Lawrence
Livermore Lab in Northern California. Uncle Harry had been studying the quantum
foam that underlies the universe itself. He'd described the quantum foam as "the
mattress-pad upon which the fitted sheets and blankets of reality are
stretched." Whatever, I had thought at the time. All I remembered of the project
was a lot of uninteresting math and a really cool-looking particle-accelerator
ring at the lab.

And, of course, I remembered being in that lab on the day an O-ring blew and a
batch of quantum foam accidentally got into the ground water, forever altering
the laws of probability and the fundamental physics of the universe. The Supers
were born that day. The good ones and the bad ones both.

"Your uncle Harry wasn't a very responsible guardian," continued Thibodeaux.
"The so-called 'Great Whoops' was no accident. Dr. Harwood knew perfectly well
what he was doing. He was rewriting the rules of the universe to make it more to
his liking. He wanted a world where everything made sense in terms of black and
white. Heroes and villains. What could be more simple?

"But he couldn't get it quite right on that first attempt. The comic-book world
he'd dreamed of was too complex. Too many variables. Too many loose cannons to
lash down, too many Supers who refused to behave themselves. He needed to make
another, more careful attempt at omnipotence."

I turned the silver key over and over in my hands. It seemed to twist in my
grasp, as though it contained restless energies that wouldn't sit still for
long.

"Look well at the Key, Quantum Boy," Thibodeaux said, a sneer creeping into his
voice as he uttered the name. Or was that just me? "And think about it. You hold
the key to all Probability now. You, not Captain Paradox. You can live in
Paradox's fantasy, or you can recast the universe into something saner. The
decision is yours."

Decisions. I knew I didn't want to face any momentous decisions. At least not
without asking the Captain for some guidance. If only he hadn't been reduced to
a handful of sugar-cubes, I maundered. I felt like a weakling for thinking that,
and hated myself for it.

Then a deep, familiar voice boomed from behind me.

"Good work, Quantum Boy. I see you've recovered the Probability Key. And that
Thibodeaux has yet to corrupt its energies. Get ready, Quantum Boy."

Captain Paradox stood whole, inexplicably restored. He was a few meters from
where he had apparently fallen, and now showed no signs of the odd
crystallization effect. Paradox's red and yellow uniform was immaculate,
scarcely wrinkling even at the bending places. His eyes twinkled beneath his
ocher-colored cowl and his cape tossed and swirled, even though there was very
little wind coming down from the hole in the ceiling. It was as though all
reality had shifted itself, just for me.

Oh, I thought, pondering Thibodeaux's useless right arm and the nearly
weightless, pulsating metal I held in my hand.

"Nuts!" hissed Thaddeus Thibodeaux. His trademark.

I ignored him, and noticed that my jaw was hanging slackly. Nothing connected
with my adventures with Captain Paradox ought to surprise me, I thought.

"'Get Ready'?" I asked.

"Prepare to focus your probability-altering abilities through the Key. This will
realign all Probability, as we've discussed. It looks like your powers have
already triggered the Key's energies. Can you feel it powering up?"

I could, and nodded.

"Once the Key is completely activated," said Captain Paradox, "we'll only have
one chance at this, you know."

I nodded mutely. I was Quantum Boy, after all. He was Captain Paradox. The
legend, the square-jawed hero who always spoke in those quaint "as I'm sure
you're already aware, professor" cliches.

"Sure, Captain Paradox," I said, grasping the slender metal stick in hands that
felt slick and clammy inside the lime-colored gloves. My eyes screwed themselves
tightly shut behind the domino mask. I tried to concentrate on the Probability
Key, on what I knew it could do. On Captain Paradox's careful lessons.

I opened my eyes to see Captain Paradox standing over Thibodeaux. The white lab
coat hung on the wretched little man like a becalmed sail.

"There are too many Supers who take no responsibility for their abilities," said
Paradox. He was using his now world-famous Lecturing Voice. "Too many who, like
you, would run roughshod over the helpless billions. The Great Origin has given
the world a few very powerful men and women who seek only justice. But it has
also unleashed incalculable evil and destruction."

The Captain had never permitted me to use the term "Great Whoops" in his
presence. Supers are a gift from Fate, not an accident to be regretted, he had
told me on several occasions.

The metal rod began to vibrate in my hand. It grew warm. I continued to
concentrate, with difficulty.

The Captain continued to lecture. He couldn't help himself.

"Now, we can undo the evils wrought by misguided meta-humans," Captain Paradox
said. "The Probability Key can adjust the Great Origin very slightly. It can
turn the tide. It can increase the heroes-to-villains ratio."

Thibodeaux smiled grimly up at the hero towering over him. "Why stop there?" he
asked, chuckling. "Why not simply redirect the quantum foam to write us over
completely? Why not fill the world entirely with spandex-clad do-gooders?"

Captain Paradox began stroking his smooth bridge-abutment of a chin as though
actually considering this. Absurdly, I wondered how the woman in the
flower-print dress, or the man who'd given me the finger this morning, would
look in primary-colored spandex, flying across the Portland skyline.

The rod tried to wrench itself out of my grip. I continued to concentrate on
holding on to it, but more unbidden, distracting images appeared before me.

I imagined myself sixty years old. Captain Paradox still calls me Quantum Boy.

I saw Fiona, her pretty features sullied by a frown. She scolding me for being
an irresponsible Pet. er Pan. Me deserving it. Where was she going to fit in
inside the juvenile paradise Paradox must be envisioning at this moment?

Where was I going to fit in?

I could barely hold onto the Probability Key anymore. I grasped at it with two
hands, both of which were becoming numb with the strain. I concentrated on
holding on. The sound of thunder surrounded me, centering on the slender
cylinder in my hands.

Captain Paradox's voice sliced through the other distractions. "The power's got
to be released, boy! We've only one shot at this! You know what to do! Make a
wish, boy! Make a wish!"

"Be careful what you wish for," I thought I heard Thibodeaux rasp. But I
couldn't be sure.

I closed my eyes, wished hard, and let go of the rod. I heard a thunderclap and
then a

tinkling sound as though something fragile had been smashed with great force
into a linoleum floor.

Something had. The pink earthenware coffee cup had launched like a projectile
from my soap-slicked hands right onto the kitchen floor.

"Goddammit," I said. That had been my favorite coffee cup. I concentrated on the
moist shards on the floor for a long moment, willing them to reassemble.

Nothing. I smiled. I tossed the shards into the trash and rinsed off two other
coffee mugs and Fiona's fancy doo-hickey that made such wonderfully neat, even
slices of cheese. The toast popped and the kettle began to whistle. Quiet feet
padded into the kitchen, approaching me from behind. Gentle hands encircled my
waist.

"Craig!" Fiona said. "You're making me breakfast?"

I smiled over my shoulder at her. "You sound surprised."

"You never make me breakfast. Besides, you said you had to answer a call. A big
story. Maybe a Pulitzer." She made a face when she said "Pulitzer," one of my
wearisome, oft-repeated bullshit-words.

"I decided not to take the call," I said. "I think I'm going to go look for a
job, instead. Or maybe a few nice, safe freelance writing projects I can tackle
at home."

Fiona's eyes were bigger than the saucers I set on the kitchen table. She didn't
speak as I opened the drapes over the kitchen sink and opened the window,
letting the morning in. The gauzy curtains billowed gently in the breeze, like
Captain Paradox's cape.

Ping!

I noticed then that my beeper was on the kitchen table. Had I wished it there? I
picked it up and excused myself to the bathroom while Fiona poured the coffee.

"Quantum Boy!" crackled Captain Paradox's voice, echoing very faintly.
"Thibodeaux must have used the Probability Key against us somehow. Everything is
dark. I don't know where I am..."

I wasn't enjoying this. Captain Paradox should sound strong. Confident. This was
the voice of a lost waif. I realized then that to Captain Paradox, super-heroing
had become everything. It had been his entire world. In a world without Supers,
how would he survive?

"Um, I think something's gone wrong with the Key," I said. I probably didn't
sound very convincing.

"It's Thibodeaux," Captain Paradox said, almost too faintly to hear. "Find him,
Quantum Boy. Find him!"

I grimaced, and flicked the beeper off. Quantum Boy. Shit.

I'll find him all right.

I returned to the kitchen table and sat down beside Fiona. She smiled at me over
the top of her coffee cup.

"Let's get married," she said.

I raised an eyebrow, then said, "Okay." My lips started to curl into what felt
like a smile.

I sipped my coffee and munched a piece of toast while flipping through the
telephone directory I'd propped on my knee. I scanned the "Th" section in the
white pages.

"If we're going to get married, we ought to think about the finances," I said.

"Who are you looking up.Z"

Ah, there it is. Thibodeaux, Thaddeus.

"Just an old colleague," I said. "I'll bet money he's looking for a new line of
work right about now, too."

Portrait of a Paradox: The Life and Times of Dr. Harold Harwood. I already had
the title down. I figured I could use plenty of primary sources, like
Thibodeaux. Maybe even a co-biographer. Yeah, a biography. Supers would be like
dinosaurs: People would enjoy reading about them a lot more than they would
being threatened by them. I had a feeling that once everybody understood that
the Supers were safely dead, confined now to the four-color pages where they
belonged, the book could sell millions.

I reached for the telephone.




MICHAEL A. MARTIN

GIANTS IN THE EARTH

Captain Paradox's calls always came at the most inopportune times. Fiona and I
had just collapsed, en-twined together on her cool sheets, after a show, a quick
Moroccan dinner, yet another argument about my lifestyle, and finally a furious
bout of lovemaking. Sleep was settling over my eyes like a heavy gauze when the
beeper I'd left on the dresser made its distinctive "ping!" sound.

"Don't answer, Craig," she groaned, grabbing my arm.

I carefully disentangled myself from the sheet, and from Fiona. "I'm afraid I
have to." I began to put on my trousers, started searching for my shoes.

"A story?"

I nodded, trying not to look guilty. I hated lying to her.

"Could be a Pulitzer," I said, as always. I donned my shirt and shoes and kissed
her on the forehead. She was still pouting, as always, when the apartment door
closed behind me. Another perfectly wonderful Sunday, ruined.

The morning sun was just beginning to paint the sky yellow and blue. I ducked
into 'an alley half a block from Fiona's apartment. No one was there.

"Is it bad, Paradox ?" I said into the beeper after thumbing the transmit
button.

"It's bad all right," came Paradox's deep resonant voice, preternaturally clear
even through the tiny speaker. He always sounded like he was doing an impression
of Sergeant Preston of the Mounties. But Captain Paradox was the genuine
article. He really, actually, genuinely sounded like that.

It scared me sometimes.

"How bad?" I asked, as if I didn't know what he was going to say next.

"I have finally finished my work on the Probability Key," he said, his voice a
dignified, rolling ocean. "At long last we can begin to make the ... adjustments
we've discussed."

That sounded too much like good news. "What's the bad news, sir?"

The Captain's voice took on the somber tones of the sepulcher. "Thibodeaux is
back," he said. "He wants the Key, lad, and very badly. His appearance will
either bring our plan to a swift denouement, or else it will destroy it utterly.
Get here as quickly as you can, Quantum Boy."

Dramatic, as always. But it didn't sound good. I flicked another button on the
beeper, releasing a minute trace of the quantum foam from its magnetic bottle.
Frost-bitten millipedes ran up and down my spine as probabilities rearranged
themselves. My jacket and slacks liquefied and flowed around me, then solidified
into a familiar skin-tight lemon-lime costume.

"On my way," I said and stuffed the beeper into a belt-pouch. My cape billowed
with a flourish as I vaulted into the brightening sky, meditating on how much I
had come to hate the name "Quantum Boy."

Captain Paradox kept his lab and secret headquarters discreetly hidden behind
the facade of a third-floor apartment on Portland's fashionable Northwest 23rd
Avenue. The Captain's discretion, outright secrecy really, isn't all that
unusual for a Super. It's been de rigueur for the Super lifestyle since the
Great Lawrence Whoops created most of us back in the early 1970's.

In those early days, Supers had been considered freaks, heresies, even
blasphemies. Now, only a couple of short yearns remain on the Millennial clock.
To some, the Supers represent salvation. Others see us as the Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.

The Willamette River sparkled serenely beneath me, and for a moment I recaptured
the heady adolescent thrill of flight for its own sake. I stretched my body taut
in the wind, limbs outstretched like a child imitating an airplane. I watched
the river, as yet undisturbed by boats, as it dropped away behind me.

The early-morning traffic had already begun its westward bustle across the
Morrison and Burnside Bridges. Horns honked and arms gestured from a dozen
vehicles beneath me.

Fans or detractors!

My flight path curved downward over the avenues of the Northwest quadrant of
Portland. I grazed the rooftops and could see a few early risers unlocking their
offices and storefronts, getting ready for the day. A heavyset woman in a
flower-print dress looked up and saw me, an "0" of surprise instantly forming on
her lips. A block away, a paperboy on a mountain bike flung a newspaper and
gestured a one-handed "thumbs-up" to me. Across the street, a dour-faced man in
a business suit flipped me the hairy bird.

I decided to ignore my adoring public and concentrate on the improbable act of
flying. I knew as well as anybody that Supers have threatened public safety as
often as they'd preserved it, so it never surprised me that certain folks had no
use for us, whatever our ideology.

Their resentment is understandable. These days, it seems all I ever read about
in the papers are stories of meta-human thieves, terrorists, and world-beaters
and all the havoc they wreak. Sometimes they're captured, or killed, or driven
off by the more altruistic Supers. Other times, there simply aren't enough
benevolent Supers around to land the crippled jet, or to defuse the terrorist's
bomb, or to keep the downtown skyscraper from being anti-gravved from its
foundations into Low Earth Orbit. On occasions such as these, a whole lot of
civilians are toast. Their resentment is understandable.

I could see from the air that half of Captain Paradox's roof was missing,
flensed from the four walls as though by some impossibly sharp carving knife. I
could see into the lab, which resembled a three-dimensional cutaway diagram,
strewn with upended computer equipment. My pulse raced. What the hell could have
done this?

I touched down, landing in a careful crouch on the roof of the Captain's lab.

I pulled the beeper out, whispered into it. "Captain Paradox?" I tried again.
Nothing. I closed my eyes behind the little domino mask and saw Fiona, still
pouting. Craig Cavanaugh, Quantum-fucking-Boy. Why the hell was I still doing
this shit at thirty? Taking a deep breath, I very deliberately jumped through
the gap in the roof, my cape trailing behind me like an emerald contrail.

The lab had evidently been ransacked in a hurry during the ten minutes it had
taken me to fly from Southeast Portland across the Willamette and north along
the shore into the Northwest quadrant. Computers and monitors and glass piping
and aluminum conduits were scattered and shattered, as though they had been not
only thrown about by something strong and malevolent, but had also exploded from
within. But there was no sign of anyone else in the room.

I wondered which of Captain Paradox's many foes could have been responsible.
There was no shortage of hostile Supers whom Paradox had, over the years, given
cause for revenge. The colossal destruction was consistent with some of the
physically powerful Supers, like Red Rampage or Pallet Jack. I tried to cross at
least a few of Paradox's enemies off the list: If Top Quark had been the
attacker, for instance, it was likely that nothing would remain of the whole
block but a crater lined with radioactive glass. T.E.N.D.R.I.L. agents were
usually more subtle than this, but who knew?

I wondered if a clever scientific-Super, somebody like Vitriol or Wishcraft,
might camouflage his search of the place with gratuitous destruction, simply to
throw me and Paradox off his scent.

Then I noticed Captain Paradox's costume lying amid the rubble. The cowl, the
red tights, and the yellow gloves and boots were all attached, as though he had
been standing in the lab in full costume when...

I carefully picked the costume off the floor, and reached into its
still-attached utility belt. A few white crystals, like sugar cubes, pattered
from the limp scarlet cowl to the floor. I dropped the costume then, in
revulsion.

"Welcome to your death," rasped a sandpaper voice from behind me. I hadn't seen
him standing there, but it stood to reason that I couldn't be all alone in
Captain Paradox's lab. Not after what had evidently happened here so very
recently. That would have been ... improbable, to say the least.

"Professor Thaddeus Thibodeaux," I said, feigning calm. I turned very
deliberately toward him, watching him carefully. I wanted to be ready for
anything any quick motion, any sudden grab for a weapon.

He smiled, reptile-like. I thought of the Grinch as he made a deep,
mock-courteous bow. He was thin, old, cadaverous. Thibodeaux could only be
described as classically, melodramatically Evil.

I tried to sound threatening. "What the hell have you done with Captain Paradox?
If you've hurt him, I swear..."

Thaddeus Thibodeaux tsk-tsked at me, still grinning that nasty grin. "My boy,"
said Thibodeaux in that oh-so-carefully cultivated mid-Atlantic accent. "The man
to whom you refer is, or rather was -- how shall I say it -- always an unlikely
sort. Now, it appears he has at last been rendered impossible."

That rattled me, and gave Thibodeaux a brief advantage, which he pressed. He
produced a small pistol from inside his tidy white lab coat. He leveled it at my
mid-section. I tensed, but didn't move. Nearly twenty feet separated us. Could I
close the distance before he nailed me?

I had to keep him talking. Buy some time. "Why, Thibodeaux? You've always had
more class than this. First you wreck Captain Paradox's lab. Then, you threaten
me with a pistol. It's not your style."

Thibodeaux marginally lowered the gun. I heaved an inner sigh of relief that I
hoped he wouldn't notice. I knew that villains can never refrain from talking
about themselves, or resist describing the minutiae of their plans for world
domination.

Thibodeaux chuckled almost benevolently. "There are a great many, myself
included," he said, "who would happily kill both you and Captain Paradox to
obtain his most puissant weapon: the Probability Key."

Shit!

* * *

"You're thirty, Craig," Fiona had said over a mouthful of grape leaf-wrapped
dolma. "It's silly for you to still be running all over the country to write
stories about this superannuated Saturday matinee hero and his teen sidekick."

I tried to pat her hand, but she pulled it away. "It's important work," I said
lamely, ending in a shrug while she chewed very slowly and glowered at me.

Important work? Maybe. Improbable work? Certainly. It was improbable that news
editors continued to pay such good money for stories about the Supers years
after they had become commonplace. I sometimes wondered if that's as improbable
as having a fiancee who doesn't recognize you just because you happen to be
wearing tights and a domino mask.

"It's not real life, Craig," she said. Her eyes were getting very blue and
moist. "Real life is settling down, getting married. Kids, maybe. A career with
some predictability. Something that doesn't involve hanging upside-down from
helicopter runners, or nearly getting sacrificed to some volcano god for the
sake of a few exclusive photos."

I didn't have an answer for her. And I couldn't tell her the real truth. Captain
Paradox needed me. The universe needed me.

Getting shot might have been a less painful option than the one I chose. But
instead of absorbing the bullet, I concentrated with every erg of power at my
disposal on Thibodeaux's gun-hand. With a cry, the stick-thin old man dropped
the gun to the wreckage-strewn lab floor. He clutched his useless right hand,
which now resembled a sea lion's flipper, in his other hand.

Altering probabilities to the extent of actually changing the shape of an
adversary's body had always put a huge strain on me. Besides being contrary to
the Captain's overly solicitous sense of heroic ethics. Still, it wasn't
something I'd do lightly, at least under normal circumstances. Captain Paradox
had always cast a long, moderating shadow across my more volcanic impulses.

But now I stood face to face with the man who in all likelihood had just killed
Captain Paradox. I walked over to Thibodeaux, trying not to weave as I moved. I
summoned all my remaining strength and grasped the old man by his collar,
dragging him to his feet.

"I ought to finish you right now for what you've done to Captain Paradox," I
hissed. How many times had Captain Paradox sagaciously talked me down from this
precipice?

Thaddeus Thibodeaux only laughed, but with an incongruously beneficent tone. He
dropped his left hand into his coat pocket. I grabbed his wrist, felt the bones
creak and grind like dry kindling. Something was in his pocket, a weapon
perhaps, and I wanted to see it. I released his wrist and pulled the object from
the depths of his jacket, letting Thibodeaux crumple to the lab floor.

It was a foot-long, notched metal rod, and it gleamed an unnaturally bright
silver. It should have weighed ten pounds or more, but it had virtually no heft
at all. I remembered some of Captain Paradox's pedantic descriptions of the
thing's inner workings: super-light wafers, separated by a mere hydrogen atom's
width. Quantum effects. My eyes widened behind the opaque white eye-slits of the
domino mask. An errant wind from outside the ruined ceiling made my cape rustle
and whisper around my knees.

I'd never held the thing in my hands before, or even seen it up close. But I
knew it had to be Captain Paradox's Probability Key.

Thibodeaux sneered up at me from the floor. But his face didn't bear quite the
same hatred I remembered from our every other encounter. From the time I'd first
seen Thibodeaux's wrinkled death's head expression, it had imprinted itself on
me as the very definition of evil.

I'd been a little kid back then. Was it pity I saw now in his eyes, rather than
malice?

"You jock-strapped idiots," he said, shaking his head. "Fools wearing your
underwear outside your pants. Do you think this is the way the world is really
supposed to be? Endless, inconclusive fights between costumed heroes and
costumed villains?

"Before the Great Whoops, the world made sense. A prosaic, dull sort of sense,
but the universe at least had a kind of dignity. Little triumphs counted for
something. Gods in spandex couldn't move planets from their orbits on a whim."

I swallowed, but my throat felt like a gravel road. I remembered when the world
made sense, too. And I remembered being a kid. A misfit teen who saw in the
newly changed post-Whoops world a way out. A kid for whom saving the world with
Captain Paradox became both a divine calling and a source of entertainment that
not even the very best comic books and video games could provide.

"You were there beside Paradox when the Whoops happened, weren't you?"
Thibodeaux said. "He was your uncle, and your late mother had placed you in his
care."

I blanched. How did he know this? When had he had time to raid the Captain's
private files? Before Captain Paradox had become Captain Paradox, back when he
was simply Dr. Harold Harwood, he had led a research project at the Lawrence
Livermore Lab in Northern California. Uncle Harry had been studying the quantum
foam that underlies the universe itself. He'd described the quantum foam as "the
mattress-pad upon which the fitted sheets and blankets of reality are
stretched." Whatever, I had thought at the time. All I remembered of the project
was a lot of uninteresting math and a really cool-looking particle-accelerator
ring at the lab.

And, of course, I remembered being in that lab on the day an O-ring blew and a
batch of quantum foam accidentally got into the ground water, forever altering
the laws of probability and the fundamental physics of the universe. The Supers
were born that day. The good ones and the bad ones both.

"Your uncle Harry wasn't a very responsible guardian," continued Thibodeaux.
"The so-called 'Great Whoops' was no accident. Dr. Harwood knew perfectly well
what he was doing. He was rewriting the rules of the universe to make it more to
his liking. He wanted a world where everything made sense in terms of black and
white. Heroes and villains. What could be more simple?

"But he couldn't get it quite right on that first attempt. The comic-book world
he'd dreamed of was too complex. Too many variables. Too many loose cannons to
lash down, too many Supers who refused to behave themselves. He needed to make
another, more careful attempt at omnipotence."

I turned the silver key over and over in my hands. It seemed to twist in my
grasp, as though it contained restless energies that wouldn't sit still for
long.

"Look well at the Key, Quantum Boy," Thibodeaux said, a sneer creeping into his
voice as he uttered the name. Or was that just me? "And think about it. You hold
the key to all Probability now. You, not Captain Paradox. You can live in
Paradox's fantasy, or you can recast the universe into something saner. The
decision is yours."

Decisions. I knew I didn't want to face any momentous decisions. At least not
without asking the Captain for some guidance. If only he hadn't been reduced to
a handful of sugar-cubes, I maundered. I felt like a weakling for thinking that,
and hated myself for it.

Then a deep, familiar voice boomed from behind me.

"Good work, Quantum Boy. I see you've recovered the Probability Key. And that
Thibodeaux has yet to corrupt its energies. Get ready, Quantum Boy."

Captain Paradox stood whole, inexplicably restored. He was a few meters from
where he had apparently fallen, and now showed no signs of the odd
crystallization effect. Paradox's red and yellow uniform was immaculate,
scarcely wrinkling even at the bending places. His eyes twinkled beneath his
ocher-colored cowl and his cape tossed and swirled, even though there was very
little wind coming down from the hole in the ceiling. It was as though all
reality had shifted itself, just for me.

Oh, I thought, pondering Thibodeaux's useless right arm and the nearly
weightless, pulsating metal I held in my hand.

"Nuts!" hissed Thaddeus Thibodeaux. His trademark.

I ignored him, and noticed that my jaw was hanging slackly. Nothing connected
with my adventures with Captain Paradox ought to surprise me, I thought.

"'Get Ready'?" I asked.

"Prepare to focus your probability-altering abilities through the Key. This will
realign all Probability, as we've discussed. It looks like your powers have
already triggered the Key's energies. Can you feel it powering up?"

I could, and nodded.

"Once the Key is completely activated," said Captain Paradox, "we'll only have
one chance at this, you know."

I nodded mutely. I was Quantum Boy, after all. He was Captain Paradox. The
legend, the square-jawed hero who always spoke in those quaint "as I'm sure
you're already aware, professor" cliches.

"Sure, Captain Paradox," I said, grasping the slender metal stick in hands that
felt slick and clammy inside the lime-colored gloves. My eyes screwed themselves
tightly shut behind the domino mask. I tried to concentrate on the Probability
Key, on what I knew it could do. On Captain Paradox's careful lessons.

I opened my eyes to see Captain Paradox standing over Thibodeaux. The white lab
coat hung on the wretched little man like a becalmed sail.

"There are too many Supers who take no responsibility for their abilities," said
Paradox. He was using his now world-famous Lecturing Voice. "Too many who, like
you, would run roughshod over the helpless billions. The Great Origin has given
the world a few very powerful men and women who seek only justice. But it has
also unleashed incalculable evil and destruction."

The Captain had never permitted me to use the term "Great Whoops" in his
presence. Supers are a gift from Fate, not an accident to be regretted, he had
told me on several occasions.

The metal rod began to vibrate in my hand. It grew warm. I continued to
concentrate, with difficulty.

The Captain continued to lecture. He couldn't help himself.

"Now, we can undo the evils wrought by misguided meta-humans," Captain Paradox
said. "The Probability Key can adjust the Great Origin very slightly. It can
turn the tide. It can increase the heroes-to-villains ratio."

Thibodeaux smiled grimly up at the hero towering over him. "Why stop there?" he
asked, chuckling. "Why not simply redirect the quantum foam to write us over
completely? Why not fill the world entirely with spandex-clad do-gooders?"

Captain Paradox began stroking his smooth bridge-abutment of a chin as though
actually considering this. Absurdly, I wondered how the woman in the
flower-print dress, or the man who'd given me the finger this morning, would
look in primary-colored spandex, flying across the Portland skyline.

The rod tried to wrench itself out of my grip. I continued to concentrate on
holding on to it, but more unbidden, distracting images appeared before me.

I imagined myself sixty years old. Captain Paradox still calls me Quantum Boy.

I saw Fiona, her pretty features sullied by a frown. She scolding me for being
an irresponsible Pet. er Pan. Me deserving it. Where was she going to fit in
inside the juvenile paradise Paradox must be envisioning at this moment?

Where was I going to fit in?

I could barely hold onto the Probability Key anymore. I grasped at it with two
hands, both of which were becoming numb with the strain. I concentrated on
holding on. The sound of thunder surrounded me, centering on the slender
cylinder in my hands.

Captain Paradox's voice sliced through the other distractions. "The power's got
to be released, boy! We've only one shot at this! You know what to do! Make a
wish, boy! Make a wish!"

"Be careful what you wish for," I thought I heard Thibodeaux rasp. But I
couldn't be sure.

I closed my eyes, wished hard, and let go of the rod. I heard a thunderclap and
then a

tinkling sound as though something fragile had been smashed with great force
into a linoleum floor.

Something had. The pink earthenware coffee cup had launched like a projectile
from my soap-slicked hands right onto the kitchen floor.

"Goddammit," I said. That had been my favorite coffee cup. I concentrated on the
moist shards on the floor for a long moment, willing them to reassemble.

Nothing. I smiled. I tossed the shards into the trash and rinsed off two other
coffee mugs and Fiona's fancy doo-hickey that made such wonderfully neat, even
slices of cheese. The toast popped and the kettle began to whistle. Quiet feet
padded into the kitchen, approaching me from behind. Gentle hands encircled my
waist.

"Craig!" Fiona said. "You're making me breakfast?"

I smiled over my shoulder at her. "You sound surprised."

"You never make me breakfast. Besides, you said you had to answer a call. A big
story. Maybe a Pulitzer." She made a face when she said "Pulitzer," one of my
wearisome, oft-repeated bullshit-words.

"I decided not to take the call," I said. "I think I'm going to go look for a
job, instead. Or maybe a few nice, safe freelance writing projects I can tackle
at home."

Fiona's eyes were bigger than the saucers I set on the kitchen table. She didn't
speak as I opened the drapes over the kitchen sink and opened the window,
letting the morning in. The gauzy curtains billowed gently in the breeze, like
Captain Paradox's cape.

Ping!

I noticed then that my beeper was on the kitchen table. Had I wished it there? I
picked it up and excused myself to the bathroom while Fiona poured the coffee.

"Quantum Boy!" crackled Captain Paradox's voice, echoing very faintly.
"Thibodeaux must have used the Probability Key against us somehow. Everything is
dark. I don't know where I am..."

I wasn't enjoying this. Captain Paradox should sound strong. Confident. This was
the voice of a lost waif. I realized then that to Captain Paradox, super-heroing
had become everything. It had been his entire world. In a world without Supers,
how would he survive?

"Um, I think something's gone wrong with the Key," I said. I probably didn't
sound very convincing.

"It's Thibodeaux," Captain Paradox said, almost too faintly to hear. "Find him,
Quantum Boy. Find him!"

I grimaced, and flicked the beeper off. Quantum Boy. Shit.

I'll find him all right.

I returned to the kitchen table and sat down beside Fiona. She smiled at me over
the top of her coffee cup.

"Let's get married," she said.

I raised an eyebrow, then said, "Okay." My lips started to curl into what felt
like a smile.

I sipped my coffee and munched a piece of toast while flipping through the
telephone directory I'd propped on my knee. I scanned the "Th" section in the
white pages.

"If we're going to get married, we ought to think about the finances," I said.

"Who are you looking up.Z"

Ah, there it is. Thibodeaux, Thaddeus.

"Just an old colleague," I said. "I'll bet money he's looking for a new line of
work right about now, too."

Portrait of a Paradox: The Life and Times of Dr. Harold Harwood. I already had
the title down. I figured I could use plenty of primary sources, like
Thibodeaux. Maybe even a co-biographer. Yeah, a biography. Supers would be like
dinosaurs: People would enjoy reading about them a lot more than they would
being threatened by them. I had a feeling that once everybody understood that
the Supers were safely dead, confined now to the four-color pages where they
belonged, the book could sell millions.

I reached for the telephone.