The Tower (16 page)

Okay, but that raised another question, of accountability. “If that's true,” I asked, “and you're watching everyone, who watches you?” He looked at me, surprised that I'd ask such a question.

“You mean to see that we don't overstep our boundaries?”

I nodded.

“No one, we do it ourselves. We're not better than anyone because we have special powers and we're not morally superior. We do have superior skills and abilities but those are used to help the people, not hurt them. We've never crossed that line and we never will.”

Sounded noble and right and good enough, on the surface, that is. Something about “who guards the guardians” came floating back to me but before I could articulate my misgivings to him, he gave me a fixed stare with his cold, blue eyes.

“As I said, none of us is in it for the money or the fame. And we're not here to rule over anyone else's lives. Mull that one over.” With that, he finished his eggs, complimented me on my cooking, and strode out of the hall. Me, I just finished off the water and went back to my cabin to think things over.

* * *

So, who could I ask about all this? It got to the point where I started a journal and wrote about everything that went on. Pieces of discarded note paper spilled over onto the floor as I tried to figure out a pattern to all this. Over the next couple of weeks, it slowly became apparent that no one wanted to discuss anything in greater detail…or they couldn't. Suddenly, things weren't so clear-cut anymore.

Another thing—inconsistencies abounded here. Basically, the inconsistencies had to do with what I presupposed the characters to be like. That they weren't just like their comic book versions didn't surprise me; it was a different universe, after all. No one wanted to say anything because all was well. It was too ideal and that did a number on my mind.

The journal soon started to get the best of me, and then taking a good look at myself I realized I was acting more than a bit obsessed. Even Oriana noticed my change in attitude, and she called me on it. Walking into my room one day and noticing the crumpled pieces of paper strewn around actually caused her to almost hit me. She dragged me outside and laid it on the line.

“Just because Knower was my friend doesn't mean y'have to act like him. I really liked him but I couldn't stand his damn journals, he was a reporter and he was always writing in them. What's wrong with you?”

Since I couldn't tell her the real reason, I just mumbled a few non-sequiturs. Her temper flared. “Get this straight: I love you but I won't put up with being second to a bunch of papers and you being a paranoid boyfriend. Got it?!”

Got it
.

“Get your head straight, Bill. Whatever you're thinking, get over it. It's either that—or me.” She stalked off. There it was; an ultimatum, and I was scared that I'd have to choose between Ori and my sense of what was right. If I
was
right that meant I might lose her, and that scared me more than anything.

However, there was still the matter of finishing what I'd started—I had to know. And what I did know was this: Everything that had gone on two years before my arrival here, everything had been documented. It was all there on the Net and anyone could see it. But what was underneath it all?

* * *

“Can I help you, Bill?” That came from Hillary McMillan, the only person staffing the Data-Base section. She was the blonde who'd complimented me on my cooking in my first few weeks here. She was also in charge of compiling all the data related to the Tower: Expenditures for fuel, supplies, repairs, payroll, and more. Seemed like a lot to handle, but Hillary was hyper-competent, a workaholic and a coffee junky and if anyone could help me, she could.

“I'm just here for some information.”

“About what?”

I decided to play dumb. “Um, well, you know I'm a fan of the Association, and I just wanted to find out a bit more about their history is all.” BS excuse, but there it was.

“You spend enough time with them,” she countered. “Guess they're not big talkers, huh?”

Right on that one, I answered. “Got anything on their recent doings?” I asked. “Say, about two years ago?” She did some checking and just as I figured, only the info for the early years popped up.

“That's weird,” she said, knocking back the last of her java. “I mean, no one's ever asked me to look up the more recent files, but I thought they'd be here. Let's try another route.” She tried again and said, “Funny, the newer files…they've been locked; I can't get in.”
Why didn't that surprise me
?

“Oh, crap, Bill,” she said urgently, “gotta go…Nature's calling. Be right back.” And with that, she ran off to the Ladies Room down the hallway. That was a lucky break. Sitting down, I typed in “Super Villains.” A screen instantly popped up showing a list of the “Who's Who” in the criminal world: Dr. Chiller, Max Menace, Hemlocker and about fifteen others. Status: Missing.
All of them
? That wasn't possible. I cross-checked their records on all the Earth's prisons and again I found nothing. It was almost as if they'd never existed.

Heard footsteps, Hillary was coming back. I quickly returned the screen to the original one and vacated her seat. She came in and asked, “What else can I look for?”

“Why is it you can't go back into the Archives less than two years?” I asked. She just gave me a blank look, and what had the workmen on the surface said? All the battles had stopped about two years ago at the same time it seemed the entire Super Villains group went missing. What was the connection?

I wasn't sure if there was one. Something about trusting your feelings came back to me. Didn't remember who'd said it but it seemed apt in this situation. Thanking Hillary for her time, I went back to my room to think on it, try to put the pieces together. What I didn't bank on was that one of the pieces of the puzzle would soon be unearthed. It involved a little lying, some undercover work and just plain dumb luck.

And it all happened a few days later.

Seventeen: Snooping

Since there was no one to ask on the Tower, this was a case of going it alone. Couldn't ask Dan or Cathy, not even Oriana. A couple of days after I'd spoken with Hillary, I found Ori on the Promenade Deck, looking out the window. “Ori, I've been a dick,” I began. “If you can forgive me….”

“Say no more, mi novio,” she said with a smile, “it's all good, you and me.” She kissed me and gave me a hug which almost broke my ribs. I then took her back to my room to show her the changes I'd made. Everything had been cleaned up and was normal-looking again. She seemed satisfied with that.

“Listen, I have a shift in Canberra tonight, we'll meet up at the usual time, okay?”

“Count on it,” I answered, and off she went.

Truth be known, though, I lied to her. Lie #1: The journal had never been stopped, it was still an ongoing project and it was updated daily. I'd jimmied the wall panel open a bit and slipped it in there. Just in case someone searched my room they'd be hard-put to find anything out of the ordinary. Only the Ultras had the Override code and I doubted they were interested.

And here's where the detective bit came in. What Avenger had said to me just didn't wash anymore. I had to know what exactly was going on. The “irked feeling” had become more than that. It had become an obsession to find out the truth, if there was a different “truth” to be found. So if any evidence was to be unearthed, it wouldn't be here.

On my day off, I went down to Met City to search. Since everyone on board was fairly young with the exception of John, maybe someone of the elderly persuasion could help. How, I wasn't sure, but I was desperate and this was as good a place to start as any.

To that end, I arrived at the Golden Brook Home for the Aged. On the pretext of being a volunteer, which was Lie #2, I gained entry to the facility and spent the morning cleaning up tables, mopping floors, making beds and the like. One of the residents, a very nice old lady named Phyllis Morris, eighty-two years of age, asked me to take her for a walk after lunch. Her nurse told me that she was lucid most of the time, and wouldn't be a bother to look after. It was a lovely day out, so after a slow stroll around the grounds, we found shelter under a tree and sat down.

“Beautiful day,” I remarked.

She nodded, looked at me. “You're not George,” she said. “You're not my grandson.”

“No, ma'am,” I answered. “My name's Bill. I'm a volunteer here, remember?” Her eyes then cleared a little. She'd taken her medicine about an hour ago and it was beginning to kick in.

“Oh, yes, you're the volunteer. Now I remember, my oh my, these days…” her voice trailed off. It was okay, I reassured her. She was a very nice old lady, and I told myself to be patient. This was a job of finesse and not brute force. One wrong move and not only would she clam up for good, I'd also probably get kicked out of this place.

We chatted at first about things familiar to her: Her children, her grandchildren, her life in Met City. She talked a lot about her grandson, George. He was almost nineteen, a freshman in college, and the apple of her old eye. The more she spoke about her family, the clearer her mind became. It was then that I managed to worm the conversation my way.

“I've been out of the country for a long time,” I began, and while lying wasn't on my “to-do” list, it was the only way to get what I wanted. “Almost three years. Do you remember what happened two years or so ago? I heard the Association went away.”

Her eyes went blank for a second, then refocused. “I seem to recall they did go somewhere. They went away…yes, they did go away. Just for a short time, maybe three or four days.”

“Where did they go?”

“Up there, of course,” she pointed at the sky. “They went in their ships.”

There was more than one? She'd used the plural form of the noun. “Yes, there were two ships. Now I remember. The bad men went, too.”

That was a surprise. “You mean, like, the super-villains…?”

“Yes,” her voice got a bit more animated now. “They all went up to fight something. It was so terrible, and they told us not to panic, but this thing had to be fought and they took care of it for us. They're such helpful, wonderful people.”

That didn't make sense. “Don't you mean ‘someone?'” I asked. Phyllis was a sweet old lady but since her memory wasn't reliable, I wasn't sure that she just wasn't repeating a line she'd heard in an old monster movie. I asked her again.

“Don't tell me what I said,” she snapped back at me, her voice clear now. “I said it was a…a thing.” Pause. “You're not George.”

Oh, boy, darkness falls
. “No, Phyllis, I'm Bill, the volunteer?”
Be patient
. She remained silent, her lower lip working.

Then, “Yes, Bill…you were asking me about the bad men?”

“Uh-huh.”

Her mind cleared, she looked straight at me, and her voice trembled as she spoke. “There was something up there. A terrible voice came from the sky, it wanted to kill us all. The heroes and the bad men went up to fight it. And they came back, just in one ship, but they came back.” Her face brightened, but lost the lucidity it once had. “They came back. And we're fine now, aren't we?” She smiled at me with the innocence of a little child; her mind was back in happier days. Senile or not, Phyllis had been of more help to me in a few minutes than any hour sitting at a computer could have.

I smiled at her. “Yes, Phyllis, we are.” I stood up and helped her to her feet. “Feel like walking back to your room now?”

Inside, I helped her get into bed to take her nap. She thanked me for my kindness. As she lay down and I covered her with a light blanket, she looked at me and smiled. “You're not George…but you're a nice young man.”

So that was some information I hadn't know about. Two ships had gone up, one had come back. The heroes had survived their face-off against some terrible force, perhaps one of their arch-enemies such as Golatron or maybe something worse and had returned. I wasn't sure where this was leading me, but there was still one more person to ask, and if she couldn't help me, then no one else could. I glanced at a clock on a building; about two-thirty. I still had time.

Nora Nixon proved to be of help, but not in the way I expected. When I called her from a pay phone, she answered, “Nightly Orb, Nixon speaking,” in a bored, world-weary voice. I thought of disguising my speech, but decided against it.

“We need to talk,” I began.

“If this is some kind of scam….” she started.

“No, no scam, Ms. Nixon,” I said hastily. “It's about PowerGuy.”

Silence, then, “I'll meet you in the lobby. Five minutes.”

In the lobby I waited, a swirl of people around me. The Nightly Orb, Met City's largest newspaper, was a large, modern skyscraper, rivaling anything I'd seen back on my Earth. Nixon came striding towards me through the crowd, walking in a no-nonsense way. About twenty-eight, she was an attractive woman on the short side with long, reddish-brown hair, sloe-shaped grey eyes, and a clipped manner of speaking.

“You called before?”

I nodded. I'd given her my description and before I could say anything else, she motioned to the door. “Not here; let's go to the park.”

Outside, we crossed over to the local park and sat down on a bench. “Alright, what's the con?”

“No con,” I assured her. Told her that I worked for a Portland newspaper, my editor had assigned me to find out details on some strange happenings. I described the strange lack of interest in the Ultras from Earth's population—no reaction. I then took the plunge and told her of working on the Tower, the eating, and other details. All of this information got me a blank look from her.

“So?”

Oh, come on!
No one could be that dense, especially a reporter. “So, doesn't this strike you as being odd?” This was really starting to cheese me off. I tried another line of questioning. “When did the Association leave the Earth in force?”

“About two years ago,” was her prompt reply. “There was…” a blank look came over her face. “There was something…up there.” Just like Phyllis.

“So, they went up in a couple of Darts to battle this ‘something,' and doesn't that sound strange to you that no one knows what that ‘something' was?” This thought had just occurred to me; why hadn't I realized that possibility sooner?

She looked confused, as if struggling to remember. “Yes…strange.”

Pressuring her, I added, “And isn't it strange that the super-villains went with them?”

“Yes, and I…I don't recall,” she said. Great, she was just like Phyllis, although Nixon was neither stupid nor senile.

Okay, another plan of attack. “You were dating PowerGuy, weren't you?” I'd heard about this from a few people, and even though it was an open secret I wanted to see her reaction.

“What's that got to do with anything?” she asked. “That isn't news.”

“After he came back, he was different, wasn't he?”

“None of your damn business,” she spat. “I'm going….” She got up to leave, and I grabbed her arm. No she wasn't, not until I got what info I'd come for.

“He left you, didn't he? Some excuse: Association business, planetary safety…yes?” That was just a wild guess on my part and sure enough, it got the response I was looking for.

Nora stopped struggling, and I let her arm go. She sat down again, tears suddenly flooding her eyes. “I…I loved him, more than any other man I've ever known. And when he…came back, he was…he broke off our relationship. He was still kind and gentle, considerate but…he told me that the planet had to come first…”

I sensed that I'd pushed her too far, and then she looked at me, face twitching. Whether it was panic or fright there was no way to tell, but it was like she was looking into the bowels of Hell and was terrified of being sent there. The twitching suddenly stopped and she jumped up.

“No! No! I can't tell you anymore. I don't know anymore! I don't know! Leave me alone!” she cried and ran across the street to the Orb, oblivious to the traffic and the honking horns.

Damn it! What could have happened to her? It was almost as if she'd been…hypnotized. Phyllis hadn't acted terrified but the blankness of her features…it was the same. If this “hypnosis,” and there was no other word for it, was true, then everyone else would act the same way if I questioned them, wouldn't they? If so, why—that was the question.

And the answer was….wait a minute. Wait just one minute.

Knower, journals, Oriana said I'd been acting like him. He'd also kept journals. Oriana said so and why hadn't I thought of this before? Once again, I'd been oblivious to the obvious.

According to the ship's data files his real name was Harry Blott and on a hunch, I took a look at the local phone book, just in case he lived here. Surprisingly, the answer was yes, he did have an apartment in Met City, and it wasn't too far from the Orb.

All of this made me think of something else. He lived here but had disappeared in Portland and that had been the logical place for Oriana to start her search. It was what I would've done. And it was entirely possible that Oriana didn't know much about his private lifestyle. I remembered that on our first visit to Met City she said Knower wouldn't be here but yet he'd lived here all this time. How could she not have known? She wouldn't lie to mem she couldn't have.

Or did she? Anyway, there was still some time before the Arrow was supposed to return to the Tower. I started walking and soon found a modest and small two-story building which had been divided into six units. Naturally, the landlord, a small, weasel-faced, middle-aged type, didn't remember anything, but when I asked him if Apartment #202 was available, he said the last occupant had moved out two years ago and the rent was still being paid.

“Who's paying the checks?” I asked

“Halyard Enterprises,” was his answer, “their money's as good as anyone else's.”

I showed him my ID from the Tower and lied, said that I was the renter's friend, Tower business, and if he didn't want the money to stop coming in, open up. Greed and fear got the best of him, and I got fifteen minutes. “I'll be watching the clock outside,” he said nervously. “Don't do anything stupid.”

It was a small place and everything was coated with dust and cobwebs. Knower was not exactly the tidiest of people. I saw lots of old newspapers and books laying around in no particular order. Saw some empty pill bottles in the cabinet and nothing else. No one had been here for a long time.

There was no telephone and no computer. Oriana had been right. The fridge was empty and musty-smelling and just a few clothes hung in his closet. Hunted for info and after checking in and under the bed, the closet, and the bookshelves, I sat down on the dirty bed and sighed. Then, a thought; since I'd hidden my journal behind my wall, wouldn't he have done the same thing?

Yes, he had. I went back to the closet and looked more closely at the wall, ran my fingers over it, found a bump. Pushed said bump and the door opened a crack. It slid automatically to the side and a whole wall was there filled with yellowed and faded newspaper clippings that I couldn't make out, but at the bottom there was one, moldy-looking book. Worn and cruddy, but the handwriting was legible. Yes!

Opening it, I was disappointed to find only two entries. It was from a little over two years ago, more or less the time he disappeared.