The Tower (9 page)

He just looked at me again, measuring my response. Guess he found it sincere enough, although I also had the feeling that he knew I wanted to be with my girlfriend.

“I'll run it by Avenger. He'll get back to you.” Then he turned away and went back to his duties and life continued on the bridge, a ceaseless blend of activity. And me, lost in the shuffle.

Thanking him, I hurried back to my room and what did I see on my door? A little sign: “Ultra pet.”
Who the hell…
? I looked around quickly but there was no one in sight. It had to be one of the regular staff as none of the other Ultras would've done this. Only the Ultras were allowed on this satellite extension—I was the sole exception to the rule. I didn't know who it was, exactly, but I was pretty sure who was dumb enough to pull this kind of stunt.

Okay, there would be a reckoning. I took the sign down and tossed it in the garbage, then spent the next forty minutes hastily cramming on the manuals even though I was still cheesed off. Oriana hadn't returned yet and I had to be ready, just in case. About an hour later my intercom buzzed. “Hello?” I asked.

Avenger's flat voice came over the 'com: “I was told you wanted to help out.”

Hope in me rose. “Could I?”

“Report to the Hangar Bay at 15:00 hours tomorrow,” he ordered. The line went dead.

Wow, a mission! The next day, after persuading the C-Man to let me start training again, I hurriedly showered after the boxing lesson and ran to the Hangar Bay.

It was full of techs all scurrying around, and Ultras waiting patiently. The Hangar Bay itself was actually composed of two levels; we were on the upper level where the Darts were wheeled in, loaded up with passengers and cargo, and then lowered automatically to the level beneath us to take off.

The lower part also served as a re-entry area on the opposite side of the Tower, so there wasn't a whole lot of room to maneuver; one had to be a good pilot to bring the ships in safely. I also took a look around for the idiot who I thought posted that little message on my door, there'd been no name…but I had a pretty good idea of who it was. No, none of them was here. Payback would have to wait another day.

Taking a closer look at the Landing Bay area, which was enormous, I asked one of the hangar crew how even on a satellite this size all the Darts could fit in it so easily.

“Watch this,” he said. After a Dart had landed and all aboard had exited, he flipped some kind of switch on a remote-control device and it just folded in upon itself to less than half its original size, the wings folding up into a gull-like position. “I love these compacts,” he said with a grin. After that, he used the same hand-held device to wheel it over to a corner. It would later be unfolded just before take-off on the upper level.

Other techs were loading on supplies, mainly food crates, I noticed, along with medicine and other first-aid relief items, and still more were checking the lights, the safety doors, the landing platforms, a ceaseless hustle and flow of activity. I just stood there at first, taking it all in and wasn't sure what was supposed to happen, when a tap on my elbow brought me back to reality. What the…? The tap came again and I looked down; a small man was beside me.

“Hey,” he said.

Uh…yeah
. “Hey,” I answered.

Who was this? And then I remembered this guy from my search time on the Net: It was The Snuffler, an odd-looking man who looked to be in his mid-thirties. In the comics, his counterpart had been “The Sniffer” and he'd been the, well, comic relief. Oddly enough, he looked almost exactly like his comic book doppelganger; maybe some things didn't change that much between universes.

About four feet tall, with an extremely rotund belly and an oversized nose, he looked like a cross between a pig and a man, and not a very good-looking combo at that. He had extremely large ears, way out of proportion to the rest of his somewhat homely face and while he didn't have a porcine nose it was quite large with very wide and round nostrils. Topping it all off, he was dressed in a shocking plain, pink outfit with a black belt and he seemed more than a bit out of place in this crowd.

Come to think of it, he was the only person I'd seen who had powers and who didn't look like a Mr. Olympia contender. While the women all seemed to be beautiful with figures the Hollywood crowd on my Earth would've killed for and the men were all built like Greek gods, he seemed like one of nature's less-than-stellar creations.

When he spoke, it was with an extreme nasal inflection. “Hey, we're going to Greece. Earthquake there yesterday and we're needed.” We started to push our way through the crowd when Mr. W's voice came over the loudspeaker. Suddenly, everyone became very quiet.

“Rescue team to El Salvador, number 14, relief team to Greece, number 11, supply team to New Delhi, team, number…” he intoned, and those on the different squads quickly headed off to their respective ships. Everyone boarded quickly and the Darts were quickly unfolded and positioned on the runway for take-off; there was very little time lost waiting. I was getting really jazzed about the whole thing. The Earth needed help and we were it!

We headed over to our Dart, and there was Oriana; she'd been waiting for me, a little smile on her face. The Snuffler looked at her for a second, then me and shrugged a little. “Some guys got all the luck,” he said good-naturedly and got on along with Lawmaker and ten other techs. Lawmaker got into the pilot's seat and The Snuffler headed for the cockpit. “I don't take up so much room,” he said, and then sort of waddle-shuffled his way forward.

Oriana and I sat together. She squeezed my hand briefly and whispered, “We're on the medical relief crew. Most of the casualties were evacuated last night. Helping out the survivors is our job. Don't screw up.”

“No chance of that,” I told her, even though I was pretty nervous at my first mission planet-side. “How did you know I'd be on this flight?”

“I asked where you were going and pushed to be on the same team,” she murmured. “Good enough answer for you?”

It was. Silence for a time, and then I asked her about The Snuffler. “Oh, he sniffs out people who might be trapped in wells, or under buildings, stuff like that,” she replied. “His nose is fifty times as sensitive as a pig's. I heard he can out-smell a cockroach; pretty crazy, right?”

Uh-huh. Useful ability
.

We landed in Athens, and it was a wreck; not a building left standing. The Snuffler searched under the rubble for any additional survivors, while Oriana and the rest of us passed out blankets, water, and helped the medical crew. Lawmaker kept up crowd control, yelling out instructions and asking for calm in fluent Greek.

“He can speak Greek?” I asked.

“All part of our training,” she answered with a shrug. After all, she spoke Spanish perfectly, but that was part of her heritage. Maybe he took language courses like she said. Anyway, it was time to go help out.

We worked solidly for five hours, and then Temptress, Miracle Mistress, Repello and a few other techs came down to relieve us. I was dog-tired but then I heard a shout, “We got some live ones!”

Incredibly, The Snuffler had found three survivors; they'd been trapped in the ruins of a house for over twelve hours and been overlooked by the first rescue team. He yelled for someone to give him a hand and Oriana and I went over to help him get the people out.

Some of the local people who'd come in with us cut and ran when the building started shaking and I thought for the briefest of moments
what the hell am I doing here
? Oriana seemed to sense my thoughts and said grimly, “We're working; they need us.” She squeezed my hand briefly and that gave me the impetus to go on. We kept digging.

The Snuffler never stopped and ignored the obvious possibility of everything caving in on him. Finally, after another twenty nerve-wracking minutes of digging and scraping, we managed to pull all three people to safety and they were quickly taken to the hospital. “Efgaresto,” they said to him gratefully in Greek. “Efgaresto—thank you.”

That taught me something: Never judge a book by its cover. “Pretty cool thing you did,” I told him. He just shrugged it off.

“People always think I'm sort of an oddball because of the way I look,” he started off by saying. “I learned to live with it a long time ago. Anyway, I have a job to do. Helping people is part of the package and that's why I signed on with this group.”

Pretty awesome hero talk, I thought, very cool. He just said it as a matter of course.

“It's pretty cool the way Lawmaker speaks Greek, can you understand what they're saying?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “Only language I ever learned was French; never got around to learning anything else.” And with that, he went back to his digging. He seemed to be happiest when rooting around in the dirt.

Back at the station, Oriana and I walked slowly back to our quarters. I was bone-tired, hungry, and sleepy, all at the same time. She seemed fine. How did she do it? At her door, she kissed me hard and said, “You did a good job down there and stood your ground. I respect that.”

She kissed me again and then walked into her room. I entered mine. “Hey, pal, you got any carrots lying around?” a voice said out of the darkness.

I flicked on the switch, and there, sitting on my bed, was Tenkita's rabbit. His little wings flapped softly against his fur.

Stunned, I said: “No…um…Tenkita probably has some in her room.”

“I been lookin' everywhere, couldn't find a thing to eat. So I came here. Tenk says you're one of the good ones.” How did he/it get here? I still hadn't caught on to the idea of magic portals.

“I'll take you back,” I offered. The rabbit nodded and flew over to me, nestling itself in my arms and as tired as I was, I carried him back to Tenkita's room.

She opened the door on the first knock and her lined features lit up with delight. “There you are,” she trilled to the bunny. “Thanks, Bill. I owe you one.” And with that, the door closed softly and I went back to my own room.

Oriana's words came back to me as I stripped off my clothes. “
You did a good job…stood your ground.”
Good job? Yeah, even though I'd been scared, I didn't back down. Guess I had done okay.

* * *

The next day, tired as I was after the previous evening's adventures, I still had to go to work and did my usual six-plus hours in the cafeteria. Good news on that front and then Oriana came up to me as I was leaving the Commissary.

“Doing anything special?”

“No, I'm off, but I've got Tower ops to study….”

“I can teach you,” she interrupted, and suddenly I had a tour guide. Along the way, she filled me in on the details and we saw a few people I knew. Oriana just smirked a little when I mentioned that the two of us going out together seemed a bit out of the ordinary. “Nothing wrong with it,” she stated. “You and I make a good team. You proved that last night. It's all good, you and me.”

I asked her if she liked her job. “It's not like work, more like fun'n'games,” she replied. “I patrol the planet and keep it safe just like everyone else. I do what I gotta do, kick a few bad guys' cans and then I do my own thing; no one bothers me.” It was funny: I was so busy looking at her that I hadn't paid any attention to how she spoke. I thought she was in her early twenties. Actually, she sounded more like a young teenager. Like me.

“Doesn't Avenger get angry when you go your own way?” I began. “I don't wanna pry, but it seems you're pretty independent. Not that it's bad or anything,” I added hastily.

She looked at me blankly for a second and then got a knowing look on her face. “Oh, that?” she asked. “Yeah, well, he gets all bent when I don't follow the play book. I do what I have to do, then do what I want. No biggie. He says I'm being stubborn.”

“Are you?”

She smiled impishly at me. “Maybe I am.”

“What's the deal here?” I knew I'd probably screwed it up by asking her, but I had to know. Even with all the time we'd been spending together I was still too dense to figure out just why she liked me.

“Deal—you mean us?” I nodded. We were walking past the portholes, and the stars were shining their eternal light at us. She suddenly stopped and then looked me squarely in the eye.

“Alright, I'll spell it out for you: You're different from all the other guys and I like that difference. I respect you for doing what you do. The food you make is great and everyone else says so, too. You don't think you're better or worse than the others on board and you don't play favorites. That's how I operate, too.” She paused for a second and her hand came up to touch my face. “And on a personal level, we're more than just friends. I think you know that and I like being with you and no one else. End of story. Don't ask if you already know the answer, 'kay?”

Yeah, okay. “What's next?”

“Combat training,” she grinned.
I was still wasted from the night before and she wanted to do
this? “Crazyman's been teaching you boxing, but you're gonna need a lot more if y‘wanna hang with the tough crowd.”

We went to the gym area and she taught me the basics of martial arts for an hour.

Then she spent the next forty minutes kicking my ass. After that, Crazyman came in and kicked it some more. And after
that
, I went to my room and collapsed into bed.

* * *

Waking up at 4 in the a.m., it was quiet outside. No bells, no sounds of people snoring, in fact, no sounds at all. I saw in the dim light of the porthole that an envelope had been placed on my nightstand. Opening it, I read:

How in the world had he gotten into my room so quietly?
That little slot by the intercom was a mail slot. And all this time I never knew
. Grabbing a quick shower and shave, I headed up top, and found my boss in the Justice Room, his eyes glued to the console. He spoke without looking up. As usual, his voice was flat, hard-edged. He wasn't really angry; it was more like a parent scolding a wayward child.