52 - The Novel
LIKE HONEY. HISTORY’S FERTILE GROUND. THIS YEAR, LIKE WONDERFUL, WET CEMENT. JUST WAITING TO BE MOLDED INTO SHAPE ..."
Waverider strained against the crackling energy bands. The robot's new armaments had caught him off guard. To his knowledge, Skeets had never possessed such weaponry before.
“when is rip hunter?” Skeets demanded, “tell me now dr you
WILL END UP LIKE THE TIME COMMANDER AND CLOCK QUEEN."
Both chrononauts had recently been erased from history, but Waverider refused to be intimidated. Now that the final confrontation was upon him, he resolved not to cower in fear any longer. "Rip Hunter has survived the onslaughts of Per Degaton and the Lord of Time." He sneered at his cybernetic captor. "A security robot from the future has no chance."
“RIP HUNTER MAY BE THE PIONEER AND INVENTOR OF TIME-
travel,” Skeets responded, “but his primitive devices and weapons
ARE STICKS AND STONES COMPARED TO MY TWENTY-FIFTH-CENTURY TECHNOLOGY.”
"And yet you still can't find him." Waverider enjoyed a smile at the robot's expense. "Want to know why?" He glared defiantly at Skeets. "Rip Hunter spent his entire life preparing for the kind of adversaries a time-traveler would face. You can threaten to go back in time and kill him in his crib all you want... but you can't! Rip's true name is a secret. Where and when he was bom and raised is a mystery. And they're secrets even I don't know."
Skeets zoomed in closer, until he was only inches away from Waverider's face. Matthew Ryder squirmed against his bonds in frustration; the robot was close enough to tear apart if he could just get his hands free! But the energy shackles refused to release him.
“YOU TALK ABOUT HISTORY. TELL ME, LINEAR MAN. DO YOU KNOW
mine?” An array of wriggling metal probes sprouted from hidden orifices in Skeets' gleaming carapace. Electrodes and laser scalpels sparked at the ends of the wiry probes as they extended toward Waverider's captive form, “do you
KNOW WHERE THE GOLDEN METAL THAT MAKES MY BODY IMPERVIOUS TO THE RAVAGES OF TIME COMES FROM? DO YOU KNOW FROM WHOSE CORPSE IT WAS BURNED OFF, AFTER BEING DISCOVERED IN A BURIED RUIN FIVE HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW?”
Waverider gulped involuntarily. If what the robot was implying was true, then he was about to suffer the fate feared most by those who traverse the timeways: murder by paradox.
A burst of searing energy tore him apart. Molten gold splattered across the face of Felix the Cat. Waverider died screaming.
Time of death: 5:25.20 a.m.
THE HIMALAYAS.
Time stood still in Nanda Parbat. The remote mountain village was cut off from the world of clocks and calendars by sky-high peaks and vast glacial drifts. A Buddhist temple overlooked a small enclave of thatch-roofed huts known as ghars. Wooly yaks were tethered outside the huts. Prayer flags fluttered in the alpine breeze, which carried the chiming of wind bells down from the looming pagoda-style temple. Vic claimed that Nanda Parbat was the real-life inspiration for the fictional Shangri-La. So far, Renee wasn't finding it much of a paradise.
She threw a punch at Richard Dragon, who effortlessly evaded the blow, then flipped her head over heels onto the frosted floor of a spacious ice cavern. The curved walls of the grotto shone like polished glass, so that Renee saw her own reflection every way she looked. Dozens of mirror images, some more distorted than others, captured her embarrassment as she landed hard upon the packed snow and ice. "Oomph!" she grunted, then swore profanely.
Her self-appointed teacher was unfazed by her colorful invective. Richard stood barefoot upon the snow, clad only in a dark T-shirt and a pair of loose karate pants. A brownish red beard obscured his stoic expression. "You must learn to let go," he advised her.
"How the hell do I do that?" She rose painfully to her feet. Despite the winter chill, perspiration soaked through her soiled tank-top and sweat pants. Her knuckles were wrapped like a boxer's. Her feet were bare. Breathing hard, she caught another glimpse of her reflection in an angled curtain of ice. No surprise, she looked just as tired and pissed off as she felt. Kahndaq had been a breeze compared to this.
"Acceptance," Richard answered. "Cherish it. The cold, the pain, the frustration, the heartache." His muscular arms were crossed atop his chest. His voice was calm, but stern. "Only when you want it to stay, will you learn to release it."
She took out her hostility on the ice sheet, smashing it with her fist. Her reflection shattered into dozens of glittering translucent shards. Blood seeped through the bandages over her knuckles. "If I cherish it, I won't want it to leave."
Flawless logic, she thought, but Richard dismissed it with a shrug. "Someone else once said the same thing." She assumed he was talking about Vic. "I'll tell you what I told him. Nobody said this is easy."
Tell me about it, she thought. Not for the first time, she wondered what she was doing here, going through all this kung fu crap, while Intergang was up to no good back home. It came as a shock to realize that she hadn't set foot in
Gotham for at least three months. Whose idea was this anyway? she asked herself. Oh yeah. Vic's.
Having evidently decided that he'd humiliated her enough for one afternoon, Richard wrapped up their training session. Renee took a moment to cool down, then put on a turtleneck sweater, her parka, boots, and gloves. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag before exiting the cavern to head back toward the ghar she now shared with Vic and the others. A pair of all-seeing eyes was painted on the whitewashed walls of the hut. She scowled at the unblinking eyes.
What are you looking at?
Flickering candles lit the murky interior of the hut. Incense competed with the smoke from her cigarette. The stone floor was sticky from spilled yak butter. As usual, she found Tot hunched over a rickety wooden table, poring over the Book of Crime. Reference books were stacked on the floor beside him. His brow furrowed as he scribbled notes onto a thick pad of paper. According to the old professor, the book was a bible of sorts, the foundation of a whole religion based on some twisted theology of crime. The massive tome, which Vic had stolen from that underground temple in Bialya, was apparently filled with prophecies, stories, and fables that preached the virtues of rape, murder, extortion, and blackmail.
Light reading, obviously.
Looking out for Vic, she found him laid out atop a wooden bench, surrounded by scented candles and incense burners. A tray of used acupuncture needles rested at the foot of the bench. He sat up to greet her, only to be stricken by a sudden coughing fit that caused him to double over. Renee flinched at the hacking noises coming from his chest, which sounded like he was coughing his lungs out.
He'd been doing that a lot lately. It had started right after they had gotten here. Vic said that it was the altitude, that he was having trouble acclimating. Yeah, right, she thought skeptically. I'm the pack-a-day smoker, but he's having trouble acclimating.
Over the last week, Richard had made him tea, treating him with acupuncture and pressure points, while Tot had fed him the better part of a pharmacy in pills.. Sometimes she caught the men whispering conspiratorially, shutting up whenever she came within earshot. Renee didn't have to be an ex-detective to figure out what was up.
Vic was sick ., . and he wasn't getting any better.
Hoiv long has he been fighting this? she wondered. Maybe he had been sick for awhile and she had just been too wrapped up in herself to notice. She finished up her cigarette, then ground it beneath her heel. Sounds like me.
The coughing fit finally subsided. Looking up from the floor, Vic spotted her worried expression. "Sounds worse than it is," he wheezed.
"I'm wondering how that's possible." Fishing her last pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, she eyed him suspiciously. "When did you quit?"
He cracked a pained smile. "Not soon enough."
An overwhelming wave of grief rushed over her. Not another partner, she anguished. Not again! The foil pack slipped from her fingers. She felt numb all over.
"How long have you known?" she asked him.
r />
His face was noticeably more gaunt than just a week ago. "About seven months."
Since before the Question first invaded her bedroom, in other words. "How long do you have?"
"Not long." He watched her closely, like she was the one he should be worried about. "Tot says it's metastasized."
"Why me?" Renee buried her face in her hands. Of all people to waste his last months on Earth on ... "Eight billion people in the world. Why me?"
He gave her a cryptic smile. "That's the Question, isn't it?"
Perhaps to give Renee a chance to process what he had just told her, Vic got off the bench and walked over to where Tot was working. Isis' magical red rose, still fresh and fragrant even after a week, rested in a vase upon the table. Vic peered over Tot's shoulder at the obscene bible. "How's it going?" he asked.
The old man cleared his throat and read aloud from the open volume. " 'The Eighteenth beyond the calling of all saints, sending his Apostle to the land where dwells the lambs of the wise and the foolish .."
"That a literal place?" Vic asked.
Tot nodded. "There was a village in Nottinghamshire, circa 1080 or so, known for its villagers both wise and foolish." His pedantic tone betrayed his academic roots. "The village was called Gatham in Old English. It's where we get the word Gotham."
Renee's ear perked up at the mention of her hometown. She wandered over to join the two men. Is this why Intergang's so interested in Gotham?
"There's more," Tot said, squinting at the text through his spectacles. "Take a look. 'Absent its Knight-Protector, the Apostle stakes his bloody claim, devouring the heart of the twice-named daughter of Cain.' " Removing his glasses, he chewed thoughtfully upon the earpiece. "Everything points to this being a significant passage. The illustration, the scansion of 'claim' and 'Cain.' "
"As in 'and Abel'?" Vic inquired.
"Indeed," Tot confirmed. "Cain is venerated throughout the text as the bringer of all crime, including the 'most sacred' one, that of murder."
Sick, Renee thought. She leaned forward to get a better look at the pages in question. The bizarre hieroglyphics bore no resemblance to any language she was familiar with, so her eyes gravitated toward the grisly drawing that took up much of the left page. An intricate woodcut, which resembled something out of Dante's Inferno, depicted a large, brutish demon ripping the heart from the bloody breast of a swooning female angel.
"Lovely," she muttered.
Something about the illustration, besides the obvious, disturbed her. A chill ran down her spine as she examined the murdered angel, whose scalloped wings struck her as oddly batlike. The bloody smear on the angel's chest had a familiar look to it, like something Renee had seen back in ...
"Gotham." She stood up straight, her eyes wide with horror. "Oh no ... no ..."
Vic noticed her reaction. "Easy, Renee. What's—?"
"I've got to get a phone," she blurted. "I have to call home!"
Vic shook his head, still not understanding what was at stake. "There is no phone, Renee. This is Nanda Parbat. Messages come via dreams and telepathy."
Was he joking? Renee didn't have time to find out. "A satellite phone, then. Anything!" Locating her duffel bag, she started throwing her laundry into it. The Intergang ray gun weighed down the bottom of the bag. "We have to warn her!"
"Who?" Vic stared at her in utter confusion. Tot looked equally baffled. "You're not making sense."
"Look at the damn book!" she said impatiently. "Look at the illustration." The ghastly image, of the leering demon ripping out the angel's heart, was burned into her brain. "It's not 'Cain,' Charlie. It's 'Kane,' the daughter of Kane."
Katherine Kane.
Batwoman.
WEEK 28
GOTHAM CITY
For the first time in months, ever since the police gave up trying to summon the Dark Knight, the Bat-Signal shone in the night sky above the city The glowing symbol didn't look quite the same as the one Gothamites had once grown accustomed to, though. The spotlight had a slightly more yellowish tint, while the bat-winged silhouette at the center of the luminous orb looked crude around the edges, like an amateur's copy of the original symbol. Renee thought it was obvious that it wasn't the real thing. Hey, I did my best, she thought.
"This is not going to work, Charlie." She squatted on top of her partner's beaten-up old Vanagon while pointing their handmade Bat-Signal up at the sky. The makeshift emblem was glued to the lens of a modified halogen flashlight.
"It'll work, Renee." The Question leaned against the side of the van, reading the Gotham Gazette. The front page headline read, "G.C.P.D. UNPREPARED FOR SUDDEN WAVE OF GANG VIOLENCE." His lack of a face did not seem to impede his reading. "That lamp emits over eleven million candela of light/' He casually flipped the page. "You're just nervous because you haven't seen her in months."
It was a week before Thanksgiving, and Gotham was much colder than it had been when she and Vic had left the city three and a half months ago. The van was parked on the fringe of Robinson Park, not far from where they had met with Kate way back in July. The park's lush green foliage was all gone now, replaced by skeletal trees whose bare branches extended out over the curb. A winter coat and gloves only partly shielded Renee from the cold November wind. She shivered atop the van, momentarily pining for the dry heat of the Middle East. Her breath misted before her lips.
"I'm nervous because we're throwing a Bat-Signal around in Gotham City." She would have killed for a cigarette, but had gone cold turkey since finding out about Vic. The nicotine craving wasn't helping her mood any. "A guaranteed way to bring half the G.C.P.D. and all the costumed freaks running."
He flipped through his newspaper. "You got another way to reach her?"
A racking cough shook his body. Renee flinched at the ugly sound, which bluntly reminded her that he was dying. The heavy sweater he was wearing under his trench coat helped to disguise how much weight he had lost, but the frequent coughs gave him away. He shouldn't even be here, she thought guiltily. He should be with his friends in Nanda Parbat, not zvith me, trying to save someone he doesn't know from something we're not sure will happen.
"None of the other ways worked, and you know it." She muttered under her breath. "Bet the damn butler never even told her I called."
"Moan, moan, moan," Vic mocked her.
Renee scowled at the sky. "Oh, bite me."
"He can't," a husky voice intruded. "He doesn't have a mouth."
. Without warning, Batwoman dropped from an overhanging tree branch onto the roof of the van. Startled, Renee almost dropped the flashlight. Batwoman glared angrily at the improvised signal. "Now turn that thing off."
Renee switched off the lamp. "We've been trying to reach you." .
"Congratulations," Batwoman said brusquely. Renee recognized the pissed-off tone of Kate's voice as the masked woman jumped down onto the pavement beside the Question. She turned to leave. "Good-bye."
Vic sighed theatrically. "Nobody has any curiosity these days. You notice that?" He coughed hoarsely into his glove, somewhat spoiling the moment. "She doesn't even want to know why we've gone to this trouble."
"It's too bad, really." Renee nimbly joined him on the ground. "We might have important information. Maybe about Intergang."
"Or how she's prophesied to have her heart ripped out a week from now," Vic added.
That got her attention. Her cape swirled behind her as Batwoman turned around and stalked back to them. "Intergang I already know about," she said. "Let's hear that second part."
"Picture's worth a thousand words." Vic reached beneath his coat and drew out a Xerox of the gruesome illustration they had discovered in Nanda Parbat. As always, Renee's skin crawled at the sight of the bloodthirsty demon tearing a bat-winged angel's heart from her breast. The more she looked at the grisly woodcut, the more the female victim seemed to resemble Kate in costume. She could practically hear the murdered angel's scream. ,
"It's taken from something called the Book of C
rimeshe explained as Vic handed the photocopy to Batwoman. "And I'm pretty damn sure that's supposed to be you dying in that picture...
WEEK 29
GOTHAM CITY
"So much for your prophesy!" Batwoman declared as she rammed her heel down the throat of a frog-faced beast-man. Her gloved hand simultaneously grabbed onto the collar of a fleeing hoodlum. The batrachian mutant choked on her boot, its slimy tail lashing about wildly. The captured hood yelped in alarm.
Looks like I made it-to the church on time, Batwoman thought.
The deconsecrated cathedral was tucked away in a squalid slum not far from Crime Alley. Declining attendance, as well as a well-publicized choirboy scandal, had forced its closing several years previously. According to her sources, Intergang's blasphemous Church of Crime had moved in to fill the void left behind by the Gothic cathedral's previous congregation. Stone ribs supported the vaulted ceiling. Moonlight filtered through cracked stained glass windows. A pitcher of fresh blood rested upon the altar.
"Awwk!" the frog-man croaked as Batwoman sprang off him, while simultaneously flipping the human gangster over her shoulder. The thug hit the stone floor with a satisfying thimk. Several of his fellow cultists had already felt the female vigilante's fury. Their robed bodies were strewn across the pews and balconies of the desecrated church. Batwoman smiled tightly. Thanks to her, tonight's midnight service was turning into a rout. She was wiping the floor with the various monsters and mobsters. Her flying fists demonstrated exactly what she thought of this so-called religion and its prophecies.
"I've always felt that people should take responsibility for their actions," she lectured her defeated foes. Pausing in the center of the nave, she looked about for a fresh opponent. "Not excuse them by denying that there was any choice in the matter."
"Then you are a fool," a gruff voice said behind her. "Because the Word will not be denied."
She spun around to see Bruno Mannheim emerge from a shadowy nook. He squeezed the trigger of a futuristic handgun and a blast of searing energy dropped her to the floor. Only the triple-weave Kevlar in her uniform saved her from a nasty third-degree burn. Gasping, she sprawled facedown upon the cold stone tiles while Mannheim came up behind her. He savagely yanked on her flowing red hair, lifting her face from the floor. Batwoman grunted in pain.