Batman 4 - Batman & Robin (18 page)

T
he night before, at the tunnel run, Barbara had been exhilarated, flushed with victory. Though she’d won this race as well, her feelings at the moment were completely different.

“. . . eighteen-fifty, nineteen hundred, nineteen-fifty, two thousand,” said Banker. As Spike looked on, he handed her the last of the crumpled fifty-dollar bills. “Don’t spend it all in one place, girlfriend.”

Unfortunately, she thought, she would have to do just that. Turning, she saw that Dick had righted his bike and was waiting for her across the street. With a sigh of resignation, she approached him.

“I could have made it,” Barbara told him, though she wasn’t sure she believed it herself. “I didn’t need your help, you know.”

He shrugged carelessly. “Whatever you say, lady. It’s all in a day’s work for me.”

She offered Dick her winnings. “Here. This is a down payment on the bike I lost. I’ll get you the rest.”

Dick looked at the money, then shook his head. “Nah. Keep it.”

Barbara frowned. “Of course. Dick Grayson, ward of the fabulously wealthy Bruce Wayne. Why would you need a few hundred dollars? You probably tip that much at lunch.”

“Hey,” said Dick, holding his hands out in an appeal for reason, “what’s your problem? I didn’t bite you, I saved your life.”

She had to admit he had a point. “All right. My apologies. I guess the truth is I’m not comfortable with the idle rich. Even when they try to act like heroes.”

He absorbed that, then patted the back of his seat. “Well, you better get comfortable real fast, sister. ’Cause we’ve only got one bike between us now, and it’s a long walk home.”

Needless to say, she chose the ride. It wasn’t so bad, either. Dick knew Gotham a lot better than she did, and he took them down a couple of scenic routes she would otherwise have missed.

By the time they got back to Wayne Manor, she felt more gratitude than resentment. And more relief than embarrassment.

When they reached the garage, they dismounted. “So what’s this Three-Jump stuff?” Dick asked.

“A race I got into in London,” she explained. “It’s a long story.”

He eyed her. “So who am I talking to? Ms. Oxbridge or Three-Jump? Who are you really?”

“Both,” she said. “Neither. I don’t really know.”

A funny expression came over Dick’s face. “You’d be amazed at just how common that is around here.”

“I started racing after my parents died,” Barbara explained, entirely without provocation. She believed she owed him that. “There was something about the speed, the danger, that took me out of myself—that made the hurt go away for a while.”

He looked at her, declining to comment.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

Dick quirked a sad, little smile. “You’d be surprised.”

Encouraged, she went on. “Street racing isn’t an acceptable major at Oxbridge. They kicked me out. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve won enough money to do what I’ve always dreamed.”

He regarded her narrow-eyed. “Just don’t tell me you’re hoping to run away and join the circus.”

Barbara left the garage and headed for the entrance to the house. Dick walked along with her.

“Uncle Alfred has supported me my whole life,” she said. “Given me everything I needed. Now I’m going to pay him back. I’m going to liberate him from his dismal life of servitude.”

Dick laughed. “What are you talking about?” Suddenly, he seemed like the rich boy again.

She felt herself growing indignant. “Servants, masters . . . it’s ridiculous,” she told him. “Alfred is the sweetest, most noble man alive, and he’s subjugated all his life and dreams to someone else.”

As they walked into the darkened house, her companion shook his head. “Alfred and Bruce aren’t like that. They’re more like family.”

Barbara made a sound of disdain. “Paying someone to prepare your meals and do your laundry and clean your dishes, to wait on you hand and foot—you call that family?”

Dick shrugged. “Alfred’s happy here.”

“Happy.” She shook her head bitterly. “You honestly don’t know, do you? You can’t even see what’s in front of your eyes?”

They had reached the stairway. Dick stared at her, clearly at a loss.

“Look at his skin,” said Barbara. “At how he’s hiding the pain all the time. Can’t you see it? Alfred’s
sick.”

Dick’s brow creased, but he didn’t say anything. He just stood there, absorbing what was obviously a revelation to him.

Leaving him that way, she ran up the stairs.

Dick stared after Barbara as she took the stairs two at a time.
Alfred,
he thought . . .
sick
? It didn’t seem to want to sink in.

“Alfred’s not sick.”

He whirled and saw it was Bruce who had spoken. The older man was standing in the shadows beside the stairs. Emerging from the darkness, he sat down on the lowest step.

“He’s not?” Dick said hopefully.

Bruce shook his head. “No. He’s dying.” A pause. “And I can’t seem to deal with it.”

The boy felt a wave of emotion coming on. He swallowed it back. “But he never said a word—”

“You know Alfred. He’d never say anything. But I can tell.” Bruce’s eyes glinted in the darkness, reflecting some faraway light. “Until you came along, Alfred was the only family I ever had. I don’t know how I would have survived without him. He saved my life, Dick. And I never told him.”

Dick could feel the weight on Bruce’s shoulders as if it were on his own. “Talk to him,” he advised. “Tell Alfred how you feel. There’s nothing worse than losing someone without . . .”

He had to stop. There was a lump in his throat.

“. . . without telling them how you feel,” he got out.

For what seemed like a long time, Bruce sat there at the bottom of the steps, looking more like a little boy than the larger-than-life Batman, protector of Gotham.

“I know,” he said at last.

Mr. Freeze knelt in his cell, careful to remain within the parameters of the antithermic field that had been specially designed for him, and crafted a tiny ice sculpture of his wife. Lifting the miniature gearworks from an alarm clock on the floor beside him, he placed the ice statuette on top of it.

Then he flicked a switch and watched the sculpture begin to turn.

That’s when he heard the sound of footsteps down the hall. Quickly, he covered the ice figure with a drinking glass.

“Hey, Icehead!” shouted a guard as he poked his head into view. “Want a drink?” He produced a water pitcher and a cup. “Incoming.”

Laughing, the guard tossed a cupful of water at Freeze. Predictably, the liquid turned to a hunk of snow as it crossed the energy field—and hit the prisoner in the face.

Dispassionately, Freeze gathered the frost and used it to add a detail to the sculpture. He glanced at the guard.

“Your death will be a slow one,” he said flatly.

“Yeah. And the Knights’ll win the World Series. Dream on, Snowflake.”

A tone sounded. The guard picked up his intercom earphone and plugged it in. Listening for a beat, he walked over to a control panel set into the wall and hit a button.

“You got a visitor,” he told the prisoner. “Looks like your sister’s here to see you.”

“Sister?” echoed Freeze. He
had
no sister.

Then another guard showed up, followed by a woman in a green cloak. Freeze had seen her before, at the Flower Ball. What was her name again?

Ah yes. Poison Ivy.

Chuckie Kochman had been a guard at Arkham for nearly three years. He thought it was the greatest job in the world.

Of course, not all the other guards shared his enthusiasm. They had to watch the prisoners, make sure they were fed and clothed, and go after them when they tried to get away.

Which, for some reason, happened an awful lot.

But Chuckie’s job was different. It was up to him to keep track of the lockup where the prisoners’ personal effects were kept.

In the lockup, it seemed like every day was Halloween. Hanging on this rack were the Mad Hatter’s threads. Hanging there was the Riddler’s outfit, somewhere else the Scarecrow’s.

And in another place, the latest entry—the big, silver playsuit worn by the esteemed Mr. Freeze.

Like they really needed someone to guard the stuff. Like the suits were going to dust themselves off and go release the guys who used to wear them. Like Chuckie might, even once, have to turn off the TV to do something more strenuous than reach for some cheese puffs.

Speaking of which . . .

The glare of the television on his face, Chuckie reached back and grabbed another handful of puffs. He loved this show, the one where the dad was Frankenstein and the grandfather was a fat old vampire and the little boy was a werewolf in short pants.

And the dad, the Frankenstein guy, was so big and so clumsy he could break a wall just by stumbling into it.

Of course, even that guy would have had a hard time breaking into Chuckie’s lockup. The walls here in Arkham’s basement were made of concrete a foot thick. And the only window to the hallway was a little barred one, barely big enough to see through.

Chuckie tossed back the cheese puffs, then brushed off his hands. Greatest job in the world, all right.

Suddenly, something crashed through the concrete wall beside him and grabbed him by the throat. He groped for his gun, but something grabbed him by the wrist then as well.

A pair of hands. Huge, powerful hands.

As his air was cut off and his face started to swell with constricted blood, Chuckie caught a glimpse of a black leather mask and a pair of bloodshot eyes—the scariest eyes he had ever seen.

Then the hand around his throat strangled the life out of him.

Ivy attracted her share of scrutiny from the inmates as she negotiated Arkham’s infamous maximum-security corridor. There were catcalls and whistles, which was more or less what she expected.

What she didn’t expect—what she found slightly unnerving, she had to admit—were the silent cells. The ones from which all she got were furtive stares. And in one case, a smacking of the lips.

Still, she took it as a compliment. Even more so when she considered how little of her they actually saw, with her hat, her cloak, and her dark glasses concealing her charms as much as anything could.