Mysterious Cairo (19 page)

"The only problem," Fink continued, "as I understand it, is that once I turn this belt off it will be impossible for me to start it up again. I need some specially-prepared sand and an ejection system. If you'll just show me where these are on your friend's costume, I'll probably let you live."

"Y-you expect me to aid you?"

"Oh, yes," he gleefully explained. "If you don't I'll have to hurt you. Badly. In fact, I'll even use your own belt to do it." The bubble containing Fink moved a few steps closer. "How do you suppose it will feel to have your flesh peeled off one layer at a time by your own invention? That will certainly add insult to the injury ... literally!" He began to laugh again.

Philip panicked. He stood and began to run for the door. But Fink was too fast for him. He cut Philip off before the scientist could even get out from behind the bar. Slowly, the whirling sands advanced, forcing Philip to back into the corner.

"Tell me how to replenish the device and I'll at least kill you quickly. No pain." Fink's breathing was becoming heavy, and he chuckled between words. "Tell me or I'll skin you alive."

Philip had nowhere to go. The wall of flying sand was inches from his nose. He turned his head and moaned. Terror kept any comprehensible words from his lips.

"You're making it tough on both of us," Fink intoned. "But I'll still find out how it works. I'll have to pay off some researchers, but they'll take the belt apart and analyze the sand and eventually I'll have your secrets. The only thing you gain by defying me is a slow, lingering death."

Philip whimpered again.

"This is your last chance! Tell me how it works!"

As afraid as he was of dying in so grisly and painful a fashion, something in Philip's conscience would not let him give away the last vestiges of honor.

White pain shot across Philip's face as the first grains of the shield tore through and carried away the outermost layer of his cheek. The pain focussed his chaotic thoughts of life, death, honor and .

Courage? Bravery?

Philip suddenly, and very clearly, realized that he had had those all along. He just didn't show it the same way Bob and the others did. His was the courage to follow his friends into situations he was unable to cope with because they might need his expertise, his brain. His was the honor that would not surrender to petty little men like Lester Fink, even in the face of certain death.

It dawned on Philip that he was heroic. Not because he ran around solving mysteries and fighting crimes like the others, but because he stayed in his lab and did all the technical work that made the adventuring successful.

From deep in his being a warmth spread over Philip. And with the warmth came strength and determination the likes of which he had never known. And with the strength came the realization that he had better use his vaunted intelligence and creativity to find a way out of this situation. Otherwise his new found heroism would be short lived indeed.

The second and third layers of skin were being torn away now. The pain was worse, much worse. But Philip somehow found it easier to bear.

He had to find some weapon to deflect the whirling sands. Reaching his arm out blindly, Philip grabbed the first thing his fingers touched. He brought it to his chest and prepared to press the attack with the bulk of this . seltzer bottle.

Seltzer bottle?
he thought. Through the haze of pain Philip's eyes suddenly shone with realization. He knew how to defeat this monster he had created.

Instead of swinging the bottle as a bludgeon, he pointed the nozzle at the wall of sand and pulled the trigger. Carbonated water sprayed out onto the shield, some of it even getting through to hit Lester Fink in the face. Fink sputtered to clear his nose and stepped back a few paces.

Already it was possible to see the difference in the shield. Fink's body was much easier to find in the center as wet sand fell to the floor in small clumps.

"What do you think you are doing? This isn't some slapstick routine! Give me that!" whined Fink.

"Yes," said Philip sharply. "Do have it."

He again pulled the trigger and this time emptied the bottle on the shield. Great gobs of muddy sand flew off the bubble in random directions. Now it was possible to see Fink's features through the wall. His head and shoulders were soaked through with soda water. His eyes were swollen with fury as he wiped the hair out of them.

As amusing a sight as this was, Philip had to be cautious. The shield was down to half strength, but it could still do him serious damage as well as defend Fink from a fair amount of punishment. He had to find some way to take out the rest of the field quickly before the little man remembered that he was still holding a gun.

As surreptitiously as possible, he grabbed an ice bucket from the bar and plunged it into the sink half filled with ice and its melted leftovers. He came out with a bucket filled half with water, half with frozen cubes and doused Fink with it.

The would-be villain shrieked at the temperature.

Philip quickly repeated the process twice more while Fink stood there in shock. The remnants of his once mighty shield clung to his skin and clothing in soggy patches.

"You can't do this to me!" he told Philip in his petulant whine. "This was my big break. I was finally going to be somebody. And then you go and ruin it with your seltzer and your ice water! I'll ... I'll kill you!"

The image was so comical Philip would have laughed endlessly if not for the fact that his friend lay nearby injured and perhaps dying.

He walked up to the fuming Fink and grinned toothily.

"What are you smiling about, you idiot?"

"I'm thinking about how good this is going to feel," Philip answered. Then he drew back his fist and knocked Lester Fink cold with one punch.

"Ow." On impact, Philip felt a twinge in his wrist, but he was correct. It
had
felt good anyway.

"We're going to have to work on your form," said a familiar voice from further down the bar, "but no one can argue with your results."

Philip was speechless. There stood Bob with a deep gash on the side of his head, but fully awake and not at all in immediate danger of death. He picked up a towel from the bar and pressed it over the wound.

"Good job. You can be my sidekick anytime" the costumed man said with a smile.

"Thanks all the same, but I think I'll stay in the lab. It's where I do my best work."

Bob put his arm around Philip's shoulders.

"Well, at least let me buy you a pot of Darjeeling."

"Actually" Philip said as they walked out the door, "I could rather stand an ale."

Back at The Watering Hole, I was treated to several rounds of drinks. Don't fret, Mother, only the first three were alcoholic. I was also treated to unending choruses of "We knew you could do it" and "You make a fine hero" and "Bob's damned lucky to have had a stud like you there to save his tail."

I think perhaps my friends miss the point. I always knew what was inside me. I just never assessed its value properly. And having discovered the worth of my talents, I don't intend to change my habits one whit. I'll simply appreciate them more.

Perhaps the difference between a hero and a bystander is only his feelings of self worth. His feeling that somehow, in his own meager way, he can make a difference. And so he tries. All my love, Philip

John Terra

"Two engines gone, and the third one doesn't look too healthy," Corey Jones yelled. "Fuel line's ruptured, the right wing looks like confetti, and we're plummeting like a stone." The young woman yanked back on the controls of the Ford Tri-Motor as hard as she could, hoping to pull the plane into at least a decent glide pattern.

"It's no use," she shouted to her co-pilot. "Daremo, flying through storms I can handle. A perforated plane on fire is another. Know any hi-tech flying tricks that might save our bacon?"

Her co-pilot, a Japanese man clad in black jeans, turtleneck, and leather jacket, gave a curt nod and took the controls. "I cannot perform miracles, but at least I do have a few tricks I can try. Why don't you check on our friends, advise them to strap themselves in and perhaps to make peace with their gods?"

"You just had to throw that last line in there, didn't you?" Corey barked as she left the cockpit and entered what was left of the passenger area. In the cabin, an intense-looking young man with a bowl-shaped haircut and clad in GWI Armor of God clutched his now inert electronic rosary beads and read from a Core Earth Catholic Bible.

"Marcel, we're going down fast," Corey said quickly. "Strap in and pray hard. How's Kayla doing?"

In response, the former Hospitaller gestured over his shoulder and shrugged, though his face betrayed his concern. Kayla, a muscular brunette clad in leather, rocked to and fro in her seat, her hands grasping her bare knees. "I do not like these flying machines. I do not like these flying machines," she murmured as her eyes stared at the floor.

Corey felt sorry for the Ayslish barbarian. In the few short weeks that this foursome had been working together, she had witnessed Kayla performing some truly gutsy things, including facing down a Draconis Teutonica alone and leading a charge into a group of GodLight-armed Hospitallers. But to have the barbarian put herself at the mercy of modern technology, that was another matter entirely.

"Kayla, secure yourself into your seat, the plane is going dow ... er, we are about to land in a very rough way," Corey hastily amended her words.

Salvaging as much dignity as possible, Kayla locked her steely blue eyes on Corey. "We are facing death, are we not, Corey Jones?" she asked evenly. Corey nodded, averting her eyes. "This is a pity. Death is not something I fear. I but wish that I could have had more control over how it came. Dying in a burning metal animal is not a good death."

"I ... I have to go back and see if Daremo needs some help," Corey answered, anxious to end the exchange. As she went back to the cockpit, she wondered how things could have degenerated to this point.

The Possibility Wars were only nine months old when these four unlikely people volunteered their services to NATO authorities in Italy: Corey Jones, New York correspondent for International Cable News; Daremo, a self-described "corporate troubleshooter" who had left the employ of the Kanawa Corporation; Marcel Berge, former Hospitaller for the Cyberpapacy; and Kayla, a barbarian from Aysle. The ensuing three weeks were a blur of dangerous assignments, and, though there were not many opportunities to socialize, the foursome's respect, trust, and affection for each other grew.

A few days back, fragments of a ham radio message originating from Cairo were intercepted by a NATO listening post in Sicily. Mobius' weird scientists routinely jammed radio messages, but a few words were decipherable: "Mobius ... big ... sphinx ... Sinai ... control and conquest . secret weapon . Cairo ." The words were enough justification for NATO to send Corey and her friends off to Cairo. The foursome were supposed to meet a local Storm Knight, code-named
Havoc,
at a small secret airstrip 10 miles due west of the city.

Remarkably, the flight across the Mediterranean and into the Nile storm front was uneventful. Once the plane crossed into what Corey understood was called "the Pure Zone," however, things disintegrated fast. She knew that there would be trouble when her digital watch, cassette recorder, and video camera all stopped working at the precise same moment. Marcel's cybernetic enhancements became inert, and Daremo found himself unable to recall how to achieve the proper mindset to perform his martial arts.

No sooner had the group realized these limitations, when Mobius' ground-based anti-aircraft batteries opened up on the plane. A few lucky hits and the plane was afire and .

"Going down," Daremo announced evenly, his teeth tight together. "Sorry, Corey, I tried everything I could. I managed to coax the plane into some minor glide patterns, slowing our descent, but all that it did was to delay the inevitable. A pity, too. We should be close to our landing zone."

Corey took her cockpit seat and peered out the window, trying to see through the smoke produced by the burning nose engine. "Oh, good Lord, I think I see our strip!"

Daremo squinted in the direction the newswoman was pointing. "Well, it looks long enough to be a small runway. I'll try and steer the plane towards it. Now buckle in, for whatever the end result, I can guarantee a rough landing."

"Everyone hold on back there!" Corey shouted over her shoulder, "We're about to make a real rough landing!"

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us," Marcel called back. That made Corey smile despite the circumstances. The two books that Marcel carried with him everywhere were the
Holy Bible
and the
Complete Works of William Shakespeare,
two books that Marcel felt represented the best that Core Earth had to offer. Apparently, Magna Verita never had a Shakespeare. Now, Marcel quoted The Bard every chance he got.

The dark rectangular strip loomed closer as the heat in the cockpit increased, courtesy of the fires on the overhead wing. Summoning every bit of his skill, Daremo pulled back on the stick and extended the air brake flaps.

Everyone's stomachs rose and fell as the landing gear hit the dirt. With a horrendous shriek of metal, the landing struts buckled, causing the nose of the plane to plunge into the soil. "This is no runway," Corey yelled over the roaring and grinding sounds of the plane plowing a furrow through the dirt,
"this is some farmer's field!!!"