Mercury Man (19 page)

He pointed to a display beside several piles of LP records. A kindly looking man in glasses, wearing the uniform of the American army, stood beside a slender dark-haired woman in a small print dress. “Lovely girl, Mary. Took great care of me after I got sick, but never coddled me. I miss her in every way. Thank God she died before Paul's troubles!”

Tom looked around; he felt a past world opening up to him, a world where things were simpler, more innocent. Or so it seemed.

“One more surprise,” Zak announced. “The
pièce de résistance
, you might say. Something Mary made, just for the fun of it. I keep it in the next room right through there. Let's have a look at it!”

Zak steered his chair between the artifacts and pictures, obviously heading for a broad wooden doorway at the far end of the passage. Tom and Miranda followed slowly. The old man hadn't quite reached his goal, however, when the door was flung wide open. Brakes screeching, the wheelchair stopped in its tracks. Zak cried out. Miranda held tight to Tom's hand.

A figure stood in the doorway, a tall man, lithe and muscular and somewhat larger than life. He was dressed in a red jersey — the chest emblazoned with a staff and twining snakes. A bright red hood covered his face, but his eyes, gazing at them through narrow slits, seemed to pierce them where they stood. As he stepped forward, the man's blue cape swirled behind him, and blue tights showed the powerful build of his legs, while his feet appeared to be shod in red slippers winged with gold.

It was as if the comics, the posters — and some of Tom's private dreams — had suddenly come to life.

“Mercury Man!” he cried out.

His exclamation was almost drowned out, however, by Zak Daniel's prolonged and joyful snort, a noise that seemed to express both amazement and appreciation together.

“Well, I'll be darned!” the old man bellowed. “I'll be darned three times over! That is one hell of an idea!”

Zak Daniel's laughter filled the room. Miranda ran up to the costumed figure and threw her arms around him. Tom stood in astonishment as Jack Sandalls stepped through the doorway behind Mercury Man, greeted Tom with a smile, and proceeded to introduce himself to the man in the wheelchair.

“Always wanted to meet you, Mr. Daniel,” he said. “Heard you were some kind of eccentric and thought I'd probably like you.”

“I've heard the same about you, Captain. You're a collector, I gather. What do you think of this?”

He waved his arm, indicating the displays on every side. Jack looked around and nodded in appreciation. “Yeah, I've been seeing some pretty amazing things. I didn't realize Marvin Cormer had left so much behind.”

“You haven't seen anything yet,” Zak Daniel told him.

Mercury Man pulled his hood down to reveal the face of Paul Daniel.

“Captain Sandalls has something big for us, Zak,” he told his father. “It seems the police are having second thoughts about Fabricon. Someone may be leaking stuff to them. A special squad's been watching the company and trying to gather evidence against Tarn. They may have drawn a blank so far, but they have their suspicions.”

“Wow!” Zak Daniel wheeled himself closer to his son's caped figure.

“I'd just finished my library research and my little survey of my police contacts when your son found me,” Jack added. “I was happy to give him the good news. I couldn't figure where you'd got to, Tom, but I'm glad you're here.”

“A ring brought him,” Zak explained, and winked at his granddaughter, “and I'm very glad of it! But the costume! It's an inspiration. It may be the answer! How did you think of it?”

Paul Daniel shook his head and swung his blue cloak over one shoulder. “Don't know what you're talking about, Father — although I'm beginning to guess. I was just trying on the old outfit for Captain Sandalls when you appeared. We were going to surprise you with it.”

Zak's slender body seemed to gyrate in the wheelchair. “Surprise is right! And you don't see it? It's our ticket into Fabricon! Mary, thank you! My wife Mary made it, you know. The Tom Strong outfit, too. We can use them both — that is, if Captain Sandalls — if Jack here — will allow Tom to help us. You do want to be part of this, Tom?”

Tom stepped forward. “You bet I do,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked. “What do these old costumes have to do with it? They're wonderful, of course, and I can see Mary Cormer made them with loving care, but what good are they to us? They won't scare anybody at Fabricon.”

“It's not a question of
scare
,” Zak Daniel explained. “It's a question of throwing dust in their eyes — of gaining time and opportunity. Now that we know that the police are wise to the Fabricon bunch we can take a risk to expose that gang. I've got an idea!”

“Let's hear it, then,” Paul Daniel said. “But in your bedroom and after I get this outfit off. It's getting warm in here.”

“All right. But show Tom the things in the back storeroom — the Tom Strong outfit especially. See if it fits him. We've got some planning to do before the night's over. I'll show Captain Sandalls some of our other mementos. Then we'll talk!”

Paul Daniel led Tom through the door and into the inner room. Miranda followed, smiling.

Tom looked around in amazement. If anything, this room was larger than the first one, and here too the walls were covered with posters and photographs; there were glass cases containing bits of memorabilia and boxes stacked all the way to the far end, where another broad stairwell led downward.

Yet despite its colourful exhibits, the room smelled musty and private. It seemed to Tom to be saturated with the past and with locked-up dreams.

Miranda broke in on this reflection. She pointed to a figure in the far corner, a caped model that seemed about to leap over an old pinball machine and come at them. From his grandfather's comics, Tom recognized it as a replica of Mercury Man's sidekick, Tom Strong, striking in black tights, a small black mask that gave him a somewhat roguish look, and a yellow cloak. Shiny yellow boots and a white jersey emblazoned with a red serpent that resembled a stylized bolt of lightning completed the outfit. Beside this apparition stood a somewhat larger twin, a blank-faced mannequin, bald and ridiculous, from which the Mercury Man costume had clearly just been removed.

“Miranda, leave me with Tom for a moment, will you?” Paul Daniel put his arm around his daughter. She looked happy, and Tom guessed that she was pleased to see him with her father at last.

“We'll join you after he tries on the costume,” Paul Daniel went on. He had started to strip off his own colourful outfit. “Right now we have to talk.”

Miranda slipped away and Tom began to peel off his clothes. Paul carefully removed the Tom Strong outfit from the mannequin and handed it to him, piece by piece. When he was fully dressed, Tom put on the black mask, peered at himself in the mirror, laughed, and flexed his muscles comically.

“Don't worry — it suits you fine,” Paul Daniel said. “You're a well set-up kid. But there are a couple of things I want you to consider before you do anything rash.”

They sat together on a long bench and Paul Daniel addressed Tom in his calm, slow manner.

“I'm glad Miranda got in touch with you. You can imagine what it's been like to have her shut up here so much — just because the world out there believes that I'm a criminal. A while ago Dad switched her to a private school, and we've had home lessons for her, too, but she hasn't been happy at all. She's a wonderful girl and she's going to be all right. I can see you like her and I'm glad.”

Tom took a deep breath and waited. After a brief silence, Paul Daniel continued. “When I found out you had something on Fabricon and Tarn I was ecstatic. I watched, I waited — I had to be careful, because I thought they might con you.”

“They almost did,” Tom told him. “I'm sorry.”

Paul Daniel slapped him on the shoulder. “I know. Your grandfather told me. But now you know the truth. Your grandfather's news is incredible. With that information we can go after them, and we even have some hope of sympathy from the police — so long as we don't screw things up.”

Tom nodded. Suddenly the dreary city seemed exciting, while this storeroom, with its fantastic pictures and its models, was no longer a cabinet of toys: it was the centre of action, the centre of reality.

“Inside Fabricon there are computer files that will blow their whole conspiracy. They haven't been able to clean them up because they themselves need the information. I know exactly where those files are and I intend to go after them.”

“Mr. Daniel — Zak — seems to have a plan.”

“Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I know what it involves. It probably involves you and your grandfather, for a starter.”

“We want to be part of it.”

“That's fine, but there's one other person involved. You know who I mean?”

Tom shook his head. “Miranda?” he guessed.

“I mean your mother. I saw her a couple of times while I was watching your apartment. She seems like a fine, decent woman. We have to make sure that she knows what's happening.”

Tom remembered. Tomorrow was the day of the company party. Chuck Reichert would be pitching for the supermarket softball team. She wanted Tom to be there, to be with her and with Reichert, whom she would be marrying some day.

All of a sudden Tom felt miserable again.

“Don't worry!” Paul Daniel reassured him. “I think I can make her understand. But if she has the least objection to whatever lunacy my dad's got planned, then you're gonna have to pull out of it. Agreed?”

Tom nodded his head slowly. “Agreed.”

In the middle of pulling on a T-shirt, Paul Daniel stopped, seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

“What is it?”

“One more thing. You know something about what Fabricon's doing, and eventually you'll learn more. I don't believe in breaking the law, but if you think about what they're up to, the situation changes. They really think that human beings are ultimately just flesh machines, that they can play with us and
reprogram us once they know enough about our biological makeup. Fabricon is bad enough, but when I think who they might sell their secrets to it scares the hell out of me.”

“But what exactly are they trying to do?”

“We'll talk about that later. Let's put it this way: they have a program that I find pretty terrifying.”

“You really think their program can work?”

Paul Daniel shook his head. “I believe it can, although how far they can go with it, I don't know. Nobody does. Not yet. The point is, Tom, I hate what they stand for. They have a contempt for human beings. It's never occurred to them that there's an
X
factor in everyone, something they can't touch, something that has to do with the old-fashioned word
soul
.”

“Soul?”

“Call it a kind of metaprogramming, or higher functioning, if you like. This is something you have to remember, Tom — that freedom is a very precious thing, and it depends on our ability to be ourselves, to be human in the best way we can. As far as I can see, that's where
soul
comes in.”

Paul Daniel stood up. He didn't look at Tom, but without another word he turned and walked out of the room.

Tom followed him through the corridor, past the photographs and displays, and back toward Zak Daniel's bedroom. From that direction, just then, roars of laughter sounded. His grandfather and Zak Daniel were obviously hitting it off very well.

He found them in close conversation. Zak was already tucked in bed; Jack sprawled in a chair beside him. A bottle of whiskey sat on the night table between them.

“Come and have a drink, Paul,” Zak said. “But only a small one. We want your head clear so that you can size up this plan of mine!”

The three men laughed. “We'll get sandwiches in a minute,” Zak went on. “I'm almost tempted to suggest a restaurant … haven't been out to a restaurant in five years or more. But no, we don't dare go out — we can't risk being seen together. We'll make our plans right here, and then we can go our separate ways — until D-Day, anyway.”

Miranda beckoned to Tom and he followed her slowly down the stairs. He watched her carefully as she descended in front of him. It was funny; he felt himself constantly staring at her, almost as if he was trying to memorize what she looked like. Yet every time he gazed at her (her eyes, her hair, her bare knees) he felt a pleasant shock of surprise, as if he were seeing something new and wonderful.

In the kitchen she pulled a manila folder from a pile of papers on the counter. Inside was a newspaper clipping, and when he read it Tom was astounded to find that it recorded his first-year high essay triumph. “YOUTH ADVISES ‘REACH FOR THE STARS,'” the caption read, and went on to describe how Tom had beaten out every student in the city with his eloquent prose. Just a year ago he had reread the essay and had found it ridiculously simple-minded. He would have
thrown away his copy of the frayed clipping, and the essay too, except that he knew his mother would have been horrified.

Now, with Miranda smiling at him, he was very glad to have been the author of the piece. That she had enjoyed it and kept it was almost a miracle.

Even that miracle became as nothing, however, when — without any preamble — she crossed the room to where Tom stood, took his ringed hand in hers, and squeezed it gently. He smiled — awkwardly, he felt, for she was very close — and looked into her deep blue eyes.

This is perfect
— he felt it with his mind and body together. But there was more, for, holding his fingers in a tight grasp, she said in a low, small, but very distinctive voice the single word: “Welcome.”