X-Men: The Last Stand (9 page)

The president nodded, choosing his words very carefully.

“Yes, I do. That’s precisely why we need some of your ‘diplomacy’ now.”

Hank closed his eyes, his inner child hoping against hope that this was merely some wild flight of fancy, and that when he opened them again he’d be back in his old room at Xavier’s, young and carefree, with no thoughts for the day ahead other than charming the daylights out of Jean and teaching Ororo how to slow-dance.

And then came a darker image, of a movie he’d watched far too often, one to complement the books and files he’d committed to memory while researching his first doctoral thesis, which hadn’t been on medicine of any kind, but history. In 1942, there’d been a conference in Wannsee Villa, a resort outside Berlin, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, who’d go down in history as “Hangman Heydrich” (his fellow Nazis called him “the Blond Butcher”). He was then Deputy Reichsführer, a handsome, powerfully commanding presence who everyone assumed would claim the leadership of the Third Reich if and when Hitler passed from the scene. He’d gathered the top bureaucrats in the Reich, from all the key departments of state, and in a meeting that lasted ninety minutes, they’d resolved the “Jewish question” in Europe. In terms both barbaric in their racial virulence and damnably chilling in their institutional banality, these men signed the death warrant of millions.

One or two among them weren’t comfortable with the idea, one may have vaguely considered opposing it, but in the end the vote was unanimous. The choice was stark and terrible: consign the Jews to their fate, or share it.

A part of Hank knew there was no comparison between that room and this. None of the men and women around this table considered themselves bigots, or monsters—if anything, far too many people still considered the likes of
Hank
the true monsters—but neither then did the men at Wannsee. They were simply trying to deal once and for all with a perceived threat to the survival of their country, their culture, their race.

And for the first time in his adult life, he found himself facing what had previously been utterly unthinkable, alien to everything he’d been taught and believed—that Magneto, who’d been a victim of the decision made that day at Wannsee, who’d grown to manhood in the most terrible of those death camps, Auschwitz, might actually be right.

“Power corrupts,” Charles Xavier told his ethics class, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a lesson every one of us must learn and live. Why? Because we are mutants.

“Will it be for the greater good,” he continued, “or personal, destructive, and tyrannical? This is a question we must all ask ourselves. Why? Because we are mutants.”

Kitty answered him with a sigh and briefly considered relaxing her hold on her power, just for a heartbeat, her phased form remaining at rest while the Earth continued merrily spinning on its axis. Just that little burst would put her outside the building. If she held her breath for a couple of minutes, she could be miles away.

It was tempting, but it would be wrong. Like it or not, responsibility had become her second nature. She had Xavier to thank for that.

“Riiight,” she agreed. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Xavier shook his head. He didn’t like it when she was intellectually lazy.

“Kitty, that’s not an argument, it’s a cliché and a generalization. And like all generalizations, it’s only partly true. Unfortunately, students”—he expanded the colloquy to embrace the entire class—“there are no absolutes when it comes to questions of ethics. For psychics, such as myself…” As he said this, Kitty felt his thoughts jump into her mind:
and as well for those who can walk through walls.
She got the message, sitting straight up while her cheeks flushed tomato scarlet, pursing her lips in embarrassment at being busted. Xavier continued, “…this presents a particular problem. When is it acceptable to use our powers and when do we cross that invisible line that turns us into tyrants over our fellow men?”

“Professor,” Kitty countered, seizing the opening with a question that was actually pertinent, yet also just that faintest bit naughty, “if the line is invisible, how do we know when we’ve crossed it?”

Some of the others grinned, and even Xavier permitted himself an itsy-bitsy quirk of the lips that might be interpreted as a smile. His game of choice had always been chess, but Kitty’s was tennis, and she served to win.

Behind the professor, a flat-screen display revealed a hospital room, together with a legend that identified the source as the Muir Isle Research Facility, Scotland. It was an isolation cubicle, marked with the international biohazard trefoil and an
M
stamped in the middle to indicate mutant biohazard. A man lay on the single bed, clearly not in the best of health. Beside him stood a woman, Dr. Moira MacTaggart, old friend of Xavier’s, a former lover, and partner in many of his current researches.

“This case was forwarded to me by a colleague, Dr. MacTaggart.”

Everyone took notes. Kitty couldn’t help sneaking an envious peek over at Weezie, who was merely running a pair of fingertips along each line of her notebook page. In their wake, every word Xavier spoke was transcribed automatically from her ear to the page. Although it seemed to be going smoothly now, it wasn’t always as easy as that; when she got distracted, Weezie’s transcription power tapped into her thoughts and her notes became a stream-of-consciousness exercise that put Joyce’s
Finnegans Wake
to shame. Then, of course, it was all hands to the rescue among her best friends at school, Kitty included, to try to separate out what was
supposed
to be there. This morning, though, she looked totally on track.

Dr. MacTaggart was speaking, the screen obligingly providing subtitles for those who found her Highland accent a bit hard to fathom.

“The man you see here,” she said, indicating her patient, “was born with no higher-level brain functions. His organs and nervous system function normally, but he has no consciousness to speak of. That has been confirmed both by the most comprehensive medical scans available to us, and telepathic examination as well.”

Xavier paused the transmission.

“What if,” he asked the class, “we could transfer the consciousness of one person, say a father of four with terminal cancer, into the body of this man?”

Kitty couldn’t help muttering, “Sounds like someone wants to play God.”

Weezie giggled.

Xavier ignored them both.

“How are we to…”

He paused, looking off to the side for just a moment, then tried to move on.

“How are we to decide what is within the range of ethical behavior and what is…”

His voice trailed off and this time he wasn’t the only person to look out the window. When class began it had been a bright, sunny afternoon; now it was completely overcast, dark with clouds that were growing thicker and angrier by the moment.

“We’ll continue tomorrow,” Xavier announced suddenly, to the surprise of very few. You didn’t have to be a student at Xavier’s very long to figure out what moments like this were all about. “Class is dismissed.”

Charles tried reaching her telepathically as he rolled his wheelchair through the halls, but as was usually the case when her powers were this active, there was so much charged electrical energy coursing through her system that it coated her mind with a sleet storm of psychic static. Even the fleeting contact necessary to determine her location threatened a nasty headache.

By the time he left the shelter of the doorway, wind was whipping enthusiastically across the Great Lawn and the scattered figures of students were racing for cover. He could taste the ozone in the air; it made his skin crawl.

The cause of the sudden weather change stood alone, staring off over the trees, so lost in thought she had no idea what was happening around her.

“Ororo,” Xavier called quietly, when he’d approached close enough for her to hear him and not be startled. Taking Storm by surprise at moments like this, he risked a close encounter with one of her lightning bolts. Not a happy experience. “The forecast was for
sunny
skies.”

She blinked, pulling back to herself, reintegrating both halves of her mind. Storm glanced upwards, her shoulders twitching with the sudden realization of what she’d unwittingly done.

“Oh,” she said, and then, underneath her breath,
“Shit.”
And finally, “I’m sorry.”

She turned to face him, a courtesy, acknowledgment that movement wasn’t easy for him. Her eyes had turned as silver as her hair, no sign of iris or pupil, indicating that her power was under her active control.

As smoothly as it had arrived, but far more quickly, the supercell above the mansion went away, restoring the lovely day that had been before.

“I needn’t be a psychic to see that something’s bothering you,” he said.

There was a stone bench nearby, and she sat down so they could converse more as equals.

“In the village where I grew up,” she said, referring to the wilds of northern Kenya, among the Masai, although Ororo herself was no part of that tribe, “when droughts were at their worst, I brought the rain. My powers were seen as a gift.”

“As I remember, they were worshipped.”

There was much left unsaid between them, although Charles knew the story. Ororo’d had no one to teach her, and she’d learned the use and extent—and the price—of her abilities the hard way, with the toll exacted on the very people she sought to help. She’d had to learn through experience that when she generated rain in one place, she ran the risk of taking it from somewhere else; a drought easily ended might as a consequence
trigger
one elsewhere, and ultimately do far more harm than good. Such a harsh lesson for such a young child!

“Yes, they were.” Unspoken:
and so was
I. “And yet, here, Charles, in what calls itself the most advanced and enlightened society on the planet, ‘home of the brave, land of the
free
’”—she’d clearly reversed the order deliberately—“we keep our gifts a secret.”

“Why don’t we go inside?” Xavier suggested.

She nodded, stood and followed, and both of them noticed—far off in the distance—the faintest ripple of thunder across a clear and cloudless sky.

“Magneto’s a fugitive,” she said as they crossed the threshold into the main foyer. “We have a mutant in the cabinet, a president who campaigned on mutant understanding and tolerance—so why are we still hiding?”

“We are
not
hiding.”

“Professor,” Ororo objected, “we live behind stone walls, we keep our true identities a secret!”

“As a precaution, Ororo. I have to protect my students.” Unspoken, reflexive, came another thought from Ororo:
“Protect them” from
what
? Why must we be so
afraid
?
“You know that.”

She looked at a couple of passing students, then back at her mentor and friend.

“Charles,” she said, “we can’t be students forever.”
We have to learn
—
we have to be
trusted—
to protect ourselves.

“Ororo, I haven’t thought of you as my ‘student’ for years. In fact…”

They reached his office.

“…I’ve been considering that you might take my place someday.”

Storm wondered if she had heard him correctly.

“But I thought Scott…”

Xavier shook his head. “Scott has taken Jean’s death so hard.” His thoughts now came through to Ororo as plain as if he were speaking aloud:
Some are tempered by adversity, others are broken, no matter how much we may wish otherwise. Time has not healed this wound. Despite
all
our efforts, it’s as though Scott himself had died with her.

“As for Logan”—and they both smiled, simpatico in both their affection for the man and their mutual awareness of his shortcomings—“well, Logan is a loner. He has neither interest nor real aptitude, not for this.”

Having nothing to say, Ororo kept silent.

“Things
are
better out there, Ororo—and certainly much better by far in America than in other parts of the globe. But you of all people should know how fast the weather changes.” He offered a playful grin and surprised her with his next comment. “What’s that Mel Brooks line, from
The Twelve Chairs
? ‘Hope for the best, expect the worst.’”