Starfall Read online

  “This bird needs a pilot,” Professor Paradigm noted amiably. “I’ll take us home. Solara, you’re with me.”

  “Professor, I-” the man with the silver cowl began.

  “Advocate, you have temporary custody of Doctor Fid.”

  “I…uh, okay.” He frowned, looking put out. “Okay.”

  The Paragons took their seats, conversing among themselves in gentle, casual tones. They did a decent job of pretending not to keep vigilant eyes upon me.

  “You can sit next to Viking,” my temporary minder pointed. “Those seats are the largest and your armor won’t scratch ‘em.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, and took the suggested location to settle in for the flight. The sooner we could reach Paragon headquarters, the sooner we could begin working on the maths necessary to save my sister.

  The hero apparently known as Advocate hesitated, then chose a seat near to mine.

  “Wheels up!” Professor Paradigm announced from the cockpit. The annoyingly beautiful craft climbed into the sky and we were on our way.

  “So, not so long ago we had a visit from a hero named Red Ghost,” Advocate noted after a minute or so of uncomfortable squirming. “Was he from your home dimension?”

  “He is.”

  “He mentioned you.”

  Ah. That, I thought, explained the hint of reluctance I’d sensed in Advocate when responsibility for me had been pushed upon him. “And what did he say?”

  “He said that you’d been a villain…but that you risked your life in an attempt to save his.”

  “Both of those statements are true,” I replied simply. I’d harmed no one on this world and the heroes here had no reason to hate me; there was no reason to defend or make light of my past, and pretending innocence had the potential to backfire.

  “And now you’ve risked your life again to save a little girl,” Advocate continued.

  That comment didn’t seem to require a response, so I sat quietly and calculated how long the journey to the Paragons’ base might take.

  “That doesn’t sound like villainous behavior,” he said in a leading manner.

  “You shouldn’t make judgements based upon insufficient evidence,” I sighed. “It’s an unhealthy habit to be in.”

  The hero chuckled. “So…you’d rather that I assume you’re still a villain after all?”

  “In general, I think that life is more complicated than labels like ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ allow for,” I retorted, glad for the vocoder that removed any hint of annoyance from my response. “Your leader believed me when I said that I’d come here for humanitarian purposes. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I suppose it is,” he replied. “I’m just trying to understand, is all.”

  “I’d rather let the subject lay.” I turned to set Doctor Fid’s implacable, faceless glare upon the hero. “No offense, but this is an uncomfortable subject and I don’t know you in my world.”

  “I suppose that you wouldn’t know me.” For a moment, his expression was pained…but the smile that followed was oddly smug. “After all, ‘Advocate’ wasn’t the hero name I originally wanted.”

  “And what was?” I asked, curious if perhaps he was someone I knew after all.

  “When I was a kid,” he grinned, and recognizing that mischievous expression felt like a punch to the chest, “I wanted to be ‘Strongboy’.”

  The foam ball strikes me directly between my eyes, knocking my glasses askew. I reach for the ball as it bounces away, but manage only to swat it downwards towards my feet.

  For a moment, there is only mortified silence. And then Bobby begins to giggle. Despite my own embarrassment, I can’t help but join in. My little brother’s joy is infectious.

  “You were supposed to catch it,” Bobby chides.

  I re-adjust my glasses, feeling my face heat. “It’s harder than it looks.”

  “It’s ‘catch’,” he laughs. “Everyone can play ‘catch’!”

  “Everyone but me,” I grumble, reaching to pick up the ball.

  The problem, I think, is that breeze and spin altered the sphere’s path. I’d swear that the ball curved! How is anyone supposed to catch an object that doesn’t follow a simple ballistic arc? Perhaps if I set up a windsock I could estimate air speed and calculate a more accurate trajectory. Not this time, though.

  “Now you throw to me,” Bobby orders, and I do so.

  In my own defense, I think that I’m improving. Bobby runs to chase after the mis-aimed ball, but he doesn’t have to travel as far as he’d had to after my first attempt.

  It’s a beautiful day. I’d promised Bobby that he could choose what we did this afternoon, and he wanted to come to the park…so, here we are. People are staring at me, I’m sure. Laughing at my awkward attempts to play, at my unpracticed motions. It doesn’t matter. Bobby is having the time of his life.

  Today, he’s the teacher and I’m the student.

  “Okay, now I throw!”

  I steel myself for another embarrassing failure, but this time the ball bounces off my chest directly into my waiting hands. I can’t help but stare, mouth agape.

  “Good catch!” Bobby chirps, and I grin so broadly that my cheeks hurt. “Now you throw again!”

  I’d read several books on sports kinesthetics, but generally found them to be unhelpful. They don’t teach how to throw…they teach how to throw faster or more efficiently. They don’t teach how to catch…they teach someone who can already catch how to catch better. The manuals are interesting reading (who knew that there was so much science and physics involved in sporting activities?) but all the books made assumptions about the level of eye-hand coordination training that most children underwent as part of a normal childhood.

  I’m out of my element here, tasting fresh air and surrounded by green grass, with the sun warming my skin. This is Bobby’s place, not mine…but he giggles and throws the ball again, and I feel welcome nonetheless.

  My childhood, I think as my brother chases another mis-thrown ball, hadn’t been normal. But maybe my adulthood could be. Bobby is a competent instructor.

  “Allright, Strongboy,” I tease, “give me your best shot!”

  Triggering the Mk 39’s release wasn’t a conscious decision. It was only that my helm was suddenly too tight and I needed to feel unfiltered air in my lungs. Doctor Fid fell away from me and I shot from my seat, twisting to stare at the still-grinning Advocate.

  I should have felt naked, exposed among so many heroes. At that moment, though, they seemed a distant presence. I could almost forget that they were there at all.

  “Bobby?” I asked, hesitantly.

  “Geez, Terry,” this dimension’s incarnation of my little brother laughed, but I could hear choked emotion in his voice. “You got old. I barely recognize you.”

  “Oh! I’ve, ah, made some modifications,” I rubbed at my jaw self-consciously. “Give me eight hours or so, I’ll have my nanites restore my original skull structure.”

  He stared at me oddly. “Is this the face you usually wear?”

  “More or less.”

  “Then don’t change it,” Bobby insisted. “I want to see who you are, now.”

  I grinned stupidly, then gestured as if pulling back a mask. “Can you…?”

  He hesitated, then pulled back his silver cowl.

  I often dreamed about what Bobby would have looked like if he’d lived. Sometimes, I imagined a slim tradesman with rough hands and a gentle smile, like our father. Other times, I imagined a broad athlete as portrayed in his crayon ‘Strongboy’ comic strips. In my mind’s eye there was always a hint of innocence, that spark of childhood that my Bobby never had a chance to outgrow.

  This was better. This was real.

  “Red Ghost told me you were here,” I murmured, amazed to see happy tears form at the corners of his eyes, “but I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

  Another brief laugh escaped, and his watery eyes danced with mischief. “For a smart guy, you can be a bit
of an idiot.”

  “That’s always been true.” My chest ached and I couldn’t meet his eyes any longer. “Oh, Bobby, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For letting you die!”

  “I’m not dead. My brother—” his voice caught. “My brother died trying to protect me from Locust’s mercenaries. I’m looking at your eyes and I’m pretty damned sure you’d have done the same for your Bobby if you could have.”

  More than anything in the world, I wished that I’d been as lucky as this Bobby’s brother.

  “You don’t need to apologize to me, Terry.” Bobby whispered. “Not now, not ever. I forgive you.”

  I hadn’t known that three words could stab so deep. It was a cleansing pain, but still my shoulders shook from the intensity of it.

  Bobby stood and grasped my shoulder in silent support. The body language was achingly familiar; my father had done the same when at a loss for words. On both worlds, Bobby had been so young when Dad died. Did he remember our father’s gentle, unflagging loyalty? Or had his Terry managed to imitate the posture during that too-brief period when he’d been acting as his brother’s guardian?

  Had I ever gripped my Bobby’s shoulder like this in a silent expression of unconditional acceptance? I couldn’t recall and that broke my heart.

  And then Viking coughed uncomfortably, and I was suddenly intensely aware that Bobby and I had an audience of costumed heroes who were no longer making any attempt to hide their attention. These were the Advocate’s team-mates, his peers. On another world, they would have been my enemies.

  In this particular instance, I recognized that it would be highly counterproductive to make any effort to eliminate the witnesses.

  I straightened my back to recover my wounded dignity, offered Bobby an apologetic smile, and triggered the command that caused the Mk 39 to leap from its resting place on the shuttle seat to wrap itself around me. Terry Markham was swallowed whole.

  “My apologies,” I intoned in Doctor Fid’s emotionless and highly-artificial voice. “I see that we have arrived.”

  And we had. The shuttle had begun its descent towards the Paragon headquarters.

  “Terry-,” Bobby began.

  “Later,” I interrupted. “Please.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Bobby nodded and then replaced his cowl to assume the Advocate identity once more. The uncomfortable silence lingered until Professor Paradigm had completed the shuttle’s landing and led Bobby and me to his laboratory.

  Professor Paradigm’s expression turned distant as he considered possible implications of the mathematical proof that I’d demonstrated. I was grateful for the faceless mask that hid my amused, indulgent smile; the aged hero-slash-inventor bore no physical resemblance to my old doctoral advisor, but the similarity in mannerisms made me nostalgic. Once upon a time, managing to inspire that absent-yet-inspired expression on Doctor Hess’ face had filled me with a sense of victory.

  The leader of the San Francisco Paragons held up one finger, mumbled an apology, and hurried off to gather another handful of texts from his library. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I was left alone in the lab.

  Or rather…not quite alone. Bobby had returned, garbed now in casual clothes covered by a white lab-coat.

  “Yeah, I know,” he grinned, nodding in the direction the Professor had wandered off. “It’s like being back at M.I.T, right?”

  “It is,” I replied, then startled as I noticed a label attached to Bobby’s coat. “Are you married?”

  He blinked in confusion. “No, although I was in a fairly serious relationship until last fall. Why d’you ask?”

  “Your surname,” I motioned to his employee badge.

  “Oh! No, I was adopted by the Hoffmans. After...ah, you know...after Locust’s attack, I didn’t know what to do so I called Alex and he drove down to Virginia to pick me up. His parents ended up taking me in.”

  I’d burned through several assistants during my own time as a professor. Alexander Hoffman had lasted the longest and—in hindsight—likely been the best.

  (One mystery resolved. When the Red Ghost had accidentally visited this world, he’d met Bobby and discovered the origin of Doctor Fid’s name…but hadn’t gathered sufficient information to identify Terry Markham as Bobby’s brother. The altered surname would have interfered with the Red Ghost’s investigation. For a while, the Ghost had erroneously believed that he’d sussed out my true identity anyway and I’d obligingly pointed him towards one of my own false ID’s; alas, that amusing ruse had since collapsed due to inattention on my part.)

  “They took good care of you?” I asked softly.

  “Yeah,” he grinned sadly. “I was a messed up, angry little kid for a while, but they were great. Are great.”

  In my world, I’d lost track of Alex after Bobby’s death—after I drifted away from academia. In another world, Alex had dropped everything in order to comfort a traumatized little kid. The journey from Boston to Virginia Beach was an eleven-hour drive; it had been in the middle of summer, and I remembered my T.A. occasionally complaining that his old Impala lacked air-conditioning.

  I suddenly wished that I’d known the Alex from my own world better. He’d deserved better from me than to be ignored and forgotten.

  Another odd thought occurred to me. “Did I—that is, did your brother have life insurance, or leave anything for the family that took you in? I genuinely don’t recall.”

  Bobby chuckled, “You had insurance through the school, and dozens of patents that passed on to me. I’m still getting payments. I was spoiled rotten.”

  In this dimension, my little brother had lived, been safe, well cared-for and—apparently—loved. It was odd, to feel a sense of smug satisfaction for actions that were taken by a different Terry Markham…but I felt it nonetheless.

  “Hey,” Bobby said quietly, when Professor Paradigm and I took a break from discussing the basics of akashic field theory. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Anything,” I replied.

  “The Terry I remember wasn’t perfect, but he was a good guy. Why become a villain?”

  “That’s…complicated.”

  Bobby glanced pointedly at his team leader, who was mumbling to himself and staring at an empty coffee pot. “I think we have a bit of time.”

  Even so, formulating a response took a while; Bobby waited patiently.

  “The simple answer is that I went mad with grief,” I eventually answered. “But the truth is more convoluted. It wasn’t just one bad moment that broke me…it was a lifetime that shaped me into a person who could be broken by one bad moment.”

  “I don’t recall my brother being fragile,” he said, his doubt plain in his expression.

  “I wasn’t. I was just…under tension. There’s always been a part of me that was angry and lonely.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could see that.”

  “After the car accident took Mom ’n Dad, it was just Bobby and me and I thought maybe that would be enough. And then you died—I mean, my Bobby died—watching Bronze turn his back and run away.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered.

  “I hated heroes, then, and I hated myself even more. There were an uncountable number of other influences, as well.” Even with my face hidden behind Doctor Fid’s mask, I averted my eyes to hide my shame. “In the end…the angry, lonely, guilty and grieving part of me won.”

  When I finally dared to look back to Bobby’s face, I saw no judgement…only sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and all that I could do was nod in gratitude.

  Professor Paradigm had brought over a smartpad and was fully focused upon jotting down formulae upon its surface using a deceptively-simple-appearing stylus. Bobby brought me a cup of coffee, and (after only a moment’s hesitation) I triggered the command that allowed Terry Markham to step out from within Doctor Fid’s armor. I accepted the mug with my still-bruised bare hand; Bobby said nothing, but I couldn’t help but notice his pleased grin
.

  After one sip, I couldn’t help but smile in return. The coffee had been prepared the same way that I’d taken it in college: four cubes of sugar and no cream.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, and used my neural-tap to remote-pilot the Mk 39 towards an out-of-the-way corner.

  “That’s creepy,” Bobby noted, watching Fid’s armor quietly walk off on its own.

  “Thank you.”

  “Given the way Red Ghost described you and the way you’ve acted,” he laughed, “I’ve had some trouble imagining you as a villain. But then you say something like that and I can see it. Just like the old cartoons…”

  “Doctor Fid isn’t a cartoon villain.” I lower my eyes. “Near the beginning, I built a robot to open my skull, to surgically slice away empathy and leave scars likely to increase aggression. I experimented with mind-altering drugs to make myself vicious. I was a monster.”

  “I was a defense lawyer before I joined the Paragons,” Bobby replied softly, though there was horror in his eyes as he contemplated what I’d done to myself. “I’ve defended my fair share of monsters…and since I’ve put on the costume, I’ve fought a lot more. The only thing they all had in common was that they didn’t feel guilt for what they’d done.”

  He didn’t comment on the pained tears that had formed at the corners of my eyes, and I didn’t pretend that they didn’t exist. I coughed to clear my throat.

  “I eventually repaired the last of my neural scarring,” I wiped at my face irritably. “But I still have a monster’s memories. For the right cause, I’m still willing to do monstrous things. I’m not the Terry Markham you remember, Bobby. Not really.”

  “The last thing I remember about my brother was his expression while he saved my life,” Bobby retorted. “What would you be willing to do to save your sister?”

  “Anything,” I admitted. “Everything. I’ll tear the sun from the sky if I have to.”