Marvel Classic Novels--Spider-Man, page 10
“Them,” I said. “Morlun tried to eat me. He wound up dead. Now his siblings are looking to return the compliment.”
Strange lifted his eyebrows. “You defeated Morlun?”
“Yeah. With freaking radioactive material not unlike the radioactive freaking spider that gave me my freaking powers,” I retorted. “No freaking mystical juju at all.”
“Interesting,” he mused. “Then their motive is not a factor of mystic balance, but one far older and more primal.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Payback. I need your help.”
“Help?”
“Aid. Assistance. Advice.”
Strange stared at me for a moment. Then he closed his eyes, settled back in his chair, and murmured, “Absolutely not.”
Which made me blink. “What?”
“I cannot interfere in what passes between you and the Ancients.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
He leaned back in his chair, frowning, his expression genuinely disturbed. “You understand, of course, that all forces in the universe act in balance. In a harmony of sorts.”
“That’s kind of Newtonian, but let’s assume that you know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice serious. “The powers at my command are part and parcel of that balance. I am not free to simply employ them on a whim without serious consequences resulting—and in fact, it would be dangerous to do so around one of the Ancients you face.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess they deserve the name?”
“Indeed. They are older than mountains, older than the seas. Since life first graced this sphere, and since that life called out to the mystic realms, echoing in harmony and sympathy, these beings, these Ancients, have been there to feed upon it.”
“Really, you could have said, ‘Yes, they’re old,’ and it would have been enough.”
“My apologies,” Strange said. “I occasionally forget the limitations of your attention span.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes. They are old.”
“And you can’t do anything to them?”
Strange frowned. “It is a complex issue, and does not lend itself to monosyllabic explanation.”
I cupped my hands to either side of my head. “Okay. These are my listening ears. I’ve got my listening ears on.”
“Let me know if you experience any discomfort,” Strange said, his voice dryly amused. Then he made a steeple of his fingers. “What you call ‘magic’ is a complex weaving of natural forces—life energy, elemental power, cosmic energies. And, like more familiar physical forces such as thermal energy, electricity, or gravity, they abide by a set of governing laws. They do not simply obey the whims of those who employ them. They have limitations and foibles. Do you understand that much?”
“Yes,” I said brightly. “And I didn’t get a nosebleed or anything.”
“The nature of my access to these powers determines how I might employ them,” he said. “I cannot simply randomly choose anything in my repertoire to counter any given situation, just as you could not expect to mix random chemicals and attain the desired results.”
“So far, so good,” I said.
He nodded. “The Ancients are predators, as you are doubtless aware. And while they are not a particularly pleasant part of the natural world, they are, nonetheless, a part of it. My powers are meant to defend and protect that world from those who would attempt to damage or destroy it. Were I to turn my powers against the Ancients it would be”—he actually turned a little green—“an abuse of that which is entrusted to me. A corruption of the energies in my charge. A most abominable blasphemy of the primal forces of our world.”
“And what? The magic wand police would give you a ticket?”
“You speak lightly,” Strange said. “But you are well aware of the evils that can be wrought with the abuse of power. Were I to turn the energies with which I work against the Ancients, the repercussions could be severe.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because of what and who the Ancients are. They are some of the eldest predators upon this sphere, creatures of enormous mystic strength— though they do not refine and utilize that energy in the way I do. It is, however, consciously focused by their force of will to give them enormous resilience, strength, and speed.”
“Yeah. They’re magically malicious. I figured that part out already.”
“Their formidable physical attributes are minor compared to the enormous potential that dwells within them. Should I wield my powers directly against them, the results could be catastrophic.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, lowering my hands. “When you say ‘severe,’ and ‘catastrophic,’ you mean. . .”
“The end of all life upon this sphere.”
“Right.” I took a deep breath. “Couldn’t you at least give me some more information about them? Anything would help.”
“My personal knowledge of them is limited. And even were I to employ my arts to learn more, I would be constrained to tell you nothing.”
“What? Why?”
“Knowledge is power—a fact with which I suspect you are intimately familiar. If I used my power to gain knowledge, and then shared that knowledge with you to affect the outcome of this situation, it would be as disruptive as if I had done so myself. It would upset certain critical natural balances and as a result, the eldritch portals would open in order to create a redressing of the forces so unbalanced.”
“Which would be . . . ?” I asked.
“A series of confrontations like those you experienced a few months ago—beginning with Morlun and continuing through Morwen’s incursion and confrontation with Loki, your battle with Shathra, all of which culminated in Dormmamu’s attempted destruction of this reality on your birthday. You would again be a critical variable in the equation. It would expose both you and uncounted innocents to enormous peril. And so I must do nothing. Even having this conversation at all is potentially dangerous.”
I shuddered. Then I slumped in my chair. My head suddenly felt really heavy on my neck. What was the point? For crying out loud, it had been nothing short of a miracle that I had survived Morlun, much less the rest of that mess. I wasn’t asking Strange to make them go poof. I just wanted him to help me. Just a little.
Strange spoke quietly, and his voice was strained with regret and compassion. “I am sorry that I cannot aid you in this battle, as you have so often aided me in mine. It is unjust. Unfair.”
“Since when has life been fair?” I asked.
Strange smiled. “In the long view, I think it might be worse if life was fair, and each of us received everything he deserved. My mistakes would have earned me torments to disturb the dreams of Dante himself.”
“Amen,” I said quietly, having pulled some epic blunders of my own.
“I wish you luck in your struggle,” Strange said. He rose and offered me his hand. “But you should know that I believe you have the necessary potential to overcome this foe. Do not lose heart. There is more strength in you than even you know. I am truly sorry that I cannot do more.”
I thought about just storming out, but Aunt May didn’t raise me to be rude. Besides, if Strange said he couldn’t help, he couldn’t help, period. He might be weird, wordy, and unsettling, but he’s not a coward or a liar. If he could have helped me, he would have. I believed that.
“S’okay, Doc.” I shook his hand, and he walked me to the door of his office. “I never got the chance to thank you for that birthday present.”
Strange inclined his head, a solemn gesture. “It was my pleasure and honor to be able to bestow it. Even so, it in no way lessens my gratitude and obligation to you for times gone by.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m used to going it alone.”
“Which is the problem,” he said.
I stopped, blinked, and looked up at him. “Hey. Did you just—”
Strange smiled, very slightly, and quietly shut the door in my face.
Strange said he couldn’t share information, but had he just tried to slip me something? If he was going to do that, why not just come out and say it? Why the heck does everything have to be so confusing when he’s involved?
Freaking sorcerers. Freaking mystic muckety-mucks.
Wong entered the room on nearly soundless feet, carrying a paper lunch bag. I turned to face him.
“I have always found,” Wong said, “that the master quite often is able to say something important without ever coming anywhere near it in conversation. I would humbly suggest that you consider his words singly, collectively and most carefully.”
“Why does it always have to be twenty questions with him?”
“Because he is the master. Did your talk go well?”
I grunted. “Not really. I was hoping for a little good luck this time around.”
Wong bowed his head, then offered me the lunch bag. “I regret that the outcome of your visit did not please you. I hope that ham on wheat will satisfy.”
I accepted the bag as we walked to the door. “It’s my favorite.”
“Really? Then one might say that you found a little good luck after all.”
I blinked at him. “Wait. Wong, did you just—”
Wong bowed politely and shut the door in my face.
I looked at the door.
I looked at the lunch bag.
“Their weakness is ham on wheat?” I asked the door.
The door was almost as informative as Strange and Wong.
“This is why I don’t like messing around in this magic stuff!” I hollered at Strange’s mansion.
People on the sidewalks stopped to stare at me.
I scowled. “I swear, one of these days I’m going to snap and throw a garbage truck through that stupid window.” I shook my head, muttered some things I’d never say around Aunt May, and opened the lunch bag.
Ham-on-wheat sandwiches, two of them, in plastic bags.
An apple.
And a black-lacquered square box as wide as my hand, maybe half an inch thick.
Interesting.
It reminded me of a jewelry case. I opened it. Inside were three small, black stones, along with a folded piece of paper that looked like a page torn from a book.
I read over it.
Very interesting.
For the first time that day, I felt something almost like real hope.
I closed the lunch bag, tied it to my belt with a bit of webbing, and swung for home.
FOURTEEN
“LET me get this straight,” Mary Jane said as she sat down across the kitchen table from me. “You went to ask for Doctor Strange’s help, and he gave you magic beans?”
“Well. He didn’t give them to me. Wong did.”
“Wong did.”
“And they aren’t beans. They’re rocks.”
“Magic rocks. And he told you they would help?”
“No,” I said.
“Wong did?”
“No,” I said. “Wong gave me lunch. And rocks. And this. But he didn’t tell me anything.” I slid her the piece of paper Wong had packed in the lunch bag while I munched on the sandwiches.
The ham was that expensive honey-baked kind that Aunt May can only afford once a year, for Christmas, and it was delicious. The bread was wheat bread, sure enough, but homemade and fresh, and Wong had made it with a splash of Italian dressing and had somehow found a fresh-grown tomato, not one of those Styrofoam imitation tomatoes my grocery store sells. It was good.
Maybe I should think about asking Wong for cooking lessons. If only he wasn’t such a wiseacre.
“Alhambran agates,” Mary Jane read. “Long used to detain the most savage nonmortal corporeal beings. Touched to the flesh of a willing or insensible entity, they resonate with a static pocket dimension from which there is no simple means of egress.” She frowned. “Static pocket dimension?”
“A tiny reality where not much happens, and where time doesn’t progress at the same rate as everywhere else,” I said. “It’s like a combination prison cell and deep freeze.”
“But magic,” she said.
“Well. There are some quantum theories that indicate that something like this could be possible, but . . .”
She reached for one of the stones. “So you just touch the Ancient with the magic rock and poof?”
I caught her wrist gently before she could touch it. “I’m not sure exactly what they will and won’t do,” I said. “But they’re evidently powerful and dangerous. I think it’s best not to take any chances.”
She blinked and drew her hand back. “Oh.”
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “They have to want to go. Or else they’ve got to be unconscious. Otherwise, the rock doesn’t work.”
“Oh,” Mary Jane said. “Well. That’s doable, right? I mean, you can just punch their lights out and stick a rock in their ear. Can’t you?”
I grunted. “I blew up a building with Morlun in it. Gas explosion. His clothes got flash-burned and he walked out of it naked as a jaybird and without so much as a bruise. It barely mussed his hair. And I put him through brick walls, smashed him with a telephone pole to the noggin, threw him off the roof of a thirty-story building—nothing.”
Mary Jane folded her arms. “So, the magic rocks aren’t going to help after all?”
“Not unless I can devise a way to knock out the Ancients,” I said through a mouthful of sandwich. “Or else talk them into doing it willingly.”
“I see,” she said quietly.
One of those tense silences fell.
“How did the test go?” I asked her.
“Hmmm?” She shook her head a little and gave me a false laugh. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not really important.”
“Sure it is,” I said quietly.
She frowned at the table for a minute. “I passed the written,” she said.
“Uh-oh.”
She rolled her eyes and waved her hands in frustration. “It’s so stupid. I got to the driving test and panicked. I couldn’t remember anything I was supposed to remember. I mean, in the traffic and everything, and I was worried and it turned into one huge blur. I couldn’t get my breath.”
“Ah,” I said. “What happened?”
“I just tried to figure out what to do by watching the professionals. I mean, I figured they knew what they were doing, right?”
“The professionals?” I asked.
She nodded. “Cabbies.”
I choked. I couldn’t help it. I bowed my head and tried to cough as if something had gone down the wrong way, to strangle my laughter before it could hurt her feelings. I looked up at her after a moment, with my face turning red from the effort of holding it in.
She sighed and shook her head with a small, rueful smile. “Go ahead.”
I laughed.
“I just don’t understand it,” she said, when I recovered. “Locking up like that. It isn’t as though it’s particularly difficult.”
“The driving test, you mean?” I said.
“Yes.”
I thought about it. “You say you were short of breath?”
“Yes.”
“It sounds like a panic attack,” I said. “They happen.”
Mary Jane’s mouth twisted in distaste. “Really? I used to make fun of the models who said they had them before a show. I never thought they might be real.” She shook her head. “Maybe I should just check myself into a funny farm.”
“Might be a little extreme this early in the game,” I said. “I mean, we’re talking about a reaction to psychological pressure—of which you have had plenty lately. You’d be crazy if you didn’t have a twitch or two.”
I didn’t mention anything specific. No need to bring up the ugly details. Her abduction and imprisonment following her apparent death. Our split. Our happy reunion, but always with homicidal madmen, with or without costumes, prancing in and out of the wings. All the while, dashing around the world on planes, trains, and automobiles (admittedly, someone else did the driving) to appear in shows, to be photographed in exotic places, attending openings and soirees and all the other duties expected of a celebrity.
Mix in some pain, some trauma, some terror. Blend well. All of that would be more than enough to rattle anyone’s cage.
“Then why do I feel like such a wimp?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I feel kinda wimpy myself. Look, MJ, this isn’t a big deal. If we have to, I’ll drive you down until you can pass the test.”
She frowned and then shook her head. “No. I’ll do it myself. I’ll pass it Monday morning. If you can deal with immortal, unstoppable monsters, I can handle the DMV.”
“Easy there, Superchick. If you’re working up an archenemy, you don’t want to start with the DMV. Go with someone a little easier to deal with. Doctor Doom, Magneto.”
She smiled at me—more because I’d gone to the effort to make the joke than because it was funny. She glanced at the stones. “I’m not sure I like this Strange person,” she said.
“The doc’s okay,” I said. “I get the feeling he’s doing everything he can. He’s got limits.”
“I don’t care about limits,” Mary Jane said, her tone practical. “I care about you. He isn’t doing well by you, and you’re what matters to me.”
I slipped my hand from her wrist, and twined her warm fingers in mine. “I think you might not be totally objective.”
“Why would I want to be?” she asked. She leaned down and pressed a soft, warm kiss to my hand.
I pushed my food aside, and went around the table to kiss my wife. She returned the kiss with an ardent sigh, her arms sliding around my neck, holding on as tightly as she could.
She was afraid.
So was I.
So the kiss became our whole world. She became my whole world. I let her warmth, her desire, her love wash over me, and gave it back in kind. Words would have been a waste of sensation. So I picked her up and carried her toward our bedroom, where the fear, for a while, couldn’t touch us.
* * *
I hadn’t really planned on falling asleep, but I’d pulled an all-nighter after a fairly strenuous round with the Rhino and a follow-up game of Dodge the Ancient, so once I had relaxed body and mind, it was apparently inevitable. I woke to the sound of voices speaking quietly in the living room.
