Chapt 3

[moon_custafer]

El Hazard - Legendary alpha supervillain of the coastal metropolis Sapphire, El Hazard specializes in supersized smash-and-grabs  - not particularly high-tech (they are usually carried out with little or no use of modern electronics) but impressive in their scale and in the co-ordination of exotic vehicles with explosives.
 
Mervyn Mandrake (deceased) - Conjurer.  It is still unclear, after his death at the hands of John Doe, whether Mandrake raised his boogeymen by supernatural powers or whether they were  some form of artifice.  His choice of targets, usually antique curiosities, suggest he was possessed of a somewhat childlike temperament, more motivated by glee in startling the citizenry than by the desire for gain; in any case, as the heir to the Mandery baking-supply fortune, he hardly needed to steal for financial reasons.
 
            Given the highly dramatic nature of their first, or was it second date, Amanda thought their third (?) should be something a little more low-key, like watching a video at her place. She could do with an excuse to tidy up.  Maybe they could rent a superhero film, as a sort of in-joke, to let Victor know she wasn’t fazed by him.  Mid-way through the afternoon a better idea struck her – she worked for the office that had access to a warehouse full of dvds of Fone Fakers – the camp value would surely be worth asking around for a copy to borrow.  They would watch it with popcorn and have a good laugh together, and it would be a nice couple-y thing  - she shivered with nerves and hope. She really did like Victor, despite the strangeness of his life.
 
            Victor, at that moment, was in a pet store in Chinatown, peering into a glass terrarium. The scorpion inside was ignoring him placidly. Its chitin shone, almost glowed, with the most brilliant peacock blue Victor had ever seen. 
            “It’s beautiful,” he said to the hovering clerk.
            “Emperor scorpion?” The clerk showed him the black light in the lid of the terrarium, that set off the beautiful colouration. “UV light makes it blue. Regular light, it just looks black.”
            “Does it sting? “ Victor asked, as casually as he could.
            “Yes, and pinch, too,” he pointed to the little claws, “but not too bad:  just like bee sting.  Good pet, if you don’t touch too much.”
            “I’ll think about it. My girlfriend might not like it.” The clerk laughed politely.
            An internet search on the emperor scorpion turned up the facts that it came from West Africa, was indeed disappointingly harmless except to those with anyplactic allergies , and that its uv-reflecting trick was probably an adaptation to lure in prey searching for the markers on flowers that are invisible to the human eye but brilliant road signs to pollinating insects. He still wanted to do something with it. In contradiction to 90-odd years of pulp thrillers, the scorpion was useless as a weapon - none of his enemies were allergic to bee-stings that he knew of, and it would have been a highly uncertain method of attack anyway. A distraction? Victor thought about black-lights, dance clubs, pounding bass. He began a new search on scorpions, wondering if they were affected by different frequencies of sound.
    Happily, it turned out the University of Kansas had made a study a few years earlier of the efficacy of sonic pest control devices on different species, including Pandinus Imperator 1 . The 6 scorpions had each been been placed on a pair of linked enclosures, containing ultrasonic devices.  After 24 hours to acclimatize one device had been turned on, the other left off in each enclosure. Over the following week the scorpions’ locations had been checked daily to see if they were in the ultrasound or the non-ultrasound part of their enclosures.  Overall they’d preferred the non-ultrasound by about 2:1.  Two devices had been tested, one that used frequencies of  21 kHz, 35 kHz, and 41 kHz and another that used frequencies varying between 27.7 and 42 kHz.  Victor didn’t think that was reliable enough to direct the scorpions’ behaviour, and besides, the frequencies in a dance club would likely be much lower.  Still there were other ways the thing could be managed. Victor continued to search, this time for reviews of dance clubs in the downtown area, and exotic pet dealers.
 
Amanda had opened a new window in the course of her search for the whereabouts of Fone Fakers, one with a conspicuous school board logo on it – she really ought to hide it behind something else, she thought, before—
“What are you doing?” asked Tess in her usual flat whine. Too late. Amanda’s insides crunched in on themselves, attempting not to snap at the woman. The worst of it was, she knew there was no malice in Tess’ prying – it was just that Tess, as far as she could tell, was only capable of two modes of conversation: stating the obvious and point-blank interrogation. Amanda spent most of her work day praying she wouldn’t catch her co-worker’s eye and have to talk to her. She felt guilty that she was so easily prejudiced for or against people by their voices; Victor’s speech, by contrast, she found delightful – staccato in delivery yet usually mild in tone, it was the perfect extension of his awkward, enthusiastic self. Despite his protestations to the contrary, she found it hard to believe there was no good in someone whose voice cracked with enthusiasm when he spoke on a favourite topic or who actually, innocently, stuck out his tongue from the corner of his mouth when engaged in some intense thought.
Meanwhile, there was still Tess to answer.
            “I’m trying to look up an educational dvd the school boards put out a few years back.”
“Why? What is this dvd? Why do you want to know?”
            “I’m just curious. I wanted to see it.”
“I will look for you.”
“You really don’t have to…” Later that afternoon she was interrupted by Tess again.
“Amanda, I cannot find the dvd.”
“It’s ok, I’ll keep looking on my own.”  She’d been about to say ask someone else, but that would have prolonged the conversation as well as hurt Tess’ feelings. Amanda was in the unfortunate way of not wanting to insult people, even ones she couldn’t stand. She’d sit next to raving drunks through whole bus trips rather than get up and move, because she would have felt guilty about embarrassing them. Surreptitiously, however, she did ask someone else, several others, including the woman in Accounts who could usually find anything related or unrelated to work. No was able to pin down the flitting rumour that was Fone Fakers, though everyone knew of it.
 
    Thursdays were Electric Jello Shot Night at the Club Molybedenum, and with the next day a civic holiday,  by 9 pm the floor was already dangerously slippery. Victor was glad of his sneakers as he skulked through the crowd of loud, sweaty people all about fifteen years younger than he was. It occurred to him he’d better play up the pathetic Humbert Humbert angle so no one would wonder why he was there, and he made a couple of deliberately clumsy passes at girls who were, he noted with a wry pleasure, both significantly less good-looking than Amanda. They, for their part, rolled their eyes at him in disgust and embarrassment and Victor smiled to himself and moved on towards the back of the room. 
    Victor was perilously close to giggling when he joined Amanda for breakfast at Murray’s the following morning.  
    “Coffee, yes indeed. I’ve been up all night,” he whispered to her across the table, and held up a newspaper: 
     SCORPION HOAX SPARKS CLUB STAMPEDE, yelled the headline. 
    “You should have been there,” Victor enthused, “I fried the lights, except for the black lights, and I made the boxes I’d brought the scorpions in invisible, so all the kids could see were all these big eight-inch scorpions scuttling  around in the dark, and they were this beautiful shimmering turquoise and teens were screaming their heads off and jumping around, and then I blew up the amps. It was like a metal concert.”  He smiled delightedly at her.
    “No one got stung, did they?” Amanda said, worriedly.
    “No, no they were in boxes, like I said. They couldn’t get loose and no one could step on them. After the panic started I scattered a bunch of plastic scorpions I’d covered with glow paint, to swell their numbers. A lot of people tripped on the boxes, though, when they were fleeing. Afterwards I came out and took the boxes away, so the investigators would just find the plastic ones and not know what happened. I’m hinting to the press it was a sound weapon plus hallucinogens,” he added, “How was your day?”
    “Kind of weird, actually. I tried to get us a copy of Fone Fakers to watch for fun, and  everyone at work has heard the story of how it was filmed and shelved, but no one seems to know where the dvds are actually kept. Not that it’s important, but it’s frustrating,” she finished sadly. Victor beeped her on the nose, a trifle punchy from lack of sleep.
    “Don’t worry, if you want a copy I’ll help you find one.”
    “It really doesn’t matter.”
    “Nothing’s too good for my girl.” His head was about to touch down on the table when the waitress arrived with two coffees, and he took one and downed it gratefully, blinking a little at the strength of the hot beverage. Amanda mussed his hair playfully.
    “I may just have to take you home to crash, after breakfast,”
    “You might, at that. Not as young as I was.” Nonetheless, after a large plate of French toast, bacon and sausages, and another coffee, and a walk back to Amanda’s apartment in the bracing late-September air, Victor felt up to keeping his promise to search for a copy of the documentary, and soon had Amanda’s little home computer prying around inside city records with Amanda, uneasy but fascinated, looking over his shoulder. That this brought her lush body into close contact with his back and the nape of his neck was a side benefit, but he was a determined man when his curiosity was piqued, and tried not to let himself be distracted just yet.
    After an hour, it looked as though the city was indeed being very reticent about the fate of Fone Fakers, but that the likeliest current location of the unused shipment was a depository on River Street.
    “We can have a look round today, if you’re up for it, and watch it after dinner tonight.”
    “I’m game. but someone needs a rest first if he’s going to be awake tonight, even through dinner.” Victor leaned back and snuggled into her, satisfied with a job well done.
 
    In the afternoon, they took a bus and walked down a couple of blocks to River Street and a dingy building of concrete block. The chain link fence around it was padlocked, the padlock rusted. 
    “They certainly don’t want anybody looking at their movie. It must have really been an embarrassment for them.”
    “If at first you don’t succeed, erase all evidence that you ever tried, I guess.” Victor tested the fence, and started up over it, “Keep an eye out, ok honey?” As Amanda looked up and down the street, hugging herself a little with the excitement (for though some of here family could be a bit dodgy, she herself had never done anything like this before), he examined the lock and picked it in a few seconds with a tool from a well-hidden pocket in his jacket. A few minutes more, and he was back out with a worried look on his thin face. He looked about, and gestured to Amanda to start walking.
    “There is definitely something going on here, but I can’t tell what,” he said a block or two later, “they weren’t in there, and furthermore that lock wasn’t as rusted as it looked.”
“I don’t get it - why steal a dramatization of a super-weapon that didn’t work in the first place?”
“I don’t want to scare you, but we might want to get clear first and theorize later.”

    They walked several side streets and got on and off buses a few times until Victor was satisfied that no one was following them, then they slipped up an alley where after counting twenty paces, he reached up onto a window ledge, fumbled for a moment, then drew down a previously invisible laptop in a weatherproof case. After that they turned into an anonymous but comfortable chain coffee shop that had a WiFi connection.  They bought enormous coffees, and Victor opened the laptop and quickly checked his various accounts. There was still enough built up from his various consulting jobs that the scorpions and equipment hadn’t made too much of a dent. Besides, he still had the scorpions stashed safely in their boxes and he could always resell them anonymously on ebay - he’d overheard quite a few people by the counter talking about the caper and thought a fad for emperor scorpions might be starting up as a result. The oddball results of this scheme of his pleased him, though his next hit should really involve more destruction.  
    Seated on a loveseat at the back, they whispered to each other and searched for any leads they could find. There was precious little - Fone Fakers - The Scourge of Childhood had been produced in 2003 with funding from three of Gradient’s local school boards. It had been narrated by veteran actor Hanover Guest, who had died a year later of lung cancer, and featured a cast of youthful actors, none of whose careers appeared to have gone anywhere. Special effects had been handled by a local firm hired by one of the school trustees who had also been producer. 
    “Hang, on, that’s the trustee who was killed in a hit and run the other day. So who’s this FX company he hired, then?”
    “Something called Keypad Factory FX Industries.  Never heard of them, though with a production like this I’m not surprised. It seems like our only lead though. “
    “Not the only lead. I’m going to talk to Vermin - after all it’s his device the movie was about. Can you keep looking for the FX people?”
    “I’d feel safer sticking with you.”
    “I know, but Vermin doesn’t deal well with people he doesn’t know. Look, here’s a number if here’s any trouble or you find anything. It’ll route through a system to the phone I’m carrying now.” He hugged her.
Actually, Victor had been too embarassed to explain it to Amanda, but she simply wouldn’t have fit into Dr. Vermin’s lair - the fiendish doctor was only about eight inches tall and his headquarters were to scale. Victor fortunately had once traded him some meteor samples for a nitrogen gun, and still remembered where the service entrance was. Pulling aside some crates behind a subway station, he uncovered a low opening just about large enough for an average-sized human to enter on all fours, donned protective gloves and kneepads, and crept in. 
    “Doc?” he ventured; he had decided to play it polite, at least at first. Vermin was apt to chitter unintelligibly when he was upset, which would have made him worse than useless as an interview subject. The Walls, as he entered the main cavern, where plastered with newspaper clippings and glossy magazine photos of Kestrel. The best were massed at one end in a sort of shrine, with wrapped sweets and other shiny objects piled in front of them. Pitiful, really, thought Victor, the way Vermin obsessed over the superheroine. He had reached the main room now, where there was room for him to stand and he did so, admiring the head of Vermin’s latest kill-bot in the work area. Whatever else one could say about the nefarious little rodent, he really knew how to design machines that folded up efficiently. 
        “Hands up, human scum!” cried a shrill voice from around Victor’s feet, and a warning blast was fired past his knee.
        “Hello yourself, Doc,” he replied to his peeved and unwilling host. Vermin was wearing his usual white lab coat that he must have taken off a Barbie doll, and shouldering a contraption that appeared to shoot gelatine caps of something unpleasant. His trademerk red goggles were pushed back on his head and his beady eyes were glaring even in the dim light of his lair. The key thing in dealing with Vermin was to stay calm and stare him down, so Victor folded and lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position. 
            Vermin glowered beadily at him for a few seconds, then relaxed and sat himself down in his doll-sized but impressive swivel chair, still keeping hold of the gelcap gun. He had quite the suave little pad actually, with a white rabbit fur rug and a tiny glass coffee table. Victor was almost certain Vermin bought his furniture from a doll collector’s site on the internet. “What do you want? I don’t have anything I want to trade at the moment.”
    “Just a friendly visit and a heads-up.”
    “About what?” asked the rodent suspiciously.
    “Well, you remember those camera phones you put out a few years ago? Very popular with the young people, I hear,” Victor spoke smoothly,  but he was carefully watching Vermin’s whiskers and the hair on the back of his neck; it was difficult to read expression on a face so small, but his fur was a giveaway. Just then it was definitely bristling. “So popular, they even made a movie about it.”
    “Bah!”
    “So you’ve heard the rumour going around then, that all known copies were stolen?”
    “Foolish human! I myself took the dvds! No Parent-Teacher’s Association shall slander me!” squeaked Vermin, but Victor was sure his whiskers had twitched in shock for a millisecond.  Moreover, Fone Fakers, he recalled, had been a co-production of the City and the school boards.
    “Ah, just as well, then. For the record, I always liked your camera tech.” He tried to fish some more, but Vermin would have none of it.
    “This interview is over.”
    “There is one other thing.” An idea had been shaping in the back of Victor’s mind for some time. He really ought to have run it by Amanda first, he knew, but this moment was too good to pass up. “I hear there’s a new player in town.”
    “Cape or crook?”
    “Status as yet unknown.”
    “Bah.”
    “They say she’s seven feet tall, and strong like tractor.”
    “All human women are cows.” Victor bit his lip, but his voice remained steady and pleasant.
    “Last time I checked, Kestrel was still legally classed as human. Superhuman anyway.”  A gelcap whizzed past his cheek and clacked against the wall behind him; it broke open and ignited the corner of a blueprint taped to the wall. It was time to leave.
As he exited the tunnel his phone buzzed in one of the pockets of his cargo pants: a text message form Amanda. It read: “Paranoid – meet nxt dr 2 1st OFFICIAL date.”