A/N Ha! Bet most of you didn't expect me to get another chapter up so fast, did you? As a matter of fact, this semester is getting off to a really slow start, so I'm taking advantage of it while I can.
Thanks, as always, to my bat-beta, IcyWaters!
Disclaimer Should any mental discomfort be experienced during the reading of this story, the author is free from all liability because GUESS WHAT? DC COMICS OWNS EVERYTHING!
Chapter 36
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
- The Ordinary of the Mass (Latin)
"All present and accounted for?" Fox asked as he swung the door of the vault shut behind them.
Bruce surveyed the assembled party. Fox and Bennett, the company lawyer who had been handling the custody case, plus Somerville, Alfred, and himself, stood in the brightly lit interior of one of the maximum security vaults buried deep beneath Wayne Tower. Bruce wasn't even sure how far underground they were. He did know that the thing was as safe as an atomic bunker.
The room was about fifteen feet wide by thirty feet long. The walls were lined with narrow metal drawers, most of which probably housed files of one top secret sort or another. In the center of the room sat a bare, narrow table, surrounded by chairs that were functional rather than comfortable. This wasn't a conference room, but a Pandora's box, strong enough to contain the evils of the world. And maybe the metaphor wasn't that inappropriate, Bruce thought, remembering Earle's weapons development programs.
In the center of the table rested a gray metal box, with a top surface area of ten by fifteen inches, and not more than three inches deep. Its surface was dull and pitted thanks to the concrete it had been buried in, but it was rust free. A small but strong padlock held the box closed.
"Mr. Wayne, if you wouldn't mind?" Fox asked, holding out a pair of diamond bladed cutters.
"Sure," Bruce said, carefully fitting the tool over the lock hasps and snapping through them. The lock fell to the table with a small clatter. Taking a deep breath, he lifted the lid of the box.
Inside, there was a flat packet about the size of a package of standard notebook paper. The entire thing was wrapped in black plastic. Two oddly shaped smaller packets, also encased in black plastic, sat on top of it. Despite the fact that the interior of the box was lined against moisture, someone had apparently been worried about the Florida dampness.
Bruce picked up one of the small packages and unwrapped it. An oval shaped locket on a gold chain slid into his hand. He gently slipped his thumbnail between the sides and opened it. The tiny picture of the smiling couple inside had to be Dick's parents. He wondered whether they had had any idea of what was going to happen to them. He passed the locket to Alfred and picked up the next package. It proved to hold an old-fashioned pocket knife engraved with the initials CRM.
Finally, he picked up the large packet that lay in the bottom of the box and slid a sheaf of papers out of the plastic. There was a sealed envelope addressed to Richard Grayson, a marriage certificate, a birth certificate, some sort of legal contract, and a stack of ordinary printer paper covered with line after line of neatly printed equations. "Your area, Mr. Fox," Bruce said, handing him the sheets before returning his attention to the certificates.
The first certified that Charles Richard Maddox had been joined to Robyn Gwenifer Grayson in legal matrimony. "He took her name," muttered Bruce. "That's why we could never trace him!"
The birth certificate appeared to be an identical copy to the one social services already had on record.
Bennett had picked up the contract and was flipping through it. He peered closely at a page and made a lawyerish sort of "hmm" sound in the back of his throat.
Bruce looked over. "What's up?"
"Even though Wayne Enterprises was funding Grayson's research, Grayson insisted on retaining full rights to anything he discovered. Wayne Enterprises got the first bid option, that's all."
"Smart man. I wonder how he got that one past Earle?"
"Maybe Mr. Earle was so desperate to get his hands on Mr. Grayson's work that he was willing to agree to anything, at least temporarily," Alfred suggested.
"If I'm right," Fox finally spoke, his head still bent over the top sheet of equations, "he would have agreed to swap his firstborn child."
Everyone else looked at him. "So what is it?" Bruce demanded.
Fox shrugged slightly and finally lifted his head. "I'm a pretty good mathematician," he said, "but this stuff is…new. If I'm reading it right, Grayson's come up with a mathematical formula for slowing time."
Bruce gave a muffled exclamation of disbelief. "So what, he figured out how to make the world stop turning?"
"Not all time," Fox explained, "but time within a contained field." He frowned, struggling to think of an appropriate analogy. "Maybe it's better to think of it as stretching time. A rubber band has the same amount of material in it, no matter how far you stretch it, but it contains more space. So a stretched minute of time is still just a minute – but if you're inside the stretch, inside the circumference of the rubber band, it's more. Say you're growing cultures. Take the bacteria, put it in your field, and a minute later, the culture has grown as much as it normally would in a month."
"Holy cow," Bruce muttered, the implications starting to sink in.
"This could change the entire face of scientific research," Fox agreed.
"And you can tell all of this from the first page?" Bennett asked.
"Sure. The complete formula's right here. The rest of these," Fox hefted the stack of paper, "are probably the proofs."
"So now we know why Earle's after Dick," Bruce said, absently pulling out one of the chairs from the table and sitting down. "But what I'd still like to know is, who was Charles Maddox?"
"Nutty Charlie the mad Maddox," Somerville said suddenly, speaking for the first time since the box had been opened. She had been examining the open locket, and now she set it carefully on the table and looked up at the rest of them. "UCLA campus legend when I was an undergrad. Anyone who got too intense about their studying was called a Maddox and told that Nutty Charlie was going to come for them. Supposedly, he was this brilliant science student who just disappeared. The legend runs that he studied so hard he went insane and threw himself into the harbor. It was a long time before I was there, though."
"I remember that," Fox said slowly. "Ten, maybe fifteen years ago. The school tried to hush it up. Seems like one of the faculty was under suspicion. I don't remember what happened."
Bruce looked over at the lawyer. "Mr. Bennett, can you look into this?"
The lawyer nodded. "First thing in the morning."
Bruce picked up the sealed envelope that had been with the rest of the papers. "Do we open this?"
"Yes," Bennett advised. "It may shed some light on the rest of this."
Bruce tore open the top of the envelope and pulled out the two pieces of paper inside. The first was a holographic will, leaving everything to Dick. He passed it to Bennett and glanced over the second sheet. Alfred stepped closer, and Bruce tilted the paper so that the older man could read too.
"What is it, Mr. Wayne?" Bennett asked.
"A personal note to Dick from his parents. It doesn't say anything about…" Bruce gestured at the formula. "…that. Or about what happened to Charles."
"All right," Fox said, suddenly brisk. "We better get to work. Alfred, will you help me lay out these pages so that I can photograph them? Then if Miss Somerville would come along behind and pick them up in the proper order."
Fifteen minutes later, all the contents of the box had been photographed, everything had been packed away into two of the metal drawers, and the vault was again left in darkness.
- - - - - -
Bruce tiptoed into the dim interior of Dick's room. Nurse Cherry sat in a chair near the door, reading with the aid of a small book light. "He woke up a couple of times, Mr. Wayne," she whispered as he entered, "and seemed very alert and coherent."
"Good," Bruce whispered back. He moved to the side of the bed and saw that Rachel had lain down on top of the covers, apparently as fast asleep as the boy. The hint of a smile on his face was erased by a tearing stab of guilt as he looked down at the black bruise on Dick's forehead, visible even in the faint light. He had known, even before Alfred had said anything at the hospital, that this was completely his fault.
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he nodded a good night to the nurse and hurried out of the room. There were too many emotions, too many things to think about. Bruce felt as if he were teetering on the verge of madness as he ran down the stairs, not sure where to go, what to do…
"Thank you, Mr. Pennyworth, that does sound like a good idea." Bruce jumped as Somerville's voice sounded in his ear. He had completely forgotten that he still wore the tiny earpiece, until he had come back into range of the transmitter. The wire she wore actually used a satellite relay to transmit to a recording device in the caverns. That device then sent the signal on to his earpiece, but its range was limited. He remembered that he had no idea what Somerville had been doing all day. He had been at the hospital when he was supposed to have been keeping surveillance on her, and he had been listening (via the transmitters) to her when Dick had launched his ill-judged flight experiment.
The whole day, in fact, had been a gory example of why one man couldn't live two lives. His emotions took a sudden and decisive swing toward anger. Storming into the study, Bruce jerked two thick volumes of Greek tragedy off the shelves, pushed open a small panel, and punched a number into a key pad. It was the only way to access this entrance into the caverns now that he had disabled the piano. He slammed the books back onto the shelf and took the lift down into the cool sanctuary of the bat cave.
- - - - - -
Alfred was puttering with the orchids in the pool room/conservatory, trying to work up his nerve. He felt heavy and sick with failure, knowing, as he did, that the day's events had been entirely his fault. Bruce had disappeared as soon as they had returned to the Manor, and Alfred had spent two hours on this and that, putting off the inevitable. At last, after reducing a phalaenopsis to a ragged stalk, he put down his clippers and set his shoulders determinedly. Delay was only going to make things harder. Besides, he owed it to Bruce to be the one to voice the words.
Alfred entered the study just as Bruce exited from behind the bookshelves. "Sir," the butler plunged in without preamble, "I've come to offer my resignation."
Instead of looking relieved, as Alfred had half expected he would, Bruce looked as if he'd been socked in the gut. "Why?" he finally asked.
"Please sir, don't make this more difficult than it already is. We both know that what happened to young Master Dick today was my fault. I should have kept a better eye on him. And furthermore, he came to me and requested the plastic. If only I'd asked what he wanted it for, I could have prevented…" the butler broke off, too upset to continue.
Bruce slumped slightly with relief, and a small smile even pulled up the corners of his mouth. "Alfred, do you remember that time I fell down the old well and broke my arm?"
"How could I forget?"
"Did my father ask for your resignation because you hadn't kept a better eye on me?"
"No, sir. But things were different then. Besides, you didn't have to ask."
Bruce's smile faded. "Alfred, I know what you're trying to do. But it won't work. It's painfully obvious why Dick jumped off the balcony."
"Sir, don't delude yourself into thinking that the only reason the boy took it into his head to fly is because you…"
Bruce slammed his hand down on the desk. "He told me, Alfred! Months ago, he told me exactly what his intentions were. He was going to learn how to fly so that…"
He was interrupted by a snort and a chuckle. Somerville's head appeared around the high back of a deep leather chair where she'd been sitting concealed from view. "Don't stop," she pleaded, "this is better than a Victorian melodrama." Both men simply stared at her, so she continued, "I do apologize for interrupting the performance, but it was just too funny to hear you squabbling over the guilt like a couple of hens over an earwig. Don't forget to blame the makers of Saran wrap and duct tape for their share in the business. And Charles Grayson for bequeathing his son such a brilliant mind."
Bruce's fury was written clearly in his expression, and he took a sudden step forward. Alfred caught his arm. "Master Wayne, perhaps Miss Somerville can explain her presence."
She stood up and came around the chair. "Actually, Wayne, I was waiting for you. We have a few matters to discuss. I also wanted to inform you that I've started proceedings against the real culprit of today's fiasco."
"And who might that be, Miss Somerville?" Bruce asked with sarcastic courtesy.
"Miss Tracy, of course." She leaned against the side of heavy chair and returned his gaze evenly. "Richard isn't your average second grader. He was hardly going to jump off the roof with an umbrella and expect to parachute down. He worked it all out mathematically, by dimension…I take it you haven't seen the evidence in the gym?"
Bruce silently shook his head.
"He found a dead bat somewhere, and he proportioned the wings to his own height. Unfortunately, he neglected the rather important matter of body density, and he seemed entirely ignorant of such usual scientific practice as consulting with other authorities, or even simple safety precautions like wearing a helmet. But he was convinced it would work because he figured it out mathematically, and he had been led to believe that when it came numbers he could do no wrong." All traces of amusement had faded from Somerville's face. In fact, if the coldness of her eyes and the iciness of her tone were any indication, she was furious. "I have contacted both the agency through which Miss Tracy obtains her employment and the educational board that licenses them. They have agreed to start an immediate investigation, which will no doubt result in the suspension of, if not the permanent revocation of, the woman's teaching license. Whether you will take further legal action against her is, of course, up to you."
"Merciful heavens," muttered Alfred.
Bruce agreed. Somerville was a terror. A living, breathing, holy terror. She had single-handedly chosen a culprit, found her guilty, and destroyed her in the space of a single afternoon. Bruce had no doubt that Miss Tracy's teaching career was over, but any pity he might have felt for her was erased by the brutality of Somerville's logic.
"But about this afternoon." Somerville abruptly switched tracks, her anger disappearing as abruptly as it had come. "How much did you hear?"
"Most of it," Bruce said. "It was all recorded."
"Good, then I won't have to explain everything. Gordon will do a better job of filling in details, since most of it happened on his end."
"How did you know about the charge in the first place?"
"Came in a fax to Judas's office while he wasn't in. Suggestive, isn't it?" Somerville smothered a yawn. "Well, I'm off to bed. You'd better do the same, Mr. Pennyworth," she added kindly. "It's been a long day. Your excellent mental faculties don't seem quite up to capacity this evening." She glanced at Bruce. "I'd offer you the same advice, but I'm afraid your case is beyond the help of simple sleep."
Looking pleased with her own wit, she left the room. Bruce let out an audible groan and perched on the edge of the desk. "I've got the strangest sensation that I've just been hit by a train."
"I understand, sir," Alfred said feelingly.
To Be Continued…
A/N Responses to bat-reviews can be found on my homepage! Happy Labor Day to all my fellow Americans! And happy Monday to the rest of you!