2.
"I went to see her again before I came home, Tony. There is something disturbing about that girl."
"The one with the heart attack? You told me. That's the third time in ten days, you know...I remember you getting very involved with some of your patients, once upon a time. Sure it's not just her age or something...Sure you don't just feel sorry for her?"
"No, I'm not sure. I felt differently a week ago. But now..."
As they had done most mornings since Thor had started his job, the two men were breakfasting together before Tony left for his office and Thor attempted to get some sleep. This had quickly become a comforting morning ritual for both of them; the one needing to unwind, to put the traumas of the night behind him; the other benefitting simply from having someone who was not an employee to talk to. Tony poured coffee and took another slice of toast. "Have some more."
"In a moment. Sophie Douglas is a puzzle in several ways. Medically she is very unusual; a woman of that age. She's had a big M.I., as I told you. The EKGs and blood tests all confirmed it. She had angios today - you know, don't you?"
Tony Stark nodded. As Thor well knew, the industrialist had good reason to be familiar with all manner of cardiac investigations. A transplant recipient, he still had to return to hospital every few months to be checked over for signs of rejection. He had had more cardiac catheterisations than most people had had holidays.
"They show inoperable, diffuse coronary artery disease. It's just the worst result one could obtain. We have nothing to offer her immediately save medication. I guess they'll put her on the transplant list, but the gods know how long she'll have to wait..."
"How is she generally?"
"Much better. Her colour, her looks have all returned. Superficially she seems very well. And for one so young, she seems very strong, very mature. She will need all those qualities in the days to come..."
"Did she say anything more about her NDE?"
"No. Last time I tried to turn the conversation to that she seemed uncomfortable; so I doubt I'll hear any more. She was telling me about her plans. She's decided to go to Europe for a holiday, whether or not the physicians think it's a good idea. She's in despair, Tony. Convinced she is going to die; so she wants to fulfil her dreams. All I could do was listen."
"Poor kid...So what do you think?"
"What can I think...? The only thing I can be certain of is that Sophie had a powerful near-death experience. The 'shining figure' is a common element of that experience and I am the only member of the resuscitation team that she has seen since. The fact that she related that figure to me could be just a coincidence."
"You don't believe that, do you, old friend?"
"A week ago I did not believe it. Now I am not so certain. I thought...No. I don't know what I thought."
There was a brief silence. "And what about Ms. Baxter?" Tony said.
"She's one of the good guys, Tony. I think I'm glad she knows."
"You really didn't expect that, did you?" Tony grinned. "After all this time."
"I'd got used to being anonymous. After all, it's a long time since I was so famous they invited me to appear on Sesame Street..."
"Ha!"
Thor poured himself another cup of coffee and drained it in one draught. "I must get some rest now, Tony. I will see you this evening."
"See you."
In Tony Stark's spare bedroom, Thor lay sleepless contemplating his progress. His professional confidence was returning, which was good. The high technology of the ER no longer baffled him; none of his practical skills had deserted him; the nurses no longer gave him pitying looks. The interns respected him and the senior medical staff trusted him. Things were coming together. Yet he was unsatisfied. The spiritual crisis, if that was what it was, which had provoked his return to America, showed no sign of resolution. For all he had felt at the time it was hard to see what Sophie Douglas could possibly have to do with it.
Perhaps Tony was right; perhaps it was all in his mind. He had been so certain; certain enough to throw away something which had begun to feel like his vocation. Yet he could have been wrong. Looking back on it now, Thor wanted to laugh. The very idea that someone here, now, in New York, might have called upon him, prayed to him like that...It was ridiculous.
Eventually he slept; but his sleep was fitful. Visions of his dead father, of the friends he could not save, tormented him. Sif reached out her hand to him, but before he could grasp it she faded from his sight, her death-cry echoing in his ears.
The watcher at the Flame could not spend all his time observing events on Earth, but his magicks enabled him to recall times past to his sight, just as they had enabled him to control the scrying of his apprentice. He watched and was pleased. Things had developed as he had anticipated. Soon it would be time. There were just a few details which needed his attention.
Hours later, spells at the ready, the sorcerer reviewed his preparations in his mind. He found no flaw. All possibilities, even those which might arise due to the ridiculous and stifling addiction to bureaucracy which all Earth-dwellers suffered from, had been covered. Standing, eyes closed, in communion with the dark powers from whom in blood and fire he had purchased his skills, he unloosed his magicks.
This done, the sorcerer laughed; a sound which had even his servants, dark as himself, clutching their cold throats in horror.
Revenge was, indeed, a dish best served cold.
In the heart of a distant monastery a woman dressed in green floated in a position of meditation several feet above the floor of her cell. She maintained her position not through magical means nor, more mundanely, due to the low level of gravity on the little world of Titan - it had few luxuries, but the monastery did possess artificial gravity generators; in the priestess's quarters they were currently set on maximum - but rather through the sheer force of her mind and will. A telekinetic by training rather than through natural gift, she found the discipline needed to counteract a gravitational force of 6G refreshing to her mental powers. The pain which was also involved preserved her from becoming too enmeshed in the webs of her own mind.
Her meditations were almost as painful to her as her efforts to remain airborne. Over the many years of penance she had been made by her superiors to confront every one of her weaknesses: weaknesses whose existence she would formerly have refused to acknowledge. That they were real had been brought home to her in the most direct and hurtful manner imaginable. She had lost friends, family and all semblance of a normal life to her former self-obsession, to her almost irresistible urge to self-aggrandisement. She had become a killer and a tormentor; to use a human vernacular expression, a 'control freak'. Since her rehabilitation she had forced herself to confront her most painful memories: herself claiming divinity; herself as murderer (no, worse than that, parricide); even as rapist. She sifted the memories through the fingers of her mind, taking, she hoped, the appropriate lessons from them; striving to acknowledge both their reality, and the fact that all that was past and she had only the future to face.
She wished sincerely to return to her home planet, she thought; to take up the threads of a life she no longer knew. Thus she might salvage something from the chaos of pride and wilfulness that had been all her life until a few years before.
The woman - who still used the name Moondragon, although the reason for that name was lost to her along with everything else - meditated; and as she meditated she was drawn downward, as she had been on so many previous occasions, toward the great unresolved question of her life and the absence in her psyche which inspired it. A woman of formidable mental powers and extraordinary discipline, Moondragon had maintained psychic links with many people in the past. Some she had, in the way of her former evil nature, forced upon others. Some had been voluntary on both sides. Some had even been entered into out of love. She had broken all of the first category and most of the others herself, in expiation of her sin or in her inability to imagine that anyone might still want to know her in that way. But only once had she had such a link broken for her, by some power from outside; and she understood neither the reason for this rupture nor the means. Often over the years she had been impelled to seek that one person to whom she longed to be linked; to whom she had been linked, by a bond composed, unlike so many others, of real love, until that unsought breakage. Every time she failed and was left both puzzled and, yet again, bereft. It was as though the Other had died; but Moondragon could understand neither how this was possible, nor how it could have happened without her unequivocal awareness.
The compulsion was stronger than ever this time. Once again her mind reached out. The Other should be there...there! Moondragon was prepared now for her many-times-repeated discovery that instead of the warmth she sought the mental space was empty and cold. This time she found, to her utter astonishment, that she was wrong.
The link was alive under her probing mind; more alive than it had seemed even in the years before the breach; more solid, more real. She lived; more, she was on Earth! Moondragon swayed, her trance threatened by pure amazement. She could not even begin to imagine how this might have happened.
Without probing further, without attempting to learn more, Moondragon released herself from meditation and leaped to her feet. She headed for the Father Superior's office, praying that she would at last be allowed the privilege of travel. She hoped that she would be in time; then she realised that she did not know why time seemed so important. But she did not change her mind. She knew - and this was all that mattered - that there was no time to be lost.
On the last morning of his locum job Thor said goodbye to Shirley Baxter and promised to keep in touch. There was no-one else. Sophie Douglas had been discharged almost a week before, presumably to take her 'last holiday'; Thor was still disturbed that he had been able to do so little to help her. He left the hospital and walked to a back alley empty of people. There, he did something he had refrained from doing throughout his three weeks of employment. He extracted his hammer from his briefcase, whirled it about his head and took off, heading for Manhattan.
Moments later, traffic congestion and crowded subways all bypassed, he landed in another alley within easy walking distance of Tony Stark's apartment block. He ran a hand over his hair and stowed his hammer in its case, so that he should not alarm his host's wealthy neighbours.
Tony had already left for work. For an hour Thor did various household chores. This was one means he did have of repaying Tony without causing the subject to become an embarrassment. He listened to two messages on the telephone answering machine, both from his medical staff agency. He had already decided which job to accept and he would have to call them back. He dumped the garbage down the chute; he placed the dishes left over from the previous night's meal in the dishwasher. Then he retrieved the used clothing and half-read books from beside his bed, vacuumed the carpets and washed the kitchen floor.
Thor had become accustomed to housework while on board ship and on the missions; just as he had become accustomed to bad food, arrogant sea-captains, over-enthusiastic evangelists and self-important village headmen. He was aware now as he had been then that Sif, his once-betrothed, would never have allowed him to descend to this. She, ever the aristocrat, would not have scrupled to persuade - or coerce - Tony into employing domestic servants; something which he, despite his wealth, never had done and would never voluntarily do. She would never have permitted some people to speak to him as they had done without picking a fight. Her possible reaction to the evangelists defied imagination. Sif...
Thor's memory, not for the first time, betrayed him. The scene was suddenly, vividly present to his mind: the attack of the demons on Avengers' Mansion; the moment he had realised that this meant a new assault on Asgard; the discovery that his father's own magicks still kept him from setting foot on Bifrost. The way that invisible wall had dissolved at the moment of Odin's death. The way he had arrived, too late, upon the battlefield. Thor smelled again the stench of blood that choked him as he reached that place at last; he saw the corpses that lay among the stones as far as the eye could see; he felt on his face the wind that blew hot with ash from the burning towns. Family and friends, proud immortals of the Golden Realm, his comrades for so many thousand years: he had found them all there, dead in the dirt.
And he remembered how, finally, he had discovered her. Sif lay there among the rest, her headdress awry, her armour drenched in blood, her spine severed and her heart pierced through. She was not quite dead. She knew him even in her pain. She cried out...his name, that was all. Her hand clutched at his own for a moment and then it grew still; and god or no, physician or no, he had known at once that he could not help her.
The apartment came back into focus. Thor found himself on his knees, his face buried in the seat of one of Tony's leather armchairs, his hands shielding his head as if from a blow. He heard his own cry as if from another's throat. It had not been possible even to take revenge. The demons had done their work and gone. Yet he had done what he could, he told himself. He had saved all those who could be saved. He shook his head as he recalled the grim work of the time that followed: the burnings and the burials; and, before any of this, the things he had had to do to preserve the lives of the few survivors. He had gone as a warrior to the aid of his homeland, yet only as a doctor had he been of any help at all. There was a terrible and entirely fitting irony in this.
Thor had suffered such attacks before.There was, there always had been, only one thing he could do when this happened. The memories would always be there; he could change nothing; but he could force his mind away from them. With an effort of will he compelled himself to rise and continue with his self-imposed tasks.
After half an hour or so he decided it was time for some coffee. As he set up the filter machine he realised suddenly how quiet the apartment was; so quiet that he began to imagine he could hear the neighbours downstairs talking ("And how they would talk, if they could see in here..."), or the traffic in the street below. Too quiet. While the drink brewed he switched on the television to a public-service channel, at low volume, just for background noise.
It was less than fifteen minutes later, just as Thor was deciding that he had done enough and perhaps he should try to sleep, that something said by a television announcer caught his attention in the same way in which one's own name, however softly spoken, will always be heard.
"....sea serpent. We go there now for a word from our reporter at the scene, Trish McCoy. Trish?"
Thor turned and stared, incredulous, at the television.
"This is Trish McCoy, in Docklands. Incredible as it may seem, the reports are true!..."
On the screen a dark-haired woman flinched aside as a panic-stricken member of the public ran past her; then, behind the reporter's head, an appalling sight came into view. Swimming up the centre of the River Thames in London, glowing in the afternoon light, was a great dragon-creature: its head fifty feet above the water; its neck scaled with malachite and gold; its eyes two red fires. Trish McCoy, centre shot again, looked over her shoulder nervously and continued.
"...Here is the incredible sight which Londoners near the River hoped never to see. We have heard reports of such monsters from other parts of the world; sometimes they have even been captured on film; but never has one come so close in shore; never has one presented such an immediate threat to the population of a major city. So far it has made no hostile moves, but we are hearing that the Air Force has been scrambled. Londoners can only wait..."
Thor, fascinated, had forgotten all about sleep. He stared at the television screen in disbelief, his mouth open. He took his hammer from the case which lay on the floor near his feet and clutched it to him, drawing reassurance from the power within. He murmured to himself, or perhaps to the hammer, What can this...!
The television reporter simultaneously paused in amazement, between one word and the next. Evidently responding to signals from the OB crew, she turned, gazed at the Thames and gasped. When she looked back at the camera it was to report, stunned, that which most viewers had already observed: that between one word and the next the monster had vanished.
"I have heard enough," Thor muttered. "There was no danger to life that I could see; no hostile act; yet the appearance of such a beast, in such a place, stinks of fell magic. More: the very form taken by the beast stinks of fell Asgardian magic...To London, then. Perhaps it is time that Donald Blake paid that visit to his old friend Malcolm Ross, which he promised more than two years ago that he would make."
Swiftly he gathered together a change of clothing and 'Donald Blake's' perfectly genuine (though dubiously legal) American passport and personal papers. His mode of travel would dispense with all formalities involving customs and visas. The documents and his SHIELD contacts would have to serve if any officer of the law became too curious about his unofficial immigration status in Britain. Then he crossed to the telephone to make two brief calls.
"...that locum OB-GYN residency at Mater Misericordiae you found me...No, I'm sorry, not next week either...Look, it's a personal emergency. Yes, personal! Yes, yes, I do want to continue on your books. No, not for at least a week. I'll be in touch when I return. Thank you."
"Tony? Sorry to disturb you at work. Something has come up that I need to investigate. I'll let you know when I'm back. Thanks for everything..."
It took Thor only moments to realise that there was no-one else he needed to contact. He had been so long away...He changed his clothes: black leather jeans, white T-shirt, black sleeveless jacket, the nearest New York's department stores had been able to provide to a fighting costume. He loosed his hair and contemplated the effect, which was that of an ageing heavy metal singer. He tied the hair back again. A few minutes later he stood on the narrow balcony outside his bedroom, hammer in hand, briefcase tied to his belt. A throw, a grasp at its carrying-thong, and he was flying on the back of the winds that were part of his nature, heading eastward fast as thought.
As Thor crossed the Atlantic Ocean, Sophie Douglas lay exhausted in the bedroom her aunt had given her in her Barbican flat. In London it was six p.m., just after sunset. Sophie's aunt was wealthy; her flat was the penthouse of a six-storey block; and from the window the view over London would have been spectacular, had Sophie been in any mood for admiring beauty.
"I did it," she murmured to herself. "I really did it. It's better every time I try. Oh, that I only had the time...It's not fair! Why did it have to happen to me? I never did anything wrong..." She turned on her side away from the window and sobbed, helplessly. The sea crossing to Britain (for Sophie had found out the hard way that so soon after a heart attack no airline would touch her) had been wonderful; she had spent much of the time on deck amid the elements which, even in their wildest moods, seemed like familiar friends in comparison with the majority of normal humans. Hardly daring at first, in case she should over-tax herself, she had checked to make certain that nothing in her illness and above all in the cardiac arrest and resuscitation she had experienced had impaired her powers; and she had found that they were, if anything, stronger than ever. The waiter, for instance, had been so good that he had been able to fetch her food and drink for two days without being challenged, though maintaining a gestalt for so long was very tiring, even with minimal control.
She had nothing to lose, she thought. What had the doctors said? If she took the cholesterol-reducing pills and the aspirin and the beta-blockers and watched her diet and didn't smoke and avoided stress and of course if she was lucky, she might live for another twenty, thirty, forty years without having another attack. Familial hypercholesterolaemia; unfortunate, but these days most people are screened. Weren't her parents...?
And all Sophie could say to that was that her parents had never told her about it. As far as her memories went back she couldn't recall anything of the sort. And the doctors had said that just perhaps, she had a new mutation of the gene responsible and it wasn't, after all, in her family. It had taken all her self-control to refrain from asking whether one new mutation was not enough. She had refused the hospital's offer of a free genotyping, just in case the other was found; while human-mutant relations had improved following the exposure and impeachment of President Creed, it would not do to alert any authorities, even those of the health professions.
Her aunt hadn't been able to shed any light on the situation. Hester, her mother's sister, older by twenty years than the deceased Ruth, had neither seen nor spoken to any other family members since she left for Britain and her unfortunate marriage, so she knew nothing. She did not have the condition herself; which tended to bear out what the doctors had said. At least she had been welcoming and sympathetic, despite the ancient family rift; she had been willing to acknowledge that her niece, her last remaining blood-relative in the world as far as she knew, had nothing to do with the bad old times. A long holiday with no worries: that was what she offered and what Sophie had at first thought that she needed. It had taken her less than a week to realise that she needed much, much more.
She rolled onto her back, eyes still red but weeping over. "I must show them," she muttered. "I'll show the world. If I'm going to die, at least everybody will have heard of me before it's over. I'll show them. I'll show them who is really the best. X-men, Avengers, I don't care who. Just so long as they know they've met me."
Sophie climbed off the bed and switched on the light over her dressing-table. Sitting before the mirror, she contemplated the changes the past few weeks had wrought in her appearance. Her hair hadn't turned grey overnight; but that was the best that could be said. She had lost a stone in weight and while this suited her body, which now looked firm and muscular and deceptively strong, her face was far too thin. It bore new lines of worry and pain across the brow and down each cheek from nostril to corner of mouth, making her appear several years older in a matter of less than a month. She picked up her favourite brush and began to tidy her hair. At least that was the same. It was white-blonde and thick, falling in soft waves to just below her shoulder-blades. It was (and she knew it) quite spectacularly beautiful. Over her forehead it was cut into a fringe which just brushed her eyebrows; strangely, these eyebrows were so dark that they were almost black, as were her eyelashes. Sophie was glad of this. It gave what might otherwise have been a pale and insipid face strength and definition, without any need for make-up.
She applied a touch of brownish-pink lipstick; that was all. She was going to go out. She had made her mind up; and there was no point in delay. She still could not think what had given her the idea, but it was a magnificent idea. The sooner she started the better.
Just before she left, she could not resist the temptation of another test run. Sophie Douglas, the mutant Gestalt as she named herself, thought - and her thoughts appeared. One to either side of her, reflected as she was in the dressing-table mirror, Captain America and Spiderman stood. They felt, even smelled authentic, like male human beings. They breathed. Sophie could feel their body-warmth through their uniforms. Maintaining rigid control, she turned and asked them to say who they were and to show her their powers. Obligingly, Captain America vaulted across the room in a display of acrobatic agility, though he explained that he could not demonstrate the use of his shield without wrecking the apartment.
The marvellous thing about this, Sophie thought, was that had she given her permission, or exercised appropriate control, the apartment would have been wrecked.
Meanwhile, Spiderman climbed a wall and crossed the ceiling upside-down, on hands and feet. Sophie dismissed them rather than reduce her control as far as she could and let them go; although it might have been entertaining to observe their effects on the neighbourhood, she really had something more public in mind and she could not afford the distraction it would cost to maintain them. With the release of the mutant's control the two veteran superheroes vanished.
"Excellent," Sophie muttered. She knew that if either of these beings had been captured and examined (not that anything like that could happen, since she would simply abandon any captured gestalt and therefore it would cease to exist), they would have appeared quite normal, with normal human vital organs. This despite the fact that she knew no anatomy and could not even say whether the stomach was on the left or the right of the body. Each new gestalt was just that: a whole, created in all its parts just by her thinking of the item or being she wanted to summon. As ever, Spiderman had all his spider-powers, even though she had no idea how these worked. She suspected that this would continue to be true, however powerful the gestalt which she attempted to create. If her power had limits other than her need to maintain a small degree of concentration, she had yet to find them.
Looking forward to her evening's entertainment, Sophie put on an overcoat and left the apartment. Her aunt merely wished her a good evening. If Hester had one really excellent quality, it was her lack of curiosity. Sophie went to Barbican underground station and caught a train, heading for Westminster.
Over London at last, Thor circled in the dusk, looking for an inconspicuous place to land. It was shortly after seven p.m. on a mild night at the end of March; far warmer than it was at this time of year in New York. It was beautiful weather for walking peaceably in a park or beside a river, two mortal pursuits which he had always enjoyed. This time, though, the peace seemed likely to be deceptive. He would have had no objection to a public entrance in normal times; but if there was evil magic abroad - assuming that his intuition had not deceived him yet again - he thought that the longer he could conceal his presence the better.
He circled over the centre of London, over the river and the shopping streets and the Houses of Parliament. All appeared quiet. Evil might be abroad, but there was nothing to see. Thor marked out a landing site in a deserted street south of the Thames and headed for it, but before he could reach his goal a sight utterly strange, yet bearing no resemblance to the work of an evil power of Asgard, caught his eye.
Right below him, not half a mile from the Palace of Westminster, seat of Parliament itself, a crowd had gathered. The people had come to see not some dignitary nor some member of the Royal Family but a fat, jolly-looking old man in a Santa Claus outfit who was, for some reason known only to himself, performing high-wire acrobatics on a cable strung in unlikely fashion across the width of Pall Mall.
Thor immediately revised his plans. Unconnected as it seemed to be to the dragon, this event was surely strange enough to merit investigation. Despite its proximity to the seat of government there was a back-street nearby which no-one guarded and in which no human figure could be seen. He landed there and stowed away his hammer. Seconds later a tall, well-muscled individual in casual clothes who carried a briefcase and, defying fashion, sported a ponytail, emerged from the darkness off Pall Mall and moved toward the disturbance; but even as he moved he realised that for 'Santa Claus' at least he had come too late.
The crowd groaned and gasped as the man swayed, waved his arms despairingly in the air, then plummeted almost fifty feet to the ground. There, he lay still. Thor, approaching, broke into a run. As the crowd grew thicker in front of him and the policemen started to close in he heard himself demand, in the words of his nightmare, that they let him through, because he was a doctor.
At the far edge of the crowd Sophie Douglas frowned in annoyance. She should have kept closer control, she thought; now she would only get the ambulance and the police; the gestalt's fall had not given the Press time to arrive. And that meddling doctor (it irritated her enormously, for reasons she could not have expressed, to discover that there was a doctor in the crowd) was even succeeding, from the little she could see past the press of bodies, in persuading the crowd to move back. The police too were forming a cordon, moving people on. She was losing her audience. It might be best to wait, to cause the gestalt to vanish from the local emergency room. By then, hopefully, the Press would have picked up the story and would be ready to sensationalise whatever occurred.
Thor secured his patient's airway. He gave the name 'Dr. Don Blake', in his best Yankee accent, to a policeman who seemed to be in the process of summoning help, secure in the knowledge that in this land his odd appearance would be sufficiently explained by the fact of his being American. He said nothing to the officer, but privately he knew that this case had to be hopeless. The fat man, his unseasonable costume pathetically new and clean, had landed on his head; and his red and white cap had not saved him. Both his pupils were fixed and dilated; he was barely breathing. Thor could do nothing but lift his jaw, prevent him from moving in case of spinal injury, and hope that help came quickly.
The man's face was familiar, as was his size and, before the fall, his bearing. He was very like Volstagg, the cowardly old Asgardian who had been Thor's friend for so many years. The moustache, the reddish hair, the girth: all were just the same. But of course it could not be Volstagg. Along with most of the warriors of the Golden Realm the fat one had been dead for years. It had given Thor some of the most intense grief he had ever known to think of that cheerful, simple family man as a denizen of Hel.
Within five minutes an ambulance and paramedics arrived. The man was taken away with Thor riding in attendance beside his patient. They were taken to the nearby Westminster City Hospital. In the casualty department Thor found himself brushed aside once he had given his report of the incident; the casualty team took over the patient's care and made it plain that they did not require the assistance of American bikers, medically qualified or otherwise. Thor was wandering away from the resuscitation area, resigned to the idea that he would never hear anything more about this strange affair, when he was startled to hear a voice calling his name; or one of his names.
"Don! Donald Blake, as I live. It is you, isn't it?"
Thor turned, puzzled. Approaching along the corridor was a tall middle-aged man. He had pale brown skin and thinning hair which was mostly grey, though it was still possible to tell that once upon a time it had been bright red. He spoke with a Scots accent which was fainter than Thor remembered. This and his appearance made him an unforgettable figure. Thor grinned broadly and moved toward him. Somehow, it had entirely slipped his mind that Malcolm Ross was one of the orthopaedic consultants at Westminster City Hospital.
They had met at a conference several years before on 'bush' medicine and the training of traditional healers; one of the few such events Thor had attended since his disappearance'. Malcolm had never known the 'original' Blake save as a name in medical journals; he therefore assumed that this famous, or notorious, doctor - the first man to publish a full account of the genetic structure and physiology of an alien species, his 'Asgardians' - had always resembled a pro wrestler, right down to the outrageous clothing and eccentric hairstyle. Malcolm was not a small man himself; he had played Rugby Union for Scotland in his younger days; but he still recalled an unwise (and slightly tipsy) arm-wrestling match between the two of them as one of his least glorious sporting moments. "Still pumping that iron, I see! And you dinna' look a day older, you lucky swine." Malcolm reached out and shook Thor's hand.
"Ah, yes....Well, it's strange how things...Malcolm, I was on my way to look you up. Really! Then I happened on this strange incident in the street...Came in with the casualty. Have you heard about it?"
"No' much. I'm just a carpenter; the neurosurgeons wouldn' trust me near one o' their 'heads'. Anyway, I'm no' on call; believe it or not, I've just finished ma afternoon operating list! I was on ma way out. And you look like a spare part yourself...How about coffee, or somethin' stronger?"
"Great idea."
The two doctors walked away from the casualty department toward the senior medical staff lounge, already talking about old times. They were long gone from the department when it happened. Suddenly, as the neurosurgeons were debating the results of a CT scan which seemed to show no abnormality in the construct's brain, the gestalt vanished to that place where all Sophie's gestalten went when she dismissed them. Five nurses and six doctors of differing specialities were watching at the time, along with two policemen who had been ordered to record any possible last words from this bizarre patient. Without even discussing the matter, somehow all the witnesses reached a consensus that no purpose would be served by reporting the incident and thus drawing attention to what the Press were bound to call an outbreak of mass hysteria; but they shortly found these intentions stymied by the army of reporters which already beseiged the Casualty entrance. There had been a few too many strange appearances and disappearances in London over the past few days for this one to be ignored.
In the medical staff lounge Malcolm Ross and Thor sat for nearly two hours, reminiscing.
"How's your mother? Still in Columbo?"
"Aye. I canna' persuade her tae move back. When Dad died she just wanted to go home. It's dangerous. They had another big suicide bomb just last week. I hate the thought of her livin' there. But she willna' move."
"Give her my regards when you call her, won't you? I have good memories of our visit."
"Aye, I will that. She liked you, too. You know what she said? 'Such a polite boy, even if he is frit' o' the barber.' I dinna' know how old she thought you were! But then, I'm still her babby too..." Malcolm grinned. He was at least eighteen inches taller than his mother.
"I can just imagine her saying that..." One thing Thor knew he would never do, even if she asked him outright, was tell Mrs. Ross the truth about his age. She was over seventy. The shock would probably kill her.
Conversation turned inevitably to 'shop'. Malcolm was somewhat worried by his friend's lack of clinical commitment. After so long out in the sticks, surely he needed to get his career back on track.
"You were a well-regarded general surgeon before you starrted publishin' papers about aliens! Y'know, some day I would really like tae hear how those people came to be your patients..."
Thor ignored the second remark. He could only explain how he had come to operate on the Valkyrie Krista, and later on Sif herself, if he told Malcolm everything. Nor would it be any less problematic to admit that one of the DNA samples he had used in his researches had been his own... "I no longer see surgery as the way forward for me. So much of it is done endoscopically these days. I don't have any experience of that method. I would need complete re-training."
"You could always take up orrthopaedics! You canna' put in a hip prosthesis through a keyhole incision..."
"I suppose not..."
Both men had drunk several pints of beer, though Malcolm was the only one who appeared at all tipsy. While quite capable of getting drunk, Thor knew that it would take far more than four pints of English ale to have that effect on him.
"You can still drink like a fish and stay upright, can't you?"
"Mm..."
"I've had enough, Don. I'm off home. You havenae anywhere ta' stay, have you?"
Thor admitted that no, he hadn't.
"I know you. There's more going on than you'll admit. Dinna' worry; I won't demand tae know why you're in London after nine p.m. with nowhere ta' stay and nae luggage but a briefcase. I remember those old stories about the Avengers and 'government business' and so on; I dinna' want tae know! But you're welcome tae crash at my place if you want tae."
"Thanks. The only trouble is that I may have to leave suddenly..."
"I can just imagine. Dinna' worry, Don. I'll geve you a spare key. Just leave it behind when you know you won't be back and I'll look forward to a letter or a call. It's good just tae see you, you know?"
"Thanks again."
Shortly afterward, the two doctors left. Malcolm hailed a cab outside the hospital and five minutes later they reached the prestigious mansion block which housed his large flat. They arrived just in time for the ten p.m. television news. Malcolm switched on the TV almost automatically, as if it was something he did as a matter of course every time he came in the door of his home; then he went to make coffee, leaving his guest to watch the news broadcast.
The tightrope walker did not only make the news; his disaster and the way he had vanished was the third item to be mentioned, after the troubles in Tibet and a gruesome murder case. Thor considered that this was to give the affair too much prominence, until he heard something of the context. Not only had there been the Thames sea-serpent just a few hours earlier, but the previous day several MPs had observed a giant frog proceeding on its hind legs over Westminster Bridge. That too had vanished, but it could have been no hallucination, alcohol-induced or otherwise, since a BBC OB unit which had happened to be in the neighbourhood had captured part of the event on camera. Then there had been the pair of four-foot-high goats which had made such a mess of the flowerbeds in Kew Gardens...These things just had to be linked: impossible appearances, followed by sudden disappearances; all in extremely public places; all either filmed or reported on by numerous reliable witnesses.
Even the tightrope-walker had been filmed, despite the absence of any television news team. Nowadays, it was almost inevitable that in a large crowd there would be somebody with a cam-corder. The shaky footage - captioned 'Amateur Video', in case anyone should not be able to work that out - showed the man on the tightrope, then the man on a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance (the fall itself, Thor decided, most likely had been filmed as well, but the news team had made the decision to edit it out). Thor even appeared himself for a moment and was described by the news-reader as 'an American doctor in the crowd'. The shot was shaky and the angle, incorporating silhouettes of several heads, very awkward; but he was clearly identifiable as 'Blake'.
"There is magic afoot here," Thor muttered to himself, "Though some of it seems whimsical, harmless...like some kind of strange publicity stunt..."
The more he thought about it, the more plausible this idea seemed; but he was unable to imagine just who might want this kind of publicity - particularly since they had not yet shown themselves - nor why. It was also possible that the pattern he discerned might be deliberate. Thor hoped sincerely that this would prove not to be the case.
Back in her aunt's flat, Sophie Douglas was also watching the news. She was thrilled by the cam-corder footage; trust the tourists, she thought, to make up for the absence of a news team. Then she saw the 'American doctor'; for the first time, since the crowd had been so much in the way at the scene.
"My God, that's that man from the County Hospital!" she said aloud. "What's he doing in London? Now, Sophie, think...You thought you saw him in another costume...what if he's really a superhero in disguise? He's big enough, isn't he? I could do it tomorrow if there's a superhero in town already...Is it worth it? I wonder which one it is? Am I even right? I suppose there's only one way to find out..."
Once the news broadcast was over Sophie went to bed. She was so excited at the prospect of trying out her powers against a real superhero that she found it impossible to sleep; her heart, that one organ which she was supposed to be resting, battered at her ribs as though trying to escape. After half an hour of this she knew she had to get up. Lying listening to her heartbeat, imagining that it might stop at any moment, was driving her crazy. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
The small extra effort was enough. Sophie felt the pain; and, involuntarily, Sophie thought. The scaled and clawed monstrosity was intimately familiar to her as she succumbed to its cold embrace, felt its insubstantial claws drive needles of pain into her chest, into her heart itself. The odour of its breath was the odour of the grave, of a corpse dead a week and rotting; its strength was more than the strength of the strongest man, for in Sophie's imaginings now made flesh it could overcome any man and leave him weeping for mercy. Sophie reached for the pill-bottle on her bedside table, struggling against the pain and against the serpent-strength of the daemon angina pectoris.
At last she was able to get a nitroglycerin pill from the bottle and place it under her tongue. The daemon faded as did her pain, though she was not able to restrain herself from thinking its hollow laugh as it finally vanished. This was the second attack she had had in a week, a fact which she had omitted to mention to her aunt. Angina pain has the frightful quality of convincing its victim of his or her imminent death. Faced with this sensation anew, Sophie resolved that she must not hesitate. She had to carry out her plan, as soon as possible. There would be no more delay; and it would be spectacular. Next day a superhero, perhaps even more than one, would fall at her hands.
Next morning Thor awoke before eight to find that Malcolm had already gone to work. It was his weekend on call, and he had ward rounds to complete. A note stuck to the bathroom mirror with Elastoplast told his guest to make himself at home; a spare key to the flat was attached. After a good deal of poking about in untidy cupboards and a refrigerator empty but for a mouldy piece of cheese and six cans of beer, Thor eventually located the coffee and the end of a loaf of bread. Most single men's apartments he had ever come across - Tony Stark's being an honourable exception - shared the feature that there was little edible food to be found in them. The years of fending for himself had long since eradicated from Thor's mind the old attitude that cooking was something servants did; but perhaps Malcolm, like so many other human men, thought it was what mothers did.
Over his inadequate repast he watched the television news, eager to hear any more about the outbreak of strange appearances. This morning the news was largely taken up with events in Palestine, but at half past eight the announcer was interrupted. She told her audience that reports were coming in of a disturbance at the Palace of Westminster; then she handed over to the OB crew which had already arrived on the scene.
The sight which greeted Thor's eyes was enough to make him drop his coffee cup. He sat forward with an oath, slightly scalded, but did not remove his gaze from the TV picture; he was quite unable to do that. There, in front of his eyes, were the Avengers - but it was far from the current team of Avengers. There was Iron Man - Iron Man as he had not appeared for over thirty years, in his original dull grey armour! - and there was the Hulk; and, most appalling of all, there, resplendent in blue and red costume and winged helmet, was Thor.
'Thor' was standing on the roof of the tower of Big Ben, whirling his hammer about his head and calling down the storm to strike the building.
Somewhere up there Ant-man and the Wasp probably flew as well, too small to register on the television cameras. Thor's first thought was that this simply had to be some kind of practical joke, though a 'joke' of a vicious and dangerous kind. All the visible 'Avengers' seemed to be intent on causing the maximum amount of damage to the ancient parliamentary building. 'Iron Man', even as Thor watched, used his repulsor rays to crack and fell one of the Gothic spires which edged the roof. 'The Hulk' broke a window. A line of policemen approached behind riot shields; and Thor - 'Thor' - called the lightning down to earth just in front of them. The line broke and they moved away.
"...unbelievable," the reporter at the scene was saying. "Witnesses claim, and in the light of recent events we have to believe them, that these impostors appeared from nowhere, out of thin air, and began to attack the building. Fortunantely, since it is Saturday, no Members were present; and all staff have been evacuated. The attackers ignored them, concentrating their efforts on damaging the structure of the House. Kate Wisdom, spokeswoman for the Avengers in New York, has confirmed that none of the beings apparently seen here has appeared in this form for at least fifteen years; and in most cases for far longer. None the less they have powers which resemble those of the real early Avengers; and they are obviously capable of inflicting heavy damage on the House. The Army has been called in. Meanwhile, we repeat our warning to the public: the Westminster area is sealed off and is to be avoided at all costs. The situation is highly dangerous. If there is any superhero watching, by the way, the police say they could do with your help..."
After another few moments the news programme returned to the studio, but not before Thor observed his counterpart strike a hole in Parliament roof with power from his hammer. "In the name of all the gods..." he murmured. "Can another being with weather-powers have decided to masquerade as me, for some reason of his own? But who, then, are the others?"
There was, quite obviously, only one course of action that he could take. He got into his clothes as fast as possible and retrieved his hammer from his briefcase. There was no armour to be donned in a magical flash of light; no further preparation to make. Just as he was he opened a window and observed to his relief that this side of Malcolm's flat gave on to a deserted back street. He climbed out, tidily shut the window behind him and took off, heading for Westminster.
In an alley near the Houses of Parliament, Sophie Douglas watched the assault of her constructs and was awed. She was particularly impressed by her rendition of Thor; she had never tried to make a gestalt of a god before.
"I was right," she said aloud. "It really, really doesn't matter if I don't know how he does it!"
Sophie was dressed in a trenchcoat and what appeared to be a pair of multi-coloured leggings. Had she removed the coat, she would have been revealed in the costume she had created for herself as Gestalt. The mask to accompany her fighting dress was in the coat pocket. She hoped that she would have the chance to display her work that day. But now was not the time. She wanted a closer view. Carefully she created for herself the gestalt of a British policewoman's uniform and left the alley to join her 'colleagues' in the thin blue line.
As he approached, not for the first time Thor wished that he possessed more than a fraction of his deceased foster-brother's magical skills. A spell of invisibility would have been very useful at this point. As it was, no sooner did he approach the Houses of Parliament (and he was sure, as he passed overhead, that he heard one of the beleaguered policemen cry out, "Oh, no! Not another one!") than the 'Thor' on the tower roof, engaged as he was in removing lead roofing wholesale and throwing it over the edge to the ground below, observed his approach.
His magical capabilities might be less flexible than he would wish, but Thor knew tactics. He recognised that the only possible form of approach in this situation was to take the offensive: to be, as Hank McCoy might have put it, as offensive as possible. He directed his flight straight toward his double, crying out as he did so, "Stand and fight, impostor! Be warned, you face the true God of Thunder..."
The other did no such thing; he, or it, actually laughed as Thor landed on top of Big Ben, not twenty feet from his twin.
"How should I fear thee, since thou art the impostor thyself?" the other cried. "Where is thy godly raiment, churl? Where thy war-cape and thine helm?" Thor was astonished to hear the once-familiar Asgardian dialect ring in his own voice from the other's throat.
Below, unregarded among the police officers, Sophie observed the real Thor's approach enthralled. It was true! There was a superhero in town; and he was unmistakable, despite the unfamiliar clothes. Although she would never otherwise have recognised 'Dr. Donald Blake', with his self-effacing manner, as Thor, now she had the coincidence of their both being in London to assist her their identity was obvious. Dr. Blake, he of the broad shoulders and the startling yellow hair...She watched as the clash approached, without intending to concentrating so hard on her 'Thor' gestalt and on her clothing that the other 'Avengers' slipped from her control altogether.
Thor heard the murmurs and shouts from the crowd; he was even dimly aware, from the corner of an eye, that the other impostors had, like all the curious appearances of the past few days, vanished, leaving no trace. But most of his attention was riveted, willing or no, on his rival. Even as he watched, this other 'Thor' whirled the twin of Mjolnir about his head, creating wind and storm even as he might have done himself.
Thor hurled his mallet full force at the impostor. That would be a devastating blow, if it struck; but he had no doubt that his opponent was some kind of magical construct rather than a living being. Mjolnir never went near his adversary. Instead, and unbelievably, the winds that other had made took the mallet and turned it away, causing it to fly off into the distance until its magic took effect and it made to return to its master.
"Fool!" cried the other 'Thor'. "Thou hast thrown away thine only weapon, and ere it can reach thee again I will have thee!" With this, he lifted his own version of Mjolnir before him, as Thor himself would do did he seek to strike down his enemy with the hammer's elemental force.
Mjolnir swerved in the air and returned to him. Thor reached out a hand and grasped it instinctively; but in other respects his reflexes were slowed just a fraction by sheer disbelief. This impostor not only commanded the storm; he had, to all appearances, all the powers both of Odin's gift and of Thor's own birthright to his command. As Mjolnir settled back into his grip the other Thor loosed his mallet's enchanted force and Thor himself was too slow by milliseconds, slowed by his astonishment at being thus assaulted by 'himself', to avoid the strike.
Thor received full in his face the entire force of Mjolnir's elemental power, sufficient to slay an army of trolls had it struck aright. Thor was still the true god of thunder and could not be slain by these means, but he was not proof against the sheer brute force of the attack, nor entirely against its occult energies. Unconsciousness was instantaneous. Thor staggered backward and fell, a limp weight with Mjolnir's thong about his wrist only dragging him more inevitably down, from the roof of the tower of Big Ben one hundred and seventy feet above Parliament Square.
Thor could not hear the gasp that went up from the crowd, nor yet the siren of the ambulance which some policeman with more presence of mind than his fellows ordered forward from its standby position. Nor did he hear the renewed gasp which ensued as his erstwhile adversary vanished into the thin air from which he had been conjured. Sophie Douglas, overwhelmed by what she had done, convinced she had killed a god, lost control of all her constructs save her own disguise; and 'Thor' disappeared as the other 'Avengers' had done before.
When Thor regained consciousness he had no idea where he was. It was warm and the surface on which he lay was reasonably comfortable, though firm: certainly not a tarmac road nor the concrete of a pavement. Voices sounded nearby, male and female; most spoke earnestly and quietly, though a couple sounded amused or startled and one - a very young female - actually giggled. He could make out none of the words; something seemed to be muffling his hearing.
Details began to register. Most importantly Mjolnir's thong was still around his right wrist and his hand held the hammer's shaft in a convulsive grip. As usual, something in him had acted to protect the magical weapon even when he was unconscious, as if the hammer were a part of his body. The air of the room, or wherever he was, was not only warm but smelled strangely familiar: traces of blood and antiseptic and vomit overlain with the potent stench of some powerful floor cleaner. Then Thor realised that he was naked from the waist up. A graze across his abdomen stung ferociously. His head throbbed as if an entire chorus of Mjolnirs were beating against his brain. And he lay absolutely flat on his back as though someone had arranged him like that.
He tried to move his head and found that he could not. Something stiff and tight was clasped about his neck. In fact it also seemed to be this which covered his ears and prevented him from understanding what was being said around him. He lifted his hand to remove it.
This provoked an instantaneous reaction. Two sets of hands grasped his limbs to restrain him, and two voices shouted at him.
"No, no, you mustn't do that!" said a young man. "You might hurt yourself."
"Now then, flower," said a woman. "Let's just lie still until Doctor says it's all right, shall we?"
There was only one type of person in the world who talked like that. It occurred belatedly to Thor that he could always open his eyes. A square, box-like object hovered above him; it took him one or two seconds to place this as the business end of an X-ray camera. And the people resolved into a middle-aged woman in a blue dress and a young man wearing a white tunic top. Nurses. Of course.
"Ah, what...where...?" I don't believe this, Thor thought; I'm about to ask Where am I?
"It's okay, sir," the male nurse said. "You're in hospital."
At last someone had said something helpful. "How did I get here?" Thor asked. "The last thing I remember is being on top of Big Ben."
"You fell off," the man replied, deadpan. "It's not every day we get a patient in from a superhero fight. We thought you'd be dead. But we're fairly sure you haven't even broken anything. We just need the consultant to look at the X-rays. You're Thor, aren't you? The real one? The paramedics said the police identified you. You were fighting somebody who looked just like you used to look. He hit you with something and you fell. Then he disappeared."
"Oh yes. I remember. He disappeared, did he? Just like all the others..."
"That's what the paramedics said, yes..."
Just then the female nurse, the one who had addressed Thor as 'flower', reappeared with a clipboard. Her manner suggested that she was in charge around here. She shooed her male colleague away from the stretcher so she could ask some questions.
"Now then, flower, let's take some details. I'm Sister Marshall. Could you give me your full name and address, please, including the post-code?"
Thor explained that the nearest he had to a home address was in the United States, but that he was staying with a friend in London. The sister asked for both addresses, please, because, "If you aren't a British subject, flower," somebody would have to pay the bill.
Just like home, Thor thought. Despite the fact that he believed himself to be uninjured he felt bruised and battered and he had the worst headache he had ever experienced; he rather suspected that he had landed on his head. He just wanted the bureaucracy completed as quickly as possible so this aggravating woman would go away. Rapidly he gave his name, Thor Odinsson - the sister, oblivious, had him spell the surname - Tony Stark's New York address; and the name, address and telephone number of Malcolm Ross, the friend whose London flat had become his local residence.
"Malcolm Ross, flower? You don't mean our Mr. Ross, do you...?"
Thor stared at the sister for a moment. Of course. Where else would the paramedics have brought him but the nearest Casualty department? He was in Westminster City Hospital, the same hospital which he had visited, as a doctor, just the evening before.
"...Well, fancy that," the nurse continued. "Couldn't be more convenient..."
In the background a man's voice boomed out above the general hubbub. "...Superhero fight, eh? Are you sure they're not pullin' your leg, Dr. Maitland? Though I'm grateful tae you for savin' me from a very borin' round; and from Sister Dalgliesh of course..."
The junior doctor mumbled something incomprehensible; then he said, "In the circumstances, sir, I was sure you'd want to know. A superhero, after all..."
"Yes, I dare say. Unless someone has been pullin' your leg. Let's see the films. Mm. Nothing here. You say this chap fell off Big Ben? Who told you that, Maitland, eh? No spinal injury, nothing on the skull film...Let's have a look at him now, shall we?"
Malcolm never had been very patient with junior doctors. Thor lay and stared at the ceiling. There was absolutely nothing he could do. Even if he tried to make a run for it his friend was bound to see him. He was doomed.
He closed his eyes, knowing even as he did so how ridiculous this was. That wasn't going to make it all go away. He forced his eyelids open again and looked up, straight into the face of Malcolm Ross.
Malcolm was good. He hesitated for no more than a second before carrying on with his examination, but Thor knew the orthopaedic surgeon had recognised him. In the brief moment before he got himself under control Malcolm's face conveyed just one thing: he was shaken to the heart.
"Amazing," he said several times. Then he spoke directly to Thor. "You're completely unhurt," he said. "Nothin'. You should be deid. All you have is a couple of grazes. There's no reason why you canna' go home." He turned around to his audience. "That's it. Show's over. Have you no' got any worrk tae do?"
Dr. Maitland and the nurses faded into the background. This was evidently just the effect Malcolm had hoped to achieve. He had something to say privately to his patient.
"You can teek that collar off now."
"Thanks..." Thor sat up. He pulled at the Velcro fastening of the cervical collar and removed it with relief.
Malcolm moved so that he was right alongside Thor as he sat on the stretcher. Quietly he continued. "You fell from the roof of Big Ben and you arenae hurrt. That hammer is yuirs."
These were statements, not questions; but still Thor answered, "Yes, Malcolm. Yes, that's right."
"Who are you, Don? What are you?"
Thor told him.