Part 11
by DarkMark
The realm of the Nightmare World was such that would drive a normal man mad. Even a sorcerer had to guard his mind once within it. Dr. Strange was no stranger to the dreamworld, though he wished it were a little less familiar to him at times. The dripping islands, the disembodied snake-jaws, the shifting landscapes, the terrible beasts...these things were all too well-known to him.
So was Nightmare, the ruler of this world.
"In the name of the hoary Hoggoth / By Seraphim's mighty shade / This power arrayed against me / Against my foe be laid!" Strange saw the magical energies escaping from his fingers, and flashed back, momentarily, to the first time he had done such a thing under the Ancient One's tutelage. It never failed to awe him, just an iota.
The cage of dreamstuff which Nightmare had constructed about him dissolved, boiled over gaseously towards the green-clad, chalk-white-faced dictator of dreams. Nightmare tried to avoid it, but that proved futile. In a trice, the plasmic bars, floor, and roof encased him, and there was very little room to move within.
"Damn you, Strange!" rasped the dream king.
"Save your curses," replied Strange. "We have played this scene before."
"As we will again and again, until the time of your death," vowed Nightmare. "I have existed since the first man had a dream of terror. How long will you last, Strange? How long?"
"Until I find a successor," said the magician. "Then he will prove sufficient to protect mankind from you. Now I have a question."
"For you, I have no answers!" Nightmare gripped the whitish bars of his prison in rage.
The red cloak of Dr. Strange billowed about him in almost a manner of warning. "Take care, Nightmare. I will not release you from that cell until you give me what I wish. Had you simply agreed to that when I came here, none of this would have been necessary."
Sullenly, Nightmare said, "Speak your question. I will give you an answer."
The mage folded his arms. "The Orb of Agomotto has indicated much jeopardy for my world. Part of it mystical, some merely bleeding over from the natural. What can you tell me of this?"
Nightmare smiled.
"I can tell you that you are at the cusp of a time which will make your world all too much like mine, Strange. But that is all I will say."
"You are bound, Nightmare."
"I gave you an answer, Strange. I did not say or imply that you would like it. Well?"
Dr. Strange paused and looked at his old foe with disgust. "As
you say, Nightmare.
Great Vishanti, three in number
Hear the wishes I impart
Free my foeman from this prison
Only after I depart!'"
The lord of Nightmares reached between the bars and tried to grasp his foe, but couldn't manage it. "One day, Strange. One day, the nightmare without ending will be yours."
"Only if you are quicker than all the rest," remarked Strange. He gestured again with his orange-gloved hand. "Until next time, Nightmare."
A warp opened into the waking world. Strange walked through it. It closed behind him. Then the cage of Nightmare dissolved into mist. He leaped at the place Strange had been, but there was nothing there. He fell chest-flat on the dream-substance ground.
After awhile, he smiled.
"Just so, Strange," he muttered. "If I do not take you, that which you will face should do the job for me."
-M-
Hell broke loose in Chicago during the afternoon lunch hour.
Hardly anyone in the city had seen the Masters of Evil anywhere except on television. They were New York villains, and stayed in their own backyard, for the most part. The Democratic Convention had all the chaos the Windy City cared for, and they didn't want any more.
But right now, they had it.
The Enchantress warped into the space between the pitcher's mound and third base at Soldier's Field and, in a voice that carried farther than even the PA system, cast a spell which basically petrified the thousands of Cubs fans in the stadium. Nobody seemed to know why she had done it.
The Melter turned up at O'Hare Airport and started reducing planes to slagheaps of aluminium, steel, and unmelted plastic. When guards opened up on him, he melted their bullets. When they tried to physically bumrush him, a figure standing beside him threw off his overcoat and hat, stood revealed as the Radioactive Man, and gave off a deadly green glow. The airport cops retreated behind wooden barriers and called in a report.
Klaw ascended Sears Tower and used the television tower to help augment and distribute the power of his sonic claw. He sent out a screech of white noise that knocked whole blocks full of people unconscious, created a series of traffic accidents, and caused those on the periphery to flee with their hands over their ears. When cops tried to get to the upper floors with plugs in their ears, they were chased back downstairs by several strange red panthers that didn't react to bullets.
Whirlwind appeared in the open square where the big iron Picasso statue was situated and stirred up a near-tornado that scattered pedestians, pigeons, vehicles, and anything else not tied down. A bunch of them went to hide in the Catholic church nearby, and tried to clamber under the pews when the winds from without blew in the stained glass windows. Thankfully, the Picasso stayed where it was.
And City Hall was taken by a huge berserker in strange armor and a horned iron helmet that concealed all of his head. He bore a battle-axe that served to ward off the steel-jacketed bullets of guards and cut its way easily through stone, metal, glass, and most all other things that got in his way. Thankfully, none of them were human; those obstacles he tossed out of his way without much thought.
The warrior had been told where the mayor's office was, and moved faster than word could travel. The city's finest didn't have time to get Richard Daley out of the back way. The mighty axe dismembered the doors intervening, and rendering the troop of armed guards senseless required only a few motions of powerful, metal-gloved hands. Then one of those hands went to Daley's shirtfront, and lifted the mayor's large body from behind his desk almost without effort. The intruder held Daley off the floor, helpless, and stared into the frightened man's eyes.
The Democratic convention a few years back had been lousy enough. But this...
"Call your heralds," said the Executioner. "Tell the world we want the Avengers."
-M-
Steve Rogers lie in bed beside Sharon Carter and tried to find words.
The blonde beauty raised up a bit. "Penny for 'em, Steve?"
He tried to smile. "You could have them for free, Sharon. Really. It's just that..."
"Uh huh?"
He smoothed his own blonde hair back a bit, using both hands. "It's just that I'm not sure America is America anymore."
"Oh, please, Steve. We get enough of that from the Right these days. You told me you were a liberal."
"Well, I am, Sharon." Cap lay back in bed and sighed again. "I'm a Roosevelt liberal. But in those days we were trying to hold the country together, not tear it apart."
"It isn't going to come apart, Steve. No matter what they show us on the evening news, the protests and the bombings and the blacks and everything, there's more of us trying to hold it together than tear it apart."
"Are there?"
She turned to him, her full breasts visible above the blue sheet of his bed. "You know it. And as long as we've got SHIELD, and Captain America, to depend on, I don't think..."
"Stop it, Sharon." He turned to her, almost glowering. "Do you think I'm God?"
"Of course not! Do you think you are?"
"No!" He almost shrank back. "Of course not. But..."
"Then it's settled. Steve, listen." She lay what she hoped were soothing fingers on his bicep, and wondered for the millionth time at the power it betold. "Okay. We know all about World War II."
"No. I'm sorry, Sharon, but you weren't there."
"My stepsister was. You know that, Steve. And what I'm saying is..."
"Sharon..."
"...What I'm saying, Steve, is that you can't be a legend. You just can't be. You're a man, all right? What they make of you, what they write you up to be, what you're all cracked up to be is...well, it's not what you are."
"I know," he said. "I know better than anyone."
"So why do you think you have to be this way? Why do you think you have to be some kind of, I don't know, an American Atlas and carry the whole country on your shoulders?"
He laughed. "Atlas. You know, that's kind of an apt metaphor, Sharon. Lots of times, that's how I feel."
She flopped back. "Here we go again."
"All right. If you don't want to listen, I won't talk."
"I'll listen," she said, looking at the ceiling.
Steve sat up in bed, drawing up his knees under the sheet and clasping them. "When I was a young man, barely 21, I tried to get into the Army. The war was already on. We weren't in it yet...that would take about a year. But a lot of us knew we were going to be involved soon. I just couldn't sit around and watch Hitler do to the world what he did to Poland, or watch the Japanese take over the rest of Asia. Sure, I believed in Roosevelt. But I also had to do something myself. I was a physical wreck, Sharon."
"You've told me, Steve."
"All right. I've told you. Now let me tell it again, all right? Because it means something to me."
She said nothing.
"I won't go into all the stuff with Professor Erskine. You know all that. But...Sharon..." He raised his hand a bit, as if trying to grasp something in the air. "...what you don't know about is the responsibility. I didn't know about it then, either. I just knew that I was going to put on a costume, beat the blazes out of the Nazis at home and in Europe, and be a soldier when I wasn't being Captain America."
Sharon, who was an agent of SHIELD, who had saved the world by destroying a phony Zemo's sun-mirror, who had saved the man beside her from the Fourth Sleeper, listened and knew she would never know all that Steve Rogers was and had been. She wondered if he did, himself.
She wondered if anyone could.
"It was so much more than I thought," said Steve, flatly and softly. "Trying to fit it into maneuvers and training at Fort Lehigh. Trying to track down saboteurs and fifth columnists as Cap, and trying to sleep in the midst of all that. Sometimes the fighting was the easiest part. Then a kid named Bucky...a kid named Bucky..."
"Steve." Sharon raised up, put her hands on his back, massaged him. He felt like marble.
"He learned who I was," Steve said. "He made me take him on as a partner. I thought it might work. I made a costume for him, trained him, thought he'd be the one who could inspire the kids of America to do their part for America, teach them that anybody could be a hero in his own way, no matter how young he was. And he did, Sharon. As my partner, and leading the Young Allies and the Kid Commandoes, he did. I was proud of the boy. Very proud.
"But I had to take responsibility for him.
"Then Pearl Harbor happened, and we had to save Winston Churchill...the first Torch, his boy Toro, Sub-Mariner, Bucky, and I. He named us the Invaders, and we decided to stick together as a unit. I was made the leader of the team. It wasn't exactly easy. The Torch and Namor were at each other's throats almost as many times as they were against the Nazis. The two boys...well, they liked each other, but they'd get into scraps about who was the tougher, me or the Torch, and we had to pull the both of them apart a lot. When they were with the YA's, we couldn't do a thing about it, but they worked together well. I..."
"It's all right, Steve," said Sharon, still kneading his shoulders. "It's okay."
"The Torch is gone, now. I learned that a few years back from the Fantastic Four. Toro died, too, about two years ago. Sub-Mariner was the first super-powered foe I fought, when the Avengers got me out of the ice in '64. I don't know if he's a friend or an enemy anymore, and I suspect that he doesn't, either. Bucky...God and Country, Sharon. If I hadn't done what I did to that boy, he might have been alive today."
"Stop it, Steve." Sharon smacked him between the shoulder blades with the palm of her right hand. "Bucky Barnes made you take him on, remember? What could you have done? Let him tell the world you were Captain America? Shut him up yourself?"
"Sharon!"
She turned him around to face her. Not an easy task, even if he wasn't resisting much. "Don't you realize that people make their own choices? That even you can't keep them from doing so, even if it hurts them, sometimes? And Steve..."
"Sharon..."
"Steve, if you hadn't done what you did for Bucky, if you hadn't trained him as well as you did, he would have been dead a lot earlier! It took the Bucky you made to be able to face guys like the Red Skull, and come through it."
He was silent. She thought she saw danger in his steel-blue eyes, but she wouldn't look away from him. "Steve, don't you see? You think you have more responsibility than you really do. You're not Jesus. You're only Captain America."
"There's no 'only' to Captain America."
She shook her head and waited for him to speak.
"Steve Rogers can mess up. Captain America can't. He can never foul up, Sharon. Never. Not when the whole world's watching a man with the red, white, and blue on his back. Not when too many people think he's America made flesh. He can't be fallible, Sharon. He can only be human to a certain degree."
"And what about you, Steve? Do you think he's America in the flesh?"
He looked away from her.
"Sometimes, Sharon, I don't know myself."
He sat on the edge of the bed, his back towards her, and after a pause, he spoke.
"If Captain America is America, what is he? I am a patriot, Sharon. I feel like the flag gives me its power, every time I put on the suit and carry the shield. But some people burn flags now, Sharon. They take the symbol of freedom, and they burn it. As if it were a cross on a Negro's yard. I believe in the worth of the black man, Sharon. My partner is the Falcon. But some black men burn cities and shoot policemen, and if I raise my hand against them, I'm branded as a pawn of the white establishment. As if American society, the Establishment, wasn't something to be proud of, instead of something to be scorned and discarded and...vilified. I believe in the American political system. But God only knows what it is now, and I'm not Him. I believe in war, Sharon, when it has to be. But we've been in this Vietnam conflict almost since I came back to life, and there doesn't seem to be a way of winning it, even if they'd let us. What should I think of draft-dodgers? Should I capture them at the border and send them back, to go to jail, or maybe to get blown apart trying to hold the line in that war? I believe in the right of free speech. But does it protect the obscenity I see in our art, or the destruction that the radicals create when they take over campuses and bomb buildings? Some of them want a revolution. And they're serious about it. A few of them think they're the modern equivalent of the men who broke from Britain in 1776, even if they're Marxists. I've tried to talk to some of them, but..."
Steve Rogers stood, naked, and opened the door to his clothes closet. There was a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt in front of an American flag, hung on the inside of it. Sharon watched him as he looked at it and wondered if he was genuflecting before a saint. Somewhere within, she knew, in a hidden compartment, was the costume and shield of Captain America.
Then he turned and looked at her with a face that showed genuine pain.
"The only thing I can do is try to keep America together, Sharon. No matter what it is, no matter what it may become, that is what Captain America has to do. I'd give my life to save this country.
"And in these days, Sharon, and in these times...it almost seems that nothing else may do that."
She was about to say something when a buzzing noise came from elsewhere in the room. Steve crossed the space to his dresser almost before she could register it, visually. He pulled the top drawer open, grasped a small object, and pressed a button.
"Cap here," he said, in a low voice.
"Cap, it's Hawkeye," came the reply from a small speaker in the object. "You available?"
"What's the problem?"
"Masters of Evil. In Chicago."
Sharon sat bolt upright. They were both hoping to spend his day off together before he had to go back to his policeman's beat. After all, there had been those difficulties with Val de Fontaine making a play for him. But surely, after all this time, they were allowed some time together. Surely he would let the other Avengers handle things. Surely, he would let duty go this one time...
"I'm on my way, Clint," said Cap. "Out."
He snapped off the communicator and went to his closet, vanishing within. She knew what he would be wearing when he came out.
Damn him.
No.
Damn Captain America.
-M-
In a laboratory hidden somewhere within the perimeter of Gilbert Industries, two old partners worked, with a third, much larger presence standing motionless against one wall. They were almost friends, certainly allies, and always a threat to the order of the world's defenders.
One of them toyed with radiant clay, molding it with lead-lined gloves and precise tools. Several of his figures, covered with thin layers of leaded paint, hung from the ceiling on strings. This was Phillip Masters, who was known more widely as the Puppet Master. He had begun as a foe of the Fantastic Four, the strange little man who could fashion lifelike puppets of his radioactive clay and use them to mentally control the persons whose image they bore. He was the stepfather of Alicia Masters, who was the Thing's beloved. That caused him no little consternation. He had, some years ago, had his face altered by plastic surgery for disguise purposes. But an accident two years ago burned his face badly, and further surgery had restored it to its normal appearance.
If a face that resembled nothing more nor less than an evil ventriloquist's dummy could be called normal, that is.
The man who had helped restore his partner's face stood nearby, in a drab green suit. His brown hair was cut long, not in the fashion of a modern pop star's, but almost as a parody of Einstein's. He, also, had been an enemy of the Fantastic Four. His own intellect was far in advance of that of the normal man, not quite the rival of Reed Richards's or Dr. Doom's, but not far behind them, either. Some years ago, he had recruited the Puppet Master for a joint operation against the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and they came close to triumph. He was the Thinker, and the popular press usually prefaced his name with the word "Mad".
The being who stood against the wall was at least fifteen feet tall and was grey and vaguely humanoid in shape. It had no face. Its massive head was roughly the shape of a brick. How it saw, if it did, how it heard, if it could, was a mystery. But there was a menace in its presence, as if an evil Golem was in the room. This entity, possibly alive, possibly not, was of superhuman strength in its natural state, but had virtually no intellect. The Thinker commanded it, thought for it, governed its life. He had created it. He had given it power to mimic the ability of other beings, only with the larger proportions of its own body. The usual name given to this being was the Awesome Android. That sounded laughable. People who had seen the Android didn't usually laugh.
The Puppet Master used a screwdriver to fasten the arm to a blank-featured puppet. "Favor us with one of your predictions, Thinker?"
The long-haired man poked the middle of a slide rule he always carried, and said, "97.00049 probability that we will be visited within the hour."
"Then you think he's ready?"
Before the Thinker could reply, a door slid back on servos and a business-suited man walked into the room.
Gary Gilbert smiled.
The Thinker stopped in his tracks. The Puppet Master dropped his screwdriver. The Android turned its massive head in the man's direction, but the Thinker looked at it and it froze in place.
"Gentlemen," he said, "are we prepared?"
The Thinker said, "Within a 98.407 probability, given the causality of the events set in place most recently, we can prognosticate..."
"I said, are we prepared?" Gilbert was still smiling. Neither one of the other men thought it bespoke good will.
The Puppet Master swallowed. "Everything is in readiness, Mr. Gilbert. I'll have enough figurines by tonight."
"You're certain of that?"
"Definitely, sir."
Gilbert stepped so close to him that the Puppet Master feared he might be too closely exposed to the deadly clay. "There had best be a hundred per cent probability of that, Masters."
"Yes, sir."
A moment later, Gilbert turned to the Thinker. The savant betrayed little of his feelings, but Gilbert knew how to read him. "Your part is prepared. Correct?"
"As stated," said the Thinker.
"Remember. Your part will be decisive in this conflict. Botch this, and, my friend, you'll only wish you had Doctor Doom to answer to. Is that clear?"
The Android shifted, slightly, as if readying itself to guard its master.
"Eminently," the Thinker answered.
"You are to stay in hiding for the present, remember that," Gilbert continued. "In hiding from everyone but me."
Gary Gilbert turned and went out the door. It slid shut behind him. The Thinker looked after him for a long moment, and the Puppet Master chose a slightly grimy rag to mop his brow.
"Well?" asked the puppeteer. "What do we do now?"
The Thinker looked at him, almost with contempt.
"Get back to work," he said.
-M-
PARKER
That day I spent at Stark Labs, doing what I normally did. Sure, I heard about the Masters of Evil raising hell in Chicago. They told me Mr. Stark and Iron Man were going down there to help the Avengers fight them. But the Masters weren't my usual sparring partners, and Chicago wasn't my backyard. I wasn't some kind of globe-hopper, for the most part. I was just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
I figured the Avengers could handle things. I went home to Gwen. We had dinner and did the things young marrieds usually do. Then we went to sleep. I figured that, even with all the trouble that America was going through right then, in my particular corner of it, all was right with the world.
More fool I.
Because they'd already lit the Fire.
To be continued...