"Mother?" the imposter inquired.
The woman in the wheelchair turned her head. "Victor! Come here, dear." She held out her hand.
He crossed the room to smile down at her, clasp her hand lightly in his, and said. "You're looking lovely today. How are you feeling?"
"Oh, quite well. A little warm, perhaps…" said Cynthia von Doom. It was difficult to read their facial expressions, as the fire was the only source of light in the room, and the flames cast unexpected flickers and shadows that were never still. She sounded—like an elderly woman, pleasant enough.
I glanced up at Victor, but of course the mask was unreadable.
"Where are your attendants?" His head snapped around. "They've put you too close to the fire. I'll have every inch of skin flayed—."
"No, no. I'm all right. Here. Sit by me and tell me all about your day. Tell Mother what you've been up to—where you've gone, what and who you've seen."
The impostor took a seat in an arm chair next to the wheel chair, and said. "Mother, I have a thought—I can't call it a plan as yet, it's far too soon. Your dearest wish has always been for a grandchild of your own blood. There may be a way that I can gratify that wish."
"My dearest wish is that you should become the greatest ruler the world has ever seen—but you can call my wish for a real grandchild my second dearest. But Valeria—if she could not when she was younger, the chances of her conceiving now must be very slight."
"I know. I have never reproached her with her childlessness, and never shall. Nor do I intend to divorce her or put her aside. I am thinking of employing a surrogate—a fertile woman, who would, for the proper price, agree to be artificially inseminated, bear my child, and surrender it upon its birth."
"Oh!" said Cynthia. "What a sensible idea. I wonder that you didn't think of it long ago."
"As it happens, I did—the problem was that I had never found a woman with the traits I would have liked to see my children inherit. Today I finally did." said the impostor Doom
'Uh-oh." I said aloud, to Victor.
The impostor continued. "Today another genetic refugee came looking for asylum and citizenship—an American woman, tall, well-spoken—young, only twenty-five—thoughtful—not, perhaps, as perfectly lovely as Valeria is, but good-looking, and with good bone structure. Dark hair—grey-green eyes. Porcelain complexion. Most important of all, extremely intelligent. Moreover, she may be pregnant."
"'May be?'" asked his mother. "But if she is pregnant already, although it speaks well of her fertility, how will you put your idea into motion?"
"I hope that she is—at least for the next month or so. If she is pregnant, then after it is certain, I will see to it she takes, unbeknownst to her, something that will—evict the current inhabitant of her womb. Nothing too harsh—certainly nothing injurious—the mildest possible abortifacent. In the earliest stages, even a laxative can be enough to dislodge a fetus. Then, after a few months have gone by, to give her time to fully recover, physically and emotionally—I would then suggest to her that she consider the benefits to be derived from surrogacy."
I had heard Victor's breathing grow harsh and ragged as the two of them discussed me, so I was surprised when his next statement came out as calmly and coolly as it did.
"I have changed my mind." he said.
"About what?" I asked.
"I am not going to rip off his head—not immediately. I am going to employ more traditional methods in dealing with him. I believe I shall make an incision in his abdomen, draw out his intestines and show them to him while he yet lives. I will do this in full view of his mother and his wife. Then I shall feed his entrails to vermin, that before he dies he may see himself devoured alive. Even to hear him speak of this enrages me beyond measure, when it is only in the abstract and could not possibly be actualized. "
I had already decided to take statements like that in my stride. There was no use getting upset about simple statements—that could wait until he showed signs of putting them into effect. I had something more important on my mind.
I had to tell him about the pills I had missed at some time. The impostor and his mother went on talking, but I disregarded them.
"Perhaps I should have mentioned this before you sent in fresh reinforcements." I began, thinking of the new batch of spermatozoa that were now looking to take up residency.
"Before I did what?" he asked, his attention on the mother and son before us. "Look—this setting shows the Kirillian aura of these two. Note how his mother's aura is—."
"I've missed five birth control pills by now—perhaps six. Every morning since our relationship was consummated, in fact."
He froze—then his head turned toward me, and his eyes met mine. I kept on speaking. "I don't think I've ovulated yet—I always had some abdominal tenderness around the relevant ovary—but I could at any time. Or it might take my body a month or two to sort out its hormones and start up again. When I said I might be pregnant, I wasn't lying—it was more like speculating. I don't know what sort of timetable you had in mind, but I've been thinking it over, and there are a lot of advantages to starting—or trying to start— a baby now. If you disagree, I could get a morning-after pill, and—."
"Disagree? Joviana! The only news that might please me more is the news that we have succeeded." The pleasure in his voice was obvious. He took my hands and drew me to my feet. "I had reconciled myself to waiting for some years, if necessary, until you were certain you were ready."
"Yes, well, I could be uncertain for the rest of my life, but my best fertile years are now. I'll work on being certain when the time comes. And it may not be easy to get me pregnant, so—best to give us some lead time."
He put his hands on my shoulders, and at looked me with warmth and tenderness. "I will save my rejoicing for the time when there will be something concrete to celebrate. But for now—You make me very happy, my dear." He pulled me close, kissed me, and then held me, my head against his chest, the edge of the mask brushing my hair.
"I am too happy." I said. "Even the world as we know it coming to an end is not enough to keep me from being afraid that the gods will do something terrible to us, because they're jealous of this much happiness." His arms tightened around me.
"Now." I said, after several minutes spent like that in rapt silence. "What are they up to?"
The impostor Doom and his mother were still talking. "Oh, nothing you need to concern yourself about, Mother. Just attending to affairs of state, dealing with..."
She interrupted him. "Oh, Victor, don't tell me you've been running errands again for that horrible mutant, that Magneto."
"Doom does not run errands, Mother. I simply did what was in the best interests of Latveria. My kingdom."
"It is yours only for so long as it pleases him that you should have it." She scolded him. "I only want what is best for you, my dear. I speak out of love. You should have what you deserve."
"I shall attend to that." said Victor, beside me in the secret command center.
Both the impostor's head and his mother's turned—someone was at the door. "My lord—your presence is requested in the conferencing chamber."
"Not now." The false Doom waved him away.
The man persisted. "The request comes from the House of M."
"This should prove interesting." said Victor, and a few keystrokes later, we witnessed both sides of another conversation.
Pietro Maximoff, the costumed adventurer Quicksilver, had his father's aquiline features and silver hair, but he was prematurely so. He was somewhere on the younger side of thirty, I guessed. His power was the ability to move at extraordinarily high speed, and it showed in his body language—he was fidgety, restless, his image on the videophone screen blurring with every twitch.
"Pietro." said the impostor Doom dryly.
"Doom." The other man acknowledged him curtly. "I have a message for you. My father requests your presence in Genosha."
"I'm sorry, Pietro. I'm just recently returned to Latveria. I have other business to attend to first. Tell Magneto I'll contact him at my earliest convenience." He emphasized the word 'my' as he said it, and cut the contact.
A moment later—merely a moment—the door to the conference chamber opened, and Quicksilver stood there, steaming with perspiration. "Doom." he said. "You misunderstand. Magneto's request—was not a request."
I saw the hand of the impostor contract into a fist. He left with Pietro, yelling loudly for the It to be roused, to accompany him.
"I think it's possible you're misdirecting your anger." I looked at Victor. "This impostor is not a player—he's just one of the played.
"Watching all of this—it's as if this Doom and his family are distorted approximations of the real people—more someone's idea of who you are, than the real thing. And this someone's idea of who you should be—is Magneto's dogsbody. Victor—I think I know why you were left out of this change made to the world, why he is there in your place—because there are no circumstances under which you, even with altered memories, could be made into that travesty. Your sense of honor goes down to the bone."
"And so the one responsible made a puppet to stand in my place and be jerked about by Magneto. Yes. He keeps his imitation Doom on a very tight leash." observed Victor. "He even appointed his son as chief dog-handler."
"It is the House of M who should be our chiefest concern. What might you know of them that I do not? My impression of Pietro is that he is hot-headed, and has just about enough brains to move all of his muscles around—but no more than that." I commented.
"I cannot disagree with that assessment." said Victor. "His twin Wanda is the smarter of the two. I knew them when they were children, in fact. They were brought up as Rom, by the Maximoffs. I remember she was a pretty little girl, with a lot of fluffy red hair. He was a smart-mouthed, but dull brat.
"Magneto didn't learn they even existed until they were twenty—not as his children, at least. He made them part of his 'Brotherhood of Mutants' a few years before. His wife ran away from him before it showed that she was pregnant, and wound up at Mount Wundagore, where she gave birth to them."
" Wundagore—that's north of here. Why didn't she bring them up herself?" I asked.
"She left them in the keeping of the High Evolutionary's menagerie of artificially evolved animals, and went out into the tender embrace of a January night, during a blizzard, that apparently being preferable to Magneto's tender embrace. She was afraid of him, so she abandoned her children lest he trace her and claim them."
"So she went out into the storm to die."
"Yes."
"Does that not strike you as being eye-rollingly melodramatic on her part, not to mention a cop-out? I mean, to give birth, leave your twin babies in the care of animals that could have been fabricated by Doctor Moreau, and immediately leave them to go out and perish in a snowstorm. That's not high tragedy—that's the stuff of a bad soap opera. What sort of a woman would really do that?"
"I cannot say I have ever thought of the story in quite those terms. She was a fellow Holocaust survivor, and had been married to him long enough to have a four year old daughter before that. She died—he is said to have gone berserk and killed a number of people with his powers. His wife fled. She wound up in Wundagore. I know no more of her than that." Victor told me.
"Was her body ever discovered?"
"I don't believe so, no."
"Then what is to say she didn't escape somehow, remarry, however bigamously, and is not now living in Fort Lauderdale as the widow of a dentist from Massachusetts?" I said it facetiously.
Victor laughed. "Nothing whatever—but that seems an unlikely scenario."
"It would run directly counter to every Law of Heroics." I said. "Ah—wait a moment. Something doesn't add up."
As ever..TBC.