You'll Never Believe A Man Can Fly: Chapter Thirteen by Lee Barnett

Chapter Thirteen

Patt stuttered out something that sounded to Williams like “impossible”, but it was unlikely that it was that, Williams, considered, seeing as it now seemed eminently possible, indeed probable. He had to cut Patt some slack though, as he was finding it hard to believe himself.

He mentally ticked off the possibilities. Hologram? Not likely, since he had a client in that field and he knew precisely how advanced the field was. No matter how advanced, it couldn’t be that. Projection? Similarly impossible. Williams held on to the window frame, getting his head around the idea that Ian Davies – Ian Davies for Pete’s sake! – was hovering, without visible support, outside the window. I always knew you’d go far, he thought, but at this moment, I wish you had gone far… far away.

Patt also held on to the window frame, but in his case it was to prevent him falling down, since he felt like his legs had turned to water. It was Monkton, surprisingly, who opened the window first. Williams just continued stared at Davies, and Patt was wishing his legs were firmer, if only so that he could consider how fast he could run, and how far away he could get by running.

But Monkton, who already thought he had an inkling what Davies wanted, opened the window and called out to him. “Ian, my dear chap. How are you?”

There was a moment of silence before Davies’ face, previously looking like a doctor about to tell a patient that he had six weeks to live, relaxed and a second after that, there was a brief chuckle. “How am I? How am I? Fine. Peachy keen. Never been better. And yourself?”

There was something faintly ludicrous, Monkton thought, about the situation. If someone had used the word surreal to describe it, despite the arguable relevancy and accuracy of the word, Monkton would have shuddered.

“Cold, to be honest,” Monkton answer, “Would you care to step inside?” He stepped back from the window and motioned for his fellow directors to do the same. Williams did so immediately and moved to the other side of the room. Patt just shook his head and continued holding to the frame for dear life. Oh dear, thought Monkton, it’s almost comical. Patt stood there grasping the window frame as if scared he’d fall down, while Davies, who he would have thought would have understandably been grateful for something to prevent him plummeting to the ground looked coldly confident, while fifty feet off the ground.

Davies appeared to consider Monkton’s invitation for a minute and then, without apparent effort, he moved smoothly towards the window. A moment later, he stepped through the window and stared at his employers. He would have had to be blind, deaf and stupid not to notice that there was an uneasy feeling in the room. And he didn’t miss how all three of them made sure there was something between him and them even if it was, in the case of Monkton, a folder.

He looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. He noticed the table and the damage that he’d done to it and shook his head, slowly. The three directors looked at each other, wondering whether or not Davies had just expressed regret for the table or whether he’d just decided to kill them all. Davies hadn’t taken his eyes off of the table.

Did that really happen only yesterday? he asked himself and wasn’t moved by the confirming answer.

He walked to the table, and closed his eyes briefly. He put his hand half an inch over the damaged section of the table and concentrated, picturing the table complete.

The lump of wood that was embedded three inches into the carpet, and that had resisted the best efforts of Monkton and Doncaster’s staff to remove it, rose as if pulled by a string and slotted into its previous home. There was a noise that sounded like a hundred bees buzzing and when he removed his hand, the table was once again whole.

“Sorry about that, Peter,” he said, and everyone in the room noticed the use of Monkton’s first name.

“Not a problem, Ian,” Monkton replied. “Please sit down. Can I get you a drink? You’re a coffee drinker, I think, yes?”

Davies nodded slowly, saying “white please, two sugars,” and watched Monkton as he moved to the portable coffee machine in the back of the room. There was a small smile on his face as he wondered when had been the last time Monkton had made coffee for someone else in the office.

He wasn’t sure what he was doing there, if he was honest with himself. After he’d left Jordan, he’d flown to the Queen Elizabeth Bridge and had sat on the top of one of the towers, wondering what the hell he was going to do. He’d spent the next two hours either rescuing depressed people who were considering jumping or saving people who had climbed up, convinced that he needed their help, who had then fallen. For an hour or so, he’d not had a problem. But then the girl had asked why he’d not chosen a better name than The Pubic Defender and he’d flown off.

It had been the same the rest of the day; for every person he’d saved and had thanked him (including victims of two road traffic accidents, four muggings and six people trapped in a lift) there had been two that had, frankly, mocked him. Two made a gag about how they were surprised the mask covered all his hair, since they found it got everywhere, one woman had asked whether or not he was sex crazy (and had seemed disappointed when he said no), and six separate people had wanted to know whether he got taller when he was excited.

Monkton brought him the coffee and placed it before him. “Thanks,” Davies said, realising that he meant it. He did want a hot drink, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one. He thought it might have been in the hospital, or maybe the hotel room. Again, he shook his head. He couldn’t recall. He sipped the coffee and Davies realised that Monkton hadn’t thought to bring him any sugar. Without thinking, he looked over at the coffee machine and two sachets of sugar rose into the air and quickly zipped into his hand. The directors looked at each other worriedly and then at Davies warily.

Monkton wasn’t sure what to say, and then plumped for “I suppose that the explanation for yesterday’s incident has now presented itself, yes?”

Davies finished his coffee and said slowly “yes, I guess you could say that.” He put the coffee cup down and then shrugged. Across the room, another coffee was poured out and the filled cup floated across the room to him.

Williams coughed and then asked “What on earth has happened to you, Ian?”

The phraseology of the question caught Davies’ attention. “Honestly? I don’t know. I do know what I can do scares the crap out of me.”

“Scares you?” Patt asked. Davies considered the comment, and nodded slowly. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

“Now, if I can ask one more question?” Monkton interjected

“Certainly,” Davies replied, wondering what it could be.

“Ian, given the publicity you seem to have attracted in your, let us say, ‘public identity’…” There were audible gasps from Patt and Williams, as the two of them made the same connection that Monkton had made the moment he’d seen Davies, “I’d say you need a top class PR agency. Interested in hiring us?”

Davies looked at Monkton and started laughing.

After an hour, the Prime Minister had coughed and had then suggested, “A break?”

The people in the room had gratefully agreed and they had drifted away from the table in small groups, talking animatedly, taking an occasional look at Grable, who sat at the table, her head in her hands. She was grateful that no one could see her legs under the table as they were shaking.

A coffee was placed in front of her, and she turned to thank Docherty. Instead, she was face to face with the Prime Minister. She started to stand up, but he waved her down. “You’re doing fine, Doctor, just fine.” He smiled warmly at her and then moved off, going to talk, she could see, to the Leader of the Opposition. She was genuinely touched by the gesture and then Docherty was there, holding a coffee. For a brief second, she wondered whether he’d brought it for her, but then he sipped it and looked at hers, saying only “I see you’ve moved up in the world.”

“Thanks,” she replied, unsmiling. “I have no idea whether or not they’re listening to me or not, you know. I’m sure I saw one of the Americans falling asleep.”

“He’s American,” Docherty said, as if that were all the explanation that was required. “You’re doing fine. I must admit that I didn’t realise that you’d prepared all that much information. How much more have you got?”

“Bored, are we?” she asked, her features crimpling in what Docherty thought was an attempt at a very tired grin.

He realised that she was genuinely concerned as to whether she was dying on her feet. He sat next to her. “Look over there,” he said, gesturing towards a group of men in military uniforms. “You’ve got the Chiefs of Staff talking military matters.” He pointed towards the Prime Minister. “Look at him. He’s with his two opposite numbers in the parties wondering what the political and national defence aspects are. And over in that corner, you’ve got intelligence people asking how this affects them. Here you are, Elizabeth,” he said, calling her that for the first time, “you’ve got some of the most important men in the country here, and they’re listening to you.”

That shook her, he could tell, and he then asked, “what’s next?”

“The rats,” she replied, tipping out the DVD from the folder. She’d asked during her talk whether a DVD player could be made available and was only faintly put out when Bowman had replied “we do have some amenities here, you know,” and showed her where it was.

“Oh boy,” said Docherty, looking at the PM. “And he thinks he’s been surprised so far. He’s about to really get a shock.”

“Jez,” Grable said, “there’s one question they’re going to ask me, and I can’t answer it. In fact I’m surprised I haven’t been asked it already.”

“Yes?” he asked, knowing what was coming.

“Where did the material come from? We only got it under a Ministry of Defence contract.” she said. “Only it would make it a lot easier to predict stuff if I knew that.”

Docherty grimaced. “Trust me, Doctor, it wouldn’t make any difference if you knew that. But you’re not going to be asked that. Absolutely not.”

“But why not?” she asked, “isn’t anyone the least bit curious?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” he queried. “They’re not going to ask you, because they already know.”

“What?” Grable cried, loudly enough that she attracted attention for a moment. Docherty smiled at everyone and they looked away again.

Docherty didn’t altogether blame her. It wasn’t until he’d seen the Americans and representatives from no other countries there that he’d put it together himself. It wasn’t the CIA man that had worried him. It was the other American, the man who the Prime Minister had only identified as “his sometime colleague from The Depot”.

The Depot was an international code designation for a small town in New Mexico, and just under sixty years ago, it had made world headlines, and ever since then, work for a thousand conspiracy theorists for pretty much all of those almost sixty years.

The Depot was Roswell.

Scott Jordan was drunk.

He was very drunk. In fact, if you’d asked him, he would have said that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this drunk. Well, he would have said it, if he could have formed the sentence with any degree of skill.

That he was currently unable to do so was due in large part to the amount of alcohol that he had poured down his throat. He considered himself very lucky that his wife couldn’t see him like this. She was on duty this evening.

So he didn’t have to tell her that he’d been fired.

Not yet – he was getting drunk so that he didn’t feel guilty about not telling her.

He was also getting drunk because he knew that his firing was unfair. He turned to his drinking companion, the former editor who’d also been fired that afternoon. Strictly speaking, they hadn’t been fired. But in both cases, it had been made clear to them that they were expected to resign. And if they hadn’t resigned, they would be fired.

When he’d been sober, Jordan was pretty sure why he’d been fired. Nothing to do with the story per se, but more to do with the reaction. They’d made the newspaper a laughing stock, they’d been told.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jordan had said, protesting that it was hardly his fault if the typesetters had screwed up.

What he didn’t know, and couldn’t be told, was that it wasn’t the managing editor’s idea to fire him. Nor had it been his boss’s idea. And not even the newspaper’s owners had come up with the idea to fire him, although it was at their command that anyone who’d had a say in approving the story was let go.

The owners of the business were the only people who knew why they’d issued the instruction to fire the men and to kill the story. It was quite simple really – they’d been instructed to. None of them knew from whom the instructions had come. But each of them had received information that they had been prepared to do anything to avoid becoming public knowledge. With one of them it had been detailed evidence of his numerous extra-marital affairs. Another had been supplied with detailed reports regarding the failure of a previous business, Continental and General, and the previous transfer of funds to directors’ nominee companies. Technically legal, of course, but when taken with a previous example? Damaging, highly damaging.

And so the order had gone out… and two hours later, both Jordan and the editor were out of work.

In his drunken state, Jordan wasn’t sure who to blame. But his sodden mind was rapidly coming to the conclusion, well as rapidly as it could do, that Ian Davies was to blame. He summoned up the energy to tell this to his former boss, but the boss wouldn’t have heard him even if Jordan could have made the comment intelligible. The former editor of The Guardian, who hours earlier had been responsible for the daily production of one of the country’s great newspapers was currently responsible solely for laying his head on the bar and snoring softly.

PC Marcus Gold heard screaming and it was at least ten seconds before he realised that the reason the voice sounded so familiar was because it was him doing the screaming. In that short time, he had managed to run from the carnage that he’d seen in the basement and he fumbled for the radio, screaming for backup. He knew he’d been a fool on three counts. It was exceedingly stupid, he now realised, to have come down without anyone accompanying him. If nothing else, he thought, they could have verified what would undoubtedly sound the ravings of a mind that had taken a left while reality had taken a sharp right.

Such a reaction would have been perfectly understandable, he realised. What he had witnessed in the room was nothing that anyone should encounter and expect to remain unchanged. He was constantly trying not to throw up at the thought of what he’d seen and he was incredibly grateful when the radio bleeped twice and his sergeant called for him to answer.

It was when he heard the tearing sound of metal being shredded as he was attempting to answer the call that he realised his second, and penultimate, mistake: he’d assumed that the ‘thing’ hadn’t followed him. He’d ducked out through a door that had led to an abandoned operating theatre and had thence hidden behind a large cabinet before running for the open elevator. Once the doors had shut, he thought he’d been safe, which was part of the ultimate mistake.

But he’d also led the creature to a way out of the basement.

In his final thoughts, he begged forgiveness for the hell of earth he was responsible for letting loose when the elevator, which had commenced moving upwards, opened its doors into the accident and emergency room.

Two minutes later, rarely had such a description of a hospital area been so appropriate.

This Week's Artist: Travel Foreman
Travel Foreman lives in Texas, and his critically acclaimed work on Com.X's CLA$$WAR series got him noticed by Marvel. In 2004, he drew Lee Barnett's tale in X-MEN UNLIMITED #4 and he's just finished drawing the DOCTOR SPECTRUM series for Marvel Comics.