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Post By The Hooded Hood kicks off the new arc, and the kick is definitely below the belt Fri Jan 20, 2006 at 08:23:09 pm EST |
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#251: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Stormy Present | |
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| #251: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Stormy Present Author’s Note: This chapter forms the prologue of a new story arc. It therefore seemed like a suitable “jumping on” point for readers, so I’ve made some efforts to introduce the characters and situations in more detail than I might usually have done. The necessary information the follow the story should all be presented in the chapter, but for those who prefer some context: The Lair Legion, the Parodyverse’s greatest heroes, have discovered that the worlds-conquering Parody Master intends to extend his empire to Earth. However, the Legion’s preparations against him are hampered by new legislation designed to force all metahumans to submit to a “Patriot brand”, a psycho-biogenic control device that would allow the government to control their behaviour. The Legion do not yet know that the Parody Master is behind this new threat. This story takes place just after the events of The Intermittent Adventures of De Brown Streak Giant-Sized #50: This Time With Lair Legion vs Botherhood of Evil Mutates and De Brown Streak’s Finest Three Nanoseconds! by DBS, in which De Brown Streak’s sister Pricilla DuBois, a.k.a. the Vermillion Vex a.k.a. Visionary’s girlfriend wiped out all mutate powers at the cost of her own existence. Relevant stories preceding Untold Tales #251 include: Alcheman #21 #22 #23 #24 #25 Resolution Crisis War #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 Cast and locations are at Who's Who in the Parodyverse and Where's Where in the Parodyverse, or are footnoted below. Previous chapters are found on The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom.  “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country... The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” from President Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress, 1862  Dominic Clancy vaulted the high chain-link fence without even breaking stride, and he moved through the shadows of the warehouses until he found the door he was looking for. His refocused his eyes, allowing him to see beyond the usually visible spectrum, checking for power sources, for traps, for enemies. Dominic Clancy could see through walls as easily as he could punch through them.They called him Mr Epitome in the popular press, a name decided for him by the government PR men back when he’d survived classified experiments to turn him halfway into Superman. The right wing papers loved him for defending his country at home and abroad, for his old republican morals and opinions, for daring to remind people that there was a greatness still in the heart of America. The left wing hated him for his arrogant imperialism, his covert activities, and his hard conservative stand. Clancy didn’t label himself too much, preferring to leave that to others. He simply called himself an American. It wasn’t hard to find pier 76 or to spot the sole piece of exotic technology in the whole deserted complex. Clancy’s recent experiences with the Lair Legion helped him to recognise a sophisticated hologram projector next to two wing-backed armchairs. There was no other furniture in the vast storehouse, only piles upon piles of tea boxes. Mr Epitome reflected upon who might send word through a leak in the Office of Paranormal Security to come to a covert meeting in a Boston tea warehouse. The generator fuzzed into life, projecting the image of an old man onto one of the armchairs. “Well, sit down boy,” the image called. “We don’t have all night, you know.” Clancy scanned the image. He knew it was an old man by the muscle and skin tone, faithfully reproduced by the projector. The face was obscured, a mass of scrambled pixels. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Epitome asked. He wouldn’t even have come had the back-door approach not been through Special Agent Grackle. “I want to not have to tell you,” the old man spat. He had a Midwestern accent, but Epitome’s enhanced brain was able to analyse the words and tell that even voice patterns were being modified to protect the identity of the speaker. “I want you to be smart enough to piece together what’s happening. Call it an entrance exam. It’s not your first.” “We’ve met before,” Clancy surmised. Months ago he’d suffered a mysterious memory loss that had wiped out fifteen years of his experiences, leaving him literally the man he was when he’d first received his powers. He was used by now to meeting rivals and enemies who remembered much more of him than he could himself. “And yet now you don’t want me to know who or what you are. You were able to get hold of restricted advanced technology, you were able to arrange for a whole warehouse complex to be cleared, you got a message to me through somebody I’m likely to trust. You want me to know what you can do.” “Yep.” “Well then, it’s your dime. I don’t have to play guessing games. Say your piece.” “Not bad,” the old man admitted. “If you can’t win the game, change the game. Maybe you still have what it takes.” “Takes to do what?” The Grey Eminence leaned forward, “Takes to save this nation, Dominic; maybe to save the world.” “Is this about Special Resolution 1066, the Freedom and Patriotism Bill?” “You can wrap crap up in a flag and people will salute it,” snarled the old man, “but it don’t make it American. This country was founded on freedoms. Freedom from tyrants. Freedom to speak. Freedom to stand for yourself, with no-one holding you back. We don’t buckle under just ‘cause some bully says so.” “I agree,” admitted Clancy. “So?” “So this Patriot Brand programme, where all metahumans have to be coded with a biotechnical imprint that gives the government over-ride control over their actions, what are you doing about it?” “Whatever I’m doing, I don’t discuss it with an unknown hologram for the asking.” The Eminence nodded as if Clancy had passed another test. “Good. So now I got to ask you, son… Do you serve America?” “I took that oath a long time ago. I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,” Clancy said, his dark eyes burning. “With liberty and justice for all.” “So do you serve the US Government? Or what?” “A democratically elected government, upholding the Constitution that our founding father strove for and the amendments we’ve won through hard trial? Yes.” “And this government?” asked the Eminence carefully. Mr Epitome shifted uncomfortably. “The Lair Legion’s been gathering reports about this SR1066 bill that comes to vote next week. Allegations of elected officials being bribed or blackmailed. Threats against their families. International pressure. Huge amounts of money changing hands between corporations. More political horse-trading than has been done since world war two.” “So?” “So democracy is being subverted. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We haven’t paid that price lately.” “So?” “So if I have to, I’ll defend America even against her government.” “Right,” the Grey Eminence breathed. “That’s the Dom Clancy I knew all these years. A guy who’ll do what’s right for this nation, no matter what the weenies in politics do to sabotage our country. A guy who’ll stand, even if no-one else will. That’s what I saw in you, Dominic, back when I brought you into the OPS. Back when I nominated you for Project: Prometheus.” Mr Epitome looked up sharply. “The Grey Eminence,” he recognised. “They say you’re a political myth.” “Soon I will be. I’m an old man. But I’ve striven all my life to serve my country. Not always done a great job, and sometimes it’s been dirty work, but I done it. And I once thought I’d have a successor to hand it all over to, so everything doesn’t go down the crapper when I’m gone.” “You were grooming me?” A thought occurred to Mr Epitome. “Did you wipe my mind?” “Hell, no. When I find who did that I’m gonna kill them.” The hologram shifted on the chair, like an old man who’d sat in one position too long. “There’s things about SR1066 that you don’t know, Dominic. So there’ll be a package coming your way in the next few days. Take it deadly seriously. I don’t have anyone else to send it to now.” “I’ll watch for it,” Epitome agreed. “And about all the rest…” But the hologram flickered out, leaving the paragon of power alone in the darkened warehouse. Clancy waited for a while to assimilate the encounter. Then he hurled one of the crates far out into the bay, because that was where he’d got to now.  Up the shore from Gothametropolis’ dark urban sprawl the cliffs rose up over the wind-swept Boxleitner Salt Flats. Unsuitable for farming or housing, huge tracts of the wilderness were deserted except for the terns and seagulls and the occasional hiker; and right now two young women climbing the cliff side with apparent ease despite their heavy backpacks.“Okay,” called Yuki Shiro, vaulting up onto the grey embankment over the night-calmed sea. “I’m interfacing with GPS. This is the place.” The girl speaking looked like a roguish, slightly-punk athlete in her early twenties. She sported purple and pink hair and an expensive leather jacket, and nobody without very advanced scanning equipment would know that her compact body was actually cybernetic, machinery housing her human brain. She was quickly joined by a lithe brunette in danskins who moved with a casual grace. The Probability Dancer was a dancer in fact as well as name. “We’d better set up the signal, then. Are you sure about this, Yuki?” The cyborg private investigator grinned. “Mumph said to come to this spot and set off a Chinese firework as a signal, right? So I got us a firework.” “You begged a firework from Kerry Shepherdson’s collection,” Dancer pointed out. “Kerry was a pathological pyromaniac even before she gained a version of my probability-bending powers that lets her make things explode in more unlikely ways.” Yuki nodded happily. “Yep.” She scraped a hole to lodge the foot-wide cardboard package into the clifftop. “You really don’t fear death, do you?” Yuki shook her head. “I should have died when my human body got mulched. Every day after that’s a bonus round.” She looked down at the fuse she’d just lit. “That said, we might want to start running now.” “Yes,” agreed Dancer. The two of them scarpered away from the cliff edge and dived towards the nearest hard rock cover. The firework exploded like the wrath of God. The sea lit up flaming red as it reflected the firestorm that painted the sky from horizon to horizon. The cliff face sheared away and toppled into the water with a crash. And improbably, dozens of miniature Catherine-wheels butterflied away through the tempest. The explosion registered as 0.9 on the Richter scale at the Paradopolis U Geology Department eighty miles away. “Wow,” breathed Yuki Shiro. “We should have brought two.” “It’s fair to say that we’ve sent a signal,” Dancer admitted. “I’m not sure Mumphrey expected us to send it as far as Neptune though.” The two women became aware of a spontaneous round of applause. They whirled round and noticed the half-dozen bipedal hippopotami admiring the aftereffects of the blast. The creatures stood seven feet tall, and they were wearing military tunics and tartan kilts. One of them was carrying bagpipes. “That really was a huge concussive blast,” Yuki admitted, checking her sensor inputs. “Aye, twas verra smart,” agreed one of the hippos. “We couldn’ae hae done better ourselves.” Dancer checked the instructions she’d received from Sir Mumphrey Wilton, the Lair Legion’s Chairman. “Would one of you be Captain Argus MacHarridan?” she enquired politely. It took more than explosion-admiring bipedal plant-eating African mammals dressed in Highland garb to phase her. “Who wants tae know?” demanded Sergeant Grievous McRabble. “What’ll be yuir business wi’ th’ Exploder-in-Chief?” “We’ve brought him a bottle of seventy year old Scotch from Sir Mumphrey Wilton,” Dancer explained, opening her backpack. “He says there’s a war coming and he wants to hire you. He said to remind you about the favour you owe him.” “Seventy year old Glenlivet, you say,” admired Sgt McRabble. “Ye’d best be comin’ wi’ us, lassies. You may just ha’ recruited the Detonator Hippos.”  Al B. Harper pushed the examination spectro-goggles back onto his forehead, switched off the omnipolysensor, and sucked reflectively on his bubble pipe.“Well?” demanded Bryan Katz, the unfortunate young man strapped to the sensor table with probes jabbing into his flesh. Joshua J Clement, an athletic looking Caribbean leaning over Al B’s shoulder examined the monitors. “It’s official,” he warned Bry. “You’re a dork, and there’s no cure.” “That does it!” raged Bry, struggling to get off the sensor bed. “You and me, here and now! Bad enough that you zap me with your freaky anti-mutate sister and screw up my teleporting powers, but now I have to sit here and listen to you cracking wise about it!” Josh dived forward to tussle with the former Legionnaire called Goldeneyed. “My sister spent her whole essence to neutralise all mutate powers everywhere and get me back from the Zoom Zone where I’d have been stuck till I died,” shouted De Brown Streak. “She went out doing something loving and noble. It’s not like she grabbed a Gene Normaliser Gun and shot somebody for no apparent reason.” “You’re never going to let that go, are you?” yelled back Bry. “I told you that was a misunderstanding when I thought you’d hurt Beth. Is this some kind of pay-back, then, Clement?” “Warning, warning,” Amy Aston, Al B.s engineering assistant called out. “Testosterone levels reaching toxic densities.” “Like I’d arrange to lose my speed powers just to stop your goofy teleporting,” DBS scorned back at G-Eyed. “I mean, I was doing something actually useful with my powers. I hadn’t quit the Legion in a hissy-fit.” “No, you were about to get booted instead,” Bry shot back. “Keep shouting,” Al B encouraged the heroes. “I get much better bio-readings when your adrenaline levels are up that high.” “We could draw lines on a wall and let them try to piss up to them?” Amy suggested helpfully. “Just give me the results of my tests, Harper,” Bry Katz said sourly. The Legion’s archscientist tapped at his computer keyboard. “Same outputs as for Josh here,” he reported. “You’re baseline human.” “Physically, anyway,” muttered Josh. “Except…” Al added thoughtfully. “Except?” “Well, we know that you and your two cousins, Exile and Suicide Blonde, were far from typical mutates. Your mutate abilities allowed you to harness other fundamental forces. They were the means, not the end.” “Until they were Vexed,” Goldeneyed noted sourly. “I’m liking my lost twin sister better and better,” Josh declared. “I mean sure she tried to frame me, manipulate me, wreck my love life, murder my friends, but still…” “The point is, you’ve had your previous access mechanism to those gifts wiped by the anti-mutate wave,” Al B. explained, “but I think you might find other ways of using those gifts. Give me some time to work on a few things.” “And you can get me running again too?” DBS added hopefully. “That…” the scientist warned with a sad tap of the pipe, “could be a rather more long term proposition.” “On the bright side,” added Amy Aston, “neither of you needs to register for one of those Obedience Brands.”  Inside the Lair Mansion, home and headquarters of the Lair Legion, there were many mysteries. One of the cellars beneath the ancient rambling house had been redesigned to have rather more dimensions than usual, with architecture whose sum angles added to more than three hundred and sixty degrees. The whole structure of striated black and green soapstone was further decorated by the cheery addition of two thousand plus maquette statues of anime characters and a top of the range bank of audio visual equipment.This was the home of the Manga Shoggoth, arguably the strangest of the Legion’s members. And just now the Shoggoth was welling up from a glowing eleven-sided diagram that floated at a 429 degree intersection with the timespace continuum. He appeared first as a shapeless gelid blob then gradually sucked himself together, folding into a roughly humanoid shape that his priestess, Ebony of Nubilia, wrapped Invisible Man-style in bandages, a smoking jacket, and sunglasses. “Well?” asked Visionary anxiously as the Shoggoth literally plopped down into a chair. “I do not have good news.” The loathsome elder creature’s voice was a slurping bubbling trill, disturbing even when it didn’t have bad tidings to impart. “Did you find any trace of her?” Ebony asked him. “Anything at all?” “Not in the timelines forward from the moment she elected to spend herself in altering all mutate DNA across the Parodyverse,” the Shoggoth replied. “I do not think that Pricilla DuBois is coming back.” Visionary’s face was white, except for the dark sleepless circles under his eyes. His brown hair was matted and uncombed. “Are there other places you could look?” the possibly-fake man demanded (for reasons of cosmic balance it was now scientifically impossible to determine whether Visionary was an organic human or some kind of synthetic being, on pain of the universe ending). “There are many places I cannot reach now I have been proscribed by my larger originator biomass,” the Shoggoth replied. He was referring to the main protoplasm of which he was a mere contaminated offshoot, and that had exiled him to the world of humans until he could cleanse himself of the mundane matter that infected his existence. “And some of the dimensional pathways are now blockaded by the Parody Master’s Avawarriors. They taste like chicken.” “So Pricilla could be alive,” Vizh clutched at straws. “We might still be able to get her back?” The Shoggoth tried to understand the cloud of bitter emotions that buzzed around his human team-mate. “I am… sorry,” he replied. “I do not believe the genetic material or spiritual codices you knew as Pricilla DuBois will reoccur within your timespace matrix.” “She’s not coming back, Visionary,” Ebony translated compassionately. “I’m sorry too. From what I hear, she made the right choices at the end and she sacrificed herself to save Josh.” Vizh turned away. “Well that’s alright then. As long as she made a good story ending that’s just fine. I’d better get out there and fall in love with somebody else who’ll explode into goddesshood or scatter themselves across the Parodyverse to save the day fast, or how will we ever solve our problems again?”  Dawn came late and grey, as if the skies themselves were reluctant to acknowledge that the time had come. Jay Boaz, Hatman of the Lair Legion, stood on the wet tarmac and held hands with the woman he didn’t know if he’d ever see again.“Do not say goodbye,” Zdenka Zarazoza begged him. “My heart would crack if you said those words to me.” The slim woman wrapped in travelling furs was known in her native land as Zvesti Zdrugo Rabid Wolf; or as the Goddess of the North. Hatman had come to think of her as the better part of himself. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” Jay told her. “You don’t have to go back to Candia.” “I do. I am needed there, just as you are needed in the Lair Legion, Jay Boaz. We knew when I came here that this was a stolen season, a blessing neither of us ever expected. And we knew that my time on exchange with your Lair Legion was not forever. We have been fortunate that it has been so long.” “It doesn’t feel long, Zdenka. A lifetime wouldn’t be too long.” Hatman glanced over the runway to where Amber St Clare, the Legion’s government liaison, was talking with her counterpart from Candia’s Glorious People’s Crime Apparatchik. “It’s not too late to stay,” he whispered. “Amber has papers in her briefcase.” “I promised to return. We have to keep our promises, yes?” “You could stay here legally if… if you were Mrs Zdenka Boaz.” “I could,” agreed Rabid Wolf. “It might be legal, but it would not be right. Besides, my marriage with Sergei, Captain Mud, it is not cancelled yet. I must return home.” “Why now?” Hatman demanded, frowning at Comrade Borin. “They let you stay for weeks. They sent word of their change of heart about your state-arranged marriage to Mud. I was starting to hope they’d let you join the LL.” “I do not know, Jay,” Zdenka said. “Perhaps it is to do with all this new law about the Obedience Brands? Perhaps they know something about the coming invasion of the Parody Master? Perhaps it is just time?” She kissed him one last time, trying to store up the memory of what it was like for a lifetime. “I will never forget you.” Jay Boaz stood silently with his eyes closed for a moment, trying to keep the taste of her on his lips as she moved away. He couldn’t resist looking again to see her as she walked to the aircraft. “If ever you need me,” Hatman told her. “Ever… you let me know. You call, I come.” “And you too,” Zvestu Zdrugo told him. “I am always with you, Jay Boaz of the Lair Legion.” Then Comrade Borin ushered her up the steps into the plane. Jay didn’t like the little triumphant look he shot back at them as he closed the door. Zdenka chose the window seat where she could watch Jay as the plane rolled away, then follow the outline of Paradopolis until it vanished below the grey covering of raincloud. Then she rushed off to the bathroom to be sick again. Comrade Borin watched in satisfaction and made another note in his journal.  “Go on then,” Zack Zelnitz cringed. “Say it.”“Say what?” asked CrazySugarFreakBoy!, looking up from his comics-reading barkolounger at the scruffy nerdy Hacker Nine. “What everyone else has said. That I’m an ungrateful traitor to walk away from the Junior Lair Legion and sign up with the Hooded Hood. That the team should never have gone out on a limb to save me from government detention. That I’m a huge disappointment and a massive waste of space.” CSFB! sighed and put down his Green Arrow/Green Lantern archives. “If everyone else has said it, why do you need to hear it from me?” “To get the set,” H9 shrugged. “I dunno. Because you’re about the only person here who tried to understand me or thought I was worth something. I figured you deserved to get your shots in.” “How did Vizh and the others find out you’d asked old Hoodily to apprentice you anyhow?” the green and orange garbed, yellow-skinned Legionnaire enquired. “Well, I told him,” Zack explained. “It wouldn’t have been fair otherwise, given that he’s letting me room in his lighthouse rent free.” “You told Vizh. You just said ‘Hey, I’m cutting classes with you so I can intern with the cowled crime czar, need anything from the shops?’” “I never offered to go shopping.” “Uh huh, And what did he say?” “Well, it started with little punk and then he got creative.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shook his head. “And what did the Juniors say?” “I have burn marks on my rear end. I don’t think I’m welcome in the clubhouse any more.” CSFB! looked up at the forlorn teenager with the gift for breaching computer security. “Well before I judge how big and what kind of butthead you are, tell me why you did it. Why go join the bad guys?” “Reasons? Nobody asked me for reasons. Everyone just assumed I was bad to the bone, and now I was showing my true colours. Rotten to the core, that’s me.” “I’m asking. Why?” Hacker Nine scratched his shock of hair. “Lots of things. I don’t want to be a hero, for starters. Heroes save the world, but they don’t often change it. I want to change the world.” “By taking over all its computer systems?” “By getting rid of poverty and hunger and injustice and all the other general crappiness that everyone says they want to tackle and no one ever does. I want to bring down the fat cats who maintain the status quo just because it’s great for them and never mind about everybody else. I want to make people think for themselves, and feel, and care. And I can’t do that playing Junior Legionnaire.” “Hey, the Legion makes all kinds of differences.” “I’m not saying it doesn’t. I’m saying I need to do other stuff. And I can learn that other stuff better from the Hooded Hood. You know I can.” “Is that the only reason?” asked CSFB! “Or is there more? Lindy Wilson?” “I know that’s done,” H9 replied. “But yeah, it hurts, and I need to move on. Plus there’s this Obedience Brand thing, you know. No way am I being stamped by the government.” “Nobody here is going to be Branded,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! said vehemently. “Nobody!” “Well, I hope you’re right. I figure though that the one place they’re never going to get those Brands is anywhere near the Hood’s people. So I chose.” Zack looked over at the wired wonder. “You can yell at me now.” “No yelling,” CSFB! told him. “I guess we all have to decide what’s right for us. I hope you do change the world.” “I’ll let you know how that works out.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! watched H9 slink towards the door, then called him back. “Hey, Zack! Friday night, 7pm, Seattle University, Xavier Hall, Room 212. Be there. Bring munchies. And twenty sided dice.” “Why?” “Because we’re not giving up on you yet. And you still need to learn a little something about courage.”  In the Lair Mansion’s Operations Room, a gigantic hologram globe of the world rotated slowly, it’s digitised surface flickering with red and orange pinpricks each attached to a photograph and text box indicating some problem for the Lair Legion to face. Standing on the gallery platform above, Sir Mumphrey Wilton looked over at the extraordinary display and said, “The old threat board is getting’ a bit crowded these days, what?”“I’m afraid so,” sighed Hallie, the green woman composed of hard-light holograms and computer sentience who was the team’s resident artificial intelligence. She stood beside the leader of the Lair Legion in her neat jumpsuit, her hologrammatic spectacles reflecting the lights from the turning globe. “I can remember the time when we’d worry because we had two reds on that thing. And one of them was Argh!Yle, Evillest of Socks.” The bewhiskered gentleman glanced at the multiple red readouts turning with the simulation: The Machine Shop, the Zoot Suit Gang, the Heck-Fire Club, the Joy Corps, the Office of Paranormal Security, C.O.P.E., ITC, the Necromancer General, Baroness von Zemo, the Hooded Hood… “Those simple times are gone,” Mumphrey mourned. “How many amber threat evaluations do we have on there just now?” “Three hundred and eighty-seven. And that’s filtering out the simple observation situations.” “Well, it’s good that our agents are keeping us appraised of the problems as they arise, what?” Hallie was one of the handful of Mansion residents who knew most of what the old Englishman had put in motion. Mumphrey had collected an extraordinary set of contacts in his hundred and fifty years of adventuring and now he was exploiting them to the full. “It’s good that we have a gnome and a gargoyle on the payroll,” she noted. What else was there to say? “Be useful to add in a troll,” grumbled the eccentric Englishman with the prominent pocketwatch on his waistcoat, “but after seeing Lisette safe home that troll who took her from the hospital last month seems to have vanished again. Typical.” The security door hissed open and Mumphrey’s secretary and general Girl Friday padded into the room carrying a handful of documentation. “Worrying about the threat board again, are you?” Asil Ashling chided. “It doesn’t get any better just because you stare at it. Special Resolution 1066 is still heading for a majority in the House. The Parody Master is still conquering parts of the universe near us.” “All the more reason to keep a grip on what’s happenin’, m’dear,” answered Mumphrey. “Be prepared, eh?” “Speaking of which,” Asil said, “your eleven a.m. is here. And he’s not happy.” “Simonides Slaughter, Black Emperor of the Heck-Fire Club,” Hallie supplied. “Either he or someone of that name has been running that organisation and its European predecessor for three hundred years or more. He’s got more political contacts than the President. He’s one of the richest men on the planet, and he has a controlling interest in the arms firm Turrets Inc. that got the government’s no-bid seven billion dollar contract for Sentinoid production.” “And he’s the legal guardian of Belinda Wilson, Falconnne,” Asil warned. “He’s here to take her back. Where do you want to meet him?” Mumphrey looked over at the threat board. “Don’t have time to meet with the bounder just now, Ms Ashling. I’ve delegated him to someone with the right levels of diplomacy to talk with the blighter.” “Lisa? I thought she was preparing for the lawsuit against Al B? She’s supposed to be meeting with that Armbruster person.” “Not Ms Waltz,” Mumphrey corrected Asil. “I gave this one to Mr Bastion.”  “Yer an evil manipulatin’ slimy limey smug fat-cat bullyin’ sonofabitch with a secret bald spot,” Carl Bastion, the archer known as Trickshot, told the man in the business suit worth more than everything the Legionnaire owned. “You think we’re gonna give that little girl up ta you and your pervy secret-criminal playmates ta drag into that Young Heckfire school o’ yours an’ corrupt inta another selfish wannabe zit-case world-conqueror then ya got yerself another think coming, chuckles!”The Black Emperor of the Heckfire Club scowled at the irritating archer. “I am not balding,” he denied. “Nor do I have the time to waste with a worthless monkey minion. Bring me to Wilton, so that I can talk with somebody who has human levels of intelligence.” “Sir Mumph only deals with the important stuff,” Trickshot shot back. “Usually we get our butler Flapjack ta wipe the crap whut got trod onto the carpet, but I guess Mumph wanted me ta do it today.” Slaughter tossed a set of legal papers onto the side table of the Mansion’s entrance hall. “I am Belinda Wilson’s appointed legal guardian. You will render her up to me or you will be arrested for kidnap.” “An if she don’t wanna come, after your wonder-kids tortured her an’ used her as a hostage against Hacker Nine?” “She is in my care, and she will return to my custody.” Slaughter smiled. “I’m sure she’ll soon learn the error of her disobedience.” “That’ll be after you lever my bow outta your ass!” Trickshot warned him. “I told ya before. You ain’t getting’ her.” “It will take me less than fifteen minutes to have a court order allowing police to enter and search this building, remove the girl, and arrest those who have obstructed the course of justice.” “Go fer it, baldy,” Trickshot sneered. “Of course, Lindy would have ta actually be here fer that to work.” “What? Where is she?” Carl Bastion smoothed down his green and purple tunic and grinned. “Heh. Well, seems she was a bit sick and tired of the superhero life after you guys, and especially after whut happened to her brother, the Falcon. So Vizh suggested she might want ta take a little vacation. Get away from it all.” “Where is she?” repeated Slaughter. “Do not try my patience, little man. I have broken many arrogant fools who got in my way.” “Hey, you want to shake down right here, right now, I’m the guy who’ll take great pleasure in kicking your overpaid butt all round the island.” “You? With you little toys? I am Simonides Slaughter. My gifts include the ability to absorb any energies used against me, even kinetic force, and turn them back on my opponents. You would be a greasy smear on your carpet if you tried to assault me. Now where is the child?” “Well, you got me tremblin’ in my purple booties,” mocked Trickshot. “As fer Lindy, she’s in Badripoor.” “Badripoor?” The far-Eastern rogue nation-state was a lawless, difficult place to trace the girl, but not impossible. “You expect that to protect her? I have judges on payroll in Badripoor.” “Yeah? Well give me their names an’ I’ll pass them on to President spiffy. Lindy’s out there as his guest. Good luck extraditin’ her back to your house of horrors, creepy. Or save yer bribe monies and buy a hair transplant.” That was enough. Slaughter’s fraying temper snapped, and his hand flashed out to do the same to Bastion’s neck. “Ooh, dumb move,” the archer beamed, dodging aside with an assured instinct of when he’d pushed yet another villain to breaking point. “Now I get ta spank your tushie!” “Idiot! There’s nothing you can do to harm me at all!” “Heh. Let’s go.” “How did the negotiations with Simonides Slaughter turn out?” asked Lisa Waltz as she met Trickshot in the hall later. “Very well, I thought,” grinned the irritating archer. “But I gotta go order me a new indelible pink dye arrow an’ get some more’a them skunk scent modules. I’m all out.”  “Powerless,” Bry Katz told schoolteacher Beth Shellett. “That mutate wave robbed me of my spatial-moulding powers. I can’t teleport anymore. I can’t bend timespace to enhance my strength or shield me from harm. I can’t do anything.”“That’s not true at all,” the pretty young woman told him. “You just can’t do super things.” “Al B. says that it’s only the trigger method that’s been erased. There might be other ways I can access my Goldeneyed powers. But I keep trying and it’s no use. I’m no use.” “I thought you had decided that being a superhero wasn’t for you anyhow? Ever since you quit the Legion…” “That was then. Suddenly I’m trapped in a world where things need fixing, people need saving. And I can’t save them!” Beth Shellett caught his face between her hands and held him still. “Bry, shut up. Just listen to me. You’re a hero, and it’s not the powers that make you that. You are not useless. You can still save the world. You just have to work a little bit harder at it.” Goldeneyed felt the anger and tension drain out of him under that soft caring gaze. “I guess I can still be a prize idiot even without my powers,” he admitted. “As good as ever,” Beth agreed. “So, are you going to be a hero, Mr Katz?” “I guess. But I don’t know how. I don’t know where to start.” Beth smiled at him pityingly. “Do something brave,” she suggested. “Do something you’ve never dared do before, even when you had all your mighty powers. Something that scares you, but you’ve always wanted to accomplish.” “Right,” breathed G-Eyed. “You’re so right.” “I know I am. So what will you do, Bry?” Goldeneyed took a moment to screw up his courage. “Beth, will you go to dinner with me? On a date, I mean. A romantic date. With me.” Beth Shellett’s mouth formed a little pink O, and her face filled with a rosy blush. “Good start,” she admitted. “Very good start.”  “Is it me,” Dancer asked, shivering a little in the damp chill, “or is it incredibly creepy down here?”“Creepy,” agreed Hatman. He’d decided that the best way to cope with the agonising hole where his heart was supposed to be was to joining Dancer and the Shoggoth on their liaison rendezvous. “It is a little claustrophobic,” the Manga Shoggoth conceded. “So few dimensions.” The three Legionnaires were waiting in one of the natural rock antechambers in the cave complex below Parody Island. Hatman and Dancer had torches, but they tried not to shine them through the translucent gel of the Shoggoth because it cast disturbing reflections over the rough rock walls. “I think it’s quite cosy,” countered the being they’d been waiting to meet. “It could use a few bookshelves, I suppose.” The Abyssal Greye had been human once. That was before he died, before his flesh and brain had been consumed by the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis, before his intellect had been absorbed into their intellectual gestalt, before his personality had grown to dominate one of the undead creatures and made it his own. Now the thin, mould-green scholar shuffled forward in his ragged dressing gown and academic mortar to greet the living. “Hey!” called out Dancer cheerfully. “Nice to meet you! Urthula Underess speaks very highly of you.” That was a diplomatic lie, of course. The phrase ‘more boring than watching mushrooms grow’ had been used in that conversation by the determined party ghoul. “I doubt that,” Greye responded; but he seemed to appreciate the attempt at conviviality. “This is Dancer, and I’m Hatman,” Jay Boaz said, taking charge. “I gather you already know the Manga Shoggoth.” “We are old acquaintances,” agreed the Abyssal of the Scholar-Ghouls Under Gothametropolis. “Thank you for meeting with me.” “Thank you for not eating us all in our beds,” Dancer breezed back at him. “So what have you got for us?” “As I told the gnome, there are things happening in the occult underworld. Subtle shifts in power, paralleling the events of your society.” “In what way?” frowned Hatman. The last experience of the supernatural he’d encountered had left him drained of blood by a vampire. “The Necromancer General is recruiting,” Greye explained. “He’s got that M’Tumbe girl working with him, and some others. They’re talking with the werewolf clans, some of the more primitive and backwards ghoul enclave, the nightgaunts, the lesser manifestations. The usual suspects.” “Perhaps I should remind them that there are rules,” bubbled the Shoggoth. “Are you sure?” asked Greye. “The Parody Master is coming. Everyone is taking sides. And there’s a Lord of Vampires again.” “Dracula has risen from the grave?” suggested Dancer. “Not that I know of,” the Abyssal answered seriously, “although I can check. No, right now the claimant is Graf Hertzhog, a very nasty piece of work indeed. He’s allied himself with the cult of the Parody Master, they’ve enhanced his abilities.” “Would sucking his head right off his shoulders still work?” asked the Shoggoth. “Well, it can’t hurt to find out.” “Hertzhog and the vampires have a lot to gain in supporting the Parody Master,” Greye continued. “After all, someone will have to run the slave camps.” “What about you?” demanded Hatman. “Why are you telling us this? Whose side are you on?” The scholar ghoul looked over his half-moon spectacles at the capped crusader like a schoolteacher at an idiot pupil. “The side that doesn’t burn books they disagree with, of course,” he replied. “Tell Sir Mumphrey Wilton that when he needs our aid, the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis will be ready.”  “Four minutes eleven,” Yuki called, stopping the automatic timer routine she’d set in her internal computer. “Not bad.”Josh Clement jogged to a halt and stood with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. He’d just completed the cross-country track around the perimeter of Parody Island. “I could have done this is less than a hundredth of a second last week,” he pointed out. “For a baseline human, four minutes eleven for a one mile outdoor circuit isn’t bad. You’re not far off Olympic standard,” the cyborg P.I. pointed out. “But a long way off LL standard,” De Brown Streak pointed out ruefully. “Hatman’s going to have to do those team deployment adjustments. Mumphrey’s going to have to find a new Field Team operative.” “Actually, he already did,” Yuki explained. “I’ve been reassigned.” She checked her friend. “Is that okay?” “More than okay,” DBS grinned. “The Field Team was seriously short of somebody who could carry on the important work of busting Epitome’s balls and making Hatman cry.” “I’ll do my best,” Yuki promised. “You know, Mumphrey said you could stay on with the support team…” “Do I seem like a support team kind of guy to you?” DBS asked. “Nah. I’ve got some other stuff to do. It’ll be a good life.” “With Uhuna?” “You’re great with the tough questions, aren’t you?” “You have seen what is says printed on my business cards, right? What job I do?” “You mean your actual business cards or those fake ones CSFB! had printed up and planted in phone booths?” “That was him? He is so street-kill when I catch him.” Yuki paused. “So, Uhuna…?” “Well,” sighed Josh, “I just…” And then Yuki comm-card bleeped. “Reminder that the Lair Legion strategy session is now commencing in the Meeting Room.” “Go,” said Josh. “It’s important.” “You’re not coming?” “Not any more.” He gave the cyborg P.I. a hug. “Knock ‘em dead.” “Going to the meeting?” Amber St Clare asked CSFB! “Any word on Yo and the Librarian?” “Still off in space,” the wired wonder called back, sliding down the banister rail in the main hall. “Got a transmission from them this morning that they’re heading to meet with the Astrovids about joining the Alliance to Kick the Parody Master in the Nads. Gotta go!” “Me too,” agreed Amber, turning to her room where she could pass on the information as the Obedience Brand stamped upon her compelled her to.  “We’ve lost,” declared Lisa L Waltz, first lady of the Lair Legion. “the campaign against the Patriot Brands, I mean. We’ve failed.”“Call ‘em whut they really are,” Trickshot insisted. “Obedience Brands, turning people inta obedient little zombies.” “From what we can tell, they’re not zombies,” warned Al B. Harper. “This technology is far more effective than even those control chips the Technopolitans used. That had a mechanical and biological effect. These brands seem to operate on all kinds of levels, maybe even mystical. The person who gets them remains in full control of all their abilities, just becomes fanatically obedient to whoever’s controlling them.” He frowned down at his hands, “I have got to get a sample for analysis,” he muttered. “Plenty of people out there willin’ ta give us one ta try,” snorted Trickshot. “I’m glad I’m in a robot body then,” Yuki declared. “No one’s controlling me.” “I haven’t been able to decompile a Brand yet,” Al B. said, “but they’re so versatile and sophisticated I wouldn’t rule out their application on cyborgs. Or hemigods. Or pure thought beings.” “Well, they’re coming now,” Lisa determined. “We’ve been outgunned and outflanked in the media war. The public are backing SR1066, at least enough of them to keep the momentum going. There’s been high-profile support from volunteers for the process like Aryan Ideal. And we’ve had some… PR difficulties.” “You can say it,” Hatman snorted. “Epitome and I made asses of ourselves on national TV when we got provoked into brawling in Velma Klein’s backyard.” “I think it was probably Dark Knight murdering someone on camera that really did for us,” Dancer pointed out. “Are we any nearer tracing poor DK?” “Further away if anything,” CSFB! reported. “One by one everybody associated with the case is disappearing. Messenger. Prodigy. Anton. Sharon Rogers. Could be the Lynchpin cleaning house, or just a sense of self-preservation, but each absence makes it that much harder to track DK.” “What about Finny?” suggested Trickshot. “If anybody could find DK it’s him.” “We sent him undercover to find out whether there was a covert operation to recruit and use supervillains for nefarious government purposes,” Mumphrey answered. “A lot has happened since then.” “I don’t know whether we can trust SPUD any more,” Mr Epitome cautioned. “I don’t know whether that was really Drury who set us up or something else, but SPUD is compromised.” Lisa Waltz flicked off the monitor replay of Hatman and Epitome being arrested by the Gothametropolis PD and laid down the remote control. “Almost everyone is compromised,” she noted. “They’re laying the foundations of a tax fraud case against Jamie Bautista and his company. In the UK the Monopolies and Mergers Commission is sniffing round Wilton Industries. SR1066 isn’t an isolated piece of hate legislation.” “It seems curious that it is all occurring shortly before the expected assault of the Parody Master,” observed the Manga Shoggoth. “At least if one views time in a directional linear manner.” “So what are you suggesting?” demanded Mr Epitome. “We know there’s a conspiracy. We know they’re out to shut the Lair Legion down and gain absolute control over all metahuman assets and advanced technology. We know – but can’t prove – that illegal pressure is being brought to bear upon the democratic process. But then what?” “Then we do something about it,” CSFB! argued. “We need to protect this world from the Parody Master. We can’t do that from prison cells, or as Herbert Garrick’s wind-up soldiers.” “Everything is changing,” admitted Hatman. “The loss of the mutate population has shifted the power base. The robots are probably the strongest metahuman minority now. And there are a lot of Sentinoids freed up for other duties.” Dancer lifted her hand to speak. “If people don’t want us to save them, have we the right to do it?” she wondered. “What if No More Metas really is the will of the people?” “Then the people don’t know what’s good for them,” argued Yuki. “That’s a dangerous way to think,” cautioned Hatman. “We can’t just take the law into our own hands…” “Even when it’s being used to strangle us?” demanded CSFB! “Look, I’m for truth and justice as much as the next friendly neighbourhood CrazySugarFreakBoy! but this stuff is getting scary. I mean, I have friends in the Globetrotting Gangbusters who are feeling very vulnerable.” “I could accept the compulsory controls over felons,” admitted Mr Epitome, “but not over private citizens. And not by legislation forced through by covert and illegal means.” “Well, we’re going to have to decide what to do,” summarised Sir Mumphrey Wilton, rising from his chair to conclude the discussion. “We’re going to have to decide whether we will accept the Obedience Brands if SR1066 and its international counterparts are passed into law. And we’ll have to decide what we will do if we elect not to submit and register.” “I’ll tell you now, I’m not doing it,” Yuki asserted. “Damn straight!” agreed Trickshot. “What’s the alternative?” Dancer asked them. “Civil war? Take over the planet?” “I haven’t taken over a planet for months,” noted Lisa. This would be her third. “Dancer has a point,” Hatman argued. “If we just take authority when it suits us, what’s the difference between us and the Hooded Hood?” “He’d do a better job of it?” suggested the Shoggoth. “I do not think most of you have the ruthlessness necessary for an effective dictatorship.” Visionary had kept quiet all through the debate but now he spoke up. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted, “but I will die before I let the Juniors or Asil or the Caphans become slaves to that Brand.” Mumphrey hrummphed and lifted his pocketwatch. “I’ll expect any representations and opinion you have on the direction we take submitted to me in person or writin’ by 9pm tomorrow,” he told the team. “My door is open. I want to know what each of you thinks, and I want to know whether you’ll abide by a majority decision no matter what it is. Then we’ll vote on what to do.” He looked carefully at each of the heroes round the table. “Think hard on this. What we decide tomorrow will decide the direction of this world for all time.”  “Scotch,” said Sir Mumphrey Wilton. It wasn’t a question about whether Visionary wanted some, it was a statement, perhaps an order. He poured a couple of doubles and didn’t bother with ice.Visionary sat down in the study that went with the job of Leader of the Lair legion. Somehow the old oak-panelled room looked a lot more classy than when he’d been resident there. Perhaps it was the eccentric Englishman’s antique furniture, or perhaps it was the old man himself. “What do you want?” asked Vizh. “Honestly?” the old man asked, slumping onto the Chesterton opposite his guest. “I want to get very drunk.” Vizh swallowed back his own drink. “Why? Because the Legion has been coming to you all day, telling you their views about SR1066?” “That, of course,” Mumphrey agreed. “Of course, you’d expect men and women of the Legion’s calibre to have strong views on things like this. But next week I have a journey to make back home to England. I make it every year at this time. I deliver a rose.” “A rose?” “On the anniversary of Madge’s death, a single rose to her grave. Every year since… since she left.” There was a raw edge to the Englishman’s voice that Visionary hadn’t heard before. “Oh.” “I’m damned sorry, Visionary, about you and Pricilla, Damned sorry. I know it must be churnin’ your guts inside, knowing you couldn’t do a thing about it, wondering about how things might have been if only…” He poured more drinks. “And I know this must come close to home, it being the second time someone you’ve loved has chosen to sacrifice themselves for the very best of reasons.” “There really aren’t any words.” Mumphrey filled the drinks again. “I know. I wanted you to know that I’ve been there, and survived. I’m with you, old chap. Long as it takes.” “I… don’t know that I’ll be able to get past this one.” “But I do. Visionary, have you ever wondered why you’re on the Lair Legion? Clement lost his powers and he’s leavin’. So did Katz. You’ve never had powers, but I’ve never once considered you anything but a valued member of the team.” “You haven’t? I mean, I thought…” “You don’t have the power, or the skill, or the weapons, or the brains to take on the dangers that beset us,” Mumphrey told him. “And yet you stand there and you try. You stand by your friends. You do what’s right. You don’t give in. In my book that makes you a man. It makes you the living embodiment of the Lair Legion.” “I’m in the team because I’m dumb and weak, but I’m too stupid to let that stop me?” Sir Mumphrey chugged back another drink. “We’re facin’ situations, fighting enemies, where we none of us have the power, or the skill, or the weapons, or the brains to win through. So what’s left – all that’s left – is to stand there and try, to do what’s right. And that’s what the Legion is going to do.” “I hope so. I expect so.” Mumphrey lifted the decanter again. “So that’s tomorrow. For tonight… I’m going to tell you about Madge. And you’re going to tell me about Pricilla. And we’re going to keep doing that until we pass out. And then… we go on.” Next time: Yo and the Librarian, betrayed to destruction! Fin Fang Foom and Dan Drury vs Manmangler and Dr Faustian. Chronic vs the Doomherald! Liu Xi and Princess Annar vs the Parody Master! All the non-Paradopolis stuff that should have gone into this chapter, basically. UT#252: All Of Your Base Are Belong To Us coming midweek if there’s enough replies. Another farewell to DBS which takes place after UT#151 is contained in The Intermittent Adventures of De Brown Streak Giant-Sized #50: What's a 50th Issue Without A Back-Up Story? by Hatman. Tie-Ins: Opinion Tie-In #1 by AG The Intermittent Adventures of the Lair Legion Breakfast Club: Now With Added Recrimination and Interpersonal Insults by De Brown Streak Professional Help by Visionary SR 1066 - A Discussion, consultation by HH The Price of Freedom is Eternal Footnotes: The Parody Master began his current campaign in UT#228: Bride of the Parody Master, and prompted Earth to introduce metahuman Obedience Branding in UT#238: Pebbles Before the Avalanche. The SR 1066 conspiracy was launched in earnest in UT#240: Digging the Dirt. The Grey Eminence, (Aldrich Grey), Texas billionaire and super-patriot, has used his vast economic and political powers to influence United States’ foreign policy for the past fifty years. A remarkably spry 97, Grey’s greatest asset in his quest to protect America’s interests was once the metahuman known as Mr. Epitome. The Grey Eminence is the creator and secret power behind the Office of Paranormal Security. Josh Clement and Bry Katz’ Bad Blood dates back to UT#111: Last Run of De Brown Streak, in which Goldeneyed mistakenly believed DBS to have kidnapped and sexually assaulted schoolteacher Beth Shellett, and so shot him with a mutate-gene suppression rifle, crippling him. DBS was later healed through advanced Technopolitan science but the two heroes have been at odds ever since. Zvesti Zdrugo a.k.a. Rabid Wolf (Zdenka Zarazoza) is a shapeshifting Candian superheroine, one of the Glorious People’s Crime Apparachiks (GloPCrAp), and goddess of the North. She is married by fiat of the state to national hero and team-mate Captain Mud, but has recently been informed of the State’s permission to be divorced from him. Zdenka’s exchange visit to America has been outlined in the Call of the Wild series. Hacker Nine (Zack Zelnitz) quit the Junior Lair Legion training programme and sought an internship with the archvillainous Hooded Hood in UT#250. Simonides Slaughter, Black Emperor of the Knights of Heck-Fire (the Heck-Fire Club) and secretly an interdimensional parasite Hero Feeder, is one of the most powerful businessmen in the world. He recently arranged to adopt orphaned Lindy Wilson, a.k.a. Falconne, younger sister of the presumed-dead Falcon, and inducted her into Young Heckfire, the Club’s training team. Lindy’s unhappy experiences therein are chronicled in the recent UT: Graduation arc. The Abyssal Greye is the senior scholar amongst the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis, a scholarly band of undead civic fathers who shuffle beneath the cemetery in their carpet slippers researching from ancient tomes. The Abyssal Greye and the Scholar-Ghouls of Gothametropolis have long dwelled beneath the All Saints Cemetery that occupies much land between the city and Sheldon River. Some of them claim to be founding fathers of Gothametropolis. These undead can integrate the memories and personalities of those whose brains they eat, and over the centuries have carefully preserved a fine selection of great thinkers. The Abyssal Greye is their Dean. Graf Anselm Hertzhog is an unpleasant and powerful vampire whom Sir Mumphrey Wilton has fought on several occasions, and who keeps coming back from the dead. His most prominent appearances were in Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery #13: The Island That Refused to Die and the Secret of the Tunnels and #14: Mr Amazing and the Nazi Vampires, although Mumph and Asil most recently battled him chronologically in UT#62: Untold Hallowe’en Tales of the Lair Legion: Things That Go Bump In the Night (that aren’t in Lisa’s room) . Mumphrey annoys him by terming him “Count Chompula”. Lady Marjorie Wilton, Mumphrey’s late wife, featured prominently in the world war II adventure series Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery and most recently appeared thanks to a temporary time-displacement to assist the Lair Legion against the Hellraisers. All the graphics in this chapter are from Dancer's work except for Yuki, and that's from me. And finally, re-presenting an article you may have missed: So ye want tae know about Detonator Hippos, do ye? Well laddie, there's many as would like tae know more aboot us. And many as speaks what doesn'ae ken what they are mouthing. Detonator Hippos are a shy, retiring race living in the highland mudflats of Soctland. Dinnae believe those who say we're a belligerent band o' hooligans what enjoys using oor abilities tae make parts of our bodies explode tae pick fights with the raccoon people and the gravity whelks. That's just the lying maunderings of them who's missing a few teeth because we had tae be slapping them fer being cheeky. In fact there's very few of us left the noo, savin for those of oor kind who hire oot tae do bodyguarding work for the Hedgehogs of Time. We scarecly come inta contacts with the hooman beings these days excepting when we're having tae be goin' to toon for the acquiring of the Whiskey. Aye, we ken there was a young hooman laddie who had oor powers a wee while back, but we recovered 'em afore he could do something dangerous. In the whiles we remain available for any missions of derring-do and exploding, and we're accepting payment in whiskey, haggis, or non-faerie goldstuffs. Bear us in mind fer all your heavy combat and demolition needs. Argus MacHarridan Exploder-in-Chief Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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