Near + Far (16 page)

Ms. Liberty lets X cook her dinner. This is a mistake for most beings. X has flexible and fairly wide definitions of "food," and she has no discernible theory of spices. But for a cybernetic body, fuel is fuel, and sensation is sensation. There are no unpleasant physical sensations for Ms. Liberty. All she has to do is make a simple modification, performed by mentally saying certain integer sets.

She knows that she can do the same with her emotions. She could make loneliness bliss, frustration as satisfying as completing a deadline. But would she be the same person if she did that? Is she a person? Or just a set of desires?

She eats chili and bread sandwiches, washes them down with a glass of steaming strawberry-beef tea. X has produced candies studded with dangerous looking sugar shards colored orange and blue and yellow and green. Inside each is a flake of something: rust, brine, coal, alderwood.

Ms. Liberty eats them meditatively, letting the flavors evoke memories.

Rust for the first day she met X, when they fought against the Robotic Empress. Brine for the Merboy and his sad fate. Coal for the day they fought the anti-Claus and gave each other gifts. Alderwood has no memory attached and it scents her mouth, acts as a mental palate cleanser. She goes upstairs and writes five chapters set in Egypt, and a heroine in love with the dusky native guide. At midnight she eats the chocolate-flavored flatbread X slides under the door and writes another 2,000 words before lying down to recharge and perform routine mental maintenance.

She pushes herself into sleep as smoothly as a drawer closing. Her last thought is: is she a superhero or just programmed that way?

They fight Electromargarine, the psychedelic supervillain.

A band of intergalactic pirates.

Super-intelligent orcas from the beginning of time.

The actual Labia League, which turns out to be supervillains who refer to themselves as supervillainesses.

Alternate universe versions of themselves.

A brainwashed set of superheroes.

A man claiming to speak for Mars.

A woman claiming to speak for Venus.

A dog claiming to speak for the star Sirius.

And all the time, Ms. Liberty keeps looking at the Sphinx and seeing her look back.

Dr. Arcane has her own set of preoccupations. There's Zanycat's hero-worship, Kilroy's chemical dependency, and whatever guilt rides Rocketwoman. Zenith suspects the last is some death. She tries to figure out
who
, tries to observe where Rocketwoman's eyes linger, which conversations shade her voice with regret (all of them, which is a little ominous), how she looks when reading the morning newspaper.

Dr. Arcane catches her in the hallway, hisses in her ear, "Listen, Charisse, I need for you to tell me who dies. If it's me, I won't be angry, I just want to get my affairs in order."

"I can't tell you," Rocketwoman says. She looks away, avoids Zenith's eyes.

Zenith snarls with frustration, She doesn't like not knowing, it's the one thing in all the world that can make her truly angry.

Plus all that stuff about the sanctity of the timeline that time-travelers spill out is hooey. You can alter time, and many people have. If it was as fragile as all that, you'd have reality as full of holes as Brussels lace. No, when you change time you just split the timeline, create an alternate universe. The unhappy future still remains, but at least it's got (if you've done it right) a happy twin to balance it out. This is, in fact, why most travelers appear and Zenith is sure that Charisse is no exception. She's here to change
something
. She's just not saying what.

They fight something huge and big and terrifying. That's par for the course. That's what superheroes do, whether they're programmed by three almost-adolescents in lab coats or by centuries of a culture's honor code or by some childhood incident that set them forever on this stark path.

Dr. Arcane fights because she likes the world.

Rocketwoman fights because she's seen the future.

X fights because her friends are fighting.

Zanycat fights because it's what her family does.

Kilroy fights because there's nothing better to do until she gets to return home.

The Sphinx fights because she doesn't want to be a supervillain.

Ms. Liberty thinks she fights for all these reasons. None of these reasons. She fights because someone wanted a sexy version of Captain America. Because someone thought the country was worth having someone else fight for. Because a woman looks sexy in spandex facing down a flame-fisted villain.

Because she doesn't know what else she should be doing.

Because her instincts say it's the right thing to do.

Ms. Liberty finishes her novel, sends it off, starts another about a bluestocking who collects pepper mills and preaches Marxism to the masses. She spends a lot of time pacing, a lot of time thinking.

X has discovered paint-by-numbers kits and is filling the rooms with paintings of landscapes and kittens, looking somewhat surreal because she changes the numbers all around.

Zanycat is about to graduate high school and has been scarce. Next year she'll be attending City College, just a few blocks away, and they all wonder what it will be like. Zenith remembers being student and superhero—it's hard to do unless you're well-organized.

Kilroy has joined AA and apologized to several villains she damaged unnecessarily while fighting intoxicated. Before each meal, she insists on praying, but she prays to her own, alien god, and an intolerant streak has evidenced. She's apparently a fundamentalist of her own kind and believes the Earth will vanish in a puff of cinders and ash when the End Times come. That's why she's been working so hard to acquire money to get off-world, lest she be caught in the devastation.

Ms. Liberty goes to Reede and Mode to find fabric for a new costume. There's a limited range to the fabrics—not much call for high-end fashion in super-science, but she comes across a silvery gray that looks good. She finds blue piping for the wrists and neck, not because she wants the echo of red, white, and blue, but because she likes blue and always has. And it makes her eyes pop. The super-robots take her measurements. They'll whip it up while she runs her next errand.

There are some places that are neutral territory for superheroes and villains. A few bars, for example, and most churches. And this hair salon, high atop the Flatiron Building. Arch rivals may face down there and simply step aside to let the other have first crack at the latest
Vogue Rogue
.

"My friends keep trying to push me to try something different, Makaila," she tells the hairdresser.

"Do you want to try something different?" the hairdresser demands, putting her hands on her hips. She has attitude, cultivates it, orders around these beings who could swat her like a fly, drain her soul, impale her with ice and kill her a thousand other ways, as though they were small children. And they enjoy it, they sink into the cushioned chairs and tell her their woes as she uses imaginarium-reinforced blades to snip away at super-durable hair, self-mending plastic. Usually she just trims split ends.

Ms. Liberty looks at the tri-fold mirror and three of her look back. She thinks that this is the first time she's decided to alter herself, step away from the original design. She thinks of it as modernization—a few decades of crimefighting can date you, after all.

Here's the question, she thinks. Does she want to be a
pretty
superhero? Is that what being a superhero means to her?

And here's another question: what is a superhero's romance? She's been writing them as though they were any other love story, writ a bit larger, with a few more cataclysms and laser-guns in the background. Girl meets boy, there's a complication, then she gets her man. But what does the superwoman do after she's got him? Does she settle down to raise supertots or do they team up to fight crime? Can you have your cake and eat it too, as Marie Antoinette, the Queen of Crime, would insist?

Her makers thought sex was a worthy goal, a prime motivator. And instead all they'd done was make her start to question her body. And now she was questioning her own mind the same way, wondering if she wanted love or sex, and what the difference was.

Her three faces stare and stare from the mirror and she hesitates, conscious of the waiting Makaila. Finally, she says, "I want it short and easy to take care of" and leans back in the chair.