Batman 4 - Batman & Robin Read online

  “Still,” Alfred pressed, “how do you think this will all come out? Off the record, if you prefer.”

  Another pause. “I am not terribly optimistic,” the stout man admitted. “But I assure you, I will do my best.”

  The butler frowned. It didn’t seem he had much choice in the matter. Before his death, Thomas Wayne had spoken highly of the stout man. If Master Bruce was going to receive treatment, it might as well come from someone his father had known and respected.

  “Very well,” Alfred said at last. “Please let me know when you would like to see Master Bruce. I will make certain he is present.”

  “Excellent,” the psychiatrist remarked. With a bit of an effort, he got to his feet. “Just one more thing, Mr. Pennyworth.”

  Alfred looked at him. “Yes?”

  “Forgive me, but Mr. Wayne once described your employment here as temporary. He mentioned that your first love is the theater—and that you hope to return to it one day.”

  “It had occurred to me,” Alfred conceded.

  The stout man’s brow furrowed. “Normally, it would be none of my business—but I ask out of concern for young Bruce. He’s already lost the two most important people in the world to him. I don’t know how close you and he have become, but right now you’re the only real constant in his life.”

  “And if I have any intentions of leaving, it would be a good idea to speak of them now,” Alfred said, picking up on the thought. “So I can be eased out of the boy’s life.”

  The psychiatrist eyed him. “That’s the gist of it, yes.”

  The butler glanced again at the boy. He was still standing there in the field, his eyes fixed on only-God-knew-what, the weight of the world on his narrow little shoulders.

  “No,” said Alfred. “It may once have been true that I considered myself a transient in this house. But it is true no longer. I intend to remain here for the duration.”

  However long that may be, he added inwardly, matching his resolve to that of the lonely child outside.

  A teenage Bruce Wayne stood in the shadows of a gnarled and ancient oak, out of sight of the full moon, and surveyed the athletic field that sprawled before him in the frosty blue light.

  The university’s academic buildings loomed behind it like dark, hoary gods brooding over an ancient battleground. But it was only a battleground in the most figurative sense, in the sense of clashing athletes. From a literal perspective, it was just a meadow with an oval track in the center of it.

  The track was deserted this night except for a solitary figure in a navy blue sweat suit, loping easily over the clay red composite surface. Large but agile-looking, just shy of his twenty-fourth birthday, he kept up a ground-eating pace without much effort—stride after stride, minute after minute, lap after lap.

  And he wasn’t even pushing himself. He was just warming up.

  A casual observer might not have known that. But Bruce knew it. He knew all the man’s best footrace times by heart. Of course, running wasn’t the man’s only forte. He was also a world-class competitor in the javelin toss, the hurdles, the pole vault, and several other events.

  That was what it took to become the premier decathlete on the planet. One had to be among the elite in a great many areas of endeavor.

  Bruce knew a lot more about the man in the sweat suit. How he had been born in a small, picturesque town in Europe, which accounted for his slight accent. How his mother had been an Olympic-caliber speed skater and his father a prominent biologist. How they had moved to the United States shortly after their son turned two. And a good deal more, some of which the man himself might even have forgotten.

  But none of it was particularly important right now. Only the ease with which the man flowed around the oval—only the speed he mustered without breaking a sweat. Bruce watched, eager to learn. Eager to add the man’s posture and rhythms and expertise to his collection.

  That was the way he had come to think of himself—as a collector, as someone who took a little from here and a little from there, acquiring and assembling and stockpiling. He’d been at it since he was fourteen. And though he was nearly twenty now, his collection was still woefully incomplete.

  He was like a squirrel, he thought, hoarding nuts for a long, cold winter. But the squirrel in his analogy had an advantage—it knew what to expect. It knew what it would need to survive.

  Bruce didn’t. So he collected everything he thought he might need, no matter how offbeat or esoteric.

  He learned martial arts—and patience—from a wizened old man in Korea. Street smarts from the legendary man-hunter Ducard in France. Fencing in the Soviet Union and auto racing in the streets of Rome.

  He became fluent in several different languages and obtained a working knowledge of several more. He studied chemistry and biology, criminology and computer design with a dozen teachers in a dozen different places.

  All in the hope that when the time came, he’d be ready. He’d be equipped for the kind of mission no one had undertaken in the history of humankind.

  After a while, the man on the track slowed down. To a jog. To a walk. Then he crossed the short-cropped field described by the track and approached a narrow runway made of the same composite material.

  There was an elongated sandpit at the end of the runway. Someone had raked it recently, taking out the footprints that had dug into it and bulldozed the sand around. But it wouldn’t stay that way for long, Bruce mused.

  As he looked on, the man in the sweat suit took up a position at the head of the runway. He drew a deep breath, then let it out. It turned ghostly in the cold, bracing air.

  The man rocked once and then deliberately, purposefully, began to run the length of the runway. Before long, he was sprinting, going full tilt. When he neared the end of the runway, the man leaped and launched himself high into the air.

  For a moment or two, he seemed to be riding an imaginary bicycle, his arms and legs pumping furiously. Then he thrust his feet out ahead of him and came to a sliding stop in the sandpit.

  The man made a face, obviously less than satisfied. Picking himself up, he left the sandpit and retraced his steps to try it again.

  That’s when Bruce decided to show himself. Leaving the obscuring shadow of the oak, he jogged out onto the track. The man turned but didn’t pay him much attention. It was a university track, after all. Students ran it all the time, even at this late hour.

  Bruce contained himself, just as the man had but even more so, keeping his pace to little more than a jog. All the while, however, he remained intent on the man in the sweat suit as he completed jump after jump.

  After what seemed like enough time, Bruce slowed down and walked over to the runway. The man was staring at it, rubbing a muscle between his shoulder blades. He still seemed dissatisfied.

  Bruce checked out the footprints in the sandpit. He looked up and smiled appreciatively.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

  The man turned to him. He had prominent cheekbones and a sweep of long, brown hair that fell almost to the bridge of his nose. And eyes like pale blue ice chips.

  “Not good,” the man replied, with just a hint of an accent. Then he amended his statement, perhaps fearing that it sounded immodest. “Not good enough, I mean. I can do better.”

  Bruce paced off the distance from the man’s footprints to the beginning of the sandpit. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This could be a world’s—”

  “A world’s record,” the man finished for him. “Yes. I know. But there are going to be a lot of records broken in the next year or so. A lot of good people coming up. I want to be ready for them.”

  Bruce pretended to stare at the man for a moment. “Hey, aren’t you . . . that guy, that athlete . . . ?” He pretended to fumble for the name, though he knew it almost as well as his own.

  “Victor Fries,” said the man.

  Bruce pointed to him. “Yeah . . . Victor Fries. You won the Olympics last year. I saw you on television.” />
  “Not the whole Olympics.” Fries chuckled good-naturedly. “As I recall, it was just the decathlon.”

  Bruce chuckled too. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He offered his hand, and the other man took it.

  “The pleasure is mine,” said Fries, polite in an Old World kind of way. His grip was strong—just what Bruce would have expected from someone who could toss a hammer as far as Fries could.

  Bruce considered the sandpit again. Those jumps Fries had made were pretty impressive. “So what’s your secret?” he asked abruptly—in the manner of someone purely curious, with no agenda at all.

  The question took the man by surprise. “Secret?”

  “Yeah,” said Bruce. “I figure anyone who can jump as far as you can has to have a secret. Some little . . . I don’t know. Some kind of edge.”

  Fries shrugged. “I have an approach, I guess. Everyone does.” He smiled. “But how do I know you’re not a decathlete in the making, trying to take my title away?”

  Bruce laughed. “Yeah, that’s me. The world-class decath . . . decath . . . what’d you call it?”

  “Decathlete,” said the other man.

  Bruce grunted. “Yeah. Decathlete.”

  Under the circumstances, Fries couldn’t help but see how absurd the idea was. If he only knew, thought Bruce. If Fries had any inkling of how hard his young admirer had worked to make his body a perfect machine . . .

  “Well,” said Fries, “it’s like this.” He used his hand to indicate his imaginary progress along the runway. “You run, you jump, you keep your balance as you sail through the air. All very important. But to me, the key is the landing.” He turned to Bruce. “In other words, whether or not you choose to make one.”

  Bruce narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  The decathlete shrugged. “I know it’s going to sound strange, but I don’t land—not when it’s a really good jump. I just hang there.”

  “But you land eventually,” Bruce pointed out.

  “Not really. I mean, sure, gravity brings me down after a while. But not as quickly as it has a right to.” The man’s ice-chip eyes glazed over—but only for a fraction of a second. “Then I realize the jump is over, and I’m back on the ground.”

  Part of Bruce, the part that had audited courses with the world’s foremost physicists and mathematicians, wanted to insist it was all hogwash. Forward progress on a flat plane was a function of momentum, friction, and gravity. Nothing else.

  But another part of him, the part that had studied psychology and belief systems and arcane philosophies, argued that the mind could do things the body on its own could not. And that part of him felt the trip to this place had been worthwhile.

  “You just hang there,” he said.

  “That’s it,” Fries confirmed.

  Bruce nodded. “I’ll remember that.”

  And he would. He would file it away with all the other bits and pieces of wisdom he’d accumulated in his travels. And someday, he was sure, he would find a use for it.

  Suddenly, he was aware of another presence in the vicinity of the track. He turned and saw a tall, slender, and decidedly female figure approaching from the direction of campus.

  Even at a distance, Bruce could see how beautiful she was. How ethereal in the moonlight, even in simple jeans and a woolen sweater. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled and beckoned.

  But not to him. To Fries.

  Beside Bruce, the decathlete smiled the smile of a man in love. “Got to go,” he said.

  “What about all those challengers?” asked Bruce. “The ones who are out to take your title?”

  Fries clapped Bruce on the shoulder. “Everyone’s got his priorities, my friend. The decathlon is important to me, make no mistake. But not half as important as she is.”

  And with that, the man jogged across the field to meet his girlfriend. With all he’d read about Fries, Bruce would have known if she was the decathlete’s wife.

  As they met, they embraced. Fries swung her off her feet. Bruce felt like an intruder. He wanted to look away, to do the polite thing, but he couldn’t take his eyes off them. They were a beautiful couple.

  He wanted to be part of something like that. Wanted it in the worst way. But the kind of plans he had made left no room for romance. No room for permanent attachments of any kind.

  He would be alone. Always alone. It was the path he had chosen, and he would remain faithful to it.

  Bruce waited until Fries and his girlfriend had receded into the distance and disappeared among the baroque silhouettes of the university buildings. Then he lined himself up at the start of the runway.

  Taking a deep breath, he hunkered down and took off. Running as fast as he could, he accelerated all the way to the end of the composite strip. Then he launched himself into space and bicycled high out over the sandpit.

  Just as he was about to come to earth, he commanded himself to wait. To hang there instead. To deny gravity its due, if only for the slightest fraction of a second longer.

  What’s more, it worked. When Bruce’s feet came down in the sand, they were just a few inches shy of Fries’s best effort. Bruce didn’t smile, but he came close. A few more jumps and he might have set a record himself.

  But no one could know that. His ambitions, his goals, were still a secret. He wanted them to stay that way.

  Getting up out of the sand, he brushed himself off and returned to the oak. Then he picked up the backpack he had left behind it, slung it over his shoulder, and moved on.

  After all, he’d heard about a contortionist in Kansas City. And one never knew when such a talent might come in handy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bruce Wayne pondered the trap laid out so cleverly in front of him.

  Lobster thermidor. Wild mushroom risotto. Julienne of gingered carrots and zucchini. All tastefully arranged on his plate. And beside it a perfectly chilled glass of Château Lafitte Rothschild ’56.

  He turned to Dick Grayson, his ward, who sat around the corner from him at the long, polished dining-room table. “Cunning,” he said,

  Dick considered his own dinner and nodded appreciatively. “Dastardly is more like it.”

  Bruce closed his eyes and sampled the aroma of the lobster thermidor. “We should be working on the new vehicles. Putting them through their paces.”

  His ward grunted. “We should be doing that.”

  “But instead,” said Bruce, “we’ve been maneuvered into . . . this.”

  “Yeah,” Dick agreed. “Sitting down at the dinner table and eating a meal fit for a king.” He tilted his head to indicate the kitchen door. “Even as we speak, he’s probably in there whipping up a dessert—something to really throw us off schedule.”

  “Is there no end to the man’s cruelty?” Bruce asked.

  “None,” Dick replied with grim certainty. “None at all.”

  “We could try to escape,” Bruce suggested.

  “For all the good it’ll do us.” Dick’s eyes narrowed. “I think he’s really got us this time.”

  The billionaire sighed. “So we resign ourselves to our fates? We give up without a fight?”

  “Seems like the only intelligent thing to do.”

  “Right you are.” Bruce unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “Let’s dig in.”

  He was just picking up his knife and fork when he caught a glimpse of something through the window. Turning to it, he saw a beam of light stabbing at the lowermost layer of clouds.

  Where the light made contact, there was a black shape. The shape of a bat, its wings outstretched as if in flight. Bruce knew it all too well.

  And since he’d come to live with the billionaire, Dick knew it, too. He followed Bruce’s gaze, saw what he was looking at, then took a last, lingering look at his dinner.

  “We go?” he asked. It wasn’t really a question.

  “We go,” Bruce said, confirming it anyway.

  Together, they put their napkins on the table and
traversed the ample interior of Wayne Manor. Circumnavigating the magnificent central stairway, they made their way to the study at the far end of the house.

  Inside it, there was a grandfather clock, its face open and exposed. It said 6:51. But Bruce reset its hands to 10:47—a time that had great significance for him. After all, it was the hour and minute at which his parents had died.

  The clock swung aside, revealing itself as a disguised door. Beyond, there was a dimly lit cascade of stone stairs that wound down into what seemed like the bowels of the earth. Bruce descended with Dick right behind him, the clock door closing automatically in their wake.

  Their footfalls echoed as they followed the winding of the stair. Finally, it deposited them on the floor of a cavern—a place where the stalagmites had long since been cleared away, but sharp stalactites still hung overhead.

  A cavern where a huge copper penny gleamed under the glare of suspended lights. Where a vast array of computer consoles sat beneath three large screens, monitoring all that went on in nearby Gotham City and its environs.

  This was the Batcave, known to only a few people in the entire world. Home to a creature of the night most people still didn’t believe in. But Bruce Wayne believed.

  He had to. He was that creature.

  Crossing the floor of the cave, Bruce headed for his costume vault. Removing his clothes in semidarkness, the billionaire reached for the nearest of the several uniforms hanging in front of him.

  Though it looked like black rubber, it was actually a suit of lightweight, flexible armor, molded to the contours of his body. There was a bat emblazoned on his chest, just like the bat he’d seen against the clouds.

  He pulled on his boots, snapped his gauntlets into place, and whipped his cape over his shoulders. Then he took his yellow-gold Utility Belt off a rack, encircled his waist with it, and locked the buckle in front of him.

  But for the moment, he was still Bruce Wayne. Still a man, no more and no less, until he included the final detail.