Super World Read online

  "Would any of these be acceptable?" She forced the words past her clenched throat.

  "Mrs. Shepherd..."

  "It's Jamie. Please humor me."

  Vicky's sigh was audible. After a minute of study, she pointed to a five-acre property with an asking price that was forty-five thousand above her place.

  "It's a little smaller in terms of land, but the house is a bit nicer and it's closer to town. I'd have to see it, and talk to my husband, of course."

  "So if I paid you the price you paid for my house plus forty-five thousand, you'd sell me back my house?"

  "Um, maybe. But seriously, Jamie, where could you possibly come up with six hundred and forty-five thousand dollars?"

  "I'm not sure." Jamie's jaw set as she stared into the distance – a distance she could travel if she set her mind to it. "But I'll think of something."

  "PLEASE EXPLAIN how this is possible," said Thomas Senior. "How could you be let out four years before your earliest possible release date."

  Thomas swayed back in his kitchen chair enough to make the legs creak, a big smile on his face. This was one of those times in life when it was all good, and he was damn well going to savor it. Let his stiff-necked father stew a bit. This was gonna be sweet.

  While his father regarded him with extreme suspicion mixed with reluctant hope, and his grandmother beamed at him for all she was worth, his younger brother's eyes were filled with trepidation. He knows the score.

  "With Allah's blessing, pops, anything is possible," Thomas said with a grin.

  "Don't give me that. Son, I want to believe this is legitimate, but I can't help but think you somehow bribed or threatened someone to make this happen."

  "Oh ye of little faith."

  "Tom, can't we just enjoy the fact that our boy is home?" Madeleine Mayes pleaded.

  "This isn't his home, Mother. Not anymore."

  "But of course he's welcome to stay here as long as he needs to get on his feet."

  "Which won't be long at all," said Thomas. "Don't worry about that, old man. Now if I could borrow the Miracle Boy here for a minute..."

  His father looked like he wanted to object, but was caught between conflicting imperatives. Maybe his voice power was working on him, Thomas thought, though he hadn't given a direct command. He planned to conduct some tests on that later, but for now, perhaps for sentimental reasons he didn't know still applied, he wasn't eager to give his parents a direct command.

  He and Terry walked out of the house onto the front lawn. A hummingbird buzzed one of her mom's feeders. The grass was cut short and immaculately trimmed along the sidewalk running out to the garage. Thomas knew inside the garage would be neatly ordered and the floor clean enough to eat off. That was how his dad rode – meticulous in all things. The kind of man you wanted if you were having surgery, but otherwise was a splintery broom up the ass.

  He sat Terry down at the patio table and leaned against the garage wall.

  "Lookin' good, little man," he said. "You're getting to be about half as handsome as your big brother."

  Terry was studying Thomas every bit as intensely as Thomas was studying him.

  "So what's the secret, Terry?"

  "An object." Terry was surprised how readily the answer came, despite the promise that was still in effect. But then he ached to tell someone, and his brother surely had the right to know now. "A device. Possibly extraterrestrial. It landed on a friend's property."

  "Very funny." Thomas stared down at him. "You're not shitting me, are you?"

  "No. We really don't know anything about it, but that's my best guess."

  "Who's we?"

  "Me and Kevin. And Mrs. Shepherd, my old high school teacher. Her father, too. It landed on her property."

  Thomas pushed off the garage and paced before him, his face a mask of fierce concentration. "No one else looked at it?"

  "No."

  "Any ideas about how it works?"

  "Not other than that it's dispensing some form of infectious agent, and it alters people physically. Mrs. Shepherd can fly...or jump so high it's like she's flying. She can move objects with her mind. She's incredibly strong – strong enough to crush a steel bar. Her father and Kevin are a lot stronger than they were, but nothing compared to her."

  Thomas nodded along with his words, his expression chilling. Kevin watched him with wary eyes.

  "How did it change you, Thomas?"

  Thomas stopped pacing and smiled at him. "I guess you could say I got the gift of persuasion. Remember how dad said I ought to read some white fool named Dale Carnegie? Teach me how to make friends and influence people? Well, I took that shit to a whole 'nother level. People do exactly what I tell 'em to. Anything I tell 'em to, so far, though I need to test that out."

  "That's..." Terry wanted to say "scary as hell," but decided he should play it cool. "Crazy."

  "You said that right. You want a demonstration?"

  "That's, uh, okay."

  Thomas laughed. "I don't blame ya." He pulled up a chair and sat facing him, his face lit up with what struck Terry as pure joy. Not an expression he'd seen on his brother's face very often, if ever. "You know what, little man? The world's my oyster. I can have anything I want. Money, power, women until my dick bleeds."

  "Thanks for sharing that."

  Thomas clapped him on the shoulder. "Look, Terry, I know you had it rough. We both have. And I know I've treated you like a a stray dog, but a whole new world is dawning, brother, and I've been reborn. I'm going to the top, and I'd be happy to bring you with me. Least I can do to make things up to you."

  Terry was skeptical but touched. His brother was possibly the most selfish, self-involved person he'd ever known. He could see that clearly now – had always known it on some level - though he hadn't had the words for it most of his life. Still, the object did change people. Maybe it had given him some of the good values their father was always harping about. Not that wanting to rule the world or make his dick bleed sounded all that morally inspired.

  "Thanks," said Terry. "But you know we're not the only ones with strange abilities. And there will be more and more of them as time passes."

  The happy sheen dimmed on his brother's face. "Ya, I seen the writing on the wall, too. This thing spreads like a cold, don't it? But everyone is affected differently?"

  "I think so."

  "Then unless the government can stop it, this whole world's gonna turn upside down. If it don't burn first. So I figure we gotta make our move now, get our shit tight, while we still can."

  Whatever that means, Terry thought.

  "First thing is, we gotta get hold of the device," said Thomas. "It's still on your old teacher's property, right?"

  "Uh, yeah." Unease blossomed in him. "But that doesn't belong to us, Thomas. They're not going to just let us walk off with it."

  "Even if I ask real nicely?" Thomas grinned.

  CAL LOOKED on as Jamie poured out the bag filled with lumps of high-grade unprocessed graphite. She grabbed one in each hand and, smiling at her dad as he stepped back several steps and donned a pair of shop glasses, she squeezed hard. Not with all her strength, but hard – still not quite believing anything dramatic would happen.

  But something dramatic did happen: her hands began to glow. Or what was inside them – bright enough to transform her hands into stadium lights.

  "Whoa!" Cal muttered. "Maybe you should stop before you create a white dwarf or something."

  Jamie kept squeezing. She felt nothing more than a pleasant warmth and the sense that the graphite was continuing to shrink in her grasp. No clue as to how long she'd need to apply pressure or whether it would be enough. The internet told her that a pressure of just under two million pounds per square inch was needed for a decent quality diamond – plus temperatures around 2000 C. But sufficient pressure would produce high heat. If she squeezed hard enough she could get the job done. Of course, that kind of pressure and heat was a challenge even for the most powerful machines. It wa
s utterly unthinkable – plain insane - to consider a person generating that kind of force. Even fiction needed to invent Superman to fulfill that need.

  Jamie opened her hands. The light in her palms slowly died, revealing a whitish pebble. Cal moved to her side.

  "That looks promising. What do you think?"

  "I have no idea. It could be what they call a 'hexagonal diamond.' Except that should be more brownish, I think. Definitely not just graphite anymore. The only way to know is to have a jeweler look at them."

  "Tell you what. You keep working away, and I'll take a couple down to my buddy Dave Mitchell and see what he says. The dude's flush, too. He owns half a dozen stores and plenty of acreage around town. Hell, he might own some decent country property for all I know. Anyhow, If he likes what he sees, I'm pretty sure he could afford to buy them himself."

  Jamie nodded. They'd discussed his old college friend, one of Grand Forks' more successful businessmen. But it was never a good idea to assume anything – including that she'd created anything valuable.

  "I'll keep working," she said.

  Her dad returned ninety minutes later. The oversized grin on his face made Jamie's heart leap with hope.

  "They're the real deal," he said. "Jewelry grade. Not high, but at least medium grade. S12 to S13, he thought – whatever the heck that means."

  "Did he say anything about what they're worth?"

  "He guessed around one hundred bucks a carat. Those two pieces were eight and seven carats, by the way."

  Jamie did some preliminary math. "I'd guess I've already created maybe 1000 pieces of that size – some smaller, some larger – from the two bags of graphite."

  "One thousand times seven hundred – "

  "Seven million dollars."

  "Holy shit."

  "Not like we'd ever get that."

  "Maybe not, but it's looking good for the six hundred and forty-five thousand dollars. And we're just scratching the surface of your earning abilities, daughter of mine. Of our earning abilities. You know what the minimum salary for an NBA player is?"

  "Two hundred thousand?"

  "Maybe thirty years ago. Now it's over five hundred thousand."

  "Wow. Really?"

  "Not to say that represents a real raise in inflated dollars from the past. But even today it's a fair amount of change."

  "No kidding. I was making forty-seven thousand my last year of teaching."

  Cal smiled. "As they say, teachers are the most underpaid professionals."

  A car turned onto the driveway: a large black pickup with double tires in back and a husky-sounding diesel engine.

  "Anyone you know?" Cal asked.

  "No."

  Jamie wondered why she felt apprehensive. What bad news could be coming in a black pickup, even if it looked like a redneck hearse? What person could threaten her or her father now?

  She heard her dad breathe out with her in relief when the truck stopped and Terry climbed out of the passenger side. The other man – taller and older and built like a running back – cut short their relieved breaths. He approached them with a swagger. The strut, Jamie thought, of either an aggressive salesperson or a mugger.

  "Hi," said Terry. "This is my brother, Thomas. He's been affected by the device, too."

  "You told him about that?" Cal was straining to keep anger out of his voice.

  "Sure did," said Thomas. "But you can't blame him for not wanting to keep his brother in the dark."

  He stopped before them, smiling but not offering his hand.

  "I hear you got the object here," he said. Cal glanced at Jamie, but neither responded. "Tell me where the object is."

  "It's on the east end of the property –"

  "Just past our property line in a marsh area there."

  Cal and Jamie exchanged startled glances. Why did we just blurt that? she wondered. She did want to talk to someone about it, but there was nothing about this man that invited a confession.

  "Good, good," said Thomas. His dark brown eyes fastened on Jamie. "I hear you got some special powers. Terry here says you about jumped to the moon."

  "The upper atmosphere anyway."

  "You must got some powerful legs under those jeans. Damn fine shape to 'em, too, if you don't mind my sayin'."

  "Actually, we do," said Cal, stepping protectively next to his daughter. "Maybe you should tell us what you want."

  "I thought I already did. Teacher-lady, you come with me and Terry here and take us to the device. You" – he smiled coldly at Cal – "sit your ass down and think pleasant thoughts until we come back."

  Cal sat on the grass and remembered the old days when he had a wife and the kids were just starting their own family. Good times.

  Riding with Terry between her and his brother, Jamie wondered why they were being so helpful to this rude dude. Since he already knew about the device, she couldn't see much objection to him seeing it, but the way he was ordering them around was ridiculous. Who did he think he was? She was going to put him in his place the next time he started making demands.

  They arrived at the marsh. Thomas parked the pickup. They slogged through some spongy grass, following the Caterpillar tread marks that had carved hundreds of rectangular pits into the wet ground. The object lay in some brush near the base of two willow trees twenty yards into Jensen's land. Thomas pulled back the brush and ran his hand over the cylinder's surface.

  "Damn, that's smooth," he said. "How much this thing weigh again?"

  "My dad estimated two and a half tons," said Jamie.

  "About what Terry guessed. I need to come back with a winch or something."

  "Jamie could probably lift it," said Terry, drawing a cool look from her. "Or move it telekinetically."

  Thomas turned to her. "That right?"

  Jamie shrugged. "Maybe. But I think I'll pass on doing that."

  "Heh. Foxy little school teacher's got some spunk. I like that. Wonder what you'd look like under them jeans and cowgirl shirt. Mighty fine, I'm thinking. Got a mind to find out."

  "Thomas," said Terry in a low tone of warning.

  Thomas chuckled. "You sayin' you ain't a little curious about that yourself?"

  "It's not right to use your power that way."

  "What power?" asked Jamie, feeling one step behind in this exchange. But a hypothesis was starting to form.

  Thomas stopped smiling. "You don't want to know."

  Jamie's hypothesis stopped forming. She really didn't care what this man could do. Probably better off not knowing.

  "All right," the former convict announced. "Jamie, pick that big vitamin pill thing up and put it real gentle-like in the bed of the pickup."

  Jamie focused on the object. It was rising before her thought fully formed, as though sensing her intentions before she gave them words. It floated past them and hovered over the pickup like a classic cigar-shaped UFO. The pickup's suspension squealed as the cylinder settled in the bed.

  "Whooee, girl," Thomas laughed. "And my momma always told me to work on flexing my mental muscles!"

  They walked back to the car, Jamie frowning as she struggled to explain to herself why she was being so cooperative when she loathed Terry's big brother. Maybe she wasn't interested in what his power was – which made no sense, why wouldn't she care when it obviously was affecting her. But...how is it affecting me, exactly?

  Jamie acted instinctively, impulsively, on the sense of a present danger she couldn't seem to define, other than it stemmed from Thomas Mayes. He was grinning at her one moment, as if enjoying her uncomprehending discomfort, and suddenly he lifted off the ground and was flying away so fast that his shocked cries and curses broke apart on the wind. She thought of him landing softly on a nearby cornfield – not in it! – and when she was confident he was on the ground and safe she faced Terry.

  "Okay, tell me what's going on with your brother."

  "Is he okay? You didn't send him into space or something, did you?"

  "He's in the nearby field
. I think he's all right." She fixed the youth with a hard stare. She would never hurt him, but she was okay with scaring him a bit. "Now I want some answers."

  "He has mind-control," Terry blurted, casting a guilty glance after his brother. "Not mind control through telepathy. Through his voice, his words. When he tells you to do something you have to do it."

  Comprehension dawned in a satisfying a-ha. She gave the young man a cold smile.

  "Has he been telling you what to do, too?"

  "Not too much. But he has plans to put it to big use." Terry grimaced. "He'll be very angry when he finds out I told you."

  "Well, I'm pretty angry right now."

  She let Terry stew in apprehension over his brother. She forcefully pushed away stray thoughts of harming Thomas Mayes, fearing one of them might actually hurt him, and focused instead on the idea of people who'd been affected by the object – people with "super powers," whatever the hell they'd be – coming into conflict with each other. She had an image of Superman fighting with other super-people from his home planet, creating mass destruction around them. Her amusement at the notion ended with a sharp chill.

  The tall figure of Thomas Mayes was striding toward them, now perhaps two football fields away. Jamie zoomed in on him – her eyes now equivalent to a powerful spotting scope – and saw with liquid crystal clarity the anger battling fear on the squirming lines of his face.

  "It's spreading, isn't it?" Terry asked in a small, shaky voice.

  "It has spread," said Jamie. "I'm not sure if that will continue. Maybe it's self-limiting."

  "I'll bet it isn't."

  "You have at least one unusual power, too," said Jamie. "But it's a positive one – the ability to heal. Have you experimented with it? Have you found anything unusual since we last saw you?"

  Terry looked away from her prying eyes. "I think I might be able to kind of 'heal' machines, too. My dad's rider mower wouldn't start, and I could see the problem...even though I couldn't quite explain it. I adjusted the picture of it in my head, and the mower started working."

  "Huh. Interesting."