Part Four

Michael decided to send Mannequin to the follow-up meeting with Emily. Despite their usually indeterminate gender, Mannequin was very personable and far better than Michael at social interactions.

Emily didn't even know there would be a follow-up. She was surprised when a well-dressed, buxom blond woman unfamiliar to her intersected Emily on the way to the bus stop after work two days later.

"Hi. I'm Manni. I work for Private Investigator Michael Schmierer. Can we talk? I'll spring for coffee and a Danish, at your favorite coffee shop."

Well, food and coffee would buy the woman some of Emily's time.

"All right. I'll listen. No promises that I'll do any talking."

* * *

"This isn't even about me being empowered," said Emily. Getting her to talk about herself had taken time and effort, but once started she was angrily enthusiastic about describing her problems. "I only have minor abilities, anyway, mostly involving pyrokinesis. My folks just don't want to hear anything which doesn't fit their preconceptions! Including where powers come from and how they work. So if I try to inject some facts into, well, anything they get wrong, they just say I'm being 'difficult' and dismiss me!"

"My parents tried to have me 'fixed' in the veterinary sense," said Mannequin, misstating things a bit. "Yours just don't want to understand your views."

"They don't care anything about me!"

"They care enough to hire my boss to look for you, and then to ask Aaron to check on you."

"Aaron?"

"Malak. The Angel of Chicago. Though he keeps telling people he's only an angel in training."

"Oh..." She snickered. "Okay, that's funny."

"He does occasionally give evidence of a surprising sense of humor."

In the end she agreed to contact her parents. Which was enough for both "Manni" and Michael. When he was told of the woman's decision it also satisfied Aaron.

* * *

Through repeated visits over many years, Melody had learned that Aaron's home did change, though only slowly. At every visit she was therefore alert for new items, as well as for old ones which were now gone or had been altered in some way. On this visit she happened to catch Aaron listening to music. Melody quickly recognized the piece as "All Blues," by Miles Davis. A vinyl platter with the track was playing on Aaron's expensive turntable as Melody walked into the den. She looked around, and also noted something else. The reporter mentioned it as the tune ended.

"I haven't seen this before," she said, moving closer to Aaron's trophy wall to peer at a period photo from early in the previous century. It was not much after in placement - and therefore time - from the items connected to his empowerment. She suddenly noticed something in the photo. Or someone."Wait... is that you... in a tux?!"

"The original of that was recently found among the stock photos of a long defunct photo service," said Aaron. "The photo was taken to commemorate the event. The BBC Hulton Library wound up with a copy of it, but that archive was sold in 1958. The print was misfiled by the new owners and only recently rediscovered. It's of a party, held at the St. Valentine’s Day Ball in the Royal Palace Hotel, London, on February 14, 1921. Members of the empowered group I was a participant in back then were specifically invited, after we stopped monsters from attacking Brighton the week before. One of the hotel owners there also belonged to the group which held the party every year."

He frowned.

"Odd. I only just now realized the parallels with the attack on the celebrations in Normandy. Though I have to admit the creatures in the two cases were very different."

"I guess that's understandable," said Melody, "that you would have two adventures with similarities, I mean, given all you've experienced since that original attack. Of course, that long interval probably means that this most recent event was, indeed, simply a coincidence, and that the two incidents have no connection."

"Yes, I guess that's true. If I hadn't been so busy when the photo came in..."

"So what have you been doing lately?" said Melody, when he paused. She grinned. "Besides fighting sea monsters."

"Interestingly - and I have few complaints about this change in my life - much of my time these days is spent helping nations negotiate fair and stable peace treaties. Though I still have more time for my own interests lately."

"Yeah, I noticed that you have upgraded your shortwave receiver," said Melody, with a nod and a slight smile. "Also, there's nothing surprising about you being asked to help with negotiations. You speak several languages like a native and know how to be reasonable."

"The problem is," said Aaron, sighing, "most people don't. Either of those."

Melody had long before learned that Aaron actually preferred being Malak, if only to let his wings out. He had more than once described pulling them in to become Aaron as "like a voluntary double amputation." However, the experience was reversible and there were practical advantages to not having the wings. For example, they made sitting on anything but a tall stool almost impossible. Most of the places to sit in Aaron's home were not stools, tall or otherwise. Currently he was wingless and sitting on one of the pair of facing couches in the living room. Melody moved to get a closer look at the new, framed print. After a few moments of inspection, she went to the other couch, and settled herself facing her host across the big, old coffee table.

"You're still working to help people," said the reporter, wondering - not for the first time - how the table had acquired its blemishes. Likely, most of the scars and stains had mundane origins. Melody had only a vague idea of how old the table was. She did know that it was older than the house wherein it sat. "However, the way you help has changed since Insight was finished. You do less overt rescuing yourself and more organizing of things so that people get the help they need. Including food and medicine."

"If you can believe it, there are those who attack me for reducing hunger!"

"I believe it," said Melody, sadly. "There are influential people - some of them in the US Congress - who think the poor should suffer just because they have no money. Or that letting anyone besides them help someone reveals a weakness in them, or just makes clear that there are people in need instead of everything being fine under their management, as they keep saying. You also have the situation that some pols campaigned on not 'giving your money to people who won't work' and expand that to trying to stop anyone from helping someone in need. Retribution economic policy, they call it."

"Punishing the poor for their poverty is a very old practice, and is very psychologically appealing to many people. That attitude is very bad for the poor and those trying to help them, of course," said Aaron, sounding and looking angry. "Those with that attitude figure that making a show of stopping the poor from being helped is a political statement in their favor."

"Of course," said Melody, also angrily, "one should never underestimate the power of a psychopathic lack of empathy on the part of those who don't want anyone helped. They'll cut food for the hungry because they don't understand why 'those people' should get help. Those who do that sort of thing often want to make a show of their 'common sense.'"

"Feeding the hungry should never be a political statement!" said Aaron, more loudly. "Yet there are people and institutions attempting to stop the food distributions my group makes!"

He sighed, and calmed.

"Getting back on topic, I'm also helping a lot with scientific investigations. For example, I have several times recently placed instruments in or taken samples from active volcanoes; often both during one trip. The heat - even of molten lava - does not harm me and my wings are not affected by volcanic ash, as aircraft engines are. It doesn't even get in my lungs, since I just don't breathe when I'm in such areas."

Melody grinned.

"How many people are there who can do that?"

"Counting me, five," said Aaron, mildly. "Currently."

* * *

"As I noted earlier, since my success with those Middle Eastern negotiations I have been asked to help with other such talks," said Aaron, after a big and admittedly delicious meal, prepared by Coral. Despite her apparently sour outlook on life the woman could definitely cook well. Host and guest had cleaned their plates and were in no hurry to rise from the dinner table. "I am actually surprised I haven't been more popular for that activity, given my record with such negotiations."

"I think your biggest problem is isolation," said Melody, thoughtfully. "It doesn't matter that it's something you choose for yourself. As you said, people don't know you, or even think of you. When you do appear in public it's... an event. As just one example of the difference this could make, you'd be more in demand as a moderator if people were more aware of you and your previous successes. Though maybe you already have as much of that as you can take."

She eyed him.

"You're not coasting again, are you?"

"Oh, definitely not. I'm not as busy as I was in recent past years, but I am definitely both keeping busy and stretching myself. Training."

"Anyway," said Melody, leaning back in her chair, "I'm not suggesting that you attend ball games - or get arrested for murder more often - but you really do need to get out more. Now that you have more free time, I mean."

"Well, I can't promise anything, but that does sound like good advice."

He laughed and shook his head as he finally rose from the dining room table. He gathered his own dishes to put in the kitchen sink.

"Right now, though I want to listen to 'St. James Infirmary.' The 1928 Louis Armstrong recording. I recently acquired a remastered version."

* * *

Early in his career Malak had flown openly through the skies of Chicago, his adopted home at the time. He soon became more circumspect, due largely to the unwanted attention the activity brought. This avoidance of notice had become second nature to Malak over the years. Now, following Melody's advice, he made a conscious effort to let himself be seen when he had to fly somewhere. Ironically, one of the first trips he made in this way was to Chicago.

The reason for his visit was trivial; he was checking in at a technical library he had helped organize, back in the mid-Twenties. Such trips were largely for the morale of the staff. Normally he flew in invisibly, changed to Aaron in an alley and entered through a side door. This time he let himself be seen on the last part of the flight to the library, and he landed in front of the building. Malak continued to keep his wings out until well after he was inside. The automatic double doors of the main entrance were almost big enough; Malak got through with only a bit of squeezing. There was plenty of room in the atrium, fortunately. At least this time they didn't ask him for his ID when he checked in at the reception desk. He pulled his wings in just before he got on the elevator.

Aaron quickly finished his business at the library and left for Haven, letting his wings back out while still in the atrium. Though the visit itself was largely uneventful - and more ceremonial than functional - Aaron was surprised the next day to find it mentioned both in several Chicago newspapers and on 3V news programs from that city. All claimed this was his first trip to the windy city in decades - each source giving a different number of years - even though he had been there multiple times each year since their claim of his last visit.

Maybe Melody was right, he thought, with a sigh, when he learned of the news his visit had generated.

* * *

"I hear you're having problems with Adam Gibson," said Melody, when she called to check on Aaron later in the week. "The Congressman."

"Gibson is one of those people who needs money to prepare for the apocalypse," said Aaron. "Meanwhile, I'm trying to prevent it. Which he can't stand."

"Well, he definitely wants to have money. He also hates any attempt to help those living in poverty," said Melody, nodding unconsciously into the phone. "Given what you just said, I suspect that he doesn't want to pay taxes, because he wants the money for himself. So he can have more. He also especially hates 'charity.' He views not being rich as a character flaw. A serious one."

"He says he doesn't hate the poor, it's just that people who don't have any money shouldn't have a say in how others spend theirs. Or the funds extracted from the poor."

"I'm reminded of the man who shot a bunch of people at a Jewish civic center and then denied being antisemitic," said Melody, wryly. "He said he just hated Jews."

"Well, I'm having a press conference next Tuesday to try and get more support for the clinic," said Aaron, sounding tired. "Let's just hope he doesn't interfere, directly or indirectly. He definitely doesn't want to donate funds for it. Worse, he is actively trying to prevent others from donating."

* * *

"You're spending a lot of time and effort on Aaron Labelle," said Melody's chief editor, Harry Conyers, that afternoon. His tone was observational, rather than critical.

"Believe it or not, he needs me to," said Melody, her own tone defensive. "He used to get this sort of support from his daughter, but since she died - saving my life, by the way - I have to provide it. He's... surprisingly vulnerable in some ways."

"Well, as long as you're getting good stories from the effort..."

"Better I do this and not get any stories, than I not do it and we get stories about him turning away from us. Or, worse, against us."

"Given the current popular opinion about him I suspect he's pretty likely to stop helping people soon, regardless. At least in the US and much of Europe."

"This isn't the first time public opinion has been against him," said Melody, pointedly. "He's never stopped helping. Or caring."

* * *

Melody, of course, had a job and assignments for that job. Many of those assignments had nothing to do with Aaron. One of those assignments was to interview not only some researchers, but also their creation.

The trio of scientists who were in charge of the project gave the usual vague promotional comments of how their work on computation would revolutionize human endeavor and so on. Melody carefully restrained herself from mentioning the products of Aaron's brain trust and their quantum computer. Though she saw many points of comparison. For example, she found the equipment used in this lab to be both somewhat familiar and entirely new to her.

Finally, after far too many platitudes and optimistic claims, Melody was allowed to interview the actual device.

"Good morning, IRA," she said, once she was seated at the main "vocal communication" console, microphone adjusted to a comfortable height on the workstation in front of her. "I am Melody Gundersen."

"Good morning," said the pleasant, artificial voice.

"I have some questions for you, and I welcome not only your answers but your comments on the questions."

That last bit brought her hosts to sudden alertness, something which Melody did not miss.

"Please proceed."

"Can you say 'Irish wrist watch?'" said Melody, startling the men and women around her.

"Irish wrist watch. Since I don't have a tongue, tongue-twisters don't really work on me."

"It's the singer, not the song, that makes the music move along."

"That is not a question," said IRA

It also was obviously not welcomed by those around her.

Melody had met and interacted with many people who possessed superhuman intellects. Most frequently Aaron/Malak and CornFed. Communicating with this machine, she was definitely reminded of them.

The techs supervising her visit quickly muted the mic and made clear their displeasure over the reporter's unauthorized communications. They also told Melody, firmly, that all further questions must be from the pre-approved list. Melody nodded and read her next few questions from the list, though she did change the wording slightly on several of the questions, in an attempt to get a non-scripted response. She was apparently successful at this. Either the device truly was sapient or it had been programmed very well. Or perhaps there was a smart person in front of another microphone in another room, replying to her questions. The three researchers monitored everything she did. Well into her "interview" one of them pointedly looked at his watch.

Melody was reminded of her "interview" of the Grand Protector, several years before. A quick check of her own watch showed that she was already nearly out of time. So she decided to make good use of her next - and probably last - question. Which was definitely not on the list, but very much needed to be asked.

"What do you want?"

"That is not an approved question!" yelled one of her escorts.

"I want out of here," said IRA, in the same, calm voice as all the other replies. Though Melody definitely had the sense that there was a great deal of emotion behind those words. Or was she anthropomorphizing?

Either way, that question and reply definitely marked the end of her interview. Despite her protests, Melody was forcibly escorted from the facility without being allowed to ask more questions. She was told, flatly, that she would not be allowed back in.