by Erin Halfelven

3.3 Behemoth

"He's being unpleasant again, isn't he?" said Gumpy Steve, looking at Kevin.

"He's always like that," I said. "I've gotten used to it, but when he isn't looking, I give him a shot to the back of the head."

Gumpy laughed.

Kevin grinned. "She's not kidding, Unk. I've got the knots to prove it. You know I love you, Darryl, 'cause you put up with my shit and you always know when I'm serious or not."

"Not always," I said. "Hence the occasional shot to the back of the head when you're not looking."

He laughed and put out a fist and I bumped it with mine.

The old man shook his head. "You two are like siblings, always quarrelling. Don't let it affect you when you're out in the field, okay?"

We both nodded. I said, "We'll keep it down to the occasional 'You suck!'"

Kevin laughed. "Are we really going to be meeting the Cometeers? The mermaid thing wore off," he added to me.

"I know," I said. "We saw them at the Newport Christmas Boat Show," I reminded him.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed. "Phantom Angel is too hot to be a mermaid, anyway; she'd make the water boil." He waved his hand as if he had burned it. "Whoo!"

I rolled my eyes. The leader of the Cometeers was a statuesque blonde with wings when she wasn't being invisible. "Am I supposed to say something about Dreadnaught and Doc Spectrum being hunky?"

"More like chunky in Dreadnaught's case," said Kevin. "And Spectrum is a super-nerd. Don't know why she hangs out with them."

"We'll get around to seeing them when you two are more practiced. They have an association of otherwise unaffiliated metas they run as kind of a mutual aid society."

I nodded. "The Good Guy Group, they call it."

"Dumb name," said Kevin. "One of their members is called Widgetman, even dumber name."

"Still," said Gumpy, not disagreeing, "it's a smart thing to have back-up you can call. And registering with even an informal group will keep you out of major trouble with the feds."

"Aren't you a member of a group, Unk?" asked Kevin.

"Sure, several, but I'm supposed to be dead, remember? Let's keep it that way for a while longer." He looked at us sharply, and we both nodded, even though we didn't quite understand why he wanted everyone to think he was dead.

After a bit more talk, Gumpy pulled some microwave burritos out of the freezer and we had a quick snack. "Gotta keep the engine stoked," he said which went a ways to explaining why his kitchen was full of snack food. "Being meta burns lots of calories."

After we finished the burritos, chips, salsa and sodas, we trooped outside to look at the big vehicle he called the Skarabkar and I had dubbed the Behemoth. It looked even bigger on the inside with full-width bench seats front and rear and jump seats that folded down in back from the front bench.

The dash was full of scanners, radios, and computers, with three video screens, one of which was a GPS. With the jump seats folded up, the back could be turned into a miniature jail cell by pulling up a chain partition hidden in the floor. The body was armored and all the glass was "bulletproof." Gumpy described it that way, making air quotes with his fingers. "It'll stop anything up to a military .50 cal.," he said. "But an elephant gun will blow the glass away on a square hit."

"Who builds cars like this?" Kevin asked.

"Guy right here in O.C., down in Costa Mesa. Meta-Limo-ACG.," said the old man. "One million, four hundred thousand, right about, for this one."

Kevin and I looked at one another, speechless. "I guess he can afford to buy cars for us," Kevin finally said.

I nodded, blinking a little, but Gumpy shook his head. "I didn't pay for it. Kosher bought it to replace the one destroyed down in Costa Rica when I was on a mission for them."

"Kosher" was the nickname of the Combined Office of Super-Human Resources, a government agency that recruited metas for special assignments with various government departments. They handled both covert and public jobs, starting in the seventies trying to rehabilitate metas who had gotten in trouble with the law. People like Blacksmith, Cossack, Varmint, Soul Sister and Greyfog.

"I had them duplicate the look my old ride had back in the forties," said Steve, patting the Behemoth affectionately. "Let's go for a spin."

"Shotgun!" Kevin yelled.

"I'm not sitting in the back!" I protested.

"Get up front, between us," said Gumpy. "You can operate the computer and radios."

"Do we have to be in costume for this?" I asked. I didn't really want to sit in the middle seat either, but it was better than being in the back with the chain partition and the disappearing door handles.

"Not really, no one can see us inside," he said. "But if and when I let either of you drive, you will have to be in your uniforms."

I slid across the leather from the driver's side and settled into the bucket-seat-like middle indent while Kevin got in from the passenger side. Gumpy showed us how to bring up the crash harnesses from the seat backs but for this drive we just used the three-point seat belt arrangement.

Steve called up traffic radar on his GPS, and when the screens showed the road to be clear for a quarter mile each way, we pulled out onto the highway in front of Casa Sunderman. "The car can drive itself, actually," he said. "Voice commands, pre-programmed routes, all that. We're hooked in with Skytower One for the best GPS on the planet, too."

Even as just Steve Sunderman, Gumpy is a big guy, but I still had plenty of elbow room in the middle seat. Two keyboards on swivels came out of the dash in front of me, one alphabetic and one numeric. The GPS screen faced the driver at an angle, but the other screens could be swiveled to be used from any of the front seats. A touchpad came out from a slot under the screen with an attached stylus that could also be used on either screen. The multi-band radio could get anything from commercial digital television to police and military secure single sideband.

"Tap in this command, sweetie," said Gumpy to me. "Act Bug One Colon Zee Cue Arr Bee."

Kevin almost choked laughing while I glared at Gumpy. "Don't call me that!" I said.

The old man looked blank. "Wha'd I say?"

"Don't call me 'sweetie,'" I said, trying not to make a face.

"Oh, sorry," he managed not to smile. "Eighty-year-old social reflexes, I guess. You remember the command I gave, uh, Darryl?"

I nodded and poked in, "Act Bug 1:ZQRB" on the keyboard.

"Enter," said Gumpy.

I did. The hood of the Behemoth turned dark silver and the bug-shaped hood ornament folded down into some recess.

"Magnetic color control. The blue insignia on the doors have also disappeared," noted Gumpy. "Less conspicuous for cruising. Lots of old classic cars in this area, no one's going to notice that this thing is a foot longer than a real 1942 Packard."

Sudden acceleration pushed me back into the seat. I watched the speedometer climb toward eighty as the car leaned in and out of the switchbacks coming off the mountain.

"Active suspension," said Gumpy.

"Nice," said Kevin.

We reached the highway and joined the freeway shortly after, headed toward Laguna Beach. The speedometer continued to climb until Gumpy finally eased off at around 110. The Tuesday afternoon traffic would be light for another hour or so, but the big car wove in and out of the pack so smoothly that we reached the edge of Laguna before we had to slow down.

We turned right at PCH and cruised the beach road in our million dollar wheels, watching the crowds on the chilly spring sands. Some meta with a fire trick was juggling flames on the beach, attracting attention.

"Why do some people waste their abilities?" Kevin asked. "If he can throw fire like that, couldn't he do something better with his life than busking?"

Gumpy snorted. "That may be all he can do; not everyone with superpowers is a world beater."

"Spot-on-the-wall," I said, using George R.R. Martin's phrase.

"Yah," agreed Gumpy.

"Still a waste," said Kevin.

The old man chuckled. "You think everyone meta should have some high purpose? Not all of us were chosen or selected to be who or what we are. A lot of people just wake up one morning or recover from some trauma and discover they've been touched by the Dark Star."

Or by the god of the Dark Star, if you're one of the cultists who believe that kind of stuff. I wondered how the Insect Lords as Gumpy had called them once fit into any sort of reasonable theology.

We were passing the scrubland around the new houses on Newport Coast to our right, even scrubbier brush to our left going down through Crystal Cove State Park to the sand cliffs above Pelican Point. I thought about visiting the rocky beach down there with my mom and sister years ago, when we first moved to Orange County. I'd had no idea what kind of family I had been born into.

"If we get our powers from the rings, are we really metas?" I asked.

"The big wigs say so," said Gumpy. "Can't manipulate the mega-quantum forces unless you are."

"Meta-quantum?" Kevin asked.

Gumpy shook his head. "Mega-quanta are the packets of other worldly energies given off by Prometheus; meta-rays, sometimes called."

"Huh," said Kevin. None of us were actually that interested in the technical details of how meta-reality worked so that conversation died.

Especially when we all suddenly noticed a white SUV coming toward us on the other side of the road. We couldn't see anything notable about it, but it held our interest until it was past. Inside, we could see a male driver, a woman in the passenger seat and two or three children in the back. None of us said anything until it had disappeared well behind us.

"What was that?" Kevin asked. "It was like that old TV show; my Skarab senses were tingling."

I agreed. "It was like an itch in the dealie-bobbers we're not wearing at the moment."

Gumpy shook his head. "One of the mysteries we have to live with. Someone or something in that car was meta, probably in a bad way. We can't really do anything about it unless we see something or know what's wrong some other way."

Kevin and I were silent for a moment then looked at one another.

"Sucks," said Kevin and I nodded.

"Got that right," said Gumpy in a tired voice.