Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

5: And Your Enemies Closer

“You don’t want that shit. Kiet! Give him one of the German imports.”

The smiling barkeep bobbed his head and obligingly poured a tall glass with just the right amount of head. He slid it over to Morgan on a cardboard coaster, bobbed his head again, and left.

“Thank you for the help,” Morgan said. He took a long sip. Hayne was right, it was much better than what he was having before. “I just flew in this afternoon and these people may as well be speaking Martian.”

A grin grew on Hayne’s face. “Where’s that accent from? You British or something?”

Morgan nodded. “An Englishman walks into a bar….”

“And can’t even order himself a drink. That’s grim.” Hayne winked. “But you seemed to do okay with those girls over there.” He jerked his beer towards the two Thai girls.

“Ah yes, lovely girls,” Morgan said. “They seem a little young to be in here, though.”

“This is Thailand, friend. Age don’t mean the same thing here that it does in the West.” He held up his glass, and Morgan clinked it with his own. “Not too many white folk come in here. Lots of other Orientals, but not many whites. What’re you here for, anyway?”

“Business,” Morgan said. “I have to meet a client about an investment tomorrow.”

Hayne screwed up his face as if the very idea of work bored him. He held out his hand. “The name’s Will.”

“Morgan.”

They fell silent for a while, sipping their beers amongst the rapid Thai conversations. Morgan studied Hayne over the lip of his glass. A foul man. Even in his prime he was the same. During his divorce in ’49, the press had spread rumours of extramarital affairs and domestic violence. They didn’t know the half of it. Hayne was the sort of man who’d let the world turn to ruin. He was the sort of man who’d turned the world against metas.

Morgan stretched and leaned back in his barstool. “I should thank you for your help. Would you like to help me buy those two girls a drink?”

The grin hadn’t changed either. It was the grin that had graced thousands of newspapers across the world. The grin of Iron Justice, comrade of Dr Atomic, and the hero who’d slaughtered more Nazis than anyone else in the Manhattan Eight.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

~~~

Two hours later, they were drinking rice wine in a private room at a small tourist hotel. Of course, Morgan had arranged the room to be free several hours previously. Morgan, Hayne, and the two young Thai girls lounged on the tattered couches in the glow of several lamps, laughing uproariously. The room already stunk of Hayne’s sweat.

“What I’m saying,” Morgan said as he topped up Hayne’s chipped glass, “is that there must be something that makes someone become a metahuman.”

Hayne tottered a little, red-faced, and waved his glass at Morgan. Even after all these years, his biceps looked like mountains. “’Course there is, everyone knows that. Don’t they teach you about the nukes back in England? No wonder we had to save you in the war.”

Morgan put on a polite smile. “Obviously the nuclear radiation is a factor. Countries that have been exposed to nuclear radiation have the greatest number of metahumans per capita. Japan, Poland, New Zealand, anywhere the bombs hit. And of course the Manhattan Eight were a result of the accident at Los Alamos. Dr Atomic would attest to that. He was a scientist first, just plain old Robert Oppenheimer.”

He stared at the drunken Hayne while he spoke, but the man gave no sign that he’d even heard, let alone realised that Morgan knew who he was.

Morgan poured some more wine for the girls as well, even though they were half-unconscious already. “I wonder sometimes,” he continued, “what Einstein and Bohr and Oppenheimer and all those other scientists thought when they realized the true power of nuclear energy. Not just to power light bulbs and disintegrate enemies, but to truly create. To make new forms of humanity, people that could be pillars of their community like never before. I wonder what it was like for Oppenheimer, one day being in charge of creating the very first atomic bomb, and the next, becoming the world’s first superhero.”