Hulk (16 page)

“Thanks. I’ve been working out.”

“That’s good to hear.”

And the line went dead. With anyone else, Betty would think they’d been disconnected. But that wasn’t the case here. Thunderbolt Ross had never developed any technique for saying, “Good-bye.” To him, when a conversation was over, there was no reason to prolong it with pointless niceties.

“Why can’t I have a nice, normal father?” she wondered aloud.

In the darkened home of Bruce Banner’s father, the three dogs circled, silent and nervous. Containers of various sizes, marked with assorted warning stickers—all of them stolen from the lab of Dr. Bruce Krenzler—littered the room. David Banner picked up a cage from under a table. There was high-pitched squeaking as the large gray rat within the cage objected to being handled.

Banner placed the cage inside another clear container in the middle of the room, and dropped one of the nanomed canisters inside. It hadn’t been easy obtaining it; it hadn’t been easy getting any of the things he’d stolen. It had taken patience and cunning, but it had been worth it, particularly if it was going to provide him with what he needed.

Stepping away from the cage and the container, Banner went into the hallway, stood around the corner, and flipped a light switch. The room was immediately alive with the hum of radiation from the makeshift and far-smaller-scale gamma cannon that he had created. In terms of potency and sophistication, it was more a gamma water pistol.

Furthermore, there was every chance that Banner himself would receive a dose from free-floating rads, since he didn’t have the tools available to him to create the sort of Plexiglas safe area that such devices usually required. But Banner couldn’t have cared less about some incidental cellular damage. He had issues of far greater import to concern himself with.

The rat’s cage began to spark and, at that moment, the nanomed canister broke open. He could hear it shatter, could hear the rat squealing in alarm, and, possibly, pain. He glanced over at the mirror set up at the far end of the room and saw, reflected in it, a cloud enveloping the rat, and a few more sparks from the metal of the cage. He hadn’t realized there’d be that much discharge. It was a foolish oversight; he could conceivably burn the house down. Not that the house itself was any great shakes, but his research materials were irreplaceable. It was something he was going to have to be more attentive to in future endeavors.

He checked his watch, satisfied himself that the requisite amount of time had passed, and shut down the juice. Gingerly he turned the corner back into the room and looked at the cage.

It was quite a sight to see. There was the rat, covered with open sores and burns and slime, all of which were to be expected from the dose of gamma radiation it had received. But it was also three times as big as it had been before. Whereas there had been plenty of room within the cage, now the infuriated creature was cramped within, tearing at it and shaking it violently.

David Banner grinned. And then he started to laugh, louder and louder, and the fearsome dogs actually cringed away from him.

Then the laughter stopped and he stared with malevolent joy at the canines.

“Hello, boys,” he said, and if the dogs had had any brains at all, they would have run as fast as their legs could take them, or perhaps turned upon their master and torn him to shreds. Instead they nuzzled up against him as he stroked their heads absently while staring at the creature in the cage and smiling broadly.

mutagenic traces . . .
but of what?

Betty Ross and Dr. Chandler walked slowly down the hallway of the infirmary. Chandler was shaking her head, and her puzzlement was quite evident.

“He seems fine now,” she said. “I’m afraid, since I can’t quite find anything else the matter, that I’m going to have to let him discharge himself.”

Betty wasn’t entirely sure how to react. Naturally, that should have been good news. Bruce was going to be okay. Somehow, whether it was nanomeds or luck or a miracle from above, Bruce had dodged a radioactive bullet. The problem was it was too good to be true. And it was part of Betty’s nature to be skeptical of that which seemed too good to be true.

“Well, I have a blood test or two I’d like to run on him, even if he’s being released,” Betty said.

Chandler looked skeptical. “Dr. Krenzler seemed rather adamant about leaving the infirmary as soon as possible, and we really don’t have any standing or reason to keep him against his will or subject him to more tests. I can’t say he’ll want to cooperate.”

“Oh, I think I can say that,” said Betty, and she smiled. “I’m very persuasive.”

Bruce winced slightly as Betty withdrew the hypodermic she’d used to take blood from him. The tube had filled up quickly. “Here,” she said gesturing at his arm. “Press down.” She put a Band-Aid on him, stepped back, and looked him over. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Sure,” said Bruce, trying to look nonchalant about the pain in his arm. “How are you?”

It seemed to Bruce that she was hesitant about something. He had intended it as merely a casual question, but it was obvious to look at her that a less-than-casual response was on her mind. “I got a message from my father. He’s coming to see me,” she said finally.

Oh, good! Let’s get him together with my alleged father! I’m sure they’ll get along just great! Maybe they’ll get a house by the sea together and swap stories about how to rear happy, healthy, well-adjusted children!

He kept his face neutral, albeit with effort. “Your father? When?”

“He lands in an hour. Funny thing was”—she frowned, obviously puzzled—“he called me.”

Bruce wasn’t entirely sure why, but he considered that to be somewhat alarming. It might well have been that he was a bit on edge when it came to the advent of fathers and father figures, particularly after last night’s encounter—an experience he still thought might just have been the stuff of dreams. With long practice, though, he kept any hint of alarm or concern from his voice. “You nervous?”

“Yes,” said Betty matter-of-factly.

“You’ll be fine,” said Bruce. He took the vial of blood from her. “And I’m going to do this myself.”

Betty was obviously startled. She’d told Bruce the type of tests she wanted to run on the blood sample, looking for mutagenic traces. He’d readily agreed that such tests should indeed be run . . . but he hadn’t promised that he was going to have her do it. And now that the blood had been drawn, Bruce was thinking that if there was something to be discovered about his biological makeup, then he was the one most entitled to discover it. Nor was he putting the matter up for debate as he held onto the vial firmly even as Betty reached for it.

“Myself,”
he repeated.

She looked as if she wanted to argue the point, but finally she just shrugged her slim shoulders. “As long as it gets done,” she said.

Throughout the rest of the day, Bruce Krenzler, pushing the matter of the Banner name out of his head, worked on studying the blood sample. There was most definitely something there, but the problem was he wasn’t entirely sure what that something was. He felt as if he were an Aborigine staring at a model of a DNA strand, having some vague idea that there was something of importance here but knowing that he didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to begin to comprehend it. Computer analysis was of little help to him, because row after row of questions and tests came back with one of two responses:

Insufficient data.

Unknown.

The “insufficient data” didn’t bother him as much as the “unknown,” for some reason. Perhaps it was because “insufficient data” left room for the possibility that more data would be forthcoming, along with answers. But “unknown” was vast, and could very possibly remain unknowable.

He leaned back from the electron microscope at one point, rubbed the bridge of his nose between his fingers, and cursed to himself. Then he suddenly looked over his shoulder. But there was no one there.

Or perhaps someone had been there but no longer was.

“Unknown” indeed.

The Joint Tactical Force West was a sprawling base situated about thirty miles outside of Berkeley. Betty remembered it all too well. When she had been very small, she’d seen news broadcasts showing Berkeley students demonstrating outside the base, complaining or protesting about some military engagement somewhere. She remembered her father loudly cursing out the kids on TV, and she had promptly joined her father in a rigorous session of off-color language. Ross had first been startled by his daughter’s word choice, but then realized she’d picked it up from him and instead let out a hearty laugh. It was one of those rare instances when she had actually pleased him, and even now—as she showed her ID to the guard at the gate before driving on—it was one of her more pleasant memories of growing up. Possibly because it was one of the few instances when she knew she had genuinely entertained her father.

She reminded herself that she was her own person, and she wasn’t required to provide entertainment for her father. Yes, she certainly had the knee-jerk feminist line good to go, which didn’t help her at all in terms of dealing with her dad.

Having parked the car near the building that housed the officer’s club, Betty got out, smoothed her blouse and skirt, then breathed into her open palm to check her breath. Just to play it safe, she popped in a breath mint, and then headed toward the club’s main entrance.

She was stopped at the door, of course, and made to show her ID all over again. Even then they wouldn’t let her enter until they found her name, and even that took longer than it should have because they had her reservation misfiled as “Ross Elizabeth” instead of “Elizabeth Ross.”

Upon seeing the name, and knowing the other individual with whom it was associated, the maître d’ immediately snapped to. Without a word, he pointed in the direction of her father, Thunderbolt Ross, seated at a table with his back ramrod straight and a drink in his hand. He was staring into the drink thoughtfully, but some inner “old soldier” sense made him realize that Betty was there. He looked in her direction and simply nodded in greeting. Effusive as ever.

She strode toward him and, when she got in range, he stood to greet her.

“Hi, Dad,” she said.

“Betty,” said Ross. He looked her up and down. She resisted the temptation to salute him. “You’ve changed your hair color,” he announced.

No, she hadn’t. “I appreciate your noticing. Thank you,” she said as she sat. “It was nice of you to come out all this way.”

He shrugged. “Half-hour chopper ride. Not a vast inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.”

They made minimal small talk as the waiter brought them menus and, a short time later, bread and butter in a wire basket. Betty didn’t push her father on what it was he wanted to speak with her about. She knew him well enough to know she didn’t have to push. He was going to tell her before too long, because Thaddeus Ross wasn’t one for beating around the bush if one could stomp the bush flat or level it with a bulldozer.

He didn’t let her down as, in short order, he announced to her, “All right, I’ll get right to it.”

Betty had been considering all the possible things her father might want to speak to her about, and she blurted out what was—to her—the most obvious and most likely. “This is about Glen, isn’t it? He’s been snooping around my lab.”

“Glen noticed some things,” Ross said guardedly. “He . . . asked me to make some inquiries.”

Something about the way Ross said that made Betty think that he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming with her. In the end, though, did it really matter? Whichever way the information train was running, both her father and her former boyfriend were riding in the same car.

“You’ve been spying on me. Of course.” By this point in her life, she had no idea why she was even surprised.

“Betty, listen,” Ross said, obviously not paying the least bit of attention to Betty’s visible unhappiness about the situation. Well, that was pretty typical of him, wasn’t it? Steamroll right over her concerns. Betty put the menu down and started glancing around quite plainly, looking for the exit, and then her father reached over and put a hand on her forearm. She couldn’t tell if he was doing it out of paternal feeling, or because he wanted to make damned sure she stayed where she was.

“We’ve turned up some surprising things,” Ross told her. “This Krenzler you work with, you know who he really is? How much do you actually know about him?”

The question caught Betty completely off guard, but she made sure not to show it. His words were alarming, though. If there was one thing her father had, it was access to all manner of top-secret information. It wasn’t as if Ross were saying that Bruce wasn’t good enough for her, or why couldn’t Betty be dating an army man. His phrasing couldn’t have been more clear: He’d learned something about Bruce, something that concerned him to such a degree that he’d felt the need to contact Betty and talk to her directly, one-on-one. That alone was sufficient to underscore the seriousness of whatever it was.

Or perhaps there was something else at work here. Ross was, after all, still working closely with Talbot. As ludicrous as it sounded, this might be some sort of team effort to kill whatever interest she might have in Bruce and steer her back to someone of whom her father approved.

Cautiously, she said, “I think the question is: What is it that
you
know about him?”

Ross leaned back and cleared his throat. “Well, right now, I’m not at liberty to—”

She should have known. She really should have known. Tossing out some all-purpose, vague aspersions—just how stupid did her father think she was? Overlapping his words, she said, “Not at liberty to disclose that to me. Right.” She was filled with disgust for him and anger for herself, because she had been sucker enough to let herself be pulled in. How easily duped had they believed her to be? And how dumb had she been to go along with it this far? “You know, I was really hoping, hoping that this time you honestly wanted to see me again to—”