The Further Adventures of Batman (46 page)

“Batman has captured the gang for us. It’s all over.”

Bruce Wayne nodded. “Millie here has been telling me some things. I believe she may be willing to testify against them if you need more evidence.”

The commissioner scowled at her. “You’d better come along with me, young lady.”

“Thank you for everything,” Millie told Bruce.

He smiled. “Good luck, and I hope you get back to the Yacht Club soon. I think they’ll have a shortage of help for a while.”

The Origin
of The
Polarizer

George Alec Effinger

H
ow ironic, Bertram Waters thought, that I, one of the most promising researchers in the field of plasmonics, should be denied Ivy University’s facilities because of something as trivial as money. Until he’d found a job with Jennings Radio Supply in the summer of 1957, Waters despaired that he’d ever be able to complete his graduate studies at the college. He had a tedious job as a stock and shipping clerk, but he realized that his meager wages wouldn’t entirely cover his expenses. He was already exploring other means of augmenting his income.

Waters was a brilliant young man who had grown frustrated with his poverty and the stubborn ignorance of Ivy University’s bursar. His coworkers at Jennings knew little about him because he rarely spoke except as required by his duties. In his presence, one was always aware that his powerful brain was constantly observing, cataloging, evaluating, and deciding. He was a tall, slender man, strong, but not in a bulky way. He had black hair with a sharp widow’s peak, a narrow, straight nose, deep dark eyes that people unfailingly described as “magnetic,” and prominent cheekbones that gave his face a long, somewhat sinister appearance. He had one affectation—a carefully trimmed mustache of the sort film stars had worn fifteen or twenty years earlier. Someone had once remarked, quite accurately, that Bertram Waters looked like Satan as played by Errol Flynn.

The shipping department was a wire cage separated from the rest of the Jennings warehouse. During the summer, there had been two employees to handle the stock and two in shipping. Now that school had begun again, however, three of the young men had quit their jobs, leaving only Waters to keep up with the never ending stream of orders. Again and again, he would grab the next purchase form, run to the warehouse and pull the stock, then run back to the shipping department to box it, address it, and get it ready for delivery. Mr. Jennings promised every day to hire more help, but as the year slipped from late summer into autumn, Waters was still all alone, doing the work of four men.

One day, while Waters was eating lunch alone and reading Vance Packard’s new bestseller,
The Hidden Persuaders
, Joe Sampson, the deliveryman, came into the shipping cage. Waters and he were not really friends—Bertram Waters did not encourage friendship in anyone—but sometimes in odd moments they talked about the few interests they had in common. Both were ardent baseball fans, for instance, and they often discussed the chances that the Gotham City club might follow the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants to the West Coast.

Today, however, the subject wasn’t baseball. “It never fails,” complained Sampson. “Whenever I have to make a big delivery on one end of town, the next one will be clear over on the other side. What do you have for me after lunch?”

Waters put down his book and his fried egg sandwich. He glanced at a clipboard hanging on the wire enclosure near him. “Just one,” he said. “Another big order from Bruce Wayne.”

“Jeez,” said Sampson, “that guy again! Well, I guess he can afford it.”

“That’s what I hear,” said Waters.

“He’s one of Jennings’ best accounts. I know for a fact that he gets as much electrical gear as some of the biggest factories and scientific outfits in Gotham City. What do you think he does with it all?”

Waters wasn’t terribly interested. He only shrugged and picked up his book again.

“I hope he’s around when I drop the stuff off,” Sampson went on. “That butler of his never gives me any trouble or anything, but when the Wayne guy himself is there, he always gives me a healthy tip.”

“Uh huh,” said Waters absently. He kept on reading.

“Listen, pal. How about if I give you a hand filling the Wayne order? The sooner you get done, the sooner I can run it out to his mansion. Then I’ll be done for the day. And I’ll tell you what: if he slips me a few bucks, I’ll come back here and split it with you. What do you say?”

Waters sighed. He was sure now that although he hadn’t finished eating, his lunch break had come to an end. “Fine.” he said. “Take one of those order form pages and find the electrical components in the bins. Bring them here to my desk because I have to check them all off.”

“Whatever you say.” Sampson slid the top sheet of paper free of the clipboard. Before he went to collect the parts, he switched on the maroon plastic AM radio above Waters’ desk. The radio had been forgotten and left behind by one of the shipping clerks who had quit his job at Jennings to go back to school. Waters never turned it on because he hated pop music, and the radio did not receive Gotham City’s FM classical music station. “Jeez, I’m getting sick of this song,” said Sampson, listening to Pat Boone crooning “Love Letters in the Sand.” Nevertheless, he left the radio on and went off in search of the electrical components Bruce Wayne had ordered.

Waters marked his place and closed
The Hidden Persuaders
. He watched Sampson wander off toward the vacuum tubes. “There should be a higher law,” he muttered. “Something that would bring to justice all the double-digit IQs like Sampson.” He took a deep breath and let it out, then stood and took the second page of the Wayne order. He began pulling boxes of resistors. He could tell that, once again, Wayne had ordered a small mountain of them.

Half an hour later, Sampson returned with a puzzled look on his face.

“This guy wants
two thousand
tubes,” he said. “What can anybody do with two thousand vacuum tubes?”

“He can build a radio the size of your garage,” said Waters irritably. “Maybe he has a crazy passion for Chinese music.”

“Anyway, we’re all out of some of these.” He showed the order form to Waters.

“You can substitute for most of these tubes. Where it says 2A3, you can use a 2A3W, and it will be even more reliable.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say, Waters.
I
haven’t memorized the code numbers of every tube in the world.”

Waters just stared at Sampson until he got himself under control again. “There’s a big yellow chart on the wall, right in front of you,” he said in a dangerous tone of voice, “and it gives all the tube numbers and all the permissible substitutions. It’s probably been there since before you were born. You’ve seen it every time you’ve come into the cage.”

Sampson grinned sheepishly, “I guess I never really noticed it before.”

“That figures,” said Waters sourly. “All right, I’ll finish the vacuum tubes. You work on the resistors.”

Sampson swapped pages with him and started to leave the shipping department. Then he stopped and turned back to Waters. “I always forget,” he said. “What do the colored bands on the resistors mean again?”

It was all Waters could do to keep from punching him. “Forget it!” he said. “I’ll finish the whole thing by myself. You just sit there and listen to the radio and don’t touch
anything.”

Sampson shrugged. “All right, if you say so.” He sat down and began munching on Waters’ unfinished sandwich. “Listen,” he said happily, “they’re playing ‘The Banana Boat Song.’ ”

Late that afternoon, Bruce Wayne bent over his work in the Batcave’s superbly equipped laboratory. In addition to being in top physical condition to fight criminals on the streets of Gotham City, Wayne also found it necessary to keep current with all the latest advances in such fields as chemistry and electronics. What he had read in recent scientific journals had persuaded him that it was time to make improvements on the Batcave’s Crime Data Analyzer. Wayne was convinced that he could build a new computer that could store and process information with even greater speed and efficiency.

New technology meant learning new techniques, but Bruce Wayne—the Batman—was never dismayed by such a challenge. As the day wore on, he worked with intense concentration, unaware that both Dick Grayson, his ward, and his faithful butler, Alfred, were concerned about him. Alfred, in particular, was unhappy that his master had eaten little of his lunch and then hurried back to his experiment. He was worried that Wayne might be overtiring himself.

At four o’clock, Dick Grayson entered the Batcave and greeted the older man. “Gosh, Bruce,” he said, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t get out of that social engagement. I would much rather have been here, helping you with our project.”

Wayne looked up, startled. “Hello, Dick. How was the matinee concert?”

“I’ve never heard the Gotham Philharmonic sound better. I explained to everyone that you had an important business matter that prevented you from accompanying me. But now I’m ready to get to work. Oh, and Alfred said to tell you that dinner will be served promptly at six.”

Wayne glanced at his wristwatch and reacted with surprise. “I had no idea that I’d been working here so long.”

Grayson came closer to the workbench to see what Wayne was doing. “Tell me, Bruce,” he said, “what is that board? It’s plastic on one side, and copper on the other. Is it going to be part of the new BATIVAC Crime Computer?”

Wayne smiled. “Yes, Dick. This is the prototype of the sort of printed circuit I’ve devised for the BATIVAC.”

Grayson looked bewildered. “Printed circuit?”

“The printed circuit board will make building the BATIVAC much simpler. The plastic board will become the base onto which we will mount the necessary electrical components. After the board is properly processed, the remaining copper on the other side will serve as the ‘wiring.’ It will save us many hours of tedious wiring and difficult soldering. The BATIVAC will consist of hundreds of these printed circuit boards, and if a component or a circuit should fail, it will be much easier to remove the entire board and replace it with an identical one.”

Grayson examined the unfinished circuit board in admiration. “This is wonderful, Bruce,” he said, “but I suppose you won’t be needing me and my soldering iron anymore.”

Wayne laughed. “Oh, there will still be plenty of connections to make, Dick,” he said. “We’ll place the components on the plastic side of the board, with their leads pushed through properly spaced holes. Then it will be a simple matter to fasten them down to copper pathways on the other side with a bit of solder.”

“What about the excess copper?”

Wayne indicated the copper-clad side of the board. “I’m just about to remove it now. I’ve masked the outline of the circuit I want with a resistant ink. Now I merely dip the board into this pan of ferric chloride solution, which will etch away all the excess copper. When it’s finished, I’ll rinse the board in clear water and remove that resistant ink with lacquer thinner. All that will be left on the copper side is a map of the circuit I designed.”

“Wow, Bruce,” said Grayson excitedly. “No more fumbling with copper wire!”

“Exactly, Dick. And this process will enable us to build our equipment more quickly and will reduce the overall size of it, too. We’ve entered the modern age of miniaturization. The BATIVAC will require several thousand vacuum tubes, and without miniaturization, it would take up much of the area of the Batcave.”

Grayson understood the possibilities immediately. “Maybe later we could build a smaller version of the BATIVAC for the crime lab aboard the Batplane. And think of the new miniature devices we could carry in our utility belts.”

“First things first, Dick,” said Wayne, amused by his ward’s enthusiasm. “And I think I’ve worked hard enough for tonight, although the sooner the BATIVAC is finished, the sooner all of Gotham City can sleep more securely.”

It would be many days before the BATIVAC was completed, but both Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson knew that there was no point in working to exhaustion. Together the two left the Batcave and went upstairs where Alfred had prepared them both a light but nutritious snack.