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                                   CALFORCE
                                  Episode 110
                          (On Being Amoral, part two)
                 "Amoral in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson


              "To instruct man and correct his morals: such is
               the sole goal we set for ourselves in this story."
                                                        - De Sade


                                 |||---^---|||

     Time passed without thought; images blurred upon his optical nerve.
He waited, suspended in perception, serene and rested.  Sound touched his
ears, but remained incoherent; the signals from his nervous system went
unanswered.
     Were Eivandt Seconds capable of thought at the moment, he would have
compared the feeling to watching a marathon of RCW Wrasslemania tapes.  Only
he was alone, this time, and without beer.
     He eventually became aware of the images moving.  They danced upon his
eyes, formless spots of color, bobbing and weaving like Ted Kennedy in a wind
tunnel.  The sounds in his ears began to develop distinct textures.  One felt
catlike and graceful.  Another was muscular and confident.  A third was french
accented; perhaps she was a Walloon.  A forth sounded female, yet the syllables
of her English had a machine-like residue, a faint trace of oil.  A fifth was
completely nondescript.
     The sixth could only be described as wooden.
     "It is three a.m," Johnathan Frakes (coincidence) intoned, woodenly.
"Isn't the Ubermachine ready yet?"
     "Well, gosh," No-Eyelids Man said, nondescriptly.  "We've had it unpacked
and plugged in for the last two hours, but every time we try to bring it
online, the readout simply says, 'This Unit Cannot Transform Non-Organic
Material.'"
     "Is there something in the operating chamber?" Frakes (coincidence) asked,
his surprise and annoyance completely inevident in his wooden monotone.
     "Yeah," Egoiste said, leaning out of the machine.  "It's these damn
styrofoam pellets!  They're in everything!"  He tossed out another handful.
"That should be the last of them, though."
     "It had better be," Frakes (coincidence) intoned, woodenly.  "Dr.
Unorthodox is no longer with us, and the manual he left us is completely
indecipherable!  If something were to go wrong..."
     "What can go wrong?" Psybernet asked.  Eivandt felt her tugging on his
mind again, pulling him out of the stupor she had induced him into.  He opened
his eyes a bit wider, to please her.  "I worked with Dr. Unorthodox in its
creation, after all."
     "Things can and will go wrong," Nimbus said, crossing his arms.  "As you
should know."
     "As we all should know," Arsenal interjected.  "We failed, as a team, by
allowing the Adjusted League Unimpeachable to best us."
     "But we did manage to escape to here," Egoiste added.
     "It was set up," Psybernet said.  "I substituted a page from 'La Cage
Aux Folles' into the scripts the guards were reading from.  They never
noticed."
     "She is correct," Frakes (coincidence) intoned woodenly.  "Our escape
was set up by the person who is coming to buy the Ubermachine."
     "Um, point of order, boss," Arsenal said.  "Why are we selling the
Ubermachine, anyway?  Seems to me we could use it to create an
invincible army, and do whatever it was you were babbling about before..."
     "Taking over the world of music," Frakes (coincidence) intoned woodenly.
     "Yeah, that," Arsenal finished.
     "Power is not something that the Unimaginable League Amoral lacks," Frakes
(conincidence) intoned woodenly.  "Money is.  And before you ask, we cannot
simply rob a bank, as that would break the terms that the buyer forced upon
me.  He could tip off DefenseCo, or the Hero Patrol, or the Awesome Force, as
to our location, and the jig would be up."
     "What about CalForce?" No-Eyelids Man asked.
     "They may have been strong enough to beat you," Nimbus said, "but they
haven't got what it takes to beat us - or you, once you go through the
machine."
     "So when do I go through?" No-Eyelids Man asked, unblinkingly.
     "In a few hours," Frakes (coincidence) intoned, woodenly.
     "Um...okay," No-Eyelids Man said.  Frakes (coincidence) smiled and
turned to look at Eivandt.  "Don't worry, my short, vaguely Belgian friend.
Your turn will come."
     Eivandt nodded, feeling something that resembled pleasure at the thought
of entering the Ubermachine.

                                 |||---^---|||

     "Mom, mom, slow down," Manny said, in french.  "Tell me what happened...
in English, so the rest of my team can understand, too."
     Chalandra watched the woman nod, forcing herself to take deep breaths
before speaking.  Her upset was understandable, and she was doing what she
could to hold it back.
     It had taken nearly five hours to get from the airport to the Seconds'
family's small, french colonial house in Beersel, just south of Brussels.
The actual drive had only taken a hour, but the throngs of Confusion groupies
in both cities made the task particularly difficult.  Mighty Guy offered
to clear the way, but was dissuaded by MeltDown and Chalandra.  Microvax flew
on ahead in his armor, while HotFlash and Criticalman tried to get used to
the sensation of being ignored by star-struck crowds.  Finally, though, they
had made it in.
     The crowds hadn't fazed Manny's parents, and Chalandra wondered if
Eivandt had enjoyed a similar reception when he had returned to Belgium after
leaving CalForce.
     "Ever since he returned," his mother, whose first name was Gwen and
whose middle name was Bakfor, said, "he's been a center of attention.  Every
day, wherever he went, crowds of Doubt-groupies would dog his tracks, and he
could never have a moments peace."
     "Odd," Key said.  "I would have thought he'd love the attention, after
getting so little of it in California."
     "He said the novelty wore off after a while," Manny's father, whose name
was Aphue and who looked to be Flemish, said.  "Eventually, he started wearing
disguises, like the one he was wearing today, when he disappeared."
     "What happened?" Templar inquired.
     "He went down to Wetteren's pub, downtown," Gwen explained.  "He said he'd
be back just after lunch...but he never returned!"
     "Around mid-afternoon, I went down to see where he was," Aphue told them.
"I was worried that a group of stewardesses might have cornered him.  That
happened before, and I was able to rescue him then (strangely, though, he
didn't seem to appreciate that much).
     "I talked with Ned, the bartender.  He told me that a blonde woman had
been talking to him, in french, trying to get him to leave with her.  He
seemed to recognize her, and then, all of a sudden, he screamed.  A minute
later, he stopped screaming, and smiled.  He paid his tab, and left.
     "Maybe she was impressed by his decibel levels," Manny suggested.  His
father looked questioningly at him.  "Um, go on," Manny replied.
     "Ned looked out the window," Aphue went on, "and saw them meeting with
someone in blue and silver armor, with an ill-fitting trenchcoat on.  They
talked a few moments, then departed.  Ned said it looked like Eivandt was
hypnotized."
     "Blue and silver armor?" Chalandra asked.  "Hmmm..."
     "You remember something?" Yury asked her.
     "Not sure," Chalandra said.  "I can ask HAL to run a check.  Excuse me a
minute."  She got up and headed into the next room, the living room.
     The walls seemed old, old with the countless layers of paint they
supported and the lives of all those who had lived between them.  Briefly,
Chalandra thought of her own home, long ago, in London.  It was gone now, gone
for almost a hundred years.  Gone, except in her memories...
     She shook her head, and pressed a button on her microtransciever, in the
collar of her jacket.
     <<Yes, Chalandra?>> HAL's voice sounded somewhat tinny, routed via
satellite from CalForce HQ in Los Angeles through the Star Yacht in Brussels
down to her.
     "HAL, I need for you to run a database search," Chalandra said.  "Eivandt's
been kidnapped, and there's a chance that parahumans may be involved.  One of
them is blonde, and possibly a Walloon.  From what Manny's parents described,
she's probably a telepath, strong enough to override Eivandt's psi-implant in
a minute's time.  She was in the company of someone in blue and silver armor."
     <<From your description, it would appear he has been captured by
members of the Unimaginable League Amoral,>> HAL said.
     "How--" Chalandra began.
     <<They escaped from the Really Really Hard to Get Out of Place a month
ago, and were believed to have fled the country,>> HAL told her.  <<It seemed
a likely connection.>>
     "Sometimes you're just too clever, HAL," Chalandra told him.  "I knew
I'd heard about the break, but couldn't remember much about it.  I'd better
get back into the other room and tell them."
     <<You are alone?>> HAL asked.
     "Yes," Chalandra said.  "It was a bit noisy in there..."
     <<I have some news on Radian.>>
     "What?" Chalandra asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.
     <<I was able to re-establish contact with her.  Apparently, she spent
her summer time-travelling.>>
     "I...see."
     <<She is now in Colombia,>> HAL said.  <<She has encountered-->>
     "Don't have time for the details, HAL," Chalandra said.  "Thanks for the
information."  She switched off the microtransciever and re-entered the
dining room.
     "Well?" Tom asked.  "What's the verdict?"
     "HAL pegged the two as members of the Unimaginable League Amoral,"
Chalandra said.
     "Great horny toads!" Kent exclaimed, setting down his plate of brussels
sprouts.  "They must be Psybernet and Arsenal!  I remember the articles in
the Schmooze!"
     "That's because you wrote them," Key told him.
     "Precisely!" Kent exclaimed, not realizing that the walls had started
to tremble.  "Eivandt is in great danger!  And by the name of my father,
Bore-All, I shall not rest until they are brought to justice!"  He pounded
his fist upon the corner of the table, causing it to flip over and imbed
itself in a wall.
     "Er, perhaps you could rest just a little?" Aphue asked.

(continued in part two, don'tcha know...)

        Gary W. Olson         <^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu  >  "If you're so special, why aren't you dead?"
     swede@drycas.bitnet      <      - The Breeders, "I Just Wanna Get Along"