Dreams of the Golden Age

THREE

THE large conference room at City Hall was filled with the worst sort of business sharks, lobbyists, developers, profiteers, and robber barons. Gathered here in the name of progressive urban development, of course. But they all had blood in their gazes and were licking their chops, figuratively.

And Celia was here among them. What did that say about her?

City government had been trying for twenty years to institute major urban redevelopment. The idea fell out of favor when a previous mayor who advocated revitalization turned supervillain on them, so Commerce City was long overdue for such a plan. Finally, though, the wheels were moving—in part thanks to Celia West’s advocacy.

The city had asked for comprehensive bids to be submitted to a planning committee. This committee would decide the tone and direction of Commerce City for the next generation. Of course, Celia had gotten West Corp involved. Along with every other construction and development company in the city wanting a piece of the pie.

A variety of consortiums and contractors had just delivered their spiels to the mayor, members of the city council, and the planning committee, which included police, fire, and safety officers. Police Captain Mark Paulson was among them. She’d asked him to join the committee specifically. Wasn’t normally his sort of thing—bureaucratic stuffiness took him off the street, where he could do real good, he was always saying. But they needed to take the long view. The work they did now would have repercussions for decades, including in the area of law enforcement. And she wanted at least one ally in the room.

The second-to-last presentation was wrapping up. Two men in suits—she thought of them as trained monkeys, doing their little dance—stood by the wall screen where they’d flashed their maps and drawn their lines and squares where their company would build freeways, outlet malls, and tract housing, if they had their way. The thing that gave them those confident smiles? The fact that everyone in their audience, whose approval they needed to move forward, was also a potential investor. Conflict of interest didn’t exist in these people’s world. They kept looking at Celia in particular like she was a bag of money waiting to burst open.

“Very impressive, gentlemen,” Mayor Edleston, who didn’t know any better, said as he nodded appreciatively. “Any questions? Any information the committee can add about what this would take in terms of permitting, legislation?” He looked to the side of the room where the people who actually got things done sat.

Celia said, “Maybe we should go ahead and move on to the final presentation.”

A silence fell, thick as snow and heavy as lead. She loved when that happened. Everyone stared at her, and her audience was suddenly entirely captive.

Today, she’d started out tired and sore, but she’d powered through it and brought out all the poise and resolve she could muster. She stood, running her hand along the edge of a file folder. She knew without looking that her dark gray dress suit didn’t have a wrinkle in it, and her short red hair and makeup were perfectly arranged. Good grooming was power. One of the little things that determined whether people would listen to you.

“We’ve seen a lot of big, ambitious plans. Lots of freeways, lots of suburbia. Looks great on paper, doesn’t it? But you can track this pattern in a dozen other cities: You build a freeway system that drains resources from the city center, you end up with an empty shell and all the problems that come with it. I want to see economic development as much as the next person, but not at the expense of the city itself. I propose that we can have an economic boom, a vibrant Commerce City, without the sprawl.”

First monkey said, “But the development our plan promotes will benefit the city—”

“The whole city, or your little cadre of investors?” she replied.

“You’re an investor—”

“That’s right. But you’re advocating an either-or situation, and I want both.”

The second monkey had returned to his seat with the other developers. He muttered to a colleague in a way that made it clear he was only pretending to whisper, “Bitch.”

Mayor Edleston shifted uncomfortably, rubbing a hand across his chin. The suits from the other development firms cleared their throats and stared at their hands. First monkey grumbled at the tabletop.

She could buy them all, and they knew it. They hated it. She was enjoying herself immensely.

“If you’ll indulge me,” she said, “West Corp has put together a plan that benefits both Commerce City’s investors and citizens, and I’d love to show it to you.” She held up a flash drive. No one even had time to go for coffee before she started in.

The city council’s IT guy plugged the drive into the video system, and a second later the wall screen displayed her graphics, dominated by the West Corp logo, the latest redesign of which included elements from the earliest logos, the crescent symbol forming the arc of a bow ready to fire a star into the heavens. The retro look of it had gone over well. The trick was, she’d been in here consulting with the IT guy half an hour before the meeting started. She knew her file worked, and it was the only file on the drive. No chance for screwups. Really, it took so little effort to appear entirely in control, entirely powerful, it was surprising so few people managed it. The IT guy handed her the display’s remote.

She walked up to the wall screen, displacing the remaining monkey. “I advocate an approach that utilizes Commerce City’s downtown resources rather than abandons them. Make downtown a destination, an attraction in itself. Block off Preston Street here and here to create a pedestrian mall. Buildings on these blocks here are already slated for demolition. Replace them with high-end residential lofts. West Corp is already investing in low-income housing a few blocks out, here and here. There’s your workforce. Increase the number of teachers at the city’s public schools. Create an art district by refurbishing the Old Opera House, link it to the City Art Museum. Build light rail lines that travel in from north and east, here, with a major stop at the university, allowing industry and manufacturing interests to take advantage of cheap real estate on the city’s outskirts. Most of what we need to implement this plan is already in place. Ultimately, focusing on renewal rather than transplanting will be cheaper, promise a greater return on investment for more people, and improve the city’s morale. And you can’t put a price tag on that.”

Some people accused her of playing the altruist as a front. A trick to make her and West Corp more popular with the general public. The accusation told her a lot about the people making it.

After the meeting, every member of the city council and half the planning committee came to shake her hand and congratulate her on the magnificent proposal. Most of them assured her that she had their support and that her plan was all but approved. Of course it was, she thought. She wouldn’t have taken it this far if she hadn’t secured the majority of her support in advance.

Most of the players lingered after the official meeting ended. Meetings like this were theater that let you see the results of dealing. The real business went on before and after. Celia stuck around, not because she had anything she wanted to get done but because she wanted to size people up and listen to the gossip.

One of the out-of-town investors, a fifty-something man with a permanent thin smile, had cornered Mark. Celia wondered if he needed rescuing, then got close enough to hear what they were talking about.

“Commerce City is famous for its superhuman vigilantes. How do they factor into the planning committee’s discussions?” His name was Danton Majors, and he’d made a fortune on real estate speculation. Self-made billionaire before forty, that kind of guy. He’d thrown his company, Delta Ventures, into the melee with a plan very similar to the others, one that depended on developing new real estate and promoting it to the city on the basis of potential property tax revenue, rather than emphasizing the well-being of the people actually living here. Meanwhile, the investment-seeking monkeys were trying to woo him just as hard as they were trying to woo her.

Majors probably looked down on Celia for inheriting her money. Probably assumed she hadn’t worked a day in her life.

“They don’t, really,” Mark said, holding his own. “They do a lot of good, but they’re unpredictable. We can’t make them part of law enforcement policy, or any other city policy, really. Not unless they want to go through the police academy like every other cop.” He smiled at his joke; Majors didn’t.

“But that must make it impossible to implement long-term strategies,” Majors said.

“We’ve had superhuman vigilantes in Commerce City for almost sixty years. We’ve managed to do okay. We try to work with them as much as possible. Citizens generally appreciate them, and any trouble we have can usually be handled within existing code and policies. You know about our Compensation Fund for Extraordinary Damages? What damages from vigilante activities private insurance won’t cover, that does.”

One of the developer suits—call him Third Monkey—butted in, wearing a grin. “You know, just last year some kid jumped me outside a bar on Ninth and tried to mug me. Block Buster Junior stopped him. Bounced right out of nowhere, knocked the guy off his feet, and next thing I know he’s putting my wallet back in my hand. Like it was nothing. Amazing.”

Block Buster Junior usually teamed up with Senior, his father. Edward Crane, also junior and senior, though nobody else in the room knew that. Senior had been slowing down and appeared on the streets less frequently of late.

“Bruce here can do you one better,” Chen from one of the law firms said. “You remember the elementary school fire twenty-five years or so ago?” Many in the room nodded, recalling the spectacular story. Bruce, the guy he was elbowing, another hot-shot lawyer, blushed and shook his head, but Chen kept pushing.

“There were like ten kids stuck on the roof,” Chen said. “The Olympiad saved them, right? All four of them, tag teaming the way they did in the old days. Tell ’em, Bruce.”

“I was one of the kids,” Bruce said reluctantly. “Captain Olympus hauled me out of the fire himself.”

He got a lot of admiring oohs and ahhs, pats on the back, requests for storytelling. Mark glanced at Celia, a sympathetic smile emphasizing the creases around his eyes.

The mayor was the one who blew her cover. “Ms. West here knows all about the Olympiad, don’t you?” He beamed like he was showing off a golf trophy.

The others looked at her expectantly. Celia set her expression in stone. Edleston went on, blithely. “Warren and Suzanne West are her parents. She’s married to Dr. Mentis.” Warren and Suzanne, Captain Olympus and Spark, along with Dr. Mentis and the Bullet. The Olympiad. She’d long ago stopped trying to remind people that she and Arthur had never actually married. She had too many other battles to fight to waste her breath.

Most of them already knew who she was and remembered her past, at least in its broadest strokes. But a couple of them—the younger ones—didn’t. They knew only the stories, not that she was a part of them. The out-of-towner—he narrowed his gaze, intrigued. That Celia West. She’d been facing that expression her whole life.

“What was that even like?” said a junior exec who’d been fetching coffee.

Celia’s answer to that question had changed in the almost twenty years since the Olympiad was active. Since her father died. “It was an adventure,” she said and left things at that.

She could count on Edleston to keep sticking his foot in it. “It’s just not like it was in the old days,” he said, sighing and shaking his head, a perfect expression of nostalgia. “The Olympiad zipping around, big battles against the Destructor raging all over the place. That was something else.”

“I can’t say I miss those days at all,” Celia said.

The mayor shrugged. “I have to admit, I worry sometimes—what happens if someone like the Destructor comes along? Not just a high-powered bank robber, but someone who, I don’t know, wants to take over, do some real damage? We have our vigilantes, but could they really stand up to something like the Destructor?”

“You want a team again,” Danton Majors said. “Like the Olympiad.”

“Well, sure. That’d be something, wouldn’t it?” He might have been looking forward to the next football game between crosstown rivals.

Memories were short, Celia thought. To actually want those days back again was psychotic. “If someone like the Destructor ever did come along,” she said, “I think we’d manage somehow.”

Fortunately, the conversation moved on to more relevant topics, business cards were exchanged, people started drifting off. Before she could make her own escape, Majors called to her.

“I hope you don’t think this is too forward of me, but I would like to shake your hand.” He held his out, not giving her a chance to refuse. “I’ve heard so many stories about your parents. About the Olympiad. You were there through all of it, weren’t you?”

“Only most of it,” she said, wearing her polite mask. “Really, it was a long time ago. The torch has passed on.”

“You’re settling for other kinds of influence, I suppose,” Majors said, glancing to take in the room and its players.

She shrugged with false innocence. “I’m just carrying on the family business.”

“Your plan seems to have struck a chord. It’s pretty radical, I take it.” He nodded at the wall screen, where her urban renewal images were still on display. She’d planned that, too.

“Only if people weren’t paying attention.”

“I only have one question,” he said. “What do you get out of it?”

One rarely heard the question asked so bluntly. The last thing most people ever said was exactly what they were thinking. Motivations in particular had to be squirreled away if they didn’t conform to standard moral values. Of course Celia had an angle. Everyone assumed it, even if they didn’t know what it was.

Which meant that Majors might or might not believe her answer when she said, “I get to live in a nice city.”

Mark walked with her to the building’s lobby. “My father always wanted me to go into politics. Looks like he finally got his wish.” Mark’s father had been the infamous Mayor Anthony Paulson, who in addition to serving two terms as mayor, was the city’s last great supervillain, who’d attempted to literally blast the city into submission so he could then mold it to his will. Those plans must have looked so good on paper. Celia thought it just as well Mark hadn’t followed in the man’s footsteps.

“I’m sorry to put you through this,” she said. “But it really helps having a friendly face in the crowd. Not to mention you have this air of respectability. You’re the only one in the room who doesn’t have imaginary fangs sticking out of his mouth.”

“Thanks. I think. I just hope we can get something going soon. We needed a redevelopment plan ten years ago.”

“How’s it looking out there?”

“Edleston may be clueless, but he’s a little bit right—without a powerful team of superhumans like the Olympiad on the streets, criminals are bolder. I know we’ve still got vigilantes working, but they can’t protect the whole city. And the younger generation of crooks doesn’t remember what it was like. Hell’s Alley, the harbor district—they’re getting worse. It feels like trying to hold back the tide with sandbags.”

She knew the argument: superhuman vigilantes as deterrent. But she also knew a team that wasn’t dominant could be worse than no team at all—see Teddy Donaldson’s outing.

It was too early to tell if the kids would grow up to be any kind of deterrent.

“You have time to grab lunch?” Mark asked.

“No, I have to get back,” she answered. “Get through the afternoon’s pile of emergencies.”

“Greasing those wheels?”

“More like fleeing the avalanche, some days.”

He’d aged more than his almost fifty years warranted, his hair gone salt and pepper, furrows lining the corners of his eyes. He worked too hard, even after an early near-miss heart attack scare slowed him down. He took the desk job, finally. He still worked too many hours, but at least he wasn’t trying to chase down muggers anymore. He’d even found himself a serious girlfriend, a court clerk he’d met during a trial related to one of his cases. Celia and Arthur had been to dinner with them a couple of times.

But no kids. He’d had a vasectomy and ended relationships over the issue. He just couldn’t be sure, he’d always explained. How could he ever be sure what his genes would pass on? She thought he was being overly cautious, but she couldn’t blame him. His father may have been the Rogue Mayor, but his grandfather had been the Destructor himself. No matter how good a man Mark was, the shadows of his predecessors stood over him. She often wondered if he thought he had to make up for them. He probably looked into the mirror every day and wondered how much he looked like former mayor and archcriminal Anthony Paulson, or mad scientist and master villain Simon Sito. More alike than he wanted, probably.

Celia and Mark had dated, back in the day. Not for long, just a few months, which meant they hadn’t accumulated so much baggage between them that they couldn’t be friends after enough time and space had passed. He was one of the few people in her life who knew the secrets. Most of them, at least.

“Car picking you up?”

“No, taking cabs today,” Celia said.

“Still keeping touch with the common folk?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve got Tom riding herd on the kids this week.”

He laughed. “Poor girls! I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“They’re teenagers. They’re acting like teenagers. I don’t know why I thought I’d somehow avoid this phase.”

A twinge in her neck made her rub the muscle of her shoulder, and she sighed. She wanted to go home and take a nap. Not that she had time for a nap, but she might not have a choice.

“You okay?” Mark asked.

“Tired. That’s all.”

“Not like you haven’t been busy or anything, arranging the fate of the city.”

“You make it sound sinister.”

“Well, if you put it like that, maybe.”

It wasn’t a very good joke. “I’ll talk to you later, Mark.”

“Take care, Celia.” He waved her off and returned to the bowels of City Hall.