Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best english novels to read .txt) 📗

"What do you mean? Surely things couldn't be much worse."

"Yes. They are." Batman nodded curtly. "The bull-headed beast that you saw has already captured four members of the Justice League."

He chose the word "captured" with care. For all he knew, Superman and the others were already dead. But he couldn't allow himself to think that way. He had to believe they were alive until events proved otherwise.

"It's only fair that you should know," he added pointedly. "We're dealing with real evil here, and it has a lot of power to back it up."

Cassandra shivered at his words, but didn't respond.

A narrow corridor led them to the main hallway, their progress illuminated by the powerful beam from Batman's penlight. They made their way across the checkered floor of black-and-white marble and passed the hall's only exhibit, the glass-encased skull of a flesh-eating dinosaur. It had been discovered in the mud of Gotham Docks by one of Robert Mills's predecessors during a routine dredging operation.

Six-inch-long teeth glinted in the flash beam as they passed it.

Gotham City has a long, long history, Batman thought. It's at least sixty-five million years since beasts like that roamed our hills.

Set against that, the seven or eight generations of the Wayne dynasty were mere pimples on the skin of time.

Batman stopped suddenly, spinning around in a blur of movement, dropping into a defensive martial-arts pose. He froze for several seconds, every sense at full alert, striving to penetrate the darkness. Then he relaxed.

"Thought I heard something," he said by way of explanation.

They passed a glass door with the word library etched in it, and Batman stopped again. He turned the door handle and pushed. It was open.

"Now might not be the best time," he told Cassandra, thinking of the books Jenny Ayles had recommended to him earlier that day, "but I want to check something out."

Cassandra followed him into the lighter, airy library. There were a dozen skylights set into the ceiling, and moonlight poured in to illuminate the interior. Batman scanned the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with his flash, quickly pulling out a half-dozen titles from different sections. He carried them to a reading desk, sat down, and handed the flashlight to Cassandra.

"Keep it trained on the open pages," he told her.

Puzzled, Cassandra did as she was instructed. She could read some of the titles–Lost Civilization of the Stone Age, Ancient Voices, The Origin of Consciousness– but they meant nothing to her.

Using some of the books as a prop, Batman leaned one volume against them and opened the cover. He closed his eyes briefly, using one of the many meditative techniques he'd learned during his research in Tibet to calm his mind. His eyes blinked open again, defocusing until he could see no detail on the pages before him. The black type seemed to become three-dimensional, standing out several inches above the white background of the page.

Cassandra watched in astonishment as he began to flick through the pages, turning them over at a rate of more than one per second.

He can't possibly be reading them, she thought, but kept her silence as Batman sped through the books.

Less than ten minutes later, he closed the last one, pushed the pile aside, and got to his feet. Swiftly, he replaced the volumes in their positions on the shelves. He led Cassandra back out into the hallway, explaining as he went.

"The technique imprints the pages directly into the subconscious mind, making it available for later conscious recall."

"Oh. Right."

"Trust me. It works."

The items Mills's team had recovered from the pyramid were still under active analysis. They found them neatly filed in an unlocked examination room, cocooned in bubble wrap and plastic storage bags.

"Any preference?" Batman asked, reading off the handwritten label on each bag in turn. "Shard of pottery. Charred animal bone. More pottery. A jet bead."

His eyes flicked to scrutinize Cassandra's face. Her lower lip quivered slightly, and he reminded her gently that this wasn't compulsory, she could still back out any time she wanted.

"I'm afraid," Cassandra admitted, relieved to put the feeling into words. "Afraid I'll see something . . . evil again."

"Fear is the messenger, not the message," Batman told her. "If you feel you shouldn't do it, mere's no shame in that."

Cassandra forced an uneasy smile back onto her lips. "No, my mind is made up." She reached out to take a plastic bag from Batman's hand, and read the label aloud. " 'Burned rib. Aurochs.'"

"A type of primitive cattle," Batman responded to her uncomprehending glance.

The plastic seal parted easily as Cassandra tugged it.

"This is called psychometry," she said, more to try to calm herself than explain to Batman. "Picking up– for want of a better word–vibrations from inanimate objects. Psychometrists believe mat everything experienced by an object is somehow recorded into the structure of the object itself."

Batman nodded. He'd been taking an interest of late in the cutting-edge advances in quartz technology. Scientists had discovered that the near-infinite crystal lattices in a piece of quartz were capable of recording phenomenal amounts of data. Anything that might be of use in the fight against crime was a magnet to Batman.

"Normally it's not something I do," Cassandra was saying, "but after my experience in the cathedral . . ."

She let her words die away. Closing her eyes, her fingers closed gently around the three-inch fragment of blackened bone, teasing it from its clear plastic envelope. At once an electric tingle caressed her fingertips, then sent what felt like a thousand volts of electricity coursing up her arm.

A window opened to another world.

"I see . . . people dancing," Cassandra began. "A long time ago. It's night. They carry flaming torches, weaving in circles around the base of . . . something." She screwed up her eyes, trying to force the vision to become clearer. "It's the pyramid–the Gotham pyramid! Many of the people are afraid, others are dancing like dervishes."

She tilted her head back, her closed eyes squinting upward, as