Earth-349:
Hawkman
by Anton
Psychopoulos, Ph.D.
Disclaimer
#1: This story is inspired by a story
in Superman #349, but is not limited
by that story or any other.
Disclaimer
#2: This story makes use of copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., and
other publishers. It is written for
amusement only and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer
#3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easily offended,
especially those who are disturbed by themes such as transgender and the end of
the world.
Prologue
One: Earth-1
Katar
Hol, son of Paran Katar, member of the Hawk Police of Thanagar, lifted the
absorbascon from his head and looked around him, allowing his mind to return to
being merely the consciousness of a single man, rather than a vast, almost
impersonal awareness possessing all the knowledge of all people on Earth. Quickly sorting through what he had moments
ago grasped in its entirety, plucking from the fading vision of Earth entire
the things he actually needed to retain, he allowed himself to reflect for a
moment on the shock he had felt the first time he had absorbed Terran
knowledge, and begun the long transition from a visiting police officer hunting
an escaped criminal, to an interested observer and ally of Terran humanity, and
finally to something that was almost as much Terran as Thanagarian. The absorbascon had allowed him and his
partner (and wife) to learn the languages and customs of their hosts, enough to
allow them to pose in their off-duty hours as ordinary Terrans, but a true
understanding had taken much longer.
Now,
though, after nearly a decade on Earth, he was more likely to think of himself
as Carter Hall than as Katar Hol, as “the” Hawkman of the Justice League than
as a Hawkman of the Thanagarian
police.
Yet
this planet, not his birthplace, now seemed as though it had always been
destined to be his home.
Prologue Two: Earth-2
Carter
Hall, son of Perry Hall, secretly the world-famous mystery man known as
Hawkman, tied the leather thong that wrapped the handle of the mace and cut it
short with a razor blade. He turned it,
inspecting his work approvingly. The
weapon, which had served a soldier in the armies of Philip of Macedon, would
serve Hawkman for another day.
Hall
reflected on the confused time when he had first learned of his past life in
ancient Egypt, the days when he had recreated his ancient feat of adding a
“ninth metal” to Egyptian alchemy’s eight.
Hall had become Hawkman, and made his girlfriend into Hawkgirl. Strange to think it had been nearly thirty
years. It didn’t seem so long.
Now
they were an old married couple, with a fine son, Hector, who might just become
a mystery man himself one day, taking his father’s place in the Justice
Society.
Hall
twirled the mace in the air, tossing and catching the deadly implement with
practiced ease.
Reincarnation,
antigravity, masked heroics. What a
life. Yet it all felt exactly
right. As though it had been meant to
be from before Egypt had existed.
Prologue
Three: Earth-3
Hol
Hektah, son of Peren Hektah, had risen through the ranks of the police agency
which kept the rulers of imperial Thanagar in power, promoted from Wingman to
Falcon and eventually to Eagle. He had
done it by hard work, by careful politicking, and by knowing when to take
chances. When the job of hunting down
the anti-imperialist activist Bythor had come up, Hol had used every trick and
favor he had to get the assignment. Hol
had known that rooting Bythor out of the unknown planet “Earth” would be no
simple find-him-and-kill-him mission, and that carrying it out successfully
would be his route to the highest honors, his best chance of one day holding
the title of Hawkman, supreme commander of the force that kept the flying
cities of the Hawkworld in the air.
His
lover, Sondar, had stowed away. That
made her a deserter from her demolitions unit, but she had figured that he
would need the bombing skills that had earned her the nickname “Egglayer” to
kill Bythor, and that returning as the partner of a hero would win her
forgiveness. And if they failed, they
would probably be dead anyway.
They
had arrived at Earth so full of confidence.
How could they have guessed just how mad a planet Earth really was?
The
Crime Syndicate, the rulers of the planet, had already killed Bythor. They’d had no more use for his talk of human
rights and justice than Hawkworld had.
Hol and Sondar had been permitted to live, provided they helped the
Crime Syndicate protect Earth from other invaders, but they would never be
allowed to return to Thanagar and warn their superiors about the dangerous
superhumans of Earth.
Now
the madman Johnny Quick had raped Sondar, and she was pregnant. Hol could not allow his beloved’s child to
grow up on this mad planet; they would have to make a break for it. To live any longer on Earth? It was never meant to be.
Prologue
Four: Earth-24
Jerzy
Holiuski threw himself against the hangar door. The corrugated sheet metal groaned loudly, but refused to
yield. Chuck Rensie, the Texan Holiuski
had met earlier that day, approached with a long metal rod which he levered
into the door, trying to pry it open where Holiuski had failed.
"What
are you expecting to find in here, anyway, Polack?"
Holiuski
shrugged.
"I
don't know. Maybe parts for your plane,
maybe petrol. Maybe a new plane for
me. But if you are serious about this
idea of becoming some kind of air pirates to fight the Nazis, we will need
things we will only find at an air base like this one, no?"
"Yeah,"
Rensie grunted, leaning on the bar.
"And your Polacks bugged outta here so fast, they musta left plenty
behind."
Holiuski
walked around behind Rensie, placing the bar between them. The American turned around to face him.
"One
more thing: don't call me 'Polack' again, Yankee."
Rensie's
fair, freckled face turned livid at the word "Yankee", and he lunged
for the Pole. This had the desired
effect, the bar levering the door open with a scream of rent metal before
dumping Rensie on the ground.
Rensie
jumped up, already beginning to laugh, when he saw Holiuski's expression. He followed the Pole's eyes, looking into
the hangar.
At
first he thought they were parachutes hung on a rack. But then he saw that the leather harnesses were connected to
seven sets of black-feathered wings.
Prologue
Five: There Is No More Earth-168
Hank
and Don Hall still felt as though they were standing on some kind of solid
surface, even though they could see nothing more beneath them than they could
in any other direction: only something like swirling, pearlescent fog.
"God
damn it," Hank snarled, the long red "feathers" of his cape
rustling like palm fronds, "this didn't have to goddamn happen!"
"It
was bound to happen, thanks to barbarians like you," snapped Don, wagging
a white-gloved finger under his brother's nose.
"What,
now you're gonna blame me for this? This is the goddamn end of the world, little brother!"
"And in the face of your world's end,
still you learn nothing," said the Voice which had given them the
powers of the Hawk and the Dove. "Can you imagine how disappointed I am
in you?"
"I did what I could,"
Don raged, "but how much could I do, when you gave just as much power to
the wrong side?" He stabbed a
finger at Hank.
"Still you think of sides. Still you think either you or your brother
should have dominated the other. You
have learned nothing, and your world is forfeit because of it."
"I told you," Hank snarled.
"I told you appeasement would only --"
"Enough. Your world is destroyed because it failed to learn the lesson I
created you to teach it. And you failed
because you never learned it yourselves.
But that world is done, and a new role awaits you, on a new world."
"Then it's true," Don
said softly, "there are other worlds, other Earths?"
"There are. And on a thousand Earths I have placed my champions, my
Hawks. Each has a different role to
play, according to the nature of the Earth.
On the world for which you are bound, after a transformation, you shall
have a new destiny, as parents of a new generation of Hawks."
"Parents?" Hank said,
horrified. "No, you can't do
that! Even if the little drip isn't
much of a man, he's still my brother, and I'm not gonna marry him even if you do change him!"
The
Voice paused, and somehow the silence took the place of a chuckle.
"Fear not, Henry Hall. Incest is not what I mean to be your fate.”
Epilogue:
Earth-349
The
alarm clock woke Perry Carter at 6:00 AM exactly, just as it had the day
before, back at MIT. He took pride in
keeping to routine.
Shutting
off the clock, he looked around his bedroom, the same one he had lived in as a
child. It was the largest private room
in Carter Hall, as befitted the son of the head of the Carter family, but it
was smaller than the bathroom of his apartment at school.
The
Carters were the wealthiest of the four Founding Families of Laputa, but space
upon the flying island was scarce, and there were limits to how much space
money could buy.
Then
again, Carter reflected as he pulled on his green hose and tied his sandals,
nobody else at MIT had his own set of wings, or the antigravity belt that
allowed them to carry him on the winds.
These items, his most precious possessions, he removed carefully from
their cabinet on the wall.
His
mother, Saundra Carter, had worn them during the Second World War as Lady Hawk,
one of the world’s first superheroes.
Now he wore them as Hawkman.
Carter
checked the wing-harness and flew neatly from his bedroom window, soaring into
the dawn sky towards the edge of the sky-island. Below and to his right, he saw fat old Asa Whitney on his flying
carpet, cruising slowly just above the ground.
To his left, his uncle Einar soared on his green batwings. All the fliers, of course, were using small
bits of Ixium, the same mysterious substance that kept the sky island in the
air.
Directly
ahead, the lip of the island was ploughing through a cloud, spilling streamers
of fog over the green lawns. There
seemed to be someone standing there, dangerously close to the edge, especially
in the fog. Carter flew down towards
the edge, beginning to make out a pair of bodies, two women dressed in odd
birdlike costumes that might have been meant to be tributes to his own. He flew down towards them.