Commando Bats Read Online Free Page B

picked.”
    “Cripple?” I held up my left hand.
    Bettina’s eyelids flickered, which made me wonder if I’d
come close, but she said, “Cecile Schuyler has bigger problems on her mind than
trying to be Hercules. And I put in a sixty-hour work week during the school
year, so even if we wanted to, who’s got the time to run around the city
playing superhero, if that’s what Hera wants?”
    “Athena said to be different.”
    Bettina opened the gate. “Different,” she repeated. “I don’t
know what to expect, outside of my hope of waking up to discover it was a bad
dream.” She reached up to touch a low branch of the oak with the laser hole
burned into it. “Are Titans going to come stomping through Los Angeles, and we
are to battle them?”
    “Can’t fight cyclops and minotaurs with electricity,” I
said — my lips getting a real workout on cyclops and minotaurs .
    She gave me a wintry smile. “I would rather cruise around
blowing up crack houses and everything else that spreads so much misery, if
that’s what we’re to be doing. Righting wrongs, I can do that. I’d like to do
that. But how do I find them? Advertise on Craigslist?”
    “Athena hid us, on the pier,” I said.
    “Yes. The urge to keep this strictly to myself is so strong
that I lied to my daughter last night. She was going to take me to some new
play one of her friends is staging, and I begged off, because I don’t want her
to see the house. I have never lied to my daughter before, ever. I lied to
school this morning, claiming a dental procedure.”
    We got into her car. “Sorry about all this driving,” I said.
    “You cleaned up my mess, and incidentally rescued a block or
two of very unhappy people. Since I do have a day, before I go back to learning
to control my lightning bolts, I’ll go to the pier, my favorite place when I
want to clear my head. That’s why I was there the other day.”
    “Kids these days?” I asked.
    “Not the kids. I like the kids, though there are some troubled
ones. It’s the Administrivia — people who have never taught a day in their
lives, who can’t spell, don’t know basic grammar. The closer I get to
retirement, the less patience I have — and the faster they want to push me out.”
    She shut up then, and drove in silence until she let me off.
When I reached the yard, there was old Twila again, calling from her shady
balcony, “Nancy! You’ve quite a social life these past couple of days, eh? Is
it a fella? It’s never too late!”
    I waved, and shut the door on her cackles.
    Shorted sleep and my morning’s exertions had done me in. I
napped for the rest of the day, then played around some more with my robots,
experimenting with driving them by their schematics until metal touched metal.
Then I could flash to the new schematic.
    In this way I reached the front house’s wiring system, and
then, through that, the local power grid. I sussed out some incipient problems
in our aging Los Angeles infrastructure, then, sensing another world overlying
mine — the world of computers, internet, surveillance — pulled back.
I had no idea if I had an electronic footprint, or what to do about it if I
did.
    It was late, so back to bed.
    Next morning, being Saturday, was my day for the laundry
room at the house. I pushed my stuff into the yard, half-expecting Twila to be
peeking out to inspect my dirty clothes, but she wasn’t there. Though I liked
her — and loved her stories about World War II era Los Angeles — I
didn’t relish the thought of the neighbors hearing about the elderly state of
my underthings.
    And that gave me an idea.
    My wash chugging away, when I got back to my place, I
dithered about whether or not I should call the other two. Smart or stupid? I
was still dithering when my phone rang. To my surprise, it was Cecile.
    She wanted to meet, suggesting a very trendy but expensive
cafe not too far away in distance, but a thousand miles from the reach of my
budget. However, she