Minister Faust (2 page)

C
hecking my display, I clicked myself over to the fringes of mainland Los Ditkos where the X-Man and Flying Squirrel were speeding at 160 miles an hour over fractured highway right behind the thundering CycloTron. Lacking any real opposition, the hurricane wheel had ceased aiming its particle beams—otherwise X-Man and Flying Squirrel would have been reduced to nothing but costumed puffs of smoke.

“Omnipotent Man, Iron Lass,” shouted the X-Man into his comm, “what in the hell’re you two doing in southeast Los Ditkos? We’ve gotta stop this thing out
here
!”

“Wellsir,” crackled back the voice of Omnipotent Man, “we can’t let this here monsterosity cross the Centurion Bridge over to Bird Island. If downtown Los Ditkos is destroyed, th’whole free ennerprise system of the state could be at stake!”

“So you’re gonna bring down that big metal bastard in
my
neighborhood? So what if all the coloreds buy it, so long as you can save Ivory Town?”

“Son,” snapped the Squirrel, “this isn’t the time for your Zulu goddamned nationalism, do you hear me? For once in your life,
listen
to people who know what they’re actually doing and let them bring down this giant steel cocksucker like they know how to!”

“Old man, we can clear the path to Centurion Bridge, destroy the bridge, and drown this motherfucker in the river, we can destroy CycloTron here while we still can,
or
I can personally rip you to pieces and fry you into hot wings. Now either shut your caviar-hole or help me blast this freak—or better yet, both!”

“And how do you suggest we do that, Rochester?”

“What’s its power source?”

Even behind the mask, the Flying Squirrel’s eyes glinted. “Get me as close as you can to that super-colliding sonofa-bitch!”

As if he were piloting a ship in a tsunami, X-Man ripped at the steering wheel, hurtling along in the ditch at station-keeping with the giant wheel’s hub, all the while dodging the storm of crushed cars, spinning street lamps, and flying trees pouring down on them. Dialing his comm, the Flying Squirrel waited for his connection and then unleashed thirty seconds of fury at the person on the opposite end.

Instantly CycloTron’s lights went black. Slowly, the peak of its rotation dipped left, and the device fell straight for the Ford Fairlane.

X-Man cranked hard to the right, arcing 180 degrees east.

Behind him, the entire mile-high apparatus that was CycloTron plummeted. From that height, the distance to fall was so great that the descent appeared to be in slow motion, until the wheel clapped the earth with a sound like God backfiring His truck, turning every window within four miles of the shock wave into a mutilating hurricane of slivered glass.

“I can’t be
lieve
you pathetic bunch of cripples!” snapped the Flying Squirrel, ripping off his Event Helmet, unstrapping himself from the Event Chair, and storming out of the Id-Smasher
^®
before I could call him back.

I tapped my panel, releasing all my sanity-supplicants from their Event Chairs. Each one detached him-or herself, stretching and groaning, before exiting the techno-pinnacle of my analytical career. At more than three stories tall, the neurodimensional Id-Smasher
^®
was a glittering titanium tower of nine hundred terabits of cognintegrated processing power. I held back a moment, admiring the technology which interlaced the psychespheres of my patients via the long, slender transduction rods through its two black processing bulbs.

“Looks just like a giant shrimp, Doc,” said the Brotherfly, observing me observing. “Come to thank of it, I’m hongry for some takeout now that we up outta there! Brotherfly be sayin ‘ka-pow!’—or should it be ‘kung-pow’?
Bzzzt!
Somebody, anybody, can I get a witness?”

Laughing at his own joke, he looked around for approval, holding out a hand palm-up for slapping reinforcement. He received none.

“Thank you for sharing, André,” I offered.

“Now could somebody fill me in on something?” said Omnipotent Man, rubbing a dried trail of drool from the side of his mouth. “How exactly did we bring down ol’ CycloTron, anyway? Cuz I think I mighta missed how that happened.”

Festus shook his head. “Since you people couldn’t destroy it, I went after its power source.”

X-Man snorted. “Only because I told you to!”

The Flying Squirrel rippled an eyebrow in my direction, then said, “When we were driving alongside that mangler, I called the Defense Department, which is what kept CycloTron operational. I got them to yank its funding.” He harrumphed, fluttering his flaps. “Hell of a simulation you’ve got there, Doctor, to’ve actually arranged a simulated DOD for me to talk to. Do you have a Hoover in some other section of that program, too?”

“I’m glad you approve, Festus. The program improvises according to the essential logic of any gambit you take, responding accordingly.”

“Hmph. Anyway,” he said, “that’s how it’s supposed to be done. Analyze the situation first. That’s what Hawk King taught us—those of us who bothered to learn. Forget the brute-force idiocy. That’s for amateurs. We’re the professionals.”

“Now,” I said, “if you’d all like to get dressed, we’ll pick up in the Group Dynamics Verbalarium.”

Back to Base, and Back to “Base Sicks”

A
ll teams, super or otherwise, function and dysfunction like all families do: having to cope with intergenerational misunderstanding, birth-order clusters of privilege and disfavor, brutal grudges, pathological codependencies, tragically “scripted” behavior loops, pathogenic levels of neglect and abuse, and phony displays of affection and loyalty.

This catalog of psychological cancers forms what I call the “base sicks,” the bombed-out foundation of every human being which is the source of all adult misery and the terror of every “inner child.” Because these
base sicks
are buried at the deepest-level programming of any group’s origin, they’re as invisible to the individuals they’re poisoning as a rainbow is to Dog Man.

It’s Easier to Change One’s Uniform Than One’s Mind-Set

E
merging from the changing room, Power Grrrl stumbled, falling into me. I helped her along while she regained her “reality legs,” noting the extraordinary change in her appearance. Gone was the black and silver Sensosilk Event Tunic, replaced by one of her more restrained uniforms: a dazzle of sequins, a lace vest with garters, and thigh-high leather boots whose skyscaper heels had no doubt contributed to her tumble.

“Like, Eva,” she asked me, “could we have, like,
died
or something in that simulation? Because I am totally not cool with that?”

Behind us, Iron Lass ground her teeth so loudly that for a moment I thought she was chewing ice.

“No, Syndi, not to worry,” I said, intercepting the Valkyrie’s objection. “The release form you signed cleared me of any liability in the unlikely event of your mental incapacitation, grievous bodily harm, or life-cessation, but while you could experience the
illusion
of pain inside the Id-Smasher
^®
, your bodies couldn’t be killed, even if your somatic simulations could be.”

“It’s precisely that kind of cowardice,” grumbled the man waiting for us inside the Verbalarium, “that’s destroyed this organization.”

Sitting already in the ring of chairs, the Flying Squirrel almost glowed from the sunlight streaming onto him, the fur of his world-famous mask gleaming with its oversized animal ears, snub nose, long white whiskers, and giant, pink-rimmed black eyes. With his Olympic build, tight skin, and laserlike stare, he looked more like a young Brian Dennehy than the seventy-year-old he was. But no one could mistake the power throbbing inside his clawed and furry gloves for that of anyone else.

“Cowardice, contempt for chain of command, lack of discipline,” sneered the Flying Squirrel, “and a hundred other maladies of character forming a toxic cocktail that has shaken, not stirred, everything that Hawk King spent decades building. If he’d seen how you invalids performed in there today—”

“O-kay, we get it?” said Power Grrrl, snapping her bubble gum. “You
know
Hawk King, you, like,
worked
with Hawk King, you used to
fetch coffee
for Hawk King—I got it the, like,
first
thousand times?”

“Aw, man, Squirrelly,” said André. “Brotherfly say girly-girl just put the
Bzzzt!
on you—”

“Quiet, you,” said Festus Piltdown III. He paused to scrub Power Grrrl with his glance. “And as for you, your juvenile blandishments which reduce every statement to an interrogative don’t erase the simple fact that your performance was subfarcical!”

“Oh, now jess tether yer ponies a sec, Festy,” said Omnipotent Man, making a “whoa” gesture with his hands. “I’ont think we was all s’bad in there. We set ’er up, an you an th’X-Man knocked ’er down. That’s the hokey-pokey, right?” He grinned and winked at the ravenish woman in the winged helmet. Iron Lass’s ivory faced flushed. He sang, “Now we turn ourselves around…that’s what it’s all about!”

“Ah, poor, pathetic, possum-fried Wally,” said the Flying Squirrel, shaking his head minutely. “Would you be giving that moonshine-and-stained-overalls assessment if Hawk King were here? Did you happen to notice that your so-called
settin’ ’er up
amounted to virtually zero role in the mission’s success?”

The X-Man spat, “ ‘Success’?”

All faces turned to Kareem Edgerton, HKA the X-Man, before flitting toward my hand, which I kept poised above my whistle, like a gunfighter fingering his Colt.

Kareem leaned back in his seat, letting out a breath while reconsidering his tone. “If today’s ‘combat’ had been real, there would’ve been a hundred thousand people lined up outside of hospitals looking like bleeding pincushions from the flying glass. ‘Success’?” he repeated, catching his voice just as it spiked. He glanced toward my whistle, looked down, loosened his fists, and stage-whispered, “You call that success…. I’d hate to see failure.”

The Utility of Aggression-Aversion Therapy

F
estus Piltdown said, “If you’d been in this business as long as I have, Edgerton, you’d know that sometimes tough decisions—executive decisions—are required when the professionals take on the hard jobs no one else is qualified for—”

“Professionals?” said the X-Man, extravagantly sweeping invisible lint from his black blazer and pants. “Mr. Squirrel here said ‘professionals’ like that’s something to be proud of. But there’re professional
killers,
too. And those two”—he wagged his chin across the circle, first to Omnipotent Man and then to Iron Lass—“were willing to
professionally
liquidate everyone in Langston-Douglas to protect the borough of Bird Island. Don’t the people in Stun-Glas have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of not being blown to kot-tam hell?”

I moved my whistle toward my lips.

“Excuse me, Doc,” said Kareem, “blown to golly-gee-whiz-gol-dang
heck.
Or was it just that not enough ‘professionals’ live over in mainland Los Ditkos?”

Hnossi Icegaard shifted in her chair. “It vuss only a simulation, Kareem,” she sighed, adjusting her gleaming silver-gold breastplate and black-feather cloak. “No actual human beingks vut haff been harmedt. Just like in ze moofies.”

“So why not—!” Kareem stopped, lowered his volume and tempo. “Why not…just let CycloTron hit the island, then? When we were inside the simulation we all believed it was real. And yet you and Wally had no hesitation to sacrifice how many of
us
to save how few of
you
?”

“Oh, Kareem!” snapped Power Grrrl. “That’s, like, not even—”

“That didn’t take long, did it?” said Festus. “Have we gone to simulated Las Vegas now? Because once again Kareem is playing his race cards!”

“You know, in my experience,” said Kareem, caging his fingers and drawing out his words, “the jokers…who talk the most about ‘playing the race card’…are the people who own all the diamonds…who’ve picked up the clubs…to beat down the spades…because they’ve got no heart.”

The Brotherfly laughed, slapping his knees in exaggerated delight. “You gots to admit, Squirrelly-man, Kareem just put the
Bzzzt!
on y’all!”

Kareem switched his gaze to Omnipotent Man and Iron Lass. “Five times more people live on the mainland than on the island. I even told you two to clear a path for CycloTron to get onto Centurion Bridge so we could sink it there. Did you even
consider
moving into position?”

“For all you know, Kareem, even if ve’d destroyt ze bridch, CycloTron vut haff continuedt rollink out of ze vaater. Dit you sink about zat?”

“X-Man, hold up there a minute,” said Wally. “What if Bird Island got flattened, and then th’entire economy crashed? Then all the mums and dads in Langston-Douglas woulda lost their jobs! Well then how they supposta pay their mortgages?”

“Wallace, have you ever even set foot in Stun-Glas? You think the people there have mortgages? You think half the people there even have
jobs
?”

“Now jess round up yer rangers a spell, Kareem. Jess last week I got a ball off the roof at one a them Langston-Douglas midnight basketball dealies. And don’t be saying they don’t have jobs, no sir. I saw lots a fine automobiles there with some very shiny, expensive-looking hubcaps, an that means hardworking folks, car loans an auto dealerships fulla happy employees. Gracious jiminny, th’folks down there even try t’dress like superheroes—evra-one wearing red or blue—”