Minister Faust by From (html) (best ereader for pdf txt) 📗

Hawk King was a brother, grieving for him dries up from millions to dozens. But when some brain-canned putt-nuts submits his decades-overdue resignation, he suddenly gets the honors due a genuine hero!”

“So all of this is about race for you? Omnipotent Man has been a celebrated hero for decades, cofounding the F*O*O*J back in the forties—”

“Man’s a fraud—even the fascist Squirrel said so. You ever read Zenith’s Unsafe in Any Cape? If Wally’d been named Kwame, Ali, Juan, or Sanjit, you think the press would’ve overlooked his Peter Sellers routine all these years and crowned him ‘world’s greatest hero’?”

“What makes you think the public even accepts your claims about Hawk King’s secret identity? Enough that they would actually reject him posthumously?”

“What’ve I just been saying about the tributes drying up?”

“The resignation of Omnipotent Man matters to the public, Kareem, whether you respected him or not. And if you think others believe your racial claims about Hawk King, I’d suggest that’s more a matter of projection that observation.”

Kareem snorted. “In all his papyri and public statements of the last ten years, Hawk King called the ancient Egyptians ‘Brothers on the Nile.’ You think that was an accident? You think it was coincidence that after he went into exile in the Blue Pyramid, the only domestic Hawk King sightings were in black neighborhoods? That he—”

“There are also sightings of Elvis, the Gold Glider, and Poe-Bot around the country every year. Surely those aren’t evidence of anything other than wish-fulfillment and self-delusion?”

“What about breaking exile to destroy Hutu militias in Rwanda after the F*L*A*C refused to intervene? Think that’s nothing?”

“If you’re right, then why didn’t he intervene more often? Overthrow apartheid or something like that?”

“Because Hawk King wasn’t simply living out a self-imposed exile in the Blue Pyramid! He was living more and more of his life as Dr. Jackson Rogers, trying to understand the struggles flesh-and-blood human beings have and how we can fix our planet without the ‘help’ of a bunch of phonified freaks hyped up on their own zap-powers. Dr. Rogers, he was old and sick, even depressed. He spent the last twenty years in a wheelchair, the last three unable to speak without his Data-Vox. I don’t think he had the energy to transmute himself back into Hawk King very often anymore—”

“Then even if you’re right, doesn’t that suggest he wasn’t murdered? That this ‘Dr. Rogers’ simply died of natural causes?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Look, I was in touch with Hawk King regularly, and while he wasn’t well, he wasn’t dying—”

Suddenly I became aware that Kareem’s former gang had been staring at us throughout our discussion and was even then menacing in upon us like a fleet of gaily spotted leopards.

“World’s smartest hero,” yelled the Black Lieutenant at me, “dies of ‘natural causes’ but fails to predict his own death? Get the hell out of my office!”

“And the planet’s strongest ‘hero,’ ” rumbled Grimhotep, his voice like the unmuffled motor of a dump truck, “up and resigns only a couple of days later, with no previous indicators?”

“And all of it happening,” said the Dark Fantastic, a shadow in voice as well as form, “when the man’s F*O*O*J is in a leadership and membership crisis?”

And then another voice rose up barkingly from behind their dark phalanx, amused and vicious at the same time, like that of a disgruntled carny vowing vengeance against every townie on the midway: “Which one a you buncha ignant-ass negroes gots to be blown fore the Fly can get hisself some service round here?”

The Rudolph Syndrome

The wall of men parted down the middle, revealing the Brotherfly standing behind them.

Despite the darkness of the interior, André was still wearing his tinted Fly Goggles. He’d retracted his wings, and instead of his usual tunic and its fly-with-afro emblem, he was sporting a tight black T-shirt glittering with a sparkly disco-font logo announcing him as BABY DADDY.

“Fuck you want, fool?” asked Ahmed Q.

“Why, you gonna take the order?” laughed André. “In that case, give Mista Brotherfly a Cristal-an-cream-soda anna bacon double cheeseburger.”

“Figures you’d be eating the devil’s hound,” growled Ahmed.

“We don’t serve alcohol and we don’t serve meat round here,” said Larry the counterman. “Specially not no pig.”

“Swine,” said Ahmed. “One third rat, one third cat, and one third dog.”

“Must be the new biology,” said André. “Never realized y’all could do genetics in thirds. Somebody gots to tell Mendel he screwed the mock pooch, knawm sayn? Kay, then, Mister Chef—gimme a plate of goat roti, with a extra shell.”

“Like I said, this establishment,” said Larry slowly, “is veg-e-tar-ian: tofu cutlets, bean pies, parsnip smoothies. Dig?”

“Brotherfly hafta dig two latrines if he ate that shit! Bzzzt!” André howled, shifted his hand left and right, palm up, as if expecting someone to put something pleasing into it. “Can Brotherfly get a bzzzt? People, people, can a Brotherfly get a bzzzt?”

Even from where I was sitting I could smell André, a reek like apricots and cleaning solvent: maki. He must have been chewing it ever since he left the funeral, if not during.

“So Brotherfly’s flyin over here,” said André, strutting and waving his arms as if they were his wings, “an he’s thinking, on this most auspicious day when we is all sposta be layin to rest our greatest hero an teacher, when we sposta be payin homage, keepin it real, pouring out the first spurt of the forty an sendin props to the other side, knawm sayn?—an André’s thinking, what would the hyper-righteous Zulucentric QRIB negroes be discussin inside the whitelessness of the soulified Dark Star?

“An what do he find here but all you intellectual ultra-mandigoes speculamatin on y’all’s conspiracies! What a surprise! Feelin all important bout y’selves cuz y’all is crackin the case of the millennium, bigger than ‘Who shot Crispus Attucks?’ Bigger than ‘Who killed Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima?’ Bigger than—”

“André, you come here shit-talking us,” said Kareem, “when you are so fucked up on maki you smell like you’ve been lying in a bathtub of Lysol and