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

gave a damn about Stun-Glas. Protected it. Against gangstas, racist cops, and supervillains alike.”

As soon as we resumed walking, Kareem pedantically listed and explained the L*A*B’s Forty-Two-Point Platform (subdivided into “What We Want” and “What We Believe”). And once again I tried to steer Kareem toward examining what must be for him an unbearable truth, that his awesome rage against white society, contained in his words and his racially fixated delusion about a supposed secret identity for Hawk King as a black, were contributing to a buildup of his paranoia, and that this paranoia could have only dreadful results for him if he refused to resolve it and integrate true reality into his awareness.

His grin grew colder every second I tried to persuade him; when I asked him why he was smiling, he said mysteriously, as if he hadn’t understood a word I’d said, “ ‘Integrate’? You people think integration’s the solution to everything.”

“Kareem, I’m talking about psychemotional integration—”

“I know what you meant,” he sneered. “And I don’t expect a damn shrink to understand a kot-tam thing about the real world. The only two ations I’m interested in are liberation and investigation. There are suspects we can’t even find—Warmaster Set, Cosmicus, the Einstein Baboons. But we’ve got three up in orbit I want some answers from, and I intend to talk to em as soon as I can arrange it.”

“You mean Gil Gamoid, the N-Kid, and…”

“Yeah,” he said, “and Menton.”

Kareem didn’t even flinch when he said the name. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy uttering those fearsome phonemes.

We were only a block from a subway entrance when Kareem stopped with his arm out, holding me back. He pointed along both sides of the street toward the boarded-up faces of half a dozen businesses, one after the other: Ruby’s Ribs, Deacon’s Gumbo, Junior’s Jerk Palace-an-Ting, Down Home Chicken, ’Bama-Ass Chicken, and Git-Yo-Chicken. Finally he pointed to the far end of the street, and the bustling business enjoyed by the Squirrel Burger franchise enthroned there.

Because of my access to F*O*O*J files, I wasn’t surprised that the X-Man would single out the burger business. Indeed, the battle between the young Philip Kareem Edgerton and the Squirrel Burger Corporation had nearly prevented Kareem’s membership in the F*O*O*J and had ensured a hatred between Kareem and the ultimate master of Squirrel Burger, a division of Piltdown Edible Products International—Festus Piltdown III.

The Black Quixotes Toward Windmills of Color

In 1986, when he was still operating under the hypernym Mac Rude, Kareem and several other proto-L*A*Bsters went to war with every Squirrel Burger outlet in Langston-Douglas. Arnold Drummond launched dozens of frivolous lawsuits against franchise owners, the Dark Fantastic used his shadow powers to make every restaurant so dark that the kitchens were unusable, and Kareem deployed his rudimentary logogenic ability to manifest 3-D graffiti above Squirrel Burger restaurants declaring such phrases as “Squirrel Burger Is Destroying Black Business.”

When that campaign had minimal effect, Kareem changed his slogans to urge ghetto residents to “Stick It to the Squirrel—Buy Black.” That campaign’s failure prompted Kareem to develop his power further, creating mobile “word swarms” or “tags” that followed Squirrel customers after they left the restaurants. Diners found themselves returning to school, home, and work with 3-D phrases such as “I Licked the Squirrel’s Nuts” and “I Drink Nut-Shakes” orbiting their heads. Squirrel Burger business plummeted, and local restaurateurs rejoiced.

But eventually Squirrel Burger Corporation regrouped with its franchise owners by offering free burgers, Squirrelly Fries™, and Chocolate Bushy Tails™. Exhausted and overstretched, Kareem and his comrades couldn’t maintain their crusade with its homophobic slogans against the sheer numbers of new Squirrel diners; eventually they surrendered completely.

“Makes me sick,” said Kareem, glaring at the giant scowling squirrel mascot as if he were Dante in the Pit staring up at the Beast, and then at the people waddling in and out of the fast-food outlet. “But it takes a nation of millions to keep us fat. And stupid. And that nation’s us.”

“Don’t you think people should have the free choice to eat where they want, Kareem? Do you think you should have the authority to tell everyone what to do, how to eat, what to think? To say nothing of depriving local people of jobs?”

“Shit, Doc, are you kidding? Don’t get me started on jobs—minimum wage, no benefits, swing shifts? How about down here in Stun-Glas we get some of that high-tech investment from the dimensional research contracts they do up there in the Tachyon Tower and all the spin-off jobs that go with that? That’d be some jobs!

“Can you even see what’s in front of your eyes? Look across the street! Fools weighing three hundred and fifty pounds ordering a mega-meal Kilo-Burger, a gross of Squirrelly Fries™, and a Half-and-Half Shake thickened with Crisco? You see that man right there—that one! Can barely walk, but he’s walrusing around like an NBA star in his Adidas sneakers and Nike track pants—I mean, they must be knockoffs cuz Nike doesn’t make size infinity—but this mad-ass madness of tryin to look athletic when you’re lethally stuffing yourself with the filthiest foods on the planet? Diabetes, heart attacks…used to be poor people starved to death. Now we overeat to death! Killing us off with low-quality, high-fat food, obesing us all into the grave. And Squirrel Burger isn’t just a name, Doc. That shit-shack serves actual squirrels!”

“Now, Kareem…we both know that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You’re telling me the FDA has approved the sale of wild rodent meat to the general public?”

“You think the multibillion-dollar Piltdown Group doesn’t get whatever it wants, whenever it wants it? FDA’s a three-dollar-an-forty-two-cent ho, Doc! Wake up! And the squirrels aren’t wild…Piltdown’s got huge factory farms down in Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, everywhere Piltdown pulled out his high-tech manufacturing and moved it to Mexico or New Atlantis. Got all those downsized crackers working his squirrel ranches, billions of squirrels in teeny-tiny cages force-fed ground-up rats that were fed ground-up roaches that were fed ground-up brains of all the mentally retarded prisoners they