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

and our only illumination came from the flames beyond the portholes as we hurtled planetward.

Kareem claimed he’d collapsed not due to any Mentonian attack, but because of a desperate telepathic gambit by Gil Gamoid and the N-Kid to warn him—an effort, he said, which had to have cost them the ultimate price.

Their message: that Asteroid Zed was about to be destroyed.

“They combined their Qosmic Qonsciousness,” he said, “and pushed right through their P-Imp hats. And it killed them. I smelled it inside my own skull, their brains burning into briquettes. Tasted like a tray of lasagna left in a kot-tam furnace.”

The portholes were orange disks in the darkness while the heat shield ripped through the superheated air around the plummeting shuttle.

“Even if you’re mistaken about how zey diedt, zey are det,” said Hnossi, her eyes heavier than dumbbells. She touched her mouth with quivering fingers. Noticing the shaking, she grasped the digits with her other hand and tucked both hands between her thighs. It was an incongruously girlish, vulnerable image for a steely, immortal woman.

“At least, at last…zeir Q-souls are hettet beck to qvasar Q-Nine-Sree-Nine, beck to ze Ur-Prime vich produced zem.”

“Yeah!” yelled Kareem, his voice nearly swallowed by the roaring engine deceleration. “Hope that’s a comfort for all the families of the guards and the technicians! Looks like half the life-pods didn’t even eject! Last five minutes on the Asteroid was the dance called ‘prisoners’ revenge,’ and the band was on fire! So what we’ve got is an attempt to shut down my investigation and kill more heroes—us! Not to mention wiping out all the remaining villains!”

“Kareem, is you crazy?” shouted André through the descent. The portholes were bright red heating elements atop a black stove. “You sayin Menton not only wanna kill Hawk King, he wanna destroy us an villains, too? Why? What’s in it for him?”

“My god, doesn’t anybody have a kot-tam brain up here? Look! Hawk King’s dead! Omnipotent Man one day just up and resigns? We almost get slaughtered up there, and almost every remaining rival for anyone who wants to take over is wiped out in one shot!”

“Take over what, Kareem?” howled Syndi.

And Kareem shouted one last sentence before reentry wiped out his voice: “What do you think?”

Inside the Fortress of Fear

Conversation was dead until we’d landed safely inside the Fortress of Freedom, where scores of heroes crowded round their comrades to make sure they were all right. Outside the Fortress wall, dozens of camera crews awaited interviews, since by then satellite photography had beamed images of Asteroid Zed’s destruction around the world.

Although I’d been inside the Fortress of Freedom several times, I was—even then, even after having survived the orbital disaster—awestruck by the stained-glass windows depicting the tragedies and triumphs of the F*O*O*J’s history, the vast 2.5-D mural churning with the chaos of the Götterdämmerung, and the titanic, soaring gold and platinum statues of the founding F*O*O*Jsters and the Flying Squirrel holding up the ceiling. (Although the Flying Squirrel didn’t join the F*O*O*J until 1946, he was able to add his own colossus to the Fortress’s Age of Heroes caryatids because the F*O*O*J was, in fact, his tenant. Mr. Piltdown not only paid for the construction of the Fortress, he remained the owner of the building and the land beneath it; to this day, the F*O*O*J pays rent from its federal operating grants to the Piltdomain Group.)

I was about to enter Heroes’ Hall when the guards held me until Syndi vouched for me and I was let inside, where I saw a storm swirling with Kareem as its eye. F*O*O*Jsters, novices and veterans alike, seemed to have decided that the X-Man was the answer man. Mr. Piltdown looked none too pleased at the gravity wielded by his front-running rival for the post of Director of Operations.

I scanned the assembly, sensing these heroes’ seething anxiety. At the back, Syndi was twirling and tugging at her hair hard enough to yank it rootless. On the far side, André affected detached cool while leaning against the wall, but he could not stop glancing upward constantly as if anticipating the collapse of the ceiling. I couldn’t see Iron Lass anywhere.

Kareem eventually took to the stage, framed by a backdrop mural of F*O*O*J martyrs such as Captain Manifest Destiny, Doctor Patho, and Lady Liberty.

“Menton the Destroyer,” said Kareem into the microphone, employing the profane name to shock everyone into shutting up, “was not on Asteroid Zed. I believe he had been replaced by an imposter. Specifically, Zee-Roks the Imitator.”

With all eyes rapt on him, Kareem reported what we saw in the space prison and laid out his “evidence,” such as it was: that he fully expected Menton to be a terrifying figure, yet he felt no fear of the man whatsoever; that his interrogation plan was to state incorrect knowledge about Menton’s career and crimes to lure the egomaniac into “correcting” him, yet his subject affirmed Kareem’s inaccuracies without hesitation; that his last-minute logoscopic investigation of Asteroid Zed’s computers revealed microgaps in the data—so small only his logoids could find them—indicating an attempt to erase all record of at least two unauthorized prisoner transfers: one to and one from Unit Z, three years ago; that the “comatose body” occupying the cell assigned to Zee-Roks the Imitator in the Biovillains Containment Unit was actually synthesized from a combination of medical waste, rhinoplasty, and Swanson’s Hungry Villain Dinners™; that contrary to early supposition, Asteroid Zed wasn’t destroyed by any outside force, but instead annihilated by a malfunction in its gravity reactor, “unquestionably” due to sabotage; and that since Gil Gamoid and the N-Kid proved they could overcome their P-I Helmets, the more psionically powerful Menton could have developed the same skill, without burning out his own brain…and if he had, only he would have had the means, motive, and opportunity to overcome prison authorities, escape, kill Hawk King, terminate Omnipotent Man’s career, and wipe out his enemies, his potential rivals, and his tracks all in one shot.

It was a thrilling,