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

when I woke up he started goin inna all his plans, splainin em to me like he’s braggin. I figured, heck, let im talk, right? Every second he gave me was time to plan an escape.

“But what I didn’know was that his cosmic ray-beam couldn’kill me physically, but he could kill me brainwise, jess by talkin. I mean, he was planning to bore me to death literally. He had some sorta thing funneling his goldang voice straight inside m’brain, wipin out m’memories, makin me all crazified…an th’whole time, like, days, he was standin in fronta me takin little sniffs offa his flouncy sleeve collars, from some kinda blue powder he kept puttin on there from his snuffbox.”

Wally’s eyes were far away, slipping from the window to me to the box.

“So he forced you to snort argonium?”

“Naw. Rex’d always been real jealous of me, see? Fraid I was more manly’n him, which is why he tried to neutralize m’powers.” He chewed his lip, pausing. “So I told him, now thet your machines done wiped out m’omni-powers, whyonchu an me duke it out, mano-a-mano? And zap, for the first time in three days he’d shut his yap, and jess like that he had me outta his Zero-Chair or whatever it was.”

“So what was it like, for the first time in your career, to have to fight a villain without being able to use your powers?”

“Well akchully, I still had em, see? Rex thought his cosmic beam’s effects were permn’nent, but no sir, once he got me outta the chair, I jess ripped his arms and legs off.”

“I see. So how did you save him? Cauterize his wounds with your omni-breath?”

“Naw. He bled to death pretty fast after being delegged. But he’d dropped his snuffbox. Now, you gotta unnerstan—I hadn’t slept or eaten or had anything to drink in three days, an thet blue powder, wellsir, it smelled powerful nice…like wakin up and goin t’sleep at the same time.”

His eyes were superglued to the strongbox, blinking so rapidly I almost couldn’t detect it, while his nostrils repeatedly flared and his fingers clenched and strummed like white tarantulas undergoing seizures.

“I asked you before how self-medicating with argonium has been affecting your work.”

He glared at me. “I’ont know!”

“Has anyone ever said anything to you about it?”

“Maybe…maybe Hawk King, once or twice…an, well, Ir’n Lass…an Gil Gamoid fore him an th’N-Kid up an went kernuttified an hadda be locked up on Asteroid Zed…”

“So your colleagues, your oldest friends…how does it feel, knowing that they know about this weakness of yours?”

Omnipotent Man leaned forward, gripping his skull as if he were about to rip into a fortune cookie.

“Wally…do you want to be able to wake up and go to sleep on your own, without any blue crystal to help you do it? Do you want to be yourself, and not billionaire Bustow, Reverend Crocket, ‘Musk Ox’ Miller, Willis Nesbin, or Aunt Edna? Just plain old Wally? I mean, omnipotent new Wally?”

As if trying to drown out my voice, he was muttering to himself, rocking and rocking and rocking in his chair.

“Listen to me, Wally! Hear what I’m saying! Do you want your life back?” On and on he rocked and muttered.

Finally I shouted, “Answer me, Wally! Do you want to be one sane man instead of a half-dozen fractured ones?”

And then I put a hand on his shoulder, and both his arms slipped out of their sleeves and rolled across the floor. He keeled forward face-first, his left leg ejecting from his pants like a slippery weiner squeezed out of a bun. What remained of contiguous Wally was sprawled out before me like a giant flesh tennis racket.

“Wally, goodness, let me help you!” I said while struggling to turn him faceup. I scrambled for his limbs; he moaned awfully. Opening his jacket, I ripped open his dress shirt and attempted to reconnect his detached right arm to its shoulder stump.

What I saw shocked me: the wound was no bloodier or bonier than a sliced-open tube of liverwurst, as if Argonian flesh were nothing but undifferentiated tissue. But the arm wouldn’t take. “Wally, can you try welding your arm back on, like you did with your fingers?”

Keening, he tried spitting out an electron burst, but all he could manage was the sparks that a spent lighter could produce. He wailed, “I’m all out, Doc!”

Helping him to be as comfortable as I could manage, I had my secretary, Ms. Olsen, retrieve the containment suit I’d employed during my treatment of the Detached Man, whose body began crumbling into pyramids, cubes, and dodecahedrons without his conscious command. After opening the armor, Ms. Olsen and I hefted Wally and his parts inside it and sealed it shut, tightening the connections with everything in place except the boots and neck collar.

Just as I was calibrating the penultimate settings, I heard the telephone ringing in the other room. After running to answer it, Ms. Olsen informed me that the call was urgent. Since Wally and I had already been interrupted, I pressed the ERECT button on the containment suit so Wally could at least stand while I took the call. There was no point leaving the room for privacy, given Wally’s omni-hearing—assuming he still possessed it.

“Miss Brain,” said a voice as raw as a freshly killed deer, “it’s Festus Piltdown.”

Ordinarily I would have avoided using the man’s given name, but taking into account the direness of his tone and the fact that he was calling past eleven o’clock at night, I asked, “Festus, what is it?”

“It’s Hnossi,” he finally begrudged. “She, she wants you. To talk to you.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Apparently…the, the immortal Iron Lass,” he said, clearing his throat, “is dying.”

I heard and felt the clap of thunder. I spun, finding Wally back on the floor like a tipped mannequin, his feet detached and upright a yard away from him as if his legs had simply stepped out of them.

It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn (or When You’re Blind or Dead)

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