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

a cumulus cloud of something like shaving foam which apparently hardened on contact, immobilizing Zenith.

“Out, now!” yelled Festus, grabbing Tran, Mr. Savant, and me and launching all of us through the opening of the retracting window. The four of us spun plummeting toward death on the zen-garden boulders five stories below, when at the last moment nets shot out from tree-mounted launchers to break our fall—

—and above us, the Squirrel Tree drawing room from which we’d just escaped erupted into orange, flaming death and raining, burning rubble.

Collateral Damnation

Security!” yelled Festus into his wrist, jumping up. “Get to the Medical Hollow now. Status on the patient!”

Within seconds, a battalion of gliding, cybernetic Squirrel-bots descended to secure the area and protect us while flame-defense mechanisms choked the inferno above. Less than a minute later, Festus’s human security guards had scrambled to our location, providing first aid for Mr. Savant and taking me inside for a change of clothes from the extensively stocked manor.

I emerged within minutes and found Tran sitting at the stone enclosure base of the smoking remains of a massive topiary squirrel. He was an agony to behold, his body shaking in utterly silent sobs.

I put my hand on his shoulder. He went rigid. And then, in the random association grief begets, said, “We just…we just lost the only man alive…who’s fit to be president of the United States.” He sniffed back mucus wetly. “Not that he’d ever’ve been even…allowed to debate…”

Across the grounds, Festus was loudly excreting abuse into his wrist comm. “…I don’t care, Doctor! You goddamned get her whatever she wants or I’ll have you shipped to the Congo to spend the rest of your career harvesting Pygmy organs, you understand?”

Absorbed as he was, Festus hadn’t even noticed the arrival of an unlikely partnership: the X-Man and the Brotherfly, there to investigate the near-assassination. Kareem was heading toward Tran, so I intercepted him and explained that he needed to allow the former Chip Monk time to process his psychemotional state.

“Of course, Doc,” whispered Kareem. “Poor freaking guy. To finally have replaced that,” he chin-wagged toward the invective-lobbing Festus, “as your ‘father’ with someone as great as Zenith, and then only to lose him, too.”

He shook his head after another outburst from the lord of the manor. “Look at that—I mean, I’ve seen him flip out on people for bringing the wrong shade of orange juice,” he said, “but thousands of people’ve been trying to assassinate him for decades. Why’s this attempt got him so spooked now? Does he think this was the work of Menton or Warmaster Set?”

I explained to him Festus’s concern over how Hnossi Icegaard might be reacting to the sounds of the explosion.

The X-Man surveyed the elder hero. “Who woulda thought?”

“What do you mean?”

“That he actually could give a demi-damn about anyone other than himself. Hm. If I didn’t know better—”

“Good God,” groaned Festus, no longer speaking into his wrist and having finally fixated on Kareem and André. “Dinosaurs, buffalo, the dodo…and merit-based hiring. All truly extinct.” Then he shuffled off to examine the burned remains of a narcissus flower bed.

“I’m a bit surprised,” I told Kareem, forestalling the inevitable fight, “to see you and André working together.”

“Call came in. We were both at the top of the duty roster. Anyway, Doc, what hap—”

“Oh, bzzzt, Squirrel-dawg! Yo house is da bomb!” André howled laughter at his own commentary. He sang, “The roof! The roof! The roof-is-on FI-YAH!” Then, shifting into a Joe Friday voice, he said, “What happened here, ma’am? Just the facts.”

“I’m the Primary here!” snapped Kareem. “Why don’t you buckdance on over there and try not to contaminate the crime scene?”

“ ‘I’m the Primary!’ ” mocked André, flying up to examine the smoldering drawing room charcoaling out the midday sun. “Looks like the HNIC got a big ol stick up his Primary ass.”

I asked Kareem to explain yet another F*O*O*J acronym. “HNIC,” he said dryly, “means Head Nigger in Charge.”

Kareem said into his wrist comm, “André, locate the butler and find out whatever you can about when Zenith pulled out the detonator, his state of mind, whatever.” He clicked off without waiting for André to respond, just as Tran walked up. After the former Chip Monk had composed himself enough for the two of us to brief Kareem, Festus strode up and said, “They actually put you on this, Edgerton? Investigating a bombing at my house? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

Kareem chuckled, apparently enjoying the sight of Festus’s distress. “Look, Fasces. You gonna obstruct the investigation, or are you gonna be helpful for a change?”

“Just don’t fuck this up. Do you think you can handle that? This is my home, for God’s sake. My headquarters!”

Kareem closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and enunciated the word kheperi. Around us, a hundred or more glistening black beetles—from the size of my fingernail to the size of my palm—shadowed into existence. For a few seconds they all crawled about and tested their wings with a sound like an orchestral string section warming up. Then up and off they flew, half of them zipping across the zen garden and grounds, the others flitting into the interiors of the Squirrel Tree.

“The forensics are covered, Pilty. Now I’ve got some questions for you.”

Looking aghast at the insectoid investigators, Festus said, “Questions about that ACLU anarchist who tried to assassinate me, I hope!”

“No, but about Jack Zenith,” said Kareem dryly. “About why a distinguished lawyer and civil libertarian would suddenly transmute into a suicide bomber.”

For several minutes Kareem drilled Festus, demanding to know precisely what happened and what if any recent interventions Human Citizen had taken against the Piltdown Group, or vice versa. Throughout Festus’s response, the X-Man dug into him repeatedly with one of Zenith’s most persistently devastating charges: that the Flying Squirrel had pushed the F*O*O*J into starting the Götterdämmerung, and then into prolonging it, because Pilt-Dyne Defensive was its sole supplier of arms, exoskeletons, vehicles, and matériel throughout the war, leaving the American taxpayer footing