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

Art critics from around the planet flew at once to California to examine “the Work,” as it was called, some hailing it as the greatest single gigantic artwork in human history, not to mention the best smelling. Hnossi disagreed, ordering the boy to scrub off the entire work by hand since he’d painted it without state permission and was facing charges of vandalism, mischief and destruction of a state park. Hector and Hnossi clashed bitterly over the incident, with Hnossi ultimately denouncing “ze undiknified life of an artist” to her former-actor husband before freezing and burning off the mural with her twin swords. The wedge between them crept deeper.

Hnossi’s opinion of her elder child had been even less encouraging. While Inga’s early powers didn’t include hyper-emulation, her singing was hypnotic—literally. But since Iron Lass disliked rival F*O*O*Jster the Siren (the heroine whose 1968 lawsuit forced the Fraternal Order of Justice to change its name to the non-gender-specific “Fantastic”), Hnossi was entirely unsupportive of her daughter having any similar power. Desperate and lacking her mother’s positive reinforcement, young Inga soon began taking advantage of her hypnovocalism, singing to children and adults—especially males—to bend them to her bidding. The only people immune to Inga’s powers were her kin. But her father and brother adored her because of their familial bond, not requiring any sonic manipulation for their experience of love.

“But there’s something much deeper than this,” I told Syndi. “Something your mother won’t go near and something you’re only hinting at. Something truly awful happened between you two which made you distance yourself from your mother so greatly that you created two secret identities with which to obscure your connection to her. What is it?”

Hnossi’s ancient, deathly eyes fixed on her daughter like leeches, whether to shut Inga down or finally to open her up, I was not sure.

Inga/Syndi got up and excused herself to go to the bathroom.

The moment she returned, I said, “Tell me about Cassiopeia Rand.”

“What?” said Inga, floored. She clutched her hands to her chest as if my question had denuded her. “How the hell did you know about her?”

“Festus,” I said, showing her a folder from my briefcase. “He’s been very helpful with supplying additional background material from his extensive files.”

“My God!” said Inga, shaking her head and looking with disgust toward the ceiling. “How long has that old fascist been spying on me? On all of us?”

“Ach, Inga,” rasped her mother. “Stop beingk so dramatic. Ze man is ze vurlt’s greatest detectiff. Vut dit you expect him to do viss his information-gazzering apparatus? Answer crossvurt puzzles?”

“Duh, I dunno, how about, catch criminals? And not invade the privacy of law-abiding citizens?”

“Answer ze qvestion. Who is ziss Cassiopeia Rand?”

“Inga,” I pressed, “tell me about Space Girl.”

The Debut, Disappearance, and Downfall of Space Girl

I had problems igniting my career, okay?” said Inga, glaring at me with all the toxic, self-indulgent angst of her Syndi Tycho persona, but without the incessant use of like and gawd.

“It was 1981. I was nineteen. So I tried making my debut as Cassiopeia Rand, HKA Space Girl. I was singing Latin pop-lite tunes—this was years before Gloria Estefan blew up—and fighting a little crime on the side with my hypnovoice, just to get some press.

“I was starting to move up, get noticed. I even had an HBO special with special appearances by Cher, Cheech Marin, and Tim Conway. But the day my special aired,” she said, jutting her lower lip toward the hospital bed, “Mother up and declared her global war. Every channel was glued on her and her crusade for the next month! Debuts are delicate, Eva! And mine, thanks to her, was a complete dud! And unlike in heroics, in showbiz, you don’t get second chances.”

Believing her career was over, Inga-Ilsabetta exiled herself back east, eventually studying marketing, music production, and singing at the Alison Blair Institute for Advanced Disco Studies. Excelling in every course, by 1987 she created a brand-new persona through which to reinvent herself and forge her own second chance.

Dyeing her hair, and with the almost perpetually youthful looks of a demigoddess, she emerged as Syndi Tycho, HKA Power Grrrl, who in 1991 capitalized upon the need of the post-Götterdämmerung F*O*O*J to reinvent itself, too, in the wake of the promised “peace dividend.” An angry, exhausted, and broke public needed happy, lively, pretty new faces if the F*O*O*J was to survive into its new postvillain era. Fast-tracked, the “seventeen-year-old” became a made member in 1991 after a mere six-month candidacy and, with her new legitimacy, immediately launched extensive marketing tie-ins.

“The government loved me, the F*O*O*J’s corporate sponsors loved me,” said Syndi, “the public loved me, everyone loved me. Everyone was happy. It was great.”

“How about your mother?” I asked without malice, regretting the crumpling of her features as soon as I saw it. “How about you? Did you love yourself? Have you ever been truly happy?”

“Of course I loved myself! Of course I’m happy! What kind of question is that?”

“I think you didn’t feel loved, Syndi. That you never felt you were getting enough love. That you had a hole in your soul. That you believed your mother’d never given you enough of what you needed. That you had to comfort your heart-shattered father and raise your little brother by yourself, depriving you of time just to be a girl. You feared Kareem would never put you first—”

“Is that a crime, Eva? To be more in touch with my need for love than other people are?”

“It’s not a question of crime, Inga, but dysfunction, and of causing damage to others. You seduced Kareem emotionally, not just sexually. And the ramifications for him have been gigantic. Scandal might help you sell more albums, but this could quite likely be the end of Kareem’s career.”

“Unt you hat no right to treat Fraulein Biceps like zat,” said Hnossi. “She vuss a gut varrior. She deservt better. Regartless of her uzzer…you know. Her…liebenschtyle.”

“After you felt your mother’d rejected you,” I said