Minister Faust (28 page)

He sat across from me, chewing his lip. “Guess I never really paid attention to how he worded that before.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I got up outta m’trainin machine to pick up m’box, but I’d become so strong, I accidentally ripped the machine outta th’floor an knocked th’pedestal down an then, well…pretty much after that was a blur on accounta th’whole black iceberg commenced t’comin down. An so I flew back home—I could fly now, see?—an all th’while my box-daddy was tellin me I was a complete nimrod, though that wun’t th’word he used.

“I got back to Mannsfall, an I went to see m’step-pa an -ma t’tell em all what’d happened, but I still hadn’t quite got th’hang a m’powers, so I accidentally burned down half th’town and then when I was trying to use m’frost breath to put out the fire I accidentally shrank th’whole place with some other power I didn’even know I had. Still don’know how I did it, actually…so I been workin ever since then to figure out how to
un
shrank em.”

“The whole town just disappeared? And no one noticed?”

“Well, it was a small town to begin with. An the war’d just started. So anyway, I went over into Cloverport, bought me a aquarium, an put the tinier town of Mannsfall inside it.”

“And you just left it there?”

“No, I took it with me. It’s in my condo, now, right on top the toilet tank, so at least once a month I member to bring in fresh food and water, which I crumble up and dribble down on em like manna and drinks from heaven.”

“Are your stepparents still alive inside the aquarium?”

“Yessir. Time seems to’ve slowed down on accounta the shrankin. Or suh’m…don’rightly know, akchully.” He chirped up, “I can bring in the tank, if you like, to show ya.”

“If you’d like to, Wally. For now, tell me more about what you did after you returned home.”

“For a while I did some herofying as I was learnin m’powers. That’s when I was Omni-Lad. Then the war got worse, an the call went out from Hawk King. I mean, akchully from his hawk legion, which was searchin th’whole country lookin for superheroes to help fight the comm’nists—”

“The Nazis.”

“—right, an that’s when I hooked up with him, Iron Lass, Captain Manifest Destiny, Lady Liberty, Gil Gamoid an th’N-Kid—”

“Actually, Wally,” I said, leafing through the heavily redacted contents of the
OMNIPOTENT FRAUD
folder Mr. Piltdown had couriered to me, “I meant, what did you do when you weren’t performing superheroics? Tell me about the jobs you held, the friends you had, the kind of life you led in your secret identity.”

“Course, y’already know m’secret name, ma’am. An I expect y’already read Jack Zenith’s book, since durn near everybody in creation did. So y’know I led a quiet life as a grade-school teacher.”

“But what about writing, Wally?”

“What about it?”

“You also—as I’ve learned,” I said, flipping through the files, “worked at a small newspaper in Blandton—”

“Now where in tarnation j’ever hear suh’m so silly?”

“—where you were apparently known as a shy and awkward proofreader named Willis Nesbin. But Nesbin was secretly the writer behind the popular syndicated advice column ‘Ask Aunt Edna.’ Which means this additional secret identity of yours was actually a two-for-one.”

“Who toldj’all that?”

“You even rented an apartment under this Nesbin persona. Your neighbors there describe Nesbin as—I’ve got it here: quote, Quiet and polite, but not in that creepy serial-killer way, end quote.”

“What, Doc, you been spyin on me?”

“So you admit it’s true.”

“No, consarn it! I mean, you been spyin on somebody else but
thankin
it were me, when in reality—”

“In fact, Wally,” I said, taking out a set of photographs from Mr. Piltdown’s folder, “you seem to have a great number of secret identities.” I held up photos one at a time, each one paper-clipped with relevant news printouts on its back, and then set them on the coffee table between us.

“Billionaire playboy
Ricky R. Bustow…
pious conservative televangelist
Jebedai ‘Crawdad’ Crocket,
ruthless fight promoter
Francis ‘The Musk Ox’ Miller.

“Since your resignation, Wally, no one’s heard a peep from any of them.”

He stared back at me emptily.

“And earlier today,” I continued, “you carved portraits into the frost you made on my window. Portraits of these men, who, despite slight differences in hairstyles, glasses, and so forth, all look remarkably like you.”

“Doc, you’d hafta have a sweater th’size a Kentucky t’pull that much wool over th’eyes of th’Merican people. How could I be all those men an still be me?”

“Only someone with powers beyond those of mortal men
could
do such a thing.”

“Well, why would I even wanna?”

“How terrified are you of rejection, Wally? Mercilessly esteem-hammered by Festus, rejected by your own father who cast you out of his entire world, a misfit in your adopted hometown, a fraud in the field of superheroics, no known romantic relationships to speak of? So if you can hide who you really are and become something that is appealing to enough people—”

“Doc, I’m loved over this whole tadpoled planet! Why should I need any more adulation than I already got?”

“You tell me, Wally. Tell me why it’s never enough.”

“I never said it wun’t! Now you jess quit all this crazy talkin!
So what
if I look like summa them fellas? Jess a coincidence! I’m Wally W. Watchtower, Karojun-Ya, last son of Argon…well, okay, maybe not th’last, but—th’invincible Omnipotent Man. That’s it, that’s all, no more!”

“Wally…are you saying…are you saying that you actually don’t know about these other identities?”

“Doc, I jess said—”

“Maybe…originally you had yourself in check, this craving of yours for validation, but the more the public fed you, the hungrier you got—as if you had a tapeworm burrowed in your psychemotional gut—and the emptier you felt. So you found something you thought could fill you up. But what you didn’t know is how much that very something would fracture you further.”

At that moment, I reached beneath the coffee table to produce a leaden gray lockbox no larger than a lunch box. I opened it and placed it on the coffee table between us.

Wally blinked, his nostrils flaring, his lips crimping inside his mouth.

The stench of ozone wafted from the interior of the gray box, which glowed electric blue.

“Obtained courtesy of the F*O*O*J laboratories,” I said. “Fifty-five grams of powdered argonium.”

“I’d reckon it,” he said after a taut twenty seconds, his eyes nailed onto the box, “more like fifty-four.”

Supervillains Might Be a Reason, but They’re Never an Excuse

I
reached to close the box. Wally jerked nearly all the way out of his chair before he looked at me and stopped himself; his eyes locked on the box and then came back to me. He settled himself back, his face looking as if the iconic masks of comedy and tragedy were battling upon it for supremacy.

I waited with the powdered argonium open and available in front of him, counting out the seconds and then the minutes on the clock beyond his shoulder.

All the while, Wally’s face and body clicked and contorted through a chaos of tics and spasms.

Finally, his lower lip trembling, he almost begged me. “Doc…y’know—
please
—”

“I
will
help you,” I whispered. “Wally, did you know that one of the effects of argonium use is personality fragmentation?”

His eyes flickered over me, over the photos arranged before him, over to the window where his frost portraits no longer were.

He sniffed and nodded, defeated.

“And I can’t help but wonder whether it might also induce delimbification in Argonians. How long has argonium use been affecting your work?”

“I’ont thank it affected m’work, ma’am,” he growled. “I always showed up, I always—”

“Was that why the attack on the Allied ships, and saving the U-boat?”

“Naw, naw, naw—back before the war I aint even ever heard about no argonium. That was jess a mistake is all.”

“So when did you first begin using—”

“Rex Mirthless,” he said.

“The Vocabularian?”

“One an th’same,” he said, drawing in a long, ragged breath. “M’first real superopponent…a true archvillain. We’d been havin these off-an-on melees for about a decade already, him always managing to slip away, like a coon dipped in bacon grease. Now Rex, he were this snootified, citified, sissified N’Englander. Wore a, whaddayacall them thangs—a cravat, c’n you b’lieve it? Wellsir, this was back in ’58, an he were threat-nin to take control a th’energy market, introduce some sorta sun-powered thang. It woulda destroyed th’whole economy. So I stormed his fortress—he had this base inside a volcano, an he was wearin one a them Beatle-type jackets, on’y it were white—”

“A Nehru?”

“Right, a Nero. He was th’first guy to do that, by th’way, th’whole volcana an white jacket dealy. Evr’body after that was jess copyin im. So he tricked me, knocked me out with some kinda cosmic beam, an then 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?”