He glanced up at me for affirmation, while his fingernail continued cutting shapes into the frost field on the window, whether randomly or by design, I wasn’t sure.
“So…all these accusations are false, Wally?”
“Yes’m.”
“Let’s take it that they’re false, then. On a scale of one to three, with one being ‘quite a bit,’ and three being ‘one hundred percent,’ how much truth would you say Mr. Piltdown’s claims contain?”
His fingernail stopped on a downward diagonal line. “Well, I…I mean…I guess then I’d hafta say…one? Wait, wait a second, is there a zero?”
“No. How relieved do you feel that you’ve been able to release yourself even a little bit from the burden of these self-deceptions, Wally? With one being ‘very relieved,’ and three being ‘extremely relieved’?”
“Now, I didn’say that I was relieved, ma’am—”
“So how much do you wish that you had not let me know how relieved you are, with one being—”
“Now, Doctor Brain, sir, ma’am, what I’d, I’d, I’d really like to talk with you about is how goshdurn unfair it is for Festus t’be stompin on m’good name like that. An not just, like, a hour ago but for the last dadblasted fifty years!”
I tapped the device next to me. “Wally, do you know what this is?”
He resumed drawing his frost image, his finger cutting and dancing faster than I could see and raising a cloud of snow. Without even looking back at me, he said, “A DynaScan Reflective Spectroscope Junior®.”
“Very good. Do you know why I have it with me?”
He stopped, silent, his finger suddenly stuck in mid-draw.
“I’ve set it to scan for a rare substance,” I said quietly. “Do you know which one?”
“Listen, ma’am, in my work I fly through solar prominences, planetary cores, Cirque du Soleil shows—I could have any number a things stuck to my suit an cape—”
“According to the scanner, this substance isn’t on your suit, Wally, and you’re not wearing your cape. It’s on your fingers, teeth, lips, and nostrils.”
He turned to face me, stepping away from the window. Only then could I see he’d drawn three startlingly detailed portraits, each slightly different, but all clearly versions of the same face.
His own.
And then he turned back to the window and expectorated a gob of electrons onto the glass, and the images pfft! into steam.
“I aint no junkie!”
Grateful I’d taken the precaution of wearing a rubber under-suit and wooden shoes, I adjusted the lightning rods on either side of me. “Wally, I never referred to you as a—”
“I aint!” he said, pointing at me, and without any warning his fingers fell off his pointing-hand and hit the floor.
“Ah, H–E–double oil derricks, not again,” he said, stooping to pick up his scattered digits with his other hand.
“ ‘Not again,’ Wally? Are you saying this has happened before?”
He nodded, holding his fingers up against their stumps, spitting electrical fire upon them to weld them back into place.
I got up to pat the chair across from me to encourage him to sit down when he’d finished with his hand. He didn’t budge. “Wally, tell me about your father. Your real father. About Jobuseen-Ya.”
“Y’mean, you don’believe Festus’s foolin? You think I’m tellin the truth?”
“Wally, I know you’re telling the truth. At least, part of it. Now let’s see if together, we can get the rest.”
The Original Golden Age, or the Age of Fool’s Gold?
My daddy, m’real daddy, was the greatest official on th’entire planet Argon,” said Omnipotent Man after a long, long silence in which the Los Ditkos night began to flow through my bay window like a cola beverage into a crystal decanter.
Wally hardly looked at me, staring instead into the twinkling Bird Island skyline and the neon-metallic phallus of the Tachyon Tower rising above it.
“Daddy was a genius,” he said eventually. “Knew our whole planet was in danger.”
“What type of danger?”
“Oh, all kinds. Aliens, ’specially. And traitors. Plus, Argon was gon explode if we didn’keep relieving the planetary pressure of all its excessive energy, which Daddy was a pioneer in removing.”
“I see.”
“So anyway, he realizes one day thet the whole planet’s gon implode—”
“—explode?”
“—right, splode, like that very week, an he wants t’warn the public, but the damn gubment says he’s jess causin panic is all, an they orders him to shut up or else they gon throw him in jail. So they won’t let im say nuthin, he caint do nuthin, except one thing: save me. So he up and puts me in a rocket ship f’Earth.”
“You were how old? In Earth years, I mean?”
“I reckon round eight.”
“Now, Wally, what about the rest of the family? Your mother, siblings—you had two brothers and a sister—and everyone else in the extended -Ya family…didn’t he try to save any of them?”
“Naw, see, he could only spare the one rocket, so he couldn’send any a them. Else he mighta got noticed and got in trouble.”
“But if he were going to die with the planet anyway, then wouldn’t jail time be a rather empty threat?”
His forehead furrowed into a farmer’s field.
“So why,” I probed, “do you suppose your father saved you alone, out of your entire family?”
His bright eyes blinked onto mine, glittering in the lamplight like two big drops of Windex. “Well, I…you know, I never actually…I mean, nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
“Wally, I want to show you something, if I may.”
Drawing him over to my desk, I selected some images on my computer while he stood behind me.
“When you resigned, I was very worried about you and your processing of these recent experiences. Because I hoped we’d continue our sessions, I asked Gagarina Girl to search through some of Hawk King’s galactic records for me—do some astronomical detective work, if you will. And she’s come up with some very interesting results.
“It appears that you’ve been a bit off regarding the location of Argon, which you always said had been here,” I said, pointing to the screen. “But if we look here, we get an entirely different story.”
A high-resolution image of an alien world appeared, a Christmas tree of a planet with thousands of tiny lights, like fireflies orbiting a foolishly wrapped and rotting Yuletide ham.
“You…you’re sayin…that’s Argon? It’s still there? No, that dun’t…now wait, ma’am,” he said, breaking into a relieved grin, “the light to take this photograph cain’t travel faster than the speed of…of light! Which means this image is from before Argon exploded.”
“But Wally, Hawk King invented the Khu-Kheperi imaging technology that makes these photographs possible. This is a picture of Argon as it looks today. And this,” I said, clicking farther, “is a picture of the capital city, what you’ve always called Nietchion.”
I clicked open an image of a giant tower shaped like a man hefting two massive weapons of indeterminate use.
“And this, assuming Gagarina Girl’s translation is correct, is the Citadel of Galactic Security. And if we take a closer look,” I said, clicking again, “on the top floor, in the office on the side facing us, is a man who looks like an older version of you, drinking what looks like a mug of something hot, what with the steam coming off the top, and he’s dropping in something and stirring—perhaps an Argonian low-calorie sweetener of some sort, since he’s in such good shape. And there, on the desk behind him…let me bring up the magnification, yes, a nameplate, which the translation says means Jobuseen-Ya, Director of Argonian Security, and right there on the side of the desk, that’s a holograph of what seems to be him, a wife, and two grown boys and a girl.”
I looked back up over my shoulder.
Before I could see his face, Wally W. Watchtower had turne
d around; he was trying to muffle the snuffling sounds he was making.
Pulling his expandocape out of his jacket and tying it around his neck, he began flying slowly around the room at less than walking speed. His cape was drooping sadly at his sides like the jowls of an aged hound dog; tears dropped from his face like that hound dog’s melancholic slaver.
The Icon Trap had imprisoned Wally with even greater power than I had realized, but with a twist: the icon splintering Omnipotent Man’s psyche into fragments was made of two persons fused into one dominating demon of disapproval: Jobuseen-Ya, and Festus Piltdown III.
The Inner Abandoned Child
Wally, please, it’s better to talk this out.”
“Why bother?” he said, flying snail-speed laps around the room. “Argon never was under no threat! You done jess proved that! M’daddy jess wanted to get ridda me! Like tyin up a big ol sack fulla kittens an droppin em in a dirty ol’ creek!”
“Now, Wally,” I said, rotating in my chair so I could keep him in sight, “Earth isn’t exactly a ‘dirty old creek,’ and your father didn’t kill you, now did he? Maybe originally he thought there really was a threat.”
He turned to look at me. “So why didn’he try an get me back, then? You know what he did do, though?”
Distracted, Wally made a low-speed collision with my fig tree, knocking it over. “Aw, pig-snickers,” he said, surveying the dirt. “Sorry bout that.”
Before I could coax him into sitting with me, Wally was in flight again, but he hadn’t made it five yards before he hit the floor like a pelican flying into the engine of a DC-10.
I rushed to help him into a chair. It was like trying to lift a sack of bowling balls. I asked him to tell me about his father.
“That ol’ bossy such-an-such!” he choked. “You know what he left me? This here cube,” he said, producing a glinting black box no bigger than a large sugar cube. “Had it since I was hip high to a mule, when I was a kid growin up in Mannsfall, Kentucky, and confused as all jolly on accounta I couldn’member anything bout who I was before age eight. But I had this here necklace, see, which Ma and Pa said I was wearin when they found me in th’swamp. An when I got older an walked to An’ar’tica—”
“You walked to Antarctica?”
“Yeah, an this here box started tellin me how our planet’d been destroyed an how the box was the sum a m’daddy’s intelligence an it was gon guide me throughout m’life in his stead.”
He shook the device in his closed hand, next to his ear, as if he were about to shoot craps. “Even has Daddy’s voice,” he said.
He opened his hand, gazed. “But all this durn thing ever did was insult me. ‘Karojun-Ya, how can you be so stupid?’ an ‘Karojun-Ya, you failed again, liver-brains’ an all that kinda guff.”
“Do you think…maybe that’s why you put up with Mr. Piltdown’s insults?”
He fixed his eyes on me again.
“Because the whole world calls you a hero, yet you let Festus talk to you like that constantly, as if you’re worthless.”
“I don’know.”
“How did all your father’s comments make you feel?”
“I don’know.”
“Did they make you happy?”
“I don’know.”
“When you swore at Mr. Piltdown and then electrospat him across the room, do you think that in some part of your mind you were spitting at your father? Was that the saliva of ‘You can’t hurt me anymore’? Or was it the albumin of a frightened little boy who was angry that his ‘daddy’ had rejected him?”
He looked down, mumbled, “I’ont know what kinda hork it was, ma’am.”
“Because saliva—the water of life in your body—”
“Actually it was a beam of electrons, ma’am—”
“But the deeper truth of the saliva behind the electricity is what matters, Wally. Look at the rage you released in that single thousand-volt expectoration. You’re the most mild-mannered man I’ve seen in this practice in decades. But then, one remark too many—”
“Yeah,” he chuckled grimly. “Fried squirrel. Courtesy of m’omni-gob.”
“Exactly. Being rejected by your father like that, believing that you’re never good enough…Do you think that might have something to do with your stunning achievements in anti-success?”
“Well, I mean, I spose that…what?”
“Tell me about walking to Antarctica.”
The Black Box of the Soul
Yeah…when I was sixteen. Ma an Pa, well, they’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I didn’know what I b’lieved. I was gettin inna trouble, drankin an messin around an such. I still didn’know bout m’powers, y’unnerstan. An Ma an Pa, they was always talkin about doomsday—seems every time a doomsday come up an didn’happen, they always had another one waitin.
“So I stopped wannin t’listen to em, specially when they wannid me t’go out witnessin, farm-to-farm an door-to-door an such. So they was fightin with me suh’m fierce t’go, an I up and decided to spite em by gettin as far away from em as I could.
“So I started walkin, an I member being s’prised by how far an how fast I could walk without ever gettin hungry. An before I knew it—like, on’y a coupla months’d gone by, an I was at the south end a Chile. And the cold didn’bother me neither, which I never knew before on accounta Kentucky always bein so hot. An I was jess so fulla spite I had to go th’whole distance, so I decided I’d swim over to An’ar’tica, which wun’t the smartest thing to do, I admit, considerin I didn’know bout my powers yet, but I was always a good swimmer an figured why not? So I did. I made it.
“But I musta lost m’necklace with the black cube on it or suh’m, cuz when I came out the water, it was gone. But I looked behind me an all th’penguins an walruses were swimmin away cuz a big black iceberg or suh’m was comin up out th’water like a mountain bein born.
“On’y it wun’t no mountain. It had a huge blue doorway glowin like one a them neon signs, an it was willin me to go through it! So I walked on inside an there was all sortsa blinkin machines, like chairs an beds an treadmills—like, like a big ol health spa from the future or suh’m. An I felt this powerful urge to sit inside one a them chairs, an when I did, suddenly I could feel all kindsa powers surging in me.
“An then I looked up and seen right on top a this pedestal—it’s m’black box! Beamin out a ghostly image of m’daddy—that’s what it said to me, that it was m’daddy—talkin to me bout how he sent me to Earth to save m’life an so at least I could be a success somewhere.”
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 unshrank 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 do
wn 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?”
Minister Faust Page 20
