“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 bee
n 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)
What will it mean for your life, and for your view of yourself, if the glory days never return?
Omnipotent Man: “For the first time I can remember…I’m totally afraid.”
One of life’s greatest paradoxes is that only when we see ourselves at our most naked, weak, foolish, ugly, disappointing, cowardly, broken, repulsive, selfish, and stupid, can we really appreciate just how special we are. For Wally to fill up the tank of personal reintegration, he was going to have to pull into the filling station of exhaustive self-assessment. And so will you.
Get a quiet space and writing tools, and block off enough time to write out all the occasions in your life in which you’ve been weak, foolish, ugly, disappointing, cowardly, broken, repulsive, selfish, and/or stupid. A day should be enough. Don’t hold back. Total honesty is absolutely necessary.
When you’re done, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who else other than I is to blame for what I’ve done?
2. How did I personally choose to be a victim of myself?
3. How did I enable myself to become a perpetrator against myself and everything I hold dear?
4. How many of the psychemotional barnacles attached to the ship of my consciousness am I willing to burn off in order to sail freely across the ocean of well-adjustedness? And why am I too cowardly to burn them all off at once and be done with it? Is it because I’m confusing the barnacles with the ship?
As you’re about to see, the challenge to Iron Lass’s immortality would threaten not only her own survival, but Wally’s recovery…and Festus Piltdown’s soul.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Unrequited Hate
WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 9:16 A.M.
The Roots Beneath the Tree
I sat upon the immaculate silver sofa in the immaculate bronze room across from the palace-owner, who was wearing his immaculate ivory suit and golden cravat. Festus Piltdown had no inkling of the reconnection—or confrontation—I’d already set in motion to bring him the peace he so desperately needed from a man he considered an enemy.
Yet the desperation and fragility Festus felt at that moment in his life demanded that I act, in secrecy, to bring to him a one-man intervention.
While Festus and I watched highlights from the 8:30 A.M. Fortress of Freedom press conference on the wallscreen, his aged manservant placed a cappuccino on the marble coffee table beside me before disappearing.
NBC reporter:—believe the destruction of Asteroid Zed to be in any way connected with the death of Hawk King?
X-Man: I can’t confirm that, no. Not yet, anyway.
CBS reporter: There are reports that Iron Lass is dying from unnamed causes, possibly connected with the orbital prison disaster. Can you comment?
X-Man: That’s true—there are reports.
CBS reporter: Yes, but, but what about them? Are they true? Is her condition connected with the bombing of Zed or the death of Hawk King?
X-Man: I can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.
ABC reporter: Are you investigating Iron Lass’s condition to see if there is a connection?
X-Man:…All I can say is—and I’m not saying she even has a “condition,”—but I will follow to the ends of this solar system any lead that points to a threat to the F*O*O*J, to this country, or to our planet—
PNN reporter: Following the destruction of Asteroid Zed, a Knight-Ridder poll put you fifty-five percentage points ahead of the Flying Squirrel for Director of Operations. How do you respond to those who say you’re exploiting the death of Hawk King, the resignation of Omnipotent Man, and allegations about Iron Lass’s health to advance your own personal political aspirations?
X-Man: My—! Look here! My only aspirations… are truth, and justice! And let truth and justice prevail though the heavens fall!
“Can you believe that hyperactive hypocrite?” snapped the Flying Squirrel, and then, as the image switched, he moaned, “Oh, not this again!”
Onscreen rolled the by then infamous funeral footage of Festus punching Kareem and Kareem hitting him back, with the anchor’s voice-over about X-Man’s “meteoric rise.”
“Meteors never rise, you subcretinous discombobulators! They only fall, crash, and burn out!�
��
At that moment, Festus’s butler Mr. Savant, so ancient and withered he might conceivably have been an unbandaged mummy, returned to say, “Madame is ready to receive visitors now, Lord Piltdown.”
Noticing my reaction, Festus shrugged and said, “I acquired a peerage a few years back. Thatcher owed me for all the good press. Come on.”
As Mr. Savant led us on the motorized pedway like a guardian mummy through its pyramid, we wound our way through the labyrinthine corridors of Festus’s legendary crimefighting headquarters, the Squirrel Tree. Every hallway was actually the interior of one of the Tree’s “branches,” and each chamber the interior of a giant “leaf.” Vast hydrogen-powered magnetic counter-gravity generators kept the entire assembly, minus the trunk, suspended aboveground. With the facility’s “smart garage,” Trashbots™, Lawnbots™, air traffic dominance, and DETHscan security system coordinated by the Squirrel-Brain 9000X, the Squirrel Tree made Bill Gates’s “smart house” seem like a Fisher-Price play set.
Passing through the cavernous Vehicle Hollow containing the Squirrel Copter, Squirrel Sub, and Squirrel N-ICBMs, and a fabulous five-story-tall replica of the one-dollar bill, we finally entered the Medical Hollow. Mr. Savant led us to the room, pulled back the curtain, stood aside.
From her bed, Hnossi Icegaard looked up at us.
The whites of her eyes were like filthy old pennies. Her face and neck were splotched ashen red and brown. In the worst sections, her skin was flaking off like the scales of a dead rattlesnake dropped into a campfire.
“Rust poisoning,” muttered Festus. “Advanced.”
“Ja,” rasped Hnossi, chuckling out of a bravura smirk. “But you shudt get a look at ze uzzer guy.”
“When the cells opened on Asteroid Zed,” explained Festus, “the Desiccator attacked her, that goddamned bastard.”
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