“Which means she exploitedt ziss great beingk’s passink to make a qvick morbid buck!”
“I think it means more than that, Hnossi, although perhaps Syndi wants us to think otherwise. How about that, Syndi?”
I looked between the two women, waiting for either of them to respond.
Facing their silence, I resolved to put the two together for a later session, to spelunk the depths of the psychemotional stalactites and stalagmites they perpetually aimed at each other. But at that moment I changed directions.
“You’ve been rather quiet, Festus,” I said. “How did you spend yesterday evening?”
I expected him to unleash a blistering denunciation of Syndi, but instead Festus Piltdown III delicately swept lady-finger crumbs from his tunic pants. “Like Hnossi,” he said quietly, “I went to my post.”
He irradiated everyone with his glare.
“The F*O*O*J Fortress. Scanning for threats. Doing my duty to our country. Our planet. When a champion of such magnitude falls, criminals become an opportunistic infection poised to contaminate us all.”
“Festus vuzn’t simply vaatching ze monitors in ze Situation Room, Frau Doktor,” said Hnossi Icegaard, smoothing her raven mane. While speaking to all of us, she looked only at Mr. Piltdown, who stared at a part of the ceiling where the Brotherfly wasn’t then crawling. André was removed from our sight-line; the only indication he remained in the room came from a soft, high-pitched buzzing near the lamp.
“Festus spent last evenink unt all last night comfortink ze heroes unt heroines who’d assembult at ze Fortress, like a vize unt gentle faazer or feutal lordt, offerink his shoulder or knee for zeir tears. Unt vile shelterink our soldiers viss his…his moral leadership, he spoke viss everyone, softly. Uff honor, unt diknity, unt true heroism, from a life devotedt not to self, not to glory, not to personal revardt…but to justice.” She sighed lengthily. “Unt sroughout all ziss, vhere vere you, Kareem?”
Kareem stiffened in his chair, goggling at her.
“Where was I, Hnossi? I was in Stun-Glas! Walking the streets, talking to my people! My people, the ones you people always seem to forget about, the ones you were gonna let CycloTron crush. I was down with the people praying in the AME Church on the corner of Cowan and McDuffie, down with the folks stuffing fried mock-chicken and corn bread down their mouths at Dark Star, down at the QRIB with the League and patrolling Stun-Glas to keep people cooled out and safe! What I wasn’t doing was pulling any fake Churchill act, covertly campaigning for DOO on the grave of a real hero!”
Mr. Piltdown: “Why you invidious, usurping, cork-faced hypocrite, accusing me of exploiting the death of our leader!”
“Nothing stabs like truth, does it, Goebbels?”
“You are out uff line, Kareem!”
I held up my whistle until the combatants stood down emotionally, and then asked Festus to explain his claim that Kareem was being hypocritical.
“Miss Brain, I’ll tell you this just once: Whatever your mawkish, liberal, multicultural self-delusions, you cannot trust this individual. He’s already launched his plot to exploit Hawk King’s death by seeking the post of Director of Operations for the F*O*O*J.”
All eyes fell on the X-Man.
His mouth opened silently.
Stages of Grief: Reckless Adventurism
Well, deny it, Edgerton,” said Festus, “if you can!”
“Kareem, is ziss true?” asked Iron Lass. “You’re standink for election after beingk a F*O*O*J member for only two years? You don’t sink zat’s presumptuous?”
“Hnossi—” Festus chuckled “—this fraud couldn’t get himself elected head of a chain gang.”
“You shoulda told that to Hawk King, Fester,” said Kareem. “Because I’m submitting nomination papers signed by him!”
Silence settled on the room like fog.
And then came the lightning.
“You’re a goddamned liar, Edgerton!” yelled the Flying Squirrel. “How dare you, you blaspheme the holy name of our departed mentor like that!”
The X-Man closed his eyes and whispered the word pamphlets. Instantly, rectangles of darkness congealed in each of our laps.
I had difficulty reading what Kareem had given us; the logogenic tracts were black only, with empty space where the letters went. I spread his literature out over the thighs of my pantsuit so the pamphlet’s holes could be read in contrast (fortunately I’d worn beige that day).
Above a shadow cutout image of the white-shirted, black-tied and -suited X-Man exhorting an implied, adoring crowd beyond the picture frame, were the block letters
ELECT
X-MAN
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
A BETTER F*O*O*J
FOR A
BETTER WORLD
On the next panels of the material was Kareem’s “Five-Point Platform for a New F*O*O*J”:
1. Shift the F*O*O*J’s investigative focus to corporate crime, now that the Götterdämmerung is over
2. Rewrite the Concord of Heroic Duty to prevent the F*O*O*J from intervening in the affairs of sovereign states
3. Defend and extend quality-of-life security for ordinary citizens—security from predatory corporations, landlords, polluters, etc., not only in disaster relief but in prevention
4. Deploy F*O*O*J technology toward public service and job creation
5. Liaise with schools, community organizations, and other nonsupergroups to promote safety, freedom, and public responsibility
“Damn, Kreem!” said the Brotherfly, fluttering down to snatch the pamphlet from Power Grrrl’s lap, then laughing once he was stuck back on the ceiling. “You gots to be insane in the hindbrain if you think you gon win gainst Squirrelly-Man! He gots the money, the experience, the money, the money—”
“I’m more concerned,” I said to Kareem, “by your campaign literature’s lack of attention to the very problems that brought you and your colleagues here in the first place. Nowhere in here do you acknowledge the importance of confronting the internal supervillains, such as the Crisis of Infinite Dearths, id escalation, depression—”
Kareem rolled his eyes.
“Your delusion is truly tragic, Edgerton,” said the Flying Squirrel, “even beyond this nonsense about Hawk King having ‘endorsed’ you. Even if, due to some thermodynamic miracle combined with an unforeseen alignment of the voodoo chicken bone stars, you actually somehow got elected as DOO, you’d be nothing but
