Hnossi Icegaard revealed nothing but a flicker of one eyebrow.
I remained undeterred.
“Frankly, Hnossi,” I said as the cerebral thunder diminished into distant rumbles, “I’m surprised that the F*L*A*C required you of all the F*O*O*Jsters to attend our sessions.”
Her eyes, like a cobra’s, dilated and scoped on me as if I were a mongoose.
“After all,” I continued, “on several occasions you’ve played the role of lawgiver with your colleagues, unto them, if you will, maintaining order, decorum. Hardly a disruptive behavior, it would seem.”
Her chin tilted up, slowly shifting to the right; her eyes remained locked, like glinting safes.
“Does ziss mean my presence is unnecessary, Frau Doktor? Becoss if so—”
“It means your presence is highly necessary, Professor Icegaard. Necessary for your teammates in providing limits, and necessary in providing a role model. Given all that, why in your opinion would the F*L*A*C suggest you’re a disruptive influence in the F*O*O*J?”
She pursed her lips, maintained her stare at me. “You vud haff to ask zem.”
“You’ve obviously had time to form your own analysis of the F*L*A*C and their decision.”
She was silent. Behind her, the temporal lobe shimmered, but there was no lightning.
“So according to your analysis, what is the F*L*A*C’s rationale for ordering you here? Where have they miscomprehended you and your work?”
“Ze F*L*A*C…unt ze FOOCH itself, fails to unterstandt…ze significance uff self-discipline unt reevaluation…durink difficult times…or uzzervise.”
“And that refers to you how?”
“I haff providedt guidance, Doktor. Guidance zey apparently belief is no lonker reqviredt. Alzough, perhaps now, sadly, in light of Hawk—”
“You’re an icon, Professor,” I said, changing directions again to prevent her clambering into her psychemotional bunker to escape the falling shells of my inquiry. “Not only as a Norse deity and as a twentieth-century superhuman, but in the academy—author of Women Who Fly with the Valkyries, The Frigga Mystique, and The Buri Myth, among others—”
“Ja?”
“You broke down doors, sometimes literally, to gain entrance to traditionally male domains. Dozens of female heroes entered the F*O*O*J because they were inspired by you, and they’ve sung your praises in interviews, books, and the motivational speaker circuit. And, of course, the fact that you’ve been worshiped for centuries—”
“Ja?”
In the northern sky of her brain’s emotional center, blue lightning flashed; the thunder lagged by seconds. I motioned for her to stand and walk with me, which she did, and we headed off toward the nexus of her divine motor function.
“That’s quite a burden,” I said above the thunder finally rolling in, “having to live up to all that. Never being allowed to falter. To be vulnerable.”
“Burtens are a part of life in ziss vurlt. Hawk Kink…taught us all zat.”
“A part of life, yes. You think they’re the entirety?”
“I didt not say zat.”
“A burden you’ve borne for twenty centuries. And now, even with the Götterdämmerung over, you’re still having to hold yourself up as an example of what people can achieve if they have the will and honor, if they’re devoted to what they consider right. It must be…
“Well, I won’t tell you how it feels, but beholding a generation of younger heroes, younger women heroes, who comport themselves as if all the privileges and access they have weren’t fought for and struggled for by the women who preceded them, most of whom never got such opportunities…opportunities that they’re—some would say—squandering? You must find that absolutely galling.”
She drew in a huge breath through her nostrils, but even with her mouth closed I could hear her teeth grinding against one another as if she were chewing the metallic sweetbreads of the mythic iron goat Scyldscrotgnashhunt.
We were close.
Iconsternation: Iron Lips
I aimed my neuron probe up into the cerebral “sky” of memory, the zone to which my Id-Smasher® had mapped and routed the segments of Hnossi’s actual flesh-and-ichor brain.
Inside her virtual cerebrum, the sky warbled at my neuron probe’s beam. I then tapped a sequence on my belt controls, stimulating the sensory-memory lobe, and around us IMAXed the remembered sights, smells, sounds, and wind-rushing tactile impression of flying over snow-clutched Scandinavian mountain peaks. Neurally connected to her as I was, I felt the strain at my shoulders of wings surging through the stratosphere, felt the cold rush across my body.
“Your other powers,” I said, aiming my probe elsewhere, “include the ability to summon this, correct?”
Instantly we were standing in a bald, gray valley; a gleaming iron chariot appeared, connected to a train of tiger-sized iron cats. I clicked again: across the sky, we looked down at two massive projections of Hnossi’s hands, into which materialized her two magic iron swords, one short, one long.
“Iron chariot; iron cats; iron swords. You can turn your wings into iron, you can occasionally turn your body into iron, you have gold-and silver-plated iron armor, your name is—”
“Your point, Doktor?”
“That’s a lot of iron, Hnossi. You tell me. What’s the point?”
“Mm, ja,” she sneered. “Don’t you sink zat’s just a bit too…mm…precise, Frau Doktor? Too purfectly pat unt pristine? Zat my carryink uff iron implements unt various transformations viss iron connote a hardness or hard-heartedtness uff my character, Freudianly suggestink furzer some sort uff pursonal or family dysfunction?”
“I didn’t say a word about your family, Professor Icegaard.”
She stiffened, blinking at me, looking like a sleeping cockatoo whose perch had suddenly collapsed beneath her.
“But the way you reacted to my question, Hnossi, is interesting. Have you found in your career or your mothering that shame is an effective means of silencing people when they question you or your decisions?”
Her lips flattened like spatulas, her eyes nailed onto me like eviction notices. The giant projection of hands and swords flared and then turned to black smoke, while the entire sky erupted in flame.
The two of us stood crisping in the violent orange light of the inferno. But because I refused to look away from her face, Hnossi finally spoke.
“Vell, first uff all, you’re mistaken ven you say—it’s inaccurate to, totally incorrect to suggest zat I—zat I shame people, Doktor, vezzer professionally or pursonally. Unt even if, unt I punctuate if, vut
