“I’m saying, Eva, that as much as I tried to help this boy…there were things he wanted that I couldn’t give him. And maybe if I’d…if I’d done a better job…he wouldn’t’ve wanted them—”
“Stop it, Festus,” choked Tran.
“I’m trying to tell you that it’s not your—”
“Stop it! Just don’t—”
“Lord Piltdown,” wheezed Mr. Savant, shuffling his way inside the vast room. With obvious agitation he said, “Ever so sorry for the interruption, sir, but a third guest has arrived—”
“Another one? Eva! What baffle-gambit are you trying to pull?”
“Festus, I didn’t—”
“No, sir, it’s a Mr. Zenith, sir—”
A lanky, soil-and-ash-haired septuagenarian marched in behind Festus’s centegenarian butler. Opening his jacket, he revealed a chest strapped full with explosives, like a smokehouse wall of dynamite. And it wasn’t bad dentures distending his mouth, but a detonator clamped between his teeth. I noted with a certain detachment two things: my second brush with explosives in forty-eight hours, and the complete relaxation of my sphincter.
“Jack!” yelled Tran. “My God, what are you doing?”
“Zenith!” yelled Festus. “Have you completely fallen off your bean?”
“Gmph-KWUH!” shout-mumbled Zenith. “Wruh-NNMMR!”
With deadly acrobatic fluidity, seventy-year-old Festus vaulted from his chair, reached inside his jacket, and hurled something at Jack Zenith before he landed and rolled toward the wall to smack a hidden panel. Whatever he’d thrown at Zenith erupted into a cumulus cloud of something like shaving foam which apparently hardened on contact, immobilizing Zenith.
“Out, now!” yelled Festus, grabbing Tran, Mr. Savant, and me and launching all of us through the opening of the retracting window. The four of us spun plummeting toward death on the zen-garden boulders five stories below, when at the last moment nets shot out from tree-mounted launchers to break our fall—
—and above us, the Squirrel Tree drawing room from which we’d just escaped erupted into orange, flaming death and raining, burning rubble.
Collateral Damnation
Security!” yelled Festus into his wrist, jumping up. “Get to the Medical Hollow now. Status on the patient!”
Within seconds, a battalion of gliding, cybernetic Squirrel-bots descended to secure the area and protect us while flame-defense mechanisms choked the inferno above. Less than a minute later, Festus’s human security guards had scrambled to our location, providing first aid for Mr. Savant and taking me inside for a change of clothes from the extensively stocked manor.
I emerged within minutes and found Tran sitting at the stone enclosure base of the smoking remains of a massive topiary squirrel. He was an agony to behold, his body shaking in utterly silent sobs.
I put my hand on his shoulder. He went rigid. And then, in the random association grief begets, said, “We just…we just lost the only man alive…who’s fit to be president of the United States.” He sniffed back mucus wetly. “Not that he’d ever’ve been even…allowed to debate…”
Across the grounds, Festus was loudly excreting abuse into his wrist comm. “…I don’t care, Doctor! You goddamned get her whatever she wants or I’ll have you shipped to the Congo to spend the rest of your career harvesting Pygmy organs, you understand?”
Absorbed as he was, Festus hadn’t even noticed the arrival of an unlikely partnership: the X-Man and the Brotherfly, there to investigate the near-assassination. Kareem was heading toward Tran, so I intercepted him and explained that he needed to allow the former Chip Monk time to process his psychemotional state.
“Of course, Doc,” whispered Kareem. “Poor freaking guy. To finally have replaced that,” he chin-wagged toward the invective-lobbing Festus, “as your ‘father’ with someone as great as Zenith, and then only to lose him, too.”
He shook his head after another outburst from the lord of the manor. “Look at that—I mean, I’ve seen him flip out on people for bringing the wrong shade of orange juice,” he said, “but thousands of people’ve been trying to assassinate him for decades. Why’s this attempt got him so spooked now? Does he think this was the work of Menton or Warmaster Set?”
I explained to him Festus’s concern over how Hnossi Icegaard might be reacting to the sounds of the explosion.
The X-Man surveyed the elder hero. “Who woulda thought?”
“What do you mean?”
“That he actually could give a demi-damn about anyone other than himself. Hm. If I didn’t know better—”
“Good God,” groaned Festus, no longer speaking into his wrist and having finally fixated on Kareem and André. “Dinosaurs, buffalo, the dodo…and merit-based hiring. All truly extinct.” Then he shuffled off to examine the burned remains of a narcissus flower bed.
“I’m a bit surprised,” I told Kareem, forestalling the inevitable fight, “to see you and André working together.”
“Call came in. We were both at the top of the duty roster. Anyway, Doc, what hap—”
“Oh, bzzzt, Squirrel-dawg! Yo house is da bomb!” André howled laughter at his own commentary. He sang, “The roof! The roof! The roof-is-on FI-YAH!” Then, shifting into a Joe Friday voice, he said, “What happened here, ma’am? Just the facts.”
“I’m the Primary here!” snapped Kareem. “Why don’t you buckdance on over there and try not to contaminate the crime scene?”
“ ‘I’m the Primary!’ ” mocked André, flying up to examine the smoldering drawing room charcoaling out the midday sun. “Looks like the HNIC got a big ol stick up his Primary ass.”
I asked Kareem to explain yet another F*O*O*J acronym. “HNIC,” he said dryly, “means Head Nigger in Charge.”
Kareem said into his wrist comm, “André, locate the butler and find out whatever you can about when Zenith pulled out the detonator, his state of mind, whatever.” He clicked off without waiting for André to respond, just as Tran walked up. After the former Chip Monk had composed himself enough for the two of us to brief Kareem, Festus strode up and said, “They actually put you on this, Edgerton? Investigating a bombing at my house? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
Kareem chuckled, apparently enjoying the sight of Festus’s distress. “Look, Fasces. You gonna obstruct the investigation, or are you gonna be helpful for a change?”
“Just don’t fuck this up. Do you think you can handle that? This is my home, for God’s sake. My headquarters!”
Kareem closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and enunciated the word kheperi. Around us, a hundred or more glistening black beetles—from the size of my fingernail to the size of my palm—shadowed into existence. For a few seconds they all crawled about and tested their wings with a sound like an orchestral string section warming up. Then up and off they flew, half of them zipping across the zen garden and grounds, the others flitting into the interiors of the Squirrel Tree.
“The forensics are covered, Pilty. Now I’ve got some questions for you.”
Looking aghast at the insectoid investigators, Festus said, “Questions about that ACLU anarchist who tried to assassinate me, I hope!”
“No, but about Jack Zenith,” said Kareem dryly. “About why a distinguished lawyer and civil libertarian would suddenly transmute into a suicide bomber.”
For several minutes Kareem drilled Festus, demanding to know precisely what happened and what if any recent interventions Human Citizen had taken against the Piltdown Group, or vice versa. Throughout Festus’s response, the X-Man dug into him repeatedly with one of Zenith’s most persistently devastating charges: that the Flying Squirrel had pushed the F*O*O*J into starting the Götterdämmerung, and then into prolonging it, because Pilt-Dyne Defensive was its sole supplier of arms, exoskeletons, vehicles, and matériel throughout the war, leaving the American taxpayer footing the F*O*O*J’s multibillion dollar appropriations budget. Even the mid-1980s retrofit of Asteroid Zed was a Pilt-Dyne project, “when according to Ze
nith,” said Kareem, “two dozen other contractors could have done this stuff for a tenth of the price. Or less. C’mon, fifty-thousand-dollar shower curtains? A half-million-dollar bidet? Who’s gonna use a bidet on Asteroid Zed?”
“I made regular trips up there to supervise reconstruction, Edgerton, and those of us on the winning side of evolution care about matters of hygiene. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Before Kareem could counter him, Festus’s security agents ushered in a contingent of the LDPD. Before the tycoon could say a word, the X-Man stepped into the path of the lead detective.
“This is F*O*O*J jurisdiction, officer. So why don’t you take your little men back to your brother-shooting clubhouse while we solve this case? ’Bye,” said Kareem, turning his back.
The lead detective flushed borscht red. “Now you listen up, ‘X-Man’—”
“No, you listen, Detective McDevil,” said Kareem, facing him, “I’ve got full jurisdiction here, and you’re standing on my crime scene. So unless you want me to arrest you, get out of here now. André!” he yelled into his wrist comm. “Get down here!”
The detective, outraged at being trumped in front of his men, looked toward Mr. Piltdown for support. Festus shook his head in sympathetic disgust and shared impotence.
“Don’t look at him. Look at me.” Kareem smiled. “The one ordering you to get your ass out of here.”
“You better watch yourself, Edgerton,” said the detective. “The bigger you get, the harder—”
“—the harder I’ll kick a fool in the ass. See ya!” said Kareem, walking away and waving bye-bye over his shoulder at the retreating LDPD.
“Edgerton!” snapped Festus, sticking a finger in Kareem’s face. “Leaving aside how you treated those peace officers, you’ve wasted ten minutes berating me about a man who tried to murder me in my own home as if I were the bomber when the real criminal blew himself to bloody burning bits! Maybe you should be leaving this investigation to someone who isn’t conflicted by pursuing a personal agenda—or a political one!”
“Irony—cute. Might want to reflect on that irony yourself, Festes. So you’d have me believe that out of nowhere, one of the most brilliant investigative litigators in the country—”
“Maybe never being able to finish his vendetta against my family finally got to him, and he snapped! Maybe he had terminal cancer and this was his last chance to get me! Maybe—”
“Maybe Menton got to him.”
Festus stopped, placing a thumb and crooked finger to his chin.
“Maybe. But…Menton wouldn’t’ve been able to mind-master the Tree’s bomb-sniffing technology. It’d take someone like the supreme khemist of ancient Egypt, Warmaster Set, to do that. He’d be eminently capable of devising an explosive my sniffers wouldn’t be calibrated to detect.”
“But why would Jack Zenith work with Set? I mean, Menton could’ve mind-chained Zenith, but Set doesn’t have—”
“The Scepter of Typhon. Obviously you’re not the Hawk King authority you think you are.”
The blackboard of X-Man’s face chalked with exasperation before he wiped it clean.
“The Scepter of Typhon,” said Festus, “discussed in the papyrus The Book of Lesser Portals as a staff of mental domination. It was lost around 1400 B.C.—but perhaps now found and used again.” He snorted. “Not that I disagree with Set’s choice of tools in this case.”
“You son of a bitch!” said Tran, suddenly at our side. “Jack Zenith wasn’t like all us, us clowns in the F*O*O*J prancing around in our three-color lingerie. He changed America more for the better than all of us combined. Combined a thousand times!”
“Well, evidently,” quipped Festus, “the author of Unsafe in Any Cape was unsafe in his final suit.”
And with that, Tran spat on Festus’s cravat and stormed off.
Toward a Total X-Sanguination
What’re you smirking at, Edgerton?”
“Admiring your spit-shine. Focus, Fes-face! There’s another angle to the Menton lead—I’ve finally finished analyzing all the data my medu-kem brought me from Asteroid Zed’s computers.
“Turns out Menton wasn’t the only prisoner missing from Asteroid Zed. Sarah Bellum should’ve been in lockdown since 1972. But she never made it! With her powers, she could’ve mind-scribed everyone concerned into believing she was up there. For all we know, she could’ve been the one who catalyzed Menton’s powers—”
The Brotherfly swooped down, brushing his feet on Kareem’s shoulders and head.
“Get the hell off me, you moron!” yelled Kareem. “What took you so long? I called you down here five minutes ago!”
André landed, ignoring the question. “Yo, Kreem, you gots a army out there, son. Army of reporters. Looking to talk to y’all.”
Kareem turned his back on Festus without so much as a word. I followed him toward the entrance with André flapping directly overhead.
“Got some fine-ass newsladies out there, K-dawg,” said André. “But what with your ‘investigation’ making you the Zulu flavor of the week, André gon hafta work his bzzzt!-mojo extra hard to get any attention, specially since you light-skinned negroes always get all the play—”
“What kinda bullshit have you been drinking, André? You and I are the exact same color! And you’re the one who was on the cover of The Source, on Essence, you were People’s Sexiest Superhero Alive, so don’t be giving me your—”
“Whoa-whoa-whoa! You redbone dodecaroons are so touchy! André gots to be calling you Detective Defensive! Don’t worry, bruh—soon you can be releasin all the tension you got to with them repor-teurs. They’s a fox from FOX out there with tadow who’s bizanging!”
“I’m in the Forty-Two Chambers, André! Vow of chastity, remember?”
“All that means is more for André, dawg!” he said, rubbing his hands together and grinning. “All-you-can-eat hoes!”
At the gates of the estate, cameras and reporters swarmed X-Man, demanding answers about the status of his investigation and his reaction to polls showing him with a 60 percent lead over the Flying Squirrel. And then a reporter in a pin-striped pantsuit and push-up bra shouldered her way to the front of the throng, holding up a book with the face of an angry hyper-muscular woman on its cover.
“Jaylene Dander from FOX, Kareem. This is an advance copy of Billi Biceps’s tell-all autobiography, Butch Like Me—”
“I don’t know anything about Billi Biceps, Jaylene—she was never in the F*O*O*J, she doesn’t—”
“Billi said she was the victim of a cruel lie—that her year-long relationship with Power Grrrl was nothing but a heartless sham—”
“—I’m here to investigate an attempt to assassinate one of this country’s most esteemed superheroes, part of an ongoing investigation into the assassination of the most esteemed superhero—”
“—a heartless sham designed to cover up the fact that Power Grrrl was never a lesbian, that in fact she was having a secret affair with you.”
Suddenly every camera and microphone was shoved in Kareem’s face, and for the first time since I’d met him, he was speechless.
“How do you explain this, Kareem?” said Jaylene. “You, the radical, militant, antiwhite, Black Power crimefighter, sleeping with someone that Hero Threat calls ‘a skanky, white, crypto-sexual, pop-tart heroine-poseur’?”
André howled from above, buzzing his wings in hilarity. “And he aint even supposta be sleepin with no ladies at all, no how!”
Cameras swung up toward the Brotherfly. “Him an all his Forty-Two-Chamber-havin blackocentric homies, they all supposta be ‘chaste,’ an now it turn out he been doin the chasin, an that he been lying down on the job to be eating off th’blond rug?”
“Shut up, you mak-head! Look, Jaylene, your allegations are a complete, utter colostomy bag! I—listen, I never, ever—”
“How do you respond to newly surfaced documents, Kareem,” said the newswoman, “showing that you actually hated Hawk King?”
“WHAT? Are you NUTS?” he shouted. “What kind of insanity is that? Hawk King was my hero! My teacher, leader, and mentor—”
The statuesque reporter took out a thin newspaper. “This is a 1984 copy of Mama Said Punch Whitey in tha Throat, the Langston-Douglas underground newspaper you used to write for under the pen name Anavidge Blackman. You wrote, quote, Hawk King…is a stooge for F*O*O*J-led white domination of the planet, end quote. And in another article,” she said, producing that issue, “you wrote, quote, I’ve been proudly hating all my life, hating the nation of millions holding us back. We opposing jive turkeys.”
Cameras were clicking, whirring, and whining faster than ever. Kareem’s face had drained to beige.
“Because your allegations about Hawk King’s secret identity,” said FOX’s Ms. Dander, “and the alleged ‘secret connection’ you supposedly shared with him have been the key to your electoral legitimacy—”
“Tomorrow, look, tomorrow, everyone—listen! I’m scheduled—I told you all at Hawk King’s funeral that I would be revealing the contents of Hawk King’s final papyrus, contents which will—”
“—a papyrus whose authenticity, given your molecular word-powers, will be impossible to prove, I’m sure,” said Jaylene Dander, who then shook the newspaper articles in the X-Man’s face. “But how do you rate your chances of being elected Director of Operations, Kareem, now that these extreme documents showing your extremist views have seen the light of day? How can you expect voters to trust a white-hating extremist?”
“How do I—I don’t hate white people! You just used the word ‘extreme’ or ‘extremist’ three times, you freaking Hyksos—”
Kareem spluttered to a stop while cameras clicked all over him like a plague of crickets.
“No kot-tam comment!” he yelled.
He shoved himself into the choke of reporters, trying to wedge his way back inside the grounds and through the gate. Blocked by photographers, he finally started shoving and cursing and got shoved back and cursed at, which made him counter-counter-shove and -curse. Every moment of it was immortalized in photographs and news video that soon would be beamed around the nation.
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