Free Minister Faust by From the Notebooks of Dr Brain (v4.0) (html) Page A

his own icon fails? Can anyone survive the pincering punishment that is the iron mandibles of the Icon Trap?

Icon to Generations
    S he sat across from me, the only illumination inside the echoing darkness, radiant in her raven-feather hair and flashing amethyst eyes. In one way it was hard to believe that it had been only two days since she learned of the death of Hawk King.
    On the other hand, she’d exchanged her electrum-plated iron armor for an elegant black skirt and a mandarin-collared powder blue cardigan, and her ubiquitous black-and-white feathered cloak was hung neatly elsewhere.
    But if she was attempting to affect a schule-frau appearance, it wasn’t working; her six-foot-four feminine muscularity couldn’t be contained by pleated wool. In the 1950s, more than one Hollywood scribe compared Lauren Bacall to her. Half a century later, she still looked an athletic thirty-nine when in fact, she’d seen two millennia. Yet by some accounts, she’d changed more during her twentieth-century career than she had over the previous two thousand years.
    This woman knew better than almost anyone what it meant to be an icon. Because for centuries, Iron Lass–AKA Dr. Hnossi Icegaard, UCLD professor of Military History, Political Economy, and German and Scandinavian Literature—was literally worshiped as Hnossi of Aesgard, daughter of Queen Frigg of the Norse gods.
    Since our sessions began, I’d noted her extreme reluctance to share her feelings; rather she hoarded her words and thoughts in my presence as if they were a mound of Hostess Twinkies and I a projectile bulimic. Hoping for better results that day, I shifted into a new approach as the two of us sat alone inside the temporal lobe of her brain.
    “I’m sure that over the last forty-eight hours, Iron Lass, you’ve been reflecting mostly on Hawk King and your relationship with him, probably to the exclusion of pretty much anything else.
    “But today, I’d like to touch on an outstanding issue at the core of why you’re here—namely, why are you here?”
    Purple lightning crackled overhead along a neural pathway, the synapses pulsating in echoing thunder like throbbing stars.
    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