Jokertown Shuffle Read online

  "Good. I've always wanted to meet you, but I wanted you away from that place. Do you like it here?"

  "It's very… lovely."

  She had reached an energetic stream. The water was rushing, chuckling over the rocks and parting around a gigantic gray boulder that squatted in the center of the streambed. Tach couldn't resist. Lifting her long skirts, she leapt lightly from rock to rock, feeling the chill touch of the spume of her face and hands. Quickly she clambered up the side of the granite behemoth. The sound of the water was very loud, and mist from the rapids occasionally kissed Tachyon's face.

  "So, who are you?" asked Tachyon with studied casualness as she picked gray-green lichen from a crevice in the rock.

  "A friend."

  "I have none in this place. All my friends live in another world, another time."

  "I'm here. I'm real."

  "You're a voice on the wind. The whisper of a cloud. The murmur of water. A dream construct of a maddened mind." She shivered and hugged herself. The long sleeves of sea green gauze snagged on the rough surface of the boulder. "Give me back my world. I can't live in madness, no matter how pleasant."

  And suddenly she was back in the cell. The darkness pressing in on all sides, the concrete cold and rough against her bare bottom.

  "Yes," she said on a sob. "This is real."

  "Oh, Princess, I'm sorry. I'll help. I swear to you, I'll help."

  She woke with the passion of that promise still echoing in her mind.

  "Well, friend, not to sound cynical, but I'll believe it when I see it," she called aloud.

  The sound was wrong. The food trap rattled like pebbles in a can as the bolt was pulled back. This sounded like a road being graded. The light struck her eyes like a lance, and tears began to stream down her face. Squinting desperately, she made out a manlike shape against the glare. And then the smell struck. Baked chicken. Saliva filled her mouth like a geyser springing to life.

  Tach clambered to her feet, her nakedness forgotten, consumed by the lure of food. Now that she was closer, she recognized the manshape. And manshape was the only way the joker Peanut could be categorized. His skin was hardened, puckered like the shell of a peanut, hence the nickname. His eyes were almost lost in the scaly mask of his face. One arm was missing, and Tach noticed that he had a blouse and a pair of jeans flung over the stump. Peanut struggled to bend, to set down the tray. Tach leapt to his aid lest the joker spill that wondrous banquet.

  "Thanks, Doc." His voice was a heavy rasp forced past lips that could scarcely move. "I brung you some food, and some clothes, but you gotta eat fast so he don't find out."

  Tachyon didn't miss the subtle emphasis nor the way the joker's eyes flickered nervously back over his shoulder. So everyone feared Blaise. It was not just spinelessness on her part.

  "Peanut, let me out," said Tach as she pulled on the jeans.

  A stiff headshake. "No, we gotta be careful. He said we was walkin' a tightrope." Different emphasis this time. The timbre of respect.

  "Who? Who is this person?" She completed the final button on the blouse and felt confidence return like the growth of a second skin. It was amazing what lack of clothes did to one's morale.

  Peanut's eyes were shifting nervously. "I've said too much already. Eat, Doc, eat. And he'll help. He's helpin' all of us."

  Tach squatted and stripped the meat from the chicken with graceful slender fingers. She ate in quick little gulps but was careful to rate her intake. Too much too fast would send the stomach into a spasm, and it would be criminal to vomit up this bounty. There was a tomato on the plate. She bit into it, the juice oozing over her chin. Replete for the first time in weeks, she sighed and rocked back on her heels.

  She seemed relaxed. In reality, she was measuring the distance between Peanut and the door. Testing the strength of her muscles. Suddenly she sprang and darted for the exit. But the weeks of imprisonment had taken their toll. Clumsily she staggered forward on trembling legs. The horny surface of Peanut's arm connected painfully with her face, flinging her backward.

  He was stuttering with shame. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Doc, but you made me. I gotta think of the others." Peanut swept up the tray and fled. The slamming of the door had a certain grim finality. Tachyon began to weep.

  Wait, wait, my love.

  It was telepathy, but telepathy like a half-seen shadow in the darkness, a firefly's path observed from the corner of an eye, the sigh of music blown on the wind. She reached for that elusive telepathic sense with both hands.

  "Help me!" she screamed aloud. I will not fail you.

  The contact was broken, but the sincerity of that promise warmed Tachyon with the comfort of an embrace. Someone cared.

  With dawning wonder, she stroked the material of the blouse. Silk. To what care this mysterious benefactor had gone.

  "Thank you. Thank you!" she whispered into the darkness.

  His eyes turned down at the corners when he smiled. It gave him a crafty catlike look, and it always made Tisianne laugh when he saw it. When Shaklan got that look, it meant work would be put aside and some pleasurable outing was forthcoming.

  "Papa, where are we going?"

  "Ice-sailing."

  "But it's past my bedtime, and I'm hungry… and cold."

  "What you'll see is worth more than sleep."

  His arms were clasped about his father's neck, and the fur and lace at the older man's throat tickled Tis's nose. He sneezed. The sound blended with the crack of boot heels on the marble floor.

  The aurora borealis was dancing like a shaken curtain of jewels across the star-strewn blackness of the night sky. The cold was intense, and each breath hurt like a rake of claws across the lungs. The glacier that crowned the peak of Da'shalan was cracking and groaning. The crunch of snow beneath booted feet, an occasional muffled cough from the bodyguards. Tis kept his eyes closed, his face buried against his father's neck. Shaklan smelled of ambergis and musk and the sharp pungent scent of gunpowder.

  Glittering like a mirror, the lake threw back the colors of the borealis. A ice-sailor skimmed across the surface of the frozen water. It was accompanied by a delicate ringing of bells. It heeled over and skidded to a stop with a hiss. Ice fragments stung Tis's face. He licked his lips and tasted the sharp taste of mountain water as the ice melted in the heat of his mouth.

  They were aboard, and the wind was stinging his cheeks as the ice-sailor swept across the lake.

  "Take the tiller, Tis."

  "I can't, Papa. The wind… it's too cold."

  A man stepped forward. The borealis formed a halo behind his dark head. A cloak of white and silver lay across his arm. The texture of the fur was so delicate, the tips sparkling in the starlight, that it seemed as if it had been formed of snow. He bowed.

  "Ma'am." His tone was so reverential, deepened in the way a man had when he was indicating to a woman that he found her beautiful. Tachyon was disoriented. The little boy looked in confusion to his father.

  Shaklan smiled, nodded. "The Outcast will care for you now"

  Tachyon looked back to this stranger, and disorientation birthed a different and more familiar emotion for a Takisiansuspicion. The man's coloring was all wrong. Black hair? Tach had never seen the color except as a dyed affectation among the House Alaa until he/she had come to earth. And his clothes. Plain brown leather-no style at all. And the final proof that this interloper in her dream was no Takisian-the name. A Takisian of the psi-lord class wore his or her moniker with more than pride. It was a shout, a scream for attention. A thousand, five, ten thousand years of careful breeding was represented in a name. Can you match it? Can you equal this pedigree? Of course you can't. I'm matchless, peerless. I am Tisianne brant T'sara sek Halima-he could continue in this vein for nearly an hour. But she didn't have the time. Danger had entered his haven of sleep.

  Tach backed up, until she was brought up short by his father's knees. "No, Papa, don't leave me." It was a frenzied whisper.

  Shaklan chuckled, shook his
head, then bent over Tachyon s hands. The strands of his golden hair caught the light and seemed to glitter like spun wire. Tach pressed her mouth against Shaklan's ear and continued to plead. But the words seemed to be reduced to mere puff's of air, and Shaklan's hair caught in the cracks of Tachyon's lips.

  "You will be as safe in the Outcast's hands as you are in mine."

  Shaklan placed a quick kiss in the palm of each hand, then folded Tach's hands together as if the child were holding and protecting the kisses. It was a beloved ritual, and Tach smiled mistily up at his father, the fear forgotten. Shaklan led Tachyon close to the Outcast.

  The man placed the cloak gently about her shoulders. Somewhere in this confusing interchange Tach's sex had gotten very confused again. The long white-blond hair mingled with the fur. Tach frowned. Even her hair seemed to have developed tiny diamond lights. It reminded her of the illustrations in the more flamboyant, romantic Japanese comic books Blaise had been wont to leave strewn about the apartment.

  "This is silly. Have my eyes been invaded by stars as well?"

  The question seemed to rattle the Outcast. Fingertips lightly touched the brim of his black cloth hat, fluttered to the hilt of the rapier hung on the leather belt with the air of a man trying to reassure himself that he had not forgotten his trousers.

  "Princess, I'm the whisper of a cloud, a voice on the wind."

  "You!" Involuntarily, her hands closed on the soft leather of his jerkin. "Help me."

  "Soon."

  The Outcast leaned in, his lips just brushing the back of her hand when there came a raucous scream of laughter. They jerked apart, and Tach stared in confusion at a penguin with ironic human eyes wearing ice skates, gliding along with the skimmer.

  The crash of the door being thrown back brought her awake. Blaise had returned. The glare of the flashlights left Tachyon blinking like a mole as the light pulled tears from her sensitive eyes.

  "Grandfather. I should have come-" He broke off abruptly, a thunderous frown wrinkling his forehead. "Hey! Where did you get the fucking clothes?"

  "I went to Saks for them. What do you think? They were shoved through the door along with my slops."

  "I see I've been away too long. People are getting soft with you. But I'm back now, and you'll be pleased to hear I've wrecked the clinic. You're really disappointing a lot of people over in jokertown."

  Each word seemed to strike like a splash of acid. Tach blinked frantically, trying to focus. Eventually she succeeded and flew at Blaise like a fighting cock. "You monster. You evil,. parentless bastard? What have you done to my people?"

  Blaise knocked her down easily, then blew a kiss at Tachyon. "You're beautiful when you're angry."

  The five youths accompanying Blaise laughed. They were all drunk, and they gusted whiskey-scented remarks (outstanding only in their crudity and banality) back and forth between them like men playing shuttlecock.

  The rasp of the zipper on Blaise's slacks cut through the babble and banter. "Get him out of her clothes," said Blaise, hopelessly tangling his pronouns.

  Even as terror closed her throat, Tachyon noticed that Blaise's voice had deepened. He was becoming a man. Apparently he was again determined to prove to Tachyon just how much of a man. "Blaise, don't do this. This is the action of an animal. How can you assault a woman in this way? How can you touch me," Tach pleaded.

  The young men were advancing. Tach backed away from them. A step in time to each desperate word. The wall arrived with startling suddenness. There was no place left to run.

  They grabbed her and ripped the clothes off her. Then she was down, her legs wrenched open. There was a grinding ache in her hips, and the concrete was cold beneath her bare buttocks.

  Blaise was undressing with elaborate flourishes. He handed his sweater, shirt, and slacks to another young man, who folded them with almost reverential care. Tach craned to see, as if facing the horror that approached were preferable. Blaise's cock was rearing rampant from his red brush.

  Tach's head hit the concrete with a sharp crack as she began to struggle wildly. She had thought she could lie back and take it. She was wrong. Takisian upbringing went too deep. This was rape. A crime virtually unknown on her world. An act so heinous that it was viewed as a form of insanity.

  A last inane little thought passed through her head as Blaise lowered himself slowly onto her cringing body: We will kill a woman without compunction. But the Ideal forbid we should rape her. Which society is more insane? Human or Takisian?

  It went on and on. Blaise was deliberately withholding his orgasm. Battering at her. Alternating the punishing assault with nibbling little kisses to her breasts, lips, and ears.

  Somewhere during the ordeal Tachyon began to plead. "Please, Blaise, please."

  "What's the matter, Grandpa?" Blaise crooned softly in her ear.

  "Don't hurt me anymore. Give me back my body. Let me go."

  "You're still too proud, Granddaddy. You're still giving orders, even when you say please. Ask nicely, Granddad. Beg."

  Blaise pulled out of her, and stood. "Let him up." The boys released her.

  "Now kneel to me, Grandpa, and beg."

  Tach got to her knees. She was staring down at Blaise's bare feet. There was dirt beneath the large toenails. It sickened her in some perverse and bizarre way. And she realized that no self-abasement would soothe or satisfy the demon creature before her. She sprang to her feet and spit in Blaise's face. There was a gasp like a sighing wind from the watching teens. Numbly, Blaise reached up and wiped away the spittle. Studied his fingers. His face was blank, expressionless. Then suddenly it twisted into a hideous grimace, and he backhanded Tachyon. She flew across the room, and came up hard against the far wall.

  Blaise was on her. This time, as he drove into her, beat her unmercifully about the face and head. His ejaculation when it came was like a hot tide in her abused body. Blaise gave her one final cuff, but the sexual release seemed to have spent his fury. Without a backward glance, the boy, stood up and dressed, and he and his entourage left the cell.

  For a long time Tachyon just lay on the floor.

  The Temptation of Hieronymous Bloat

  IV

  Two weeks later, and I have tried to get her out. I knew it wouldn't do any good to talk to Blaise, so I didn't. But I knew Blaise's thoughts. I knew that he had a grudging respect for Prime, even possessed a fear of the man who could create a jumper and couldn't be jumped himself, and so I tried that way.

  I had to. It was bad enough that I had to hear Tachyon's mindvoice. But now… now she is in all my dreams too. I have them every night. She waits for me in my sleep, patiently.

  It hurts. It makes me want to take Blaise and throttle the bastard.

  I did try. Really. I talked to Prime-Latham.

  Latham folded his hands on the new pair of Dockers he was wearing. Zelda made muscle-magazine poses behind him. He waited, filling his mind with old contracts and legal briefs, so that I had a difficult time knowing what he was really thinking. "I'm a busy man, Governor, and I really can't stay here very long," he said. "What is it you want?"

  "I want your assistance," I told him. "Blaise has done something stupid and dangerous. I assume you know what I'm talking about, or do I have to draw you a picture of a certain red-haired alien who has had an involuntary sexchange operation?" I grinned down at him. "I used to be able to draw pretty well. I could have drawn a picture."

  Latham only blinked. The dense contract language in his mind parted just long enough for him to speak-he really was very good at hiding his thoughts. "What Blaise does is his own business, not mine," he said.

  He gave me a smile that belonged on a codfish. The events of the last month had taken their toll on Latham, but he still had the cold act down well, if a little cracked around the edges.

  "Kidnapping Tachyon was dumb," I continued. "Even if Blaise hadn't brought his grandfather here, I would've said that. I supposed Blaise gets the stupidity naturally. Tachyon's certainly done some
idiotic things himself-backing out on Hartmann comes to mind-but overall, we jokers owe Tachyon a hell of a lot. I don't want him hurt."

  Zelda just snorted. "Why," Latham asked, "should I do anything at all?"

  "Because," I said, a little bewildered that he could even ask, "a man like Tachyon doesn't deserve what Blaise is doing to him." That seemed clear enough to me.

  Latham just pursed his lips and nodded. He sniffed, delicately. "Sympathy," he said at last, "is more foolish than revenge as a motive for doing something." He waited. "In my opinion."

  I gave him all the rest then. "Look, you don't have to do it out of common decency if that offends you. Do it because Blaise has made the situation for the jokers a hundred times worse. You've heard the news reports. Bush has told Congress he'll consider a revival of the exotic laws if they'll put the legislation on his desk. The courts are playing hardball with any joker accused of any crime. Two states have already passed bills for mandatory sterilization of wild card carriers. The editorials in the papers are full of hatred and venom. Jokertown is a police state, and Koch's making noises about `no more tolerance of scofflaws and squatters who take over public property'-he always did have a way with words. The jumpers have the entire city paranoid and armed. Kelly isn't going to be able to masquerade as Tachyon for long. Taking someone with his high visibility will force the authorities to look at my Rox."

  Zelda pursed her lips in sarcastic sympathy. Latham just sat there, hands steepled under his chin.

  "I know you, Prime," I continued. "You hide your thoughts well enough when you're sitting here in front of me, but not always. I know everything you know. All I have to do is whisper the right things to the Egrets, or maybe just tell the authorities what a certain prominent city attorney is up to…" I left the sentence unfinished.

  Zelda had gone alert and tense. The legal script in Latham's mind shredded like tissue paper. In Latham's mind, everything was cold. So cold. "Let me give you some advice, Governor," he said as softly as ever. "Never bluff with blackmail. It is always a very weak hand. "

  "It's not a bluff. I'll do it. I will."