Jokertown Shuffle Read online

  She glanced up. The monitor lady was watching her intently, just as she'd thought. That always happened when other girls got ready to fight. Sprout thought it was because the monitor lady got in trouble if she reported that the other girls were fighting but got rewarded if she told on Sprout. But that probably just meant Sprout was stupid, like the other girls always told her.

  The door opened. Two men walked in. One of the girls squealed in surprise. The monitor stepped forward, frowning. "I'm sorry, you're not supposed-my God, it's President Bush."

  "Yes. Yes it is. How perceptive of you to notice." He smiled and nodded at her, then looked around the room. "Sprout? Is there a Sprout Meadows here?"

  Cheeks burning, Sprout dropped her National Geographic and stood up. She couldn't say a word. Inside she quailed, knowing that he'd never see her because she couldn't make herself talk.

  But he did. He smiled and dropped to one knee. "Come here, honey. I've come to take you to your daddy."

  The movies notwithstanding, a human being is not physically capable of aiming two handguns at different targets with any degree of accuracy. A Morakh is. Somehow the two police officers sensed it.

  They hadn't offered any backchat when he ordered them to drop their trousers around their ankles. Now he'd gotten them to cuff themselves together, back-to-back, and stand to one side, still covered by the Colt, while a nervous staffer pulled the phones out of the wall under the watchful eye of the service revolver. The people outside were still dithering. Everything seemed to be under control.

  He knew it couldn't last.

  "I can't believe this is going so smoothly," K.C. said as they approached the stairwell. Her voice sounded strange in her ears; everything sounded strange in her ears. She was getting antsy to get back in her own body. She'd never liked long-term jumps. They disoriented her, and her borrowed bodies never seemed to respond well to her commands.

  "Are you really taking me to my daddy?" Sprout asked George Bush, who was holding her hand.

  "Yes, I am. I'm not really the president, you see. I'm one of your daddy's friends. Cosmic Traveler, I'm called."

  Her face lit up. "Oh, I know! The blue one. The one everybody says is a weenie."

  Black, and menacing in his borrowed cop suit, Blaise stalked down the reform-school corridor, head buzzing with fury and the disinfectant smell that forced its way into his nostrils like probing fingers. He had set the perfect trap for Meadows: the pigs had the drop on him, and even if Meadows found the balls to act, no matter how powerful a "friend" the ancient hippie summoned, he or she couldn't make his companions bulletproof Meadows didn't have the spine to write them off and drive for his daughter on his own. Blaise knew that as he knew he could make a five-year-old skip rope into the path of a speeding semi.

  Yet Meadows had found a way through the jaws of the perfect trap.

  I was right to fear him! he yammered in his mind, as if Bloat could read him from here. He's too powerful! He must be destroyed!

  Ahead of him Blaise saw that the corridor led into a waiting room of some sort. A familiar pair of legs encased in skintight black protruded from the left, lying up against a chest-high wood-sided planter.

  He paused, unsnapped the safety strap on his holster. He'd left the riot gun propped inside the side door he'd let himself in through. To a European, a shotgun is a peasant's weapon.

  He preferred the precision of a handgun, and was vain of the combat shooting skills his grandfather had drilled into him. He drew the pistol. It was one of the new Walther nine millimeters with an ultra-high-capacity magazine. Solid Euroworkmanship; he approved. He shifted to the right-hand wall of the corridor ard moved forward with the pistol held in both hands, ready.

  The rest of K. C. came into view. She lay with her arms cuffed behind her. Her head hung listlessly on her neck. Blaise recognized a common jump reaction. K.C. wasn't home right now. His pulse raced with hunter's eagerness. Swiftly, sure, he glided forward into the foyer.

  As expected, the monster was there, positioned to cover both the front door and the white-faced D-home staffers. The Morakh. The ultimate abomination-a variant Takisian.

  Despite the hostility between Tachyon and Morakh, Durg had often been set to watch young Blaise. The boy had a nasty way with baby-sitters. But a Morakh mind cannot be controlled. Try as he might, Blaise had been unable to dent Durg's mindshield.

  But that was then. Blaise had grown, and learned. He was unique, a new thing beneath the sun of Takis or Earth, and he knew no rules.

  He reached for Durg's mind. It was like grabbing at a wall, massive as battleship steel, friction-free as glass. Yet for just a moment he actually had a grip. The narrow head snapped around, the lilac eyes found his and widened.

  The tree-trunk arm swung around. Blaise narrowed his focus, pouring his entire being into a desperate attempt to stop it. It was like trying to keep a tank gun from traversing. The heavy Colt rose inexorably on-line.

  For the rest of Blaise's life he would believe he saw the black 10-mm eye of the pistol flash yellow. Only Takisian reflexes saved him then. He felt the hot breath of the bullet's passage as he threw himself back into the corridor, and its miniature sonic boom stung his cheek like a slap.

  He hit the right-hand wall with enough force to send the air out of him, went down on butt and shoulderblades. But his training held; he kept two-handed control of the SWAT man's wonder nine, kept the pistol trained generally on the corridor mouth the whole time.

  When he stopped sliding, he firmed his aim in the middle of the door where he judged the center of the Morakh's mass would appear. He held there for a dozen highspeed heartbeats, ignoring the trembling in his arms.

  The monster did not follow up his advantage. Blaise fought panic like a swimmer in an undertow, forcing his mind to the surface. Durg would not pursue him, he realized. To do so would leave the door unguarded, and holding the surrounding police at bay would be Durg's main priority. Short of a direct threat to his master-or death-there was no force in the universe that could move a Morakh from his post.

  The fear receded. Rage took its place. Blaise dropped his eyes to the limp body of K.C. Strange and smiled. With a gymnast's bound, he came to his feet. He flexed his knees slightly, locked his arms into the isosceles triangle of the Weaver stance, drew a deep breath.

  The fat white dot of the foresight hovered like a moon over K. C. Strange's sternum. Blaise began to let the breath out. The trigger slack came in.

  "Shit! There's shooting!" K. C. stopped halfway down the stairs.

  "Well, it can't hurt me, at least," read George Bush's lips.

  She tossed her pistol to Cosmic Traveler and fumbled a pair of handcuffs out of a pocket of Norwalk's coat. "Put these on my wrists."

  "Whatever for?"

  "Something's coming down. I've gotta get back to my body."

  "But it's too soon! You have to get us out of here!"

  "You're the ace. If I have to, I can jump somebody else. Jesus, come on."

  "Oh, this is just too much. Trust Meadows to have such unreliable friends. How can you leave me and this innocent child in the lurch?"

  "You, easy." She finished snapping the cuffs around Norwalk's knobby ginger-haired wrists. "Sayonara, sucker."

  Blaise squeezed the trigger with one smooth pull, felt the sear break crisply.

  K.C. raised her head. Her eyes met his above the sights. "No!" he screamed. The gun bucked and roared. The bullet hit K.C. two inches above the right nipple and slammed her back into the planter.

  Durg at-Morakh fired three quick rounds into the corridor from which the shot had come. He was firing blind, suppressive fire; the angle was bad, and he couldn't see a target. It was impossible to cover the gaggle of prisoners, the front door, and the side corridors all at once. Even Morakh had their limitations.

  Still, he could scarcely believe he had missed his first shot at the intruding policeman. There had been something behind his eyes, a flicker of touch, like nothing he had ever felt before. P
erhaps that had thrown off his aim by a fraction of are.

  It was no excuse. A Morakh knew no excuses, only success or death. If his lord demanded his life for K. C. Strange, it was his.

  For now, he still had duty.

  Cosmic Traveler and Sprout had just reached bottom when the shot hit K. C. The Traveler cringed as Durg blasted shots in return. His impulse was to go insubstantial and melt through the floor into the basement. It was the sensible thing to do. He could keep himself insubstantial only so long, and then bullets would be able to hurt him, cops would be able to lay heavy coarse hands on him. He couldn't tolerate that risk. But something-residual influence of the baseline Mark persona perhaps-made it impossible for him simply to vanish and leave Sprout to her fate.

  Durg saw him, waved him back. "Go. I'll catch up with you."

  Traveler rabbited up the stairs with Sprout in tow. Tears stung Blaise's eyes as he stumbled down the corridor. Oh, K.C., K.C., why did you have to choose that moment to jump back?

  She was hurt too badly to muster the mental concentration needed to jump to safety in another body. She was lost to him, lost. Rage and grief rose up and threatened to overwhelm him.

  Now I'll never get to torture you to death! Oh, Mark Meadows, you have much to answer for.

  Durg ignored his captives' screaming. He was focused on the front entrance now. The police outside would have heard the shooting.

  Bulky in his flak jacket, a SWAT man hit the outer door, popped it open, and rolled in, leveling a shotgun from the hip.

  Durg had orders from his lord to avoid violence if possible, to avoid killing at all costs. Durg had mentally amended that to not killing anyone except to preserve the life of Mark or his daughter. He could always atone with his life later if Mark would not absolve him of guilt for disobedience; to preserve the life of one's lord was a higher imperative even than to obey. But Durg felt confident he need take no lives. None of these groundlings was a big enough threat.

  Without seeming to hurry, he pivoted, bringing the Colt around. He fired as it came on-line.

  The Kevlar jacket was guaranteed to stop anything up to a. 44 Magnum. The 10-mm was slightly less potent, equivalent to a. 4-I Magnum. As advertised, the vest did stop it. But the copper-jacketed bullet delivered a lot of energy right through the vest into the patrolman's solar plexus. He went down gasping like a grounded carp.

  "Ohh," Cosmic Traveler moaned at the pistol crack that chased them up the stairs like Fate hounding a classical Greek hero. They popped out the top, and there at hand was salvation, the Traveler's ultimate refuge: a broom closet. He tried the door. Locked, of course.

  "Shit," he said.

  Sprout gasped. Heart in throat, he whirled, expecting to see fifteen hundred SWAT cops and federal agents thundering down on them like a herd of buffalo. Instead, the girl was staring straight at his face, and he realized he'd resumed his preferred form, a blue and hairless humanoid with a black cowl. "Wait here a moment, honey,'." he said, and stepped through the door.

  Once inside, he thought, why open the door? It will only let them know I'm here. And they'd never hurt a mere child. I

  The universe seemed to vibrate to a single plangent chord. A chasm opened beneath his feet. "No!" he screamed. "It's not possible! I'm supposed to get an hour! Oh, God, the fool will get me killllled!.. ."

  He plummeted into black infinity.

  "Something's going on here," SWAT lieutenant Dixon said to the pencil neck from plainclothes. "I'm assuming Lieutenant Norwalk has been taken hostage. I'm taking command here." He pumped his neck and shoulders a little, hearkening back to lineman days.

  The honkie from Serious Crimes kind of fell on himself. "Okay."

  A couple of officers had dragged Torres from the doorway, and he was unloading breakfast into what winter and half a hundred booted feet had left of a rosebush.

  "All right, we're going in again, but this time we're gonna do it right. Connelly, take your men around to the left. Washington, you go right. Kelly, you get three and take the back. The rest of us are going right through the front door." There was no one in view down the corridor when Durg got there. He waved his Colt back at the terrified staffers. "I'm letting you go now. Out the front door."

  The captives just stared at each other and trembled. He fired a round into the wall over their heads. It sounded like a howitzer going off.

  "Now!"

  They stampeded for the exit just as the cops were coming in.

  For a moment, Mark Meadows stood in the dark with his hands braced against the door and his head hung between them. It had been a long time since he'd been the Traveler. He'd almost forgotten what this concentration of Lysol and ammonia smelled like.

  Cosmic Traveler's final fading plaint still echoed in his skull.

  I never promised you an hour, man. That's just the max. He was pleased to have thought of filling a vial with a sixth of a normal dose for just this kind of emergency, and by chance his timing had been perfect. Maybe he could do something right. By accident at least.

  "Sprout," he breathed. He fumbled at the door, got it open, got his feet tangled, and fell on his knees in the front of his daughter.

  Without a word, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  At the foot of the stairs he found Durg. The Morakh had his Colt jammed up in the notch formed by Lt. Norwalk's jaw and his ear, and was winding duct tape around the officer's head to hold it in place. Mark looked past him and yelped. "K. C.!" She was lying against the wall. The front of her T-shirt was scarlet. She was breathing with difficulty. Her eyes were half closed and looked at nothing.

  He knelt beside her. "Baby," he said.

  "Don't touch her," Durg said. "She's badly hurt." There was a band of duct tape diagonally across her chest, holding down a gauze compress, now dripping red. Durg believed in being prepared.

  Mark touched her cheek. She moaned. Blood bubbled from her lips.

  Durg finished taping the dazed policeman. "We must move. The groundlings in front will eventually compose themselves enough to act."

  Mark looked a wordless appeal at him.

  "I can bear her," the Morahk said. "You take the young mistress and go."

  "Come on, honey." Mark grabbed Sprout's hand, and they raced back up the stairs.

  At the top, Mark turned to his daughter. "Stand back," he said. He reached into the inside pocket of his cord jacket, brought out a tiny vial full of orange powder, raised it to his lips.

  From the far end of the corridor, a voice screamed, "Meadows!"

  From thirty feet away, he could see Meadows's mouth fall open. "Blaise?"

  Blaise laughed.

  What he was about to do was fantastically risky. He was beyond caring. Besides, he was young, and he was Blaise, and he was immortal.

  He seized Meadows's eyes with his, coiled his soul like a panther, and sprang.

  Sprout looked from the strangely familiar man dressed like a policeman to her daddy. Her father was wrapped in flames. The expression of calm happiness and love on her perfect features never flickered. Sprout took it for granted that everybody's daddy periodically caught fire and turned into somebody else.

  Roiling red and black surrounded Blaise, suffused him. For a moment, he saw his own now-vacant body through a roaring curtain of flame. And then his soul exploded outward, went spinning into an endless treacherous dark where shadows went to die.

  JJ Flash rocked on his feet. It was as if he were whirling around and around inside his own head, surrounded by a maelstrom of shrieking blackness.

  The whirlpool effect subsided like water gurgling down a drain, carrying with it a dying shrill keening like nothing Flash had ever heard. "Wow," he said. Bloat must've gotten burned with some impure shit. JJ would like to hunt up his supplier someday and return the favor just a bit, teach him better business practices. Guys like that gave the free market a bad name.

  He opened his eyes to see a SWAT cop collapsing like a marionette with its strings snipped a
t the far end of the hall. "What the fuck?"

  "Hi, JJ," Sprout said shyly.

  "Babe. What's happening?" He gave her a quick hug and hung his head over the stairwell.

  "Durg. Go for it."

  Durg kicked the back door. He put a bit too much IEnglish on it. The heavy meshed-glass-and-steel door popped right off its hinges and went spinning out into the small blacktopped yard to bounce off the eight-foot wall that separated the institute grounds from the street.

  He stopped, slung K.C. over his shoulder as gently as he could. Then he thrust Norwalk out into the cloud-filtered light, holding the Colt with his left hand.

  "Everybody get back," he commanded. "I'm holding the hammer back with my thumb. If I release it, the lieutenant dies."

  He gave them a few beats to mull that over, then stepped outside. He could see four squaddies hunkered in pairs, covering the door from either side. He walked deliberately to the back wall. Then he looked up at the second-floor window of the annex.

  JJ Flash kissed Sprout on the forehead. "Stick tight, honey. Back in half a tick."

  He rolled his hand onto its back. Flame leapt forth, played against the window. Glass and steel wire shimmered, puffed away. Flash followed.

  "You can't use tear gas," the therapist said. She was a redheaded woman with saddlebag thighs and thick horn-rim glasses. "That kind of brutality would devastate our developmental strategies-"

  "Screw your strategies," Dixon said. "I'm talkin' lives here="

  "Yo!" a voice said. "Down there. Pay attention."

  The babble of voices in the courtyard stopped. Everybody looked at one another, then up.

  There was a small red-haired man in an orange jogging suit hovering just above the peak of the roof. "You might want to stand back away from the LeBaron, there."

  "Nail the bastard!" Dixon roared.

  Guns came up. Flash let his hand loll out. A jet of fire flashed to the top of the car Mark and company had arrived in. Just enough to melt through the roof and start the vinyl inside burning nicely.