Dealer's Choice Read online

  “Right,” the Outcast said. “I get it now. You’re from my subconscious, aren’t you? — like all those things that Kelly” — he stopped himself — “Tachyon said. You’re all the fears I’ve had of the Rox failing.”

  “You still do not see it, Teddy.” Viracocha had on his sad gaze again: no, he was actually weeping, the old fart. The white-haired head shook dolefully. “Look!” he cried aloud, lifting his hands to the sky again, his gaze there now, not at the Outcast. “You see! It is as I told you — he does not comprehend. He is hopeless.”

  The ground rumbled underneath the Outcast’s feet. Stones slithered from the heights and crashed nearby. The grating dull thuds echoed through the misty landscape as if in answer to Viracocha’s words.

  The old man’s gaze fell upon the Outcast like a bludgeon. The eyes were dry now, and malevolent. His stare burned the Outcast like the heat from a fire. “You must die,” the old man whispered. “All heroes die.” Each word was like a knife thrust, and the Outcast’s body staggered with the impact of them as if they were physical blows. “Die now, Teddy,” Viracocha said again. The Outcast had gone to his knees, breathless, his heart pounding against the cage of his ribs. The world spun softly around him at Viracocha’s invocation. He thought he heard laughter.

  The Outcast’s breath was leaving him. Through the swirling dark, Teddy heard the taunting voice of Roger, his old neighborhood tormentor, he heard his parents, who had abandoned the child tainted by the wild card virus.

  “Damn you!” Teddy growled deep in his throat. The anger lent him the strength to rise to his feet again, taking on the Outcast aspect once more. He could feel the knobby wood of the staff in his hand, and its purple brilliance caressed his face. He pulled himself up the length of the wood.

  “Damn you!” he said to Viracocha, whose stare was now touched by fear. The Outcast rapped the bottom of his staff on the cold stones of the peak. He felt the power surging, moving from Bloat to himself, filling him. He pointed his staff at Viracocha like a weapon. The old man lifted his chin, and his gaze went hard and unreadable. “That’s right, you old fucker. I can roast you right where you stand and there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

  “But you will not,” Viracocha declared. “I know you, Teddy.”

  “Damn it, I told you that I’m the fucking Outcast!” His staff trembled in his hands. The power spat and crackled, leaping from the end of the staff. He could barely hold it back.

  “I could have killed you,” Viracocha said. “I will yet, if I can. But you…” Viracocha sighed. “Go home, Teddy,” he said. “Use your precious power and leave me.”

  The Outcast didn’t know how to answer. The dream-energy of Bloat hissed like static in his ears and he couldn’t think. He exhaled, harshly, wordlessly, then spun around. He released the surging power and it screamed from his staff like a banshee, a whirlwind dervish that enveloped him, swept him up and dizzily away.

  When it set him down again, he was back in Bloat’s body. Bloatblack was rippling and sliding down his sides.

  The man called Gary Wanatanabise cleared customs easily, the one complication coming when the uniformed officer stumbled over the name on the forged passport. “Listen, how the hell do you say this, sir?”

  “Wah-na-tah-na-vee-say.” What he didn’t say was that the “Gary” was from his true name; the other was effectively a joke stolen from a television commercial created by the imperialist AT&T. Wyungare had seen it on a bootleg tape of Twin Peaks smuggled into Western Australia.

  “So what’s it mean?” said the customs man a bit imperiously.

  “Sweet land of boundless opportunity.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The officer even smiled. “That’s real nice.”

  Wyungare picked up his unopened bag off the carpeted table.

  The officer looked away toward the next haggard traveler. “Have a nice day.”

  A little ragged from lack of sleep, Wyungare wanted to say, Thanks, but I’ve got other plans. He restrained the impulse. It would most likely be a very long day. He didn’t want to spend a large portion of it in a steel cage.

  He took the bus into the city and wondered at the skyline growing larger before his eyes. Then the road dipped into the Holland Tunnel and Wyungare felt the pressure of the river running overhead. It was not a comfortable feeling. He sensed a certain amount of filth in the water.

  After disembarking at the Port Authority Terminal, he checked a map posted under graffiti-defaced plastic and ventured into the gray morning outside. The moment he cleared the door, he was rushed by a half-dozen beings he took to be Manhattan jokers.

  “You wanna cab?” said a man with his face cracked like the bottom of a river in high-summer drought.

  “Hey! I getcha one with the lowest fare you can imagine. Where you goin’?” It was a woman with a bright pink face and her lips turned vertical rather than horizontal.

  “Uptown, sir? I can get you a good one. Real fast!”

  “Me! Pick me!” "No, don’t listen. I get you something special.”

  “Thank you all, but no thank you.” Wyungare pushed his way through without actually touching any of them. “Sorry, friends.” Nor did they touch each other. It was a complex choreography of desperation. All the jokers were physically large, whether male or female. The Aborigine supposed they would have to be, if they were to earn a living acting as gladiators for incoming travelers in need of a cab.

  He found a subway stairs and descended from the imminent sunrise. Wyungare had been provided with transit tokens as well as cash. Though he’d never been in a subway station before, he’d seen them in plenty of films. With confidence, he dropped a token into the turnstile slot and pushed through. One gate over, a small gang of four Asian teenagers hopped fluidly over the turnstile as if they were a closely spaced line of English jumpers. They ignored an outraged yell from the change booth.

  Wyungare glanced up to make sure he was on the downtown side of the tracks. At the same time, he felt the ghost wind that he guessed meant that a train was approaching from up the tunnel. He turned and saw the wavering light.

  The train rattled and hissed into the station. Wyungare, keeping tight hold of his bag, boarded a middle car.

  He got off at 14th Street and walked across town. It didn’t take all that long, and it was good to stretch his legs. They had been cramped on the airplane.

  The city was starting to come to life. Not that New York City ever truly slept — Wyungare remembered Cordelia’s opining that. This morning, the atmosphere seemed shot through with tension. The Aborigine could pick that up without any need of special powers. Something was indeed in the air. Or maybe it was simply the daily index of paranoid urban tension building up.

  When he encountered the water, he turned south. Eventually he reached South Street, and the aging waterfront building bearing the sign Wyungare sought: the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic. He knew he was in Jokertown; the people passing him on the street proved that. This was the Jokertown Clinic. He didn’t hesitate. Right through the front door and past the reception desk. He was travel-worn but presentable enough especially for Jokertown. As long as he appeared to know what he was about, Wyungare didn’t anticipate being challenged.

  There was no percentage, though, in pushing his luck. He found the door to the stairs and went up to the second floor. Wyungare stepped briskly down the dingy corridor. He glanced curiously to either side. Some of the doors were open. It was like walking through a huge Advent calendar of misery.

  A scream issued from the doorway to his right. Wyungare saw what appeared to be a nat — a man, with the exception of his face. His head cradled on an oversize pillow, he stared at the Aborigine and screamed again. His features looked as though they were formed of melting wax; they appeared to be slowly running down the side of his head. Only his bright blue eyes were still in their proper locations.

  Wyungare looked through other open doors. He remembered the ancient print he’d seen of Horrors of the
Wax Museum. He approached the end of the corridor. Around the corner, he thought. He’d been counting room numbers. Two doors down.

  The fluorescent illumination seemed dimmer here. There were no outside windows in this section of the hallway. Doorways loomed like dark gaps in a jaw full of diseased teeth.

  The door to room 228 was closed.

  Wyungare slipped it open, moved inside, stared around the room. One dim lamp illuminated some sort of bed; actually more of a padded, contoured table. The alligator was cradled in that bed. Wyungare detected movement. A set of rollers moved beneath the fabric under the alligator’s belly. The mechanism that activated them hummed, clicked, and then the rollers recycled, starting their massaging movement again.

  “Magic fingers,” Wyungare muttered. The perfect alligator tranquilizer. He heard a questioning miaow. He looked down and saw a large black cat looking up at him. They stared at each other for a few seconds. Then Wyungare slowly hunkered down and ran his fingers firmly across the feline head and down its neck. The cat purred, the sound something like that of a bus idling.

  “Cousin mirragen, I know you, even though I’ve not seen you before. Cordelia told me of you and your mate. You are a friend of the one called Bagabond, true?”

  The cat continued to purr. He was about twenty-five pounds and solid black, though his fur was beginning to grizzle. He pushed himself against Wyungare’s lower leg. The man looked at the feline’s coat and guessed him to be at least twenty years old. The cat was still solidly muscled. He was missing a small notch from his right ear.

  Wyungare stood and turned to the recumbent alligator. Twelve or fourteen feet long, the reptile breathed regularly, but otherwise displayed no signs of life. “And this is your friend?” he said to the cat. “Jack Robicheaux? Cordelia’s uncle.” He nodded with satisfaction. “He sleeps. Perhaps he dreams. We’ll find out.” The black cat yowled. “Yes, cousin, your friend actually lies far from here. Let me find out how far.”

  The Aborigine again hunkered and unzipped the cheap, floral-print suitcase. He took out a candle and firestone, a small drum with the stick slipped into the lacing, and an abbreviated loincloth. With a sigh of relieved comfort, he slipped off the European clothes and donned the cloth. He used the firestone to light the candle, then dripped enough warm wax on the end of the table by the alligator’s snout to serve as a candleholder. Then he turned off the lamp.

  The cat watched interestedly as Wyungare settled himself on the floor and set the drum between his knees. The man picked out a basic rhythm, the beat of the river, let it repeat, worked a variation, settled into the sound.

  He was still aware of being in the hospital room; but he was simultaneously aware of walking through a thick pine forest. The humidity was high and his skin felt sticky. It was hard to see the sun. He looked up and saw intermittent flashes of hazy light.

  The man entered a clearing and passed a decrepit frame house. Time had not spared the boards; they possessed a soft gray shine. Before he rounded the front corner, Wyungare heard a small sound. A whimper. He stopped and looked carefully beyond the juncture, the side of his face pressed comfortably against the gray clapboard.

  He saw a humped shape pinned beneath the rectangular shroud of a screen door. Wyungare carefully approached. He found the body of a young boy lying on his belly, the screen door over him. Someone had staked the door to the earth with long, rusted spikes. The boy’s body filled out the pliable screening as though it had been molded there. The wire over the boy’s buttocks was wet, rusty with blood. He whimpered. His fingers twitched at the rough mesh.

  The young Jack? Wyungare thought. He knew that Jack Robicheaux had been reared in a rural southern Louisiana parish back in the time of Earl Long. His niece Cordelia Chaisson had told Wyungare that. When he contracted the wild card virus, Jack had imprinted on the pervasive bayou image of the alligator. That reptile had become the alter ego of his shape-changing ability. Now doubly cursed and dying of AIDS, Jack Robicheaux’s human avatar apparently lay very far indeed from the waking world.

  Who did this? Wyungare wondered to himself. Which monster? He was afraid he knew. “Do you wish release?” he asked aloud. He thought he already knew the answer.

  The boy turned his head slightly to the side and looked into Wyungare’s eyes. The boy’s eyes were dark and liquid, echoing the black, tangled hair.

  “I should not interfere,” the man said, “but I think there’s not enough time for you to solve your own lesson.” He touched one of the steel spikes and tried to wiggle it back and forth. It was solidly driven into the ground.

  He heard the sound.

  Wyungare started to turn, to look over his shoulder. In the other world, the waking place, he was aware that someone had opened the door to Jack’s room, had paused in the halo of outside light, was looking around, reacting —

  He felt the force slam into his head and start to shut down all his autonomic systems. His heart, his lungs — He could see the shadowed eyes of the intruder and knew he was being killed by a woman.

  Something dark and heavy streaked through the black room and slammed into the woman’s back. She tumbled forward onto her face on the cool tile floor, the breath going out of her with a whoof. Her chin led and her teeth clicked together. The woman lay still for a moment, seemingly stunned.

  The killing pressure left his mind.

  With apologies, Wyungare abandoned the imprisoned child and returned to the waking world. He shook his head and blinked a few times.

  The black cat was purring and licking the woman’s cheek with his rough wet tongue. She groaned and tried to raise her head. The cat nuzzled her face and she recoiled. “Stop it!”

  Wyungare walked over to her and bent down. The woman’s long, curly hair was soft and just as black as had been the boy’s in the other world. “You okay?”

  The woman pushed the cat firmly away and tilted her face toward his. Her eyes matched the color of her hair. “You?” she said, sounding shocked.

  “It ain’t Mel Gibson, young missy,” Wyungare said. “It is memorable to see you, Cordelia” He reached to help her up.

  Cordelia sat up without any aid. She grabbed Wyungare’s proffered hands and pulled the man down beside her. “You son of a bitch,” she said. “You self-centered political asshole.”

  Wyungare said, “Cordie —”

  “Don’t ’Cordie’ me,” Cordelia snapped. “It’s been four years since you saved my life in the Outback. Four years since we were lovers and we fought the spider-woman and —” She shook her head violently. “Not a letter, not a call, not even a damned card at Christmas, love.”

  Cordelia ignored his attempt to say something. “I know, Wyungare. You were busy being a revolutionary and I was just a kid.” She punched him in the shoulder with the heel of her hand. “Dickhead! Just like a guy.”

  “Cordelia.” he said, “I’m sorry.” And she laughed. “You’re lucky I’ve lived in New York for a while. I can take this shit.” Cordelia wrapped her arms around him. “It is you. I can’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

  “I called your apartment. Your roommate said you were running peculiar early errands and planned to visit your uncle before you went to your job. When I rang up the clinic, they said Jack Robicheaux could have no visitors, but I was able to get his room number when I told them I wished to leave you a message when you arrived. I thought I would find you here.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant,” said Cordelia. She traced a fingertip across his face as though recapturing a route on a forgotten map. “I mean, why are you here in New York instead of eating grubs in the middle of Australia?”

  “I heard Manhattan had many good restaurants.”

  “Smartass,” she said.

  “I couldn’t exactly telephone ahead.”

  “Tell me all about it later.”

  “What are you doing?” It occurred to him that there was some mild shock in his voice. Her hand traced his body lower. The waistcloth was little prot
ection. He was hard now, very erect indeed.

  “Excuse me,” said Cordelia. She stood and Wyungare heard the sounds of whispering fabric. Then she was back down where he was, straddling him, gently moving so that he slid up into her. He moved easily.

  “Cordelia”

  “Ssh. Later we’ll talk, mi chér.

  But later wasn’t much later. The door swung open with a crash. Wyungare looked up and saw a hybrid of man and horse filling the doorway with arms folded. He wore a brilliant white coat that matched the albedo of his lush mane and had a stethoscope around his neck.

  The joker doctor squinted and said to someone Wyungare couldn’t see, “Well, Troll, it looks as if we’ll have to start enforcing visiting hours. If Cody were around, she’d have both our hides.”

  Ray stopped in front of the door to his office, his nose twitching suspiciously. An unfamiliar stench was coming through the closed door. Ray actually wasn’t high enough in the bureaucratic scheme of things to rate a private office, but when none of the other agents’ personal standards of cleanliness could match his, Ray had made such a fuss that the powers-that-be had bent the rules in the interest of peace and given him his own room.

  It wasn’t much. It was just big enough for a spotlessly clean desk, two chairs, and a meticulously organized file cabinet. But it was Ray’s own. And he didn’t care for anyone to stink it up.

  Ray opened the door. A man was sitting in his chair, behind his desk, smoking a cigar while leafing through his private files. The enormity of the outrage left Ray speechless.

  The cigar was bad enough, but it was playing only a minor role in the symphony of stenches assaulting Ray’s nostrils. A host of other horrible smells emanated from the guy standing behind the man sitting at Ray’s desk.

  The man slouching against Ray’s file cabinet was dressed in a black skintight fighting suit much like Ray’s own, except the hood covered his entire face — mouth, nose, eyes, and all. The left eye was covered by a polarized lens that allowed him to see out, but no one to see in. The right eye, though, was covered by black cloth embossed with a small scarlet cross. The cross was the only touch of color about the man.