Jokertown Shuffle Read online

  He turned and looked at the rest of the room for the first time.

  Father Squid was staring at them with wide-open eyes.

  Kien's body-Fadeout's body-was lying slack-mouthed and drooling on the floor. The door to the room suddenly swung open, and there was Rick and Mick, carrying a large jar tucked under Rick's right arm.

  "Okay, boss," Rick said. "Here we are." They stopped, looked around, looked at each other, and said, "Oh-oh" in unison.

  "We've been tricked," Mick added. "Something's wrong with the boss."

  "Let's get out of here," said Rick. They dropped the glass jar as they ran from the room, and it shattered. Brennan made a move to follow them, then stopped as he saw Brutus among the remains of the glass jar. The homunculus was bloody and torn. Brennan rushed over to him and kneeled. He reached out a hand but didn't dare touch him. He knew there was nothing he could do to mend the damage his comrade had sustained.

  Brutus looked up at him, barely able to see through swollen, bruised eyes. "Sorry I told where you were, boss, but I guess it worked out."

  "It did," Brennan said quietly. "Did we get Jennifer back?"

  Brennan glanced to his side to see Jennifer kneeling down next to him.

  "You did, Brutus," she said.

  "Good." His tiny body was wracked by a spasm of coughing, and he leaned back among the shards of glass. "This is damned uncomfortable," he said, and closed his eyes.

  Brennan sighed and leaned back on his heels. Jennifer gripped his forearm and laid her head against his shoulder as Father Squid crossed himself and quickly whispered the prayer for the dead.

  "You did very well out there," a voice said. Brennan looked up to see Trace standing over him and Jennifer. "Satisfied?"

  Brennan looked at her before answering. She was a young woman-slim, dark-eyed, with high cheekbones and Indian eyes. He didn't know who she was for a moment, then he remembered. She was his mother, who had died when Brennan was very young. He didn't remember much about her, only gentle hands and soft songs sung in Spanish and Mescalero Apache.

  Brennan felt he couldn't be ungrateful. He had, after all, gotten Jennifer back. But he looked down at Brutus's shattered body and knew there was still immense suffering and injustice in the world, and no matter what he did, he couldn't stop it all.

  Trace shook her head. "You are very hard to please," she said, not ungently.

  "I guess I am," Brennan admitted. "Did you trick the joker into bringing Brutus back to us?"

  "It was easy," Trace said. "Everything I do should be so easy."

  "How much was you in that place," Brennan asked, "and how much was real?"

  "Haven't you learned your lesson about the reality of reality yet?" Trace asked.

  "I don't know," Brennan said. "I just wish it weren't so hard."

  "It's as hard as you make it," Trace told him in his mother's voice. "Sometimes there's nothing anyone can do to make it easier. Sometimes there is."

  The door to the room shot open, and Dr. Tachyon rushed in. "What's going on?" he demanded. "A strange joker was seen running out of here-"

  He looked around, genuinely puzzled. "What did I miss?"

  Brennan looked at him. It was time, he thought, to try to make things easier. He went to Tachyon and took his hand. "The end of an age, old friend, and the beginning of a new."

  The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat

  II

  I have a dream.

  I have several dreams, in fact. I suppose that makes this teenage governor marginally better than old King, right? They're very odd, my dreams-a lot more hard-edged and surreal than I remember them being before the wild card hit me. But then, I always did like the painters who could twist reality and make it their own: Dali, Bosch, Brueghel, Chagall…

  Last night I had a dream too.

  I was in the Administration Building. (Where else would I be, huh?) But the old place had changed. The stone and brick had changed to glass. It was a wondrous, clear crystal line palace from which I could see out into the world again. The sunlight shattered on it and bled rainbows.

  I'd changed too. I was someone else, not Bloat. I stood on my own legs, and my body was a gorgeous, muscular wonder. Kelly, as resplendent and alluring as a fairy-tale princess, stood alongside me. Her thoughts were no longer pitying but full of love and trust for me. Together, we strode up and down inside my palace, marveling at its beauty.

  Kafka was kneeling in the lobby as we approached, hooking up that generator he keeps insisting we need. A snarl of wires went all around him.

  Then I noticed that the brilliant sunlight had tricked me. These weren't wires. The lobby was filled to overflowing with jokers, their bodies all pressed together. They were screaming at me, waving hands and tentacles and filaments and antennae, and shouting, "There's no more room! No more room!"

  I looked out and saw that-omigod!-they were right. Through the windows I could see that all the Rox was the same way-a living, writhing carpet of jokers from end to end, right into the greasy waves of the bay.

  I shouted to them all. My voice was the voice of a King, deep and charismatic. Not at all the adolescent boy's screech it really is. " I will make you a new home!" I told them. " I will do that for you!"

  Kelly applauded. The jokers cheered.

  But Kafka glanced up at me from the generator. "They won't let you," he said softly.

  The massed jokers all howled agreement. I knew that Kafka spoke of every joker's eternal "they": the nats who hate us, the turncoat aces who are weapons against their own kind.

  "My Wall keeps them out," I insisted, shaking my head. Kafka sighed.

  I suddenly felt a chill. I looked up to see that the entire roof of the building was gone. Above, a winter wind flung dirty wet snow from massed, hurtling clouds. The snow piled in drifts around and over the mountain of my body-I was Bloat again. Kelly, disgust on her face, fled the lobby. I was frightened. I felt more helpless than I'd ever felt, for I knew that the wall couldn't keep out the snow.

  "The wall isn't enough," Kafka told me. "Not enough."

  "The jumpers. My joker army."

  "Not enough."

  The wind howled, a mad laughter. Sleet hissed around the columns of the lobby, between the supports that held the floor against my weight…

  And I woke. My enormous body was trembling so that the whole building was shaking in sympathy. All the guards were looking at me, and the smell of the bloatblack… Well, you get the idea.

  Hell, dreams are supposed to be escapes. I should be dreaming of being in a normal body or having some postpubescent wet dreams about Kelly.

  Every joker needs a refuge. I can't even find one in my dreams.

  I talked to Molly Bolt rather than Blaise because I could hear through the mindvoices that Blaise was busy.

  All right, I'll be honest here. That was a lousy excuse. I talked to Molly because I really don't like Blaise.

  But even Molly doesn't listen very well to me. She spoke her thoughts, and I heard them twice. You're a softy, Bloat. Weak. "Power is information." C'mon, that's crap. You know what power is? It's taking the body of some rich snot and humiliating him. Making him run naked down Wall Street jacking off. Having him fire his staff with a goddamn AK-47. Walking him to J-town and having him suck some joker's dick. Making him feel helpless and used. That's power, Governor.

  Molly flung one jean-clad leg over the other as she slouched in the chair in front of me. Details: the knees were out of the jeans. Despite the three inches of snow on the ground outside, she was wearing sneakers without socks and a cutoff T under her leather jacket. She ran a hand through spiked multicolored hair. Her lower lip was out, pouting.

  I notice things like that. It's the artist in me.

  "Molly, your kind of power is just kicks. You do it because you're a sick, twisted little child. Because you enjoy it." She smiled at that; I chuckled.

  "But you're worried too," I told her. "All of you are. I hear the thoughts. You're worried because if an assassi
n can take out a man as well protected as Kien-a man I know Blaise and his friends were supposed to be protecting-then Prime can be killed, even with Zelda watching him. For that matter, so can Blaise or you. The fact you can jump ain't enough."

  As I said it, I caught the thought she tried to hide. So I laughed again. "Oh, you wouldn't mind if Blaise were offed, would you? Excuse me, that's `that fucking son-of-a-bitch cocksucking alien prickhead Blaise,' to be exact. You really need to work on your cursing, Molly. You show a lack of inventiveness. All those cliches…"

  "Stop your fucking giggling and get on with it, Bloat."

  "Information is power. For instance, what if I told Blaise what you were thinking just now. Or what if I mentioned your and Blackhead's half-assed plan to get rid of Blaise-" Molly angrily filled her mind with other images. I chuckled. "You've stirred up a hornet's nest, Molly," I said. "I can hear them buzzing around. So can you. I notice these things. I notice that since Kien died, since Prime's been acting strange, you jumpers have been, well, stupid. You're terrorizing the city like you're in some bad teenage biker movie." She wasn't impressed. "We're just showing the fuckers we ain't afraid of them."

  "Right. What you're doing is playing right into the nats' hands. All you're doing is making them angry, and only blind fools would think that a hundred jumpers and a thousand or so jokers on a little island can really stand against `them.' If they want to just clean us out, they can."

  Molly sniffed, though I knew that inside she had listened. "So talk to Blaise or Prime. Since when did you get so fucking political? You ain't no older than me, or any smarter."

  "It's because I like you."

  I had to laugh at the strange image that put in her head. "Oh, I still have the right equipment for it," I told her. "I think so, at least. It's buried inside. I doubt if it's in proportion to my current body, though. Besides, Kelly's really more my type. Look, I've been studying a lot, Molly-there are minds on this island…" I shook my head. The mindvoices intruded even as I tried to talk about them.

  "You want power?" I said. "Then you gotta be rich. You gotta play the economic game too. I've been learning all the time, and I've come to certain conclusions. One is that the Rox is too small and too run-down. Kafka's already finding it impossible to keep the place going. 'Infrastructure-that's the word he uses. The infrastructure is old and antiquated; it keeps falling apart. Yet the jokers keep coming. You keep recruiting more wannabee jumpers. The Rox is crowded now and getting worse."

  "You gonna tell me that your idea of taking New York isn't a fucking pipe dream?"

  I answered her patiently. "I'm telling you that soon there won't be any choice. They won't let us stay here, not forever. Our own success is going to drive us out, even if they do nothing."

  Molly just laughed, and I could see absurd images in her mind. She knew I was watching them and exaggerated them even more for my benefit. "Bloat on a float?" she snorted. "How the fuck are you going to get to the city? Your jokers gonna build a goddamn ark? You gonna swim? Jesus, the first whale sighted in New York Bay." She laughed again, throwing her head back and exposing that long muscular neck.

  "There are ways, Molly Bolt," I told her. "With enough money, with enough power, there's very little you can't solve."

  She wasn't convinced. "Sure. And your fucking wall's gonna go all around Manhattan too."

  "Hey, I'm still a growing boy. My powers are expanding with me. The Wall's already a hundred yards farther out than it was six months ago, and it's stronger than ever. That's part of the equation, too. What's going to happen when ships can't get up or down the Hudson from the bay? What will they do when the Rox begins to hit housing in Jersey? They're already changing the air-traffic patterns for Tomlin and La Guardia. Power is economics, Molly my dear."

  She didn't believe me and said so. I thought of the dreams.

  It won't be enough…

  I became lost for a minute in the memory of my dreams, in the mindvoices. When I came back to reality, Molly was staring at me. "Look, Gov," she said. "I know you. You got some plan, don't you? That's why you're boring me to death with all your yapping."

  I grinned. "I want to use you, Molly, you and the rest of the jumpers. I want to use your abilities to make us fucking rich. If you want to really humiliate someone, you have to know where it will hurt them most when you hit them. And I also know what would scare them the most. I'll organize it; you jumpers be the muscle. I tell you, I'll make us rich, rich, rich. Let me tell you how we do it…"

  Lovers by Melinda M. Snodgrass

  I

  "MONSTER!!"

  Doctor Tachyon dodged a raking blow from her claw. Acid tears were rolling down her ruined cheeks, eating new wounds in the already suppurating mess that was her face. The joker shook her head violently. As the tears flew in all directions, small burns appeared in the cloth curtain that provided what passed for privacy in the emergency room of the Blythe Van Rensselaer Clinic. One tear struck Tach on the ear, drawing a yelp of pain.

  "You did this. You. I'll kill you."

  There was no mistaking to whom this threat was being directed. "TROLL!" bellowed Tachyon.

  The nine-foot-tall joker didn't waste time on niceties. The curtain came down with the scream of outraged metal rings. The security chief of the clinic plucked the shrieking woman over the examining table and held her kicking, clawing, writhing form at arm's length. The acid in her spittle and tears had no effect on the horny plates that encased Troll's body.

  Tachyon ran for a dispensary cart. Cursed the artificial hand as he struggled to hold the sedative bottle steady without breaking the fragile glass. Filled a hypodermic.

  As he hurried back, Troll tried to warn him o$: "No, Doc, don't. You'll get burned."

  "I deserve to," grunted the Takisian. He ducked in close, grabbed one of the flailing arms, and pulled it up tight behind the woman's back. Acid burned his hand and face, but he jammed the needle in and pushed the plunger home.

  "Now back off!" ordered Troll, and this time Tachyon obeyed. Two minutes later, and the joker's struggles subsided. With a sigh, she slid into a drug-induced sleep. Tach slumped down onto a stool as Cody came hurrying through the doors to the ER. As befitted the chief of surgery, she was dressed in drab green scrubs. There was a spray of blood across the front of the surgical gown, and that, combined with the black eye patch, gave her a deadly look. She came to rest only inches from Tach and bent in so close that their noses almost touched. "Frau Doctor Frankenstein, I presume," said Tach lightly. The militant light did not die from her one good eye.

  "What in the hell is going on down here?"

  "Just another typical day in the charnel house." Concern replaced the anger. "What's wrong? What happened?" Tach made a weary gesture. Cody whirled on Troll. "Is he all right?"

  "Physically. He's got a few acid burns. But she cut him… deep," Troll said.

  Cody's hands closed on Tach's shoulders. "Talk to mel I get this bulletin over the fucking loudspeaker-this damn hysterical nurse screaming that you're being killed down here."

  "Nothing so dramatic." Tach sighed and pushed to his feet. "Just another victim taking the author of her misery to task." Cody followed his gaze to the now supine joker. "When did she transform?" the woman asked.

  "Jumped."

  "Christ." A tiny shudder took her tall slender form. Tach understood. With the advent of the strange new wild card power, the sanctity of one's soul was now in jeopardy. A roaming gang of teenagers had suddenly developed the ability to trade bodies with any individual. And they used the power with the vicious playfulness of the very young-committing acts of brutality, atrocity, and humiliation before jumping back to their own bodies and leaving the victim to deal with the often tragic aftermath of a jumper's spree. Tach sighed again and swept the back of his hand across his eyes as if the action could somehow banish weariness. "I must now call Mr. Nesbitt and inform him his wife is herebut not the wife he recalls."

  "Come to Jokertown and lose yourself," said C
ody bitterly.

  "It's no wonder we've been virtually abandoned by the nats. They're terrified. Hell, even I'm worried as I walk home at night. How long until some covetous joker decides she'd like my body?"

  "Hush," cautioned Tachyon.

  "I don't care if they hear. It's a dirty little joker secret. Some of them know how to get to these kids, and rather than tell us or the police, they'd rather take care of themselves first."

  Tach looked sadly at the collection of protoplasmic nightmares that filled his emergency room. "Can you blame them?" Cody shuddered, and Tach caught a wisp of memory. Once Cody had come terrifyingly close to jokerdom. And Tach himself carried the wild card, twined in a loving, latent sleep about his genes. At any moment the virus could manifest and turn him into a hideous monster or grant him the blessing of death. He didn't even consider the third, golden option-that he would beat the odds and become one of the lucky few-an ace, blessed with metahuman powers.

  "Not so easy to be righteous, is it?" he asked softly, and Cody blushed.

  "In our dreams we're all heroes," the woman replied. "I would like to hope I'd be strong, tough it out-"

  "And you probably would be. I'm the coward who could not face life as a joker."

  "What are you doing tonight?"

  "I had a date."

  "Cancel it. I'll cook dinner." Tachyon stared at her. Then, surprisingly, the lashes dropped to veil the single eye. Gruffly she added, "Chris is going to a friend's… slumber party. I'm enjoying it. By next year, I'm convinced, such innocent pleasures will seem tame, and he'll be looking for girl action."

  "Cody, you're babbling. Why?"

  "You're the telepath. Figure it out!" And she left with an aggressive click of high heels.

  Jay Ackroyd caught him on the steps of the clinic. Ackroyd was a moderately successful private detective who at times annoyed Tachyon worse than fleas and on occasion could actually be useful-due more to his ace power as a teleporter than any real brains was a secret opinion that Tach held. Jay was too glib, and Tach did not think it was a mask for a serious mind.