Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle - Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle Part 14
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Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle Part 14

He went to sleep.

She caught up with him the next day, just after noon. They went for a walk again, and just talked. About books, about the fucked-up world they lived in, about the things Mark had been through, as an ace or beyond. Never about her, though; the times he asked she went quiet and spiky, and he quit after a while.

She was a bright, bitter, and all-tooknowing kid, cynical and vulnerable by random turns.

She was also beautiful. He tried not to think about that. He settled into the routine of life on the Rox. Or nonroutine. Aside from the steam tables, which came to life sometime in the morning and sometime toward sunset, the only rhythms the Rox knew were the sun and the tides and what people felt like cranking through their ghetto blasters. Mark was going mad. Somewhere his daughter was trapped in a nightmare she couldn't possibly comprehend. He had to help her. But not even Pretorius-sticking his neck way out-had been able to turn up clue one to her whereabouts.

"I can't tell him."

The night wind unreeled flame and light from the tiki torches like a kid jerking at a roll of toilet paper. Pairs of jumpers sparred with one another on the landfill margin behind the Admin Building in the uncertain light.

Blaise paused in mopping his forehead with a towel. He always insisted on clean fresh towels being brought over from the mainland for his showers and workouts.

He got them.

"What do you mean, you can't tell him?" His voice took on a dangerous edge.

"It means so much to him. I feel like I'm ... like I'm using him."

Anger hit him. Trembling anger. She saw it in his face and stepped back.

You bitch. You bitch! Are you beginning to feel loyal to him?

"You haven't used people before? You haven't used people up? Think, K. C. Think hard. You're a jumper, remember? Jumpers use people. Especially burned-out old nat pukes."

"He's not a nat, he's an ace"She stiffened as if expecting to receive a blow.

"Besides ... besides, I'm through with that. You know that. We need to build something out here, something strong that the Combine can't just sweep away like a kid knocking down a bunch of blocks."

"You're starting to sound like Bloat."

"I thought I was sounding like you. You with your talk of a New Order. Is that all that it is, just talk?"

I should kill her now. But the thought fell like a dead leaf through his consciousness, without heat, without weight. He already knew he was through with her. But instead of destroying her here and now, he would use her. Use her up in the destruction of Captain fucking Trips.

I'm learning patience, Grandpere. You'll be so proud of me when I tell you.

"No. And that that's why you're going to tell him. We need his help. We, we need his ace power when the Combine comes to call. Besides, you'll be giving him what he wants most in the world, won't you?"

She looked at him a moment, eyes glinting like coins in the firelight. She stood tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "Yeah," she breathed huskily in his ear, and kissed him on the adolescent down of his cheek. "Sometimes, Blaise, you're almost human." She turned and ran away.

I'll pay you for that one too, he thought.

"She's in the Reeves Diagnostic and Development Institute, in Brooklyn. Borough Park area. It's a Kings County joint; there's some kind of deal down between the city, the state, and the counties to share custody, so they can keep her circulating."

He was sitting with his butt planted in damp frigid sand, squinting at the occasional stab of a patrol-boat spotlight. It was cold as hell tonight, but you had to be flat desperate to retreat into one of the crumbling turn-of-the-century buildings crammed together on Ellis. She hunkered behind him, seemingly inured to cold in her thin jacket and thinner pants. "'Diagnostic and Development'?" he said.

"Yeah. Combine sure talks purty, don't it? Pig Latin for 'kid jail,' pal. It's in a pretty decent neighborhood, never run too far down, starting to maybe catch a case of the yuppies. Not too bad. As hellholes go."

He turned and looked at her, disbelief struggling with the will to believe on the battlefield of his face. "How could you find out, when the best lawyer in Jokertown drew a blank?"

"Best lawyer in Jokertown is by definition not a juvenile delinquent, darlin'.

Capisc'? 'You wanna find a missing kid, ask an outlaw,' or words to that effect."

He jumped up, walked toward the water, walked back, sidestepping a drunk or drugged joker face down in the sand. He began to pace in front of K. C. "I have to make plans. I have to do this right. Think now, Mark. Think." He plumped down in the depression he'd made before, feeling heavy and overwhelmed.

"Maybe you should get some sleep first." She bent over and kissed him lightly on the forehead, then melted into black.

Mark stood on the sidewalk in front of the Blythe van Rensselaer Clinic with tears standing like small hot crowds on his face. Tachyon wasn't in, the surly and unfamiliar face behind the desk of the strangely deserted reception room had told him. And when the doctor was in, he wasn't receiving visitors. Any visitors.

Cody was dead. The news lay in Mark's stomach like a gallon of ice. That lady had meant so much to Tach, had done so much to bring him back from the terrible events of the Atlanta Convention.

Sprout had always loved her. And now she was gone, apparent victim of Tachyon's enemies.

Tach had crawled back into the bottle. As he had when honor had forced him to destroy the mind of Blythe van Rensselaer. It would not be easy for him to escape a second time.

And that was tough.

Mark rubbed spidery hands over his face as if scrubbing his cheeks clean with the tears. As he closed his eyes, he saw his daughter's hand reaching out for him again, while he asCosmic Traveler sank through the floor of the courthouse and the bailiffs closed in.

I'm sorry, Doc. She needs me worse than you do. No matter what's happening to you.

I'm sorry.

He raised his head. A patrol car prowled by. The flat black face of the cop on the passenger side seemed to track him through the chicken-wire mesh that covered the windows of all the cars from the jokertown precinct as it slid sharklike through the sightseers huddled in schools against the strangeness of the scene.

Time for my boot heels to be wandering, his nascent street-sense told him.

He stuck his hands in the pocket of his army jacket and walked away. But not too fast.

The Demon Princes had shot out the streetlights again. The man walking home from swing shift down the Jokertown side street paid no mind. It would take more than cracks in the sidewalk to disrupt the primo ballerino grace with which he walked, as it would take more than the chill of a New York January evening to require him to add the threadbare windbreaker thrown over one shoulder to the black Cinderella T-shirt. Besides, he saw in the dark like a leopard.

His chest and shoulders were those of a much taller man, swollen with muscle.

His head was small and narrow, the features almost elfin. His eyes were slanted, the color of lilacs. He diverged far enough from the human somatotype to be considered a joker. Yet he carried no trace of the wild-card virus.

He wasn't a nat, either. He wasn't human at all.

"Hey, man." The voice came from the dark alley, a few feet away to his right: a sick-crow caw. The lilac eyes never wavered. He had no time for importunate groundlings. And if it was more than a panhandler ...

Seventeen months ago, a nat youth had attempted to mug him at gunpoint on a street much like this one. The youth was unduly confident in the superstitious terror in which the denizens of this vast, reeking, unaesthetic jumble of a city held their primitive firearms, or perhaps his confidence was chemically enhanced. He had been so little challenge that the man with lilac eyes had been merciful. There was a chance the boy had received medical attention in time to keep from bleeding to death after having his arm torn off at the shoulder.

"burg," the voice said, quieter now. "Durg at-Morakh. It's you, isn't it, man?"

He froze, turned slowly. The tall gaunt figure that shuffled toward him from blackness into mere darkness did not much resemble the owner of that voice as he remembered him. Still, the pale eyes of a being shaped by gene engineering and training to be the consummate bodyguard were not to be deceived by a few alterations in silhouette.

"Dr. Meadows." Durg performed a brief bow, accompanied by a hand gesture.

The taller man stood there in a posture of helplessness. Durg waited, legs braced, head up. He would maintain that pose all night or all week: awaiting orders.

"Uh, how's life, man?"

"My job as a stevedore provides adequate exercise. The pay affords me such comfort as this overly warm and insufficiently civilized world can provide."

Thin lips smiled. "Should I require more funds, my coworkers are ever eager to wager on contests of strength and dexterity. Some of your people are dismally slow learners, lord. I would hope your own fortunes have changed for the better."

"No. Not really. Except-except I've found my little girl."

"I rejoice that the Little Mistress has been discovered. Does your government still hold her captive?"

"Yeah." Mark bit his lip and shuffled his feet. "I-I have to get her back. God only knows what she's going through."

"You mean, then, to employ force?"

Mark's gaze rummaged among the fissures in the pavement. He nodded. "You know I'm not comfortable with this kind of thing. But I'm desperate, man. I'm really strung out. I need to know, will you help me?"

"Does the sun yet shine on Avendrath Crag?"

"Beg pardon?"

"A Morakh saying, lord. So long as the sun of Takis shines, so long as the great rock of Avendrath shall stand-so long shall the loyalty of a Morakh run true."

"It'll mean breaking the law"

The elfin head tipped back, rang laughter like the pealing of a big silver bell.

"I care as much for the laws of your kind as you care what legislation dogs might pass. Had you listened to me, you would have defied the law long since and fought to keep your daughter by force or stealth."

"I wasn't ready, man. I-I still believed in justice."

"Your world entertains many quaint superstitions. What now, my lord?"

"Now I'm gonna get Sprout back," Mark said. "Whatever it takes."

Bloat said he hated pity. His visitor pitied him, and he found it oddly pleasurable. What the man didn't feel was repugnance. That made all the difference.

"Dr. Meadows," he said, "welcome."

Mustelina and Andiron took their cue and left. Meadows stood blinking up at Bloat's bloatblack-slimy sides. "Thanks, uh, Governor. Like, to what do I owe the honor?"

You're dying to know what's become of your friend, Bloat thought, and couldn't help but giggle. The poor man. Should I tell you where he is?

"I understand you have a project in mind."

The tall man swallowed. Bloat heard him turn up the deception card and toss it away without hesitation, as if he were unused to its use. How rare that was.

"It's my daughter, Governor." He glanced at Kafka. "I have to get her back."

With or without your permission. He didn't speak the words, but of course Bloat heard them.

"You don't need my permission," Bloat said, and tittered at the way Mark jumped to hear his own thoughts quoted. "But you have it. My blessings, even. More than that, Doctor. I want to offer my help."

"What-what do you mean, man?"

"You want to see if you can bring your friends back. Don't look so surprised, Doctor; you've got to know I can read your mind. I know what you need. You need certain drugs and a safe place to work. I can offer those things."

"What do you want from me?"

Bloat clucked. "My, my. The Last Hippie has gotten cynical."

"It's just the way the world works, man."

"Exactly. Dr. Meadows, you've felt the anger of the straight world-the anger and the fear. We've offered you shelter from it."

"Yeah, thanks, man, like I really appreciate--"

"Wait. That's understood. I want to make sure you understand that this can't last. The nats-the straights-won't let us defy them forever. They have to reassert their power. To destroy us for being different and daring to hold our heads up and not be ashamed."

Meadows nodded. "You think the Combine will move in on you. Makes sense."

"The Combine? Oh, you've been talking to K.C. Strange. Yes. We're inevitably going to be attacked, and we will fight. What I ask in exchange for my help is that you fight beside us when the time comes."

He read Meadows's hesitation and, stifled his own feelings of disappointed anger and I thought you would be different. "I know it's a big step. Asking you to cut yourself off completely from the nat world. But it's really a fait accompli, isn't it, Doctor? The straight world's rejected you. It's hunting you like a vicious animal. Do you really have anything left to lose?"

"No," Meadows said quietly. "Like, I guess not." He raised his head. "I'm with you, man."

Bloat giggled happily. "Marvelous! And now I have something--"

"Just one thing. When I get Sprout back, I have to find out what's happened to Tachyon. If he's in trouble, my friends and I will have to get him out. Then I'll, like, be happy to help you."

Uh-oh, Bloat thought. He switched in mid-sentence. "-something to ask you. What do you think of Hieronymous Bosch?"

Meadows's eyes lit. " I love him, man. He's my favorite. Him and M.C. Escher.

And, uh, Peter Max."

When Mark had left, Kafka said, "You should have told him to go to Blaise for help hunting Tachyon. It would have been amusing."

Bloat's jellyfish sides heaved. The black ran glistening down. "I need them both," he said. "I need all the help I can get."

"You toyed with the notion of telling him, though, didn't you? About Tachyon."

"Blaise is-he's like a force of nature. I don't dare challenge him. He'll destroy us all. It's all I can do to get him to keep a lid on his taste for atrocity, and that's only here on my island."

Kafka produced clicking sounds with his chitinous joints. "Someday, Kafka.

Someday we'll face down the nats and win. Then maybe Mark Meadows will hear a few things that'll raise his eyebrows. And then maybe Jumpin' Jack Flash will burn pretty Blaise fucking Andrieux down to a cinder. Someday."