The ultimate tabloid headline, Tach thought, but then, we live in a tabloid nightmare. The wild card virus saw to that. We took order, peace, security ...
and gave them chaos.
Tachyon was braiding his-her hair. But it really was his-her hair. Metallic copper curls sliding between his-her fingers. Frowning, tip of the tongue peeking from between his-her lips, he-she concentrated, struggled. Suddenly other hands took over the chore. The deft pull, right over left over right, the tug to the scalp was heaven. Tachyon sighed and dropped his-her hands into his-her lap, cradling the curve of their pregnancy.
"You sent for me," said the Outcast. "Yes."
Tach shifted around to face him. The wide brim of his hat shadowed his eyes but could not match the darkness within those eyes. Tachyon took the Outcast's hand and laid the palm against his-her belly. "Feel her." And Tachyon gathered up his-her child's thought and thrust them into the mind of his-her courtly lover.
The Outcast reacted like a slaughterhouse steer seeing the fall of the hammer.
"She's going to die. I'm going to die ... if you don't help us."
The man pulled his hand away as if the contact pained him. "I've tried ... tried to help."
"Here?" Tach gestured. "Well, it's not enough. The time for dreams is over."
"It's difficult. He's very dangerous."
"I know..." Long pause, then Tach added with poisonous softness, "I'd wager...
better than you."
The flush rode up in the Outcast's cheeks like a spill of blood. "How do you even know I can do anything?" There was a childish complaining note in the deep voice.
"I don't ... and you'd probably like me to assume you're merely a symptom of incipient madness. That would let you off the hook. But you sent Peanut. He speaks of you with reverence. No, you exist. And now you have to find the courage to act."
The Outcast turned away. "There are so many... so many of them needing me-"
"And now there's one more," Tach interrupted. He-She touched her belly. "Her name is Illyana. I sing, and she thinks music back to me. She's a trickster because she knows there's one particular place where she kicks and I have to urinate. She knows it makes me mad, and it makes her giggle."
Tachyon could see the tension in her reluctant hero's back. The muscles in his neck formed corded rejection. "That's Illyana," Tachyon continued quietly. "And Blaise kicked me in the stomach. To him, she's just a parasite. A means to torture me. But I know better... she is my daughter... and I love her."
Tachyon rose. Made his ungainly way to the Outcast's side. Lightly touched the man on the back of the hand. "Don't let him kill her."
The man whirled, almost knocking Tach off his feet. "Would you kiss me?"
"What? Now?"
"Now... sometimes ... always."
"Well ... yes."
"You hesitated!" Accusation and suspicion made the words cut like blades.
"Of course. I don't know who you are. You don't know what I am."
"My love."
Tachyon covered his ears and spun awkwardly away. Fled until the width of the circular room lay between them. "Stop it, stop it, sTOP IT!" Panting breaths punctuated each word. "Why does no one know me? Am I always to be a symbol? The saint of Jokertown. The faggot from outer space. The Takisian. The drunkard, the prince, doctor, alien, lover, rival. And now your 'love.' Well, dammit, why can't I just be." He was sobbing wildly.
The Outcast crossed the room in three long strides. Took Tach in his arms. Made soothing, shushing noises.
"A kiss," the Takisian murmured wearily as his sobs subsided. "Is that the price of freedom? Then you'll have it. I swear."
The dream was fading. Tach became aware of the sagging cot beneath her body, the pressure of an overfull bladder, the smell of the slops bucket, voices calling outside.
And fluttering through her consciousness like a fading memory, another voice.
"You promised. Remember, you promised."
"Doctor. Doctor Tachyon, wake up."
Tach cranked up on an elbow. Pushed back her hair, tried to focus. "Peanut, by the Ideal..." The words died into silence as she stared at the joker protruding from the floor like a horny mushroom. Tach blinked and realized that the lower half of the man was beneath the level of a trapdoor--where there shouldn't be a trapdoor.
"Come quick. I'm gonna get you outta here."
The joker had a Coleman lantern hung over the stump of his arm. With his other hand he reached out to help her. As Peanut's chitinous fingers closed about her hand, Tachyon felt a thrill as great as if it had been the touch of a lover.
Free, free-she was almost free.
"It's a long ladder. Can you make it?"
"Not easily," said Tach as her stomach rubbed at a rung. "But I'll manage," she concluded grimly.
"Can you close the trap?"
She stretched, grasped the edge, pulled. It fell with a dull thump. Peanut's terror was palpable in the confined space.
"Sorry," said Tach. "It was heavier than I thought."
"That's okay, but let's hurry"
They began climbing.
"Can you go a little faster?" Peanut asked after several minutes.
"No. I'm a little awkward right now. And a little scared," she added.
"Don't worry, Doctor. I won't let you fall. And anyway, you'd land on me."
"And then where would I be?" She smiled back and down over her shoulder. "You're my guide, Peanut."
At last they reached bottom, and Tach found herself in a cavern. Seven openings debouched into the vaultlike room. Tach pivoted slowly, staring in wonder at the colorful painted glyphs that rioted on the curving walls. Somewhat reminiscent of Mayan art, they also partook of Balinese temple paintings.
"Blood and Line, this is very strange," Tach murmured. "Pardon?" said Peanut politely.
"Nothing... hysteria... relief," Tach quickly added at the joker's look of alarm. "But this can't be real ... can it?"
"It is. He's had me down here exploring them. They go all over. Weird places, but okay places too."_ Peanut headed toward one of the openings. Tach fell in step with him.
"Places like where?"
"New Jersey."
"Definitely a weird place," said Tach thoughtfully.
The tunnel had started to climb, and Tach knew damn good and well that they hadn't walked to New Jersey yet. She stopped, planting both feet heavily like a balky foal. Peanut looked back questioningly.
"Where are you taking me?" Suspicion sharpened her tone.
Peanut seemed to collapse in on himself. His thickened eyelids blinked rapidly several times. The effect was like watching a stone idol come to life, and Tach imagined that she could hear a sharp click as the hoary lids met and sprang apart.
"I gotta take you to him first. Then we'll go. He just wants to see you."
"Who? The Outcast?"
"The governor."
"Governor? What are you babbling about?"
Wounded dignity descended over the joker like rolling fog. "This is a joker place now. We take care of each other, and he takes care of us. We got laws now and everything."
"I'm sorry, Peanut," Tachyon said contritely. "It's probably a good thing you have a joker place. And I'm very fortunate. You're probably the only people in the world who would help me right now"
They resumed walking. "We're scared of Blaise, but not enough to stop caring for you."
"You didn't feel that way two years ago when I derailed Senator Hartmann's presidential campaign."
"The governor explained why you did that."
That stopped Tachyon in her tracks again. "He did?" she asked in a voice gone suddenly as wobbly as her knees. "Yeah. He wouldn't give us details. He just said that what you did probably saved us from even worse persu...persecution."
Peanut faltered slightly over the unfamiliar word. "He says you do care for the jokers like nobody ever has."
Falling into step with the joker, Tach asked hesitantly, "Is ... is the governor a joker?"
"Of course."
That stopped her yet again. It was an act of will to kick herself back into motion again. She steeled herself to pay the price of freedom.
A kiss. A joker.
"You promised ... remember, you promised." A joker.
Faceted surfaces seized the light. Broke it into the primary colors of the spectrum. Threw it back in rainbow striations on the white sand floor of the cavern. Tach shook her head. Only on the world of her birth had she seen such gaudy extravagance. A jewel-encrusted door, the gems forming the pattern of a coat of arms.
"Your governor doesn't underrate his importance."
"We didn't build it. Honest. It just happens."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Enchanting ice, the faceted surfaces cool and sharp against the palm of her hand. One of the gems was loose. It formed the eye of an eagle, and beneath her probing fingers, it suddenly tumbled free like a bloody tear. Bewitching fire, as a ruby the size of a plum filled her hand. She couldn't resist. She pocketed the wealth.
"The ability to make dreams manifest... energy-to-matter transference," murmured Tach, trying to remove this latest wild card mutation from the realm of fantasy into the workaday reality that was science.
Scientific theories held little interest for Peanut. He threw back the elaborate bolt, the turned to Tachyon. "Wait here. I gotta make sure everybody's cleared out. The fewer people who know, the better."
Darkness fell around her like a storm as Peanut and the lantern passed through the doorway. And carried on its stygian wings was a stench that defied description. Tach, her stomach heaving, spun and staggered back a few steps from the door.
What could possibly live and produce such foulness? For over forty years she'd faced and physicked the worse the wild card had to offer. She could face this too. What she couldn't face was the blackness. Memories of her basement cell scurried like tormenting demons through her mind. Footfalls in the darkness, raucous laughter. Light struck her like a blow, and Tachyon screamed. Blaise was coming.
Peanut's hand across her mouth smothered the sound, yanked her back from the edge of madness.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry" Her teeth chattered over each consonant like hail on a tin roof.
"Don't be afraid of the dark. We won't let anything getcha. Now come on, but you remember-because he won't, won't want to-you gotta hurry."
They were through the secret door, and her feet recoiled from a sticky resinous substance. The stench made her head reel, made her doubt the evidence of her eyes. That voluminous mass of stained white couldn't possibly be flesh? Could it?
Pipes thrust into the mass like air hoses into an inflating balloon. But this was not so benign. Dried blood flaked from the skin around the punctures like peeling paint, and Tach could see an angry red, the corona of infection, flaring from several of the crudely sewn incisions. And from the pores poured the source of the foulness-liquid shit oozing in perfect beadlike globules, running down the joker's side to join the mountains of waste. Ancestors help the poor creature, it was flesh, it did live. Stomach heaving like a bucking horse, Tach fought her revulsion and tried to see where in thIs mountain of protoplasm resided the mind, the soul.
"Get the doctor a handkerchief, Peanut," said a highpitched voice from high above her. "She's not accustomed to the smell of bloatblack." The boy hit the word bloat with the bitterness of a falling hammer.
Tach searched wildly for the source of the voice. Finally located it. Pygmylike, the head, neck, shoulders, and arms of a young man perched like a figurehead on the prow of a massive ship of flesh.
Was there anything in that round fat face reminiscent of her dream phantom suitor? Only the hair color. A nudge from Peanut startled her. He offered a handkerchief. It had been drenched in Lagerfeld. It had been Tachyon's favorite-- "After-shave, yes, I know," said the young man in chorus with her thoughts.
"That's why I got it for you.. . for this moment."
The damp cloth formed a veil against the stink and Tachyon's horror. "Are you..." She couldn't form the rest of the words.
"The Outcast? Yeah. Now, I suppose, you see why." They were tuned. He was the first person she had read with her feeble telepathy. They had walked in dreams together. It was easy to slide into his mind. Past the lithe, tanned figure that was the Outcast, the soul's image of his true self. Past erotic visions of Kelly. A simulacrum of Tachyon-heroic, noble, suffering. Down to where the boy-child lived. Encased in fat, eating sewage, lying in shit, and dreaming of beauty. Quick blurred images flashed past-of Teddy, slow and always a little pudgy, but blessed with beautiful hands. Those hands sweeping across the page of a sketchbook. The smell of drying oil, the romantic quirky paintings that filled his room. They were lovely; they added something to a world that dismissed, discounted, and rejected Theodore Honorlaw.
Monster/tired/screaming/hateself/mustlive/mustdie. Tachyon's spirit wept.
Teddy looked down at her. "You're crying on the inside for me."
"Yes."
"Why don't you cry on the outside?"
"I can't. I've lost the ability," Tach said simply. "When?"
"After the rape." They studied each other for a long moment. "Now you're weeping for me," Tach added softly. "Yeah ... but only on the inside. Wouldn't do for the governor of the Rox to show weakness."