"I have no idea what's fueling it or why it's running, either," he continued. "I checked out the readings, and it's pumping out the amps, nice and steady. I ran the west wing's circuits to it. We have lights, heat, and power..."
About then, he stopped, noticing Prime's present to me for the first time.
Prime waved his hand toward the drapes. "A little gift to the governor from us,"
Prime told him. "The first royalty statement. Bloat's suggestion to myself and the other jumpers has worked out well." He yanked at the covering, and dirty canvas rippled to the floor. All the jokers gasped.
It was beautiful. More stunning than any of the plates I'd seen in the high school art history texts or in the poster I used to have taped to my bedroom wall. The painting-the triptych-stood five feet high, maybe four wide, in an ornate wooden case. On the front were scenes of the Taking of Christ and the Carrying of the Cross, but what I really wanted to see was on the interior panels. I gestured to Peanut and Elmo, telling them to hurry up and open it.
They opened the outer panels, revealing the brilliant fantastic landscape inside. Around the room I felt waves of admiration and surprise rippling out.
"The Temptation of St. Anthony. Hieronymous Bosch," I said for the benefit of those who didn't know the work. "Previously at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon and now appearing exclusively in the Rox."
I chuckled, loud and long. It was indeed glorious. Bosch didn't know it, but he was painting the post-wild card world before it ever existed. I've often wondered if it wasn't a flash of prescience-no one else in his time was doing anything like this. I can imagine it as my Rox. It would be a wondrous place, a glorious vision.
You know Bosch, don't you? In his head grotesqueries abounded; his brush gave forth a torrent of human forms misshapen, altered, and tormented; his imagination overflowed with all the demons of hell and the icons of a superstitious age-at least that's what my teachers said.
In the midst of a twisted medieval landscape, the characters of Bosch were playing. Jokers. They cavorted everywhere you looked. The triptych is a celebration of jokerhood: fox-headed demons, a merman riding a flying fish, another fish crawling down a road with a castle on its back, a skating penguin, a stag-headed man in a red cloak, another with grass growing on his back, a half-naked woman with a lizard's tail, a toad-man, a monkey-man-hundreds of them, roiling in a dark, stormy world.
Like my Rox. Very much like the Rox I see in my dreams.
The Rox I might build if they'd let me.
Kafka was staring at the Bosch like all the others, captivated. The joker we call Headlamp had turned bright, bright eyes on the triptych, so that it stood bathed in crystalline illumination. Jokers cavorted in egg tempura brilliance.
I laughed gaily. "We've found the way to make the Combine pay us back." The jumpers laughed at that, hearing K.C.'s phrase for the nat authorities. "They'll pay quite well to be allowed to stay in their own little bodies. Quite well."
For that instant, looking at the Temptation, I forgot the tragedies in New York.
I forgot the scorn of Prime and Blaise toward the jokers and my dreams. I forgot the nagging torture of all the jokers within my wall.
I forgot it all.
"The Rox has benefactors now. People in high places. People with money. Lots of money. No one will ever be hungry here again."
I laughed again. The voices of the jokers laughed with me. The jokers in Bosch's painting danced in sympathy.
There are times when life is shit....
The day after Prime delivered the Bosch, Blaise did something I still can't believe even he would do.
In one horrible stroke, he has taken Kelly away and wounded the one man who has always helped the jokers. It isn't fair what Blaise has done to Kelly. It isn't fair to her or to Tachyon. I listened as Blaise brought Tachyon to the Rox. I listened, and I couldn't do anything, for most of the jokers here no longer trust Tachyon, not since he betrayed Hartmann. Still ...
It makes my stomach-all of it turn to listen to Tachy's pain. Worse, I can't shut it off like I can someone else's voice. I felt it as soon as they pierced the wall. Maybe it's because of my infatuation with Kelly, maybe its some remnant of Tachyon s telepathy, but we are linked.
He's so loud in my head. He hurts so much.... Burning Sky, please help me....
She hurts so much. She makes me hurt.
I was outraged, even though several of the jokers laughed when they heard about it. I sent Peanut to Blaise with a message that I wanted Tachyon returned to his own body. I told him that I understood Blaise had his own reasons for wanting to hurt Tachyon but that the doctor had done more to help the jokers than anyone else. For that, I said, I wanted Tachyon released now. Blaise had had his vengeance; he'd proved how strong he was. Now let Tachyon go.
I'm the governor, right?
Blaise sent Peanut back with Polaroids: Kelly's--Tachyon's-- body, naked and spread-eagled, her eyes wide, haunted and hopelessly defiant. Tachyon exposed helplessly, the picture snapped between her spread legs. Tachyon covered by Blaise's body. Tachyon afterward, weeping.
I ... well, I didn't do anything.
I mean, what could I do, really? Was I going to send a squad of armed jokers to the jumper side of the Rox? I could've done that, but Blaise'd just mind-control them, or his followers would jump them. It'd start a civil war here. There are things I have to consider, after all. It's not just a simple thing.
The jumpers bring in money, they bring in the rapture and other drugs that half the jokers here are addicted to. The fear of them is at least part of what keeps the authorities away. I need the jumpers as much as they need me.
There are things I can't do. Really. I just ... I just wish I didn't feel so bad about it. So dirty. I keep hearing myself, and I sound like fucking George Bush making excuses about how all his promises about 'no new exotic laws' have had to be forgotten.
Do you understand?
... please help rne ... I still hear her, and she's calling for me.
It hurts. It really does.
I had Peanut burn the pictures, but I kept seeing them. Kelly, poor Kelly. My Kelly. This isn't the way a romance is supposed to go.
Lovers
II.
A lifetime ago, Tachyon had been thrown into the Tombs. He had thought he knew despair when the heavy barred door slammed shut behind him. Now he realized that had been only a pale shadow of true wretchedness.
His head pounded in time to the beating of his heart. Breath seemed to rip like shattered glass across a throat made raw from screaming. Blood still trickled sluggishly from his vagina, and he wondered what internal damage had been done.
The incongruity struck him. One should not use male pronouns with female anatomy. But he was a man. Wasn't he? He was suddenly aware of a painfully full bladder. He reached down, touched blood matted hair, and smoothness. No, he was no longer a man.
It seemed the final straw. As she stared with dry, aching eyes into the darkness, Tach longed to cry, to bathe her burning eyes with warm tears, to release the anguish filling her chest like crushing weight. But she could not cry. It was as if her emotions had been carefully gathered, and packed away in some deep and secret part of her soul. She was suffering, but she couldn't express the pain.
The darkness seemed to have substance. Hands stretched out before her, Tach made a circuit of her prison. Six feet by five feet. Bare concrete underfoot. Brick walls that oozed damp like a sweating fat man. As she made her journey of discovery, her bruised toes tried to cringe from any possible obstacles. They needn't have worried. The room was utterly, totally barren.
Tachyon was discovering that it was much harder to hold urine in a female body than in a male one. She found the door again. Beating desperately on it with her palms, she gathered a breath and shouted, "Hey! Help! Listen to mel HEY!"
There was no response.
As she squatted in a corner and relieved herself, Tachyon realized that in addition to being the most desperate moment of her life, it had become the most humiliating.
Eventually she slept. What woke her was a raging thirst, the clammy cold, and the sound of the door closing.
"No! Wait! Don't go! Don't leave me!"
Her toes struck something. There was a flat tinny sound as metal skittered across the floor. The aroma of oatmeal wafted to her nostrils. Shaking with hunger, Tach dropped her knees and groped blindly for the scattered silverware.
Minutes passed without success. Finally, with a faint mew of fury, Tach gathered the bowl in her hands and lapped down the cereal like a starving dog. It dented but did not banish the hunger. With her index finger, Tachyon scraped the sides and bottom of the bowl and sucked off the last bits of oatmeal.
A little more reconnaissance, and she discovered a pitcher of water and an empty bucket. She instantly availed herself of the bucket.
She had lost track of time. One day, three days, a week? How much time had elapsed in the world of light, in a world where people didn't go hungry or live with the stench of bowel movements or strain for even the faintest sound of another living creature?
At first Tachyon had been terrified that Blaise had taken Cody too. After all, the boy had been fascinated with the woman. It was his jealousy of Tach and Cody's relationship that had led him to run away in the first place and set him on this course of vengeance. But Blaise was as unsubtle as he was unstable. If he had held Cody, he would have tortured her before Tachyon's eyes. Thank the Ideal that he did not yet understand the power of suggestion, the agony of not knowing.
At least he's transferred his obsession with Cody to me, thought Tach. Now she will be safe. And though the thought comforted, Tachyon still had to clamp her teeth together to stop their chattering.
And Cody would be able to identify Blaise as Tachyon's kidnapper. The brief comfort afforded by that thought took a sudden plummet. She was on the Rox-and nobody sane came to the Rox.
Then the final crushing realization: Blaise could not allow Cody to reveal her jump and Tachyon's kidnapping. Had he killed her? Or simply removed that section of her memory with his mind powers? Fear gripped her, for while Blaise possessed the most awesome mind-control power Tach had ever faced, it was like a bludgeon.
There was no mentatic subtlety. His clumsy mental surgery might have destroyed Cody's mind. Desperately, Tach prowled the darkness, but it could not match the stygian blackness within her mind and soul. From their first meeting, he and Cody had formed a telepathic bond that Tachyon had shared with only one other human woman. Surely that power would tell her if Cody lived. But the power was gone. So the darkness was filled only with silence and her grim fears.
Six times they had fed her. Did that mean three days had elapsed? Impossible to tell. At times her hunger was so great that it felt as if a small animal were chewing at the walls of her stomach. So perhaps they weren't feeding her every day. It was a blow to discover that her method of telling time proved to be as useless as everything else she had tried. This final loss of control over even the most meager part of her environment had, her blinking back tears.
More time elapsed, and eventually the silence became too much. One day she found herself talking to herself. Silverware was the catalyst for this latest bizarre behavior. She had been hoarding it, and she now possessed three spoons and a fork, which she obsessively counted and rearranged a hundred times in the hours between each sleep period.
"In an adventure novel or a cheap spy movie, our hero always constructs some devilishly clever device from ordinary household utensils," said Tach aloud.
"But our hero's been reduced to a heroine, and she doesn't have a clue." The laughter hit the low ceiling and fell dully back on her ears.
Tach clapped a hand over her mouth to still the hysterical sound. Exhaustion dragged at her limbs.
Forcing herself to her feet, she made six quick circuits of her prison, and in time to her steps she recited: "A constant and overwhelming desire for sleep.
Unspecified attacks of anxiety. Mind-numbing exhaustion. Bouts of hysterical laughter. All classic symptoms of acute depression." She paused for a moment, conceding that this rambling oration was also abnormal behavior. Then, with a shrug, she shouted at the invisible ceiling. "But you won't drive me crazy, Blaise. You may imprison me, starve me, destroy my eyesight with constant darkness, but you will not drive me crazy."
It helped to say the words. But then she went to sleep.
Somber reflection in the cold blackness of morning left Tachyon with the decided feeling that she had to do something. Waiting for rescue hadn't worked. She had to find a way to communicate, to inform someone of her plight. There was only one way she knew, and that would require an intimate study of the fleshy prison in which she now found herself.
For several minutes she paced the length of the cellar. She hated this body as much as she hated the damp concrete walls of the basement. But now she had to inspect the primitive mind. Search for the connections that might be trained and honed in mentatics.
It could be done. Long ago, she had trained Blythe to construct bulky unsophisticated mindshields. Granted, Blythe had been a wild card, but her talent had not affected the physical linkages of her brain, and she had learned.
So this body could learn.
"Will learn," Tach growled.
She settled herself comfortably on the floor. Closed her eyes, began with the feet, tried to make her cramped muscles relax. And behind the darkness of her lids her mind began to whirl like a frenzied animal chasing its own tail: What have they done to my clinic? Why is no one helping me? Furious at her own lack of discipline, Tach sat up abruptly. "If you train this body," she said aloud, "the possibility exists that you can communicate with Sascha, or Fortunato, or some other as yet undetermined wild card telepath. You can escape and come back with many, many powerful aces, recover your body, and level this miserable island."
She spent a few moments picturing the scene. The images of death and destruction had a very salubrious effect. As Tach lay back down, she decided that despite forty-five years on earth, she was still a Takisian to her fingertips.
She was walking in the mountains. The mountains looked Takisian, but the sky was earth's. A flying fish skimmed the tops of the dark pines like an intricate Chinese kite, but for some reason none of this was confusing.
"Does this count as a meeting?" a young man's voice was asking.
Tach searched for the source but saw nothing but grass, flowers, trees, and that damn fish. She did notice that a castle had suddenly appeared on one of the hilltops.
"I suppose so," Tachyon replied cautiously.
"Good. I've always wanted to meet you, but I wanted you away from that place. Do you like it here?"
"It's very... lovely."
She had reached an energetic stream. The water was rushing, chuckling over the rocks and parting around a gigantic gray boulder that squatted in the center of the streambed. Tach couldn't resist. Lifting her long skirts, she leapt lightly from rock to rock, feeling the chill touch of the spume of her face and hands.
Quickly she clambered up the side of the granite behemoth. The sound of the water was very loud, and mist from the rapids occasionally kissed Tachyon's face.
"So, who are you?" asked Tachyon with studied casualness as she picked gray-green lichen from a crevice in the rock.
"A friend."
"I have none in this place. All my friends live in another world, another time."
"I'm here. I'm real."
"You're a voice on the wind. The whisper of a cloud. The murmur of water. A dream construct of a maddened mind." She shivered and hugged herself. The long sleeves of sea green gauze snagged on the rough surface of the boulder. "Give me back my world. I can't live in madness, no matter how pleasant."
And suddenly she was back in the cell. The darkness pressing in on all sides, the concrete cold and rough against her bare bottom.
"Yes," she said on a sob. "This is real."
"Oh, Princess, I'm sorry. I'll help. I swear to you, I'll help."
She woke with the passion of that promise still echoing in her mind.
"Well, friend, not to sound cynical, but I'll believe it when I see it," she called aloud.
The sound was wrong. The food trap rattled like pebbles in a can as the bolt was pulled back. This sounded like a road being graded. The light struck her eyes like a lance, and tears began to stream down her face. Squinting desperately, she made out a manlike shape against the glare. And then the smell struck. Baked chicken. Saliva filled her mouth like a geyser springing to life.
Tach clambered to her feet, her nakedness forgotten, consumed by the lure of food. Now that she was closer, she recognized the manshape. And manshape was the only way the joker Peanut could be categorized. His skin was hardened, puckered like the shell of a peanut, hence the nickname. His eyes were almost lost in the scaly mask of his face. One arm was missing, and Tach noticed that he had a blouse and a pair of jeans flung over the stump. Peanut struggled to bend, to set down the tray. Tach leapt to his aid lest the joker spill that wondrous banquet.
"Thanks, Doc." His voice was a heavy rasp forced past lips that could scarcely move. "I brung you some food, and some clothes, but you gotta eat fast so he don't find out."
Tachyon didn't miss the subtle emphasis nor the way the joker's eyes flickered nervously back over his shoulder. So everyone feared Blaise. It was not just spinelessness on her part.
"Peanut, let me out," said Tach as she pulled on the jeans.
A stiff headshake. "No, we gotta be careful. He said we was walkin' a tightrope." Different emphasis this time. The timbre of respect.
"Who? Who is this person?" She completed the final button on the blouse and felt confidence return like the growth of a second skin. It was amazing what lack of clothes did to one's morale.