It’s farther to go back now anyway, he told himself. Actually, he didn’t really feel tired at all. He just felt a compulsion to turn around and swim away.
Leslie Christian wouldn’t think much of that.
Ben churned his legs in the water, harder and harder.
Suddenly a wave of fear swept over him, making his stomach muscles clench. It came without thought or logic; he felt a primal panic rising in him, lifting the ursine hackles on the back of his neck and shoulders. He kept swimming, but his legs were reluctant, weakening with dread.
Another crest of fear rose in him, and he stopped swimming. His huge body bobbed in the tossing waves, held aloft by his fur and layer of fat. Ellis Island, no more than a light or two in the distance, filled him with revulsion. As he looked at it through the blizzard, the island grew blurry and seemed to shift even farther away from him.
Ben blinked a splash of water out of his eyes, trying to focus. Even the falling snow ahead of him seemed to turn oddly in his vision. He was disoriented, scared, and wanted to go home.
He forced his legs to start kicking again, in a dog paddle. Instead of turning, though, he paddled straight ahead. He concentrated on his legs, just to keep them moving. The island, the fear and dread of the unknown he would meet there, and this strange panic that had struck him were still present, but he ignored them. Two legs at a time, pushing against the water, filled his mind. That was all: one, two; one, two.
Ben kept swimming.
The trip seemed to take forever. At last, however, he entered a cone of bright light and dared to look up. It was a single powerful lamp on one of the buildings; others near it were burned out. Ellis Island was a rectangle, with a ferry slip in one long side that created a horseshoe shape. The island was smaller than he had expected, maybe less than two city blocks.
Now that he knew he was going to make it, he slowed down, looking for signs of life. Only certain windows illuminated from inside suggested anyone was here, but in this weather that was no surprise. He paddled into the ferry slip, still looking around, and finally reached up to the dock with his front legs and pulled himself out of the water.
On an impulse, he shook himself, spraying icy water in all directions.
As he got his bearings, he became aware of an unpleasant smell. It reminded him of garbage barges, but the smell was more varied, and worse. Fortunately, the hard wind was blowing it away from the island.
He squinted his bear’s eyes into the rush of snow against his face. The main building was maybe six stories’ worth of brick and limestone trim, considerably longer than a football field from left to right as he faced it. At each corner, copper-domed observation towers stood another forty feet higher than the roof against the storm. The building had an old look, as though it was from the turn of the century, but Ben was no student of architecture.
An eerie feeling of being watched from behind ticked the back of his neck. He turned to look as his hackles rose, but nothing was behind him except the water. The sensation persisted and he looked up, to see only the heavy snowfall swirling down at him.
A movement in the shadows to his left caught his eye. He turned, tensing. Someone took a wary step forward.
“What do you want?” a woman’s voice demanded.
Ben hadn’t expected anyone to be outside here. Also, he couldn’t talk as a bear. He only watched as the speaker came forward another step. She walked upright, at least six feet tall. Her face was that of a ferret: black nose, wedge-shaped head with round ears, and a black mask around her eyes over buff fur. Her fur shifted toward silver on her abdomen. Most notably, two-inch fangs curved downward from her mouth.
“Careful, Mustelina,” said a young man’s voice. “I never saw him before.”
Ben looked at him. He was a strange bushy bundle of average height for a man, steely gray in color.
“Shut up, Brillo,” said Mustelina. “A joker’s a joker. What’s your name?”
Ben shook his head and tried to shrug, still watching them suspiciously. At least he understood what Mustelina was doing out here; she was made for this weather, nearly as much as he was. She probably handled the blazing, humid New York summers better than he would in this form. Brillo, too, was apparently warm enough out here.
“What if he’s not a joker?” Brillo yelled harshly against the wind. “What if he’s a real polar bear?”
“Oh, get off it, will you?” She took another step toward Ben. The wind rippled her white fur. “Can’t you talk at all?”
Ben carefully swayed his head from side to side in a definitive gesture that Brillo could not deny. Then he inclined his head toward the main doors of the big building. His mouth was still clamped shut.
“Bloat better meet him,” said Mustelina firmly. “Come on.” She walked along the ferry slip toward the main doors with a springy, prancing step, her head bent against the wind.
Ben padded after her, keeping an eye on Brillo. Brillo stayed away from him, though, as they both approached the entrance.
As Ben drew closer to the building, he looked up at the huge triple-arched doors that reached up into the second story. Over them, snow lay on some kind of concrete birds flanking an insignia in relief. Thousands of people could be in a building this size.
“Bloat runs things here,” said Mustelina as she pulled open the heavy door.
An incredible stench hit Ben’s sensitive ursine nose. He forced himself to walk inside, his stomach rebelling. Mustelina and Brillo followed him.
Ben blinked in the light of the huge room, which had apparently been a lobby at one time. Then he stopped in surprise as the door slammed shut behind him. He was staring face-to-face with the most repulsive joker he had ever seen.
Bloat was monstrous in size, a gross mountain of flesh maybe fifty feet wide and eight feet high. His head and neck looked normal enough at the top and his shoulders and arms were ordinary, but they stuck out uselessly from the incredible mass of his body. Five inlet pipes of some kind jabbed into his body. The stench originated with a resinous black sludge that had accumulated around him on the floor.
Several jokers were hanging around, of all shapes. Some were nearly lost in the shadows at the edges of the big room. At this hour, most of them were probably asleep. Those who were here turned to look with suspicion and hostility at Ben.
“Bloat,” said Mustelina, with a fervent awe in her voice. “This joker just swam all the way out here to join us and climbed out of the water. He can’t even talk.”
“Really?” Bloat’s voice was a thin squeak. “Another guest? Welcome, my friend.” Bloat peered down at him from his greater height. His expression revealed a leering suspicion his voice had not conveyed.
Ben nodded his bear’s head in greeting, feeling a tingle of alarm. He really didn’t know much about this place at all.
Mustelina had said Bloat ran the show here, but Ben wished Leslie Christian had told him exactly who should receive the drug packet. And if he had to defend himself, he would have to drop the packet in order to bite anybody.
“He’s no joker!” Bloat shrieked. “He’s an ace of some kind!” Suddenly he glowered sternly at Ben. “You’re no glamour boy, though, are you?”
Ben froze, his pulse racing, wondering how Bloat knew all this. Maybe the rapture was for him, after all.
“That’s right,” Bloat shouted gleefully. “That packet’s for me! Hand it over!”
Ben tensed, looking up at Bloat’s face, suddenly realizing that the huge joker was reading his thoughts.
The jokers around them turned expectant, their hostile eyes fixed on Ben. Ben shuffled around to keep them all in his vision. From what he could see, he could defend himself, but a fight wouldn’t help him complete his mission.
“Watch him,” Bloat warned in his high voice. “Don’t let him get away.”
“May I?” a commanding male voice asked. A youngster strode out of the shadows with a springy step. He was slender and vibrant, bristling with energy—maybe seventeen years
old, dressed in jeans and an oversized purple turtleneck sweater. A short, dark-haired teenage girl stood behind him.
Ben looked from him to Bloat and back.
“Oh, all right, David,” Bloat said with exaggerated indulgence. “Make sure. But I’ve already read his mind, so I know. So there.”
David pranced right up to Ben. He grinned with large, even teeth in a handsome face that needed a shave. His blond hair was shaggy and one shock of it fell into his face over bloodshot, watery eyes. He held out one hand.
Ben hesitated, studying David’s confident, self-mocking smile. Without the power of speech, surrounded by unknown jokers, he saw little choice of action. He opened his mouth and let the envelope slide forward a little, smelling beer on David’s breath as he did so.
He heard shuffling feet and nervous, high-pitched laughter high above him. As David, still grinning, edged forward carefully and took the package, Ben looked up and saw an observation gallery at the third-floor level over the main floor. The people up there were only shadows.
“Ugh,” said David, laughing too hard. “Polar-bear saliva.”
At first no one laughed. Then Bloat’s high giggle pierced the air and the jokers laughed along with him.
David was no joker, though. Neither was the girl behind him.
“So you don’t know who he is,” Bloat gloated at Ben. “Well … I’m not going to tell you!” He laughed again at his own cleverness.
Ben glanced at the door. His chances of running were negligible. His paws couldn’t even work the doorknob.
David drew out a packet of the blue powder. He tore a hole in the plastic with the tip of his little finger and then stared at the tiny blue stain on his skin with a sudden fascination.
“Well, David?” Bloat squeaked impatiently.
“That’s the stuff, all right,” David said softly. “Rapture.” He grinned crookedly at his finger and then looked up at Bloat with glowing eyes. “Let’s just say I wanted to make sure we get credit for the rent we pay.”
“David,” Bloat whined. “I don’t cheat my friends.” He looked around and spotted a tall, slender woman cowering in the shadows. “Giggle, you cutie. This is the one I promised you. Give her some, David.”
Giggle crept forward carefully. She wore loose, bulky winter clothes and soft shoes, but as she moved, she laughed quietly. Yet the expression on her face was one of torture and anguish.
“Everything tickles her,” Mustelina said softly to Ben. “Even the feel of clothes on her body and the floor when she walks. Every sensation makes her laugh, but she hates it.”
“It’s called rapture,” said David, holding out the packet. “It activates on contact with the skin … and it’s strongest locally.”
Giggle ventured forward slowly and stuck an index finger into the hole in the plastic. She drew it out and looked at it. First she smiled shyly. Then she snatched the packet out of his hands, giggling helplessly at her touch on the plastic. She poured the powder into her palm and smeared it on her face and neck. Gasps and laughter rose up on all sides.
“It’s Bloat’s,” said David warily. “And very expensive.”
Bloat laughed in shrieking delight, however, entertained by the spectacle as Giggle dropped the packet on the floor and stripped off her bulky sweater and the blue T-shirt under it. She knelt and began desperately rubbing the rapture all over her bare arms, shoulders, breasts, and stomach.
“You won’t stop feeling tickled,” said David. He leered at her obvious pleasure, idly rubbing the blue stain on his finger with his thumb. “But you’ll love it now.”
As everyone watched Giggle, Ben glanced around carefully. He couldn’t get out without help.
Giggle had stripped naked and was squatting on the floor, smearing rapture on her thighs. She giggled at the sensation, but no longer looked tortured. Now her face had a dreamy glow.
Ben watched her in a kind of detached horror. Rapture was a nasty drug and she was drenched in it. Still, he was in too tight a spot to worry about some stranger.
Bloat was laughing louder than ever and his joker followers imitated him. David watched Giggle with rapturous enjoyment. The young woman who had entered behind him was now standing alongside him, looking at Giggle with wistful amusement in her pretty blue eyes.
“David,” she said softly, twisting a finger around one of her black curls of hair. “Who’s the polar bear?”
“You got me, Sarah,” said David, his eyes still glowing at Giggle.
“I want to jump him,” said Sarah. “I wonder what rapture feels like to a bear.”
Ben’s ursine ears caught her words even through the riot of other voices. No one else had heard her.
Ben backed away a step, wondering what she meant. If she just wanted a ride, Ben could do that. If she meant sex, she was really crazy. Ben looked around quickly, sure that he was physically stronger than anyone he could see. That told him nothing about what ace abilities might be present here.
Giggle was dancing, naked and smeared with blue, inside a circle of jokers. They were clapping in rhythmic unison, still laughing and shouting encouragement as the rest of the packet of rapture was passed around. Bloat hooted and laughed and wiggled his stubby appendages helplessly.
Suddenly Giggle spotted Ben. Swaying from side to side and giggling, she pranced toward him, her smile white inside her blue face. The circle around her parted, still clapping, and she came to Ben, still dancing and twirling.
The circle re-formed to surround both of them. Someone started a chant to go with the rhythmic clapping: “Bear! Bear! Bear!” Giggle laughed and grabbed Ben’s ears, dancing from side to side.
David and Sarah were now in the front of the circle, still within Ben’s hearing. The blond youth studied Ben with his watery, bloodshot eyes. Then he put his arm around Sarah and shrugged. “Go ahead, for all I care,”
Ben tensed, watching Sarah, ready to leap forward to attack or to dodge away, as necessary.
She didn’t move. Suddenly a force struck Ben’s mind, sending him reeling—shoving him out of the polar bear. In his vision, the swaying blue shape of Giggle rippled and blurred. The clapping and chant of “Bear!” overwhelmed him.
Disoriented, he pushed back, growling almost without meaning to. He was hot now beneath his fur and fat inside this place and he did not understand what the force was. The room suddenly seemed to tilt as the mysterious force pushed him away from the sight, hearing, and tactile feeling of the bear.
Ben was lost in a blur of closing darkness, just barely able to make out Sarah seeming to grow larger in his mind. Panicked, unable to hang on to the bear, he focused his concentration on his human body back in Chinatown. He pictured his room, his bed, his nude body in the bed next to Sally. He concentrated harder and finally, belatedly, spun dizzily back into familiar darkness.
Vivian felt Ben’s confusion. She had been sleeping in the dark room, grateful for the rare solitude, but her mind came awake suddenly. Ben’s mind, disoriented and not present, was no longer controlling their body. The feeling was intuitive, but reliable.
Vivian’s mind came instantly awake. She eagerly hurried to blink their eyelids, move their arms and legs, to make them hers, not theirs—or his. She came awake, took control of their body, and felt the change once again.
It didn’t hurt at first, exactly, but her adrenaline flowed into her bloodstream and the shifting of blood from the change caused throbbing in her head, her chest, and her pelvis. Her bones ached as their shape and size altered, her pelvis growing and her shoulders and rib cage narrowing. Her head and face hurt sharply as their shape changed. She felt some of the sensation of an elevator dropping suddenly or a roller coaster suddenly starting a steep downgrade.
The shifting of soft tissue was less intense, but it rippled and moved on her chest, between her legs, on her face, through all of her muscles. Then the physical changes stopped and left her breathing hard on the bed in Ben’s room. She opened her eyes. The layer of ice on the window softene
d the glow of light from outside.
Carefully, as she always did after changing from rider to driver in their body, she slid one hand to her chest. Her breasts were small but certainly female. At the same time, her other hand moved between her legs, where she found what she expected. She was Vivian, as Ben still called her from childhood—or Tienyu, as she called herself now.
She cleared her throat softly. It was her voice.
She could feel Ben’s presence now, too. He had probably been killed in his animal, she guessed, and his mind was reeling from the surprise. That’s what would have caused him to lose control of their body momentarily.
For an indefinite period, however, he would now be riding in their body while she did what she wanted. Like she had done as a rider, he could communicate conscious, direct thoughts to her, but they could not read each other’s minds unless the message was deliberate and willful on the part of the sender.
Right now Ben apparently had nothing to say.
Next to her, Sally stirred languorously and turned on her side toward Vivian. Vivian remained motionless, not wanting to wake her. Sally’s hand eased across her waist, however, in a casual caress and slid down between her legs.
Vivian tensed, then gently moved to get out of bed, away from Sally’s hand. She was hoping Sally was still mostly asleep. However, as Vivian sat up and put her feet on the floor, Sally raised up on one elbow.
“Who are you?” she said sleepily. “Where’s Ben?”
Vivian got up and moved away from the bed. “I’m Ben’s sister. Ben’s gone.”
“Gone? Jeez, why didn’t—hey, what were you doing in bed with me?”
For a moment Vivian stood uncertainly in the steamy room, naked except for the coin on her neck chain. She toyed nervously with it. Then she switched on the lamp.
Sally flinched, squinting in the sudden light, and pushed herself up into a sitting position.
“Get out,” said Vivian.
“What? Come on, Ben said he didn’t care if I spent the night. What time is it, anyway?”
Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks Page 18
