Jokertown Shuffle

by George R. R. Martin

  Brennan nodded and limped back to the van. "What's up, boss?" Brutus piped.

  "We're going in," Brennan said shortly. He gathered together the blanket wrapped about Jennifer and carefully lifted her from the van. She felt no heavier than a child in Brennan's arms. She was fading away, unconsciously using her ace power to turn insubstantial to the world.

  "Put her here," Father Squid said, suddenly materializing behind him with a gurney. Brennan laid her down carefully. Brutus leapt onto the cart and clung to her blanket as Brennan and Father Squid wheeled her into the clinic's receiving area.

  Tachyon was standing at the desk, knuckling sleep from his lilac eyes. The diminutive alien was still wearing a wrinkled white lab coat that looked like it'd been slept in. "What's this all about? I told you-" He turned toward the doors when they whooshed open. He stared for a moment, frowning, then his eyes went wide in astonishment. "Daniel!"

  He took a quick step forward, arms wide as if to embrace Brennan, then stopped short as he saw the look on Brennan's face and remembered the circumstances of their last parting. "It's… good to see you," he finished somewhat lamely.

  Brennan only nodded. The two men had been through a lot together, from battling the Swarm to fighting Kien and the Shadow Fists, but Brennan still found himself unable to forget what had happened the last time they'd seen each other.

  It had been over a year ago. Brennan and Jennifer had tracked down Chrysalis's murderer, Hiram Worchester, to a hotel in Atlanta. Tachyon, who had also been on the scene, made a fine little speech about how things should be handled in strict accordance with the law. Tachyon, of course, got his way since he backed up his speech by mind-controlling Brennan. Worchester, had later turned himself in to the police and copped a pea bargain that kept him out of prison. Chrysalis was dead, and Worchester had a suspended sentence. True, equitable justice.

  Still, Brennan couldn't let himself brood on the past. He had another life to worry about now. Jennifer's.

  For the first time, Tachyon looked down from Brennan to the gurney. "What happened?" he asked.

  "Three men hit our home this morning," Brennan said shortly.

  Tachyon leaned over and peeled the layers of blankets away from Jennifer. She was translucently pale, the only color about her the crimson-soaked bandage that Brennan had wrapped around her forehead.

  As the ace known as Wraith, Jennifer Maloy could turn insubstantial to the physical world. She could walk through walls, sink through floors, and pass through locked doors as quietly as a ghost. But now, wounded and unconscious, her mind adrift in the uncharted depths of a black coma, there was nothing to anchor her body to the physical world. She would fade until nothing was left.

  Tachyon looked up at Brennan. "We'll take her to a security room on the top floor," Tachyon said in a low voice. "I'll examine her thoroughly there."

  They went down the corridor, up an elevator to the top floor, then down another corridor that was dark and obviously rarely used. The room they took Jennifer to had a steelreinforced door and thick wire mesh on the windows. Once inside, Brennan carefully lifted her onto the bed and watched anxiously as Tachyon examined her.

  "Will she be all right?" Brennan finally asked after Tachyon straightened up, a distant, worried expression on his face." Her wounds," Tachyon said, "are not life-threatening. You did a good job of field-dressing them, and I can carry on from there. She should be in no danger from them." Brennan detected a hesitancy in Tachyon's voice. "She will be all right?"

  Tachyon's eyes, as he looked straight at Brennan, were uncertain. "There is something else… wrong. Terribly wrong. I could not touch her mind."

  Brennan stared at the alien physician. "She's dead?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice. Father Squid put a steadying hand on Brennan's right forearm as Brutus moaned softly from the head of the bed.

  Tachyon shook his head. "Look at her, man. She still breathes. The blood still rushes through her veins. Her pulse is steady. Faint, but steady."

  Tachyon seemed to be speaking in riddles, but the years Brennan had spent in a Zen monastery made him used to that. Tachyon was making a koan, a Zen riddle designed to teach a subtle lesson about the nature of life.

  Brennan's mind seized on that familiarity of form like a life raft tossing about on the ocean of emotion raised by the possibility of Jennifer's death. "When is life like death, and death like life?" he said so softly that Tachyon and Father Squid could barely hear him. He looked from the priest to the doctor. "When the mind is gone," he finished.

  Tachyon nodded. "That's correct. The strange thing is, I can detect no organic reason for her… emptiness."

  "Was she attacked on the mental plane?" Father Squid asked.

  Tachyon shook his head. "I could detect no damage to indicate forcible entry and removal of her mind. It's almost as if it'd been lost… somehow…"

  "Can you find it again?" Brennan asked.

  Tachyon looked at Brennan, uncertainty in his eyes. "I wouldn't even know where to begin," he said simply. Brennan groaned and grabbed the bed's headboard with enough force to crush a section of its tubular piping. "There's Trace," Father Squid said.

  "Trace?" Tachyon snorted and shook his head. "That charlatan!"

  Brennan looked at Father Squid. "What are you talking about?"

  "A mysterious ace who calls herself Trace. No one seems to know much about her, but she has strange mental capabilities. She can find nearly anything that's been lost by `looking' back on its pathway of existence."

  "Can she find lost minds?" Brennan asked. "I doubt it," Tachyon said firmly.

  Father Squid shook his head. "I don't know," the priest said. "She has other rather odd powers. Or claims to."

  "Get her," Brennan said. "Get anyone who can help."

  "I'll try," Father Squid said doubtfully.

  "If you can't bring her here," Brennan said forcefully, "I will."

  The priest shook his head. "No amount of coercion would ever work on Trace. If she wants to help you, fine. If not, nothing on earth will ever make her change her mind. And she is the wrong person to anger."

  "So am I," Brennan said.

  "Don't make a hard situation more difficult," Father Squid pleaded.

  "Okay." Brennan took deep breaths to calm himself. "Go make the call, or whatever it takes to get this Trace here. Tell her I'll do anything I can, anything she wants, if she'll only help."

  Father Squid, eyes closed, nodded. "I already have," he said.

  Latham chivvied the last bit of eggs Benedict onto his fork with the last half of the last muffin on the plate sitting on Kien's desk. "Bloat is getting to be something of a problem," he told Kien.

  Kien poured himself another glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice from the decanter on his silver serving tray and washed down his caviar-covered muffin. He loved freshly squeezed orange juice almost as much as he loved wielding authority. Almost. Combining the two into a power breakfast was the perfect way to start the day. "Can we do without him?" he asked his lieutenant.

  Latham considered the question as he chewed and swallowed, and finally shook his head. "Not yet. Perhaps soon." He fastidiously wiped his lips with his linen napkin. "I created another three jumpers last week. Soon we'll have a force big enough to deal with all the grotesque jokers Bloat has accumulated on the Rox."

  "Three?" Kien repeated, impressed. Latham had gone without sex, as far as Kien knew, for the first twenty years he'd known the man. Now that his ace had turned, the heretofore abstemious lawyer was acting like a damn rabbit. Still, it was all to Kien's benefit in the long run. Latham created the jumpers, and Kien controlled them through his loyal lieutenant. Soon they'd be potent enough to add as a third main branch to the tree of the Shadow Fists: Immaculate Egrets, Werewolves, and jumpers.

  Kien, in fact, had already availed himself of their services, obtaining through them this fine ace body that had once belonged to one of his less-loyal lieutenants.

  The jangle of the telephone sitting on the edge o
f his desk cut through Kien's reverie. "Yes," he said quietly into the receiver as Latham looked on curiously.

  "It's Lao."

  Lao was the head of the assassin team he'd sent after Brennan and that bitch of his. Kien didn't like Lao's tone of voice.

  "Yes." Kien's reply was sharper this time, and Lao hesitated. "We-we ran into some unexpected difficulties," he finally said.

  "Is he dead?" Kien asked in a hard voice. "The woman is… I think…"

  "You `think,"' Kien ground out. He growled deep in his throat, his fury robbing him of the ability to articulate. He waited for the blaze of emotion to fade so he could speak clearly again. "All right. You and the others come in. I shall give you a chance to redeem yourselves."

  There was another long silence, and then Lao said, "The others are dead."

  Kien swallowed his fury. "All right. I will give you another chance. Do not fail me again."

  He didn't hear Lao's voluble reassurances as he hung up the phone. Good help, Kien reflected, was so hard to find these days. Wyrm was dead, Blaise-well, there was a possibility, but it was difficult to control the little bastard. The Whisperer-impossible to reach on short notice. Warlock and the Werewolves… another possibility, but Kien had secrets, many secrets, that he didn't want exposed. Latham, though, already knew most of them.

  "I might," Kien said, struck by sudden inspiration, "have need of your jumpers again. Round up three or four that you can trust."

  Latham nodded slowly. "All right. Three or four trustworthy, disposable jumpers."

  "`Disposable,"' Kien repeated. "Good point."

  They could get rid of them after the job and keep Kien's newest secrets even more closely held. Latham stood, folded his napkin down neatly on his breakfast tray, nodded, and left the room. Kien scarcely realized that he was gone. He was wondering what it would feel like to wear, like a newly purchased coat, the body of his longtime enemy.

  3.

  Brutus jumped down from Brennan's shoulder to the head of Jennifer's bed. He laid a tiny hand on her forehead and shivered. "She's cold, boss, real cold."

  Brennan could only nod. The wait was excruciating. Tachyon had dealt with Jennifer's wounds as best he could, then had to leave on clinic business, leaving Brennan, Brutus, and Father Squid to their bedside vigil. It didn't help that Father Squid could offer no suggestion as to how long they'd have to wait for Trace or whether she would even show up.

  "Not much is known about her," Father Squid explained, "other than the fact that she possesses mental abilities of the highest order. Some say she's a hideous joker, others that she's a beautiful ace. No one can say for sure because everyone who looks at her sees something different." Brennan frowned. "How can that be?"

  Father Squid shrugged massive shoulders. "It is apparently her will to vary her image with each beholder. No one can say why that is. Some claim that she's mad."

  "Not very flattering," said a voice behind Brennan, "to say about someone you need help from."

  Brennan started, hand reaching for the Browning High Power holstered in the small of his back. He had heard no one enter the hospital room, and with nerves stretched by worry verging on desperation, he acted without thinking. But even as he drew his gun, he lowered it.

  Facing him, standing straight and unhurt, was Jennifer Maloy. He had to glance down at the real Jennifer lying comatose on the bed to make himself believe that the image before him was some kind of simulacrum. He glanced at Father Squid. He, too, seemed taken by some sort of vision. "Holll-eeee," Brutus said. He jumped from the top of the bed's headboard and landed lightly on Brennan's shoulder. He clung on by winding a small fist in a lock of Brennan's hair and then said in a low voice that only Brennan could hear. "It's Chrysalis, boss. In the flesh. And bones. But it can't be. She's dead."

  "Guns won't help, either," the Jennifer simulacrum said. Brennan realized that the newcomer wasn't speaking with Jennifer's voice. "I could," she said, "if it's that important."

  And she was.

  "Thank you for coming," Father Squid said.

  Trace dropped into the uncomfortable hospital chair placed next to Jennifer's bed. "Nothing else to do," she said. "Thought I'd drop by and see what you wanted."

  "How'd you get through the clinic's security?" Brennan asked.

  She shrugged. "It wasn't hard."

  "Can you help us?" Father Squid asked.

  She looked at the priest, then Brennan. Brennan s eyes locked with hers, and he felt a shiver run down his spine, as if she were holding his naked brain in her hands. Her eyes shone like cateyes in the dark, and then they were Jennifer's again, and she smiled a bright Jennifer smile. "I see," she said. "I suppose I could take a look around. But what's in it for me?"

  "Anything," Brennan said. "Anything you want."

  She looked at him with Jennifer's face in a way that tore the heart from him. "Anything?" Trace repeated, giving the word a light, provocative lilt that made Brennan clench his teeth.

  "Anything that I can give," he said. "If you're as powerful as you claim to be, you should realize the extent-and sincerity-of my offer."

  She shrugged. "Just wanted to hear you say it in words. Words make things seem more real to you people."

  "But not to you?" Brennan asked.

  "Words have their place. But I can see beneath their surface, down to their real meanings." She frowned momentarily. "Your words are real enough. You mean what you say."

  Abruptly, Trace sat forward, turning her attention from Brennan and focusing on Jennifer. There was a long uncomfortable silence, then Trace sat back in the chair again, nodding. She looked at Brennan. "You're right. She's gone. She must be lost, wandering somewhere. The body won't last much longer without the mind."

  "Can you help?" the priest said. "I suppose."

  "Will you?"

  "Oh, I guess."

  Brennan realized that he was holding his breath and released it in a long sigh.

  "In exchange for what?" Father Squid asked.

  "Oh-" she waved it away-"we'll talk about that later." She turned her gaze on Brennan. "Go away now. Your brain is emitting too much static. I can't concentrate."

  "All right." Brennan nodded at Father Squid who followed him and Brutus out of the room into the corridor beyond. "You should have decided upon a settlement back then," Father Squid told him. "Trace has been known to exact a heavy price for her services."

  "I got that idea," Brennan said, "but the important thing is that she find Jennifer's consciousness and bring it back to her body. I can settle with her later."

  "I hope it will be that easy," Father Squid said as Brennan picked up Brutus and unzippered his leather jacket. Brutus snuggled down inside it and reclosed the zipper until only his head was showing.

  "Easy or not," Brennan said, "if she brings Jennifer back, we'll settle fairly. Now tell me what you know about Kien's death."

  "You suspect him?"

  "Always."

  Father Squid nodded ponderously. "I don't know much of anything beyond that which was in the papers. It was a heart attack, apparently, sudden and unexpected. Wait a minute," he said, his long, slender fingers waving in sudden excitement. "There was something else. I remember talking with Cosmo Cosgrove-you know, from the mortuary"

  Brennan nodded. The Cosgrove brothers were Jokertown's preeminent morticians.

  "Now," Father Squid continued, "the Cosgrove Mortuary did not handle the affair, but, well, apparently morticians talk among themselves, and Cosmo told me that Kien's mortician mentioned that there was something irregular about the body."

  "'Irregular'?" Brennan asked. "Like what?"

  Father Squid shrugged. "He knew no details. Just that there was something odd about the corpse."

  "I'll bet," Brennan muttered. "Is Fadeout the head of the Shadow Fists now?"

  The priest nodded. "As far as I can tell. The Fists have kept a very low profile in recent months. As profitable-and cold-blooded-as ever, of course, but the Shadow Fist Society has been avoi
ding rather than seeking headlines recently."

  Brennan nodded. "That sounds like Fadeout, all right."

  He'd try to operate as circumspectly as possible. He'd consider it a good business practice. He looked into the priest's eyes. "Thanks, Bob," he said.

  "For what?"

  "For being here when I needed help."

  "What else is a priest for? I still have high hopes for your soul, Daniel."

  "At least someone does. Keep an eye on Jennifer for me." Father Squid nodded and went back into the room. Brennan and Brutus went down the corridor, took the elevator back to the first floor, and went out into the night.

  Brutus, huddled under Brennan's leather jacket, shivered. "I'm cold, boss."

  "Don't worry," Brennan said. It had started to snow again, and the wind was blowing hard. Brennan turned his face into the driving snow as he headed toward his van. "I'm sure things are going to warm up very soon now"

  "Shit," Brutus said, and huddled down even more.

  Kien looked up from his desk when Rick and Mick entered the office. The joker brothers were Siamese twins, of a sort. They had one pair of legs and one trunk, though their body bifurcated halfway through the rib cage, giving them two chests and two sets of arms and shoulders. Though they were impressive physical specimens, Kien sometimes thought that they didn't have half a brain between them.

  "Guy here to see you," Rick said.

  Mick looked at his brother with a hurt expression. "I was going to tell Fadeout that. I spoke to the guy, after all."

  "You spoke to him, but it was my idea to see the boss first before letting him in."

  "Your idea? I-"

  "Please," Kien said, holding up a hand. It was times like this that he missed Wyrm. "Does the gentleman have a name?"

  They both thought about it, said "Cowboy" simultaneously, then glared at each other.

  Kien stiffened. That was the name Daniel Brennan used when he'd gone undercover and joined the Shadow Fists in an attempt to bring them down from within. His ploy failed because he blew his cover to save Tachyon's life, but he managed to do a fair bit of damage to the Fists before giving himself away.