Jokertown Shuffle

by George R. R. Martin

  "What was all that commotion down below?" the priest asked.

  "Another hit," Brennan said briefly, holstering his Browning. "Everyone all right?"

  Brennan shook his head. "I think they need you down there, Father."

  The priest crossed himself and dashed out of the room. Trace was sitting in a chair by Jennifer's bed, looking like a statue of the wounded woman. Jennifer herself had faded to the point of translucence. She looked like a serene, beautiful corpse.

  Brennan winced. This couldn't be doing her any good. He started to say something, but Trace looked up and rubbed tiredly at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  She looked at Brennan. "I found her," she said wearily. "She's lost, afraid and wandering. She wouldn't come back with me."

  "You have to bring her back," Brennan said.

  Trace shrugged. "I can't. She doesn't trust me." She looked at Brennan speculatively. "But maybe you can. If you have the guts."

  Brennan started to answer her, but she held up her hand. "Don't be so quick to commit yourself," she said. "I know you're tough and brave and all that, but physical bravery has little to do with this." She pursed her lips and looked at Brennan seriously. "Your Jennifer was in a deep dream state when you were attacked. Instead of snapping back into her body, her mind somehow shunted itself off into another plane-another dimension. I suspect that this has something to do with the nature of her ace powers, that when she turns immaterial, she somehow shifts through adjacent dimensions."

  "And this time," Brennan said, "only her mind shifted. Her body stayed behind, and she can't find her way back to it."

  "Correct," said Trace.

  "What's this other dimension like?" Brennan asked. "Now it's just a gray void, but that's because Jennifer's conscious mind is dormant. Once a waking mind enters it, it'll become the living manifestation of the archetypes that govern that mind."

  Brennan frowned. "I see. I think. But what's so dangerous about that?"

  "If you enter this dimension, it'll become populated by the driving images, by the symbolic figures that stalk your subconscious. Do you dare face them?"

  Brennan hesitated. He had no great desire to examine closely the hidden secrets of his mind. But it seemed he had no choice. He nodded.

  Trace smiled, but there was little humor in it. "All right," she said. "I guess we'll get to see how brave you really are."

  Kien got up, walked to his office door, and closed it, shutting out the annoying beep-boop-bap coming from the antechamber where Rick and Mick were playing Donkey Kong on the Atari.

  It baled Kien why anybody would waste his time like that, but he allowed lesser men their divertimenti. He had his own plans to occupy his mind. He should be hearing from Lao about the hit on the clinic at any time now. If Brennan and that arrogant little space bastard were dead, fine. But Kien had the feeling that it wouldn't be that easy, that he would need a more subtle web to ensare them. Then, spiderlike, he could suck out their juices and cast aside their desiccated corpses like yesterday's garbage.

  Yes, he told himself as he sat back in his chair, feet on his desk and fingers interlaced behind his head, nice image. I like it. I am a spider, a great, powerful emperor spider who sits in the center of his web, patient and cunning, reading the vibrations made by lesser men as they scurry like trembling flies from strand to strand. I pick those to reward and those to use and discard. I've come a long way since Vietnam and the store that was my father's.

  His father, Kien realized, had frequently been on his mind lately. It wasn't like him to be obsessive about the past. Thinking about the past did no good. It couldn't change things. It did no good to brood about the old man's death, the way Kien had found him lying slaughtered on the dirt floor of their store. Kien had never had much as a child. He endured poor food and patched clothing, and was jeered at by the other children in the village as much for his pauperish appearance as for being Chinese. But the French bastards who murdered his father took what little money the old man had accumulated, dug the strongbox right out of the secret place where Old Dad had kept it hidden. They left nothing for Kien. That was why he had to change his name and go to the city. He didn't desert his family. He did what he could for them-

  There was a sound, a knock on his door, and Kien started. "Come in," he said.

  It was Rick and Mick. "Just got word from your informant on the police force," Rick said.

  "He kept an eye out like you told him," Mick added, "and went to the scene when the call came that something was going down at the Jokertown Clinic."

  "And?" Kien prompted.

  Rick and Mick looked at each other, and Kien realized that neither wanted to be the bearer of bad tidings. They nudged each other a couple of times, and Rick finally came out with it. "Lao's dead. Shot once through the forehead. There was an ace of spades on his body."

  Kien clenched his teeth. "And Brennan and Tachyon?" Rick and Mick shook their heads. "Don't think they were hurt. Lao got some joker -kids, a joker geezer. He also wounded one of the doctors. Tachyon's still at the clinic, but from what the witnesses said, this Brennan guy just disappeared. He kneecapped the guys Lao hired to help him and left them behind for the cops."

  "But they don't know nothin'," Mick was quick to add. "They're not Fists. They're not connected to you."

  They seemed to expect some kind of explosion, but Kien just nodded. "I'd planned for this possibility" he said. "If you want something done right," he mused aloud, "you have to do it yourself."

  He stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and started to pace around the room. "Tachyon's no problem," he muttered. "I can deal with the little fool anytime I want to. It's Brennan I have to track down as soon as possible." He fixed Rick and Mick with a stare. "Where would he go after the attack?" Rick and Mick looked at each other, looked back at Kien, and shrugged.

  "He would be worried about his bitch. Yes. His sentimentality would get the best of him, and he'd head right for her side to make sure that she was all right." He stopped, stared at a three-tiered glass stand that held part of his fabulous collection of ancient and rare Chinese ceramics. "He said that she _ was at the clinic, but they wouldn't just put her in an open ward. She'd be somewhere that they thought was safe." He paced back to his desk. "Where, precisely, would that be?"

  Someone behind him sneezed. "Bless you," Kien said reflexively. "I didn't sneeze, boss," Rick said. "Neither did I," Mick added.

  Kien whirled around. "Then who did?"

  "I think it came from there," Rick said, pointing at the vase on the middle tier of the glass stand.

  It was a green-glazed vase with a black background dating from the Yung Cheng period. Very old and extremely rare in color and form, it was one of the cornerstones of Kien's art collection. He frowned, stood, and went back to the glass stand. He peered into the vase.

  Inside was a manikin, a wrinkled, leathery-looking homunculus whose skin seemed about five sizes too large for his body. He had both hands clamped over his nose and mouth, and tried to stifle another sneeze. It came out with a tiny blatting noise. He wiped his nose on his arm and stared back up at the huge face looking down at him.

  "Oh, shit," he said.

  5.

  The city was afire, though it did not burn.

  Brennan had never felt such heat. The air shimmered with it. It rose off the pavement in waves, licking his face like the fetid tongue of a great panting beast. It crawled over his body, sending tendrils of sweat trickling down his back and legs. If he had been of a religious bent, he'd suspect that this was hell. He remembered the motto commonly found embroidered on jackets favored by combat vets in Nam: I'm going to heaven when I die 'cause I've already spent my time in hell.

  Maybe this wasn't hell, but it was the city of Brennan's worst nightmares. He moved on down the alley, stepping over the bubbles of asphalt oozing through the cracks in the pavement. The buildings surrounding him were decaying, the streets buckling and choked with uncollected trash. It was a ghost town. No on
e but Brennan walked the garbageinfested streets.

  He emerged from the alley and looked up at the rusted and bent sign hanging overhead from the streetlamp: Henry Street. The Crystal Palace, then, should be…

  Brennan looked down the street, and there it was. The Palace still stood in this place. And if the Palace still stood… Brennan found himself drawn down the street like a sailor pulled helplessly to siren-infested rocks.

  The door to the Palace was unlocked. Inside it was dark and cool. Brennan felt a shiver go through him as the sweat running down his face and body suddenly evaporated, leaving him cold and clammy.

  Maybe it was the coolness of the Palace's interior that caused the shiver. Maybe it was the sight of her sitting in her customary table in her customary high-backed chair, barely visible in the dark, her customary glass of amaretto sitting by her hand.

  "Chrysalis," Brennan whispered.

  She looked at him, the expression on her fleshless face as unreadable as ever. Chrysalis was a woman of blood and bone, her skin and flesh invisible, her muscles mostly so.

  Some found her hideous. Brennan had been fascinated by her.

  "Is it really you?" he asked.

  "Who else would be sitting in this place, in this body, drinking amaretto from a crystal glass?" the spectre asked. Brennan shook his head. She hadn't really answered his question. Perhaps the rules governing this skewed dimension didn't allow her to. Or perhaps she was forbidden to speak clearly by the rules that governed his skewed subconscious. "You knew everything that happened in Jokertown," Brennan said. "What about in this place?"

  "I know you," she replied. "I know something of that which goes on in your mind."

  "Can you help me?" he asked. "Can you help me find Jennifer?"

  If the spectre was upset by his mention of her rival, she didn't show it. "Look in the center of things," she told him. "You will find that which is most precious to you in the arms of your greatest enemy. But be careful. You are not alone in this world."

  "Is this place," he asked her, "real?"

  "It seems real enough to me," she replied.

  "Me too," Brennan said in a small voice. He hesitated. He wanted to touch her, but somehow he didn't think that was a very good idea. He was afraid that she would dissipate like smoke. Worse, he was afraid that she would feel warm and alive, like solid flesh. "I have to go," he finally said. Chrysalis nodded. "Another quest," she said as Brennan backed out of the room. "Be careful, my archer. Be very, very careful."

  It seemed to Brennan that she looked sad, but there was nothing he could do to cure her sadness. He just took a piece of it with him as he left the Palace for the last time.

  Outside, the sun was so bright that he had to blink against its glare. It hadn't gotten any cooler, either, and he broke out in an instant sweat as he stood outside the Palace considering his next move.

  If he was to take Chrysalis's advice, he should look for the "center of things." That, unfortunately, was a rather nebulous description. He started up the street, thinking about it, and then he noticed that another part of Chrysalis's prophecy had come true.

  He wasn't alone.

  There were people on the street. Most were wearing the blue satin jackets of the Immaculate Egret gang, or the face masks of the Werewolves. They stood singly or in small groups, in front of, behind, and all around him.

  Brennan reached for the Browning holstered in the snug of his back but came away empty. His gun, it seemed, hadn't been translated to this place with him. Then he suddenly realized that it might not matter whether he had his gun.

  Add the men surrounding him were already dead.

  Add were bloody. All had open wounds. Most had arrows sticking in chests, throats, backs, or eyes. Their faces, as Brennan watched them approach, were mostly familiar, and he realized that these were the men he had kidded since coming back to the city.

  There were a dot of them.

  Brennan was momentarily frozen, unable to decide upon a plan of action as the dead men approached. There was a sudden movement, a sudden flicker of motion that Brennan caught out of the corner of his eye. He whirled to face it head-on and, saw a ghastly-grinning man with a horribly tattooed face tanding within arm's length of him.

  It was Scar, the teleporting ace and gang deader who Brennan had kidded when he'd first come to the city. Scar's face was tattooed with the scarlet and black whorls that were the mark of the Cannibal Headhunters. He was a sadistic ace who took vast delight in utilizing his power to help him slowly slice up his victims with a straight razor. "I'm back, asshole," he said in a ghastly whisper through the throat that Brennan had crushed with a bowstring. "And this time I've got help." He gestured at the company of dead men slowly surrounding them in the brutal heat.

  "You'll need it," Brennan said with a confidence he didn't totally feed. "I already kidded you once."

  Scar hissed in rage, disappeared, and reappeared right in Brennan's face. He slashed out with his straight razor. Brennan ducked and half blocked the blow, but not before the razor cut across his chest, slicing his sweat-soaked T-shirt and scoring the flesh underneath. Scar disappeared, then flicked back into existence half a dozen feet from Brennan.

  "Time to play," the sadistic ace said.

  Brennan felt blood mingle with the sweat running down his chest, and he suddenly realized that he could die in this place. He looked around quickly, spotted a narrow gap between two dead Egrets who were closing in on him, and sprinted for it. Brennan stiff-armed the Egret who moved to intercept him and pushed his way through.

  "Run, you bastard, run!" Scar screamed with crazed delight. "You'll never get away, never! You're meat-dead, rotting meat!"

  Brennan ran, the dead men on his trail, Scar watching and laughing horrible constricted daughter.

  Rick and Mick held up the pickle jar and looked at it intently. Brutus stared back at them, his face forlornly pressed up against the glass, bruised and swollen. Blood trickled from his nose, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to cradle his broken right arm as Rick shook the jar and watched the joker bounce around.

  "Why are we bringing the little geek with us?" he asked Kien.

  Kien glanced down at him as he drove carefully through the flurry of fat damp snowflakes. "Ultimately, as a receptacle for Captain Brennan s soul. After we've captured them, I've decided to have our jumper allies transfer me to his body for a while and him to that thing."

  "Cool," Rick said. He gave the bottle another shake. "Better take the did off and give the geek a little air," Mick said. "He's starting to turn blue."

  Kien chuckled indulgently, then turned his attention back to the street. Kien didn't dike driving, and he liked driving in snowstorms even less, but he wanted privacy on this trip. Once it was over, he would have another body, another identity, one that no one would survive to know about. Not the jumpers who would effect the transference. Not even Rick and Mick. He glanced at the monsters torturing the helpless little joker. They were getting almost as much fun from that as they had when they manhandled the joker until it told where Jennifer was being kept in the clinic.

  They had their crude uses, but Kien knew he wouldn't miss them. It was time to invest in a better grade of help.

  Kien pulled into the clinic's parking lot, next to the van that had ARCHER LANDSCAPING AND GARDENING painted on its side. It had taken months of detective work to track down Brennan and his bitch, but nothing was beyond Kien's power. Nothing.

  "All right. Wait here until I send for you, then bring your friend," Kien said, gesturing at the pickle jar.

  Rick held it up, giving it another shake as Kien slipped out of the car. Kien would miss the thrill of being an ace when he gave up this body. He faded down to his eyes-it had taken a little practice to realize that when he faded out totally, he was also totally blind-and moved through the falling snow like an animated silhouette. He made his way to an unlocked service entrance at the back of the clinic and silently slipped inside. He paused for a moment, orienting himself, then
went to the room on the top floor the pathetic joker had told him about.

  It was easy to fade to nothing whenever he saw an approaching nurse or orderly, easy to fade his eyes back in when he heard them walk by. No one saw him. The door to the room was shut. Kien looked through the small window set high on the security door and saw Brennan's bitch lying in the bed, her forehead bandaged. The big joker priest, Father Squid, was standing next to the bed. Someone was sitting in a chair next to the priest, but the priest was in the way, and Kien couldn't identify him. Or her.

  Everyone was intent on Brennan's bitch. Kien drew the gun he carried in his coat pocket and pushed open the door. "Be quiet," he said in his most commanding voice, "and I'll let you live awhile."

  The priest turned and stared. Kien let his gun fade in until everyone could see it. "Don't be stupid," Kien said, and the priest held his ground, an unreadable expression on his ugly joker face. "Stand back, slowly. And remember, I'm not afraid to shoot."

  "Listen to him," the joker priest said. "It's Fadeout, of the Shadow Fists. He means what he says."

  "You're right," Kien said, laughing aloud, "but also wrong. Very, very wrong."

  There seemed to be no reason to remain invisible any longer. Kien faded in as the priest stepped back from the bed, and the person sitting in the chair looked up at him. Kien stared. It was a small Asian man, white-haired, wrinkle-faced, with a long, sparse chin beard. He was dressed in shabby, patched clothes. It was his father.

  Kien's gun shook as he pointed it at him.

  "Such a son," his father said in the familiar hated tone of voice.

  The old man shook his head sadly, and Kien started to lower the gun. It's a trick, he suddenly thought. It's got to be a trick. He raised the gun again, trembling fingers almost pulling the trigger unwillingly.

  "Who are you?" Kien asked.

  The image of his father shook his head again, sadly. "It is an evil child who doesn't recognize his own father, Hsiang Yu," the apparition said.