Jokertown Shuffle

by George R. R. Martin

  Chalktalk picked herself up and walked impatiently through Penn's body, then turned back to Shad and shrugged. Sanity wedged its way into Shad's panicked mind. He reached out, passed a sword hand through Penn's body. Chalktalk turned away and padded on, her bright lantern held high.

  Shad passed his hand through Penn again. His heart drummed against his ribs. There was a deep ache in his throat where the police had given him the tracheotomy that saved his life.

  Penn wasn't there. He was an illusion.

  Shad watched closely, and he saw that the Penn illusion didn't seem very lifelike-it was huge and distorted, a sixteenyear-old maniac seen through the eyes of his ten-year-old victim.

  Chalktalk's lantern was fading into the distance. Shad took a deep breath and followed, his spine tingling as he turned his back on the killer of his family.

  Penn didn't follow.

  Shad caught up to Chalktalk. His hands were trembling, and his voice shook. "Where the hell are we?" he asked. Chalktalk said nothing, natch. Shad looked around.

  He was in Carlsbad Caverns, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Tall formations, lightless passages, the constant drip of water. Formations where illusions of mass murderers lurked. Shad wondered if they were under the high New Mexico desert, until he saw the graffiti, spray-painted on a bright vein of quartz: JUMP THE RICH.

  Somehow, Shad knew, he was right where he wanted to be.

  Then there was the sound of clattering footsteps, the clank of weaponry. The squawk of a walkie-talkie. It didn't sound much like an illusion.

  The locals knew he was here. Shad turned to Chalktalk. "Go back a ways, okay? These are some bad people coming. Maybe you better make a sketch and get yourself out of here."

  He looked up at him with shadowed dark eyes, then shrugged, squatted, reached for her chalk.

  She walked up the wall, covered himself with darkness, and moved forward along the ceiling. Putting himself between Chalktalk and pursuit.

  Shad turned off his lantern and navigated on IR. He entered a chamber twenty feet high, moved forward between limestone columns, and saw jokers, half a dozen, all wearing some kind of informal war-surplus battledress, most carrying M-16 assault rifles. Kafka led them, unmistakable in his brown chitin, holding a walkie-talkie and a four-battery flashlight. He wasn't carrying a weapon. Even in his haste he was careful not to touch any of the other jokers.

  Shad remembered he had some kind of contamination phobia.

  High-powered flashlights swept the confined area of the stair. Shad deepened the black cloak around him and waited. "No sight of him yet," Kafka reported.

  "He's right there." A high-pitched, almost comical voice came out of the hissing walkie-talkie. "He's watching you. And he recognized you from somewhere."

  Watching you. The thought rolled through Shad's mind. Someone knew he was here, someone who couldn't see him… Maybe the person who had called Penn into being.

  Shad tried to make his mind blank.

  "He's onto me," the high-pitched voice warned. "And he can hear you."

  Kafka jumped wildly, his flashlight beam dancing. Then he scuttled under the staircase, put his back to the wall. "You and you! Over there!"

  Two jokers charged with weapons ready, the sound of their boots echoing.

  "He's right there," the high-pitched voice said. "He's right near you."

  "That's right," said Shad. He kicked loose from his perch, dropped to Kafka's side, snatched the flashlight. He shone the flash upward into his own face and let the darkness fall away from the part of his body facing Kafka, so that Kafka could see his face and upper body. He let Kafka see his pose, standing upright with his right arm horizontal and bent, hand under his chin, the edge of his hand pressing against his throat.

  "Who will help the widow's son?" he asked.

  Rifles clattered as they were brought to bear. But Shad was standing too close to Kafka for them to fire, and the other jokers couldn't see what was going on.

  Kafka's astonishment was clear, even on his inhuman face. He looked frantically left and right, then leaned closer, his eyes glittering in the light of the flash. "Who are you?"

  "A stranger going to the West, to search for that which was lost."

  "Where do you come from?"

  "From the East."

  "What is your task?"

  "To trample the Lilies underfoot."

  Kafka goggled at him. Shad gave him a severe look. The most difficult trick, he'd found, was to speak all this nonsense with an absolutely straight face.

  "Will you not aid me, brother?" he asked. "In the name of the widow's son?"

  "Who are you?"

  "In the Brotherhood, my name is Gains Gracchus." He pretended to lose patience. "Do I have to do the fucking handshake, or what?"

  Kafka seemed puzzled. "I seem to remember the name."

  "I've been away for a long time."

  "Kafka! Kafka!" The jokers were shuffling, trying to play their flashlights through the darkness that Shad had set up between them. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm all right." Kafka tried to peer out past Shad. His mouth parts worked nervously. "What do you want of me?" he asked.

  "Nothing. I need to know where the jumpers are quartered."

  "Kafka!" The high-pitched voice shouted from the walkie-talkie. "There aren't any Egyptian Masons anymore! You know that as well as anyone. He's just trying to trick you!"

  "That is the governor, I take it?" Shad said. "I have no business with him. Just with the jumpers. Will you let me pass or not?"

  Kafka hesitated. Shad expanded the darkness that surrounded him, eating photons, surrounding Kafka with night.. The joker guards behind began to scuttle backward from the expanding sphere.

  "Kafka," said the governor. "Bring him to me. I will give him an interview"

  "I don't know that I need an interview," Shad said. "I don't know that we have a lot to say to each other."

  "Yes we do, shad," said the high voice.

  Surprise rolled through Shad's mind. No one called him that.

  "Yes, I know your name for yourself," the governor said. "And I know more than that, including a few things you don't know" A small pause. "And we have to discuss your friend, little Chalktalk."

  " Who?"

  The voice turned impatient. "Governor Bloat knows all and sees all, my son. I know you didn't come alone, and I have another group of guards watching your friend. I don't think you have time to interfere with them before they follow any orders I should care to give, particularly if the order is swift and violent."

  Indecision fluttered through Shad's mind. He'd been spinning this out with the intention of giving Chalktalk a chance to get away.

  Images of Barker and Penn floated through his mind. "How do I know this isn't a trap?" he asked.

  "If it is, you can kill me. I know it's within your capabilities. It's a small island, and I'm-" a strange little high-pitched giggle, "I'm not exactly built for running."

  Kafka told his troops to return to their quarters. Shad let the darkness fall from Kafka's path. The joker led him down a lengthy stone corridor, then up a surprising staircase, all pink-veined marble like something out of Phantom of the Opera. Once up the stairs, they were in a building. The walls were covered in layers of flaking white paint, and there were doors on either side.

  Ellis Island. Beneath which, Shad knew, there was not supposed to be an extensive cavern complex. Things had obviously changed around here.

  A penguin, wearing a funnel for a hat, appeared from one door, made a graceful figure eight on its ice skates, disappeared through another door.

  Shad stared. He'd hung out in Jokertown for a long time, but he'd never seen anything like that. And it was on ice skates. There wasn't even any ice here.

  Another giggle came from the walkie-talkie. "Brother Shad, you ain't seen nothing yet!"

  Kafka led him out into a balcony overlooking a large hall filled with well, filled with the governor, the sluglike body gleaming with moisture, dappled
with oozing black matter.

  Bloat's smell clawed its way up the back of Shad's throat. His arms, shoulders, and head were those of a boy of maybe eighteen. He looked as if the slug were in the process of eating him.

  "Welcome," the governor said, "to the Rox."

  "Thank you." Shad walked up the wall, then stepped onto the ceiling. He strolled inverted across the plaster till he hung over Bloat's little head. Bloat's eyes tracked him as he moved, even though he was in darkness.

  Kafka stayed behind on the balcony, pacing nervously. With all Kafka's phobias, Shad wondered, how could he stand even to be in the same room with his boss?

  "You seem to have given poor Kafka a crisis in loyalties," Bloat said. "He thought all that was long behind him."

  "Once a Mason, always a Mason."

  "He knows you were supposed to have been killed. He fears you might be one of the Astronomer's surviving agents. That you might kill him."

  Kafka's mouth parts worked as he listened to this.

  "If I'd wanted him dead," Shad said, "he'd be dead." He wondered if the firing squad was lined up outside the doors, waiting for him to leave.

  "If we're going to talk," Shad said, "let's do it." Bloat's look was mild. "Why are you here, Shad?"

  "My plan is to snap the neck of every jumper in the place."

  "And get Tachyon out if you can. I can read that."

  "Then why did you ask the question?" Sharply.

  "I think," Bloat said, "that I'll let you do one, and not the other."

  "Which one? Which other? And how could you stop me if I wanted to do both?"

  "Your notion of killing the jumpers has a certain attractiveness, I must admit. And if you could get Blaisehe's their leader, you see, and a very disturbed person-that would be… well, it would end any number of problems."

  "I'll get him first thing, if you like."

  "He's not on the Rox at the moment, unfortunately. He gets restless, and he's off bringing in supplies."

  "I can wait."

  "For God's sake, Governor!" Kafka's voice cut the silence. "Why are you bargaining with him? Do something!"

  "I don't have a whole lot of choice, do I?" For once, Bloat sounded like a sulky adolescent. "Considering that my prime minister hasn't quite worked out which side he's on." Then Bloat looked up at Shad, his eyes glittering. "There are over a hundred jumpers on this island, Shad. Can you really kill them all? Could you kill them all?"

  Shad hesitated. Kids, he thought. Not all of them killers, not all of them crazy.

  "There aren't enough lampposts to hang them all from," Bloat said. "That's your usual method, isn't it? But a coldblooded massacre-that's not your style. Never was. You just start the ball rolling, and the bad guys kill each other." Bloat gave a sour laugh. "It may happen yet. This is not a happy island. Not happy at all." His eyes narrowed as he looked at Shad. "You think you're a killer, though, don't you."

  "Cut the shit, Governor. Say what you've got to say." Bloat's look grew more searching. Shad felt cold crawling along his nerves. "You think you're a berserker. You've gone berserk; therefore, you must.. ." Bloat shook his head. "You've been tampered with."

  Shad gave a laugh. "Believe what you like, Bloat."

  "Your mind-it shares some mental characteristics with some of our other citizens. Shroud, File, Video, Peanut. Even the Oddity. And I've talked to Tachyon, and he knows…" The high-pitched voice trailed away.

  Shad's nerves wailed at him to get away, kill Bloat, turn his head into an ice cube, and fight his way out before Bloat could spring whatever trap he was setting up.

  "I'm getting impatient, Governor," he said.

  "Someone has tampered with you," Bloat said. "Someone has turned you into a berserker-has made you kill."

  Anger lanced through Shad. " I advise you to stay out of my head!" he snapped.

  Bloat paid no attention. "It's very subtle. The individual doing it was moving very quietly, just making little alterations. Masking your inhibitors, accenting the violence, the rage…"

  Bloat's face was intent, absorbed, his expression almost ecstatic. "Yes, he's been at you, all right. It's almost invisible, but I can see the fingerprint, now that I'm sensitive to it. The same individual who drove Peanut to madness, who inflamed the Oddity's self-loathing and hatred…" Bloat's eyes bored into Shad's heart. "That wasn't you who strung up that first man. Or the next few, either. That wasn't your ecstacy-that was some filthy pervert having an orgasm in your mind."

  Shad's mouth went dry. "Bullshit," he said. "Nobody's been with me all this time."

  "This is the wild card!" Bloat said. "Who says it can't be operated by remote control?"

  "So who was it, asshole? Give me a name."

  "What is your grudge against the jumpers, exactly?" Bloat snarled. "I know-they stole your self. But it was only your body they took. What will you do with the man who tampered with your mind? Who sent you on a fifteen-year murder spree, because he had you convinced that was who you were?"

  Shad hesitated. Then a cold resolve filled him. "He would deserve death," he said.

  "Probably. The man has certainly killed. But you don't have to kill him, of course. That's your choice now. You don't have to do any of this."

  "Give me his name."

  Bloat narrowed his eyes. "Let's make a deal, Shad. The name in exchange for an understanding."

  Shad looked down at him. "Talk."

  " I do not like having Tachyon imprisoned here. It's an embarrassment. Tachyon has been a great friend to jokers over the years. She was brought here without my permission, and if you take her off, I-"

  "Her?"

  Bloat hesitated, then spoke. "Tachyon is at present residing within the body of a sixteen-year-old girl." The words seemed to come with difficulty, and Bloat's cheeks seemed hot. He spoke quickly, as if he hoped Shad wouldn't notice. "Here's the deal, Shad. You spare the jumpers. Take Tachyon off the island. Prime Minister Kafka will let you have one of our speedboats. And I'll give you the name."

  "And if someone tries to stop me?"

  Bloat thought for a moment, then sighed. "Do what you have to do."

  "And Chalktalk?"

  Bloat giggled again. "She left the island a long time ago, quite in her own fashion. I wouldn't have molested her, in any case. She's been here before, and-"

  "And she's a joker."

  Bloat's voice was sharp. "She's a joker who has been badly hurt. Which,"-eyes narrowing-"I see you understand."

  "You know the story?"

  "No. Her mind is opaque to me. But I can guess. Your concern for her speaks well of you. Before Senator Hartmann turned you into a murderer, you probably would have turned out well."

  Shad was stunned. Hartmann…

  Hartmann. The only person he'd had regular contact with for years.

  "You gave me the name," Shad said, "but I haven't said yes to the deal."

  "Yes, you did," Bloat said. "You just never said it out loud."

  Shad was silent.

  "Kafka will have a boat waiting for you on the east side," Bloat went on. "A Zodiac-you'll get wet, but you'll move fast. You don't want to head for Jersey City-the authorities have set up too many searchlights, and you'll be spotted."

  "Searchlights won't see me."

  "They have radars out there, too. Hooked to missile batteries, Kafka tells me, and to something called the 20mm Vulcan Air Defense System. Which sounds pretty intimidating to me."

  Shad hesitated. He could absorb photons in the electromagnetic spectrum as well as the visual and infrared, but his control was lessened when he was dealing with something he couldn't see.

  "I'll have to raise an alarm sooner or later," Bloat said, dismissing the thought for him. "I'm supposed to be omnipotent that way. But I'll tell the jumpers you ran for Brooklyn. They'll search in that direction."

  "And where will I really go? Manhattan?"

  "Too well patrolled by the coast guard and air force. Head south, toward Staten Island. You should be able to com
e ashore in one of the Bayonne terminals without difficulty." Shad thought about it.

  "That's settled, then," Bloat said. "Follow my friend the penguin. He'll lead you straight to Tachyon." Shad hesitated. "Move fast," Bloat said, "before word of your presence gets out."

  Move fast. The best piece of advice he had all night. The penguin skated into the room, gliding effortlessly on the ceiling. Dark smoke that smelled of brimstone poured from his funnel cap. The penguin cruised a nonchalant circle around Shad, then made a silent glissade toward the Administration Building entrance.

  Shad's nerves wailed an alert, but there wasn't any ambush waiting. Shad followed the penguin out of the building and to the infirmary, passing behind a joker sentry without alerting him. The western horizon glowed: huge searchlights set up on the jersey shore had the entire island in their grip. Breakers boomed in the distance. A cold Atlantic wind cut through his light Manchukuoian jacket.

  The penguin led Shad to the door of the infirmary and passed through without opening it, leaving a faint whiff of brimstone behind. Shad opened the door-heavy institutional steel pitted by salt water-and stepped inside. Music slammed from off-white corridor walls, and Shad heard laughter somewhere, but no one was in sight. There were no guards, and no security seemed in place.

  The penguin was gliding up a staircase to Shad's right. Shad followed up two flights. The Dead Kennedys filled the staircase with exuberant hardcore. On the floor above were roughly finished rooms right under the eaves. A white boy lay asleep on a mildew-eaten couch, his boom box and a space heater plugged into a thick orange extension cord. A halfeaten bowl of rice and Vienna sausages lay on the floor. An M-16 was propped on the wall.

  Some sentry.

  Okay, Shad thought, I'll try it Bloat's way.

  He ate photons and called the darkness down, filling the room with night, then snatched the boy out of sleep. He broke one arm, then the other, then whispered into the boy's ear.

  "Okay, kid," he said, "here's how I see it. I don't want to kill you, and you don't want to die. So lead me to Tachyon and I'll let you live, okay?"