One reporter had even sought out Tach to ask that question. “Telekinesis,” Tachyon told him. “It’s nothing new. Almost common, in fact.” Teke had been the single ability most frequently manifested by virus victims back in ’46. He’d seen a dozen patients who could move paper clips and pencils, and one woman who could lift her own body weight for ten minutes at a time. Even Earl Sanderson’s flight had been telekinetic in origin. What he did not tell them was that teke on this scale was unprecedented. Of course, when the story ran, they got half of it wrong.
“He’s a joker, you know,” whispered the twin on the right, the one in the silver-gray cat mask. She was leaning against his shoulder, reading about the Turtle.
“A joker?” Tach said.
“He hides inside a shell, doesn’t he? Why would he do that unless he was really awful to look at?” She had taken her hand out of his trousers. “Could I have that paper?”
Tach pushed it toward her. “They’re cheering him now,” he said sharply. “They cheered the Four Aces too.”
“That was a colored group, right?” she said, turning her attention to the headlines.
“She’s keeping a scrapbook,” her sister said. “All the jokers think he’s one of them. Stupid, huh? I bet it’s just a machine, some kind of Air Force flying saucer.”
“He is not,” her twin said. “It says so right here.” She pointed to the sidebar with a long, red-painted nail.
“Never mind about her,” the twin on the left said. She moved closer to Tachyon, nibbling on his neck as her hand went under the table. “Hey, what’s wrong? You’re all soft.”
“My pardons,” Tachyon said gloomily. Cosmos and Chaos were flinging axes, machetes, and knives across the stage, the glittering cascade multiplied into infinity by the mirrors around them. He had a bottle of fine cognac at hand, and lovely, willing women on either side of him, but suddenly, for some reason he could not have named, it did not feel like such a good night after all. He filled his glass almost to the brim and inhaled the heady alcoholic fumes. “Merry Christmas,” he muttered to no one in particular.
CONSCIOUSNESS RETURNED WITH THE ANGRY TONES OF MAL’S voice. Tach lifted his head groggily from the mirrored tabletop, blinking down at his puffy red reflection. The jugglers, the twins, and the crowd were long gone. His cheek was sticky from lying in a puddle of spilled liquor. The twins had jollied him and fondled him and one of them had even gone under the table, for all the good it did. Then Angelface had come to the tableside and sent them away. “Go to sleep, Tacky,” she’d said. Mal had come up to ask if he should lug him back to bed. “Not today,” she’d said, “you know what day this is. Let him sleep it off here.” He couldn’t recall when he’d gone to sleep.
His head was about to explode, and Mal’s shouting wasn’t making things any better. “I don’t give a flyin’ fuck what you were promised, scumbag, you’re not seeing her,” the bouncer yelled. A softer voice said something in reply. “You’ll get your fuckin’ money, but that’s all you’ll get,” Mal snapped.
Tach raised his eyes. In the mirrors he saw their reflections darkly: odd twisted shapes outlined in the wan dawn light, reflections of reflections, hundreds of them, beautiful, monstrous, uncountable, his children, his heirs, the offspring of his failures, a living sea of jokers. The soft voice said something else. “Ah, kiss my joker ass,” Mal said. He had a body like a twisted stick and a head like a pumpkin; it made Tach smile. Mal shoved someone and reached behind his back, groping for his gun.
The reflections and the reflections of the reflections, the gaunt shadows and the bloated ones, the round-faced ones and the knife-thin ones, the black and the white, they moved all at once, filling the club with noise; a hoarse shout from Mal, the crack of gunfire. Instinctively Tach dove for cover, cracking his forehead hard on the edge of the table as he slid down. He blinked back tears of pain and lay curled up on the floor, peering out at the reflections of feet while the world disintegrated into a sharp-edged cacophony. Glass was shattering and falling, mirrors breaking on all sides, silvered knives flying through the air, too many for even Cosmos and Chaos to catch, dark splinters eating into the reflections, taking bites out of all the twisted shadow-shapes, blood spattering against the cracked mirrors.
It ended as suddenly as it had begun. The soft voice said something and there was the sound of footsteps, the crunch of glass underfoot. A moment later, a muffled scream from off behind him. Tach lay under the table, drunk and terrified. His finger hurt: bleeding, he saw, sliced open by a sliver of mirror. All he could think of were the stupid human superstitions about broken mirrors and bad luck. He cradled his head in his arms so the awful nightmare would go away. When he woke again, a policeman was shaking him roughly.
MAL WAS DEAD, ONE DETECTIVE TOLD HIM; THEY SHOWED HIM A morgue photo of the bouncer lying in a pool of blood and a welter of broken glass. Ruth was dead too, and one of the janitors, a dim-witted cyclops who had never hurt anyone. They showed him a newspaper. The Santa Claus Slaughter, that was what they called it, and the lead was about three jokers who’d found death waiting under the tree on Christmas morning.
Miss Fascetti was gone, the other detective told him, did he know anything about that? Did he think she was involved? Was she a culprit or a victim? What could he tell them about her? He said he didn’t know any such person, until they explained that they were asking about Angela Fascetti and maybe he knew her better as Angelface. She was gone and Mal was shot dead, and the most frightening thing of all was that Tach did not know where his next drink was coming from.
They held him for four days, questioning him relentlessly, going over the same ground again and again, until Tachyon was screaming at them, pleading with them, demanding his rights, demanding a lawyer, demanding a drink. They gave him only the lawyer. The lawyer said they couldn’t hold him without charging him, so they charged him with being a material witness, with vagrancy, with resisting arrest, and questioned him again.
By the third day, his hands were shaking and he was having waking hallucinations. One of the detectives, the kindly one, promised him a bottle in return for his cooperation, but somehow his answers never quite satisfied them, and the bottle was not forthcoming. The bad-tempered one threatened to hold him forever unless he told the truth. I thought it was a nightmare, Tach told him, weeping. I was drunk, I’d been asleep. No, I couldn’t see them, just the reflections, distorted, multiplied. I don’t know how many there were. I don’t know what it was about. No, she had no enemies, everyone loved Angelface. No, she didn’t kill Mal, that didn’t make sense, Mal loved her. One of them had a soft voice. No, I don’t know which one. No, I can’t remember what they said. No, I don’t know if they were jokers or not, they looked like jokers, but the mirrors distort, some of them, not all of them, don’t you see? No, I couldn’t possibly pick them out of a lineup, I never really saw them. I had to hide under the table, do you see, the assassins had come, that’s what my father always told me, there wasn’t anything I could do.
When they realized that he was telling them all he knew, they dropped the charges and released him. To the dark streets of Jokertown and the cold of the night.
HE WALKED DOWN THE BOWERY ALONE, SHIVERING. THE WALRUS was hawking the evening papers from his newsstand on the corner of Hester. “Read all about it,” he called out. “Turtle Terror in Jokertown.” Tachyon paused to stare dully at the headlines. POLICE SEEK TURTLE, the Post reported. TURTLE CHARGED WITH ASSAULT, announced the World-Telegram. So the cheering had stopped already. He glanced at the text. The Turtle had been prowling Jokertown the past two nights, lifting people a hundred feet in the air to question them, threatening to drop them if he didn’t like their answers. When police tried to make an arrest last night, the Turtle had deposited two of their black-and-whites on the roof of Freakers at Chatham Square. CURB THE TURTLE, the editorial in the World-Telegram said.
“You all right, Doc?” the Walrus asked.
“No,” said Tachyon, putting down the paper. He
couldn’t afford to pay for it anyway.
Police barriers blocked the entrance to the Funhouse, and a padlock secured the door. CLOSED INDEFINITELY, the sign said. He needed a drink, but the pockets of his bandleader’s coat were empty. He thought of Des and Randall, and realized that he had no idea where they lived, or what their last names might be.
Trudging back to ROOMS, Tach climbed wearily up the stairs. When he stepped into the darkness, he had just enough time to notice that the room was frigidly cold; the window was open and a bitter wind was scouring out the old smells of urine, mildew, and drink. Had he done that? Confused, he stepped toward it, and someone came out from behind the door and grabbed him.
It happened so fast he scarcely had time to react. The forearm across his windpipe was an iron bar, choking off his scream, and a hand wrenched his right arm up behind his back, hard. He was choking, his arm close to breaking, and then he was being shoved toward the open window, running at it, and Tachyon could only thrash feebly in a grip much stronger than his own. The windowsill caught him square in the stomach, knocking the last of his breath right out of him, and suddenly he was falling, head over heels, locked helplessly in the steel embrace of his attacker, both of them plunging toward the sidewalk below.
They jerked to a stop five feet above the cement, with a wrench that elicited a grunt from the man behind him.
Tach had closed his eyes before the instant of impact. He opened them as they began to float upward. Above the yellow halo of the streetlamp was a ring of much brighter lights, set in a hovering darkness that blotted out the winter stars.
The arm across his throat had loosened enough for Tachyon to groan. “You,” he said hoarsely, as they curved around the shell and came to rest gently on top of it. The metal was icy cold, its chill biting right through the fabric of Tachyon’s pants. As the Turtle began to rise straight up into the night, Tachyon’s captor released him. He drew in a shuddering breath of cold air, and rolled over to face a man in a zippered leather jacket, black dungarees, and a rubbery green frog mask. “Who…?” he gasped.
“I’m the Great and Powerful Turtle’s mean-ass sidekick,” the man in the frog mask said, rather cheerfully.
“DOCTOR TACHYON, I PRESUME,” boomed the shell’s speakers, far above the alleys of Jokertown. “I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO MEET YOU. I READ ABOUT YOU WHEN I WAS JUST A KID.”
“Turn it down,” Tach croaked weakly.
“OH. SURE. Is that better?” The volume diminished sharply. “It’s noisy in here, and behind all this armor I can’t always tell how loud I sound. I’m sorry if we scared you, but we couldn’t take the chance of you saying no. We need you.”
Tach stayed just where he was, shivering, shaken. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.
“Help,” the Turtle declared. They were still rising; the lights of Manhattan spread out all around them, and the spires of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building rose uptown. They were higher than either. The wind was cold and gusting; Tach clung to the shell for dear life.
“Leave me alone,” Tachyon said. “I have no help to give you. I have no help to give anybody.”
“Fuck, he’s crying,” the man in the frog mask said.
“You don’t understand,” the Turtle said. The shell began to drift west, its motion silent and steady. There was something awesome and eerie about the flight. “You have to help. I’ve tried on my own, but I’m getting nowhere. But you, your powers, they can make the difference.”
Tachyon was lost in his own self-pity, too cold and exhausted and despairing to reply. “I want a drink,” he said.
“Fuck it,” said Frog-face. “Dumbo was right about this guy, he’s nothing but a goddamned wino.”
“He doesn’t understand,” said the Turtle. “Once we explain, he’ll come around. Doctor Tachyon, we’re talking about your friend Angelface.”
He needed a drink so badly it hurt. “She was good to me,” he said, remembering the sweet perfume of her satin sheets, and her bloody footprints on the mirror tiles. “But there’s nothing I can do. I told the police everything I know.”
“Chickenshit asshole,” said Frog-face.
“When I was a kid, I read about you in Jetboy Comics,” the Turtle said. “‘Thirty Minutes Over Broadway,’ remember? You were supposed to be as smart as Einstein. I might be able to save your friend Angelface, but I can’t without your powers.”
“I don’t do that any longer. I can’t. There was someone I hurt, someone I cared for, but I seized her mind, just for an instant, for a good reason, or at least I thought it was for a good reason, but it…destroyed her. I can’t do it again.”
“Boohoo,” said Frog-face mockingly. “Let’s toss ’im, Turtle, he’s not worth a bucket of warm piss.” He took something out of one of the pockets of his leather jacket; Tach was astonished to see that it was a bottle of beer.
“Please,” Tachyon said, as the man popped off the cap with a bottle-opener hung round his neck. “A sip,” Tach said. “Just a sip.” He hated the taste of beer, but he needed something, anything. It had been days. “Please.”
“Fuck off,” Frog-face said.
“Tachyon,” said the Turtle, “you can make him.”
“No I can’t,” Tach said. The man raised the bottle up to green rubber lips. “I can’t,” Tach repeated. Frog-face continued to drink. “No.” He could hear it gurgling. “Please, just a little.”
The man lowered the beer bottle, sloshed it thoughtfully. “Just a swallow left,” he said.
“Please.” He reached out, hands trembling.
“Nah,” said Frog-face. He began to turn the bottle upside down. “Course, if you’re really thirsty, you could just grab my mind, right? Make me give you the fuckin’ bottle.” He tipped the bottle a little more. “Go on, I dare ya, try it.”
Tach watched the last mouthful of beer dribble down onto the Turtle’s shell and run off into empty air.
“Fuck,” said the man in the frog mask. “You got it bad, don’t you?” He pulled another bottle from his pocket, opened it, and handed it across. Tach cradled it with both hands. The beer was cold and sour, but he had never tasted anything half so sweet. He drained it all in one long swallow.
“Got any other smart ideas?” Frog-face asked the Turtle.
Ahead of them was the blackness of the Hudson River, the lights of Jersey off to the west. They were descending. Beneath them, overlooking the Hudson, was a sprawling edifice of steel and glass and marble that Tachyon suddenly recognized, though he had never set foot inside it: Jetboy’s Tomb. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“We’re going to see a man about a rescue,” the Turtle said.
Jetboy’s Tomb filled the entire block, on the site where the pieces of his plane had come raining down. It filled Tom’s screens too, as he sat in the warm darkness of his shell, bathed in a phosphor glow. Motors whirred as the cameras moved in their tracks. The huge flanged wings of the tomb curved upward, as if the building itself was about to take flight. Through tall, narrow windows, he could see glimpses of the full-size replica of the JB-1 suspended from the ceiling, its scarlet flanks aglow from hidden lights. Above the doors, the hero’s last words had been carved, each letter chiseled into the black Italian marble and filled in stainless steel. The metal flashed as the shell’s white-hot spots slid across the legend:
I CANT DIE YET,
I HAVEN’T SEEN THE JOLSON STORY
Tom brought the shell down in front of the monument, to hover five feet above the broad marble plaza at the top of the stairs. Nearby, a twenty-foot-tall steel Jetboy looked out over the West Side Highway and the Hudson beyond, his fists cocked. The metal used for the sculpture had come from the wreckage of crashed planes, Tom knew. He knew that statue’s face better than he knew his father’s.
The man they’d come to meet emerged from the shadows at the base of the statue, a chunky dark shape huddled in a thick overcoat, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Tom shone a light on him; a camera track
ed to give him a better view. The joker was a portly man, round-shouldered and well-dressed. His coat had a fur collar and his fedora was pulled low. Instead of a nose, he had an elephant’s trunk in the middle of his face. The end of it was fringed with fingers, snug in a little leather glove.
Dr. Tachyon slid off the top of the shell, lost his footing and landed on his ass. Tom heard Joey laugh. Then Joey jumped down too and pulled Tachyon to his feet.
The joker glanced down at the alien. “So you convinced him to come after all. I’m surprised.”
“We were real fuckin’ persuasive,” Joey said.
“Des,” Tachyon said, sounding confused. “What are you doing here? Do you know these people?”
Elephant-face twitched his trunk. “Since the day before yesterday, yes, in a manner of speaking. They came to me. The hour was late, but a phone call from the Great and Powerful Turtle does pique one’s interest. He offered his help, and I accepted. I even told them where you lived.”
Tachyon ran a hand through his tangled, filthy hair. “I’m sorry about Mal. Do you know anything about Angelface? You know how much she meant to me.”
“In dollars and cents, I know quite precisely,” Des said.
Tachyon’s mouth gaped open. He looked hurt. Tom felt sorry for him. “I wanted to go to you,” he said. “I didn’t know where to find you.”
Joey laughed. “He’s listed in the fuckin’ phone book, dork. Ain’t that many guys named Xavier Desmond.” He looked at the shell. “How the fuck is he gonna find the lady if he couldn’t even find his buddy here?”
Desmond nodded. “An excellent point. This isn’t going to work. Just look at him!” His trunk pointed. “What good is he? We’re wasting precious time.”
“We did it your way,” Tom replied. “We’re getting nowhere. No one’s talking. He can get the information we need.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Tachyon interrupted.