Dealer's Choice

  The bodysnatcher leaned against the back wall, sucking absentmindedly on a bloody knuckle. Molly had gathered forty jumpers in the onion dome atop the Red Tower. There were 116 jumpers on the Rox the last time anyone had counted, but these were ones who mattered.

  Juggler held up one of the leaflets that Modular Man had been handing out. 1-800-I-GIVE-UP. “Amnesty,” he read. “It says they’ll give us amnesty.” He really could juggle pretty good, at least when he was wearing his own body. Other than that, he was a useless little weasel, as far the bodysnatcher was concerned.

  “How do we know it’s true?” Suzy Creamcheese asked nervously. She was a nervous little fifteen-year-old, no more than five feet tall, but the boys loved her. For two good reasons, at least forty inches of them, barely restrained now in a narrow halter top, fat nipples pushing against the fabric.

  “We don’t know it’s true,” Molly told her bluntly. “This is the Combine. The Combine will fuck you every time.”

  The Combine. That was K. C. Strange talk. She got it out of some book she read. K. C. Strange had been one of the first jumpers. She was dead now. So many dead or gone: David, Blaise, even Prime, who’d created them all. That was Zelda’s fault. Zelda had been Prime’s bodyguard. It had been her job to keep him safe, and she’d fucked it. Zelda had deserved to die.

  With Prime dead and buried, there would be no new jumpers. They were the last.

  “They won’t dare attack the Rox again,” Porker said. He’d squealed like a pig when Prime had fucked him up the ass. “Not after last time. It’s just a bluff.”

  “Maybe,” Molly Bolt said. “Maybe not.”

  “So what if it isn’t?” Alvin the Chipmunk said, smiling. “So we’ll do it to them again. Fun and games.” Alvin had killed both his parents, slitting their throats with his father’s straight razor while they slept. Blaise had read about him in the paper and decided Alvin was his kind of guy. They’d sprung him, brought him to the Rox, and Prime had done the rest.

  “It’s not like last time,” Juggler insisted. He rattled the paper. “Amnesty… maybe we ought to…”

  “Send them home in little pieces,” Alvin said, smiling. "Bloat’s not going anywhere,” Blueboy said. He’d put on some pants and buttoned up the cop shirt. A half-dozen badges were pinned to his chest, polished until they were as shiny as his mirror-shades. A captain’s hat, a size too large, was tilted at a rakish angle across his brow. “So everything’s copacetic.”

  “If you trust Bloat,” said Captain Chaos, an anorexic fourteen-year-old with a crazy glint in her eyes.

  “We’re on the same side,” Porker said.

  “He’s a joker,” the Iceman pointed out.

  “Joker poker,” echoed Captain Chaos. “Freak city express.”

  Juggler glanced behind him nervously. “Don’t talk like that,” he whispered. “He might be listening.”

  “Of course he’s listening,” Molly Bolt said. “He can’t help but listen. He hears what we think, he doesn’t give a flick what we say.” She looked around the room. “Zelda, what do you think?”

  The bodysnatcher moved away from the wall. Everyone stopped talking. She knew they were all afraid of her. They thought she’d gone as psycho as Blaise. The bodysnatcher didn’t care.

  “Zelda’s dead,” she said loudly. “A lot of you are going to be dead too before this is over.”

  Suzy Creamcheese looked like she was going to cry. Juggler started reading his paper again, all about amnesty.

  “Maybe not,” a new voice said. “Bloat wants volunteers.”

  Patchwork stood in the door to the long hail. She was brown-haired, slender, freckled. Older than most of the jumpers, twenty at least, the same age Zelda had been before the aces had gotten to her. Patchwork wasn’t a jumper, and she wasn’t really a joker either, but both factions on the Rox seemed to trust her.

  “Volunteers for what?” Molly Bolt asked her.

  Patchwork walked toward her, boots ringing on the stone floor. “To even the odds. He figures, the robot scoped us out, maybe we should do a little recon of our own.”

  “I’ll go,” the bodysnatcher said. She’d been itching to get back to Manhattan. And of course it had to be jumpers. Bloat’s freaks were too conspicuous for this kind of work.

  “Okay,” Molly Bolt said. “I’m with you.” She looked around the room. “Vanilla, Blueboy, you’ll come too. Four ought to be enough.”

  “Here,” Patchwork said, “I’ve got something for you.” She dug her fingers into her eye. There was a soft squelchy sound, a trickle of blood, and the eyeball popped out of the socket. Patchwork handed it to Molly Bolt. Then she popped out the other eye, ripped off her left ear, and handed those across as well. “Better put a move on it,” she said. “Charon is waiting, and you know how surly he gets.”

  FRIDAY

  AFTERNOON

  September 21, 1990 Using a few of the specialized tools that Travnicek had used to create him, working slowly and with great care, Modular Man managed to bend his fingers back into a shape that would work. But they didn’t work as well as they had, and the proportions were slightly different — just a little deformed. At least the plastic skin covering them hadn’t torn: the distortion wasn’t as noticeable as it would have been if the structural metal were peeking through.

  Modular Man had been attending Columbia University for two semesters now, taking courses in advanced physics, metallurgy, and chemistry. He had been hoping to learn ways of repairing himself. He got his tuition free in return for allowing the professors to examine him.

  He had learned a lot — he could memorize the textbooks in a single sitting — but he hadn’t learned much that could help him. Travnicek was a wild card genius, and no one could duplicate his work.

  And Modular Man himself, despite all the facts he memorized, didn’t seem able to duplicate the work either. It appeared that the android wasn’t very creative.

  He was trying to rewrite his programming slightly, hoping it would improve his creativity. He hadn’t had much luck with that either.

  Travnicek had told him to fix himself, then wait. Having finished his repair job, Modular Man went to Travnicek’s room and waited.

  He was used to waiting. Usually, to help time pass, he called up pleasant memories from his past and relived them in great detail.

  This time he watched as Travnicek watched some of his least pleasant memories on his television. Travnicek was playing the recordings from the android’s visit to the Rox. He watched both the video portion and the radar image.

  The old Travnicek hadn’t known how to read the radar images, or if he did, simply wasn’t interested. This one did. Maybe it was similar to one of the ways in which he now apprehended the universe.

  Travnicek came to the part of the recording where the merman appeared out of the air in front of the android. Stray alarm programs flickered through the android’s circuits at the sight. Travnicek slowed the recording, ran it through the collision, then reversed it. He halted it at the instant in which the merman appeared.

  “Toaster,” he said. “Do you have the time at which this happened?”

  “11:16:31:14 Eastern Daylight Time,” the android said.

  “Hah.” One of Travnicek’s trumpet-flowers gave an unpleasant laugh from the base of his featureless head. “I remember this happening then,” he said. “I remember the feeling of that thing coming into being. I sensed it on a southwesterly bearing from the balcony. It was… extraordinary.” Another nasty laugh. “Very pleasurable. And then only a few seconds later it just came to bits. Annihilated. And that didn’t feel so bad either. I’ve been feeling things like that ever since that castle got built. And the castle itself” Two of his sense organs, facing Modular Man, came erect. The android had the feeling they were peering at him. “That feeling was immense. That must be why God creates things. It feels so good.” Another laugh. “And why He destroys.”

  Travnicek rose from the bed and turned off the video and recorder. “Let?
??s go,” he said.

  “Where?” the android asked.

  Travnicek headed out of the room. “The Rox,” he said. “We’re joining them. I want to feel the place firsthand.”

  “Sir.” The android followed, his self-preservation programming shattering hopelessly against the overriding hardwired command to obey his creator. “Sir. Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Fuck you, Toaster.” Walking rapidly through the living room. “I’ll decide what’s wise around here.”

  “Sir. They think I’m an enemy. They’ll probably open fire the second they see me. And if I’m carrying you, you’ll be in danger. You could be —” One of those thoughts he wasn’t allowed to think shot through his circuits, then slammed to a halt against hardwired circuits. “You could be killed,” he said.

  “We’ll do some fast talking.”

  “Sir. Ellis Island is coming under heavy assault if they don’t surrender. If I’m damaged, you’ll never get off. I don’t think this is…”

  “If you’re damaged, I’ll fix you.” Breezily. “Do as I say.”

  There was no point, the android knew, in reminding Travnicek that he’d lost his abilities to repair his creation. Travnicek was obstinate in claiming that his second dose of the wild card had enhanced rather than diminished his capabilities.

  “And you’ve got that Zapper’s battle plan,” Travnicek added. “Bloat would give a lot for that, I betcha.”

  “Zappa.” Hopelessly.

  Travnicek stepped onto the balcony and raised his blue-skinned arms to the sun. “It’s a good day for flying,” he said.

  Sometimes it pays to have a private office, however small. This was one of those times.

  Ray sat down at his desk and took out the can of Glade — natural pine scent — that he kept in the upper right-hand drawer of his desk. He squirted the air, which was still contaminated by the smell of cigar smoke, burned flesh, and Bobby Joe Puckett. He wished the office had a window, but opening it would only have let in equally disgusting city odors. The air freshener smelled as much like real pine trees as anything from a test tube could, but it was hardly adequate.

  He put the can away and flipped on his computer, asking it to search for the names “Bobby Joe Puckett” and “George G. Battle” among various law agency and newspaper files. He keyed in half a dozen databases, and then sat back to wait, memories of Puckett’s handshake rising unbidden in his mind.

  If there was one thing Ray despised it was bullies. Puckett, Ray was sure, fit that category big time. He was begging for payback. Ray was just playing the opening sequences of such a confrontation in his mind when a line of words crawling across his computer screen brought him back to the here and now.

  It was, he saw, the info he’d requested on Puckett. And it wasn’t good. Reading it first brought a sense of disbelief, then a frisson of fear. Something was wrong here. Definitely wrong.

  FBI records listed a Bobby Joe Puckett born June 5, 1959, in Cross Plains, Texas. He was arrested for car theft at fourteen. The case was dropped due to lack of evidence, but he’d been before the judge three more times in the next two years for car theft, again, and B and E. He spent seven months in a juvvie home, and three weeks after being released was arrested for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon for pistol-whipping a 7-1l clerk. He’d spent the next three years in jail.

  All of this was unremarkable and wouldn’t have deserved inclusion in a national data bank, except that it provided the backdrop for the next stage of Puckett’s career. He apparently drifted through the early 1980s, occasionally in trouble for more smalltime stuff, then the highlight of his life of crime came down in 1987.

  Ray clenched his misshapen jaw as he read the details of a liquor-store robbery gone wrong. This time Puckett killed the clerk instead of only scarring her for life. The killing snapped something in Puckett and he took a deer rifle and .45 Magnum handgun to the top of a tower at the University of Texas in Austin and spent an afternoon sniping at passersby. He got twenty-six students and cops before the police charged his stronghold. To avoid capture he put his Magnum in his mouth and blew away the right side of his face. Shot himself as dead as any of his victims.

  Only Puckett wasn’t dead. Ray had shaken hands with him just a few hours before and he could attest to the strength of the man’s grip. But, with a chill running down his spine, Ray remembered the odd, misshapen silhouette of the man’s face under his all-enveloping hood. Given the state of his own face, Ray hadn’t thought much about it then. But now

  And the smell —

  His file said Puckett was dead. Maybe, Ray thought, Puckett hadn’t really killed himself. Maybe, for some reason, he’d been brought into government service and the suicide story was leaked as cover. Ray could see why the government would want to recruit him. He was an ace, after all. But was he?

  Ray stopped and reread the file. There was no indication that Puckett was anything other than another petty criminal whose stupidity had driven him to a horrible death.

  But Ray had felt Puckett’s grip. Maybe he hadn’t been an ace before his purported death but he sure was one now. He’d been a scumbag then, and was one now. Except now he was a scumbag for the government.

  And speaking of government scumbags, the file on Battle was coming online.

  Ray studied it intently, but there were no hints of the bizarre like those that abounded in Puckett’s story.

  Battle came from a prosperous family. He was now a lawyer, but he’d started out in the army. He’d been too young for World War II, but he hadn’t served active duty in Korea or Vietnam, either.

  After graduating from law school, Battle had gone into government service rather than private practice. He started out in the FBI, but stayed there only into the early 1960s when he disappeared into a haze of agencies, committees, and staff positions that was enough to give a headache to anyone who tried to sort it all out. There was one agency that Ray was familiar with. Battle had been special counsel to CREEP — the Committee to Reelect the President — when Nixon was running for his second term. After that there seemed to be a gap in his career. His next official posting was in the middle 1970s, and he’d also served on both of Reagan’s election campaigns. Currently he was attached to something called the Special Executive Task Force headed by someone named Phillip Baron von Herzenhagen, which sounded like a Nazi name if anything did. The Task Force was headed by Dan Quayle.

  Great, Ray thought. Just fucking great. It looked like wheels within wheels time. He thought about it for a second and then dumped the files. He went through his requests meticulously making sure that no trace of them survived in the computer system.

  Ray usually didn’t worry about covering his ass, but very definitely something whacko was going on here. And he had put himself right in the middle of it.

  He sat at his desk for a moment, thinking. He’d never paid too much attention to office-politics bullshit. His job had been guarding bodies and kicking ass, and he’d been good at it too, until the business with Hartmann.

  The senator’s face suddenly filled Ray’s mind and he felt a flash of anger. All those years he’d spent with the bastard, and then the prick had never even come to see him in the hospital when he’d literally had his guts spilled trying to keep Messer from him.

  Ray’d done everything he could for the senator, even turning his face the other way when the man had stepped out on his wife all those times, even acting as his personal messenger boy when the man wanted someone summoned to his presence. And then, the first time he failed him, Hartmann shut him off, just like that.

  Ray still felt a sense of loss, a void that ached to be filled by the simple touch of Hartmann’s hand on his shoulder. But he hadn’t seen Hartmann since the day he’d been carried out on a stretcher from the Atlanta Convention Center trying to stuff his guts back into his stomach cavity. He’d heard nothing from the senator, no word, no visit, not even a lousy phone call or a stupid card.

  Ray caught himself, realiz
ing he was standing on the brink of a very treacherous abyss, and pulled himself back with great effort.

  That was then, he thought. This is now. He had Battle to worry about, and their upcoming mission. He looked at his wristwatch. He just had time to head for the second place on the list before he was due to meet with Battle. It was someplace in Chinatown. Looked like an apartment address, belonging to a guy the name of Ben Choy.

  Modular Man dived out of the sun with Travnicek in his arms. Wind whipped at Travnicek’s organ lei, and the organs folded in on themselves. The jokers at their posts down below didn’t see him. The lacy spires of the Rox waited ahead.

  The android crossed over the outer wall. Travnicek suddenly clutched at him. “Wait!” he screamed. “Stop! Go back!” The words came from several trumpet-flowers at once with a curious harmony effect.

  Relief flooded through the android. He began to slow. He’d head back up-sun and get away before anyone noticed him.

  “No,” Travnicek said. “No, hold on here.” The panic faded from his voice. “Keep going.”

  The android kept slowing. “Are you sure?”

  “Yah. Just felt a little frightened there for a second. But I’m okay now.”

  Just wait, the android thought, till the fish-things come at you with lances.

  But in that he was disappointed.

  They were back in Jack Robicheaux’s clinic room. Cordelia’s nails were buried in Wyungare’s upper arm nearly to the point of drawing blood.

  “Mon dieu,” she said shakily, “what happened?”

  The Aborigine turned toward her and gently disengaged her fingers. He enfolded her into his arms. Just above her head, he said, “That was only a taste of the madness.”

  She tilted her head back so she could look at him. “Whose madness? Bloat?”

  “At one time, I would have said yes. Now… “ He shook his head. “There is a contagion, and it is spreading like a physical disease, except this one’s not — it’s psychic.”

  The black cat whined from beside Jack’s bed. Cordelia suddenly shook her head violently. “Jack! The boy — where is he?” She stared about the room.