Jokertown Shuffle

  She had backed him into the wall. He slid slowly down. "But what am I gonna do?"

  "Welcome to the jungle, babe. You're on the Rox now."

  "You're an outlaw. The first thing you do is accept that. The second is, kick some ass."

  He stared at his hands. "Yeah. I guess so."

  Her leather jacket slumped down beside him. He jumped, looked up at her.

  She was skinning her Jane's Addiction T-shirt off over her head. Her breasts were small and conical. The nipples stood up into points.

  " I lied," she said, undoing her fly. "There is something else you're going to do first."

  He was instantly hard. To his horror, his erection tented up the front of the blanket he had wrapped around him poncho-style. He tried to edge away.

  "But, uh, Blaise-" he stammered. "But Bloat-"

  "But nothing." She covered his mouth with hers.

  There were eight million stories in the naked city. Most of them were about assholes. The Great and Powerful Turtle looked over the monitor screens around the control console of his shell and thought pissed-off thoughts about how there was never anything good on television.

  He canted his shell and slid down for a look at the crowds by Madison Square. "Imagine," he said aloud. "I'm up here looking out for that asshole, George Bush."

  The president was in town to confer with the new mayor. A number of the more prominent public aces had volunteered to help ensure there were no incidents, with the grudging acquiescence of police and city officials. It wasn't that they liked Bush. The very idea that anyone might think he did pissed Turtle off no end. But this jumper thing was getting way the hell out of hand. It was more than mere media hype.

  Given the country's current mood, anything that happened to Bush was liable to be blamed on aces and the Medellin cartel, a connection George had done so much to establish in the public mind. And if an ace, even a jumper, had anything to do with actually harming the president…

  It would be easy to call the consequences unthinkable. But they were all too thinkable. They'd make McCarthy look like the Phil Donahue Show. So the Turtle was up here farting around to watch over a man who'd just as soon see him in a concentration camp. Great. Just fucking great.

  A disturbance below. A stout black woman, hat askew, sat on the sidewalk. A skinny youth elbowed his way through the tourist throngs clutching her handbag by a strap.

  "Don't these assholes ever give it a break?" Turtle asked the air. He punched up the megaphone. "Okay, dickweed, this is the Great and Powerful Turtle. Hold it right there or I'll spoil your whole damn day."

  The purse snatcher looked left and right, but not up. "What a weenie," Turtle said, and winced as he felt his amplified words reverberate through his armor plate. Forgot to dump the mike. Great.

  He reached down with his teke hand and grabbed the kid by the ankle, swooping him into the air. While the crowd gawked and pointed- "git a picture o' that, Martha, or the folks'll never believe us back in Peoria"-he carried the kid, the top of his head ten feet off the pavement, back to where the stout black woman was picking herself up. He shook the kid up and down until he let go of the handbag. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Turtle," the woman called. "God bless you."

  "Yeah, lady, anytime." He stuffed the kid in a dumpster and flew off.

  "George fucking Bush," he said. "Jesus." Fortunately he'd turned the microphone off.

  "This is never gonna work," Mark Meadows said, feeling his head again. The Grecian Formula he'd doused his head with to cover the punk racing stripes had reacted funny with some of the dye, and now it felt as if he'd been moussing with old paint.

  Up front in the driver's seat, Durg impassively kept his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel, just like the old song. His head looked odd sprouting from his collar and broad, suit-coated shoulders, like some narrow vegetable.

  Frowning, K.C. scrunched herself farther down next to Mark. "Quit fussing, will you? Jesus."

  Mark plucked at his tan corduroy sport coat and improbably wide maroon tie, and ran his fingers under the harness of his shoulder holster. There was nothing in the shoulder holster; Mark had a terror of guns, and like a good modern liberal knew for a fact that if he carried one, it would instantly take possession of his mind and cause him to rush into a subway and start shooting black teenagers. But K.C. insisted he at least wear the holster so he'd have the appropriate bulge under his left arm.

  "I'm never gonna pass for a cop. I look like a total geek."

  "You don't know much about cops, do you? We should have got you a bad hairpiece too. And maybe strapped a pillow to your stomach so you'd look like you'd put in your time on a Dunkin Donuts stool. Besides" she turned and stretched quickly to kiss his cheek-"you are kind of a geek, babe. Lucky for you I got kinky tastes."

  He shuddered. " I don't know what I think I'm doing. I got no right to involve you and Durg in this."

  K.C. fell back against the seat, bounced briefly. "You don't have a gun, sugar, so you couldn't hold one to my head."

  " I live to serve," Durg said.

  Mark's loosely strung-together collection of features twitched in irritation. "That's just a cliche, man. Your life is your own."

  "Perhaps it is a cliche among your kind. To the Morakh, it is biological fact. For me, a master is like food-I can go without, but only for a short period of time. Then I must weaken and die."

  "Things work different on our world, man."

  "My genes are not of this world. They make me what I am."

  "You must hate what they've done to you," K.C. said. "The people who created you."

  He glanced over the butte of his shoulder. The look in the lilac eyes was amusement. It hit her like a blow. "What they have done to me, lady, is give me life. And strength, and agility, and skill. They have given me perfection. Among your kind I am an ace. Among Takisians I am an object of awe, even terror. Are these things not glorious? All they ask of me in return is that I do what I am uniquely equipped to do. I see no disparity."

  "A man who knows what he wants." K. C. leaned forward and breathed in Mark's ear. "I think I love him."

  She nipped Mark's earlobe. He blushed furiously. She giggled.

  Durg cleared his throat. "We approach our objective."

  "All right." K. C. subsided in her seat. "I'm back to being a bad little prisoner girl now. Kind of like a skinny, mean Michelle Pfeiffer."

  Her short neutral-colored hair had been washed and combed out wet into bangs. She wore a scuffed leather jacket over tight black pants and a white T-shirt with three defiant transverse slashes across the belly. No spikes; when they committed you to the juvie justice system, they relieved you of props like that. She did look like a skinny, mean Michelle Pfeiffer.

  "So, how'd you get this gig, anyway, Durg? What's a Takisian doing hanging out with a skinny Earthling biochemist kind of guy?"

  "I came to this planet with Prince Zabb of House Ilkazam, cousin and blood-foe of the being you know as Dr. Tachyon. Dr. Meadows, more loyal a friend than Tachyon deserves, fought to aid him. In one of his avatars he bested me in single combat, thereby winning my loyalty. I have found him a good master, if somewhat prone to forget his servant."

  "Sounds kinky," K.C. said.

  They topped a hill, rolled down a block of shabbygenteel stone buildings with plenty of wrought iron at ground level. On the right, Reeves showed the street a blank high wall looped with strands of razor tape, a gate of wrought-iron spikes.

  "Why are you slowing so soon, man?" Mark asked as Durg braked.

  Durg nodded his narrow head. "That sedan at the head of the next block. It has two occupants in the front, more perhaps in back. I am disquieted."

  "The windshield's so dark," K.C. said, "how can you see anything?"

  "He can see, man," Mark said. "Should I drive on?"

  "You're being paranoid, Durg," K.C. said.

  They were almost at the gate, which stood open. On the far wall a small bronze plaque proclaimed RICHARD REEVES JUVENILE DIAG
NOSTIC AND DEVELOPMENTAL CENTER through patina and soot. On the near wall a sign said DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS IN THIS AREA.

  Beyond those walls was Sprout.

  From what Tach had told him of Takisa pang of guilt here, over possibly leaving his friend in a tight place-a tendency to err on the side of caution would be a highly desirable trait in a Morakh. K.C.'s right, he told himself. "No. We go in."

  Durg turned his head a fraction to the right, flicked Mark with his lilac eyes. Mark swallowed. Years of association with the alien told him that was the closest a Morakh could come to open mutiny. He set his jaw and tried to look determined.

  Reeves occupied an outsize lot with a paved courtyard. Durg cranked the wheel to bring the car around in front of the cement steps behind a station wagon with heavy wire mesh in the rear windows-

  And abruptly slammed the stick into reverse, Mark's chin bouncing off the front seat back as the LeBaron accelerated backward.

  Not even Morakh hearing and Morakh reflexes were quite quick enough. The long sedan with the tinted windshield was already blocking the gate, trapping them.

  "Daigla bal'nagh!" Durg braked to a bucking stop and reached inside his dark suit coat. He did have a gun in his shoulder holster, a Colt 10-mm auto that would shoot through an engine block and knock down a man in body armor.

  K. C. dug nails into his arm like talons. "No! Look." Men in flak jackets, dark blue baseball caps, and identical aviator sunglasses were pouring out of the building and around the brick sides, pointing shotguns and M16s at the car.

  "Holy shit," Mark gulped. His hand dived into the inside pocket of his sport coat.

  "Come out of the car with your hands up," Lieutenant Norwalk said through the megaphone. He stood tall at the head of the front steps, ignoring the SWAT team's frantic signals to seek cover. He knew these New Age wimps. Mark Meadows would never hurt him. Norwalk bet he didn't even carry a gun.

  As he lowered the loudspeaker he cheated his face slightly to the right, so that the Action News team on the roof opposite would be sure to catch his best profile. He was a rangy man who really and truly thought he looked like actor Scot Glenn.

  The LeBaron's windows were tinted, so that he couldn't see clearly inside. But he thought he saw movement, and a ripple of tension among the crouching SWAT men confirmed it.

  The rear passenger's side door nearest Norwalk began to open. He put his head back and waited, conscious that even the way the late-morning bluster ruled the sandy hair brushed across his balding crown was reminiscent of Scot Glenn.

  Out of the car stepped… George Bush.

  "Hey, kid," the SWAT cop yelled from behind the trunk of a cruiser blocking the street above Reeves. "Get back. Get out of here."

  The boy kept coming. A tall athletic-looking red-haired kid in a leather jacket, who obviously thought he was Major Bad News.

  "Fuck," the policeman said under his breath. They could have the fucking news teams set up to cover the big event, but they couldn't detail enough people to keep civilians from wandering into the line of fire. Too much danger of alerting the quarry. Oh, yeah. He should have stayed in the army. He stood up, flipping on the safety of his Remington 870 riot gun. Then he stopped, leaned the shotgun against the car, and began taking off his uniform.

  Blaise knelt beside a pair of officers behind the sedan parked across the gate into Reeves. The policeman's uniform was a couple of sizes too big, especially in the gut, but that wasn't too overt. With his riot helmet and dark glasses and his tail tucked down inside his flak jacket, nobody spared him a glance.

  He was filled with wild hot energy, the energy of repletion, like taking a woman for the first time, or mind-controlling a man into cutting his own throat with a razor. The kind of energy that needed occasional venting so it wouldn't get the better of him. It was coming down payback time on Mark Meadows and K.C. fucking Strange. He knew how to savor these moments.

  Thanks to New York regulations, when you dropped a dime on someone, you still actually dropped a dime. Bloat would suspect. At Blaise's first unguarded moment, Bloat would know. But he would never take action any length of time after the fact. Bloat needed the jumpers, needed their drugs, needed their numbers when the Man came to call.

  More than that, Bloat was too cowardly to burn Blaise in cold blood. He was too sensitive. The ultimate eighties kind of guy.

  Blaise giggled. A couple of cops briefly turned faces hidden by sunsplash on visors toward him, but their body language showed neither surprise nor concern. Giggling is more common on the firing line than jackboot-opera cop shows want you to believe.

  Then the cops' body language changed to stone confusion.

  "What is all this here? What is this? I approve of men on the front lines in the war against crime in our streets showing initiative, but don't you think this is taking things too far?"

  No, Lieutenant Norwalk thought, bullshit-no way. This cannot be the president. But still-he looked like Bush, and he acted like Bush, and he had that prissy little mouth… and Christ knew he talked like George Bush.

  The SWAT troopies were back on their heels, lifting weapons off-line in confusion. They couldn't quite believe it was Bush either, but if it was, their nifty Hard Corps vests with SWAT in big tape letters on the back were not going to keep their asses out of Leavenworth on a long-term lease if they pointed fucking guns at him. And it would be just like the weenie to pull a spot inspection of some chickensquat D-home on zero notice.

  No, no, where's the Secret Service? Reality got hold of Norwalk's brain again, and he opened his mouth to give orders to grab the impostor. Then a small nasty-looking number in black leather stuck her Michelle Pfeiffer snub nose out the door behind the pseudopresident. Her pale eyes met his.

  "Put down your guns, men," Lieutenant Norwalk rapped. "Can't you see it's the president? Dammit, move when I tell you!"

  The SWAT men eyed him dubiously but obeyed, straightening up from behind the station wagon, rising out of the empty flower beds. Norwalk had a rep for liking to chew ass. If he said this was George Bush, that made it official.

  The little cupcake in black sagged against the car with drool trailing from the corner of her mouth. Since she was a lot more fun to look at than the president, several of the team noticed her open her mouth as though about to scream. A plainclothes cop who looked like a compressed Jean-Claude van Damme slid around from the driver's side and caught her arm just above the elbow. No sound came out of her. George Bush strode up the steps. Lieutenant Norwalk held the door for him. The squat cop and his prisoner followed.

  In the foyer George Bush looked left and right. No one in sight. He stooped slightly to honk the girl's left butt-cheek. "No one can say I don't take an active interest in today's young people," he croaked.

  "If I was in my own body, I'd break your arm for you, you asshole," Lieutenant Norwalk said, stumbling slightly. The president gave the policeman a horrible stroke victim's leer. "It's nothing I haven't done before, my child."

  "That was Mark. I don't even know who you are, you creepy blue thing, so just fucking watch it."

  "I'm your salvation, you ungrateful little-"

  "Shh," Durg said pointedly. He gave the captive a quick slap on the side of the head, enough to scramble whatever wits she had been able to gather. Or he, actually. Most people who were jumped were incapable of doing anything meaningful for a while, but he was taking no chances.

  In the reception area a couple of uniforms stood, making sure the staff didn't go pressing their noses to the front door and giving away the show or getting in the way of any stray slugs. They gaped at the intruders.

  "Mr. President," the black cop said.

  "Just a moment," a heavyset black woman in a mauve dress with an outsize collar exclaimed. "That's not really the president."

  Durg pushed K. C.'s body to the scuffed hardwood floor. His arm whipped out with the big black Colt in his fist. "But this is really a gun. Nobody move."

  K. C. guided Norwalk's body past him. Ke
eping clear of his line of fire, he relieved the black cop of his sidearm, tossed it to Durg. He caught it one-handed, pointed it at the other cop as K. C. disarmed him.

  "Oh, my," the man who looked like George Bush said. "I don't approve of firearms. People might use them to defy the law"

  "Shut the fuck up," K.C. Norwalk said. To the administrator in the mauve dress she said, "Sprout Meadows. Where?"

  "I won't tell you."

  K.C. pointed the second officer's pistol at her. "If I kill you, maybe somebody else will be a little more sensible." "Lieutenant Norwalk," the white cop breathed.

  "Blow me, Patrolman. Now, where's the girl?" She cocked the pistol. "One-"

  "Rec room. Annex in the back, second floor."

  Turtle blinked and stabbed a finger at the control of his police-band radio, overriding the automatic scanner. He punched it back three channels, to the broadcast that had belatedly caught his attention.

  "-tell you it's the president of the United States!" a voice was insisting. "George Bush. The weenie himself. He's on some kind of cockamamy spot inspection-"

  The Turtle frowned. Bush was supposed to be under massive guard, addressing a Turn-In-Your-Parents rally somewhere in Harlem. He looked at the digital readout, checked the freek against a dog-eared looseleaf notebook hung beside his console. Brooklyn.

  The voices were still arguing about whether the president could possibly be at something called the Reeves Institute. He turned his shell east.

  Sprout Meadows sat to one side looking at the pictures in a magazine with a yellow cover. She liked to look at that magazine because it always had nice animals in it. Sometimes it almost seemed she could tell what the words said. But never quite.

  Fine Young Cannibals were on the television high on the wall. A couple of girls were arguing over whether to keep watching MTV or switch to Santa Barbara. It sounded as if they were going to start hitting each other at any moment. Sprout was getting good at telling things like that. Fortunately the other girls had gotten bored with picking on her; she was mostly left alone these days. That meant the counselors scolded her for not getting more involved in what the other girls did. She hated being scolded. But she hated getting picked on more.