"I don't… and you'd probably like me to assume you're merely a symptom of incipient madness. That would let you off the hook. But you sent Peanut. He speaks of you with reverence. No, you exist. And now you have to find the courage to act."
The Outcast turned away. "There are so many… so many of them needing me-"
"And now there's one more," Tach interrupted. He-She touched her belly. "Her name is Illyana. I sing, and she thinks music back to me. She's a trickster because she knows there's one particular place where she kicks and I have to urinate. She knows it makes me mad, and it makes her giggle."
Tachyon could see the tension in her reluctant hero's back. The muscles in his neck formed corded rejection. "That's Illyana," Tachyon continued quietly. "And Blaise kicked me in the stomach. To him, she's just a parasite. A means to torture me. But I know better… she is my daughter… and I love her."
Tachyon rose. Made his ungainly way to the Outcast's side. Lightly touched the man on the back of the hand. "Don't let him kill her."
The man whirled, almost knocking Tach off his feet. "Would you kiss me?"
"What? Now?"
"Now… sometimes… always."
"Well… yes."
"You hesitated!" Accusation and suspicion made the words cut like blades.
"Of course. I don't know who you are. You don't know what I am."
"My love."
Tachyon covered his ears and spun awkwardly away. Fled until the width of the circular room lay between them. "Stop it, stop it, sTOP IT!" Panting breaths punctuated each word. "Why does no one know me? Am I always to be a symbol? The saint of Jokertown. The faggot from outer space. The Takisian. The drunkard, the prince, doctor, alien, lover, rival. And now your `love.' Well, dammit, why can't I just be." He was sobbing wildly.
The Outcast crossed the room in three long strides. Took Tach in his arms. Made soothing, shushing noises.
"A kiss," the Takisian murmured wearily as his sobs subsided. "Is that the price of freedom? Then you'll have it. I swear."
The dream was fading. Tach became aware of the sagging cot beneath her body, the pressure of an overfull bladder, the smell of the slops bucket, voices calling outside.
And fluttering through her consciousness like a fading memory, another voice. "You promised. Remember, you promised."
"Doctor. Doctor Tachyon, wake up."
Tach cranked up on an elbow. Pushed back her hair, tried to focus. "Peanut, by the Ideal…" The words died into silence as she stared at the joker protruding from the floor like a horny mushroom. Tach blinked and realized that the lower half of the man was beneath the level of a trapdoor-where there shouldn't be a trapdoor.
"Come quick. I'm gonna get you outta here."
The joker had a Coleman lantern hung over the stump of his arm. With his other hand he reached out to help her. As Peanut's chitinous fingers closed about her hand, Tachyon felt a thrill as great as if it had been the touch of a lover. Free, free-she was almost free.
"It's a long ladder. Can you make it?"
"Not easily," said Tach as her stomach rubbed at a rung. "But I'll manage," she concluded grimly.
"Can you close the trap?"
She stretched, grasped the edge, pulled. It fell with a dull thump. Peanut's terror was palpable in the confined space.
"Sorry," said Tach. "It was heavier than I thought."
"That's okay, but let's hurry"
They began climbing.
"Can you go a little faster?" Peanut asked after several minutes.
"No. I'm a little awkward right now. And a little scared," she added.
"Don't worry, Doctor. I won't let you fall. And anyway, you'd land on me."
"And then where would I be?" She smiled back and down over her shoulder. "You're my guide, Peanut."
At last they reached bottom, and Tach found herself in a cavern. Seven openings debouched into the vaultlike room. Tach pivoted slowly, staring in wonder at the colorful painted glyphs that rioted on the curving walls. Somewhat reminiscent of Mayan art, they also partook of Balinese temple paintings.
"Blood and Line, this is very strange," Tach murmured. "Pardon?" said Peanut politely.
"Nothing… hysteria… relief," Tach quickly added at the joker's look of alarm. "But this can't be real… can it?"
"It is. He's had me down here exploring them. They go all over. Weird places, but okay places too."_
Peanut headed toward one of the openings. Tach fell in step with him.
"Places like where?"
"New Jersey."
"Definitely a weird place," said Tach thoughtfully.
The tunnel had started to climb, and Tach knew damn good and well that they hadn't walked to New Jersey yet. She stopped, planting both feet heavily like a balky foal. Peanut looked back questioningly.
"Where are you taking me?" Suspicion sharpened her tone.
Peanut seemed to collapse in on himself. His thickened eyelids blinked rapidly several times. The effect was like watching a stone idol come to life, and Tach imagined that she could hear a sharp click as the hoary lids met and sprang apart.
"I gotta take you to him first. Then we'll go. He just wants to see you."
"Who? The Outcast?"
"The governor."
"Governor? What are you babbling about?"
Wounded dignity descended over the joker like rolling fog. "This is a joker place now. We take care of each other, and he takes care of us. We got laws now and everything."
"I'm sorry, Peanut," Tachyon said contritely. "It's probably a good thing you have a joker place. And I'm very fortunate. You're probably the only people in the world who would help me right now"
They resumed walking. "We're scared of Blaise, but not enough to stop caring for you."
"You didn't feel that way two years ago when I derailed Senator Hartmann's presidential campaign."
"The governor explained why you did that."
That stopped Tachyon in her tracks again. "He did?" she asked in a voice gone suddenly as wobbly as her knees. "Yeah. He wouldn't give us details. He just said that what you did probably saved us from even worse persu… persecution." Peanut faltered slightly over the unfamiliar word. "He says you do care for the jokers like nobody ever has."
Falling into step with the joker, Tach asked hesitantly, "Is… is the governor a joker?"
"Of course."
That stopped her yet again. It was an act of will to kick herself back into motion again. She steeled herself to pay the price of freedom.
A kiss. A joker.
"You promised… remember, you promised." A joker.
Faceted surfaces seized the light. Broke it into the primary colors of the spectrum. Threw it back in rainbow striations on the white sand floor of the cavern. Tach shook her head. Only on the world of her birth had she seen such gaudy extravagance. A jewel-encrusted door, the gems forming the pattern of a coat of arms.
"Your governor doesn't underrate his importance."
"We didn't build it. Honest. It just happens."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Enchanting ice, the faceted surfaces cool and sharp against the palm of her hand. One of the gems was loose. It formed the eye of an eagle, and beneath her probing fingers, it suddenly tumbled free like a bloody tear. Bewitching fire, as a ruby the size of a plum filled her hand. She couldn't resist. She pocketed the wealth.
"The ability to make dreams manifest… energy-to-matter transference," murmured Tach, trying to remove this latest wild card mutation from the realm of fantasy into the workaday reality that was science.
Scientific theories held little interest for Peanut. He threw back the elaborate bolt, the turned to Tachyon. "Wait here. I gotta make sure everybody's cleared out. The fewer people who know, the better."
Darkness fell around her like a storm as Peanut and the lantern passed through the doorway. And carried on its stygian wings was a stench that defied description. Tach, her stomach heaving, spun and staggered back a few s
teps from the door.
What could possibly live and produce such foulness? For over forty years she'd faced and physicked the worse the wild card had to offer. She could face this too. What she couldn't face was the blackness. Memories of her basement cell scurried like tormenting demons through her mind. Footfalls in the darkness, raucous laughter. Light struck her like a blow, and Tachyon screamed. Blaise was coming.
Peanut's hand across her mouth smothered the sound, yanked her back from the edge of madness.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry" Her teeth chattered over each consonant like hail on a tin roof.
"Don't be afraid of the dark. We won't let anything getcha. Now come on, but you remember-because he won't, won't want to-you gotta hurry."
They were through the secret door, and her feet recoiled from a sticky resinous substance. The stench made her head reel, made her doubt the evidence of her eyes. That voluminous mass of stained white couldn't possibly be flesh? Could it?
Pipes thrust into the mass like air hoses into an inflating balloon. But this was not so benign. Dried blood flaked from the skin around the punctures like peeling paint, and Tach could see an angry red, the corona of infection, flaring from several of the crudely sewn incisions. And from the pores poured the source of the foulness-liquid shit oozing in perfect beadlike globules, running down the joker's side to join the mountains of waste. Ancestors help the poor creature, it was flesh, it did live. Stomach heaving like a bucking horse, Tach fought her revulsion and tried to see where in thIs mountain of protoplasm resided the mind, the soul.
"Get the doctor a handkerchief, Peanut," said a highpitched voice from high above her. "She's not accustomed to the smell of bloatblack." The boy hit the word bloat with the bitterness of a falling hammer.
Tach searched wildly for the source of the voice. Finally located it. Pygmylike, the head, neck, shoulders, and arms of a young man perched like a figurehead on the prow of a massive ship of flesh.
Was there anything in that round fat face reminiscent of her dream phantom suitor? Only the hair color. A nudge from Peanut startled her. He offered a handkerchief. It had been drenched in Lagerfeld. It had been Tachyon's favorite-
"After-shave, yes, I know," said the young man in chorus with her thoughts. "That's why I got it for you… for this moment."
The damp cloth formed a veil against the stink and Tachyon's horror. "Are you…" She couldn't form the rest of the words.
"The Outcast? Yeah. Now, I suppose, you see why." They were tuned. He was the first person she had read with her feeble telepathy. They had walked in dreams together. It was easy to slide into his mind. Past the lithe, tanned figure that was the Outcast, the soul's image of his true self. Past erotic visions of Kelly. A simulacrum of Tachyon-heroic, noble, suffering. Down to where the boy-child lived. Encased in fat, eating sewage, lying in shit, and dreaming of beauty. Quick blurred images flashed past-of Teddy, slow and always a little pudgy, but blessed with beautiful hands. Those hands sweeping across the page of a sketchbook. The smell of drying oil, the romantic quirky paintings that filled his room. They were lovely; they added something to a world that dismissed, discounted, and rejected Theodore Honorlaw. Monster/tired/screaming/hateself/mustlive/mustdie. Tachyon's spirit wept.
Teddy looked down at her. "You're crying on the inside for me."
"Yes."
"Why don't you cry on the outside?"
"I can't. I've lost the ability," Tach said simply. "When?"
"After the rape." They studied each other for a long moment. "Now you're weeping for me," Tach added softly. "Yeah… but only on the inside. Wouldn't do for the governor of the Rox to show weakness."
Again silence fell between them. Tach remembered Peanut's admonition. "Teddy, the longer I stay here, the greater the danger. Peanut and I-"
"Bloat, the name's Bloat. Teddy belongs to another world… and haven't you forgotten something?" Tachyon cringed, eyes flicking guiltily from side to side. "No, you haven't forgotten, you were just hoping I had. I disgust you, don't I?" Tach just shook her head. She wished she could lie. Knew she couldn't. He was in her mind again. She couldn't hide anything from him. His face puckered like a baby about to cry.
"We've all revolted you. For forty-five years you've been totally grossed-out every time you touched one of us, cared for one of us." His tone wound higher, fueled by his growing anger.
"I'm sorry…"
"I thought you loved me!" The enormous body was quivering, sending shocks through the walls and floor of the old building. Tach tottered, struggled to maintain her footing. Peanut was terrified.
"You're a fraud, Tachyon, a total fucking fraud!"
Her shame collapsed before a wave of indignation. "No-I helped create you-I'll bear that guilt. But I have worked and lived among you, given half my life to your care, your protection, your well-being. I do care for you. You are my wounded step-children, but how can you ask me to love you when you can't even love yourselves?"
Snorting, gasping sobs emerged from the boy atop his hideous throne. Unable to help, Tachyon listened to the sounds of woe come falling down the joker's sides like the rivers of bloatblack.
"Somebody's coming," said Peanut suddenly. Tachyon hadn't even noticed him moving to the door.
"Has to be Blaise. My jokers are all under strict orders."
"Ideal," murmured Tachyon, and felt her bowels go to water. The boy's face hardened. He scrubbed at his eyes. Tach dug to her core. Takisian pride would support her. It was all she had left. "This is your moment. Revenge yourself and all your fellows upon me. You have the power."
Bloat stared at her. Fury fell away. He sighed. "I can't do that to you. For months you've cried, and sung, and talked in my mind. You're beautiful… I can't hurt you. Climb up."
Tachyon needed no urging. Revulsion gave way to selfpreservation. She picked her way through the mounds of fecal waste, placed a foot on one of the pipes jabbed IV-like into the joker's body. Fingers pinching at the skin she hauled herself upward, and fell forward into the folds of flesh. She lifted a flap of skin. It was like handling a sack of wet sand, but sweat made it oily. She slipped beneath it, and pulled it up like a blanket. It was horrible.
The sound of the doors slamming open brought back memories. Tach chewed on a corner of the handkerchief. "How dare you bust in on me like this!" Bloat roared. "This is joker territory, jumpers only come when invited."
"Looking for someone," wailed a boy in a cracking adolescent's tone. The door slammed again. Tach sagged with relief.
She stood and made her way to the head, her feet sinking several inches with every step. His head reached only to her breast. She pushed his hair off his forehead. It was silky, freshly washed. She caught the thought in preparation for meeting you.
Their thoughts continued to dance and weave about and through one another.
"I wish you could come with me too," said Tach in answer to an unspoken question.
"Will you ever come back?" Pleading without ever having asked.
"I must."
"Oh, yeah, your body'll still be here."
"More than that. There's you, and I'll help you if I can." Tach hesitated. Bloat's dark eyes were pleading with her. He looked away, mumbled, "Blaise knows you're gone, they're hunting… you better go."
Setting her jaw, Tach drew in a hissing breath between her teeth. Took Bloat's face between her hands, bent in for the kiss. His flabby arms wrapped about her waist, drew her in close, and Tachyon began to shake. This had nothing to do with Takisian revulsion for the deformed. This was gutwrenching terror.
Blaise's teeth drawing blood from her lower lip in his own grotesque and evil version of a kiss. Almost choking her as he thrust his penis down her throat.
Tachyon whimpered as Bloat's hands closed tightly about her wrists.
He forced her hands from his face, pushed her away. "NO!" The word twisted and vibrated with his emotional agony. "I'm not going to hurt you. You'll never remember me as someone who hurt you."
"I promised!" cried Tach.
"And I want it! But not this way. Not when all you can remember is a rape! Peanut, help her down." The joker scurried up onto Bloat's back, put a hand beneath Tachyon's elbow. "Hurry"
It was harder going down. Eventually Tachyon just sat down and slid. Her dress and hands were stained with bloatblack.
She looked back up the wall of flesh. "No, Peanut, I've got to do it. I've got to go back. I can't leave him with my word broken."
"No, Doctor, we've gotta go. It'll hurt him worse if you get caught."
They stepped through the secret door. The last sound Tachyon heard was a boy weeping.
Eventually fear can kill you. It starts by sapping the will and turning the body into a shivering sickly husk. Tach had reached that state. Without the support of Peanut's arm, she could never have reached the chamber in which they now stood. In another lifetime she would have shrunk from that rough contact. But she had endured the sweating, stinking, flaccid mound that was Bloat, and she had felt his love and his despair. She had been assaulted by the physical beauty that was Blaise and known his hate.
"It doesn't matter," she whispered as she sank down on the glittering sand that formed the floor of the cavern chamber. "What, Doctor?"
She looked up at him. The sad, sad eyes, the chiseled wrinkles about that slit of a mouth.
"Peanut… you're a very handsome man."
"No, Doctor, I'm a joker." Bending, he held out his single hand to her. "You rested enough? Can you go on? That Blaise… he knows we're running."
The tinkling of falling water drew her attention. She looked and located the source. "Let me bathe my face and hands. That will help."
"Okay," said Peanut dubiously.
The water was icy cold, but it revived her like a slap. She looked down at her dress, gave a little mew of disgust, and pulled it over her head. Immersed it beneath the tiny waterfall that had first attracted her. The waters of the pool were soon fouled and darkened with the bloatblack. She put the dress back on, shivering at its clammy touch, but at last she was clean, and the stink was gone.
They kept walking. Tachyon slid a hand into Peanut's. He looked back and smiled. Striations of mica in the rock walls threw off a soft phosphorescent glow. Tachyon was no geologist, but she didn't think that mica could do that. Elaborate stalagmites and stalactites yearned for each other from the floors and ceilings of the caverns, their colors shell pink, sea green, amber.