Wild Cards_ Jokers Wild Part 38

He felt rather than saw it penetrate the Astronomer, going through his shields like a bullet through jelly. When he could see again the Astronomer was doubled up in shock and pain.

The Astronomer burst into flame. He burned hot and red, and dense black smoke boiled off him. His arms stuck out of the fireball at odd angles and Fortunato watched them turn black and crusty.

And then the flames died.

The Astronomer's body was blackened, mummified. The wind blew charcoal-scented flakes of burnt skin off him as he floated.

Fortunato took a breath. He had a little power left after all, enough to keep them afloat, but that was all. And it would soon be gone.

He couldn't seem to move. A sense of nothingness surrounded him.

The Astronomer opened his eyes.

"Is that all?" he said. He screamed with laughter, and slowly straightened his body. Burned skin showered off him and Fortunato could see the scalded pink flesh underneath. "Is that your best shot? Is that really all you can do? I would pity you. I would pity you except you hurt me, and now you have to die."

Fortunato saw the hideous, blistered little man gathering himself, and the nothingness around him told him what to do.

He chanted silently, banishing his fear. He cleared his mind, found the last thoughts that still snagged there-Caroline, Veronica, Peregrine-pulled them loose and let them flutter down toward the lights below.

He slowed his heart and it started thrashing again and he calmed it, finally.

It was, after all, only death.

He touched the Astronomer's mind and saw the power beginning to uncoil, and reached in to help. He loosened the bonds and pulled the damping rods and opened all the switches. He turned the dials up to ten.

We go together, Fortunato thought. You and me. Nothing mattered; he became nothing, less than nothing, a vacuum. Come to me, he thought. Bring everything you have.

The night filled with cold white light.

Most of the crowd couldn't even see the battle over the East River because of their angle of sight being limited by the Manhattan skyline. It was mainly the observers standing in the intersections who could look along the numbered streets east to the spectacle.

Even those onlookers weren't completely impressed as the fireb.a.l.l.s coruscated and exploded. One joker, staring at the sparks cascading down toward the river, said in range of Jack's hearing, "Hey, I saw a lot more spectacular stuff during the Bicentennial. This ain't nothing. Why don't they go do something over the Statue of Liberty?"

"Yeah!" said someone else. "That'd be neat neat."

No one peering goggle-eyed from the intersection of 14th Street and Avenue A had any idea just what was going on above the river.

"I've got a date in three hours," said Bagabond. "It's my first date in twenty years, and now the world's ending."

The fireworks dimmed and died.

"I think it's over," said Jack. "The world's not ending. You've still got your date. Who's the lucky guy?"

She recoiled and stepped away from him.

He realized what she was thinking and hastily said, "I'm not being sarcastic. I mean it. Who is he?"

"Paul Goldberg."

"The lawyer? Rosemary's office?"

"That's right."

"What're you going to wear?" said Jack.

Bagabond hesitated. "The usual."

Jack laughed. "Bag lady outfit?"

She shook her head angrily. "Business suit."

"Come on."

This time it was Jack who grabbed Bagabond's arm and tugged her along the street. "It's maybe three blocks to All Nite Mari Ann's," he said. "It's the in place this season."

"What do you mean?" said Bagabond.

"You need an all-night boutique," said Jack. "This is going to be fun."

"I'm not looking for fun," said Bagabond.

"You want to look really great at your breakfast date?"

She resolutely stared straight ahead.

"Then, let's go, kiddo."

She tried to lag as he led the way down the street. Jack waited for her, took her elbow, merrily steered her along. He was whistling an off-key version of "We're Off to See the Wizard."

"You're no Judy Garland," Bagabond said.

Jack just smiled.

The crowds were starting to thin out, almost as though the epic battle over the East River had been equivalent to the nightly fireworks at Disneyland, signaling families it was time to take the kids home. More than that, the crowds seemed simply to be exhausted. It had been a long, long day.

All Nite Mari Ann's was sufficiently successful; it could afford to spread out more than the average boutique. It sprawled through the ground floor of what had once been a parking garage.

Jack led Bagabond along a window-shopping tour of the front of the store. "Yes," he said. "Oh yes. A silk dress, see?" He pointed. He looked into her face and then back into the interior of the shop. "Teal, I think. Perfect." He moved ahead of her. "Come on, Suzanne. It's Cinderella time."

Bagabond made one final attempt to stall. "I don't have much money with me."

Holding the door for her, Jack said, "I have an account."

When the burst of power went through him, there was nothing left of Fortunato to resist it. Nothing resisted it, and so it pa.s.sed through him. And as it pa.s.sed it left particles behind, particles of knowledge and memory and understanding.

Fortunato saw a little man in thick gla.s.ses crawling out of the East River, twenty years ago. There were no memories before that. Where there should have been memories there was only a seared place, self-inflicted. The Astronomer was self-made; there was no human ident.i.ty, no human history left to him.

The little man had crawled into the gra.s.s of East River Park and he had looked up into the night sky. And the wild card virus uncoiled in him for the first time and his mind shot out into that sky and moved between the stars. It saw clouds of gas that burned in reds and purples and blues. It saw planets striped and whorled and ringed and haloed. It saw moons and comets and shapeless lumps of asteroid.

And it saw something moving. Something dark and nearly mindless, something vast and rubbery and foul, something hungry. And his mind began to scream.

The little man found himself outside a brick building in Jokertown, naked except for his gla.s.ses, still screaming. A door opened and a man named Balsam took him in. Took him in and taught him the secrets, taught him the name of the thing he'd seen, the name that was the ultimate Masonic word: TIAMAT.

Taught him about the machine, the Shakti device that the brother from the stars had brought to Cagliostro. Cagliostro who had founded the Order, to protect the knowledge of TIAMAT-the Dark Sister-and the Shakti device.

Until Balsam had nothing left to teach the little man, and it was time for the little man to become the Astronomer, and remove Balsam, with the unwitting help of a b.u.mbling magician named Fortunato. To take control of the Order. To realize their destiny. To found a religious tyranny of Egyptian Masons that would rule the world. A world that would come begging to be ruled out of awe and grat.i.tude. For the Astronomer would use the Shakti device as it had always been meant to be used . . .

"No," Fortunato said. "No."

But the knowledge would not go away. The knowledge that the Shakti device had been given to the Masons to save save the Earth from TIAMAT, not to lure her there. To call the Network to destroy her. the Earth from TIAMAT, not to lure her there. To call the Network to destroy her.

The Shakti device could have saved them and Fortunato had destroyed it. Because of him, thousands had died. For all his claims of wisdom he was still only a creature of impulse, nothing but a temperamental child.

The Astronomer still lived. The filmed gla.s.ses were still hooked around his ears, the tatters of his robe snapped in the wind, his chest moved up and down. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and his power was gone. Completely.

It would take nothing at all for Fortunato to drift across the thirty feet that separated them, put his hands around the little man's throat, and finish him.

Instead he left him fall.

Long seconds later Fortunato heard the splash as the little man came full circle, back into the East River again.

Henry Street was still and deserted, its revelry closed with the Crystal Palace. Sawhorses still closed off both ends of the block, though the street fair was long over. Hiram and Jay walked down the middle of the street, past the darkened rowhouses. The gutters were choked with litter: napkins, paper cups, plastic forks, newspapers.

Halfway up the block, a dark shape stepped out from the shadows to accost them. Popinjay's hand came out of his pocket fast, but Hiram grabbed his arm. "Don't," he said.

The shape moved under the light of a streetlamp. It was a heavy gray-haired woman in a shapeless green army jacket. The bottom half of her body was a single huge white leg, moist and boneless. She pushed herself forward like a snail. "Spare change?" she asked. "Spare change for a poor joker?"

Hiram found he could not look at her. He took out a wallet, gave her a five-dollar bill. As she took it from his hand, his fist clenched, and he cut her weight in half. It wouldn't last, but for a little while it would be easier for her.

A fire was burning in the vacant, debris-strewn lot beside the Crystal Palace. A dozen small twisted forms were huddled around it, and an animal of some sort was turning on a spit above the flames. At the sounds of footsteps, some of the creatures got up and vanished into the ruins. Others turned to stare, eyes hot as embers in the darkness. Hiram paused. He didn't often come down to Jokertown, and now he remembered why.

"They won't bother us," Ackroyd said. "This is their time, when the streets are empty and the world's asleep."

"I think that's a dog they're cooking," Hiram said.

Jay took him by the arm. "If you're that interested, I'll have Chrysalis get you the recipe. Come on."

They climbed the steps, knocked.

The sign on the door said CLOSED CLOSED, but after a moment they heard the dead bolt slide back and a man stood before them. He had a pencil-thin mustache, oily dark hair, and an expanse of taut skin where his eyes should have been.

"Sascha, Hiram," Jay Ackroyd said. "They here?"

Sascha nodded. "In the taproom. Only two. They're clean."

Hiram heaved a sigh of relief. "Let's get this over with, then." Sascha nodded, and led them through a small ante-chamber to the main taproom of the Crystal Palace.

The only lights were those behind the long bar. The room smelled of beer and cigarette smoke, and the chairs had been upended on the tables. They sat in a booth, three of them. In the dimness, Chrysalis looked like a skeleton in an evening gown. The end of her cigarette glowed like the eyes of the lost souls outside. Loophole Latham was impeccably dressed in a charcoal gray three-piece, and his briefcase was on the table in front of him. Between them, wrapped in shadow, was the third man.

"Thank you, Sascha," Chrysalis said. "You can leave us now." When the echoes of his footsteps had died away, it was deathly quiet in the taproom.

Hiram wondered once again what the d.a.m.nation he was doing here. Then he thought of Gills, swallowed hard, stepped forward. "We're here," he announced, his deep voice full of confidence he did not really feel.

Latham stood up. "Mr. Worchester, Mr. Ackroyd," he said, as easily if this were just a business lunch.

The third person hissed. Something long and thin flickered out of his mouth and tasted the air. "We weren't a.s.sure you would come." He leaned forward, thrusting his gaunt reptilian face into the light. He had no nose, just nostrils set flat into his face. His forked tongue moved constantly. "Ssso we meet again."

"Sorry you had to rush off like that this afternoon," Jay said. "I didn't quite catch the name."

"Wyrm," the reptile man said.

"Is that a first name or a last name?" Jay asked.

Chrysalis laughed dryly. Latham cleared his throat. "Let's get on with this," he said. He sat down, spun the combination locks on his briefcase, clicked it open. "I've consulted with my client, and your terms are acceptable. No legal action will be taken against either of you, and the false-imprisonment charges will be dropped. I have the papers here, already signed by Mr. Seivers, who waives all his claims against you for the amount of one dollar."

"I'm not going to-" Hiram began.

"I'll pay the dollar," Latham said quickly. He handed a sheaf of legal papers to Ackroyd. The detective looked through them quickly, signed them in triplicate, returned two sets. "Very good," the attorney said. "As for the fish market, without admitting any prior guilt or involvement, my client and his organization will henceforth take no interest in that area of the city. This is not something that can be committed to a legal instrument, of course, but Chrysalis is a witness to these proceedings and the organization's reputation is your surety."

"Their business is built on trust," Chrysalis confirmed. "If they're known liars, no one will deal with them."

Hiram nodded. "And Bludgeon?"

"I reviewed his case after our last conversation, and frankly, he is not the sort of man Latham, Strauss, cares to represent. We're dropping him."

Wyrm's smile showed a mouth full of yellowed incisors. "Would you like his head ssserved up on a platter?"

"That won't be necessary," Hiram said. "I just want him to go to prison for what he did to Gills."

"Prissson it isss, then." His eyes were fixed on Hiram, and his tongue flickered out greedily. "And now, Fatman, you have all you wanted. Give usss the booksss! Now!"

There was a moment of tense silence. Hiram looked at Jay. The detective nodded. "Looks like all the bases are covered."

"Good," Hiram said. Now all that remained was to get it done, and get out of here alive, back to the sanity of his own life. He was about to speak when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move behind the bar. He turned.

Wyrm said, "I want the booksss. Quit wa.s.ssting my time."

"I thought I saw a reflection in the mirror," Hiram said. But there was nothing there now. The polished silver surface gleamed softly in the dim light, but no one moved.

"Where are the booksss?" Wyrm demanded.

"I'd like to know the answer to that question myself," another voice added.