Wildcards - Down and Dirty Part 16

In the old days the sidewalk in front of the Funhouse would have been crowded by cabs dropping off fares and limousines waiting at the curb for the end of the second show. But the sidewalk was empty tonight, not even a doorman, and when Tom entered, he found the checkroom unattended as well. He pushed through the double doors; a hundred different frogs stared at him from the silvered depths of the famous Funhouse mirrors. The man up on stage had a head the size of a baseball, and huge pebbled bags of skin drooping all over his bare torso, swelling and emptying like bellows or bagpipes, filling the room with a strange sad music as air sighed from a dozen unlikely orifices. Tom stared at him with a sick fascination until the maitre d' appeared at his side. "A table, sir?" He was squat and round as a penguin, features hidden by a Beethoven mask.

"I'd like to see Xavier Desmond," Tom said. His voice, partially m.u.f.fled by the frog mask, sounded strange in his ears.

"Mr. Desmond only returned from abroad a few days ago," the maitre d' said. "He was a delegate on Senator Hartmann's world tour," he added proudly. "I'm afraid he's quite busy."

"It's important," Tom said.

The maitre d' nodded. "Whom shall I say is calling?" Tom hesitated. "Tell him it's ... an old friend."

When the maitre d' had left them alone, Des got up and came around the desk. He moved slowly, thin lips pressed together tightly beneath a long pink trunk that grew from his face where a normal man would have a nose. Standing in the same room with him, you saw things you could not see in a face on a TV screen: how old he was, and how sick. His skin hung on him as loosely as his clothes, and his eyes were filmed with pain.

"How was the tour?" Tom asked him.

"Exhausting," Des said. "We saw all the misery of the world, all the suffering and hatred, and we tasted its violence firsthand. But I'm sure you know all that. It was in the papers." He lifted his trunk, and the fingers that fringed its end lightly touched Tom's mask. "Pardon, old friend, but I cannot seem to place your face."

"My face is hidden," Tom pointed out.

Des smiled wanly. "One of the first things a joker learns is how to see beneath a mask. I'm an old joker, and yours is a very bad mask."

"A long time ago you bought a mask just as cheap as this." Des frowned. "You're mistaken, I'm afraid. I've never felt the need to hide my features."

"You bought it for Dr. Tachyon. A chicken mask." Desmond's eyes met his, startled and curious, but still wary. "Who are you?"

"I think you know," Tom said.

The old joker was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly and sagged into the nearest chair. "There was talk that you were dead. I'm glad you're not."

The simple statement, and the sincerity with which Desmond delivered it, made Tom feel awkward, ashamed. For a moment he thought he should leave without another word.

"Please, sit down," Des said.

Tom sat down, cleared his throat, tried to think how to begin. The silence stretched out awkwardly.

"I know," Desmond said. "It is as strange for me as it must be for you, to have you sitting here in my office. Pleasant, but strange. But something brought you here, something more than the desire for my company. Jokertown owes you a great deal. Tell me what I can do for you."

Tom told him. He left out the why of it, but he told him his decision, and what he hoped to do with the sh.e.l.ls. As he spoke, he looked away from Des, his eyes wandering everywhere but on the old joker's face. But he got the words out.

Xavier Desmond listened politely. When Tom had finished, Des looked older somehow, and more weary. He nodded slowly but said nothing. The fingers of his trunk clenched and unclenched. "You're sure?" Des finally asked. Tom nodded.

"Are you all right?"

Des gave him a thin, tired smile. "No," he replied. " I am too old, and not in the best of health, and the world persists in disappointing me. In the final days of the tour I yearned for our homecoming, for Jokertown and the Funhouse.

Well, now I am home, and what do I find? Business is as bad as ever, the mobs are fighting a war in the streets of Jokertown, our next president may be a religious charlatan who loves my people so much he wants to quarantine them, and our oldest hero has decided to walk away from the fight." Des ran his trunk fingers through thinning gray hair, then looked up at Tom, abashed. "Forgive me.

That was unfair. You have risked much, and for twenty years you have been there for us. No one has the right to ask more. Certainly, if you want my help, you'll have it."

"Do you know who the owner is?" Tom asked.

"A joker," Desmond said. "Does that surprise you? The original owners were nats, but he bought them out, oh, some time ago. He's quite a wealthy man, but he prefers to keep a low profile. A rich joker is, well, something of a target. I would be glad to help set up a meeting."

"Yeah," Tom said. "Good."

After they had finished talking, Xavier Desmond walked him out. Tom promised to phone in a week for the details of the meeting. Out front, on the sidewalk, Des stood beside him as Tom tried to hail a taxi. One pa.s.sed, slowed, then sped up again when the cabbie saw the two of them standing there.

"I used to hope you were a joker," Desmond said quietly. Tom looked at him sharply. "How do you know I'm not?" Des smiled, as if that question hardly deserved an answer.

"I suppose I wanted to believe, like so many other jokers. Hidden in your sh.e.l.l, you could be anything. With all the prestige and fame the aces enjoy, why would you possibly hide your face and keep your name a secret if you were not one of us?"

"I had my reasons," Tom told him.

"Well, it doesn't matter: I suppose the lesson to be learned is that aces are aces, even you, and we jokers need to learn to take care of ourselves. Good luck to you, old friend." Des shook his hand and turned and walked away.

Another cab pa.s.sed. Tom hailed it, but it shot right past. "They think you're a joker," Des said from the door of the Funhouse. "It's the mask," he added, not unkindly. "Take it off, let them see your face, and you'll have no problem." The door closed softly behind him.

Tom looked up and down the street. There was no one in sight, no one to see his real face. Carefully, nervously, he reached up and pulled off the frog mask.

The next cab screeched to a stop right in front of him.

Blood Ties

by Melinda M. Snodgra.s.s

I.

"I QUIT! I QUIT! HE DOESN'T NEED A TUTOR, HE NEEDS A WARDEN! A G.o.dd.a.m.n ANIMAL.

TRAINER! A STINT IN THE PEN!".

The slam of the door shook papers from the stacks that stood on his desk like the bastions of a white cellulose fortress. Tachyon, a rental contract hanging limply from long fingers, stared bemusedly at the door. It cracked open.

A pair of eyes, swimming like blue moons behind thick lenses, peered cautiously around the door.

"Sorry," whispered Dita. "Quite all right."

"How many does that make?" She eased one shapely b.u.t.tock onto the corner of his desk. Tachyon's eyes slid to the expanse of white thigh revealed by the hitch of her miniskirt. "Three."

"Maybe school?"

"Maybe not." Tach repressed a shudder as he contemplated the havoc his grandchild would wreak in the dog-eat-dog world of public school. With a sigh he folded the apartment lease and slipped it into a pocket. "I'll have to go home and check on him. Try to make some other arrangement."

"These letters?"

"Will have to wait."

"But-"

"Some have waited six months. What's another few days?"

"Rounds...?"

"I'll be back in time."

"Doctor Queen-"

"Is not going to be happy with me. A common enough event."

"You look tired."

"I am,"

And so he was, he thought as he walked down the steps of the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic without bestowing his usual pats on the heads of the stone lions that flanked the stairs. In the week since his return from the World Health Organization tour, there had been little time for rest. Worries snapped at him from all sides: his impotence, which left him (one should forgive the pun) with a growing sense of pressure and frustration; the candidacy of Leo Barnett; the crime wars that were threatening the peaceful (peaceful, ha!) life of Jokertown; James Spector wandering loose, and continuing to-- But all of this seemed oddly distant, so unimportant, mere bagatelles when compared with the arrival of a new presence in his life. An active eleven-year-old boy playing havoc with his routines. Making him realize just how very small a one-bedroom apartment could be. Making him realize how long it took to find something larger, and how much more it would cost.

And then there was the problem of Blaise's power. During his childhood Tachyon had frequently railed against the strictness of his Takisian psi lord upbringing. Now he wished he could apply some of that same severe punishment to his wayward heir, who could not be brought to realize the enormity of his sin when he casually exercised his psi powers on the mindblind humans that surrounded him.

But to be honest, it was not simply a matter of sparing the rod. On Takis a child learned to survive in the plot-ridden atmosphere of the women's quarters.

Surrounded as they were by other mentats, children quickly became cautious about the unrestrained exercise of their power. No matter how powerful an individual might be, there was always an older cousin, uncle, or parent more experienced and more powerful.

Upon their emergence from the harem a child was a.s.signed a companion/servant from the lower orders. The intent was to instill in the young psi lord or lady a sense of duty toward the simple folk they ruled. That was the theory-in actual fact it generally created a sort of indulgent contempt for the vast bulk of the Takisian population, and a rather offhanded att.i.tude that it really wasn't very interesting or sporting to compel servants. But there were tragedies-servants forced to destroy themselves upon a whim or a fit of fury on the part of their masters and mistresses.

Tachyon rubbed a hand across his forehead and considered his options. To blather on about kindness and responsibility and duty. Or to become the most dangerous thing in Blaise's life.

But I wanted his love, not his fear.

The boy reminded him of some feral woodland creature. Coiled in the big armchair, Blaise warily eyed his grandsire and tugged fretfully at the long points of the lacy Vand.y.k.e collar that spilled over the shoulders of his white twill coat. Red stockings and a red sash at the waist echoed the blood red of his hair. Tach tossed his keys onto the coffee table and sat on the arm of the sofa, keeping a careful distance from the hostile child.

"Whatever he said, I didn't do it."

"You must have done something." They spoke in French.

"No."

"Blaise, don't lie."

"I didn't like him."

Tach drifted to the piano and played a few bars of a Scarlatti sonatina.

"Teachers aren't required to be your friends. They're meant to ... teach."

"I know everything I need to know."

"Oh?" Tachyon drew out the word in one long, freezing accent.

The childish chin stiffened, and Tach's shields repelled a powerful mind a.s.sault. "That's all I need to know. At least for ordinary people." He blushed under his grandfather's level gaze. "I'm special!"

"Being an ignorant boor is unfortunately not terribly unique on this world. You should find yourself with plenty of company."

"I hate you! I want to go home." The final word ended on a sob, and Blaise buried his face in the chair.

Tach crossed to him and gathered the sobbing boy into his arms. "Oh, my darling, don't cry. You're homesick, that is natural. But there is no one for you in France, and I want you so very much."

"There's no place for me here. You're just fitting me in. The way you make room for a new book on the shelves."

"Not true. You have given my life meaning." The remark was too obscurely adult to reach the child, and Tachyon tried again. "I think I've found a new apartment. We'll go there this very afternoon, and you can tell me just how you want your room."

"Really?"

"Truly." He scrubbed the child's face with his handkerchief. "But now, I must return to work so I will take you to Baby, and she will tell you tales of your blood."

"Tres bien."

Tach felt a momentary flare of guilt, for this plan was designed less for Blaise s pleasure than to a.s.sure his good behavior. Locked within the walls of the sentient and intelligent Takisian ship, Blaise would be safe, and the world at large would be safe from him.

"But only in English," Tachyon added sternly. Blaise's face fell. "Tant pis."

Back to the clinic for five hours of frenzied work. Most of it unfortunately of the paper variety. With a start he remembered Blaise and hoped that Baby had been very entertaining. Collecting the child, Tachyon hurried him to his karate lesson. He then sat in the outer office reading the Times, a wary ear c.o.c.ked toward the dojo. But Blaise was behaving.

Wild Card/AIDS Benefit Concert to be Held at Funhouse. How like Des, Tachyon reflected. Interesting that this event was to take place in Jokertown. Probably no other forum in New York would host it. They would want to place plastic liners on the seats.

There were a number of emotional similarities between the two scourges. As a biochemist, he saw a different correlation, herpes to wild card. But a herpes/wild card/AIDS benefit would offer far too many unfortunate opportunities for s.e.xual innuendo.

Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that f.u.c.king may be hazardous to your health.

"Well, I ought to live to be two thousand," muttered Tach, crossing his legs.

Blaise bounced out looking adorable in his little white gee. There had been an initial tussle with the manager of the karate school over that gee. The standard color was black, but despite forty years on Earth, Tach still held a stubborn bias against the color. Laborers wore black. Not aristocrats.

The boy thrust his clothes into Tach's' arms. "Aren't you going to change?"

"No." He climbed onto a chair to investigate a display of shurikiens, kusawagamas, and naginatas.

"Is the language barrier a problem?" he asked Tupuola as he wrote out a check.

"No. Even in just the past few days his English has improved remarkably."

"He's very bright."

"Yes, I am," said Blaise walking across the chairs to hug Tachyon around the neck. Tupuola frowned, twiddled a pen. "I wish you would show me some of this English improvement."