Wildcards - Down and Dirty Part 53

"Some joker f.u.c.k, been spreading a new kind of wild card all over the city. He's freaky strong, and crazy. Dangerous. And he's got a friend with him, some new ace, looks normal but bullets bounce right off him. If I was you, I'd dump the geek and haul a.s.s for Port Authority."

"I didn't do nothing," Mishmash whispered.

His voice was low, barely audible, but it was the first time he'd dared to speak, and the cop heard him well enough. "Shut the f.u.c.k up. I'm not in the mood for any joker lip. I want to hear you talk, I'll ask you a question."

Mishmash quailed. Tom was shocked by the loathing in the policeman's voice. "You got no call to talk to him that way."

It was a mistake, a big mistake. Above the surgical mask the policeman's eyes narrowed. "That so? What are you, one of those queers who likes to hump jokers?"

No, you a.s.shole, Tom thought furiously, I'm the Great and Powerful Turtle, and if I were in my sh.e.l.l right now, I'd pick you up and drop you in the garbage where you belong. But what he said was, "Sorry, Officer. I didn't mean anything by it. It's been a rough day for everyone, right? Maybe we should just get going?" He tried to smile as he picked up the suitcase and shopping bag. "C'mon, Mishmash," he said.

"What's in those bags?" the cop said suddenly.

Modular Man's head and eighty thousand dollars in cash, Tom thought, but he didn't say it. He didn't think he'd broken any laws, but the truth would raise questions he wasn't prepared to answer. "Nothing," he told the cop. "Some clothes." But he'd hesitated too long.

"Why don't we have a look," the policeman replied.

"No," Tom blurted. "You can't. I mean, don't you need a search warrant or probable cause or something?"

"I got your f.u.c.king probable cause right here," the cop said, drawing his gun.

"This is martial law, and we got authority to shoot looters on sight. Now lower the bags to the ground slowly and back off, a.s.shole."

The moment seemed to last a long, long time. Then Tom did as he was told.

"Further back," the cop said. Tom retreated to the sidewalk. "You too, geek."

Mishmash moved back next to Tom. The policeman edged forward, bent over, and pulled one of the handles of the shopping bag to peer inside.

Modular Man's head flew up and smashed him in the face. Blood squirted from the cop's nose with a sickening crunch to stain the white gauze of his mask. He gave a m.u.f.fled screech and staggered back. The head bowled squarely into his gut, tumbling like a cannonball. The cop grunted as his feet went out from under him.

He landed on his a.s.s in the street.

The head swooped around him. The cop brought up his pistol with both hands and squeezed off a round. Gla.s.s shattered in a second-story window as the head came cras.h.i.+ng into his temple. The cop swatted at it with the barrel of his pistol; then something jerked the gun right out his hand and sent it skittering off down a sewer.

"Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h," the cop managed. He tried to struggle back to his feet, his eyes as gla.s.sy as Mod Man's. His nose was still bleeding; the surgical mask had turned a vivid red.

The head came at him again. This time he managed to grab it and hold it at bay, just inches from his face. The long cable dangling from the jagged neck took on a life of its own and snaked up into a b.l.o.o.d.y nostril. The cop screamed and grabbed for the cable. The head jumped forward; two foreheads cracked together hard. The cop went down. The head circled over him. The cop groaned and rolled over. He made no attempt to rise.

Tom started breathing again.

"Is he dead?" Mishmash asked in an eager whisper.

Tom's heart was still on adrenaline overdrive; it took a moment for the words to register. "f.u.c.k," he said. What the h.e.l.l had he done? It had all gone down so quickly.

Mod Man's head fell out of the air, hit the gutter, and rolled. Tom knelt over the fallen cop and felt for a pulse. "He's alive," Tom said. "Breathing is shallow, though. He might have a concussion, maybe even a cracked skull."

Mishmash crowded close. "Kill him."

Tom's head snapped back around and he stared at the joker in horror. "Are you crazy?"

The hideous little purple monkey-face was straining forward through his s.h.i.+rtfront. Moisture glistened on the hard, thin lips. "He was going to kill us.

You heard him, you heard what he called us. He had no right. Kill him."

"No way," Tom said. He stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans compulsively. His high was gone now; he felt more than a little sick.

"He knows who you are," Mishmash whispered.

Tom had somehow managed to forget that. "f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k," he swore. The cop had seen his driver's license. "They'll come for you," Mishmash suggested. "They'll know you did it, and they'll come. Kill him. Go on, I won't tell."

Tom backed away, shaking his head. "No."

"Then I'll do it," Mishmash said. His lips peeled back over a mouthful of yellowed incisors, and the wrinkled face shot out and down, into the cop's throat. Mishmash's s.h.i.+rt sagged where his gut had been. The head worked at the soft flesh under the cop's chin, bobbing at the end of three feet of glistening transparent tube connecting it to the joker's torso. Tom heard wet, greedy sucking sounds. The cops feet began to thrash feebly. Blood spurted, Mishmash swallowed and sucked, and a thick red wash began to travel up through the thick gla.s.sy flesh of his neck.

"No!" Tom screamed. "Stop it!"

The monkey-face continued to feed, but on top of the joker's body his second head, the movie-star head, turned to stare at Tom from clear blue eyes and smiled beatifically.

Tom reached out for Mishmash with his teke, or tried to, but there was nothing there. The fury that had filled him when the cop threatened them was gone; now there was only horror and fear, and his power had always deserted him when he was afraid. He stood helplessly, hands clenching and unclenching as Mishmash gnawed away with teeth as cruel and sharp as needles.

Then he leapt forward and grabbed the joker from behind, wrapping his arms around that twisted torso, pulling him back. For a moment they grappled. Tom was overweight and out of shape and had never been especially strong, but the joker's body was as weak as it was misshapen. They stumbled backward, Mishmash thras.h.i.+ng feebly in Tom's arms, until the head pulled free of the cop's torn throat with a soft pop. The joker hissed in fury. His long glistening neck coiled around, snakelike, over his left shoulder, as pale eyes glared down, insane with frustration. Blood was smeared all over the shrunken purplish face.

Wet red teeth snapped wildly, but his neck wasn't long enough.

Tom spun him around and shoved him away. The joker's mismatched legs tangled under him, and he tripped and fell heavily into the gutter. "Get out of here!"

Tom screamed. "Get out of here now or I'll give you the same thing I gave him."

Mishmash hissed, his head weaving back and forth. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the bloodl.u.s.t was gone, and once more the joker cringed in fear. "Don't,"

he whispered, "please don't. I only wanted to help. Don't hurt me, mister." His neck shrunk slowly back into his s.h.i.+rt, a long, thick gla.s.s eel returning to its lair, until there was only the small scared face s.h.i.+vering between his b.u.t.tons.

By then Mishmash was back on his feet. He gave Tom one last pleading look, and then whirled and began to run, arms and legs working grotesquely.

Tom stopped the policeman's bleeding with a handkerchief. There was still a pulse, but it felt weak to him, and the man had obviously lost a lot of blood.

He hoped it wasn't too late.

He looked around at the abandoned cars and headed toward a likely one. Joey had once shown him how to hot-wire an ignition; he sure as h.e.l.l hoped he still remembered.

It was standing room only in the waiting room of the Jokertown Clinic. Tom pushed his suitcase up against a wall and sat on top of it. The shopping bag, with Modular Man's bloodied head stuck inside it, he shoved between his legs.

The room was hot and noisy. He ignored the frightened people all around him, the screams of pain from the next room, and stared dully at the tiles on the floor, trying not to think. Perspiration covered his face under the clinging frog mask.

He'd been waiting a half hour when a fat, tusked newsboy in a porkpie hat and Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt entered the waiting room with an armful of papers. Tom bought a copy of tomorrow's Jokertown Cry, sat back on his suitcase, and began to read.

He read every word in every story on every page, and then started all over again.

The headlines were full of martial law and the citywide manhunt for Croyd Crenson. Typhoid Croyd, the Cry called him; anyone coming in contact with the carrier risked drawing the wild card. No wonder everyone was so scared. Dr.

Tachyon had told the authorities it was a mutant form, capable of reinfecting even stable aces and jokers.

The Turtle could bring him in, Tom thought. Anyone else, police or Guardsman or ace, risked infection and death if they tried to apprehend him, but the Turtle could take him in perfect safety, easy as candy. He didn't have to get real close to teke someone, and his sh.e.l.l gave him plenty of protection. Only there was no sh.e.l.l, and the Turtle was dead.

Sixty-three people had required medical treatment after the rioting around the Holland Tunnel, and property damage was estimated at more than a million dollars, he read.

The Turtle could have dissipated that crowd without anyone's getting hurt. Just talk to them, dammit, take the time to quell their fears, and if things got out of hand, pry them apart with teke. You didn't need guns or tear gas.

Sporadic outbreaks of anti joker violence had been reported throughout the city.

Two jokers were dead, a dozen more had been hospitalized after beatings or stonings.

There was widespread looting in Harlem.

Arson had destroyed the storefront headquarters of jokers for Jesus, and firemen responding to the alarm had been pelted with bricks and dogs.h.i.+t.

Leo Barnett was praying for the souls of the afflicted and calling for quarantine in the name of public health.

A twenty-year-old coed from Columbia had been gangraped on a pool table in Squisher's Bas.e.m.e.nt. More than a dozen jokers had watched from their barstools, and half of those had lined up to take their turns after the original rapists were done. Someone had told them they'd be cured of their deformities if they had s.e.x with this woman.

The Turtle was dead, and Tom Tudbury sat on a battered old suitcase stuffed with eighty thousand dollars in cash as the world grew more and more insane.

All the king's horses and all the king's men, he thought. He'd just finished his third pa.s.s through the newspaper when a shadow fell across him. Tom looked up and saw the hefty black nurse who had helped him carry the policeman in from the car. "Dr. Tachyon will see you now," she said.

Tom followed her back to a small cubicle off the emergency room, where Tachyon sat wearily behind a steel desk. "Well?" Tom asked after the nurse had left.

"He'll live," Tach said. Lilac eyes lingered on the green, rubbery features of Tom's mask. "We are required by law to file a report on this sort of thing. The police will want to question you once the emergency has pa.s.sed. We need a name."

"Thomas Tudbury," he said. He pulled off the mask and let it drop to the floor.

"Turtle," Tach blurted, surprised. He stood up.

The Turtle is dead, Tom thought, but he didn't say it. Dr. Tachyon frowned.

"Tom, what happened out there?"

"It's a long, ugly story. You want it, go into my f.u.c.king brain and take it. I don't want to talk about it."

Tach looked at him thoughtfully. Then the alien winced and sat down again.

"At least with the f.u.c.king Astronomer I could tell the good guys from the bad guys," Tom said.

"He has your name," Tach said.

"One of my names," Tom said. "f.u.c.k it. I need your help."

Tach was still linked with his mind; the alien looked up sharply. "I will not do that."

Tom leaned forward across the desk, looming over the smaller man. "You will," he said. "You owe me, Tachyon. And there's no way I can kill myself without your help."

Mortality

by Walter Jon Williams

Run.

Consciousness st.i.tched a lightning path across his mind. It seemed to come in bursts, like lines of text from a very fast laserprinter ... but no, it was more complex than that. A master weaver was forming the largest and most intricate tapestry in the universe, all in a matter of seconds, and doing it all in his brain.

He opened his eyes. St. Elmo's fire s.h.i.+mmered before him like a polar aurora. A screaming noise a.s.saulted his ears. Subsonics moved through his body like tidal waves.

The noise faded. Internals ran lightspeed checks. Radar painted an image in his brain, superimposed it on the visuals. "All monitored systems are functioning,"

he found himself saying.

The St. Elmo's fluorescence faded, revealing sagging bare roofbeams, an half-open skylight with the gla.s.s painted black from the inside, diagrams tacked up helter-skelter, drooping electric cables. Electric fans made a busy stir in the air. Something in the room moved, imaged first by radar, then by visuals. He recognized the figure, the tall, white-haired man with the hawk nose and disdainful eyes. Maxim Travnicek. A frigid smile curled Travnicek's lips. He spoke with a middleEuropean accent.

"Welcome back, toaster. The land of the living awaits."

"I blew up." Modular Man examined this possibility with cold impartiality as he pulled on a jumpsuit. A fly buzzed in the distance.

"You blew up," said Travnicek. "Modular Man the invincible android blew himself to bits. In a big fight at Aces High with the Astronomer and the Egyptian Masons. Lucky I had a backup of your memory."

Memories poured over the android's macroatomic switches. Modular Man recognized Travnicek's new Jokertown loft, the one he'd moved into after being evicted from the bigger place on the Lower East Side. The place was stiflingly hot, and electric fans plugged into overworked extension cords did little to make the place seem like home. Equipment, the big flux generators and computers, were jammed together on home-built platforms and raw plywood shelving. The ultrasonics had burst the picture tubes in two of the monitors.

"The Astronomer?" he said. "He hadn't been seen in months. I have no recollection of his return."

Travnicek made a dismissive gesture. "The fight happened after I last backed up your memory."

"I blew up?" The android didn't want to think about this. "How could I blow up?"

"Right. A surprise to both of us. Half-intelligent microwave ovens aren't supposed to explode."

Travnicek sat on a thirdhand plastic chair, a cigarette in his hand. He was thinner than before, his reddened eyes sunk deep in hollows. He looked years older. His straight hair, usually combed back from his forehead, stuck out in tufts. He seemed to have been doing his own barbering.

Travnicek wore baggy, army-green surplus trousers and a cream-colored formal s.h.i.+rt with food stains and frills on the front. He wasn't wearing a tie.

The android had never seen Travnicek without a tie. Something must have happened to the man, he realized. And then a frightening thought came to him.

"How long have I been ... ?"