Aces High

JUBE: TWO

In the rooming house on Eldridge, the tenants were having a little Christmas party, and Jube was dressed as Santa Claus. He was a little short for the part, and the Santas in the store windows seldom had tusks, but he had the ho-ho-ho down pat.

The party was held in the living room on the first floor. It was early this year, because Mrs. Holland was flying out to Sacramento next week to spend the holidays with her grandson, and no one wanted to have the party without Mrs. Holland, who had lived in the building almost as long as Jube, and seen all of them through some rough times. Except for Father Fahey, the alcoholic Jesuit from the fifth floor, the tenants were all jokers, and none of them had a lot of money for Christmas gifts. So each of them bought one present, and all the gifts went into a big canvas mailbag, and it was Jube's annual assignment to jumble them around and hand them out. He loved the job. Human patterns of gift giving were endlessly fascinating and someday he intended to write a study of the subject, as soon as he finished his treatise on human humor.

He always started with Doughboy, who was huge and soft and mushroom white and lived with the black man they called Shiner in a second floor apartment. Doughboy outweighed Jube by a good hundred pounds, and he was so strong that he ripped the front door off its hinges at least once. a year (Shiner always fixed it). Doughboy loved robots and dolls and toy trucks and plastic guns that made noises but he broke everything within days, and the toys he really loved he broke within hours.

Jube had wrapped his present in silver foil, so he wouldn't give it to anyone else by mistake. "Oh, boy," Doughboy shouted when he'd ripped it open. He held it up for all of them to see. "A ray gun, oh boy, oh boy." It was a deep, translucent red-black, molded in lines that were smooth and sensual yet somehow disquieting, with a pencil-thin barrel. When his immense fingers wrapped around the grip and pointed it at Mrs. Holland, points of lights flickered deep inside, and Doughboy exclaimed in delight as the microcomputer corrected his aim.

"That's some toy," Callie said. She was a petite, fastidious woman with four useless extra arms.

"Ho ho ho," Jube said. "He won't be able to break it, either." Doughboy squinted at Old Mister Cricket and pressed the firing stud, making loud sizzling noises through his teeth. Shiner laughed. "Bet he do."

"You'd lose," Jube said. Ly'bahr alloy was dense and strong enough to withstand a small thermonuclear explosion. He'd worn the gun himself during his first-year in New York, but the harness had chafed, and after a while it had just gotten to be too much of a nuisance. Of course, Jube had removed the power cell before wrapping the gift for Doughboy, and a Network disrupter wasn't the sort of thing you could energize with a D battery.

Someone shoved an eggnog, liberally laced with rum and nutmeg, into his hand. Jube took a healthy swallow, grinned with pleasure, and got on with passing out the presents. Callie went next, and drew a coupon book for the neighborhood movie house. Denton from the fourth floor got a woolen knit cap, which he dangled from the end of his antlers, provoking general laughter. Reginald, whom the neighborhood children called Potato-head (though not to his face), wound up with an electric razor; Shiner got a long multicolored scarf. They looked at each other, laughed, and swapped.

He made his way around the room from person to person until everyone had a gift. The last present in the bag was usually his; this year, however, the bag was empty after Mrs.

Holland pulled out her tickets to Cats. Jube was a little nonplussed. It must have showed on his face. There was laughter all around. "We didn't forget about you, Walrusman," said Chucky, the spider-legged boy who ran messages down on Wall street. "This year we all chipped in, got you something special," Shiner added.

Mrs. Holland gave it to him. It was small, and storewrapped. Jube opened it carefully. "A watch!".

"That's no watch, Walrus-man, that's a chronometer!"

Chucky said. "Self-winding, and waterproof and shockproof too."

"That there watch tell you the date, and the phases of moon, shit, it tell you everything except when your girlfriend be on the rag," Shiner said.

"Shiner!" Mrs. Holland said in indignation.

"You've been wearing that Mickey Mouse watch for, well, for as long as I've known you," Reginald said. "We all thought it was time you had something a little more modern."

It was a very expensive watch. So, of course, there was nothing to be done but wear it. Jube unstrapped Mickey from his thick wrist, and slid on the brand-new chronometer with its flex-metal band. He put his old watch very carefully atop the mantelpiece, out of the way, and then made a round of the crowded room, thanking each of them.

Afterward, Old Mister Cricket rubbed his legs together to the tune of "Jingle Bells," and Mrs. Holland served the turkey she'd won in the church raffle (Jube pushed his portion around sufficiently so that it looked as though he'd eaten some), and there was more eggnog to be drunk, and a card game after coffee, and when it got very late Jube told some of his jokes. Finally he figured it was time for him to retire; he'd given his helper the day off, so he'd have to open the stand himself bright and early the next morning. But when he stopped by the mantel on his way out, Mickey was gone. "My watch!" Jube exclaimed.

"What you want with that old thing, now that you have the new one?" Callie asked him.

"It has sentimental value," Jube said.

"I saw Doughboy playing with it," Warts told him. "He likes Mickey Mouse."

Shiner had put Doughboy to bed hours ago. Jube had to go upstairs. They found the watch on Doughboy's foot, and Shiner was very apologetic. "I think he broke it," the old man said.

"It's very durable," Jube said.

"It's been making a noise," Shiner told him. "Buzzing away. Broke inside, I guess."

For a moment, Jube didn't understand what he was talking about. Then dread replaced confusion. "Buzzing? How long-?".

"A good while," Shiner said as he handed back the watch. From inside the casing came a high, thin whine. "You okay?"

Jube nodded. "Tired," he said. "Merry Christmas." And then he thumped downstairs as fast as he could go.

In his cold, dim apartment, he hurried to the coal cellar. Within, sure enough, the communicator was glowing violet, Network color-code for extreme emergency. His hearts were in his mouth. How long? Hours, hours, and all the time he was partying. Jube felt sick. He dropped himself into his chair and keyed the console to play the message it had recorded. The holocube lit from within, in a haze of violet light. In the center was Ekkedme, his hind jumping-legs folded under him so he seemed almost to crouch. The Embe nymph was obviously in a state of great agitation; the cilia covering his face trembled as they tasted the air, and the palps atop his tiny head swiveled frenetically. As Jube watched, code-violet background gave way and the crowded interior of the singleship took form. "The Mother!" Ekkedme cried in the trade tongue, forcing the words through his spiracles in a wheezy Embe accent. The hologram shattered into static.

When it reintegrated an instant later, the Embe lurched suddenly to one side, reached out with a stick-thin forelimb, and clutched a smooth black ball to the pale white fur of his chitinous chest. He started to say something, but behind him the wall of the singleship bulged inward with a hideous metallic screech, and then disintegrated entirely. Jube watched with horror as air, instruments, and Embe were sucked up toward the cold unwinking stars. Ekkedme slammed into a jagged bulkhead and slid higher, holding tight to the ball as his hind legs scrabbled for purchase. A swirl of light ran over the surface of the sphere, and then it seemed to expand. A swift black tide engulfed the Embe; when it receded, he was gone. Jube dared to breathe again.

The transmission broke off abruptly an instant later. Jube punched for a replay, hoping he had missed something. He could only watch half of it. Then he got up, rushed to the toilet, and regurgitated an evening's worth of eggnog. He was steadier when he returned. He had to think, had to take things calmly. Panic and guilt would get him nowhere. Even if he had been wearing the watch, he could never have gotten down here in time to take the call, and there was nothing he could have done anyway. Besides, Ekkedme had escaped with the singularity shifter, Jube had seen it with his own eyes, surely his colleague had gotten to safety… only… if he had… where was he?

Jube looked around slowly. The Embe certainly wasn't here- But where else could he go? How long could he survive in this gravity? And what had happened up there in orbit?

Grimly, he linked to the satellite scanners. There were six of them, sophisticated devices the size of golf balls, loaded with Rhindarian sensors. Ekkedme had used them to monitor weather patterns, military activity, and radio and television transmissions, but they had other uses as well. Jube swept the skies methodically for the singleship, but where it should have been he found only scattered debris.

Suddenly Jube felt very much alone.

Ekkedme had been… well, not a friend, not the way the humans upstairs were friends, not even as close as Chrysalis or Crabcakes, but… their species had little in common, really. Ekkedme was a strange solitary sort, enigmatic and uncommunicative; and twenty-three years in orbit, locked in the close confines of his singleship with nothing to occupy him but meditation and monitoring, had only made the nymph stranger still-but of course that was why he had been chosen out of all those the Master Trader might have pegged when the Opportunity came this way so long ago, in the human year 1952, to observe the results of the Takisian grand experiment. Unbidden, the memories came. The vast Network starship had circled the little green planet all that summer, finding little of interest. The native civilization was promising, but scarcely more advanced than it had been on their previous visit a few centuries earlier. And the vaunted Takisian virus, the wild card, seemed to have produced great numbers of freaks, cripples, and monsters. But the Master Trader liked to cover all bets, so when the Opportunity departed, it leftt behind two observers: the Embe in orbit, and a xenologist on the surface. It amused the Master Trader to hide his agent in plain sight, on the streets of the world's greatest city. And for Jhubben, who had signed a lifetime service contract for the chance to travel to distant worlds, it was a rare chance to dot important work.

Still, until this moment there had always been the knowledge that someday the Opportunity would return, that someday he would know starflight again, and perhaps even return to the glaciers and ice cities of Glabber, beneath its wan red sun. The Embe nymph had never quite been a friend, yet Ekkedme had been something just as important. They had shared a past. Only Jube had known the Embe was there, watching, listening; only Ekkedme had known that Jube the Walrus, joker newsboy was really Jhubben, a xenologist from Glabber. The nymph had been a link to his past, to his homeworld and his people, to the Opportunity and the Network itself, to its one-hundred-thirty-seven member species spread across a thousand-odd worlds.

Jube looked at the new watch his friends had given him. It was past two. The message had been received just before eight. He had never used a singularity shifter himself-it was an Embe device, still experimental, powered by a mini-black hole and capable of functioning as a stasis field, a teleportation device, even a power source, but fantastically expensive, its secrets zealously guarded by the Network. He did not pretend to understand its workings, but it should have brought Ekkedme here, where Jhubben could help him. If the shifter had malfunctioned, the Embe might have teleported into airless space, or the bottom of the ocean, or… well, anywhere within range.

He shook his massive head. What could he do? If Ekkedme was still alive, he would make his way here. Jube was powerless to help him. Meanwhile, he had a more urgent problem: something, or someone, had discovered, attacked, and destroyed the singleship. The humans had neither the technology nor the motives. Whoever was responsible was clearly no friend of the Network, and if they were aware of his existence, they might be coming after him as well. Jube found himself wishing that he hadn't just given away his weapon to Doughboy.

He watched the Embe's last transmission one last time in the hopes of finding a clue to the unknown enemy. There was nothing, except.. . "The Mother!" Ekkedme had said.

What was that? Some Embe religious invocation, or was his colleague actually calling on the female who had hatched him? Jube spent the next few hours floating in his tub, thinking. He did not savor those thoughts, yet the logic was inescapable. The Network had many enemies, within and without, but only one truly powerful rival in this sector of space, and only one that might be violently disgruntled to find Earth under observation: a species so like and so unlike the humans, imperious and aloof, racist, implacably bloody-minded, and capable of most any atrocity, to judge from what they'd done on Earth, and what they so regularly did to each other.

When dawn neared, and he dressed after a sleepless night, Jube was virtually convinced of it. Only a Takisian symbiont-ship could have done what he had witnessed. The ghostlance or the laser? he wondered. He was no expert on things martial.

It was a gray, slushy, depressing day, and Jube's mood matched it perfectly as he opened his newsstand. Business was slow. It was a little after eight when Dr. Tachyon came down the Bowery, wearing a white fur coat and mopping at an egg stain on his collar. "Something wrong, Jube?" Tachyon asked when he stopped for a Times. "You don't look well."

Jube had trouble finding the words. "Uh, yeah, Doc. A friend of mine… uh, died." He watched Tachyon's face for any flicker of guilt. Guilt came so easy to the Takisian, surely if he knew he would betray himself.

"I'm sorry," Doc said, his voice sincere and sympathetic. "I lost someone myself this week, an orderly at the clinic. I have a horrible suspicion that the man was murdered. One of my patients vanished the same day, a man named Spector." Tachyon sighed. "And now the police want me to perform an. autopsy on some poor joker they found in a dumpster in Chelsea. The man looks like a furry grasshopper, McPherson tells me. So that makes him one of mine, you see." He shook his head wearily. "Well, they're just going to have to keep him on 'ice until I can organize the search for Mr. Spector. Keep your ears open, Jube, and let me know if you hear anything, all right?"

"A grasshopper, you say?" Jube tried to keep his voice casual. "A furry grasshopper?"

"Yes," Tach said. "Not someone you knew, I hope."

"I'm not sure." Jube said quickly. "Maybe I ought to go and take a look. I know a lot of jokers."

"He's in the morgue, on First Avenue."

"I'm not sure I could take it," Jube said. "I got a queasy stomach, Doc. What kind of place is this morgue?" Tachyon reassured Jube that there was nothing to be frightened of. To allay any misgivings, he described the morgueand its procedures. Jube memorized every detail. "Doesn't sound so bad," he said finally. "Maybe I'll take a looksee, in case it is, uh, the guy I knew."

Tachyon nodded absently, his mind on other troubles. "You know," he told Jube, "that man Spector, the patient who vanished-he was dead when they brought him to me. I saved the man's life. And if I hadn't, Henry might still be alive. Of course, I have no proof." Folding his Times up under an arm, the Takisian slogged off through the slush.

Poor Ekkedme, Jube thought. To die so far from home… he had no idea what sort of burial customs the Embe practiced. There was not even time to mourn. Tachyon did not know, clearly. And more importantly, Tachyon must not know. The Network presence on Earth must be kept a secret at all costs. And if the Takisian performed that autopsy, he would know, there was no doubt of that. Tachyon had accepted Jube as a joker, and why not? He looked as human as most jokers, and he'd been in Jokertown longer than Doc himself. Glabber was a backwater, poor and obscure. It had no starflight of its own, and less than a hundred Glabberans had ever taken service on the great Network starships. The chances of him recognizing Jhubben were slight to nonexistent. But the Embe filled a dozen worlds, their ships were known on a hundred more; they were as much a part of the Network as the Ly'bahr, Kondikki, Aevre, or even the Master Traders. One glance at that body and Tachyon would know.

Jube bounced on his heels, feeling the first faint touches of panic. He had to get that body before Tachyon saw it. And the shifter, how could he forget that! If an artifact as valuable as a singularity shifter fell into Takisian hands, there would be no telling what the consequences might be. But how?

A man he had never laid eyes on before stopped in front of the newsstand. Distracted, Jube looked up at him. "Paper?"

"One cf each," the man said, "as usual."

It took a moment to sink in, but when it did, Jube knew he had his answer.