Jokers Wild

Chapter Two

7:00 a.m.

By the time he got to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Jack wished he had taken his electric track-maintenance car and sped uptown playing hopscotch with the trains. But what the hell, he'd thought as he'd ascended the stairs to the passenger levels of the City Hall station-this was a holiday. He didn't want to think about work. What he wanted to do more than anything else was to get all his clothes laundered, read a few chapters of the new Stephen King novel, The Cannibals, and maybe wander up to Central Park to have some cheap vended hot dogs with Bagabond and the cats.

But then the uptown 7th Avenue express had screeched into the station, and it had seemed like a good idea to step aboard. As the train sped uptown though Tribeca, the Village, and Chelsea, Jack noticed through the smeared panes that the stations seemed awfully busy for a holiday-at least this early. When he got off at Times Square and walked the block west in the tiled tunnels beneath 42nd, he overheard one transit cop disgustedly say to his partner, "Wait'll you take a gander topside. It looks like a cross between spring break at Lauderdale and the Bronx Zoo."

He came up for air at Eighth Avenue, ascending out of the strong morning scent of disinfectant barely masking the smell of vomit. The street population looked to Jack like any rush hour weekday morning, except that the average age looked fairly youthful, and gray suits had been replaced by considerably more garish attire.

Jack stepped off the curb to avoid having to confront a swaggering trio of teenaged boys-normals by the look of them-who wore outrageous styrofoam headgear. The hats fea tured tentacles, drooping lips, segmented legs, horns, melting eyes, and other, more unappetizing appendages that jiggled and bobbed with the wearer's movements.

One of the boys put his thumbs to his cheekbones and wagged his fingers at passersby. "Ooga, booga," he cried. "We muties! We bad!" His pals laughed uproariously.

A block further, Jack passed one of the sidewalk sellers peddling the foam hats. "Hey!" the vendor called. "Hey, c 'mere, c'mere. Y' don't got to be a joker to look like one. T'day's your chance to act like one. You interested?"

Jack shook his head wordlessly, scratched the back of his hand, and walked on.

"Hey!" yelled the man to another potential customer. "Be a joker for a day! Tomorrow you can go back to being yerself " Jack shook his head. He wasn't sure now whether it would be better to go on being depressed, or just go back and rip out the hat vendor's throat. He looked at his watch. Five before seven. The bus would be in. The salesman's life was temporarily safe.

The Port Authority building was a darker gray, bulking large in the chill gray of the Manhattan morning. Then Jack noted that most of the human traffic seemed to be exiting rather than entering the building. It reminded him of an Avenue A apartment after the exterminators set off their chemical bombs-an exodus of cockroaches carpeting every exit.

He fought his way through one of the main doors, ignoring the hulking men importuning, "Hey, man, want a cab? Want an escort in to your bus?" Most of the storefronts along the interior promenade were locked and dark, but the snack bars were doing a land-office business.

Jack looked at his watch again. 7:02. Ordinarily he would have stopped and appreciated the huge "42nd St. Carousel" kinetic sculpture, a glass box enclosing a marvelous and musi cal Rube Goldberg contraption, but now there was no time. Less than no time.

He checked the arrival board. The bus he wanted was coming in at a gate three levels up. Merde! The escalators were broken. Most of the foot traffic was coming down. Jack made his way up the stationary metal flights. He felt like a salmon struggling upstream to spawn.

Only a minor current of the incoming tidal crest of humanity seemed to be the usual sorts of people who arrived in Manhattan bv bus. Most seemed either to be tourists-Jack wondered whether this many people would actually be coming into the city for this particular holiday-or jokers themselves. Jack noted wryly that the normals were obliged by the constraints of the stairs and escalator steps to associate much more closely with jokers than they might otherwise have wished.

Then someone elbowed him painfully in the side, and the opportunity for musing was over. By the time he reached the third level and stepped outside the down-traveling crowd, Jack felt as if he'd used as much energy as he would normally burn climbing to the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

Somebody in the crush patted him on the rear. "Watch it, jerk," he said without rancor, not looking.

He found the section holding the gate he wanted. The area was packed. It looked as if at least half a dozen coaches had arrived and were unloading simultaneously. He waded into the aimless melee and aimed himself at the right gate number. He stopped to allow a dozen traditionally garbed nuns to move past him at right angles. A big joker with leathery skin and pronounced tusks protruding from beneath his upper lip tried to muscle through the nuns. "Hey, move it, penguins!" he veiled. Another joker, one with huge puppy-like brown eyes and what appeared to be stigmata wounds on his palms, voiced exception. The shouting match looked as if it might escalate into something more violent. Naturally an increasingly dense crowd of onlookers stopped to gawk.

Jack tried to bypass the mess. He stumbled into an apparent normal, who shoved back. "Sorry!"

The normal was well over six feet tall, and proportionately muscled. "Buzz off."

And then Jack saw her. It was Cordelia. He knew that as surely as he knew anything, though he hadn't seen her before in his life. Elouette had sent pictures the Christmas previous, but the photographs didn't do the young woman justice. Looking at Cordelia, Jack thought, was like looking at his sister when she'd been three decades younger. His niece was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was a faded crimson with screaming yellow letters spelling out FERRIC JAGGER. Jack recognized the name even though he wasn't terribly interested in heavy metal groups. He could also make out some sort of pattern made up of lightning bolts, a sword, and what looked like a swastika.

Cordelia was about ten yards away, on the other side of a thick flow of disembarking passengers. She held a battered floral-print suitcase with one hand, a leather handbag with the other. A tall, slender, expensively dressed Hispanic man was trying to help her with the suitcase. Jack was instantly suspicious of any helpful stranger wearing a purple pinstripe suit, slouch hat, and a fur-trimmed coat. It looked like baby harpseal pelts.

"Hey!" Jack shouted. "Cordelia! Over here! It's meJack!"

She obviously didn't hear him. For Jack, it was like watching television, or perhaps the view seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He couldn't attract Cordelia's attention. With the noise of the terminal, the buses revving their engines, the massed roar of the crowd, his words wouldn't cross the intervening distance.

The man took her suitcase. Jack yelled helplessly. Cordelia smiled. Then the man took her elbow and steered her toward a near-side exit.

"No!" It was loud enough that even Cordelia turned her head. Then she looked puzzled briefly, before continuing toward the exit at the behest of her guide.

Jack uttered a curse and started to pull and shove people out of his way as he tried to cross the waiting area. Nuns, jokers, punkers, street bums, it didn't matter. At least not until he fetched up against the bulk of a joker who looked to have the general shape and about half the mass of a Volkswagen Beetle.

"Goin' somewhere?" said the joker. "Yes," said Jack, trying to move past.

"I come all the way from Santa Fe for this. I always heard you people here was rude."

A fist the size of a two-slice toaster grabbed Jack's shirt lapels. Fetid breath made him think of a public restroom after rush hour.

"Sorry," said Jack. "Look, I've got to get my niece before a son-of-a-bitching pimp steals her out of here."

The joker looked down at him for a long moment. " I can dig it," he said. "Just like on TV, huh?" He let loose of Jack, and the latter scooted around him like rounding the flank of a mountain.

Cordelia was gone. The nattily attired man guiding her was gone. Jack got to the exit where the two had presumably left. He could see hundreds of people, mainly the backs of their heads, but no one who looked like his niece.

He hesitated only a second. There were eight million people in this city. He had no idea how many tourists and jokers from all parts of the world had flooded into Manhattan for Wild Card Day. More millions, probably. All he had to find was one sixteen-year-old from rural Louisiana.

It was all instinct for the moment. Without thinking further, Jack headed for the escalators. Maybe he'd catch up with them before the man and Cordelia got outside. But if not, then he'd just find Cordelia on the street.

He didn't want to think about what he'd tell his sister.

Spector hadn't slept. He picked up the amber bottle of pills on the bedside table and dropped them into the trash. He'd have to find something stronger.

The pain was always there, like the smell of stale smoke in a seedy bar. Spector sat up and breathed slowly. The early morning light made his apartment look even grayer than usual.

He'd furnished the efficiency with cheap beat-up junk from pawnshops and secondhand stores.

The phone rang. "Hello."

"Mr. Spector?" The voice had the refined edge of a Bostonian. Spector didn't recognize it.

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"My name is unimportant, at least for now."

"Right." They were going to play cagey with him, but most people did. "So why are you calling me? What do you want?"

"A mutual acquaintance named Gruber indicated that you have certain unique abilities. A client of mine might wish to employ you, initially on a freelance basis."

Spector scratched his neck. "I think I see what you're getting at here. If this is some kind of a setup, you're a dead man. If you're legit, its going to cost you."

"Naturally. Perhaps you've heard of the Shadow Fist Society? It could be very profitable for you to work within that organization. However, they are cautious and would require a demonstration first. Would this morning be too soon?"

Word had it that the Shadow Fist Society was run by the city's anonymous new crime lord. They were leaning hard on the older gang bosses. Spector would feel right at home in the upcoming bloodbath. "I got nothing else to do. Who do you have in mind?"

"That's really of no importance to us." He paused. "Mr. Gruber seems to know quite a bit about you, and he's far from discreet."

"Fine by me."

"Be at Times Square at eleven-thirty this morning. If we're satisfied that you meet our needs you'll be contacted there."

"What about money?" Spector heard a buzz at the other end.

"That will be negotiated later. If you'll excuse me, I have another matter to attend to. Good-bye, Mr. Spector." Spector dropped the receiver into the cradle. He smiled. Gruber wasn't one of his favorite people. He never gave anyone a fair price for their goods. Killing a greedy fence would be something of a public service.

He walked naked to the bathroom and stared at the mirror. His stringy brown hair needed washing and his mustache was overgrowing his thin upper lip. Other than that he looked the same as the day he'd died. The day Tachyon had brought him hack. Spector wondered if he might not live forever. At this point, he didn't really care. He stuck out his tongue. His reflection didn't. It smiled at him.

"Don't worry, Demise," said his face in the mirror. "You can still die." It laughed.

He backed into the bedroom. The air was cold. There was a loud, crackling sound. Spector ran for the living room. The bedroom door slammed in his face. He smelled ozone.

"Now, now, Demise. I only want to have a little chat." Spector recognized the voice now. He turned. The Astronomer's projected self was sitting on the bed. He was wearing a black robe sashed at the waist with a rope of human hair. His crippled body was straighter than usual, which meant his powers were charged up. He was covered in blood.

"What do you want?" Spector was afraid. The Astronomer was one of the few people his power didn't work on.

"Do you know what today is'?"

"Wild Card Day. Everybody and his dog knows that." Spector picked a pair of brown corduroy pants of the floor. "Yes. But it's also something else. Its Judgment Day." The Astronomer knotted his fingers together.

"Judgment Day?" He pulled his pants on. "What are you talking about?"

"Those bastards who ruined my plan. They intervened with our true destiny. They kept us from ruling the world." The Astronomer's eyes gleamed. There was a madness in them that even Spector hadn't seen before. "But there are other worlds. This one won't soon forget my parting shot at those fuckers who got in my way."

"Turtle. Tachyon. Fortunato. You're going after those guys?" Spector clapped his hands softly. "Good for you."

"By the end of the day they'll all be dead. And you, my dear Demise, are going to help me."

"Bullshit. I did your dirty work before, but not now. You fucking left me hanging out to dry, and I'm not going to give you another chance."

"I don't want to kill you, so I'll give you one chance to change your mind." A rainbow of colored light began to swirl around the Astronomer.

"Fuck off, man." Spector shook his fist. "You're not going to make a fool of me again."

"No? Then I'm afraid I'll have to make a corpse of you. Along with all the rest." The Astronomer shifted into a jackal's head. It opened its mouth; dark blood flowed steaming onto the carpeted floor. It howled. The building shook with sound. Spector covered his ears and fell to the floor.

Fortunato called Caroline to, come for Veronica. Caroline could take her to his mother's townhouse, the official business address for the escort agency. Caroline, and half a dozen of the other women, more or less lived there. He hustled Veronica into her clothes and then left her nodding out on the living room couch.

Brennan said, "Is she going to be all right?"

"I doubt it."

"I know it's none of my business, but weren't you maybe a little hard on her?"

"It's under control," Fortunato said.

"Sure it is," Brennan said. "I never said it wasn't."

They stood and looked at each other for a few seconds. As Yeoman, Brennan was probably the only one of the costumed vigilantes running loose in New York that Fortunato trusted. Partly because Brennan was still human, unaffected by the wild card virus. Partly because he and Fortunato had been through some serious shit together, inside a monstrous alien that some people called the Swarm.

The Astronomer called it TIAMAT, and he'd used a machine he called the Shakti device to bring it to Earth. Fortunato had smashed the machine himself, but he was too late. The alien had already arrived, and hundreds of thousands around the world had died because of it.

"What about the Astronomer?" Fortunato said.

"You know a guy they call the Walrus? Jube, the newsie?" Fortunato shrugged. "Seen him around, I guess."

"He saw the Astronomer in Jokertown early this morning. Told Chrysalis about it, she mentioned it to me."

"What did it cost you?"

"Nothing. I know, it's out of character. But even Chrysalis is afraid of this guy."

"Where does this Walrus know the Astronomer from?"

"I don't know."

"So we've got a secondhand report by an unreliable witness and a cold trail?"

"Back off, man. I tried to phone. The operator told me it was off the hook. This isn't even my fight. I came here to help you out."

Fortunato looked at the Mirror of Hathor. It could take him all day to get it purified and get himself focused enough to try it again. Meanwhile, if the Astronomer had come out of his hole, it could be trouble.

"Yeah, okay. Let me take care of this other business and f we'll go take a look."

By the time Fortunato had his street clothes on, Caroline had arrived. Even with her hair in short blond tangles, wearing an old sweatshirt and jeans, she made Fortunato want her.

She didn't look any older than she had seven years ago, when he'd first taken her on. She had a child's face and a compact, energetic body whose every muscle seemed to be under her voluntary control. Fortunato loved all his women, but Caroline was special. She'd learned everything he could teach her-etiquette, foreign languages, cooking, massage-but her spirit had never cracked. He'd never mastered her, and maybe for that reason she could still give him more pleasure in bed than any of the others.

He kissed her quickly when he let her in. He wished he could take her back into the bedroom and let her give him shot of Tantric power. But there wasn't time.

"What do you want to do with her?" Caroline said. "Does she have a date tonight?"

"It's Wild Card Day. Everybody has a date tonight. Mine should be over by midnight, and I may have to go out again if I get home too early."

"Keep an eye on her. Let her go out if she seems all right. But keep her away from any more junk. I'll figure out the rest of it later."

She looked at Yeoman. "Is something up?"

"Nothing to worry about. I'll call you later." He kissed her again and watched her take Veronica down to the waiting cab. Then he looked at Brennan and said, "Let's go."

"Is that a lobster, or is that a lobster?" Gills asked. He held it up for Hiram's inspection, and the lobster waved its claws feebly. The pincers were banded shut and a few strands of seaweed draped the hard green shell.

"A lobster of distinction," Hiram Worchester agreed. "Are they all that large?"

"This is one of the small ones," Gills said. The joker had mottled greenish skin, and gill slits in his cheeks that pulled open when he smiled, showing the moist red flesh within. The gills didn't work, of course; if they had, the elderly fishmonger would have been an ace instead of a joker.

Outside, dawn light was washing over Fulton Street, but the fish market was already busy. Fishmongers and buyers haggled over prices, refrigerator trucks were being loaded, teamsters shouted curses at each other, and men in starched white aprons rolled barrels along the sidewalks. The smell of fish hung in the air like a perfume.

Hiram Worchester fancied himself a night owl, and on most days preferred to sleep in. But today was not most days. It was Wild Card Day, the day he closed his restaurant to the public and hosted the city's aces in a private party that had become a tradition, and special occasions made their own special demands, like getting out of bed when it was still dark outside.

Gills turned away, replaced the lobster in its barrel. "You want to see another one?" he asked, tossing aside a handful of the wet seaweed and extracting a second lobster for Hiram's inspection. It was larger than the first, and more lively. It moved its claws vigorously. "Look at 'im kick," Gills said. "Did I say fresh or did I say fresh?"

Hiram's smile was a quick flash of white teeth through the black of his spade-shaped beard. He was very particular about the food he served in Aces High, and never more so than for his Wild Card Dinner. "You never let me down," Hiram said. "These will do handsomely. Delivery by eleven, I assume?" Gills nodded. The lobster waved its claws at Hiram and regarded him sourly. Perhaps it anticipated its fate. Gills put it back in the barrel.

"How's Michael?" Hiram asked. "Still at Dartmouth?"

"He loves it there," Gills said. "He's starting his junior year, and already he's telling me how to run the business." He put the top back on the barrel. "How many you need?" Hiram anticipated feeding about one hundred and fifty persons, give or take a dozen-eighty-odd aces, each of whom would bring a spouse, a lover, a guest. But of course lobster would hardly be the only entree. Even on this night of nights, Hiram Worchester liked to give his guests a choice. He had three alternatives planned, but these lobsters looked so splendid, undoubtedly they would be a popular choice, and it was better to have too many than too few.

The door opened behind him. He heard the bell ring. "Sixty, I think," Hiram said, before he realized that Gills was no longer paying attention. The joker's oversized eyes were fixed on the door. Hiram turned.

There were three of them. Their jackets were dark green leather. Two looked normal. One barely topped five feet, with a narrow face and a pronounced swagger. The second was tall and wide, a rock-hard beer belly spilling over his skull-andcrossbones belt buckle. He'd shaved his skull. The leader was an obvious joker, a cyclops whose single eye peered out at the world through a monocle with a thick coke-bottle lens. That was strange; jokers and nats didn't often run together.

The cyclops took a length of chain out of the pocket of his jacket and began to wind it around his fist. The other two looked around Gills's establishment as if they owned the place. One began to kick at the sawdust with a heavy, scuffed-up boot.

"Excuse me," Gills said. "I have to'… I… I'll be righ back." He moved off toward the cyclops, abandoning Hiram for the moment. Across the room, two of his employees leaned close and began to whisper together. A third man, a feebleminded joker who'd been moving the wet sawdust around with a push broom, gaped at the intruders and began to edge toward the back door.

Gills was expostulating to the cyclops, gesturing with his broad web-fingered hands, pleading in a low urgent tone. The youth stared down at him from that single implacable eye, his face cold and blank. He kept wrapping the chain around his hand as Gills talked to him.

Hiram frowned and turned away from the tableau. Trouble there, but it was none of his business, he had enough to think about today. He wandered down a sawdust-covered aisle to inspect a shipment of fresh tuna. The huge fish lay atop each other in rough-hewn wooden crates, their eyes fixed on him glassily. Blackened tuna, he thought. The inspiration brought smile to his face. LeBarre was a genius at Cajun food. Not for tonight, that menu had been planned weeks ago, but blackened tuna would make an excellent addition to his regular bill of fare.

"Fuck that shit," the cyclops said loudly from across the room. "You shoulda thought of that a week ago."

"Please," Gills said in a thin, frightened voice. "Just a few more days.. "

The cyclops put one booted foot up on a bin of fish, kicked, and sent it crashing over on its side. Whitefish spilled out all over the floor. "Please, don't," Gills repeated. His employees were no longer in sight.

Hiram turned and walked toward them, hands shoved casually into the pockets of his jacket. For such a huge man, his pace was surprisingly brisk. "Excuse me," he said to the cyclops. "Is there a problem here?"

The joker youth towered over Gills, who was a small man made even smaller by his twisted spine, but Hiram Worchester was another matter. Hiram stood six foot two, and most people took one look at his girth and guessed that he weighed around three hundred fifty pounds. They were off by about three hundred twenty pounds, but that was another story. The cyclops looked up at Hiram through his thick monocle, and smiled nastily. "Hey, Gills," he said, "how long you been selling whale?"

His companions, who had been standing by the door trying to look bored and dangerous simultaneously, drifted closer. "Look, it's the fucking Goodyear blimp," the short one said.

"Please, Hiram," Gills said, touching him gently on the arm. "I appreciate it, but… everything is fine here. These boys are… ah

… friends of Michael's."

"I'm always pleased to meet friends of Michael's," Hiram said, staring at the cyclops. "I'm surprised, though. Michael always had such good manners, and his friends have none at all. Gills has a bad back, you know. You really ought to help him clean up these fish you knocked over."

Gills's face looked greener than usual. "I'll get it cleaned up," he said. "Chip and Jim can do it, don't… don't worry about it."

"Why don't you leave, lard ass?" the cyclops suggested. He glanced at the short kid. "Cheech, get the door for him. Help him squeeze his fat ass right through." Cheech stepped back and opened the door.

"Gills," Hiram said, "I believe we were discussing terms on these excellent lobsters."

The tall boy with the shaved skull spoke up for the first time. "Make 'im squeal, Eye," he said in a deep voice. "Make 'im squeal before you let 'im go."

Hiram Worchester looked at him with genuine distaste and a calm he did not really feel. He hated this sort of thing, but sometimes one was given no choice. "You're trying to in timidate me, but you're only making me angry. I doubt very much that you're actually friends of Michael's. I suggest you leave now, before this goes too far and someone gets hurt."

They all laughed. "Lex," Eye told the bald one, "it's too fuckin' hot in here: I'm sweating. Need some fresh air."

"I'll cool it right off"' Lex said. He looked around, grabbed a small barrel in both hands, hoisted it above his head in a single smooth, powerful jerk, and took a step toward the big plate-glass windows that fronted on Fulton Street.

Hiram Worchester took his hands out of his pocket. At his side, his right hand curled into a tight, hard fist. A meaningless little tic, he knew; it was his mind that did it, not his hand, but the gesture was as much a part of him as his wild card power. For an instant, he could see the gravity waves shifting hazily around the barrel like heat shimmers rising from the pavement on a hot summer's day.

Then Lex staggered, his arms buckled, and a barrel of sal cod that suddenly weighed about three hundred pounds cam crashing down on his head. His feet went out from under him, and he hit the floor hard. The barrel staves shattered, buryin Lex under the fish. Very heavy fish.

His friends stared, uncomprehending at first. Hiram stepped briskly in front of Gills and pushed the fishmonge away. "Go phone the police," he said. Gills edged backward.

The short one, Cheech, tried to drag Lex out from unde the shattered barrel. It was harder than it looked. The cyclops gaped, then looked sharply back at Hiram. "You did that," he blurted. "You're that Fatman guy."

"I loathe that nickname," Hiram said. He made a fist, and Eye's monocle grew heavier. It fell of his face and shattered o the floor. The cyclops screamed an obscenity and swung at Hiram's ample stomach with a chain-wrapped fist. Hira dodged. He was a lot nimbler than he looked; his bulk varied, but he'd kept his weight at thirty pounds for years. Eye cam after him, screeching. Hiram retreated, clenching his fist an making the joker heavier with every step, until his legs col lapsed under his own weight and he lay there moaning.

Cheech was the last to make his move. "You ace fuck," h said. He held his hands out in front of him, palms flat, som kind of karate or kung fu or something. When he leapt, hi metal-shod boot came pistoning toward Hiram's head.

Hiram dropped to the sawdust. Cheech leapt right ove him, and kept going, weighing rather less than he had a m ment ago. The force of his leap carried him into a wall, hard.

He hit, rolled, tried to come up with a bounce, and discovered he was so heavy he couldn't get up at all.

Hiram rose and brushed the sawdust off his jacket. He was a mess. He'd have to go home and change before going on to Aces High. Gills edged up to him, shaking his head. "Do you get the police?" Hiram asked. The old man nodded.

"Good. The gravity distortion is only temporary, yo know. I can keep them pinned down until the police arrive, bu it takes a lot out of me." He frowned. "It's not healthy for them either. All that weight is a terrible strain on the heart." Hiram glanced at his gold Rolex. It was past 7:30. "I really have to get to Aces High. Damn, I didn't need this nonsense, not today. How long did the police-"

Gills interrupted him. "Go. Just go." He pushed at the larger man with gentle, insistent hands. "I'll handle it, Hiram. Please, go."

"The police will want me to give a statement," Hiram said. "No," Gills said. "I'll take care of it. Hiram, I know you meant well, but you shouldn't… I mean… well, you just don't understand. I can't press charges. Go, please. Stay out of it. It will be better."

"You can't be serious!" Hiram said. "These hoodlums…"

"Are my business," Gills finished for him. "Please, I ask you as a friend. Stay out of it. Go. You will get your lobsters, very fine lobsters, I promise."

"But-"

"Go!" Gills insisted.

His hoarse grunts and the beat of his groin against hers set a counterpoint to the ticking of the bright yellow dimestore "Baby Ben" alarm clock on the bedside table. Roulette pulled her topaz eyes fi-om Stan's brown ones, watched the second hand sweeping smoothly across the face of the clock. Time. The ticking of a clock, the wash of blood through her veins driven by the inexorable beating of her heart. Fragments of time. Fragments marking the passage of a life. Ultimately it came down to this. It respected neither wealth, nor power, nor saintliness. Sooner or later it came, and silenced that steady pulse. And she had her orders.

Roulette reached up, softly touched Stan's temple.

She drew breath-a gathering of will and power-but there was no release. It required hate, and all she felt was uncertainty. She lay back; and summoned an image of horror. The agony of labor, knowing it would soon end, and she would hold her child, and all pain would be forgotten. The doctor's eyes widening in terror. Struggling up to gaze at the thing between her legs.

Her taut belly went flaccid, and an added warmth washed through her vagina, an imitation of passion as the poisonous tide flowed free. Howlers eyes suddenly bulged, his mouth worked, and he recoiled from her, his rapidly swelling cock rasping harshly along the soft tissues of her vagina with his abrupt withdrawal. Hands wrapped protectively about his quivering discolored member, he gagged several times and emitted a choking scream. A glob of spittle ran over his chin in a thin thread, and the dresser mirror exploded in a crystal waterfall littering the bed with glass fragments. The baby Big Ben took the edge of the spreading wave of sound. Its crystal shattered, freezing the hands, and as the blow reached the clock's inner works the alarm gave a tinny, dispirited squawk as if it were complaining about its sudden and unfair demise.

Sound like a fist took Roulette across the right cheek raising a mottled bruise on the cafe au lait skin, coaxing a trickle of blood from her ear. Indrawn breath caught in her throat like a jagged block, and sickness filled her belly. Howler's agonized face hung above her, and she knew she was looking at death. His chest was heaving, lips skinned back from teeth, and a tide of blue-black was rising from his now completely black and swollen penis into his groin and belly.

The rumpled satin comforter gave no purchase to her flailing legs. She felt as if she were swimming on glass. With a final, desperate flounder, she got to her knees, and threw an arm around the ace's chest. Her other hand tangled in his sweat-matted hair, and she yanked his head around so he faced the wall separating bedroom from living room. A life-ending, time-stopping scream echoed to the fringes of the universe and back again, and the wall exploded. Plaster dust spun in lazy spirals, catching at the throat, and filling the nostrils. Rubble fanned across the living room floor, and the far wall was bulging. For an instant Roulette contemplated that sagging wall; pictured it falling, pictured the fat, lower-middle-class couple in the next apartment staring at the tableau she would present. Naked woman holding naked man-cock swollen to stallion proportions, whole body swelling as the poison exploded blood cells, the trail of the poison marked by blue-black discolorations.

Another convulsion shook Howler, but his throat had swollen, closing off the vocal chords. The sweat-drenched skin of his back was cold and clammy against her flattened breasts, and the stink of released bladder and bowel filled the room. Gagging, she pushed him away, crawled off the bed, and huddled in on herself on the floor by the bed.

Destruction at the Cloisters. He had implied it was Turtle who had crumbled the stone walls… But he lied! He promised there would be no risk even though this was the first ace she had ever killed. And he lied. She touched a hand to her ear, and gazed in fascination at the congealed blood that stained her fingers. A sense of betrayal ate its way through to conscious thought, and resolved itself into anger. He knew, and didn't warn me. Had he wanted her to die here? But who then would kill Tachyon for him?

Sirens reminded her of her danger. She had been so immersed in contemplation of death and betrayal that she had forgotten reality. No one in lower Manhattan could have missed that death cry. She was running out of time. And if she wanted to survive, to attain her final goal, she too had to run. She pushed back her tangled hair, the tiny pearls and crystals braided into the long strands catching on her fingers, tugging at her scalp. She jammed stockings and garter belt into her purse, flung on her dress, and pushed her feet into highheeled sandals.

A last glance around the shattered room to see if she had left any trace of her presence-aside from the obvious one, of course, the bloated body on the bed.

I always wanted to be special.

An inarticulate cry burst from her, and she ran for the fire escape. One spiked heel slipped through the iron grating underfoot, and with a curse she pulled off the shoes. Holding one in each hand she ran down the five flights to the first floor, and lowered the ladder to the filthy, garbage-strewn pavement of the alley. Glass from a hundred broken windows lay like a sparkling snowfall among rotting lettuce leaves, plastic six-pack dividers, stinking cans. It crunched underfoot as she reached the ground, and one splinter drove deep into her heel.

She whimpered, pulled it out, and worked on her shoes. Tetanus shot, I'll need a tetanus shot. I haven't had one since that month Josiah and I spent in Peru.

The thought of her ex-husband set memory in motion. Jerking forward like a train gaining momentum. Images jostling and shattering like the frames of a nightmare film running at double speed… until no coherent pictures remained, just an undifferentiated blur of pain and grief and gut-burning fury culminating in a spewing sense of relief when she had released the tide, and Howler had died.

Out of the alley and onto the street. Trying to set the right tone. It would be suspicious to simply ignore the insurance company's nightmare and glazier's delight that surrounded her. Yet she could not bring herself to join the gaping jostling throng, many still in pajamas and bathrobes, who gathered in' clumps and gawked at the glass-littered street and the parked can, with frosted or demolished windows. Better perhaps to ape a young working woman; interested but concerned with getting to work on time.

A police car shot down the street, braked suddenly as it passed her, jerking the two occupants like test-car dummies. Fiat, bloodshot eyes raked over her, and she forced herself t face the cop's suspicious glance though fear was fluttering in her belly. It was a predominantly white neighborhood, an though she was dressed with understated elegance her dres was clearly for evening.

Hooker.

The thought read clearly on the bloated, pink face, and she felt a stir of' resentment. Class of '70, Vassar, master's in economics. Not a prostitute, you asshole. But she was carefu to keep her expression neutral.

A man ran out of Howler's apartment building, arms windmilling about his head, mouth opening and closing though no words could be heard over the cry of the sirens. The cop, distracted, lost interest in Roulette. He growled something to his partner, and jerked his thumb toward the building. The car rolled on, and Roulette forced herself back into motion.

The fear was back. Fueled not by the presence of the tangible pursuers who gathered behind her, but by the baying of her soul hounds who loped easily at her flanks. They were waiting for the time when the doubt and horror and guilt that had been growing with every kill would overwhelm' her, bear her down, and then they would move in and destroy her. They were there now-waiting. She could hear them. She hadn't been able to hear them before. She was going insane. And if she killed again, what would happen? But she had to. And to have Tachyon dead would make even madness bearable.