Jokertown Shuffle

IX

There are things that a person shouldn't have to remember. Peanut's martyrdom was still reverberating in my head, driving out everything else. Governor, I won't talk. I won't. Don't worry…

I could feel the knifepoint against his throat, could feel it through his mind. And then Peanut shoved it home. Drove it into his own body to save me.

When I heard Peanut's pain, when I felt it rake my mind like clawed fingers, I screamed for Kafka and told him to bring Blaise to me as soon as he came out of the caverns.

I suppose it was a measure of Blaise's arrogance and his contempt for me that he came alone except for the two jumpers carrying Peanut's body. He'd sent Durg back with Tachyon.

They just dumped him on the lobby floor. The poor joker's eyes were still open. Peanut stared at me, but his mind was utterly still and empty. I blinked. Tears blurred the bloody corpse.

Can't let them know who sent me. Can't let Blaise hurt the governor. Those were the last thoughts I'd heard from Peanut.

Damn you, Peanut. Did you have to be so goddamn noble? Maybe if you hadn't, I wouldn't feel so guilty. I didn't know he'd be there. I didn't. I thought it would be simple.

Blaise glanced at the Temptation, at Kafka, and at the jokers who had gathered.

Can't let them know..'.

Simple, brave Peanut. I wondered how in the hell I'd come to deserve that kind of loyalty. The only legacy of my efforts was that Peanut was dead. I'd killed a friend, ruined my dream fantasy, and Tachyon was still a prisoner.

Fucking effective.

"He killed himself, Bloat," Blaise crowed. He was mocking me in his head, daring me to object. "He was helping my old granpere to escape. He interfered with me, but I didn't touch him. Of course, you know all this, don't you. You were listening, right? Governor Bloat knows everything."

Inside, he taunted: I know it was you, Bloat. I know. That fuck Peanut didn't have two brain cells to rub together. He didn't think of this on his own, did he. He let the thoughts drift out of the veils hiding his mind.

"Get out of here, Blaise," I said. "You did what you wanted to do. It's over. Now get the hell out of here."

But Blaise wanted to brag, wanted to strut. He was laughing, talking about how this was a lesson to anyone who thought they could interfere with him, that he'd do the same to anyone else who got in his way. Anyone. He was looking at me when he said it.

"You got Tachyon back," I told him. I looked at Peanut, at the gory vision of his sacrifice for me. The tears threatened again, and my voice was breaking. "Peanut's dead. Drop it." Blaise just snorted and kept going.

"Blaise, I've warned you-" Even to myself, my blustering sounded like bad empty movie dialogue, and Peanut's body was a symbol of just how empty my words were. I wasn't surprised when Blaise just laughed. Guards brought their guns up, swinging them to bear on the red-haired kid, but he just waved his arms at them.

He just kept blathering. "You gonna tell 'em to shoot, Gov? You think that's going to stop me? Maybe I should just jump one of them and start firing away."

"Put your guns down," I told my people.

Blaise laughed louder. "Ain't that just like you, Gov? You never kill anyone. Prime had you pegged-you're a whimp. The fucking caves are you, too-they mean you don't have to worry about making a move to New York. You didn't want to do that anyway, did you? Not really. You might have had to hurt someone if you did. You wimped out with my grandfather, too. You could've sent a whole squadron of jokers or used some of the renegade aces on the Rox. But no, you tried to do it hidden and bloodless. You sent Peanut -I know it was you, Governor. That was a wimp's rescue; it had `Bloat' engraved all fucking over it. Bloat doesn't hurt jokers or jumpers or anyone. Bloat wants to make a fairyland where everyone kisses and hugs and loves each other, all encircled in Bloat's sturdy little wall. Well, you know what? That's fucking stupid."

My jokers were watching me. I didn't have anything to say. Peanut looked up at me, and I thought I could see that damn idiotic trust still in his eyes. "Somebody cover that body," I husked out.

Blaise howled with. laughter.

He is scared of you. Underneath it all, he's not confident. I know it. Blaise fears anything he can't control; you can't be jumped and the screens around your mind are too strong for him. He's afraid of your unconscious power, toothe dreamstuff. He's seen the caverns; they worry him. The scope of the power that created them… Tachyon tried to soothe me.

I raged back at her.

I don't control the ability. It's like the wall-things just happen. You think I would've let Peanut die if I could do it on my own? I don't have power. Not really. You know that now, don't you? You detest me.

No. Bloat, I'm so… I'm so sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. Neither one of us wanted Peanut to die, but he died because he loved you, because he believed in you. I believe in you, too. I still do.

I can't do anything for you. I failed.

You can, Bloat. You can. Please… Promise me one thing. Promise that you won't give up. Promise me that. Why'

Because the Outcast loved the Princess, and the Princess loved the Outcast, too. Because what you're trying to do here is good. Because if you don't, then Peanut wasted his life. We were both crying.

I'll still get you out, I promised her. I will. I'll do… I don't know what. But I'll find some way, someone to help me. But the contact had faded, as it always did. I don't know if she heard me or not. I caught only the faintest whisper of her voice:… you have the power, Bloat. Use it.

I raged. I sobbed.

"She's right. She's telling you just what I've been telling you." The penguin. It stood in the lobby before me. Not a hallucination, not a dream-I could see the guards looking at it curiously and wondering. "Right," the penguin said. "You made me, like you made the rest."

"How?" I shouted. "Tell me how I can control this." But it didn't answer. It waddled away down the corridor to the west wing, toward the caves. "I'll be back," it said. "When you need me."

"Governor?" Andiron, one of the guards, asked. "Should we stop him?"

"You see it? You really do?"

Andiron looked at me strangely. "Yes. Of course."

I sighed. I looked at the Temptation and tried to think. "Let it go," I told him. "Let it go."

I guess that after Peanut's death I felt that I had to do something. I needed to gain some (however grudging) respect from the jumpers, not to mention the jokers. And despite Tachyon's entreaties, the only thing I seemed to have accomplished with my dreams had been to make the penguin real. Several jokers reported seeing it moving through the caves.

A parlor trick. Bloat can pull a penguin from his hat. Great. Boy, will that scare the nats. Gosh, is that going to make Blaise tremble.

I needed action. I needed a symbol. I needed to feel that I was doing something.

I thought it time to make official what was already true in fact.

Kafka punched home the switch on the power strips. Arc lights flared with an audible snarling, and I was bathed in incandescent splendor. I watched the monitor as Kafka ticked off the seconds with his fingers. He jabbed a finger at me as the red light blinked on the video camera. In the monitor, the Temptation appeared in a slow pan.

I started talking. I had the script memorized. I'd practiced it for two days straight, making little changes here and there.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" I said, and heard my high voice reverberate through the sound system we'd bought back when we'd had money to play with. Across the monitor, St. Anthony was bedeviled by strange hordes,, beaten by demons flying in the sky, tantalized by a seductress with her surreal following. "It's The Temptation of St. Anthony, if you're not familiar with the painting. Bosch is giving us the tale of Anthony of Egypt and how he was unable to function in his own society. He couldn't exist there, not unless he was the same as they were. So Anthony decided to retreat. He fled the worldly life and went into the desert. He made a place where he could be as he needed to be."

The camera pulled back from the painting and focused on my face, my plump-cheeked, pimply, fatboy face nearly lost in the folds of pasty flesh. The camera continued to zoom back, farther and farther, showing the gravid landscape of my body crammed into the lobby.

"Ain't it funny how your world always views evil as something misshapen or twisted or ugly? Like a joker, y'know. Funny. But to us, being that way is normal."

Panning now, the camera moving over the solemn joker faces in front of me and around the balcony…

"Your world treats jokers badly. That statement doesn't exactly surprise you, does it? Then it shouldn't surprise you that, hey, sometimes a joker will kick back one way or another. The only trouble is, whenever that happens, the violence ante just gets upped one more notch. The joker gets stomped again, only harder this time. We're tired of that game. Hey, it's one we can't win-you've got the power and there's nowhere for a joker to hide. You don't even have to brand us or legislate our movements to keep track of us; we wear our identification all the time. All you have to do is look."

Back to me: half a teenager glued onto a slug thing from a bad Japanese monster movie…

"I'm Bloat. This is the Rox, what most of you still call Ellis Island. I'm the governor of the Rox. I'm the one who keeps all of you out and lets the jokers in. What I have to say is pretty simple, really."

I licked my lips, which were suddenly dry. Bloatblack rippled down my sides; I tried to ignore the smell.

Now that it had come to it, I was scared. Reading about revolutions in history books never made me feel the experience-I always knew how it would end. Doing the same thing in role-playing games was simple: If my character died, I'd roll another and keep playing.

But here, now, I didn't know what would happen afterward. I'd already learned that-in this world-you only get one death.

"I'm the governor of the Rox," I repeated. Kafka winced at my blunder and pointed out my place in the cue cards alongside the camera. I stumbled over the next few lines, stuttering. "The… the Rox has become a joker's haven. A place away from the nats and hostile authorities. Here, we're normal. Here, we can be as we need to be. So what I'm saying now is just legitimizing something that's already a fact."

Tight in…

"I hereby declare the Rox to be a separate political entity. We declare ourselves independent of the state of New York and the United States. You have no authority over us. We're the joker homeland."

Around me, jokers burst into prolonged cheering. The camera swung around to show the celebration. I gestured to Kafka. The lights kicked off, and the video feed went dead.

The loud jubilation of the jokers, my people, continued unabated. I could hear it here, could feel it going on all over the Rox. I looked down at Kafka, characteristically somber. He was thinking of the Astronomer again, of another stronghold that had been destroyed.

"How do you think that went over?" I asked him. "We'll find out," he answered. "Won't we?"

While Night's Black Agents to Their Preys Do Rouse