Jokertown Shuffle

K.C.

"K. C. and Kelly caught him, and the little fucker sliced at them with a knife. What you gonna do about it?"

I knew what Blaise wanted me to do. The image was very clear. His justice is very black and white. Simple.

I glanced at Slimeball. He'd been radiating wordless chattering fear since the incident, all shot through with unresolved hatred toward Blaise. His salamanderlike skin was gleaming with sticky oil, the flat pads on the ends of his fingers crushed into his palms. His bulbous eyes, vertically slit and golden, were momentarily lost under thick translucent lids as he blinked. His mouth opened; a forked snake's tongue wriggled out briefly from between snaggled incisors, and then retreated.

"You lied to me," I said to Slimeball. "That's very, very bad." I tsked and shook my head. "You promised you'd leave the food alone. I ordered you to stay away, and I warned you about bothering them again. Remember? We're all one big happy family on the Rox."

K.C. guffawed at that, but no one else laughed. "What happened, Slimeball?"

That's a mind reader's trick: just ask a direct question. It jars them away from the stream-of-consciousness images and forces them to focus. I hardly listened to Slimeball's words; I was watching his mind. I could sense his hunger all the while he was talking. The words didn't matter-he'd gotten hungry, a common enough thing on the Rox. A simple thing. He'd thought he could get away with stealing from the jumpers. He'd been wrong. That's all.

Blaise broke in then. "Bloat, I want the problem taken care of. Permanently. You do it, or I will," he said. "Make the fucker an example to everyone else."

He stared at me. I'll kill him, Blaise told me then in his mind, deliberately and consciously pushing the words forward. Like he thought I might be hard of hearing in my mind. You make sure Slimeball gets fed to the sewerage system, or I'll do it myself. Either way, you eventually eat the mother. Your choice= "Governor."

"I don't kill jokers," I answered him aloud.

He snorted at that. "The whole goddamn world kills jokers. What makes you so special?"

I could've told him. I could've told him how it's a curse to always know. Hey, I know everything. I know that the jumpers have stolen more food from the jokers than the reverse. I know that hunger's a problem for both sides here on the Rox. I know that Slimeball has about as much intelligence and moral sense as a six-year-old, and while he was genuinely sorry now, he'd forget all this and probably do it again.

It's easier not to know. But I always know the truth. I know all the facts.

It's hard to hurt someone whose most intimate thoughts you've experienced. It's hard when you know that their pain is going to be broadcast back to you and you'll have to listen to it. It's hard when you see that there's never-NEVER-just black and white.

Wrong or right. Evil or good.

Not for me, certainly. 'There are things I've done… Just by being here and creating the Rox, I'm responsible for a lot of deaths. My Wall isn't kind, and Charon doesn't stop for passengers who change their minds. Kafka tells me that the waters of the bay under the Wall are full of skeletons. My victims, directly. There's a lot of the violence in New York done by people who live here. People I protect.

I tell myself that's only justice.

I stared down at Slimeball over the slope of my body. Filling your belly shouldn't be a capital offense, no matter what the circumstances.

"What're you gonna do, Governor?" Blaise is as impatient as Kelly is lovely. Glitteringly dangerous. As close to amoral as any mind I'd ever experienced. He wanted me to kill over a few damn Twinkies.

Hell, I didn't know what I was going to do. Nothing felt good-there wasn't any right or wrong here. When you know all the facts, that's what you always find out. Every decision is unfair. Yet if I just shrugged this off, I'd undermine any progress I've made in that last several months toward actually being the governor. But I don't kill jokers either, and if I came down on the jumpers, I could lose their support they're as essential to the Rox as I am.

Look, it was all fucking fun and games at first. Big kid Bloat takes the Rox and keeps the bad of nats away. But it kept getting more serious. It stopped being some comic-book plot and started being real. The thoughts kept coming louder and louder, and I couldn't shut them out anymore, and suddenly nothing was quite so funny. David died under the Oddity's hands, everyone started grabbing for control of things instead of cooperating, and the conditions for jokers in the world outside just kept going into the fucking toilet. Blaise wouldn't let me think. "Bloat? Hey, Bloat!"

I glowered down at them all, angry now. "Slimeball's at fault," I barked at them finally. "I warned him about the food. But I'm not going to kill him for that, Blaise. Slimeball, you're one of the bloatblackers now. You'll haul my shit until I'm sure that you'll stay away from the jumpers. If you're found in their part of the Rox again, they have my permission to do whatever the hell they please with you. Understood?" Relief was coiled around disgust in Slimeball. K. C. shrugged her shoulders. Kelly looked at me with her small smile.

Blaise scowled. "I will kill him if I see his oily face again," Blaise proclaimed loudly. "I don't need your permission for that, Bloat."

"Blaise," Kelly began placatingly. "The governor's-" Blaise rounded on her, his fist raised. I could feel the violence in his mind leaking out like molten lava.

"Stop!" I shouted, and the fury in my voice caused gunbolts to click back. Blaise radiated a sudden fear. I could feel the heat on my face as I continued to shout. "You damn well do need permission. I am the Rox. Me. Without my Wall, the nats'll be swarming on this place like maggots on roadkill. They'll bury you here. I hear your thoughts. You think I'm weak. `Bloat doesn't kill, he can be pushed around.' I hear you."

I looked at the jokers watching the confrontation. I listened to their thoughts. They were as violent as the jumpers. I knew I had to end this now or someone would do something really stupid.

"Kafka," I said. "Blaise needs to bow to me before he leaves. I want to hear him thank me for taking the time to judge this case." I paused. "And if he won't do it, blow him away."

Blaise was confused. His mouth gaped. He thought for a minute of mind-controlling my jokers, but there were a lot of us around, and he suddenly wasn't sure he could handle us all. He sputtered. "You're bluffing. You ain't gonna do that. That ain't your way." It was just mind static.

I giggled at him. "Try me. Go ahead. Hey, if you die here, the only thing that's going to happen is that K. C. or someone else will take over for the jumpers. Why, I'll bet K.C. might even be happy to have the competition thinned out." K.C. gave me a dangerous look; I ignored it. "You'd be no loss to me at all, Blaise. None at all."

Blaise hesitated, his thoughts all jumbled. I really wasn't sure what he'd do. My jokers waited, patient and a little too eager. I think it was their faces that decided him more than anything else.

He took a step back toward me and ducked his head stiffly.

I giggled. "You do that very nicely. And what else?" Scowl. Frown. Pucker. "Thank you." The words were almost understandable. Inside, he was fuming: Fuck you, you bastard.

"I'm not really into boys," I told him. "Not like Prime. Now if you were as good-looking as Kelly…"

Blaise's face colored nicely; so did Kelly's. Blaise spun angrily on his toes and stamped away to the laughter of the joker onlookers. K. C. followed with a last look back at me;

Kelly gave me a long stare (poor thing) and went after them. Slimeball was laughing, too, until Peanut took him by the arm and pointed him toward the mounds of bloatblack. "Start shoveling," Peanut said.

And then we all laughed at Slimeball. Jokers are allowed to laugh at jokers.

Kafka looked up at me. Children. You all argue like such children. The insectlike man sighed. He told me something that sounded like wisdom. Maybe it was.

"Bluffing is a very dangerous game," he said. "Especially with Blaise."

I would remember those words, later.

And Hope to Die by John J. Miller

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, Who is neither tarnished or afraid…

– RAYMOND CHANDLER