Jokertown Shuffle

X

It began very much like the last time.

I woke from a dream. For a moment I was confused, wondering where I was. Kafka's crews had finished the lobby's remodeling a few days ago. My body now rested on a ramp, jutting up in the center of the space as high as the balconies, my head another full story above that. The walls of the building were triple-paned glass all around. I could see the Rox slumbering in a thick predawn fog. My land looked peaceful enough, and the mindvoices were mostly quiet, filled with their own dream images-though there were exceptions: Croyd pacing in his tower and trying to decide whether to try to sleep or not, Chickenhawk (who was supposed to be watching the city from his perch on the northern tower) sleeping and dreaming of dead Kien, a few couples making love or talking.

I looked down at the Temptation, set on the balcony in a blaze of lamps, and I wondered what had awakened me.

Then I felt it again-two dozen or more pricklings at my Wall. The probings came from all around me. The thoughts I sensed now at the edges of my inner hearing were frightening.

They'd learned. These weren't green park rangers and city cops. No-these were seasoned military troops, people with a horrifyingly simple sense of duty. People who followed orders blindly without worrying about what they meant. People who had been in combat before and would gladly hate anything their superiors named The Enemy.

"Oh shit," I muttered.

"Governor?" Kafka, slumbering nearby, woke. My guards looked suddenly wary.

"Just be quiet," I told them.

And I could hear it again: the rhythmic, insistent beat of blades chopping the air not too far away; the throbbing of powerful engines frothing the water of the bay.

They were coming.

The last time, I'd mucked up by alarming the Rox too quickly. I wasn't about to make that mistake again.

So I made another.

I tried to use this "power" that everyone says I have. I focused on my Wall. I imagined it stiffening, becoming rubbery and pushing back the intruding boats and choppers. I thought… I thought it was working at first. I felt this sense of "hardness" to the Wall, and the faint pricklings disappeared entirely. I clenched my fist: victory.

"Yes," I hissed.

I really thought I'd done it. I believed, for an instant, that it had been that simple.

Then they hit the Wall again-from every direction, at once, and fast. This was a concerted, simultaneous, organized assault. I summoned all the psychic strength I had. At least I hoped that's what I was doing. I tried to visualize energy gathering around me, flowing through my mind and then hurtling out to the Wall, but maybe it was just imagination or comic-book fantasy, because it didn't do any good.

The Wall bulged and cracked, making me moan. I mean, I could feel it. It fucking hurt. Then the Wall was lanced open entirely, like some great raw pus-filled boil. The troops (that's who it was-the goddamn U. S Army or National Guard or something) poured through while I lay there, gasping in pain.

Through. Coming. I could hear them. going in, yeah! Gonna drugdealers, murderers, C'mon, c'mon, kick some ass. Show them rapists, they all Come on! Damn it! wimp rangers how it's deserve this, deserve Get through this damn really done. This time what we're gonna give wall before they have we don't hold back 'em a chance to be ready

Actinic flaring blue light threw crazed, weaving shadows across the Rox and the Administration Building: flares. Out across the water I could see the bright legs of spotlights striding across the bay toward us. A chopper with flaring running lights wheeled past the glassed-in lobby like an angry bat, and I could see faces staring at us as it passed.

And I heard thoughts:

What the hell is that Jesus Christ in a is that Bloat? thing bottle!

Belatedly, the sirens were wailing over the Rox. Kafka was yelling below me. "Bloat! Can't you hold them back?"

"Uh-uh," I told him, slowly and wearily. It took a lot more effort to talk than I would have thought. "I can't. I'm tired." I sounded like a kid too late for bed. Carry me in, Daddy; I'm so sleepy.

A pair of choppers danced thunderously around the building, then banked away to land. Automatic gunfire crackled, sounding almost too thin to be real, except that I could hear the mindvoices wailing in panic and fear.

A wave of terror rang through the headvoices of the Rox. Then there were just too many thoughts and too much going on, and the images overwhelmed me, buried me.

Chaos. Just chaos. I don't remember much of it, only individual scenes plucked from the general carnage. Images piled one on top of another, experienced almost simultaneously…

… I could sense the ghost of Chrysalis haunting Elmo's dreams. There was an urgency to her voice as she stroked his cheek. "Get out!" she said, her voice at odds with her soft caress. "Get out!"

In Elmo's head, there was a sound like running footsteps. Under their impact, the dream walls of the Crystal Palace dissolved. Chrysalis disappeared, but I could feel him holding to that sweet dream touch.

Another ghost. Another memory.

Elmo must have opened his eyes, for he was thinking, Shit, are they here again? while a half-remembered sound of rotors echoed in his mind. Gotta get up! She said so!

Then I caught a brief stolen image of a gun butt arcing toward his face and then a fusillade of pain that cut out everything. The anguish was excruciating, instant, and blinding. Just before Elmo blacked out entirely, I heard him thinking, Jesus, they're going to fucking kill me.

… the noise of the helicopters had awakened Blaise, for I caught his thoughts spilling from the windshield. There was an image: the blue beam of a searchlight throwing crazed shadows on a wall. Erotic dream images mingled with shabby reality for a moment before his mindwalls came up and shut him away…

Croyd was jittery. Thoughts wheeled like bats in his head. Choppers went right by the tower, two of 'em, and more lights out in the bay coming in… this is crap, just crap… gotta move, gotta be goddamn careful… can't get caught here.

I followed Croyd's stream of thoughts down from his tower and into the building proper. He was near Elmo's room when the stream of consciousness suddenly halted. From what any of us had seen, Croyd's new body-he looked like an armadillo mated with a man-was fast and strong, as well as pretty well armored. His eyesight sucked, but his hearing was good; scent was even better.

Smell machine oil, sweat. Something else. Look around the corner; goddamn this lousy eyesight… That has to be Elmo… shit, those are troopers.

Through Croyd's ears, I could hear the distinct deadly clicking of a weapon being readied, and then Croyd-with a psychic yell that rang in my own head-charged them…

I could tell that the one named Danny was pissed because Ray wanted to waste time with the damn dwarf, but then, Ray was the squad leader, a by-God new sergeant… and it was Ray's call. just get it over with… this place gives me the creeps… fulla jokers and God knows what around that fucking blob in the lobby. Danny was listening to Ray laughing. He didn't really want to see the dwarf's head turn into strawberry jam. Just wanna get outta here…

Danny heard Ray's CAR-15 fire, but at the same time something like a big fast armadillo crashed into them-from the snatches of vision I caught, I knew it was Croyd. No!… shit, kill the damn thing… Danny was firing, and-a brief headflash-Ray was rolling on the ground grabbing at his throat,… shit, the joker crushed his windpipe… and Croyd was clawing at Jerry who screamed too, and Danny let go with a burst that tore into Jerry, and Jerry went down, no, no! and a ricochet hit Danny, Jesus, I'm hit! Fuck, it hurts, it hurts, and the armadillo had snatched up the dwarf and scooted down the hall, limping but alive…

Molly Bolt had jumped a Huey pilot… wonder how the fuck you're really supposed to fly one of these things P… not that it really matters, just turn the stick over this way and that way… kinda fun

… I could feel the vertigo tug at her as the craft began to buck and cant over. The troops crouched in the open rear were shouting (I heard their thoughts, too, of course). Shit… who's that? I caught a glimpse through Molly's eyes as she glanced over her shoulder. A military pistol was pointed at her. A GI, a young black man, looked at her with strange sad eyes. "Goddamn, Chuck, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." Shit!!… and then there was a pinwheeling shock of disorientation as Molly jumped away.

I could feel her for long seconds afterward, gasping, waiting to feel the shattering impact of the bullet, before she realized that she was in her own body again.

Captain Hayes was thinking that it was hell to have a fight with your old lady just before a mission. Marge, damn it, they kill people. You understand? They'd carve you up on the street because you looked wrong at them. They're vicious and mean. They're animals. He kept replaying the argument in his head. Marge argued that they were just kids, just kids, and she didn't understand. Shouldn't have told her in the first place. She's just worrying, that's all. Just worried about me.

Hayes was worried too. I could feel it and see it in the quick headflashes between thoughts. He clung to the throbbing, shaking walls of the Huey, staring at the packed troops in the craft's belly. Good men, all. None of them deserve to die, but some will. The bastard kids here will see to that, no matter what Marge says. Hayes cleared his throat; the forming words interfered with his thoughts. "Thirty seconds," he shouted over the din of the rotors.

… can see the place now, flares lighting the place like it's Nam all over again… choppers wheeling around that fucking toy palace like big angry vultures…

"We're landing in jumper territory."… of course they know that, but if I talk, they can't think about what's going to happen… "So make sure you watch your partner."… big fucking ball of of flame, JESUS! was that a Huey?…"Remember that your guns are rigged."… can't see it now, but that was one of ours going down, shit… "So you're the only ones who know the trick."… had better work had better damn work… "You see one of our guys pulling the trigger and nothing's happening, they may-may-have been jumped. So don t shoot 'em; use the tranks." Or just shoot quick anyway… "Policy is fire only when fired on," (… which may get us dead…) "but I want you to do whatever it takes. Don't worry about policy. Stay alive however you gotta do it. Understand?"

His men shouted affirmation back to him.

The Huey jerked (man, those shacks across the way are going up like crazy), dropped. I saw an image of dirt swirling crazily in sudden floodlights.

"Go, GO, GO!" Hayes was shouting, and his people were spilling out the door toward the jumper buildings. Like a ghetto, a slum. Like what I remember of Saigon, just before we left… Hayes was lagging behind, his people already in the buildings as he crossed the open ground in front.

A burst of small arms fire caught him then. He screamed and went down. The horror of what he saw drove out all the words for an instant. I saw the remnants of his body as he did. We both knew, even as the pain hit and the vision started to go.

… let it end, God, just let it end please… can't believe they actually shot me, all that time in Nam and not a scratch… still see my hands all slick and warm… there was so much blood, so much, too much and all mine… cold and black… they always said that there'd be light and voices and family, but there's only blackness… blackness… Marge?…

Video was screaming, an endless sobbing agony. I don't want to see it anymore, I don't want to see it…

But nothing could erase the sight in her mind. She projected it helplessly. In her mind, it overlaid everything, the reality of the mud in which she was sitting, the cold fog that wrapped around her, the ugly chunks of raw meat covered with tattered olive cloth that she very carefully avoided looking at but that kept intruding into her thoughts.

Video cried. She wailed. It did no good. There was no way to block out the scene.

Like a movie stuck in a pathetic, awful loop, Video replayed the scene she'd witnessed:

The sound came first, a loud erratic whine, then as she turned to look, the chopper came careening across the foggy bay. The craft was obviously in trouble, tilted way over and out of control. She thought for a moment it was going to make it, but even as she glimpsed the frightened dark face in the cockpit, one of the rotor blades tore into the earth, and the chopper slammed itself into the Rox. It disintegrated and exploded, transforming itself into a rolling blazing hell that left a trail of burning fuel and scattered broken corpses like gory seeds. Then the entire glowing incandescent ball slammed into the makeshift homes near the docks. They went up like tinder, roaring and throwing sparks.

There was no way to tell the nat screams from those of the jumpers, and the burning bodies all looked alike.

… Eavesdropping on Chickenhawk, I could hear him giving Kien the tale about the Egrets' last shipment of rapture, but every time Kien opened his mouth to reply, strange discordant sounds came out: sirens, explosions, an insistent rhythmic pounding. Kien kept talking through the din, waving his hands as if he were really saying something, only now they weren't in Kien's office at all but out in a field somewhere, and helicopters were circling…

Hell! Those are real choppers! Damn, I've been asleep…

Chickenhawk, in his tower perch high above the Rox, rose cautiously to his feet and looked down at the Rox.

Omigod

The shock seared the images into his mind so that I saw them as well. Thunder roared from the jumper side of the docks. An impossible gout of orange and yellow flame tumbled into the dwellings there. The Rox was the set of a war movie, a night battle scene. Two helicopters had landed near the west wing, another in the front court; more were sweeping in from the bay. Flares dripped in the sky, searchlights tore bright holes in the darkness. Chickenhawk could see muzzle flashes and hear the chattering gunfire.

Choppers were landing on the jumper side of the island too… full-scale assault… makes sense. They'd've been told how the jumpers chewed up the cops. Best tactic would be to hit them fast, hard, and with lots of people… fuck, two more choppers coming in from the east… gotta see Bloat, see what he needs me to do…

Chickenhawk launched himself from his roost, but somebody below must have seen the motion and shot at him, for suddenly his thoughts were panicked and strange,… can't move the wing… falling… oh dear God, it hurts… all the wingbones snapped…

He fell most of the way.

Panic leaked like bitter syrup from Blaise's mind. There are too many of them. I can't control them all. It was a spoken thought, and I knew that he was talking to Durg, for I also sensed that odd emptiness that was the Takisian's mind. Blaise's shields had collapsed. His mind was spewing out glimpses of death, of soldiers firing on soldiers, of jumpers lying on a bloody floor, of Durg (my God, could the man really move like that?) flashing through combat like a well-oiled killing machine. Another troopship was landing by the medical building, more soldiers running crouched toward them. What do we do? What do we do?

Blaise was terrified.

Only a bit of Durg's reply filtered through the clamor in Blaise's mind. "… leave while we can… not safe here any longer" Durg was saying.

"To where?" Blaise replied, but then a thought interrupted his question. The image of a seashell flamed in his mind.

Suddenly I could sense resolution. "Kelly!" he shouted at Durg. "Find the bitch. Now!"

For several moments, I caught nothing else from Blaise. Then there was another brief flash… make you fucking fly this thing, asshole

… And then the image of one of the grounded troopships and its terrified pilot, his mind snared in Blaise's. Kelly was with them, stumbling along in Dung's grasp, half blind with fear.

Out of here. I'm out of here now, Blaise thought. The last image I caught from any of them was the sound of rotors screaming…

Kafka's voice brought me back. "You're the only one who can tell us what's going on, Governor!" he was screaming. "Where do we need to go? What do you want us to do?"

Kafka was gesticulating furiously in front of the Temptation, his carapace rattling like a bunch of tin cans. He was scared, and thinking that this was too much like the Cloisters when everyone ganged up on the Astronomer. Jokers crowded around him, armed with everything from baseball bats to Uzis.

Kafka kept shouting. "Bloat, come onl It sounds like the fighting's heading our way."

Kafka was right. I could feel it, like a dull scarlet tide rolling toward the building. " I didn't want to know them," I said. No, let's be fair-I was babbling. " I shouldn't have to know them."

"Bloat, man, jokers are dying out there!"

"They're just people. All of us." I was trying to blot out all the voices of the Rox. I couldn't. Behind Kafka, St. Anthony wrestled with demons and other fantastic creatures. They swarmed over him, biting and clawing.

"Bloat!"

I sighed. "There are three squads in the west wing already, coming up the side stairs. There's another group approaching fast from the east, near the water. In a few seconds, they'll be stuck in open ground. Forget the jumper side of the island; marines are everywhere over there. All the squads have orders to make for the Administration Building after they've secured their first objective. They'll all be coming soon."

Kafka was snapping orders as I relayed positions. Jokers scattered, howling like mad things. Guards fanned out to protect the lobby and the rooms behind where my body lay helpless.

I heard the gunfire rise and swell in volume. I felt the deaths continue.

I was staring, immobile, as my mind roamed my poor Rox, my embattled island. No one had ever told me it was like this. Nobody could have, I guess. I just wanted it to stop.

Chickenhawk half fell, half glided through an open window in the balcony. Blood splattered his feathers, and one wing was crumpled and torn. "Bloat-" he began.

" I know," I said as one of the jokers ran to tend to him. "You'll be all right, man. It'll be okay." One of those cliches that tumble out when you're not thinking. Frankly, I wasn't sure anyone was going to be "all right." I wasn't sure any of us were really going to live through this.

"It's hell, ain't it?" someone said, and I looked down to see the penguin. It looked worried.

Then hell came to pay a small personal visit.

There were screams from behind the doors leading into the lobby. Gunfire stuttered its lethal percussive speech. I felt Vomitus and Mothmouth die just outside. The doors kicked open, glass scattering across the tiles. Soldiers in riot helmets, fatigues, and Kevlar armor were spilling out: from the doors, from the balcony.

Theirs were not nice thoughts. Not at all. These people had seen their companions hurt or killed already in the fighting. They were only thinking of staying alive.

Well, that isn't quite accurate. Let me qualify the statement. The way they intended to stay alive was to make sure that The Enemy was dead.

"Move and you've had it!" one of them shouted, waving an assault rifle. I thought people only talked like that in the movies. It was almost enough to make me giggle… almost. He had a lieutenant's bar on his shoulder and a badge on his Kevlar chest that proclaimed him to be I. SHER.

The penguin moved. It looked at me. "Sometimes ya just gotta do something, Gov'nor," it told me.

The creature made a mocking sound halfway between razzberry and caw, and launched itself at the lieutenant. The officer-a boy really, not much older than me-didn't even hesitate.

The stream of bullets nearly ripped the penguin in half. Bright arterial blood splattered everywhere-over me, over Kafka and the other jokers, over the Bosch painting. Bits of feathered flesh stuck to the glass walls, trailing rivulets of scarlet. The carcass, most of it, lay half on, half off my dais, and the kid was still firing wildly; I know that some of the bullets hit me, though I didn't feel much besides a distant dull ache. Ricocheting slugs tore more glass from the huge panes. I couldn't even hear the sound of the glass hitting the floor over the gun. The noise was deafening, the smell of cordite and oil and blood overpowering.

The silence when the burst had finished was long.

The kid laughed-like I might. His eyes were wild and strange. He'd enjoyed that; it made him feel powerful. When he looked around the lobby, he was looking for a new target. Just let one of them twitch, even a little bit…

The hatred in the room was damn near thick enough to touch, like a red-tinged fog in my mind. I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do, and these SOBs were waiting for an excuse to let loose.

Sher barked "You Bloat?"

A couple dozen sarcastic answers came to mind; none of them seemed particularly smart. "Yes."

"Call off your goddamn dogs. Do it now."

I listened to the continuing carnage outside the building. I looked at the jokers nearest me: Kaflca, video, Shroud, Chickenhawk, maybe a dozen others. They were all watching, like they expected me to do something, and I'll be damned if I could see anything to do. I'd failed, all around. My incompetence had killed them as surely as if I'd pulled the fucking triggers myself. Penguin blood dripped from my sides like an accusation.

"We're not dogs," I told Sher. "We're people."

"Fuck that shit. it's all over, asshole."

"I-I" I stuttered. They were all still looking at me, jokers and soldiers both. "I can't call them off "

"I thought you were in charge," Sher spat.

I laughed, bitterly. "Yeah. That's right. Of course I'm in charge. I'm the governor." I lashed myself with the word. The kid snarled. He whipped his rifle around.

He fired.

St. Anthony flew apart in a spray of paint-flecked chips. The surreal landscape of Bosch's dreams ripped into long splinters, gouged and broken. A menagerie of deformities expired as the kid's weapon bucked and roared and shredded the triptych. The entire frame of the Temptation canted and slammed to the floor in pieces.

Ruined.

"Not" I screamed, loud in the silence after the gunfire. "Now you listen, Governor," Sher was saying, thou the din of the gun had made us all half deaf. "Make them stop. Or this time it's the roach here."

The muzzle pointed at Kafka.

"I can't, damn youl Listen to me="

He didn't give me a chance to finish. "Bye, roach." I heard Sher's resolve. I watched the finger slowly tighten, and I knew he'd do it.

I knew.

"Not" I screeched again.

Bloatblack was falling like thick lava from my sides. I was sick-sick of death, sick of destruction, sick of my own inability to do anything. The rage and hatred had built up in me past endurance. With that… well, with that was the same feeling I'd had once before, when the caves had been created. Only this time the surging power was a darker and deeper sensation. Bigger than last time, but more a part of me, if you know what I mean. It was like… I don't know, like imagining something in my head and then "thinking" it outside.

And there it was. Abracadabra. Poof.

Everything happened in that instant I shouted "No!". It happened when I knew that if I didn't do something now, I was going to watch Kafka die as Peanut had, as the penguin had, as I'd heard and seen jokers die throughout the Rox tonight.

"No!" I screamed, and something within me leapt out like a savage creature. I knew what I wanted, and I shaped it. I'm not sorry for it. I'm really not.

I wanted death. I wanted revenge. I wanted to make widows of these soldiers' wives and orphans of their children. I wanted them to fucking suffer.

The fragments of the Temptation stirred on the floor. A thick greenish fog swirled at ankle level, coiling and rising. Groans and screams echoed, as if coming from some vast subterranean well. The sights and sounds made Sher swing his muzzle away from Kafka. The kid's eyes widened at what was coming from that fog, rising with it as if striding up from the depths.

The kid screamed.

He held the trigger down, a long and noisy burst.

A hand reached from the fog and snatched at the barrel even as Sher was firing. The hand flipped the rifle, reversing it, and then the weapon fired again.

Sher's body danced backward in a ballet of death, moving to the jittery music of the bullets slamming into his body. He screamed wordlessly, but I could hear his thoughts, and I didn't care. It was my hand that had taken the weapon from the kid, even though the hand that had come from the fog had been clawed and green and scaly. It had been my hand-because I'd made it move. I'd ordered its actions, and it had responded.

Sher was dead long before the body stopped twitching and fell to the floor. His squad was staring, momentarily stunned.

It took only that instant of hesitation for them to die as well. A tropical hurricane wind roaring from below shredded the fog, and I took each tendril and made it a thing, a creature of Bosch.

A joker. A demon.

They poured out, shrieking and vengeful: the stag-headed man; a merman in full medieval armor riding a flying, metalscaled fish; a featherless bird with teeth stolen from a Tyrannosaurus; a claw-legged, man-size toad; a cat-demon; a ferocious winged fish bearing a unicorn's horn; flying devils of all descriptions…

Tey tore the guns away from the soldiers and threw them back to us. The soldiers went down under a clot of swarming attackers.

My demons tore the limbs from their living, writhing victims. They died slowly and horribly, and I…

I relished every last instant of their pain. The floor literally ran red with blood.

I laughed. I howled. I chuckled.

My jokers celebrated with me. "Out!" I cried to them, and my fantasy multitude echoed the word with their shrill inhuman voices. "Drive them all away! Kill any of them you can!"

Flowing like a massive black cloud,. my troops were gone. My will went with them. I sent them hurtling against the intruders. With their power, I ripped the choppers from the sky and tore the hulls open on their boats. They killed, they maimed, they destroyed.

More of my cavalry swooped down from the sky. Some were jokers riding armored flying fish and armed with (if I could believe the eyes of the Rox) swordfish lances. At their flanks, hags and beasts and creatures of all descriptions plummeted down from the false dawn glow, ablaze in their own infernal light. The apparitions were incandescent, painful to look upon.

The demons landed and tore the guns from the hands of the nats even as the soldiers fired on them. The joker riders flushed out the hidden troops and drove them into the open. The shining, awful hordes whooped and howled and dove at them; the riders impaled them on their strange lances. The soldiers fled before them. In a very few minutes, the attack was broken. The troops were fleeing the Rox any way they could, and my army-my dream army-pursued them. Briefly, anyway.

I was tiring rapidly. With my exhaustion, the summoned creatures of my mind lost strength as well. Those soldiers who made it to their boats or to their choppers I let go as the images of Bosch turned again to wisps of fog and faded away. That night, I'm told, less than half the troops returned to their bases. The rest the bodies-were thrown into the Rox sewage system to rot. There was no place on the Rox to bury them, even if we'd wanted to.

So in essence, I suppose, I eventually ate them.

You know what? I didn't care. In fact, I rather enjoyed the thought.

It wasn't until hours later that I started shaking.

Lovers