Jokertown Shuffle

5.

The city was afire, though it did not burn.

Brennan had never felt such heat. The air shimmered with it. It rose off the pavement in waves, licking his face like the fetid tongue of a great panting beast. It crawled over his body, sending tendrils of sweat trickling down his back and legs. If he had been of a religious bent, he'd suspect that this was hell. He remembered the motto commonly found embroidered on jackets favored by combat vets in Nam: I'm going to heaven when I die 'cause I've already spent my time in hell.

Maybe this wasn't hell, but it was the city of Brennan's worst nightmares. He moved on down the alley, stepping over the bubbles of asphalt oozing through the cracks in the pavement. The buildings surrounding him were decaying, the streets buckling and choked with uncollected trash. It was a ghost town. No one but Brennan walked the garbageinfested streets.

He emerged from the alley and looked up at the rusted and bent sign hanging overhead from the streetlamp: Henry Street. The Crystal Palace, then, should be…

Brennan looked down the street, and there it was. The Palace still stood in this place. And if the Palace still stood… Brennan found himself drawn down the street like a sailor pulled helplessly to siren-infested rocks.

The door to the Palace was unlocked. Inside it was dark and cool. Brennan felt a shiver go through him as the sweat running down his face and body suddenly evaporated, leaving him cold and clammy.

Maybe it was the coolness of the Palace's interior that caused the shiver. Maybe it was the sight of her sitting in her customary table in her customary high-backed chair, barely visible in the dark, her customary glass of amaretto sitting by her hand.

"Chrysalis," Brennan whispered.

She looked at him, the expression on her fleshless face as unreadable as ever. Chrysalis was a woman of blood and bone, her skin and flesh invisible, her muscles mostly so.

Some found her hideous. Brennan had been fascinated by her.

"Is it really you?" he asked.

"Who else would be sitting in this place, in this body, drinking amaretto from a crystal glass?" the spectre asked. Brennan shook his head. She hadn't really answered his question. Perhaps the rules governing this skewed dimension didn't allow her to. Or perhaps she was forbidden to speak clearly by the rules that governed his skewed subconscious. "You knew everything that happened in Jokertown," Brennan said. "What about in this place?"

"I know you," she replied. "I know something of that which goes on in your mind."

"Can you help me?" he asked. "Can you help me find Jennifer?"

If the spectre was upset by his mention of her rival, she didn't show it. "Look in the center of things," she told him. "You will find that which is most precious to you in the arms of your greatest enemy. But be careful. You are not alone in this world."

"Is this place," he asked her, "real?"

"It seems real enough to me," she replied.

"Me too," Brennan said in a small voice. He hesitated. He wanted to touch her, but somehow he didn't think that was a very good idea. He was afraid that she would dissipate like smoke. Worse, he was afraid that she would feel warm and alive, like solid flesh. "I have to go," he finally said. Chrysalis nodded. "Another quest," she said as Brennan backed out of the room. "Be careful, my archer. Be very, very careful."

It seemed to Brennan that she looked sad, but there was nothing he could do to cure her sadness. He just took a piece of it with him as he left the Palace for the last time.

Outside, the sun was so bright that he had to blink against its glare. It hadn't gotten any cooler, either, and he broke out in an instant sweat as he stood outside the Palace considering his next move.

If he was to take Chrysalis's advice, he should look for the "center of things." That, unfortunately, was a rather nebulous description. He started up the street, thinking about it, and then he noticed that another part of Chrysalis's prophecy had come true.

He wasn't alone.

There were people on the street. Most were wearing the blue satin jackets of the Immaculate Egret gang, or the face masks of the Werewolves. They stood singly or in small groups, in front of, behind, and all around him.

Brennan reached for the Browning holstered in the snug of his back but came away empty. His gun, it seemed, hadn't been translated to this place with him. Then he suddenly realized that it might not matter whether he had his gun.

Add the men surrounding him were already dead.

Add were bloody. All had open wounds. Most had arrows sticking in chests, throats, backs, or eyes. Their faces, as Brennan watched them approach, were mostly familiar, and he realized that these were the men he had kidded since coming back to the city.

There were a dot of them.

Brennan was momentarily frozen, unable to decide upon a plan of action as the dead men approached. There was a sudden movement, a sudden flicker of motion that Brennan caught out of the corner of his eye. He whirled to face it head-on and, saw a ghastly-grinning man with a horribly tattooed face tanding within arm's length of him.

It was Scar, the teleporting ace and gang deader who Brennan had kidded when he'd first come to the city. Scar's face was tattooed with the scarlet and black whorls that were the mark of the Cannibal Headhunters. He was a sadistic ace who took vast delight in utilizing his power to help him slowly slice up his victims with a straight razor. "I'm back, asshole," he said in a ghastly whisper through the throat that Brennan had crushed with a bowstring. "And this time I've got help." He gestured at the company of dead men slowly surrounding them in the brutal heat.

"You'll need it," Brennan said with a confidence he didn't totally feed. "I already kidded you once."

Scar hissed in rage, disappeared, and reappeared right in Brennan's face. He slashed out with his straight razor. Brennan ducked and half blocked the blow, but not before the razor cut across his chest, slicing his sweat-soaked T-shirt and scoring the flesh underneath. Scar disappeared, then flicked back into existence half a dozen feet from Brennan.

"Time to play," the sadistic ace said.

Brennan felt blood mingle with the sweat running down his chest, and he suddenly realized that he could die in this place. He looked around quickly, spotted a narrow gap between two dead Egrets who were closing in on him, and sprinted for it. Brennan stiff-armed the Egret who moved to intercept him and pushed his way through.

"Run, you bastard, run!" Scar screamed with crazed delight. "You'll never get away, never! You're meat-dead, rotting meat!"

Brennan ran, the dead men on his trail, Scar watching and laughing horrible constricted daughter.

Rick and Mick held up the pickle jar and looked at it intently. Brutus stared back at them, his face forlornly pressed up against the glass, bruised and swollen. Blood trickled from his nose, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to cradle his broken right arm as Rick shook the jar and watched the joker bounce around.

"Why are we bringing the little geek with us?" he asked Kien.

Kien glanced down at him as he drove carefully through the flurry of fat damp snowflakes. "Ultimately, as a receptacle for Captain Brennan s soul. After we've captured them, I've decided to have our jumper allies transfer me to his body for a while and him to that thing."

"Cool," Rick said. He gave the bottle another shake. "Better take the did off and give the geek a little air," Mick said. "He's starting to turn blue."

Kien chuckled indulgently, then turned his attention back to the street. Kien didn't dike driving, and he liked driving in snowstorms even less, but he wanted privacy on this trip. Once it was over, he would have another body, another identity, one that no one would survive to know about. Not the jumpers who would effect the transference. Not even Rick and Mick. He glanced at the monsters torturing the helpless little joker. They were getting almost as much fun from that as they had when they manhandled the joker until it told where Jennifer was being kept in the clinic.

They had their crude uses, but Kien knew he wouldn't miss them. It was time to invest in a better grade of help.

Kien pulled into the clinic's parking lot, next to the van that had ARCHER LANDSCAPING AND GARDENING painted on its side. It had taken months of detective work to track down Brennan and his bitch, but nothing was beyond Kien's power. Nothing.

"All right. Wait here until I send for you, then bring your friend," Kien said, gesturing at the pickle jar.

Rick held it up, giving it another shake as Kien slipped out of the car. Kien would miss the thrill of being an ace when he gave up this body. He faded down to his eyes-it had taken a little practice to realize that when he faded out totally, he was also totally blind-and moved through the falling snow like an animated silhouette. He made his way to an unlocked service entrance at the back of the clinic and silently slipped inside. He paused for a moment, orienting himself, then went to the room on the top floor the pathetic joker had told him about.

It was easy to fade to nothing whenever he saw an approaching nurse or orderly, easy to fade his eyes back in when he heard them walk by. No one saw him. The door to the room was shut. Kien looked through the small window set high on the security door and saw Brennan's bitch lying in the bed, her forehead bandaged. The big joker priest, Father Squid, was standing next to the bed. Someone was sitting in a chair next to the priest, but the priest was in the way, and Kien couldn't identify him. Or her.

Everyone was intent on Brennan's bitch. Kien drew the gun he carried in his coat pocket and pushed open the door. "Be quiet," he said in his most commanding voice, "and I'll let you live awhile."

The priest turned and stared. Kien let his gun fade in until everyone could see it. "Don't be stupid," Kien said, and the priest held his ground, an unreadable expression on his ugly joker face. "Stand back, slowly. And remember, I'm not afraid to shoot."

"Listen to him," the joker priest said. "It's Fadeout, of the Shadow Fists. He means what he says."

"You're right," Kien said, laughing aloud, "but also wrong. Very, very wrong."

There seemed to be no reason to remain invisible any longer. Kien faded in as the priest stepped back from the bed, and the person sitting in the chair looked up at him. Kien stared. It was a small Asian man, white-haired, wrinkle-faced, with a long, sparse chin beard. He was dressed in shabby, patched clothes. It was his father.

Kien's gun shook as he pointed it at him.

"Such a son," his father said in the familiar hated tone of voice.

The old man shook his head sadly, and Kien started to lower the gun. It's a trick, he suddenly thought. It's got to be a trick. He raised the gun again, trembling fingers almost pulling the trigger unwillingly.

"Who are you?" Kien asked.

The image of his father shook his head again, sadly. "It is an evil child who doesn't recognize his own father, Hsiang Yu," the apparition said.

"What do you want from me?" Kien shouted, unnerved at the spectre's use of his real name.

His father shook his head. "Only the respect due me. For that," he continued, "I will give you a gift. Your greatest, fondest desire."

"What's that?" Kien asked in a shaken voice.

"Do you want the head of Daniel Brennan?" his father purred.

Kien's eyes grew wide. "You know I do."

"Then you shall have it," Kien's father told him. "If," he added in the voice of a devil, "you are man enough to take it."

His father pointed to the other side of the bed. Kien carefully leaned forward, looking over the bed, and saw Brennan lying asleep on the floor.

Kien smiled wolfishly. "This is a great gift, oh Father," he said, and pointed his gun at Brennan.

His father shook his head. "You were always one for taking the easy way, my son," he said.

Kien glanced at him, but before he could say anything, there was a sudden, terrifying wrenching. Kien felt his mind whirling into a mad vortex. He closed his eyes, but it wouldn't stop. He tried to vomit, but he couldn't. He swallowed hot bile, and when he opened his eyes again, he lurched forward to steady himself against the great teakwood desk that stood in the office of his apartment that overlooked Central Park.

He took a deep breath, fighting the nausea still rumbling through his stomach, and looked around. It was his office, all right. Everything looked normal. All his art treasures were in their places, all his expensive furniture polished and unmarred, even the surface of his teakwood desk, which had been horribly damaged during his faked death when that idiot Blaise had pinned his watchdog joker to its surface with a letter opener.

He ran his hand pensively across the desktop that was so highly polished that he could see himself in it. He leaned forward for a closer look, mumbling to himself as he realized that he was back in his old body. He was Kien again. He looked at his right hand and wrung it with his left, and then laughed a short relieved laugh. At least he had two whole hands. He looked away, startled when the door to his office opened.

Wyrm stood in the doorway. But that couldn't be. Wyrm was dead. He looked dead, Kien suddenly realized-and pissed.

"I wasss your loyal ssservant," the scaleless reptiloid joker hissed, "and I died becausssse of your ssschemes."

"It wasn't my fault," Kien protested. He still half refused to believe that Wyrm was standing before him, but the evidence was hard to ignore. It looked like Wyrm, talked like Wyrm, and even had a big ugly wound in its throat where Fadeout had stuck it with the same letter opener that had killed the watchdog joker. "Fadeout killed you," Kien added. Wyrm approached, still looking angry, and Kien drew back behind his desk. Wyrm was inhumanly strong, and his bite was highly poisonous. Kien knew that he was no match for the joker.

"I died," Wyrm hissed furiously, "becaussse you wouldn't give me the loyalty I alwayssss gave you." He loomed over Kien like an avatar of death, and the general cringed. Kien pictured Wyrm's great gaping maw crunching down ruthlessly on his throat.

"Don't," he managed to get out. "Don't," he repeated, shielding his face with his arms.

Wyrm drew back with a sneer. "You're not to meet your dessstiny at my handsss," he said, clenching and unclenching powerful fists. "But out there." The joker pointed out the window facing Central Park.

Kien came around from behind his desk cautiously and peered out. Central Park was gone. In its place was a dense, thick jungle.

Just like home, Kien thought. Just like Vietnam.