One Eyed Jacks

SPIRIT.

Inside was cool and almost dark. It used to be sunny in here on spring days like this, but that was when there was still plate glass in the windows instead of plywood sheets. The sound system was on, tuned by one of his clerks to one of those New Age easy-listening stations popular with people who spend their evenings watching Koyaanisqatsi on remote-programmable VCRs. A little thin for even Mark's blood, but at the moment better than the usual fare: Bonnie Raitt, something recent with a soft ska beat.

Good business for midafternoon, he thought, with the reflex twinge of guilt he got any time he had such commercial thoughts. A small guy with a fleshy, pointy nose and a silklike jacket with a strip-club logo on the back was haunting the glass-top counter that displayed the dope paraphernalia the Pumpkin was carrying until the inevitable Crusading DA finally got around to cracking down. He seemed to be thinking of hitting on one of Mark's stumpy, brush-cut clerks, who was sweeping the floor behind the deli counter with muttering bad grace and shooting him hate looks. She gave Mark one, too, when she noticed him. He was a man; this was all his fault.

A handful of even less descript types sat at tables hunched over racing forms and steaming cups of Red Zinger tea. A tall dark-haired woman stood at the comic rack with her back to him, looking at a reprint of an early Freak Brothers classic. The DA was after those, too. Mark put a hand back around to where his long blond hair, more ash now than straw, was gathered into a blue elastic tie. It was too tight, and pulled at random patches of his scalp like doll hands. Nineteen years this spring he'd been wearing his hair long, and he still hadn't gotten the hang of tying back a ponytail.

Absently he noticed that the woman was well dressed to be grazing the undergrounds. Usually the customers in pricey threads scrupulously confined their attentions to his sprouts-and-tofu cuisine.

His daughter chirped, "Auntie Brenda," and went running back to give the clerk a hug. The tall man smiled ruefully. He could never tell his clerks apart. They both thought he was a weed, anyway.

Then the well-dressed woman turned and looked at him with violet eyes and said, quietly, "Mark."

It felt as if one of the youthful football jocks who had been the curse of his adolescence had just chop-blocked his pelvis out from under his spine.

"Sunflower," he managed to say through a throat gone as pliable as an airshaft.

He heard the squeak-scruff of his daughter's sneakers on stained linoleum behind him. A moment of silence hung in the air, stretching gradually, agonizingly, like a taffy strand. Then Sprout boiled past and threw herself at the woman, hugging her with all the strength of her thin arms.

"Mommy."

The rat-faced man slid out of the booth and walked up to Mark. He had wet-looking black eyes and a mustache that looked as if it had been carelessly dabbed on in mascara. Mark blinked at him, very carefully, as if his eyes were fragile and might break.

The smaller man thrust a packet of papers into his hand. "See you in court, buppie," he said, and sidled out the door.

Mark stared down at the papers. Freewheeling, his mind registered official-looking seals and the phrase determine custody of their daughter, Sprout.

And the other customers came boiling up from their checkered cheesecloth tables as if tied to the same string, stuck big black cameras in Mark's face, and blasted him back into the door with their strobes.

His vision full of big swarming balloons of light, Mark staggered into the little bathroom and threw up in the toilet beneath the Jimi Hendrix poster. Fortunately the poster was laminated.

Kimberly Anne slid into the limousine by feel, watching the Pumpkin's front door with bruised-looking eyes. Around the fringes of the plywood she could see the photographers' flashguns spluttering like an arc welder.

"Poor mark," she whispered. She turned with mascara beginning to melt down one cheek.

"Is it really necessary to put him through all this?" The backseat's other occupant regarded her with eyes as pale and dispassionate as a shark's. "It is," he said, "if you want your daughter back."

She stared at fingers knotted in her lap. "More than anything," she said, just audibly.

"Then you must be ready to pay the price, Mrs. Gooding."

"My advice to you, Or. Meadows," Dr. Pretorius said, leaning back and cracking the knuckles of his big, callused hands, "is to go underground."

Mark stared at the lawyer's hands. They didn't seem to fit with the rest of him, which was a pretty unorthodox picture to start with. You didn't expect hands like that on a lawyer, even a long-haired one, especially not resting above a gold watch-chain catenary on the vest of a thousanddollar charcoal-gray suit. They jarred. Just like fording the cream wallpaper and walnut-wainscoted elegance of Pretorius's office in a second-floor walk-up in what the tabloids liked to call the festering depths of Jokertown. Or like the strange tang like pus-filled bandages that seemed to stick in the back of Mark's nose.

Mark couldn't evade the issue any longer. "I beg your pardon?" he said, blinking furiously. Behind his chair Sprout hummed to herself as she studied the array of insects mounted under glass on the walls.

"You heard me. If you want to hold on to your little girl, the best advice I can give you as a lawyer is to go underground."

"I don't understand."

"Oh, my God,"' Pretorius quoted, "you're from the sixties.' Doesn't ring any bells? You didn't see that movie they made out of W E Kinsella's autobiography? No, of course not; chewing up a blotter and sitting through a revival of 2001 three times is more your speed in movies."

He sighed. "Are you telling me you don't know what 'going underground' means? You know-Huey Newton, Patty Hearst, all those fabulous names of yesteryear."

Mark glanced nervously back at his daughter, who had her nose pressed to the glass over some kind of bug that looked like a ten-inch twig. Mark had never realized before just how nervous insects made him.

"I know what it means, man. I just don't know-" He raised his own hands, which in the somewhat stark light began to look to him like specimens escaped from Pretorius's cases, to try to draw communication out of himself, out of the air, whatever. Outside of one area of life he had never been much good at getting ideas across.

Pretorius nodded briskly. "You don't know if I'm serious, right? I am. Dead serious."

He let his hand drop forward onto his desk, onto the copy of the Post Jube had given Mark. "Do you have any idea who you're dealing with here?"

A blunt finger was tapping Kimberly Anne's face where it peered over Sprout's shoulder. "That's my ex-old lady," Mark said. "She used to call herself Sunflower."

"She's calling herself Mrs. Gooding now. I gather she married the senior partner at her brokerage firm."

He stared almost accusingly at Mark. "And do you know whom she's retained? St. John Latham."

He spoke the name like a curse. Sprout came up and insinuated her hand into her daddy's. He reached awkwardly across himself to put his free arm around her.

"What's so special about this Latham dude?"

"He's the best. And he's a total bastard."

"That's, like, why I came to you. You're supposed to be pretty good yourself. If you'll help me, why should I think about running?"

Pretorius's mouth seemed to heat-shrink to his teeth. "Flattery is always appreciated, no matter how beside the point."

He leaned forward. "Understand, Doctor: these are the eighties. Don't you hate that phrase? I thought nothing was ever going to be as nauseous as the cant we had back in the days when Weathermen weren't fat boys who got miffed at Bryant Gumbel on the morning show. Oh, well, wrong again, Pretorius." He cocked his head like a big bird. "Dr. Meadows, you claim to be an ace?"

Mark flushed. -"Well, I…"

"Does the name `Captain Trips' suggest anything?"

"I-that is-yes." Mark looked at his hands. "It's supposed to be a secret."

"Cap'n Trips is a fixture in Jokertown and on the New York ace scene. And does he ever wear a mask?"

"Well… no."

"Indeed. So we have a fairly visible but apparently minor ace, whose, ahem, `secret identity' is a man who follows a rather divergent life-style in a day when `the nail that stands out must be hammered down' is the dominant social wisdom. St. John Latham is a man who will do anything to win. Anything. Do you see how you might be, how you say, vulnerable?"

Mark covered his face with his hands. "I just can't… I mean, Sunflower wouldn't do anything like that to me. We, we're like comrades. I knew her at Berkeley, man. The Kent State protests-you remember that?" His confusion came out in a gush of reproach, accusation almost. He expected Pretorius to bark at him. Instead the attorney nodded his splendid silver head. The perfection of his ponytail filled Mark with jealous awe.

"I remember. I still walk with a limp, thanks to a National Guardsman's bayonet in my hip-among other reasons."

Pretorius sat back and gazed at the ceiling. "A radical in '70. An executive in '89. If you knew how anything but uncommon that story is. At least she's not with the DEA."

"And while we're on that subject, I have formed the impression you don't say no to recreational chemistry"

"It doesn't hurt anybody, man."

"No. Ain't nobody's business but your own; couldn't agree more. Being a Jew in Nuremberg in the thirties didn't hurt anybody either."

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Doctor, you are a big, soft, inflated Bozo the Clown doll in the climate of today, and Mr. St. John Motherfucking Latham is going to knock you all over the courtroom. So I say to you, Run, baby, run. Or be prepared for a sea change in your life."

Mark made a helpless gesture, started to stand. "One more thing," Pretorius said.

Mark stopped. Pretorius looked to Sprout. She was a shy child, except with those close to her, and the lawyer had an intimidating way-he intimidated her dad, anyway. But she faced Pretorius, solemn and unflinching.

"The question that needs to be asked is, what do you want, Sprout?" Pretorius said. "Do you want to live with your mommy, or stay with your father?"

"I-I'll abide by her wishes, man," Mark said. It was the hardest thing. he'd ever said.

She looked from Pretorius to Mark and back. "I miss my mommy," she said in that precise, childish voice. Mark felt his skeleton begin to collapse within him.

"But I want to stay with my daddy."

Pretorius nodded gravely. "Then we'll do what we can to see that you do. But what that will be"-he looked at Mark-"is up to your father."

Seven o'clock turned up on schedule. Susan-he was fairly sure it was Susan-marched to the front door to flip over the sign to SORRY-WE'RE CLOSED just as a woman materialized and pushed at the door from outside.

Susan resisted, glaring. Mark came around the counter wiping his hands on his apron and felt his stomach do a slow roll.

"It's okay," he managed to croak. "She can come in." Susan turned her glare on Mark. "I'm off now, buster." Mark shrugged helplessly. The woman stepped agilely inside. She was tall and striking in a black skirt suit with padded shoulders and a deep purple blouse. Her eyes had grown more violet over the years. The blouse turned them huge and glowing.

"This is personal, not business," she said to Susan. "We'll be fine."

"If you're sure you'll be okay alone with him," Susan sniffed. She launched a last glower at Mark and clumped out into the Village dusk.

She turned, Kimberly, and was in Mark's arms. He damned near collapsed. He stood there a moment with his arms sort of dangling stiffly past her like a mannequin's. Then he hugged her with adolescent fervor. Her body melted against his, fleetingly, and then she turned and was out of his arms like smoke.

"You seem to be doing well for yourself," she said, gesturing at the shop.

"Uh, yeah. Thanks." He pulled a chair back from a table. "Here, sit down."

She smiled and accepted. He went around behind the counter and busied himself. She lit a cigarette and looked at him. He didn't point out the LUNGS IN UsE-No SMOKING, PLEASE sign on the wall behind her.

She wasn't as willowy as she had been back in the Bay days. Nor was she blowsy from booze and depression as she had been when their marriage hit the rocks and she self-destructed at the first custody hearing, back in '81. Full-figured was what he thought they, called it, glancing back as he waited for water to boil, though he had it in mind that had become a euphemism for "fat". She wasn't; voluptuous might have put it better. Whatever, she wore forty well.

… Not that it mattered, not really. He was still as desperately in love with her as he'd been the first time he saw her, thirty years and more ago, tricycling down their southern California tract-home block.

The lights were low, just a visual buzz of fluorescents above the deli counter. Mark lit candles and a sandalwood stick. The Windham Hill mob was history. The tape machine played real music. Their music.

He brought an earthenware pot and two matching mugs on a tray. He almost tipped the assembly onto the floor, slopping fragrant herbal tea on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth as he transferred the pot to the table. Kimberly sat and watched him with a smile that held no mockery.

He spilled only a little of the pale amber liquid as he poured and handed her a mug. She sipped. Her face lit. "Celestial Seasonings and old Bonnie Raitt." She smiled. "How sweet of you to remember."

"How could I forget?" he mumbled into the steam rising from his mug.

A rustle of beaded curtain, and they looked up to see Sprout standing in the gloom at the back of the store. "Daddy, I'm hungry-" she began. Then she saw Kimberly and came flying forward again.

Kimberly cradled her, telling her, "Baby, baby, it's all right, Mommy's here." Mark sat, absently stroking his daughter's long smooth hair, feeling excluded.

At last Sprout relinquished her hold on Sunflower's neck and slid down to sit cross-legged on the scuffed linoleum, pressed up against her mother's black-stockinged shins. Kimberly petted her.

"I don't want to take her away from you, Mark." Mark's vision swirled. His eyes stung. His tongue knotted. "Why-why are you doing this, then? You said I was doing well."

"That's different. That's money." She gestured around the shop. "Do you really think this is any way for a little girl to grow up? Surrounded by smut and hash pipes?"

"She's all right," he said sullenly. "She's happy. Aren't you honey?"

Wide-eyed solemn, Sprout nodded. Kimberly shook her head.

"Mark, these are the eighties. You're a dropout, a druggie. How can you expect to raise a daughter, let alone one as… special as our Sprout is?"

Mark froze with his hand reaching for the pocket of his faded denim jacket-the one that held his pouch and papers, not the one with the Grateful Dead patch. It came to him how great the gulf between them had become.

"The way I've been doing," he said. "One day at a time."

"Oh, Mark," she said, rising. "You sound like an AA meeting."

The tape had segued to Buffalo Springfield. Kimberly hugged Sprout, came around the table to him. "Families should be together," she said huskily in his ear. "Oh, Mark, I wish-"

"What? What do you wish?"

But she was gone, leaving him and her last words hanging in a breath of Chanel No. 5.

The stuffed animals sat in a rapt semicircle on the bed and in shelf tiers along the walls. The light of one dim bulb glittered in attentive plastic eyes as the girl spoke.

Mark watched from the doorway. She had not pulled the madras-print cloth to, indicating she didn't want full privacy. She spoke in a low voice, leaning forward. He could never make out what she said at times like this; it seemed to him that the length of her sentences, the pitch of her voice even, were somehow more adult than anything she managed in the world outside her tiny converted-closet bedroom, in the presence of anyone but the Pobbles and Thumpers and teddy bears. But if he tried to intrude, to come close to catch the sense of what she was saying, she clammed up. It was one area of her life Sprout excluded him from, however desperately he wanted to share it.

He turned away, padded barefoot past the dark cubicle where he had his own mattress on the floor to the lab that took up most of the apartment above the Pumpkin.

Red-eye pilot lights threw little hard shards of illumination that ricocheted fitfully among surfaces of glass and mechanism. Mark felt his way to a pad in the corner beneath a periodic table and a poster for Destiny's gig at the Fillmore in 1970's long-lost spring and sat. The smell of cannabis smoke and the layers of paint it had sunk into enfolded him like arms. His cheeks had become wet without his being aware.

He pushed a cabinet on casters away from the wall, untoggled the fiberboard rear panel. The compartment hidden inside contained racks of vials of various colored powders: blue, orange, yellow, gray, black, and silver that swirled together without mixing. He stared at them, ran a finger along them like a stick along a picket fence.

A long time ago a skinny kid with a crew cut and highwater pants, who had just dropped LSD for the first time ever, had stumbled into an alleyway in horror, fleeing a People's Park confrontation between National Guardsmen and students in the dark angry days that followed Kent State. Moments later a glowing beautiful youth emerged: an ace for the Revolution. Together with Tom Douglas, the Lizard King and doomed lead singer for Destiny, he had stood off the Guard and the Establishment ace Hardhat, and saved the day. Then he partied the night away, with help from the kids, Tom Douglas, and a beautiful young activist called Sunflower. He called himself the Radical.

In the morning the Radical disappeared. He was never seen again. And a certain nerd biochem student stumbled back out of the alley with a head full of the strangest memory fragments.

Becoming the Radical again-if he'd ever really been the Radical-had become Mark's Holy Grail. He had failed in that quest. The brightly colored powders were what he had found instead. Not what he was looking for-but a means to acceptance all the same. To having, at least for one hour, a dose, what a long-dead Egyptian scribe once prayed for as "effective personality."

He felt stirrings down around the back of his skull, like the voices of children on a distant playground. He pushed them back down, away. From below the racks he took a bong with a cracked, smoke-stained stack. Right now he needed chemical sanctuary of a more conventional kind.

He soared upward from the roof, upward from the smog and squalor into blue morning sky that darkened around him as he rose. The Village dwindled, was subsumed into the cement scab of Manhattan, became a finger poking a blue ribbon between Long Island and the Jersey shore, was lost in swirls of cloud. Clouds hid the shitbrown garbage bloom from the bay into the Atlantic: a blessing in his present mood.

He rose higher, feeling the air chill and attenuate around him until it was gone, and he floated in blackness, with nothing between him and the hot healing eye of the sun.

He stretched, feeling his body fill with the wild energy of the sun, the lifegiver He was Starshine; he needed no air, no food. Only sunlight. It hit him like a drug-though he knew the rush of cocaine and sizzle of crystal meth only at one remove and unwillingly, through the experiences of Mark Meadows.

From the Olympian height of orbit you could barely see what a splendid job man was doing of fouling his own nest. He ached to spread the word, the warning, to help the world to its senses with his poems and songs. But the moments of freedom were too few, too few…

He felt the pressure of other voices within, dragging him back to Earth, in thought if not yet in body. Meadows had a problem, and he knew that this brief liberation was Mark's way of consulting him. As he would the others.

Changes are due in your life, Mark Meadows, he thought. But what might those changes be? If he himself could do no more, he wished Meadows at least would involve himself more in the world, take a stand. He wished Mark would give up his habits of drug abusethough he couldn't escape irony there, since if Mark went completely straight, it would be in effect the end of him, of Starshine in his golden body stocking, floating up above the world so high.

He gazed off around the molten-silver limb of the world. A gigantic oil spill was fouling the coast of Alaska; for all his powers, what could he do? What could he do to halt acid rain, or the destruction of the Amazon rain forest?

That last he'd even tried, had flown to Brazil on wings of light, begun destroying bulldozers and work camps with his energy beams, putting the workmen to flight, burning the rotor off a Gazelle gunship that had tried to drive him away-though begrudgingly he had caught it before it crashed, and eased it to a soft landing on a sandbar. Unworthy as they were, he didn't want the crew's deaths weighing down his soul.

He had gotten so engrossed in his mission, in fact, that he'd overstayed his hour, stranding Mark in a smoldering patch of devastation in the middle of the Amazon basin with a whole regiment of the Brazilian army closing in and mightily pissed off. Even with his other friends to call on, Mark had some bad moments getting back to the States. He'd been so miffed he hadn't summoned Starshine for six months afterward.

It did no good, of course. The Brazilian government borrowed more money from the World Bank and bought more and bigger earth-raping machines. The destruction went on with barely a hiccup.

The truth is, the world doesn't need more aces, he thought. It doesn't need us at all. We can't do anything real.

He looked into the sun. Its roaring song of life and light blinded him, suffused him. But for all his exaltation, he was a mote-a spark, quickly consumed.

And he knew that he had come to his truth.

Dr. Pretorius leaned back in his swivel chair and crossed hands over his hard paunch. His suit was white today. He looked like a hip Colonel Sanders.

"So, Dr. Meadows, do you have a decision for me?" Mark nodded, started to speak. A door opened behind Pretorius and the words stuck tight in Mark's throat. A woman had slipped silently into the room-a girl, maybe; she looked more like a special effect than a human. She was five and a half feet tall, inhumanly slim, and blue-blue green, actually, gleaming in the same shade as the dyes used in blue ice. The room temperature, already cool, had dropped perceptibly.

"You haven't met my ward, have you? Dr. Meadows, let me present Ice Blue Sibyl."

She looked at him. At least she turned her face toward him. Whatever she was made of looked hard as glass, but seemed constantly, subtly to be shifting. Her features seemed high-cheekboned and forward thrusting, though it was hard to be sure. Her body was attenuated as a mannequin's and almost as sexless; though she appeared to be nude, the tiny breasts showed no nipples, nor did she display genitalia. Still, there was some alien, elflike quality to her, something that caused a stirring in Mark's crotch as she looked at him with her blue-glass stare.

She turned her face to Pretorius, tipped it attentively. Mark got the impression that some communication passed between them. The lawyer nodded. Sibyl turned and walked to the door with sinuous inhuman grace. She stopped, gave Mark a last glance, vanished.

Pretorius was looking at him. "You've decided?" Mark reached out and hugged his daughter to him. "Yeah, man. There's only one thing I can do."

"Hello? Is anyone here?" Dr. Tachyon stepped cautiously through the open door. Today he wore an eighteenthcentury peach coat over a pale pink shirt with lace spraying out the front of a mauve waistcoat. His breeches were deep purple satin, caught at the knee with gold rosettes. His stockings were lilac, his shoes gold. Instead of an artificial hand, he wore a lace cozy on his stump, with a red rose sprouting from it.

Amazement stopped him cold. The Pumpkin was gutted. Tables were overturned, the counter torn up, the magazine racks lying on their backs, the psychedelic-era posters gone from the walls. Somewhere music played.

"Burning Sky! What's happened here? Markl Mark!" Through a doorway at the back that looked curiously naked without the beaded curtain that had always hung there stepped a remarkable figure. It wore torn khaki pants, a black Queensrykche T-shirt stretched to the bursting point across a disproportionately huge chest. With a narrow head and finely sculpted, almost elfin features set on an inhumanly squat body, the newcomer looked the way pretty-boy movie martial-artist Jean Claude Van Damme would if they put him in a hydraulic press and mashed him down him a foot or so.

He stopped and turned a cool smile on Tachyon. "So. The little prince." His English had a curious, almost Eastern European accent. Just like Tachyon's.

"What have you done to Mark?" Tachyon hissed. His flesh hand inched back toward the little H amp;K nine-millimeter tucked in a waistband holster inside the back of his breeches.

The other put fist to palm and flexed. Cloth tore. "Served loyally and without stint, as befits a Morakh." Being destroyed as an abomination befits a Morakh, Tachyon thought. He was about to say so when an equally outlandish apparition loomed up behind the creature. This one had a gray sleeveless sweatshirt and paint-splashed dungarees hung on a frame like a street sign and graying blond hair clipped skull close. He seemed to consist all of nose, Adam's apple, and elbows.

"Doc! How are you, man?" the scarecrow said. Tachyon squinted at him. "Who the hell are you?" The other blinked and looked as if he were about to cry. "It's me, man. Mark."

Tachyon goggled. A blond rocket in cutoffs shot out the door, hit the Morakh in the middle of his broad back, scaled him like a monkey, and seated itself with slim bare legs straddling his rhinoceros neck.

"Uncle Tachy!" Sprout chirped. "Uncle Dirk is giving me a piggyback ride."

"Indeed." Ignoring the Morakh's scowl, Tach stepped close to kiss the girl on her proffered cheek.

Durg at-Morakh was the strongest non-ace on Earth: no Golden Boy or Harlem Hammer, but far stronger than any normal human. He was not human; he was Takisian-a Morakh, a gene-engineered fighting machine created by the Vayawand, bitter enemies of Tachyon's House Ilkazam. He had come to Earth with Tachyon's cousin Zabb, a foe of a more intimate nature.

Now he served Mark, having been defeated in unarmed combat by Mark's "friend" Moonchild. He and Tachyon tolerated each other for Mark's sake.

Tachyon gripped his old friend by the biceps. "Mark, man, what has happened to you?"

Mark grimaced. Tachyon realized he had never seen his chin before.

"It's this court thing," Mark said, glancing at his daughter. "They start taking depositions soon. Dr. Pretorius said I needed to, like, straighten up my image."

Taking his cue, Durg patted Sprout's shins and said, "Let us go for a walk, little mistress." They went out into the sunlight on Fitz-James.

"`Dr. Pretorius,"' Tachyon repeated with distaste. The two regarded each other like a pair of dogs who claim the same turf. "He thinks you should then give in, change the way you lives-the way you wear your hair?"

Mark shrugged helplessly. "He says if I challenge the system, I'll lose."

"Perhaps if you had a more competent lawyer."

"Everybody says he's the best. The legal version of, like, you."

"Well." Tach fingered his narrow chin. "I admit I've no cause to believe that your justice' is aptly named. What are you doing to your store?"

"Pretorius says if I go in as a head-shop owner I'll get blown out of the water. So I'm selling off the paraphernalia and letting Jube take the comix as a lot. I'm making the Pumpkin into more a New Age place. Gonna call it a `Wellness Center' or something."

Tachyon winced.

"Yeah, man, I know. But it's, like, the eighties."

"Indeed."

Mark turned and went into the back, where he had boxes of refuse piled to go into the dumpster in the alley. Tachyon followed.

"What music is this?" he asked, gesturing to a tape player with a coat-hanger antenna.

"Old Buffalo Springfield. "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing."' He dabbed a fingertip at a corner of his eye. `Always has made me cry, darn it."

"I understand." Tach plucked a silken handkerchief from the sleeve of his stump and dabbed at the sweat that daintily beaded his eyebrows. "So Pretorius thinks changing your life-style at this late date will impress the court? It seems a childishly obvious expedient."

"Appearances count for a lot in court, he says. See, the judge decided to hold open hearings at the end, not just take depositions and briefs like they usually do in custody cases. And Doc Pretorius says Sun-Kimberly's attorney's trying to get the press in, and they'll play it up big; the ace thing and all. You know how popular we are now. So this image thing, it's like, if a biker gets busted for murder or something, they shave off his beard and put a suit on him for trial."

"But you are not on trial."

"Dr. E says I am."

"Hmm. Who is the judge?"

"Justice Mary Conower." He bent, picked up a box, and brightened. "She's supposed to be a liberal; she was, like, a big Dukakis supporter. She won't let all these ace haters trash me. Will she?"

"I remember her from the campaign. Last fall I'd have said you were correct. Now… I'm not so sure. It seems we have few friends on any side."

"Maybe that's why Dr. E told me to go underground instead ' of doing the court thing. But I always thought being a liberal meant you believed in people's rights and stuff."

"A lot of us thought that, once." Something stuffed in a box caught Tach's eye. He stooped like a hawk. "Mark, no!" he exclaimed, brandishing a crumpled purple top hat.

Mark stood holding the box and avoiding his eyes. "I had to straighten up. Stop doing drugs. Pretorius said they'd ream me out royally if I didn't. Might even go to the DA and get me busted."

"Your Sunflower would do this to you?"

"Her attorney would. Dude named Latham. They call him, like, Sturgeon or something."

" `Sinjin.' Yes. He would do that. He would do anything." He held up the hat. "But this?"

The tears were streaming freely down Mark's shorn cheeks now. "I decided on my own, man. After the vials I got now are all used up, I'm not making any more. There's just too much risk, and I gotta keep Sprout. No matter what."

"So Captain Trips-"

"Has hung it up, man."

"Have you ever used drugs, Dr. Meadows?"

With effort Mark pulled his consciousness back to the deposition room. The oak paneling seemed to be pressing him like a Salem witch. His attention was showing a tendency to spin around inside his skull.

"Uh. Back in the sixties," he told St. John Latham. Pretorius opposed conceding even that much. But this new Mark, the one emerging from a cannabis pupa into the chill of century's end, thought that would be a little much.

"Not since?"

"No."

"What about tobacco?"

He rubbed his eyes. He was getting a headache. "I quit smoking in '78, man."

"And alcohol?"

"I drink wine, sometimes. Not too often."

"You eat chocolate?"

"Yes."

"You're a biochemist. It surprises me you aren't aware these are all drugs; addictive ones, in fact."

"I do know" Very subdued.

"Ah. What about aspirin? Yes? Penicillin? Antihistamines?"

"Yeah. I'm, uh, allergic to penicillin."

"So. You do still use drugs. Even addictive drugs. Though you just now denied doing it."

"I didn't know that's what you meant."

"What other drugs do you use that you claim you don't?"

Mark glanced to Pretorius. The lawyer shrugged. "None, man. I mean, uh, none."

When they got back to the Village from Latham's office, Mark could tell Sprout was tired and footsore, simply because she wasn't bouncing around in the usual happy-puppy way she had when she was out somewhere with Daddy. She wore a lightweight dress and flats, and her long straight blond hair was tied in a ponytail to keep it off her neck. Mark fingered his own nape, which still felt naked in the sticky-hot spring-afternoon breeze, rich with polynucleic aromatic hydrocarbons.

A couple of kids in bicycling caps and lycra shorts clumped by on the other side of the street. They watched Sprout with overt interest. She was just falling into adolescence, still skinny as a car antenna. But she had an ingenue face, startlingly pretty. The kind to attract attention. Reflexively he tugged her closer. I'm turning into an uptight old man, he thought, and tugged again at the loosened white collar of his shirt. His neck felt ropeburned by the tie now wadded in the pocket of his gray suit coat.

The light of the falling sun shattered like glass on windshields and shop windows and filled his eyes with sharp fragments. Even in this backwater street the noise of nearby traffic was like a rocker-arm engine pounding in his skull, and each honk of a horn threatened to pop his eyes like a steel needle.

For years Mark had lived in a haze of marijuana smoke. He dabbled in other drugs, but that was more in the nature of biochemical experimentation with himself as subject-such as had called up the Radical, and subsequently his "friends." Grass was his drug of choice. Way back in those strange days of the late sixties early seventies, actually, but the sixties didn't end until Nixon did-it seemed a perfect solace to someone who had come to terms with the fact that he was doomed to disappoint everyone who expected anything of him. Especially himself.

Now he was emerging from the cushioning fog. Off the weed, the world was a lot more surreal place to be. Someone stepped from the doorway of the Pumpkin, features obscured by the broad straw brim of a hat. Mark's hand moved to the inside pocket of his coat, where he kept a set of his dwindling supply of vials.

Sprout lunged forward with arms outspread. The figure knelt, embraced her, and then violet eyes were looking up at him from beneath the hat brim.

"Mark," Kimberly said. "I had to see you."

The ball bounced across the patchy grass of Central Park as though it were bopping out the lyrics to a sixties cigarette-commercial jingle. Sprout pursued it, skipping and chirping happily.

"What does your old man think of all this?" Mark asked, lying on his elbows on the beach towel Kimberly had brought along with the ball.

"About what?" she asked him. She wasn't showing her agency game face this afternoon. In an impressionistic cotton blouse and blue jeans that looked as if they'd been worn after she bought them instead of before, knees drawn up to support her chin and hair hanging in a braid down her back, she looked so much like the Sunflower of old he could barely breathe.

He wanted to say, "about the trial," but he also wanted to say, "about you seeing me," but the two kind of jostled against each other and got jammed up like fat men trying to go through a men's room door at the same time, and so he just made vaguely circular gestures in the air and said, "About, uh, this."

"He's in Japan on business. T. Boone Pickens is trying to open up the country to American businesses. Cornelius is one of his advisers." She seemed to speak with unaccustomed crispness, but then he'd never been good at telling that kind of thing. It had been one of their problems. One of many.

He was trying to think of something to say when Sunflower-no, Kimberly--clutched his arm. "Mark, look-" Their daughter had followed the bouncing ball into the middle of a large blanket and the Puerto Rican family that occupied it, almost bowling over a stout woman in lime-green shorts. A short, wiry man with tattoos all over his arm jumped up and started expostulating. Half a dozen children gathered around, including a boy about Sprout's own age with a switchblade face.

"Mark, aren't you going to do something?"

He looked at her, puzzled. "What, man? She's okay."

"But those… people. That is, Sprout ran into them, they're justifiably upset-"

He laughed. "Look."

The Puerto Ricans were laughing, too. The fat woman hugged Sprout. The tough kid smiled and tossed her the ball. She turned and came racing back up the slope toward her parents, graceful and clumsy as a week-old foal.

"See? She gets along pretty well with people, even if…" The sentence ran down uncompleted, as they usually did on that subject.

Kimberly still looked skeptical. Mark shrugged, then by reflex touched the pocket of the denim jacket he wore despite the heat.

Maybe he did rely on the implicit promise of his 'friends' too much. He'd have to go cold turkey from that, too, one of these days. He wasn't calling up the personae too often. Occasionally he felt the peevish pressure in his brain, like heckling from the back of an old auditorium, though he had explained to his 'friends' what he had to do and thought most of them accepted it. But eventually the powders would be gone.

As it was, Pretorius would kill him if he knew he still had any of them. Pretorius thought a raid was a real possibility, and the vials contained a wider variety of proscribed substances than a DEA agent was liable to resell in a year.

But what am I supposed to do? Pour them down the drain? That felt like murder.

Then Sprout's arms horseshoed his skinny neck and they went over, all three of them, in a laughing, tickling tangle, and for a moment it was almost like real life.

The Parade of Liars, as Pretorius called the succession of expert witnesses he and Latham took turns deposing, trudged on from spring into summer. The Twenty-eighth Army taught the students in Gate of Heavenly Peace Square what the old dragon Mao had told them so often: where political power springs from. Nur al-Allah fanatics attacked a joker-rights rally in London's Hyde Park with bottles and brickbats, winning praise from Muslim leaders throughout the West. "Secular law must yield to the laws of God," a noted Palestine-born Princeton professor announced, "and these creatures are an abomination in the eyes of Allah."

A skinhead beat a joker to death with a baseball bat. The media swelled with indignation. When it turned out that the chief of staff of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee had tried the same thing back in '73, liberals called it "a meanness out there, a feeding frenzy" when people took him to task for it. After all, he had helped to pass some very caring legislation, and anyway the bitch survived.

Kimberly flitted in and out of Mark's life like a moth. Every time he thought he could catch hold of her, she eluded him. She seldom kept a date two times running. But she never stayed away long.

The hearings began.

Pretorius turned up precious few character witnesses for Mark. Dr. Tachyon, of course, and Jube the news dealer; Doughboy, the retarded joker ace, broke down and sobbed mountainously as he recounted how Mark and his friends had saved him from being convicted of murder- and, incidentally, saved the planet from the Swarm. His testimony was corroborated by laconic Lieutenant Pilar Arrupe of Homicide South, who chewed a toothpick in place of her customary cigarillo. Pretorius wanted to bring on reporter Sara Morgenstern, but she had dropped from sight after the nightmare of last year's Atlanta convention.

No aces testified on Mark's behalf. The Aces High crowd was laying low these days. Besides, most of them seemed embarrassed by Cap'n Trips and his plight.

He just wasn't an eighties kind of guy.

"Dr. Meadows, are you an ace?"

"Yes."

"And would you mind describing the nature of your powers?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean by that?"

" I mean, -I, uh-I would mind."

"Your honor, I ask that the court take notice of the witness's lack of cooperation."

"Your honor-"

"Dr. Pretorius, you needn't gesticulate. You and Mr. Latham may approach the bench."

Pretorius always thought the rooms of the New Family Court on Franklin and Lafayette had all the human warmth of a dentist's waiting room. The too-bright fluorescents hurt his eyes.

The media were back in force, he noted with displeasure as he gimped to the bench. After the publicity that attended Mark's getting served, the press had lost interest; lots of nothing visible had happened for a while.

"Dr. Meadows is refusing to answer a vital question, your honor," Latham said.

"He can't be compelled to answer. Indiana v. Mr. Miraculous, -I964. Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination apply."

With blue eyes and blond hair worn in a pageboy cut, judge Mary Conower looked more pretty than anything else-ingenue, belying her reputation as a hard-ass. A slight dry tautness to her skin gave her the appearance of a cheerleader gone sour on life.

"This isn't a criminal trial, Doctor," she said. Pretorius bit down hard on several possible responses. He was getting kind of old to pull another night in the Tombs for contempt.

"Then I object on the grounds that the line of questioning is irrelevant."

Conower raised an eyebrow at Latham. "That seems valid."

"Mrs. Gooding contends that the fact of her former husband's acehood constitutes a threat to the welfare of her daughter," Latham said.

"That's absurd(" Pretorius exclaimed.

"We intend to demonstrate that it is not at all absurd, your honor."

"Very well," Conower said. "You may attempt to so demonstrate. But the court will not compel Dr. Meadows to describe his powers."

Latham stood a moment before Mark, staring holes in him with reptile eyes. In the audience someone coughed. "You have friends who are aces, Dr. Meadows?" Mark glanced at Sprout, busy drawing doodles on one of Pretorius's legal pads, at Kimberly, who was dressed like the centerfold in Forbes and wouldn't meet his eye. Finally he looked to Pretorius, who sighed and nodded. "Yes."

Latham nodded slowly, as if this was Big News. Mark could feel the press begin to rustle around out there like snakes waking up among leaves. They sensed he was getting set up; he sensed he was getting set up. He glanced at Pretorius again. Pretorius gave him a drop-'em-and-spread-'em shrug.

"It's been suggested that you play a sort of Jimmy Olsen role to several of New York's most powerful aces. Is that a fair assessment?"

Mark tried to keep his eyes from sidling to Pretorius yet again. He didn't want Conower to think he was shifty-eyed. This justice trip was a lot more complicated than he ever thought.

… It came to him he had no idea how to answer the question. Other than, No, more of a Clark Kent role, which he badly did not want to say. He turned red and stuttered.

"Would it be fair," Latham continued, with a fractional smile to let Mark know he had him right where he wanted him, "to say that you are on intimate terms with certain aces, including one who variously styles himself Jumpin' Jack Flash and JJ Flash?"

"Um… Yes."

"Briefly describe Mr. Flash's powers for us, if you will. Come, there's no reason to be coy; they're not exactly a secret."

Mark hadn't been being coy. Latham's smug unfairness didn't make it easy to answer.

"Ah, he, ah-he flies. And he, like-I mean, he shoots fire from his hands."

Plasma, schmuck, a voice said in the back of his skull. I just pretend tit's fire. Jesus, you're making a royal screw-up out of this.

He looked around, terrified he had spoken aloud. But the mob showed blank expectant faces, and Latham was turning back from his table with a manila folder in his hands.

"I'd like to call the court's attention," Latham said, "to this photographic evidence of the damage done by just such a fire-shooting ace."

In the crowd somebody gasped; someone else retched. Latham pivoted like a bullfighter. Mark felt his stomach do a slow roll at the sight of the eight-by-ten photo he held in his hand. Judging from the skirt and Mary Janes, it had been a girl not much older than Sprout.

But from the waist up it was a blackened, shriveled effigy with a hideous grin.

Pretorius's cane tip cracked like a rifle. "Your honor, I object in the strongest possible termsl What the hell does counsel think he's doing with this horror show?"

"Presenting my case," Latham said evenly. "Preposterous. Your honor, this picture is of a victim of the ace the press dubbed Fireball, a psychopath apprehended by Mistral this spring in Cincinnati. Whatever his relationship to Mark Meadows, JJ Flash had no more to do with it than you or I or Jetboy. To show it here is irrelevant and prejudicial."

"Do you suggest I might be swayed by evidence not germane to this case?" Conower asked silkily.

"I suggest that Mr. Latham is attempting to try his case in the press. This is rank sensationalism."

Conower frowned. "Mr. Latham?"

Latham spread his hands as if surprised. "What am I to do, your honor? My opponent avers that ace powers are harmless. I demonstrate the contrary."

"I aver no such damn fool thing."

"Perhaps he would put it, Ace powers don't kill people-people kill people. I intend to demonstrate that the destructive potential of these powers is too enormous to be dismissed with a flip syllogism."

Pretorius grinned. "I have to hand it to you, St. John. You are stone death walking to straw men."

He shifted weight to the cane from his bad leg and turned to the judge. "Mr. Latham is trying to drag in atrocities with no connection to JJ Flash other than that they were committed by an ace with fire-related powers. And even if Flash were involved, to indict Dr. Meadows on that account smacks of guilt by association."

"If Dr. Meadows commonly associated with known members of the Medellin Cartel," Latham said ingenuously, "would your honor say that fact lacked relevance to his suitability as a parent?"

Conower squeezed her mouth till her lips disappeared. "Very well, Mr. Latham. You may present your case. And may I remind you, Dr. Pretorius, that I'm the one charged with evaluating the evidence?"

Mark felt more exposed and humiliated than he ever had in his life. This was worse than one of those balls-outon-Broadway dreams. All his life he'd shunned attention, in his own persona at least. Now all these strangers were looking at him and Sprout and thinking about those awful pictures.

Pretorius turned away from the bench. His eyebrows bristled over blue-hot eyes. Latham approached the witness stand with a look like an Inquisitor with a fresh-lit torch.

Kimberly was studying her fingernails. Mark looked at Sprout. Seeming to sense his attention, she looked up into his eyes and smiled.

He wanted to die.

"We need to do more, Mrs. Gooding," St. John Latham said.

"Such as what? You seem to be doing a marvelous job of emasculating my ex-husband as it is."

Latham stood. She sat on the couch, to the extent sitting was possible on a chrome-framed Scandinavian slab. It was more a matter of trying not to slide off onto the black marble floor. If the lawyer noticed the bitter sarcasm in her voice-as if she and Mark were on one side and he on the other-he didn't acknowledge it.

"Dr. Pretorius is a chronic romantic, and his notions of human nature and interactions downright quaint. Nonetheless, he is not a total fool. He is cunning, and he knows the law. And you are not without your vulnerable points." She threw her cigarette half-smoked into her drink and set the tumbler down on the irregular glass coffee table with a clink. "Such as?"

"Such as your breakdown in court during the first custody hearing. It lost the case for you then. It cannot help you now"

The two exterior walls that met at one corner of the Goodings' living room were glass. Kimberly gazed out over Manhattan and thought about how much the view reminded her of a black velvet painting. Apartments with panoramic views like this one always came off better in the movies, somehow.

" I was under a lot of stress."

"As are you now. It is not inconceivable that Pretorius might try to reduce you to another such breakdown on the stand."

She looked at him. "Is that what you'd do in his place?"

He said nothing.

She lit another cigarette and blew smoke toward him. "Okay. What did you have in mind?"

"A concrete demonstration of your husband's ace powers. Or solid evidence of the actual nature of the connection between him and Flash and Moonchild and the rest, if he is no more than a Jimmy Olsen figure."

Her eyes narrowed. "What are you saying."

"If your former husband loves your daughter as much as he claims, a perceived threat to her would certainly lead him to employ any powers he might have."

She went white, tensed as if she were about to leap up and attack him. Then she settled back and elaborately studied her manicure.

" I shouldn't be surprised that you're a bastard, Mr. Latham," she said. "After all, that's why I hired you. But it occurs to me-"

She lowered her hand and gave him a smile, poisonous and V -shaped. "It occurs to me that you're insane. You want me to use my daughter for bait?"

He didn't flinch. Didn't even flicker.

"I said perceived threat, Mrs. Gooding. I am talking about a set-piece-a stratagem. There would be no real risk."

Showing as little emotion as he, she picked up her glass and threw it hard at his head. He shifted his weight. The glass sailed past to shatter against the window. In New York, people who live in glass houses have to have stoneproof walls; it's in the building code.

"I'm paying you to win this in court, you son of a bitch. Not to play games with my daughter's life."

He showed her the ghost of a smile. "What do you think the law is but playing games with people's lives?"

"Get out," she said. "Get out of my house."

"Certainly." Calm. Always calm. Infuriating, impermeable, irresistible. "Anything the client desires. But reflect on this: Not even I can get your daughter for you if you don't want her badly enough to sacrifice."

Sprout clung tightly to her parents' hands. "Mommy and Daddy, be nice to each other," she said solemnly. "In that court place, everybody always sounds mad all the time. It makes me afraid."

She clouded up and started to sniffle. "I'm afraid they'll take me away from you."

Her mother hugged her, hard. "Honey, we'll always be with you." A hooded look to Mark. "One of us will. Always."

Sprout let Kimberly lower her onto the mattress among the stuffed toys and gazed up with wide eyes. "Promise?"

"Promise," her mother said.

"Yeah," Mark said around an obstruction in his throat. "One of us will always be around. We can promise you that much."

Kimberly sipped Chianti from her jelly jar. "Your room looks so naked without all the psychedelia." Candlelight struck half-moon amethyst highlights off her eyes. "I mean, who'd -imagine you without that huge poster of Tom Marion over your bed?"

He smiled ruefully. "The worst part is this futon I got in place of my old mattress. It's like nothing at all sometimes. I wake up with sore patches on my knees and elbows from the floor."

Kimberly drank wine and sighed. Mark tried hard not to think about the way her breasts rode up inside the thin cotton blouse. He'd been alone too long.

"Oh, Mark, what happened to us?"

He shook his head. His eyes grew misty. Way back and down, he felt derisive sounds coming out of Flash and Cosmic Traveler, sitting like hecklers in the cheap seats of his mind. It was rare enough they agreed on anything. He felt wordless care and concern from Moonchild, nothing at all from Aquarius. Starshine was vaguely disapproving. He was probably afraid Mark was going to have fun. It wasn't socially conscious.

She moistened her lips. "I know St. John is being awfully hard on you. I wish it didn't have to be this way." He looked at her with eyes that felt as if they had no moisture in them, parched by each random breath of air. It was strange, considering how close he was to tears. Would it do me any good to beg? he wondered. Oh, please, the Traveler said.

She settled back on his pillow. Even in the eighties a man got to have a pillow. For a moment she half lay that way, one leg cocked, her hair hanging in her eyes and around her shoulders with just a little bit of perm kink still in it. He thought she'd never looked so beautiful. Not even when she was carrying Sprout and they were both breaking their necks to make believe that everything was going to work out.

She sighed again. "All my life I've had this feeling of shapelessness," she began.

Mark's mouth said, "Oh, baby, don't talk that way, you're beautiful," before he could stop it. Flash and Traveler hooted and twirled noisemakers. Even Moonchild winced.

Kimberly ignored him. "It's like I've always been searching for landmarks to define myself by: jocks, radicals." A smile. "You."

She smoothed her hair back and let her head drop toward one shoulder. "Does any of this make any sense?" Mark made earnest noises. She smiled and shook her head.

"After we split I spent a few years in heavy therapy. I guess you knew about that, huh? Then one day I decided it was time to try something new, just completely different from anything I'd done before. I did the furthest-out thing I could think of set out to become a by-God businesswoman, a real hard-charging lady entrepreneur. Entrepreneuse. Whatever. Is that strange, or what?"

She laughed. "And I did, Mark, I did it. I do it. Racquetball and power lunches. I even have a muscular male bimbo for a secretary, even if he is gay. You can't imagine what this is costing me in lost time, aside from dear St. John's astronomical fees."

Mark looked away and felt selfish for reflexively thinking of what all this was costing him, and not at all in terms of money.

"Then I met Cornelius. He's really a wonderful man."

"I'm sure you'd like him if you got to know him. Only you and he are… worlds apart."

She poured them both more wine. "Domestic little creature, aren't I? I'm starting to have the horrible suspicion that no matter how liberated I think I am, my gut notion's Norman Rockwell. You know, all those Saturday Evening Post covers when we were kids-don't make faces like that, I know it's silly. But I want to capture that feed."

She leaned toward him. He ached to stroke her hair. "Anything you want is fine. I want you to be happy." She smiled at him, sidelong. "You really mean that, don't you? In spite of what's going on."

He wanted to say-well, everything. But the words tried to come so fast they jammed tight in his throat. She brought her face close to his. Her mass of hair shadowed both their faces.

"Remember that guy I went with in high school? The big guy, blond, captain of the football team?"

Mark winced at long-remembered pain. "Yeah."

She laughed softly. "About three weeks after he broke your nose, he broke mine." She set the jelly glass down beside the futon and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Funny how things turn out sometimes, huh?"

His lips were numb and stinging all at once, as if somebody had punched him in the mouth. She slipped her hand behind his head, drew his face to hers. Almost he hung back. Then their mouths touched again, and her tongue slid between his lips, teased across his teeth. He grabbed her like a drowning man and clung, with his hands, his lips, his soul.

In her sleep, in her room, Sprout cried out.

They were both on their feet at once. Mark just beat Kimberly through the door of his microscopic bedroom. Lying on her own lumpy mattress, Sprout murmured to herself, hugged her Pooh-bear closer to herself, and rolled over and back deeper into sleep. Mark and Kimberly watched her for a moment, not speaking, barely breathing. Kimberly disengaged, went and sat on the futon. Mark practically melted beside her, reaching for her. She was tense, unyielding.

"I'm sorry," she said without looking at him. "It won't work. Don't you see? I've tried this. I can't go back."

"But we can be together I'd do anything for you-for Sprout. We can be, like, a family again."

She glanced at him over her shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with tears. "Oh, Mark. It can't be. You're too much the free spirit. "

"What's wrong with freedom?"

"Responsibility took its place."

"But I can be what you wannl I'll do anything for you. I can help give you shape, if that's what you need." Smiling sadly, she shook her head. She stood up, faced him, took his face in her hands. "Oh, Mark," she said, and kissed him lightly but chastely on the lips, "I do love you. But really, it's all you can do to get up feet-first in the morning."

She was gone. Mark lurched to his feet, but her Reeboks were already doing a muted Ginger Baker number down the stairs. He hung there in the door frame, heart pounding. He could feel it especially in the scrotum; his belly and inner thighs ached and trembled with frustrated tension.

He had almost forgotten what the blue balls felt like. This shit, JJ Flash said, has got to stop.

"Dr. Pretorius, what do you mean by appearing in my court like this?"

"You mean this, your honor?" He gestured at his right leg. The immaculately tailored trousers ended at the knee. The limb below was black and green and wanted like a frog's. Yellow pus oozed from a dozen lesions. Judge Conover's nose wrinkled at the smell.

"This is my wild card. It makes me a joker-except the condition is spreading upward by degrees, and when it reaches my torso, it will kill me. So I suppose it also qualifies as a Black Queen, albeit slow"

"It's disgusting. Do you intend to make mockery of this court?"

"I intend to display only what exists, your honor. Be it the physical disfigurement of a joker or the emotional and mental disfigurement of bigots who would condemn people for having drawn a wild card."

"I am tempted to find you in contempt."

"You can't make it stick," he said affably. "Jokers may not be enjoined from public display of their traits, unless these conflict with indecent-exposure laws. That's state and federal law; would you like citations?"

Her cheeks pinched her nose. "No. I know the law" He turned to Kimberly, who sat in the box as if she'd just been carved from a block of ice.

"Mrs. Gooding, you've been to court before to get custody of Sprout. What happened the first time?" Anger flared in her eyes. He let himself show a slight smile. Good Elizabeth Taylor. Before her John Belushi days, of course.

"You know perfectly well what happened," she said crisply.

"Please tell the court anyway." He let her see him glance toward the press-packed courtroom. He and Mark had awakened to headlines screaming TRIPS CUSTODY CASE LAWYER EQUATES ACES, DRUG LORDS and ACE POWERS KILL, ATTORNEY SAYS. He wanted her and Latham to know he intended to share the joy.

There was also an article that said President Bush, after specifically pledging not to do so during his campaign, was considering calling for a revival of the old Ace Registration Acts. Didn't have anything to do with this, of course. Just another sign of the times.

She folded her hands before her. "I was under an enormous amount of stress at the time. There was our daughter's condition, and marriage to Mark was not precisely easy on me."

Touche, he thought, not that it'll do you any good. "So what happened?"

"I broke down on the stand."

"Went to pieces is more like it, wouldn't you say?" Her mouth tightened to a razor cut. "I was ill at the time. I'm not ashamed of that, why should I be? I've had treatment."

"Indeed. And how else have circumstances changed from that time?"

"Well-" She glanced at Mark, who as usual was gazing at her like a blond basset pup. "My life has become much more stable. I've found a career, and a marvelous husband."

"So you would say that you can offer a far more stable home environment to Sprout than you could before?" She looked at him, surprised and wary. "Why, yes." He expected Latham to object right then, on GPs, just to break the rhythm of questioning even or maybe especially if he didn't know where it was headed. You aren't infallible after all, are you, motherfucker?

"So you are saying that now you are a suitable parent because you're richer? What you're saying, then, is that rich people make better parents than poor ones?"

That pulled Latham's string. He actually jumped to his feet and raised his voice when he objected. Conower was pounding her gavel to restore order. She was going to sustain, no doubt about it. But he'd seen the flicker in her eyes. He'd gotten the point home. Punched her liberal-guilt button with his customary sledgehammer subtlety.

Christ, I hate myself sometimes.

After lunch break Pretorius asked, "Have you ever used illegal drugs, Ms. Gooding."

"Yes." She was forthright, meeting his eyes, not trying to evade an allegation she knew he could prove. "A long, long time ago. It was in the wind." A half smile. "We weren't as wise back then."

Nicely done. "And did you ever try LSD-25?" A pause, then, "Yes."

"Did you use it frequently?"

"That depends on your definition."

"I'll trust your judgment, Ms. Gooding."

She dropped her eyes. "It was the sixties. It was the thing to do. We were experimenting, trying to liberate our consciousness as well as our bodies."

"And did you ever stop to consider the genetic damage such experimentation might be doing?" He let it ring: "Did you not consider the welfare of your future children, Ms. Gooding?"

The courtroom blew up again.

After Conower called recess Mark was waiting for Pretorius, kind of hopping up and down without leaving his horrible chair, ergonomically designed to conform perfectly to the mass man but to fit no individual. He looked as if his ears were made of iron and had been stuck in a microwave.

"What was all that bullshit about?" he hissed at Pretorius. "Acid isn't a proven teratogen. Not like, like alcohol."

"Alcohol isn't the issue. They haven't gotten around to reprohibiting it yet, at least not in time for the morning editions. Latham wants to make an issue of drugs. So we'll give him drugs good and hard."

For a moment Mark could only sputter in outrage. "Wuh-what about the truth?" he finally managed to get out.

"Truth." Pretorius laughed, a low, sour sound. "You're in a court of law, son. Truth is not the issue here."

He sighed and sat. "Never believe that the days of trial by combat are over. Trials are still duels. It's just that the champions wised up and rewrote the rules. Now we fight with writs and precedents instead of maces, and instead of risking our own lives, all we risk is our clients' money. Or lives or freedom."

He rested both hands on the gargoyle-head knob of his cane. You don't like what I'm doing. Son, I don't either. But I take my role as your champion seriously. If I have to wallow in shit to win your case for you, that's what I do.

"These are witch-hunt times. You want to challenge that essential fact; hell, so do I. But if that's all I do, you lose your daughter. That's why they call it the system, Mark. Because like it or not, it's the way things work. Defy it too openly, it grinds you up and spits you out."

Mark and Kimberly had a date for that night, Friday. She didn't keep it. He wasn't surprised. He didn't even blame her. He felt dirtied by the way Pretorius had treated her, ashamed.

What was worst in his own mind was that he hadn't stopped him.

Saturday the guilty depression got to be too much. Mark closed the Wellness Center early. There was something he had to do. A matter of voices in his head.

The small man stood with one red Adida on the roof parapet, looking at the stop-and-go Third World traffic of jokertown a dozen stories below. He wore a red jogging suit over an orange T-shirt. His face was narrow, foxlike, with a sharp prominent nose and a sardonic bend to the eyebrows. Russet hair blew like flames in the stinking breeze.

He held a hand out before him. A jet of flame spurted from the forefinger tip. It became a ball, jumped from one finger to the next. He rolled the hand palm up. The flame swelled to baseball size, settled in the palm. For a moment it burned there, pallid in the sunlight, while he stared at it, as if fascinated. Then with a roar it shot into the high haze on a gusher of fire that seemed to spring from his palm.

He watched the flame dissipate. Then he drew a deep breath, let it sigh out through a lopsided grin.

"About fucking time," he said, and stepped into space. He let himself fall about fifteen feet, far enough to see a startled face flash by in a window. Then he straightened his body and put his arms out before him like a swimmer in a racing dive and took off flying. No point freaking the citizenry too much. The poor schmucks in J-town had enough on their plates already.

He flew north, toward the park, thinking Mark's really. put his foot in it this time. At least the poor fool hadn't quite had the nuts to make a clean break with the past. Didn't have a cold enough core to pour out his remaining vials of powder and see his other selves swirl away down the drain.

Thank God. It was chafing enough, the half-life he and the others led, like spectators at the back of an old and cavernous movie house where the film kept breaking.

He hated that he only existed on sufferance, only knew his own body, his own flesh, the feel of flight and the wind in his hair, in sixty-minute increments. For a man as full of life as he, that was hell.

Hell was a cold place, for him. The life that roared inside him, he expressed as flame.

A helicopter vaulted off a building top to his left. He angled toward it. When he was a thousand yards away, he kicked in some flame, went streaking for it like a SAM.

He threw himself into a corkscrew, drawing a spiral of orange fire into which the chopper flew.

It was a traffic chopper. The crew knew him; the announcer grinned and waved while his assistant pointed a live-action minicam at him.

JJ Flash, superstar. He grinned and waved. The pilot's face was as white as a brother's ever gets. He obviously hadn't run into Jumpin' Jack before.

That was fine, too. Flash had a certain amount of mean in him, that needed some harmless outlet. .. About then he realized where he was heading. He smiled again, wolfishly. His subconscious knew what it was doing.

Kimberly Ann Cordayne Meadows Gooding looked up from her magazine. A man was floating outside the glass corner of her penthouse, tapping with one finger.

She gasped. Her hand reached up to twitch her indigo robe a little more closed over the sheer lilac negligee. He made urgent gestures for her to open the window. She bit her lip, shook her head.

"It doesn't open," she said.

"Fuck," his mouth said soundlessly. He pushed away about six feet, rolled out his hand palm up, as if introducing his next guest on late-night TV Orange fire jetted out and splashed against the window.

Kimberly recoiled. Almost she screamed. Almost. The window wavered, melted in a rough oval. A breath of warm diesel-perfumed wind washed in. The man in red stepped through.

"Sorry about the window," he said. "I'll pay for it. I had to talk to you."

"My husband's a rich man," she said. Her voice caught, like a hand running over silk.

"I'm JJ Flash."

"I know who you are. I've seen you on Peregrine's Perch."

Without asking, he dropped onto a merciless white chair. "Yeah. And you've seen those pictures your fuck lawyer flashed around. Some poor teenybopper pan-fried by a psycho in a town I've never even been to."

She glanced at the window. The wind was blowing her hair. "Maybe Mr. Latham's the one you should be visiting."

"No. You're the one I want. Why are you jacking Mark Meadows around?"

She leapt up. "How dare you speak to me like thad" He laughed. "Can the indignation, babe. All your life… as long as you've known him, it's been the same. You tantalize and glide away. He's a putz in a lot of ways, but he deserves better."

He tipped his head sideways and looked more like a fox than ever. "Or are you just setting the boy up?"

For a moment her eyebrows formed fine arches of fury above eyes that had gone meltwater pale. Then she stood and spun, walked a few steps away. He watched the way her full buttocks moved the heavy cloth of the robe. "He must tell you a lot about himself," she said tartly. A grin came across Flash's face. He held up crossed fingers. "We're like this." The grin hardened, set. "Answer the question, babe."

She stood by the melt-edged hole. "Do you think it's easy for me?"

"From where I sit," he said, "it looks like the easiest thing in the world."

"I love Mark. Really," she said in a clotted voice. "He is the kindest man I've ever known."

"Or the biggest schmuck. Because you equate kind with weak, don't you?" He was on his feet now, in her face.

Weeping, she started to spin away. He caught her by the shoulder and made her face him. Small flames danced around his fist.

"Too many women," he said, "are afraid of themselves. They buy the old Judeo-Christian rap that they're innately wicked, tainted. So they look for a man to abuse them. Give them the punishment they deserve. Like that jock who busted Mark's beak and then yours. Is that your gig, Ms. Kimberly Perfect?"

She gasped. Smoke wisped up around the curve of one nostril, and suddenly her gown flashed into flame. Kimberly shrieked, tried to run. Flash held her. His free hand tangled the burning synthetic, pulling with surprising strength. Robe and gown tore away.

She slumped to the floor, sobbing in terror. Flash methodically wadded the burning garment, almost seeming to wash his hands with it. The fire diminished, went out. He tossed the half-molten mass in the corner and knelt beside her.

She clung to him. For a moment he held her, absently stroking her hair. Then he pushed her away.

"Let's see what kind of shape you're in, while I can still do you some good."

Ignoring her attempts to marshal belated modesty and indignation, he looked her over. She seemed unharmed, except for a reddening glare of burn stretching from her left shoulder to breast. He laid a hand over the angry patch, began to run it down.

She tried to jerk back. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Drawing the energy out," he said, preoccupied. "It's like hitting a minor burn with a piece of ice. If I get to it quickly enough, there's no harm done."

She looked at him. "I thought fire was your element," she said from somewhere down in her throat.

"It is." He cupped her breast. Where his hand had passed, the skin was white, unmarked. "Just a little parlor trick."

"You're a dangerous man to be around, Mr. Flash." His thumb stroked her nipple. She gasped, stiffened. The nipple rose. Her eyes held his. Her lips were moist. "I'm not an eighties kind of guy," he said huskily, "any more than Mark is. He's a gentle flake from the sixties. `And I'm a bastard for the nineties."

She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his head down.

In an alley behind an elegant Park Avenue high rise Mark Meadows sat with his knees up around his prominent ears.

How long has it been, that I've dreamed of that? Of holding her, feeling her, tasting her, seeing the way her eyes go dark and then pale, the way she tosses her hair and clutches and moans…

He felt two-timed. He felt like a voyeur. He felt like a fool.

He put his face in his spider hands and cried.

That night Mark sat up and killed a bottle of wine. Sprout played with her Tinkertoy set. Kimberly never came.

Eventually Mark got down on the new white linoleum he and Durg had laid and helped Sprout build an airplane with a propeller that really spun. It never got off the ground.

"I'll do it," she said.

He looked at her the way a cobra looks at you through the glass in the zoo. Without interest, without sign of even seeing.

"Do what, Mrs. Gooding?"

"What whatever you ask me to. To make sure I keep her."

She stood there, her whole body clenched, holding a breath inside until it threatened to burst her rib cage. Just daring him to ask what caused her change of heart.

He didn't give her the satisfaction. He just nodded. And she found herself hating his certainty as desperately as she needed it.

Sunday the front doorbell rang just as the sun was checking out. Mark came and stared through the replacement glass for a long moment before unlocking the door.

She had a flushed, bright-eyed, breathless quality, as though there was frost in the air. She wore a loose dark smock over blue jeans tonight.

"Feel like a walk?" she asked.

"You mean, after what happened the other day? You can still, like, talk to me?"

She recoiled a fraction of an inch. Then she went to the toes of her fashionable low-top boots and kissed his cheek. "Of course I can, Mark. What happens in court ought to stay there. Let's go."

Afterward he never could remember what they talked about. All he could remember was feeling that, despite it all, she might really be coming back this time.

Then they turned a corner and stopped. A pair of NYPD motorcycles were drawn across the street. Down the block a building waved flags of flame against the night.

Fire trucks were drawn up in front, arcing jets of water into the blaze. As he watched, one pulsed once spastically and died.

He drifted forward, pulling away from Kimberly's hand that clutched his sleeve. He felt the flames on his face. At the far end of the block a knot of skinheads cheered and jeered. One was just darting back into their midst, pursued by a fireman clumsy in his big boots. In horror Mark realized the skin had just slashed a hose.

"What's happening, man?" he asked a bystander. "Somebody torched an old apartment. Chink family on the third floor was trying to start some kind tailor shop." He spat on the sidewalk. "Slopes got it coming, you ask me. Tryin' to mess with our rent control, sneak the place into bein' commercial property. They in it with the landlord, that's for sure."

A line of cops crowded the skins, pushing them back. Mark ran forward. Sprout screamed, "Daddy!", broke Kimberly's grip, and lunged after him. Kimberly followed, trying to grab her arm.

Am ambulance was parked this side of the blaze. Beside it cops were trying to keep back an Asian family. A man and woman were wrestling with the officers and firemen who hemmed them in, howling and windmilling painfully thin arms. A man in an asbestos suit was hanging on the end of a ladder; a truck was trying to bring him into position to get inside a window, but huge bellows of flames kept lashing out at him, driving him back despite his protective clothing.

Several other men in inferno suits stood in a puddle on the street with helmets off. "You gotta get in there," a florid-faced man with a chiefs badge on his helmet yelled. "There's still a little girl inside."

"It's suicide. Fucking roofs going."

Mark was fumbling in his Dead patch pocket. Kimberly caught up with Sprout a few feet away.

"Mark! What's happening?"

He shook his head, unheeding. Black and silver-no. Yellow: useless. Gray, worse than. In his haste he discarded them. His lives fell in glittering arcs to shatter on the asphalt.

"Mark, what what in God's name are you doing?" The last two. One blue-and, thank God, an orange. He stuck the blue vial back in his pocket. Then he tossed the orange one's contents down his throat.

Kimberly saw him stagger back. And then he changed. The familiar gawky outlines blurred, shifted, condensed. A different man stood there, with film-star looks, a Jewish nose, a devil's grin. And a red sweatsuit, worn over an orange T-shirt.

JJ Flash tipped a one-finger salute to Kimberly. "Later, toots. Take care of the kid."

He launched himself into the sky.

The man on the ladder said a couple of Had Marys and prepared to jump through the window. He was going to his death. But that was better than hearing the little girl in there crying every time he closed his eyes for the rest of his life.

He jumped. Something grabbed the back of his protective hood, bought him up short, and hung him on the end of the ladder.

"Just trying to save you from yourself, pal," said the man hovering next to him in midair. "Better leave this one to the professionals."

"Jumpin' Jack Flash!" the fireman gasped.

The ace put a finger beside his nose. "It's a gas-gasgas," he said, and darted into the heart of the fire.

JJ Flash was on fire.

But his flesh didn't blacken and crackle, his eyeballs didn't melt. His blow-dried hair wasn't even mussed. In the midst of hell, he was in heaven.

E J. O'Rourke heaven, in fact the fire felt like sitting in a Jacuzzi with a couple of lines up each nostril and a teenage girl by your side eeling out of her string bikini and getting ready to audition as a sword-swallower for Barnum amp; Bailey. This was fine.

Best of all, he could still hear the little girl crying. "Where are you, honey?" he yelled. She didn't seem to hear, just kept bawling, but that was enough. He went down a short hallway wallpapered in big batts of flame, gave a wall a jolt so hot the inferno around him seemed tepid. It went away in a puff of yellow incandescence.

She was sitting in about the only square yard of the whole fucking building that wasn't on fire, a little girl in pigtails and smoldering pj's with Yodas all over them. He walked up to her, knelt, and smiled.

The roof fell in.

Even the firemen gasped when they heard the thunderous series of cracks and saw a fresh spray of sparks shoot up through the column of smoke. Sprout screamed, "Daddy!" and threw herself forward.

A Puerto Rican cop in a riot helmet grabbed her arm. "Hold on, little lady," he said. "Your daddy'll be fine." The wet lines on his cheeks made a liar of him.

JJ Flash lay on his side with the little girl beneath him and an elephant on top. He moved, felt the raw ends of ribs grate against each other.

The girl was still alive, sheltered by his body. A miracle she hadn't seared her lungs. He looked up. There was still more building to fall on him, and while the flame couldn't harm him, a structural member could damn well snuff his lights. And there was only so long before the little girl breathed in the flames that were crowding around like teenyboppers at a Bon Jovi concert.

"As Archbishop Hooper said," he grunted, " `More fire' " Hugging the girl to him, he reared up. The flame rushed in with a joyous greedy roar. He thrust his arm down its throat.

It wasn't fire that almost nailed the poor son of a bitch working his futile hose from the end of the ladder. It was a jet of incandescent gas and vaporized cement and steel, bright as the sun and a couple degrees cooler. For a heartbeat the inferno died back to a few stray flickers.

A man flew out of the hole the jet had made. Flames wreathed his body and the little girl he hugged against him. They were absorbed into his body as he landed lightly next to the frantic family.

"Here you go, ma'am," JJ Flash said, handing the girl to her mother. "Better let the medics look her over before you hug her too tight."

He turned away before they could try hugging him, scanning the crowd for Sprout. All Mark's personae shared his overriding imperative love for her; they couldn't help it. Plus he just plain liked the kid.

"Madre de Dios," the Puerto Rican cop said, staring at Flash.

Kimberly Gooding reeled away. Her mind was spinning. Unraveling as it went.

And then she saw him. Standing at the end of the block, immaculate in his camel-hair coat. He caught her eye and nodded.

For the first time since she'd known him, St. John Latham was showing something like emotion. He was showing… triumph.

She knew, then, what she had been a party to. Kimberly put her hands to her cheeks and dug in, slowly and deliberately, until the nails drew blood from just beneath her eyes.

"Mr. Latham," Judge Conower asked gravely, "where is your client?"

"She has been released to the custody of a private mental-health clinic."

"And her condition?"

Latham paused just a sliver of a second. "She is in a fragile state, your honor."

"Indeed. Mr. Latham, Dr. Pretorius, kindly step forward."

The house was packed today, and Pretorius was expending lots of effort not to have hackneyed thoughts about bread and circuses. He glanced aside at Mark, who sat beside him wearing a lightweight buff blazer over the bandages wrapped around his upper body. JJ Flash or Mark A. Meadows, his ribs were cracked just the same. Mark only had eyes for his daughter, sitting at the table in the center between the opposing camps, directly facing the bench.

"This court is compelled to find that Ms. Gooding is clearly too unstable to be entrusted with custody of Sprout Meadows."

Pretorius caught his breath. Could it be-

"On the other hand," the judge said, turning to him, your client is in fact an ace-perhaps several aces, whose names have been linked to extremely risky and irresponsible behavior. Moreover, he seems still-and in spite of his sworn testimony-to be a user of dangerous drugs, if the preliminary tests conducted on the vials recovered from the street at the site of last night's fire are any indication. In fact, at the close of these proceedings, Dr. Meadows will be remanded to the custody of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

"With these facts in view I cannot in conscience award him custody of the girl either. Therefore I declare Sprout Meadows to be a ward of the state, and remand her to a juvenile home until arrangements can be made for a foster family."

Pretorius slammed down his cane. "This is monstrous! Have you asked the girl what she wants? Have you?"

"Of course not," Conower said. "We are acting on the advice of a qualified expert in children's welfare. You could hardly expect us to consult a minor in matters this important, even if the minor in question were not… special." Sprout leapt to her feet. "Daddy! Daddy, don't let them take rne away!"

With a wordless bellow Mark jumped onto the table. Bailiffs with sweat moons under their arms were on him like weasels, pulling him back down. A couple of men in suits stepped off from the rear wall and began making their way purposefully through the crowded courtroom.

Mark managed to get a hand inside his blazer. It came out with something, darted to his mouth.

"Stop him!" the judge screamed. "Cyanide!" Another bailiff threw his bulky body across the table at him. And through him, into the front row, scattering TV cameras and onlookers and a portable spotlight array. The two bailiffs who had been wrestling with Mark fell against one another and rolled back to the floor.

In Mark's place a glowing blue man stood atop the table. He wore a black hooded cloak; stars seemed to glow within its folds. He shot the court the finger, wrapped the cloak about him, and sank with all deliberation through the table and the floor.

Dr. Pretorius thumped the bottle of Laiphroaig down on the table and measured by eye how much of it he'd killed at a shot. About a quarter, he thought; about right. He passed the bottle across the desk to Mark.

"We fucked up," he announced as Mark's prominent Adam's apple worked up and down.

"No, Doc," Mark said breathlessly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "It wasn't your fault."

"Bullshit. I told you to run; I should have stuck to my guns. Now you're on the run without the girl… sorry; shouldn't have reminded you."

Mark shook his head. "It's not like you did remind me," he said quietly.

Pretorius sighed. "You know what we did, Mark? We compromised. You cut your hair. I went against the wishes of a client because I thought it was for his own good. An aging hippie and an old libertarian: we sell out and for what? To screw the pooch."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The door opened and lee Blue Sibyl came in to massage his shoulders with her blue-ice fingers.

"What will you do now, Mark?" he asked.

Mark gazed out the window at the darkness that lay over Jokertown. "I have to get her back," he said. "But I don't know how"

"I'll help, Mark. Anything I can do. Even if I have to go underground myself." He grabbed a pinch of belly. "I'm getting flabby. Spiritually as well as physically. Might do me good to go on the run. And in this kinder, gentler America, I suspect it's what I'll have to do, soon or late." But Mark said nothing. Just stared out the window. Somewhere out there, beyond the open wound of Jokertown, his daughter was crying.

You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You by Walton Simons

Aces High was as close to deserted as Jerry had ever seen it. Two-thirds of the tables were empty, and there was nobody whom Jerry recognized as a celebrity. There was an aura of tense quietness, almost expectancy, about the place. Hiram was nowhere to be seen. Luckily, it didn't affect Jerry's appetite.

Jerry had eaten the shrimp and other goodies out of his salad and was ready to move on to his steak. Jay Ackroyd, whom Jerry had paid off, was happily chewing away at his lamb, occasionally pausing to wipe a drop of gravy from the corner of his mouth with a silk napkin. "You're not still stuck on Veronica, are you?" Ackroyd asked.

"Nope. I'm giving up destructive women for Lent. Hopefully, it's a habit I won't get into again." Jerry sliced into his steak. It was deliciously pink and oozed juice. He stared at it a moment, then set down his knife and fork and took a large swallow of wine. "Besides, I don't care about her anymore." He'd been practicing the lie for weeks. "Now, about our other friend?"

"Right." Ackroyd pulled a file from his briefcase and handed it over to Jerry. "Here's everything I could find on Mr. David Butler. It's mostly background. He's rich, well schooled, good family, good future. He has a wild streak, but most rich kids do. Lots of clubbing, probably bisexual. But this is New York."

Jerry took the file and ipped through it. "Don't know where he is now, though?"

"Nope." Ackroyd chewed and swallowed. "You seem to specialize in people that disappear, don't you?"

"I guess." Jerry didn't bother to try to hide his disappointment. If he hadn't let Tachyon talk him into going to the police, Jerry might have nailed David himself. "Any hunches?"

"There's something going on at Ellis Island. Gangs of kids, some dangerous jokers, maybe even an ace hiding out there. They call it the `Rox.' Only teenagers could come up with a name like that. Probably as safe a place as any for a kid wanted by the law. Cops don't go out there anymore." Jay grabbed a waitress as she walked past. "See if Hiram will visit with us, will you? Tell him it's Jay. If not, well, let me know when you get off." He gave her a wink and slipped her a ten.

"You're acting like a man who's just been paid," Jerry said.

"I always act this way," Jay said. "You seem a little down. Better cheer up or I'll start telling you my knockknock jokes."

"Sorry. Normally, I'm better company than this. Must be the weather," Jerry said. It was partly true. The late-winter sky had been gray for days on end. Sunshine always made the world feel nicer. Without it, even the good things left a little to be desired. "Is that all?"

"Of course not. There's weeks of work in that file," Ackroyd said. "One very important fact that came out is that for several of the jumper' incidents, David Butler had a well-substantiated alibi."

"Which means?"

Ackroyd paused a second, as if waiting for Jerry to answer his own question. "There's more than one of them. And nobody knows how many more there might be."

"Just great," Jerry said. "That's all the world needs."

"Something else bothering you?" Ackroyd rubbed his chin. Jerry was silent. "Knock, knock."

"All right. Things are tense at home. I live with my brother and sister-in-law, you know. And Kenneth seems to resent me for spending time with his wife, even though he's usually too busy to pay her much attention." Jerry shrugged. "It's not like she's interested in me. I doubt she'd date me if I were the last man on Earth.".

Ackroyd sat quietly for a moment. "Hopefully, the sun will start shining again soon. In the meantime, you might want to consider moving into your own place. Might defuse the situation. just a thought."

"Right." Jerry looked away. Hiram stepped out of his office and wove his way through the tables toward them. His charcoal suit, as always, was exquisitely tailored, but the man inside looked worse for wear. There were deep lines in his face, especially around the eyes.

"Hiram," Jay said, "sit down with us. Have dessert and an after-dinner drink. We're boring the hell out of each other."

Hiram smiled weakly and looked around, his head moving in a quick, jerky manner. "Thank you, really, but no. There's so much to catch up on, with all the other business that's been going on." He paused. "And, well, it might not be a good idea to be seen with me now. Guilt by association, you know"

"We're not worried," Jay said. "In fact-"

There was a thunderous noise from the kitchen and fire leapt out from the doorway. Jerry was knocked from his chair and into the next table. His elbow smashed into one of the table legs, shooting pain up his arm. Smoke churned into the dining area.

Jerry dragged himself into a standing position. Jay and Hiram were already making their way toward the kitchen. Customers, those that could, were picking themselves up and pushing out of the restaurant. The injured were moaning or screaming. Jerry heard the sound of fire extinguishers from the kitchen.

"Hit the exhaust fans," Hiram directed. He pushed his way into the kitchen. Jay was right behind him. Jerry followed slowly, coughing from the heavy smoke. He walked across the restaurant and stuck his head into the kitchen. One of the swinging doors had been torn from its hinges. Hiram was kneeling next to someone, lifting their head.

"I'm sorry" Hiram said. "I'm so sorry"

Jay pulled his friend up. "Hiram, call Tachyon. Tell him we have several severely injured people coming his way. Do it now"

Hiram nodded and walked out of the kitchen. Jerry stepped back. He could see the pain and anger in Hiram's eyes. It made his self-pity over Veronica seem selfish. Jerry stepped into the kitchen.

"Anything I can do?" he asked Jay.

"Not unless you're a doctor." Jay pointed his finger. There was a pop. A moaning man vanished. There were two more pops. Jay knelt down next to the final body in the room and shook his head. "It's too late for this one."

"If those other people make it, it'll be because of you," Jerry said.

"More because of Tachyon," Jay said, wiping his eyes. "But you have to do as much as you can. There's no excuse for doing less."

"Nope," Jerry said, thinking of David. "No excuse at all."

He could have asked Kenneth to bring home David's file, but that would have tipped his brother about Jerry's suspicions. Besides, the file was probably in St. John's office. Latham, Strauss was very selective about who it hired; hopefully there would be some clue as to David's whereabouts. It could be a starting point, anyway.

The door to Latham's office had been tougher than Lieutenant King's and his finger bone had poked painfully out through the skin. Jerry kissed a salty-tasting drop of blood off his fingertip and went inside. He turned on the desk lamp. The fluorescent bulb crackled to life and greenish light covered the desk. He looked about the dimly lit office. It was oppressively neat and boring. No plants, no personal photographs, no clutter, nothing to give it any semblance of life. Jerry tried the desk drawers, but they were locked. He figured what he wanted would be in the file cabinet anyway, but the key to it was likely in the desk.

Jerry crossed the room to the file cabinet. He blew on his hands. The heat was turned way down and even double-paned glass let some cold air seep in. The drawers were locked here, too. Jerry didn't want to tear up his fingers, but it looked like the only way he was going to get anywhere.

He heard a noise outside and froze. He'd known this was a possibility, but had trusted to luck that it wouldn't happen. After a moment's hesitation he changed his looks to mimic Latham's. Cold and impersonal, he thought, trying to make everything go dead inside him. He took a deep breath, turned off the lamp, and headed for the door. If it was anyone but Latham, he'd be okay.

She met him at the door. She was wearing a tight blue off-the-shoulder designer dress. Her carefully combed hair hung past her shoulders. She smelled as beautiful and expensive as she looked. After an instant Jerry recognized her. Fantasy, or Asta Lenser, and she was definitely no dog. Much closer to Myrna Loy, in fact.

He interrupted the silence with a cough. "How can I help you?"

She sighed. Jerry thought he smelled wine on her breath. Her eyes were so dilated he couldn't tell what color they were. "Just looking for company. Rumor has it that you're, shall we say, more accessible to the temptations of the flesh these days."

Jerry tried not to act excited. Not only was he not going to get caught, he was likely going to get laid. Still, he had to play it cool, or she'd know he wasn't the genuine Latham. "That might be possible. Using my residence is out of the question, though."

She twined her fingers in his necktie, gracefully pirouetted, and pulled him toward the office door. "I love it when nasty rumors turn out to be true."

Her penthouse was huge, with high ceilings and expensive modern decor. There was less black and silver on a sports car lot than in her living room. She dimmed the lights and kicked off her shoes.

"Let's see now, counselor. Bedroom number one, two, or three for you?" Fantasy put a finger to her red lips for a moment. "No. Don't tell me. Bedroom number three. My instincts are never wrong."

"I'm sure that will be satisfactory" Jerry was having trouble maintaining his Latham act. He wanted to get to the sex so he wouldn't have to talk anymore.

Fantasy half walked and half danced to the bedroom doorway, then lifted her chin and stepped inside.

Jerry struggled out of his coat and tossed it on the nearest chair, then followed. She was standing next to the large brass bed, pulling her dress off over her head. All she had on underneath was a pair of tie-on black satin panties. She undid them with dramatic flair and let them drop to the floor, then did a slow half turn so he could see her from behind.

Jerry just stared. Her body was flawless, at least no imperfections showed up in the dimmed light. She was small-breasted, but he preferred that. "You're very admirably proportioned."

She walked over to him and began unbuttoning his shirt. "You know, if Kien finds out about this, we're both in for hell on earth."

"Really?" Jerry didn't know who Kien was and frankly didn't care. It would be Latham's problem if they were found out. Right now he was deciding what size to make his penis. Asta undid his belt and began slipping his pants down. He quickly decided on a Penthouse Forum model. She cracked a pill under his nose as they sat down, naked on the bed. Jerry's head jerked back. His nose stung for a second, then everything was fine. "Actually, Kien wouldn't do anything to you right now. He's too interested in your teen groupies."

Jerry figured this might have something to do with David, so he filed the information away for future use. She put her mouth on his. He was buzzing with pleasure and didn't want to do anything but fuck. She opened her mouth and worked her tongue over and around his. Jerry lay down and pulled her with him, running his hands over her soft flesh. He couldn't feel any imperfections, either.

Her kisses were intense and aggressive. She ran her fingers across his chest and abdomen, sometimes touching him delicately with the tips and sometimes digging in slightly with her nails. She reached down between his legs and traced the underside of his penis with her fingernails. In spite of its size, Jerry had no trouble getting it up. He ran his fingers through her pubic hair, twisting it lightly here and there.

She pinched the tip of his penis, almost hard enough to hurt him.

"Jesus," he said.

"Why counselor, I didn't know you were a religious man." She pulled his hand away and kissed it. "You have a nice, light touch, but I've got something a little more intimate in mind. Any objections?" Silence. "I'm ready to call my first witness."

Asta straddled him, facing his feet, and lowered herself onto his mouth. Her scent overpowered the expensive perfume she'd doubtless dabbed on her inner thighs. He ran his tongue up and down, separating her already moist labia. He decided to put his tongue into her as far as he could; given his power, that was all the way.

Fantasy gasped, then looked down at him. It was the most sincerely hedonistic expression he'd ever seen.

" I know a lawyer's greatest weapon is his mouth," she said, "but I wasn't aware just how dangerous it was."

"A lawyer's greatest weapon is his desire not to lose," Jerry said. Whatever she'd popped under his nose was kicking in, and he felt powerful and in control.

"Here's to the winners," Asta said, tossing her hair back and lowering herself back onto his mouth.

Jerry whipped his tongue lightly across her, then pointed it and pushed in again. Fantasy breathed heavily for several moments then leaned forward, taking him into her mouth. Pleasure spread through him. Veronica had plenty of oral technique, but not the enthusiasm Asta had shown with only a few strokes. Jerry exhaled slowly and put his tongue on autopilot. She made a muffled laugh. This had to be as good as it got.

He was two-thirds of the way through both The Big Sleep and his bottle of peppermint schnapps when he heard a knock on the door.

"Come in," he said, pausing the VCR.

Beth sat down next to him and looked disapprovingly at the bottle.

"I'm depressed, so I'm drinking," Jerry explained. "It's a time-honored tradition."

"What are you depressed about?"

Jerry thought a moment, then told her everything. Told her about Veronica, and the return of his wild-card ability, his night with Fantasy. He left out his suspicions about David. She'd probably just write it off as jealousy. Beth sat there the entire time with her hand on her chin. "You know what's funny," Jerry said. "The sex with Asta was the best I've ever had, maybe the best I'll ever have, and it just depressed me. You know why? Because it wasn't for me. It was for Latham and I was just a stand-in. Nobody would ever want to fuck me like that."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Beth shook her head. "Does it make that big a difference?"

"Hell, yes. What's the measure of success nowadays? For a man it's how much money you make and how many women want to ball your brains out. I'm already rich, so the only area I can make good is with women."

"Jesus, Jerry, you don't have to buy into that crap. You're the one who decides what is or isn't a useful and happy life. Don't let Madison Avenue or anyone else tell you."

Jerry leaned away from her. "That's easy for you to say. You're married and happy. You've got what you want."

"Yes, because I know what I want and I worked hard to get it. Nobody did it for me."

"So, I'm just lazy. That's it." Jerry turned back to the TV.

"You're not just lazy, you're an emotional six-year-old. You don't see anyone's feelings or needs but your own. And you'll never get along with women as long as they're just something you do to make yourself feel more adequate." Beth paused. "It makes me wonder how you feel about me."

"I'm wondering about it right now, too." Jerry turned and looked at her. He could see the hurt in her eyes. The line was crossed, he might as well get his money's worth.

"I trusted you with all my secrets, and all you can do is criticize. Why don't you just leave me alone. Go off and suck Kenneth's dicks"

Beth stood slowly, left the room, and closed the door quietly behind her.

"I'm sorry" Jerry said, when he was sure she couldn't possibly hear. He took another slug of schnapps from the bottle. Bogart wouldn't have handled it this way. "Jesus, on top of everything else, I'm turning into an asshole."

He unpaused the VCR. He hoped Bogey and Baby would tell him otherwise, but they only had eyes for each other.

Jerry carried a stack of boxes to the van. The air was cold and damp. Easter was just around the corner. Jerry thought of celebrating by biting the heads off chocolate bunnies. Misery loved company. He glanced up at the second-story window to Kenneth and Beth's bedroom. Beth looked down at him for a moment, then turned away. The finality of the gesture was crushing. Jerry felt like something inside him just died.

Kenneth walked out carrying a pair of suitcases. He set them carefully in the back of the van and closed the doors.

"This isn't really what you want to do," Kenneth said. "Cut your losses. Apologize to her and she'll meet you halfway. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience."

Jerry stared hard at Kenneth. "You know. My main reason for leaving is that both of you think I'm too stupid to handle my own life. That gets a little tiring after a while."

"Dumb, and proud of it. That's you," Kenneth said, turning away angrily. "Do what you have to do."

Jerry got in the van and turned the key. The engine sputtered to life. They'd be sorry soon enough. He'd already figured out how to make sure of that.

The early-dawn light filtered through the mist over the water. Jerry sat at the powerboat's wheel, trying to figure out how to start it. The gun he'd gotten from the Immaculate Egret was in his pocket. He'd done his best to clean it. It wouldn't do to have it explode in his hand. David was on Ellis Island, the Rox. Jerry was willing to stake his life on that. He'd head out to the island and gun David down, die a hero's death. There was a note in his apartment explaining everything. He hoped that Beth was the one to find it.

Jerry started the engine. Fumes boiled up from the boat's stern. Jerry cast off the lines and carefully backed out of the slip. He'd rented the boat. No point in buying one, since it was going to be a one-way trip. Once he was clear of the dock, Jerry stopped backing the engines and started moving forward. He spun the wheel and pushed the throttle. The eighteen-foot boat bounced out through the waves toward Ellis Island. Cold spray stung his face. Jerry wished he'd taken some Dramamine. His stomach was in less than great shape. But it usually acted up when he was scared. Still, facing David had to be easier than facing Beth. At least with David he had a chance of winning.

A tug passed by in front of him. Jerry took its wake at high speed and bounced out of his seat. He hit his mouth on the dash and split his lip.

"Shit," he said. "Can't I get anything to go right?" He pointed the nose of the craft toward Ellis Island and pushed the throttle all the way forward.

About a half mile away, his stomach knotted up and he felt his breakfast at the back of his throat. Jerry bent over and put one hand to his mouth. His brain flashed sparks.

The sky above seemed to change color, from blue to green to purple. Jerry felt like iron hammers were pounding his flesh. He felt a cold spasm in his gut and fell over, the wheel spinning out of his grasp. White noise hissed in his ears. He stretched his arm out toward the throttle and pulled it back, then blacked out.

There was a harbor patrol boat next to his when he came to. A man in a yellow poncho was chafing his wrists. Jerry sat up slowly, his ears ringing.

"You all right?" the man in the poncho asked.

"I've been better, but I'll live." Jerry slowly sat up and looked over his shoulder. He'd drifted away from Ellis Island.

"You were headed to Ellis? That place is a rat's nest now" The man shook his head. "Are you crazy?"

"No. Just enthusiastic." If the man caught his reference to King Kong, he didn't comment on it.

"Want a tow back in?"

"Yeah, thanks," Jerry said. "If you don't mind."

This had obviously been a bad idea, but hindsight was always twenty/twenty.

Jerry's instincts told him to stake out Latham's penthouse. There was no particular logic to it, but a good detective always trusted his guts. At least, that was what he'd read and seen in the movies. For once, he'd been right.

A car pulled up right before midnight and a young man got out. Jerry recognized him in an instant. David had an arrogance to his walk that didn't change even when he was being hunted. Latham met him at the door. They hugged, and then St. John talked while David listened and nodded. The conversation was brief. Jerry couldn't be sure, but he thought they actually kissed lightly before David trotted back down the steps to the car.

Jerry tailed David to Central Park. He knew it was dangerous to walk in the park at night. Even back before he'd turned into a giant ape, that was a bad idea. David was about twenty yards ahead of him and walking fast.

On the other side of a wooded hill was the Central Park Zoo, where he'd been the feature attraction for over twenty years. Maybe as a giant ape he'd have been able to take David with no trouble. As it was, he'd have to rely on his ability with his stolen gun and a little luck.

A cool wind stirred the hair on the back of his neck, tickling it. He'd made himself look tough by giving his facial disguise a few scars. Jerry knew he could die doing this, but at this point there just wasn't anything else in his life. If he could cash it in trying to make a positive difference in the world, maybe people wouldn't remember him too badly. Beth, especially.

David stepped off the path and up into the trees.

Jerry walked forward slowly, staring at the shadows for some hint of movement. When he reached the point where David had disappeared, Jerry paused, then moved quietly into the trees. He headed off the path at a right angle, putting his feet down carefully to avoid making much noise. An empty beer can glinted in the moonlight not far ahead. Jerry took a few more steps and found himself at the edge of a tiny clearing. He reached inside his coat to make sure the gun was still there. An arm caught him from behind and pushed hard against his windpipe, and he felt a forearm against the back of his neck. Jerry felt a hand yank the gun from his shoulder holster. He sucked hard at the air, but hardly any made it to his lungs.

"What have we here?" David asked, stepping into view. Jerry recognized him by his voice. There wasn't much light to see by, and his vision was blurring.

Jerry tried to gasp out an answer, but could only manage a choked hiss.

"Let's sink him in the pond," a young female voice said.

"That may not be necessary, Molly," David said. He leaned in close to Jerry. "We're going to let you go for a second and you're going to tell me why you were following me." David held up the gun. "With this, no less."

The arms came loose from either side of Jerry's neck and he fell to his knees, gasping. A simple lie would probably be best. Not that it would matter. "I… just wanted your… money."

Several of the kids laughed. David shook his head. "You were going to rob me? What a piece of shit you are. You have no idea who you're dealing with, little man." David's voice was cold, yet he looked strangely beautiful in the pale light. Jerry figured it was the last face he'd ever see.

"Do him," said a husky female voice from behind. "I'll snap his neck if you don't want it to look suspicious." A long, quiet moment passed. "I think not," David said. "He truly is beneath us, and I can't see much entertainment value." David grabbed Jerry's face. "Look at me, thief. Remember my face. I'm going to be famous soon. People everywhere are going to be afraid of me. It's only your insignificance which saved you. Find a hole and pull it in after you. If any of us ever sees you again, you're dead. Understand?"

Jerry nodded. He felt sick. Maybe they were just setting him up and were going to kill him anyway. David popped the clip from Jerry's gun and tossed it into the trees, then smashed the handle of the gun into Jerry's head. Jerry collapsed to the ground, his forehead banging with pain.

"Here's your gun back, thief," David said.

Jerry felt it land on his back. He heard David and the others make their way off through the brush. He lay there panting for a moment, then wobbled into a sitting position and pulled a leaf from his mouth. He'd almost died. Could have. Maybe should have. All of a sudden the hero's death had lost its appeal. He picked up and holstered the gun. He staggered in the opposite direction David and his friends had taken. If his life were a movie, it would need a serious rewrite.

Sixteen Candles by Stephen Leigh

Three blocks away from the Dime Museum, the clock tower of the Church of Christ the joker tolled midnight. "Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us. Happy birthday, dear Oddity, happy birthday to us."

The voice was off-key and cracked. "Look at the present I brought us," it said.

A fencing mask lent a shimmering distance to the heavy. 38 cupped in Oddity's hand. Flecks of reflected light from the Jetboy diorama ran along the barrel and glimmered wildly from the mask's steel mesh. The interference shattered the harsh brilliance like a cheap spectroscope into pale, weak colors.

Evan could look at the gun and pretend the weapon was just a fantasy, something seen on television. He could almost imagine someone else was lifting it.

[Sixteen years. Sixteen years of pain in this monstrosity of a body,] Evan said in his interior voice.

[Evan, please don't do this.] Patty's voice. She was Sub-Dominant at the moment, Oddity's eternal pain dampened slightly for her. [I'm asking you to please just let it go. I'll take Oddity for you until John's ready. You can be Passive and rest.]

Evan ignored her. Far below, she could hear John the third of the trio of personalities who were Oddity. John was Passive at the moment, down in the depths of the strangely-woven mind where Oddity's agony was a faint tidal wash. The passive personality could hear but couldn't intrude. Passive could open the torrent of his thoughts to the others or shield them; the others could listen or not as they wished. The fact that John made no effort to conceal his feelings now spoke more than the thoughts themselves.

[… goddamn asshole can't stand the pain like me no courage at all fucking artistic sensibilities Patty may like it but I'm damned tired of the complaining it hurts all of us not just him can't he see the power we wield…]

[No, John,] Evan sent down to him. [I don't see power, and I don't care. I want to be alone. Alone. I love you both, but being locked in here-]

Evan stopped. Oddity was sobbing with the emotional undercurrents. Evan raised Oddity's left hand. It was mostly John's, though past the lumpy interface the little finger looked to be Patty's and the thumb had Evan's coffee-and-cream coloring. The hand resisted him-Patty, trying to shove him from Dominant and take the body. Evan concentrated his will. The hand came up and slipped back the heavy cowl of Oddity's hood. As Oddity moaned, the fingers curled painfully with tendons crossed and overstretched, and lifted off the fencing mask.

The feathery touch of air-conditioning on Oddity's cheeks hurt, like everything else. The chill felt like ice water on a broken tooth. Without the mask, the gun in Oddity's other hand was very present, sinister and compelling all at once. It smelled of oil and cordite and violence.

Three hours past closing, the Jokertown Dime Museum was silent except in Oddity's head, and dark except in front of the Jetboy diorama, pinned in bright Fresnels with colored gels. Jetboy was caught in midstruggle. Evan had done most of the waxwork sculpture for that exhibit, working in those few hours when he was Dominant and both hands were mostly his own. Though Patty and John insisted it was all psychological, Evan couldn't work with Patty's hands or John's. They didn't have the touch.

Rare moments, those, when Evan could almost ignore Oddity's slow, continuous transformation as bits and pieces of their three merged bodies came and went, when he could almost believe he was one person again.

[Alone,] Patty echoed sympathetically. [I know, Evan. We'd all like that, but it can't be.]

Evan opened Oddity's mouth. The lips were thin and harsh: John's. Evan placed the barrel of the. 38 there and closed John's mouth around it. The burnished metal was a sharp tang against the tongue.

Evan wondered what it would feel like to pull the trigger.

"Oddity-Evan…"

The voice was soft and came from behind Oddity. Evan ignored it and struggled to curl Oddity's finger around the forefinger. It wouldn't require but a fraction of Oddity's enhanced strength. Just the smallest tithe of it. Just the tiniest movement and Evan could find oblivion. Solitude.

[Evan, I love you. No matter what, remember that. I love you; John loves you, too.

"Evan, I think that's my gun you have. I bought it for protection, not this."

[… can't even pull the trigger, can't even do the one thing he really wants to do…]

Evan gave a heaving inner sob. Oddity's mouth opened. The hand holding the gun dropped to the side of the massive body.

Oddity turned to face Charles Dutton, who stood in the archway of the Jetboy room. Evan knew what the joker was seeing: the melted-wax cheeks, the patchwork, lumpy face that was part Evan, part Patty, part John. The skin would be moving like a veil of cheesecloth laid over a mass of seething maggots. The face would be changing even as he watched, features collapsing and melting back into the pasty sagging flesh. The only unity to it at all would be that each and every one of those mismatched, overlaid parts would be twisted and taut with the torture of the slow, restless transformation.

Dutton didn't even blink. But then Dutton had to face his own living death's-head face in the mirror every single day.

"Dutton," Oddity gated out. Even the voice was harsh and shattered, like some B-movie creature. "It just hurts so much…"

Evan could feel moisture on the ruined cheeks. The left hand (Patty's entirely, now), came up and brushed at it.

"I know it does," the owner of the Dime Museum said. "I know and I sympathize. But I don't think you really believe this is the way. May I have my weapon back, please." The cadaverous joker held out his hand.

Oddity looked at the gun once more. Evan hesitated, playing with the control of the shifting, powerful muscles. He could still bring the gun up, place the muzzle against Oddity's horrific, deformed temple, and do it. He could. Patty tried to force him to give the gun to Dutton. Evan continued to hold it, though it remained at Oddity's side. Dutton shrugged.

"I saw the Atlanta diorama this evening," he said. "It's excellent work, especially what you did with the Hartmann figure. I like the hands even more than the face, the way the fingers grip the podium even though Hartmann's ignoring the carnage behind him. They lend a tension to the entire scene."

The hand that was Patty's twitched involuntarily. An elbow tore from Oddity's chest, ripping muscles and prodding the front of the cloak before subsiding again. "They broke him," Oddity's grating, slow voice declared. "They conspired against him. It wasn't the senator's fault. He wanted to help. He cared, he was just… fragile, and they knew it. They did what they had to do to break him."

"Who, Evan?"

"I don't know!" Oddity's muscular arm swung wide. Dutton took a half step backward. A blow from that hand could kill. "Barnett, maybe. That Judas Tachyon, certainly."

"Maybe some conspiracy of the right-wing joker haters. I don't know. But they brought the senator down."

The gun beat against Oddity's thigh again. Dutton watched it. "There's nothing but pain, Dutton," Evan continued. "Every damn joker's life is nothing but unrelieved, bitter blackness. Jokertown bleeds and there's nothing and no one to bind the wounds. I-we-hate it."

"You're one of the few who have done any good, Evan-you and Patty and John."

Oddity gave a short, ironic laugh. "Yeah. We've done a lot of good." The weapon's barrel glinted as Oddity started to bring it up again, then let it drop once more. "Is this what Patty wants, or John?"

Oddity snorted. A glob of mucus spat from one nostril onto its cheek. "John's a martyr. He's almost delighted that Oddity suffers, since it makes us such a fucking noble figure. And Patty"-Oddity's voice softened, and the mouth almost seemed to smile for a moment "Patty holds on to hope. Maybe Tachyon will find a cure in between his sabotage of the jokers he claims to love. Maybe the virus will go into remission. Maybe there'll be another secondary outbreak like Croyd's to pull us apart again."

Oddity seemed to laugh, but there was no amusement in the sound at all. The gun beat against the heavy cloth of Oddity's thigh.

"It's all bullshit, Dutton. You know what the trouble is? There aren't any happy endings in Jokertown. No happy endings at all."

Oddity shuddered. The huge, misshapen figure brought the cowl up over the face before bending down to retrieve the fencing mask. Oddity placed the mask over its face and stared at the Jetboy diorama.

"It all started here. The hero's supposed to win. What a shame. What a horrible, awful shame."

Oddity seemed to notice the gun once more. The hand came up, held the weapon before the fencing mask. "I didn't finish Hartmann's figure," Evan said.

"He can wait. I've been contacted by a source who claims to have Carnifex's actual fighting suit from that night. If I can buy it…" Dutton shrugged.

"You're ghoulish, Dutton."

Dutton almost smiled. "So is the public."

"A ghoul and a cynic," Oddity said, and its voice was higher and less raspy.

The hand holding the gun trembled, then reversed its grip. "Charles…"

Dutton reached with a thin, bony hand and placed the gun in his suit pocket.

"Thanks, Patty," he said. "Where's Evan?"

"Passive," Oddity replied. "We'll keep him down there for a few days if we can. He's tired, Charles, very tired." Shapes humped along Oddity's back and a soft moan came from behind the mask. Then Oddity sighed. "All of us are tired. But thank you for listening and for helping."

"I didn't want to lose my artist."

Oddity gave a dry, rasping chuckle. "I know better. And I think it's time to go. Evan probably won't be back for a while."

Shadows flowed over the black cloak as Oddity turned to leave.

"Patty?"

Steel mesh glinted; the head looked back to Dutton but they didn't speak. Oddity lurched heavily away. Dutton watched until she/it/they (Dutton was never sure which pronoun was appropriate) closed the door of the rear entrance. The joker looked back at the Jetboy exhibit, brilliant in the darkness.

"They're right, you know," he told Jetboy. "You were supposed to win and you fucked up."

Dutton turned off the exhibit's lights with a savage swipe of his hand and went back to his office.

He locked the gun in the museum safe.

It was a cool night for May. Oddity's heavy, black ankle-length velvet cloak was comfortable. A cold front had swept the late-spring humidity and smog out to sea.

The air was crisp and crystalline. Patty could see the light of the Manhattan towers between the older, lower, and far grubbier buildings of Jokertown.

May 14, 1973, had been a gorgeous night as well, in its own way.

Patty sighed with the orgasm, her eyes closed. "Yes…" Evan whispered in her ear, and John laughed in satisfaction, lower down. When the long, shuddering climax had passed, Patty hugged both of them to her.

"God, you two are lovely." Then, giggling, she flung

Evan aside and bounded from the bed. Naked, she padded across the room and flung open the doors to the balcony. A breeze lifted her hair, fragrant with a warm, sweet-tasting rain that was scrubbing the city clean. Twenty floors below, New York spread out in noisy brilliance. Patty opened her arms wide and let the night and the elements take her, joyous. Droplets shimmered like crystal in her hair, on her skin.

"Jesus, Patty, anyone could see us…" John came up behind her, also naked, hugging her. Evan stroked the two of them in passing and went to the railing. "It's wonder ful," he said. "Who cares what they see, John. We're happy."

Evan smiled at them all. They melded into a long triple embrace, kissing and touching as the rain slicked their bodies. When it seemed to be time, they went back inside and made love again…

They'd gone to sleep that night, but they'd never awakened. Not really. It was Oddity who had opened its eyes on the fifteenth. Oddity, the horror. Oddity, the wild card's mockery of their relationship. Oddity, the torturer. Gone forever were a social worker named Patty, a rising black artist named Evan, and an angry young lawyer named John. Like a thousand jokers before them, they disappeared into the warrens of Jokertown.

Oddity looked at the brilliant concrete spires of Manhattan and moaned, as much from the memory as the physical pain.

[At least in Jokertown it's harder to feel sorry for yourself, when every day we see the other horrors, the ones who are helpless. Oddity's body has strength to match that of the aces.] John.

[Bull shit, it's all bullshit rationalization…] Evan screamed back, down below. [It hurts, it hurts…] [Rest,] Patty told Evan. [Rest for a few days while you can. We'll be needing you to take over again soon enough.] John scoffed. [I'm not rationalizing. It's the truth-in Jokertown Oddity can do some good.] John especially seemed to enjoy the role of vigilante. Oddity: protector of jokers, the strong right arm of Hartmann.

Hartmann's defeat still hurt. John especially throbbed with bitterness. But John was strong; Evan wasn't. Patty sent her thoughts down to him.

[I understand, Evan. John does, too, when he takes the time to think about it. We understand. We do. We love you, Evan.]

[Thank you, I love you, too, Patty…] Evan could have said it only to Patty, but he left himself open to both of them, deliberately.

John was surly; Patty knew he'd noted Evan's intentional snub. [He has a hell of a way of showing his affection, doesn't he?]

[John, please… Evan needs the rest more than us. Have some compassion.]

[Compassion, hell. He almost killed us. I'm not ready to die, Patty. I don't give a shit how much it hurts.] [Evan doesn't really want to die either, or he would have gone ahead. I couldn't have stopped him, John. This was a gesture, a plea. He wants to be free of it. Sixteen years is a long time to be in a room you can't leave. I can't blame him for feeling that way.]

[He's come to hate me, Patty.]

[No.] But that was all she said. John scoffed at her. "Y'know, if you ignore the fact that there's three of us, we're almost staid," John said one night as they lay on the couch, sipping at glasses of cabernet. "We don't swing, we don't sleep with other people. Within the triangle, we're as monogamous and conservative as some married couple in Podunk, Iowa."

"You complaining, John?" Patty teased him, running a finger along his upper thigh and watching what that did to his face. "You getting tired of us?"

John groaned, and they all three laughed. "No," he said. "I don't think that's ever going to happen."

[Okay, maybe "hate" is a little strong,] John said. [But he doesn't love me or like me anymore. Not for a long time. Do you, Evan?]

[Damn egoist, no, I want out, I just want to be alone…] Then, the barest echo: [John I'm sorry I'm sorry…] [This might have happened anyway,] Patty said to both of them. [Even without Oddity. Those were different times. Different moralities than now.]

[Sure. But there's no divorce from Oddity, is there?] [Which is all the more reason we all need empathy and understanding-all of us.]

[You always were the goddamn saint, Patty] [Fuck you, John.]

[I wish I could, Patty. God, I wish I could.]

Jokertown had always been a night town.

A little past midnight, the main Jokertown streets were still busy. Darkness hid or amplified deformities as needed. Night was the best mask of all.

Not many nats traveled to J-town in the last several months. Tourism was something done in daytime, if at all. The streets had become too unfashionably dangerous.

At night, Jokertown was left alone like a bad dream. Still, the locals were out and Oddity decided to keep to the plentiful back alleys. John might find some small enjoyment in being public, in the respect and sometimes outright adulation of the jokers, but Patty didn't. Patty could forgive John's egotism-it was little enough balm for the pain-but she didn't need it or want it herself, especially not tonight.

They were a few blocks from the ruins of the Crystal Palace, in the back alley where Gimli's inexplicably empty skin had been found. The Oddity stared at the stained concrete where Tom Miller's body had lain: another death, another nameless violence. Patty was certain Gimli had been assassinated by a rogue ace, Evan thought that maybe Gimli had been an early victim of the Croyd outbreak, John (always the skeptic) thought maybe Hartmann had arranged it. [And good riddance, too,] John added in counterpoint to Patty's thought.

The Oddity shuffled on, limping because one leg seemed to be mostly Patty's and was attached at a decided angle to the hip. Moving it hurt like hell. The Oddity moaned and moved on.

"Shit, man. She's just a toy. Ain't worth wasting time on taking."

"Yeah, but that cunt'd be nice and tight, wouldn't it?" Voices stopped suddenly as the Oddity turned a corner into another alley. There were three of them, all male, none of them looking more than sixteen or seventeen and dressed in grimy leathers. One was prepubescent and childlike; another had a blotchy face peppered with angry blackhead acne. But it was the kid in the_ middle that made Oddity hesitate for a moment. He was tall and fair-skinned. Under the torn leathers and dirty Levi's he had a fighter's body, lean and hard-muscled. The youth was handsome in a feral way, with intense light eyes half-hidden behind straggling blond bangs. He was almost pretty, until they noticed the bloodshot eyes and the fidgety restlessness. The kid was pumped up, high and dangerous.

The joker Oddity knew as Barbie was sobbing on the ground between the three-a perfectly formed woman with adult features but barely two feet tall. Her face was caught in a perpetual smile. She saw Oddity; her mouth grinned incongruously, but the blue china eyes were pleading.

A quick anger raged through John; Patty could feel its red heat. "Hey!" Oddity shouted, their huge fists knotting. "Leave her the hell alone!"

"Shit," Pimpleface said. "You gonna let a fucking joker talk to us like that, David? Maybe it'd be fun, too. Big enough, ain't it? Maybe it's strong, too."

The leader-David-regarded the Oddity, hands on hips. Patty felt John trying to take control. [Just charge the bastards. Beat the kid's head in before he decides to move.]

Patty didn't need much encouragement. Oddity moved, roaring and lumbering toward the trio like a banshee. The gang suddenly flashed steel. Seeing the knives, Oddity screamed and tore a No PARKING sign from the asphalt. They swung the pole like a flail, it made a deep rumble as it whipped through the air.

There was nothing subtle about their attack. The massive body plowed into the gang like a careening truck. The sign caught Pimpleface and slammed him back against a wall; whipping it around again, they held the other two back. "Get out of here! Now!" Oddity barked at Barbie. The doll-like joker struggled to her feet. She ran, taking staggering, tiny baby steps.

Oddity spun to find David, figuring that if they took out the leader, the others would crumple. They launched themselves at the leering kid.

They were far too late. David's body slumped as if struck. Blackhead caught him before he fell.

[Patty…?]

At the same moment John and Evan felt Patty's presence ripped away from the Oddity. In place of her was someone cool, sinister, and smug: David. For just a second he was Dominant, crowing his triumph inwardly. Then the pain hit him.

Oddity screamed, loud and long and tormented. The sign and the twisted pole dropped from their hands, clanging on the pavement like an alarm.

John and Evan had had sixteen years to learn the neural mazes of Oddity's odd group mind. They knew all too well the searing agony that assaulted this intruder. Their shared response was almost instinctive: John sent his will surging to the high place they thought of as Dominant, pushing aside the screaming, frightened ego of David.

(Hands grasped at Oddity and a blade ripped cloth: Blackhead, attacking again after shaking off the first blow. Intent on the interior struggle, Oddity simply howled and flung the punk aside once more. The voices of reality seemed to be distant. "Goddamn, something's happened, man. David's screaming. Shit!"

"Fuck, it's gone wrong, it's gone wrong.."

Blackhead grabbed at their sleeve. Oddity roared and whirled; he heard a body fall hard on the concrete. ("The fucker's too strong! Grab David's body. Let's get back to the Rox.")

They knew it was wrong, John and Evan. "Patty!" they cried together, and the fury gave John enough mental strength to snatch the screaming David from control of Oddity's mind.

As John threw the jumper from the mental ramparts, Evan attempted to slide from Passive to Sub-Dominant. That was more difficult. David could feel himself losing control, and as Oddity's pain became more distant, his will began to assert itself once more.

For a moment both Evan's and David's minds were entirely open to each other as they moved, caught somewhere in the limbo between Passive and Sub-Dominant. Evan knew David in that instant, and he hated the mind he encountered. He could feel the jumper snatching at his emotions, his thoughts, his memories, and the feeling of violation gave Evan the power to throw David down again.

Evan screamed with David, thrusting himself past until the jumper tumbled down to helpless Passive. [John?]

[I've got Oddity, Evan. Just keep that bastard down in Passive.]

Oddity looked around. "Shit. Shit!"

The kids were gone. They couldn't even hear the sound of their retreating footsteps. The interior battle might have taken minutes-it was impossible to tell.

[Patty?] Evan queried softly, hopefully, into the matrix of Oddity.

There was no answer but soft, mocking laughter from Passive.

Oddity howled in the darkness of the alley.

She didn't hurt. That was the first thing she noticed. For sixteen years there had been constant pain. For sixteen years there had been tearing agony as ligaments shifted, muscles were stretched to their limit, and bones scraped against each other in the cage of Oddity's flesh. She didn't hurt. And she was alone.

There were the six or seven kids-nats, as far as she could tell-in the filthy room with her, but she was alone in a single body.

The others were arguing, but she paid little attention to the words.

"Hey, man, what you're describing is the Oddity. So the Oddity took David. He's gone, man."

"You don't mean that, Molly."

" I don't? Well, he sure couldn't control the fucker, could he?"

"If David's gone, everything's up for grabs. And there's gonna be some people who like that idea. You remember that, Molly. In fact, I'll bet you're thinking the same, too." There was rough laughter, footsteps, a slamming door.

The voices were outside. There were no voices in Patty's head.

[Evan? John?] No answer-only silence and her own thoughts.

Patty brought her hands up to her face and marveled. "Shit, she ain't supposed to be able to do that." Blackhead stared at her with an expression caught somewhere between fear and hatred on his pimply face. Patty ignored him, concentrating on the hands and wiggling the fingers, turning them around to see the calluses.

These weren't the hands she dimly remembered from the early seventies. But neither were they the patchwork, marbled, knobbed things at the end of Oddity's arms. The fingers were long, with dirt snagged under the chewed nails and callused hard tips on the left hand that told her the jumper played guitar, for Patty had once had similar calluses.

She could smell the body's own rank sweat, and the dirty, knee-torn Levi's were tight at her crotch. She looked down and saw the bulge of a penis. She could feel the cock, part of her. She could make it twitch.

She laughed because that startled her, and her voice was deep and very male. "What's the matter, assholes?" she said with a bravado she didn't feel. "Weren't expecting me to wake up?"

She'd heard the news reports. Everything that had happened tonight added up to the same conclusion: The kids were jumpers. The jumpers' victims had all said the same thing: For the duration of the jump, they'd been in a coma. Patty assumed the jumper's companions had guarded the body until the jumper returned and transferred back. Certainly the transfer was a horrible shock to the victim; it was undoubtedly what drove them into unconciousness.

Patty had felt very little of it. Patty was used to existing in a strange body; she was familiar with the sensation of her awareness shifting place. She'd recovered quickly and she knew exactly where she was. Even though the journey here had seemed fantasy (was there really a living, gelatinous globe in which they rode?), she knew where they'd taken her.

Ellis Island. The Rox.

The remembrance sobered her quickly. Depending on who you listened to, the Rox was a refuge where jokers helped one another, or it was a gaping sore, a dangerous seeping wound where the worst of those touched by the wild card had gathered.

YOU HAVE TO DIE TO GO TO THE Box. Patty had seen that spray-painted in garish colors on the walls of J-town. SEND US YOUR HUDDLED MASSES-WE NEED THE FOOD. Slogans of the Rox had appeared by the hundreds in the past few months. From what she'd heard, death was common and varied here. The bodies floated ashore in. Jersey or were found out in the bay.

Patty no longer felt pleased. Refuge or hell, the air of the Rox smelled of garbage and shit and corruption. [My loves…] And she was alone. That was worst of all.

The room itself was a hovel, as bad or worse than anything she'd seen in her years with Welfare Services: corrugated aluminum sides that looked like they'd been pieced together from old awnings, a stained concrete floor, the only light a bare bulb hanging from a frayed extension cord. The door was a piece of warped plywood with a rope handle. Patty was sitting in the one piece of furniture in the room: a Laz-E-Boy recliner, the black Naugahyde hopelessly shredded and soiled with nameless stains.

Patty tried standing. Despite the dirt, despite the neglect, despite the halitosis and the crud in the lungs and the leftover crack buzz, this was a gorgeous body: sleek and powerful and lean. Still, it was an effort. Her knees wobbled and she sat again quickly. Patty forced herself to smile, to look as smug and arrogant as this guy had appeared to be.

The punks stood on either side of the exit, scowling. There were three now; the others seemed to have left. She recognized the one who had been with David. Blackhead had a huge welt on his leg and a bloody nose; a remnant of the fight with Oddity. His face and upper arms were scraped raw and the left side of his head was puffy and discolored. Standing next to him was a slight and pretty girl who looked to be at the most thirteen, with breasts just budding under the tank top she wore. The girl stared wide-eyed at Patty. Her face was round, with a fragile attractiveness. Blackhead had his arm around her; his fingers stroked her right nipple. She scowled at him and moved out from under his arm. She continued to gaze strangely at Patty.

The last of the group was a young woman with a scowl on her face, her arms akimbo over a dirty T-shirt. The way Blackhead looked at her, it was obvious he deferred to her. "Who the fuck are you?" she said.

Patty found that she didn't want them to know she was a woman. "Part of Oddity" she said at last. "You can call me… Pat." She laughed mockingly again at that, hearing the strain in the sound. [Ah, Evan, too bad it wasn't you who was Dominant. You'd have to put up with being a honky, but at least you'd be the right sex. You'd be out. ]

She was almost startled that there was no answer in her head.

[Alone. God, it feels so strange.]

"Molly, we gotta tell Bloat," Blackhead said.

"Not yet. Not yet, man. Maybe David'll be back." She didn't look that pleased at the prospect, but she shrugged. "He knows where we went, huh? He'll come here."

Patty stood again, and this time stayed up. Blackhead blinked hard, scowling at Patty with his right hand fisted around a piece of iron pipe. "We shoulda fuckin' tied him up, Mol'. David's gonna be pissed if we have'ta fuck up his body."

"What makes you think David's coming back?" Patty asked. [God, such a rich voice. A politician would die for it. What do you think, John?] Then: [I have to stop this. There's no one there.] "Hey, I have two other friends in Oddity, assholes: Looked to me like they were in charge when you punks ran, not David."

It was a bluff. Patty had seen the battle for control raging in Oddity after the jump. There hadn't been anyone

Dominant; Oddity had simply been flailing wildly, out of control. The kids had grabbed her and run before the fight had been won one way or the other. Patty had no doubt John was strong enough to be Dominant quickly, but poor Evan-

She didn't know what might have happened. If David had won, then Oddity could be in J-town at the moment, doing things she'd rather not think about.

[There's nothing you can do about it. Just stay alive. Try to get out of here.]

"He'll be back, and you're strain' till he does," Blackhead said nervously, licking his lips and looking at Molly for confirmation. The girl beside him was still staring, silent. "You don't know David. He gets what he wants. He's strong. He's got ways. And you-you're in the Rox. You're meat."

"David doesn't know what he hit in Oddity," Patty bluffed. "He may never get out. I rather like this body." Blackhead glanced at Molly. The other girl stared. "What?" Patty asked. "What's the problem?"

Molly just shrugged, but Blackhead snorted. "He's never been away for more'n a few hours. No one's sure what happens when you stay in someone else's body too long."

"Maybe Bloat'd know," Blackhead said.

Molly scoffed. "And why the hell would you think that? You think Bloat jumps?"

"He reads minds, don't he?"

Molly just scowled harder. "This ain't got nothin' to do with Bloat."

"Everything in the Rox has to do with Bloat," Blackhead insisted. The kid sniffed and wiped his arm, across the back of his nose. Snot mixed with the blood on his cheek.

Molly sighed. "All right. Maybe we should let Bloat know what's going on. Hell, he probably knows already. Can you handle this?"

Blackhead scowled. "Shit," he said. "Sure. Me'n Kelly'll stay here and take care a'things."

Kelly's intense gaze had never left Patty. Her eyes were somewhere between blue and gray, and very open.

"You see how she's watching you?" she whispered teasingly to Evan, giggling with the wine. John's fundraising party for Gregg Hartmann's first senatorial campaign was a noisy swirl around them. "The willowy one with too much makeup, over in the corner by your sculpture. She hasn't taken her eyes off you since she came in:"

"Jesus, Patty, you have a filthy mind. That's the Salchows' daughter. She's still in high school. I sold her father two paintings last month."

"I was her age once, too. That's a teenage crush if I ever saw one. I've been there, too. The hormones just run away with your mind. How about it, Evan? She's young, rich, probably willing if a bit inexperienced. White and curious about how it'd be with a big black stud like you. "

"Patty-"

Patty laughed and kissed Evan. The girl's face had gone almost angry as she turned away…

Patty gave Runt a half smile. The girl seemed startled; then slowly, behind Blackhead, she smiled back, almost shyly.

[Have to get out of here. Have to find John and Evan.]

Patty knew in that moment how to escape. She hated herself for the knowledge, but she knew.

[You want out I know you do I can feel it and I can do it for you I have the key but it has to be soon I can take you to the Rox but