We landed in an open meadow. In the distance I could see security fencing and beyond it a large Southern plantation. I wondered if the slave quarters were still around, then decided taking that attitude might not be helpful to my assigned task. The ramp was set up and I descended to find a nine-foot-tall joker with warty gray-green skin and large yellow teeth waiting for me. “Hey, Doc,” he said, and smiled.
I didn’t. “If you’re expecting a joyful reunion, Howard, don’t. You walked out on us.”
He looked hurt, then angry. Considering that even at his age he was one of the strongest men on the planet, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done. He shook his head. “You do good work at the clinic, Doc, but Theodorus needs me more than you did. Not to mention, he tripled my salary. The last time I got a raise was when Tach was still in charge. Give Theodorus a—”
There was a loud throat-clearing from an attractive mixed-race man of middle years. “It would be better to let Mr. Witherspoon make his own pitch, Howard,” the man said.
Troll throttled whatever he was going to say. “Yes, sir, Mr. Bell.”
The man held out his hand. I shook it. “Clifford Bell, head of security for Witherspoon Holdings. I trust your ride was smooth?”
“It was short,” I said.
He laughed, and gestured toward an enormous greenhouse that squatted like a translucent mushroom on the verdant grass. He led off and I started to follow.
“Catch you after, Doc?” Troll called.
“I don’t think so.” I was a little surprised at the intensity of my churning anger, but I couldn’t shake it. Troll had been a fixture in Jokertown for decades. Volunteering at career days at the local high school, taking part in the food and gift drive led by the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker every holiday season.
“Why you busting my balls, Doctor?”
I stormed back to him. My tail was stiffly upright with outrage. “You were a role model to younger jokers. And you abandoned our people to live in this Gone with the Wind fantasy at the beck and call of some rich fuck who sure as hell hasn’t been shoveling any of his wealth toward Jokertown … any of the jokertowns. Yeah, so forgive me if I’m not all hail-fellow-well-met, Howard. I think we’re done.”
I reared and whirled. “You’ll understand after you talk to Theodorus. You’ll see,” Troll called.
Since it was February and colder than a witch’s tit up in New York, the balmy South Carolina air had me sweating in my sweater and suit jacket. I pulled off the jacket and tossed it over my equine back. I felt sweat forming on my palomino coat. While I might have the body of a horse, I still smell like a sweaty human when I get hot. Clara thinks if I’d go vegan that might change. I am not going to go vegan.
Bell slid me a sideways glance. “I’m surprised you’d be here as an emissary for the government. Particularly this government.”
I got his drift even without him saying it. “The president is my wife’s cousin. I might be the only joker they know.”
We had reached the door of the giant greenhouse. Bell paused with his hand on the door handle. “But you were still willing.”
“I’d also like to know just what the hell your boss is up to.” I stepped inside.
I had been in the jungles of Vietnam. This was just like the damn jungles of Vietnam. Too hot, too humid, and stinking as various exotic plants, the wet loam underfoot, manure, and chemical fertilizer battled for primacy. I slapped aside the frond of a stunted palm that looked like a dinosaur should be sheltering beneath it.
It wasn’t that I had anything against nature. I like nature just fine. I just didn’t like nature that looked like it wanted to eat me. I stared at a trailing vine. Or throttle me, I added.
I heard music playing softly up ahead. Something classical. I followed the sound. You couldn’t miss Theodorus. He was a giant snail-centaur. He was carefully potting a flowering plant. An iPod rested on a Bose speaker setup and was sheltered in a clear box.
There was a woman with him, a joker with no discernible neck and bright red skin. When she turned to face me I saw that her eyes were also a brilliant red. She was wearing an elegant power-woman suit and I could tell from the cut it didn’t come off some rack in Dillard’s. More likely Saks or Harrods or a runway in France. I know clothes. Since Dad was a famous Hollywood director I’d been on more than a few red carpets in my time.
The woman held out her hand. “Doctor Finn, I’m Mathilde Schwartz. And this is Theodorus.”
The man merely nodded. On the other hand, he was wearing gardening gloves, which were covered with dirt. “You’re bigger than when Tachyon examined you,” I said.
“You know about that?”
“He was a doctor. He kept records.”
Theodorus looked over at Mathilde. “See to it we get those records.”
“You really are playing the reclusive billionaire thing, aren’t you? And if you try to get those records I will sue you. I’ll happily give you copies, but Tachyon’s records are there to help us try to craft a cure for this hell-born disease.” Theodorus was frowning at me. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Oh, and might I suggest a different playlist? In every movie it’s always the bad guy who listens to classical music. Maybe Joker Plague or Lady Gaga. Or go country. That’ll put everybody off-balance.… I’m talking a lot, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.” Theodorus sounded amused.
Mathilde broke in. She didn’t look amused. “You asked for this meeting. So what do you want?”
“To find out what you’re planning to do with these objects you’re bringing in from the asteroid belt. The administration and the National Science Foundation are all a little nervous. You know, the dinos and all.”
Theodorus snorted. “They have nothing to fear.”
“So you say. I’ve seen a lot of disaster movies. What are you planning to do with these things?”
“Crash them into the Moon.”
“What have you got against the Moon?”
He laughed. “Nothing. I have great plans for the place. But we should continue this discussion over dinner. I trust you didn’t lie about your interstellar experiences.”
“You didn’t check out the claims? Sort of falling down on the reclusive billionaire thing.”
“Ackroyd refused to talk to us,” Mathilde said with a frown.
“And we were reluctant to approach your wife,” Theodorus added. “A spouse would probably lie.”
“If you knew anything about my wife you would know that would not be the case,” I muttered.
Theodorus stripped off his gloves and began the laborious process of getting turned around. I felt pity for him. I knew how hard it was to manage my own bulk and my best guess was that this man was well over two thousand pounds and probably pushing three.
We left the greenhouse and crossed the manicured lawn toward the mansion. I studied the slime that was left by his body and wondered if he’d let me take a sample for Clara. My wife was brilliant, and since we no longer had Tachyon she offered the best hope for finding that elusive cure.
The house was what I expected, filled with expensive antiques, redolent with the smell of beeswax furniture polish and flowers. The doorways had been widened to accommodate Theodorus’s massive form and there were no carpets on the polished wood floors. The dining room was arranged so Theodorus could just slide in to the head of the table and then back straight out. As expected, the table was huge—it could easily have seated twenty, which meant the three of us felt rather lonely huddled near one end. In the center was an enormous chased-silver epergne embossed with rearing horses and nymphs holding sheaves of wheat.
The joker serving staff was quiet, efficient, and discreet. They withdrew the minute the soup course had been removed and we had our mains. The crown roast of pork with mashed potatoes and cherry sauce was delicious, and the wine sure as hell wasn’t Two-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s.
I tried several times to bring up the reason for my visit, but Mathilde always smoothl
y directed the conversation into a discussion of my father’s latest Academy Award–winning film or my mother’s work with refugee relief. Throughout it all Theodorus said little. There was something almost alien in his silence and demeanor.
After dessert—an incredible bananas Foster—we were offered port, cheese, and nuts. Only then did Theodorus turn to the issue that had brought me there. “So, down to business,” the big joker said.
“’Bout time,” I muttered.
He studied me as if I were a curious new form of leaf mold on one of his plants. “Odd, I hadn’t expected you to be…”
“What?” I asked.
“… rude. Yes, that’s the right word.” It was said without heat and in a very clinical tone. I should have been offended, but I was trying to figure out how I’d diagnose him.
Mathilde leaned across the table. “But first you have to pay the piper.”
“You promised me tales of your travels among the stars,” Theodorus said.
I closed my eyes briefly and looked back across the years. “My wife’s father was determined to separate me from his daughter. He made a deal with Jay Ackroyd … Jay can teleport people, and there’s apparently no limit on his range. He had been to Takis, so when he honored the deal to send me away he really sent me away. Popped me to Takis, right into the fucking Ilkazam throne room. Thank God Tachyon was there to vouch for me or I’d probably be a stuffed trophy on some Takisian psi lord’s wall. Anyway, after a couple of days to get my bearings and to look over some of the research that Tach and his team were working on—”
“What kind of research?” Mathilde interrupted.
“What else? A cure for the wild card. Until that happens I don’t think Tachyon will ever get over his guilt for being involved in its creation.”
“He did try to prevent its release,” Theodorus said. “And he was kind when my parents brought him down to examine me.”
“Yeah, he worked hard to expiate his sin, but Tachy loved … loves to wallow. Anyway, after a few days, he put me on one of the living ships with a Takisian crew. They were supposed to bring me home. Instead the ship got damaged in an ion storm. While the ship was repairing itself we got waylaid by pirates.”
“Space pirates?” Mathilde’s voice was filled with disdain.
“Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid. If it helps deal with the silly, they call themselves the Gatherers, but they’re really just pirates.”
Under their fascinated gazes I went on to talk about that two-year-long journey home—the planets I’d visited, the aliens I had met. There were things I wasn’t going to share with Theodorus or Mathilde … or with my wife.
“I kept trying to find a way to send a message to Tachyon. Do you have any idea how hard it is to figure out alien technology that is centuries ahead of ours? People act like it would be simple, but try handing a smartphone to some dude from the seventeenth century and see how well he would figure it out.”
Mathilde was staring at me. Then Theodorus asked, “Why did you ever leave?” There was a glow in his eyes, the dreams of adventure by a man who was trapped in a cocoon of horrifying flesh.
“Because I loved Clara and I wanted to get back home to her. And I’m a doctor and I wanted to get back to my patients. And I’m not a criminal. I did things in order to survive, but I’m not proud of them.”
“Did you ever kill anyone?” Theodorus asked.
The question snapped me back to a time I would rather forget. A time when a worldwide conspiracy had attempted to kill every wild card on Earth. I had used guns for the first time in my life. I had killed people. Granted, they had been people who wanted to kill me, but it was a hard memory still.
Long ago I had memorized the updated Hippocratic oath written by Louis Lasagna back in the nineteen sixties. Five sentences stood out. I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I shook myself free of the heat, smells, and screams of an airfield in Vietnam a long time ago. I stared at Theodorus. “Never mind. I think you answered the question,” he said softly.
“So how did you get back?” Mathilde asked.
“The Gatherer ship I was on ran out of luck and went up against a Network ship. We think we’ve got this all figured out—the Takisians, the Swarm. We don’t know shit. There are vast civilizations out there that, so far and thank God, haven’t decided to come calling. The Network is a trading empire involving over a hundred alien species in a loose conglomeration. I can’t tell you all the races, but I personally dealt with Aevre, Embe, Kondikki, Ly’bahr, and Rhindarians. I was with them only a few months and they agreed to drop me off back on Earth. I’m still not sure if I sold my left nut or my firstborn when I signed that contract, but so far nobody’s come to collect.” I gave a hollow laugh.
They were staring at me incredulously. “And you never told anyone about this?” Theodorus asked.
“Of course not. I didn’t want to be viewed as a liar … or worse, be believed and get locked up in some federal facility to be debriefed. I just wanted to go home, marry Clara, and go back to work at the clinic.”
“How did they manage to bring you back undetected?” Mathilde asked.
“I think they had some kind of cloaking device on their shuttle. Landed me out in the wilds of New Jersey and I hitched a ride back to Manhattan in the bed of a pickup truck.”
“Extraordinary,” Theodorus said. We sat in silence for a few moments. I took a long pull on my port. “So what do you know about my activities?” he asked.
“I know you invented these spaceplanes and that you have a research base on the Moon. I know you’re as rich as Midas. I now know that you sent a fleet of ships out into the asteroid belt and now they are heading back and the administration wants to know why.”
“What do you know about terraforming?” Mathilde asked.
“Not much.”
“It’s the process by which a celestial body is altered so it can support terrestrial life,” Theodorus said. “And I intend to do that to the Moon.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “And what’s that got to do with crap coming in from the asteroid belt?”
“My ships have been gathering up ice comets. Once they reach the inner solar system they’ll be crashed into the Moon—”
“I ask again, what have you got against the Moon?”
His lips stretched into a barely discernible smile at my feeble sally. “This will begin the terraforming process. Once we have water we can begin to build a viable colony.”
“A colony?”
“Yes, but more than that. I’m building a home world for our people.”
Now he finally showed an observable emotion. I stared at the man, seeing the messianic fire in his eyes, his exalted expression.… I shivered as an icy spider seemed to walk down my spine. “Humans,” I said.
“No, jokers. Only jokers.”
It was the answer I feared. I went to pick up my port, realized my hand was shaking, and set it down again. “Well, forgive me, but I don’t see a difference.”
“Then you’re a fool, Doctor,” Theodorus said.
“How so? I have a physical deformity due to a genetic mutation, but I’m still human.”
“Rejected by the rest of humanity. We have been despised, rejected, assaulted, and murdered by nats. And every time we’ve tried to create a place where we can live in peace, those moral, normal humans have come in and killed us. The Rox, Jerusalem, Vietnam, Egypt.”
The icy demeanor was back. This wasn’t genteel Southern courtesy, this was something worse. I now had my diagnosis. Alexithymia seemed the most likely suspect with its marked dysfunction in emotional a
wareness. This was a man cut off from all normal human emotions.
“I’ve got a news flash for you, Theo. Your joker paradise will be subject to the same greed and lust and hate and violence that plague every other human society. Because we’re human!”
“No. Once I’ve put us beyond their reach, beyond their hate, we’ll build a new paradigm. I’ve vowed to do this and I will, and nothing will stop me. Not this administration, not the UN, not the Committee.”
I canted my human torso back and clapped sarcastically. “All hail the great Joker Moses leading us to the promised land … on the fucking Moon!” I leaned in. “I don’t care how much ice you dump on that barren rock, it’s still going to be one-sixth gravity. Great for you, I’m sure you’d love to shed a few pounds, but lousy for most jokers.” He opened his mouth to object, but I barreled on. “I don’t know much about this process, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not going to happen overnight, so you’ve got us, or at least the people stupid enough to buy into this crazy plan, squatting in holes in the ground for years … decades … probably centuries.” I realized I was shouting and I clamped my teeth together.
“Get out.” The tone was low, dangerous.
“Gladly.” I backed up, whirled, and went clattering out of the dining room.
Now that it was all over, I had that greasy nauseated feeling in the pit of the gut that you get when you realize you have royally fucked up. So much for me being the joker emissary and diplomat.
I made my way to the front door and got outside. The fresh air helped cool my cheeks. As I stood there trying to figure out how to go back in, apologize, and get this back on track, Mathilde came hurrying down the front steps. “That could have gone better,” she said.
I opened my mouth to argue, then nodded. “Yeah.” We stood in silence, listening to the wind through the trees. “You’re a joker. Are you on board with this?”
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