Joker Moon

by George R. R. Martin

  “You playing paintball with your old college buddies?” Dwight said. “I ain’t got no time for crap like that. Get your stupid paint all over my car—”

  “No, nothing like that.” Bugsy shrugged. “I want to go to New York City.”

  The driver scowled. “New York City? By Uber? You fucking with me? You don’t want to be fucking with me. You ever hear of airplanes?”

  “I don’t want to fly. I’m Jonathan Hive—”

  Dwight frowned. “That dude who turns into moths?”

  “Wasps. I turn into wasps.”

  “Oh, man, that’s worse,” Dwight said. “Get out of my ride before I get stung.”

  “I only turn into wasps when I have to,” Bugsy said in exasperation. “You ever watch American Hero? I was a contestant. First season.”

  Dwight got a thoughtful frown on his face. “That was the year the brother won. Yeah, I remember you now. You were kind of lame. Were you one of the ones went to Egypt?”

  “Yes,” said Bugsy, warily.

  “Okay,” Dwight said. “I’m in.”

  “You are?”

  “My mom a joker,” he said.

  “I’m—” Bugsy paused a moment. “—grateful for your help.” He paused again. “I’ve got to tell you though, it could be very dangerous.”

  “You think being an Uber driver isn’t dangerous?” Dwight turned the ignition key and the Yaris sped away from the curb.

  Bugsy took his cell phone and regretfully tossed it out the window. He’d just paid eight hundred bucks for it. Or rather, Aces! had. Digger would bitch, but in the end he’d approve a new phone, so he could probably whistle up another one once he got back to the office. If I get back to the office, he told himself.

  The brief phone call had been from Dr. Pretorius, simply telling her to return to New York as quickly as possible. “There’s been a break in the case,” he told her. “I prefer not to go into detail on the phone.” Sibyl had known Dr. P. long enough to realize he had good reasons for being so abrupt. Most likely he was fearful that his communications were possibly being monitored. You’re not paranoid if they really are after you, she thought.

  Fortunately, flights between Charleston and New York City were rather frequent, and in little more than an hour she was winging her way back north.

  The offices of the Joker Anti-Defamation League were located in an old gentrified three-story brownstone on the edge of Jokertown and Little Italy. Her adoptive father, Dr. Pretorius, owned the entire block. Not all of the businesses were owned by jokers—some were family firms that dated back well before 1946—but all catered to their customers.

  As usual, parking was at a premium, so Sibyl had the cabbie who’d picked her up at Tomlin drop her off at the corner. It was a hot, humid day in New York, but not as hot and humid as it’d been in Charleston. Sibyl realized that she was glad at her return home and that made her feel even better. Human, somehow.

  That feeling was heightened as she saw Pretorius exit the office building, limping on his cane, holding something in his left arm tight against his chest. He was staring straight ahead, looking for a cab, probably, not noticing her. Sibyl hurried down the moderately busy street toward him, dodging slow-moving pedestrians with the ease of the experienced urbanite.

  As she approached she realized that Pretorius was holding, of all things, a tiny dog snuggled calmly against his chest. It had very short dark brown, almost black, fur with lighter tan highlights on its tiny muzzle and front legs down to its paws and inside its up-pointed little ears. It was so small that it looked as though it weighed no more than five pounds or so.

  Pretorius stepped toward the street, raised one arm to call a passing cab, and one rolled to a stop, double-parked in the street, for him. He stooped to open the cab’s passenger-side rear door and Sibyl called out to attract his attention. “Dad!”

  He turned suddenly, and looked up the street at her, a smile on his face, as three close-spaced gunshots rang out. Pretorius dropped his cane and, huddled protectively around the tiny dog he carried, fell to the street as pedestrians around him started to react with various states of horror and panic. Some screamed, some stared, some ducked. A couple moved to Pretorius’s side as the cab driver gunned the motor and took off down the street. Sibyl stared at him for the moment it took him to fly by her, burning his face and the cab’s license plate and tag number into her memory.

  Then Sibyl screamed, “Dad!” Peregrine’s rich contralto twisted into a high-pitched wail. She ran to him, pushing her way through the crowd.

  Dr. Pretorius’s face was clenched in pain, but it softened when he recognized Sibyl. “You’re just a little too late,” he said, without reproach.

  “Shhhh, quiet.” She felt something she had never felt before and realized it was desperation.

  Pretorius smiled. “It’s all right, darling. I didn’t have much left, anyway. But it’s up to you now.” He opened his arms a little. The tiny dog huddled against his chest was bloody.

  “Is she all right?” he said, his voice starting to flutter.

  The little dog was soaked in blood. Sibyl realized that she was pressed tightly against the bullet wounds in Pretorius’s chest, trying to staunch the flow of blood with her tiny body. She looked up and Sibyl was shocked—another feeling that she was mostly unfamiliar with—to see intelligence and understanding in her eyes.

  “Sibyl, keep her safe. At all costs, keep her safe. She’s the key.”

  She wondered if Pretorius’s mind was starting to wander, but then those few terrible seconds that encompassed the shooting played back in her mind, and she realized that it was probably the dog who’d been the target of the hit, and Pretorius had gone down protecting her with his own body. It was a stunning realization.

  The dog wiggled forward a bit and her tiny tongue came out and licked Pretorius’s face. He reached out a bloody hand to grip Sibyl’s. “I have to leave you now,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I love you any less.”

  “Oh, Dad.” She put his bloody hand against the coolness of her cheek. She wished she could kiss it, she wished she could cry. Being human was a bitch. Being what she was, whatever she was, was harder. “I love you.”

  He nodded. He put his other hand out and Sibyl automatically took the dog and held it against her leather-covered chest. She held Pretorius’s hand until it went limp and the dog let out a howl that seemed compounded of anguish and anger. Sibyl released his hand and closed her father’s eyes with her cold fingers.

  Then she waited for the cops to arrive, the dog nestled patiently in her arms. Anger, despair, and an overwhelming feeling of loneliness engulfed her. Henrik Pretorius had been the center of her life for a long, long time. She had been lost and frightened after the Professor had died, but Dr. Pretorius had found her, protected her, taught her so much … but now he was gone as well. I will outlive them all, Ice Blue Sibyl suddenly realized. Everyone I know, everyone I love. They are only human, and I am … whatever I am.

  Fort Freak was the first precinct to respond: Beastie Bester, Rikki, Tinkerbill, and half a dozen other uniforms she did not know turned up one after another in a crush of squad cars. Sibyl didn’t say much when questioned. She pleaded exhaustion from her recent flight and ignorance of current events.

  She was only lying a little, keeping the license plate, taxi number, and description of the killer for her own use. She would hunt the gunman down herself. And then … and then, she didn’t know. Rage at her father’s killer consumed her, but her immobile features gave no hint of what she was feeling. Tinkerbill finally waved down a taxi for her, and directed the driver to take her to her apartment. As they pulled away from the curb, Sibyl unconsciously stroked the little dog and suddenly realized that the Chihuahua was staring right into her eyes.

  It gave a little yip.

  “You want to help?” she asked.

  “What’d you say, lady?” the taxi driver asked, glancing into his mirror at her.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Si
byl said.

  The dog looked directly at her and nodded.

  This, Sibyl thought, is the first mystery that has to be solved.

  Sibyl lived in a high-rise condo a few minutes from the JADL office building. She paid the taxi driver and ducked into the vestibule, lurking behind a convenient column. She watched the street through the glass entrance doors. No one seemed to have followed the cab. She would almost have welcomed the presence of an emissary from their unseen enemy.

  They went to the elevator and Sibyl punched the button for the top floor. As they went up she briefly considered attempting small talk, but that was not her strong suit at the best of times, and now she was definitely not in the mood. The little dog looked on with a degree of sympathy in its large, dark eyes, and Sibyl wondered what was going through its brain. Her, she corrected almost immediately, having realized that she was a female.

  “Welcome to my apartment,” Sibyl said. It was just down the hall from the elevator. She put the dog down so she could take out her key and unlock the front door, then she held it open as the Chihuahua trotted by her, her little legs flashing so quickly they were almost a blur.

  Sibyl hit some toggles in the entranceway that opened into a spacious living room, and subdued light and sound came on, susurrating from hidden speakers all around the room, a recording of rain gently falling in a forest. Sibyl constantly played similar tracks of natural sounds to screen out the noise of traffic from below and the world outside.

  She had large windows that let in plenty of light, but most of the living room’s walls were covered by broad swatches of bright colors: red, green, orange, purple, yellow, and blue. They were juxtaposed according to an aesthetic that somehow employed discordant as well as harmonizing colors to form visually pleasing flows. Sibyl created these panels herself, changing them to suit her whim, using a combination of paints that allowed her to wipe the walls down to pure white when she wanted a change. She looked at the walls, wishing for such a change now. It was all too damned cheerful. She needed something dark and jagged and explosively discordant to match her current mood.

  The room was sparsely furnished, yet entirely comfortable. There was a large white leather sofa, replete with a number of soft stuffed plush animals scattered upon it, fronted by a glass-topped coffee table supported by swoops of chrome piping. The table was empty, but for a closed laptop. Scattered around the couch were a number of smaller tables of various heights that held statuary, mostly abstract shapes in textures ranging from snaggletoothed lava chunks to bumpy coral branches to polished fragments of malachite and sprays of fragile, living blossoms, currently honeysuckle. Several bookshelves held a number of volumes, some of them Braille. Sibyl could read Braille as fast as a sighted person could read the printed page—faster than some. Oftentimes the simple feel of the raised bumps beneath her fingertips soothed her. Two upholstered chairs faced the sofa across the glass-topped coffee table.

  Sibyl felt eyes on her, and looked down to see the Chihuahua standing by her side, gazing up at her. She realized that she’d been gazing for some time around the empty room. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m being a very poor host. Can I get you anything? Something to eat—well, I actually don’t have much on hand since I don’t eat, but—”

  She watched the little dog, now sitting at her feet, point to her mouth with a tiny paw and make panting motions.

  “You’re thirsty? Right. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

  When Sibyl returned from the adjoining kitchen a moment later with a bowl of water, the dog had moved over to the sofa, and was sitting on her haunches on the glass table before it.

  “Of course,” Sibyl said, placing the bowl on the table beside the laptop. She sat down on the sofa and opened up the laptop as the dog drank daintily from the bowl. By the time she’d quenched her thirst, Sibyl had the laptop up and running and open to a word processing program, blank document ready.

  The dog sat before the keyboard on her haunches, her remarkably tiny front paws no thicker than the average human forefinger. For a hunt-and-peck typist she was amazingly fast, and, for a dog, an incredibly good speller.

  Sibyl sat on the sofa, peering at the screen as the electronic type crawled across it, sped by paws moving so quickly they were almost a blur.

  I am scare agernt moon, she wrote, without bothering to use capital letters—except for those automatically inserted by the word processing program—or correct typos in her urgency to tell her story.

  Of course, Sibyl thought. She’d never had direct dealings with Moon, but she knew of her; a joker in her human form, Moon was a shape-changer who could morph into any canid form, wild or domestic, living or extinct. And a SCARE agent. The JADL kept files on all known SCARE agents, active or retired. “I should have recognized you,” Sibyl told the Chihuahua.

  Is ok, Moon typed. Iam sorrty for what happened to Pretorius. He was agood man. Icame to him bercause I trusted him and I had tot ell someone what I know. I didn’t know they were already oin my trail—

  “Who?” Sibyl interrupted.

  Jystice and the othr rogues. SCARE Agent Antonio Echeverrrria. He was the shooter. He killed presdent Van Rennssler.

  “Why?” asked Sibyl.

  To stop her gvng the moon to jokerfreaks, Moon typed. They knw better than to try and recruit me but i realized what was going on by overhearing bits opieces here and there. When they found me out and i was forced to run forit. I came to pretorius with my story—and you know what happened.

  The sinking feeling turned into something else and Sibyl felt heat bubbling up and growing where her stomach would be if she were human.

  But, listen, Moon continued. We should get out of hre, quick. They have a teleporter on the team—they can go anywhere.

  “Buck,” said Sibyl, with a sick, sinking feeling. “And his brother.”

  Moon nodded. They can find where you live.

  “Let me grab a few things.”

  She didn’t need clothes. They needed lawyers, guns, and money. And a computer. She could immediately put her hands on most of those things. She shut down the laptop, scooped it up from the table, shoved the sofa aside, and pulled up a piece of carpeting, exposing a good-sized floor safe. She opened it in a hurry and extracted an already packed bag, to which she added the laptop. Then she went to a closet off the living room and took out a leather coat. It was a little warm considering the weather, but it had deep pockets in which Moon would fit.

  Sibyl put on the coat. “In you go,” she said, and Moon leapt from the sofa and settled down into the pocket Sibyl held open for her.

  They were not a moment too soon. There was an eerie sound and odd vibrations that neither Sibyl nor Moon, peering from her pocket, had ever felt before, and a dark semicircle appeared on a far wall of her living room.

  Moon yipped excitedly. Sibyl did not waste words, but ran for the apartment door, slammed it shut behind her, and activated a special lock that could be opened only from the outside. “That’ll hold them,” she said, “for a few minutes, anyway. We better take the stairs.”

  She went down the steps quickly and was still breathing evenly when she reached the ground floor. The stairwell door opened out into an alley behind her apartment building. She peered out carefully. “Looks clear,” she said in a quiet voice, and they went out into the alley, Sibyl walking at a fast clip. She hadn’t taken five steps before three men stepped out from behind a pile of junk that lined the opposite alley wall. All three pointed guns at them.

  “What do we have here?” one of the men asked facetiously in a heavy Russian accent.

  “Pretty blue doll,” another said.

  “Where’s the dog, Barbie?” added the third.

  Moon peered out of her jacket pocket. Sibyl felt a flash of irritation. The only saving grace was that they were armed only with silenced pistols, not automatic rifles. She had a chance—

  Moon bared her teeth and growled, long and loud. The men all laughed.

 
“Funny little dog,” one said.

  Moon leapt from Sibyl’s pocket.

  The men paused to laugh again, and sealed their fate.

  By the time they dropped their pistols to cover Moon she was already at full speed, her tiny legs a blur as she dodged and jinked like a dark moth in flight. Each gunman fired a couple of shots, but their bullets whined off the pavement harmlessly, though one of the ricochets clipped Sibyl and glanced off without doing any damage. Their curses turned to laughter again as, still six feet away, Moon launched herself into the air right at them.

  “Oh, no,” one managed to say. The streetlights flickered for blocks around. In mid-leap Moon transformed and their laughter transformed into sudden screams.

  Any canid species, Sibyl thought, alive or extinct.

  Canis dirus. Weight, one hundred and sixty pounds. Height, two and a half feet at the shoulder. Length, six feet from nose to tail tip. Teeth, Sibyl thought, a lot, and pretty fucking big and sharp. The dire wolf.

  There were some shrieks and a couple of wild shots and it was over. Sibyl watched Moon wipe the blood off her muzzle with one incredibly large paw and then lick it clean. It might have been better if she’d left one alive to interrogate, but then Buck and Blood could pop up behind them at any moment. “We’d better go,” she said.

  Moon shifted into a tiny Chihuahua again and leapt up into her arms. But before she did that she peed all over the bodies.

  That’ll give CSI some pause, Sibyl thought. Together they hurried away and turned out of the alley. As she walked rapidly to the busy street off the alley, she pulled one of the burner cell phones out of her bag, and hit one of the saved numbers.

  “Go dark,” she said, stopped for a moment, dropped the cell, crushed it under her foot, and picked up the pieces and put them in her other coat pocket.

  Half a dozen despondent JADL high-level staffers and allies had gathered in the safe house, along with Sibyl and Moon, still a Chihuahua. Very few people had ever seen her in her actual human joker form, which was rumored to be so crippled that she could barely move about on her own and was actually less able to communicate than her canine forms.