Wild Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  They jerked to a stop five feet above the cement, with a wrench that elicited a grunt from the man behind him.

  Tach had closed his eyes before the instant of impact. He opened them as they began to float upward. Above the yellow halo of the streetlamp was a ring of much brighter lights, set in a hovering darkness that blotted out the winter stars.

  The arm across his throat had loosened enough for Tachyon to groan. “You,” he said hoarsely, as they curved around the shell and came to rest gently on top of it. The metal was icy cold, its chill biting right through the fabric of Tachyon's pants. As the Turtle began to rise straight up into the night, Tachyon's captor released him. He drew in a shuddering breath of cold air, and rolled over to face a man in a zippered leather jacket, black dungarees, and a rubbery green frog mask. “Who . . . ?” he gasped.

  “I'm the Great and Powerful Turtle's mean-ass sidekick,” the man in the frog mask said, rather cheerfully.

  “DOCTOR TACHYON, I PRESUME,” boomed the shell's speakers, far above the alleys of Jokertown. “I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO MEET YOU. I READ ABOUT YOU WHEN I WAS JUST A KID.”

  “Turn it down,” Tach croaked weakly.

  “OH. SURE. Is that better?” The volume diminished sharply. “It's noisy in here, and behind all this armor I can't always tell how loud I sound. I'm sorry if we scared you, but we couldn't take the chance of you saying no. We need you.”

  Tach stayed just where he was, shivering, shaken. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.

  “Help,” the Turtle declared. They were still rising; the lights of Manhattan spread out all around them, and the spires of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building rose uptown. They were higher than either. The wind was cold and gusting; Tach clung to the shell for dear life.

  “Leave me alone,” Tachyon said. “I have no help to give you. I have no help to give anybody.”

  “Fuck, he's crying,” the man in the frog mask said.

  “You don't understand,” the Turtle said. The shell began to drift west, its motion silent and steady. There was something awesome and eerie about the flight. “You have to help. I've tried on my own, but I'm getting nowhere. But you, your powers, they can make the difference.”

  Tachyon was lost in his own self-pity, too cold and exhausted and despairing to reply. “I want a drink,” he said.

  “Fuck it,” said frog-face. “Dumbo was right about this guy, he's nothing but a goddamned wino.”

  “He doesn't understand,” said the Turtle. “Once we explain, he'll come around. Doctor Tachyon, we're talking about your friend Angelface.”

  He needed a drink so badly it hurt. “She was good to me,” he said, remembering the sweet perfume of her satin sheets, and her bloody footprints on the mirror tiles. “But there's nothing I can do. I told the police everything I know.”

  “Chickenshit asshole,” said frog-face.

  “When I was a kid, I read about you in Jetboy Comics,” the Turtle said. “`Thirty Minutes Over Broadway,' remember? You were supposed to be as smart as Einstein. I might be able to save your friend Angelface, but I can't without your powers.”

  “I don't do that any longer. I can't. There was someone I hurt, someone I cared for, but I seized her mind, just for an instant, for a good reason, or at least I thought it was for a good reason, but it . . . destroyed her. I can't do it again.”

  “Boo hoo,” said frog-face mockingly. “Let's toss 'im, Turtle, he's not worth a bucket of warm piss.” He took something out of one of the pockets of his leather jacket; Tach was astonished to see that it was a bottle of beer.

  “Please,” Tachyon said, as the man popped off the cap with a bottle-opener hung round his neck. “A sip,” Tach said. “Just a sip.” He hated the taste of beer, but he needed something, anything. It had been days. “Please.”

  “Fuck off,” frog-face said.

  “Tachyon,” said the Turtle, “you can make him.”

  “No I can't,” Tach said. The man raised the bottle up to green rubber lips. “I can't,” Tach repeated. Frog-face continued to drink. “No.” He could hear it gurgling. “Please, just a little.”

  The man lowered the beer bottle, sloshed it thoughtfully. “Just a swallow left,” he said.

  “Please.” He reached out, hands trembling.

  “Nah,” said frog-face. He began to turn the bottle upside down. “ 'Course, if you're really thirsty, you could just grab my mind, right? Make me give you the fuckin' bottle.” He tipped the bottle a little more. “Go on, I dare ya, try it.”

  Tach watched the last mouthful of beer dribble down onto the Turtle's shell and run off into empty air.

  “Fuck,” said the man in the frog mask. “You got it bad, don't you?” He pulled another bottle from his pocket, opened it, and handed it across. Tach cradled it with both hands. The beer was cold and sour, but he had never tasted anything half so sweet. He drained it all in one long swallow.

  “Got any other smart ideas?” frog-face asked the Turtle.

  Ahead of them was the blackness of the Hudson River, the lights of Jersey off to the west. They were descending. Beneath them, overlooking the Hudson, was a sprawling edifice of steel and glass and marble that Tachyon suddenly recognized, though he had never set foot inside it: Jetboy's Tomb. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “We're going to see a man about a rescue,” the Turtle said.

  Jetboy's Tomb filled the entire block, on the site where the pieces of his plane had come raining down. It filled Tom's screens too, as he sat in the warm darkness of his shell, bathed in a phosphor glow. Motors whirred as the cameras moved in their tracks. The huge flanged wings of the tomb curved upward, as if the building itself was about to take flight. Through tall, narrow windows, he could see glimpses of the full-size replica of the JB–1 suspended from the ceiling, its scarlet flanks aglow from hidden lights. Above the doors, the hero's last words had been carved, each letter chiseled into the black Italian marble and filled in stainless steel. The metal flashed as the shell's white-hot spots slid across the legend:

  I CAN'T DIE YET,

  I HAVEN'T SEEN THE JOLSON STORY

  Tom brought the shell down in front of the monument, to hover five feet above the broad marble plaza at the top of the stairs. Nearby, a twenty-foot-tall steel Jetboy looked out over the West Side Highway and the Hudson beyond, his fists cocked. The metal used for the sculpture had come from the wreckage of crashed planes, Tom knew. He knew that statue's face better than he knew his father's.

  The man they'd come to meet emerged from the shadows at the base of the statue, a chunky dark shape huddled in a thick overcoat, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Tom shone a light on him; a camera tracked to give him a better view. The joker was a portly man, round-shouldered and well-dressed. His coat had a fur collar and his fedora was pulled low. Instead of a nose, he had an elephant's trunk in the middle of his face. The end of it was fringed with fingers, snug in a little leather glove.

  Dr. Tachyon slid off the top of the shell, lost his footing and landed on his ass. Tom heard Joey laugh. Then Joey jumped down too, and pulled Tachyon to his feet.

  The joker glanced down at the alien. “So you convinced him to come after all. I'm surprised.”

  “We were real fuckin' persuasive,” Joey said.

  “Des,” Tachyon said, sounding confused. “What are you doing here? Do you know these people?”

  Elephant-face twitched his trunk. “Since the day before yesterday, yes, in a manner of speaking. They came to me. The hour was late, but a phone call from the Great and Powerful Turtle does pique one's interest. He offered his help, and I accepted. I even told them where you lived.”

  Tachyon ran a hand through his tangled, filthy hair. “I'm sorry about Mal. Do you know anything about Angelface? You know how much she meant to me.”

  “In dollars and cents, I know quite precisely,” Des said.

  Tachyon's mouth gaped open. He looked hurt. Tom felt sorry for him. “I wanted to go to you,” he said. “I
didn't know where to find you.”

  Joey laughed. “He's listed in the fuckin' phone book, dork. Ain't that many guys named Xavier Desmond.” He looked at the shell. “How the fuck is he gonna find the lady if he couldn't even find his buddy here?”

  Desmond nodded. “An excellent point. This isn't going to work. Just look at him!” His trunk pointed. “What good is he? We're wasting precious time.”

  “We did it your way,” Tom replied. “We're getting nowhere. No one's talking. He can get the information we need.”

  “I don't understand any of this,” Tachyon interrupted.

  Joey made a disgusted sound. He had found a beer somewhere and was cracking the cap.

  “What's happening?” Tach asked.

  “If you had been the least bit interested in anything besides cognac and cheap tarts, you might know,” Des said icily.

  “Tell him what you told us,” Tom commanded. When he knew, Tachyon would surely help, he thought. He had to.

  Des gave a heavy sigh. “Angelface had a heroin habit. She hurt, you know. Perhaps you noticed that from time to time, Doctor? The drug was the only thing that got her through the day. Without it, the pain would have driven her insane. Nor was hers an ordinary junkie's habit. She used uncut heroin in quantities that would have killed any normal user. You saw how minimally it affected her. The joker metabolism is a curious thing. Do you have any idea how expensive heroin is, Doctor Tachyon? Never mind, I see that you don't. Angelface made quite a bit of money from the Funhouse, but it was never enough. Her source gave her credit until she was in far over her head, then demanded . . . call it a promissory note. Or a Christmas present. She had no choice. It was that or be cut off. She hoped to come up with the money, being an eternal optimist. She failed. On Christmas morning her source came by to collect. Mal wasn't about to let them have her. They insisted.”

  Tachyon was squinting in the glare of the lights. His image began to roll upward. “Why didn't she tell me?” he said.

  “I suppose she didn't want to burden you, Doctor. It might have taken the fun out of your self-pitying binges.”

  “Have you told the police?”

  “The police? Ah, yes. New York's finest. The ones who seem so curiously uninterested whenever a joker is beaten or killed, yet ever so diligent if a tourist is robbed. The ones who so regularly arrest, harass, and brutalize any joker who has the poor taste to live anywhere outside of Jokertown. Perhaps we might consult the officer who commented that raping a joker woman is more a lapse in taste than a crime.” Des snorted. “Doctor Tachyon, where do you think Angelface bought her drugs? Do you think any ordinary street pusher would have access to uncut heroin in the quantities she needed? The police were her source. The head of the Jokertown narcotics squad, if you care to be precise. Oh, I'll grant you that it's unlikely the whole department is involved. Homicide may be conducting a legitimate investigation. What do you think they'd say if we told them that Bannister was the murderer? You think they'd arrest one of their own? On the strength of my testimony, or the testimony of any joker?”

  “We'll make good her note,” Tachyon blurted. “We'll give this man his money or the Funhouse or whatever it is he wants.”

  “The promissory note,” Desmond said wearily, “was not for the Funhouse.”

  “Whatever it was, give it to him!”

  “She promised him the only thing she still had that he wanted,” Desmond said. “Herself. Her beauty and her pain. The word's out on the street, if you know how to listen. There's going to be a very special New Year's Eve party somewhere in the city. Invitation only. Expensive. A unique thrill. Bannister will have her first. He's wanted that for a long time. But the other guests will have their turn. Jokertown hospitality.”

  Tachyon's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “The police?” he finally managed. He looked as shocked as Tom had been when Desmond told him and Joey.

  “Do you think they love us, Doctor? We're freaks. We're diseased. Jokertown is a hell, a dead end, and the Jokertown police are the most brutal, corrupt, and incompetent in the city. I don't think anyone planned what happened at the Funhouse, but it happened, and Angelface knows too much. They can't let her live, so they're going to have some fun with the joker cunt.”

  Tom Tudbury leaned toward his microphone. “I can rescue her,” he said. “These fuckers haven't seen anything like the Great and Powerful Turtle. But I can't find her.”

  Des said, “She has a lot of friends. But none of us can read minds, or make a man do something he doesn't want to.”

  “I can't,” Tachyon protested. He seemed to shrink into himself, to edge away from them, and for an instant Tom thought the little man was going to run away. “You don't understand.”

  “What a fuckin' candy-ass,” Joey said loudly.

  Watching Tachyon crumble on his screens, Tom Tudbury finally ran out of patience. “If you fail, you fail,” he said. “And if you don't try, you fail too, so what the fuck difference does it make? Jetboy failed, but at least he tried. He wasn't an ace, he wasn't a goddamned Takisian, he was just a guy with a jet, but he did what he could.”

  “I want to. I . . . just . . . can't.”

  Des trumpeted his disgust. Joey shrugged.

  Inside his shell, Tom sat in stunned disbelief. He wasn't going to help. He hadn't believed it, not really. Joey had warned him, Desmond too, but Tom had insisted, he'd been sure, this was Doctor Tachyon, of course he'd help, maybe he was having some problems, but once they explained the situation to him, once they made it clear what was at stake and how much they needed him—he had to help. But he was saying no. It was the last goddamned straw.

  He twisted the volume knob up all the way. “YOU SON OF A BITCH,” he boomed, and the sound hammered out over the plaza. Tachyon flinched away. “YOU NO-GOOD FUCKING LITTLE ALIEN CHICKENSHIT!” Tachyon stumbled backward down the stairs, but the Turtle drifted after him, loudspeakers blaring. “IT WAS ALL A LIE, WASN'T IT? EVERYTHING IN THE COMIC BOOKS, EVERYTHING IN THE PAPERS, IT WAS ALL A STUPID LIE. ALL MY LIFE THEY BEAT ME UP AND THEY CALLED ME A FUCKING WIMP AND A COWARD BUT YOU'RE THE COWARD, YOU ASSHOLE, YOU SHITTY LITTLE WHINER, YOU WON'T EVEN TRY, YOU DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT ANYBODY, ABOUT YOUR FRIEND ANGELFACE OR ABOUT KENNEDY OR JETBOY OR ANYBODY, YOU HAVE ALL THESE FUCKING POWERS AND YOU'RE NOTHING, YOU WON'T DO ANYTHING, YOU'RE WORSE THAN OSWALD OR BRAUN OR ANY OF THEM.” Tachyon staggered down the steps, hands over his ears, shouting something unintelligible, but Tom was past listening. His anger had a life of its own now. He lashed out, and the alien's head snapped around and reddened with the force of the slap. “ASSHOLE!” Tom was shrieking. “YOU'RE THE ONE IN A SHELL.” Invisible blows rained down on Tachyon in a fury. He reeled, fell, rolled a third of the way down the stairs, tried to get back to his feet, was bowled over again, and bounced down to the street head over heels. “ASSHOLE!” the Turtle thundered. “RUN, YOU SHITHEAD. GET OUT OF HERE, OR I'LL THROW YOU IN THE DAMNED RIVER! RUN, YOU LITTLE WIMP, BEFORE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TURTLE REALLY GETS UPSET! RUN, DAMN IT! YOU'RE THE ONE IN THE SHELL! YOU'RE THE ONE IN THE SHELL!”

  And he ran, dashing blindly from one streetlight to the next, until he was lost in the shadows. Tom Tudbury watched him vanish on the shell's array of television screens. He felt sick and beaten. His head was throbbing. He needed a beer, or an aspirin, or both. When he heard the sirens coming, he scooped up Joey and Desmond and set them on top of his shell, killed his lights, and rose straight up into the night, high, high up, into darkness and cold and silence.

  * * *

  That night Tach slept the sleep of the damned, thrashing about like a man in a fever dream, crying out, weeping, walking again and again from nightmares, only to drift back into them. He dreamt he was back on Takis, and his hated cousin Zabb was boasting about a new sex toy, but when he brought her out it was Blythe, and he raped her right there in front of him. Tach watched it all, powerless to intervene; her body writhed beneath his and blood flowed from her mouth and ears and vagina. She began to cha
nge, into a thousand joker shapes each more horrible than the last, and Zabb went right on, raping them all as they screamed and struggled. But afterward, when Zabb rose from the corpse covered with blood, it wasn't his cousin's face at all, it was his own, worn and dissipated, a coarse face, eyes reddened and puffy, long red hair tangled and greasy, features distorted by alcoholic bloat or perhaps by a Funhouse mirror.

  He woke around noon, to the terrible sound of Tiny weeping outside his window. It was more than he could stand. It was all more than he could stand. He stumbled to the window and threw it open and screamed at the giant to be quiet, to stop, to leave him alone, to give him peace, please, but Tiny went on and on, so much pain, so much guilt, so much shame, why couldn't they let him be, he couldn't take it anymore, no, shut up, shut up, please shut up, and suddenly Tach shrieked and reached out with his mind and plunged into Tiny's head and shut him up.

  The silence was thunderous.

  The nearest phone booth was in a candy store a block down. Vandals had ripped the phone book to shreds. He dialed information and got the listing for Xavier Desmond on Christie Street, only a short walk away. The apartment was a fourth-floor walk-up above a mask shop. Tachyon was out of breath by the time he got to the top.

  Des opened the door on the fifth knock. “You,” he said.

  “The Turtle,” Tach said. His throat was dry. “Did he get anything last night?”

  “No,” Desmond replied. His trunk twitched. “The same story as before. They're wise to him now, they know he won't really drop them. They call his bluff. Short of actually killing someone, there's nothing to do.”

  “Tell me who to ask,” Tack said.