When he finally opened his eyes, half expecting to see Joey’s fist smashing into his nose, there was nothing to behold but a seagull perched on the hood of the Packard, its head cocked as it peered through the cracked windshield. He was floating. He was flying.
Tom stuck his head out of the window. Joey stood twenty feet below him, glaring, hands on his hips and a disgusted look on his face. “Now,” Tom yelled down, smiling, “what was it you were saying last night?”
“I hope you can stay up there all day, you son of a bitch,” Joey said. He made an ineffectual fist, and waved it. Lank black hair fell across his eyes. “Ah, shit, what does this prove? If I had a gun, you’d still be dead meat.”
“If you had a gun, I wouldn’t be sticking my head out the window,” Tom said. “In fact, it’d be better if I didn’t have a window.” He considered that for a second, but it was hard to think while he was up here. The Packard was heavy. “I’m coming down,” he said to Joey. “You, uh, you calmed down?”
Joey grinned. “Try me and see, Tuds.”
“Move out of the way. I don’t want to squash you with this damn thing.”
Joey shuffled to one side, bare-ass and goose-pimpled, and Tom let the Packard settle as gently as an autumn leaf on a still day. He had the door half open when Joey reached in, grabbed him, yanked him up, and pushed him back against the side of the car, his other hand cocked into a fist. “I oughtta—” he began. Then he shook his head, snorted, and punched Tom lightly in the shoulder. “Gimme back my fuckin’ drawers, ace,” he said.
Back inside the house, Tom reheated the leftover coffee. “I’ll need you to do the work,” he said as he made himself some scrambled eggs and ham and a couple more English muffins. Using his teke always gave him quite an appetite. “You took auto shop and welding and all that shit. I’ll do the wiring.”
“Wiring?” Joey said, warming his hands over his cup. “What the fuck for?”
“The lights and the TV cameras. I don’t want any windows people can shoot through. I know where we can get some cameras cheap, and you got lots of old sets around here, I’ll just fix them up.” He sat down and attacked his eggs wolfishly. “I’ll need loudspeakers too. Some kind of PA system. A generator. Wonder if I’ll have room for a refrigerator in there?”
“That Packard’s a big motherfucker,” Joey said. “Take out the seats and you’ll have room for three of the fuckers.”
“Not the Packard,” Tom said. “I’ll find a lighter car. We can cover up the windows with old body panels or something.”
Joey pushed hair out of his eyes. “Fuck the body panels. I got armor plate. From the war. They scrapped a bunch of ships at the Navy base in ’46 and ’47, and Dom put in a bid for the metal, and bought us twenty goddamn tons. Fuckin’ waste a money—who the fuck wants to buy battleship armor? I still got it all, sitting way out back rusting. You need a fuckin’ sixteen-inch gun to punch through that shit, Tuds. You’ll be safe as—fuck, I dunno. Safe, anyhow.”
Tom knew. “Safe,” he said loudly, “as a turtle in its shell!”
ONLY TEN SHOPPING DAYS WERE LEFT UNTIL CHRISTMAS, AND Tach sat in one of the window alcoves, nursing an Irish coffee against the December cold and gazing through the one-way glass at the Bowery. The Funhouse wouldn’t open for another hour yet, but the back door was always unlocked for Angelface’s friends. Up on stage, a pair of joker jugglers who called themselves Cosmos and Chaos were tossing bowling balls around. Cosmos floated three feet above the stage in the lotus position, his eyeless face serene. He was totally blind, but he never missed a beat or dropped a ball. His partner, six-armed Chaos, capered around like a lunatic, chortling and telling bad jokes and keeping a cascade of flaming clubs going behind his back with two arms while the other four flung bowling balls at Cosmos. Tach spared them only a glance. As talented as they were, their deformities pained him.
Mal slid into his booth. “How many of those you had?” the bouncer demanded, glaring at the Irish coffee. The tendrils that hung from his lower lip expanded and contracted in a blind wormlike pulsing, and his huge, malformed blue-black jaw gave his face a look of belligerent contempt.
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re no damn use at all, are you?”
“I never claimed I was.”
Mal grunted. “You’re worth ’bout as much as a sack of shit. I don’t see why the hell Angel needs no damn pantywaist spaceman hanging round the place sopping up her booze….”
“She doesn’t. I told her that.”
“You can’t tell that woman nothin’,” Mal agreed. He made a fist. A very large fist. Before the Day of the Wild Card, he’d been the eighth-ranked heavyweight contender. Afterward, he had climbed as high as third…until they’d banned wild cards from professional sports, and wiped out his dreams in a stroke. The measure was aimed at aces, they said, to keep the games competitive, but there had been no exceptions made for jokers. Mal was older now, sparse hair turned iron gray, but he still looked strong enough to break Floyd Patterson over his knee and mean enough to stare down Sonny Liston. “Look at that,” he growled in disgust, glaring out the window. Tiny was outside in his chair. “What the hell is he doing here? I told him not to come by here no more.” Mal started for the door.
“Can’t you just leave him alone?” Tachyon called after him. “He’s harmless.”
“Harmless?” Mal rounded on him. “His screamin’ scares off all the fuckin’ tourists, and who the hell’s gonna pay for all your free booze?”
But then the door pushed open, and Desmond stood there, overcoat folded over one arm, his trunk half-raised. “Let him be, Mal,” the maître d’ said wearily. “Go on, now.” Muttering, Mal stalked off.
Desmond came over and seated himself in Tachyon’s booth. “Good morning, Doctor,” he said.
Tachyon nodded and finished his drink. The whiskey had all gone to the bottom of the cup, and it warmed him on the way down. He found himself staring at the face in the mirrored tabletop: a worn, dissipated, coarse face, eyes reddened and puffy, long red hair tangled and greasy, features distorted by alcoholic bloat. That wasn’t him, that couldn’t be him, he was handsome, clean-featured, distinguished, his face was—
Desmond’s trunk snaked out, its fingers locking around his wrist roughly, yanking him forward. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Des said, his voice low and urgent with anger. Blearily, Tach realized that Desmond had been talking to him. He began to mutter apologies.
“Never mind about that,” Des said, releasing his grip. “Listen to me. I was asking for your help, Doctor. I may be a joker, but I’m not an uneducated man. I’ve read about you. You have certain—abilities, let us say.”
“No,” Tach interrupted. “Not the way you’re thinking.”
“Your powers are quite well documented,” Des said.
“I don’t…” Tach began awkwardly. He spread his hands. “That was then. I’ve lost—I mean, I can’t, not anymore.” He stared down at his own wasted features, wanting to look Des in the eye, to make him understand, but unable to bear the sight of the joker’s deformity.
“You mean you won’t,” Des said. He stood up. “I thought that if I spoke to you before we opened, I might actually find you sober. I see I was mistaken. Forget everything I said.”
“I’d help you if I could,” Tach began to say.
“I wasn’t asking for me,” Des said sharply.
When he was gone, Tachyon went to the long silver-chrome bar and got down a full bottle of cognac. The first glass made him feel better; the second stopped his hands from shaking. By the third he had begun to weep. Mal came over and looked down at him in disgust. “Never knew no man cried as much as you do,” he said, thrusting a dirty handkerchief at Tachyon roughly before he left to help them open.
HE HAD BEEN ALOFT FOR FOUR AND A HALF HOURS WHEN THE NEWS of the fire came crackling over the police-band radio down by his right foot. Not very far aloft, true, only about six fee
t from the ground, but that was enough—six feet or sixty, it didn’t make all that much difference, Tom had found. Four and a half hours, and he didn’t feel the least bit tired yet. In fact, he felt sensational.
He was strapped securely into a bucket seat Joey had pulled from a mashed-up Triumph TR-3 and mounted on a low pivot right in the center of the VW. The only light was the wan phosphor glow from an array of mismatched television screens that surrounded him on all sides. Between the cameras and their tracking motors, the generator, the ventilation system, the sound equipment, the control panels, the spare box of vacuum tubes, and the little refrigerator, he hardly had space to swing around. But that was okay. Tom was more a claustrophile than a claustrophobe anyway; he liked it in here. Around the exterior of the gutted Beetle, Joey had mounted two overlapping layers of thick battleship armor. It was better than a goddamned tank. Joey had already pinged a few shots off it with the Luger that Dom had taken off a German officer during the war. A lucky shot might be able to take out one of his cameras or lights, but there was no way to get to Tom himself inside the shell. He was better than safe, he was invulnerable, and when he felt this secure and sure of himself, there was no limit on what he might be able to do.
The shell was heavier than the Packard by the time they’d gotten finished with it, but it didn’t seem to matter. Four and a half hours, never touching ground, sliding around silently and almost effortlessly through the junkyard, and Tom hadn’t even worked up a sweat.
When he heard the report over the radio, a jolt of excitement went through him. This is it! he thought. He ought to wait for Joey, but Joey had driven to Pompeii Pizza to pick up dinner (pepperoni, onion, and extra cheese) and there was no time to waste; this was his chance.
The ring of lights on the bottom of the shell threw stark shadows over the hills of twisted metal and trash as Tom pushed the shell higher into the air, eight feet up, ten, twelve. His eyes flicked nervously from one screen to the next, watching the ground recede. One set, its picture tube filched from an old Sylvania, began a slow vertical roll. Tom played with a knob and stopped it. His palms were sweaty. Fifteen feet up, he began to creep forward, until the shell reached the shoreline. In front of him was darkness; it was too thick a night to see New York, but he knew it was there, if he could reach it. On his small black-and-white screens, the waters of New York Bay seemed even darker than usual, an endless choppy ocean of ink looming before him. He’d have to grope his way across, until the city lights came into sight. And if he lost it out there, over the water, he’d be joining Jetboy and J.F.K. a lot sooner than he planned; even if he could unscrew the hatch quick enough to avoid drowning, he couldn’t swim.
But he wasn’t going to lose it, Tom thought suddenly. Why the fuck was he hesitating? He wasn’t going to lose it ever again, was he? He had to believe that.
He pressed his lips together, pushed off with his mind, and the shell slid smoothly out over the water. The salt waves beneath him rose and fell. He’d never had to push against water before; it felt different. Tom had an instant of panic; the shell rocked and dropped three feet before he caught hold of himself and adjusted. He calmed himself with an effort, shoved upward, and rose. High, he thought, he’d come in high, he’d fly in, like Jetboy, like Black Eagle, like a fucking ace. The shell moved out, faster and faster, gliding across the bay with swift serenity as Tom gained confidence. He’d never felt so incredibly powerful, so good, so goddamned right.
The compass worked fine; in less than ten minutes, the lights of the Battery and the Wall Street district loomed up before him. Tom pushed still higher, and floated uptown, hugging the shoreline of the Hudson. Jetboy’s Tomb came and went beneath him. He’d stood in front of it a dozen times, gazing up at the face of the big metal statue out front. He wondered what that statue might think if it could look up and see him tonight.
He had a New York street map, but tonight he didn’t need it; the flames could be seen almost a mile off. Even inside his armor Tom could feel the heat waves licking up at him when he made a pass overhead. He carefully began a descent. His fans whirred, and his cameras tracked at his command; below was chaos and cacophony, sirens and shouting, the crowd, the hurrying firemen, the police barricades, and the ambulances, big hook-and-ladder trucks spraying water into the inferno. At first no one noticed him, hovering fifty feet above the sidewalk—until he came in low enough for his lights to play on the walls of the building. Then he saw them looking up, pointing; he felt giddy with excitement.
But he had only an instant to relish the feeling. Then, from the corner of an eye, he saw her in one of his screens. She appeared suddenly in a fifth-floor window, bent over and coughing, her dress already afire. Before he could act, the flames licked at her; she screamed and jumped.
He caught her in midair, without thinking, without hesitating, without wondering whether he could do it. He just did it, caught her and held her and lowered her gently to the ground. The firemen surrounded her, put out her dress, and hustled her into an ambulance. And now, Tom saw, everyone was looking up at him, at the strange dark shape floating high in the night, with its ring of shining lights. The police band was crackling; they were reporting him as a flying saucer, he heard. He grinned.
A cop climbed up on top of his police car, holding a bullhorn, and began to hail him. Tom turned off the radio to hear better over the roar of the flames. He was telling Tom to land and identify himself, asking who he was, what he was.
That was easy. Tom turned on his microphone. “I’m the Turtle,” he said. The VW had no tires; in the wheel wells, Joey had rigged the most humongous speakers they could find, powered by the largest amp on the market. For the first time, the voice of the Turtle was heard in the land, a booming “I’M THE TURTLE” echoing down the streets and alleys, a rolling thunder crackling with distortion. Except what he said didn’t sound quite right. Tom cranked the volume up even higher, injected a little more bass into his voice. “I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TURTLE,” he announced to them all.
Then he flew a block west, to the dark polluted waters of the Hudson, and imagined two huge invisible hands forty feet across. He lowered them into the river, cupped them full, and lifted. Rivulets of water dribbled to the street all the way back. When he dropped the first cascade on the flames, a ragged cheering went up from the crowd below.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS,” TACH DECLARED DRUNKENLY WHEN THE clock struck midnight and the record Christmas Eve crowd began to whoop and shout and pound on the tables. On stage, Humphrey Bogart cracked a lame joke in an unfamiliar voice. All the lights in the house dimmed briefly; when they came back up, Bogart had been replaced by a portly, round-faced man with a red nose. “Who is he now?” Tach asked the twin on his left.
“W. C. Fields,” she whispered. She slid her tongue around the inside of his ear. The twin on the right was doing something even more interesting under the table, where her hand had somehow found a way into his trousers. The twins were his Christmas gift from Angelface. “You can pretend they’re me,” she’d told him, though of course they were nothing like her. Nice kids, both of them, buxom and cheerful and absolutely uninhibited, if a bit simpleminded; they reminded him of Takisian sex toys. The one on the right had drawn the wild card, but she wore her cat mask even in bed, and there was no visible deformity to disturb the sweet pleasure of his erection.
W. C. Fields, whoever he was, offered some cynical observation, about Christmas and small children. The crowd hooted him off the stage. The Projectionist had an astonishing array of faces, but he couldn’t tell a joke. Tach didn’t mind; he had all the diversion he needed.
“Paper, Doc?” The vendor thrust a copy of the Herald Tribune across the table with a thick three-fingered hand. His flesh was blue-black and oily-looking. “All the Christmas news,” he said, shifting the clumsy stack of papers under his arm. Two small curving tusks protruded from the corners of his wide, grinning mouth. Beneath a porkpie hat, the great bulge of his skull was covered with tufts of bristly red hair. On t
he streets they called him the Walrus.
“No thank you, Jube,” Tach said with drunken dignity. “I have no desire to wallow in human folly tonight.”
“Hey, look,” said the twin on the right. “The Turtle!”
Tachyon looked around, momentarily befuddled, wondering how that huge armored shell could possibly have gotten inside the Funhouse, but of course she was referring to the newspaper.
“You better buy it for her, Tacky,” the twin on the left said, giggling. “If you don’t she’ll pout.”
Tachyon sighed. “I’ll take one. But only if I don’t have to listen to any of your jokes, Jube.”
“Heard a new one about a joker, a Polack, and an Irishman stuck on a desert island, but just for that I’m not going to tell it,” the Walrus replied with a rubbery grin.
Tachyon dug for some coins, found nothing in his pockets but a small, feminine hand. Jube winked. “I’ll get it from Des,” he said. Tachyon spread the newspaper out on the table, while the club erupted in applause as Cosmos and Chaos made their entrance.
A grainy photograph of the Turtle was spread across two columns. Tachyon thought it looked like a flying pickle, a big lumpy dill covered with little bumps. The Turtle had apprehended a hit-and-run driver who had killed a nine-year-old boy in Harlem, intercepting his flight and lifting the car twenty feet off the ground, where it floated with its engine roaring and its tires spinning madly until the police finally caught up. In a related sidebar, the rumor that the shell was an experimental robot flying tank had been denied by an Air Force spokesman.
“You’d think they’d have found something more important to write about by now,” Tachyon said. It was the third big story about the Turtle this week. The letter columns, the editorial pages, everything was Turtle, Turtle, Turtle. Even television was rabid with Turtle speculation. Who was he? What was he? How did he do it?
Dreamsongs. Volume II Page 24