The Hue of a Mind

by Stephen Leigh

Wednesday, 9:15 A.M.

FOR SEVEN DAYS, SINCE Misha had arrived in New York, she had met nightly with the joker Gimli and the abominations he had gathered around him.

For seven days she had lived in a festering sore called Jokertown, waiting.

For seven days there had been no visions. And that was most important.

Visions had always ruled Misha’s life. She was Kahina, the Seeress: Allah’s dreams had shown her Hartmann, the Satan who danced puppets from his clawed hands. The visions had shown her Gimli and Sara Morgenstern. Allah’s visions had led her back to the desert mosque the day after she’d slit her brother’s throat, there to be given by one of the faithful the thing that would give her revenge and bring Hartmann down: Allah’s gift.

Today was the day of the new moon. Misha took that as an omen that there would be a vision. She had prayed to Allah for well over an hour this morning, the gift He had bestowed upon her cradled in her arms.

He had granted her nothing.

When she rose from the floor at last, she opened the lacquered clothes trunk sitting beside the rickety bed. Misha took off her chador and veils, changing into a long skirt and blouse again. She hated the light, brightly colored cloth and the sinful nakedness she felt. The bared arms and face made her feel vulnerable.

Misha covered Allah’s gift with the folds of the chador she didn’t dare wear here. She had just hidden it under the black cotton when she heard the scrape of a footstep behind her. Mingled fear and anger made her gasp. She slammed down the lid of the clothes trunk and straightened.

“What are you doing in here?” She whirled around, not even realizing she was shouting in Arabic. “Get out of my room—”

She’d never felt safe in Jokertown, not once in the week she’d been here. Always before there had been her husband, Sayyid, her brother, the Nur. There had been servants and bodyguards.

Now Misha was in a country illegally, living alone in a city full of violence, and the only people she knew were jokers. Only two nights before, someone had been shot and killed in the street outside these ramshackle sleeping rooms near the East River. She told herself that it had only been a joker, that the death didn’t matter.

Jokers were cursed. The abominations of Allah.

It was a joker standing at the door of her dingy room, staring at her. “Get out,” she said in shaky, accented English. “I have a gun.”

“It’s my room,” the joker said. “It’s my room and I’m taking it back. You’re just a nat. You shouldn’t be here.” The thin, scrawny shape took a step forward into the light from the room’s one window. Misha recognized the joker immediately.

Gray-white rags of torn cloth were wrapped around his forehead, and the grimy bandages were clotted and brown with old blood. His hair was stiff with it. His hands were similarly covered, and thick red drops oozed through the soaked wrappings to fall on the floor. The clothing he wore over his emaciated body bunched here and there with hidden knots, and she knew that there were other seeping, unclosing wounds on the rest of his body.

She’d seen him every day, staring at her, watching. He would be in the hallways outside her door, on the street outside the tenement, walking behind her. He’d never spoken, but his rancor was obvious. “Stigmata,” Gimli had told her when she’d confessed his fear of him the first day. “That’s his name. Bleeds all the fucking time. Have some goddamn compassion. Stig’s no trouble to anyone.”

Yet Stigmata’s sallow, drawn stare frightened her. He was always there, always scowling when she met his gaze. He was a joker, that was enough. One of Satan’s children, devil-marked by the wild card. “Get out,” Misha told him again.

“It’s my room,” he insisted like a petulant child. He shuffled his feet nervously.

“You are mistaken. I paid for it.”

“It was mine first. I’ve always lived here, ever since—” His lips tightened. He drew his right hand into a fist; the sopping bandages rained scarlet as he brandished it before her. His voice was a thin screech. “Ever since this. Came here the night I got the wild card. Nine years ago, and they kick me out ’cause I don’t pay the last couple months. I told ’em I was gonna pay, but they wouldn’t wait. They’ll take nat money instead.”

“The room’s mine,” Misha repeated.

“You got my things. I left everything here.”

“The owner took them, not me—they’re locked in the basement.”

Stigmata’s face twisted. He spat out the words as if they burned his tongue, almost screaming them. “He’s a nat. You’re a nat. You’re not wanted here. We hate you.”

His accusations caused Misha’s masked frustrations to boil over. A cold fury claimed her, and she drew herself up, pointing at the joker. “You’re the outcasts,” she shouted back at Stigmata, at Jokertown itself. She might have been back in Syria, lecturing the jokers begging at the gates of Damascus. “God hates you. Repent of your sins and maybe you’ll be forgiven. But don’t waste your poison on me.”

In the midst of her tirade there was suddenly a whirling, familiar disorientation. “No,” Misha cried against the onslaught of the vision, and then, because she knew there was no escape from hikma, divine wisdom: “In sha’Allah.” Allah would come as He wished, when He wished.

The room and Stigmata wavered in her sight. Allah’s hand touched her. Her eyes became His. A waking nightmare burst upon her, melting away the gritty reality of Jokertown, her filthy room, and Stigmata’s threats.

She was in Badiyat Ash-sham again, the desert. She stood in her brother’s mosque.

The Nur al-Allah stood in front of her, the emerald glow of his skin lost beneath impossibly thick streams of blood that trailed down the front of his djellaba. His trembling hand pointed at her accusingly; his chin lifted to show the gaping, puckered, bone-white edges of the wound across his throat. He tried to speak, and his voice, which had once been compelling and resonant, was now all gravel and dust, choked. She could understand nothing but the hatred in his eyes.

Misha gasped under that baleful, accusing gaze.

“It wasn’t me!” she sobbed, falling to her knees before him in supplication. “Satan’s hand moved mine. He used my hatred and my jealousy. Please…”

She tried to explain her innocence to her brother, but when she looked up, it was no longer Nur al-Allah standing before her but Hartmann.

And he laughed.

“I’m the beast who rips away the veils of the mind,” he said. His hand lashed out, clawing for her as she recoiled belatedly. Like talons his nails dug into her eyesockets, slashed the soft skin of her face. Blinded, she screamed, her head arced back in torment, writhing but unable to get away from Hartmann as his fingers tore and gouged.

“We don’t wear veils here. We don’t wear masks. Let me show the truth underneath. Let me show you the color of the joker below.” He clenched harder, ripping and tearing. Ribbons of flesh peeled away as he clawed at her, and she felt hot blood pouring down her ruined features. She moaned, sobbing, her hands trying to beat him away as he raked again and again, shearing flesh from muscle and muscle from bone.

“Your face will be naked,” Hartmann said. “And they will run in horror from you. Look, look at the colors inside your head—you’re just a joker, a sinner like the rest. I can see your mind, I can taste it. You’re the same as the rest. You’re the same.”

Through the streaming blood she looked up. Though the apparition was still Hartmann, he now had the face of a young man, and the whine of a thousand angry wasps seemed to surround him. Yet in the midst of her torment, Misha felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and turned to see Sara Morgenstern beside her. “I’m sorry,” Sara told her. “It’s my fault. Let me send him away.”

And then Allah’s vision withdrew, leaving her gasping on the floor. Trembling, sweating, she raised her hands to her face. Marveling, she touched the unbroken flesh there.

Stigmata stared at the woman sobbing on the splintery pine boards.

“You ain’t no damn nat,” he said, and his voice was touched with a grudging sympathy. “You’re just one of us.” He sighed. Slow droplets of blood welled, fell. “It’s still my room and I want it,” he added, but the bitter edge was gone from his voice. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait.”

He walked softly to the door. “One of us,” he said again, shaking his gory, swaddled head, and went out.

Friday, 6:10 P.M.

“So all the rumors are true. You are back again.”

The voice came from behind him, in the shadow of an overflowing trash container. Gimli whirled, scowling. His feet kicked up oil-filmed water pooled in the alleyway, the remnants of the afternoon’s showers. “Who the fuck are you?” The dwarf’s left hand was fisted at his side; his right stayed very close to the open flap of the windbreaker he wore despite the warm night, where the weight of a silenced .38 hung. “You’ve got about two seconds before you become gossip yourself.”

“Well, and as temperamental as ever, aren’t we?” It was a young man’s voice, Gimli decided. Streetlight flowed over a figure beside the trash. “It’s me, Gimli,” the man said. “Croyd. Move that damn hand from the gun. I ain’t no cop.”

“Croyd?” Gimli squinted. He relaxed slightly, though his squat, muscular body stayed low. “Your ace sure screwed up this time. I’ve never seen you look like that.”

The man chuckled without mirth. His face and arms were a shocking porcelain white, his pupils dull pink; the tousled dark brown hair only accentuated the pallor of the skin. “Shit, yeah. Gotta stay out of the sun, but then I’ve always been a night person. Dyed the hair and started wearing sunglasses, but I lost the shades. Still got the strength this time, though. It’s a damn good thing too,” he added reflectively.

Gimli waited. If this guy was Croyd, fine; if he wasn’t, Gimli didn’t intend to give him a chance to do anything. Being in New York again made him edgy. Polyakov wouldn’t meet with them until Monday, when Hartmann was rumored to be making his bid; the fucking Arab woman was a joker-hater who spouted religious nonsense half the time and had “visions” the other; his old JJS people had lost their fire while he’d been in Europe and Russia; and with the Shadow Fist/Mafia wars and Barnett’s rabble-rousing, no one felt safe.

Yet staying cooped up in the warehouse made him edgy. He had told himself that taking a brief night walk would take some of the edge off.

Another fucking bad idea.

Gimli was seeing enemies in every shadow—that was the only way to stay alive and free. It was bad enough that Hartmann had the federal and state authorities digging up the old JJS network and hassling everyone. With the joker-nat underground skirmishes, it seemed like every fucking cop in New York was in Jokertown and Gimli was too recognizable to feel comfortable on the streets, no matter what precautions he took. He wasn’t going to pretend that Hartmann wouldn’t prefer Gimli was shot “resisting arrest” than jailed—he wasn’t that damned stupid.

Better to be cautious. Better to be furtive. Better to make a mistake and leave someone else dead than to be noticed. “Look, Croyd, I’m just a little paranoid at the moment. I’m real uneasy about people I don’t know seeing me…”

Croyd took a step closer. Crooked teeth snagged his lower lip—the albino’s gums were a startling bright red. Gimli was reminded of a B-movie zombie. “You got any speed, Gimli? Your connections were always good.”

“I’ve been away. Things change.”

“No speed? Shit.”

Gimli shook his head. That, at least, sounded like Croyd. The man frowned, shuffling from foot to foot.

“So it goes,” he said. “I’ve got other sources, though they’re drying up or dying on me. Listen, the talk on the streets is that the JJS is reforming. Let me give you some free advice. After Berlin, you should give up on Hartmann; he’s a good guy, anyway, no matter what you think. Take out that s.o.b. Barnett instead. I might have considered it myself, if I’d woken up with the right power. Everyone in Jokertown’d thank you for it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The albino laughed again, the same dry cackle. “You don’t believe it’s me, do you?”

Gimli shrugged. His hand moved significantly back toward the windbreaker; he saw the man watching the movement carefully. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? That’s something.”

The albino who might or might not be Croyd sidled closer until Gimli could smell his breath. “Yeah,” he said. “And maybe next time around I’ll just pound you a lot closer to the pavement than you already are. Croyd remembers things, Miller.”

Croyd coughed, sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. With a bloodshot, overdone leer, he moved off. Gimli watched him, wondering if he was making a mistake. If he wasn’t Croyd …

He let him go. Gimli waited in the alley until he’d turned the corner back onto the street and then headed off again, taking a few extra turns just to see if he was being followed.

In time he came to the back door of a dilapidated warehouse near the East River.

Gimli could see Video on the roof. He waved to her and nodded to Shroud, who materialized from the shadows of the entrance. Gimli grimaced. He could hear the argument inside the frame building—twined voices snarling like a rumbling thunderstorm heard just over the horizon. “Fuck, not again,” he muttered.

Shroud adjusted the strap of his machine pistol and shrugged. “We need some entertainment,” he said. “It’s almost as good as Berlin.”

Gimli shoved open the door. Muffled words coalesced into intelligibility.

File was shouting at Misha, who stood with arms folded and a righteous expression on her face as Peanut tried to hold back the rasp-skinned joker. File waved a fist at Misha, shoving at Peanut. “… your self-centered, blind fanaticism! You and the Nur are just Barnetts in Arabian drag. You have the identical hatred in your pompous souls. Let me show you hatred, bitch! Let me show you what it feels like.”

As the rusty hinges of the door screeched, Peanut glanced over, his arms still wrapped around File. Peanut was scraped from the effort of holding the joker, his forearms scored with long, bloody scratches. A nat’s skin would have been scoured entirely off, but Peanut’s chitinous flesh was more durable. “Gimli,” he said pleadingly.

File spun in Peanut’s grip, tearing a pained screech from Peanut. He pointed at Misha as he glanced at the dwarf. “Get rid of her!” he shouted. “I won’t put up with this crap much longer.” Twisting, he tore himself away from Peanut, who let him go this time.

“Just what the fuck’s going on?” Gimli slammed the door shut behind him and glared. “I could hear you people halfway down the alley.”

“I won’t tolerate any more insults.” File stalked toward Misha threateningly, and Gimli planted himself between the two.

“She said Father Squid’s going to hell when he dies,” Peanut added, dabbing at his cuts with a handkerchief. “I told File she just don’t understand, but—”

“I told the truth.” Misha sounded bewildered, as if she failed to believe their lack of comprehension. Her head shook, her hands were spread wide as if to absolve herself of guilt. “God showed His displeasure with the priest when He made him a joker. Yes, this Father Squid might be sent to hell, but Allah is infinitely merciful.”

“See?” Peanut smiled at File tentatively. “It’s okay, huh?”

“Yeah, and I’m a joker and Gimli and you are jokers and we’re all being punished too. Right? Well, that’s bullshit and I’m not gonna listen to it. Screw you, cunt.” File flipped a finger in Misha’s direction and spun on the balls of his feet.

The slamming of the door reverberated for several seconds after his exit.

Gimli looked over his shoulder at Misha. To him she was quite remarkably good-looking out of the frigging black funeral dress, but she never seemed at ease in Western clothing. Her mysticism and bluntness unsettled his people. File, Shroud, Marigold, and Video absolutely loathed her, while Peanut—oddly enough—seemed utterly infatuated even though she gave the half-witted joker nothing but scorn.

Gimli had already decided he hated her. He regretted the impulse that had led him to meet with her after the Berlin fiasco; he wished he’d never steered her toward Polyakov. If it weren’t for the evidence she claimed to have against Hartmann and the fact that they were still waiting for the Russian’s information, the Justice Department would have received an anonymous tip. He’d like to see what fucking Hartmann would have them do with her.

She was a damn ace. Aces only cared about themselves. Aces were worse than nats.

“You got remarkable tact, you know that?” he said.

“He asked. I only told him what Allah told me. How can truth be wrong?”

“You want to live very much longer in Jokertown, you’d better learn when to keep your fucking mouth shut. And that is the truth.”

“I’m not afraid to be a martyr for Allah,” she answered haughtily, her accent blurring the hard consonants. “I would welcome it. I’m tired of this waiting; I would rather attack the beast Hartmann openly.”

“Hartmann’s done a lot for the jokers…” Peanut began, but Gimli cut him off.

“It’ll be soon enough. I talked to Jube tonight, and the word is Hartmann’s going to speak at the rally in Roosevelt Park on Monday. Everyone thinks he’ll make his announcement then. Polyakov said he’d contact us as soon as Hartmann made things official. We’ll move then.”

“We must contact Sara Morgenstern. The visions—”

“—don’t mean anything,” Gimli interrupted. “We’ll make plans when Polyakov’s finally here.”

“I will go to this park, then. I want to see Hartmann again. I want to hear him.” Her face was dark and savage, almost comically fierce.

“You’ll stay away, goddammit,” Gimli said loudly. “With all the shit going down in this city, the place’ll be crawling with security.”

She stared at him, and her gaze was more intense than he had thought it could be. He blinked. “You are not my father or my brother,” she told him as if speaking to a slow child. “You are not my husband, you are not the Nur. You can’t order me as you do the others.”

Gimli could feel a blind, useless rage coming. He forced it down. Not much longer. Only a few more days. He stared back at her, each reading the other’s dislike.

“Hartmann might make a good president…” Peanut’s voice was almost a whisper as he glanced from one to the other. They ignored him. The scratches on his arms oozed blood.

“I hate this place,” Misha said. “I look forward to leaving.” She shuddered, breaking eye contact with Gimli.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of fucking people about here who feel the same way.” Misha’s eyes narrowed at that; Gimli smiled innocently.

“A few more days. Be patient,” Gimli continued. And after that, all bets are off. I’ll let File and the rest do whatever they damn well please with you.

“Until then, keep your goddamn opinions to yourself,” he added.

Monday, 2:30 P.M.

Misha, who had once been known as Kahina, remembered the sermons. Her brother, Nur al-Allah, had been at his most eloquent describing the torment of the afterlife. His compelling, resonant voice hammered the faithful from the minbar while noontime heat swirled in the mosque of Badiyat Ash-sham, and it had seemed that the pits of hell gaped open before them.

Nur al-Allah’s hell had been full of capering, loathsome jokers, those sinners Allah had cursed with the affliction of the wild card virus. They were an earthly image of the eternal torment that awaited all sinners: the vile underworld was slathered with twisted bodies that were a mockery of the human form; slick with puss oozing from scabrous faces; full of the stench of hatred and revulsion and sin.

The Nur had not known, but Misha did: Hell was New York. Hell was Jokertown. Hell was Roosevelt Park on a June afternoon. And the Great Satan himself capered there, before all his adoring followers: Hartmann, the devil with strings lacing his fingertips, the phantom who haunted her waking dreams. The one who had with Misha’s own hands destroyed her brother’s voice.

She’d seen the papers, the headlines praising Hartmann and extolling his coolness in crisis, his compassion, his work to end the sufferings of jokers. She knew that the thousands in the park were there to see him, and she knew what they hoped he would say. She knew that most considered Hartmann to be the one voice of sanity against the pious, hate-filled ravings of Leo Barnett and the others like him.

Yet Allah’s dreams had shown her the real Hartmann, and Allah had placed in her very hands the gift that would bring him down. For just a moment the reality of the gathering in the park shimmered and threatened to give way to the nightmare again, and Misha nearly cried out.

“You okay? You shivered.”

Peanut touched her on the arm, and Misha felt herself draw away involuntarily from contact with his hornlike, inflexible fingers. She saw hurt in his eyes, nearly lost in the scaly shell of his face.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she told him. “Gimli said—”

“It’s all right, Misha,” he whispered. The joker could barely move his lips; the voice was a poor ventriloquist’s rasp. “I hate the way I look too. A lot of us do—like Stigmata, y’know. I understand.”

Misha turned from the guilty pain that the sympathy in his ruined voice gave her. Her hands ached to pull the veils over her face and hide herself from Peanut. But the chador and veils were locked away in the trunk in her room. Her hair was unbound and loose around her shoulders.

“When you are in New York, you can’t wear black, not on a summer day. They’ll already suspect that you’re there. If you must go out, at least take care that you blend in if you intend to stay free. Be glad you can at least go walking in daylight; Gimli won’t dare show his face at all.” Polyakov had told her that before she’d left Europe. It seemed small consolation.

Here in Roosevelt Park, despite what Gimli had said the night before, there was no chance she would be conspicuous. The place was packed and chaotic. Jokertown had spilled its vibrant, strange life onto the grass. It was ’76 again, the masks of Jokertown placed gleefully aside. They walked unashamed of Allah’s curse, flaunting the visible signs of their sins, mixing unchecked with the ones they called nats. They stood shoulder to misshapen shoulder around the stage set at the north end of the park closest to Jokertown, cheering the speakers who preached solidarity and friendship. Misha listened, she watched, and she shivered again, as if the afternoon heat was a chimera, a dream-phantom like the rest.

“You really hate jokers, don’t you?” Peanut whispered as they moved closer to the stage. The grass was torn and muddy under their feet, littered with newspapers and political tracts. It was another thing she detested about this hell; it was always crowded, always filthy. “Shroud, he told me what your brother preached. The Nur don’t sound awful different from Barnett.”

“We … the Qur’an teaches that God directly affects the world. He rewards the good and punishes the wicked. I don’t find that horrible. Do you believe in God?”

“Sure. But God don’t punish people by giving them no damn virus.”

Kahina nodded, her dark eyes solemn. “Then yours is either an incredibly cruel God, who would inflict a life of pain and suffering on so many innocents; or a poor, weak one who cannot stop such a thing from happening. Either way, how can you worship such a deity?”

The sharp rebuttal confused Peanut—in the days since she’d been here, Misha had found the joker to be friendly but extraordinarily simple. He tried to shrug, his whole upper body lifting, and tears welled in his eyes. “It ain’t our fault—” he began.

His pain touched Misha, stopping her even as she started to interrupt. Again she wished for the veil to hide her empathy. Haven’t you listened to what Tachyon and the others have hinted at between the lines? she wanted to rage at him. Don’t you see what they don’t dare say, that the virus amplifies your own foibles and weaknesses, that it only takes what it finds inside the infected person? “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m very sorry, Peanut.” She reached out and brushed his shoulder with her hand; she hoped he didn’t notice how the fingers trembled, how fleeting the touch was. “Forget what I said. My brother was cruel and harsh; sometimes I’m too much like him.”

Peanut sniffed. A smile dawned on his sharp-edged face. “S’okay, Misha,” he said, and the instant forgiveness in his voice hurt more than the rest. He glanced at the stage, and the valleys deepened in his craggy skin. “Look, there’s Hartmann. I don’t know why you and Gimli got such a beef against him. He’s the only one who helps…”

Peanut’s observation trailed off; at that moment the packed masses around them shoved fists toward the sky and cheered.

And Satan strode onto the stage.

Misha recognized some of those around him: Dr. Tachyon, dressed in outrageous colors; Hiram Worchester, rotund and bloated; the one called Carnifex, staring at the crowd so that she wanted to hide herself. A woman stood beside the senator, but it wasn’t Sara, who had also been in her dreams so often, with whom she’d talked in Damascus—Ellen, his wife, then.

Hartmann shook his head, grinning helplessly at the adulation that swept through the crowd. He raised his hands, and the cheering redoubled, a roaring crowd-voice echoing from the skyscrapers to the west. A chant began somewhere near the stage, rippling back until the entire park resonated. “Hartmann! Hartmann!” they shouted to the stage. “Hartmann! Hartmann!”

He smiled then, his head still shaking as if in disbelief, and then he stepped to the battery of microphones. His voice was deep and plain and full of caring for those before him. That voice reminded Misha of her brother’s; when he spoke, the very sound was truth. “You people are wonderful,” he said.

They howled then, a hurricane of sound that nearly deafened Misha. The jokers pressed around the stage, Misha and Peanut thrust forward helplessly in the tidal flow. The cheering and chanting went on for a long minute before Hartmann raised his hands again and a restless, anticipatory hush came over the crowd.

“I’m not going to stand up here and feed you the lines you’ve come to expect of politicians like me,” he said at last. “I’ve been a long time away and what I’ve seen of the world has, frankly, made me feel very frightened. I’m especially frightened when I return and find that same bigotry, that same intolerance, that same inhumanity here. It’s time to quit playing politics and taking a safe, polite course. These aren’t safe, polite times; these are dangerous times.”

He paused, taking a breath that shuddered in the sound system. “Almost exactly eleven years ago, I stood in the grass of Roosevelt Park and made a ‘political mistake.’ I’ve thought about that day many times in the past years, and I swear to God that I’ve yet to understand why I should feel sorry for it. What I saw before me on that day was senseless, raw violence. I saw hatred and prejudice boiling over, and I lost my temper. I. Got. Mad.”

Hartmann shouted the last words, and the jokers shouted back to him in affirmation. He waited until they had settled into silence again, and this time his voice was dark and sad. “There are other masks than those which Jokertown has made famous. There is a mask which hides a greater ugliness than anything the wild card might produce. Behind that mask is an infection that’s all too human, and I have heard its voice in the tenements of Rio, in the kraals of South Africa, in the deserts of Syria, in Asia and Europe and America. Its voice is rich and confident and soothing, and it tells those who hate that they are right to hate. It preaches that anyone who is different is also less. Maybe they’re black, maybe they’re Jewish or Hindu, or maybe they’re just jokers.”

With the emphasis on the last word the crowd-beast howled again, a wail of anguish that made Misha shiver. His words echoed the visions uncomfortably. She could almost feel his fingernails clawing at her face. Misha looked to her right and saw that Peanut was craning forward with the rest, his mouth open in a cry of agreement.

“I can’t let that happen,” Hartmann continued, and now his voice was louder, faster, rising with the emotions of the audience. “I can’t simply watch, not when I see that there’s more I can do. I’ve seen too much. I’ve listened to that insidious hatred, and I can no longer abide its voice. I find myself becoming angry all over again. I want to rip the mask off and expose the true ugliness behind, the ugliness of hatred. The state of this nation and the world frightens me, and there’s only one way that I can do something to ease that feeling.” He paused again, and this time waited until the entire park seemed to be holding its collective breath. Misha shuddered. Allah’s dream. He speaks Allah’s dream.

“Effective today, I have resigned my seat in the Senate and my position as chairman of SCARE. I’ve done that to give full attention to a new task, one that will need your help as well. I am now announcing my intention to be the Democratic candidate for president in 1988.”

His last words were lost, buried under the titanic clamor of screaming applause. Misha could no longer see Hartmann, lost in the rippling sea of arms and banners. She had not thought that anything could be so loud. The acclamation deafened her, made her clap hands to ears. The chant of Hartmann! Hartmann! began once more, joker fists pumping in time with the beat.

Hartmann! Hartmann!

Hell was noisy and chaotic, and her own hatred was lost in the joyous celebration. Beside her, Peanut chanted with the rest, and she looked at him with revulsion and despair.

He is so strong, Allah, stronger than the Nur. Show me that this is the right path. Tell me that my faith is to be rewarded.

But there was no answering dream. There was only the beast-voice of the jokers and Satan basking in their praise.

At least now it would begin. Tonight. Tonight they would meet and decide how to best destroy the devil.

Monday, 7:32 P.M.

Polyakov was the last one to arrive at the warehouse.

That pissed Gimli off. It was bad enough that he wasn’t sure he could trust any of the old New York JJS organization. It was enough that he’d been dealing with Misha for nearly two weeks now, putting up with her contempt for jokers. It was enough that Hartmann’s Justice Department aces were prowling all over Jokertown after him; that Barnett’s rabble-rousing had made any joker fair game for the nat gangs; that the continuing battles between the underworld organizations had made the streets a gamble for all.

On top of everything else, he could feel a cold coming on.

Gimli sneezed and blew his nose into a large red handkerchief.

It was shit time in Jokertown.

Polyakov’s arrival only made Gimli’s temper more vile. The Russian stamped into the place without a knock, throwing the door back loudly. “The joker on the roof is standing against streetlight,” he proclaimed loudly. “Any fool can see her. What if I’d been police? You would all be under arrest or dead. Amateurs!” Dilettante!

Gimli wiped his bulbous, tender nostrils and glanced at the handkerchief. “The joker on the roof’s Video. She threw an image of you in the room to let us know you were on the way—she needs the light to project. Peanut and File would have taken you out at the door if I hadn’t recognized you.” Gimli stuffed the damp handkerchief back in his pocket and pounded on the wall twice with his fist. “Video,” he shouted to the ceiling. “Give our guest a replay, huh?”

In the center of the warehouse the air shimmered and went dark. For a moment they were all looking at the alleyway outside the warehouse, where a portly man stood in shadow. The darkness coalesced, pulsed, and they were seeing a head-and-shoulders view of the man: Polyakov, grimacing as he looked toward Video. Then the image faded to Gimli’s laughter.

“And you never fucking saw Shroud behind you, did you?” he said.

A slender figure materialized out of the shadow behind Polyakov. He poked a forefinger in Polyakov’s back, “Bang,” Shroud whispered. “You’re dead. Just like a Russian joker.” Alongside the door Peanut and File grinned.

Gimli had to admit that Polyakov took it gracefully enough for a nat. The burly man just nodded without looking at Shroud at all. “My apologies. You obviously know your people better than I.”

“Yeah. Don’t I.” Gimli sniffed; his sinuses were dripping like an old faucet. He waved to Shroud. “Make sure nobody else gets in—there’s no more invitations.” The thin, dark joker nodded. “Dead meat time,” Shroud said—another whisper. A grin came from the vaporous form, and then he dissolved into shadow.

“We have aces with us, then,” Polyakov said.

Gimli laughed without amusement. “Get Video near an electrical device and her nervous system overloads. Put her in front of a damn television and her heart will go into arrhythmia. Too close and she’ll die. And Shroud loses substance every day, like he’s evaporating. Another year and he’ll be dead or permanently immaterial. Aces, shit, Polyakov—they’re jokers, just like the rest. You know, the ones you cull out in the Russian labs.”

Polyakov merely grunted at the insult; Gimli felt disappointed. The man brushed his fingers through stubbly gray hair and nodded. “Russia had made her mistakes, as has America. There are many things I wish had never happened, but we’re here to change what we can, are we not?” He fixed Gimli with an unblinking stare. “The Syrian ace has arrived?”

“I’m here.” Misha came from the rear of the warehouse. Gimli saw her glance sharply at Peanut and File. Her attitude was sour and condescending. She walked as if she expected to be catered to. Gimli might find her Arabian darkness extremely attractive, but—except in late-night fantasies—he didn’t delude himself that anything might come of it. He knew what he looked like: “a warty, noxious little toadstool feeding on the decaying log of ego”—Wilde’s phrase.

Gimli was a joker; that was the bottom line for the bitch. Misha had made certain that Gimli knew he was tolerated only to gain revenge on Hartmann. She didn’t see him as a person at all; he was just a tool, something to use because nothing else would do. The realization gigged him every time he looked at her. Just seeing the woman was enough to make him want to shout at her.

I’ll make you a fucking tool of my own one day.

“I’m ready to begin. The visions”—she smiled, making Gimli scowl in response—“have been optimistic today.”

Gimli scoffed. “Your goddamn dreams ain’t gonna worry the senator, are they?”

Misha whirled around, eyes flaring. “You mock Allah’s gift. Maybe your scorn is why He made you a squashed mockery of a man.”

That was enough to shatter what little restraint he had. A quick, molten rage filled Gimli. “You fucking bitch!” he screeched. The dwarf’s stance widened on muscular legs, his barrel chest expanded. A finger stabbed from the fist he cocked at her. “I won’t take that shit, not from you, not from anyone!”

“STOP THIS!” The shout came from Polyakov as Gimli took a step toward Misha. The roar brought Gimli’s head around; the movement made his stuffy head throb. “Amateurs!” Polyakov spat out. “This is the stupidity that Mólniya said destroyed you in Berlin, Tom Miller. I believe him now. This petty bickering must end. We have a common purpose; focus your anger on that.”

“Pretty speeches don’t mean shit,” Gimli scoffed, but he stopped. The fist lowered, the fingers loosened. “We’re a damn unlikely conspiracy, ain’t we?—a joker, an ace, and a nat. Maybe this was a mistake, huh? I’m not so certain anymore that we share much of a common purpose.” He glared at Misha.

Polyakov shrugged. “None of us want Hartmann to gain political power. We have our separate reasons, but on this we agree. I would not care to see an ace with unknown powers as president of the nation that opposes my own. I know the Kahina would like to exact revenge for her brother. You have a long-standing grudge of your own against the senator. And as little as you may care for this woman, she has brought hard evidence against Hartmann.”

“So she claims. We ain’t seen it yet, have we?”

Polyakov grunted. “Everything else is circumstantial: hearsay and speculations. So let us begin. I, for one, would like to see Misha’s ‘gift.’”

“Let’s talk reality first. Then we can indulge in religious fantasies,” Gimli argued. He could feel control of the meeting slipping from him; the Russian had presence, charisma. Already the others were watching Polyakov as if he were the head of the group. Forget how lousy you’re feeling. You’ve got to watch him or he’ll take over.

“Nevertheless,” the Russian insisted.

Gimli cocked his head at Polyakov. Polyakov stared back at him blandly. Finally Gimli cleared his throat noisily and sniffed. “All right,” he grumbled. “The stage is yours, Kahina.”

When Gimli glanced at her, she gave a quick, triumphant smile. That decided Gimli. When this was over, the bill would come due for Misha’s arrogance. He’d exact the payment himself if he had to.

Misha went to the rear of the warehouse again and came back with a rolled bundle of cloth. “When the aces attacked us in the mosque, Hartmann was wounded,” she said. “His people examined him there, quickly, but they retreated immediately afterward. I”—she stopped, and a look of remembered pain darkened her face—“I had already fled. My brother and Sayyid, both horribly wounded, gathered their followers and went deep in the desert. The next day a vision told me to return to the mosque. There, I was given this: It is the jacket Hartmann was wearing when he was shot.”

She unrolled her package on the cement floor.

The jacket wasn’t all that impressive—a gray-checked sports coat, dusty and bedraggled. The cloth held a faint stench of mildew. At the right shoulder a frayed hole was surrounded by an irregular splotch of brown-red, spreading as it crept down the chest. Packed inside were a sheaf of papers in a manila envelope. Misha riffled through them.

“I went to four doctors in Damascus with the jacket,” she continued. “I had them examine the bloodstains independently, and each gave me a report that said the blood had definitely come from someone infected with the wild card virus. The blood type matches Hartmann—‘A’ positive. I have verification from the man who gave it to me that this is Hartmann’s jacket—he picked it up after the fighting, thinking to keep it as a relic of the Nur.”

“A verification letter from a terrorist, and blood that could have come from fucking anyone.” Gimli snorted. “Look, all of us here might believe it’s Hartmann’s blood, but alone it’s nothing. The bastard’s got his blood test on record. You think he can’t produce another negative one with the people he knows?”

Polyakov nodded ponderously. “He can. He would.”

“Then attack him physically,” Misha said, wondering at these people. “If you don’t want my gift, kill him. I will help.”

The look on her face made Gimli laugh, and the laughter brought on a hacking, phlegm-filled cough. “Christ, all I need is a cold,” he muttered, then: “Awfully fucking bloodthirsty, ain’t we?”

Misha folded her arms beneath her breasts, defiant. “I’m not afraid. Are you?”

“No, goddammit. Just realistic. Look, your brother had him surrounded by guards with Uzis and he got away, didn’t he? I had the fucker tied to a chair, all of us armed, and one by one most of us left, a decision we can’t believe we made an hour later. Then Mackie Messer—who was a loaded gun with no safety anyway—goes fucking berserk and slices up everyone that’s left, yet somehow doesn’t hurt the good senator at all.” Gimli spat. “He can make people do things—that’s got to be his power. He’s got aces all around him. We ain’t gonna get to the man, not that way.”

Polyakov nodded. “Unfortunately, I must agree. Misha, you don’t know Mólniya, the ace who was with Gimli in Berlin,” he said. “He could have killed Hartmann with a simple touch. I spoke to him at length. He did things there that were sloppy and senseless for a man of his loyalty and experience. His performance was utterly inconsistent with his past record. He was manipulated: part of the evidence I have is his deposition.”

File elbowed Peanut. “’Seventy-six,” he said to Gimli. “I remember. You talked to Hartmann when we were all ready to march. Suddenly, you were telling us to turn around and go back into the park.”

The memory was as sour now as it had been eleven years ago. Gimli had brooded on it many times. In ’76 the JJS had been on the verge of becoming a legitimate joker voice, yet somehow he’d lost it all. The JJS and Gimli’s power had fallen apart in the aftermath of the rioting. Since Berlin, since his meeting with Misha, that brooding had taken a different turn.

Now he knew who was to blame for his failure.

“Damn right. The son-of-a-bitch. That’s why I want him taken down. With Barnett or any of the other nat politicians we know what we’re dealing with. They’re all known quantities. Hartmann’s not. And that’s why he’s more dangerous than any of the rest. You remember Aardvark, Peanut? Aardvark died in Berlin, along with a lot of others—his death and all the fucking rest are ultimately Hartmann’s fault.”

Peanut’s entire body moved as he tried to shake his head. “That ain’t right, Gimli. Really. Hartmann does work for the jokers. He got rid of the Acts, he talks nice to us, he comes to Jokertown…”

“Yeah. And I’d do the same damn thing if I wanted to lull everyone’s suspicions. I tell you, we know where Barnett stands. We can deal with him anytime. I’m more afraid of Hartmann.”

“Then do something about him,” Misha interjected. “We have his jacket. We have your story and Polyakov’s. Take it to your press and let them remove Hartmann.”

“Because we still ain’t got shit. He’ll deny it. He’ll produce another blood test. He’ll point out that the ‘evidence’ was produced by a joker who kidnapped him in Berlin, a Russian who has connections with the KGB, and you—who says that her dreams tell her Hartmann’s an ace and who’s suffering under the lunatic delusion that she was made to attack her terrorist brother. A fucking classic example of guilt transference.”

Gimli enjoyed the flush that climbed Misha’s neck. Yeah, that one hit home, didn’t it, bitch? “We’ve circumstantial evidence, sure,” Gimli continued, “but if we bring it forward, he’ll just laugh it off and so will the press. We have to link with someone else. Let them be the front.”

“I take it you have someone in mind?” Polyakov commented. Gimli thought he heard a faint challenge in the man’s voice. “Yeah, I do,” he told Polyakov. “I say we take what we have to Chrysalis. From what I hear, she’s awfully damn interested in Hartmann herself, and she doesn’t have any grudges. No one knows more about anything in Jokertown than Chrysalis.”

“No one knows more about Hartmann than Sara Morgenstern.” Misha waved away Gimli’s suggestion. “Allah’s dreams have shown me her face. She is the one who will destroy Hartmann, not Chrysalis.”

“Right. She’s Hartmann’s lover. We think Hartmann’s got mind powers—so who’s he most likely to control?” The headache was slamming at Gimli’s temples now, and his head felt packed full of mucus. “We have to go to Chrysalis.”

“We don’t know that Chrysalis would have any interest in helping us. Maybe Hartmann controls her as well. My visions—”

“Your visions are crap, lady, and I’m getting fucking tired of hearing about them.”

“They are Allah’s gift.”

“They’re a gift from the wild card, and every last joker knows what’s in that package.” Gimli heard the door to the warehouse open. His gaze spun away from Misha to see Polyakov standing there. “Where the hell are you going?”

Polyakov exhaled sharply. “I’ve heard enough. I won’t be caught with fools. Go to Chrysalis or go to Morgenstern—I don’t care which. I even wish you luck; it may work. But I won’t be associated with it.”

“You’re walking?” Gimli said in disbelief.

“We have a common interest, as I’ve said. That seems to be all. You do as you like; you don’t need me for that. I will pursue this my own way. If I uncover anything of interest, I will contact you.”

“You try something on your own and you’re more likely to get caught. You’ll alert Hartmann that people are after him.”

Polyakov shrugged. “If Hartmann is the threat you think he is, he already knows that.” He nodded to Gimli, to Misha, to File and Peanut. He stepped outside and closed the door softly behind himself.

Gimli could feel the gazes of the others on him. He gestured obscenely at the door. “To hell with him,” he said loudly. “We don’t need him.”

“Then I go to Sara,” Misha insisted. “She will help.”

You don’t have a choice. Not now.

Gimli nodded reluctantly. “All right,” he sighed. “Peanut will get you a plane ticket to Washington. And I’ll see Chrysalis.” He touched his hand to his forehead; it felt suspiciously warm. “In the meantime, I’m going to bed.”

Tuesday, 10:50 P.M.

Gimli had told her that she must be careful that no one was watching Sara’s apartment. Misha thought the dwarf paranoid, but she waited several moments before crossing the street, watching. There was never a way to be sure—Sayyid, her husband, who had been in charge of all aspects of the Nur sect’s security, would have agreed.

“No amateur will ever see a professional unless he wants to be seen,” she remembered his saying once. Thoughts of Sayyid brought back painful memories: his scornful voice, his overbearing manner, his monstrous body. She’d felt relief mingled with horror when he’d been struck down in front of her, his bones snapping like dry twigs, a low animal moaning coming from his crumpled body.…

Misha shuddered and crossed the street.

She pressed the intercom button at the front door, marveling again at the American obsession with ineffectual security—the door was beveled glass. It would hardly stop anyone desperate to enter. The voice that answered sounded tired and cautious. “Yes? Who’s there?”

“This is Misha. Kahina. Please, I must talk with you.…”

There was a long silence. Misha thought that perhaps Sara wasn’t going to answer when the intercom’s speaker gave a dry click. “You may come up,” the voice said. “Second floor. Straight ahead.”

The door buzzer shrilled. For a moment Misha hesitated, not certain what to do, then pushed the door open. She entered the air-conditioned foyer and went up the stairs. The door was cracked open; in the space between the door and jamb, an eye stared at her as she approached. It withdrew, and Misha heard a chain rattling. The door opened wider, but only enough to let her pass. “Come in,” Sara said.

Sara was thinner than Misha remembered, almost gaunt. Her face was sallow and drawn; there were pouchy dark bags under the eyes. Her hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed in days, lying limp and lusterless around her shoulders. She locked the door behind Misha, then leaned back against it.

“You look different, Kahina,” Sara said. “No chador, no veils, no bodyguards. But I remembered the voice, and your eyes.”

“We’ve both been changed,” Misha said softly, and saw pain flicker in Sara’s dark-rimmed pupils.

“I guess we have. Life’s a bitch, huh?” Sara pushed away from the door, knuckling at her eyes.

“You wrote about me, after … after the desert. I read it. You understood me. You have a kind soul, Sara.”

“I don’t write much lately.” She went to the center of the living room. Only one lamp was on; Sara turned in dim shadow. “Listen, why don’t you sit down? I’ll get something to drink. What would you like?”

“Water.”

Sara shrugged. She went into the kitchen, came out a few minutes later with two tumblers. She handed one to Misha; Misha could smell alcohol in the other. Sara sat on the couch across from Misha and took a long swallow. “I’ve never been more frightened than the day in the desert,” she said. “I thought your brother—” She hesitated, glancing at Misha over the rim of the glass. “I thought he was utterly mad. I knew we were all going to die. And then…” She took a long sip.

“Then I cut his throat,” Misha finished. The words hurt; they always did. Neither one of them looked at the other. Misha put her tumbler on the table beside the couch. The chiming of ice against glass seemed impossibly loud.

“That must have been a very hard decision.”

“Harder than you could believe,” Misha answered. “The Nur was—and still is—Allah’s prophet. He is my brother. He is the person my husband followed. I love him for Allah, for my family, for my husband. You’ve never been a woman in my society; you don’t know the culture. You can’t see the centuries of conditioning. What I did was impossible. I would rather have cut off my hand than allow it to do that.”

“Yet you did.”

“I don’t think so,” Misha said softly. “I don’t think you believe it, either.”

Sara’s face was in darkness, haloed by backlit hair. Misha could see only the gleam of her eyes, the shimmer of water on her lips as she raised her glass again. “Kahina’s dreams again?” Sara mocked, but Misha could hear the words tremble.

“I came to you in Damascus because of Allah’s visions.”

“I remember.”

“Then you remember that in that vision Allah told me you and the senator were lovers. You remember that I saw a knife, and Sayyid struggling to take it from me. You remember that I saw how Hartmann had taken your distrust and transformed it, and how he would take my feelings and use them against me.”

“You said lots of things,” Sara protested. She huddled back deeper in the couch, hugging her knees to her chest. “It was all symbols and odd images. It could have meant anything.”

“The dwarf was in that vision, too,” Misha insisted. “You must remember—I told you. The dwarf was Gimli, in Berlin. Hartmann did the same thing there.”

Sara’s breath was harsh. “Berlin—” she breathed. Then: “It’s all coincidence. Gregg’s a compassionate and warm man. I know that, better than you or anyone. I’ve seen him. I’ve been with him.”

“Is it coincidence? We both know what he is. He is an ace, a hidden one.”

“And I tell you that’s impossible. There’s a blood test. And even if it were true, how does that change things? He’s still working for the rights and dignity of all people—unlike Barnett or your brother or terrorists like the JJS. You’ve given me nothing but innuendo against Gregg.”

“Allah’s dreams—”

“They’re not Allah’s dreams,” Sara interrupted angrily. “It’s just the damned wild card. Flashes of precognition. There are half a dozen aces with the same ability. You see glimpses of the possible futures, that’s all: useless little previews that have nothing to do with any god.”

Sara’s voice had risen. Misha could see her hand trembling as she took another drink. “What did you think he’d done, Sara?” she asked. “Why did you once hate him?”

Misha had thought that Sara might deny it; she didn’t. “I was wrong. I thought … I thought he might have killed my sister. There were coincidences, yes, but I was wrong, Misha.”

“Yet I can see that you’re frightened because you might have been right, because what I’m saying might be the truth. My dreams tell me—they tell me you’ve been wondering since Berlin. They tell me you’re frightened because you remember one other thing I told you in Damascus: that what he did to me, he would also do to you. Don’t you notice how your feelings for him change when he’s with you, and doesn’t that also make you wonder?”

“Damn you!” Sara shouted. She flung the tumbler aside. It thudded against the wall as she rose to her feet. “You have no right!”

“I have proof.” Misha spoke softly into Sara’s rage. She looked calmly upward into the woman’s glare.

“Dreams,” Sara spat.

“More than dreams. At the mosque, during the fighting, the senator was shot. I have his jacket. I had the blood analyzed. The infection is there—your wild card virus.”

Sara shook her head wildly. “No. That’s what you want the tests to show.”

“Or Hartmann had his own blood test falsified. That would be easy for him, wouldn’t it?” Misha persisted. The wild agony in Sara tore at Misha, yet she persisted. Sara was the key—the visions all said that she was. “And it would mean that perhaps you were right about your sister. It would explain what happened with me. It would explain what happened in Berlin. It would explain everything, all the questions you’ve had.”

“Then go to the press with this proof.”

“I am. Right now.”

Sara’s head swayed back and forth in dogged refusal. “It’s not enough.”

“Maybe not by itself. We need all that you can tell us. You must know more—other strange incidents, other deaths…”

Sara was still shaking her head, but her shoulders slumped and the anger had drained away. She turned from Misha. “I can’t trust you,” she said. “Please. Just go away.”

“Look at me, Sara. We’re sisters in this. We’ve both been hurt, and I want justice for that, as you want justice for your sister. We cry and bleed and there’s no healing for us until we know. Sara, I know how we can mix love and hate. We’re related in that strange, awful way. We’ve both allowed love to blind us. I love my brother, but I also hate what he’s done. You love Hartmann, and yet here’s a darker Hartmann underneath. You can’t move against him because to do so would prove that giving yourself was a mistake, because when he’s here all you can think about is the Hartmann you love. You’d have to admit that you were wrong. You’d have to admit that you let yourself love someone who was using you. So you wait.”

There was no answer. Misha sighed and nodded. She couldn’t say any more, not when each word tore a visible wound in Sara. She moved toward the door, touching Sara gently on the back as she passed. Misha could feel Sara’s shoulders moving with silent tears. Misha’s hand was on the knob when Sara spoke behind her, her voice choked.

“You swear it’s his jacket? You have it?”

Misha kept her hand on the knob, not daring to turn, not allowing herself to feel hope. “Yes.”

“Do you trust Tachyon?”

“The alien? I don’t know him. Gimli doesn’t seem to like him. But I will trust him if you do.”

“I have to be in New York later this week. Meet me in front of the Jokertown Clinic Thursday evening at six-thirty. Bring the jacket. We’ll have Tachyon examine it, and then we’ll see. We’ll see, that’s all. Is it enough?”

Misha almost gasped with the relief. She wanted to laugh, wanted to hug Sara and cry with her. But she only nodded. “I’ll be there. I promise you, Sara. I want the truth, that’s all.”

“And if Tachyon says it proves nothing?”

“Then I’ll learn to accept the guilt for what I did myself.” Misha started to turn the knob, stopped. “If I’m not there, know that it’s because he stopped me. You’ll have to decide what to do then.”

“Which gives you a convenient out,” Sara said derisively. “All you have to do is not show.”

“You don’t believe that. Do you?”

Silence.

Misha turned the knob and went out.

Tuesday, 10:00 P.M.

Chrysalis swung open the door to her office. She paid very little attention to the dwarf who sat in her chair, his bare feet propped up on her desk. She shut the door—the sounds of another busy night at the Crystal Palace dropped to a distant tidal soughing. “Good evening, Gimli.”

Gimli was feeling rotten. The lack of surprise in Chrysalis’s startling eyes only made him feel worse. “I should learn that you’re never caught off guard.”

She gave him a tight-lipped smile that floated over a webbing of muscles and tendons. “I’ve known you were back for weeks. That’s old news. So how’s your cold?”

Gimli sniffed, a long, wet inhalation. Another chill rattled down his spine like a tray of ice cubes. “Shitty. I feel like hell. I’ve had a fever I haven’t been able to kick for two days now. And I’ve evidently got somebody in my organization who can’t keep his or her mouth shut.” He gave her a rueful grimace.

“You wouldn’t get colds if you’d wear shoes. You brought me a package, too.”

“Fuck,” Gimli spat out. He swung his legs down and hopped from the chair with a grimace. The sudden movement made him dizzy, and he steadied himself against the desk with a hand. “I might as well have come in the front door. Why don’t we just skip the conversation entirely and you just give me an answer?”

“I really don’t know the question yet, for certain.” Her laugh was short and dry. “There are some limits after all, and I’ve been concerned about more immediate things than politics recently. It’s not safe out there for any joker, not just you. But I can make an educated guess,” Chrysalis continued. “I’d say that your visit concerns Senator Hartmann.”

Gimli snorted. “Shit, after the fuckup in Berlin that doesn’t take much of a guess.”

“You’re the one who’s impressed by what I know, not me. You’re the one who has to hole up near the East River so the feds don’t snatch him.”

“I’ve got a big goddamn leak.” He shook his head. Gimli lurched around the side of the desk and hauled himself into her chair again. He closed his eyes for a second. When you get back, you can go to bed again. Maybe this time when you wake up it’ll be gone. “God, I do feel like crap.”

“Nothing infectious, I hope.”

“We’ve both already had the worst fucking infection we’re ever like to get.” Gimli glanced at Chrysalis with a sidelong, bloodshot stare. “And speaking of which, I suppose you already know that our Senator Hartmann’s a goddamn ace?”

“Really?”

Gimli scoffed. “There are things I know too, lady. One of them is that Downs has been asking odd questions, and that you’ve been seeing a lot of each other. My guess is that you’re thinking the same thing.”

“And if I am? Even granting that you’re correct—and I’m not—why should you care about it? Maybe an ace president would be good. A lot of people feel Hartmann’s done more for the jokers than the JJS.”

Gimli shot to his feet at that, his illness forgotten. Rage eroded deep canyons in his pudgy face. “The goddamn JJS was the only organization that told the fucking nats that they can’t jerk us jokers around. We didn’t stand there holding our hats in our trunks like old kiss-ass Des. The JJS made ’em pay attention, even if we had to do it by beating them in the face. I’m not going to listen to crap about Hartmann being better than the JJS.”

“Then I suggest you leave.”

“If I do, then you don’t see the fucking package.”

He could see Chrysalis considering that, and he smiled, the anger quickly forgotten. Yeah, you’re hungry for that. Old Chrysalis’s just playing it cool. I knew she’d want to see it. And fuck Misha if she doesn’t like it.

“You’ve never been one to be free with things, Gimli. What’s the payment for the package?”

“You go public with this. You spill it with the rest of what I’ve got for you, along with anything you and Downs have dug up. We take Hartmann out of the race.”

“Why? Because he’s an ace? Or because it’s Gimli’s personal little vendetta?”

Gimli gritted his teeth and then destroyed the image with a sneeze. “Because he’s a power-hungry bastard. He’s just like the rest of the money-grubbing, self-centered bureaucrats in government, only he’s got his ace to help him. He’s dangerous.”

“You get rid of Hartmann, and the next president might be Leo Barnett.”

“Shit.” Gimli spat; Chrysalis looked at the globule on her rug in dismay. “He might get the nomination, but that’s not the presidency. Barnett’s just a nat; he can be removed if he has to be. With Barnett we at least know what to expect. Hartmann’s a fucking unknown. You don’t know what he’s got or what he’s going to do with it.”

“Like maybe make a few things right.”

“Like maybe make things worse. This ain’t for me; this is for the jokers. Look at the damn facts you prize so much. What Hartmann touches gets destroyed. He uses people. Chews ’em up and spits out the carcass when the flavor’s gone. He used me, he used the Nur’s sister, he fucked with the minds of the people around me in Berlin. He’s a goddamn bottle of nitro. God knows what else he’s done.”

He paused, waiting for her to object, but she didn’t. Gimli pulled a wad of tissues from his pocket, blew his nose, and grinned at her. “And you suspect the same thing,” he continued. “I fucking know it, ’cause you wouldn’t have stood there and listened to me for this long if you thought otherwise. You want my little package because it might prove it true.”

“Proof is a nebulous thing. Look at Gary Hart. No one needed ‘proof’ with him, just a lack of denial.”

“There is proof with the wild card. In the blood. And I’ve got Hartmann’s blood.” Gimli brought out Misha’s jacket. As he spread the bloodstained cloth on Chrysalis’s desk, he gave her the story. When he’d finished, a faint flush had appeared in Chrysalis’s transparent skin, the lacework of blood vessels spreading and widening in excitement. Gimli laughed even though his head pounded from the fever.

“It’s yours, free,” he told her. A coughing fit took him, deep hacking spasms, and he waited until they’d passed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “You know me, Chrysalis. I might do a lot of things, but I don’t lie. When I tell you that’s Hartmann’s blood, it’s the truth. But it ain’t enough, not without more. You just have to do something with it. Interested?”

She took the cloth between her fingers, touching the bloodstains tentatively. “Let me keep it,” she said. “I want a friend to run the tests—it might take a few days. If the stains are from an ace, then yes, we might have a deal.”

“I thought so,” Gimli said. “Which means you have more on Hartmann, don’t you? Take good care of the jacket. I’ll check with you later. Right now, I’m going to go home and fucking die.”

Tuesday, 11:45 P.M.

Gimli was shaking with fever by the time he left Chrysalis. He’d ridden over in the back of File’s van but had told the joker that he’d get back himself. Fuck the risk, he’d said. I’m tired of playing the fugitive. I’ll be careful.

He let himself out the back door of the Crystal Palace into an alleyway that reeked of stale beer and rotting food. Quick nausea slammed him in the gut; leaning with one hand against the Dumpster, he heaved violently, emptying his stomach with the first wave and then retching uselessly. Afterward he felt no better. His stomach was still knotted, his muscles felt as if he had been beaten, and the fever was getting worse. “Oh, fuck,” he gasped. He spat dry-mouthed.

He wished he’d listened to File and let him wait. He pushed off the Dumpster and holding his stomach, began to walk toward the warehouse. Six damn blocks. It ain’t so far.

He’d made it four when his stomach rebelled again. This time it was far worse. There was nothing in his stomach. Gimli tried to ignore it, shuffling forward.

“Christ!” he shouted, his face twisting with surprised agony. The pain drove him to his knees; he knelt behind a row of trash cans, desperately trying to breathe between the waves of helpless retching. His insides were on fire, his head pounded, sweat soaked his clothing. He pummeled the concrete with his fists until they were torn and bloodied, trying to block the inner torment with outside pain.

It got worse. Every muscle in his body seemed to go into spasm at that moment, and Gimli bellowed, a shrill inhuman screeching. He rolled on the gound, twitching, the muscles of his body in uncontrolled rebellion—legs flailing, hands clenched, spine arched in torment. His arm snapped under the pressure of wildly contracting biceps and triceps, the jagged end tearing through skin. The bone wriggled before his eyes like a live thing, tearing the wound wider. His intestines felt as if acid had been poured on them, but somehow the pain seemed to be receding, and that scared him worst of all.

He was going into shock.

The spasms ended abruptly, leaving him in a curled fetal position. Gimli couldn’t move. He tried, willing himself to blink his eyes, bend a finger; he had no control of his body at all. For a moment Gimli thought that at least it was over. Someone would find him; someone would have heard his screams. The denizens of Jokertown knew what to do—they’d take him to Tachyon.

But it wasn’t over. His broken arm was sitting in front of his open, staring eyes, and as he watched, the spear of bone from his arm was melting like a candle in an oven. He could feel his body sagging, shifting inside, liquefying. His skin bulged, spread like a huge balloon filled to bursting with scalding water. He tried to scream and could not even open his mouth. His eyes, too—the trash cans, the wall, his broken arm in front of him all dissolved in his sight, distorting as the world turned dim and then was gone. He could not draw a breath. He felt himself suffocating, unable to take in air.

At least Chrysalis has the fucking jacket. The thought had a finality that surprised him.

There was a sound like tearing paper, startling a curious rat that had crept closer to the strange mound. Gimli couldn’t see it or hear it, but the feeling was there, like a white-hot poker rammed into his spine. A small rent appeared in the middle of his back. Slowly the fissure grew, his flesh tearing open in long, jagged strips.

In his soundless, anguished void, Gimli wondered if he hadn’t already died, if this wasn’t the eternal hell Misha had promised him waited for all jokers. He mind-screamed, cursing Misha, cursing Hartmann, cursing the wild card and the world.

And then, blessedly, he lost consciousness.

Wednesday, 12:45 A.M.

The waking dream hit her just as she pushed open the door to the warehouse. The graffiti-scrawled paint became fluid; the door sagged like a lead figurine thrown into a fire.

In the darkness beyond she could hear laughter—Hartmann’s laughter, and the strings of a puppet danced in the air before her. As Misha recoiled, the strings tightened and rose, and she could see a hunchbacked figure lolling on the ends. The malevolence of that face staggered her—a pimply boy’s face, but one so infused with evil that its very breath seemed a poison. She remembered that face from her visions. The smile was twisted and cruel, and the bright eyes held the promise of pain. The creature stared at her, twisting in the strings, silent and unmoving as Hartmann’s laughter boomed.

And then it was gone. There was the door, and her hand ready to twist the key. “Allah,” she breathed, and shook her head. The motion did nothing to dispel the lingering feeling of dread. The images of the dream stayed with her, and she could hear her heart pounding. The lock clicked open and she pushed the door wide. “Gimli?” she called “Hello?”

The warehouse was as dark as her dream, and empty. Misha’s pulse roared in her head and the dream-demon threatened to reappear; in the dim reaches of the warehouse, whirling splotches of light moved with her momentary dizziness.

The door to the office swung wide, the glare from beind the lamps inside nearly blinding her. A shadow loomed—Misha cried out.

“Sorry, Misha,” Peanut’s voice said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

His hand reached out as if he was going to pat her shoulder, and Misha drew back, leaving his hand extended awkwardly. She frowned as she regained her composure. “Where’s Miller?” she asked sharply.

Peanut’s hand dropped, his sad gaze regarding the stained concrete floor. Heavy, clumsy shoulders lifted. “Dunno. He should’da been here hours ago, but I ain’t heard from him. File and Video and Shroud was here, said they’d be back later. They wouldn’t stay with me.”

“What’s the matter, Peanut? You’ve been here alone before.”

“Polyakov—he phoned. Said to tell Gimli that Mackie was here, in the States. Said that the paper trail was all official stuff: government. He told me to tell Gimli that he was afraid Hartmann knew it all—everything.”

“Does Gimli know?”

“Not yet. I gotta tell him. You wait with me?”

“No.” She said it too quickly, too harshly, but she didn’t try to soften the word with an explanation. “I talked to Sara; I need the jacket—we’re going to take it to Tachyon.”

“You can’t have the jacket. Gimli took it with him. You’ll have to wait.”

Misha only shrugged at that, surprising Peanut, who had expected her to fly into a rage. “I’m going to my place. I’ll come back here later.”

She turned to leave.

“I don’t hate you,” Peanut’s childlike voice said behind her. “I don’t hate you ’cause you got lucky with the wild card and I didn’t. And I don’t even hate you for what you and the Nur did to people like me. I think I got a lot more reason to hate than you, but I don’t, ’cause I think maybe the damn virus has hurt you more than me, after all.”

Misha had kept her back turned, stiffly, from his first words. “I don’t hate you, Peanut,” she answered. She was tired from the long day, from the flight, from the meeting with Sara and the inchoate feeling of dread that still enveloped her. There was no energy in her to argue or explain.

“The Nur hates jokers. Barnett hates jokers. Sometimes jokers hate jokers. And you and Gimli and the Russian want to hurt the one guy who looks like he might care. I don’t understand.” Peanut sighed. “So what if he’s an ace? Maybe that explains why he works so hard for the jokers. I might keep it secret, too, if I could. I know how people treat you different and stare at you and try to pretend it doesn’t matter when it does.”

“Haven’t you listened to us, Peanut?” Misha swung around, sighing. “Hartmann’s a manipulator. He plays with his power. He uses it for his own ends. He hurts and kills people with it.”

“I’m still not sure I believe that,” Peanut insisted. “Even if I did, didn’t what you and the Nur preached kill? Didn’t you cause hundreds of jokers to die?”

His mild voice only made the truth of the accusation sting more. Blood on my hands, too. “Peanut—” she began, then stopped. She wanted to bring the veils over her eyes and hide her feelings behind black cloth. But she couldn’t. She could only stand there, unable to look away from his sad, puckered face. “How can you not hate me?” she asked him.

He almost seemed to smile. “I did, once. Till I met you, anyways. Hey, your society fouled you up. Does that to everyone, huh? I see you fight against it, and I know you care, underneath. Gimli says you didn’t like a lot of what the Nur said, either.” Now he did smile, a tentative grin that heightened the ridges in his thick flesh. “Maybe I could come with you and protect you from Stigmata.”

She could only smile in return.

“Well, ain’t this touching?”

The voice, so utterly unexpected, caused them both to whirl —the words had a strong Germanic accent. A hunchbacked, anemic young man in black stepped through the wall of the warehouse as if it were a mist. Misha knew that cruel, lean face instantly, knew the sickness that lurked behind the eyes. The hammering of fear in her body was reminder enough, and he had the same feral casualness of the figure hanging in Hartmann’s strings.

“Kahina,” he said in a jittery, quick voice, and with the use of that honorific she knew it was over. The youth was breathing like a nervous thoroughbred, smiling lopsidedly. Hartmann knows. He’s found us. “It’s time.”

She could only shake her head.

Peanut moved to put himself between the intruder and Misha. The boy-man’s sardonic gaze flicked toward the joker. “Ain’t Gimli told you about Mackie? Man, everyone’s scared shitless of Mackie. You should have seen the Fraction bitch’s eyes when I offed her. I’ve got an ace better than anything.…” There was an eager satisfaction in Mackie’s rambling voice. He reached for Misha. Peanut tried to strike Mackie’s hand aside, but suddenly the hand shivered and began to vibrate with a fierce thrumming.

Blood fountained impossibly. Peanut’s severed forearm dropped to the floor.

Peanut stood for a moment, staring in disbelief as pulsing red jetted from the stump. Then he screamed. His legs buckled; he collapsed. Mackie raised his hand again, a deep buzz-saw whine coming from the blur.

“No!” Misha shouted. Mackie hesitated, looking at her. The pleasure she saw in the boy made her sick—it was a look she’d seen in her brother, it was a look she’d seen on Hartmann’s face in Allah’s dreams. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please. I’ll go with you. Whatever you want.”

Mackie’s breath was harsh and loud; emotions crossed his pinched face like quick cloud-shadows. Peanut moaned beneath him. “He’s a damn joker. I thought you wanted them all dead. I can do it for you. It’d be quick; it’d be good.” His face had gone serious now, and the sickness was like a lust in him.

“Please.” Mackie didn’t answer. Misha stopped and ripped a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress. She knelt beside the stricken joker, who writhed on the floor. “I’m sorry, Peanut,” she said. She wrapped the cloth around his arm above the stump, pulled it tight until the blood flow eased, and knotted it. “I didn’t hate you. I just couldn’t manage to say it.”

Mackie’s hand touched her arm, and Misha flinched. Though the horrible vibration was gone, his fingers gripped her until she cried out in pain. “Now,” Mackie said. He glanced down at Peanut. His tone was almost conversational. “Next time you see Gimli, tell him Mackie said ‘Auf Wiedersehen’”

And then he was grinning again as he pulled Misha up. “Don’t be frightened,” he told her. “This is going to be fun. Lots of fun.” His manic laughter cut into her like a thousand glass shards.

Thursday, 3:40 A.M.

In the alley behind the Crystal Palace a bulky figure in a black cloak approached a man wearing a clown’s mask. The cloaked figure’s hooded face was hidden behind what looked to be a fencing mask.

“Okay, Senator, we were the last ones out,” the apparition said. “The rest of the customers are gone. The staff just left; the place is empty. Chrysalis is in her office with Downs.”

The quiet voice sounded female, which meant that the Patti persona was in charge of Oddity tonight. Gregg’s understanding was that the joker had once been three people, two men and a woman involved in a long-standing love relationship. The wild card had joined them into one being, though the fusion had been incomplete and fluid. Shapes humped and shifted under Oddity’s cloak. Oddity’s body was never at rest—Gregg had once seen it without the concealing fabric, and the sight had been disturbing. It (or perhaps “they,” since Oddity always referred to itself in the plural) was constantly undergoing metamorphosis. Patti, John, Evan: never entirely any one of them, never stabilizing, always struggling against itself. Bones creaked, the flesh bulged and twisted, the features came and went.

The endless process was agonizing—Puppetman knew that best of all. Oddity gave him the emotional nourishment he craved simply by existing. Oddity’s world was a wash of pain, and the trebled matrices of its mind were quick to shift into black, sullen depression.

The only constant of Oddity was the strength of its malleable form. In that, Oddity surpassed Carnifex and perhaps rivaled Mordecai Jones or Braun. Oddity also had a great loyalty to Senator Hartmann.

After all, Oddity knew that Gregg was compassionate. Gregg cared about the jokers. Gregg was the voice of reason against fanatics such as Leo Barnett. Why, he was one of the few who ever asked Oddity about itself, and he listened sympathetically to the long tale of the joker’s life. Gregg might be a nat, but he came among the jokers and talked to them and shook their hands and then kept his political promises.

Oddity would have done anything Senator Hartmann asked it to do. The thought made Puppetman wriggle with delight inside Gregg. Tonight … tonight held the promise of being delicious.

Puppetman was tired of playing it safe, even if Gregg was not.

Gregg forced that hidden personality into the recesses of his mind. “Thanks, Patti,” he said. Through Puppetman he could feel a tinge of pleasure at that—the individual psyches in Oddity liked to be recognized. “You know the rest?”

Oddity nodded. What might have been a breast pushed sluggishly at the left side of the cloak. “I’ll watch the place. No one gets in or out but the two you told me about. Simple enough.” The words were slurring as the shape of the mouth altered behind the fencing mask.

“Good. I appreciate this.”

“No problem for you, Senator. All you ever have to do is ask.”

Gregg smiled and forced himself to clap Oddity on the shoulder. There were sliding things underneath. He suppressed a shudder as he squeezed slightly. “Thanks again, then. I’ll be out in twenty minutes or so.”

The gratitude and loyalty radiating from Oddity made Puppetman laugh, inside. Gregg adjusted the clown’s mask as Oddity leaned against the back doors. They groaned; a metal chain snapped inside. Gregg strode through the sagging doors and into the club.

“We’re closed.” Chrysalis was standing at the door to her office with a nasty-looking gun in her hand; behind her, Gregg could see Downs.

“You were expecting me,” Gregg said softly. “You sent me a message.” He took off the clown’s mask. Even without a puppet’s link to the woman, he could sense the mingled fear and defiance in her, a bitter metallic tang that roused Puppetman. Gregg chuckled, letting a little of his own nervousness into the sound.

Why so uncertain?

That should be obvious. Even with the information Video fed us we don’t know everything. Gimli didn’t trust Video enough; he didn’t let her see everything. They have whatever it was Kahina and Gimli had.

And you have me.

Gregg had planned it well: Video had been a wonderful, pliant puppet for years. Yet even with what she’d managed to funnel to him, even with what he’d garnered from government intelligence agencies and other sources, he was still grasping in twilight. A misstep here, and it might all be over.

Gregg had always been cautious, had always sought the safe path. Recklessness was not something with which he was comfortable, and this was reckless. But since Syria, since Berlin, it seems he’d been forced to choose this path. “Sorry I couldn’t make it during your business hours,” he continued, his voice nearly apologetic. “I felt your meeting might be too private for that.”

Good. Let them think they’re negotiating from strength, at least for a bit. You need to know what they know.

Chrysalis lowered the gun; muscles expanded under her transparent arm and across her chest—the dress she wore did little to conceal her body. Red lips that seemed to float on glassy flesh pursed. “Senator,” she said with that breathy fake accent that Gregg disliked, “I assume you know what Mr. Downs and myself would like to discuss.”

Gregg took a breath. He smiled. “You want to talk about aces,” he said. “Especially ones who are—so to speak—up the sleeve and who intend to stay that way. You want to see what I might be able to do for you. I think it’s usually called blackmail.”

“Aah, that’s such an ugly word.” She stepped back into the office. Her lips tightened, the horror-show skull eyes blinked. “Please come in.”

Chrysalis’s office was luxurious. A polished oak desk, plush leather chairs, an expensive rug over the center of the hardwood floor, wooden bookcases on which gold-leaf spines were lined neatly in sets. Downs was sitting nervously. He smiled tentatively at Gregg as the senator entered.

“Hey, Senator. What’s shakin’?”

Gregg didn’t bother to answer. He stared hard at Downs. The little man sniffed and sat back in the chair. Chrysalis brushed past him in a wave of perfume and took her seat behind the desk. She waved at one of the empty chairs. “Have a seat, Senator. I don’t believe our business will take that long.”

“Exactly what are we talking about?”

“We’re talking about the fact that I’m considering telling the public that you’re an ace. I’m sure you’d be very unhappy with that.”

Gregg had expected Chrysalis to threaten; she was no doubt used to getting results from that tactic, and he didn’t doubt that she considered herself safe from physical violence here. Gregg watched Downs from the corners of his eyes. The reporter had shown himself to be the nervous type on the wild card tour, and he couldn’t control his agitation now. Sweat beaded on his forehead; he rubbed his hands and squirmed in his seat. If Chrysalis was at ease with this, Downs was not. Good. Puppetman came alert. We made a mistake not taking him. Let me have him now.

No. Not yet. Wait.

“You are an ace, aren’t you, Senator?” Chrysalis asked the question coolly, pretending nonchalance.

He knew they expected him to deny it. So he simply smiled. “Yes,” he answered just as calmly.

“Your blood tests were faked?”

“As they can be faked again. But I don’t think I’ll have to do that.”

“You’re rather overconfident in your ability, then.”

Gregg, looking at Downs rather than Chrysalis, could see the uncertainty. He knew what the man was thinking: A projecting telepath? A mental power like Tachyon’s? What if we can’t control him?

Gregg smiled calmly to lend credence to that misconception. “Your friend Downs isn’t so certain,” he told Chrysalis. “Everyone in Jokertown knows about Gimli’s empty skin being found last night in an alleyway, and he wonders about whether I had anything to do with that.” It was a bluff—Gregg had been as surprised (and delighted) as anyone else at the news—but Gregg saw the color drain from Downs’s face. “He wonders if I might not be able to coerce your cooperation through my ace.”

“You can’t. And whatever happened to Gimli had nothing to do with you, not directly,” Chrysalis answered forcefully. “No matter what he thinks. My best guess is that you’ve a mind power, but with a rather limited range. So even if you can make us say yes now, you can’t enforce it.”

She knows! Puppetman’s wail echoed in Gregg’s head. You’ve got to kill her. Please. It will taste good. We could make Oddity do it.…

She suspects, that’s all, he answered.

What’s the difference? Have them killed; we have puppets who would find pleasure in it. Have them killed and we don’t have to worry.

Kill them now and we have more trails to cover up. Misha wouldn’t talk; we still don’t know what evidence Chrysalis was given. Gimli’s taken himself out of the picture, but there’s still the other man in Video’s memory—the Russian.

And Sara. Puppetman’s scorn was a barb.

Shut up. Sara we can control. Chrysalis will have plans made against her own death. We can’t risk that.

The inner debate took only a moment. “I’m a politician. This isn’t France, where the wild card is chic. I’m in a fight where Leo Barnett will use joker hatred as a tool. I’ve already seen Gary Hart’s career wiped out by innuendo. I’m not going to let that happen to me. Still, people might look at whatever evidence you have and wonder. I might lose votes. People will say that blood tests can be faked, they’ll look at Syria and Berlin with suspicion. I can’t afford to lose ground to speculation.”

“Which means we can come to an accommodation,” Chrysalis smiled.

“Maybe not. I think you still have a problem.”

“Senator, the press has its obligations…” Downs began, then fell silent with the withering gaze Hartmann gave him.

“Aces magazine is hardly the legitimate press. Let me put it this way—your problem is that you don’t know what I’m capable of. I will tell you that Berlin and Syria weren’t accidents. I’ll tell you that even now Gimli’s little cadre is being arrested. I’ll tell you that there’s no way you can escape me if I want to find you.” He turned his head slightly toward the door. “Mackie!” he called.

The door opened. Grinning, Mackie entered, supporting a stumbling woman wrapped in a long cloak. Mackie jerked the cloak from the woman’s shoulders, revealing her naked and streaked with blood. He shoved the woman from behind, and she sprawled on the carpet in front of the horrified Chrysalis.

“I’m a reasonable man,” Gregg said as Chrysalis and Downs stared at the figure moaning on the floor. “All I ask is that you think about this. Remember that I will contest any evidence. Remember that I can and will produce that negative blood test. Think about the fact that I don’t even want to hear the faintest whisper of a rumor. And realize that I leave the two of you alive because you’re the best sources of information I know—you hear everything, or so you’d have me believe. Good. Use those sources. Because if I hear any rumors, if I see a piece in the papers or Aces, if I notice that people are asking strange questions, if I’m attacked or hurt or even feel vaguely threatened, I’ll know where to come.”

Downs was staring slack-jawed at Misha; Chrysalis had sunk back against her desk. She tried to meet Gregg’s eyes and failed. “You see, I intend to use you, not the reverse,” Gregg continued. “I hold the two of you responsible for silence and safety. You’re both so damned good at what you do. So start learning who my enemies are and work at stopping them. I’m vindictive, and I’m dangerous. I’m everything Gimli and Misha were afraid I might be.

“And if anyone else ever learns that, I’ll consider it your fault. You might damage my presidential campaign by being heroes, but that’s all. You can’t prove anything else. After all, I’ve never actually killed or hurt anyone myself. I’d still be on the streets, afterward. And I’d find you without any trouble at all. And then I’d do to you what I’d do to any enemy.”

Puppetman was chuckling in his mind, anticipating. Gregg smiled at Chrysalis, at Downs. He hugged Mackie, who was watching him eagerly. “Enjoy yourself,” Gregg told him. He gave Chrysalis a small nod that was chilling in its nonchalance and left the office. He shut the door behind him, leaning against it until he heard the whine of Mackie’s ace.

He let Puppetman loose to ride with the youth’s strange, brightly colored madness. He hardly had to nudge Mackie at all.

Inside, Mackie knelt and cradled Misha’s head in his arms. Neither Chrysalis nor Downs moved. “Misha,” he crooned. The woman opened her eyes, and the pain he saw behind them made him sigh. “Such a good little martyr,” he told her. “She wouldn’t talk no matter what I did, you know,” he said to the others admiringly, his eyes skittering, bright. His hands roamed over her lacerated body. “She could be a saint. Such silence in suffering. So frigging noble.” The smile he gave Misha was almost tender. “I took her like a boy first, before I cut her at all. Anything to say now, Misha?”

Her head rolled side to side, slowly.

Mackie was smiling fitfully, breathing hard and fast. “You couldn’t really have hated the jokers,” he said, looking down at her face. “You couldn’t, or you would have talked.” There was a strange sadness in the way he said it.

“Shahid.” The word was a whisper from swollen; blood-caked lips. Mackie leaned close to hear it.

“Arabic,” he told them. “I don’t understand Arabic.” His hands were buzzing now, screaming. He ran his fingers around her breasts like a caress, and blood followed. Misha shrieked hoarsely; Downs gagged and threw up. Chrysalis remained stoic until Mackie slid his hand down Misha’s stomach and let the coils of intestines spill wetly out over the carpet.

When he was done, he stood up and brushed away the gore covering the front of him. “The senator said you’d know how to take care of the mess,” he told them. “He said you knew everything and everybody.” Mackie chuckled, high and manic. He began to whistle: Brecht, the Threepenny Opera.

With a casual wave he strolled through the wall and away.

Thursday, 7:35 P.M.

Sara stood on the corner of South across from the Jokertown Clinic. A cool front had moved in from Canada; low, scudding clouds spat wet circles on the pavement.

Sara glanced again at her watch. Misha was over an hour late. “I’ll be there. I promise you, Sara. If I’m not there, know it’s because he stopped me.”

Sara cursed under her breath, wishing she knew what to think, what to feel.

“You’ll have to decide what to do then.”

“Can I help you, Ms. Morgenstern?” Tachyon’s deep voice made her start. The scarlet-haired alien peered down at her with a look of intense concern on his face that she might have found comical at another time; during the recent junket, he’d more than once indicated he found her attractive. She laughed, hating the hysteria she heard in the sound.

“No. No, Doctor, I’m all right. I was … I was waiting for someone. We were supposed to meet here.…”

Tachyon nodded solemnly, his startling eyes refusing to let her go. “You seemed nervous. I watched you from the clinic. I thought perhaps there was something I could do. Are you sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”

“No.” Her denial was too sharp, too loud. Sara was forced to smile to soften the effect. “Really. Thank you for asking. I was just about to leave, anyway. It doesn’t look like she’s going to show.”

He nodded. He stared. At last he shrugged. “Aah,” he said. “Well, it was good seeing you again. We don’t need to be strangers now that the trip is over, Sara. Perhaps dinner one night?”

“Thank you, but…” Sara bit her lower lip in agitation, just wanting Tachyon to leave. She needed to think, needed to get away from here. “Maybe next time I’m in the city?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Tachyon inclined his head like a Victorian lord, staring at her strangely, then turned. Sara watched Tachyon make his way across the street to the clinic. The sky was beginning to let down a steady drizzle. Streetlights were flickering in the early dusk. Sara looked again up and down the street. A joker with oddly twisted legs and a carapace scuttled from the sidewalk to the cover of a porch. Rain began to pool in the trash-clogged gutters.

“We’re sisters in this.”

Sara stepped from the curb and hailed a cab parked down the street. The nat driver stared at her through the rearview mirror. His gaze was rude and direct; Sara turned her face away. “Where you going?” he asked with a distinct Slavic accent.

“Head uptown,” she said. “Just get me out of here.”

“What he did to me, he would also do to you. Don’t you notice how your feelings for him change when he’s with you, and doesn’t that also make you wonder?”

Aah, Andrea. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

Sara sat back and watched the rain smear the towers of Manhattan through the windows.