“I want some things,” Travnicek said. He stood, blue-skinned and featureless, below the vast creature that was Bloat, pale body pulsing beneath the broken arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty. Armored mermen stood guard, lances at rest. The giant carp on which they rode were propped on the floor on splayed fins. Marble columns rose on high.
“I want a place of my own,” Travnicek said. “A tower, so I can get up and down when I want, arranged to my specifications. You can built it the way I want, yah?”
“Just visualize it,” Bloat said, “and I’ll try to put it somewhere.” His voice was high-pitched and adolescent.
Travnicek turned to Modular Man. “This is the damn life, right?” he said. “I think it, and White, Fat, and Ugly here builds it.”
A joker named Kafka made an angry, chittering sound, but Bloat only giggled.
“You don’t care what people think, do you?” he asked.
Travnicek’s voice was defiant. “Why should I?”
Bloat looked down on him. There was a touch of sadness in his tone. “Welcome to the Rox,” he said, “I think you’ll fit right in.”
“Of course I have a plan,” said Wyungare. “Do you think I’m bluffing?”
Cordelia raised her eyes ceiling-ward. They stood again in room 228, Jack’s room. “Give me patience, Lord.” The black cat moved restlessly about their feet, stalking fluidly between their legs in a slalom pattern.
“I need to borrow your Walkman,” said the Aborigine. “Please.”
Cordelia looked curious, but extracted the small black box from her handbag. “You want some tunes to go with it?”
“I have my own, thank you.” He dug into his dilly bag and took out a tape cassette.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’ll take a quick journey into your uncle’s reptile mind and attempt to establish some communication. This will be quick and dirty, no time for ceremony.”
“You’re not going to strip?”
He shook his head. “No time.”
“Good,” said Troll. “Aesthetics are important here.”
Cordelia jerked around. “None of you ever knocks.”
“Sorry. I’m used to just barging in. Besides, as I gather your Australian friend was saying, we don’t have a lot of time for social niceties. Dr. Finn really cannot afford to be seen helping you. I can.”
“So what’s the tape?” said Cordelia as Wyungare clicked it into the Walkman.
He adjusted the ear-buds and handed her the box.
“Gene Krupa? Cool. Not exactly traditional,” she said.
“I’m not going to bother with my own drumming,” said Wyungare. “I need what’s called a sonic driver. This will do admirably. I find Mr. Krupa’s approach to rhythm quite impressive.”
“I’ll go ahead and disconnect the sleep probes,” said Troll. “The moment the voltage stops going into the alligator’s brain, he should start to wake up.” He set the medical case down on a chair. “I’ve got some stimulants that should help accelerate the process.”
“You know how to do all this?” Cordelia shook her head. “Gator uppers.”
“Precisely.” Troll hesitated. “Hang around this place long enough and you either have to learn something or go bug-fuck. I sure don’t have an M.D., but please trust me anyway.” Cordelia laughed. “You sound like a doctor.”
Wyungare sat down cross-legged. “Carry on,” he said to the two. “I’ll be back with you soon.” He punched the tape player’s ON button and closed his eyes.
Bloat’s Wall towered a hundred feet high. Brokers on Wall Street could look out their office windows and count the demons on its ramparts. The Staten Island Ferry passed right under its battlements, or had before service was suspended.
But above the physical barrier was another wall. Invisible. Intangible. A wall of fear. A wall of loathing cold as stone, of hatred hard as iron. The wall of terror had the same boundaries as the other, but it was higher, much higher. To get to the Rox took courage and a strong stomach. Most people didn’t have either.
The previous month, when the Turtle had tried to take Dr. Tachyon out to the Rox in search of his stolen body, the stone wall hadn’t been there, but the invisible wall had stopped him dead. On the second try, Tom had discovered a very important fact: the wall ended around two thousand feet.
This time he came in high, and it was candy.
The powers-that-be had decided it would be undignified for the rest of the peace delegation to sit on top of his shell. The vice president had volunteered his limousine. Tom couldn’t help notice that he hadn’t volunteered himself.
The limo floated under the shell, gripped tight by Tom’s telekinesis, the two moving as one. It was long and black and bulletproof. A little flag emblazoned with the vice presidential seal flew from one fender, a miniature stars and stripes from the other. The delegates sat in back. Nobody sat in front. The Great and Powerful Turtle was all the driver they needed.
The demons moved in as they passed over Bloat’s Wall.
Tom watched them approach on his screens. Mermen riding on flying fish, carrying lances shaped like swordfish. They took up positions around the shell, and escorted him in, surreal outriders in a procession out of nightmare. The Rox grew stranger the closer they got. Inside the Wall was more bay. Slender stone causeways connected the castle with its outer defenses. On Ellis itself, the castle bulked huge as Gormenghast. Tom glimpsed stone walls twenty feet thick, a confusion of towers and turrets and courtyards, crystalline fairy bridges delicate as spun sugar, onion domes carved in obsidian and ruby, black iron portcullises, huge wooden doors banded in steel, and in the center of it all a high golden dome as wide across as three football fields.
When they got above it, Tom saw that the golden dome was fashioned in the shape of a tremendous face, staring up at the sky. The eyes were skylights, but they seemed to follow them as they approached. One of the mermen dipped his spear. Tom understood the gesture. Down.
He thought of falling leaves.
The shell and the limo drifted downward. The face swelled larger and larger on his screens. When they were almost on top of it, the mouth opened wide, swallowing the limo. Tom followed.
He found himself in a vast, airy chamber full of golden light and jokers. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, staring up at the peacemakers as they descended. And from the middle of that human sea rose a mountain of pale flesh.
Bloat.
The governor was even bigger than Tom remembered. Still growing, it seemed. The chubby, boyish face and the two small arms that grew from the top of his monstrous body looked like flyspecks. Tom pressed a button: his cameras tracked and zoomed in. Bloat’s features filled his screens. The boy governor was smiling.
It was the face of the golden dome, Tom realized.
The torch from the Statue of Liberty stood behind Bloat’s throne, mounted on an iron frame. In front of him, a landing area had been cordoned off with velvet ropes. Tom teked the limo down to a gentle landing, and hovered ten feet above it.
A handful of VIPs had been allowed inside the ropes. Tom swung some cameras toward them. A humanoid cockroach stood protectively in front of Bloat, a penguin at his side. A magnificent antlered joker towered over both of them, shaking out a red-gold mane as he watched the limo. On the fringes stood groups of normal-looking teenagers who had to be jumpers.
The penguin skated forward and opened the back door of the limousine. Senator Gregg Hartmann stepped out, looked around for a hand to shake, found none offered, and cleared his throat. Father Squid squeezed out after him, struggling with his bulk and the folds of his cassock.