In the midst of a twisted medieval landscape, the characters of Bosch were playing. Jokers. They cavorted everywhere you looked. The triptych is a celebration of jokerhood: fox-headed demons, a merman riding a flying fish, another fish crawling down a road with a castle on its back, a skating penguin, a stag-headed man in a red cloak, another with grass growing on his back, a half-naked woman with a lizard's tail, a toad-man, a monkey-man-hundreds of them, roiling in a dark, stormy world.
Like my Rox. Very much like the Rox I see in my dreams.
The Rox I might build if they'd let me.
Kafka was staring at the Bosch like all the others, captivated. The joker we call Headlamp had turned bright, bright eyes on the triptych, so that it stood bathed in crystalline illumination. Jokers cavorted in egg tempura brilliance.
I laughed gaily. "We've found the way to make the Combine pay us back." The jumpers laughed at that, hearing K.C.'s phrase for the nat authorities. "They'll pay quite well to be allowed to stay in their own little bodies. Quite well." For that instant, looking at the Temptation, I forgot the tragedies in New York. I forgot the scorn of Prime and Blaise toward the jokers and my dreams. I forgot the nagging torture of all the jokers within my wall.
I forgot it all.
"The Rox has benefactors now. People in high places. People with money. Lots of money. No one will ever be hungry here again."
I laughed again. The voices of the jokers laughed with me. The jokers in Bosch's painting danced in sympathy.
There are times when life is shit…
The day after Prime delivered the Bosch, Blaise did something I still can't believe even he would do.
In one horrible stroke, he has taken Kelly away and wounded the one man who has always helped the jokers. It isn't fair what Blaise has done to Kelly. It isn't fair to her or to Tachyon. I listened as Blaise brought Tachyon to the Rox. I listened, and I couldn't do anything, for most of the jokers here no longer trust Tachyon, not since he betrayed Hartmann. Still…
It makes my stomach-all of it turn to listen to Tachy's pain. Worse, I can't shut it off like I can someone else's voice. I felt it as soon as they pierced the wall. Maybe it's because of my infatuation with Kelly, maybe its some remnant of Tachyon s telepathy, but we are linked.
He's so loud in my head. He hurts so much… Burning Sky, please help me…
She hurts so much. She makes me hurt.
I was outraged, even though several of the jokers laughed when they heard about it. I sent Peanut to Blaise with a message that I wanted Tachyon returned to his own body. I told him that I understood Blaise had his own reasons for wanting to hurt Tachyon but that the doctor had done more to help the jokers than anyone else. For that, I said, I wanted Tachyon released now. Blaise had had his vengeance; he'd proved how strong he was. Now let Tachyon go.
I'm the governor, right?
Blaise sent Peanut back with Polaroids: Kelly's-Tachyon's- body, naked and spread-eagled, her eyes wide, haunted and hopelessly defiant. Tachyon exposed helplessly, the picture snapped between her spread legs. Tachyon covered by Blaise's body. Tachyon afterward, weeping.
I… well, I didn't do anything.
I mean, what could I do, really? Was I going to send a squad of armed jokers to the jumper side of the Rox? I could've done that, but Blaise'd just mind-control them, or his followers would jump them. It'd start a civil war here. There are things I have to consider, after all. It's not just a simple thing.
The jumpers bring in money, they bring in the rapture and other drugs that half the jokers here are addicted to. The fear of them is at least part of what keeps the authorities away. I need the jumpers as much as they need me.
There are things I can't do. Really. I just… I just wish I didn't feel so bad about it. So dirty. I keep hearing myself, and I sound like fucking George Bush making excuses about how all his promises about `no new exotic laws' have had to be forgotten.
Do you understand?
… please help rne… I still hear her, and she's calling for me.
It hurts. It really does.
I had Peanut burn the pictures, but I kept seeing them. Kelly, poor Kelly. My Kelly. This isn't the way a romance is supposed to go.
Lovers
II
A lifetime ago, Tachyon had been thrown into the Tombs. He had thought he knew despair when the heavy barred door slammed shut behind him. Now he realized that had been only a pale shadow of true wretchedness.
His head pounded in time to the beating of his heart. Breath seemed to rip like shattered glass across a throat made raw from screaming. Blood still trickled sluggishly from his vagina, and he wondered what internal damage had been done.
The incongruity struck him. One should not use male pronouns with female anatomy. But he was a man. Wasn't he? He was suddenly aware of a painfully full bladder. He reached down, touched blood matted hair, and smoothness. No, he was no longer a man.
It seemed the final straw. As she stared with dry, aching eyes into the darkness, Tach longed to cry, to bathe her burning eyes with warm tears, to release the anguish filling her chest like crushing weight. But she could not cry. It was as if her emotions had been carefully gathered, and packed away in some deep and secret part of her soul. She was suffering, but she couldn't express the pain.
The darkness seemed to have substance. Hands stretched out before her, Tach made a circuit of her prison. Six feet by five feet. Bare concrete underfoot. Brick walls that oozed damp like a sweating fat man. As she made her journey of discovery, her bruised toes tried to cringe from any possible obstacles. They needn't have worried. The room was utterly, totally barren.
Tachyon was discovering that it was much harder to hold urine in a female body than in a male one. She found the door again. Beating desperately on it with her palms, she gathered a breath and shouted, "Hey! Help! Listen to mel HEY!"
There was no response.
As she squatted in a corner and relieved herself, Tachyon realized that in addition to being the most desperate moment of her life, it had become the most humiliating.
Eventually she slept. What woke her was a raging thirst, the clammy cold, and the sound of the door closing.
"No! Wait! Don't go! Don't leave me!"
Her toes struck something. There was a flat tinny sound as metal skittered across the floor. The aroma of oatmeal wafted to her nostrils. Shaking with hunger, Tach dropped her knees and groped blindly for the scattered silverware.
Minutes passed without success. Finally, with a faint mew of fury, Tach gathered the bowl in her hands and lapped down the cereal like a starving dog. It dented but did not banish the hunger. With her index finger, Tachyon scraped the sides and bottom of the bowl and sucked off the last bits of oatmeal.
A little more reconnaissance, and she discovered a pitcher of water and an empty bucket. She instantly availed herself of the bucket.
She had lost track of time. One day, three days, a week? How much time had elapsed in the world of light, in a world where people didn't go hungry or live with the stench of bowel movements or strain for even the faintest sound of another living creature?
At first Tachyon had been terrified that Blaise had taken Cody too. After all, the boy had been fascinated with the woman. It was his jealousy of Tach and Cody's relationship that had led him to run away in the first place and set him on this course of vengeance. But Blaise was as unsubtle as he was unstable. If he had held Cody, he would have tortured her before Tachyon's eyes. Thank the Ideal that he did not yet understand the power of suggestion, the agony of not knowing.
At least he's transferred his obsession with Cody to me, thought Tach. Now she will be safe. And though the thought comforted, Tachyon still had to clamp her teeth together to stop their chattering.