"Let's hurry it up," the thing said. "I got dinner waiting." Its veined skin split open, and another joker stood up inside. The joker was built along the lines of a beer truck, with a heavy armored exoskeleton to strengthen him, and he began to take heavy crates from those above and stow them carefully inside the shimmering dome.
The crates seemed evenly divided between food and munitions.
"My aching back," said the aquatic dome. "I hope you're ready for a slow ride home."
"Anything to give Granddad a kick in the teeth," Blaise said. Tachyon and the jokers looked uncomfortable. Granddad, Shad thought. Tachyon had been jumped. And he was on the Rox.
Tachyon and Blaise lay flat on a case of antitank rockets.
The big joker stepped out, the dome sealed, and in complete silence, it vanished from sight beneath the river.
The deuce-and-a-half rumbled as it started up.
Shad decided to burglarize Tachyon's apartment again. Maybe he'd find something incriminating this time.
On the pavement below Tachyon's window he found a chalk drawing of himself, dressed as he was just now, his feet planted to the wall. Shad's head swung wildly, his ears alert to the sound of laughter.
He heard nothing.
He found nothing in Tachyon's apartment.
He wondered, as he scuffed the drawing away with his shoe, if his role in this was ordained by someone not himself. If he was a pawn.
And he wondered if that someone had chalk dust on her fingertips.
"Hi. My name is Lisa Traeger these days. I'm calling from the trust officer's desk while he's off converting about half a million dollars to bearer bonds. I just thought I'd let you know I'm still among the living. I'll call back later, when I get some free time."
Lisa Traeger. He knew the victim's name now.
He heard the phone call hours after it was recorded. He'd seen the jump after having followed the Lincoln from the brownstone warehouse, but he hadn't known Shelley was a part of it. Shad was waiting by the phone when it rang again.
"Yes?" he said.
"This is, ah, Miss Traeger. I was wondering if you would care to join me for a night on the town."
"Are you free?"
"Nobody's watching. They trust me. I'm a criminal now, just like them."
He wasn't completely certain he believed that.
He met her at Tavern on the Green, in the Chestnut Room, which was one of the few rooms in the restaurant where people lurking out in Central Park couldn't watch them through the glass walls. He had taken a few circuits of the building before he'd gone in, just in case, and seen nothing, not even a detached eyeball.
Shad wore a blue blazer, gray wool slacks, and regimental tie. Lisa Traeger was in her late thirties, white, darkhaired, dark-eyed, and handsome. She carried a leather briefcase that Shad suspected was stuffed with bearer bonds. She wore a black off-the-shoulder Donna Karan evening dress and a Georges Kaplan fox wrap with the price tag still on it. Emeralds shone at her throat and ears. She ordered champagne and a warm chicken-salad appetizer with bacon and spinach.
"Brilliant," she said. "It went without a hitch. Traeger'll be held till tomorrow morning, and then I'll have to get the hell outta town."
"How do you feel?"
"Glorious. That joker body was old. I'm young againwell, younger. And my senses are much better. I can taste things again." She laughed as champagne went up her nose. Her skin glowed against the background of polished brass and rare wormy chestnut.
Sadness whispered through Shad's bones. "Traeger's hurting," he said. "Wherever she is."
Shelley considered that for a moment. "She'll make them the same deal I did. Wouldn't you?" She gave him a shaky smile. "I don't want to think about that anymore. I just want to be human again." She gave a brittle laugh. "I want to be safe for a little while, okay?"
She ordered the Muscovy duck in juniper sauce. Shad, to be polite, ordered the veal escalope and ate a few bites. He hadn't had solid food in days, and his stomach griped at him. His nerves kept giving little jumps as new people entered the room, as he checked them against his mental files of people connected with the jumpers' scheme. He saw nobody he knew. She ordered a bottle of Puligny Montrachet Latour '82, and Shad sipped a glass. Alcohol danced warm spirals in his head.
Outside, a cold winter wind flogged at the trees of Central Park. Shad put on No Dice's leather trench coat and got on his bike. Shelley gave a laugh and climbed on behind him, her hose-covered thighs gripping him. They sped up Central Park West, heading uptown. He danced the Vincent left and right, eyes straining, awareness reaching out, trying to make sure he wasn't followed. He stole heat from the cars and buildings they passed, a degree or two at a time, until his body roared with fire.
Shelley took his shoulders, leaned forward, spoke into his ear. "Wherever you want to go."
Wherever. Right.
Wherever ended up being a suite at the Carlyle. Shelley paid with Lisa Traeger's Gold Card. She hadn't been human for a long time. She wanted to do the most human thing of all.
Blindly, he reached for her. Her eyes glowed in shadowed sockets, and columns of flame pulsed in her throat. "You'll keep me safe, won't you?" she said.
He felt masks sliding away one by one. He felt less safe than he had in years.
"I'll do what I can," he said.
Shelley slept like a baby. Shad prowled the two-room suite, trying to work things out in his head. Strange little Miles Davis etudes sang through his thoughts. He kept hoping the situation would define itself, that he'd look out the window and see a human eyeball on the sill outside staring at him; then he would know what needed doing.
No eyeball. No clue.
He kept thinking about that green landscape glowing on the sidewalk. There, maybe, people wouldn't need masks. In the pale predawn Shelley woke with a laugh. She threw up her arms and rolled across the Carlyle's sheets, giggling like a girl. Then she glanced up at Shad, who sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes narrowed. "What's that on your shoulder?" she said. She reached out, touched the skin. "It's the CBS eye," Shad said.
Her face wrinkled in puzzlement. "You had it done? Why?"
"Scar tissue," Shad said. "Somebody carved it into me when I was little."
Shock rolled across her face.
"I don't want to talk about it," Shad said.
She sat up in bed, put her arms around him. "I can't understand how somebody could-"
"Somebody did. And somebody jumped you and put you in a joker body."
And some people string others up from lampposts. "People do these things," he said.
She rested her cheek on his shoulder. "I can't believe I didn't see those scars before." Her eyes narrowed. "Is that another one around your throat?"
Where the garrote had sawn into him and the tracheotomy had gone into the windpipe. Shad nodded. "The light's at the right angle or something. It happened years ago. It's hardly visible anymore."
She looked at him. "So what do you do with your time? You just live in hotels and carry a lot of cash with you and help people feel safe?"
"What are you going to do?"
She seemed surprised. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what are you going to do? You've got money, a new body. A credit card that's probably good for a few more hours. So what's your plan?"
She lay back on the sheets. He looked at the dark nipples atop her soft mature breasts, and he couldn't help remembering the breasts of the old Shelley-smaller, firmer, with a dusting of freckles.
"I don't know," she said. "I feel too good to think about it right now. All I know is that I want to be safe again."