Wild Cards Part 33

The young vet pulled on his Levi's jacket and settled his steel hat on his crew cut head. "It's only a few blocks from here. I don't know about you, but I am am gonna do something about it." He led a rush toward the lift cage. gonna do something about it." He led a rush toward the lift cage.

Grabowski would have shouted, No, wait, don't go! You must leave this to the authorities-if brother begins fighting brother, the forces of disorder will have won. But speech was denied him.

Because he was as furious as the rest, and fearful, for he alone had seen firsthand the consequences of this revolution revolution everyone talked about. And in his emotion he had gripped a girder with all his might. everyone talked about. And in his emotion he had gripped a girder with all his might.

His fingers had sunk into the steel as if it were the soft sticky paste Americans called ice cream.

He was himself marked with the mark of the Beast.

Mark pa.s.sed the rest of the day in a strange haze compounded of l.u.s.t, hope, and fear. He missed the word from Kent State. While the rest of America reacted in horror or approbation, he spent the night locked in his apartment with a plateful of cookies, poring through his papers and well-thumbed books on LSD, taking out the acid tablet, turning it over and over in his fingers like a talisman. When the sun was weakly established in the sky a transient surge of resolution made him pop it in his mouth. A quick slug of flat orange soda pop washed it down before nerve could fail him again.

From his reading he knew acid generally took between an hour and an hour and a half to kick in. He tried to slide past the time by flipping from the Solomon anthology to Marvel comics to the Zap Zap comix he'd accrued in his pursuit of understanding. After an hour, too nervous to await the drug's effects by himself any longer, he left his apartment. He had to find Sunflower, tell her he'd found his manhood, had taken the fateful step. Also, he was afraid to be alone when the acid hit. comix he'd accrued in his pursuit of understanding. After an hour, too nervous to await the drug's effects by himself any longer, he left his apartment. He had to find Sunflower, tell her he'd found his manhood, had taken the fateful step. Also, he was afraid to be alone when the acid hit.

Finding Sunflower was always like tracking a flower petal kicked about by the breeze, but he knew she gravitated toward UCB, which had long since replaced the moribund Haight as the locus of hip Bay Area culture, and she worked spasmodically at a head shop near People's Park. So, at about nine-thirty on the morning of May 5, 1970, he wandered into the park-and straight up against the most spectacular confrontation between aces of the entire Vietnam epoch.

For one brief s.h.i.+ning moment, everyone-Establishment and enemies alike-knew the time had come for fighting in the streets. If the revolution was coming, it was coming the time had come for fighting in the streets. If the revolution was coming, it was coming now now, in the first hot flush of fury following the Kent State ma.s.sacre. Bay Area radical leaders had called a mammoth rally that morning in People's Park-and not just the police forces of the Bay Area but Ronald Reagan's own contingent of the National Guard had turned out to take them on.

By a quarter to ten the police had withdrawn from the park, establis.h.i.+ng a cordon sanitaire cordon sanitaire around the campus area to prevent conflagration from spreading. It was just the kids and several deuce-and-a-half trucks spilling National Guardsmen in battle dress and gas masks from under their canvas covers forty meters away. With a loose clattering squeal and diesel chug, an M113 armored personnel carrier pulled to a halt behind the line of fixed bayonets, treads chewing at the sod like mouths. A man in captain's bars sat stiff and resolute in the cupola behind a fifty-caliber machine gun, wearing what looked like a Knute Rockne football helmet on his head. around the campus area to prevent conflagration from spreading. It was just the kids and several deuce-and-a-half trucks spilling National Guardsmen in battle dress and gas masks from under their canvas covers forty meters away. With a loose clattering squeal and diesel chug, an M113 armored personnel carrier pulled to a halt behind the line of fixed bayonets, treads chewing at the sod like mouths. A man in captain's bars sat stiff and resolute in the cupola behind a fifty-caliber machine gun, wearing what looked like a Knute Rockne football helmet on his head.

Students ebbed from the green line like mercury from a fingertip. They'd been shouting to bring the war home; like their brothers in Ohio, it seemed they'd succeeded in doing just that. The Guard was regularly called in to break up demonstrations-but the boxy, ugly shape of the APC represented something new, a note of menace even the most sheltered couldn't miss. The crowd faltered, buzzing alarm.

Into the s.p.a.ce between the lines a single figure stepped, slim in black leather. "We came to be heard," said Thomas Marion Douglas, his voice pitched to carry, "and we're d.a.m.ned well going to be be heard." heard."

Behind him the crowd began to solidify. Here was a superstar-an ace-taking his stand with them. Across the bayonet hedge the eyes of National Guard troopers flickered nervously behind the thick lenses of their masks. They were mostly young men who'd joined the Guard to avoid being drafted and sent to 'Nam; they they knew who was facing them. Many owned Destiny records, had Douglas's haughty features staring down from posters on their bedroom walls. It was harder, somehow, to use bayonet or rifle-b.u.t.t against someone you knew who was facing them. Many owned Destiny records, had Douglas's haughty features staring down from posters on their bedroom walls. It was harder, somehow, to use bayonet or rifle-b.u.t.t against someone you knew knew, even if it was only as a face on a record jacket or in a photo spread in Life Life magazine. magazine.

Their captain was of sterner stuff. He barked an order from the cupola. Tear-gas guns coughed, a half-dozen small comets arched down around Douglas and among the crowd surging up to join him. Billows of thick white smoke, CS gas, hid the singer from view.

Taking a shortcut through an alley, Mark had managed to miss the police lines. At this moment he emerged to a perfect sideline view of his very own idol standing with smoke swirling around him like a medieval martyr at the stake. He stopped and stared openmouthed at the confrontation shaping up before him.

The acid kicked in.

He felt reality's collagens dissolve, but the scene before him was too intense for hallucination. As the stiff morning breeze tattered the curtains of gas, a man standing with legs braced and fists raised appeared, auburn hair streaming back from a broad face that somehow flickered, interspersed with the head of a giant cobra, scales gleaming black, hood extended. The Guardsmen drew back; the Lizard King was in their midst.

The King moved forward in a sinuous glide. Uniforms gave way. Someone jabbed at him with a bayonet, or maybe just didn't back off quickly enough. A flick of the wrist, seeming lazy and disdainful but delivered with superhuman speed, and the rifle went spinning away as its owner stumbled backward to the gra.s.s with a yelp of terror. The captain in his iron box shouted hoa.r.s.ely, trying to pull together the fraying strands of his men's determination.

But as he a.s.sumed his Lizard King aspect, Douglas loosed his mind games upon them; their eyes began to wander, seeking visions of desperate beauty or mind-numbing horror, each affected in his own way by the Lizard King's black aura.

The crowd was advancing now, chanting, shouting, menacing. The Guard captain did the only thing he could-his thumb pulsed once against the fifty-caliber's b.u.t.terfly trigger. The gun vomited noise to bust gla.s.s and a Volkswagen flame, streaming tracers over the protesters' heads.

Triumphant an eyeblink before, the crowd came apart in screaming panic. The noise of the shots struck Mark like a giant pillow and spun him backward along endless, twisting corridors. But the scene stayed before him, light at the end of a tunnel, terrible and insistent. No one had been hit by the burst, but the protesters, like Mark himself, had come up for the first time against the reality their prophet Mao had tried to impress on them: where power comes from.

Tom Douglas was standing so close that muzzle-flash singed his eyebrows. He didn't flinch, though the noise struck him with a force a truckload of speakers couldn't match. Instead he met it with a roar of his own that sent Guardsmen tumbling like frightened puppies.

A prodigious leap and he stood on the upper deck of the APC. He bent, grasped the gun's barrel, heaved. The heavy Browning came away from its mounting like a sapling torn up by the roots. He held the weapon above his head, both-handed, then with a single convulsion of shoulders and biceps bent the barrel almost double. Having displayed his contempt for the Establishment and its war machines, he tossed the ruined machine gun after the troopers, now in full rout, and bent forward to pluck the now-terror-stricken captain from the cupola by the front of his blouse. He held the man up before him, legs kicking feebly.

And was struck down from behind by a blow driven with the full awesome strength of an unknown ace.

Mark snapped. With a shriek his soul vanished into swirling dark. His body turned and blindly ran.

Wojtek Grabowski saw the sinister serpent figure in black leap onto the APC and tear the weapon from its mountings and knew it had been the right choice to live.

Only devout Catholicism had stopped him from throwing himself to his death. He'd hurried from the site-already deserted as the workers rushed to attack the demonstrators-and home to his cramped apartment to a nightlong vigil of misery and silent prayer.

With dawn had indeed come Light; and he knew with a warm rush that his ace affliction was divinely sent, a blessing not a curse. Revolution threatened his adopted home, led by those who'd sworn allegiance to the forces of darkness. He had washed, dressed, made his own way to the park with peace in his heart.

Now he was confronted with a beast that seemed to have many heads, knew that he was face-to-face with the hated Tom Douglas himself.

Fury blasted into him. The ace transformation overtook him, bulking his muscles hugely to fill his baggy clothes to the bursting point. The steel hat of his profession was on his head, a yard-long pipefitter's wrench in his hand. Lingering doubts about using his strength against normal humans vanished; here was an enemy worthy of him, an ace, a traitor-a servitor of h.e.l.l.

He raced forward, vaulted onto the vehicle even as the snake-headed creature in black plucked its commander from the hatch. Students cried warnings Douglas didn't hear. Hardhat raised his wrench and struck at the back of a head now bushy-haired, now black and glabrous and obscene.

The blow would have pulped the skull of a normal human, or torn his head from his shoulders. But the constant s.h.i.+fting of Douglas's appearance confused Grabowski's aim. The blow glanced off. Douglas dropped the squirming officer and slumped bonelessly off the vehicle as momentum carried the wrench downward to buckle the aluminum top-armor like tinfoil.

Thinking he had killed him, Grabowski felt strength ebb. He needed rage to stay in the meta state, but all he felt was shame. Desperate, he turned to face the crowd. "Go home," he shouted in his hoa.r.s.e, harsh English. "Go home now, Is over. You must not fight no more. Obey your leaders and live in peace."

They stood and stared at him with sheep's faces. Morning dew had sucked the tear gas down into it and poisoned the gra.s.s. A few white CS tendrils writhed on the ground like dying snakes. Tears streamed down Grabowski's face. Wouldn't they listen? Wouldn't they listen?

From the rear of the crowd a young man shouted, "f.u.c.k you! f.u.c.k you, you mother f.u.c.kin' fascist! f.u.c.k you, you mother f.u.c.kin' fascist!"

To have that epithet thrown at him, a man who still carried fascist bullets in his flesh, by some spoiled, insolent, ignorant puppy-anger filled him in abundance, and with it that inhuman strength.

Fortunately for him, because about then Tom Douglas got his wits back, jumped to his feet, grabbed the Hardhat by the ankles, and yanked his boots out from under him. Grabowski's helmet struck the deck like a giant cymbal. Every bit as furious as the man who'd taken him down, Douglas caught him as he fell, slammed him against the side of the vehicle, and began to piledrive blows into him with his own ace strength.

But Grabowski too had more than human durability. He dragged his wrench up between their bodies, thrust Douglas violently away. Douglas's feet slipped once on the wet gra.s.s, he caught himself with serpent agility and lunged forward to the attack-only to check himself and go up on tiptoe like a ballet dancer while a savage two-handed swipe of the wrench whined within an inch of his abdomen.

Douglas dove inside the wrench's deadly arc. He grappled his opponent, slamming punches in under the short ribs. Grabowski took a quick step backward, put a hand on Douglas's sternum, and pushed. Douglas fell back a step. The wrench lashed out, and this time only Douglas's metahuman reflexes saved him from catching it square in the front of his skull.

The tool-steel beak raked his forehead. Blood cascaded. He backpedaled furiously, wiping his eyes with one hand while the other thrashed about in an attempt to ward the following blow.

Hardhat swung his wrench like a baseball bat and took Douglas under the right arm with a sound that echoed through the park like a grenade explosion. Douglas went down. Hardhat stood over him with legs spread wide, raising the wrench slowly above his head like a headsman preparing the stroke. Blood drooled from the corner of his mouth. He was berserk, beyond compunction, beyond compa.s.sion, devoid of anything but the need to smash his opponent's skull like a snail on a rock.

But even as the gleaming blood-dripping wrench started down, a golden chain wrapped around it from behind and stopped the blow before it was launched.

With a fighter's reflex Hardhat instantly relaxed his arms, allowing his wrench to travel in the direction the sudden restraint pulled. Then he snapped the weapon forward and down, spinning as he did so to throw the entire augmented weight of his body against the slack. But as he moved, a houlihan rippled down the chain and it loosened, so that the wrench slithered free with a musical sound. Motion unchecked by expected impact, Hardhat spun around completely, staggering forward, continued through another half-turn so that he faced his opponent across five meters of muddy, trampled earth.

A youth stood there, slender and tall, golden hair falling to his shoulders, dangling a saucer-sized peace medallion of gold on a long chain. Despite Bay-morning chill he wore only a pair of jeans. To the short, dark Grabowski, he looked like nothing so much as a figure stepped from a n.a.z.i recruiting poster.

"Who are you?" Hardhat snarled. Then, realizing he had spoken in his own tongue, repeated it in English.

The youth frowned briefly, as if perplexed. "Call me Radical," he said then with a grin. "I'm here to protect the people."

"Traitor!" Hardhat launched himself, swinging the wrench. Radical danced aside. No matter how savagely Hardhat attacked, no matter how he feinted, his opponent eluded him with apparent ease. Frustrated at his attempts to strike the golden youth, Hardhat turned once again to Douglas, still moaning on the ground. And Radical was there, peace symbol weaving a golden figure of eight in the air before him, warding Hardhat's most ferocious blows with sparks of coruscance while soldiers and students alike stood transfixed by the spectacle.

But if Hardhat couldn't strike past the amulet, Radical seemed unwilling or unable to counterattack. Noting this Hardhat backed away, waving his wrench menacingly. After a moment Radical followed, flowing like mist. Hardhat circled widders.h.i.+ns. Radical kept pace. Slowly the Pole drew his long-haired opponent away from the rec.u.mbent Douglas.

Lightning fast, he wheeled left and hurled himself at the onlookers. Though his speed wasn't as great as Radical's it was greater than a norm's, and he was among the crowd of protesters before any could react, wrench upraised to smash. Caught by surprise, Radical was unable to react in time.

The wrench stayed up, frozen like a fly in lucite. Radical sprang forward, driven to attack by desperation, swinging his peace medallion at the back of the tree-trunk neck below the helmet's sweep. It connected with the chunk of an ax striking wood; not as mighty a blow as the Lizard King could have delivered, not to be compared in the least with the terrible force of Grabowski's wrench, but sufficient to scramble Hardhat's senses, send him pitching face first into the gra.s.s and mud and crumpled signs.

Radical poised above him, swinging his medallion in a slow circle at his side. A moment later Douglas joined him, rubbing his side and grimacing. "Think he cracked a few ribs, there," he rasped in his familiar dirt-road baritone. "What the h.e.l.l?"

Even as they watched, the inhumanly squat form of Hardhat dwindled into a stocky, balding man in baggy clothes, lying with his face in the mud, sobbing as if his heart were broken. Shaking his s.h.a.ggy mane, Douglas turned to his benefactor. "I'm Tom Douglas. Thanks for saving my a.s.s."

"The pleasure's mine, man."

And then Douglas stepped forward and embraced the taller blond man, and a cheer went up from the crowd. The National Guard soldiers were already in retreat, leaving their APC behind. The revolution would not come today, or ever, perhaps, but the kids had been saved.

As the television cameras churned, Tom Douglas proclaimed Radical his comrade in arms and called into being a celebration as wild as any the Bay Area had known. While the police kept their uneasy perimeter and the National Guard licked its wounds, thousands of kids poured into the park to hail the conquering heroes. The abandoned M113 provided an impromptu stage. Tents dotted the park like colorful mushrooms. Music and drugs and booze flowed freely, all that day and all that night.

At the center of it all glowed Tom Douglas and his mysterious benefactor, surrounded by beautiful, compliant women-none more so than the willowy brunette with eyes like impacted ice everybody called Sunflower, who appeared to have sprouted from Radical's hip like a postnatal Siamese twin. The newcomer would give no other name than Radical, and he turned away all questions as to his origin, and how he happened to be at that place at that time, with a grin and a shy "I was here because I was needed here, man." At dawn the next day, he slipped quietly away from the dwindling festivities and vanished.

He was never seen again.

In the spring of 1971, charges against Tom Douglas stemming from the People's Park confrontation were dropped-at the recommendation of Dr. Tachyon, who'd been called in by SCARE to help investigate the incident-just as Destiny's alb.u.m City of Night hit the stands. Shortly thereafter, Douglas electrified the rock world by announcing he was retiring-not just as a musician, but as an ace.

So he took Doc Tachyon's experimental trump cure, and was one of the fortunate thirty percent on whom it worked. The Lizard King disappeared forever, leaving behind Thomas Marion Douglas, norm.

Who was dead in six months. His overuse of drugs and alcohol had achieved such heroic proportions that only ace endurance kept him alive. Once that was gone his health deteriorated rapidly. He died of pneumonia in a seedy hotel in Paris in the fall of 1971.

As for Hardhat-interviewed by Dr. Tachyon the day after the confrontation, hospitalized for observation with a mild concussion, Wojtek Grabowski insisted his foes had not defeated him. "All you need is love" ran the received wisdom of the day-and love had brought him down. Or so he claimed. Because when he hurled himself against the crowd, he found himself staring into the face of Anna, his wife, lost to him for two decades and a half.

Not quite Anna, he said tearfully; there were differences, in the color of hair, the shape of nose. And, of course, Anna would not now be a woman in her early twenties.

But their daughter would be. Grabowski was convinced he had seen, at last, the child he had never known. The horrible knowledge that his anger had almost led him to destroy that which he cherished most in all the world bled the strength from him in an instant, so that what Radical's medallion struck was a being in transition from full ace strength to a normal human state.

Touched, Dr. Tachyon helped Grabowski search the Bay Area for his daughter. Privately he never expected to find her; at the moment Grabowski believed he saw her, Tom Douglas had been recovering, his Lizard King aspect still active. And that black aura could make you see what you most wished to see. As far as Tachyon was concerned, it had.

To none of his surprise, the search turned up nothing. In any event, he was able to devote little time to Grabowski, no matter how much the man's plight affected him. He returned East after three weeks of a.s.sisting Grabowski and SCARE investigators. A couple of months later he learned that Grabowski had vanished, no doubt to pursue the search for his family. Since then, no more had been heard of Wojtek Grabowski, or Hardhat.

And as for Radical . . . . . .

In the early morning hours of May 6th, 1970, Mark Meadows staggered out of an alley opening into People's Park with his head full of white noise, clad only in his one pair of jeans. He had no memory of what had happened to him, scarcely realized where he was. He found himself amongst the remnants of last night's celebrants, heavy-eyed with fatigue but still chattering like speed freaks about the fantastic events of the last twenty-four hours. "You should have been been there, man," they told him. And as they described the events of yesterday morning, strange fragments of memory, surreal and disjointed, began to bubble to the surface of Mark's mind: perhaps he there, man," they told him. And as they described the events of yesterday morning, strange fragments of memory, surreal and disjointed, began to bubble to the surface of Mark's mind: perhaps he had. had.

Was he remembering his own experiences? Or was the last of the acid casting up images to match the breathless, vivid descriptions a dozen eyewitnesses pressed on him at once? He didn't know. All that he knew was that the Radical represented the realization of his wildest dream: Mark Meadows as Hero.

And when he saw Sunflower standing nearby, hair disarrayed, eyes dreamy, and she said to him, "Oh, Mark, I just met the most fantastic fantastic dude," he knew that whatever hopes he'd had of being more than Sunflower's friend had just gone dude," he knew that whatever hopes he'd had of being more than Sunflower's friend had just gone poof poof. Unless he were, in fact, the Radical.

He knew what to do, of course. He'd learned more than he consciously realized during his street apprentices.h.i.+p with Sunflower; by nightfall he was crosslegged on his own mattress among his cookies and comic books, clutching two weeks' living-expenses worth of LSD. He was so exalted when he popped the first tab that he barely needed the drug to get off.

Which was all he did. No Radical transformation. Nothing. He just . . . tripped out tripped out.

For a week he didn't leave the apartment, living on moldy crumbs, slamming down increasing doses of acid as fast as the effects of the last charge faded. Nothing Nothing. When at last he staggered forth for more drugs he'd already taken on a blur around the edges.

So began the quest.

Interlude Three From "Wild Card Chic," by Tom Wolfe, New York New York , June 1971. , June 1971.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. These are nice. Little egg rolls, filled with crabmeat and shrimp. Very tasty. A bit greasy, though. Wonder what the aces do to get the grease spots off the fingers of their gloves? Maybe they prefer the stuffed mushrooms, or the little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts, all of which are at this very moment being offered them on silver platters by tall, smiling waiters in Aces High livery. . . . These are the questions to ponder on these Wild Card Chic evenings. For example, that black man there by the window, the one shaking hands with Hiram Worchester himself, the one with the black silk s.h.i.+rt and the black leather coat and that absolutely unbelievable swollen forehead, that dangerous dangerous-looking black man with the cocoa-colored skin and almond-shaped eyes, who came off the ele- vator with three of the most ravis.h.i.+ng women any of them have ever seen, even here in this room full of beautiful people-is he, an ace, a palpable ace, going to pick up a little egg roll stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat when the waiter drifts by, and just pop it down the gullet without so much as missing a syllable of Hiram's cultured geniality, or is he more of a stuffed mushroom man at that . . .

Hiram is splendid. A large man, a formidable formidable man, six foot two and broad all over, in a bad light he might pa.s.s for Orson Welles. His black, spade-shaped beard is immaculately groomed, and when he smiles his teeth are very white. He smiles often. He is a warm man, a gracious man, and he greets the aces with the same quick firm handshake, the same pat on the shoulder, the same familiar exhortation with which he greets Lillian, and Felicia and Lenny, and Mayor Hartmann, and Jason, John, and D.D. man, six foot two and broad all over, in a bad light he might pa.s.s for Orson Welles. His black, spade-shaped beard is immaculately groomed, and when he smiles his teeth are very white. He smiles often. He is a warm man, a gracious man, and he greets the aces with the same quick firm handshake, the same pat on the shoulder, the same familiar exhortation with which he greets Lillian, and Felicia and Lenny, and Mayor Hartmann, and Jason, John, and D.D.

How much do you think I weigh? he asks them jovially, and presses them for a guess, three hundred pounds, three fifty, four hundred. He chuckles at their guesses, a deep chuckle, a resonant chuckle, because this huge man weighs only thirty pounds and he's set up a scale right here in the middle of Aces High, his lavish new restaurant high atop the Empire State Building, amid the crystal and silver and crisp white tablecloths, a scale like you might find in a gym, just so he can prove his point. He hops on and off nimbly whenever he's challenged. Thirty pounds, and Hiram does enjoy his little joke. But don't call him Fatman anymore. This ace has come out of the deck now, he's a new kind of ace, who knows all the right people and all the right wines, who looks absolutely correct in his tuxedo, and owns the highest, chic chicest restaurant in town.

What an evening! The tables are set all around, the silver gleaming, the tremulous little flames of the candles reflected in the encircling windows, a bottomless blackness with a thousand stars, and it is that moment Hiram loves. There seem to be a thousand stars inside and a thousand stars outside, a Manhattan tower full of stars, the highest grandest tower of all, with marvel- ous people drifting through the heavens, Jason Robards, John and D.D. Ryan, Mike Nichols, Willie Joe Namath, John Lindsay, Richard Avedon, Woody Allen, Aaron Copland, Lillian h.e.l.lman, Steve Sondheim, Josh Davidson, Leonard Bernstein, Otto Preminger, Julie Belafonte, Barbara Walters, the Penns, the Greens, the O'Neals . . . and now, in this season of Wild Card Chic, the aces.

That knot of people there, that cl.u.s.ter of enthralled, adoring, excited excited people with the tall, thin champagne gla.s.ses in their hands and the rapt expressions on their faces, in their midst, the object of all their attention, is a little man in a crushed-velvet tuxedo, an people with the tall, thin champagne gla.s.ses in their hands and the rapt expressions on their faces, in their midst, the object of all their attention, is a little man in a crushed-velvet tuxedo, an orange orange crushed-velvet tuxedo, with tails, and a ruffled lemon-yellow s.h.i.+rt, and long s.h.i.+ny red hair. Tisianne brant Ts'ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian is holding court again, the way he must have done once on Takis, and some of the marvelous people about him are even calling him "Prince" and "Prince Tisianne," though they don't often p.r.o.nounce it right, and to most of them, now and forever, he will remain Dr. Tachyon. He's crushed-velvet tuxedo, with tails, and a ruffled lemon-yellow s.h.i.+rt, and long s.h.i.+ny red hair. Tisianne brant Ts'ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian is holding court again, the way he must have done once on Takis, and some of the marvelous people about him are even calling him "Prince" and "Prince Tisianne," though they don't often p.r.o.nounce it right, and to most of them, now and forever, he will remain Dr. Tachyon. He's real real, this prince from another planet, and the very idea idea of him-an exile, a hero, imprisoned by the Army and persecuted by HUAC, a man who has lived two human lifetimes and seen things none of them can imagine, who labors selflessly among the wretched of Jokertown, well, the excitement runs through Aces High like a rogue hormone, and Tachyon seems excited too, you can tell by the way his lilac-colored eyes keep slipping over to linger on the slender Oriental woman who arrived with that other ace, that dangerous-looking Fortunato fellow. of him-an exile, a hero, imprisoned by the Army and persecuted by HUAC, a man who has lived two human lifetimes and seen things none of them can imagine, who labors selflessly among the wretched of Jokertown, well, the excitement runs through Aces High like a rogue hormone, and Tachyon seems excited too, you can tell by the way his lilac-colored eyes keep slipping over to linger on the slender Oriental woman who arrived with that other ace, that dangerous-looking Fortunato fellow.

"I've never met an ace before," the refrain goes. "This is a first for me." The thrill vibrates through the air of Aces High, until the whole eighty-sixth floor is thrumming thrumming to it, a first for me, never known anyone like you, a first for me, always wanted to meet you, a first for me, and somewhere in the damp soil of Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy spins in his coffin with a high, thin whirring sound, and all his worms have come home to roost now. These are no Hollywood poseurs, no dreary politicians, no faded literary flowers, no pathetic jokers begging for help, these are to it, a first for me, never known anyone like you, a first for me, always wanted to meet you, a first for me, and somewhere in the damp soil of Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy spins in his coffin with a high, thin whirring sound, and all his worms have come home to roost now. These are no Hollywood poseurs, no dreary politicians, no faded literary flowers, no pathetic jokers begging for help, these are real real n.o.bility n.o.bility, these aces, these enchanting electric aces.

So beautiful. Aurora, sitting on Hiram's bar, showing the long, long legs that have made her the toast of Broadway, the men cl.u.s.tered around her, laughing at her every joke. Remarkable, that red-gold hair of hers, curled and perfumed, tumbling down across her bare shoulders, and those bruised, pouting lips, and when she laughs, the northern lights flicker around her and the men burst into applause. She's signed to make her first feature film next year, playing opposite Redford, and Mike Nichols will direct. The first ace to star in a major motion picture since-no, we wouldn't want to mention him him, would we? Not when we're having so much fun.

So astonis.h.i.+ng. The things they can do do, these aces. A dapper little man dressed all in green produces an acorn and a pocketful of potting soil, borrows a brandy snifter from the bartender, and grows a small oak tree right there in the center of Aces High. A dark woman with sharply sculpted features arrives in jeans and a denim s.h.i.+rt, but when Hiram threatens to turn her away, she claps her hands together and suddenly she is armored head to toe in black metal that gleams like ebony. Another clap, and she's wearing an evening gown, green velvet, off the shoulder, perfect for her, and even Fortunato looks twice. When the ice for the champagne buckets runs low, a burly rock-hard black man steps forward, takes the Dom Perignon in hand, and grins boyishly as frost rimes the outside of the bottle. "Just right," he says when he gives the bottle to Hiram. "Any longer and I'd freeze it solid." Hiram laughs and congratulates him, though he doesn't believe he has the honor. The black man smiles enigmatically. "Croyd," is all he says.

So romantic, so tragic. Down there by the end of the bar, in gray leather, that's Tom Douglas, isn't it? It is, it is is, the Lizard King himself, I hear they just dropped the charges, but what courage courage that took, what commitment, and say, whatever happened to that Radical fellow who helped him out? Douglas looks terrible, though. Wasted, haunted. They crowd close around him, and his eyes snap up and briefly the specter of a great black cobra looms above him, dark counterpoint to Aurora's s.h.i.+mmering colors, and silence ripples across Aces High until they leave the Lizard King alone again. that took, what commitment, and say, whatever happened to that Radical fellow who helped him out? Douglas looks terrible, though. Wasted, haunted. They crowd close around him, and his eyes snap up and briefly the specter of a great black cobra looms above him, dark counterpoint to Aurora's s.h.i.+mmering colors, and silence ripples across Aces High until they leave the Lizard King alone again.

So das.h.i.+ng, so flamboyant. Cyclone knows how to make an entrance, doesn't he? But that's why Hiram insisted on the Sunset Balcony, after all, not just for drinks out under the summer stars and the glorious view of the sun going down across the Hudson, but to give his aces a place to land, and it's only natural that Cyclone would be the first. Why ride the elevator when you can ride the winds? And the way he dresses-all in blue and white, the jumpsuit makes him look so lithe lithe and and rakish rakish, and that cape, the way it hangs from his wrists and ankles, and then balloons out in flight when he whips up his winds. Once he's inside, shaking Hiram's hand, he takes off his aviator's helmet. He's a fas.h.i.+on leader, Cyclone, the first ace to wear an honest-to-G.o.d costume costume, and he started back in '65, long before these other aces-comelately, wore his colors even through those two dreary years in 'Nam, but just because a man wears a mask doesn't mean he has to make a fetish of hiding his ident.i.ty, does it? Those days are past, Cyclone is Vernon Henry Carlysle of San Francisco, the whole world knows, the fear is dead, this is the age of Wild Card Chic when everyone everyone wants to be an ace. Cyclone came a long way for this party, but the gathering wouldn't be complete without the West Coast's premier ace, would it? wants to be an ace. Cyclone came a long way for this party, but the gathering wouldn't be complete without the West Coast's premier ace, would it?

Although-taboo thought that it is, with stars and aces glittering all around on a night when you can see fifty miles in every direction-really, the gathering isn't quite quite complete, is it? Earl Sanderson is still in France, though he did send a brief, but sincere, note of apology in reply to Hiram's invitation. A great man, that one, a great man greatly wronged. And David Harstein, the lost Envoy, Hiram even ran an ad in the complete, is it? Earl Sanderson is still in France, though he did send a brief, but sincere, note of apology in reply to Hiram's invitation. A great man, that one, a great man greatly wronged. And David Harstein, the lost Envoy, Hiram even ran an ad in the Times Times, david won't you please come home? but he's not here either. And the Turtle, where is the Great and Powerful Turtle? There were rumors that on this special magical night, this halcyon time for Wild Card Chic, the Turtle would come out of his sh.e.l.l and shake Hiram's hand and announce his name to the world, but no, he doesn't seem to be here, you don't think . . . G.o.d, no . . . you don't think those old stories are true true and the Turtle is a joker after all? and the Turtle is a joker after all?

Cyclone is telling Hiram that he thinks his three-year-old daughter has inherited his wind powers, and Hiram beams and shakes his hand and congratulates the doting daddy and proposes a toast. Even his powerful, cultivated voice cannot cut through the din of the moment, so Hiram makes a small fist and does that thing he does to the gravity waves and makes himself even lighter than thirty pounds, until he drifts up toward the ceiling. Aces High goes silent as Hiram floats beside his huge art-deco chandelier, raises his Pimm's Cup, and proposes his toast. Lenny Bernstein and John Lindsay drink to little Mistral Helen Carlysle, second generation ace-to-be. The O'Neals and the Ryans lift their gla.s.ses to Black Eagle, the Envoy, and the memory of Blythe Stanhope van Renssaeler. Lillian h.e.l.lman, Jason Robards, and Broadway Joe toast the Turtle and Tachyon, and everyone drinks to Jetboy, father of us all.