Wild Cards Part 34

And after the toasting come the causes. The Wild Card Acts are still on the books, and in this day and age that's a disgrace, something must be done. Dr. Tachyon needs help, help for his Jokertown Clinic, help with his lawsuit, how long has that that been dragging on now, his suit to win custody of his s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p back from the government that wrongly impounded it in 1946-the shame of it, to take his been dragging on now, his suit to win custody of his s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p back from the government that wrongly impounded it in 1946-the shame of it, to take his s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+p after he came all that way to help, it makes them angry, all of them, and after he came all that way to help, it makes them angry, all of them, and of course of course they pledge their help, their money, their lawyers, their influence. A beautiful woman on either side of him, Tachyon speaks of his s.h.i.+p. It's alive, he tells them, and by now it's certainly lonely, and as he talks he begins to weep, and when he tells them that the s.h.i.+p's name is they pledge their help, their money, their lawyers, their influence. A beautiful woman on either side of him, Tachyon speaks of his s.h.i.+p. It's alive, he tells them, and by now it's certainly lonely, and as he talks he begins to weep, and when he tells them that the s.h.i.+p's name is Baby Baby, there's a tear behind many a contact lens, threatening the artfully applied mascara below. And of course something must be done about the Joker Brigade, that's little better than genocide, and . . .

But that's when dinner is served. The guests drift to their a.s.signed seats, Hiram's seating chart is a masterpiece, measured and spiced as precisely as his gourmet food, everywhere just the right balance of wealth and wisdom and wit and beauty and bravura and celebrity, with an ace at every table of course, of course course, otherwise someone might go away feeling cheated, in this year and month and hour of Wild Card Chic . . .

DOWN DEEP.

by Edward Bryant and Leanne C. Harper

As she dodged cabs, crossing Central Park West and entering the park, Rosemary Muldoon knew she was in for a difficult afternoon. She distractedly maneuvered through a late-afternoon mob of dog-walkers gathered on the sidewalk and looked for Bagabond.

As an intern with New York's Social Services Department, Rosemary got all the interesting cases, the ones no one else would handle. Bagabond, the enigmatic transient she had drawn this afternoon, was about the worst. Bagabond had to be at least sixty, and smelled as if she hadn't bathed in half that time. That was something Rosemary had never gotten used to. Her family was not what one could call nice, but each person bathed daily. Her father insisted on it. And n.o.body refused her father.

She had been drawn to the detritus of society precisely because of their alienation. Few had any connection with their pasts or their families. Rosemary recognized this but told herself that it did not matter what the reason was; the result was the important thing. She could help them.

Bagabond was standing beneath a grove of oaks. As Rosemary approached her, she thought she saw Bagabond gesturing and talking to a tree. Shaking her head, Rosemary pulled out Bagabond's file. It was slim. Real name unknown, age unknown, place of origin unknown, history unknown. According to the spa.r.s.e information, the woman lived on the streets. The best guess of the previous social worker was that Bagabond had been released from a state inst.i.tution to provide s.p.a.ce. The bag lady was paranoid but probably not dangerous. Because Bagabond had refused to give any information, there had been no way to help her. Rosemary put away the paperwork and marched toward the old woman dressed in layers of ragged clothing.

"h.e.l.lo, Bagabond. My name is Rosemary and I'm here to help you." Her gambit failed. Bagabond turned her head and stared at two kids throwing a Frisbee.

"Don't you want a nice, safe, warm place to sleep? With hot meals and people to talk to?" The only response she received was from the biggest cat she had ever seen outside a zoo. It had walked over to Bagabond and was now staring at Rosemary.

"You could take a bath." The bag lady's hair was filthy. "But I need to know your name." The huge black cat looked at Bagabond and then glared at Rosemary.

"Why don't you come with me and we'll talk?" The cat began to growl.

"Come on . . ." As Rosemary reached toward Bagabond, the cat sprang. Rosemary jumped back, tripping over the handbag she'd set on the ground. Lying on her back, she could see eye to eye with the very angry feline.

"Nice kitty. Stay right there." As she started to get up, the black cat was joined by a slightly smaller calico cat.

"Okay. I'll see you another time." Rosemary grabbed her bag and the file and retreated.

Her father never understood why she wanted to deal with the poor of the city, the "filth," as he called them. Tonight she was going to have to suffer through another chaperoned evening with her parents and her fiance. An arranged marriage, in this day and age. She wished it was easier to stand up to her father and say no. Her family was a creature of tradition. She just did not fit in.

Rosemary had her own apartment which, until recently, she had shared with C.C. Ryder. C.C. was a vocal hippie. Rosemary had made sure that her father and C.C. never met. The consequences were too horrible to consider. Keeping her two lives separate was essential.

It was a line of thought that took her too close to the pain. C.C. was gone. She had disappeared into the city. Rosemary was frightened for C.C. and for herself, for what it meant about the city.

Rosemary looked up from the park bench where she had collapsed. It was time to get the file back to the office and head for Columbia and cla.s.s.

"What a terrific night." Lombardo "Lucky Lummy" Lucchese was feeling great, just great. After two whole years of working numbers and small-time protection, he had at last made it into the foremost of the Five Families. They knew talent and he had plenty. Walking down 81st toward the park with his three friends, he was on top of the world.

He had to go pay his respects to his fiancee, Maria. What a mouse! But a mouse who was the only child of Don Carlo Gambione could be very valuable in the years to come. Later he would celebrate with his buddies. Now he had to get some cash so he could buy mousy Maria some nice flowers to show his devotion. Maybe carnations.

"I'm gonna go downstairs. Pick up some money," Lummy said.

"Want some company?" Joey "No-Nose" Manzone asked.

"Nah. You kiddin'? After next week, I'll be in the big money. I just wanna do one more job. For old time's sake. See ya later."

Splas.h.i.+ng through oil-iridescent puddles, Lummy whistled as he swung along toward the illuminated globe marking the stairs to the 81st Street subway station. Nothing could bring him down tonight.

What a perfectly dreadful evening, Sarah Jarvis thought. The sixty-eight-year-old woman had never in her life expected to be invited to an Amway party. The very thought. It had taken hours for her friend and her to leave. Of course, it was raining by that time and, of course, there was not an on-duty cab to be found. Her friend lived in the next building. Sarah had to go all the way uptown to Was.h.i.+ngton Heights.

Sarah hated the subway. That stale smell always nauseated her. She disliked the noisy parts of the city anyway, and the subway was among the loudest. Tonight, though, everything was quiet. Alone on the platform, Sarah s.h.i.+vered under her tweed jacket.

Peering over the edge of the platform and along the tunnel, she thought she saw the light of the uptown AA local. Something was there, but it seemed to move so slowly. Sarah turned away and looked at the advertising placards. She examined the poster calling for the reelection of that nice Mr. Nixon. In the adjacent newspaper vending machines, the headlines told of burglars breaking into a Was.h.i.+ngton hotel and apartment house. Watergate? What a funny name for a building, she thought. The Daily News Daily News led with a story about the so-called Subway Vigilante. The police were attributing five slayings over the past week to the mysterious killer. The victims had all been drug dealers and other criminals. The murders had all taken place in the subways. Sarah shuddered. The city was quite different than it had been in her childhood. led with a story about the so-called Subway Vigilante. The police were attributing five slayings over the past week to the mysterious killer. The victims had all been drug dealers and other criminals. The murders had all taken place in the subways. Sarah shuddered. The city was quite different than it had been in her childhood.

First she heard the steps, clattering down the stairs and past the deserted token booth. Then whistling, a peculiar tuneless drone, as the person entered the station. Despite herself, she was caught between apprehension and relief. Somewhat ashamed of her reaction, she decided she wouldn't mind a little human company.

As soon as she saw him, she was not so sure. Sarah had never been all that fond of black leather jackets, particularly those worn by slightly greasy, smirking young men. She turned her back firmly and focused on the wall across the tracks.

As the old woman turned her back, Lucky Lummy grinned broadly and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip.

"Hey, lady, got a light?"

"No."

One corner of Lummy's mouth twitched as he moved toward her back. "Come on, lady, be nice."

He missed the tension gathering in her shoulders as Sarah remembered that self-defense cla.s.s she had attended last winter.

"Just give me the purse, lad-aiee!" He screamed as Sarah turned and crushed his instep with her sensible but sophisticated beige pump. Lummy jerked back and aimed a punch at her face. Sarah evaded him by stepping backward and slipping on something slimy. Lummy grinned and started toward her.

Wind rushed past them from the tunnel as the AA train approached the station.

Neither noticed that a dozen people had all managed to get to the subway entrance simultaneously. Most of the crowd had attended a late showing of The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather and were continuing an animated discussion of whether or not Coppola had exaggerated the Mafia's role in modern crime. and were continuing an animated discussion of whether or not Coppola had exaggerated the Mafia's role in modern crime.

Someone who hadn't hadn't been at the screening was a transit worker who had had a long and trying day. He just wanted to go home and get dinner, not necessarily in that order. The newspapers had been pus.h.i.+ng again; even that Joker Rights stuff couldn't keep them occupied all the time. The transit man had been pulled off his regular track-checking duties to spend eighteen hours searching vainly for alligators in sewers and subway tunnels, conduit shafts, and deep utility holes. He mentally cursed his employers for kowtowing to the sensationalist press, and especially cursed the bird-d.o.g.g.i.ng reporters he'd finally ditched. been at the screening was a transit worker who had had a long and trying day. He just wanted to go home and get dinner, not necessarily in that order. The newspapers had been pus.h.i.+ng again; even that Joker Rights stuff couldn't keep them occupied all the time. The transit man had been pulled off his regular track-checking duties to spend eighteen hours searching vainly for alligators in sewers and subway tunnels, conduit shafts, and deep utility holes. He mentally cursed his employers for kowtowing to the sensationalist press, and especially cursed the bird-d.o.g.g.i.ng reporters he'd finally ditched.

The transit worker hung back a little, trying to stay out of the melee as the group fumbled for tokens and started through the gates. The moviegoers chattered as they went.

With a roar and braking screech of metal on metal, the AA local burst out of the tunnel.

On the platform, all manner of people confronted each other. Swearing in Italian, Lummy let go of his victim and looked around for a bolt-hole.

The first two couples had entered and were staring at the scene in front of them. One of the men moved toward Lucky Lummy as the other man grabbed his date and tried to retreat.

The doors of the local hissed open. At this time of night, there were few pa.s.sengers on the train and no one got off.

"There's never a transit cop when you need one," said the wouldbe rescuer. Momentarily, Lummy considered leaping for the punk and punching out his lights. Instead he feinted at the man, then half-limped, half-ran into the last car. The doors snapped closed and the train began to move. It might have been the light, but the bright grafitti on the sides seemed to change.

From inside the car, Lucky Lummy laughed and gestured obscenely at Sarah, who was feeling for bruises and trying to rearrange her soiled clothing. Lummy aimed a second gesture at the woman's inadvertent rescuers as the entire group converged on Sarah.

Abruptly Lummy's face contorted with fear and then outright terror as he began beating on the doors. The man who had tried to stop Lummy caught one last glimpse of him clawing at the rear door of the car as the train sped into darkness.

"What a creep!" said the date of the would-be rescuer. "Was he one of those jokers?"

"Naw," said his friend. "Just a garden-variety a.s.shole."

Everyone froze as they heard the screams from the uptown tunnel. Over the diminis.h.i.+ng roar of the local, they could hear Lummy's hopeless, agonized cries. The train vanished. But the screams lasted until at least 83rd Street.

The transit worker moved toward the downtown tunnel as the hero of the hour was congratulated by the mostly unharmed Sarah, as well as by the rest of the onlookers. Another transit employee came down the steps at the other end of the platform.

"Hey!" he yelled. "Sewer Jack! Jack Rob.i.+.c.heaux. Don't you ever sleep?"

The exhausted man ignored him and let himself through a metal access door. As he walked down the tunnel, he began shedding his clothes. A watcher might have thought she had seen a man squatting down and crawling along the damp floor of the tunnel, a man who had grown a long snout filled with sharp, misshapen teeth and a muscular tail capable of smas.h.i.+ng the watcher into jam. But no one saw the flash of greenish-gray scales as the erstwhile transit worker joined the darkness and was gone.

Back on the 81st Street platform, the spectators were still so transfixed by the echoes of Lummy's dying screams that few noted the rumbling, ba.s.s roar from the other direction.

Her last cla.s.s over, Rosemary walked wearily toward the 116th Street subway entrance. One more task completed for today. Now she was on her way to her father's apartment to see her fiance. She had never had much enthusiasm for that, but these days she had little enthusiasm for anything at all. Rosemary moved through the days wis.h.i.+ng that something in her life would be resolved.

She s.h.i.+fted her armload of books to her right arm as, one-handed, she sifted through her purse for a token. Walking through the gate, she paused, standing to one side to stay out of the path of the other students. Judging from the placards carried by a number of the people, the latest antiwar rally must have just ended. Rosemary noted some apparently normal kids carrying signs lettered with the Joker Brigade's informal slogan: LAST TO GO-FIRST TO DIE LAST TO GO-FIRST TO DIE.

C.C. had always been into that. She had even sung her songs at a few of the less-rowdy gatherings. One day she had even brought home a fellow activist, a guy named Fortunato. While it was nice that the man was involved with the Joker Rights movement, Rosemary didn't like pimps, geishas or no geishas, in her apartment. It had caused one of the few fights she had ever had with C.C. In the end C.C. had agreed to check with Rosemary more closely about future dinner guests.

C.C. Ryder had tried and tried to convince Rosemary to become active, but Rosemary believed that helping a few people directly could do as much good as standing around shouting condemnations of the "Establishment." Probably a lot more good. Rosemary knew she came from a conservative family. Her roommate rarely let her forget it.

Rosemary took a deep breath and launched herself into the flood of people. All the late cla.s.ses had evidently gotten out at the same time.

As Rosemary walked onto the platform, she moved around the rear of the crowd so she could end up at the far side of the waiting area. She didn't feel like being that close to people right now. Moments later she felt the flood of dank tunnel air and s.h.i.+vered inside her damp sweater.

Deafening, depressing, the local swept by her. All the cars had been defaced, but the last car was even more peculiarly decorated. Rosemary was reminded of the tattooed woman in the Ringling Brothers show she had seen in the old Garden. She had often wondered at the psychology of the kids who wrote on the sides of the trains. Sometimes she didn't like what their words revealed. New York was not always a nice place to live.

I won't think about it. She thought about it. The image of C.C. lying comatose in the I.C. ward of St. Jude's glittered in her mind. She saw the s.h.i.+ny life-support machines. Because C.C. had had no relatives to notify, Rosemary had even been there when the nurses changed the dressings. She remembered the bruises, the black and poisonously blue patches that covered most of C.C.'s body. The doctors were unsure exactly how many times the young woman had been raped. Rosemary had wanted to empathize. She couldn't. She wasn't even sure how to begin. All she could do was to wait and hope. And then C.C. had vanished from the hospital.

The last car looked to be empty. As Rosemary started toward it, she glanced at the graffito. She stopped dead, her eyes tracking the words written on the dark side of the car:

Parsley, sage, Rosemary?

Time . . .

Time is for others, not for me.

"C.C.! What?" Disregarding the other people who had spotted the unoccupied car, she pushed her way to the doors. They were closed. Rosemary dropped her books and tried to claw the doors open. She felt a nail break. Failing, she beat on the doors until the train began to pull slowly out of the station.

"No!"

Rosemary's eyes filled with tears at the final sight of her name and another of C.C.'s lyrics:

You can't fight the end, But you can take revenge.

Rosemary said nothing else, only stared after the train. She looked down at her fists. The apparently steel door had been soft and yielding, warm. Had someone given her acid? Was it a coincidence? Was C.C. living underground? Was C.C. alive at all?

It was a long time before the next train came.

He hunted in the near-darkness.

The hunger was upon him; the hunger that seemed never to be fully satisfied. And so he hunted.

Dimly, ever so faintly, he recalled a time and a place when it had been different. He had been someone-what was that?-something else.

He looked, but saw little. In this gloom and especially in the foul water choked with debris, his eyes served little use. More important were the tastes and smells, the tiny particles that told him both what lay in the distance-meals to seek patiently-and of the immediate satisfactions that hovered, unsuspecting, just beyond the length of his snout.

He could hear the vibrations: the powerful, slow movements from side to side as his tail muscled through the water; the crus.h.i.+ng, but distant waves beating down from the city above; the myriad tiny actions of food scurrying about in the darkness.

The filthy water broke around his wide, flat snout, the current streaming to either side of the raised nostrils. Occasionally the transparent membranes would slide down across the protruding eyes, then slip up again.

As large as he was-barely able to fit through some of the tunnels he had traversed during this time of feeding-he made very little noise. Tonight most of the sounds that accompanied him came from the prey, were cried out during the devouring.

His nostrils gave him the first inkling of the feast to come, but was shortly followed by messages from his ears. Although he hated to leave this sanctuary that covered nearly all of his body, he knew he must go where the food was. The mouth of another tunnel loomed to one side. There was barely enough room in the pa.s.sageway for even so flexible a body as his to turn and enter the new watercourse. The water became shallower and ended altogether within two body-lengths of the entrance.