George Martin - Aces High

People made wedding plans.

The swarmlings hadn't been completely exterminated, of course. A few remnant monsters lurked here and there, in outof-the-way places and some not-so-out-of-the-way. Tom wanted one badly today. A small one would do-flying, crawling, he didn't care. He would have settled for some ordinary criminals, a fire, an auto accident, anything to take his mind off Barbara.

Nothing doing. It was a gray, cold, depressing, dull day, even in Jokertown. His police monitor was reporting nothing but a few domestic disturbances, and he'd made it a rule never to get involved in those. Over the years he'd discovered that even the most abused wife tended to be somewhat aghast when an armored shell the size of a Lincoln Continental crashed through her bedroom wall and told her husband to keep his hands off her.

He cruised up the length of the Bowery, floating just above rooftop level, his shell throwing a long black shadow that kept pace with him on the pavement below. Traffic passed through underneath without even slowing. All his cameras were scanning, giving him views from more angles than he could possibly need. Tom glanced restlessly from screen to screen, watching the passersby. They scarcely noticed him anymore. A quick glance up when the shell hove into their peripheral vision, a flicker of recognition, and then they went back to their own business, bored. It's just the Turtle, he imagined them saying. Yesterday's news. The glory days do pass you by.

Twenty years ago, things had been different. He'd been the first ace to go public after the long decade of hiding, and everything he did or said was celebrated. The papers were full of his exploits, and when the Turtle passed overhead, kids would shout and point, and all eyes would turn in his direction. Crowds would cheer him wildly at fires and parades and public assemblies. In Jokertown, men would doff their masks to him, and women would blow him kisses as he went by. He was Jokertown's own hero. Because he hid in an armored shell and never showed his face, a lot of jokers assumed he was one of them, and they loved him for it. It was love based on a lie, or at least a misunderstanding, and at times he felt guilty about that, but in those days the jokers had desperately needed one of their own to cheer, so he had let the rumors continue. He never did get around to telling the public that he was really an ace; at some point, he couldn't remember just when, the world had stopped caring who or what might be inside the Turtle's shell.

These days there were seventy or eighty aces in New York alone, maybe as many as a hundred, and he was just the same old Turtle. Jokertown had real joker heroes now: the Oddity,

Troll, Quasiman, the Twisted Sisters, and others, joker-aces who weren't afraid to show their faces to the world. For years, he had felt bad about accepting joker adulation on false premises, but once it was gone he found that he missed it.

Passing over Sara Roosevelt Park, Tom noticed a joker with the head of a goat squatting at the base of the red steel abstraction they'd put up as a monument to those who had died in the Great Jokertown Riot of 1976. The man stared up at the shell with apparent fascination. Maybe he wasn't wholly forgotten after all, Tom thought. He zoomed in to get a good look at his fan. That was when he noticed the thick rope of wet green mucus hanging from the corner of the goat-man's mouth, and the vacancy in those tiny black eyes. A rueful smile twisted across Tom's mouth. He turned on his microphone. "Hey, guy," he announced over his loudspeakers. "You all right down there?" The goat-man worked his mouth silently.

Tom sighed. He reached out with his mind and lifted the joker easily into the air. The goat-man didn't even struggle. Just stared off into the distance, seeing god knows what, while drool ran from his mouth. Tom held him in place under the shell, and sailed off toward South Street.

He deposited the goat-man gently between the worn stone lions that guarded the steps of the Jokertown clinic, and turned up the volume on his speakers. "Tachyon," he said into the microphone, and "TACHYON" boomed out over the street, rattling windows and startling motorists on the FDR Drive. A fierce-looking nurse popped out of the front door and scowled at him. "I've brought one for you," Tom said more softly.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"President of the Turtle Fan Club," Tom said. "How the hell do I know who is he? He needs help, though. Look at him."

The nurse gave the joker a cursory examination, then called for two orderlies who helped the man inside. "Where's Tachyon?" Tom asked.

"At lunch," the nurse said. "He's due back at one-thirty. He's probably at Hairy's."

"Never mind," Tom said. He pushed, and the shell rose straight up into the sky. The expressway, the river, and the rooftops of Jokertown dwindled below him.

Funny thing, but the higher you got, the more beautiful Manhattan looked. The magnificent stone arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, the twisting alleys of Wall Street, Lady Liberty on her island, the ships on the river and ferries on the bay, the soaring towers of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, the vast green-and-white expanse of Central Park; from on high the Turtle surveyed it all. The intricate pattern of the tragic flowing through the city streets was almost hypnotic if you stared at it long enough. Looking down from the cold winter sky, New York was gorgeous and awesome, like no other city in the world. It was only when you got down among those stone canyons that you saw the dirt, smelled the rotten garbage in a million dented cans, heard the curses and the screams, and sensed the depth of fear and misery.

He drifted high over the city, a cold wind keening around his shell. The police monitor crackled with trivialities. Tom switched to the marine band, thinking maybe he could find a small boat in distress. Once he'd saved six people off a yacht. that had capsized in a summer squall. The grateful owner had laid a huge reward on him afterward. The guy was smart too; he paid cash, small worn bills, nothing bigger than a twenty. Six damned suitcases. The heroes Tom had read about as a kid always turned down rewards, but none of them lived in a crummy apartment or drove an eight-year-old Plymouth. Tom took the money, salved his conscience by giving one suitcase to the clinic, and used the other five to buy his house. There was no way he'd ever have been able to own a house on Tom Tudbury's salary. Sometimes he worried about IRS audits, but so far that hadn't come up.

His watch said it was 1:03. Time for lunch. He opened the small refrigerator in the floor, where he'd stashed an apple, a ham sandwich, and a six-pack.

When he finished eating, it was 1:17. Less than forty-five minutes, he thought, and he remembered that old Cagney movie about George M. Cohan, and the song "Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway." A bus leaving right now from Port Authority would take forty-five minutes to get to Bayonne, but it was quicker by air. Ten minutes, fifteen at the most, and he could be back.

But for what?

He turned off the radio, pushed the Springsteen tape back in, and rewound until he found 'Glory Days' again.

The second time around, things went a lot better. After graduation she'd gone to Rutgers, Barbara told him that first night, over steak sandwiches and mugs of beer at Hendrickson's. She'd gotten a teaching certificate, spent two years in California with a boyfriend, and come back to Bayonne when they broke up. She was teaching locally now, kindergarten, and in Tom's old grammar school, ironically enough. " I love it," she said. "The kids are fantastic. Five is a magic age."

Tom had let her talk about her life for a long time, happy just to be sitting there with her, listening to her voice. He liked the way her eyes sparkled when she talked about the kids. When she finally ran down, he asked her the question that had been bugging him all these years. "Did Steve Bruder ever ask you to our prom?"