George Martin - Aces High

At the 59th Street station a slender, balding man in a three-piece suit got on the train and sat across the car from Jube. He worked for the Internal Revenue Service, and was known in the Order as. Vest. At 125th Street, they were joined by a hefty, gray-haired black woman in a pink waitress uniform. Jube knew her too. They were ordinary people, both of them. They had neither ace powers nor joker deformities. The Masons had turned out to be full of such people: construction workers and accountants, college students and moving men, sewer workers and bus drivers, housewives and hookers. At the meetings Jube had met a well-known lawyer, a TV weatherman, and a professional exterminator who loved to talk shop and kept giving him cards ('Lots of roaches in Jokertown, I'll bet'). Some were rich, a few very poor, most just worked hard for their living. None of them seemed to be very happy.

The leaders were of a more extraordinary cut, but every group needs its rank and file, every army its privates. That was where Jube fit in.

Jay Ackroyd would never know where he had made his mistake. He was a professional private investigator, shrewd and experienced, and he had been painstakingly careful once he had realized what he was dealing with. If only he had been a little less talented, if only Chrysalis had sent a more common sort of man, they might have gotten away with it. It was his ability that had tripped him up, the hidden ace power. Popinjay, that was the street name he loathed: he was a projecting teleport who could point a finger and pop people somewhere else. He had done his best to stay inconspicious, had failed to pop a single Mason, but Judas had sensed the power nonetheless, and that had been enough. Now Ackroyd had no more memory of the Masons than did Chrysalis or Devil John Darlingfoot. Only Jube's obvious jokerhood and conspicuous lack of power had spared his mind and his life… that, and the machine in his living room.

It was dark by the time the A train pulled into 190th Street. Spoons and Vest walked briskly from the subway while Jube trudged after them, newspapers under his arm. The harness chafed under his shirt, and he felt desperately alone.

He had no allies. Chrysalis and Popinjay had forgotten everything. Croyd had woken as a bloated gray-green thing with flesh like a jellyfish and had promptly gone to sleep again, sweating blood. The Takisians had come and gone, doing nothing, caring less. The singularity shifter, if it was still intact and functional, was lost somewhere in the city, and his tachyon transmitter was useless without it. He could not go to any human authorities. The Masons were everywhere; they had penetrated the police, the fire department, the IRS, the transit authority, the media. At one meeting, Jube had even spotted a nurse who worked at the Jokertown clinic.

That one had troubled him deeply. He had spent several sleepness nights floating in his cold tub, wondering if he ought to say something to somebody. But who? He could whisper Nurse Greshams name to Troll, he could report Harry Matthias to his captain, he could spill the whole story to Crabcakes at the Cry. But what if Troll was a Mason himself? Or Captain Black, or Crabcakes? The ordinary Masons saw their leaders only at a distance, and frequently in masks, and there were rumors of other high-degree initiates who never came to meetings, aces and power brokers and others in positions of authority. The only one he could really trust was himself.

So he had gone to their meetings, listening, learning. He had watched with fascination when they donned their masks and acted out their pageants and rituals, had researched the attributes of the mythological gods they aped, had told his jokes and laughed at theirs, had made friends with those who would befriend a joker and observed the others who would not. And he had begun to suspect something, something monstrous and troubling.

He wondered, not for the first time, why he was doing this. And found himself remembering a time long ago, aboard the great Network starship Opportunity. The Master Trader had come to his cabin in the guise of an ancient Glabberan, his bristling hair gone black with age, and Jhubben had asked why he was being honored with this assignment. "You are like them," the Master Trader had said. "Your form is different, but among those warped and twisted by Takisian bioscience, you will be lost, another faceless victim. Your thought patterns, your culture, your values, your moralities-these are closer to the human norms than those of anyone else I might select. In time, as you dwell among them, you will become still more alike, and so you will come to understand them, and be of great value on our return.".

It had been true, all true; Jube was more human than he would ever have guessed. But the Master Trader had left one thing out. He had not told Jhubben that he would come to love these humans, and to feel responsible for them.

In the shadow of the Cloisters, two youths in gang colors stepped out to confront him. One of them had a switchblade. They knew him by now, but still he had to show them the shiny red penny he carried in his pocket. Those were the rules. They nodded to him silently, and jube passed within, to the great hall where they were waiting with their tabards and masks, with their ritual words and the secrets he was terrified to learn, where they were waiting for him to arrive, to conduct his initiation.

By Pat Cadigan

It was unseasonably hot for May, a fast preview of deep summer, and the children gathered at the fire hydrant made a timeless scene. The only thing missing was expertise-no one knew how to release the water from the hydrant. Never mind that such a thing would result in a precipitous drop in the local water pressure, seriously impairing fire fighting, which was why arsonists were always willing to accommodate a gaggle of sweaty kids on a hot day. But there was never an arsonist around when you needed one.

The man in the mom-and-pop convenience store was not watching the kids; he was watching the young woman with the shoulder-length auburn hair and the wide green eyes who was watching the kids. He'd been tracking her since she'd gotten off the bus three days before, usually from the shelter of one of his favorite tabloids, like the one he was holding now. The headline read: WOMAN TURNS INTO JOKER, EATS MATE ON WEDDING NIGHT!! Harry Matthias had always had a taste for the lurid.

The girl across the street, however, was anything but lurid. Girl suited her better than young woman, even though he was reasonably sure she was over twenty-one. Her heart shaped face was unmarked, unlined; unfinished. Unsophisticated, very attractive if you looked twice and he imagined most people did. You'd never think that she was anything other than one more innocent morsel throwing herself into the jaws of the big city. But Harry, more often referred to as Judas, knew differently. The Astronomer would reward him handsomely for this one.

Or rather, the Astronomer's people would. The Astronomer himself didn't bother with you, not if you were lucky, and Judas had been very lucky, almost too lucky to live. He'd gone from being a joker groupie, what they'd called a jokee (and laughing at him, too, when they said it) to being an ace himself. A very subtle ace, to be sure, but very useful with his ability to detect another ace and the power involved. His power had come out that night in that crazy cabaret, the jokers Wild. Saved his life; they'd been about to serve him up proper when the spore had turned and he'd exposed that shape-shifter woman. What changes they'd put her through, to coin a phrase. He didn't like to think about it but better her than him. Better anyone than him, even the girl across the street, though it would have pained him; she was attractive. But he was only delivering her to the Masons, where she wouldn't be wasted. What a talent she had; they'd probably pin a medal on him when he brought her in. Well, they'd pay him, anyway, enough to take the sting out of being called Judas. If he'd felt any sting, which he didn't.