George Martin - Jokertown Shuffle

"I know that you're acting like a kid afraid of the neighborhood bully," the penguin told me. "I also know that for as big as you are, you just don't think big enough."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You really love her? Then get her out. Do something."

"I don't know how!" I told the penguin in anguish, and my voice was a wail.,

"I'll help you, Governor. Let me help you."

My whole body shuddered. The dream had dissolved. I found myself in the lobby, and Peanut was looking up at me with trust and loyalty and sadness in his mind. His wide sympathetic eyes, caught in their eternal hard folds of skin, gazed at me.

"Peanut-"

"It'd be best that way. Really. I know the way through the caves to her better than anyone. All you have to do is make an opening into her cell. You can do that, can't you?"

He looked up at me with those trusting eyes. "I can lead her through the caves, get into a boat, and take her to where she'd be safe. No one would know, Governor."

"No," I said. I couldn't send a whole contingent of jokers-that would start a civil war here, and the jokers would inevitably lose. I couldn't afford to oppose Blaise directly, and with Latham gone, I had no more leverage within the jumper camp. So many people gone: K. C., Latham, Zelda…

I smiled at Peanut. So simple and confident and faithfulhe believed that there was always a way. He believed that Good always had to win in the last reel.

And so, I guess, did I.

I felt the same stirrings of something that I'd felt when I'd made the caves, and I knew that, yes, I could make the door into her cell. I could do that much, I was certain.

"Let me think about it," I told Peanut.

Lovers

The little room under the eaves was a stupendous improvement over the basement cell. There was a narrow window, and she could watch the sun set. She had a cot and folding metal chair, and once a day her guards took her for a walk about the perimeter of the hospital building. The food was no better, but at least there was more of it. But unfortunately she was, for the most part, denied the things most necessary to a breeding female-milk, fresh green vegetables, fruit. But as the days and weeks passed, as she became rounder and rounder, she developed a grudging respect for Illyana even as the baby made her more and more ungainly.

"You are a tough little bitch, aren't you? Fed on next to nothing, and you still thrive. That's your Takisian bloodmakes you a fighter."

Tachyon was sitting on the chair gazing out the window at a truly lovely sunset, provided courtesy of Manhattan's smog. It was beastly hot up under the eaves. Tach lifted the skirt of her dress, opened her legs even wider than was necessary to accommodate the bulge of her belly, and farmed herself vigorously. And for the hundredth time she made herself-and the illusory wife she might someday possess, should fate and fortune smile and restore her to her rightful body-the promise that she would never force a woman to endure a pregnancy in the summer.

A small knot of jumpers emerged from the door four stories below and walked toward the trees. Tach leaned forward, more from force of habit than any real drive, and studied them. Fell back when there was no glint of copperred hair. Her body was not among them.

This complacency was a recent development. In the beginning, she had peered from the window. During her walks, she had cast about like a hunting hound seeking desperately for a glimpse of herself, but the Tachyon body remained stubbornly out of sight. Now it was hard to arouse that level of concern. Her focus had narrowed to the room, and more importantly to what was occurring within her borrowed body.

She was content to sit for hours listening to her heart beat, weaving her thought colors through the fabric and colors of the baby's thoughts, singing Takisian lullabies she had thought long forgotten.

The grate of the key in the lock brought her head around, a frown of puzzlement between the blond brows. One of her guards, his mouth slack, drool running down his chin, jerked zombielike into the room. Her body was behind him. The reaction ran like fire along her nerve endings. Tach came to her feet, stared hungrily at her own body.

The girl who wore her skin was dressed in tattered cutoffs. The shirt was the one Tachyon had been wearing at the time of the kidnapping-billowing sleeves, drawstring at the throat. It was open now, revealing a good deal of the chest with its whorls of copper hair. The bones of the clavicle were like stony ropes beneath the white skin, the legs stick thin. Stubble littered the pointed chin and the sunken cheeks.

The sound they both made was surprisingly similar. A tiny whimper of misery, divided by two octaves. Tachyon recovered first. Stretched out imploring hands.

"He raped me." The words were jarring in that husky baritone.

"No, he raped me." Furious, Tach gripped the jumper by the shoulders. "Return me. Put us back! I can handle him."

"I can't." "Won't:"

"Can't! I'm not a jumper. Can't ever be one now" Before that bit of miserable knowledge could fully penetrate, the guard let out a choking sound and fell to the floor like a broken puppet. For Tachyon, medical instinct took over. Jerking her eyes from her body, she knelt awkwardly beside the boy and checked his pulse.

Eyes shifting with lightning speed from the prone boy to Tachyon and back again, the body asked, "What's wrong with him? What did I do?"

"A mind-control can be a silken web or a steel trap. Yours was of the latter variety"

"Will he be okay?"

Tachyon looked up at her eerie doppelganger. "No. His mind has been shredded. Death is only a matter of time." The body gasped, a sharp little hiss of fear. " I had to see you. You've got to help me."

Tach gave a short bark of laughter. "Me? Help you? Isn't that rather presumptuous of you?"

"You've got me pregnant," said the body in a blinding non sequitur.

"Well, no. It's not something I managed all by myself… any more than I managed to get your body raped all by myself."

The body was staring in fascination at the curve of her belly. He advanced a few steps, and his eyes jerked up to meet Tach's.

"My head's making me crazy. I can't turn it off. I think things, and they happen."

Tears welled up in the lavender eyes. Tachyon writhed inwardly. How painful to watch yourself weep. And for a brief instant she acknowledged that there was more than one victim in this hellish scenario.

"What are you called, child?" she asked gently, feeling unimaginably old.

"Kelly."

Plans began to explode in Tachyon's mind. "Kelly, listen to me. Blaise is no match for my body. I can teach you how to control the power. You can mind-control him. Force him to return us."

She was pursuing Kelly around the room as he retreated before her, desperately shaking his head. With panic shortening his breath, Kelly said, "I can't. I can't. He hurts me="

The door slammed into the wall. They both cried out and whirled to face Blaise. And both fell back, for they knew the maddened rage that glittered in those dark eyes.

Blaise seized Kelly by the arm and threw him across the room. " I told you… you couldn't see him. Don't ever… disobey me again."

Kelly's teeth were chattering so hard, he couldn't speak. He shook his head frantically, the long red hair flying about his face.

Blaise turned with almost balletic grace to face his grandfather. Tachyon's heart was jumping in her throat. Blaise stepped inclose, cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. Suddenly his teeth clamped down on his lower lip, and hauling off, he backhanded her across the face. She was flung into the wall, pain exploding in her shoulder and head. With a moan, she slid down the wall. Black spots danced before her eyes. She could hear Blaise approaching. Ponderous footsteps.