George Martin - Jokertown Shuffle

Somewhere a distant woodpecker was chattering out its rapid-fire signature. Tachyon dug her cheek deeper into the down pillow, tried to block it out.

The bed shook ever so slightly. Tachyon reacted as if it had suddenly bucked. She spilled out of the bed and was running before her time, place, and situation had fully penetrated.

Artillery fire, automatic weapons. A raid! Get outside, find the guards, hide. Father! Papa! Daddy!

It was the sight of Tommy's solid form on the front porch that banished dreams and returned her to a sense of reality. But the gunfire continued, and the predawn sky was lit by the trails of tracer fire like peripatetic fireflies, muzzle flashes from the helicopter gunships. Tommy was in a red-and-bluestriped bathrobe, one hand dug deep into a pocket, the other cradling a coffee mug. A suburban homeowner calmly assessing the dawn of Armageddon.

Tachyon moved to his side and closed her hands around his upper arm. He looked down at her. They both knew, but there was a sense that someone had to say it.

Tommy spoke first. "The Rox. They're finally doing it." Almost inaudibly, Tach said, "My body's there."

"They're gonna kill everybody." He either hadn't heard or didn't think. Probably a little of both.

"Then you must take me there. You've got to take me there."

That penetrated. "You're nuts."

Dawn was beginning to paint the eastern sky with a leprous white light.

"Tommy, please."

The ace looked from her white, desperate face toward the battle raging to the north. It was almost full light now. Liberty was a tiny porcelain figure standing dauntless as the killers flashed past heading for Ellis Island. As they watched, a Huey, its steel belly packed with assault troops, choppered north toward the battle. Suddenly it began to pitch and yaw as if the pilot were drunk or mad. Rotor blades clawing at the air, it fell at an ever-steeper angle until it slammed into the upraised arm of the statue. For an instant the fireball obscured their view, then burning debris rained down, fiery outriders for the torch and arm, which had been sheared away by the impact. The arm spun once, almost lazily, until it plunged, torch first, into the black waters of the bay.

Liberty stood crippled and forlorn, her sides blacked from burning fuel, her fire extinguished, her message drowned in the polluted waters of the harbor.

Tommy pushed his cup at Tachyon. Walked down the steps and vanished into the jumble of dead cars. Minutes passed. Then the shell rose slowly over the mountains of junk. He was coming for her. Her steel knight.

The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat

It began very much like the last time.

I woke from a dream. For a moment I was confused, wondering where I was. Kafka's crews had finished the lobby's remodeling a few days ago. My body now rested on a ramp, jutting up in the center of the space as high as the balconies, my head another full story above that. The walls of the building were triple-paned glass all around. I could see the Rox slumbering in a thick predawn fog. My land looked peaceful enough, and the mindvoices were mostly quiet, filled with their own dream images-though there were exceptions: Croyd pacing in his tower and trying to decide whether to try to sleep or not, Chickenhawk (who was supposed to be watching the city from his perch on the northern tower) sleeping and dreaming of dead Kien, a few couples making love or talking.

I looked down at the Temptation, set on the balcony in a blaze of lamps, and I wondered what had awakened me.

Then I felt it again-two dozen or more pricklings at my Wall. The probings came from all around me. The thoughts I sensed now at the edges of my inner hearing were frightening.

They'd learned. These weren't green park rangers and city cops. No-these were seasoned military troops, people with a horrifyingly simple sense of duty. People who followed orders blindly without worrying about what they meant. People who had been in combat before and would gladly hate anything their superiors named The Enemy.

"Oh shit," I muttered.

"Governor?" Kafka, slumbering nearby, woke. My guards looked suddenly wary.

"Just be quiet," I told them.

And I could hear it again: the rhythmic, insistent beat of blades chopping the air not too far away; the throbbing of powerful engines frothing the water of the bay.

They were coming.

The last time, I'd mucked up by alarming the Rox too quickly. I wasn't about to make that mistake again.

So I made another.

I tried to use this "power" that everyone says I have. I focused on my Wall. I imagined it stiffening, becoming rubbery and pushing back the intruding boats and choppers. I thought… I thought it was working at first. I felt this sense of "hardness" to the Wall, and the faint pricklings disappeared entirely. I clenched my fist: victory.

"Yes," I hissed.

I really thought I'd done it. I believed, for an instant, that it had been that simple.

Then they hit the Wall again-from every direction, at once, and fast. This was a concerted, simultaneous, organized assault. I summoned all the psychic strength I had. At least I hoped that's what I was doing. I tried to visualize energy gathering around me, flowing through my mind and then hurtling out to the Wall, but maybe it was just imagination or comic-book fantasy, because it didn't do any good.

The Wall bulged and cracked, making me moan. I mean, I could feel it. It fucking hurt. Then the Wall was lanced open entirely, like some great raw pus-filled boil. The troops (that's who it was-the goddamn U. S Army or National Guard or something) poured through while I lay there, gasping in pain.

Through. Coming. I could hear them. going in, yeah! Gonna drugdealers, murderers, C'mon, c'mon, kick some ass. Show them rapists, they all Come on! Damn it! wimp rangers how it's deserve this, deserve Get through this damn really done. This time what we're gonna give wall before they have we don't hold back 'em a chance to be ready

Actinic flaring blue light threw crazed, weaving shadows across the Rox and the Administration Building: flares. Out across the water I could see the bright legs of spotlights striding across the bay toward us. A chopper with flaring running lights wheeled past the glassed-in lobby like an angry bat, and I could see faces staring at us as it passed.

And I heard thoughts:

What the hell is that Jesus Christ in a is that Bloat? thing bottle!

Belatedly, the sirens were wailing over the Rox. Kafka was yelling below me. "Bloat! Can't you hold them back?"

"Uh-uh," I told him, slowly and wearily. It took a lot more effort to talk than I would have thought. "I can't. I'm tired." I sounded like a kid too late for bed. Carry me in, Daddy; I'm so sleepy.

A pair of choppers danced thunderously around the building, then banked away to land. Automatic gunfire crackled, sounding almost too thin to be real, except that I could hear the mindvoices wailing in panic and fear.

A wave of terror rang through the headvoices of the Rox. Then there were just too many thoughts and too much going on, and the images overwhelmed me, buried me.

Chaos. Just chaos. I don't remember much of it, only individual scenes plucked from the general carnage. Images piled one on top of another, experienced almost simultaneously…

… I could sense the ghost of Chrysalis haunting Elmo's dreams. There was an urgency to her voice as she stroked his cheek. "Get out!" she said, her voice at odds with her soft caress. "Get out!"

In Elmo's head, there was a sound like running footsteps. Under their impact, the dream walls of the Crystal Palace dissolved. Chrysalis disappeared, but I could feel him holding to that sweet dream touch.

Another ghost. Another memory.