The Outcast’s breath was leaving him. Through the swirling dark, Teddy heard the taunting voice of Roger, his old neighborhood tormentor, he heard his parents, who had abandoned the child tainted by the wild card virus.
“Damn you!” Teddy growled deep in his throat. The anger lent him the strength to rise to his feet again, taking on the Outcast aspect once more. He could feel the knobby wood of the staff in his hand, and its purple brilliance caressed his face. He pulled himself up the length of the wood.
“Damn you!” he said to Viracocha, whose stare was now touched by fear. The Outcast rapped the bottom of his staff on the cold stones of the peak. He felt the power surging, moving from Bloat to himself, filling him. He pointed his staff at Viracocha like a weapon. The old man lifted his chin, and his gaze went hard and unreadable. “That’s right, you old fucker. I can roast you right where you stand and there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.”
“But you will not,” Viracocha declared. “I know you, Teddy.”
“Damn it, I told you that I’m the fucking Outcast!” His staff trembled in his hands. The power spat and crackled, leaping from the end of the staff. He could barely hold it back.
“I could have killed you,” Viracocha said. “I will yet, if I can. But you…” Viracocha sighed. “Go home, Teddy,” he said. “Use your precious power and leave me.”
The Outcast didn’t know how to answer. The dream-energy of Bloat hissed like static in his ears and he couldn’t think. He exhaled, harshly, wordlessly, then spun around. He released the surging power and it screamed from his staff like a banshee, a whirlwind dervish that enveloped him, swept him up and dizzily away.
When it set him down again, he was back in Bloat’s body. Bloatblack was rippling and sliding down his sides.
The man called Gary Wanatanabise cleared customs easily, the one complication coming when the uniformed officer stumbled over the name on the forged passport. “Listen, how the hell do you say this, sir?”
“Wah-na-tah-na-vee-say.” What he didn’t say was that the “Gary” was from his true name; the other was effectively a joke stolen from a television commercial created by the imperialist AT&T. Wyungare had seen it on a bootleg tape of Twin Peaks smuggled into Western Australia.
“So what’s it mean?” said the customs man a bit imperiously.
“Sweet land of boundless opportunity.”
“Oh, yeah?” The officer even smiled. “That’s real nice.”
Wyungare picked up his unopened bag off the carpeted table.
The officer looked away toward the next haggard traveler. “Have a nice day.”
A little ragged from lack of sleep, Wyungare wanted to say, Thanks, but I’ve got other plans. He restrained the impulse. It would most likely be a very long day. He didn’t want to spend a large portion of it in a steel cage.
He took the bus into the city and wondered at the skyline growing larger before his eyes. Then the road dipped into the Holland Tunnel and Wyungare felt the pressure of the river running overhead. It was not a comfortable feeling. He sensed a certain amount of filth in the water.
After disembarking at the Port Authority Terminal, he checked a map posted under graffiti-defaced plastic and ventured into the gray morning outside. The moment he cleared the door, he was rushed by a half-dozen beings he took to be Manhattan jokers.
“You wanna cab?” said a man with his face cracked like the bottom of a river in high-summer drought.
“Hey! I getcha one with the lowest fare you can imagine. Where you goin’?” It was a woman with a bright pink face and her lips turned vertical rather than horizontal.
“Uptown, sir? I can get you a good one. Real fast!”
“Me! Pick me!”
"No, don’t listen. I get you something special.”
“Thank you all, but no thank you.” Wyungare pushed his way through without actually touching any of them. “Sorry, friends.” Nor did they touch each other. It was a complex choreography of desperation. All the jokers were physically large, whether male or female. The Aborigine supposed they would have to be, if they were to earn a living acting as gladiators for incoming travelers in need of a cab.
He found a subway stairs and descended from the imminent sunrise. Wyungare had been provided with transit tokens as well as cash. Though he’d never been in a subway station before, he’d seen them in plenty of films. With confidence, he dropped a token into the turnstile slot and pushed through. One gate over, a small gang of four Asian teenagers hopped fluidly over the turnstile as if they were a closely spaced line of English jumpers. They ignored an outraged yell from the change booth.
Wyungare glanced up to make sure he was on the downtown side of the tracks. At the same time, he felt the ghost wind that he guessed meant that a train was approaching from up the tunnel. He turned and saw the wavering light.
The train rattled and hissed into the station. Wyungare, keeping tight hold of his bag, boarded a middle car.
He got off at 14th Street and walked across town. It didn’t take all that long, and it was good to stretch his legs. They had been cramped on the airplane.
The city was starting to come to life. Not that New York City ever truly slept — Wyungare remembered Cordelia’s opining that. This morning, the atmosphere seemed shot through with tension. The Aborigine could pick that up without any need of special powers. Something was indeed in the air. Or maybe it was simply the daily index of paranoid urban tension building up.
When he encountered the water, he turned south. Eventually he reached South Street, and the aging waterfront building bearing the sign Wyungare sought: the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic. He knew he was in Jokertown; the people passing him on the street proved that. This was the Jokertown Clinic. He didn’t hesitate. Right through the front door and past the reception desk. He was travel-worn but presentable enough especially for Jokertown. As long as he appeared to know what he was about, Wyungare didn’t anticipate being challenged.
There was no percentage, though, in pushing his luck. He found the door to the stairs and went up to the second floor. Wyungare stepped briskly down the dingy corridor. He glanced curiously to either side. Some of the doors were open. It was like walking through a huge Advent calendar of misery.
A scream issued from the doorway to his right. Wyungare saw what appeared to be a nat — a man, with the exception of his face. His head cradled on an oversize pillow, he stared at the Aborigine and screamed again. His features looked as though they were formed of melting wax; they appeared to be slowly running down the side of his head. Only his bright blue eyes were still in their proper locations.
Wyungare looked through other open doors. He remembered the ancient print he’d seen of Horrors of the Wax Museum. He approached the end of the corridor. Around the corner, he thought. He’d been counting room numbers. Two doors down.
The fluorescent illumination seemed dimmer here. There were no outside windows in this section of the hallway. Doorways loomed like dark gaps in a jaw full of diseased teeth.
The door to room 228 was closed.
Wyungare slipped it open, moved inside, stared around the room. One dim lamp illuminated some sort of bed; actually more of a padded, contoured table. The alligator was cradled in that bed. Wyungare detected movement. A set of rollers moved beneath the fabric under the alligator’s belly. The mechanism that activated them hummed, clicked, and then the rollers recycled, starting their massaging movement again.