Any optimism that Bloat had harbored concerning this meeting dissolved under the barrage. Hartmann was not a good man, a compassionate one, or even a misguided one. Jokers were human beings whose bodies were twisted by the wild card into something inhuman. Hartmann was a joker in reverse — a normal form with something horribly inhuman inside.
The realization made Bloat angry. The deceit of all of them made him furious.
“You’re all liars,” he said suddenly, and the hilarity around him ended as if it had been cut off by a switch. The anger in him made his body writhe around the inlet pipes that impaled him like a mounted insect. Bloatblack oozed from the scabrous pores and the miasma of raw sewage filled the room. The inhabitants of the Rox might be used to the stench; the thoughts of the others were quite expressive.
“Don’t you like Eau de Bloat?” He giggled, and then frowned. “Can’t you taste the shit that’s coming out of your own mouths? God, such a fine trio of hypocrites. I listened to all this crap and there’s nothing in your words. Nothing at all.”
Father Squid gaped, his tentacles wriggling over his open mouth; inside the shell of the Turtle, Bloat could hear Tudbury gasp as if struck; Hartmann looked like he wanted to run. Around the room, automatic rifle bolts clicked back; Kafka waved angrily at the joker guards.
“GOVERNOR,” the Turtle began. He’d turned up the volume on his speakers, trying to gain in decibels what he couldn’t in fervor. Bloat could hear the turmoil and sudden guilt in the man-boy’s mind. “PLEASE…”
“I hear you,” Bloat interrupted, waving his helpless stick arms. “I hear the thoughts, not the words. I know all your secrets. I know your name. Oh Great and Powerful Turtle. You can’t hide from me behind the shell, and you can’t hide from the world in it, either. You don’t really like what your side is doing in this, do you? That’s an armored shell you ride, not a fucking white horse. Your own little Wall, and you the Bloat behind it.”
Bloat’s gaze went to the priest. “And you, Father Squid? Are you a saint?”
“I’m at peace with myself,” the large joker answered, but Bloat could hear the skittering memories inside. Bloat followed their sounds into dark places.
“No, you’re not at peace, Father,” he cackled. “Not when you spend some nights kneeling by the bed asking God for forgiveness — and you still have those nights, don’t you, Father? Don’t the faces of the ones you killed with your own hands haunt your dreams? You protest that you were young then and caught up in something you’ve since found to be wrong, but don’t you still find that you look the other way when violence just happens to benefit your side, even now? You want the names. Father? You want the dates and places? I can get them for you. I can tell everyone, just like I could tell everyone the Turtle’s real name.”
Father Squid was silent, clutching the crucifix of Christ the Joker to his huge chests. He made soft, wet sounds deep in his throat, as if he were sobbing.
“And you, Senator. …”
Hartmann visibly startled. He looked old suddenly, and frail. He wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his hand.
“Governor,” he said pleadingly.
Bloat guffawed. “Wow, the great senator wants a little goddamn compassion. C’mon, Senator, you’re the sickest one of all. Sure, I can see that in your mind as clearly as you can. You even agree with me. The great friend of Jokertown certainly did love the jokers, didn’t he?”
The ugly pores along Bloat’s flanks flexed and pouted like circular mouths, great turds of bloatblack emerged from them, sliding down the stained hills of his flesh. His body was trembling again, as it had when the Temptation of St. Anthony had been destroyed and he’d first brought forth the demons from his mind. Bloat forced the energy back down, tried to still the turmoil inside the vastness of his form. Bloat looked around the room. He could feel the rising enmity against the delegation. The torrent of voices inside his head made him grin. Their massed support sparked the dream-energy inside him. He could feel it rising once more, chaotic, and he reached out with mental hands to channel that vitality. For a moment as he first grasped the power, there was a whirling disorientation — like he remembered as a kid, spinning with arms outspread in the living room until the room danced around him. In that split second, he thought he could hear angry voices calling him … Teddy … and there was a wisp of cold mountain air; an impression of a flat, dark-skinned, wide-nosed face; a sense of outraged invasion from watching minds.
Then he was back. The cold air was only the warm stink of his own bloatblack and he was speaking with the resonant, compelling tones of the Outcast, causing everyone to look up at him in astonishment.
“You don’t want to help me, Senator,” he said, banishing the residual dizziness. “You don’t care about the jokers at all. You don’t give a shit about the Rox or what we’ve done here. None of you really do.”
From around the room came shouts of agreement, loud enough that the huge torch on the wall behind him rattled in sympathy. Father Squid and Hartmann had moved back close to the Turtle and the limousine, and their mindvoices chattered in panic. “All the three of you want to do is save yourselves the guilt of having to fight with the nats against your own kind, and you don’t care that you sell out the Rox and all the people here to do it.” More shouting: jokers and jumpers alike added their voices. But when he spoke, the Outcast’s voice sent them all silent again.
“You can tell Bush and General Zappa this. If anyone wants to leave here, he or she can do so. Governor Bloat doesn’t chain his people up against their will — hey, I’ve got Liberty’s torch right behind me, after all. But all I’m hearing is the same old shit from you. All I hear is that… that those who the wild card touched are lepers: diseased people to be shut away, sterilized, and kept watch over. Man, I didn’t choose to be this way. It ain’t my fucking fault. I didn’t want to put up the Wall — it’s just there and I can’t turn it on and off at will. All I’m doing is using what I was given in the best way I know. That’s all any of us here are doing, and I think we’re beginning to make progress. I think we’re beginning to put something together for jokers.”
More shouts. Bloat laughed, and this time it wasn’t his adolescent, shrill giggle, but something deep-throated and full. “But you don’t care. Huh-uh. We’re just pieces of bloatblack to you, to be disposed of or put somewhere out of sight.”
More cries erupted around them. Captain Chaos, standing next to Bloat, reached down and plucked one of the pieces of bloatblack from the floor. She flung it; the fecal blob bounced off Hartmann’s shoulder and left a brown stain on his gray suit coat. Hartman flinched back, startled. “Here’s an answer to take back with you,” Chaos said, and suddenly several of the jokers in the hail were running to Bloat’s side, grasping the filth there and flinging it at the delegation.
Bloat laughed. Hartmann and Father Squid scrambled into the limousine for shelter. The jokers ran to the car and began rocking it side to side. The suspension squealed in protest; the tires sagged like the waists of tired old men. “GET BACK!” the Turtle roared, and lifted the limousine straight up. Bloatblack missiles thudded dully against the bottom of the car and the Turtle’s shell.
“GOVERNOR…” ….the Turtle began, then the speakers crackled and went silent. Bloat could hear the man’s thoughts racing, trying to find words and coming up with nothing that seemed appropriate. Finally, the ace gave up. Hartmann stared at Bloat from the window of the car… ugly little thing. If! had Puppetman… Father Squid looked down from the opposite side.