“Mistral,” Pulse told them as she glided down toward the terrace. “Beautiful, isn’t she? Sweet girl.”
Mommy and Daddy exchanged glances. “We’ll have to get a picture of her too,” said Mommy.
There were no rumors on the Rox. Not, at least, for
Bloat. No gossip, no secrets. Bloat knew.
In a perverse way, it was mildly interesting to listen to the jumpers’ sinking confidence. That damned 1-800-I-GIVE-UP number kept flitting through their minds like a mantra for AT&T executives. Most of the jumpers — nearly a hundred of them — had gathered in one of the halls across the island. Without the strong leadership of Molly and Bodysnatcher, the impromptu strategy meeting was turning into a rout. It was an ugly scratch on the surface of the Rox’s thoughts.
“You’d really let them go, wouldn’t you?” The penguin was gazing up at Bloat as it skated in nonchalant circles around the lobby floor. Outside, the sun was lowering itself gingerly onto the spires of his Wall.
“Anyone who wants to throw themselves on the mercy of Hartmann and the nats can go ahead. I’m not keeping anyone here against their will. That’s not why I created the Rox.”
“Uh-huh.” The penguin did a quick twirl and a high leap, landing gracefully just below Bloat’s head and shoulders and then skiing down the steep slope of his body to the floor once more. The joker guards stationed around the balcony applauded: the penguin gave a grinning bow. “Good ol’ kindly Bloat. Compassionate Governor Bloat. Doesn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“All I’ve ever wanted is a joker homeland,” he told the penguin. “That’s all. A place where we can be whatever it is we need to be. The nats can have the rest.”
“That ain’t gonna happen, Your Immensitude,” the penguin cackled. “I’ve told you that a hundred times before.” The penguin canted its head and the funnel hat tilted dangerously to one side. “You stay here and you’re gonna haveta fight.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Don’t stay here. I should think that’s obvious.”
“Right. Excuse me. I’ve been so stupid. I’ll just get up and walk away.” Bloat giggled; on cue, so did the guards who had been half listening to the conversation. The penguin put on an aggrieved look and pouted.
“Tell me, Gov, why is it that idiot nats with paranoia complexes use every last ounce of power they got, and a joker with more ability than ten aces put together just sits here and waits for them to take potshots at him? I swear I don’t understand it. Can’t you feel it, fat boy? All that power . The penguin sighed. Flippers folded behind its back, it skated off down one of the side corridors. Bloat watched his creature leave, pondering as he listened to the continuing disagreements in the joker compound. He could feel the degeneration of the Rox’s morale; more with each passing hour, it seemed.
The answer came to him suddenly.
This morning, Kafka looking at the side corridor where the penguin and the Outcast stood and seeing them… The way his voice had sounded during the meeting with Hartmann’s delegation…
He could walk away. He actually could.
With the thought, his vision shimmered. Bloat yawned; his body began to tremble and the odor of bloatblack arose. As his mind relaxed and Bloat began to slumber, a surging violet tendril fanned up from somewhere deep within him, turning and sparking, dividing and dividing again.
The Outcast laughed. He knew this feeling: the power of dreams. He took the electric force and shaped it. He shaped it, he put himself into the vessel of energy and told it where to carry him.
The transformation didn’t happen immediately. For several moments he felt himself lost in some limbo. Pulsing cords of self led back to Bloat, drawing sustenance from that immense form and keeping him irrevocably tethered to it. There was a sensation of falling. A fierce brightness made him shade his eyes with his hands. He was in the dream-world again. He saw creatures of all kinds in a landscape like a Chinese brush painting, skeletal trees and steep round hills. A slavering ogre lurched by with a struggling young girl flung over its hunched back. A naked young boy waggled his newly severed, bloody foreskin before the Outcast’s face. An androgynous, six-armed figure in a headdress danced by. A lion strutted past, bearing a man holding a glowing orb that was as bright as the sun.
Voices assailed his ears as the sights invaded his eyes, alternately pleading and threatening …. go back!… Don’t you know what you’re doing? … You have no understanding. None…
The Outcast pulled power from Bloat and from the dream-world itself. He willed himself to return to reality. The Rox snapped into existence around him.
“.…I say we leave.”
“You do, Juggler? Why? Are you frightened of nats?”
The jumper named Juggler had literally leapt into the air at the unexpected voice behind his back. “Who the fuck are you?” he snarled, his hands fisted. At the same time, the Outcast heard the thought… jump the mother… and felt the force of the boy’s mind recoil off the perfect alabaster shield of his own ego.
“No, I can’t be jumped,” he told Juggler and the others. Captain Chaos took the challenge; she failed. So did Iceman, then Suzy Creamcheese. The Outcast smiled. “You already know me,” he told them. “Just not in this form. I’m your governor, after all.”
“Governor Bloat?” Juggler snorted. “Fuck, man, you sure as hell lost some weight. You on Nutrisystem?”
“Yeah,” Alvin said from farther back in the room. “This guy could be one of the aces Modman says Hartmann’s got.”
“No.” The Outcast smiled, and he let the power of his presence leap out. “I am Bloat,” he said to them, encasing the words within his power. “In this form, you can call me the Outcast. Like you. Like all of us cast from society by the wild card.” The energy touched each of them, calming and soothing them, dampening their skepticism. “And you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you so frightened? There’s no reason for it. None at all. Let me show you.”
He rapped his long wooden staff against the floor. The amethyst flared.
They were all crowded on the ledge near Bloat’s Moat. The heat from the rushing lava far below made the jumpers gasp; the ruddy light rendered the Outcast’s features fierce and stern. “I built the Rox. I shaped it. Did you think I would make it easy for them?”
The Outcast slammed the base of his staff against the rocks. They were now arrayed along the north side of the Wall facing Manhattan. The glass eyes of the skyscrapers glittered at them mockingly; behind, the Disney-meets-Escher fairyland of the new Rox stuck out spired tongues in return. “This is our land,” the Outcast told them. “It grows every day in size and strength. Just as the Wall’s now visible, so is my power. You see it in what I’ve done with the Rox. You see it in the demons and strange things that walk in the caverns. And — I promise you this — you’ll see it if the nats are foolish enough to attack.”
As he spoke the words, a flare shot from across the bay, near where the Wall touched the Jersey shore. It quickly resolved into a cylinder trailing a line of billowing smoke. The weapon shot directly toward them at immense speed. The jumpers cried out, but the Outcast laughed. In the instant before the glowing missile would have struck them, he waved his staff, the stone at its summit glaring, and the jumpers were showered with pink and white petals.
“In this world, things are as I wish them to be.” The Outcast laughed and flung his arms wide.