"No. I'm a little awkward right now. And a little scared," she added.
"Don't worry, Doctor. I won't let you fall. And anyway, you'd land on me."
"And then where would I be?" She smiled back and down over her shoulder. "You're my guide, Peanut."
At last they reached bottom, and Tach found herself in a cavern. Seven openings debouched into the vaultlike room. Tach pivoted slowly, staring in wonder at the colorful painted glyphs that rioted on the curving walls. Somewhat reminiscent of Mayan art, they also partook of Balinese temple paintings.
"Blood and Line, this is very strange," Tach murmured. "Pardon?" said Peanut politely.
"Nothing… hysteria… relief," Tach quickly added at the joker's look of alarm. "But this can't be real… can it?"
"It is. He's had me down here exploring them. They go all over. Weird places, but okay places too."_
Peanut headed toward one of the openings. Tach fell in step with him.
"Places like where?"
"New Jersey."
"Definitely a weird place," said Tach thoughtfully.
The tunnel had started to climb, and Tach knew damn good and well that they hadn't walked to New Jersey yet. She stopped, planting both feet heavily like a balky foal. Peanut looked back questioningly.
"Where are you taking me?" Suspicion sharpened her tone.
Peanut seemed to collapse in on himself. His thickened eyelids blinked rapidly several times. The effect was like watching a stone idol come to life, and Tach imagined that she could hear a sharp click as the hoary lids met and sprang apart.
"I gotta take you to him first. Then we'll go. He just wants to see you."
"Who? The Outcast?"
"The governor."
"Governor? What are you babbling about?"
Wounded dignity descended over the joker like rolling fog. "This is a joker place now. We take care of each other, and he takes care of us. We got laws now and everything."
"I'm sorry, Peanut," Tachyon said contritely. "It's probably a good thing you have a joker place. And I'm very fortunate. You're probably the only people in the world who would help me right now"
They resumed walking. "We're scared of Blaise, but not enough to stop caring for you."
"You didn't feel that way two years ago when I derailed Senator Hartmann's presidential campaign."
"The governor explained why you did that."
That stopped Tachyon in her tracks again. "He did?" she asked in a voice gone suddenly as wobbly as her knees. "Yeah. He wouldn't give us details. He just said that what you did probably saved us from even worse persu… persecution." Peanut faltered slightly over the unfamiliar word. "He says you do care for the jokers like nobody ever has."
Falling into step with the joker, Tach asked hesitantly, "Is… is the governor a joker?"
"Of course."
That stopped her yet again. It was an act of will to kick herself back into motion again. She steeled herself to pay the price of freedom.
A kiss. A joker.
"You promised… remember, you promised." A joker.
Faceted surfaces seized the light. Broke it into the primary colors of the spectrum. Threw it back in rainbow striations on the white sand floor of the cavern. Tach shook her head. Only on the world of her birth had she seen such gaudy extravagance. A jewel-encrusted door, the gems forming the pattern of a coat of arms.
"Your governor doesn't underrate his importance."
"We didn't build it. Honest. It just happens."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Enchanting ice, the faceted surfaces cool and sharp against the palm of her hand. One of the gems was loose. It formed the eye of an eagle, and beneath her probing fingers, it suddenly tumbled free like a bloody tear. Bewitching fire, as a ruby the size of a plum filled her hand. She couldn't resist. She pocketed the wealth.
"The ability to make dreams manifest… energy-to-matter transference," murmured Tach, trying to remove this latest wild card mutation from the realm of fantasy into the workaday reality that was science.
Scientific theories held little interest for Peanut. He threw back the elaborate bolt, the turned to Tachyon. "Wait here. I gotta make sure everybody's cleared out. The fewer people who know, the better."
Darkness fell around her like a storm as Peanut and the lantern passed through the doorway. And carried on its stygian wings was a stench that defied description. Tach, her stomach heaving, spun and staggered back a few steps from the door.
What could possibly live and produce such foulness? For over forty years she'd faced and physicked the worse the wild card had to offer. She could face this too. What she couldn't face was the blackness. Memories of her basement cell scurried like tormenting demons through her mind. Footfalls in the darkness, raucous laughter. Light struck her like a blow, and Tachyon screamed. Blaise was coming.
Peanut's hand across her mouth smothered the sound, yanked her back from the edge of madness.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry" Her teeth chattered over each consonant like hail on a tin roof.
"Don't be afraid of the dark. We won't let anything getcha. Now come on, but you remember-because he won't, won't want to-you gotta hurry."
They were through the secret door, and her feet recoiled from a sticky resinous substance. The stench made her head reel, made her doubt the evidence of her eyes. That voluminous mass of stained white couldn't possibly be flesh? Could it?
Pipes thrust into the mass like air hoses into an inflating balloon. But this was not so benign. Dried blood flaked from the skin around the punctures like peeling paint, and Tach could see an angry red, the corona of infection, flaring from several of the crudely sewn incisions. And from the pores poured the source of the foulness-liquid shit oozing in perfect beadlike globules, running down the joker's side to join the mountains of waste. Ancestors help the poor creature, it was flesh, it did live. Stomach heaving like a bucking horse, Tach fought her revulsion and tried to see where in thIs mountain of protoplasm resided the mind, the soul.
"Get the doctor a handkerchief, Peanut," said a highpitched voice from high above her. "She's not accustomed to the smell of bloatblack." The boy hit the word bloat with the bitterness of a falling hammer.
Tach searched wildly for the source of the voice. Finally located it. Pygmylike, the head, neck, shoulders, and arms of a young man perched like a figurehead on the prow of a massive ship of flesh.
Was there anything in that round fat face reminiscent of her dream phantom suitor? Only the hair color. A nudge from Peanut startled her. He offered a handkerchief. It had been drenched in Lagerfeld. It had been Tachyon's favorite-
"After-shave, yes, I know," said the young man in chorus with her thoughts. "That's why I got it for you… for this moment."
The damp cloth formed a veil against the stink and Tachyon's horror. "Are you…" She couldn't form the rest of the words.
"The Outcast? Yeah. Now, I suppose, you see why." They were tuned. He was the first person she had read with her feeble telepathy. They had walked in dreams together. It was easy to slide into his mind. Past the lithe, tanned figure that was the Outcast, the soul's image of his true self. Past erotic visions of Kelly. A simulacrum of Tachyon-heroic, noble, suffering. Down to where the boy-child lived. Encased in fat, eating sewage, lying in shit, and dreaming of beauty. Quick blurred images flashed past-of Teddy, slow and always a little pudgy, but blessed with beautiful hands. Those hands sweeping across the page of a sketchbook. The smell of drying oil, the romantic quirky paintings that filled his room. They were lovely; they added something to a world that dismissed, discounted, and rejected Theodore Honorlaw. Monster/tired/screaming/hateself/mustlive/mustdie. Tachyon's spirit wept.