"Bloat," said Mustelina, with a fervent awe in her voice. "This joker just swam all the way out here to join us and climbed out of the water. He can't even talk."
"Really?" Bloat's voice was a thin squeak. "Another guest? Welcome, my friend." Bloat peered down at him from his greater height. His expression revealed a leering suspicion his voice had not conveyed.
Ben nodded his bear's head in greeting, feeling a tingle of alarm. He really didn't know much about this place at all.
Mustelina had said Bloat ran the show here, but Ben wished Leslie Christian had told him exactly who should receive the drug packet. And if he had to defend himself, he would have to drop the packet in order to bite anybody. "He's no joker!" Bloat shrieked. "He's an ace of some kind!" Suddenly he glowered sternly at Ben. "You're no glamour boy, though, are you?"
Ben froze, his pulse racing, wondering how Bloat knew all this. Maybe the rapture was for him, after all. "That's right," Bloat shouted gleefully. "That packet's for me! Hand it over!"
Ben tensed, looking up at Bloat's face, suddenly realizing that the huge joker was reading his thoughts. The jokers around them turned expectant, their hostile eyes fixed on Ben. Ben shuffled around to keep them all in his vision. From what he could see, he could defend himself, but a fight wouldn't help him complete his mission. "Watch him," Bloat warned in his high voice. "Don't let him get away."
"May I?" a commanding male voice asked. A youngster strode out of the shadows with a springy step. He was slender and vibrant, bristling with energy-maybe seventeen years old, dressed in jeans and an oversized purple turtleneck sweater. A short, dark-haired teenage girl stood behind him.
Ben looked from him to Bloat and back.
"Oh, all right, David," Bloat said with exaggerated indulgence. "Make sure. But I've already read his mind, so I know. So there."
David pranced right up to Ben. He grinned with large, even teeth in a handsome face that needed a shave. His blond hair was shaggy and one shock of it fell into his face over bloodshot, watery eyes. He held out one hand. Ben hesitated, studying David's confident, self-mocking smile. Without the power of speech, surrounded by unknown jokers, he saw little choice of action. He opened his mouth and let the envelope slide forward a little, smelling beer on David's breath as he did so.
He heard shuffling feet and nervous, high-pitched laughter high above him. As David, still grinning, edged forward carefully and took the package, Ben looked up and saw an observation gallery at the third-floor level over the main floor. The people up there were only shadows. "Ugh," said David, laughing too hard. "Polar-bear saliva."
At first no one laughed. Then Bloat's high giggle pierced the air and the jokers laughed along with him. David was no joker, though. Neither was the girl behind him.
"So you don't know who he is," Bloat gloated at Ben. "Well… I'm not going to tell you!" He laughed again at his own cleverness.
Ben glanced at the door. His chances of running were negligible. His paws couldn't even work the doorknob. David drew out a packet of the blue powder. He tore a hole in the plastic with the tip of his little finger and then stared at the tiny blue stain on his skin with a sudden fascination.
"Well, David?" Bloat squeaked impatiently.
"That's the stuff, all right," David said softly. "Rapture." He grinned crookedly at his finger and then looked up at Bloat with glowing eyes. "Let's just say I wanted to make sure we get credit for the rent we pay."
"David," Bloat whined. "I don't cheat my friends." He looked around and spotted a tall, slender woman cowering in the shadows. "Giggle, you cutie. This is the one I promised you. Give her some, David."
Giggle crept forward carefully. She wore loose, bulky winter clothes and soft shoes, but as she moved, she laughed quietly. Yet the expression on her face was one of torture and anguish.
"Everything tickles her," Mustelina said softly to Ben. "Even the feel of clothes on her body and the floor when she walks. Every sensation makes her laugh, but she hates it."
"It's called rapture," said David, holding out the packet. "It activates on contact with the skin… and it's strongest locally."
Giggle ventured forward slowly and stuck an index finger into the hole in the plastic. She drew it out and looked at it. First she smiled shyly. Then she snatched the packet out of his hands, giggling helplessly at her touch on the plastic. She poured the powder into her palm and smeared it on her face and neck. Gasps and laughter rose up on all sides.
"It's Bloat's," said David warily. "And very expensive." Bloat laughed in shrieking delight, however, entertained by the spectacle as Giggle dropped the packet on the floor and stripped off her bulky sweater and the blue T-shirt under it. She knelt and began desperately rubbing the rapture all over her bare arms, shoulders, breasts, and stomach.
"You won't stop feeling tickled," said David. He leered at her obvious pleasure, idly rubbing the blue stain on his finger with his thumb. "But you'll love it now"
As everyone watched Giggle, Ben glanced around carefully. He couldn't get out without help.
Giggle had stripped naked and was squatting on the floor, smearing rapture on her thighs. She giggled at the sensation, but no longer looked tortured. Now her face had a dreamy glow.
Ben watched her in a kind of detached horror. Rapture was a nasty drug and she was drenched in it. Still, he was in too tight a spot to worry about some stranger.
Bloat was laughing louder than ever and his joker followers imitated him. David watched Giggle with rapturous enjoyment. The young woman who had entered behind him was now standing alongside him, looking at Giggle with wistful amusement in her pretty blue eyes. "David," she said softly, twisting a finger around one of her black curls of hair. "Who's the polar bear?"
"You got me, Sarah," said David, his eyes still glowing at Giggle.
"I want to jump him," said Sarah. "I wonder what rapture feels like to a bear."
Ben's ursine ears caught her words even through the riot of other voices. No one else had heard her.
Ben backed away a step, wondering what she meant. If she just wanted a ride, Ben could do that. If she meant sex, she was really crazy. Ben looked around quickly, sure that he was physically stronger than anyone he could see. That told him nothing about what ace abilities might be present here.
Giggle was dancing, naked and smeared with blue, inside a circle of jokers. They were clapping in rhythmic unison, still laughing and shouting encouragement as the rest of the packet of rapture was passed around. Bloat hooted and laughed and wiggled his stubby appendages helplessly.
Suddenly Giggle spotted Ben. Swaying from side to side and giggling, she pranced toward him, her smile white inside her blue face. The circle around her parted, still clapping, and she came to Ben, still dancing and twirling.
The circle re-formed to surround both of them. Someone started a chant to go with the rhythmic clapping: "Bear! Bear! Bear!" Giggle laughed and grabbed Beds ears, dancing from side to side.
David and Sarah were now in the front of the circle, still within Ben's hearing. The blond youth studied Ben with his watery, bloodshot eyes. Then he put his arm around Sarah and shrugged. "Go ahead, for all I care."
Ben tensed, watching Sarah, ready to leap forward to attack or to dodge away, as necessary.
She didn't move. Suddenly a force struck Ben's mind, sending him reeling-shoving him out of the polar bear. In his vision, the swaying blue shape of Giggle rippled and blurred. The clapping and chant of "Bear!" overwhelmed him.
Disoriented, he pushed back, growling almost without meaning to. He was hot now beneath his fur and fat inside this place and he did not understand what the force was. The room suddenly seemed to tilt as the mysterious force pushed him away from the sight, hearing, and tactile feeling of the bear.
Ben was lost in a blur of closing darkness, just barely able to make out Sarah seeming to grow larger in his mind. Panicked, unable to hang on to the bear, he focused his concentration on his human body back in Chinatown. He pictured his room, his bed, his nude body in the bed next to Sally. He concentrated harder and finally, belatedly, spun dizzily back into familiar darkness.