“I never claimed I was.”
Mal grunted. “You’re worth ’bout as much as a sack of shit. I don’t see why the hell Angel needs no damn pantywaist spaceman hanging round the place sopping up her booze… .”
“She doesn’t. I told her that.”
“You can’t tell that woman nothin’,” Mal agreed. He made a fist. A very large fist. Before the Day of the Wild Card, he’d been the eighth-ranked heavyweight contender. Afterward, he had climbed as high as third … until they’d banned wild cards from professional sports, and wiped out his dreams in a stroke. The measure was aimed at aces, they said, to keep the games competitive, but there had been no exceptions made for jokers. Mal was older now, sparse hair turned iron gray, but he still looked strong enough to break Floyd Patterson over his knee and mean enough to stare down Sonny Liston. “Look at that,” he growled in disgust, glaring out the window. Tiny was outside in his chair. “What the hell is he doing here? I told him not to come by here no more.” Mal started for the door.
“Can’t you just leave him alone?” Tachyon called after him. “He’s harmless.”
“Harmless?” Mal rounded on him. “His screamin’ scares off all the fuckin’ tourists, and who the hell’s gonna pay for all your free booze?”
But then the door pushed open, and Desmond stood there, overcoat folded over one arm, his trunk half-raised. “Let him be, Mal,” the maitre d’ said wearily. “Go on, now.” Muttering, Mal stalked off.
Desmond came over and seated himself in Tachyon’s booth. “Good morning, Doctor,” he said.
Tachyon nodded and finished his drink. The whiskey had all gone to the bottom of the cup, and it warmed him on the way down. He found himself staring at the face in the mirrored tabletop: a worn, dissipated, coarse face, eyes reddened and puffy, long red hair tangled and greasy, features distorted by alcoholic bloat. That wasn’t him, that couldn’t be him, he was handsome, clean-featured, distinguished, his face was—
Desmond’s trunk snaked out, its fingers locking around his wrist roughly, yanking him forward. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Des said, his voice low and urgent with anger. Blearily, Tach realized that Desmond had been talking to him. He began to mutter apologies.
“Never mind about that,” Des said, releasing his grip. “Listen to me. I was asking for your help, Doctor. I may be a joker, but I’m not an uneducated man. I’ve read about you. You have certain—abilities, let us say.”
“No,” Tach interrupted. “Not the way you’re thinking.”
“Your powers are quite well documented,” Des said.
“I don’t … ” Tach began awkwardly. He spread his hands. “That was then. I’ve lost—I mean, I can’t, not anymore.” He stared down at his own wasted features, wanting to look Des in the eye, to make him understand, but unable to bear the sight of the joker’s deformity.
“You mean you won’t,” Des said. He stood up. “I thought that if I spoke to you before we opened, I might actually find you sober. I see I was mistaken. Forget everything I said.”
“I’d help you if I could,” Tach began to say.
“I wasn’t asking for me,” Des said sharply.
When he was gone, Tachyon went to the long silver-chrome bar and got down a full bottle of cognac. The first glass made him feel better; the second stopped his hands from shaking. By the third he had begun to weep. Mal came over and looked down at him in disgust. “Never knew no man cried as much as you do,” he said, thrusting a dirty handkerchief at Tachyon roughly before he left to help them open.
He had been aloft for four and a half hours when the news of the fire came crackling over the police-band radio down by his right foot. Not very far aloft, true, only about six feet from the ground, but that was enough—six feet or sixty, it didn’t make all that much difference, Tom had found. Four and a half hours, and he didn’t feel the least bit tired yet. In fact, he felt sensational.
He was strapped securely into a bucket seat Joey had pulled from a mashed-up Triumph TR-3 and mounted on a low pivot right in the center of the VW The only light was the wan phosphor glow from an array of mismatched television screens that surrounded him on all sides. Between the cameras and their tracking motors, the generator, the ventilation system, the sound equipment, the control panels, the spare box of vacuum tubes, and the little refrigerator, he hardly had space to swing around. But that was okay. Tom was more a claustrophile than a claustrophobe anyway; he liked it in here. Around the exterior of the gutted Beetle, Joey had mounted two overlapping layers of thick battleship armor. It was better than a goddamned tank. Joey had already pinged a few shots off it with the Luger that Dom had taken off a German officer during the war. A lucky shot might be able to take out one of his cameras or lights, but there was no way to get to Tom himself inside the shell. He was better than safe, he was invulnerable, and when he felt this secure and sure of himself, there was no limit on what he might be able to do.
The shell was heavier than the Packard by the time they’d gotten finished with it, but it didn’t seem to matter. Four and a half hours, never touching ground, sliding around silently and almost effortlessly through the junkyard, and Tom hadn’t even worked up a sweat.
When he heard the report over the radio, a jolt of excitement went through him. This is it! he thought. He ought to wait for Joey, but Joey had driven to Pompeii Pizza to pick up dinner (pepperoni, onion, and extra cheese) and there was no time to waste; this was his chance.
The ring of lights on the bottom of the shell threw stark shadows over the hills of twisted metal and trash as Tom pushed the shell higher into the air, eight feet up, ten, twelve. His eyes flicked nervously from one screen to the next, watching the ground recede. One set, its picture tube filched from an old Sylvania, began a slow vertical roll. Tom played with a knob and stopped it. His palms were sweaty. Fifteen feet up, he began to creep forward, until the shell reached the shoreline. In front of him was darkness; it was too thick a night to see New York, but he knew it was there, if he could reach it. On his small black-and-white screens, the waters of New York Bay seemed even darker than usual, an endless choppy ocean of ink looming before him. He’d have to grope his way across, until the city lights came into sight. And if he lost it out there, over the water, he’d be joining Jetboy and J.F.K. a lot sooner than he planned; even if he could unscrew the hatch quick enough to avoid drowning, he couldn’t swim.