Slowly. He did not want to drown her in it; that would be too quick. He filled her mind and body. She was a writhing, screaming container for the viscous black liquid of his death.
The Astronomer groaned and fell on top of her, jolting Spector from his trancelike state. He was ripping hunks from her with his teeth and hands. The woman was dead.
Spector stepped back and closed his eyes. He had never enjoyed the act of killing until now, but the satisfaction and relief he felt were beyond what he had thought possible. He had controlled his power, made it serve him for the first time. And he knew he needed the Astronomer to be able to do it again.
"Do you still want to kill me?" The Astronomer pulled himself, spent, off the corpse. "I assume the gun is still in your coat. It's either that or this." He held up one of the pennies. There was no real choice. Any doubts were erased by what he had just experienced. He took the coin without hesitation. "Hey, everybody in New York carries a gun. This city is full of some very dangerous people."
The Astronomer laughed loudly, the sound echoing off the stone walls. "This is only the first step. With my help you'll be capable of things you never dreamed possible. From now on there is no James Spector. We of the inner circle will call you Demise. To those who oppose us, you will be death. Swift and merciless."
"Demise, I like the sound of it." He nodded and put the penny in his pocket.
"Trust only those who identify themselves with the coin. Your friends and enemies are chosen for you now. Spend the night if you like. Tomorrow, we'll continue your education." The Astronomer picked up his robe and went back inside. Spector rubbed his temples and wandered back into the building. The pain began to grow again. He accepted it, even loved it. It would be the source of his power and fulfillment. He had drawn the Black Queen and suffered a terrible death, but a miracle occurred. His gift to the world would be the horror inside him. It might not be enough for the world, but it was enough for him.
He curled up under the statue in the foyer and slept the sleep of the dead.
JUBE: FOUR
On the third floor of the Crystal Palace were the private chambers Chrysalis reserved for herself. She was waiting for him in a Victorian sitting room, sitting in a red velvet wingbacked chair behind an oak table. Chrysalis gestured at a seat. She wasted no time. "You've piqued my interest, Jubal."
"I don't know what you mean," Jube said, easing himself down on the edge of a ladder-back chair.
Chrysalis opened an antique satin change purse and extracted a handful of gems.
She lined them up on the white tablecloth. "Two star sapphires, one ruby, and a flawless bluewhite diamond," she said in her dry, cool voice. "All uncut, of the highest quality, none weighing less than four carats. All appearing on the streets of jokertown within the past six weeks. Curious, wouldn't you say? What do you make of it?"
"Don't know," Jube replied. "I'll keep an ear out. Did you hear about the joker with the power to squeeze a diamond until it turned into a lump of coal?"
He was bluffing and they both knew it. She pushed a sapphire across the tablecloth with the little finger of her left: hand, its flesh as clear as glass. "You gave this one to a sanitation worker for a bowling ball that he'd found in a dumpster."
"Yeah," Jube said. It was magenta and white, customdrilled for some joker, its six holes arranged in a circle. No wonder it had been dumped.
Chrysalis prodded the ruby with her pinkie, and it moved a half inch. "This one went to a police filing clerk. You wanted to see the records concerning a body liberated from the morgue, and anything they had on this lost bowling ball. I never knew you had such a passion for bowling, Jubal."
Jube slapped his gut. "Don't I look like a bowler? Nothing I like better than to roll a few strikes and drink a few beers."
"You've never set foot in a bowling alley in your life, and you wouldn't know a strike from a touchdown." Her fingerbones had never looked so frightening as when they picked up the diamond. "This item was tendered to Devil John Darlingfoot in my own red room." She rolled it across transparent fingers, and the muscles in her face twisted into what must have been a wry smile.
"It was mother's," Jube blurted.
Chrysalis chuckled. "And she never bothered to have it cut or set? How odd." She put down the diamond, picked up the second sapphire. "And this one truly, Jubal!
Did you really think Elmo wouldn't tell me?" She placed the gem back with the others, carefully. "You need to hire someone to perform certain unspecified tasks and investigations. Fine. Why not simply come to me?"
Jube scratched at one of his tusks. "You ask too many questions."
"Fair enough." She swept a hand over the jewels. "We have four here. Have there been others?"
Jube nodded. "One or two. You missed the emeralds."
"A pity. I'm fond of green. The British racing color." She sighed. "Why gems?"
"People were reluctant to take my checks," Jube told her, "and it was easier than carrying large amounts of cash."
"If there are more where these came from," Chrysalis said, "see that they stay there. Let the word get around Jokertown that the Walrus has a secret cache of precious gems, and I wouldn't give a bloody fig for your chances. You may have stirred the waters already, but we'll hope the sharks haven't noticed. Elmo told no one but me, of course, and Devil John has his own peculiar sense of honor, I think we can rely on him to keep mum. As for the garbageman and the police clerk, when I purchased their gems I bought their silence too."
"You didn't have to do that!"
"I know," she said. "The next time you want information, you know how to find the Crystal Palace. Don't you?"
"How much do you know already?" Jube asked her. "Enough to tell when you're lying," Chrysalis replied. "I know you're looking for a bowling ball, for reasons incomprehensible to man, woman, or joker. I know that Darlingfoot stole that joker corpse from the morgue, presumably for pay. It's not the sort of thing he'd do on his own. I know the body was small and furred, with legs like a grasshopper, and quite badly burned. No joker matching that description is known to any of my sources, a curious circumstance. I know that Croyd made a rather large cash deposit the day the body was stolen, and an even larger one the following day, and in between had a public confrontation with Darlingfoot. And I know that you paid Devil John handsomely to reveal whose interests he had represented in this little melodrama, and tried without success to engage his services." She leaned forward. "What I don't know is what all this means, and you know how I abhor a mystery."
"They say that every time a joker farts anywhere in Manhattan, Chrysalis holds her nose," Jube said. He looked at her intently, but the transparency of her flesh made her expression impossible to read. The skull-face behind her crystalline skin stared at him implacably from clear blue eyes. "What's your interest in this?" he asked her.
"Uncertain, until I know what 'this' is. However, you've been quite valuable to me for a long time, and I would hate to lose your services. You know I'm discreet."
"Until you're paid to be indiscreet," Jube pointed out. Chrysalis laughed, and touched the diamond. "Given your resources, silence can be more lucrative than speech."
"That's true," Jube said. He decided that he had nothing to lose. "I'm really an alien spy from a distant planet," he began.
"Jubal," Chrysalis interrupted, "you're wearing on my patience. I've never been that fond of your humor. Get to the point. What happened with Darlingfoot?"
"Not much," Jube admitted. "I knew why I wanted the body. I didn't know why anyone else would. Devil John wouldn't tell me. I think they must have the bowling ball. I tried to hire him to get it back for me, but he didn't want anything more to do with them. I think he's scared of them, whoever they are."
"I think you're right. Croyd?"
"Asleep again. Who knows what use- he'll be when he comes to? I could wait six months, and he'll wake up as a hamster."
"For a commission," Chrysalis said with cool certainty, "I can engage the services of someone who'll get you your answers."
Jube decided to be blunt, since evasion wasn't getting him anywhere. "Don't know that I'd trust anyone you'd hire." She laughed. "Dear boy, that's the smartest thing you've said in months. And you'd be right. You're too easy a mark, and some of my contacts are admittedly less than reputable. With me as intermediary, however, the equation changes. I have a certain reputation." Next to her elbow was a small silver bell. She rang it lightly. "In any case, the man who'd be best for this is an exception to the general rule. He actually has ethics."
Jube was tempted. "Who is he?"
"His name is Jay Ackroyd. Ace private investigator. In both senses of the word.
Sometimes he's called Popinjay, but not to his face. Jay and I do favors for each other from time to time. We both deal in the same product, after all."
Jube plucked at a tusk thoughtfully. "Yeah. What's to stop ime from hiring him directly?"
"Nothing," Chrysalis said. A tall waiter with impressive ivory horns entered, carrying an amaretto and a Singapore sling on an antique silver tray. When he departed, she continued. "If you'd rather have him getting curious about you than about me, that is."
That gave him pause. "Perhaps it would be better if I stayed in the background."
"My thought exactly," Chrysalis said, sipping her amaretto. "Jay won't even know you're the client."
Jube glanced out the window. It was a dark, cloudless night. He could see the stars, and somewhere out there he knew the Mother still waited. He needed help, and cast caution aside. "Do you know a good thief?" he asked her bluntly.
That surprised her. "I might," she said.
"I need," he began awkwardly, "uh, parts. Scientific instruments, and, uh, electronics, microchips, things like that. I could write you a list. It involves breaking into some corporate labs, maybe some federal installations."
"I stay clear of anything that illegal," Chrysalis said. "What do you need with electronics?"
"Building me a ham radio set," Jube said. "Would you do it to save the world?"
She didn't answer. "Would you do it for six perfectly matched emeralds the size of pigeon's eggs?"
Chrysalis smiled slowly, and proposed a toast. "To a long, and profitable, association."
She could almost be a Master Trader, Jube thought with a certain admiration.
Grinning tuskily, he raised the Singapore sling, and brought the straw to his mouth.
UNTO THE SIXTH GENERATION
Epilogue
It had been easy. While Flush and Sweat pretended to have a fight on the pavement in front of the moving van, Ricky and Loco had simply walked up to the van, liberated a pair of boxes apiece, and walked off into the street. The tall geezer who was moving hadn't even noticed that some boxes were missing. Ricky patted himself on the back for the idea.
They didn't get opportunities like this very often anymore. Nat turf was getting smaller. Joker gangs like the Demon Princes were swallowing more territory. How the hell could you fight something that looked like squid?
Ricky Santillanes dug into his jeans, produced his keys, and let himself into the clubhouse. Flush went to the icebox for some beers and the rest put the boxes on the battered sofa and opened them.
"Wow. A VCR."
"What kinda tapes?"
"Japanese monster movies, looks like. And something here called PORNO."
"Hey! Set it up, man!"
Beers popped open. "Loco! A computer."
"That's not a computer. That's a graphic equalizer."
"Fuck it ain't. I seen a computer before. In school before I quit. "
Ricky looked at it. "Wang don't make no stereo components, bro."
"Fuck you know."
Sweat held up a ROM burner. "What the hell is this, man?"
"Expensive, I bet."
"How we gonna fence it if we don't know how much to ask?"
"Hey! I got the tape player set up!"
Sweat held up a featureless black sphere. "What's this, man?"
"Bowling ball."
"Fuck it is. Too light." Ricky snatched it. "Hey. That blond chick's hot."
"What's she doing? Screwing the camera? Where's the guy?"
"I seen her somewhere."
"Where's the guy, man? This is weird. That's like a closeup of her ear."
Ricky watched while he juggled the black orb. It was warm to the touch.
"Hey! The chick's like flying or something!"
"Bullshit. "
"No. Look. The background's moving."
The blond woman seemed to be airborne, speeding around the room backward while engaged in vaguely-perceived sex acts. It was as if her invisible partner could fly. "This is deeply weird."
Loco looked at the black sphere. "Gimme that," he said. "Watch the damn movie, man."
"Bullshit. Just give it to me." He reached for it. "Fuck off, asshole!"
Weird lights played over Ricky's hands. Something dark reached for Loco, and suddenly Loco wasn't there.
Ricky stood in shocked silence while the others stood and shouted. It was as if there was something brushing against his mind.
The black sphere was talking to him. It seemed lost, and somehow broken.
It could make things disappear. Ricky thought about the Demon Princes and about what you could do about someone who looked like a squid. A smile began to spread across his face.
"Hey, guys," he said. "I think I- got an idea."
WINTER'S CHILL
By George R.R. Martin
The day arrived at last, as he had known it would. It was a Saturday, cold and gray, with a brisk wind blowing off the Kill. Mister Coffee had a pot ready when he woke at half past ten; on weekends Tom liked to sleep in. He laced his first cup liberally with milk and sugar, and took it into his living room.
Old mail was strewn across his coffee table: a stack of bills, supermarket flyers announcing long-departed sales, a postcard mailed by his'sister when she'd gone to England the summer before, a long brown envelope that said Mr.
Thomas Tudbury might already have won three million dollars, and lots of other junk that he needed to deal with real soon now. Underneath it all was the invitation.
He sipped his coffee and stared at the mail. How many months had it been sitting there? Three? Four? Too late to do anything about it now. Even an RSVP would be woefully inappropriate at this date. He remembered the way The Graduate had ended, and savored the fantasy. But he was no Dustin Hoffman.
Like a man picking at an old scab, Tom rummaged through the mail until he found that small square envelope once again. The card within was crisp and white.
Mr. & Mrs. Stanley Casko request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Barbara, to Mr. Stephen Bruder, of Weehawken. St. Henry's Church 2:00 p.m., March 8
Reception to follow at the Top Hat Lounge
RSVP 555-6853
Tom fingered the embossed paper for a long time, then carefully set it back on the coffee table, dumped the junk mail into the wicker trash basket by the end of his couch, and went to stare out the window.
Across First Street, piles of black snow were heaped along the footpaths of the narrow little waterfront park. A freighter flying the Norwegian flag was making its way down the Kill van Kull toward the Bayonne Bridge and Port Newark, pushed along by a squat blue tugboat. Tom stood by his living-room window, one hand on the sill, the other shoved deep in his pocket, watching the kids in the park, watching the freighter's stately progress, watching the cold green water of the Kill and the wharves and hills of Staten island beyond.
A long long time ago, his family had lived in the federal housing projects down at the end of First Street, and their living-room window had looked out over the park and the Kill.
Sometimes at night when his parents were asleep, he would get up and make himself a chocolate milk and stare out the window at the lights of Staten Island, which seemed so impossibly far away and full of promise. What did he know? He was a project kid who'd never left Bayonne.
The big ships passed even in the night, and in the night you couldn't see the rust streaks on their sides or the oil they vented into the water; in the night the ships were magic, bound for high adventure and romance, for fabled cities where the streets shone dark with danger. In real live, even Jersey City was the land unknown as far as he was concerned, but in his dreams he knew the moors of Scotland, the alleys of Shanghai, the dust of Marrakesh. By the time he turned ten, Tom had learned to recognize the flags of more than thirty different nations.
But he wasn't ten anymore. He would turn forty-two this year, and he'd come all of four blocks from the projects, to a small orange-brick house on First Street.
In high school he'd worked summers fixing TV sets. He was still at the same shop, though he'd risen all the way to manager, and owned almost a third of the business; these days the place was called the Broadway ElectroMart, and it dealt in VCRs and CD players and computers as well as in television sets.
You've come a long way, Tommy, he thought bitterly to himself And now Barbara Casko was going to marry Steve Bruder.
He couldn't blame her. He couldn't blame anyone but himself. And maybe Jetboy, and Dr. Tachyon . . . yeah, he could blame them a little too.
Tom turned away and let the drapes fall back across the window, feeling like shit. He walked to the kitchen, and opened a typical bachelor's refrigerator. No beer, just an inch of flat Shop Rite cola at the bottom of a two-liter bottle.
He stripped the foil off a bowl of tuna salad, intending to fix himself a sandwich for breakfast, but there was green stuff growing all over the top.
Suddenly he lost his appetite.
Lifting the phone from its wall cradle, he punched in seven familiar numbers. On the third ring, a child answered. "Hewo?"
"Hey, Vito," Tom said. "The old man home?"
There was the sound of another extension being lifted. "Hello?" a woman said.
The child giggled. "I've got it, honey," Gina said.
"G'bye, Vito," Tom said, as the child hung up.
"Vito," Gina said, sounding both aggravated and amused. "Tom, you're crazy, you know that? Why do you want to confuse him all the time? Last time it was Guiseppe. The name is Derek."
"Pfah," Tom replied. "Derek, what kind of wop name is that? Two nice dago kids like you and Joey, and you name him after some clown in a soap opera. Dom would've had a fit. Derek DiAngelis--sounds like a walking identity crisis."
"So have one of your own and name him Vito," Gina said. It was just a joke. Gina was just kidding around, she didn't mean anything by it. But the knowledge didn't help. He still felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. "Joey there?" he asked brusquely.
"He's in San Diego," she said. "Tom, are you all right? You sound funny."
"I'm okay. Just wanted to say hello." Of course Joey was in San Diego. Joey traveled a lot these days, the lucky stiff. Junkyard Joey DiAngelis was a star driver on the demolition derby circuit, and in winter the circuit went to warmer climes. It was sort of ironic. When they were kids, even their parents had figured Tom was the one who'd go places while Joey stayed on in Bayonne and ran his old mans junkyard. And now Joey was almost a household word, while his old family junkyard belonged to Tom. Should have figured it; even in grade school, Joey was a demon on the bumper cars. "Well, tell him I called. "
"I've got the number of the motel they're at," she offered. "Thanks anyway. It's not that important. Catch you later, Gina. Take care of Vito." Tom set the phone back in its cradle. His car keys were on the kitchen counter. He zipped up a shapeless brown suede jacket, and went down to the basement garage. The door slid closed automatically behind his dark green Honda. He headed east on First Street, past the projects, and turned up Lexington. On Fifth Street, he hung a right, and left the residential neighborhoods behind.
It was a cold gray Saturday in March, with snow on the ground and winter's chill in the air. He was forty-one years old and Barbara was getting married, and Thomas Tudbury needed to crawl into his shell.
They met in junior Achievement, seniors from two different high schools.
Tommy had little interest in learning how the freeenterprise system worked, but he had a lot of interest in girls. His prep school was all boys, but JA drew from all the local high schools, and Tom had joined first as a junior.
He had a hard enough time making friends with boys, and girls terrified him. He didn't know what to say to them, and he was scared of saying something stupid, so he said nothing at all. After a few weeks, some of the girls began to tease him. Most just ignored him. The Tuesday-night meetings became something he dreaded all through his junior year.
Senior year was different. The difference was a girl named Barbara Casko.
At the very first meeting, Tom was sitting in the corner, feeling pudgy and glum, when Barbara came over and introduced herself. She was honestly friendly; Tom was astonished. The really incredible thing, even more astonishing than this girl going out of her way to be nice to him, was that she was the prettiest girl in the company, and maybe the prettiest girl in Bayonne. She had dark blond hair that fell to her shoulders and flipped up at the ends, and pale blue eyes, and the warmest smile in the world. She wore angora sweaters, nothing too tight but they showed her cute little figure to good advantage. She was pretty enough to be a cheerleader.
Tommy wasn't the only one who was impressed with Barbara Casko. In no time at all, she was president of the JA company. And when her term ran out, after Christmas, and it was time for new elections; she nominated him to succeed her as president, and she was so popular that they actually elected him.
"Ask her out," Joey DiAngelis said in October, when Tom worked up the nerve to tell him about her. Joey had dropped out of school the year before. He was training as a mechanic in a service station on Avenue E. "She likes you, shithead."
"C'mon," Tom said. "Why would she go out with me? You ought to see her, Joey, she could go out with anybody she wanted." Thomas Tudbury had never had a date in his life. "Maybe she's got shitty taste," Joey said, grinning.
But Barbara's name came up again. Joey was the only one Tom could talk to, and Barbara was all he could talk about that year. "Gimme a break, Tuds," Joey said one December night when they were drinking beer inside the old ruined Packard by the bay. "If you don't ask her out, I will."
Tommy hated that idea. "She's not your type, you dumb wop."
Joey grinned. "I thought you said she was a girl?"
"She's going to college to be a teacher."
"Ah, never mind that shit. How big are her tits?" Tom punched him in the shoulder.
By March, when he still hadn't asked her out, Joey said, "What the hell are you waiting for? She nominated you to be president of your fuckin' candyass company, didn't she? She likes you, dork."
"Just 'cause she knew I'd make a good company president doesn't mean she'd go out with me."
"Ask her, shithead."
"Maybe I will," Tom said uncomfortably. Two weeks later, on a Wednesday night after a meeting where Barbara had been especially friendly, he got as far as trying to look up her number in the phone book. But he never made the call.
"There are nine different Caskos listed," he told Joey the next time he saw him.
"I wasn't sure which one was her."
"Call 'em all, Tuds. Fuck, they're all related."
"I'd feel like an idiot," Tom said.
"You are an idiot," Joey told him. "So look, if that's so hard, next time you see her, ask for her phone number." Tom swallowed. "Then she'd think I wanted to ask her out. "
Joey laughed. "So? You do want to ask her out!"
"I'm just not ready yet, that's all. I don't know how." Tom was miserable.
"It's easy. You phone, and when she answers you say, `Hey, it's Tom, you want to go out with me?"'
"Then what if she says no?"
Joey shrugged. "Then we'll phone every pizza place in town and have pies delivered to her house all night long. Anchovy. No one can eat anchovy pizza."
By the time May had rolled around, Tom had figured out which Casko family Barbara belonged to. She'd made a casual comment about her neighborhood, and he'd noted it in the obsessive way he noted everything she said. He went home and tore that page from the phone book and circled her phone number with his Bic. He even began to dial it. Five or six times. But he never completed the call.
"Why the fuck not?" Joey demanded.
"It's too late," Tom said glumly. " I mean, we've known each other since September, and I haven't asked her out; if I ask her out now, she'll think I was chickenshit or something."
"You are chickenshit," Joey said.
"What's the use? We're going to different colleges. We'll probably never see each other again after June."
Joey crushed a beer can in his fist, and said two words. "Senior prom."
"What about it?"
"Ask her to your senior prom. You want to go to your senior prom, don't you?"
"I dunno," Tom said. "I mean, I can't dance. What the fuck is this? You never went to no goddamned prom!"
"Proms are shit," Joey said. "When I go out with a girl, I'd rather drive her out on Route Four-forty and see if I can get bare tittie than hold her fuckin'
hand in some gym, you know? But you ain't me, Tuds. Don't shit me. You want to go to that stupid prom and we both know it, and if you walked in with the prettiest date in the place, you'd be in fuckin' heaven."
"It's May," Tom said sullenly. "Barbara's the cutest girl in Bayonne, no way she doesn't have a prom date already."
"Tuds, you go to different schools. She's probably got a date to her prom, yeah, but what are the fuckin' odds that she's got one to your prom? Girls love that prom horseshit, dressing up and wearing corsages and dancing. Go for it, Tuds.
You got nothing to lose." He grinned. "Unless you count your cherry."
In the week that followed, Tom thought about nothing but that conversation. Time was running out. Junior Achievement was wrapping up, and once it was over he'd never see Barbara again, unless he did something. Joey was right; he had to try.
On Tuesday night, his stomach was tied in a knot all during the long bus ride uptown, and he kept rehearsing the conversation in his head. The words wouldn't come out right, no matter how many times he rearranged them, but he was determined that he would get something out, somehow. He was terrified that she would say no to him, and even more terrified that she might say yes. But he had to try. He couldn't just let her go without letting her know how much he liked her.
His biggest worry was how in the world he could possibly get her aside, away from all the other kids. He certainly didn't want to have to ask her in front of everybody. The thought gave him goose bumps. The other girls thought he was hilarious enough as is, the presumption of him asking Barbara Casko to the prom would double them up with laughter. He just hoped she wouldn't tell them, after.
He didn't think she would.
The problem was solved for him. It was the last meeting, and the advisers were interviewing the presidents of all the different companies. They gave a bond to the kid picked as president of the year. Barbara had been president of their company for the first half-year, Tom for the second; they found themselves waiting outside in a hallway, just the two of them, alone together, while the other kids were in at the meeting and the advisers were off doing interviews.
"I hope you win," Tom said as they waited.
Barbara smiled at him. She was wearing a pale blue sweater and a pleated skirt that fell to just below her knees, and around her neck was a heart-shaped locket on a slender gold chain. Her blond hair looked so soft that he wanted to touch it, but of course he didn't dare. She was standing quite close to him, and he could smell how clean and fresh it was. "You look really nice," he blurted awkwardly.
He felt like an idiot, but Barbara seemed not to notice. She looked at him with those blue, blue eyes. "Thank you," she said. "I wish they'd hurry." And then she did something that startled him-she reached out and touched him, put her hand on his arm, and said, "Tommy, can I ask you a question?"
"A question," he repeated. "Sure."
"About your senior prom," Barbara said.
He stood like a zombie for a long moment, aware of the chill in the hall, of distant laughter from the classroom, of the advisers' voices coming through the frosted-glass door, of the slight pressure of Barbara's hand, and above all, of the nearness of her, those deep blue eyes looking at him, the locket hanging down between the small round bumps of her breasts, the clean, fresh-washed smell of her. For once, she wasn't smiling. The expression on her face might almost have been nervousness. It only made her prettier. He wanted to hug her and kiss her. He was desperately afraid.
"The prom," he finally managed. Weakly. Absurdly, he was suddenly aware of a huge erection pressing against the inside of his pants. He only hoped it didn't show.
"Do you know Steve Bruder?" she asked.
Tom had known Steve Bruder since second grade. He was the class president, and played forward on the basketball team. Back in grammar school, Stevie and his friends used to humiliate Tom with their fists. Now they were sophisticated seniors, and they just used words.
Barbara didn't wait for his answer. "We've been going out together," she told him. "I thought he was going to ask me to his prom, but he hasn't."
You could go with me! Tom thought wildly, but all he said was, "He hasn't?"
"No," she said. "Do you know, I mean, has he asked somebody else? Is he going to ask me, do you think?"
"I don't know," Tom said dully. "We don't talk much."
"Oh," Barbara said. Her hand fell away, and then the door opened and they called his name.
That night Tom won a $50 savings bond as junior Achievement President of the Year. His mother never understood why he seemed so unhappy: The junkyard was on the Hook, between the sprawl of an abandoned oil refinery and the cold green waters of New York Bay. The ten-foot-high chain-link fence was sagging, and there was rust on the sign to the right of the gate that warned trespassers to keep out. Tom climbed from his car, opened the padlock and undid the heavy chains, and pulled inside.
The shack where Joey and his father Dom had lived was far gone in decay now. The paint on the rooftop sign had faded to illegibility, but Tom could still make out the faint lettering: DI ANGELIS SCRAP METAL & AUTO PARTS. Tom had bought and closed the junkyard ten years ago, when Joey got married. Gina hadn't wanted to live in a junkyard, and besides, Tom had been tired of all the people who prowled around for hours looking for a DeSoto transmission or a bumper for a 1957 Edsel. None of them had ever stumbled on his secrets, but there had been close calls, and more than once he'd been forced to spend the night on some dingy rooftop in Jokertown because the coast wasn't clear at home.
Now, after a decade of benign neglect, the junkyard was a sprawling wasteland of rust and desolation, and no one ever bothered driving all the way out there.
Tom parked his Honda behind the shack, and strode off into the junkyard with his hands shoved into his pockets and his cap pulled down against the cold salt wind off the bay. No one had shoveled the snow here, and there had been no traffic to turn it into filthy brown slush. The hills of scrap and trash looked as though they'd been sprinkled with powdered sugar, and he walked past drifts taller than he was, frozen white waves that would come crashing down when the temperatures rose in the spring.
Deep in the interior, between two looming piles of automobiles turned all to razor-edged rust, was a bare place. Tom kicked away snow with the heel of his shoe until he had uncovered the flat metal plate. He knelt, found the ring, and pulled it up. The metal was icy cold, and he was panting before he managed to shift the lid three feet to the side to open the tunnel underneath. It would be so much easier to use teke, to shift it with his mind. Once he could have done that. Not now. Time plays funny tricks on you. Inside the shell, he had grown stronger and stronger, but on the outside his telekinesis had faded over the years. It was all psychological, Tom knew; the shell had become some kind of crutch, and his mind refused to let him teke without it, that was all. But there were days when it almost felt as though Thomas Tudbury and the Great and Powerful Turtle had become two different people.
He dropped down into darkness, into the tunnel that he and Joey had dug together, night after night, way back inwhat year had that been? '69? '70?
Something like that. He found the big plastic flashlight on its hook, but the beam was pale and weak. He'd have to remember to bring some new batteries from the store the next time he came out. Alkaline next time; they lasted a lot longer.
He walked about sixty feet before the tunnel ended, and the blackness of the bunker opened up around him. It was just a big hole in the ground he'd scooped out with his teke, its crude roof covered over with a thin layer of dirt and junk to conceal what lav beneath. The air was thick and stale, and he heard rats scuttling away from the light of his flashlight beam. In the comic book, the Turtle had a secret Turtle Cave deep under the waters of New York Bay, a marvelous place with vaulted ceilings and computer banks and a live-in butler who dusted all the trophies and prepared gourmet meals. The writers at Cosh Comics had done one fuck of a lot better for him than he had ever managed to do for himself.
He walked past two of the older shells to the latest model, punched in the combination, and pulled up the hatch. Crawling inside, Tom sealed the shell behind him and found his chair. He groped for the harness, and belted himself in. The seat was wide and comfortable, with thick padded armrests and the friendly smell of leather. Control panels were mounted at the ends of both arms for easy fingertip access. His fingers played over the keys with the ease of long familiarity, turning on ventilators, heat, and lights. The interior of the shell was snug and cozy, covered with green shag carpet. He had four 23-inch color televisions mounted in the carpeted walls, surrounded by banks of smaller screens and other instrumentation.
His left index finger jabbed down and the outside cameras came to life, filling his screens with vague gray shapes, until he went to infrared. Tom pivoted slowly, checking the pictures, testing his lights, making sure everything was functional. He rummaged through his box of cassettes until he found Springsteen.
A good Jersey boy, Tom thought. He slammed the cassette into the tape deck, and Bruce tore right into "Glory Days." It brought a flat, hard smile to his face.
Tom leaned forward and threw a toggle. From somewhere outside came a whirring sound. That garage door opener would have to be replaced soon from the sound of it. On the screens, he saw light.pour into the bunker from overhead. A cascade of snow and ice fell down onto the bare earth floor. He pushed up with his mind; the armored shell lifted, and began to drift toward the .light. So Barbara Casko was getting married to that asshole Steve Bruder, so what the hell did he care; the Great and Powerful Turtle was going out to kick some monster butt.
One thing Tom Tudbury had found out a long time ago was that life doesn't give you many second chances. He was lucky. He got a second chance at Barbara Casko.
It happened in 1972, a decade after he'd last seen her. The store was still called Broadway Television and Electronics then, and Tom was assistant manager.
He was behind the register, his back to the counter while he straightened some shelves, when a woman's voice said, "Excuse me."