Jokers Wild Page 0,57

little corpses, little embalmed "Monstrous Joker Babies" as the sign above the exhibit proclaimed. There were maybe thirty of them. Most had little of humanity about them and Jennifer was thankful, in a way, that they had experienced for so short a time the cruelty of the world.

She hurried from the room and found herself in the section of the museum devoted to large displays that were life-sized dioramas. It was eerily quiet and dark with the displays' lighting and sound effects turned of and quite disconcerting to be the only living thing about.

She went by a scene depicting Jokertown burning, commemorating, as it were, the Great Jokertown Riot of 1976. There was, now only mildly shocking to modern tastes, an older tableau showing a purported Jokertown orgy. A sign in front of a curtained-off area said to watch for the latest addition to the entertaining yet informative displays, Earth vs. The Swarm.

Jennifer went on past the dioramas into the long hallway beyond and entered the museum's Hall of Fame, or, in some instances, Infamy.

Lifelike wax figures of prominent aces and jokers clustered in groups or stood alone in the hallway. Jetboy looked young and handsome, his scarf blowing out behind him in an unfelt, perhaps divine wind, his eyes squinting slightly as if he were staring into a gentle sun. The Four Aces-Black Eagle, Brain Trust, the Envoy, and Golden Boy-stood in a group, three of them together, one isolated by the slightly turned backs, the slightly averted faces of his fellow aces. Dr. Tachyon was resplendent in an outfit that a small card at his feet said had been donated by him to the museum. And there were others. Peregrine maintaining, Jennifer had to admit, her smoldering sensuality even when graven in wax, Cyclone, Hiram Worchester's astonishing bulk apparently floating lightly over his pedestal, Chrysalis with invisible flesh and visible organs caged by her skeleton...

Jennifer looked them over carefully. Tachyon, she decided, would be the one. She stepped over the velvet rope and approached the waxen statue. She towered over it by half a foot and its waxen features were as delicate as her own. Moved by an irresistible impulse, she ran her hand down the rich fabric of his peach-colored waistcoat. It had a fine, soft feel to it. She could almost believe that the card was telling the truth and the outfit had once belonged to Tachyon himself.

She caught herself and looked around guiltily. The hallway, of course, was deserted. She summoned all her will, reached out, and put the bag through the chest of the wax figure. She withdrew her hand and left the bag snug in Tachyon's chest, the two stockbooks of stamps and the mysterious volume safely hidden away until her return.

Now she had to get in touch with Kien. It might take some doing. She couldn't simply look him up in the phone book.

She left the Hall of Fame with one last jealous glance at the Peregrine figure, pondering her next move. She never noticed the eye watching from a curtained doorway at the other end of the hallway.

The worst of it, Fortunato thought, was having to listen to the goddamned politicians. There were a dozen of them on stage, including Mayor Koch and Senator Hartmann. Tachyon, the bastard, was already gone, cozied up to a gorgeous black woman with plaited hair.

Hartmann was at the podium. "The time has come for acceptance. A time for peace, as the biblical poet said. Not only for peace between nations, but peace within ourselves. A time to look into our own hearts, human and joker and ace alike. A time not to forget the past, but to be able to look back at it and say, this is where I have been, and I am not ashamed. But my duty now is to the future. Thank you very much."

A police helicopter circled overhead. As Fortunato glanced up he saw the Turtle's shell float slowly over the park and then pass out of sight again.

Fortunato knew roughly where the kid was. This close to him he could get a vague image of what the kid saw, and he could triangulate off Hartmann as he sat down at the edge of the stage.

There. Fifteen or twenty yards away, wearing clothes, for once, which meant he'd come in his human form and stayed that way. The kid slouched against a light pole, a good fifteen or twenty feet away from an older version of himself, clearly his father.

The