door to the room shot open, and Dr. Tachyon rushed in. "What's going on?" he demanded. "A strange joker was seen running out of here-"
He looked around, genuinely puzzled. "What did I miss?"
Brennan looked at him. It was time, he thought, to try to make things easier. He went to Tachyon and took his hand. "The end of an age, old friend, and the beginning of a new."
The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat
II
I have a dream.
I have several dreams, in fact. I suppose that makes this teenage governor marginally better than old King, right? They're very odd, my dreams-a lot more hard-edged and surreal than I remember them being before the wild card hit me. But then, I always did like the painters who could twist reality and make it their own: Dali, Bosch, Brueghel, Chagall.. . .
Last night I had a dream too.
I was in the Administration Building. (Where else would I be, huh?) But the old place had changed. The stone and brick had changed to glass. It was a wondrous, clear crystal line palace from which I could see out into the world again. The sunlight shattered on it and bled rainbows.
I'd changed too. I was someone else, not Bloat. I stood on my own legs, and my body was a gorgeous, muscular wonder. Kelly, as resplendent and alluring as a fairy-tale princess, stood alongside me. Her thoughts were no longer pitying but full of love and trust for me. Together, we strode up and down inside my palace, marveling at its beauty.
Kafka was kneeling in the lobby as we approached, hooking up that generator he keeps insisting we need. A snarl of wires went all around him.
Then I noticed that the brilliant sunlight had tricked me. These weren't wires. The lobby was filled to overflowing with jokers, their bodies all pressed together. They were screaming at me, waving hands and tentacles and filaments and antennae, and shouting, "There's no more room! No more room!"
I looked out and saw that-omigod!-they were right. Through the windows I could see that all the Rox was the same way--a living, writhing carpet of jokers from end to end, right into the greasy waves of the bay.
I shouted to them all. My voice was the voice of a King, deep and charismatic. Not at all the adolescent boy's screech it really is. " I will make you a new home!" I told them. " I will do that for you!"
Kelly applauded. The jokers cheered.
But Kafka glanced up at me from the generator. "They won't let you," he said softly.
The massed jokers all howled agreement. I knew that Kafka spoke of every joker's eternal "they": the nats who hate us, the turncoat aces who are weapons against their own kind.
"My Wall keeps them out," I insisted, shaking my head. Kafka sighed.
I suddenly felt a chill. I looked up to see that the entire roof of the building was gone. Above, a winter wind flung dirty wet snow from massed, hurtling clouds. The snow piled in drifts around and over the mountain of my body--I was Bloat again. Kelly, disgust on her face, fled the lobby. I was frightened. I felt more helpless than I'd ever felt, for I knew that the wall couldn't keep out the snow.
"The wall isn't enough," Kafka told me. "Not enough."
"The jumpers. My joker army."
"Not enough."
The wind howled, a mad laughter. Sleet hissed around the columns of the lobby, between the supports that held the floor against my weight ...
And I woke. My enormous body was trembling so that the whole building was shaking in sympathy. All the guards were looking at me, and the smell of the bloatblack ... Well, you get the idea.
Hell, dreams are supposed to be escapes. I should be dreaming of being in a normal body or having some postpubescent wet dreams about Kelly.
Every joker needs a refuge. I can't even find one in my dreams.
I talked to Molly Bolt rather than Blaise because I could hear through the mindvoices that Blaise was busy.
All right, I'll be honest here. That was a lousy excuse. I talked to Molly because I really don't like Blaise.
But even Molly doesn't listen very well to me. She spoke her thoughts, and I heard them twice. You're a softy, Bloat. Weak. "Power is information." C'mon, that's crap. You know what power is? It's taking the body of some rich snot and humiliating him. Making him run naked down Wall Street jacking off. Having him fire his staff with a