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"Mustelina," she said. "Hi. How are you?"
"What do you think you're doing here, bitch?" Sara recoiled from her vehemence. It was amazing how the Disney people always missed details like the two-inch fangs curving from her upper jaw.
"What do you mean?" The time she'd spent among jokers had inured her so she didn't flinch away from the girl's breath. Mustelina's joker had included a compulsive craving for live meat. Fortunately there were a lot of rats in Jokertown.
A crowd was accreting. Many of the jokers from the sticks were anonymous behind masks, but the J-town contingent tended to parade its jokerhood, wearing disfigurements like proud stigmata. She recognized Glowbug and Mr. Cheese and Peanut with his hard-shelled stump and a strange look in his eye. They had been her friends. There was little friendship here now.
"You know real well what I mean. You sold us to Barnett." She blinked, tears starting hot. "What are you talking about?"
"You're the one tried to smear Senator Gregg," a Southern voice said from behind a Kabuki mask with eyebrows halfway up a domed white forehead.
"You turned on Hartma
"Yeah, traitor," somebody else called. "Nat!"
"Fucking Jew bitch!"
She tried to back away. They hemmed her on all sides, the faces of grotesques by Goya and Hokusai and Bosch, hostile masks of feathers and plastic smooth as bone. Why did I come here? These are Hartma
Suddenly Mustelina was snatched right out of her face and thrown fifteen feet. She curled into a ball, rolled, came up bottling and popping like a string of firecrackers.
A vast white figure loomed over the incipient mob. It held out a chubby hand, pallid and shiny as uncooked dough. "Come on, Thara," it lisped in the voice of a black child. "I'll take you where it'th thafe."
She clung to the hand. Doughboy started forward with his rolling gait and Sara at his side. The crowd gave back. He was nonviolent. He also weighed in at upwards of six hundred, and had the strength of three or four nat men. In his own way he was quite irresistible.
"I thaw you on Mechano's televithion," Doughboy said. "You were thaying terrible things about the Thenator. Everybody thaid you were a twaitor."
She looked up at him. His face was an unpitted moon. He smiled without lips or teeth.
"You are my friend, Thara. I knew you'd never do nothing wrong."
She hugged him. She also kept walking. This was an ideal place for Hartma
"Will you bwing me some candy sometime, Mith Thara?" Doughboy asked. "Nobody brings me candy since Mithter Thyiner went away."
He stopped at the street and faced her. "When will Mithter Thyiner come back? Do you think he'll come back soon?"
"He's not coming back, honey," she said gently. "You know that." It had been a stroke, that January. Doughboy found him paralyzed on his mattress in their little Eldridge Street apartment, carried him through the streets weeping and begging for someone to help fix Mr. Shiner. He reached Jokertown Clinic before an ambulance with a heavy enough suspension to carry him could be found-nobody was going to try to separate him from his friend and guardian. By that time there was nothing even Dr. Tachyon could do.
Tears rolled from Doughboy's button eyes. "I mith him. I mith him tho."
She reached up. She wasn't tall enough. He bent over until she could wrap her arms around his neck.
"I know you do, honey," she said through her own tears. "Thank you for helping me. I'll bring you candy soon. I love you."
She kissed his cheek and walked quickly away without looking back.
11:00 A.M.
"Doctor!"
He studied the handsome dark face, the intense eyes actively sca
"Deserting the floor of the convention?"
"Too chaotic."
"And disappointing?" suggested Jesse Jackson softly.
"It will be all right." Tach cocked his head speculatively. "And you, entering the stronghold of the enemy?"
"Gregg Hartma
"Ah, then you would have no objection to dropping out, and handing your delegates to the senator?"
Jackson laughed. "Doctor, you beat me to the punch. May we talk?" He indicated a sofa near one wall of the upper lobby. AP, Time, the Sun Times, and the Post began circling like barracuda. Straight Arrow, the Mormon ace from Utah, and Jackson's ace bodyguard, eyed them with an unblinking stare. The news of Tachyon's bombshell had spread quickly through the security forces. To Tachyon's knowledgeable eye the lobby seemed filled with discretely armed men.
"Wouldn't your suite be more private?" asked the Takisian dryly.
The flash of white teeth behind the mustache. "Private is not what I'm after. Let 'em speculate."
Tachyon debated. Decided that perhaps he and the Reverend Jackson could use one another. Some might speculate that Tachyon's support of Hartma
They settled onto the sofa. The tall black man, the diminutive alien with one leg tucked up beneath him.
"I want you to transfer your support to me," said Jackson bluntly.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. I'm the logical candidate to represent the jokers and aces. Together we can build a new world."
"I've been here forty-two years, Reverend, and I'm still waiting for that new world."
"You must not give in to cynicism, pessimism and despair, doctor. I hadn't expected that from you. You're a fighter-like me. " Tachyon didn't speak, and Jackson went on. "We have the same interests."
"Do we? I want to see my people protected. You want to be president."
"Help me become president, and then I can protect your people-a-ny people too." He frowned at the far wall. "Doctor, my foreparents came to America on slave ships. You came here in a spaceship, but we're in the same boat now. If Barnett becomes president we all suffer."
Tachyon shook his head more in confusion than negation. "I don't know. Gregg Hartma
Help me. Kill me. Believe ine. He ruthlessly silenced the voices.
"Because he can't win. The senator is stalling. My people are reporting "Anyone-but- Hartma
"And you can?"
That self-confident grin that had galvanized a country. Like an arc light in its intensity. "Yes, I can." The smile faded, and he stared intently down at Tachyon. "I understand. I know abandonment, and people being mean to you, and saying you're nothing and nobody and can never be anything. I understand." His hand gripped the Takisian's shoulder.
Tachyon laid his hand over Jackson's. The same perfectly manicured nails, the same long slender fingers, but white on black. "Why is it when you and Barnett are reputed to serve the same god, your gods are so different?"
"A good question, Doctor. A very good question."
A Flying Ace glider sighed softly onto the tile at Tachyon's feet. He picked it up, stroked the molded white scarf with a forefinger. Jackson stared at the painted black face. His hand rose reflexively, and he drew his fingers down his cheek.
"Is your reluctance to back me entirely due to your loyalty, or is it because I'm black?"
Tach's head snapped up. "Burning Sky, no." He rose. "Believe me, Reverend, if I should ever decide to transfer my support from Gregg Hartma