The Road to Amber (44 page)

Croyd heard a panicked gasping as he swore, unlike any doggy sound with which he was familiar. Glancing downward and back into the shadows, he beheld the quivering, amorphous form of Snotman, generally conceded to be the most disgusting inhabitant ofJokertown, as he cringed in the corner and ate the remains of Croyd’s donut.

Every square inch of the man’s surface seemed covered with green mucus, which ran steadily from him and added to the stinking puddle in which he crouched. Whatever garments he had on were so saturated with it as to have become barely distinguishable—like his features.

“For Christ’s sake! That’s filthy and I was eating on it!” Croyd said. “Have a fresh one.” He extended the bag toward Snotman, who did not move. “It’s okay,” he added, and finally he set the bag down on the bottom step and returned to watching the watchers.

Snotman finished the discarded fragment and remained still for some time. Finally, he asked, “For me?”

His voice was a liquid, snotty, snuffling thing.

“Yeah, finish ‘em. I’m full,” Croyd said. “I didn’t know you could talk.”

“Nobody to talk to,” Snotman replied.

“Well—yeah. That’s the breaks, I guess.”

“People say I make them lose their appetites. Is that why you don’t want the rest?”

“No,” Croyd said. “I got a problem. I’m trying to figure what to do next. There’re some guys up there have my place covered. I’m deciding whether to take them out or just go away. You don’t bother me, even with that gunk allover you. I’ve looked as bad myself on occasion.”

“You? How?”

“I’m Croyd Crenson, the one they call the Sleeper. I change appearance every time I sleep. Sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes It lsn’t.”

“Could I?”

“What? Oh, change again? I’m a special case, is what it is. I don’t know any way I could share that with other people. Believe me, you wouldn’t want a regular diet of it.”

“Just once would be enough,” Snotman answered, opening the bag and taking out a donut. “Why are you taking a pill? Are you sick?”

“No, it’s just something to help me stay alert. I can’t afford to sleep for a long time.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story. Very long.”

“Nobody tells me stories anymore.”

“What the hell. Why not?” Croyd said.

W
hen Snotman grew ill, Croyd snapped the lock on the door behind him, letting him into the dusty ruin of a small two-room apartment whose owner was obviously using the place to store damaged furniture. He located a threadbare couch on which the glistening joker sprawled, quivering. He rinsed a jelly jar he found near a basin in the next room and took him a drink of water. Sweeping aside a mess of ancient drug paraphernalia, Croyd seated himself on a small cracked bench as the other sipped.

“You been sick?” Croyd asked him.

“No. I mean, I always feel like I’ve got a cold, but this is different. I feel sort of like I did a long time ago, when it all started.”

Croyd covered the shivering joker with a pile of curtains he found in a corner, then seated himself again.

“Finish telling me what happened,” Snotman said after a time.

“Oh, yeah.” Croyd popped a methamphet and a dex and continued his tale. When Snotman passed out, Croyd did not notice. He kept talking until he realized that Snotman’s skin had gone dry. Then he grew still and watched, for the man’s features seemed slowly to be rearranging themselves. Even speeded, Croyd was able to spot the onset of a wild card attack. But even speeded, this did not quite make sense. Snotman was already a joker and Croyd had never heard of anyone—himself excluded—coming down with it a second time.

He shook his head, rose and paced, stepped outside. It was afternoon now, and he was hungry again. It took him a few moments to spot the new shift that had taken over surveillance of his quarters. He decided against disposing of them. The most sensible thing to do, he guessed, would be to go and get a bite to eat, then come back and keep an eye on the now-transforming Snotman through his crisis, one way or the other. Then clear out, go deeper underground.

In the distance a siren wailed. Another Red Cross helicopter came and went, low, from the southeast, heading uptown. Memories of that first mad Wild Card Day swam in his head, and Croyd decided that perhaps he’d better acquire a new pad even before he ate. He knew just the sleaze-bin, not too far away, where he could get in off the streets and no questions asked, provided they had a vacancy—which was generally the case. He detoured to check it out.

Like a mating call, another siren answered the first, from the opposite direction. Croyd waved at the man who hung upside down by his feet from a lamppost, but the fellow took offense or grew frightened and flew away.

From somewhere he heard a loudspeaker mentioning his name, probably saying terrible things about him.

His fingers tightened on the fender of a parked car. The metal squealed as he pulled at it, tearing a wide strip loose. He turned then, bending it, folding it, blood dripping from a tear in his hand. He would find that speaker and destroy it, whether it was high on a buildingside or the top of a cop car. He would stop them from talking about him. He would…

That would give him away, though—he realized in a moment’s clarity—to his enemies, who could be anybody. Anybody except the guy with the wild card virus, and Snotman couldn’t be anybody’s enemy just now. Croyd hurled the piece of metal across the street, then threw back his head and began to howl. Things were getting complicated again. And nasty. He needed something to calm his nerves.

He plunged his bloody hand into his pocket, withdrew a fistful of pills, and gulped them without looking to see what they were. He had to get presentable to go and get a room.

He ran his fingers through his hair, brushed off his clothes, began walking at a normal pace. It wasn’t far.

A
gain they were after him. If you can’t even trust your doctor, he wondered, who can you trust? The sirens’ wails were almost a steady sheet of sound now.

He hurled chunks of concrete, broke streetlights, and dashed from alley to doorway. He crouched within parked cars. He watched the choppers go by, listening to the steady
phut-phut
of their blades. Every now and then he heard parts of appeals over some loudspeaker or other. They were talking to him, lying to him, asking him to turn himself in. He chuckled. That would be the day.

Was it all Tachy’s fault again? An image flashed before his mind’s eye, of Jetboy’s small plane darting like a tiny fish among great, grazing whales there in the half-clouded sky of an afternoon. Back when it all began. What had ever happened to Joe Sarzanno?

He smelled smoke. Why did things always get burned in times of trouble? He rubbed his temples and yawned. Automatically he sought in his pocket after a pill, but there was nothing there. He tore open the door to a Coke machine before a darkened service station, broke into the coin box, then fed quarters back into the mechanism, collected a Coke for either hand, and walked away sipping.

After a time he found himself standing before the Jokertown Dime Museum, wanting to go inside and realizing that the place was closed.

He stood undecided for perhaps ten seconds. Then a siren sounded nearby. Probably just around the corner. He moved forward, snapped the lock, and entered. He left the price of admission on the little desk to his left and as an afterthought, tossed in something for the lock.

He sat on a bench for a while, watching shadows. Every now and then he rose, strolled, and returned. He saw again the golden butterfly, poised as if about to depart from the golden monkey wrench, both of them transmuted by the short-lived ace called Midas. He looked again at the jars of joker fetuses, and at a buckled section of a metal door bearing Devil John’s hoofprint.

He walked among the Great Events in Wild Card History dioramas pressing the button over and over again at the Earth vs. Swarm display. Each time that he hit it, Modular Man fired his laser at a Swarm monster. Then he located one that made the statue of the Howler scream…

It was not until his final Coke was down to its last swallow that he noticed the diminutive human skin, stuffed, displayed in a case. He pressed nearer, squinting, and read the card that identified it as having been found in an alley. He sucked in his breath as the recognition hit him.

“Poor Gimli,” he said. “Who could have done this to you? And where are your insides? My stomach turns at it. Where are your wisecracks now? Go to Barnett, tell him to preach till all hell freezes. In the end it’ll be his hide, too.”

He turned away. He yawned again. His limbs were heavy. Rounding a corner, he beheld three metal shells, suspended by long cables in the middle of the air. He halted and regarded them, realizing immediately what they were.

On a whim he leaped and slapped the nearest of the three—an armor-plated VW body. It rang all about him and swayed slightly on its moorings, and he sprang a second time and slapped it again before another yawning jag seized him.

“Have shell, will travel,” he muttered. “Always safe in there, weren’t you, Turtle—so long as you didn’t stick your neck out?”

He began to chuckle again, then stopped as he turned to the one he remembered most vividly—the sixties model—and he could not reach high enough to trace the peace symbol on its side, but” ‘Make love, not war,”’ he read, the motto painted into a flower-form mandala. “Shit, tell that to the guys trying to kill me.

“Always wondered what it looked like inside,” he added, and he leaped and hooked his fingers over the edge and drew himself upward.

The vehicle swayed but held his weight easily. In a minute he was sequestered within.

“Ah, sweet claustrophobia!” he sighed. “It
does
feel safe. I could…”

He closed his eyes. After a time he shimmered faintly.

Before switching to English literature, Zelazny majored in psychology and worked in a lab for over a year. His knowledge of and interest in psychology created the futuristic psychiatrist and the ro-womb (instead of a couch) in “He Who Shapes” /
The Dream Master
. Zelazny revisited psychology and technology as themes in this third Croyd Crenson tale; Croyd manages to sleep by using a device for brain wave entrainment and suggestion.

In its first appearance in
Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty
, this story interweaves with tales written by other authors. At the story’s end, in his hyped-up state Croyd has become Typhoid Croyd, unwittingly transmitting the Wild Card virus to all he encounters.

A
concerto
is a musical composition for a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra. Likewise, this story intermingles with others in this novel. A
siren
is a mythological woman whose singing lures sailors onto rocks; it can also mean a beautiful but dangerous woman; it is also the noise made by emergency vehicles. In this story, it refers to all three—Veronica, who leads Croyd further into addiction; Veronica, whom Croyd infects, transforms into an Ace who sucks the life out of males (detailed in a linked story); and the sirens at the end because of the plague’s recurrence and the search for Croyd.
Serotonin
is a neurotransmitter and hormone produced by the brain; it regulates sleep and other behaviors (mood, appetite, sexuality, aggression, etc).

Chianti
is Italy’s most famous red wine.
Theotocopolos
was the painter El Greco.
Marcelled
hair has multiple waves set by a curling iron.
Chateau d’Yquem
is French wine from Graves in the southern part of Bordeaux.
Compound eyes
of bees and other insects have thousands of facets. Croyd’s eyes have only
216
.
Black Beauties
contain amphetamine (Speed) and dextroamphetamine.
Two-carafe problem
pays homage to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, for whom challenging puzzles would be a “three-pipe problem” in the original tales, and a “two-pipe problem” beginning in 1959’s film adaptation of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.
Jack Daniels
is a brand of whiskey;
Schlitz
is a brand of beer.
Wattles
are fleshy lobes that hang from the throat turkeys and some other birds. A
palomino
is a horse with a golden coat and a white mane and tail.
Semantics
is study of word meanings.
Bennies
are amphetamines and
dexes
are dextroamphetamines.
Decolletage
is a low-cut neckline on a woman’s dress.
Si
means yes.

Numerous addictive stimulants are mentioned in rapid succession—
purple hearts
are blue triangular Drinamyl containing both Dextroamphetamine and Amobarbital (a barbiturate);
benz
is benzadrine;
bombitas
is a mix of heroin and amphetamines;
speedballs
are combination heroin and cocaine;
STP
is DOM or 4-Methyl-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine;
yage
is Ayahuasca, a plant with near-mythical hallucinogenic properties;
Desoxyn
is methamphetamines/speed;
Desbutol
is a combination of methamphetamine and nembutal (pentobarbital);
Khat
is the alkaloid stimulant cathinone;
huilca
is DMT or dimethyltryptamine;
pituri
is an aboriginal drug that contains 5% nicotine (tobacco contains about 1 %);
kratom
is a leaf containing many different alkaloids of which the main component may be 7-hydroxymitragynine;
Percodan
is oxycodone and aspirin.

Abo
means aboriginal, now considered pejorative.
Tsingtao
is a Chinese beer;
feng shui
is the Chinese practice which seeks harmony with the environment by arranging spaces;
chi
is the spiritual energy that every living being possesses;
ba-gua
is an eight-sided “feng shui map” used to determine which part of a living space correlates with a particular situation in one’s life.
Ephemera
are items of passing interest. A
tong
is a secret criminal organization of Chinese Americans;
Yakuza
are Japanese gangsters.
Takisian
are the people of Takis, Dr. Tachyon’s planet of origin and the source of the Wild Card virus.
Horse
is heroin;
snow
is cocaine.
French blue
are amphetamines;
French green
is not a street drug name.
Pyrahex
may be an invented term.