Read Wild Cards [09] Jokertown Shuffle for Free Online Page B

that he'd dragged up from the back. "I don't know," Brennan said. "But I don't believe that things are as they seem. As is usual in this town."
    He started the van and pulled away from the curb. "Where're we headed?" Brutus asked.
    Brennan glanced at him as he drove into an alley that bordered Kien's apartment building. "I'm going back to the clinic," Brennan said, "but you're staying behind to keep an eye on things here."
    Brutus stretched, peering over the edge of the dashboard. "It looks cold out there," he said.
    "All the more reason to find a way inside as soon as you can."
    "Right."
    Brennan pulled up next to a pile of overflowing garbage cans and opened the van's passenger door.
    "So what am I supposed to be watching?" Brutus asked. "Cunningham."
    "Why?"
    Brennan shook his head. "I'm not sure. Cunningham seemed ... odd. Not normal. I can't really put my finger on it, but things aren't right. He called me `Captain.' He's never called me that before. There's no way he could even know I'd been a captain in the army... unless..." Brennan shook his head again.
    Brutus grunted and jumped down from the van. The sun had risen, but the sky was dark with clouds and the promise of snow. A cold wind cut through the alley as Brutus scurried behind a pile of garbage, mumbling to himself. Brennan leaned out of the van's passenger door as Brutus disappeared in the trash.
    "And Brutus."
    The manikin poked his head from around a greasestained brown-paper bag. "Yeah?"
    "Be careful."
    The homunculus smiled. "You too, boss," he said, then vanished into the garbage.
    Brennan pulled the door shut and drove off, telling himself not to worry. Brutus had been one of the Chrysalis's best spies. He knew how to take care of himself.
    Chrysalis. His thoughts turned to her for the first time in quite a while. They were linked inextricably with the events that had occurred the last time he'd seen Tachyon, when he confronted the doctor, Jay Ackroyd, the EL, and Hiram Worchester, Chrysalis's murderer.
    Ackroyd had been incensed with Brennan. For a man neck-deep in a sordid and violent business, he had a more than somewhat unrealistic view about violence. But Brennan didn't hold that against him. He never held a man's ideals against him.
    But Tachyon. Tachyon had missed an important point with his speech about slavish obedience to the letter of the law. Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.
    The only thing a man can do is decide for himself what is right or wrong and what must be done to combat the wrong. And then he must face the consequences of his decision, no matter what they are.
    Brennan pulled up before the Jokertown Clinic, killed the engine, and got out of the van. He walked through the sliding glass doors that led into the receiving area and entered chaos.
    A half-hysterical woman was shouting to a harried-looking nurse that no, dammit, her baby was always that sort of suffocated purplish color, but still, her gills just weren't working right, while another white-uniformed nurse was explaining to an excessively furry man that Blue Cross usually didn't consider electrolysis a necessary medical procedure, no matter how badly he wanted a career in the food-service industry. Another joker-female and quite attractive if you discounted the mottled, flaking condition of her skin was sitting reading an eight-month-old copy of National Geographic while her toddlers slithered after each other in and out of the chairs, circling around a gaunt, hollow-eyed old joker who was coughing continually and spitting up unhealthy-looking gobs of something into a styrofoam cup clutched firmly in his chelate forepaws.
    Someone behind Brennan