Read Online Wild Cards [09] Jokertown Shuffle by George R.R. Martin - Free Book Online Page A

person sitting in the chair looked up at him. Kien stared. It was a small Asian man, white-haired, wrinkle-faced, with a long, sparse chin beard. He was dressed in shabby, patched clothes. It was his father.
    Kien's gun shook as he pointed it at him.
    "Such a son," his father said in the familiar hated tone of voice.
    The old man shook his head sadly, and Kien started to lower the gun. It's a trick, he suddenly thought. It's got to be a trick. He raised the gun again, trembling fingers almost pulling the trigger unwillingly.
    "Who are you?" Kien asked.
    The image of his father shook his head again, sadly. "It is an evil child who doesn't recognize his own father, Hsiang Yu," the apparition said.
    "What do you want from me?" Kien shouted, unnerved at the spectre's use of his real name.
    His father shook his head. "Only the respect due me. For that," he continued, "I will give you a gift. Your greatest, fondest desire."
    "What's that?" Kien asked in a shaken voice.
    "Do you want the head of Daniel Brennan?" his father purred.
    Kien's eyes grew wide. "You know I do."
    "Then you shall have it," Kien's father told him. "If," he added in the voice of a devil, "you are man enough to take it."
    His father pointed to the other side of the bed. Kien carefully leaned forward, looking over the bed, and saw Brennan lying asleep on the floor.
    Kien smiled wolfishly. "This is a great gift, oh Father," he said, and pointed his gun at Brennan.
    His father shook his head. "You were always one for taking the easy way, my son," he said.
    Kien glanced at him, but before he could say anything, there was a sudden, terrifying wrenching. Kien felt his mind whirling into a mad vortex. He closed his eyes, but it wouldn't stop. He tried to vomit, but he couldn't. He swallowed hot bile, and when he opened his eyes again, he lurched forward to steady himself against the great teakwood desk that stood in the office of his apartment that overlooked Central Park.
    He took a deep breath, fighting the nausea still rumbling through his stomach, and looked around. It was his office, all right. Everything looked normal. All his art treasures were in their places, all his expensive furniture polished and unmarred, even the surface of his teakwood desk, which had been horribly damaged during his faked death when that idiot Blaise had pinned his watchdog joker to its surface with a letter opener.
    He ran his hand pensively across the desktop that was so highly polished that he could see himself in it. He leaned forward for a closer look, mumbling to himself as he realized that he was back in his old body. He was Kien again. He looked at his right hand and wrung it with his left, and then laughed a short relieved laugh. At least he had two whole hands. He looked away, startled when the door to his office opened.
    Wyrm stood in the doorway. But that couldn't be. Wyrm was dead. He looked dead, Kien suddenly realized-and pissed.
    "I wasss your loyal ssservant," the scaleless reptiloid joker hissed, "and I died becausssse of your ssschemes."
    "It wasn't my fault," Kien protested. He still half refused to believe that Wyrm was standing before him, but the evidence was hard to ignore. It looked like Wyrm, talked like Wyrm, and even had a big ugly wound in its throat where Fadeout had stuck it with the same letter opener that had killed the watchdog joker. "Fadeout killed you," Kien added. Wyrm approached, still looking angry, and Kien drew back behind his desk. Wyrm was inhumanly strong, and his bite was highly poisonous. Kien knew that he was no match for the joker.
    "I died," Wyrm hissed furiously, "becaussse you wouldn't give me the loyalty I alwayssss gave you." He loomed over Kien like an avatar of death, and the general cringed. Kien pictured Wyrm's great gaping maw crunching down ruthlessly on his throat.
    "Don't," he managed to get out. "Don't," he repeated, shielding his face with his arms.
    Wyrm drew back with a sneer. "You're not to meet your dessstiny at my