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.In the next five months I willsee veldts and mountains, Rio and Cairo, the Khyber Pass and the Straits ofGibraltar, the Outback and the Champs-Elysees - all very far from home for a manwho has often been called the mayor of Jokertown.Jokertown, of course, has nomayor.It is a neighborhood, a ghetto neighborhood at that, and not a city.Jokertown is more than a place though.It is a condition, a state of mind.Perhapsin that sense my title is not undeserved.I have been a joker since the beginning.Forty years ago, when Jetboy diedin the skies over Manhattan and loosed the wild card upon the world, I wastwenty-nine years of age, an investment banker with a lovely wife, a two-year-olddaughter, and a bright future ahead of me.A month later, when I was finallyreleased from the hospital, I was a monstrosity with a pink elephantine trunkgrowing from the center of my face where my nose had been.There are sevenperfectly functional fingers at the end of my trunk, and over the years I havebecome quite adept with this ‘third hand.’ Were I suddenly restored to so-callednormal humanity, I believe it would be as traumatic as if one of my limbs wereamputated.With my trunk I am ironically somewhat more than human.andinfinitely less.My lovely wife left me within two weeks of my release from the hospital, atapproximately the same time that Chase Manhattan informed me that my serviceswould no longer be required.I moved to Jokertown nine months later, followingmy eviction from my Riverside Drive apartment for ‘health reasons.’ I last saw mydaughter in 1948.She was married in June of 1964, divorced in 1969, remarriedin June of 1972.She has a fondness for June weddings, it seems.I was invited toneither of them.The private detective I hired informs me that she and herhusband now live in Salem, Oregon, and that I have two grandchildren, a boy anda girl, one from each marriage.I sincerely doubt that either knows that theirgrandfather is the mayor of Jokertown.I am the founder and president emeritus of the Jokers’ Anti-DefamationLeague, or JADL, the oldest and largest organization dedicated to the preservationof civil rights for the victims of the wild card virus.The JADL has had its failures,but overall it has accomplished great good.I am also a moderately successfulbusinessman.I own one of New York’s most storied and elegant nightclubs, theFunhouse, where jokers and nats and aces have enjoyed all the top joker cabaretacts for more than two decades.The Funhouse has been losing money steadily forthe last five years, but no one knows that except me and my accountant.I keep itopen because it is, after all, the Funhouse, and were it to close, Jokertown wouldseem a poorer place.Next month I will be seventy years of age.My doctor tells me that I will not live to be seventy-one.The cancer hadalready metastasized before it was diagnosed.Even jokers cling stubbornly to life,and I have been doing the chemotherapy and the radiation treatments for half ayear now, but the cancer shows no sign of remission.My doctor tells me the trip I am about to embark on will probably takemonths off my life.I have my prescriptions and will dutifully continue to take thepills, but when one is globe-hopping, radiation therapy must be forgone.I haveaccepted this.Mary and I often talked of a trip around the world, in those days before thewild card when we were young and in love.I could never have dreamt that Iwould finally take that trip without her, in the twilight of my life, and atgovernment expense, as a delegate on a fact-finding mission organized andfunded by the Senate Committee on Ace Resources and Endeavors, under theofficial sponsorship of the United Nations and the World Health Organization.Wewill visit every continent but Antarctica and call upon thirty-nine differentcountries (some only for a few hours), and our official charge is to investigate thetreatment of wild card victims in cultures around the world.There are twenty-one delegates, only five of whom are jokers.I suppose myselection is a great honor, recognition of my achievements and my status as acommunity leader.I believe I have my good friend Dr Tachyon to thank for it.But then, I have my good friend Dr Tachyon to thank for a great manythings.* * * *DECEMBER 1/NEW YORK CITY:The journey is off to an inauspicious start.For the last hour we have beenholding on the runway at Tomlin International, waiting for clearance for takeoff.The problem, we are informed, is not here, but down in Havana.So we wait.Our plane is a custom 747 that the press has dubbed the Stacked Deck.Theentire central cabin has been converted to our requirements, the seats replacedwith a small medical laboratory, a press room for the print journalists, and aminiature television ‘studio for their electronic counterparts.The newsmenthemselves have been segregated in the tail.Already they’ve made it their own.Iwas back there twenty minutes ago and found a poker game in progress.Thebusinessclass cabin is full of aides, assistants, secretaries, publicists, and securitypersonnel.First class is supposedly reserved exclusively for the delegates.As there are only twenty-one delegates, we rattle around like peas in a pod.Even here the ghettoes persist jokers tend to sit with jokers, nats with nats, aceswith aces.Hartmann is the only man aboard who seems entirely comfortable with allthree groups.He greeted me warmly at the press conference and sat with Howardand myself for a few moments after boarding, talking earnestly about his hopesfor the trip.It is difficult not to like the senator.Jokertown has delivered him hugemajorities in each of his campaigns as far back as his term as mayor, and nowonderno other politician has worked so long and hard to defend jokers’ rights.Hartmann gives me hope; he’s living proof that there can indeed be trust andmutual respect between joker and nat.He’s a decent, honorable man, and inthese days when fanatics such as Leo Barnett are inflaming the old hatreds andprejudices, jokers need all the friends they can get in the halls of power.Dr.Tachyon and Senator Hartmann co-chair the delegation.Tachyonarrived dressed like a foreign correspondent from some film noir classic, in atrench coat covered with belts, buttons, and epaulettes, a snap-brim fedorarakishly tilted to one side [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]