Jack Martin opened his eyes.
The pain was there, again; a dull searing heat rolling across his
chest in savage throbs. He had awakened to this pain several times before,
he thought; he couldn't be sure, he had been heavily sedated, it was all
like a dream, a red-hot nightmare of agony.
But his mind seemed clear now, no matter what torture his body was
undergoing. He could feel the soft-focus grip of some opiate on his
consciousness, yes; but it was not enough to dull his wits.
He looked around the room. It looked enough like a hospital room,
with its institutional paint scheme, its aluminum trays, some sort of chart
at his feet. There was an IV drip of some kind running into his arm; some
sort of device took readings from him and recorded them in a series of
beeps from a machine on a table beside him. Like a hospital. Very
hospitable.
There were no windows.
No TV either, he noted with dismay. What, wouldn't my insurance
cover it? He smiled at the concept, but a spasm of pain from his chest
erased it.
He had jumped into the fire, just like that song he remembered from
when he was a kid; who was that, anyway? "You can jump into the fire, but
you'll never be free."
He looked around his cell-like room. Ain't it the truth.
It occurred to him that he had doubtlessly been drugged, and there
was a possibility that he had let slip some incriminating information.
Like, "Hey, hi, I'm with the FBI." He didn't think so, but there was that
possibility.
In which case they were healing him in order to grant him a really
special death.
Not a pleasant prospect.
Best not to think about it.
He made a tentative move toward sitting up. Bad idea. He probably
wouldn't be sitting up for another week. If ever.
No, he was getting better, there was no doubt about that. His burns
had been serious, there was no way they couldn't have been; but the point
of the exercise was for him to prove his mettle as a prospective Tiger,
Tiger terrorist. A ceremony where he either saves the kitten and dies or
lets it die and is (presumably) subsequently killed himself - for what
other outcome could there be? - makes no sense at all; how would they ever
get any members if it is literally impossible to pass the initiation? So
the fire trap must be survivable. And the survivor must be able to recover
to the point where he is as fit as or fitter than he was before his trial
by fire... terrorism being the demanding business that it is.
So he could expect to recover, and with any luck not be immediately
killed... what then?
He would be considered a full-fledged member of the crew, that's what.
Unless there were more stupid rites-of-passage. Jesus, his chest
hurt! Couldn't they just give goddam merit badges?
An image suddenly appeared in his mind, of the Leader, "Karloff",
dressed in a short-pants cub scout uniform bedecked with merit badges in
"Furrier Skinning" and "Eskimo Clubbing". This time he couldn't stop the
laugh that it conjured, despite the pain it caused him.
"We don't usually find Initiates laughing at this stage in the
Process," a voice from behind him said. "I thought your medication was
supposed to have been decreased."
Jack turned his head to the right, then regretted the rash action
as he felt talons of scar tissue digging into the skin of his throat. And
he hadn't needed to turn anyway. He knew the voice in an instant.
Karloff.
"Jack Martin," Karloff said. "Well. Look at you. You're a mess. A
scary, scarry mess."
The man Jack had come to think of as "Karloff" walked over to a
place beside the bed where Jack could see him clearly. For the first time
Jack got a clear look a the leader of Tiger, Tiger's face.
The resemblance to Boris Karloff was more of a matter of bearing
and impression rather than a direct feature-to-feature correlation. True,
the man before him was tall as Karloff, with the same intense, deep-set
eyes and imposing forehead. But the leader of Tiger, Tiger seemed much
younger than Karloff was in his prime; he was in his late-thirties or early
forties. A child of he seventies, Jack thought to himself.
"How are you feeling, Jack?" he asked, with a note of patrician
concern in his voice.
"Hurt," Jack managed to wheeze out, his vocal cords feeling clotted
with disuse.
Karloff nodded. "I suppose so. But birth is pain. And you have just
been reborn."
"Could I have had a Caesarean instead?" Jack managed to croak.
Karloff laughed paternally, a laugh which managed to sound both
genuine and phony within the same insane chuckle. "Fancy yourself an
Emperor, do you? We'll see. But before we can build the new Empire, we must
hose the blood of the old from the bricks of God's Kingdom on Earth. Allow
me to introduce myself, Jack. I'm Jeremy Krieghunde."
Karloff - Jeremy, that is - extended his hand, near enough to
Jack's so that he wouldn't have to reach too far in order to take it. With
a bit of exertion and quite a bit of pain Jack took it and shook, briefly.
"Call me Jerry." He smiled, too widely. It was a predator's smile,
though Jack sensed no malice in it toward him.
"Hi, Jerry," Jack said. It felt disturbing to address a man who had
tortured and killed over a dozen people as "Jerry". "Are you the leader?"
It was a dangerous question to ask, Jack realized, but he thought that it
would not seem an unusual query, given the situation.
"We are all equals here," Jerry said, "But you could say that I
wield the voice of the Wild. We move as brothers and sisters, we think as
individuals; but when the Voice of the Wild calls, we all take heed."
That's a yes, Jack thought. Translated from cultspeak.
Jerry walked down to the foot of the bed, where he stood,
appraising Jack's medical charts. "You've done well in the test of fire,
Jack. You didn't hesitate for a second. We were all very impressed."
"Has everyone been through this?" Jack thought about the gallery of
robed people attending his initiation. How much pain did that represent?
Could such agony be measured?
"Everyone has passed one test or another. Yours was not the
simplest, nor the severest. The Wild decides how you will stand before it."
And how many didn't make it, Jerry? How many has "the Wild" claimed
in this mad game of yours?
Watch it, Jack thought to himself. Your thoughts will show on your
face. You're doped up, you know. "Is the kitten alright?" He knew that
would be the right thing to ask. Jerry's face showed him that he was
correct.
"Of course," Jerry replied. "Thanks to you." Jerry took two steps
back to the head of the bed and clapped Jack on the shoulder, away from the
burns but still making him wince.
Yeah, Jack's mind said, out of his control. And if the cat had
died, that would have been your fault, too, Jack. Never mind that the Wild
Child himself was the one who dropped it. This is not a rational person,
Jack. Not rational at all.
Be very, very careful.
"Everyone was impressed with you, Jack," Jerry said, with a sincere
smile. "The pain will fade, but the impression you made will carry you
forward. We're already talking about which of our future rescues you would
be suited for."
"I'm honored."
"You made your decision in an instant, and implemented it with the
surety of a panther. Of a panther." He nodded to emphasize the analogy. "I
think of you now as part cat."
"Meow." Jack couldn't resist, but Jerry seemed to take him seriously.
"Meow indeed. What cats know they won't say. I like that about
them. Don't you?"
"I've known some talkative cats in my day..."
"They talk their own language, and only they know what they really
mean. Does 'meow' mean, 'Feed me, please' or 'feed me dammit'? Only cats
know for sure."
"Or 'meow' could mean 'we strike at midnight'."
"It could. But the idea of cats uniting in rebellion is so...
un-catlike. Dogs, now, dogs would do that. But cats? For them, the anarchic
individual insurrection is the only strategy. Monkeywrenching, sabotage,
assassination. Cats are guerillas. Cats are snipers."
Jerry seemed to take the whole subject a bit too seriously, so Jack
didn't say anything more.
"Are you in great pain?" Jerry asked, after Jack had been silent
for a moment. "I can have your nurse bring some morphine."
He most certainly was. But the fear of what he might reveal under
drug-induced delirium stayed his tongue. "I'm fine, thanks."
"I know that you are not 'fine', I can see it in your eyes. But I
respect your wish to subdue the pain on your own terms. Brave. Strong.
Panther."
Jerry nodded to himself as he spoke. Jack felt his eyeballs rolling
up in his head as a fresh wave of agony swept across him. But he maintained
his calm. "What rescues are being planned?" he asked, as nonchalantly as
possible.
"No one may know details of actions they aren't involved in," Jerry
said, understandingly. "One of the first rules of commando organization. I
can understand your desire to know; I am, of course, aware of all of our
upcoming rescues and they are exciting indeed. And I'm sure you'd love to
be able to pick just which action to get involved with. But that's not the
way things are done.
"But rest assured, I have taken your skills to heart. I've chosen
for you a cream of a mission; the most challenging, most exciting, and,
sure to be, most talked about event in our history. It's a peach. A smooth
peach."
Jerry reached under his robe and pulled out a folded-over
newspaper. He tossed it on the bed.
An article showed above the fold. Jack saw by the page number that
this was an item from one of the back sections, "Arts and entertainment",
most likely. There was a focus of a grinning young man in an Indiana Jones
hat. Behind him, a large structure that could only be one thing: a circus
tent.
The headline read: "Old fashioned circus returns" and below it, in
smaller type: "McCrae circus to make spring tour".
Jack looked up at Jerry.
Jerry grinned.
"Tell me, do you like the circus?"