Free Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel by George R. R. Martin, Melinda M. Snodgrass Page A

had her tied up. She smiled around a full mouth, looking up at him as he patted her head.
    Eddie’s fingers tightened on his brush and his mouth twisted into a sardonic grin as he detailed the woman’s thumb-sized nipples.

    After Eddie had finished the panel, cleaned his brushes, and taped the new pages up on the wall above his bed, he settled down in his chair with a small sketchpad and a black fine-point felt-tip.
    Eddie tapped his fingertips together, pondering options and possibilities. Then he began to draw. With just a few quick lines, a familiar form began to take shape on the pad in his lap.
    As Eddie sketched, something like white smoke began to swirl in the air, condensing and thickening, spiraling downward into a hazy bowling pin shape about seven feet tall. Bulbous arms and legs coalesced from the mist, a small head, an enormous cucumber schnoz.
    Eddie looked up from his completed sketch of The Gulloon to see the same character looming over him in person, his big clodhopper boots pigeon-toed on the scuffed vinyl of Eddie’s floor. He raised one hand and gave Eddie a little three-fingered wave. The Gulloon didn’t talk.
    Through The Gulloon’s eyes Eddie saw himself, a hunched warty excrescence of a joker, but that didn’t last long. The Gulloon turned away, clambered up onto the kitchenette counter, and squeezed through the finger’s-width gap that was always left open at the bottom of the window. With an audible pop he reappeared on the other side, pausing a moment on the fire escape to mold himself back into his usual shape. Then he ambled down the fire escape ladder toward the street.
    Eddie himself remained in his chair, conscious and aware, but he closed his eyes to block out the view of his apartment. It was easier that way.

    The Gulloon wasn’t a rooftop peeper like Gary Glitch; he liked to lurk in the shadows until he saw a pretty girl, then follow her home and look in her window. The big guy was surprisingly quiet on his feet. But tonight there was little foot traffic in Jokertown, and what there was all seemed to be heading in one direction. Curious, he joined in the flow.
    Their destination was the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker, at the door of which Quasiman stood handing out flyers. The Gulloon took one. “ HAVE YOU SEEN US ?” it said, above a grid of sixteen photos. Every one of them was a joker.
    The Gulloon, one of Eddie’s first creations, was kind of funny-looking even for a joker … smooth and round and, frankly, cartoonish. But this crowd seemed preoccupied enough that he felt he could step out of the shadows without attracting too much attention. And, though he did get a few curious glances, no one in the crowd of winged, tentacled, and scaled jokers seemed too perturbed by his appearance. He entered and descended the stairs to the community hall.
    The room was filling up fast. The Gulloon stood at the back of the crowd, between a bull-like man and an enormous joker who seemed to be made of gray rock, and edged back into the corner so nobody would touch him. The strange material that made up Eddie’s characters’ flesh and clothing felt kind of like Styrofoam, stiff and light and fragile.
    As The Gulloon shifted around, peering around the heads of those even taller than himself, he spotted the snake-man—Infamous Black Tongue, that was what he was called—in the crowd. But though even the easygoing Gulloon tensed at the sight, Eddie reminded himself that the snake was just as welcome in the church as any other joker, and he had no reason to suspect The Gulloon of anything. Still, The Gulloon kept one eye on him as the crowd took their seats.
    The murmuring crowd quieted as Father Squid rose and stood at the lectern. “Thank you for coming tonight,” he said, the tentacles of his lower face quivering with each consonant. “As you know, Jokertown has been suffering a series of disappearances. It’s said that some jokers have been snatched from the street. Others have simply