Marked Cards

by George R. R. Martin

"I'll give you what advice I can. But - like I said ..."

  How pathetic was it, Shad wondered that he was asking moral comfort and suasion from a onetime professional criminal who had slept away nine-tenths of his life since 1946, and who spent most of his waking hours out of his mind on crank?

  "That's okay," Shad said. "Whatever you can do."

  "Where do we start?" Croyd asked.

  "Hartmann gave me a list - it's pretty much the same one he gave on television. I was going to leave it here for you, for when you woke up ..." Shad's voice trailed away as he looked up to see a man staring back at him, a black man with a cold, intent expression and scars that creased the uniformity of his short prison hair, a man straining on the very edge of violence. With humming nerves Shad recognized the man.

  Himself. Suddenly Croyd looked just like the escaped homicidal maniac Neil Carton Langford, aka Black Shadow.

  "Croyd," Shad said, "I think I found out what your power is."

  "Yeah? What?"

  "Take a look at yourself in the bathroom mirror."

  Croyd munched pizza as he ambled to the bathroom and stared into the mirror. A brown-haired white man stared back.

  "So?" he said.

  Shad flailed for an explanation. "To me you look like someone else. You look like me."

  "Say again?"

  "It's got to be a kind of projection telepathy. You make people think you look like someone else, but your appearance really doesn't change."

  "Huh." He scowled at the mirror, drew his brows together, and puffed out his cheeks. Then he looked at Shad. "Who do I look like now?"

  "Still me."

  "I was trying to do Richard Nixon. No joy, huh?"

  "No."

  Croyd ambled back into the kitchen for pizza. "I'll work with it a bit and see what happens. Meantime, you tell me about the Sharks."

  "Well, for starters, it looks like there's gonna be a convention of them in a few days in Washington."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Herzenhagen propped himself up in bed and watched as Peggy Durand pulled her tight jeans up over her hips, her butt wriggling back and forth as she tugged them on. Watching Peggy dress was becoming his second-favorite afternoon activity.

  She saw him watching - she always saw him watching - and gave him a flirtatious glance over her shoulder. "Are you horny again?"

  "Flatterer."

  She sat next to him, patted his round, ruddy tummy. "And they say old men can't cut the mustard anymore."

  "They just need the right inspiration."

  "Just think what you'll be able to do when you finally get a young body. You're going to wear me out."

  He laughed. "Goodbye, Peggy." Herzenhagen gave her a serious look. "Take care, now."

  "No one will follow me to Latchkey. No problem."

  "And how are our jumper friends?"

  Peggy looked amused. "Mam'zell's restless. Life on a little Maryland farm isn't really to her taste. The others - " She shrugged. "They're happy with their toys."

  "Let's remember to keep them happy."

  They're the things that make us as gods.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Peggy Durand used multiple evasion procedures on her way to the Maryland farm. But she hadn't checked her car for bugs; and Shad and Croyd were able to follow the two transmitters in her car, and arrived at the farm called Latchkey without having to keep her vehicle in sight.

  You didn't want to be in sight of the target, Shad knew. Not if there were jumpers involved.

  Croyd and Shad had emptied their various hiding places and come south with a smoky-windowed van filled with enough weapons to outfit a SEAL team, and sufficient surveillance gear to supply a Central American intelligence agency. There was even room for Shad's motorbike in the back.

  Shad drove slowly past the farm once, then found an elm tree by the road and went up with a pair of binoculars. He scanned Latchkey slowly, saw the electronic gate, the two guards ambling around the buildings, and a young girl in a leather jacket kicking around the back half-section like she was bored and looking for something to do.

  "Ahem." Croyd's voice.

  Shad looked down and saw him standing at the foot of the tree. He looked like the waiter who'd brought them their room service breakfast at the Statler that morning, a tall, thin Somali in a white uniform.

  "I can't climb like you can," the waiter said in Croyd's voice.

  "Right."

  Shad dropped down the tree, picked up Croyd, and with a certain amount of effort carried him to a convenient limb. By the time he arrived, Croyd looked like the little old lady who'd served them the crabcakes they'd eaten for lunch the day before.

  Croyd was still honing his power. As Shad had guessed, he used a form of projection telepathy to convince other people that he looked like someone else. But he couldn't look like just anyone - he had to be around a person for a while in order to "absorb" his looks. He couldn't look like Richard Nixon unless he'd spent at least a few minutes hanging around the real thing.

  Mirrors would give him away. So would his voice - he never sounded like anyone but Croyd. This was going to demand a certain amount of caution in using his power.

  Shad handed Croyd his binoculars.

  "So far as I can tell, the security isn't much," he said. "But there are probably alarms out there, and I'd have to get a closer look at them tonight. After we get back from the meet at Hughes' place."

  He thought about the last time he'd met with jumpers, and old bullet wounds - ribs and leg - began to ache. He realized he was having a hard time breathing, that his heart was racing. He remembered lying in his own blood as he leaned against a brick wall in Jokertown, remembered the warmth of Chalktalk's breath as she kissed him.

  No, he thought. It wasn't going to be like that.

  This time it was going without a hitch.

  Croyd yawned vastly. Shad looked at him in surprise. "You just yawned."

  "I must have."

  "You're not getting sleepy, are you?"

  Croyd lowered the binoculars and looked surprised. "Maybe I am. And since I didn't sleep very long, either, maybe I'm doing everything faster this time around."

  Shad just looked at him. Without a hitch, he thought, right.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Herzenhagen waited for Senator Flynn and watched Howard Hughes do bench presses. The old man grunted as he did his reps. Fourteen, fifteen ...

  The heavy iron free weights clanged as Hughes dropped them onto the weight bench supports. He sat up, mopped his little goatee with a towel, and then moved toward the curling machine.

  There was a buzz from the wall speakerphone. "Senator Flynn is here, sir. I'm sending him up."

  Hughes looked at Herzenhagen. "Open the door, will you, Philip?"

  The machine clanked as Hughes began to do arm curls. Herzenhagen rose and opened the door for Flynn. While he waited for the senator to leave the elevator he turned to gaze out the clear glass wall of Hughes' penthouse. The Washington Monument, some miles distant, thrust out of a murky haze of ozone and auto exhaust.

  Hughes was a fanatic about his health. He was so terrified of the wild card virus that he filtered the air in every one of his residences so as to weed out any random spores. He worked out daily in a gym that he dragged with him from place to place on his own aircraft. His diet was supervised by a full-time employee - a gorgeous redhead - who, Hughes maintained, also fucked like a weasel.

  At least it was better than in the old days. Herzenhagen remembered the insomniac Hughes who kept a dozen starlets stashed in apartments throughout Los Angeles, and who ate trash, hot dogs and corned beef hash right out of the can, as his driver shuttled him, all night long, from one girl to the next.... The current lifestyle seemed a lot healthier.

  And it worked. Hughes was in amazing shape for someone his age. Perhaps he could star in a TV show about it, Herzenhagen thought, Eightysomething.

  Flynn entered. He wore a western suit and a string tie and bore the dark skin a
nd high cheekbones of his Shawnee ancestors. Herzenhagen shook his hand.

  Hughes grinned with effort. "Would you like a drink, Henry?"

  Flynn looked around the room. "Carrot juice?"

  "We can find you the hard stuff if we look."

  "I don't really have time. I've got a meeting with field investigators at three."

  Prosecuting wild cards, of course, for violations of the registration and public health acts.

  "To business, then," Herzenhagen said. He started to light a cigarette, saw Hughes' look, then sighed and put it away. "A triple jump, I think, with one of the holdouts on the conference committee."

  "Congressman Phipps," Flynn said. "He's been waffling for weeks on this - won't say yes, won't say no."

  "I'll head to Latchkey to tell Gyro to get ready. Henry, if you can get hold of Phipps' schedule ...? Let's see if we can get Phipps in the body of some fat old tourist lady from Philadelphia."

  And if that didn't nudge Barnett, Herzenhagen thought, he would unleash a barrage of jumping incidents throughout Washington society, not forgetting to include his little friends in the press. Stick Ted Koppel in the body of a foreign tourist named Indira, and see how long the press was willing to editorialize about civil liberties.

  And if that didn't work, Herzenhagen had a little plan of his own.

  The Lord, he thought, moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.

  Hughes dropped the weights and mopped his face. "You're ruthless, you know that?" His tone was admiring. He turned to the senator.

  "Now, what about the logistical support you were saying you need?"

  Herzenhagen stood. "This really isn't any of my business. I should head out to Latchkey and let Gyro know about his assignment."

  And maybe, he thought hopefully, squeeze in an hour or two with Peggy.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Shad had heard every word. To anyone with a parabolic mike, the glass wall of Hughes' penthouse formed an exemplary diaphragm to amplify the sound of anything inside.

  As soon as Shad heard the door close behind Herzenhagen he left the roof of the building opposite, moved quickly down the outside of the building, crossed the alley between them, waved to Croyd in the van, then went up Hughes' building. He ate enough photons to keep himself from having a human silhouette, and it looked as if no one was paying attention anyway. People simply didn't look for people to walk up the side of a building as if it were a sidewalk.

  Strains of Scrapple from the Apple floated through his mind, an odd little instrumental accompaniment to his thoughts.

  Shad vaulted over the railing of the balcony and tested the glass door. It was open - who expected an enemy from this direction?

  Eyes turned toward him as the door slid open. He sucked every photon from the room and went for Hughes first. Shad knocked the old man down, drew a Smith & Wesson, and emptied it, six shots, into the chest of Senator Henry Flynn.

  Hey man, some inner voice said, you just killed a US Senator! Is this some kind of great or what?

  His old wounds ached as he saw Flynn fall. Then pain crackled up his leg as Hughes sank teeth into his calf. He grabbed Hughes's ear and yanked - he didn't want to bruise the man - and Hughes let go. Shad slipped a forearm around his throat and put a sleeper hold on him. Hughes struggled - he was strong for an old guy, and a nat - but he was elderly and hadn't even so much as Hartmann's combat training, and he passed out quickly.

  There was a sound outside. Shad dragged Hughes to the door and locked it from the inside. "Howie?" The voice of the bewildered dietician. "Is there something wrong? Shall I call security?"

  Shad smeared Hughes' fingerprints all over the Smith & Wesson, tossed the gun next to Flynn's corpse, then hoisted Hughes into a fireman's carry, and started walking down the building with him.

  "Howie!" he heard. "You're scaring me!"

  Croyd had the rear door of the van open. He looked like the little old crabcake lady. Shad tossed the old man inside, slammed the doors, walked to the driver's door. As he drove away he heard the rip of duct tape being torn off the roll, heard one of Hughes' awakening moans being snuffed out by tape placed across his mouth.

  Shad made some random turns, found a pay phone at a corner. "Got the list?" he asked.

  More tape ripped. Croyd dug the phone list out of his jacket pocket, spilling gel caps in the process, then made a series of phone calls alerting the media and police to the fact that there had been a shooting in Howard Hughes' apartment.

  Shad always liked to use the cops as his allies when he could. It was harder to cover up stuff when the police were actually wandering around taking pictures.

  Croyd got back in the van and Shad took off. Hughes was puffing and blowing and trying to fight his arms out of the duct tape. "You know," Croyd said, "I thought you were going to be asking my moral advice from time to time."

  His voice sounded pretty strange coming out of an elderly waitress.

  Shad shook his head. "They were planning on jumping a congressman so that they could pass a law to put us all in camps."

  "Oh. Okay. But I was going to advise you to snuff the bastards anyway."

  Shad looked over his shoulder, saw Croyd's little-old-lady eyes gleaming bright. "We're not out of control, are we?" he asked.

  Croyd picked one of the gel caps off the floor of the van and popped it in his mouth. "No," he said. "Why do you ask?"

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Would you like a date with Katherine Hepburn?" Hughes asked. "I can get you one. Mr. Connections, that's me."

  They'd slapped him around some with a towel, trying to get answers out of him, and Shad had drained a bit of body heat; but Hughes, simply in being kidnapped, seemed to have regressed into some strange, alternate personality. His mind floated around the Forties without ever quite landing anywhere.

  "General MacArthur Johnson," Shad said, giving it another try. "Who's he?" He was on Hartmann's list, but Shad had done some checking and found out there was no MacArthur Johnson in the US Army, Marines, or Air Force, or on the retired list, either.

  Maybe the fucker was Canadian.

  "How about Jane Russell?" Hughes grinned. "Some hooters, huh?"

  Shad considered again the possibility of the Hartmann solution, fun with a kitchen knife, but found his heart wasn't really in the idea anyway. He didn't have quite the same grudge against Hughes that he'd had against Gregg Hartmann.

  Besides, he was afraid Croyd would enjoy it too much.

  "The hell with this," Shad said, and picked up his Skorpion. "Let's do it."

  "You betchum, Red Ryder." Croyd's face twitched as he taped Hughes' mouth shut and left the van. The cool night Maryland countryside opened up around them. They began walking down the lane toward the lights of Latchkey, a quarter-mile away.

  Croyd rotated the yoke on his High-Standard semiautomatic shotgun so that he could fire it from the crook of his arm, just by pointing. His current appearance was that of a three-piece suit executive standing next to him at the McDonald's counter that afternoon, an image that contrasted somewhat with the weapon.

  "I suppose Red Ryder was before your time," he said. He was having a hard time not talking, Shad noticed.

  "I suppose he was."

  "Who'd you listen to when you were growing up?

  "Watch, not listen to. Scooby-Doo, I guess."

  Shad traced the phone line from the house, went up a power pole, cut the line. "Never heard of Scooby-Doo, the bastard," Croyd snarled from below. "I'm getting disconnected from my culture, you know that?"

  That's not all you're getting disconnected from, Shad thought.

  "It's like mathematics. I always wished I learned algebra."

  "Quiet for a second, okay?"

  Shad covered himself in darkness, glided forward, checked out the detectors on Latchkey's fence. Infrared, he saw. Piece of cake. He swallowed enough photons to conceal body heat and waved Croyd forward over the fence.

  There would probably be motion detectors on th
e farm itself, he thought, but by that point it would be too late for the defenders. He put a dark cloud just in front of himself and Croyd as they walked to the farm, to conceal them from anyone with a night vision scope.

  "You learned algebra?" Croyd asked.

  "I almost got my doctorate in physics."

  "No shit!" Croyd was impressed. "I never knew that, homeboy! Why didn't you finish?"

  "I sorta got into the vigilante business."

  "Yeah. The bastards. They always screw you out of everything."

  Shad wasn't too clear on the antecedents of this remark, but he let it pass. "There's a lot of suffering out there," he said, "and most of the time you really can't help. The situation is just too complicated. But sometimes you know exactly what the problem is, and exactly who's causing it; and sometimes that person is invulnerable. I mean, who's going to go up against Howard Hughes?"

  Croyd giggled. "We are, homeboy."

  "Well, yeah, but that's my point. Who the hell else? The Sharks are part of the government. They're part of industry. They're part of show biz. They bought Gregg Hartmann, for chrissake!"

  Croyd looked at him. "Do you always have to talk yourself into it this way?"

  Shad took a breath. "Sometimes. When I realize I'm going to kill a bunch of people I've never met, and that some of them are kids."

  "Well, do whatcha gotta do to get yourself up for it. But they're jumpers, you know, and even when I was on the Rox they gave me the creeps."

  "You were on the Rox?"

  "Yeah, but I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the Jersey shore, and the Rox wasn't there anymore."

  "Huh."

  "Just remember who put us in the slams, bro." Shad looked at Croyd and his nerves started to wail - Croyd had shifted his appearance to look just like Shad again. Croyd gave a twitchy grin. "This way we don't get confused and shoot each other by accident. Right?"

  Shad tried to calm his shrieking nerves. "Fine, man. Whatever."

  "Jesus. What's that smell?"

  "Something died, I expect." The odor seemed to be coming from one of the farm's small outbuildings. Shad scanned it, found no sources of body heat. His heart sank. "They've probably killed someone and stuck him in there," Shad said.

  "We'll check later, if there's time."