Card Sharks

by George R. R. Martin

  Once back in the light we both realized we were late. Maybe that was the reason we ran from each other.

  As I plugged into the console next to Dearborn, I nodded to Rowe at his station in the back. Lost in thought, he didn't see me. Which didn't bother me in the least.

  "Glad you could make room for us in your busy schedule," Dearborn said.

  "Had to answer a call of nature." If he only knew.

  "Curtain's going up," Dearborn said. He keyed the intercom. "Tank, this is flight. Comm check."

  Moments later, Guinan's tank was airborne.

  ***

  We had film cameras mounted in the KC-135 and at two places in the 11A cockpit. I mention this because we weren't able to see anything ... we had to rely on the audio comm lines and telemetry. As did the rest of the world: NBC had managed to convince NACA and the Defense Department to allow it to broadcast the attempt live. (The Soviet failure made our image-conscious policy makers eager to show them up publicly.)

  As the 11A approached the tank from behind and below, we heard Enloe, Guinan and the boom operator speaking from the script, which had by then been through a dozen in-flight rehearsals.

  Suddenly we heard Grissom, in the lead chase plane, holler, "Watch it!"

  At the same time Meadows, the other chase pilot, called, "Mid-air!"

  "Abort." (According to the tapes, that was me, though I don't remember saying it.)

  The next thirty seconds were confused. Guinan said he was rolling left. Grissom told him he had lost part of his tail and right wing. Guinan's broken reply: Can't hold."

  I literally punched Dearborn on the shoulder. "Where's Enloe!" Forgetting that all along Dearborn had been calling, "11A, this is flight. 11A, this is flight."

  At the same time I was hearing from every console at once. The one that registered was propulsion - the engineer monitoring the X-11A's rocket. "We're at redline."

  "Woody, shut it down!" I didn't wait for Dearborn to make the call.

  No response. No response. Finally, Meadows' voice. "Dust on the lake. Ten miles north of Boron."

  Dust on the lake? That's when I realized that it was all over. One of the aircraft had crashed. But which one?

  Then I heard Grissom's voice. "Tank's down, too. Five miles from Boron."

  ***

  Rescue crews were already on their way, but it was too late. The X-11A had suddenly pitched up as the boom was being inserted. This would have been incovenient, but not disastrous, except that the two craft were physically connected. The 11A actually pivoted around the boom, slamming into the tail of Guinan's tank, rolling across the bigger plane and shearing off the right wingtip.

  Guinan might have been able to save the tanker with damage to the tail or the missing wingtip, but not both. He was helpless to stop the beast - laden with fuel - from rolling over and plunging to earth.

  Even so, he managed to retain some kind of control: the KC-135 was almost level when it hit ... in the proper attitude for landing. But it broke apart and exploded, leaving a blackened smear four hundred feet long across the desert. The only recognizable structure was the crew cabin with the bodies of Guinan and Ridley. (It was later determined that Vidrine, the boom operator, had been decapitated in the initial collision.)

  Both of the men in the cockpit had suffered "severe thoracic trauma," in the bland words of the investigating board. There was one curious bit of damage to Guinan which could not be explained by the impact:

  He had lost his right hand.

  ***

  Enloe's death was more chilling. The cabin films, one frame a second, show him in control and in position up through the beginning of fuelling. Suddenly - in the space of one frame - his hands fly off the controls, as if he is reacting to an explosion of sorts in his lap. (The board later concluded it was due to a failure in the oxygen hose attached to the belly of his suit. It literally blew apart.)

  At that delicate moment, the lack of a steady hand - and the sudden, reflexive push on the pedals - is enough to throw the 11A into its fatal pivot.

  Even though he is in his flight harness, Enloe is flung toward the camera by the collision with the tail of the tank. The cabin remains intact. The light changes, shifting from sun to shadow to sun, as the 11A rolls across the tank, clipping the wing.

  The canopy shatters. Enloe, in his pressure suit and helmet, seems unhurt, though one of the straps of his harness comes loose. Sun, shadow, sun, shadow. Faster and faster, until the rate of rotation exceeds the frame speed.

  The last two frames show a mountainside reflected in the faceplate of Enloe's helmet.

  (From the Special Committee Investigating the X-11A Disaster, Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris, Chairman:)

  MEDARIS: Mr. Thayer, the 11A did not contain an ejection seat.

  THAYER: No, sir.

  MEDARIS: Why not?

  THAYER: Because of Major Enloe's wild card abilities. He was literally capable of flight.

  MEDARIS: But he did not fly away from the 11A.

  THAYER: No, sir.

  MEDARIS: Why not?

  THAYER: I don't know. The medical telemetry shows that he was conscious until impact, or shortly before.

  MEDARIS: Was he impeded in any way? Could he have gotten out?

  THAYER: Film from the chase plane shows that the 11A cabin was relatively intact until impact, and that one or both of his harness straps were loose.

  MEDARIS: He should have been able to fall out and fly. Is that what you're saying?

  THAYER: That's one possibility, yes, sir.

  (By hand: If he wanted to!)

  (From the notebooks of Edgar Thayer:)

  Three days after the accident we held a memorial service out on the flight line. The Navy hymn. The missing man formation. Margaret was there, in sunglasses, somber, serene and distant. I stood next to Rowe. He and I had been in the hands of the investigating board since the hour of the accident. I hadn't slept more than a total of four hours. At that point, I didn't think I'd ever sleep again.

  When it was over, I caught up with Margaret, who was hurrying toward her car. "Don't run away from me, goddamnit!"

  "All right, Ed." She turned toward me, waiting. "What do you want?"

  "I'm in trouble."

  "I heard. Why you?"

  "They think they've found the cause of the accident. It was in Enloe's life support system, which I was supposed to check."

  "But didn't?"

  "No."

  She shook her head. It might have been sympathy. "What's going to happen?"

  "I'm going to be in a lot of trouble."

  "With the program ..."

  "Oh, it's finished. They'll investigate for two years and realize there's nothing wrong with concept. But there's no more money. Especially since the Russians are grounded, too."

  "I'm sorry, Ed. I mean, I'm sorry for you. This was your dream." Then she said something that didn't shock me until much later. "What the hell, Ed: they were aces. It wasn't as though human beings were the ones going into space."

  "I never cared about that. I worked for Dr. Rowe."

  She started to laugh. "Yes, Dr. Rowe. When you get a chance, ask him why he hired you."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "Talk to Rowe. He's got all the answers."

  Without a kiss, without another word, she got in her car and drove off.

  I found Rowe cleaning out his office. An air policeman stood guard outside.

  "I had an interesting conversation with Margaret Durand."

  Rowe smiled for the first time in days. "Oh, yes, Peggy Durand. I'm going to miss her."

  "She told me to ask you why you hired me. She seemed to think it was important.

  The smile stayed on his face, but his eyes closed. He sank into his chair. "You know, a few years ago I began to have dreams. Visions of the future. Winged spaceships taking off from runways and flying into orbit. Space tugs landing on the surface of the moon." He swiveled his chair to look out at the desert. "Even things
like aces and jokers being treated with respect."

  "None of that seems very likely, now."

  He turned back to me. "Oh, that's the hell of it, Ed. I also dreamed that I would try to make this happen. That I would build the first winged spaceship ... but that it would fail. Fail horribly. And all because of some young Judas named ..." He stopped himself. "Never mind."

  He said this nonsense with such conviction that I began to get chills. "Well," I said, playing along for the moment, "why didn't you do anything about it? You brought me in here ... you threw me together with Peggy ..."

  "You can't change things, Ed. That's what hurts the most. I thought I could. I hedged my bets." He laughed bitterly. "I even put my most prized possession on that ship, hoping ... It didn't make a damn bit of difference."

  "What am I supposed to say? That I'm sorry?"

  "It wasn't up to you." He was trying to make me understand. "It will happen, you know. The good part of the vision, those winged spaceships. I can still see them. But Enloe and Guinan had to die first."

  There was a knock at the door. George Battle was there to take us away.

  It wasn't until days later, sitting in confinement in Los Angeles, awaiting transfer to Washington, that I realized Rowe had made quite a confession to me. He, too, was an ace ... with the power of foresight. Actually, given the nature of the power, I should say he was a joker.

  Did he take comfort in knowing that eleven years after the X-11A disaster SpaceCom would be formed? That in thirteen years a whole squadron of Hornets would be flying into orbit - Hornets whose design was based on the X-11A? I hope so. He was a good man caught, like all of us, in the world created by the wild card.

  He was the real victim.

  (From The Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, January 28, 1967:)

  X-11A DESIGNER DIES

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA (AP). Wilson Rowe, the engineer who designed and oversaw the ill-fated X-11A rocket plane program, has died here of cancer at the age of 62. He had been living in seclusion for the past several years following charges of sabotage that were lodged against him and his team.

  (From The True Brothers by Tom Wolfe, 1979:)

  Yeager quit testing rocket planes in 1954 and returned to operational flying in Korea. Four years later he was back in the United States, commanding a squadron of F-100s at George Air Force Base, fifty miles away from Tomlin, when the X-11A blew up.

  It caused a colossal panic, with newspapermen and congressmen leading a pack that bayed through the woods about wild card treachery and communist sabotage. This was the End of Everything.

  The first soul to be dragged off the sled was the 11A's intense young flight director, Edgar Thayer, who was actually sentenced to prison for "gross negligence." He served ten years in the Federal lockup in Lompoc, California, only to die in a car crash as soon as he got out.

  Thayer's mysteriously timely death led to the revival of a few wild theories, however. It had been rumored, the True Brothers said, that someone else had screwed up Woody Enloe's equipment. Tomlin flight operations weren't like some goddamn Hitler bunker ... lots of people went in and out of there that day. Sure Thayer should have checked ... but who cut the hose in the first place?

  None of the Brothers could ever understand why nobody but Thayer and Rowe got called to testify. What about Battle, the head of security? He was a weaselly sonofabitch. What about Margaret Durand, the flight nurse? She was every True Brother's choice for Space Age Mata Hari, but she just vanished! Disappeared into the mist!

  Yeager, of course, wasn't about to turn himself into some kind of bounty hunter. He spent a few weeks with the panel investigating the accident, came to his own conclusions, then went off to the Sierras in search of golden trout.

  At the party the night the first Hornet took off, however, it was Yeager who raised a toast to the True Brothers who should have made it, Woody Enloe and Casey Guinan....

  The Ashes of Memory

  4

  "May I copy these?" Hannah asked. "If you don't mind...."

  Dearborn was staring out of the window at the light-speckled night landscape of the city. She could see the reflection of his drawn face in the glass. "They were good men, and they all died. So young ..." The sadness in his face and voice brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes. Hannah blinked them away.

  Dearborn sighed and turned back toward Hannah. "I guess maybe I was the lucky one, after all," he said, and his laugh was bitter and short.

  "Mr. Dearborn -" Hannah began.

  "Take the papers," he told her. "Keep them, publish them, burn them. I don't really care. I don't really care at all anymore."

  ***

  "I can't believe that you're falling for this garbage."

  David was standing with hands on hips alongside Hannah's desk. Blue light from her Macintosh's monitor made his face seem almost spectral. Hannah saved the file and looked up at him. "David, I know it's far-fetched. I don't like it either but it all hangs together in a bizarre way: the old arson plot of Lansky and van Renssaeler, Faneuli infecting all those jokers in Kenya, the fire there, Durand being part of the X-11A disaster -"

  "I thought you had a list of pyros," David interrupted. "Instead you're chasing shadows."

  Hannah glared at him. "Don't be condescending. I have checked out the list. Simpson and I interrogated a few of them this afternoon."

  "And?"

  "And we have a good suspect. Ramblur, the one they call Flashfire ..."

  "Then bring him in. Sweat him until he cracks. Case closed, and you're a hero."

  "Right. What if the hunchback's right and the torch is just someone's else's tool? The person who ordered those poor people murdered walks and the torch hangs. I don't want that, David. I want the bastard that said 'burn the church.'" Hannah switched off the computer.

  "Nothing you've got would convince anyone that the fire was anything more than a lone psychotic's act, Hannah. Thinking it's more is stupid."

  "Stupid?" The harshness of the word made her sit back. She took a slow breath, staring at his unrepentant eyes, hoping that his gaze would soften, that he'd realize how he was hurting her. You don't have to believe me. Just talk with me like my lover instead of some all-mighty deity. "David, even you have to admit that some of the links are suspicious. The use of an oxygen canister in the trigger - something someone in the medical profession would know. Jet fuel, too - Durand would have known how flammable that is. Maybe Quasiman's right. The priest said he catches glimpses of the future. Maybe this is part of something bigger."

  "Oh, just fucking great! Now you're listening to the Psychic Hunchback. Supermarket tabloid stuff. Hannah, Hannah ..." Words seemed to fail him; he exhaled like a steam kettle and grimaced. "You're acting like a paranoid idiot."

  Hannah laughed at the verbal attack, unbelievingly. "And you're acting like an insensitive bigot. I just want to be sure. If I could get the information I need from Saigon ..."

  "Saigon? This is insane, Hannah. They're jokers," David spoke as he might to a slow child. "For Chrissake. There's no goddamn plot. Someone hated the fucking freaks enough to set the place on fire - that's not too hard to believe. It's a local fire, a local problem. Now you've pasted on a globe-spanning conspiracy fantasy."

  "So now I'm fantasizing?"

  "What have you got, Hannah? Where's your proof?"

  "Damn it, David, there isn't any proof. You know that. It's just a feeling I have."

  "Right. Fucking woman's intuition, huh?"

  "Shut up, David. Just shut the hell up!" Hannah stood up, the chair clattering backward to the floor. She waved her hand at him. "If you don't want to listen, fine. Then leave me alone. Get the hell out of here."

  David laughed at her, braying in her face. "Who the hell's apartment is this? Hannah, listen to me. Do your damn job and drop this nonsense. I had a hell of a time convincing Malcolm and the others to get you this job, but I did. Don't throw away everything I've given you."

  "I didn't want you to give it to me, David.
I told you that from the beginning. I was willing to find my own job, my own place ..."

  "But you sure as hell took it, didn't you? You sure came panting after me when I called."

  "You arrogant son of a bitch!" Hannah picked up the brass paperweight that sat on the desk. David just looked at her. Hannah breathed heavily, staring at David, amazed at the revulsion she felt for him. It was as if she'd found a rip in a favorite teddy bear, and looked to see maggots writhing in the stuffing.

  She set the paperweight down, and then the tears came in gasping sobs.

  "Hannah ..." David said. She could feel the warmth of his body alongside her. "Hey, I'm sorry. I really am." His hand brushed her arm, and she felt his lips brush the back of her neck. "Just ... just forget everything I said. I didn't mean any of it."

  But you did mean it, David, and I can't forget. I won't ever forget.

  Hannah wanted to tell him that, but she didn't.

  DAVIS: Mr. Ramblur, do you understand the rights that I've just read to you?

  RAMBLUR: Yeah. (pause) I've heard 'em before. If I want my damn shark of a lawyer here, I can call him. So what? I don't need him. I ain't done nothing.

  SIMPSON: Then you'll be happy to answer a few questions for us.

  RAMBLUR: I'm fucking ecstatic. If I were any happier I'd come in my pants.

  DAVIS: Would you mind if we went inside?

  RAMBLUR: If you were alone, I'd say that'd be lovely, blondie. But since you have your bodyguard here with you, yeah I'd mind.

  SIMPSON: (unintelligible)

  RAMBLUR: Yeah? Well, ask your questions and get the hell out of here. I'm missing As Takis Turns. (He laughs) Just remember I'm talking with you on my own time. When I say I'm done, I'm done.

  DAVIS: Where were you on the night of September 16th, Mr. Ramblur?

  RAMBLUR: Out. Celebrating Black Queen Night.

  SIMPSON: With someone or by yourself?