Card Sharks

by George R. R. Martin

  Their voices faded to murmurs as the floor transmitted to my shins and knees the trembling of their footsteps. They had moved away from the door. I stayed crouched at the door, shivering and sweating till I could smell my own stink, and thought about the photos in the rolltop desk back home.

  A moment later footsteps shook the floor again. Dr. Rudo's voice said, "... I doubt her resistance is high; this shouldn't take long."

  The tumblers turned and the door opened. They looked down at me. I tried to duck between their legs, but Brandon grabbed my arm and hauled me upright - virtually off my feet.

  "My dear young lady, you're showing an alarming amount of initiative," Dr. Rudo said.

  "What are you going to do with me?" I felt embarrassed, apologetic, at how my voice quavered. He smiled.

  "Just ask your a few simple questions. Come sit down. Relax. Nobody's going to hurt you." He took me by the elbow and led me back to the chair.

  ***

  Dr. Rudo made Brandon leave the room, and then we chatted. I should have been much more on the defensive; to this day I don't know how I could have relaxed around him, given what I knew.

  But the questions all seemed so innocuous. I remember his cool violet eyes looking at me, and his head nodding.... I Went on about Clara, about myself and how much I wanted another child, about Brandon's ambitions. Memories and thoughts surfaced and spilled out of my mouth that I had thought were long buried.

  And when he asked me about the photos, I should have been prepared but I - I don't know why; I must have been an idiot! - but I had become convinced that the photos Franklin had taken were harmless and pointless, that I had no reason to conceal them.

  And, well, I told him where they were.

  ***

  Do you know, it took me years afterward to realize that it was even odd I should have told him where the pictures were? Whenever I thought about the session my mind kept slipping and sliding off the memory of the pictures, every which way. I'm still disturbed by how I could have been so foolish, so easily fooled. I wonder if he hypnotized me?

  ***

  Brandon came back in at some point and took me home. I don't remember that part too clearly.

  When we got home, Clara and Jessica were nowhere to be seen. I had a high fever by then, and was freezing cold, quaking like an aspen leaf. My joints ached. Brand took the pictures out of the desk, then undressed me, put me in bed and looked through the photos. He made a call on the phone, sitting on the bed.

  "Pan? Brand. I found them right where she told us. Yeah, he got some shots of the exchange but nothing too incriminating. I think we can destroy them and leave it at that. I'll take care of them."

  A pause. "I'll make sure she doesn't cause any more trouble. Isn't that right, Joan?" he asked me, gripping me by my sweat-soaked hair. Pain spread inward from the loci of his knuckles. I moaned.

  He released me and spoke into the phone again. "OK. How about tomorrow evening? You can have supper with us." Pause. "Fine. Seven thirty. See you then."

  Next he set fire to the photos, one by one, and dropped them, flaming, into a crystal serving bowl. Except for several explicit ones of him and Marilyn. Those he waved at me.

  "Perhaps I'll start my own scrap book with these."

  He eyed the photos for a moment, gave me a look, then threw back his head and laughed. I was struck at how honest and open that laugh sounded. He hadn't sounded so open in years.

  "God, Joan. It's great to be free at last. Free to tell you how much I hate you. Your jealousies and suspicions, your pettiness, your clinging and complaining and prudishness and controlling, bitchy nature - you've made my life a living hell.

  "But that's over now. From now on, you are Clara's mother and that's all. You have nothing to say to me, nor I to you. You'll be my wife to the public eye, but there's nothing between us any more. And if you ever try anything like this again," he waved the picture at me, "I swear I'll kill you."

  He put them in his wallet and then picked up the phone again.

  "Hi. It's me." I could tell by how his voice grew husky and by how a bulge swelled in his trousers whom he'd called.

  "I arranged for our babysitter to take Clara overnight," he said. "She's sick with the flu. I need a place to stay. I need to see you."

  Pause. "Can't you find a sitter?"

  Another pause. "I read about it in the papers. I'm so sorry. But, you know, he is a threat to our work, with his position on the wild card."

  A pause. "Who told you? Wait - don't hang up. Damn it!"

  He slammed the phone down and rubbed his face, looking at me. Anguish was stamped on his face like someone's shoeprint. He really loved her. I was curled into a tight ball, riding out the fireball of pain spreading through me, and couldn't focus on him, even to taunt him.

  I don't remember him leaving.

  ***

  That night, I became intimate with the virus. It was the longest night, the worst pain I have ever lived through.

  ***

  The next morning I awoke to Frou Frou's yaps, welcoming Jessica and Clara into the apartment.

  The night's agony was fading, though a thousand aches and twinges tormented me along my body. I had that lightheaded, floating clarity one feels after a high fever breaks, and also a terrible, cavernous hunger. Morning sunlight streamed in through the sheer curtains. Jessica clattered about in the kitchen, making breakfast. Clara's voice rose and fell in a dialog with Frou Frou in the living room.

  Clara. I wondered if the prior day's torture had been a dream. I wanted Clara in my arms. I propped myself up on my elbows.

  Great tufts of my hair lay strewn about my pillow. With a strangled gasp I touched my scalp and felt - baldness. Brushing backward, the skin was smooth and cool and dry; brushing forward it felt like sandpaper. My arms were covered in scales, in a pattern that vaguely mimicked the roses and dark green leaves twined on the comforter.

  Throwing off the comforter, I meant to put my feet on the floor. But when I tried to swing my legs out from under the sheets nothing happened. My toes were down there somewhere; I could even wiggle them, but whatever was moving in there wasn't my toes.

  I strained to lift my legs again. Nothing happened except the sheet moving. I was afraid to lift the sheet.

  I heaved with all my might. My lower torso slid out from under the sheet - and slid, and slid, and collapsed onto the floor in a single looping, rubbery limb: a growing, sinuous tangle. The weight of it pulled the rest of me off the bed.

  I grabbed at the bedsheets to keep from striking my head on the bedside table. Then I twisted around to see what I had become.

  No legs. No toes. I felt them but they weren't there. My torso, my navel, even my genitalia - or so I thought then - gone.

  From below my breasts, I was all snake, eighteen feet of scaled coils about the thickness of one of my former thighs and mottled now like our carpet, gleaming moonstone and sand. Even the flesh of my nipples was scaled, a slightly darker brown. My lips, too, felt scaled. How beautiful the scales were: luminous, translucent, like semiprecious stones. Beautiful, and horrible. My fingernails were long, horny claws, a lizard's claws.

  My lace nightie had slipped off my shrunken shoulders and gotten tangled in the loops of snake flesh. I struggled with the nightie, sliding it over the coils, heaving portions of myself back and forth, till I could pull it off over my head. That small exertion exhausted me and I had to rest for a moment.

  Then, hand over hand, I dragged myself over to the mirror by the door and propped myself upright, supported by shaky arms. From the breasts up the thing in the mirror was mostly me, though the wrong color, scaled and hairless, with an altered nose, mouth, and ears, shrunken shoulders and arms. From there down, I'd become monstrous.

  I reared back in horror and shock, and my lower body clenched into a mass of coils. The thing in the mirror bobbed like a cobra about to strike. Its color - and mine - went a brilliant parrot blue with yellow, black, and red striping, as a cobra hood spread beh
ind its head. Its reptile eyes dilated. A bitter taste bled from my lengthened canine teeth as a milky substance leaked from the mirror thing's canines.

  It wore my face. A scaled, reptilian face, but unmistakably mine. The colors were fading now to a softer, smoky blue as I studied it, with sand-, ash-, and rust-colored stripes.

  I ran my tongue over my lips and saw it had lengthened and forked at the end. After extruding it, when I brushed the tongue against my pallet, it could - taste the air, smell it; neither of those words is right, but it was a little like both. It could taste the scent of Brand's belongings and mine, and taste faintly the presence of Jessica and Clara and Frou Frou in the other room, of frying eggs and bacon and toast.

  Hands over my face, I lurched away from the mirror with a soft cry.

  First I thought, a dream. A nightmare spawned by my fever.

  I But I knew differently. What Dr. Isaacs had said would come to pass, had come to pass. My body had been stolen from me during the night. Some malevolence had traded it for this mass of heaving, scaled coils. I'd become in body the predator I'd always had in my heart. I'd become a lamia.

  ***

  One's priorities shift when survival is at stake. Hysteria was definitely called for; I felt it bubbling around the edges of my thoughts. But now was not the time. I couldn't be certain Brand had gone for the night - he might have borrowed Clara's bed, since she'd been at Jessica's. And Clara, I couldn't bear for her to see me like this.

  On the other hand, I couldn't bear to lose her.

  Brand had always hated the wild card and its victims, as much as I had. He would never tolerate a joker wife. I didn't know what he would do when he discovered what had happened to me, but given that he had been involved in the murder of two men, I didn't want to find out.

  But first things first. Food.

  When I thought about eating my tongue flicked, flicked again, tasting the air. The smells it detected made me writhe into knots of hunger and revulsion. The cooking eggs and bacon and toast turned my stomach. Raw animal flesh was what my body needed. A prospect equally revolting, but imperative.

  Three prime, New York cut strip steaks were in the refrigerator. Those would do.

  I lurched and slung and dragged my elongated self over to the door. It was exhausting work; slithering is not as easy as it looks, especially when one is starved, weakened by illness, and unaccustomed to the motion. Heart racing, I turned the knob, pulled the door open, peeked around the corner. The blue was fading from my scales and a dark brown with moonstone and sand mottlings, the combined colors of the door and carpeting, faded in.

  My scales gave me protective coloring. With a sudden, faint hope that I could escape this situation unharmed, I slipped out onto the cool wood floor, my colors shifting as I moved.

  Frou Frou's ears pricked up when the door opened. He looked over at me. I froze.

  Clara had arranged Frou Frou and her dolls in a semicircle beyond the couch. The circle included the dog, Barbie and Ken, the plastic Crybaby Cathy baby, the fine, antique China doll my mother had given her for Christmas, and stuffed animals of assorted types, colors, and sizes. Clara told Frou Frou to sit down but instead he came around the end of the couch, suspicious and confused, with a growl rumbling in his throat.

  I hurled myself toward the safety of the bedroom. But I was too long and clumsy to get all of me through the door and slam it shut before Frou Frou darted inside. Bristling, with little yips and growls, he backed me into the corner. I pulled myself into a tightly coiled mass, held out my hands.

  "Frou Frou," I whispered. "Hush." My colors began to brighten, responding to my fear.

  Frou Frou tilted his head at my voice, clearly confused, yipped experimentally.

  "Hush." My voice trembled and my speech was slurred; I hadn't yet learned to form my words quite properly with my new mouth.

  Frou Frou sniffed at my fingers, then made up his mind. I wasn't his mistress, I was an intruder. He snapped at my outstretched hand and started to bark. Jessica yelled at him from the other room.

  I rose up above my coils. Colors blazed on my scales; my cobra's hood spread.

  He darted at me, baring his teeth, and his teeth closed on my twitching tail. Pain lanced up my body. With a cry I struck out and bit him on the left flank, behind his foreleg. While he struggled, yelping, glands in my palate emptied themselves, venom pulsed in my gums and through my teeth. Dismayed, I let him go.

  He ran in circles, yowling, then staggered under the bed, fell on his side and twitched. I worked my way over to him. His eyes were glazing. I lay down next to him. His heart fluttered against the palm of my hand. Then the heart stopped beating.

  Clara stood at the door.

  "Clara," I said, propping myself upright with effort. Starvation and exertion made my head spin.

  "You hurt Frou Frou."

  "He attacked me, honey." I forced the words out. "I had no choice."

  "You hurt Frou Frou! Bad snake!"

  She came at me with both fists, struck at my face. One blow caught me on my nose, still tender from its transformation. At the pain, anger flooded me. I coiled and reared. My scales blazed blue with red, yellow, and black, and my hood fanned out.

  Not Clara; no!

  I forced down the urge to strike. The angry, brilliant colors drained from my scales. I caught at Clara's hands and held onto them till her rage passed. Without adrenaline I was so weak that it took all my strength to control a five-year-old.

  "It's all right, honey. It'll be all right. It's Maman."

  She burst into tears. I put my arms around her and stroked her head. My arms were almost too weak to hold her. "I'm so sorry, honey. I'm sorry about Frou Frou."

  Jessica had come into the room to see what the commotion was. She stood at the door, pasty white. She must have seen me about to strike at Clara.

  "My God," she said, "oh, my God."

  Clara, nestled next to my heart, said, "Jessica, it's Maman."

  "Clara, come here." Jessica held out her arms. Her voice was shrill.

  I didn't let go of Clara. "It's me, Jessica. It's all right. It's the wild card, that's all."

  Jessica squatted. Her voice was tinged with hysteria. "Clara, come here right now."

  I released Clara and gave her a gentle push. "We need to talk, honey. Go on out for a minute. Jessica -"

  But she snatched Clara up, took her out, and slammed the door. Loud bumps and thumps told me she had blocked the door with the rolltop desk. I crept over and tested it anyway; it was blocked.

  I collapsed on the floor and panted. I was ill from hunger, all but unconscious.

  I moved back to the bed and flicked my tongue all up and down Frou Frou. He was dead and nothing I could do would bring him back. He smelled like what I needed to eat. Fresh, newly killed meat.

  I dragged him out from under the bed, lifted his limp head, removed his collar with trembling hands, and then gave him a last caress. I shuddered. The dog was so big, I wasn't sure I could go through with it.

  I forced his head into my mouth. My throat gagged but I kept pushing, salivating heavily, and my jaw unhinged as a snake's does, so he could pass more easily. The skin of my mouth stretched over him. My throat expanded to take him.

  He got stuck when his shoulders reached the back of my mouth. No matter how hard I shoved and punched at him he'd go no further. So I propped his hindquarters against the floor, struggled up atop him, and used my own weight to push him all the way in, fur, claws, and all.

  It hurt a lot. I swallowed and swallowed. Tears streamed down my face. Eating him was a great labor. I swallowed some more and my powerful throat muscles carried him farther down my gullet, where he pressed hard against my ribcage and made my breathing labored.

  The ache of famine was ebbing. The pain of an overlarge object stuck in my gullet remained but my body knew it had the right kind of sustenance.

  Exhausted, still swallowing feebly, I lay on my side and looked down at myself. Frou Frou had lodged at ab
out where my diaphragm tapered into the snake's trunk. My stomach - if that's what it was, though I guessed it was just a long tube with digestive juices; there didn't seem room for a set of intestines - growled and burbled. I looked pregnant.

  At that thought I started to retch, and then couldn't stop. The same strong muscles that had swallowed him tried to force him back up my throat. But they were weakened now, and by concentrating and taking deep breaths I managed keep him down.

  Lethargy settled over me. I stretched out against the wall behind, the bed, folding my tail double, and my scales faded to eggshell white, moonstone, and sand. I slept.

  ***

  "Joan?" It was Brand's voice, and it roused me to semi-wakefulness.

  The color and angle of the sunlight told me it was mid-afternoon. essica must have called him home early. I was in the throes of a massive, reptilian-grade digestive stupor, so I have only a vague memory of their voices, and of blurred images moving about the room, though I managed gradually to force myself to complete wakefulness.

  Jessica said, "It was in here before. It said 'it's me' in her voice." A moment later, "Where's the dog?"

  They looked right at me at least twice. And then past.

  "It was here," she repeated in a defensive tone. Brandon gave her one of his patronizing looks. "It killed the dog. It tried to attack Clara, too. I rescued her."

  "I've never known you to be this excitable. I pray you'll do it on your on time next time, and not disturb me at work."

  They were on their way out when Clara came in. "Maman?"

  "Get back!" Jessica snapped, but Brand said, "There's no one here. Don't be a twit."

  "Maman." Clara had a child's eyes, not as easily fooled by expectations. She saw me at the wall and came over, knelt beside me and touched my face.

  I should have regretted her revealing me. But all I knew was joy at the relief and delight in her eyes and voice. She threw her arms about my neck and I enveloped her with arms and coils.

  "I'm sorry I yelled at you about Frou Frou," she said.

  "And I'm sorry," I replied. "I'm sorry that I scared you and hurt Frou Frou."

  "He's not ever coming back, is he?"