Turn of the Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  “It can’t really be helping you,” Evan Brewer offered in his sweet-reason voice.

  Croyd laughed. “Get real, man. Maybe I’m damaging my tissues and my precious bodily essence. But every two, three months I go night-night and the wild card deals me a whole new set. Where’s the damage?”

  “Side-stream smoke adversely affects the health of those around you,” Luce said primly, folding his lower sets of arms while his upper continued to fan.

  “What? Meadows? He’s got enough bad habits of his own. A little cigar smoke won’t make him much difference.” He drew on the cigar and released an aromatic jet toward the log beams of the ceiling.

  “So, you gentlemen have something in mind, or is this a social call? Us old guys need our sleep. But I guess you know that.”

  Luce scowled. He liked to think of himself as a youth in rebellion, although he was old enough to have fathered most of the second-generation Brigaders. “Colonel wants to see you. Now.”

  “Are we in trouble?” Mark asked.

  Luce glowered, still feeling the sting of Croyd’s “old guys” crack. Brew shrugged. “He didn’t tell us to point guns at you, for what that’s worth,” he said easily.

  “Can’t beat old-fashioned courtesy,” Croyd said, standing and sweeping his stubby tail left and right a couple of times as if to shake the kinks out. He swayed briefly, as if drunk, then collected himself. “Let’s not keep the man waiting.

  The Colonel’s office was paneled in some dark-stained hardwood. Mark guessed teak, but he wasn’t sure if that came from Vietnam. It was also small, cozy to the point of near claustrophobia for three individuals, their chairs, and a lordly wooden desk.

  The room was additionally crowded with two-dimensional occupants, stuck up on the walls and sharing frames with Charles Sobel. There was a young Captain Sobel, painfully earnest, Doug MacArthur chin proudly ajut as General Westmoreland pinned a medal on his chest. There were pictures of Major Sobel, a little older, a little more creased around the eyes, posing with members of the joker Brigade company he had commanded in the early seventies. There were a lot of photos of Sobel in civilian clothes, shaking hands with Jimmy Carter, shaking hands with Andrew Young, shaking hands with Robert Redford, shaking hands with the Hero Twins in Guatemala, shaking hands with Gregg Hartmann, back in uniform to shake hands with joker Brigade survivors in front of the Vietnam Wall, whitewater rafting with Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. He probably shook their hands, too, but for some reason had neglected to memorialize it. “Care for a drink, gentlemen?” Colonel Sobel asked, leaning back in his padded leather chair. Soft New Age music played from a small generator-run CD system. “I have a modest but, if I may say so, fairly high-quality collection of hard liquor.”

  Croyd asked for Wild Turkey and settled for Jack Daniel’s. Mark accepted a cognac without specifying a brand name. Alcohol was not his drug of choice.

  Sobel poured some brandy for himself and passed the snifter back and forth beneath his nose, savoring the bouquet.

  “La lucha continua.” He almost sighed. “The struggle goes on.”

  He looked at them. “You may wonder at finding me in such decadent surroundings.”

  “Farthest thing from our minds, Colonel,” Croyd said.

  “The truth is, life in our materialist consumer-oriented society accustoms one to certain perquisites, certain comforts. It is difficult to do entirely without them. And in truth, why put oneself to the stress of going cold-turkey from decadence, as it were, when there is so much urgent work to be done?”

  “No point at all,” Croyd said. “We’re behind you all the way, Colonel.”

  He sort of hung his head to one side and gave Mark a big wink. Mark fought an urge to slap him. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Sobel nodded. “You gentlemen are aces. Powerful aces. You have a great deal to offer our revolution. And I hope you won’t take it amiss if I mention that you’re getting up in years. Not that you’re old, of course, but, simply put, you aren’t as young as you once were. Neither am I, of course; why, I’m probably older than either of you.”

  Croyd raised a three-fingered hand, palm-down, wagged it side-to-side. He was pushing sixty; he had been fourteen when Dr. Tod and Jetboy held the very first Wild Card Day, more or less over his head. His long periods of sleep and the ancillary effects of the wild card virus had kept him in stasis in a sort of indeterminate maturity. His story was not exactly common knowledge. He had told it to Mark in a crystal-meth rush. Over and over.

  Not seeming to notice the gesture, Sobel folded his hands on the desk before him. “What I’m saying is, we’re all equal here, but of course I’m willing to take cognizance of both your age and the unique contributions you can make.”

  “We want to pull our weight, sir,” Mark said.

  Have you gone completely insane, you drug-addled freak? Cosmic Traveler wanted to know. Don’t you know better than to contradict a man who holds life-and-death power over us? And listen to him — do you like filling sandbags?

  “You will do that, and more. ’From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.’ You have special needs and special abilities both. You, Dr. Meadows, can call upon your ’friends’ — you’ll have to tell me how you do that, comrade-to-comrade, one of these days.”

  “Um,” Mark said.

  “I’m also aware of your fine scientific background. We have a crying lack of qualified medical personnel. The Republic’s medical assets are so thinly stretched — another crime to be laid at America’s door, denying this country the aid it needs to expand its medical services.”

  They got plenty of gelt to blow on guns and tanks and warplanes, buppie, J. J. Flash thought. Mark had a flash of relief — he was feeling centered enough at the moment that he knew he hadn’t actually spoken the words aloud. Then he glanced frantically at Croyd, afraid he’d say them, or something to their effect. Croyd didn’t, but he gave Mark another bulb-eyed stage wink, which was almost as bad.

  “I was therefore wondering,” the Colonel said, “if you’d mind assuming the role of camp pharmacist. It’s far from a fulltime occupation; I just want somebody competent to oversee our precious inventory. You’re clearly qualified — overqualified, if anything.”

  “Um,” Mark said again, “sure, sir. I’d be happy —”

  “And you, Mr. Crenson, your powers”

  “Are unique.” Croyd tossed off the rest of his Evil Jack as if swallowing a particularly juicy bug. “Over the years I’ve learned to be very discreet about my ace powers, Colonel. The nat world isn’t always very understanding, if you catch my drift. You can rest assured that my powers are at your disposal, whenever you may call on them.”

  Sobel nodded emphatically. “Of course, of course, I understand. The years of oppression …

  He gazed off at his photo collection. “The Socialist Re public is doing a great thing for all aces and jokers here. A great thing. We owe the Republic a heavy debt. And we may be on the verge of being able to begin to pay it back.”

  He stood up and turned to face his Wall o’ Photos, placing his back to Mark and Croyd. “The Republic is beset by traitors, gentlemen. While all over the world the faint of heart are turning their backs on revolutionary socialism, Vietnam has the strength to keep fighting the good fight. But even she has traitors gnawing her vitals from within.”

  Croyd raised his head suddenly, as if taken by surprise. “Traitors,” he said crisply. “Absolutely.”

  Traitors? Mark thought. He had immense respect for the Colonel and the scope of his Lennonesque vision, but he was beginning to feel like the Alan Arkin character in The In-Laws.

  “There has been a news blackout throughout Fort Venceremos,” the Colonel said, “but we all know how the rumor mill grinds. You may have heard the stories by now: civil unrest in Ho Chi Minh City, rebellion in the countryside, how the People’s Army has been struck with an epidemic of desertions. And while I frown upon rumor-mongering, I must admit there’s a good
deal of truth to the stories.”

  He turned. “We may be called upon to demonstrate that we, at least, are loyal to our hosts.”

  “Certainly, Colonel,” Croyd said, and Mark had a horrible flash that he was doing as good a Peter Falk impression as his lipless lizard mouth would allow. “We’re with you all the way.” Mark just nodded.

  “I knew I could rely on you, gentlemen.”

  “So we may have to, like, go to war,” Mark said. Actually he yelled it to Croyd, as the two stumbled across the flooded compound in hammering rain. Croyd was padding along on his hind legs, though his favored mode was all-fours. That would drown him tonight, or at least require him to swim more than walk. Mark didn’t know how geckos fared in water — okay, skinks. Croyd was making heavier weather than usual of locomotion, even allowing for the ankle-deep water.

  “Could be,” Croyd said. “Some fun, huh?”

  “So a bunch of our guys fought against the Vietnamese years ago. You think they’re really going to like being on the same side with the government if the shooting starts for real?”

  “Who knows? It’s in their contract, and these are your pinker shade of Nam vets. I haven’t got it all worked out, to tell you the truth. Half the time the vets come on like they’re way to the left of Lucius Gilbert. Then they suck down a couple Giai Phongs and it’s ’we were winning when I left.’”

  He lowered a horny lid to half-mast and laid a finger alongside his broad snout. It was an alarming sight.

  “By the way,” he said, “I’m not so sure our Colonel has all his hatches battened down tight. Can’t you just see him with a little face painted on his hand? ‘Señor Pepe likes zee lizards. Don’t you want a keess…?’”

  “Stop that. Colonel Sobel is a great man. He’s a visionary.

  “He’s a dude who had you beaten with rubber hoses in a room with drains in the floor, Mark.”

  “Never mind that. He was doing what he thought was best; he thought I was a CIA spy or something. Besides, the Vietnamese dudes did the actual beating. Sobel was just watching.”

  “If making excuses for people becomes an Olympic event anytime soon, he ready to pack your bags for Barcelona next year because you just qualified.”

  “You don’t understand, man. It’s good to have visions. Us wild cards need visions. Especially since some of us can’t see beyond where the next rhinoceros beetle is coming from.”

  They reached Croyd’s bunker, ducked inside. “I’m sorry, man,” Mark said, as soon as the rain was off their backs.

  “No, touché, fair’s fair. When you’re right, you’re right.”

  Mark shot him a warning look. “All right. I’ll stop with The In-Laws.” He lay down on the pallet he’d made out of blankets.

  “So what are your powers this time, man?” Mark asked, sitting on a crate that was there for the purpose.

  Croyd laughed. “Well, I can climb walls like a son of a bitch. And I can catch bugs with my tongue.”

  Mark was staring at him. “Hey, you try catching bugs with your tongue. It’s not as easy as it sounds. If you or any of these jokers tried it, all you’d do is just mash ’em into the ground. Don’t want to do that; gets ’em all muddy and gritty.”

  “Gak,” Mark said. “You mean, you don’t have any powers?”

  “Other than those … none I’ve noticed yet. No levitation, no bolts of lightning from my fingertips, nothing like that. And for once I’m actually weaker than a nat. I thought one time my scales were turning color, but it was just a trick of the light. We get your green-flash sunsets from time to time here in scenic Vietnam.”

  “What if Sobel finds out you don’t have any of these ’special abilities’ he was talking about? Unless he’s planning on launching a big bug-eradication campaign, he’s gonna be pissed.”

  “Who’s gonna tell him?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Croyd placed one hand atop the other and rested his head on them. He knew Mark was no informer.

  “Hey!” Mark said. “They way you were acting in there, like you were drunk or something”

  “So I was a little giddy,” Croyd said without raising his head.

  “You’re not getting sleepy, are you?”

  “Nonsense,” Croyd said firmly. “I already told you. Lizards don’t sleep.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  At the next break in the rain a bunch of the new recruits got sent to a rifle range beside the Vietnamese People’s Army camp next door for a little training. The kid with the flesh-bars in front of his mouth eyed his M-16 with disdain.

  “Why we gotta fuck with these?” he asked. “I heard they jam all the time. Don’t they use AK-47s around here? Now, those guns are bad.”

  The instructor was a tall, narrow joker Brigade original with a squint and bright-green skin. “You’ve been watching 60 Minutes too much, Dillman. The media have distorted the story; as they do anything connected with the Vietnam experience — anything to do with firearms, for that matter.”

  “After the M-16’s introduction to combat in the middle 1960s, a number of the rifles experienced failure-to-feed malfunctions, what the layperson will call your jam. Frequently these had fatal results to the shooter. The Army and Colt did a study, announced that nothing was wrong, and proceeded to fix it.”

  He smiled without humor. “Since that time the M-16 has undergone a number of improvements and refinements — what you computer types might call debugging. You now have the privilege to be equipped with the very latest rendition, the M-16A2. Consider yourselves fortunate. The Black Rifle is the finest assault rifle in the world. You will treat it with respect.”

  “But what about the AK-47?” another kid wanted to know.

  “Heft your rifle, soldier. Is it heavy?”

  “Uh, not particularly.”

  The instructor reached into the duffel bag at his feet, produced a wooden-stock AK. “The Kalashnikov series of assault rifles consists of the AK-47 — which is old and outmoded, people, though the People’s Army still has a lot of them — the AKM, the folding-stock AKMS paratrooper model and the new AKS-74 family, which are in 5.45-millimeter instead of 7.62 like the older ones. They have several things in common. They are no more mechanically reliable than the M-16A2, even under extreme field conditions. They have a safety/single-shot/full-auto selector that is loud enough to wake the dead, which is inconvenient on ambush. And, people, they are heavy.”

  He tossed the rifle to Dillman. The kid caught it, then staggered, almost dropping the weapon.

  “A fully loaded AK-47 weighs upward of ten and a half pounds. An M-16 weighs less than seven. Those three-pounds-plus seem very, very significant when you have to hump the rifle through elephant grass and up and down hills under our beautiful Southeast Asian sun all day long.

  “Do you now understand why you will carry and learn to shoot the Black Rifle?”

  The assent was on the muted side. The instructor let it go without comment and proceeded to the instructing part.

  Mark took his turn shooting. To his astonishment he wasn’t instantly seized with a desire to run off and start gunning down Vietnamese schoolchildren the instant the piece was loaded, despite the ready availability of Vietnamese schoolchildren. The rifle had very little felt recoil, and wasn’t horribly loud.

  It was actually kind of fun.

  “As originally issued,” the instructor said, “the M-16A2 had a regulator restricting full-auto fire to three-round bursts. It was observed that the first thing troops did on being issued the weapon was to disable the three-round regulator. Accordingly, the weapons you have been issued can be fired in the unrestricted full-auto mode. You would be well advised not to do so.”

  Right. The recruits sprayed bullets downrange on full automatic, a magazine at a time. Mark noticed that even at close range few rounds from a full thirty-round mag hit anywhere near the X-ring when fired flat out. A couple of the young guns managed to miss not only the somewhat macabre black man-outline target proper but the paper bor
der as well with entire magazines.

  Mark, obedient to the instructor’s orders primarily because he had no idea what the hell else to do, fired his shots one at a time, aiming each as best he could. Though the others jeered and hooted for him to hurry, he got better than half his shots into the black at twenty-five meters.

  “Well, congratulations,” the sergeant-instructor said. “You killed him, instead of just scaring him shitless the way most of these homeboys did. Guess which lasts longer in combat?”

  Mark felt both satisfaction and guilt. Though some of his “friends” had taken human life, it was creepy to feel good about shooting anything. He suspected that if it actually came to action, he would flip the selector to Anything Goes and empty his mag with the best of them. And he was unsure he could actually fire at another human with any hope of hitting him. He knew the hot-and-cold rush of combat and knew that the real thing differed from practice as death differs from dance.

  It’s nice to have friends, he thought as they packed it in. The rain began to fall again.

  “I don’ know but I been told —”

  The Ural-375 lurched up the cracked blacktop road, southwest into the Tay Nguyen. The sky was clear. The sun beat on the canvas shell so hard, it seemed damned near as loud as the rain.

  “Nat-born woman got no soul.”

  It was Mark’s platoon’s turn to be shipped out for what Croyd — just transferred into the same squad as Mark — called sleep-away camp: overnight or longer patrols in the mountainous Central Highlands of Gia Lai-Kon Tum Province. Some regarded the rotation as a welcome break from Venceremos; it was reputedly cooler in the mountains than down by the coast. On the other hand, the inhabitants tended to be Montagnards or ethnic Viets forcibly transplanted from Ho-ville, and not at all welcoming.

  “Find me one before I die —”

  Sobel and his monitors had been stepping hard the last week or so on rumors that the Highlands were in a state of virtual revolt. There were a few traitors at work, undoubtedly in the pay of the CIA. The populace — the ocean in which guerrilla warriors swam like fish — rejected them roundly.