Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks

by George R. R. Martin

  Blaise ducked into a Horn and Hardart. Bought a sandwich and coffee. Cody had kept his jewels, God damn her. But maybe that wasn’t so bad. He had taken them for her. Let her keep them and consider what she had rejected. She’d pay soon enough.

  And money was better than jewels anyway. He had mind-controlled a limousine driver and the elegantly attired passenger. That had netted him almost a thousand bucks. He could go a long time on a thousand bucks. But the jewels would have been better.

  The turkey sandwich was dry, the bread forming a soggy expanding mass on the back of his tongue. Blaise choked it down and wondered again where the fat old joker news vendor had come by a fortune in precious gems. Maybe he should go back to Jube’s apartment and make him tell?

  A slim form slid onto the stool next to him. Blaise tensed. Studied her out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t bother to slide a hand down to the .38 tucked into the waistband of his pants. His mind powers could subdue her faster than a gun could fire.

  The girl was young. Fifteen, sixteen with spiky multicolored hair, deliberately tattered blue jeans, unlaced high-top sneakers.

  “We’ve been watchin’ you.”

  “Yeah, I know. Any particular reason why?”

  “You look like you need a place to go.”

  “I’ve got plenty of places to go,” said Blaise.

  The girl popped gum. “What are you gonna do when you get there?”

  “Take care of myself.”

  “Think you can?”

  “Know I can.” And there was something in his face that made the girl edge as far away as the stool would allow.

  “I’m not sayin’ you can’t,” she said. She thrust out a hand. Blaise noticed she had bitten the cuticles into the quick. “Molly Bolt.”

  Blaise ignored the outthrust hand. “What do you want?”

  She pulled back her hand, thumb rubbing lightly across the tips of her other fingers as if she were startled to find the hand at the end of her arm.

  “Just this. You need a place to go. You ever need a team … people to handle something … come to pier eleven on the East River. We’ll find ya.”

  The cold coffee had a slick oily taste. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Fine.”

  She was gone as quickly as she had appeared. Suddenly the well-dressed businessman seated a table away stood up, unzipped, pulled out his cock, and pissed down his own leg.

  Blaise left. The food wasn’t very good. And he’d lost his appetite with the realization of just who or rather what he had been dealing with.

  Jumpers.

  Jumpers were after him.

  “Would you stop worrying? Go already. Go to Washington, and bring back that grant. Mama needs a new laser surgery center.”

  The connection on the car phone was terrible. Cody sounded like she was calling from the center of an electrical storm. Tachyon pictured her: hair brushed back, one hand thrust into the pocket of her lab coat, knee jiggling as she longed to get back to her patients. For an instant his concern and fear for Blaise receded. He laughed.

  “What are you chortling about?” Cody’s voice was sharp with suspicion.

  “You. How many times per second is your foot tapping?”

  “You are interrupting me.”

  “Take the time. I’m worth it.”

  A slight choke of laughter as he threw her words back at her.

  “Prove it to me,” Cody said. “Get down to Washington, and lobby like hell.” She added, “It really is a shame about Senator Hartmann. He might have been a loon, but at least he was our loon.”

  The missing hand flared in agony as Tachyon remembered the bite of the assassin’s buzz-saw hand. An assassin sent by Senator Gregg Hartmann, Democratic presidential candidate. Or at least the candidate for a day until Tachyon had destroyed forever Hartmann’s political ambitions. But Cody did not know—could never know—any of this.

  “Tach, are you still there?”

  “Yes, yes, sorry. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you Monday.” He started to hang up, then hurriedly added, “Please, please, be cautious. Be careful.”

  A disconnected buzz was all he got back. Had she heard? Did she understand? Tachyon stared out the windows of the gray limousine at the city like a jeweled ship sailing away from him in the darkness. Blaise was out there somewhere.

  The thought chilled him.

  Troll was propping his nine-foot length against the front reception desk, chatting up the Chickenfoot Lady when Blaise entered. The joker straightened abruptly, his face twisting into an expression of surprise and concern. It looked like tectonic plates in motion.

  “Blaise, your granddaddy’s been worried sick. Where the hell have you been? I ought to whip your ass.”

  Troll suddenly turned, lowered his head, and ran full tilt at the far wall. He struck with a sound like a cannonball crashing into a fortress battlement and went down in a heap. Chickenfoot let out a hysterical cackle and ran through the big double doors leading to the emergency room.

  Blaise walked on, brows knitted in a frown of concentration, hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  Cody wasn’t in her office.

  She wasn’t in surgery. Finn was, and he shouted from behind his mask about the sterile integrity of the room and advanced on dancing pony feet on Blaise. Blaise didn’t fuck with Finn’s head. He kind of liked the pony-sized centaur.

  Cody was in the morgue. What appeared to be an enormous wasp was on the table. Blaise watched as she carefully cut open the joker’s chest cavity and surveyed the lungs. Cody then leaned over a small tape recorder. Her voice was so low he couldn’t distinguish the words, just the soft, husky timbre like a chuckling brook. The sound made him shiver, but whether with anger or desire he couldn’t say.

  Suddenly Cody looked up and stared directly at him through the tiny window in the morgue door. Blaise jumped, hating that she had thrown him off balance. He stiff-armed the heavy door, and it flew open. She didn’t retreat before his furious entrance. And that, too, made him angry.

  “Hello, Blaise. Had a good time for the past week?”

  “I’ve come for two things. My stones and you.”

  Her smile was crooked and a little hateful. “Your problem, my son, is that you’ve always thought your stones were bigger than they are.”

  “I can make you love me!” Blaise cried.

  “No, you can make me hate you. Love you have to earn.”

  Cody was standing stock-still. A pillar of ice and darkness. Blaise ran his eyes down that slim tall form. Noted her hand tucked into the fold of her lab coat. The glint of the scalpel between her fingers. He smiled.

  “Cody, you’re so stupid,” Blaise crooned.

  The scalpel fell from nerveless fingers.

  “I don’t give a fuck how you feel.”

  The coat fell with a sigh to the linoleum floor.

  “Because I can…”

  The blouse joined the coat on the floor.

  “… make you…”

  She stepped out of her skirt.

  “… love me.”

  Had it connected, the blow would have ruptured a kidney.

  But Blaise’s karate training gave him a split-second warning. The young man spun away from Tachyon’s thrust kick and caught his grandfather by the ankle. Floor met chin with head-ringing force, and Tachyon tasted blood as his teeth snapped shut on his tongue. He rolled to the side. Blinked in consternation as the heel of Blaise’s boot slammed into the floor where his head had rested only a second before. Tachyon got his legs beneath him and bounded to his feet. Blaise charged, and the older man fended him off with the artificial hand. The digits couldn’t be bent to form a proper spear hand, but the hard plastic fingers still managed to sink a satisfying distance into the teenager’s solar plexus.

  Blaise let out a sound like a dying air brake, and Cody lunged for her surgical gear as Blaise’s mind control broke.

  “Would you fuck this macho bullshit!” she screamed. “And just mind-co
ntrol him!”

  For an instant Tachyon was distracted by the sight of the completely naked Cody snatching up and wielding a chest separator like a modern-day Hippolyte.

  First rule of combat—never, never, never get distracted.

  Blaise landed a palm strike to the face. With a dreadful mushy sound the cartilage in Tach’s nose let go, and blood fountained over his chest, forming a red bib on the elaborate peach-colored coat.

  Belatedly the Takisian brought up his hands in defense. He and Blaise circled each other warily.

  Feint, feint. Tachyon lashed out with his mentat’s power and struck the glass-smooth surface of Blaise’s shields. Struck again and a tiny cobweb of cracks appeared in the structure. At this rate it was going to take until next Tuesday to breach the boy’s shields. And Tach didn’t have that long.

  Too much booze and not enough exercise was taking its toll. He was panting like a ruptured hog. Blaise landed a body blow that resurrected memories of broken ribs from the year before.

  Suddenly Cody was there. With a deft twirl of the chest separator she landed a walloping blow to the back of Blaise’s head. He staggered, but then Cody froze and began advancing stiff-legged on Tachyon.

  “You see, Granpere.” Blaise’s smile was feral. “I can control her and fend you off. Mentally and physically. All at the same time.”

  Blaise’s coercive ability was the most powerful Tach had ever confronted, but it was brute force. The subtleties of high-level mentatics were beyond him. Contemptuously Tachyon batted aside Blaise’s grip on Cody. Interposed himself between the teenager and the woman. His mental shields enfolded her close as an embrace.

  Cody was raging. Her thoughts ripped off her like sparks off a shorting fuse.

  Damndamndamn. Stags. Runtingbedamnedstags. Me a damn shuttlecock. Notatoy! Release/makefree!

  Cannot. Dare not. Tachyon sent to her. Help me, he begged.

  Tachyon licked blood from his upper lip and endured three punishing body blows as he closed with Blaise. Clawlike, the artificial hand closed about Blaise’s arm just above the elbow. It could exert enough pressure to crush a metal cup. Its effect on human tissue was also quite satisfying. Blaise screamed, and Tachyon’s nostrils flared with wild, joyous pleasure as he slammed his left hand over and over again into Blaise’s face.

  Touch her, will you? No! None but me! She is mine! Mine! MINE!

  Blaise tried a ball shot, but Tach was too quick for him. The blow landed on his thigh. The older man responded with a hammer blow to the boy’s nuts. A scream ripped through the morgue.

  Tachyon could feel Blaise’s mind control scrabbling at his shields, but the teenager was in too much pain, too disoriented by hate and interrupted lust to muster any effective challenge to Tach’s power.

  Suddenly there were hands tearing at his shoulders.

  “Stop it! Stop it! You’re going to kill him.”

  Tach snarled, ignored her, continued the pleasurable business of reducing his enemy to a bloody pulp. The hands were gone. Tach heard the slap of Cody’s bare feet on the tile as she ran.

  Agony! The formaldehyde burned like acid in the cuts on his face, his eyes. Tach and Blaise both fell back. And at last it penetrated. Blood lust, the killing. He had been on the verge of murdering his own grandchild. Horrified, Tachyon stumbled back, lost his footing in the slick blood, and went windmilling to the floor.

  Blaise, his face a mask of blood, cradling his mangled arm, snarled down at Tachyon. “You’re dead!”

  Crablike, Blaise scuttled for the door. Flung it open and bolted from the morgue. Tachyon shook off the fear that held him and struggled to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” cried Cody.

  “Must … catch him. Apologize. Help him.”

  “It’s too late for that!”

  Tach tottered for the door, but the pain from his broken nose made him dizzy. Tach sent out a telepathic bellow for Troll and was amazed when the nine-foot-tall joker appeared a second later.

  “Doc, are you okay?” the security guard asked.

  “Of course he’s not okay,” snapped Cody.

  Troll opened and closed his mouth several times as he contemplated the stark-naked chief of surgery.

  “Blaise,” Tach mumbled around a split and rapidly swelling lip.

  “He lit out of here like a scalded cat,” said Troll, then added ruefully. “Sorry I’m so late getting here, but I knocked myself clean out.”

  “Help me get Dr. Tachyon to emergency,” Cody ordered. “We’ve got to fix that nose.”

  “Put on some clothes,” ordered Tachyon.

  “What’s the matter? You’ve never seen a naked woman before?”

  “I do not wish the entire world to see my woman.”

  “Your woman? Your woman?”

  Tach retreated from her acid laced thoughts. “Slip of the tongue,” the Takisian muttered weakly.

  “Owwwww! What are you using?” Tachyon complained nasally. Cotton wadding and splints clogged his nose, and his throat was becoming sore as he struggled to breathe through his mouth. “An entrenching tool?”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” The probe hit the steel tray with a metallic clatter. “You’re going to need a new nose. Any preference?”

  “How about just like the one I had.”

  “Don’t waste a golden opportunity.”

  “Why should I change it?” It annoyed him that she didn’t like his nose.

  “It was a trifle on the long side,” Cody said coolly.

  “It was patrician and aristocratic.”

  “It was a honker.”

  Tach absorbed this. Reluctantly admitted, “My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother always hated my nose.”

  “Then allow me to be creative.”

  “All right.”

  Cody worked in silence for several minutes, then a little gruffly she asked, “How did you know?”

  “We were halfway to Tomlin International when I realized I had forgotten a grant application.”

  “The one from HEW?” she interrupted.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got it. I inadvertently picked it up when I was in your office this afternoon. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You should thank whatever ancestors guard your back. So fortuitous a gift should not be demeaned. Anyway, Riggs started back, and at about Fifth Avenue I heard you screaming your head off. Riggs spared no effort, and as a result we had a police escort all the way to the clinic.”

  “Well … thanks.” She made a minute adjustment, and Tach sucked in a pained breath. “I seem to be making a habit of having you rescue me.”

  “It is my pleasure.”

  “Well, it’s no pleasure for me. I’m accustomed to taking care of myself.”

  “You would do the same for me,” said Tach gently.

  Cody prefaced her words with a long sigh as if she regretted the emotion that drove the response. “I suppose I would.”

  That girl was back. Lips skinned away from his teeth as Blaise whirled on her.

  “Why the fuck are you following me?”

  “You look like you need that place to go.” The angle of her cigarette as it hung limply from her lips seemed to mock him.

  “I don’t need dick from you.”

  “I can show you something you’ll like,” Molly Bolt said.

  Blaise smiled. “You’re a really skinny, ugly little runt. I doubt your pussy’s going to be much nicer.”

  The girl’s face closed down like a series of slamming doors. “You’re so fucking stupid. Okay, fine, we’ll show you.”

  He felt the pressure of a mind. Then a second, a third, more and more joined in a desperate attempt to do something to him. Molly’s tough-girl act was starting to fray at the edges. Blaise grinned at her. Reached out and closed his power about the watchers in the shadows. Last of all he took Bolt. It felt sweet to save her until last. Blaise commanded, and eight kids walked out of the shadows of the alley. Stood shoulder to rigid shoulde
r with their leader. Molly’s eyes raged at him.

  “What are you?” whispered a girl whose white-blond hair formed a shimmering nimbus about her little face.

  Blaise considered the question for a long time. It deserved a lot of consideration. Finally he said, “Inhuman.”

  Blaise patted down Molly Bolt and pulled out a package of cigarettes. Lit one. Took a long drag. “Now, what was it you wanted to show me?”

  “Read my mind,” spat Molly.

  It angered Blaise that he couldn’t. Tachyon would have been able to. That cranked the anger a little higher.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Molly asked.

  “Sell you as lawn jockeys.” The laugh emerged as a tight little whinny.

  “Let us go … please,” cried the blond girl.

  “You won’t fuck with me?”

  “I swear it,” said Molly, pleading a little now. “We need you. Now I know why.”

  “What were you going to show me?”

  “Let us go.”

  Blaise released them. Truth was, his overstretched mental powers were starting to quiver like a too tightly wound guitar string. But his little humans never suspected.

  Molly ran a hand across the spikes of her multicolored hair. Sauntered to the mouth of the alley. The sidewalks were filled with rush-hour humanity. The sun sank like a bloated red sack into an ocean of brown-green smog. In the canyons between the buildings night had already fallen.

  “So, pick one,” said Molly.

  “One what?” asked Blaise.

  “Person,” said a skinny kid whose face seemed to be one angry blackhead.

  “For what?” Blaise asked. He hated to ask. It made him look stupid.

  “To humiliate,” said the blond teen in her soft little-girl voice.

  “Or kill,” offered another of the gang.

  Blaise scanned the crowds. Listened to the blare of car horns. The thrum and rumble of hundreds of tires racing across the uneven asphalt of Broadway.

  “Hurry,” prodded Molly Bolt.

  Blaise ignored her. Eventually he spotted what he was looking for. A carefully combed head of carrot-red hair, a business suit on the inexpensive side of nice. Not too tall. A little too slim.