Wild Cards VI--Ace in the Hole

by George R. R. Martin

She was scrabbling into her clothes, wadding up her hose, and cramming them into her purse, smoothing the tangled hair. Pausing at the door, she flung at him, “I accomplished what I set out to do. I kept you away from the convention.”

  “And you deserve something for your trouble.” Tachyon dug out a pair of twenties, and slapped them into her hand. “Jack was right. You’re not your mother. You are a slut.”

  She slammed the door behind her.

  The air-conditioning was icy on his bare skin. Tach poured himself a drink, and took several deep breaths trying to slow his racing heart. Then as he lifted the glass to his lips, the door hit the wall with a report like a firing pistol.

  Brandy sloshed across his chest and belly. “Oh, Ideal!”

  “Expecting someone?” remarked Polyakov dryly as he eyed Tachyon’s erection.

  But there was a narrowness to the eyes, a tension to the jaw that made Tachyon think that the Russian’s mind was anywhere but on Tachyon’s sex life.

  “If you could return your brains from your secondary head to your primary head, may we discuss a very serious problem?”

  “Very funny.” Tach padded to the dresser, and poured a fresh drink. Blaise settled cross-legged on the bed, and stared down at his hands. George stood solid and lumpish in the center of the room. “So what is this great and serious problem?”

  “We were arrested.”

  “WHAT!” Tach turned like a slow-coiling snake on Blaise. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” he whined.

  “Oh, no, just played master puppeteer with a joker, a Klansman, a neo-Nazi, and a policeman,” snapped Polyakov. Tach shook his head like a baffled pony. George continued grimly on, “You would think when he has a subtle and invisible power he would have the brains not to advertise when he is using it.”

  Something flickered between man and boy. Suspicious, Tach lanced out with his telepathy, but all he caught was the brittle edges of the passing thoughts. The flavor of conspiracy.

  “They were all standing out there waving their dicks at each other. I was just giving them the opportunity to prove how tough they were. That stupid, ugly joker was trying to wimp out—”

  “SHUT UP!” Even Tachyon jumped at the fury and command in the Russian’s voice. Polyakov turned his back on the red-faced boy. “The preambulations of an adolescent, superpowered Caligula are not the problem. The problem is Henry Chaiken.”

  “Fascinating. And who by the Ideal is Henry Chaiken?”

  “An AP reporter who used to be stationed overseas. He recognized me as Victor Demyenov, reporter for Tass.”

  “Blood and Ancestors.” Tach’s knees felt weak, and he felt for the edge of the bed, sat down hard.

  “Naturally the police—”

  Frustrated with the slow unraveling of the story, Tachyon snatched the memory from his grandson’s mind.

  The street flanking Piedmont Park. Glancing down to see the dusty footprints left by his tennis shoes on the hood of the car. The circle of sweating faces surrounding the little tableau. Mouths stretched with excitement, eyes glistening. Shrugging off George’s clutching hands.

  “Come on. Come on! Put your money down. Not on an ugly joker he’s going to get creamed.”

  The cop giving a convulsive jerk as Blaise twitched the cord binding the human to the quarter-Takisian child.

  “He’s not going to help the joker. He hates them too. I know. I’m in his head.

  “Soon after an army of police arrived, and Blaise discovered the limit to his power,” continued Polyakov, not realizing that Tachyon had read it all.

  A chill, like an icy finger, traced down his back as Tach considered that at the end Blaise had been controlling nine people. Tachyon’s limit was three for full control, and that took a tremendous toll on mind and body. Nine. And he was only thirteen. And I’ve been training him. His eyes met the flat, implacable gaze of the sullen boy.

  “Chaiken was an interested spectator to all of this, and he found it interesting that my current identification did not match his memory of me. I gave them a story about changing my name as I changed my life, but if they are not complete fools they will check.”

  “Your papers?”

  “Are very good, but a question to the wrong place. A photo shown to the wrong man.…” Polyakov shrugged expressively.

  “You have to get out of here. Out of the country. If you need money I’ll give it to you—”

  “No. I came here to do a thing. I will not leave.”

  “What about me!”

  “You don’t matter any more than I do. What I do I do out of a perhaps pathetic belief in an ideal. A familiar concept to you, Tachyon. You curse with it, believe in it. We’re not so very different. We both have our honor. Unfortunately, it is always purchased with blood.”

  There was again that fleeting glance between the Russian and Blaise. Tachyon slipped beneath the teenager’s imperfect shields.

  “You may not use Blaise. I forbid it!”

  An infinitesimal arch of the eyebrows. Polyakov’s mouth twisted in a slight, bitter smile.

  “I’ll do whatever Uncle George wants,” shrilled Blaise.

  “I will kill you first,” said Tachyon, eyes locking with the Russian’s.

  “I’m not your enemy, Dancer. He is.” A pudgy forefinger thrust at the ceiling, and the Hartmann suite seven floors above.

  8:00 P.M.

  Standing with the fronds of a fern falling across his face like bangs, Mackie Messer watched Sara and the big fuck leave the restaurant.

  She’d been keeping him at bay all day, keeping to the crowds, never letting him have a shot at her alone. He’d thought surely she’d go to the room she shared with the nigger to take a shower; women were crazy about keeping clean. He’d never seen Psycho, so he didn’t realize that was the last thing a woman of Sara’s generation would do in circumstances like these.

  The memory of offing the natty nigger made his lips smile. It had felt good, his hand on bone. But the rush had faded. He was hungry. He hadn’t spotted Sara till midmorning, over in the joker park. He hadn’t even had a chance to phase into some restaurant’s kitchen and rip off a bite to eat. Hunger was feeding the frustrated anger that had been building in him all day.

  The bitch. I have to kill her. I can’t let the Man down. He was going to have to do something soon, something violent, to let out all that feeling.

  And now she and her new boyfriend headed for the elevators, arm in arm. Going upstairs to fuck; women were all alike.

  He followed, weaving among delegates who didn’t deign to notice a twisted boy, got to the elevator stand in time to see them go into one and the doors close. He laughed out loud: “Yeah. Baby, baby.”

  All he had to do now was see what floor they got off on. Then he’d find them.

  He licked his lips. I hope they’re doing it when I catch them. He thought of the man’s big cock going into Sara, and his hard hand going into him, and almost creamed his jeans.

  Drinks, exhaustion, and a heavy meal had done their work on Sara. Her knees had gone rubbery, and she leaned on Jack as they shot upward in the glass elevator. Jack closed his eyes against a surge of vertigo. Then he thought of the bottle of Valiums in his luggage and gave an inward smile.

  Sara was clearly on her last legs. She’d be out like a light within hours, and some time toward morning Jack was going to creep out of bed, find the Valiums, crumble a couple of them in a glass of room-service orange juice, and feed them to her with breakfast.

  That, he thought, should keep the loose cannon from rolling around for most, if not all, of Friday.

  Jack led Sara along the curving atrium balcony, then down a short hallway to his suite. “Piano Man” echoed up from the floor of the atrium. Sara stepped through the door and stood there, her heavy shoulder bag pulling her off balance. Jack put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, closed and locked it, and put his arms around Sara from behind. Despite the alcohol her body was taut as a watchspring. He brushed the dis
ordered hair from her neck and began to kiss her nape. For a while Sara didn’t react, then she gave a sigh and turned toward him. He kissed her on the lips. She took her time about responding, finally put her arms around his neck, opened her mouth, let his tongue flicker against hers.

  “There,” Jack said, grinning. “It’s better when you help.” Which was the line that Bacall gave Bogart in To Have and Have Not.

  Sara didn’t smile. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Jack watched her walk unsteadily toward the toilet. A sinking feeling was beginning to envelop him. This was playing too much like his second marriage.

  He took off his jacket and poured himself a whiskey. He could hear water running in the bathroom, then silence. Maybe she was fixing her hair or makeup. Maybe she was sitting on the commode, reliving the death of her friend.

  Jack lit a cigarette and thought about the first time he’d seen violent death, when his company was caught in a German counterattack down Highway 90 between Avellino and Benevento, and he remembered that the experience hadn’t made him feel very sexy, either.

  Damn, he thought. This had the potential to be a very depressing night.

  The bathroom door opened and Sara gave him a brave smile as she came into the room. She’d fixed her hair and makeup and looked quite different from the scarecrow who’d sat opposite him at dinner.

  Jack stubbed out the cigarette and walked toward her. He was about to take her in his arms when a young hunchback in a leather jacket walked right through the wall behind her, grinned, and lunged forward with a hand thrust out like a spear.

  Without thought, Jack picked Sara up, made a half turn, and tossed her gently onto the sofa behind him. The air burned with Jack’s golden light. There was the shrieking sound of a buzz saw hitting a spike buried in a tree, a sound that brought Jack’s hackles erect and sent a surge of adrenaline pouring through his body. Jack turned back to the intruder and saw a look of shock on his young, pale face. Jack flipped a fist at the little man, a gentle backhand strike, and in a flare of yellow light the leather boy was flung against the bathroom wall with a bone-breaking crash. The boy dropped to the floor like a rag doll.

  Sara screamed as she turned and saw the assassin. Jack jumped involuntarily.

  “I got him, Sara,” Jack said. She kept on screaming. He heard the sounds of her struggling to her feet.

  Jack stepped forward toward the leather boy and leaned over him. The boy’s eyes snapped open and his hands sliced out, flashing as if they were knives, and when they connected with Jack there was a flare of golden light, the screaming buzz saw noise, and bits of Jack’s clothing flying like the fur of a fighting cat.

  Jack didn’t even feel the blows.

  He picked up the boy by his leather jacket and held him at arm’s length. The hunchback, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, kept hacking at Jack’s arm, cutting the pale-blue Givenchy shirt to ribbons.

  Apparently, the little guy hadn’t ever come up against an invincible opponent before.

  “Kill him!” Sara’s voice. “Jack, kill him now!”

  Jack thought not. He wanted to knock this character out and find out who he was working for. He aimed a slow open-hand slap at the boy’s head, one that would maybe put him out for a few hours.

  The slap went through the hunchback’s head without connecting. His other hand, holding the boy’s jacket bunched up under his chin, was suddenly holding nothing at all. A dazed, triumphant grin passed across the boy’s face as he drifted—drifted slowly, not dropped—toward the floor.

  “Jack!” Sara wailed. “Jack, oh JesusJesusJesus…”

  An edge of fear grated across Jack’s nerves. He flicked out punches, one-two, and both passed through the boy without touching him.

  The boy’s feet touched the floor. His grin twisted and he dove forward, his body passing right through Jack, heading for Sara.

  Jack spun and went after him. Sara was stumbling backward toward the door, holding her shoulder bag out protectively. The boy’s hands sliced forward, hacking the bag in half with a ripping noise, like heavy cardboard torn by a buck knife.

  Jack grabbed the hunchback’s leather collar and jerked back with all his strength. The boy went insubstantial before his feet quite left the floor, but Jack had managed to impart a certain momentum and the boy sailed upward and back. Jack saw the pale face redden with fury as it disappeared through the ceiling. The lower part of his body remained visible as it shot back, then down.

  “JesusJesus!” Sara was clawing at the hall door, trying to unlock it. “Oh, fuck!”

  Jack had worked it out. The boy had to become substantial in order to use his buzz-saw hands. He was most vulnerable when he tried to kill.

  It had been so much easier when all he had to do was grab cars full of fugitive Nazis and turn them upside down.

  Sara got the door open and disappeared screaming into the hall. The leather boy soared back, his head appearing now, and Jack swiped at him a few times just in case he tried to turn himself solid again.

  The hunchback kept sailing, went through the wall into Jack’s back bedroom. “Hell,” Jack said. He contemplated going through the wall after him and decided against it—he might get hung up partway through. He ran for the bedroom door and smashed through it in a bright flash of light. He saw the leather boy solid and on his feet, racing for the wall that led to the corridor outside. The assassin went insubstantial and dove through the wall head-first.

  “Hell,” Jack said again, reversed himself, ran for the hallway door.

  The boy was just ahead of him. Sara wasn’t visible, had probably run out onto the atrium balcony by now.

  “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” soared up from the ground floor.

  Jack accelerated, swung a fist, missed the back of the boy’s neck by inches. The momentum of the punch threw Jack off course and caromed him off the wall, and the boy drew ahead. He must have heard Jack behind him, because as he reached the atrium balcony he turned, grinning his crazed grin. One buzz-saw hand, just for demonstration purposes, sliced a chunk of concrete out of the balcony wall.

  Jack was still moving forward with considerable momentum. He planted his feet in front of the kid and used his forward motion to torque his upper body forward, his right hand punching out toward the hunchback’s chest with every ounce of strength he possessed.

  The assassin went insubstantial.

  The power of Jack’s punch carried him over the balcony rail in a blaze of golden light.

  She ran out the door and down the hallway because the stairwell had been closing in around her, about to grow an arm that would slice her in two. The terror was a solid lump in her throat.

  She had no idea where she was going. A distant part of her mind observed that just now panic was her friend. Because she had no place to go, logically, and panic was better than despair.

  I should just go back and offer my throat, she thought wildly. But her legs kept pumping.

  And the wall did sprout a hand, and it did fasten about her wrist.

  She screamed. It was as if her heart was exploding and the sound came out her mouth. She slumped in terror.

  “Get up,” a voice said, soft but peremptory. Accented. She looked up into the face of the old man who had accosted her after she bolted Tachyon’s breakfast. Instead of his Mickey Mouse shirt he wore a lime-green leisure suit.

  “Get up,” he said again. “You know now what I told you is true.”

  She let him haul her to her feet, nodded. There were no words in her. She had lost her shoes.

  “Then come with me. I’ll take you to a place of safety.”

  She came.

  As the Marriott atrium yawned out below, Jack had all the time in the world to think of how stupid he’d just been.

  He tumbled, arms and legs flailing. Balconies spun past. Vertigo and terror tugged at his belly.

  He gave a yell, just to give people below a chance to clear out.

&nbs
p; “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” floated upward toward him.

  It occurred to him to do something to stop the tumbling.

  Jack stuck out his arms and legs like a skydiver and tried to stabilize and slow his fall. His stomach lurched again as his body took a wild swing, but then the technique took effect. His vertigo lessened. The ruins of his Givenchy shirt fluttered out behind him like a flag, the remains of the sleeve snapping out little sonic booms close to one ear. His punch had carried him clear out into the atrium, there didn’t seem to be a chance of guiding his fall so that he’d hit a balcony rather than fall all the way to the floor.

  He tried real hard to think.

  There were guy wires strung up here and there, carrying bits of colored cloth that were supposed to provide little abstract flags of brightness against the intimidating saurian rib-cage structure of the atrium. Jack tried to angle his fall toward one of these. Possibly it would break his fall.

  Jack gave a yell again as his effort to guide his fall resulted in his pitching over headfirst. He flailed and stabilized, and then he wished he could think of something brave and inspiring to say. Not that anyone would hear it against the sound of the piano anyway.

  He missed his intended guy wire by twenty feet. He began concentrating on trying to land where there weren’t any people. He gave another shout.

  Flying Ace Gliders danced and swooped below him, bright mocking spots of color.

  People below must have heard, since they were trying to get out of the way. There was a patch of white down there that seemed to make a good aiming point. He tried to angle his fall toward it.

  He could see individual people now. A blond-haired black hooker, trying to run, but wearing such high heels that she could only hop like a sparrow. A man in a white tuxedo was staring upward as if he didn’t believe his eyes. Hiram Worchester was jumping up and down and waving a fist.

  Earl Sanderson floated past him, wings spread, heading for the light. Jack felt a sudden wash of sadness.

  Too late, he thought, and then wondered what he meant by that.

  Suddenly the sound of the wind in Jack’s ears seemed to diminish. He felt a lurch in his belly, like when an elevator begins to move. The ground wasn’t coming up any faster.