Wild Cards IV

by George R. R. Martin

  Howard stuffed the brochure in his back pocket and ducked in through the main doors of the museum. He had overheard Fantasy saying that the Museo Larco had a world-renowned collection of pre-Columbian erotic pottery. And it had been ages since he’d gotten laid.

  The collection did not disappoint. Howard had to get down on one knee to look in all the cases, but he was rewarded with the sight of pre-Colombian pottery figures getting their freak on as much as nats could. There were even some seeming jokers among them: a bird woman with perky tits; a couple alpaca jokers, or maybe just pottery alpacas, doing the wild thing; and a skull-faced joker with an oversized dick who looked like Charles Dutton’s head on a pre-Colombian nat’s body with, well, Howard’s own penis—though less warty, and brown instead of green.

  Howard purchased the Museo Larco’s coffee table book then went back out to the gardens to wait for the limo to take him back to the hotel. A purple bougainvillea formed a pleasant bower in one corner, and a giant terra-cotta urn tipped on its side served him as a seat. Butterflies and moths fluttered nearby, still seeming to regard him with their owl eyes and wing spots. He fished a cigar out of his shirt pocket, an extremely fine gift from Fulgencio Batista, the aging president of Cuba, during their brief stop in Havana. He sniffed it to savor it one last time then bit off the end with his snaggled yellow teeth, which served better than any cigar clipper. Howard spat the end into the bougainvillea and struck a safety match against his skin.

  He’d just inhaled a lungful of the sweet smoke when the limousine pulled up, UN flags fluttering prominently. Howard sighed, letting out a cloud of smoke, which drove away the butterflies that kept mistaking him for a cactus. He got up, stubbing his cigar out against the urn.

  The chauffeur ignored Howard, opening the door instead to let out a tall—relatively speaking—blond man in a linen suit who in turn offered a gallant hand to a petite but stunning woman. The man was Jack Braun, the infamous Golden Boy; the woman Asta Lenser, prima ballerina for the American Ballet Theater, more famed as Fantasy, the ace whose dancing caused all men (and even some women) to desire her.

  Howard had a poster of her on the wall of his bedroom—Asta done up as Coppélia, the clockwork doll, from the ballet of the same name—a souvenir of the night Dr. Tachyon had given Howard his ticket to the Met. Her coiffure for that performance had been tightly wound brassy ringlets that bounced like springs. Today she wore a spiked platinum mullet, like Bowie’s Goblin King. A Goblin Queen, and a fetching one at that.

  “Oh!” she cried, her hand and arm moving in an elegant yet theatrical gesture as she pointed to the air above the museum. “Oh, look, Jack! How beautiful!”

  Howard looked as well, watching as a migration of moths and butterflies crested over the roof of the former colonial mansion, chartreuse and crimson, apricot and azure, sulfur and fuchsia; some were even translucent, like a cascade of confetti viewed through a Tiffany window magically brought to life, their wings all the colors of the rainbow.

  Visitors to the garden gaped. Children laughed and pointed. Howard gazed in wonder himself, mystified as to their source. The kaleidoscope of Lepidoptera whirled and spun, their patterns tumbling and transforming, a panoply of jeweled fragments.

  For a moment, a coven of black witch moths flew together, forming a shape that resembled a hooded figure, like one of Tolkien’s ringwraiths—but just as swiftly it broke apart, the black moths becoming dark traceries amidst their more colorful companions. Before Howard could follow their progress any further, Fantasy began her dance.

  To say she was beautiful was an understatement. To say she was absolutely mesmerizing was the truth. Asta was a dancer, lithe but muscled, supremely agile and in control of her body as she gave herself over to sheer terpsichorean joy.

  Howard did not know all the names for what she did—entrechat, pirouette, cabriole fouetté, a graceful arabesque, and a grand jeté—he only knew that he wanted her. She moved like a butterfly, her dress a sheer wrap of delicate peach-tinted silk with full skirts slit to show off her amazing legs. Across her shoulders, trailing from each hand, she wore a gaudy native shawl, doubtless a recent gift from some admirer, woven with threads of cactus fruit pink and cornflower blue.

  Asta raised it above her head like moth wings, causing it to flutter as the butterflies swirled around her, drawn half by the colors, half by her movement and magnetism.

  All the men watching, Howard included, were held transfixed by her beauty, caught like a lepidopterist’s specimens on a pin. There must have been a woman among them, for Howard dimly heard the clicking of a camera shutter. He could do nothing but watch, only able to move what muscles it took to follow the dancer’s movements, entranced.

  Asta’s spontaneous performance at last wound to a close as she sank to a spot in the center of the lawn, fluttering her shawl like a butterfly’s wings as it comes to rest. She touched her head to her knee, bringing her arms forward to touch her calf so the shawl’s colors were fully displayed at the conclusion of her dance’s coda.

  Applause erupted spontaneously, the noise and movement causing the moths and butterflies to scatter. Howard shook off the last of his trance and became uncomfortably aware that the front of his jeans was tented by a raging hard-on. This was made even more embarrassing by the fact that it was at an average person’s eye level.

  Fantasy rose, taking her bows for her impromptu ballet fantasia, surveying her admirers and her audience. She paused with an amused sidelong glance at Howard’s crotch. “And to think,” she remarked impishly, “we haven’t even seen the erotic pottery collection yet. Jack?”

  “Of course, Asta.”

  Asta simply laughed. While Jack Braun might be pleased because he knew she would be his tonight, Asta Lenser would never truly belong to anyone but herself.

  DECEMBER 19, 1986, EN ROUTE TO CUSCO:

  On board the Stacked Deck, people traded seats like Fantasy traded bed partners—all save Howard and Mordecai Jones. The Harlem Hammer required a chair with special reinforcements to withstand his immense weight. Howard required that plus additional headroom, legroom, and width. He couldn’t even stand up in the plane, so spent most of his time stretched out recumbent, staring at the ceiling or chatting with whomever had taken the seats beside him for that leg of the tour.

  This morning it was Father Squid and Archbishop Fitzmorris, the tour’s representative for Catholic Charities. The Archbishop was a nat in his sixties, with white hair with traces of red and an affable round face offset by silver-rimmed bifocals. He was also exceedingly unflappable, paging through Howard’s book of pre-Colombian erotica with interest. “Oh my,” he exclaimed, “some of these remind me of the obscure saints.” He tapped a page and chuckled. “This gentleman resembles Saint Foutin.”

  Howard looked over at the photograph. It was another one of the jokers with a giant dick. “We’ve, uh, got a guy sort of like that back at the clinic.”

  “Oh?” Father Squid inquired, his tentacles curling with interest. “Is it Philip, the new janitor? I have told him there’s no shame in a joker body, but he does not wish to reveal what he hides beneath that trench coat. And, I’m afraid to say, the church ladies have begun to speculate.”

  “Uh, no,” Howard said. “Not Phil. Another guy.”

  The archbishop still marveled at the photograph. “I hope this poor man’s joker is not precisely like Saint Foutin’s.”

  “Well, more proportional…,” Howard admitted uncomfortably.

  “That is good to hear, but still not precisely what I meant,” Archbishop Fitzmorris clarified. “One of the saint’s icons is housed at a little parish in France. When they think the priest isn’t looking, women sneak a hand beneath Saint Foutin’s robe and touch him to ensure fertility. Sometimes they even chip off splinters.” He leaned over conspiratorially, whispering, this obviously a favorite scurrilous anecdote. “You would think the saint’s member would be worn away to nothing, and yet it is miraculously restored! Or maybe not so miraculously. Someone i
n the Middle Ages was clever enough to drill a hole through the statue and insert a dowel. Every so often, as needed, one of the priests uses a mallet to tap a little more out.”

  Howard considered. Like most jokers, he was not entirely pleased with what the wild card had done to him. But at least it hadn’t shoved a broomstick up his ass.

  “This is an official saint of the church?” asked Father Squid.

  “As official as Saint Christopher, if less popular.” Archbishop Fitzmorris reached into his shirt collar and pulled out a silver medallion engraved with the image of a bearded man holding a staff and giving a child with a halo a piggyback ride. “His Holiness took both their days off the universal liturgical calendar, along with those of the rest of the obscure saints, but parishes dedicated to them are still free to celebrate their feast days, as are any who hold a special veneration. ‘Christopher’ is my Christian name, and I am not going to fly anywhere without my patron’s protection.” The archbishop kissed his medallion and tucked it away, then gave Howard an appraising look. “Do you know, Mr. Mueller, you remind me very much of Saint Christopher. He too was a giant among men—five cubits tall. That, I believe, is about seven and a half feet.”

  “I’m taller.”

  “I can see,” the archbishop conceded, “and if I’ve heard correctly, quite strong as well. But Saint Christopher was even stronger, for he bore the Christ child across a river on his back, and with him, the sins of the world. I doubt that even Mr. Braun could bear that burden.”

  “Golden Boy has enough of his own sins to bear,” observed Father Squid.

  “Truly,” agreed the archbishop. “Judas’s sin is the greatest of all.”

  The conversation was starting to stray into uncomfortable territory, especially considering Golden Boy was seated only a few rows away, still flirting with Fantasy. Howard asked, “Did Saint Christopher have warts too?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” said Archbishop Fitzmorris, amused, “but the oldest icons of him do give him a dog’s head.”

  “There’s a guy like that over at the Crystal Palace,” Howard said. “Lupo. Makes a good martini.”

  “I shall have to visit,” said the archbishop. “I appreciate a good martini.”

  “So what happened to the dog’s head?” Howard asked.

  “After he carried Our Lord across the river, Christopher was rewarded with a human countenance.” The archbishop swiftly added, “Mind you, I am simply reciting the hagiography as I learned it as a child, well before the advent of the wild card.”

  “Jesus was a joker,” Father Squid stated piously, his tentacles twitching, “and a hermaphrodite. I do not see why He-She would consider it a reward to make someone into a nat.”

  “Who are we to question the ineffable wisdom of the divine?”

  “There is that,” agreed Father Squid. “What I will question, however, is why the Holy Mother Church has still not accepted the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker, as one of her parishes, nor even seen fit to declare a patron saint for wild cards.”

  “Father Squid,” the archbishop sighed, “you are still a young priest. These matters take time. There are any numbers of patron saints who already deal with plagues—Roch, Sebastian, Godeberta, Camillus de Lillus. And, truth to tell, it has only been forty years. Sadly, there are matters of pride and politics to attend to, societies that wish their patron saint be granted dominion over something as important as the wild card virus.”

  “The wild card is more than just some plague,” Father Squid stated flatly.

  “I agree,” conceded Archbishop Fitzmorris, “but then it becomes a question of which other saint should have dominion? Saint Jude, who makes all things possible? Saint Eustace and His Companions, the patrons of difficult situations? Saint Spyridon, the Wonder-worker? Personally I advise all those dealing with the wild card to pray to Saint Rita of Cascia, for Rita of the Impossibles would seem the one most suited. That said, Rita’s society is small, and Augustinian, and Spyridon dealt in both miracles and plagues, so he’s currently the front-runner. But it would never be wise to count Rita of the Impossibles out.”

  Howard considered, trying to remember where he’d heard of Rita of the Impossibles before. “Didn’t Castro say she helped the Dodgers win the pennant a few years back?”

  “Heresy!” declared Archbishop Fitzmorris. “That was the devil’s work!” He unscrewed the cap of an airline bottle of gin, looked for something to mix it with, and, failing that, swigged it straight. “It should have been the Red Sox!”

  “I knew you were a Red Sox fan, Christopher”—Father Squid gave the archbishop a sidelong glance with his cephalopod eyes—“but a Dominican too?”

  “What are you talking about?” The archbishop paused, then added, “But you’re quite right. I’m a Franciscan. My primary concerns are charity for the poor and healing for the sick. And annoying the Jesuits. I must leave it to the Dominicans to deal with heresy.” He patted Father Squid on the arm. “Like you, my good friend. The heretic.”

  “I am not a heretic,” huffed Father Squid.

  “That’s what she said,” laughed Archbishop Fitzmorris.

  “Who?”

  “Joan of Arc,” said the Archbishop, his blue eyes twinkling, “and now she’s a saint.” He raised his gin in a toast. “Consider yourself in good company.”

  DECEMBER 19, 1986, CUSCO:

  “And here is where the Inca Manco Cápac sank his golden rod!” the giant white guinea pig in the rainbow-striped poncho declared, looking like Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole’s Peruvian cousin from some unpublished Rackham illustration. She pointed to the cobblestones near an old colonial fountain.

  Snickers and repetitions of “golden rod!” echoed across the Plaza de Armas, the old heart of the Incan empire and the new heart of tourism in Cusco. Howard couldn’t figure out whether Peruvians had a thing for dick jokes or were just less uptight than New Yorkers. Probably a little of both.

  Two churches and a larger cathedral dominated the plaza, the little Iglesia del Triunfo, the larger Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús, and the huge brownstone Catedral de Santo Domingo. Howard watched Father Squid and Archbishop Fitzmorris slip inside the gothic façade of the latter, still chatting convivially.

  Howard wasn’t much for church, cathedral ceilings notwithstanding. But the morning walking tour of the plaza had sounded like a good way to stretch his legs after the flight and yet another set of awkwardly pushed together beds back at the last hotel.

  Howard missed his bed back home. When he was a teenager, still having his growth spurt and not knowing how tall he was going to get, his old friend Cheetah had helped him cobble it together from a couple brass bed frames.

  Cheetah had also gotten him into breaking and entering. Howard had paid for those bed frames eventually, getting his first honest job as security for Mr. Musso.

  Musso’s Furniture was long dead and Mr. Musso along with it. Howard didn’t know what had happened with Cheetah. They’d grown apart, in more than one sense.

  When you passed six and a half feet tall, you started to get used to owning the airspace around your head. Even in Jokertown. At nine feet, the only people Howard was used to seeing at eye level were Tree, Gargantua, and occasionally the Floater, depending on his altitude at the moment. In the Plaza de Armas, the only things floating around Howard’s head were more butterflies, part of the same seasonal migrations as in Lima. Tourists ran about taking pictures of them, and also, incidentally, of him. Howard tried to be good-humored about it.

  But walking around the plaza was also a good way to see his fellow jokers. Howard had an eye for security and also had a strong knowledge of the possible jokers folks could draw. While there were a fair number of jokers present, they reminded Howard of the staff at the Funhouse. The guinea pig tour guide was well groomed, her white hair obviously shampooed and styled, her teeth freshly clipped. A man with jaguar spots, fur, fangs, claws, and a stubby half-grown tail stood in the shade of a tree, giving an expert performance toss
ing butterfly sticks. A two-headed llama acted as a barker for a stand selling fruit cups, one head crying out in a woman’s voice, the other a man’s. Both heads wore headbands with red felt reindeer antlers, it being the week before Christmas. And, near the fountain, a group of assorted joker musicians in Santa hats alternated between international holiday tunes and traditional Andean flute music. Instead of the expected satyr playing the panpipes, they included a golden-skinned wood nymph whose flutes were her own fingers. A bronze-scaled serpent woman danced beside her, her scales chiming like bells. The less-than-presentable local jokers had either been removed by the police or been paid to be elsewhere by local businesses. Howard did not know which.

  “Señors y señoritas!” the giant guinea pig cried. “Please turn your attention to the square! The first of our folk dances shall be La Llamerada! The dance of the llama herders!”

  Excepting the two-headed llama joker, who had a head at each end like the Pushmi-Pullyu from Doctor Doolittle, the dancers were all nats, dressed in traditional folk costumes. Their pants and skirts were russet, their shirts and blouses gold, and their sashes in the gaudy clashing serape colors most Peruvian weavers seemed to favor. Their triangular hats looked like a cross between Masonic ritual headdresses, tea cozies, and Howard’s nat Grandma Mueller’s favorite fringed lampshade. A couple of pom-poms decorated the top, and a felt llama cut-out was stuck on the front along with, for some reason Howard couldn’t fathom, a red letter U.