Wild Cards IV

by George R. R. Martin

  —and fell jarringly to the floor.

  She caught herself on her hands and knees, skinning her palms on the rough stones and banging her left knee so hard that it went numb after an initial stab of excruciatingly sharp pain.

  For a long second Peregrine refused to believe what had happened. She crouched on the floor, bullets whining around her, then stood and beat her wings again, hard. But nothing happened. She couldn’t fly. She stood in the middle of the floor, ignoring the gunfire around her, trying to figure out what was happening, what she was doing wrong.

  “Peregrine,” McCoy shouted, “get down!” The third terrorist aimed at her, screaming incoherently. A look of horror suddenly contorted his face and he swooped toward the ceiling. His gun slipped out of his hand and smashed to the floor. Hiram casually let the man drop thirty feet as the other terrorists were clubbed to the floor by temple security guards. Kemel bustled up, a look of incredulous horror on his face.

  “Thank the Merciful Ones you weren’t injured!” he cried, rushing to Peregrine, who was still dazed and confused at what had happened to her.

  “Yeah,” she said distantly, then her eyes focused on the walls of the chamber. “But look at all the damage!”

  A small wooden statue, gilded and inlaid with faience and precious stones, lay in fragments at Peregrine’s feet. She stopped and picked it up gently, but the fragile wood turned to dust at her touch, leaving behind a twisted shell of gold and jewels. “It survived for so long, only to be destroyed by this madness.…” she murmured softly.

  “Ah, yes.” Kemel shrugged. “Well, the walls can be restored, and we have more artifacts to put into display cases.”

  “Who were those people?” Father Squid asked, imperturbably brushing dust off of his cassock.

  “The Nur,” Kemel said. He spat on the floor. “Fanatics!”

  McCoy rushed up to them, his camera slung over his shoulder. “I thought I told you to be careful,” he reproached Peregrine. “Standing in the middle of a room with idiots blazing away with machine guns is not my idea of careful! Thank God that Hiram was watching that guy.”

  “I know,” Peregrine said, “but it shouldn’t have happened that way. I was trying to get airborne, but I couldn’t. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. It’s strange.” She pushed her long hair out of her eyes, looking troubled. “I don’t know what it is.”

  The chamber was still in turmoil. The terrorists could have slaughtered hundreds if they had chosen to shoot people rather than the symbols of the old religion, but as it was, several score of tourists had been hit by stray bullets or injured themselves trying to escape. Temple security guards were trying to help those who were hurt, but there were so many of them lying crumpled on the stone benches, wailing, crying, screaming, bleeding …

  Peregrine turned from McCoy and the others, nauseated to the point of vomiting, but there was nothing in her stomach to throw up. McCoy held her as she was wracked by dry heaves. When she stopped shuddering, she leaned against him gratefully.

  He took her hand gently. “We’d better get you to Dr. Tachyon.”

  On the way back to the Winter Palace Hotel, McCoy put his arm around her and drew her to him. “Everything is going to be okay,” he soothed. “You’re probably just tired.”

  “What if it isn’t that? What if something is really wrong with me? What,” she asked in a horror-stricken whisper, “if I’ll never fly again?” She buried her face against McCoy’s shoulder as the others looked on in mute sympathy. Her tears soaked through his shirt as he stroked her long brown hair.

  “Everything will be all right, Peri. I promise.”

  “Hmmm, I should have expected that,” Tachyon said as Peregrine tearfully told him her story.

  “What do you mean?” asked McCoy. “What’s wrong with her?”

  Tachyon eyed Josh McCoy coldly. “It’s rather private. Between a woman and her physician. So…”

  “Anything that concerns Peri concerns me.”

  “It’s that way, is it?” Tachyon looked at McCoy hostilely.

  “It’s all right, Josh,” said Peregrine. She hugged him.

  “If that’s the way you want it.” McCoy turned to go. “I’ll wait for you in the bar.”

  Tachyon closed the door behind him. “Now, sit down and wipe your eyes. It’s nothing serious, really. You’re losing your feathers because of hormonal changes. Your mind has recognized your condition and has blocked your power as a means of protection.”

  “Condition? Protection? What’s wrong with me?”

  Peregrine perched on the edge of the sofa. Tachyon sat next to her and took her cold hands in his.

  “It’s nothing that won’t be cleared up in a few months.” His lilac eyes looked straight into her blue ones. “You’re pregnant.”

  “What!” Peregrine sank back against the sofa cushions. “That’s impossible! How can I be pregnant? I’ve been on the pill forever!” She sat up again. “What will NBC say? I wonder if this is covered in my contract?”

  “I suggest you stop taking the pill and all other drugs, including alcohol. After all, you want a happy, healthy baby.”

  “Tachy, this is ridiculous! I can’t be pregnant! Are you sure?”

  “Quite. And judging from your symptoms, I’d say you were about four months along.” He nodded at the door. “How will your lover feel about being a father?”

  “Josh isn’t the father. We’ve only been together for a couple of weeks.” Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God!”

  “What is it?” Tachyon asked, concern in his voice and on his face.

  She got off the sofa and began walking around the room, her wings fluttering absently. “Doctor, what would happen to the baby if both parents carried the wild card? Joker mother, ace father, that sort of thing?” She stopped by the marble mantel and fiddled with the dusty knickknacks set on it.

  “Why?” Tachyon asked suspiciously. “If McCoy isn’t the father, who is? An ace?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  She sighed and put aside the figurine she was playing with. “I don’t think it really matters. I’ll never see him again. It was just one night.” She smiled in recollection. “What a night!”

  Tachyon suddenly remembered the dinner at Aces High on Wild Card Day. Peregrine had left the restaurant with—“Fortunato?” he shouted. “Fortunato’s the father? You went to bed with that, that pimp? Have you no taste? You won’t sleep with me, but you’ll lay with him!” He stopped shouting and took several deep breaths. He walked to the room’s bar and poured himself a brandy. Peregrine looked at him in amazement.

  “I cannot believe it,” Tachyon repeated, swallowing most of the glass. “I have so much more to offer.”

  Right, she thought. Another notch on your bedpost. But then maybe I was just that for Fortunato too.

  “Let’s face it, Doctor,” Peregrine said flippantly, angered by his self-centeredness. “He’s the only man I’ve ever screwed that made me glow. It was absolutely incredible.” She smiled inside at the furious look on Tachyon’s face. “But that’s not important now. What about the baby?”

  A multitude of thoughts dashed through her mind. I’ll have to redo my apartment, she thought. I hope they’ve fixed the roof. A baby can’t live in a house without a roof. Maybe I should move upstate. That would probably be better for a child. She smiled to herself. A big house with a large lawn, trees, and a garden. And dogs. I never thought about having a baby. Will I be a good mother? This is a good time to find out. I’m thirty-two and the old biological clock is ticking away.

  But how did it happen? The pill had always worked before. Fortunato’s powers, she realized, are based on his potent sexuality. Perhaps they somehow circumvented the contraceptives. Fortunato … and Josh! How will he react to the news? What will he think?

  Tachyon’s voice broke into her reverie. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?” he demanded.

  Peregrine blushed. “I’m sorry. I was thinking abo
ut being a mother.”

  He groaned. “Peri, it’s not that simple,” he said gently.

  “Why not?”

  “Both you and that man have the wild card. Therefore the child will have a 90 percent chance of dying before or at birth. A 90 percent chance of being a joker, and 1 percent, 1 percent,” he emphasized, “of being an ace.” He drank more brandy. “The odds are terrible, terrible. The child has no chance. None at all.”

  Peregrine began pacing back and forth. “Is there something you can do, some sort of test, that can tell if the baby is all right now?”

  “Well, yes, I can do an ultrasound. It’s abysmally primitive, but it’ll tell if the child is developing normally or not. If the baby is not, I suggest—no, I urge you, very strongly, to have an abortion. There are already enough jokers in this world,” he said bitterly.

  “And if the baby is normal?”

  Tachyon sighed. “The virus often doesn’t express itself until birth. If the child survives the birth trauma without the virus manifesting, then you wait. Wait and wonder what will happen, and when it will happen. Peregrine, if you allow the child to be born, you will spend your whole life in agony, worrying and trying to protect it from everything. Consider the stresses of childhood and adolescence, any one of which might trigger the virus. Is that fair to you? To your child? To the man waiting for you downstairs? Providing,” Tachyon added coldly, “he still wants to be a part of your life when he learns of this.”

  “I’ll have to take my chances with Josh,” she said swiftly, coming again to the thought that dominated her mind. “Can you do the ultrasound soon?”

  “I’ll see if I can make arrangements at the hospital. If we can’t do it in Luxor, then you’ll have to wait until we get back to Cairo. If the child is abnormal, you must consider an abortion. Actually, you should have an abortion, regardless.”

  She stared at him. “Destroy what may be a healthy human being? It might be like me,” she argued. “Or Fortunato.”

  “Peri, you don’t know how good the virus was to you. You’ve parlayed your wings into fame and financial success. You are one of the fortunate few.”

  “Of course I am. I mean, I’m pretty, but nothing special. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen. Actually, I have you to thank for my success.”

  “This is the first time anyone has thanked me for helping to destroy the lives of millions of people,” Tachyon said grimly.

  “You tried to stop it,” she said reassuringly. “It’s not your fault Jetboy screwed up.”

  “Peri,” Tachyon said grimly, changing the subject as if the failures of the past were too painful to dwell upon, “if you don’t terminate the pregnancy, you’ll be showing very shortly. You’d better start thinking about what you’re going to tell people.”

  “Why, the truth of course. That I’m going to have a baby.”

  “What if they ask about the father?”

  “That’s nobody’s business but mine!”

  “And, I would submit,” Tachyon said, “McCoy’s.”

  “I guess you’re right. But the world doesn’t have to know about Fortunato. Please don’t tell anyone. I’d hate for him to read it in the papers. I’d rather tell him myself.” If I ever see him again, she added silently. “Please?”

  “It is not my place to inform him,” Tachyon said coldly. “But he must be told. It is his right.” He frowned. “I don’t know what you saw in that man. If it had been me, this would have never happened.”

  “You’ve said that before,” Peregrine said, annoyance showing on her face. “But it’s a little too late for might-have-beens. Eventually everything will be fine.”

  “Everything is not going to be fine,” said Tachyon firmly. “The odds are the child will die or be a joker, and I don’t think that you’re strong enough to deal with either of those possibilities.”

  “I’ll have to wait and see,” Peregrine said pragmatically. She turned to leave. “I guess I’d better break the news to Josh. He’ll be glad it’s nothing serious.”

  “And that you’re carrying the child of another man?” asked Tachyon. “If you can maintain your relationship through this, then McCoy is a very unusual man.”

  “He is, Doctor,” she assured him, and herself. “He is.”

  Peregrine walked slowly to the bar, remembering the day she and McCoy had met. He had made his interest in her evident from the very first when they were introduced at the NBC offices in November. A talented cameraman and freelance documentary maker, he had jumped at the chance to film the tour, and as he later confessed to Peregrine, the opportunity to meet her up close and personal. Peregrine was almost over her obsession with Fortunato, and McCoy’s attentions had helped. They had teased and tantalized each other until they finally ended up in bed together in Argentina. They’d shared a room ever since.

  But McCoy couldn’t arouse in her the sexual passion that Fortunato had. She doubted if any man could. Peregrine had wanted him again after that wild night they’d had together. He was like a drug she craved. Every time the phone had rung or there was a knock at the door, she’d hoped it was Fortunato. But he’d never come back. With Chrysalis’s help she had found his mother and learned that the ace had left New York and was somewhere in the Orient, probably Japan.

  The realization that he had left her so casually helped her get over him, but now he rushed back into her mind. She wondered how he would feel about her pregnancy, about being a father. Would he ever even know? She sighed.

  Josh McCoy, she told herself sternly, is a wonderful man, and you love him. Don’t blow it over a man you’ll probably never see again. But if I did see him again, what would it be like? For the millionth time she relived her hours with Fortunato. Just thinking about it made her want him. Or McCoy.

  Josh was drinking a Stella beer. As he saw her, he signaled the waiter and they arrived at his table together.

  “I’ll have another beer,” McCoy told the waiter. “Some wine, Peri?”

  “Uh, no thanks. Do you have any bottled water?” she asked the waiter.

  “Certainly, madam. We have Perrier.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “Well?” McCoy asked. “What did Tachyon have to say? Are you okay?”

  I’m not as brave about telling him this as I thought I’d be, Peregrine said to herself. What if he can’t deal with it? It was best, she decided, to simply tell him the truth.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing that time won’t cure.” She took a sip of the drink the waiter placed in front of her and murmured, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “What?” McCoy almost dropped his beer. “A baby?”

  She nodded, looking at him directly for the first time since she had sat down. I really love you, she said silently. Please don’t make this any harder on me than it already is.

  “Mine?” he inquired calmly.

  This was going to be the hard part. “No,” she admitted.

  Josh downed the rest of his beer and picked up the second bottle. “If I’m not the father, who is? Bruce Willis?” Peregrine made a face. “Keith Hernandez? Bob Weir? Senator Hartmann? Who?”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Regardless of what the supermarket tabloids, and apparently you, think, I do not sleep with every man my name is linked with.” She drank some Perrier. “In fact, I happen to be rather particular about choosing bedmates.” She grinned mischievously. “I picked you, after all.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” he warned. “Who’s the father?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Josh nodded curtly.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he sighed, “I happen to love you and I think it’s important that I know who is the father of your baby. Does he know yet?”

  “How can he? I just found out myself.”

  “Do you love him?” McCoy asked, frowning. “Why did you break off your relationship? Was it him?”

  “Josh,” Peregrine explained patiently. “There was
no relationship. It was one night. I met this man, we went to bed. I never saw him again.” Although not, she silently added, for lack of trying.

  McCoy’s frown deepened. “Are you in the habit of going to bed with anybody who catches your fancy?”

  Peregrine flushed. “No. I just told you I’m not.” She laid her hand on his. “Please understand. I had no idea you were in my future when I met him. You knew you weren’t my first the first time we made love, and after all,” she challenged, “I’m surely not the first woman you’ve slept with, am I?”

  “No, but I was hoping you’d be the last.” McCoy ran his hand through his hair. “This really puts a cramp into my plans.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what about the father? Is he going to just stand quietly by while I marry the mother of his kid?”

  “You want to marry me?” For the first time Peregrine felt that everything would work out right.

  “Yeah, I do! What’s so strange about that? Is this guy going to be a problem? Who is it anyhow?”

  “It’s an ace,” she said slowly.

  “Who?” McCoy insisted.

  Oh, hell, she thought. Josh knows a lot about the New York scene. He’s sure to have heard of Fortunato. What if he has the same attitude Tachyon has? Maybe I shouldn’t tell him, but maybe he has the right to know. “His name’s Fortunato—”

  “Fortunato!” exploded McCoy. “That guy with all the hookers? Geishas, he calls them! You slept with him?” He gulped down more beer.

  “I really don’t see that it matters now. It happened. And if you must know, he’s very charming.”

  “Okay, okay.” McCoy glowered.

  “If you’re going to be jealous of every man I ever slept with, then I don’t give us very much of a chance. And marriage is out of the question.”

  “Come on, Peri, give me a break. This is kind of unexpected.”

  “Well, it’s a shock to me too. This morning I thought I was tired. This afternoon I find out I’m pregnant.”