Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty

by George R. R. Martin

  “We’re closed.” Chrysalis was standing at the door to her office with a nasty-looking gun in her hand; behind her, Gregg could see Downs.

  “You were expecting me,” Gregg said softly. “You sent me a message.” He took off the clown’s mask. Even without a puppet’s link to the woman, he could sense the mingled fear and defiance in her, a bitter metallic tang that roused Puppetman. Gregg chuckled, letting a little of his own nervousness into the sound.

  Why so uncertain?

  That should be obvious. Even with the information Video fed us we don’t know everything. Gimli didn’t trust Video enough; he didn’t let her see everything. They have whatever it was Kahina and Gimli had.

  And you have me.

  Gregg had planned it well: Video had been a wonderful, pliant puppet for years. Yet even with what she’d managed to funnel to him, even with what he’d garnered from government intelligence agencies and other sources, he was still grasping in twilight. A misstep here, and it might all be over.

  Gregg had always been cautious, had always sought the safe path. Recklessness was not something with which he was comfortable, and this was reckless. But since Syria, since Berlin, it seems he’d been forced to choose this path. “Sorry I couldn’t make it during your business hours,” he continued, his voice nearly apologetic. “I felt your meeting might be too private for that.”

  Good. Let them think they’re negotiating from strength, at least for a bit. You need to know what they know.

  Chrysalis lowered the gun; muscles expanded under her transparent arm and across her chest—the dress she wore did little to conceal her body. Red lips that seemed to float on glassy flesh pursed. “Senator,” she said with that breathy fake accent that Gregg disliked, “I assume you know what Mr. Downs and myself would like to discuss.”

  Gregg took a breath. He smiled. “You want to talk about aces,” he said. “Especially ones who are—so to speak—up the sleeve and who intend to stay that way. You want to see what I might be able to do for you. I think it’s usually called blackmail.”

  “Aah, that’s such an ugly word.” She stepped back into the office. Her lips tightened, the horror-show skull eyes blinked. “Please come in.”

  Chrysalis’s office was luxurious. A polished oak desk, plush leather chairs, an expensive rug over the center of the hardwood floor, wooden bookcases on which gold-leaf spines were lined neatly in sets. Downs was sitting nervously. He smiled tentatively at Gregg as the senator entered.

  “Hey, Senator. What’s shakin’?”

  Gregg didn’t bother to answer. He stared hard at Downs. The little man sniffed and sat back in the chair. Chrysalis brushed past him in a wave of perfume and took her seat behind the desk. She waved at one of the empty chairs. “Have a seat, Senator. I don’t believe our business will take that long.”

  “Exactly what are we talking about?”

  “We’re talking about the fact that I’m considering telling the public that you’re an ace. I’m sure you’d be very unhappy with that.”

  Gregg had expected Chrysalis to threaten; she was no doubt used to getting results from that tactic, and he didn’t doubt that she considered herself safe from physical violence here. Gregg watched Downs from the corners of his eyes. The reporter had shown himself to be the nervous type on the wild card tour, and he couldn’t control his agitation now. Sweat beaded on his forehead; he rubbed his hands and squirmed in his seat. If Chrysalis was at ease with this, Downs was not. Good. Puppetman came alert. We made a mistake not taking him. Let me have him now.

  No. Not yet. Wait.

  “You are an ace, aren’t you, Senator?” Chrysalis asked the question coolly, pretending nonchalance.

  He knew they expected him to deny it. So he simply smiled. “Yes,” he answered just as calmly.

  “Your blood tests were faked?”

  “As they can be faked again. But I don’t think I’ll have to do that.”

  “You’re rather overconfident in your ability, then.”

  Gregg, looking at Downs rather than Chrysalis, could see the uncertainty. He knew what the man was thinking: A projecting telepath? A mental power like Tachyon’s? What if we can’t control him?

  Gregg smiled calmly to lend credence to that misconception. “Your friend Downs isn’t so certain,” he told Chrysalis. “Everyone in Jokertown knows about Gimli’s empty skin being found last night in an alleyway, and he wonders about whether I had anything to do with that.” It was a bluff—Gregg had been as surprised (and delighted) as anyone else at the news—but Gregg saw the color drain from Downs’s face. “He wonders if I might not be able to coerce your cooperation through my ace.”

  “You can’t. And whatever happened to Gimli had nothing to do with you, not directly,” Chrysalis answered forcefully. “No matter what he thinks. My best guess is that you’ve a mind power, but with a rather limited range. So even if you can make us say yes now, you can’t enforce it.”

  She knows! Puppetman’s wail echoed in Gregg’s head. You’ve got to kill her. Please. It will taste good. We could make Oddity do it.…

  She suspects, that’s all, he answered.

  What’s the difference? Have them killed; we have puppets who would find pleasure in it. Have them killed and we don’t have to worry.

  Kill them now and we have more trails to cover up. Misha wouldn’t talk; we still don’t know what evidence Chrysalis was given. Gimli’s taken himself out of the picture, but there’s still the other man in Video’s memory—the Russian.

  And Sara. Puppetman’s scorn was a barb.

  Shut up. Sara we can control. Chrysalis will have plans made against her own death. We can’t risk that.

  The inner debate took only a moment. “I’m a politician. This isn’t France, where the wild card is chic. I’m in a fight where Leo Barnett will use joker hatred as a tool. I’ve already seen Gary Hart’s career wiped out by innuendo. I’m not going to let that happen to me. Still, people might look at whatever evidence you have and wonder. I might lose votes. People will say that blood tests can be faked, they’ll look at Syria and Berlin with suspicion. I can’t afford to lose ground to speculation.”

  “Which means we can come to an accommodation,” Chrysalis smiled.

  “Maybe not. I think you still have a problem.”

  “Senator, the press has its obligations…” Downs began, then fell silent with the withering gaze Hartmann gave him.

  “Aces magazine is hardly the legitimate press. Let me put it this way—your problem is that you don’t know what I’m capable of. I will tell you that Berlin and Syria weren’t accidents. I’ll tell you that even now Gimli’s little cadre is being arrested. I’ll tell you that there’s no way you can escape me if I want to find you.” He turned his head slightly toward the door. “Mackie!” he called.

  The door opened. Grinning, Mackie entered, supporting a stumbling woman wrapped in a long cloak. Mackie jerked the cloak from the woman’s shoulders, revealing her naked and streaked with blood. He shoved the woman from behind, and she sprawled on the carpet in front of the horrified Chrysalis.

  “I’m a reasonable man,” Gregg said as Chrysalis and Downs stared at the figure moaning on the floor. “All I ask is that you think about this. Remember that I will contest any evidence. Remember that I can and will produce that negative blood test. Think about the fact that I don’t even want to hear the faintest whisper of a rumor. And realize that I leave the two of you alive because you’re the best sources of information I know—you hear everything, or so you’d have me believe. Good. Use those sources. Because if I hear any rumors, if I see a piece in the papers or Aces, if I notice that people are asking strange questions, if I’m attacked or hurt or even feel vaguely threatened, I’ll know where to come.”

  Downs was staring slack-jawed at Misha; Chrysalis had sunk back against her desk. She tried to meet Gregg’s eyes and failed. “You see, I intend to use you, not the reverse,” Gregg continued. “I hold the two of you responsible for silence and sa
fety. You’re both so damned good at what you do. So start learning who my enemies are and work at stopping them. I’m vindictive, and I’m dangerous. I’m everything Gimli and Misha were afraid I might be.

  “And if anyone else ever learns that, I’ll consider it your fault. You might damage my presidential campaign by being heroes, but that’s all. You can’t prove anything else. After all, I’ve never actually killed or hurt anyone myself. I’d still be on the streets, afterward. And I’d find you without any trouble at all. And then I’d do to you what I’d do to any enemy.”

  Puppetman was chuckling in his mind, anticipating. Gregg smiled at Chrysalis, at Downs. He hugged Mackie, who was watching him eagerly. “Enjoy yourself,” Gregg told him. He gave Chrysalis a small nod that was chilling in its nonchalance and left the office. He shut the door behind him, leaning against it until he heard the whine of Mackie’s ace.

  He let Puppetman loose to ride with the youth’s strange, brightly colored madness. He hardly had to nudge Mackie at all.

  Inside, Mackie knelt and cradled Misha’s head in his arms. Neither Chrysalis nor Downs moved. “Misha,” he crooned. The woman opened her eyes, and the pain he saw behind them made him sigh. “Such a good little martyr,” he told her. “She wouldn’t talk no matter what I did, you know,” he said to the others admiringly, his eyes skittering, bright. His hands roamed over her lacerated body. “She could be a saint. Such silence in suffering. So frigging noble.” The smile he gave Misha was almost tender. “I took her like a boy first, before I cut her at all. Anything to say now, Misha?”

  Her head rolled side to side, slowly.

  Mackie was smiling fitfully, breathing hard and fast. “You couldn’t really have hated the jokers,” he said, looking down at her face. “You couldn’t, or you would have talked.” There was a strange sadness in the way he said it.

  “Shahid.” The word was a whisper from swollen; blood-caked lips. Mackie leaned close to hear it.

  “Arabic,” he told them. “I don’t understand Arabic.” His hands were buzzing now, screaming. He ran his fingers around her breasts like a caress, and blood followed. Misha shrieked hoarsely; Downs gagged and threw up. Chrysalis remained stoic until Mackie slid his hand down Misha’s stomach and let the coils of intestines spill wetly out over the carpet.

  When he was done, he stood up and brushed away the gore covering the front of him. “The senator said you’d know how to take care of the mess,” he told them. “He said you knew everything and everybody.” Mackie chuckled, high and manic. He began to whistle: Brecht, the Threepenny Opera.

  With a casual wave he strolled through the wall and away.

  Thursday, 7:35 P.M.

  Sara stood on the corner of South across from the Jokertown Clinic. A cool front had moved in from Canada; low, scudding clouds spat wet circles on the pavement.

  Sara glanced again at her watch. Misha was over an hour late. “I’ll be there. I promise you, Sara. If I’m not there, know it’s because he stopped me.”

  Sara cursed under her breath, wishing she knew what to think, what to feel.

  “You’ll have to decide what to do then.”

  “Can I help you, Ms. Morgenstern?” Tachyon’s deep voice made her start. The scarlet-haired alien peered down at her with a look of intense concern on his face that she might have found comical at another time; during the recent junket, he’d more than once indicated he found her attractive. She laughed, hating the hysteria she heard in the sound.

  “No. No, Doctor, I’m all right. I was … I was waiting for someone. We were supposed to meet here.…”

  Tachyon nodded solemnly, his startling eyes refusing to let her go. “You seemed nervous. I watched you from the clinic. I thought perhaps there was something I could do. Are you sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”

  “No.” Her denial was too sharp, too loud. Sara was forced to smile to soften the effect. “Really. Thank you for asking. I was just about to leave, anyway. It doesn’t look like she’s going to show.”

  He nodded. He stared. At last he shrugged. “Aah,” he said. “Well, it was good seeing you again. We don’t need to be strangers now that the trip is over, Sara. Perhaps dinner one night?”

  “Thank you, but…” Sara bit her lower lip in agitation, just wanting Tachyon to leave. She needed to think, needed to get away from here. “Maybe next time I’m in the city?”

  “I’ll hold you to that.” Tachyon inclined his head like a Victorian lord, staring at her strangely, then turned. Sara watched Tachyon make his way across the street to the clinic. The sky was beginning to let down a steady drizzle. Streetlights were flickering in the early dusk. Sara looked again up and down the street. A joker with oddly twisted legs and a carapace scuttled from the sidewalk to the cover of a porch. Rain began to pool in the trash-clogged gutters.

  “We’re sisters in this.”

  Sara stepped from the curb and hailed a cab parked down the street. The nat driver stared at her through the rearview mirror. His gaze was rude and direct; Sara turned her face away. “Where you going?” he asked with a distinct Slavic accent.

  “Head uptown,” she said. “Just get me out of here.”

  “What he did to me, he would also do to you. Don’t you notice how your feelings for him change when he’s with you, and doesn’t that also make you wonder?”

  Aah, Andrea. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

  Sara sat back and watched the rain smear the towers of Manhattan through the windows.

  Blood Ties

  III

  A GRID MAP OF Manhattan from Eighty-seventh down to Fifty-seventh Street glowed on the computer. Tachyon punched in a marker. Brought up another thirty-block section. Studied the two red dots. Wished he had a really big screen that could give him a full view of all of Manhattan. Decided that despite the growing crises at the clinic he would have to spend several hours aboard Baby. Her wetware and hardware were far superior to anything on Earth, and she could give him a full-screen view of this mysterious and elusive wild card source.

  Victoria Queen, the clinic’s chief of surgery, entered without knocking.

  “Tachyon, you can’t go on like this. Spending time with the joker patrols, working with patients, doing research, and racing around with your grandson trying to be superdad.”

  He dug his thumbs into his gritty eyes, then rapped his knuckles against the CRT screen. “The answer is here somewhere. I just have to find it. Eighteen new cases of wild card in a four-day period. It’s not rational, it shouldn’t be happening. I had hoped it was something simple. A hitherto undisturbed cache of spores. But the dispersal of the cases makes that impossible. I put in a call to the National Weather Service, and they’re up sending weather tapes covering the past two weeks. Perhaps that will be the key. Some climactic and seismic anomaly that has caused this outbreak.”

  “Pointless and hopeless, and a waste of your already limited time.”

  “GODDAMN IT!” He used the desk to lever himself out of his chair. “I’ve got the goddamn press breathing down my neck, demanding answers, demanding some reassurance for their readers. How long can I continue to make reassuring noises before this becomes a full-scale panic? And just think what Barnett will do with that!”

  She gripped his wrists, pinning his hands to the desk. Leaned in until their noses were almost touching. “You can’t be responsible for every damn thing that happens in the world! For gang wars in Jokertown, and right-wing cranks running for president! Or for wild card either.”

  “I am bred to be responsible. By blood and bone. By a thousand generations. This is my town, my people, MY GRANDSON, AND MY CLINIC, AND YES, MY VIRUS!”

  “DON’T BE SO FUCKING PROUD OF IT!”

  “I’M NOT!” Snatching his hands away, he stormed across the room.

  “YOU’RE ARROGANT AND IRRATIONAL!”

  “SO WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST? TO WHOM DO I ABDICATE THIS RESPONSIBILITY? WHOM DO I CONDEMN TO BEAR THE GUILT AND THE HATE! MY PEOPLE, YES, AND AT BASE EVERYONE OF
THEM HATES MY GUTS!” Laying his head against the wall, he burst into wild sobs.

  The woman’s face hardened. Filling a glass with water from the bathroom tap, she yanked him around by a shoulder and flung it full in his face.

  “That’s enough! Get hold of yourself!” She punctuated each word with a hard shake.

  Coughing, he mopped his face, drew a shaky breath. “Thank you, I’m all right now.”

  “Go home, get some sleep, accept some goddamn help. Get Meadows in here to help with the research, and let Chrysalis run the goddamn patrols.”

  “And Blaise? What do I do with Blaise?” He scrubbed at his face. “He’s the most important thing in my life, and I’m neglecting him.”

  “The problem with you, Tachyon,” she said as she walked out of the office, “is that everything is the most important thing in your life.”

  A routine appendectomy. He shouldn’t have taken the time, but Tommy was Old Mr. Cricket’s nephew, and you don’t ignore old friends. Tach stripped out of the bilious green scrubs, brushed out his cropped hair, and made a face. He then took a turn through each of the clinic’s four floors. The hospital had been dimmed for the evening. From various rooms he heard muted televisions, the low hum of conversation, and from one a sad, hopeless sobbing. For a moment he hesitated, then entered. Powerful mandibles and opaque oval eyes stared out framed by stringy gray hair. The emaciated body beneath the hospital gown revealed it to be a woman.

  “Madam?” He lifted the chart. Mrs. Willma Banks. Age seventy-one. Cancer of the pancreas.

  “Oh, Doctor, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m fine really. I don’t mean to be a bother … that nurse was so sharp—”

  “You’re not a bother. And what nurse?”

  “I don’t mean to be a talebearer or unduly troublesome.”

  It was obvious that she was, but Tachyon listened politely. No matter how tiresome a patient might be, he insisted upon courtesy and service from his staff. If someone had violated this most basic rule, he wanted to know.

  “And my children never come to see me. I ask you, what’s the good of children if they abandon you when you most need them? I worked every day for thirty years so they could have the advantages. Now my son, Reggie—he’s a stockbroker with a big Wall Street firm—he has a house in Connecticut, and a wife who can’t stand to look at me. I’ve only been to their house once when she was away with my grandchildren.”