Wild Cards 14 - Marked Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  But Sprout was full of love and mischief this bright afternoon, and so she decided to act the way she'd seen grownups do, on TV and sometimes in person. She grabbed Belew by the head and planted a kiss full on his lips.

  "Belew!"

  Belew's hands froze to claws on the girl's biceps. He had never heard that rage-choked voice before. All the same, he knew it belonged to Mark Meadows.

  Sprout was still giggling and trying to kiss him. For all her near-adult weight, he picked her up by the arms and set her to the side. She saw her father standing in the arcade with Ganesha, ran happily to them.

  "Take her," Mark snapped to two of the armed jokers who accompanied him. "Take her someplace ... someplace safe."

  "Daddy?" she called as she was hustled away. "Daddy, what's the matter? Daddy, I'm scared!"

  "Don't worry, honey," Mark said darkly. "You'll be all right now."

  He turned a look of perfect loathing on Belew. "I should have known," he said. "What they said about you right-wing military types - it was true all along."

  Ganesha laid a hand on his arm. "Do not judge him too harshly, my son," he said. "Sometimes the lust of older men for innocence comes to overpower their judgment. So it can be, when one has not learned to live without desire."

  The six remaining jokers leveled their Kalashnikovs at Belew. He raised his hands.

  "Just shoot me now," he suggested.

  "Maybe later," Mark said, and turned away.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Unca Neesha," Sprout asked, "where are we going?"

  The elephant head swiveled left and right as the guru checked the hall. "Out to play, my child. Do not be afraid."

  "But it's after dark. And Daddy told me to stay in my room."

  He smiled at her. "He meditates. But he decided you could go with me. It's all right." The trunk tip chucked her beneath the chin. "You trust your Uncle Neesha, don't you?"

  She nodded solemnly.

  "Then let us go. It will be such a marvelous adventure."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "There is something damned well wrong with this picture," Mark's mouth said; and then his voice said, "Dammit, JJ, I resent you taking over control like that."

  Somebody's got to get us back on track. We're all in this together, buddy. You can't just throw us aside, shave your head, and forget about us.

  "I - JJ, I'm sorry. But this is driving me insane. I don't know who I am anymore."

  We're always going to be here, came the waspish thought from the Traveler. You can't get rid of us so easily.

  You already tried, back when you were trying to be clean and sober to get custody of Sprout, JJ Flash thought. One worked about as well as the other.

  Mark sat on his bed, stork legs pulled up. He held his head in both hands.

  "What happens if my mind just snaps?" he asked.

  How would any of us tell the difference? Trav shot back.

  Be honest with yourselves, JJ, Traveler, Moonchild said. Have you never resented your imprisonment? Have you never wished you could be free of the confines of another's skull?

  You know it, baby, JJ Flash said.

  Then why do you resist? Perhaps Guru can find a way to liberate us to pursue our own karma.

  What if we don't have our own karma? JJ asked. Remember how you couldn't understand Korean? The language you supposedly grew up speaking? What happens if we're just fantasy figments, or symptoms of the world's best-realized multiple personality disorder? What happens to us then?

  Perhaps we can be reintegrated into one whole again, Moonchild said. Perhaps we can know peace.

  Yeah, JJ said with a sneer, Nirvana. Smells like personal extinction to me, babe. That's what the Big Goal is, after all - flipping off the wheel of birth and death and getting to be nothing. Me, I'd feel cheated. I'd at least like to give the wheel a spin or two in my own improper person.

  "JJ," Mark said, "I'd switch places with you if I could. Really, I would. The stress, inside and out - I can't take it any more."

  He beat his hands lightly on the bedclothes. "I'd accept nonbeing," he whispered, "in a minute."

  What about the Radical? Flash asked.

  "That was a long time ago. The human body replaces all its cells on a seven-year cycle; what was that, three bodies ago? And who knows how many lifetimes. Starshine's, for one. Maybe it's time to give up on that. I've never known if I even was the Radical, man. Maybe it's time to quit pretending."

  Mark - Moonchild said.

  "Yeah. I know. It's sad when dreams die." He stood up, paced around his small, bare room. "Or maybe I'll find the purity I've been lacking so long; maybe Guru can help me get the Radical back, and he'll be ... greater than the sum of his parts."

  The sound of half a mind thinking, JJ said, is rationalization.

  "Call it what you Will. Naming a thing doesn't change it." He shook his head. "I'm gonna check on my little girl. Then I'm going to get some sleep. And tomorrow - "

  He paused with one bony hand on the door. "Tomorrow, my life begins anew."

  He knew it sounded tacky. But he'd live with it.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Because he wasn't sure exactly what extremities he might need this night, he bit off the tip of his left little finger to take control of the door lock of the room he'd been imprisoned in.

  His cell was on the third floor, in front. The window could not be locked from the outside, obviously, but there was no ready way down to the ground but surrender to gravity. Belew was confident in his abilities to say the least, but he knew he wasn't a movie hero, to scramble down the rain gutters, or whatever, three stories to the front courtyard, without falling and busting his fool neck. Besides, one of the sentries out front would likely spot him - and they were jokers, which meant their loyalty was to Mark first.

  Like all machines, though, the lock was his to take. From listening at the door he knew that there was a bored pair of guards on watch. Piece of cake.

  He opened the door and walked out. The guards were slouched against the walls, weapons slung, smoking illicit cigarettes. They gaped at him.

  While they waited for their synapses to snap, he busted the nose of the right-hand guard with a backfist, then grabbed his sling and spun him around in a semicircle in front of him to slam into the other guard, who had actually come to life sufficiently to begin fumbling with his own weapon. The second guard sat down hard, losing his rifle in the process.

  By the simple expedient of clinging to the sling as the first guard crumpled in a moaning face-clutching heap, Belew availed himself of an assault rifle. He proceeded to aim it at the pair.

  The room had curtains. The guards had bootlaces, belts, a handkerchief, and socks. Of such things are rapid and wonderfully efficient field-expedient bonds and gags made. Belew was occupied less than a minute in securing the pair.

  Sprout's room was a flight down, next to Mark's. Neither was guarded. Belew felt a terrible suspicion that certain trunk-overhung lips had dropped in Mark's ear a suggestion that most of the Palace guards should be elsewhere that night, like out front, or guarding the audience room, or keeping watch on Belew the putative child molester.

  Belew's still bleeding pinky opened Sprout's locked door. The room was empty but for the immense stuffed panda keeping blind and futile vigil over the bed. Just as he feared.

  He crossed quickly to the window, looked out into the back garden. Two figures, one with blond hair in a pony-tail, one with an elephant's head, were riding a rising pillar of dirt to the top of the rear garden wall.

  "Shit," Belew said, and ran.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Where are we, Unca Neesha?" Sprout asked, hanging slightly back.

  It was another villa a few blocks away, less grand than the one the President and Chancellor occupied, and dark. The grounds were overgrown, the shrubberies looming black ominous shapes.

  "I don't like it here," the girl protested. "I'm afraid."

  "There is nothing to fear," the guru said. "Not wi
th your Uncle Ganesha here. Have I not the power of maya? Have I not magic?"

  She bit her lip, but nodded. She was going to be brave. She had learned how a long time ago, when the bad people took her from her daddy.

  He pushed the door. It opened. Inside, the house echoed to their steps, and smelled of mildew and the dust that swirled up to greet them as they entered.

  The place had belonged to a ranking member of one of the former Socialist Republic's many and varied secret police organizations. Showing that wisdom Marcos owned, but Ceaucescu and Honecker sadly lacked, he had blown town before People Power came and nailed his ass to a light standard. The villa had suffered a little token vandalism and looting in the immediate aftermath of Liberation, but Madam President had made it known she Strongly Disapproved of that sort of thing, and it had ceased. The house had been closed up, and remained fairly undisturbed until the guru's sannyasi cased it.

  They walked through the foyer and parlor to the great room. Ganesha gestured, and it became paradise. In this case paradise was dominated by a bed, canopied in fine silk and cloth of gold, lit by myriad candles and golden oil lamps, swaying from carved-ivory chains.

  "We're going to go to bed?" Sprout asked, trying to hide her disappointment. She wasn't tired yet, and anyway the excitement of escaping the Palace had got her all awake.

  "Here, my child, kneel upon the bed." the guru said, urging her onto it.

  "I never sleep without my pink bear," she said, and then remembered to add politely, "and Mr. Fish."

  "Sleep, my child?" Ganesha tittered. "Sleeping is the furthest thing from my mind. Soon, you shall truly know paradise. I can make you feel things your young body never knew it could experience - "

  As he spoke, the tip of his trunk slid softly down her cheek. She smiled. It felt good.

  His hands were on her, caressing. She tried to pull away. There was something wrong here, something her daddy had warned her about....

  The T-shirt vanished. Chimes began to play.

  She gasped and hugged her arms over her white bra. "Stop it!" she wailed.

  "Do not be afraid, my princess," Ganesha said. "I shall not hurt you, no. First I shall prepare you - "

  He dropped a hand to her hip. The cut-off jeans vanished.

  "And then will come the pleasure. Come now, my sweet, do not cringe away. Let me help you off with that."

  He tried to reach her bra. She clasped her forearms in a tight inverted V before her and turned away. He tittered.

  "No matter. That which I can touch, I can bring to nonbeing. As I can create, so can I destroy, though at not so long a range."

  As he spoke, he got two plump fingers under the strap of Sprout's bra, pulled it away from her skin. She whimpered.

  The bra disappeared.

  "See? It is all so simple. Nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. I am your father's guru, but I would be more to you, precious child. Oh, so very much more."

  "Please," she said, unable to hold in the tears. "Leave me alone."

  "You will not wish that when you learn what I can offer." He ran his hand down her ribs. Her satiny skin was drawn up in goosebumps. He reached for the waistband of her panties.

  A click from behind him, metallic and multiplex.

  Deliberately Ganesha turned. J. Robert Belew stood in the door to the parlor, aiming his Para-Ordnance at the guru's broad stomach.

  "Back off, Hosenose. Or I'll commence to let your atman leak out through your belly-button."

  Ganesha sighed. "Truly, you are without wisdom."

  His giant white rat materialized at Belew's right hand. Before he could pull the trigger it bit off his gun hand with a flash of orange incisors.

  Belew gasped and fell to his knees as blood jetted across the room, spraying the magnificent canopy, Ganesha, and Sprout. Sprout crouched on the bed, looking wildly from Belew to Ganesha to the giant rat, which sat on its great haunches, demurely cleaning blood from its whiskers.

  "Sprout, run!" Belew screamed. "Back to your father!"

  The half-naked girl tried to obey. She started to jump off the bed, but the sheet rose up around her legs, tangling her and pulling her down.

  The rat gave off cleaning its face to lunge again at Belew. Desperately he rolled aside, just avoiding its strike. The maneuver brought him into the corner, almost against the base of an old-fashioned floor lamp with a flexible neck. He pressed his spurting stump against its base.

  The rat jumped for him. The top of the lamp slammed down right between its eyes, which showed maroon highlights in the candlelight.

  The rat sat down on its haunches. The lamp struck like a cobra, cracking it on its snout. The rat chittered outrage and grabbed the lamp in its teeth. It bit down hard.

  There was a blue flash, and a pop!, and a brief loud buzzing, accompanied by a stink of burning meat. The rat flopped over on its back, the broken lamp hanging from its convulsively working jaws, blue sparks flying like spittle from its mouth. It kicked around the room, tore the hangings from the bed and expired.

  "My rat," Ganesha said in tones of desolation. He had trouble making himself heard over Sprout's screams. The sheet had completely entwined her long legs, turned her to a mummy lamia with an angel's face. "You have slain my sacred rat."

  "You can build yourself another," J. Bob said, between pants, as he rolled to his knees and cast about for his sidearm. "Unless I miss my guess. What do you do, call virtual particles into being in the desired form? And if you need something really substantial, like a riding rat, it uses up a lot of your capacity, doesn't it? Thought I saw this LSD playboy pad of yours waver a few times there.

  "And your little disintegration trick - you can suppress virtual particles, too, as well as call them into being, you rascal, you. Like the pions that carry the strong force - "

  Ganesha shook his magnificent head. "You are lost in the maya of your machines - "

  "Actually, I think it's the blood I've lost that makes me talk like this."

  "- to concern yourself with how I do what I do, when all that matters is what I do."

  And his mind caught the flames of the lamps and the candles, and drew them forth in bright strands into a roiling, roaring mass, and set them upon Belew. He fought, rolling on the floor to douse the flames, roaring as much in fury as in pain. But in the end, the flames had their way.

  At last it was done, and he lay still.

  For a moment Ganesha stood over his vanquished foe. The corpse was covered with a hard black charcoal crust, from which stinking smoke rose. The guru nodded and turned away.

  "And now, my child," he said, going to the bed. The smell of incense filled the room, to banish less pleasant odors. "Let us continue where we left off."

  Sprout stared at him with wide blue eyes. When he reached his trunk for her she struck at it with her fists.

  "You hurt Unca Bob. I hate you!"

  He reared, blinking back sudden tears of pain. He seized her wrists.

  "I will not be denied any longer," he cried. Golden vines twined around Sprout's arms from the posts of the bed. They drew her down onto her back.

  Behind Ganesha the smoking mummy stirred. Slowly, agonizingly, it stretched a foot toward the handgun lying near it on the floor. Handspan patches of blackened meat fell away like cheap plaster.

  "Where were we, my child?" Ganesha asked when the girl was restrained. He dropped his hand to her belly, which was covered by the wound sheet. He patted it twice, and then the sheet disappeared. Before she could kick him, more vines seized her ankles.

  The black crust over one big toe split open. Blood welled through the cracks. The mummy reached for the pistol with the toe. Clumsy in its coat of char, it nudged the weapon, which made a tiny scraping sound.

  Ganesha spun, frowned thunderously. "So! You are hard to kill, Major."

  He strode across the room with a speed belying his bulk, kicked the handgun away.

  "And now," he said, "I fear that I must reach out and touch you." He held forth a hand as
if to bestow a benediction, leaned forward.

  The window exploded inward in a cascade of glass-shards and splintered wood. Ganesha looked up.

  Moonchild drove a flying two-footed kick into his trunked face.

  She touched down lightly. Ganesha flopped bonelessly to the hardwood floor at her feet. His great elephant head flickered once, twice, vanished.

  In its place was the head of an ordinary Indian male, round, plump-cheeked shaven in the priestly style. It lolled at an unnatural angle on a normal human neck, which was unmistakably broken. Protruding eyes stared at Moonchild like brown marbles.

  She fell to her knees and began to scream.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  J. Bob Belew's healing powers were not as those of ordinary men. By the time he was brought before Mark a few days later, he had enough skin, pink and new and fragile as a baby's, that he did not need to be kept pumped full of every antibiotic known to humankind to keep every known contagion from invading his body. He was still sadly deficient in the matter of hair and he preferred to wear bandages over his face and hands, to protect the sensibilities of others.

  "Since I'm still not in possession of all my faculties," he told the Chancellor of Free Vietnam in his muffled voice, "I won't try to fight the impulse to say, 'I told you so.'"

  Mark Meadows turned from the window to stare at him. His blue eyes were chill and pale as Arctic-circle sky. With the afternoon sun blasting in at his back his long features seemed skeleton-gaunt.

  The audience chamber had been stripped to echoing bareness. Not only were Ganesha's tangible illusions gone, but the tie-dyed scrim as well. All that occupied the room was now the camp stool, the two men, a quartet of joker guards with their rifles trained on Belew.

  "He was a fraud to the bone," Belew said. "You saw him, didn't you, at the end? He wasn't even a joker."

  Even during their days of privation and comradeship, in the fight for Vietnam, Belew thought he had never seen the skin so dry or parchment-tight over Mark's prominent cheekbones. Now emotion drew it tighter still, until it seemed the skin must snap.