Wild Cards IV: Aces Abroad

by Stephen Leigh

  Wild Cards IV Aces Abroad

  Copyright © 1988, 2002 by George R.R. Martin and the Wild Card Trust

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  For Terry Matz, a treasured friend for longer than I care to think about.

  THE TINT OF HATRED

  Stephen Leigh

  Prologue

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1986, WASHINGTON, DC:

  The Sony threw flickering light over Sara’s Thanksgiving feast: a Swanson turkey dinner steaming in foil on the coffee table. On the television screen a mob of misshapen jokers marched through a sweltering New York summer afternoon, their mouths moving in silent screams and curses. The grainy scene had the jerky look of an old newsreel, and suddenly the picture swung about to show a handsome man in his mid-thirties, his sleeves rolled up, his suit coat slung over a shoulder and his tie loose on his neck—Senator Gregg Hartmann, as he had been in 1976. Hartmann strode through the police lines blockading the jokers, shrugging away the security men who tried to hold him, shouting at the police himself. Alone, he stood between the authorities and the oncoming crowd of jokers, motioning them back.

  Then the camera panned toward a disturbance within the ranks of jokers. The images were jumbled and out of focus: at the center was the ace/prostitute known as Succubus, her body seemingly made of quicksilver flesh, her appearance constantly shifting. The wild card had cursed her with sexual empathy. Succubus could take on whatever shape and form most pleased her clients, but that ability was now out of control. Around her, people responded to her power, grasping out for her with a strange lust on their faces. Her mouth was open in an imploring scream as the pursuing crowd, police and jokers both, bore her down. Her arms were stretched out in supplication, and as the camera panned back, there was Hartmann again, his jaw open in surprise as he gaped at Succubus. Her arms were reaching for him, her plea was for him. Then she was gone under the mob. For several seconds she was buried, lost. But then the crowd drew back in horror. The camera followed Hartmann closer: he shoved through those around Succubus, angrily pushed them away.

  Sara reached for the VCR’s remote switch. She touched the pause button, freezing the scene, a moment of time that had shaped her life. She could feel the hot tears streaking her face.

  Succubus lay twisted in a pool of blood, her body mangled, her face turned upward as Hartmann stared at her, mirroring Sara’s horror.

  Sara knew the face that Succubus, whoever she might have really been, had found just before death. Those young features had haunted Sara since childhood—Succubus had taken on Andrea Whitman’s face.

  Sara’s older sister’s face. Andrea who, at thirteen, had been brutally murdered in 1950.

  Sara knew who had kept that pubescent image of Andrea locked away in his mind for so many years. She knew who had placed Andrea’s features on the infinitely malleable body of Succubus. She could imagine that face on Succubus as he lay with her, and that thought hurt Sara most of all.

  “You bastard,” Sara whispered to Senator Hartmann, her voice choking. “You goddamn bastard. You killed my sister and you couldn’t even let her stay dead.”

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF

  XAVIER DESMOND

  NOVEMBER 30/JOKERTOWN:

  My name is Xavier Desmond, and I am a joker.

  Jokers are always strangers, even on the street where they were born, and this one is about to visit a number of strange lands. In the next five months I will see veldts and mountains, Rio and Cairo, the Khyber Pass and the Straits of Gibraltar, the Outback and the Champs-Élysées—all very far from home for a man who has often been called the mayor of Jokertown. Jokertown, of course, has no mayor. It is a neighborhood, a ghetto neighborhood at that, and not a city. Jokertown is more than a place though. It is a condition, a state of mind. Perhaps in that sense my title is not undeserved.

  I have been a joker since the beginning. Forty years ago, when Jetboy died in the skies over Manhattan and loosed the wild card upon the world, I was twenty-nine years of age, an investment banker with a lovely wife, a two-year-old daughter, and a bright future ahead of me. A month later, when I was finally released from the hospital, I was a monstrosity with a pink elephantine trunk growing from the center of my face where my nose had been. There are seven perfectly functional fingers at the end of my trunk, and over the years I have become quite adept with this “third hand.” Were I suddenly restored to so-called normal humanity, I believe it would be as traumatic as if one of my limbs were amputated. With my trunk I am ironically somewhat more than human . . . and infinitely less.

  My lovely wife left me within two weeks of my release from the hospital, at approximately the same time that Chase Manhattan informed me that my services would no longer be required. I moved to Jokertown nine months later, following my eviction from my Riverside Drive apartment for “health reasons.” I last saw my daughter in 1948. She was married in June of 1964, divorced in 1969, remarried in June of 1972. She has a fondness for June weddings, it seems. I was invited to neither of them. The private detective I hired informs me that she and her husband now live in Salem, Oregon, and that I have two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, one from each marriage. I sincerely doubt that either knows that their grandfather is the mayor of Jokertown.

  I am the founder and president emeritús of the Jokers’ Anti-Defamation League, or JADL, the oldest and largest organization dedicated to the preservation of civil rights for the victims of the wild card virus. The JADL has had its failures, but overall it has accomplished great good. I am also a moderately successful businessman. I own one of New York’s most storied and elegant night-clubs, the Funhouse, where jokers and nats and aces have enjoyed all the top joker cabaret acts for more than two decades. The Funhouse has been losing money steadily for the last five years, but no one knows that except me and my accountant. I keep it open because it is, after all, the Funhouse, and were it to close, Jokertown would seem a poorer place.

  Next month I will be seventy years of age.

  My doctor tells me that I will not live to be seventy-one. The cancer had already metastasized before it was diagnosed. Even jokers cling stubbornly to life, and I have been doing the chemotherapy and the radiation treatments for half a year now, but the cancer shows no sign of remission.

  My doctor tells me the trip I am about to embark on will probably take months off my life. I have my prescriptions and will dutifully continue to take the pills, but when one is globe-hopping, radiation therapy must be forgone. I have accepted this.

  Mary and I often talked of a trip around the world, in those days before the wild card when we were young and in love. I could never have dreamt that I would finally take that trip without her, in the twilight of my life, and at government expense, as a delegate on a fact-finding mission organized and funded by the Senate Committee on Ace Resources and Endeavors, under the official sponsorship of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. We will visit every continent but Antarctica and call upon thirty-nine different countries (some only for a few hours), and our official charge is to investigate the treatment of wild card victims in cultures around the world.

  There are twenty-one delegates, only five of whom are jokers. I suppose my selection is a great honor, recognition of my achievements and my status as a community leader. I believe I have my good friend Dr. Tachyon to thank for it.

  But then, I have my good friend Dr. Tachyon to thank fo
r a great many things.

  THE TINT OF HATRED

  Part One

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1986, SYRIA:

  A chill, arid wind blew from the mountains of the Jabal Alawite across the lava rock and gravel desert of Badiyat Ash-sham. The wind snapped the canvas peaks of the tents huddled around the village. The gale made those in the market pull the sashes of their robes tighter against the cold. Under the beehive roof of the largest of the mud-brick buildings, a stray gust caused the flame to gutter against the bottom of an enameled teapot.

  A small woman, swathed in the chador, the black Islamic garb, poured tea into two small cups. Except for a row of bright blue beads on the headpiece, she wore no ornamentation. She passed one of the cups to the other person in the room, a raven-haired man of medium height, whose skin glowed a shimmering, lambent emerald under a brocaded robe of azure. She could feel the warmth radiating from him.

  “It will be colder for the next several days, Najib,” she said as she sipped the piercingly sweet tea. “You’ll be more comfortable at least.”

  Najib shrugged as if her words meant nothing. His lips tightened; his dark, intense gaze snared her. “It’s Allah’s presence that gleams,” he said, his voice gruff with habitual arrogance. “You’ve never heard me complain, Misha, even in the heat of summer. Do you think me a woman, wailing my futile misery to the sky?”

  Above the veils, Misha’s eyes narrowed. “I am Kahina, the Seer, Najib,” she answered, allowing a hint of defiance into her voice. “I know many hidden things. I know that when the heat ripples over the stones, my brother Najib wishes that he were not Nur al-Allah, the Light of Allah.”

  Najib’s sudden backhanded cuff caught his sister across the side of her face. Her head snapped sideways. Scalding hot tea burned her hand and wrist; the cup shattered on the rugs as she sprawled at his feet. His eyes, utter black against the luminescent face, glared at her as she raised her hand to her stinging cheek. She knew she dared say no more. On her knees she gathered up the shards of the teacup in silence, mopping at the puddle of tea with the hem of her robe.

  “Sayyid came to me this morning,” Najib said as he watched her. “He was complaining again. He says you are not a proper wife.”

  “Sayyid is a fatted pig,” Misha answered, though she did not look up.

  “He says he must force himself on you.”

  “He doesn’t need to do so for me.”

  Najib scowled, making a sound of disgust. “Pah! Sayyid leads my army. It is his strategy that will sweep the kafir back into the sea. Allah has given him the body of a god and the mind of a conqueror, and he is obedient to me. That’s why I gave you to him. The Qur’an says it: ‘Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other. Good women are obedient.’ You make a mockery of Nur al-Allah’s gift.”

  “Nur al-Allah shouldn’t have given away that which completes him.” Now her eyes came up, challenging him as her tiny hands closed over the pottery shards. “We were together in the womb, Brother. That’s the way Allah made us. He touched you with His light and His voice, and He gave me the gift of His sight. You are His mouth, the prophet; I am your vision of the future. Don’t be so foolish as to blind yourself. Your pride will defeat you.”

  “Then listen to the words of Allah and be humble. Be glad that Sayyid does not insist on purdah for you—he knows you’re Kahina, so he doesn’t force your seclusion. Our father should never have sent you to Damascus to be educated; the infection of the unbelievers is insidious. Misha, make Sayyid content because that will content me. My will is Allah’s will.”

  “Only sometimes, Brother . . .” She paused. Her gaze went distant, her fingers clenched. She cried out as porcelain lacerated her palm. Blood drooled bright along the shallow cuts. Misha swayed, moaning, and then her gaze focused once more.

  Najib moved a step closer to her. “What is it? What did you see?”

  Misha cradled her injured hand to her breast, her pupils wide with pain. “All that ever matters is that which touches yourself, Najib. It doesn’t matter that I hurt or that I hate my husband or that Najib and his sister Misha have been lost in Allah’s roles for them. All that matters is what the Kahina can tell Nur al-Allah.”

  “Woman . . .” Najib began warningly. His voice had a compelling deepness now, a timbre that brought Misha’s head up and made her open her mouth to begin to speak, to obey without thinking. She shivered as if the wind outside had touched her.

  “Don’t use the gift on me, Najib,” she said gratingly. Her voice sounded harsh against that of her brother. “I’m not a supplicant. Compel me too often with Allah’s tongue and you might one day find that Allah’s eyes have been taken from you by my own hand.”

  “Then be Kahina, Sister,” Najib answered, but it was only his own voice now. He watched as she went to an inlaid chest, took out a strip of cloth, and slowly wrapped her hand. “Tell me what you just saw. Was it the vision of the jihad? Did you see me holding the Caliph’s scepter again?”

  Misha shut her eyes, bringing back the image of the quick waking dream. “No,” she told him. “This was new. In the distance I saw a falcon against the sun. As the bird flew closer, I noticed that it held a hundred people squirming in its talons. A giant stood below on a mountain, and the giant held a bow in his hands. He loosed an arrow at the bird, and the wounded falcon screamed in anger. The voices of those it held screamed also. The giant had nocked a second arrow, but now the bow began to twist in his hands, and the arrow instead struck the giant’s own breast. I saw the giant fall. . . .” Misha’s eyes opened. “That’s all.”

  Najib scowled. He passed a glowing hand over his eyes. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know what it means. Allah gives me the dreams, but not always the understanding. Perhaps the giant is Sayyid—”

  “It was only your own dream, not Allah’s.” Najib stalked away from her, and she knew that he was angry. “I’m the falcon, holding the faithful,” he said. “You are the giant, large because you belong to Sayyid, who is also large. Allah would remind you of the consequence of defiance.” He faced away from Misha, closing the shutters of the window against the brilliant desert sun. Outside the muzzein called from the village mosque: “A shhadu allaa alaha illa llah”—Allah is great. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.

  “All you want is your conquest, the dream of the jihad. You want to be the new Muhammad,” Misha answered spitefully. “You won’t accept any other interpretation.”

  “In sha’allah,” Najib answered: if Allah wills. He refused to face her. “Some people Allah has visited with His dreadful Scourge, showing their sins with their rotting, twisted flesh. Others, like Sayyid, Allah has favored, gifting them. Each has been given his due. He has chosen me to lead the faithful. I only do what I must do—I have Sayyid, who guides my armies, and I fight also with the hidden ones like al-Muezzin. You lead too. You are Kahina, and you are also Fqihas, the one the women look to for guidance.”

  The Light of Allah turned back into the room. In the shuttered dimness he was a spectral presence. “And as I do Allah’s will, you must do mine.”

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1986, NEW YORK:

  The press reception was chaos.

  Senator Gregg Hartmann finally escaped to an empty corner behind one of the Christmas trees, his wife Ellen and his aide John Werthen following. Gregg surveyed the room with a distinct frown. He shook his head toward the Justice Department ace Billy Ray—Carnifex—and the government security man who tried to join them, waving them back.

  Gregg had spent the last hour fending off reporters, smiling blankly for video cameras, and blinking into the constant storm lightning of electronic flashes. The room was noisy with shouted questions and the click-whirr of high-speed Nikons. Musak played seasonal tunes over the ceiling speakers.

  The main press contigent was now gathered around Dr. Tachyon, Chrysalis, and Peregrine. Tachyon’s scarlet hair gleamed like a beacon in the crowd; Peregrine and Chrys
alis seemed to be competing to see who could pose most provocatively for the cameras. Nearby, Jack Braun—Golden Boy, the Judas Ace—was being pointedly ignored.

  The mob had thinned a bit since Hiram Worchester’s staff from the Aces High had set up the buffet tables; some of the press had staked permanent claims around the well-freighted trays.

  “Sorry, boss,” John said at Gregg’s elbow. Even in the cool room the aide was perspiring. Blinking Christmas lights reflected from his beaded forehead: red, then blue, then green. “Somebody on the airport staff dropped the ball. It wasn’t supposed to be this kind of free-for-all. I told them I wanted the press escorted in after you guys were settled. They’d ask a few questions, then . . .” He shrugged. “I’ll take the blame. I should have checked to make sure everything had been done.”

  Ellen gave John a withering glance but said nothing.

  “If John’s apologizing, make him grovel first, Senator. What a mess.” That last was a whisper in Gregg’s ear—his other longtime aide, Amy Sorenson, was circulating through the crowd as one of the security personnel. Her two-way radio was linked directly to a wireless receiver in Gregg’s ear. She fed him information, gave him names or details concerning the people he met. Gregg’s own memory for names and faces was quite good, but Amy was an excellent backup. Between the two of them Gregg rarely missed giving those around him a personal greeting.

  John’s fear of Gregg’s anger was a bright, pulsing purple amidst the jumble of his emotions. Gregg could feel Ellen’s placid, dull acceptance, colored slightly with annoyance. “It’s okay, John,” Gregg said softly, though underneath he was seething. That part of him that he thought of as Puppetman squirmed restlessly, begging to be let loose to play with the cascading emotions in the room. Half of them are our puppets, controllable. Look, there’s Father Squid over near the door, trying to get away from that woman reporter. Feel his scarlet distress even as he’s smiling? He’d love to slither away and he’s too polite to do it. We could fuel that frustration into rage, make him curse the woman. We could feed on that. All it would take is the smallest nudge . . .