Aces Abroad wc-4

by George R. R. Martin

  "It is the time of the Fourth Creation. The birth of Huracan, the heart of heaven, our home. The gods have returned to us! Death to the enemies of our people!" Akabal knelt and stretched his hands toward the Hero Twins. "Lead us to glory, favored of the gods."

  In room 502 of the Camino Real a tourist in flowered shorts and a pale blue polyester shirt stuffed the last souvenir weaving into his suitcase. He looked around the room for his wife and saw her at the window.

  "Next time, Martha, don't buy anything that won't fit into your suitcase." He leaned his considerable weight on the bag and slid the catches closed. "Where is that boy? We must have called half an hour ago. What's so interesting out there?"

  "The people, Simon. It's some kind of procession. I wonder if it's a religious occasion."

  "Is it a riot? With all this unrest we've been hearing about, the sooner we get out of here the better I'm going to feel."

  "No, they just seem to be going somewhere." His wife continued to peer down at the streets filled with men, women, and children. "They're all Indians too. You can tell by the costumes."

  "My god, we're going to miss our plane if they don't get a move on." He glared at his watch as if it was responsible. "Call again, will you? Where the hell can he be?"

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF XAVIER DESMOND

  DECEMBER 15, 1986/EN ROUTE TO LIMA, PERU:

  I have been dilatory about keeping up my journal-no entry yesterday or the day before. I can only plead exhaustion and a certain amount of despondence.

  Guatemala took its toll on my spirit, I'm afraid. We are, of course, stringently neutral, but when I saw the televised news reports of the insurrection and heard some of the rhetoric being attributed to the Mayan revolutionaries, I dared to hope. When we actually met with the Indian leaders, I was even briefly elated. They considered my presence in the room an honor, an auspicious omen, seemed to treat me with the same sort of respect (or lack of respect) they gave Hartmann and Tachyon, and the way they treated their own jokers gave me heart.

  Well, I am an old man-an old joker in fact-and I tend to clutch at straws. Now the Mayan revolutionaries have proclaimed a new nation, an Amerindian homeland, where their jokers will be welcomed and honored. The rest of us need not apply. Not that I would care much to live in the jungles of Guatemala-even an autonomous joker homeland down here would scarcely cause a ripple in Jokertown, let alone any kind of significant exodus. Still, there are so few places in the world where jokers are welcome, where we can make our homes in peace… the more we travel on, the more we see, the more I am forced to conclude that Jokertown is the best place for us, our only true home. I cannot express how much that conclusion saddens and terrifies me.

  Why must we draw these lines, these fine distinctions, these labels and barriers that set us apart? Ace and nat and joker, capitalist and communist, Catholic and Protestant, Arab and Jew, Indian and Ladino, and on and on everywhere, and of course true humanity is to be found only on our side of the line and we feel free to oppress and rape and kill the "other," whoever he might be.

  There are those on the Stacked Deck who charge that the Guatemalans were engaged in conscious genocide against their own Indian populations, and who see this new nation as a very good thing. But I wonder.

  The Mayas think jokers are touched by the gods, specially blessed. No doubt it is better to be honored than reviled for our various handicaps and deformities. No doubt. But…

  We have the Islamic nations still ahead of us… a third of the world, someone told me. Some Moslems are more tolerant than others, but virtually all of them consider deformity a sign of Allah's displeasure. The attitudes of the true fanatics such as the Shiites in Iran and the Nur sect in Syria are terrifying, Hiderian. How many jokers were slaughtered when the Ayatollah displaced the Shah? To some Iranians the tolerance he extended to jokers and women was the Shah's greatest sin.

  And are we so very much better in the enlightened USA, where fundamentalists like Leo Barnett preach that jokers are being punished for their sins? Oh, yes, there is a distinction, I must remember that. Barnett says he hates the sins but loves the sinners, and if we will only repent and have faith and love Jesus, surely we will be cured.

  No,?'m afraid that ultimately Barnett and the Ayatollah and the Mayan priests are all preaching the same creedthat our bodies in some sense reflect our souls, that some divine being has taken a direct hand and twisted us into these shapes to signify his pleasure (the Mayas) or displeasure (Nur al-Allah, the Ayatollah, the Firebreather). Most of all, each of them is saying that jokers are different.

  My own creed is distressingly simple -I believe that jokers and aces and nats are all just men and women and ought to be treated as such. During my dark nights of the soul I wonder if I am the only one left who still believes this.

  Still brooding about Guatemala and the Mayas. A point I failed to make earlier-I could not help noticing that this glorious idealistic revolution of theirs was led by two aces and a nat. Even down here, where jokers are supposedly kissed by the gods, the aces lead and the jokers follow.

  A few days ago-it was during our visit to the Panama Canal, I believe Digger Downs asked me if I thought the U.S. would ever have a joker president. I told him I'd settle for a joker congressman (I'm afraid Nathan Rabinowitz, whose district includes Jokertown, heard the comment and took it for some sort of criticism of his representation). Then Digger wanted to know if I thought an ace could be elected president. A more interesting question, I must admit. Downs always looks half asleep, but he is sharper than he appears, though not in a class with some of the other reporters aboard the Stacked Deck, like Herrmann of AP or Morgenstern of the Washington Post.

  I told Downs that before this last Wild Card Day it might have been possible… barely. Certain aces, like the Turtle (still missing, the latest NY papers confirm), Peregrine, Cyclone, and a handful of others are first-rank celebrities, commanding considerable public affection. How much of that could translate to the public arena, and how well it might survive the rough give-and-take of a presidential campaign, that's a more difficult question. Heroism is a perishable commodity.

  Jack Braun was standing close enough to hear Digger's question and my reply. Before I could conclude-I wanted to say that the whole equation had changed this September, that among the casualties of Wild Card Day was any faint chance that an ace might be a viable presidential candidate Braun interrupted. "They'd tear him apart," he told us.

  What if it was someone they loved? Digger wanted to know. "They loved the Four Aces," Braun said.

  Braun is no longer quite the exile he was at the beginning of the tour. Tachyon still refuses to acknowledge his existence and Hiram is barely polite, but the other aces don't seem to know or care who he is. In Panama he was often in Fantasy's company, squiring her here and there, and I've heard rumors of a liaison between Golden Boy and Senator Lyons's press secretary, an attractive young blonde. Undoubtedly, of the male aces, Braun is by far the most attractive in the conventional sense, although Mordecai Jones has a certain brooding presence. Downs has been struck by those two also. The next issue of Aces will feature a piece comparing Golden Boy and the Harlem Hammer, he informs me.

  THE TINT O F HATRED

  Part Three

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1986, RIO:

  Sara detested Rio.

  From her room in the Luxor Hotel on Atlantica, the city looked like a curving Miami Beach: a display of gleaming, white high-rise hotels arrayed before a wide beach and gentle blue-green surf, all fading into a sun-hazed distance on either side.

  The majority of the junket had fulfilled their obligations quickly and were using the Rio stopover for R amp;R. After all, it was almost the holidays; a month on the tour had worn the idealism off most of them. Hiram Worchester had gone on a binge, eating and drinking his way through the city's myriad restaurante. The press had opted for the local cervezaria and were sampling the native beers. American dollars exchanged into handfuls of cruzados and prices were low. The wea
lthier of the contingent had invested in the Brazilian gem marketthere seemed to be a jewelry stall in every hotel.

  And yet Sara was aware of the reality. The standard tourist warnings were indication enough: Don't wear any jewelry on the streets; don't get on the buses, don't trust the taxi drivers; be careful around children or any jokers; don't go out alone, especially if you're a woman; if you want to keep something, lock it up or stay with it. Beware. To Rio's multitudes of poor, any tourist was rich and the rich were fair game.

  And reality intruded as, bored and restless, she left the hotel that afternoon, deciding to go see Tachyon at a local clinic. She hailed one of the ubiquitous black-and-yellow VW Beetle cabs. Two blocks in from the ocean, glittering Rio turned dark, mountainous, crowded, and miserable. Through the narrow alleys between buildings she could glimpse the old landmark, Corcovado, the gigantic statue of Christ the Redeemer atop a central peak of the city. Corcovado was a reminder of how the Wild Card had devastated this country. Rio had suffered a major outbreak in 1948. The city had always been wild and poor, with a downtrodden population simmering under the veneer. The virus had let loose months of panic and violence. No one knew which disgruntled ace was responsible for Corcovado. One morning the figure of Christ had simply "changed," as if the rising sun were melting a wax figurine. Christ the Redeemer became a joker, a misshapen, hunchbacked thing, one of his outstretched arms gone completely, the other twisted around to support the distorted body. Father Squid had celebrated a mass there yesterday; two hundred thousand people had prayed together under the deformed statue.

  She'd told the taxi driver to take her to Santa Theresa, the old section of Rio. There, the jokers had gathered as they had gathered in New York's Jokertown, as if taking solace in their mutual afflictions in the shadow of Corcovado. Santa Theresa had been in the warnings too. Near Estrada de Redentor she tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Stop here," she said. The driver said something in rapid Portuguese, then shook his head and pulled over.

  Sara found that this taxi driver was no different than the rest. She'd forgotten to insist that he turn on his meter when they'd left the hotel. "Quanto custa?" It was one of the few phrases she knew: How much? He insisted loudly that the fare was a thousand cruzados, forty dollars. Sara, exasperated and tired of constant small ripoffs, argued back in English. Finally she threw a hundred-cruzado bill at him, still far more than he should have received. He took it, then drove off with a screech of tires. "Feliz Natal!" he called sarcastically: Merry Christmas.

  Sara flipped him the finger. It gave her little satisfaction. She began looking for the clinica.

  It had rained that afternoon, the usual rainy-season squall that drenched the city for a few hours and then gave way to sunshine again. Even that hadn't managed to quell the stench of Rio's antiquated sewage system. Walking up the steeply inclined street, she was pursued by fetid oders. Like the others, she walked in the center of the narrow street, moving aside only if she heard a car. She quickly felt conspicuous as the sun began to fall behind the hills. Most of those around her were jokers or those too poor to live anywhere else. She saw none of the police patrols here that routinely swept the tourist streets. A fox-furred snout leered at her as someone jostled past, what looked to be a man-size snail slithered along the sidewalk to her right, a twin-headed prostitute loitered in a doorway. She'd sometimes felt paranoid in Jokertown, but the intensity was nothing like she felt here. In Jokertown she would have at least understood what the voices around her were saying, she would have known that two or three blocks over lay the relative security of Manhattan, she would have been able to call someone from a corner phone booth. Here there was nothing. She had only a vague notion of where she was. If she disappeared, it might be hours before anyone knew she was missing.

  It was with distinct relief that she saw the clinic ahead and half ran to its open door.

  The place hadn't changed since yesterday when the press corps had visited. It was a crowded, chaotic lunacy. The clinic smelled vile, a combination of antiseptics, disease, and human waste. The floors were filthy, the equipment antiquated, the beds mere cots packed together as closely as possible. Tachyon had howled at the appearance, then had immediately thrown himself into the fray.

  He was still there, looking as if he'd never left. "Boatarde, Ms. Morgenstern," he said. His satin jacket missing, his shirt-sleeves rolled halfway up his lanky arms, he was drawing a blood sample from a comatose young girl whose skin was scaled like a lizard's. "Did you come to work or watch?"

  "I thought it was a samba club."

  That gained her a small, weary smile. "They can use help in back," he said. "Felicidades." Sara waved to Tachyon and slid between the rows of cots. Near the rear of the clinic she halted in surprise, frowning. Her breath caught.

  Gregg Hartmann was crouched beside one of the cots. A joker sat there, bristling with stiff, barbed quills like those of a porcupine. A distinct animal musk came from the man. The Senator, in hospital blues, was carefully cleaning a wound on the joker's upper arm. Despite the odor, despite the patient's appearance, Sara could see only concern on his face as he worked. Hartmann saw Sara and smiled. "Ms. Morgenstern. Hello."

  "Senator."

  He shook his head. "You don't need to be so damn formal. It's Gregg. Please." She could see fatigue in the lines around his eyes, in the huskiness of his voice; he'd evidently been here for some time. Since Mexico, Sara had avoided situations that might leave the two of them alone. But she'd watched him, wishing she could sort out her feelings, wishing that she didn't feel a confused liking for the man. She'd observed how he interacted with others, how he responded to them, and she wondered. Her mind told her that she may have misjudged him; her emotions tore her in two directions at once.

  He was looking at her, patient and genial. She ran her hand through her short hair and nodded. "Gregg, then. And I'm Sara. Tachyon sent me back here."

  "Great. This is Mariu, who was on the wrong end of somebody's knife." Gregg indicated the joker, who stared at Sara with unblinking, feral intensity. His pupils were reddish, and his lips were drawn back in a snarl. The joker said nothing, either unwilling or unable to talk.

  "I guess I should find something to do." Sara looked around, wanting to leave.

  " I could use an extra pair of hands with Mariu here." No, she wanted to say. I don't want to know you. I don't want to have to say I was wrong. Belatedly Sara shook her head. "Umm, okay. Sure. What do you want me to do?" They worked together silently. The wound had been stitched earlier. Gregg cleaned it gently as Sara held the prickly barbs away. He smeared antibiotic ointment on the long wound, pressed gauze to it. Sara noticed most that his touch was gentle, if clumsy. He bound the dressing and stepped back. "Okay, you're done, Mariu." Gregg patted the joker carefully on the shoulder. The spiny face nodded slightly, then Mariu padded away without a word. Sara found Gregg looking at her, sweating in the heat of the clinic. "Thanks."

  "You're welcome." She took a step back from him, uncomfortable. "You did a good job with Mariu."

  Gregg laughed. He held out his hands, and Sara saw angry red scratches scattered over them. "Mariu gave me lots of problems until you showed up. I'm strictly amateur help here. We made a good team, though. Tachyon wanted me to unload supplies; want to give me a hand with that?"

  There wasn't a graceful way to say no. They worked in silence for a time, restocking shelves. "I didn't expect to find you here," Sara commented as they wrestled a packing crate into a storage room.

  Sara saw that he noted her unspoken words and hadn't taken offense. "Without making sure a video camera was recording my good works, you mean?" he said, smiling.

  "Ellen was out shopping with Peregrine. John and Amy had a stack of paperwork this big they wanted me to tackle." Gregg held his hands two feet apart. "Coming here seemed a lot more useful. Besides, Tachyon's dedication can give you a guilt complex. I left a note for Security saying I was `going out.' I imagine Billy Ray's probably having a fit by now. Promise not to
tell on me?"

  His face was so innocently mischievous that she had to laugh with him. With the laughter a little more of the brittle hatred flaked away. "You're a constant surprise, Senator."

  "Gregg, remember?" Softly.

  "Sorry" Her smile faded. For a moment she felt a strong pull to him. She forced the feeling down, denied it. It's not what you want to feel. It's not real. If anything, it's a backlash reaction for having detested him for so long. She looked around at the barren, dusty shelves of the storeroom and viciously tore open the carton.

  She could feel his eyes watching her. "You still don't believe what I said about Andrea." His voice wavered halfway between statement and question. His words, so close to what she'd been thinking, brought sudden heat to her face.

  "I'm not sure about anything."

  "And you still hate me."

  "No," she said. She pulled Styrofoam packing from the box. And then, with sudden, impulsive honesty: "To me that's probably more scary."

  The admission left her feeling vulnerable and open. Sara was glad that she couldn't see his face. She cursed herself for the confession. It implied attraction for Gregg; it suggested that, far from hating him, she'd come nearly full circle in her feelings, and that was simply something she didn't want him to know. Not yet. Not until she was certain.

  The atmosphere between them was charged with tension. She searched for some way to blunt the effect. Gregg could wound her with a word, could make her bleed with a look.

  What Gregg did then made Sara wish that she'd never seen Andrea's face on Succubus, that she hadn't spent years loathing the man.

  He did nothing.

  He reached over her shoulder and handed her a box of sterile bandages. "I think they go on the top shelf," he said. " I think they go on the top shelf."

  Puppetman was screaming inside him, battering at the mindbars that held him in. The power ached to be loose, to tear into Sara's opened mind and feed there. The hatred that had rebuffed him in New York was gone, and he could see Sara's affection; he tasted it, like blood-salt. Radiant, warm vermilion.