Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump

by George R. R. Martin

  "Real good," Jay said. "Shit. I guess it's up to me."

  Jerry said, "You can pilot a helicopter?"

  Jay shrugged. "How hard can it be?" He thought a moment. "I'll go for the chopper, you guys take out Casaday." He made gestures at the pirates, pantomiming. "Run. Shoot, Ratatatatata." More blank looks. "This is working swell. Maybe we have to lead them by example."

  Jerry took a deep breath. "Yo," he said. "When?"

  "Now," Jay said. He ran. Jerry fired a burst toward the distant hangar, then came pelting after him, shooting on the run.

  Every step felt like someone was probing Jay's nose with a dental drill. After about five feet he figured the pirates were a little slow on the uptake; after ten he knew they weren't coming.

  Their dash took them past the spot where Radical had fallen. The ace looked a cat who'd been run over by a cement truck. But even in the thickening doom there was no mistaking it: the lung exposed in the shattered ribcage was unmistakably pumping. Jay leapt over him and went on; he had problems of his own.

  "Wait, he's alive," he heard Jerry call out behind him. He glanced back and saw his junior partner kneeling beside the body. There was no time to go back and argue; Jay kept running.

  A sudden burst of machine-gun fire spurred him on. Whether it was O. K. Casady shooting at Jay or Jerry shooting at Casaday or the pirates finally pitching in with covering fire, Jay had no idea. Someone was shooting; that was enough for him. He lowered his head and sprinted. His footfalls drove spikes through his head and the wind off the chopper's rotors buffeted him as he got close. He was so blind from pain he almost ran right into the blades, but somehow he managed to reach the cockpit and pull himself inside. The pilot was still in his seat. "Follow that blimp," he told him, panting.

  There was no reply. Jay looked over. A neat little hole had been punched through the canopy, and half the pilot's head was gone. Blood was drying on what remained of his face, and fat Chinese flies were crawling across his brain. Jay's stomach turned over.

  The Harmony was far to the southeast, picking up speed. Jay shoved the body out onto the tarmac and slid over into the pilot's seat, still wet with the blood of its last occupant. He looked at the dials and gauges and sticks. The blades were already spinning; Jay figured that meant he was halfway there.

  "Ackroyd!"

  At first he thought he was hearing things. Then the shout came again, high and thin over the whap of the rotors and the chatter of automatic weapons. J. Bob Belew was pulling himself across the tarmac on hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood. "Ackroyd!"

  Swearing under his breath, Jay jumped out of the helicopter and scrambled toward Belew. "I thought you were dead," he said as he knelt down beside him.

  "Sorry to disappoint you," Belew said between clenched teeth. His handlebar mustache was sticky with blood, and more blood bubbled out between his lips when he spoke. "Help me up."

  "Can you fly a helicopter?" Jay asked, like an idiot. What was he saying? Does the Pope shit in the woods? The Mechanic could be a helicopter.

  Belew's face was white as bone, drained of all color. Jay got an arm under him and helped him to his feet. Belew moaned and closed his eyes. For an instant Jay thought J. Bob had fainted on him, or maybe died, but then his eyes opened again. "Hurry," he whispered. Jay supported him as they staggered back toward the chopper. Bullets whined around them.

  The Harmony was well to the south now, dwindling visibly as dusk settled around them.

  As they limped past the chopper's tail, Belew thrust his hand into the spinning rotor. There was a wet meaty sound. Blood spurted. Fingers and bits of bone scattered like jacks. Jay shuddered. "I hate it when you do that," he said fervently.

  Belew pulled his ruined hand close to his chest and tried to staunch the bleeding with his good one. "... get ... me ... on ... board..." he said. Jay could barely make out what he was saying, but Belew's eyes were wide open, feverish.

  Somehow Jay managed to shove him into the chopper, lifting him over the pilot's body. J. Bob ripped off a panel with his good hand and shoved his bloody stump into the wiring beneath. Bone and blood and muscle became one with steel and aluminum and plastic; the Mechanic's soul entered the machine.

  The copter began to lift, leaving Jay standing flat-footed on the field. "Hey, wait a minute!" he yelled.

  And then he saw him.

  Rising from the weeds beyond the field, not ten feet away, grinning his jack-o'-lantern grin, rumpled and evil, O. K. Casaday raised the snout of his machine gun. "Belew, you hoary old fuck," he screamed over the rotors, "where do you think you're going?" Laughing, he hosed down the front of the chopper with a stream of fire. The glass canopy exploded in a million pieces, and Jay could see Belew's body shudder under the impact of the bullets.

  The chopper's tail angled up, the nose fell, and for a second Jay thought it was all over. A second was all it took. Instead of crashing, the copter lurched forward, right at Casaday. Bullets sparked wildly on steel. There was just enough time for O. K. Casaday's laughter to turn into a scream before the main rotor took his head off. The blades angled down a shade more and cut him clean in half before the body had even begun to fall.

  Jay ran and jumped, pulling himself up and in as the chopper went screaming into the sky. "Jesus, Belew, I thought you were dead for sure that time," he shouted.

  Then he realized that Belew was past listening. J. Bob was slumped against the controls, his warm blood leaking from a dozen bullet holes to mingle with the hot hydraulic fluids leaking from the chopper. Whatever life and strength he had left in him was going into the helicopter now. The Mechanic had become the machine.

  The airfield fell away below them. The Harmony was miles ahead, lost in the gloom to the south.

  The sun had set, Jay realized. On Canton and maybe the world.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Croyd was fast, all right. They sped over the dunes with a stampede of racing camels behind them, but the herd fell farther and farther behind.

  "They can't keep up," Croyd said.

  "They're falling behind, all right. Damn it, Croyd, they'll circle back to camp if they lose sight of you. You'll have to slow down," Zoe said.

  Croyd braked, a tilting and scary procedure all by itself. Zoe held on for dear life, glad of Billy Ray's strength, for he managed to keep both of them attached to Croyd.

  Croyd wheeled around and looked back at the herd. "You're right. They'll go where they think the closest water is. I'm thirsty myself." He knelt on the sand. "Now what?"

  "Beats me," Billy Ray said.

  Zoe slid off Croyd's back, pulling her rolled kilim with her. Her knees felt shaky.

  "I guess it's time for a magic carpet." Croyd picked up the kilim with his big teeth and shook it.

  "Oh, fuck," Zoe said.

  If antigravity were a force, it was one she had no idea how to engineer. Wool, sand, wind. Zoe knelt on the spread kilim and held a corner of it in her mouth, tasting the structure of coils in the soft wool, traces of ammonia from sheep urine, and the simple bitterness of analine dyes. Carbon strands, ammonia. Cadmium? Cadmium is supposed to be a no-no, Zoe remembered. No more yellow paint for artists.

  Cadmium made such a good catalyst. Hydrogen. Hydrogen from water, cadmium-drive catalysis, hydrogen cells to push against the wind and provide some lift. A strong alignment was needed, a perfect directional twist on the cells honeycombed from the structure of the wool. We may burn up, the carbon will melt - melt into diamond, if need be. Needs be. Waffled diamond for insulation, Croyd, here we go.

  Wondering, as she breathed the changes into the hand-woven twists of wool, if Croyd could still function sexually when he was this far gone into craziness. Wondering if Turtle was making love to Danny, laughing on old sheets washed to the texture of silk, sunny and cool in the Venice apartment. Wondering if the boy Pan Rudo had been was now at peace, his silky skin and delicate touches bringing unspeakable pleasures to an alternate woman in an alternate, benevolent universe. She hoped s
o.

  The kilim writhed, expanded, went rigid as sheet metal.

  Zoe ripped two of the water packs away from her waist and dropped them beside Croyd. "Here's a bribe for your friends." She handed two of the bags to Billy Ray. "Get on behind me," she said. "And pour. This may be a bumpy ride."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Gregg was glad for Needles' company as he walked around the Quarter - if Ray showed up again, he'd use Needles to make damn sure that this time the ace stayed dead.

  Guilt tasted of licorice, fear of anise, and anger was as sweet as sugar. "You know what the Black Dog has planned, don't you?" Gregg asked Needles. They stood in front of an orange-seller's stall. The odor of citrus wasn't nearly as strong as the scent of Needles' confusion. "No," he said loudly and fast, and the lie was distressingly obvious in his face. Needles knew it; the boy became far too interested in the orange he held in his clawed hand. "I'll take this one," he said to the joker behind the stall, whose skin was as pulpy as the orange. "How much?"

  "Needles, Gregg persisted. "You've heard rumors or you've heard the Black Dog say it outright. What's he planning?"

  "I ... I can't tell you."

  "That's a little different than 'I don't know,' isn't it?"

  Needles colored nicely, like a teenager caught necking in the car. Gregg sipped at the taste, sampling its sweetness, and he yanked on the strings: pulling here, pushing back there. "Look - " Needles dropped the orange back onto the pile as the seller yelled at him in Arabic. "Let's walk. Too many people listening."

  They left the Quarter, moving into the suq just beyond the gate. Needles didn't speak as they moved through the crowds of mingled nats and jokers. Gregg didn't push, letting him walk and enjoying the taste of the internal battle going on inside him. "Damn it," Needles breathed. "I shouldn't ..."

  "You have to go with what your heart says," Gregg told him, and as he said the words, he pulled aside the doubt in Needles' mind. With the power, he strengthened the underpinnings of old lessons, brought up the memory of how horrible Needles had felt when he'd first killed. He conducted the orchestra of the youth's mind, playing a symphony whose ending he alone knew. "Listen to your feelings, and you'll know whether to tell us or not. Hannah and I want to help you, Needles. We want to do what's right, that's all."

  Tugging, making him dance to our tune ...

  Needles stopped and looked down at Gregg as the crowds moved around them. "I'll tell you," he said, and started walking again. As they moved through the suq, Needles began to speak, haltingly at first.

  And in the silence of Gregg's mind, Puppetman laughed in delight.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Radical came back to awareness in a plenum of pain.

  For a time he lay there, feeling semi-regular jolts slam through the throbbing wound which was his body like Richter 8 earthquakes. Nowhere in his various lives had he or Mark or anybody gotten a clue that this much pain existed. Even the death of Starshine - a suddenly-vivid memory, passing like a train bound the other way - hadn't hurt this much.

  He opened his eyes. The full moon had begun to rise. The light fell between the upright stakes that surrounded the truck bed in bars, striping his body. When it entered his eyes it hit him like a drug.

  Moonchild, he thought, as the pain receded like the ebb tide. She had the power of healing herself, and moonlight augmented her powers, as the light of the sun fueled Starshine's. The moonlight's healing me.

  He stirred, and it was like being broken on the wheel all over again. Moonchild's gift was healing his hurts, but it and the moon had their work cut out for him.

  He looked around. It was full dark. The truck was jouncing toward the light-dome of a huge city, with Sly Stallone behind the wheel. Creighton.

  And it hit him, like the RPG warhead going off all over again: I've been here more than an hour.

  I'm free. Really free.

  Inside, he felt a clamor of voices. And panic, rearing and swelling like an angry king cobra: the blimp! Had it reached Hong Kong by now? Was the very breeze become a messenger of death, infecting all it touched with cool fingers?

  He laughed though it seemed to tear tissue from the inside of his throat in handfuls and made his lips feel as if they were being sliced with razors.

  "I'm alive," he said. "And I'm back to stay. No way do I lose. No way."

  He coiled himself and leapt through pain into the sky.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "So you know what they have planned," Hannah said to Needles. They were walking in the crowded bazaar near the gates to the Jokers' Quarter, isolated in the midst of the afternoon throngs and the calls from the sellers in the stalls. The Quarter was noisy and oblivious to the plot being launched underneath its streets. The teeming colors of the people brought Puppetman crawling to the edge of the cage, peering out hungrily; Gregg pushed him back.

  "Yeah," Needles said. "Most of it, anyway. The Black Dog's had the nuke altered since Zoe brought it back - they rigged a timing device and mounted the whole thing on a truck bed. The plan is to have that Highwayman guy drive it in - he's got some old truck, about the same size as that one." Needles indicated a battered, dusty water truck sitting on the other side of the open square. "They'll off-load the bomb, set the timer, and get the hell out. By the time anyone figures out what's going on, Bruckner's gone, and Boom!"

  Needles made a mushroom cloud with his daggered hands.

  The driver had climbed up on the roof of the water truck across the way. Gregg could see her through gaps in the crowd: a tall woman with her hair tucked under a military-style cap. In the sunlight, sweat gleamed from her fair skin. Gregg looked again, squinting. The woman wore a gauze mask over her mouth. She was holding something in her hands - a long hose that trailed back to the rear of the water truck. Given the sandy dust coating the stainless steel cylinder, Gregg wasn't surprised that the driver would want to wash down the truck, though why she would do so in the middle of a crowded square escaped him. Hannah had noticed her, too; she was staring at the woman.

  "All this garbage just means we can't wait any longer," Gregg said, still watching the woman. "You were right, Hannah. We have to get word to someone as soon as we can. Maybe even Ray ... Hannah?"

  She didn't answer. The hues of her mind weren't even directed toward him. They flared outward, the colors strange. Gregg looked up at Hannah. She too was staring at the driver on the cab of the water truck. Water gushed out from the nozzle of the hose. The woman directed the fine spray out into the crowd around the truck, turning to douse everyone in range. There was a sudden eruption of shouts and curses and laughter. Several joker children screeched in delight and began frolicking in the mist and mud.

  "Did you hear me, Hannah?"

  "That woman," Hannah said. "What in the hell is she doing?"

  Gregg squinted again. "I don't know. Needles, what is this? Do they bring out the water trucks to cool things down, keep the dust settled?"

  Needles shook his head. "Never heard of it."

  The woman continued to spray. Gregg noticed something else. There were armed guards around the truck. Several of them - stern-faced nats, each one.

  "Except for the kids, no one looks to be enjoying it very much. And she still has her mask on...." Hannah was frowning, and her colors went a sudden alarming purple. "Jesus! Gregg, that's the woman who's working with Billy Ray: April Harvest. We have to get out of here," Hannah said urgently, suddenly. "Needles, come on ..."

  "Hannah?"

  "I don't have time to explain," she said. "Just trust me. Come on!"

  Hannah hurried them back into the Fist compound at a run, pushing through the throngs around the suq, not stopping until they passed the startled guards and passed back into the catacombs. "Get the Black Dog!" she snapped at Needles. "And tell them to keep the damn doors closed. Don't let anyone else in who's still outside. Not until everyone here is wearing masks, gloves, and filters."

  "What's going on?" Gregg managed to ask her. Puppetman howled inside him,
a sound of animal fear, and Gregg suddenly knew. "Oh, Jesus," he said. "You're wrong. You have to be wrong."

  "I hope like hell I'm wrong," Hannah said, and shades of purple and red wrapped around her like an unseen veil. "We have to get to the Black Dog. They've got to stop that truck ..."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  ZERO

  The Harmony swelled ahead of them, a white whale shimmering in the moonlight. "Slow down," Jay told Belew, shouting to be heard over the rotors. "You want to match speeds. Bring us in alongside the gondola, close as you can get, and I'll jump across."

  Even as the words were leaving his mouth, Jay wondered what the hell he was saying. He'd jump across??? He looked down, at the ghost moon shimmering on the dark waters below. It was very pretty. If Jay slipped while he was jumping across, he'd have a long time to admire it on the way down.

  The Harmony filled the world. "Not so fast," Jay cautioned Belew. "You can slow down now." He could see pale tourist faces pressed to the windows of the gondola, watching their approach. "Any time," Jay said. The huge envelope of the airship loomed over them like the face of a cliff. "Now," Jay said, "now would be a good time to slow." The cliff was about to fall on them. The tourist faces were screaming. "Veer off!" Jay shouted.

  They ploughed into the side of the gondola in an explosion or glass and metal. Something slammed Jay in the face, hard, and the bolt of pain that went through him was so bad that he lost consciousness for a moment, or two, or ten.

  When he opened his eyes again, he could hear the shriek of the wind and the sound of people screaming. His head was ringing. There were two Belews in the seat beside him, spinning around each other. Both of them seemed to be unconscious or sleeping or dead.

  Jay crawled out of the helicopter on his hands and knees, through a tangle of twisted metal and broken glass. He dropped a couple of feet, slammed into an unsteady floor, and blacked out again. Then there was a blaze of pain. He opened his eyes to find a pair of hunchbacks croucned over him, shaking him. Their eyes looked down at him soulfully. "You can't die yet," they said in chorus, shaking him. "You can't die yet."