Aces and Eights

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  Twisting the wheel in time to stay with a minor curve I remembered, I checked the rearview again to see how fast the Trans Am was gaining, and got a tiny bit of encouragement. The headlights weren’t coming up as fast as I’d expected. Maybe the other car’s supercharger had packed up.

  Maybe it had swallowed a valve or thrown a rod.

  Suddenly the city wasn’t so far away, and suddenly I was thinking again in terms of minutes instead of only seconds. But it was a mirage. Like chasing an inside straight. The last card is never the one you paid for.

  A new sound explained everything: High above and to the rear I heard the unmistakable clatter of a helicopter approaching at high speed, and I had a sudden clear flash-memory of a radio antenna spiked on the rear deck of the Trans Am. No wonder they hadn’t been in a hurry to catch up. All they had to do was keep me in sight.

  Bright light flooded down, illuminating the road behind me and picking out the Trans Am and then moving swiftly forward to center on the BMW. I bled off a little speed to give myself a maneuvering edge, but it couldn’t be much; the pursuing car was still there.

  The initial burst missed. I braked at the first eruption in the surface of the road ahead and then hit the power to cause the door gunner to bracket the car instead of cutting dead center. Not much of a ploy, but it worked. Once.

  The whirlybird noises got louder and the light circle narrowed, beginning to throw slant-shadows as the pilot tried to give the door gunner a better shot.

  Screw you, Jack! I braked, feinted left, and then turned off the road into the desert, making a wide circle to the right that would bring me directly under the bird, smothering the gun and giving me a chance to swing back when the pilot corrected.

  But this time he was ready.

  The helicopter followed my movement perfectly, and I had a moment to see the markings I had expected—the NANG that Corner Pocket was so sure couldn’t be there—before the BMW’s windshield blew away and the tires on the right side came apart and the world bounced once, turned over twice, and collapsed in a wildness of light shards shimmering to zero.

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  Nobody ever really believes that he, personally, wears the black hat. There are extenuations; our motives have been misunderstood. If others knew us better, they would see the basic rightness of our actions...

  TWENTY-SIX

  Returning consciousness came as a real surprise.

  And an awful smell. I had been sitting on an Alpine hillside touching blades of grass that were the fingertips of the Enlightened One and contemplating the infinite variety of experience that could be mine now that mortal concerns were put away.

  Clouds drifted below, closing off the valley, and the Rebbe from Nazareth said it was time to move higher—perhaps to the timberline of Nirvana—and his friend the Mecca merchant laughed and wanted to know what time was and the Rebbe had just started what sounded as though it might turn into a solipsist’s rhapsody when I noticed that something had gone wrong with the air.

  Yellow mist had formed around us, and the odor it brought was not of the rose.

  I tried to move a hand to hold my nose rather than interrupt the flow of syllogism, but found that I could not. The hand that had touched the digits of Siddhartha seemed somehow to be imprisoned now, and my efforts to deal with the problem only brought the yellow mists closer and I opened my mouth to warn the others but they were gone and sound had ceased and so was the meadow and my eye opened an inch or two from the wet surface of a concrete floor.

  Focus took a bit of effort.

  But scent identification was immediate. My nostrils were filled with a reek of human waste, only partially masked by the smell of the harsh chemicals employed to neutralize it.

  I was back at Sewanee, on the floor of the men’s room at Saint Luke’s Hall. No. Try again. That floor would have been clean. Maybe this was one of the roadhouses off campus. Or a bus stop in Colorado. Near Fort Carson. What the hell kind of a party was this, anyway?

  And what were they putting in the drinks...?

  I stirred, still not sure where I might be, but certain that no good could come of lying on a dirty floor next to a dirty toilet stool. And discovered that my hands were still back in the meadow mist. Tied and useless.

  My mouth opened to voice an indignant protest, but I caught myself in time and closed it without a sound.

  Time enough for that later, if it still seemed like a good idea.

  Twisting my shoulders against the concrete and using my elbow, I finally managed at least to sit up. Better. Or worse, depending on one’s criteria of judgment. The world was still a bit unreal, filled with the mistiness that follows even the most minor concussion. But having it back on a level plane again seemed a step in the right direction.

  The view, however, did not improve. My first impression had been correct. This was someone’s idea of a comfort station: Toilet, washstand, and mirror, stained and dirty, were ranged against two walls. A cardboard wastebasket completed the decor. Nothing else.

  Except me. I was propped up against the third wall of the room—call its floor space six by five, with charity—and the fourth wall was mostly door. Walls and door were painted the same institutional green, scarred and pitted with the dirt of long abuse, and a minor tap with my head assured me that looks were not deceiving: They were of metal.

  I looked up, and it was a mistake. Pain lanced through my skull, and I added a wrenched neck to the growing statement of charges that included the hemp rope that had been used to bind my wrists. The knots were beginning to bite.

  Still, the single glance at the ceiling had given me the first positive impression of my surroundings. Lighting for the room was not good because it came indirectly, from a far place not immediately visible, filtered through a heavy but widely spaced mesh of wire. The lid on my cage was strong enough. But not solid.

  I struggled to bring my feet under me—my ankles were tied with the same kind of rope as my hands—and finally succeeded to the extent of being able to roll forward to my knees and then back on the heels of the boots the bondage freak had foolishly left on my feet when he tied the ankles together. Sloppy work, but I could understand it well enough. Removing close-fitted boots requires a certain cooperation from the wearer: I had been in no condition to give him any. And be damned to him.

  The first attempt at vertical posture was a washout.

  I overbalanced. Almost fell.

  Careful...!

  Don’t want to make a noise; might spoil all the fun.

  After thinking the maneuver through in advance, I made a better job of the second attempt, disregarding the urge to move the feet once they were beneath me and holding myself erect by leaning against the wall. A mirror above the washbasin gave back the image of a wreck.

  My right eye was gone. Not that it had really been there in the first place, of course, but the prosthesis that usually filled the position seemed to have taken leave when the judge’s BMW came to grief, and the lid was down over the vacant socket in the great-grandfather of all dark winks.

  Further inspection showed that the rest of the ensemble had fared no better.

  Violence had been done to the shirt, the second such casualty in less than two days. And there were also pulled seams and buttons missing and one great rent evidently inflicted by something sharp that had penetrated both coat and vest. The trousers were not visible in the mirror, but a downward glance assured me that one knee was open to the world and the opposite cuff had suffered some misfortune that caused it to sag. So much for custom tailoring. They just don’t make things the way they used to.

  Quietly, carefully, I hop-stepped across the eighteen or so inches that separated my stomach from the washbasin and then turned to look over my shoulder at the bindings on my hands. Competent, yes. But not perfect. Whoever had done the tying had not been accustomed to such chores. An expert would have tied the elbows even if the hands had to be left free. Okay, then, friends: I looked closely
at the mirror, but appearances had not been deceiving. It was of metal, not glass. No chance for a knife-shard to cut the ropes there.

  Just as well, perhaps. Offhand, I couldn’t think of any good way to break glass without making a lot of noise.

  Still taking it slow and careful, I seated myself on the closed top of the stool and went to work.

  T’ai chi ch’uan, the art and science of balance and muscular control developed for self-defense of wayfaring monks a few centuries ago, places most of its emphasis on whole-body control. The idea is to exercise and create beauty simultaneously. But the small muscles, including those of the hands and feet, are not entirely neglected. And muscular control can do more things in heaven and earth, Horatio...

  Pain is the enemy. Intended by nature as a warning device, a signal to take corrective action before damage increases, it can fill a world and become its ruler if not trained and channeled to its proper place in the rightness of things. Sweat started from my forehead and control slipped for a moment, the nothingness of saika tanden giving way to mere stoicism, and I almost made it worse by reacting with self-disgust.

  Stop that.

  Just cut it out!

  No superhuman powers here. No Jit Suryoko. No Jaho. Just plain old folks with a little extra training from people who know what they are doing and don’t expect miracles from the nonmiraculous. Take it slow. Take it easy. Take the nothingness. Accept reality...

  A moment later, or so it seemed, the first loop of rope moved free over the end of my right forefinger and I waited a moment, savoring the immediate looseness before going to work on the second.

  That went faster.

  And the third was nothing at all. Quickly I slipped my hands free of the flaccid coils and exercised the fingers to restore full circulation and sensation before going to work on the ropes around my ankles. They gave a little trouble. But not much.

  I stood, with the two lengths of rope in my hand and looked with a kindlier and more considering eye at the room around me.

  Big problems call for big solutions, and big solutions call for big tool kits. But all I had was a couple of pieces of rope.

  The door proved to be firmly locked; no response whatever to my stealthy two-way experiment with the inside knob. No surprise there. I stood on the stool to inspect the grille overhead.

  Just what it had seemed: rippled eight-inch lengths of steel wire, interwoven and strongly fixed in a steel frame, screwed or bolted—screwed, I decided, taking a closer look—into the steel framing of the four walls. Unpromising. But not impossible. Think about it. Plenty of time.

  Turning, I started to ease myself down to floor level again but thought better of it and reached out an arm to touch the wall over the door. The fit might once have been perfect, but time and ill-usage had done their work. Metal fatigue had allowed the outer edge of the door to sag. More than half an inch of light showed between its top and the upper sill and I used my position to make a visual survey of the world outside.

  Once again, no surprises. The little bit of the ceiling visible through the rest room grille had told me I was in some kind of large metal structure and my door-top peephole confirmed the impression, identifying the building as an airplane hangar. Or what had once been one. Doors at the far end, almost out of sight in the general gloom of poor lighting, were of the rolling type intended to open the entire front for wide-wing ingress and egress. No airplanes in line of sight right now, and temporary-looking plywood structures along the wall leading to my prison showed that the place had seen other uses in the recent past.

  Yet aerial interests had not been entirely neglected.

  Sharp-edged and metallic, an object of peculiar shape hung suspended from an unseen fulcrum twenty feet to one side and barely within my restricted field of vision, moving up and down an inch or two from time to time with the minor currents of air circulating inside the building. But I had no difficulty recognizing it as the main blade of a helicopter, or in imagining the olive drab color of the fuselage and the letters painted on the tail and under the fuselage.

  I scanned the far corner of the hangar. It was almost lost in dimness, but even so I could make out an orderly stack of boxes. Rectangular, about the size of coffins. Some kind of markings on the side, but nothing I could read from across the room. All the same, I would have given long odds on my chance of being able to describe their contents. And the smell of the Cosmoline they were packed in. If I’d had any doubt that this was Sam Goines’s—or someone’s—hideaway arsenal, it was gone now. The ugly nose of a desert half-track was just visible on the other side of the space that must have been occupied by the Huey, and the temporary enclosures nearer my washroom-cell would contain various kinds of ammunition and/or explosive devices. All very orderly and efficient. And illegal. No permits had ever been issued for any of this.

  I looked around for signs of life.

  Nothing in sight.

  But there was a lot of the room that I couldn’t see, and a lot of information I didn’t have. Leaving me alive after I’d survived the strafing by the helicopter didn’t make a lot of sense. But leaving me alone—even tied, unconscious, and locked in the john—would be an act of outright stupidity.

  Suddenly I had to get down.

  And sit down. At once.

  The soft fuzziness that had filled the world when I first tried to sit up was back at the corners and spreading. I sat down on the stool and lowered my head and waited for it to pass. One step at a time, Preacher. Easy does it...

  One of the funniest things about prime-time television is the ease with which he-man heroes are able to absorb repeated hammerings on the head. Wallops that would kill or paralyze anything else on two feet—gorillas and orangutans included—seem to do little more than slow them down. Whiplash, vertebral compression, spinal damage, and hospital recovery time never seem to get a mention. A nice comfortable world for a nice comfortable life.

  Seated in the dirty little lockup at the hangar-armory, I decided to apply for assignment to one of those lives next time around. Lousy dialogue, maybe, and repetitious situations involving dull people. But the absence of headaches and dizziness might make up for a lot.

  As soon as the world was sharp and steady again, I took steps to enlarge my part of it.

  The ropes that had been on my wrists and ankles were strong enough but far too short for what I had in mind. More cordage was needed. I took off everything but my boots and underwear.

  After tying one of the ropes to the damaged cuff of the trousers, I stood on the toilet stool again to pass the other end of the rope through the center portion of the wire mesh, and then gave it a second loop to reduce spot chafing before bringing it back down into the room and tying it to the sleeve of the ruined coat.

  Vest and shirt came next, and I risked turning on the cold water tap—very slowly and very quietly—to wet the garments before tying them together and then tying them to the free end of the ceiling rope.

  That left the other rope.

  I attached it to the free leg of the trousers and twisted them as tightly as I dared before passing the rope around the nexus of toilet stool and flush box. The coat, vest, and shirt also came in for some solid twisting before I slacked off a bit and tied the final knot that turned the whole mess into a tight but lumpy circle of rope and clothing connecting the dirty solidity of the plumbing to the roof mesh.

  Then I removed the bottom of the wastepaper basket, flattened the cylinder, folded it twice, thrust it between the two rope-and-clothing cables, and began to twist.

  As turnbuckles go, it wasn’t perfect, and I tried not to guess what its actual breaking-strain rating might be.

  But it took hold of the steel-wire roof of my little prison and made a notable downward dent after the first few turns, and I settled down to the work of making sure the cardboard lever kept turning in just one direction.

  Each turn was a little harder, and a glance in the steel mirror didn’t help much.

  The skinny one-eye
d wreck laboring in there was nearly naked and he looked like something out of a Charles Addams dungeon. Dirty, bloody, bruised, and comically earnest about what he was trying to do. I didn’t know him and I didn’t think I wanted to. But he was good for a laugh, and I almost gave him one before I remembered his vow of silence. No, no! The dungeon master will get you! I leaned on the turnbuckle and struggled to control hysteria.

  Cham-Hai, the Chinese meditational state of sinking into one’s surroundings seemed indicated.

  But out of reach.

  Saika tanden, then. I marshaled remnants of intelligence and concentrated on the state that admits all eventualities. On nothingness. Success was not total. But it was enough.

  And the respite had not been a total loss.

  Before manhandling the lever through its next turn I glanced at the mesh top of the cage and realized that success—and the moment of greatest danger—were both close at hand.

  Either my improvised turnbuckle was stronger than I’d thought, or the metal holding the edges of the grille was weaker. The whole facing had come loose on one side, and I could see signs of weakening in two more places. Excellent! Amazing! But silence remained a prime imperative; no E for effort here. Get it right and get it quietly the first time, or no trip to Hawaii...

  Carefully, my attention focused on the grille’s edges, I forced the lever through another turn. And another.

  The corner screw on the left tilted and I held my breath, climbing onto the stool to steady it with my free hand before making the next turn that tore it free from its moorings. A few flakes of rust followed. All right! Now for the screws nearest to it.

  I moved my hand to brace the second screw as I had the first, but was a split second too late. No more twisting was required. Those screws were done. Before my hand could make contact, two of them parted company with the wall...to the accompaniment of an E-flat screech clearly audible in the next county.