Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

by George R. R. Martin

  Chrysalis shut off the hateful memories rushing through her mind. She was still, she realized, walking on tricky ground with Digger. She had to concentrate fully on him and forget the family that she’d robbed and fled from.

  “That information is confidential,” she told Digger coldly.

  He laughed aloud. “That’s very funny, coming from you,” he said, then suddenly sobered at her look of uncontainable fury. “Of course, perhaps the true story of your real past wouldn’t be of much interest to my readers.” He put a conciliatory expression on his pale face. “I know that you know everything that goes on in Jokertown. Maybe you know something interesting about him.”

  Digger gestured with his chin and let his eyes flicker in the direction of Senator Hartmann.

  “What about him?” Hartmann was a powerful and influential politician who felt strongly about jokers’ rights. He was one of the few politicians that Chrysalis supported financially because she liked his policies and not because she needed to keep the wheels greased.

  “Let’s go somewhere private and talk about it.”

  Digger was obviously reluctant to discuss Hartmann openly. Intrigued, Chrysalis glanced at the antique brooch watch pinned above the bodice of her gown. “I have to leave in ten minutes.” She grinned like a Halloween skeleton. “I’m going to see a voodoo cer­emony. Perhaps if you care to come along, we might find time to discuss things and come to a mutual understanding about the newsworthiness of my background.”

  Digger smiled. “Sounds fine to me. Voodoo ceremony, huh? They going to stick pins in dolls and stuff? Maybe have some kind of sacrifice?”

  Chrysalis shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to one before.”

  “Think they’ll mind if I take photos?”

  Chrysalis smiled blandly, wishing she was on familiar turf, wishing that she had something to use on this gossip-monger, and wondering, underneath it all, why his interest in Gregg Hartmann?

  In a fit of sentiment Ti Malice chose one of his oldest mounts, a male with a body almost as frail and withered as his own, to be his steed for the night. Even though the mount’s flesh was ancient, the brain encased in it was still sharp, and more strong-willed than any other Ti Malice had ever encountered. It said, in fact, a lot for Ti Malice’s own indominatable will that he was able to control the stubborn old steed. The mental fencing that accompanied riding it was a most pleasurable experience.

  He chose the dungeon for the meeting place. It was a quiet, com­fortable old room, full of pleasurable sights and smells and memo­ries. The lighting was dim, the air was cool and moist. His favorite tools, along with the remains of his last few partners in experience, were scattered about in agreeable disarray. He had his mount pick up a blood-encrusted flaying knife and test it on its callused palm while he drifted in pleasant reminiscence until the snorting bellow in the corridor outside proclaimed Taureau’s approach.

  Taureau-trois-graines, as he had named this mount, was a huge male with a body that was thick with slabs of muscle. It had a long, bushy beard and tufts of coarse black hair peered through the tears in its sun-faded work shirt. It wore frayed, worn denim pants, and it had a huge, rampant erection pushing visibly at the fabric that cov­ered its crotch. It always had.

  “I have a task for you,” Ti Malice told his mount to say, and Taureau bellowed and tossed its head and rubbed its crotch through the fabric of its pants. “Some new mounts will be awaiting you on the road to Petionville. Take a squad of zobops and bring them to me here.”

  “Women?” Taureau asked in a slobbering snort.

  “Perhaps,” Ti Malice said through his mount, “but you are not to have them. Later, perhaps.”

  Taureau let out a disappointed bellow, but knew better than to argue.

  “Be careful,” Ti Malice warned. “Some of these mounts may have powers. They may be strong.”

  Taureau let out bray that rattled the tattered half-skeleton hang­ing in the wall niche next to it. “Not as strong as me!” It thumped its massive chest with a callused, horny hand.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Just take care. I want them all.” He paused to let his mount’s words sink in. “Do not fail me. If you do, you will never know my kiss again.”

  Taureau howled like a steer being led to the slaughter block, backed out of the room, bowing furiously, and was gone.

  Ti Malice and his mount waited.

  In a moment a woman came into the room. Its skin was the color of coffee and milk mixed in equal amounts. Its hair, thick and wild, fell to its waist. It was barefooted and obviously wore nothing under its thin white dress. Its arms were slim, its breasts large, and its legs lithely muscled. Its eyes were black irises floating in pools of red. Ti Malice would have smiled at the sight of it, if he could, for it was his favorite steed.

  “Ezili-je-rouge,” he crooned through his mount, “you had to wait until Taureau left, for you couldn’t share a room with the bull and live.”

  It smiled a smile with even, perfectly white teeth. “It might be an interesting way to die.”

  “It might,” Ti Malice considered. He had never experienced death by means of intercourse before. “But I have other needs for you. The blancs that have come to visit us are rich and important. They live in America and, I’m sure, have access to many interest­ing sensations that are unavailable on our poor island.”

  Ezili nodded, licking red lips.

  “I’ve set plans in motion to make some of these blancs mine, but to ensure my success, I want you to go to their hotel, take one of the others, and make it ready for my kiss. Choose one of the strong ones.”

  Ezili nodded. “Will you take me to America with you?” she asked nervously.

  Ti Malice had his mount reach out an ancient, withered hand and caress Ezili’s large, firm breasts. It shivered with delight at the touch of the mount’s hand.

  “Of course, my darling, of course.”

  iii.

  “A limousine?” Chrysalis said with an icy smile to the broadly grinning man wearing dark glasses who was holding the door for her. “How nice. I was expecting something with four-wheel drive.”

  She climbed into the backseat of the limo, and Digger followed her. “I wouldn’t complain,” he said. “They haven’t let the press go anywhere. You should’ve seen what I had to go through to crash the dinner party. I don’t think they like reporters much . . . here . . .”

  His voice ran down as he flopped onto the rear seat next to Chrysalis and noted the expression on her face. She was staring at the facing seat, and the two men who occupied it. One was Dorian Wilde. He was looking more than a little tipsy and fondling a coco­macaques similar to the one Chrysalis had seen that afternoon. The stick obviously belonged to the man who was sitting next to him and regarding Chrysalis with a horrible frozen grin that contorted his scarred face into a death mask.

  “Chrysalis, my dear!” Wilde exclaimed as the limo pulled away into the night. “And the glorious fourth estate. Dug up any juicy gossip lately?” Digger looked from Chrysalis to Wilde to the man sitting next to him and decided that silence would be his most appropriate response. “How rude of me,” Wilde continued. “I haven’t introduced our host. This delightful man has the charming name of Charlemagne Calixte. I believe he’s a policeman or something. He’s going with us to the hounfour.”

  Digger nodded and Calixte inclined his head in a precise, non-deferential bow.

  “Are you a devotee of voodoo, Monsieur Calixte?” Chrysalis asked.

  “It is the superstition of peasants,” he said in a raspy growl, thoughtfully fingering the scar tissue that crawled up the right side of his face. “Although seeing you would almost make one a believer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have the appearance of a loa. You could be Madame Brigitte, the wife of Baron Samedi.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” Chrysalis asked.

  Calixte laughed. It was a gravelly, barking laugh that was as pleasant as his smile. “Not I,
but I am an educated man. It was the sickness that caused your appearance. I know. I have seen others.”

  “Other jokers?” Digger asked with, Chrysalis thought, his usual tact.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I have seen other unnatural deformities. A few.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Calixte only smiled.

  No one felt much like talking. Digger kept shooting Chrysalis questioning glances, but she could tell him nothing, and even if she had a inkling of what was going on, she could hardly speak openly in front of Calixte. Wilde played with Calixte’s swagger stick and cadged drinks from the bottle of clairin, cheap white rum, that the Haitian took frequent swallows from himself. Calixte drank over half the bottle in twenty minutes, and as he drank he stared at Chrysalis with intense, bloodshot eyes.

  Chrysalis, in an effort to avoid Calixte’s gaze, looked out the window and was astonished to see that they were no longer in the city, but were traveling down a road that seemed to cut through otherwise unbroken forest.

  “Just where are we going?” she asked Calixte, striving to keep her voice level and unafraid.

  He took the bottle of clairin from Wilde, gulped down a mouthful, and shrugged. “We are going to the hounfour. It is in Petionville, a small suburb just outside Port-au-Prince.”

  “Port-au-Prince has no hounfours of its own?”

  Calixte smiled his blasted smile. “None that put on such a fine show.”

  Silence descended again. Chrysalis knew that they were in trou­ble, but she couldn’t figure out exactly what Calixte wanted of them. She felt like a pawn in a game she didn’t even know she’d been playing. She glanced at the others. Digger was looking confused as hell, and Wilde was drunk. Damn. She was more sorry than ever that she’d left familiar, comfortable Jokertown behind to follow Tachyon on his mad, worthless journey. As usual, she only had herself to depend on. It had always been like that, and always would. Part of her mind whispered that once there had been Bren­nan, but she refused to listen to it. Come to the test, he would have proved as untrustworthy as the rest. He would have.

  The driver suddenly pulled the limo to the side of the road and killed the engine. She stared out the window, but could see little. It was dark and the roadside was lit only by infrequent glimpses of the half moon as it occasionally peered out from behind banks of thick clouds. It looked as if they had stopped beside a crossroad, a chance meeting of minor roads that ran blindly through the Hait­ian forest. Calixte opened the door on his side and climbed out of the limo smoothly and steadily in spite of the fact that he’d drunk most of a bottle of raw rum in less than half an hour. The driver got out too, leaned against the side of the limo, and began to beat a swift tattoo on a small, pointed-end drum that he’d produced from somewhere.

  “What’s going on?” Digger demanded.

  “Engine trouble,” Calixte said succinctly, throwing the empty rum bottle into the jungle.

  “And the driver is calling the Haitian Automobile Club,” Wilde, sprawled across the backseat, said with a giggle.

  Chrysalis poked Digger and gestured to him to move out. He obeyed, looking around bewilderedly, and she followed him. She didn’t want to be trapped in the back of the limo during whatever it was that was going to happen. At least outside the car she had a chance to run for it, although she probably wouldn’t be able to get very far in a floor-length gown and high heels. Through the jun­gle. On a dark night.

  “Say,” Digger said in sudden comprehension. “We’re being kidnapped. You can’t do this. I’m a reporter.”

  Calixte reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small, snub-nosed revolver. He pointed it negligently at Digger and said, “Shut up.”

  Downs wisely did.

  They didn’t have long to wait. From the road that intersected the one they’d been driving upon came the cadenced sound of marching feet. Chrysalis turned to stare down the road and saw what looked like a column of fireflies, bobbing up and down, com­ing in their direction. It took a moment, but she realized that it was actually a troop of marching men. They wore long, white robes whose hems brushed the roadtop. Each carried a long, skinny can­dle in his left hand and each was also crowned with a candle set on his forehead by a cloth circlet, producing the firefly effect. They wore masks. There were about fifteen of them.

  Leading the column was an immense man who had a decidedly bovine look about him. He was dressed in the cheap, tattered clothes of a Haitian peasant. He was one of the largest men that Chrysalis had ever seen, and as soon as he spotted her he headed straight toward her. He stood before her drooling and rubbing his crotch, which, Chrysalis was surprised and not happy to see, was bulging outward and stretching the frayed fabric of his jeans.

  “Jesus,” Digger muttered. “We’re in trouble now. He’s an ace.”

  Chrysalis glanced at the reporter. “How do you know?”

  “Well, ah, he looks like one, doesn’t he?”

  He looked like someone who’d been touched by the wild card virus, Chrysalis thought, but that didn’t necessarily make him an ace. Before she could question Digger further, however, the bull-like man said something in Creole, and Calixte snapped off a guttural “Non” in answer.

  The bull-man seemed momentarily ready to dispute Calixte’s apparent order, but decided to back down. He continued to glower at Chrysalis and finger his erection as he spoke in turn to the strangely garbed men who had accompanied him.

  Three of them came forward and dragged a protesting Dorian Wilde from the backseat of the limo. The poet looked around bewilderedly, fixed his bleary eyes on the bull-man, and giggled.

  Calixte grimaced. He snatched his cocomacaquesfrom Wilde and lashed out with it, spitting the word “Masisi” as he struck.

  The blow landed where Wilde’s neck curved into his shoulder, and the poet moaned and sagged. The three men supporting him couldn’t hold him, and he fell to the ground just as all hell broke loose.

  The snap, crack, and pop of small-arms fire sounded from the foliage bordering the roadside, and a couple of the men so strangely crowned by candles went down. A few others broke and ran for it, though most held their ground. The bull-man bellowed in rage and hurtled toward the undergrowth. Chrysalis, who’d dropped to the ground at the first sound of gunfire, saw him get hit in the upper body at least twice, but he didn’t even stagger. He crashed into the underbrush and in a moment high-pitched screams mixed with his bellowing.

  Calixte crouched behind the limo and calmly returned fire. Dig­ger, like Chrysalis, was huddled on the ground, and Wilde just lay there moaning. Chrysalis decided that it was time to exercise the better part of valor. She crawled under the limo, cursing as she felt her expensive gown snag and tear.

  Calixte dove after her. He snatched at her left foot, but only grabbed her shoe. She twisted her foot, the shoe came off, and she was free. She scrambled all the way under the limo, came out on the other side, and rolled into the jungle foliage lining the roadside.

  She took a few moments to catch her breath, and then was up and running, staying low and keeping to cover as much as she could. Within moments she was away from the conflict, safe, alone, and, she quickly realized, totally, utterly lost.

  She should have paralleled the road, she told herself, rather than taking off blindly into the forest. She should have done a lot of things, like spending the winter in New York and not on this insane tour. But it was too late to worry about any of that. Now all she could do was push ahead.

  Chrysalis never imagined that a tropical forest, a jungle, could be so desolate. She saw nothing move, other than tree branches in the night wind, and heard nothing other than the sounds made by that same wind. It was a lonely, frightening feeling, especially to someone used to having a city around them.

  She’d lost her brooch watch when she’d scrambled under the limo, so she had no way of measuring time other than the increas­ing soreness in her body and dryness in her throat. Hours, cer­tainly, had passed before, totally by a
ccident, she stumbled upon a trail. It was rough, narrow, and uneven, obviously made by human feet, but finding it filled her with hope. It was a sign of habitation. It led to somewhere. All she had to do was follow it, and somewhere, sometime, she’d find help.

  She started down the trail, too consumed by the exigencies of her immediate situation to worry any more about Calixte’s motives in bringing her and the others to the crossroads, the identity of the strangely dressed men crowned with candles, or to even wonder about their mysterious rescuers, if, indeed, the band that had ambushed their kidnappers had meant to rescue them.

  She walked through the darkness.

  It was difficult going. Right at the start of her trek she’d taken off her right shoe to even her stride, and sometime soon afterward she’d lost it. The ground was not without sticks and stones and other sharp objects, and before long her feet hurt like hell. She cataloged her miseries minutely so she’d know exactly how much to take out of Tachyon’s hide if she ever got back to Port-au-Prince.

  Not if, she told herself repeatedly. When. When. When.

  She was chanting the word as a short, snappy little marching song when she suddenly realized that someone was walking toward her on the trail. It was difficult to say for sure in the uncertain light, but it looked like a man, a tall, frail man carrying a hoe or shovel or something over his shoulder. He was headed right toward her.

  She stopped, leaned against a nearby tree, and let out a long, relieved sigh. The brief thought flashed through her mind that he might be a member of Calixte’s odd gang, but from what she could discern, he was dressed like a peasant, and he was carrying some sort of farm implement. He was probably just a local out on a late errand. She had the sudden fear that her appearance might scare him away before she could ask for help, but quenched it with the realization that he had to have already seen her, and he was still steadily approaching.