Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

by George R. R. Martin

  “Can I do anything?”

  He wasn’t sure what she was offering and he didn’t want to think too hard about it. “No,” he said. “Not now.”

  “Where are you?”

  “A pay phone, in the Roppongi district. The club where Hiram got in trouble is somewhere around here.”

  “It’s just . . . we never really had a chance to talk. With Jayewardene there and everything.”

  “I know.”

  “I went looking for you after Wild Card Day. Your mother said you were going to a monastery.”

  “I was. Then when I got here I heard about that monk, the one up on Hokkaido.”

  “The ace.”

  “Yeah. His name is Dogen. He can create mindblocks, a little like the Astronomer could, but not as drastic. He can make people forget things or take away worldly skills that might interfere with their meditation or—”

  “Or take away somebody’s wild card power. Yours, for instance.”

  “For instance.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “He said he’d take me in. But only if I gave up my power.”

  “But you said your power was gone.”

  “So far. But I haven’t given it a chance to come back. And if I go in the monastery, it could be permanent. Sometimes the block wears off and he has to renew it. Sometimes it doesn’t wear off at all.”

  “And you don’t know if you want to go that far.”

  “I want to. But I still feel . . . responsible. Like the power isn’t entirely mine, you know?”

  “Kind of. I never wanted to give mine up. Not like you or Jayewardene.”

  “Is he serious about it?”

  “He sure seems to be.”

  “Maybe when this is over,” Fortunato said, “him and me can go see Dogen together.” Traffic was picking up around him; the daytime buses and delivery vans had given way to expensive sedans and taxis. “I have to go,” he said.

  “Promise me,” Peregrine said. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I promise.”

  The Roppongi district was about three kilometers southwest of the Ginza. It was the one part of Tokyo where the clubs stayed open past midnight. Lately it was overrun with gaijin trade, discos and pubs and bars with Western hostesses.

  It had taken Fortunato a long time to get used to things closing early. The last trains left the center of the city at midnight, and he’d walked down to Roppongi more than once during his first weeks in Tokyo, still looking for some elusive satisfaction, unwilling to settle for sex or alcohol, not ready to risk the savage Japanese punishment for being caught with drugs. Finally he’d given it up. The sight of so many tourists, the loud, unceasing noise of their languages, the predictable throb of their music, were not worth the few pleasures the clubs had to offer.

  He tried three places and no one remembered Hiram or recognized the sign of the duck. Then he went into the north Berni Inn, one of two in the district. It was an English pub, complete with Guinness and kidney pie and red velvet everything. About half the tables were full, either of foreign tourists in twos and threes, or large tables of Japanese businessmen.

  Fortunato slowed to watch the dynamics at one of the Japanese tables. Expense accounts kept the water trade alive. Staying out all night with the boys from the office was just part of the job. The youngest and least confident of them talked the loudest and laughed the hardest. Here, with the excuse of alcohol, was the one time the pressure was off, their only chance to fuck up and get away with it. The senior men smiled indulgently. Fortunato knew that even if he could read their thoughts there wouldn’t be much there to see. The perfect Japanese businessman could hide his thoughts even from himself, could efface himself so completely that no one would even know he was there.

  The bartender was Japanese and probably new on the job. He looked at Fortunato with a mixture of horror and awe. Japanese were raised to think of gaijin as a race of giants. Fortunato, over six feet tall, thin, his shoulders hunched forward like a vulture’s, was a walking childhood nightmare.

  “Genki desu-ne?” Fortunato asked politely, with a little bow of the head. “I’m looking for a nightclub,” he went on in Japanese. “It has a sign like this.” He drew a duck on one of the red bar napkins and showed it to the bartender. The bartender nodded, backing away, a rigid smile of fear on his face.

  Finally one of the foreign waitresses ducked behind the bar and smiled at Fortunato. “I have a feeling Tosun is not going to do well here,” she said. Her accent was Northern England. Her hair was dark brown and pinned up with chopsticks, and her eyes were green. “Can I help?”

  “I’m looking for a nightclub somewhere around here. It’s got a duck on the sign, like this one. Small place, doesn’t do a lot of gaijin trade.”

  The woman looked at the napkin. For a second she had the same look as the bartender. Then she worked her face around into a perfect Japanese smile. It looked horrible on her European features. Fortunato knew she wasn’t afraid of him. It had to be the club. “No,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Look. I know the yakuza are mixed up in this. I’m not a cop, and I’m not looking for any trouble. I’m just trying to pay a debt for somebody. For a friend of mine. Believe me, they want to see me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Megan.” The way she thought before saying it told Fortunato she was lying.

  “What part of England are you from?”

  “I’m not, actually.” She casually crumpled the napkin and threw it under the bar. “I’m from Nepal.” She gave him the brittle smile again and walked away.

  He’d looked at every bar in the district, most of them twice. At least it seemed that way. Hiram could, of course, have been half a block farther on in the wrong direction, or Fortunato could simply have missed it. By four A.M. he was too tired to look anymore, too tired even to go home.

  He saw a love hotel on the other side of the Roppongi Crossing. The hourly rates were on the high, windowless walls by the entrance. After midnight it was actually something of a bargain. Fortunato went in past the darkened garden and slipped his money through a blind slot in the wall. A hand slid him out a key.

  The hall was full of size-ten foreign men’s shoes paired off with tiny zōri or doll-sized spike heels. Fortunato found his room and locked the door behind him. The bed was freshly made with pink satin sheets. There were mirrors and a video camera on the ceiling, feeding a big-screen TV in the corner. By love hotel standards the room was pretty tame. Some featured jungles or desert islands, beds shaped like boats or cars or helicopters, light shows and sound effects.

  He turned out the light and undressed. All around him his over-sensitive hearing picked up tiny cries and shrill, stifled laughter. He folded the pillow over his head and lay with his eyes open to the darkness.

  He was forty-seven years old. For twenty of those years he’d lived inside a cocoon of power and never noticed himself aging. Then the last six months had begun to teach him what he’d missed. The dreadful fatigue after a long night like this one. Mornings when his joints hurt so badly it was hard to get up. Important memories beginning to fade, trivia haunting him obsessively. Lately there were the headaches, and indigestion and muscle cramps. The constant awareness of being human, being mortal, being weak.

  Nothing was as addictive as power. Heroin was a glass of flat beer in comparison. There had been nights, watching an endless throng of beautiful women move down the Ginza or the Shinjuku, virtually all of them for sale, when he’d thought he couldn’t go on without feeling that power again. He’d talked to himself like an alcoholic, promising himself he’d wait just one more day. And somehow he’d held out. Partly because the memories of his last night in New York, of his final battle with the Astronomer, were still too fresh, reminding him of the pain the power had cost him. Partly because he was no longer sure the power was there, whether Kundalini, the great serpent, was dead or just asleep.

&n
bsp; Tonight he’d watched helplessly as a hundred or more Japanese lied to him, ignored him, even humiliated themselves rather than tell him what they so obviously knew. He’d started to see himself through their eyes: huge, clumsy, sweaty, loud, and uncivilized, a pathetic barbarian giant, a kind of oversized monkey who couldn’t even be held accountable for common politeness.

  A little tantric magick would change all that.

  Tomorrow, he told himself. If you still feel this way tomorrow then you can go ahead, try to get it back.

  He closed his eyes and finally fell asleep.

  He woke up with an erection for the first time in months. It was fate, he told himself. Fate that brought Peregrine to him, that provided the need for him to use his power again.

  Was that the truth? Or did he just want an excuse to make love to her again, an outlet for six months of sexual frustration?

  He dressed and took a cab to the Imperial Hotel. The tour took up an entire floor of the new thirty-one-story tower, and everything inside was scaled up for Europeans. The halls and the insides of the elevators seemed huge to Fortunato now. By the time he got off on the thirtieth floor his hands were shaking. He leaned against Peregrine’s door and knocked quietly. A few seconds later he knocked again, harder.

  She answered the door in a loose nightgown that touched the floor. Her feathers were ruffled and she could hardly open her eyes. Then she saw him.

  She took the chain off the door and stood aside. He shut the door behind him and took her in his arms. He could feel the tiny creature in her belly moving as he held her. He kissed her. Sparks seemed to be crackling around them, but it could have been just the strength of his desire, breaking out of the chains he’d kept it in for so long.

  He pulled the straps of her nightgown down along her arms. It fell to her waist and revealed her breasts, their nipples dark and puffy. He touched one with his tongue and tasted the chalky sweetness of her milk. She put her arms around his head and moaned. Her skin was soft and fragrant as the silk of an antique kimono. She pulled him toward the unmade bed and he broke away from her long enough to take off his clothes.

  She lay on her back. The pregnancy was the summit of her body, where all the curves ended. Fortunato knelt next to her and kissed her face and throat and shoulders and breasts. He couldn’t seem to get his breath. He turned her on her side, facing away from him, and kissed the small of her back. Then he reached up between her legs and held her there, feeling the warmth and wetness against his palm, moving his fingers slowly through the tangle of her pubic hair. She undulated slowly, clutching a pillow in both hands.

  He lay down behind her and went into her from behind. The soft flesh of her buttocks pressed into his stomach and his eyes went out of focus. “Oh, God,” he said. He began to move slowly inside her, his left arm under her and cupping one breast, his right hand lightly touching the curve of her stomach. She moved with him, both of them in slow motion, her breath coming harder and faster until she cried out and ground her hips against him.

  At the last possible moment he reached down and blocked his ejaculation at the perineum. The hot fluid flooded back into his groin and lights seemed to flash around him. He relaxed, ready to feel his astral body come loose from his flesh.

  It didn’t happen.

  He put his arms around Peregrine and held onto her fiercely. He buried his face in her neck, let her long hair cover his head.

  Now he knew. The power was gone.

  He had a single bright moment of panic, then exhaustion carried him on into sleep.

  He slept for an hour or so and woke up tired. Peregrine was on her back, watching him.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “You’re not glowing.”

  “No,” he said. He looked at his hands. “It didn’t work. It was wonderful. But the power didn’t come back. There’s nothing there.”

  She turned on her side, facing him. “Oh, no.” She stroked his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Really. I’ve spent the last six months going back and forth, afraid the power would come back, then afraid it wouldn’t. At least now I know.” He kissed her neck. “Listen. We need to talk about the baby.”

  “We can talk. But it’s not like I expect anything from you, okay? I mean, there’s some things I should probably have told you. There’s a guy on the tour name of McCoy. He’s the cameraman for this documentary we’re doing. It looks like it could get serious with us. He knows about the baby and he doesn’t care.”

  “Oh,” Fortunato said. “I didn’t know.”

  “We had a big fight a couple of days ago. And seeing you again—well, that really was something, that night back in New York. You’re quite a guy. But you know there couldn’t ever be anything permanent between us.”

  “No,” Fortunato said. “I guess not.” His hand moved reflexively to stroke her swollen stomach, tracing blue veins against the pale skin. “It’s weird. I never wanted kids. But now that it’s happened, it’s not like I thought it would be. It’s like it doesn’t really matter what I want. I’m responsible. Even if I never see the kid, I’m still responsible, and I always will be.”

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Don’t make me wish I hadn’t come to you with this.”

  “No. I just want to know that you’re going to be okay. You and the baby both.”

  “The baby’s fine. Other than the fact that neither one of us has a last name to give it.”

  There was a knock at the door. Fortunato tensed, feeling suddenly out of place. “Peri?” said Tachyon’s voice. “Peri, are you in there?”

  “Just a minute,” she said. She put on a robe and handed Fortunato his clothes. He was still buttoning his shirt when she opened the door.

  Tachyon looked at Peregrine, at the rumpled bed, at Fortunato. “You,” he said. He nodded like his worst suspicions had just proved out. “Peri told me you were . . . helping.”

  Jealous, little man? Fortunato thought. “That’s right,” he said.

  “Well, I hope I didn’t interrupt.” He looked at Peregrine. “The bus for the Meiji Shrine is supposed to leave in fifteen minutes. If you’re going.”

  Fortunato ignored him, went to Peregrine, and kissed her gently. “I’ll call you,” he said, “when I know something.”

  “All right.” She squeezed his hand. “Be careful.”

  He walked past Tachyon and into the hall. A man with an ele­phant’s trunk instead of a nose was waiting there.

  “Des,” Fortunato said. “It’s good to see you.” That was not entirely true. Des looked terribly old, his cheeks sunken, the bulk of his body melting away. Fortunato wondered if his own pains were as obvious.

  “Fortunato,” Des said. They shook hands. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I didn’t think you’d ever leave New York.”

  “I was due to see a little of the world. Age has a way of catching up with one.”

  “Yeah,” Fortunato said. “No kidding.”

  “Well,” Des said. “I have to make the tour bus.”

  “Sure,” Fortunato said. “I’ll walk you.”

  There was a time when Des had been one of his best customers. It looked like those times were over.

  Tachyon caught up with them at the elevator. “What do you want?” Fortunato said. “Can’t you just leave me alone with this?”

  “Peri told me about your powers. I came to tell you I’m sorry. I know you hate me. Though I don’t really know why. I suppose the way I dress, the way I behave, is some kind of obscure threat to your masculinity. Or at least you’ve chosen to see it that way. But it’s in your mind, not mine.”

  Fortunato shook his head angrily.

  “I just want one second.” Tachyon closed his eyes. The elevator chimed and the doors opened.

  “Your second’s up,” Fortunato said. Still he didn’t move. Des got on, giving Fortunato a mournful look, and the elevator closed again. Fortunato heard the cabl
es creaking behind bamboo-patterned doors.

  “Your power is still there.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’re shutting it inside yourself. Your mind is full of conflicts and contradictions, holding it in.”

  “It took everything I had to fight the Astronomer. I hit empty. The bottom of the barrel. Cleaned out. Nothing left to recharge. Like running a car battery dry. It won’t even jumpstart. It’s over.”

  “To take up your metaphor, even a live battery won’t start when the ignition key is turned off. And the key,” Tachyon said, pointing at his forehead, “is inside.” He walked away and Fortunato slammed the elevator button with the flat of his hand.

  He called Hiram from the lobby.

  “Get over here,” Hiram said. “I’ll meet you out front.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just get over here.”

  Fortunato took a cab and found Hiram pacing back and forth in front of the plain gray facade of the Akasaka Shanpia. “What happened?”

  “Come in and see,” Hiram said.

  The room had looked bad before, but now it was a disaster. The walls were spattered with shaving cream, the dresser drawers had been thrown into the corner, the mirrors were shattered and the mattress ripped to shreds.

  “I didn’t even see it happen. I was here the whole time and I didn’t see it.”

  “What are you talking about? How could you not see it?”

  Hiram’s eyes were frantic. “I went to the bathroom about nine this morning and got a glass of water. I know everything was okay then. I came back in here and put the TV on and watched for maybe half an hour. Then I heard something that sounded like the door slamming. I looked up and the room was like you see it. And this note was in my lap.”

  The note was in English. “Zero hour comes tomorrow. You can die this easy. Zero man.”

  “Then it is an ace.”