Marked Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  Clara carried the coolers over to the microwave oven. All but three of the flasks fit. She'd have to do it in two batches. Fifteen minutes per batch would be too much time to gamble on, but ten minutes should be enough. She set the timer, and paced, watching the door.

  When the alarm went off, she dragged the flasks of destroyed virus out, stuck the last three in, and reset the timer. Some sixth sense, or perhaps a faint noise, caused her to turn. A small compressed gas bottle was descending on her. Poynter's face was behind it.

  Clara dodged and the metal bottle struck her shoulder. She buckled with a cry.

  Poynter shoved her out of the way and grabbed the flasks out of the oven. She tried to run but Clara caught her by the leg and she stumbled, barely keeping hold of the flasks as she went down.

  They wrestled for control of the flasks. Clara was larger but Poynter was younger and much stronger. She wormed free of Clara's grasp and scrambled to her feet, and hurled a two-gallon glass jug of plasmid solution at Clara, catching her in the gut. She sat down with a whoosh, all the air knocked out of her. The glass shattered on the floor between her legs, bathing her in sticky, acrid solution.

  Poynter was gone by the time she'd recovered.

  Clara stuffed the tissue cultures into the oven and turned it on, then ran out to find and stop Poynter. She dodged into a room when she heard General MacArthur Johnson's voice; he and a squad of goons armed with semi-automatics ran past. They entered the clean room airlock behind Poynter. Clara waited till they were all inside, then hit the emergency button by the airlock.

  Alarms started going off all over, signalling a contaminant release in the clean room. The airlock doors would now be sealed till they could get someone outside to activate the override.

  But some of the virus still lived.

  Clara ran for the basement, pausing only long enough to fan the flames of panic with a word here and there.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Hours passed. Finn imagined every possible catastrophe. Hartmann uttered them. Joan yelled at them.

  Finn huddled against a wall, and imagined they had discovered her. Killed her. Fuck that, nobody gets to throttle her but me, he thought. He knew he was losing his mind. He never wanted to see Clara again, but the thought that he wouldn't was a sharp pain deep in the gut. Then, just when all hope was gone, the key grated in the lock and the door flew open. Clara stood revealed, her hair looking as if she'd combed it with an egg beater, a wild light in her green eyes.

  For the first time Finn felt good enough to notice the environment beyond the door. It was really unexciting - stacked boxes, lab beakers lining shelves, sacks of bulk food supplies, in short ... a basement storeroom. Clara noticed his abstraction, slapped him on his withers with an open palm.

  "We have to hurry. Johnson's not stupid." She was almost stuttering as she tried to force the words out faster. "He'll figure out soon it's not the virus, and I don't know if I got them all. Guards I mean. He's got four. If some of them didn't eat ..."

  Finn shooed Joan out the door. She was a blur of camouflaging scales whipping across the floor. Finn leaped through the door. Clara grabbed him around the neck. Pressed a kiss on his mouth. He howled. She fell back, her hands pressed to her mouth, bumped into a stack of crates which went tumbling with a god-awful crash.

  "Hurts," Finn muttered, wondering why he was reassuring her.

  Hartmann skittered out of the room. "Want to give me a little nudge?" he asked. Finn stared at him in confusion. "Scare me," the senator amplified. He sounded irritated.

  "I wouldn't think you'd need any help for that," Finn said.

  "I need high gear. One of us has got to get out, give the warning. I'm probably the fastest of any of us. If you goose me."

  Finn shrugged, and cow-kicked at Hartmann, clipping him lightly in the side. He levitated about a foot into the air. All of his myriad legs began churning, and he hit the ground running. Finn watched the senator go, swarming up the stairs and out of sight.

  "Which floor?" Joan called from inside the elevator.

  "Not the elevator," Finn yelled back. "If anybody's alert they'll shut them down. Trap us." Joan came out of the elevator at Mach two.

  They crept up the stairs. Finn was having a hard time without his rubber booties. Finn, protecting the womenfolk and all that, emerged first from the stairwell and saw - a hall. It looked like any other hall in any other office building. Finn realized he was holding himself so tensely that his muscles were aching.

  "Which way?" he whispered to Clara.

  "Turn left at the end of the hall. That'll take us to reception. It's about twenty feet to the front doors."

  From behind one of the closed doors which lined the hall Finn heard a low, hopeless, terrified sobbing. He didn't investigate. Joan headed out down the hall, Clara following. She looked back when she didn't hear the clop of his hooves on the linoleum floor.

  Finn stepped to her, gripped her shoulders, turned her around, laid a hand between her shoulder blades, and pushed. "You and Joan go on. Call the cops. I gotta get Faneuil."

  "What?"

  "He killed thousands of people. He made me an unwitting killer. He's got to pay for that."

  "We don't have the luxury," Clara said.

  "This is a necessity. Does he have a lab? Where does he work?"

  "You'll never reach him alone," Clara said. She turned to Joan. "Go on, Mother." Joan hesitated, regret and fear showing on her face. Then she went. Clara darted past Finn back into the stairwell. He followed.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  They made it to the third floor without incident. Clara was right about him needing her help. Access to all the labs was through negative pressure clean rooms, and an access card and voice print were required. Clara's got them through. Faneuil wasn't in his office, or in the lab with its detailed maps of world cities. The only one Finn recognized in the brief seconds allowed to him was New York.

  "He's not here. Come on! Let's go!" Tension thrummed in Clara's voice.

  "How big is this building?" Finn asked as he pulled open another door. Closet. Faneuil wasn't in it.

  "Too big for us to search. Maman's toxin will only last so long."

  Finn pulled open a final door, and discovered a bathroom, and Faneuil seated on the shitter. His pants were down around his ankles, the bowl filled with his diarrhea. The paralysis induced by Joan's venom had finally hit, but it was too weak a dose to completely freeze him. He was struggling, moving like a man under water. Finn reached in, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and yanked him out of the john. With Clara's help they got him tossed over Finn's back.

  Out of the lab. Back into the hall. Racing for the stairwell. People were starting to recover from the effects of the venom. Sensation returning to their limbs, rational thought to their brains. A couple of them clung to door jambs, and called garbled questions to Clara.

  Through the door, and down the stairs. It was a bitch going down. Finn's hooves kept slipping on the metal stair nosings, and Faneuil was an awkward weight on his back. The French doctor's struggles were becoming more violent.

  "Punch him!" Finn ordered.

  Clara pulled back her arm, and drove her fist into Faneuil's temple. He quieted down substantially.

  Suddenly a voice from below called out. "You joker-fucking bitch."

  Finn risked a glance over the railing. A burst of automatic weapons fire came back in reply. The sound was terrifying in the enclosed space, and bullets were whining and spanging off the metal banisters. One of the ricochets gouged a line of fire across the top of Finn's haunches. Clara hunkered down, her arms protectively covering her head. "It's Johnson Security. We're fucked."

  The situation had clearly become desperate. Retreat was impossible. Walking down the stairs into that withering fire was equally impossible, and standing still was also impossible. There was only one thing to do - punt.

  Finn reared slightly, sending Faneiul sliding off his back. He then gathered his hindquarters beneath him, tens
ed the muscles, and leaped. The man's mouth was a dark, stretched "O" as he watched four hundred pounds of palomino centaur descending from heaven on top of him. His gun was pointed straight into Finn's gut, but fortunately the sight of a flying joker made him hesitate, and in hesitating he was lost.

  Finn came down on the man, heard bones cracking, a pathetic wheezing sound as the air went out of the guard. There was another gun-shot loud crack, and fire washed up Finn's right front leg. He went down in a welter of legs and arms. He craned up to see his foreleg. From the middle of the cannon bone it was flopping. He struggled onto three legs. Rambo was out cold on the stairs. Pieces of him were bent in funny directions, too. Finn looked up to see Clara, hands tangled in the lapels of Faneuil's coat, dragging him down the stairs. His head bumped on each step, and his trousers and shorts were pulled almost completely off his legs.

  Thanking God they were at the first floor (Finn could not have done stairs on three legs), he hobbled to the door, pulled it open. Clara dragged Faneuil through. Down the hall. Finn wished he could help Clara with Faneuil, but knew he couldn't. With each limping step he could hear the bones in his leg grinding across each other.

  "Do you know if they still shoot horses?" Finn asked hysterically. Clara grunted, kept pulling.

  They reached reception, hobbled and lurched past the gaping secretary, a phone up to her ear, and into the street. In the distance were the sounds of approaching sirens. Joan slithered over to Clara, and rearing up, embraced her. Faneuil lay forgotten on the pavement. The first fire truck arrived.

  Joan was a clever woman. Knowing a call of "jokers in distress" would arouse nothing but apathy, she had literally yelled fire!

  Clara pulled free of her mother's embrace. Walked over to Finn. "I didn't get it all. They removed some of it." Finn just stared at her. "But it's a weaker strain. It falls dormant after three transmissions." The words emerged in a desperate rush.

  "Yeah, that's great. I'm sure that'll really comfort the three deaders who get hit before dormancy is achieved."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  An ambulance - a real one - took Bradley to the hospital. Meanwhile, a nearby cop loaded Clara and Joan into a patrol car. Hartmann was long gone.

  Clara slouched against the door handle and looked out at the streets of Manhattan. It was twilight. Sodium, neon, and mercury fluorescents illuminated the many thousands of people spewing from the buildings and crowding the sidewalks of midtown. Traffic crept down Lexington. Horns blared and engines roared. The air smelled of ozone. Clara glanced over and saw Joan nervously eyeing the cop beyond the thick mesh. He was listening to the police radio, which spat police codes and static. At Clara's questioning glance, Joan leaned toward her and spoke in a low voice.

  "Darling, do you still have your scrapbook - the one I gave you when you were little?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  Joan was wringing her hands - and her coils of snake flesh were wringing themselves. "This will seem rather an odd question, but - is there a picture of your father with a man of Mediterranean descent?"

  Clara frowned at her. "What on earth is this about?"

  "There is something I left out when I told you how I contracted the wild card," Joan said. "Something important."

  "Oh?"

  Joan nodded, looking miserable and flustered. "It's about your father, and, well, if I don't tell you now I may not have a chance later, and ... I don't want you to think I deceived you in any way...."

  "Of course not."

  "I would have told you when you came to see me, but that didn't seem to be the right time. But after all, I told that lovely young lady arson investigator, and I'm sure she told Senator Hartmann; I can't imagine why he didn't investigate further, but perhaps it's for the best, in a sense."

  Clara frowned. Joan's flutterings were starting to grate. "Would you please just tell me, Maman?"

  Joan looked at the cop again and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Back in 1968, Pan Rudo arranged to have Bobby Kennedy assassinated. And Brand paid off Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin. Brand was the - what do they call it? - the bag man."

  Clara stared at her, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She wanted to say that Papa would never do such a thing, but she couldn't bring herself to say it.

  "He was having an affair at the time," Joan went on. "With Marilyn Monroe. I hired a private investigator to follow him, and the investigator captured the exchange on film. The photo later disappeared, and I wondered if it might somehow have ended up in your scrapbook."

  Clara thought about the very clear, close-up photo of her father handing an envelope to a dark-complected young man, whose identity Clara had occasionally wondered about. She merely shrugged and shook her head at her mother's gaze, and let Joan assume she meant no.

  The first thing she did on reaching the police station was to request a phone call. She used a pay phone in the foyer and called her father at home. He came on the line immediately.

  "Are you all right? Is the line clear?"

  "I'm fine. The line's OK, I think. I'm on a pay phone at the police precinct. Pan was holding me - "

  "- at the UN lab. I know. His man Johnson sealed off the UN lab to my people. I didn't even know he knew which ones they were, the bastard. We were about to stage and assult. And now they tell me the police have taken you in. What's going on?"

  Clara took a deep breath. Here goes, she thought. "Papa, I'm about to turn State's evidence against Pan - "

  "You're what?"

  "- and the whole Card Shark organization. I'm calling you now to let you know you'd better get out of the country, because I'm not going to hold anything back."

  Silence greeted her. After a minute Brandon found his voice. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "You never told me Maman was still alive."

  "Oh. Oh, honey. I should have told you a long time ago - "

  "Yes. You should have."

  "- but that's no reason to go off half-cocked like this."

  "It's not half-cocked. Pan has the Black Trump - or a version of it - and he has to be stopped. And I've had enough of the lies. You said it yourself. It's not worth it." Tears started rolling down her face. "I know that you've been wanting out. At least a little bit. I'm giving you your chance. Early retirement. Transfer all your funds to an international bank right now and get a plane ticket. Don't delay."

  More silence.

  "You're sentencing yourself to a lifetime of prison," he said. "Or at best, a lifetime of hiding. Don't do this."

  "I don't think so. I think they'll let me cut a deal. I can give them Pan Rudo, and they want him badly. So." She cleared her throat. "Know a good lawyer?"

  "Clara, don't do this."

  "I love you, Papa."

  She slid the phone into the cradle and turned. Several police officers stood near the precinct captain's office, where Joan was speaking to the officer in charge. She drew a breath, squared her shoulders, and walked over.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  She cut the photo of her father with Sirhan Sirhan out of her scrapbook, cut it into tiny bits and burned it, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Then she went into the bedroom.

  The mattress was still on the floor. She buried her face in the pillow, breathing his scent. She rolled onto her side and sensations returned: the taste of his kiss; the feel of his arms enfolding her, hand cupping a breast; his horse's fur warm against her bare buttocks.

  Clara rolled onto her back and covered her eyes with the back of an arm, trying to summon the tender look in his eyes when they'a made love, to recall his laughter over shared, cold Chinese food. But all she saw was that look on his face when they'd been torturing him, when he'd realized what she'd done.

  What the world thought of her meant nothing. Bradley's opinion meant everything, and there was no way to make him understand. She'd lost him before she'd ever really had him.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Maggie had started into labor. Finn had been checking her progress, and emerged from h
er room intent on ordering the incubation unit to the delivery room. Cody was lying in wait.

  "Oh, please," said Finn, and tried to dodge her. He wasn't real successful with a cast on his leg and a cane in his hand.

  Cody caught him by the tail. He wasn't wearing his rubber shoes, so his hooves were scrabbling for purchase on the slick linoleum floor. He decided neither his dignity nor his tail could survive much more of this, so he craned around to look at her.

  "Call her," Cody said. It was the sixth time she'd said it in the past four hours.

  "No."

  "Stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about your patient ... patients. That baby needs Clara's attention."

  "She left notes," Finn caviled.

  "Not the same. Clara knows this case better than either of us."

  "I can't face her."

  "Finn, I know how hard this is - "

  "No, you don't! You can't! You're not one of us. As much as you care, as much as you've given, you're not a wild card, and you're not living under a death sentence." His voice was rising. A couple of passing patients gave him an odd look. Finn dropped to a whisper. "I'm a doctor. I see death all the time. And I'm scared. I don't want to die."

  She laid a hand on his hindquarters. Stroked softly. "You've given the warning. It's in the hands of others now. All we can do is live, work, and not give in to despair." She paused, walked around to face Finn, grabbed him by the front of his Hawaiian shirt, and pulled him in close. "And save this baby."

  He took the elevator up to Tachyon's old office, his old office, now his office again with Clara's departure. Picked up the phone. Dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.

  "Hello, hello.... Oh, it is you."

  "Maggie's in labor. We need you."

  He hung up the phone before he could hear any more of the pain or the joy in her voice.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  At three and a half pounds, Mary Louise was frighteningly small. And she looked so helpless with her eyes squeezed shut, with green tubes in her nose, electrodes on her chest and back, an IV taped to her leg. The heart monitor next to her incubator showed a strong, steady little beat, though. And the transfusions had stabilized her condition. She had an excellent chance.