Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks

by George R. R. Martin

  The corpse lay on the examining table and Cody was surprised to discover it no less disturbing dead than alive.

  “Pretty fucking gross,” the pathologist agreed.

  She didn’t reply at first as she continued her examination, mentally comparing the body before her with the one imprinted in her mind’s eye. “Ever see anything like it?” she asked, at last.

  “You kiddin’? Jeez, I hope not. B’sides, I thought each manifestation of the virus was unique.”

  “That’s the theory,” she agreed. “Any chance of a positive identification?”

  “Not a fucking prayer, pardon my French. Other than the fact it’s female.”

  “Female?” she asked sharply.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Take a look. No tits to speak of, but what appear to be appropriate genitalia. I suppose, during the post, I can check to see if the internal plumbing matches.”

  “Do it.” She spoke with such an automatic, offhand voice of command that he responded by writing the order down in his workbook, assuming she was senior staff. “About the ID?”

  “No hands, which means no fingerprints; no way we’ll get retinagrams from those eyes; and dental records…?” He pointed to the sawtooth fangs filling the partially open mouth. “This is a complete physical metamorphosis—’cept, of course, bein’ a joker, nothing works like it’s supposed to. So you got an aquatically configured creature who can’t live in water. Flippers for swimming, but no gills.”

  Cody looked at the thickly massive, almost elephantine flippers that were the creature’s “feet.”

  “What can you tell me about these?” she asked.

  “Whaddya mean”—he stifled a yawn—“other than what I already said?”

  “Any wear and tear?”

  “You can see that for yourself. Same kinda shit you’d have on your feet, you walked around barefoot. Especially in this town.”

  “Hasn’t been doing it long, then?”

  “Doubtful. Any real amount of time, they’d develop rough, horny calluses, scar tissue from the constant pounding and abrasion. Probably compression of the legbones, as well—y’see, these really aren’t feet in any sense that we mean it, they aren’t designed for walking. Nah, y’ask me, Doc, this baby’s right outta the box.

  “And somebody sure as shit wasn’t happy to see her.” He pulled aside the sheet that covered the joker’s torso, revealing a pair of fearful wounds. “You ever see Jaws,” he asked, and as Cody nodded, “when I was in med school, we got some poor sumbitch, did a dance with a tiger shark. Same kinda bite structure. ’S funny.” He stepped away from the table, gave the corpse a long look—and Cody revised her opinion of the man; for all his annoying behavior, he appeared to be good at his job. “If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say the joker did this to herself—similar bite radius, actually a little larger, same kind of teeth structure. But no way could her mouth reach around to make those wounds.”

  “Maybe—twins?”

  “You serious? Jeez, I hope not.”

  She looked at the creature’s shoulder. The bite there had splintered bone and savaged the network of vessels leading out from the heart. “Cause of death?”

  “Cardiac arrest, due to loss of blood, directly resultant from extreme, violent physical trauma.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Work crew, I think. Transit. Scared ’em outta two lifetimes’ growth, I hear. Shit. I do not understand how they get anyone to work down in those holes.”

  “Where?” Cody asked as he paused for breath.

  “Got me there.” He looked at his notes. “We don’t have the full sheet yet, prob’ly at the precinct or en route, I only know the who ’cause the EMS crew was griping about coming here while the other ambulance got to transport the live ones to Bellevue. I guess that at least places it in Manhattan. What you got, Doc, something?”

  “Not sure. Pair of tweezers.”

  “Here go. Looks shiny. Piece of chain, maybe, wedged into the wound. Holy shit,” he exclaimed as Cody worried free both the chain and the medal it was attached to. There was almost nothing left of the miniature shield, but the St. Christopher medal was pretty much intact. Pity it hadn’t protected the wearer.

  “Doc, you all right? You look awful gray, want some water?”

  She waved him back, one hand clenched tight into a fist, supporting her weight on the table while the other held the tweezers. Poor woman, she thought, completed the transformation barely begun with me. Not just an ace, the son of a bitch is a predator.

  “Draw a blood sample. I want a test for the presence of the wild card.”

  “Why waste the time? Open your eyes an’ take a look. She’s a joker, that much is obvious.”

  “Humor me.” She gave him a look, for additional inspiration; he got the message. “Quick as you can, please,” she told him, “and send the results to Tachyon.”

  She sat at Tachyon’s desk, trying to push thoughts onto paper, mostly staring at the blank legal pad in front of her, twirling the fountain pen she’d found. Fine point, with a clear, elegant line—got the job done but with a special little flourish if you wished. Like Tachyon. She hoped Tachyon was a southpaw, or possibly ambidextrous; it would be hell retraining to use the lesser side, the writing technique would never be as fluid, each word a reminder of—how had he put it?—his “deformity.”

  She thought of her own loss and wondered why it hadn’t crippled her. By rights, she should have been finished as a surgeon—there was no depth perception with one eye, no way to tell precisely how far away things were, yet she never had a problem. She always seemed to know where to reach, was always a split second ahead of the people around her, somehow sensing what they were going to do, where they’d be. Folks always interpreted it as luck—and so did she, to an extent, on the rare occasions when she actually thought about it.

  She made a rude face and ruder noise—if it were truly luck, she should be a lot better off than she was—and started scribbling notes. According to Brad Finn, Tachyon had been summoned to the local precinct—“Fort Freak.” Cody wondered if that had anything to do with the policewoman, wondered further what kind of effect her own news would have. A predator ace was bad enough, but one who went around transforming nats into jokers was everyone’s worst nightmare, a return to the panicked days of last spring, when Typhoid Croyd roamed the city, and Manhattan had been placed temporarily under martial law. She’d thought of confiding in Finn—she liked the centaur—but didn’t know him anywhere near well enough to trust him. The memory of what happened in Wyoming was still too raw; people she’d known had lied, those she’d trusted had turned away from her. She was determined never to be that vulnerable again. Scent, whom she’d trust with her life, was long gone home.

  She considered sticking around till Tachyon’s return, but found she couldn’t stay still. Rain was sheeting down—bad sign, since the long breaks between lightning flash and thunder indicated the heart of the storm had yet to arrive—but the violent weather did nothing to ease the oppressive atmosphere. Quite the opposite. She prowled the office, without a clue as to why she was on edge, wary in ways she hadn’t been since the ’Nam. Easy to be confused, hot rain and steamy air more common to the Mekong Delta than Manhattan. It was like this at Shiloh, in the evening twilight, when everyone knew Charley was in the jungle beyond the wire, waiting for full night before he came visiting.

  She sealed her report and the evidence in a manila envelope, left it on Tachyon’s desk, decided to call it quits while she hopefully was ahead.

  The illusion lasted as far as the clinic’s main entrance, where a laugh of genuine amusement greeted her query about the possibility of getting a taxi. The guard let her use his phone to try to call a radio cab. Most of the numbers got her a busy signal and the few companies she actually reached—after what seemed like an age on hold—hung up the moment she gave the address. A local gypsy cab pulled up, dropping off a joker. The driver was another one. But when Cody dashed to the curb, and
he saw she was a nat, he gave her the finger with a hand shaped like a bird’s claw and sped away, plowing though the biggest puddle at hand in the bargain, to add insult to injury.

  “Fuck this,” she muttered wearily, as furious with the growing joker prejudice as she was with its nat counterpart. Maybe she’d do better back in Chinatown or Little Italy. At least there she could get herself a meal; she hadn’t eaten since the pathetic excuse for supper served by the airline on her flight in.

  Streets were deserted, everyone with sense taking refuge under cover till the brunt of the storm passed. It was a true monsoon, water descending in an almost solid mass, overwhelming the capacity of the drains and turning most corners into ankle-deep ponds. The streets here dated back to the nineteenth century, like the buildings, cobblestone supposedly covered with asphalt. But no repairs had been made this summer, which meant that in a lot of places the asphalt had been worn down to the original pavement, which made the footing treacherous.

  She thought she was going the right way, following the directions the guard had given her, but the streets didn’t make sense. Most of Manhattan was laid out on a grid system, with streets running east-west and north-south. It took real effort to get lost. Not so down here. Some of the streets were more like alleys and they canted off in wild directions from the main avenues, which themselves followed the natural curve of the island. The buildings were old and looked it, mostly constructed in the last half of the last century, walk-up tenements that had never seen better days and probably weren’t likely to. She smiled to herself—but only half in jest, another part of her took this perfectly seriously—and imagined the wild-card virus turning these old tenements into living beings, who played musical chairs with each other to confuse any visitors. Were the windows eyes, watching her every move, the doorways mouths? If she ducked into one to get out of the rain, would she be eaten? She scoffed, but edged out toward the middle of the street, rationalizing it by telling herself that this was the best place to flag down any cruising cab. Sumbitch would have to run her down to get by. Assuming, of course, one ever came. She’d walked more than far enough, she should have reached the periphery of Jokertown, but there wasn’t a Chinese store sign in sight.

  Then, on the corner, she saw a bright green globe set on a dirty green railing—she remembered that meant a subway station. What the fuck, she thought, and was down the steps in a flash, shaking herself like a half-drowned pup to get the worst of the wet off her before fumbling in her bag—which she’d had sense enough to wear under her slicker—for a dollar for a token. When she asked the clerk for directions, she found she was on the wrong platform. This was the downtown side, the trains here would take her under the East River to Brooklyn.

  “Is there an underpass?” she asked, not terribly enthusiastic about the prospect of going back out into the storm, even if only to cross the street.

  “Wouldn’t matter if there was,” the clerk—to Cody’s surprise, another joker—replied, passing a copper token through the tiny slot. “Platform’s closed, TA’s doing work on those tracks.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “They’re s’posed to be finished by now, that’s why the work’s done mostly at night so the lines and stations are open for day traffic, ’specially at rush hour, but the storm’s probably got ’em backed up some. Some serious rain,” he added sympathetically.

  “And then some,” she agreed. “So could you tell me, at least, which line am I on, I didn’t see the sign outside.”

  “This is the F, ma’am. IND Sixth Avenue local.”

  Cody didn’t really hear the last line, she was making a slow, careful turn toward the station, sweeping the platform the same as she would a hostile tree line. She shook her head violently, chiding herself for reacting like a baby. Jokertown may well be strange country, but she was no cherry; she knew how to handle herself, and it wasn’t like this.

  “How do I go uptown, then?” she asked, satisfied that—so far as she could eyeball—she was alone outside the booth.

  “Take the F to Jay Street–Borough Hall, then hoof it up the stairs, over to the uptown platform. Got your choice there, miss, between the F and the A. F’ll take you straight up the middle of the island, but the A makes better connections. You want a map?”

  She’d mislaid the last one. “Thanks,” with a smile.

  “What we’re here for. Got a rash or somethin’?” And when she responded with a confused look, wondering what he was talking about: “Been scratching your hand pretty hard, must itch awful bad.”

  She looked down, she hadn’t been aware she was doing it—was the skin numb?—and she went cold, inside and out. The back of her hand glittered impossibly in the fluorescent light, with the faintest silvery cast.

  She looked toward the stairs. Water was pouring down—an impressive cascade, as good as many fountains—the stream flowing past her down the slightly angled platform, through the gates, toward the tracks. She could hear other waterfalls inside, from the ventilation and maintenance grids set into the sidewalk above.

  She’d been saved last time. And the policewoman had paid the price. Is that my fault? she asked herself. How could I have known? But what’s the link now? And comprehension narrowed her eye. Perhaps that was the key—she was the one that got away. An ace that looks like a joker, with the power to transform people into beings like himself. No, she realized, with a flash of inspiration, not people—women! The wild-card deck deals only one of a kind, each victim is forced to live their life unique and alone. And someone as awful as that ace, he wouldn’t have even a hope of normal companionship. But if his power is to make a companion…? Fair enough—the lady cop was proof of that. Cody didn’t have to imagine how the ace’s victims felt—some awful instinct told her that she and the policewoman hadn’t been the first. But if so, she thought, why hasn’t anyone noticed; if there are others, what happened to them?

  As she worked through all this, she began walking forward, head tracking slowly back and forth, giving her eye a clear field of everything in front of her. The turnstile sounded surprisingly loud as she passed through—everything did, her senses were operating at a peak they hadn’t achieved since the war. So far as she could see, the platform was empty.

  Keep putting the pieces together, she told herself, see what you build. Okay, the ace transforms women—perfectly understandable, he’s alone and lonely, he wants a mate—only they don’t like it. And she remembered the bite marks on the dead policewoman, and let her head loll back against the tile wall behind her. Is that it, has to be, explains why there’ve been no sightings—he kills them. She held up her hand, trying to tell herself the silver sparkles weren’t flashing a fraction more brightly. She was unfinished business. Moby Dick, perhaps, to his Ahab.

  Tachyon had broken down the gun when he took it away from her; she checked the clip to make sure it was full, then shoved it into the butt of her .45. She pulled the slide to chamber a round, snapped on the safety, and tucked the heavy automatic behind the small of her back, under her belt. Not the most comfortable of improvised holsters—especially given the gun’s weight—but she wanted to be able to get at it in a hurry without having to fumble with her bag. The bag, though, was another problem, an encumbrance she could do without.

  There was a rush of air from the tunnel, two spots of light off in the distance that slowly rocked toward her for what seemed like the longest time before suddenly exploding out of the darkness, revealing the sleek, gray-metal box shape of the subway train. As the train slowed, she peered through each window, hoping for a sight of the ace—but all the cars that passed had people in them. She dashed for the next one in line, the conductor—not wanting to spend any more time than necessary at this particular stop—closing the doors just as she snaked through. A few passengers gave her the eye, probably wondering—like the cabbie this morning, seemed to Cody like another age, another world—what she was, whether she was one of them. She met their gazes, same as she had after returning from the ’Nam, wh
ile moving the length of the car, automatically checking every seat. She tried the connecting door, but unlike on the train she’d ridden that morning, these were kept locked. Damn, she snarled silently, a complication she didn’t need. At least, she could see through the grimy window that the next car had people in it, she could bypass it and go on to the one beyond.

  She got that chance at York Street, on the fringe of Brooklyn Heights, ducking out the doors the moment they opened and sprinting fast as she could to the ones she wanted. There was the normal flow of passengers here, she had time to reach them. Problem was, her shoes—perfectly adequate for job interviews—were not cut out for this kind of work. No support, less traction. Couldn’t be helped, she had to manage with what she had, wouldn’t be the first time.

  This car was fine, too, and the one beyond, and the ones beyond that, as the train trundled through Jay Street and then Bergen. She was beginning to feel more than a little silly, dashing about like a madwoman, armed to the teeth, chasing a creature that could be anywhere along the subway system’s hundreds of miles of tracks. There were no odds for her catching up with him—what made her think he’d be on this train, or even this line?—and if she did, she wondered wryly, would that be the best of luck, or the worst? And yet—this was where he’d made his last attack, better than nothing to go on. Why her, though? Wasn’t her job, or her nature—she was neither cop nor hero. Just stubborn.

  The fiery numbness had spread up her forearm. Is that a function of proximity, she asked herself, does it mean we’re coming closer? Sign on the wall read CARROLL STREET. She made her move, as usual, as the doors opened, but she slipped on the rain-slick platform, bags unbalancing her enough so she couldn’t recover, went down hard on one knee, pain splintering her concentration for a moment. She tried to lever herself up as she heard the door chime, called hoarsely to the conductor to wait as she tried for the nearest door, but he had his schedule to keep and they closed in her face. “Damn,” she said over and over again as the train rumbled on its way, “damn damn damn damn damn!”