Wild Cards VI--Ace in the Hole

by George R. R. Martin

  “Bull. You roar in here like a madman. You’re shaking like a leaf.…” Desperately Tachyon clasped his hands, trying to still the betraying tremors. “What’s happened?”

  The Takisian flung out a hand in a sharp, jagged gesture. “Do you want what I am offering you, or not?”

  “Yes. But I want to know why.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Look, Doctor, you’re going to have to tell the press something. You may as well practice on me.”

  The bed in the suite was an elaborate canopied affair. Tachyon wrapped his hands about the neweled post, and rested his forehead against the wood. In a flat monotone he recited, “Gregg Hartmann’s instabilities are well-documented. Though everyone hoped that the tragedy of 1976 was forever behind the senator I have determined that this morning’s events have badly shaken the candidate, and I cannot in good conscience support the gentleman in his bid to secure the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.” He dropped his hands, and turned to face Jackson. “There, will that do?”

  Jackson smoothed his mustache with a forefinger, “Yes, I think it just might.” His eyes were grave as he looked down at the tiny alien. “Do you fully understand the consequences of what you are doing?”

  “Oh, yes.” The words came out, carried on a breath.

  “And that doesn’t deter you?”

  “I cannot let it.” Tach headed for the door. Paused with his hand on the knob, and looked back. “I am trusting you with my people, Reverend. You had best not prove my faith unfounded.”

  10:00 P.M.

  “—instabilities are well-documented,” the small man with the long red hair was saying from the midst of the television screen. In the background the letters JAC and SON winged out either side of the grinning giant black man beside him. “I fear that the tragic events of this morning have overwhelmed Senator Gregg Hartmann.”

  “You fucker, you fucker!” Mackie Messer screamed, spewing fried pork-rind crumbs at the screen. His skinny, twisted little body was practically levitating above the taut hotel bedspread, like a speck of superconductor caught in a magnetic field.

  The pork rinds tasted mostly of salt and grease. Failure tasted like shit.

  Der Mann hadn’t sent him away. He had permitted him to stay, in a room as stolen as the pork rinds—funny how you could always find an empty room no matter how jammed a hotel was. At least if you could walk through walls.

  It had been close. Mackie could tell. He could always tell when rejection was near. He had a lot of experience with it.

  Tachyon looked directly into molten-silver glare. It seemed to push his eyes back deep in dark pits.

  “I am no longer convinced of Senator Hartmann’s abilities adequately to represent the Democratic Party, either as a presidential nominee or as president. Therefore I have decided to support the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who has demonstrated his commitment to jokers.…”

  For a nigger! The alien bastard was throwing over the Man for a jungle savage! And Mackie, who could at least have killed the blonde cunt who was trouble for the Man, had fucked up.

  He was worthless. He deserved the Man’s rejection. Just as he deserved to be abandoned by his mother. With a sob he tore a pillow from the candy-wrapper embrace of the bedspread and stuffed it over his face as if that could keep the tears in him.

  11:00 P.M.

  The phone rang. Tachyon glanced at Jay’s slumbering form, but the detective didn’t even twitch. He was beyond mere sleep; it was an exhaustion so deep that it was almost unconsciousness. Tachyon stared at him in bitter envy. He was bone tired, but his restless mind would not allow him to rest. Knocking back the last inch of brandy in his tumbler, the alien reached out and snagged the phone.

  “Hello. No, I’m not giving interviews—”

  “Dr. Tachyon, this is the front desk. The Great and Powerful Turtle is hovering in front of the entrance, and he’s calling for you.”

  “Tell him I am busy.”

  “But—”

  Tachyon replaced the receiver, and resumed drinking.

  A few minutes later the phone rang again.

  “Look, goddamn it! Meet me! We’ve got to talk.”

  Tachyon pondered on where Tommy had parked the shell while he made the telephone call. “No, Tommy.”

  “You owe it to me.”

  “No.”

  He hung up the phone, and had another drink.

  The glass blew in with the sound like a rocket detonating. With a yell of terror Tachyon wrapped his arms about his head as glittering slivers rained across carpet and furniture. Turtle was a vast black bulk blotting out the stars. There were shouts of confusion coming from the hall.

  “You can hang up a phone. I thought I’d call in person.”

  “Oh, Tommy.”

  “Let’s go, we’ve gotta talk.”

  “I can’t.”

  Turtle’s power seized him. Swung him out the shattered window, and held him suspended three hundred feet above the pavement. “You can.”

  Tachyon glanced down at the roofs of the cars flowing past beneath him. Swallowed his stomach. “All right. I can.”

  Turtle deposited him softly on the rounded back of the shell. Tach groped for a handhold. He was too drunk to balance without it.

  “Why, Tachy?”

  “I had to.”

  “One more ballot, and we would have had it.” Tachyon remained silent. “Look, goddamn it, talk to me!”

  “I cannot.”

  “You cannot.” Tommy imitated in a whining, prissy little tone.

  Anger stirred wearily. “Look, Tommy, what’s the problem? Jackson holds every position that Hartmann held.”

  “Jackson can’t become president.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Jackson is a black guy who supports jokers!”

  “I decided he was the best person to represent the wild card interest.”

  “You, you decided? Just like that. Well, what about the rest of us?”

  “You have known me for twenty-five years. You must trust me.”

  “Trust you. Even though you betrayed us. You know what you’ve done. You’ve just given the nomination to Barnett.”

  “No I haven’t! And you know me well enough to know that I have sound reasons for what I’ve done.”

  “Then tell me what the fuck they are!”

  “No.” Tach began to cry.

  “Shit, you’re drunk.”

  They were skimming the rooftops, spotlights stabbing at windows, and cornices. The curving roof of the Omni Convention Center came into view. In the darkness, thousands of lights flickered at the foot of the sprawling building. Tach, blinking away the moisture that clouded his eyes, realized that a sea of silent jokers, their masks and deformities highlighted by the flames of a thousand candles, stood in mute vigil.

  “Look at them. Look at them good. What are you gonna tell them, Tach? Trust me? While the troops come to round them up.”

  “It will not come to that.”

  “And if it does?”

  “It would not change the decision I have made tonight.”

  Turtle read it as arrogance, and it snapped his control. “JESUS CHRIST, WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” A number of curious masked faces were lifted toward them.

  Tachyon’s temper shredded. “I am Tisianne brant Ts’ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian of House Ilkazam, and when I do a thing it is for a good and sound reason. Do not question me!”

  “I’m not your fucking serf!”

  “No, but you are my stirps, formally adopted by me. You are blood and bone of my line, you and your heirs forever bound to my house. You forget yourself!” he hissed.

  “Oh fuck you! Fuck you to hell! We’re just playthings to you. That’s all we’ve ever been. Lab rats in your great experiment.”

  They were over Piedmont Park now. Turtle dropped like a plummeting stone, and seizing Tachyon with his teke, he deposited him on the steps of a fountain.

  “For the la
st time, Tachyon, answer me.”

  “I cannot.”

  The power lashed out. Caught Tachyon across the face. He fell backward down the steps, landing hard on his side. Groaning, he struggled onto an elbow. He was blinded by the floods as Turtle swooped in low. Gingerly Tach explored his ribs. Decided they were merely cracked, not broken. Turtle hovered for an instant, then shot straight up, and vanished over the trees of the park.

  Tachyon did not miss the message or the symbolism in that single blow. December 1963. The steps of Jetboy’s tomb. “You don’t give a damn about anybody.”

  “But I do. I’m doing this to protect you. Because I love you. He has a killer who can walk through walls. And I took a vow.”

  But Turtle had raised one terrifying specter—Barnett—as president. Tachyon had kept Hartmann from the presidency; he now had to stop Barnett. And for that he needed Jack.

  By the time the ambulance got Jack to the hospital he was feeling okay, though weakened. Assuming he’d had a heart attack, they put him through a battery of tests. He was too tired to resist, but by the time they announced the results were negative and they were going to do a brain scan for sign of a something-something-cerebral-episode, Jack’s strength had come flowing back, and he put his foot down. It was an ace power that had hurt him, he said, and he’d lived through it. There was nothing wrong with him physically. The whole thing happened in his head.

  The doctors compromised by making Jack stay overnight for observation. Minutes after the nurses left, he was on the phone to Billy Ray, describing the man he’d seen and the nature and extent of his powers.

  “He’s working for Barnett,” Jack said. “He and the other guy, the leather boy.”

  “I’ll pass on your suspicions,” Ray said. “The guy who got you, by the way, we figure that was James Spector, aka Demise. He’s got a certain rep. Put on a pair of shades, though, and he can’t lock eyes with you.”

  “Tell the senator, for Christ’s sakes. That’s two aces aiming at him.”

  “The senator’s got other things to think about, Jack boy. Tachyon and the jokers have defected to Jesse Jackson.”

  “What?” Jack sat bolt upright in bed.

  “The fucking alien bastard.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “About the same time a certain Golden Weenie was getting his ass kicked in the stairwell. Talk to you later, asshole.”

  Jack hung up the phone and stared for a long moment at the darkened television set propped in the corner.

  The screen was the same blank color as James Spector’s eyes. A cold flood lurched up Jack’s spine.

  And then he thought, the secret ace. The secret ace—hell, Leo Barnett, call the guy by his name—Barnett got Tachyon somehow. Probably through Fleur. Fleur got him alone and Barnett hit him with something.

  Jack slid out of bed and found his blood-spattered clothes in the closet. He started drawing them on.

  He was alone now. And he knew what he had to do.

  Tachyon was pounding his fists on the nurses’ station. It hurt like hell, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

  “How could you have let him leave? How could you? I need to see him. I must see him!”

  “Doctor,” said a slim black nurse gently. “I’m going to call Dr. English from the psych ward—”

  “I do not … require … a … psychiatrist. I require … Mr. Braun.”

  “And he’s … not … here,” the nurse said with the same careful enunciation Tachyon had used.

  A hand closed viselike about his elbow. “Dancer, come away.”

  Tachyon whirled, the violent move pulling a groan from him. Polyakov kept his grip on the Takisian’s elbow, fingers tightening painfully on the joint. Meekly, Tachyon allowed himself to be led away.

  “We knew from the news reports that you had at last come to your senses,” said George quietly as they walked out of the hospital.

  “We?”

  He waved down a cab. “Sara. I’m caring for her.”

  “Oh thank the Ideal. Take me to her—”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” grunted Polyakov as he swung open the door of the cab.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday July 23, 1988

  1:00 A.M.

  THEY STOOD BEFORE A door at a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Atlanta. Tachyon tried to think what he would say to the woman he had so wronged, but all he could think about was how tired he felt. He tried to figure out when he had last slept. He had a bad feeling it had been Tuesday night.

  Polyakov rapped once sharply on the door.

  “Sara, it’s George.”

  Tachyon tensed for the moment, and then Sara was there, staring strained and white-faced up at him. She wore a crumpled blue-and-white dress. The petticoats crackled as she backed away, arms folded protectively across her breasts. Polyakov was a stolid dark shadow behind him. Tachyon felt his throat work several times as he tried to force out words. Suddenly he advanced on her in a rush. Dropped to one knee, and lifting the hem of her skirt, pressed it to his lips.

  “Sara, forgive me.”

  She was making faint, inarticulate mewing sounds. Her fingertips brushed wraithlike across his hair as he knelt with bowed head before her.

  “What’s he doing?” she finally asked pathetically.

  “Making an overly dramatic Takisian gesture. In times of stress, he reverts to this sort of extraordinary behavior,” grunted the Russian. “I’ll leave you two alone.” The door closed softly behind him, and they listened to his footsteps retreating down the hall.

  She tugged at his shoulder. “Oh, get up, please.”

  The pain from his cracked ribs drew a grunt from him as Tach pushed to his feet. “Forgive me if I embarrassed you, but words were inadequate. I have wronged you horribly.”

  “Then … then…”

  “Yes, you are not mad,” he said, answering her greatest fear. “I have confronted the monster.” She began to cry. Gently he reached out with a fingertip, and wiped her cheeks.

  “Oh, Ricky.”

  Her shoulders were jutting blades as he pulled her into an embrace. “Hush, it is over now.”

  Throwing back her head she looked up at him. “Really? Truly?”

  “Yes. His momentum is broken. He can never regain it.”

  Her lashes fluttered wearily down onto her cheeks. “Then I’m safe.”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her, tasting the salt from her tears. Her white-gold hair lay across his shoulder as she rested her head against him. So tiny. She was one of the few women on this hot-and-heavy planet who made him feel tall. Elfin pale, approaching Takisian standards of beauty. And he remembered that he had wanted her. Three years ago when she had entered his life, begging him to save the pathetic joker Doughboy who had been wrongfully accused of murder. Now he was whole—or at least his body was. And he was lonely and lost and afraid, and so was she.… He transferred his kisses to her mouth.

  He knew she could not be a virgin, but there was something so delightfully shy and awkward about her responses. He swung her up into his arms, and groaned again.

  Her head snapped back, tendons etched in the thin neck. “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing.” He tottered to the bed, ignoring the pain. Laid her down.

  He wondered at this sudden surge of libido when all about him his life lay in shattered ruins. Then he realized it was appropriate. The Takisian spirit was a dauntless one, and it would always seek to lure victory out of defeat, creation from despair. Tach paused, asked, “Do you want me?”

  “Yes, oh, yes. I’m so grateful … so very grateful.” She choked, and the tears matted in the hair at her temples.

  Sliding his hands up her haunches Tach snagged the top of her panty hose, and pulled them down. And noticed that runs and holes had left them like a tattered cobweb beaten in a killing wind.

  “Oh, my poor little one. My little, little one.”

  Suddenly he was sobbing. Agony shot through him as the par
oxysms shook his sore ribs. Sara, looking terrified, pressed her palms to his cheeks.

  “Oh, don’t. Please don’t. What’s wrong?”

  “I trusted him, and he betrayed me. Now”—his arm flailed in the general direction of Piedmont Park—“they think I’ve betrayed them. I’m so tired. So tired.”

  Sara with gentle hands undressed him. Got him beneath the covers. Her naked flesh was as clammy as his. For a long time they merely hugged, shivering as their minds and bodies tried to relax. Tachyon had a hand cupped over one tiny breast. Sara lay in the curve of his arm, lightly tracing the line of his lips with a forefinger.

  “It’s probably a good thing I’m not on Takis.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d have been dead long ago. If a mere human, a groundling, can outmaneuver me at the Takisian game.” He shook his head.

  “Which is?”

  “Intrigue. I’ve known Hartmann for twenty years. And I never suspected.”

  “He was very cunning. I’ve spent—” Her voice deepened and thickened with bitterness. “And ruined—my life pursuing him.”

  “And now you’ve succeeded. Was it worth it?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed, and he kissed her.

  Tachyon barked out a short laugh, then muffled a groan. “I have no idea where my thirteen-year-old grandson is, isn’t that incredible? I’m so damned busy strutting about the grand stage of life that I have no time to live. I wonder what it would be like to be just a person?”

  “Boring. You’d hate it.”

  Easing up on an elbow, Tach stared down at her. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes.”

  He laid back down. “I don’t know. To have a wife, children, friends.”

  “You have friends.”

  “I think I lost most of them tonight.”

  Sara began to cry again. “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault—”

  Tachyon laid a hand over her mouth. “No, that’s my line.”

  “Ricky loved me, and he had him cut to pieces. I never even slept with him.”

  The alien slid his hand down her stomach, matted his fingers in her mons. “Then let us honor the dead by celebrating living.”