Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty

by George R. R. Martin

  “You’ve never been one to be free with things, Gimli. What’s the payment for the package?”

  “You go public with this. You spill it with the rest of what I’ve got for you, along with anything you and Downs have dug up. We take Hartmann out of the race.”

  “Why? Because he’s an ace? Or because it’s Gimli’s personal little vendetta?”

  Gimli gritted his teeth and then destroyed the image with a sneeze. “Because he’s a power-hungry bastard. He’s just like the rest of the money-grubbing, self-centered bureaucrats in government, only he’s got his ace to help him. He’s dangerous.”

  “You get rid of Hartmann, and the next president might be Leo Barnett.”

  “Shit.” Gimli spat; Chrysalis looked at the globule on her rug in dismay. “He might get the nomination, but that’s not the presidency. Barnett’s just a nat; he can be removed if he has to be. With Barnett we at least know what to expect. Hartmann’s a fucking unknown. You don’t know what he’s got or what he’s going to do with it.”

  “Like maybe make a few things right.”

  “Like maybe make things worse. This ain’t for me; this is for the jokers. Look at the damn facts you prize so much. What Hartmann touches gets destroyed. He uses people. Chews ’em up and spits out the carcass when the flavor’s gone. He used me, he used the Nur’s sister, he fucked with the minds of the people around me in Berlin. He’s a goddamn bottle of nitro. God knows what else he’s done.”

  He paused, waiting for her to object, but she didn’t. Gimli pulled a wad of tissues from his pocket, blew his nose, and grinned at her. “And you suspect the same thing,” he continued. “I fucking know it, ’cause you wouldn’t have stood there and listened to me for this long if you thought otherwise. You want my little package because it might prove it true.”

  “Proof is a nebulous thing. Look at Gary Hart. No one needed ‘proof’ with him, just a lack of denial.”

  “There is proof with the wild card. In the blood. And I’ve got Hartmann’s blood.” Gimli brought out Misha’s jacket. As he spread the bloodstained cloth on Chrysalis’s desk, he gave her the story. When he’d finished, a faint flush had appeared in Chrysalis’s transparent skin, the lacework of blood vessels spreading and widening in excitement. Gimli laughed even though his head pounded from the fever.

  “It’s yours, free,” he told her. A coughing fit took him, deep hacking spasms, and he waited until they’d passed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “You know me, Chrysalis. I might do a lot of things, but I don’t lie. When I tell you that’s Hartmann’s blood, it’s the truth. But it ain’t enough, not without more. You just have to do something with it. Interested?”

  She took the cloth between her fingers, touching the bloodstains tentatively. “Let me keep it,” she said. “I want a friend to run the tests—it might take a few days. If the stains are from an ace, then yes, we might have a deal.”

  “I thought so,” Gimli said. “Which means you have more on Hartmann, don’t you? Take good care of the jacket. I’ll check with you later. Right now, I’m going to go home and fucking die.”

  Tuesday, 11:45 P.M.

  Gimli was shaking with fever by the time he left Chrysalis. He’d ridden over in the back of File’s van but had told the joker that he’d get back himself. Fuck the risk, he’d said. I’m tired of playing the fugitive. I’ll be careful.

  He let himself out the back door of the Crystal Palace into an alleyway that reeked of stale beer and rotting food. Quick nausea slammed him in the gut; leaning with one hand against the Dumpster, he heaved violently, emptying his stomach with the first wave and then retching uselessly. Afterward he felt no better. His stomach was still knotted, his muscles felt as if he had been beaten, and the fever was getting worse. “Oh, fuck,” he gasped. He spat dry-mouthed.

  He wished he’d listened to File and let him wait. He pushed off the Dumpster and holding his stomach, began to walk toward the warehouse. Six damn blocks. It ain’t so far.

  He’d made it four when his stomach rebelled again. This time it was far worse. There was nothing in his stomach. Gimli tried to ignore it, shuffling forward.

  “Christ!” he shouted, his face twisting with surprised agony. The pain drove him to his knees; he knelt behind a row of trash cans, desperately trying to breathe between the waves of helpless retching. His insides were on fire, his head pounded, sweat soaked his clothing. He pummeled the concrete with his fists until they were torn and bloodied, trying to block the inner torment with outside pain.

  It got worse. Every muscle in his body seemed to go into spasm at that moment, and Gimli bellowed, a shrill inhuman screeching. He rolled on the gound, twitching, the muscles of his body in uncontrolled rebellion—legs flailing, hands clenched, spine arched in torment. His arm snapped under the pressure of wildly contracting biceps and triceps, the jagged end tearing through skin. The bone wriggled before his eyes like a live thing, tearing the wound wider. His intestines felt as if acid had been poured on them, but somehow the pain seemed to be receding, and that scared him worst of all.

  He was going into shock.

  The spasms ended abruptly, leaving him in a curled fetal position. Gimli couldn’t move. He tried, willing himself to blink his eyes, bend a finger; he had no control of his body at all. For a moment Gimli thought that at least it was over. Someone would find him; someone would have heard his screams. The denizens of Jokertown knew what to do—they’d take him to Tachyon.

  But it wasn’t over. His broken arm was sitting in front of his open, staring eyes, and as he watched, the spear of bone from his arm was melting like a candle in an oven. He could feel his body sagging, shifting inside, liquefying. His skin bulged, spread like a huge balloon filled to bursting with scalding water. He tried to scream and could not even open his mouth. His eyes, too—the trash cans, the wall, his broken arm in front of him all dissolved in his sight, distorting as the world turned dim and then was gone. He could not draw a breath. He felt himself suffocating, unable to take in air.

  At least Chrysalis has the fucking jacket. The thought had a finality that surprised him.

  There was a sound like tearing paper, startling a curious rat that had crept closer to the strange mound. Gimli couldn’t see it or hear it, but the feeling was there, like a white-hot poker rammed into his spine. A small rent appeared in the middle of his back. Slowly the fissure grew, his flesh tearing open in long, jagged strips.

  In his soundless, anguished void, Gimli wondered if he hadn’t already died, if this wasn’t the eternal hell Misha had promised him waited for all jokers. He mind-screamed, cursing Misha, cursing Hartmann, cursing the wild card and the world.

  And then, blessedly, he lost consciousness.

  Wednesday, 12:45 A.M.

  The waking dream hit her just as she pushed open the door to the warehouse. The graffiti-scrawled paint became fluid; the door sagged like a lead figurine thrown into a fire.

  In the darkness beyond she could hear laughter—Hartmann’s laughter, and the strings of a puppet danced in the air before her. As Misha recoiled, the strings tightened and rose, and she could see a hunchbacked figure lolling on the ends. The malevolence of that face staggered her—a pimply boy’s face, but one so infused with evil that its very breath seemed a poison. She remembered that face from her visions. The smile was twisted and cruel, and the bright eyes held the promise of pain. The creature stared at her, twisting in the strings, silent and unmoving as Hartmann’s laughter boomed.

  And then it was gone. There was the door, and her hand ready to twist the key. “Allah,” she breathed, and shook her head. The motion did nothing to dispel the lingering feeling of dread. The images of the dream stayed with her, and she could hear her heart pounding. The lock clicked open and she pushed the door wide. “Gimli?” she called “Hello?”

  The warehouse was as dark as her dream, and empty. Misha’s pulse roared in her head and the dream-demon threatened to reappear; in the dim reaches of the warehouse, whirling splotches of
light moved with her momentary dizziness.

  The door to the office swung wide, the glare from beind the lamps inside nearly blinding her. A shadow loomed—Misha cried out.

  “Sorry, Misha,” Peanut’s voice said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  His hand reached out as if he was going to pat her shoulder, and Misha drew back, leaving his hand extended awkwardly. She frowned as she regained her composure. “Where’s Miller?” she asked sharply.

  Peanut’s hand dropped, his sad gaze regarding the stained concrete floor. Heavy, clumsy shoulders lifted. “Dunno. He should’da been here hours ago, but I ain’t heard from him. File and Video and Shroud was here, said they’d be back later. They wouldn’t stay with me.”

  “What’s the matter, Peanut? You’ve been here alone before.”

  “Polyakov—he phoned. Said to tell Gimli that Mackie was here, in the States. Said that the paper trail was all official stuff: government. He told me to tell Gimli that he was afraid Hartmann knew it all—everything.”

  “Does Gimli know?”

  “Not yet. I gotta tell him. You wait with me?”

  “No.” She said it too quickly, too harshly, but she didn’t try to soften the word with an explanation. “I talked to Sara; I need the jacket—we’re going to take it to Tachyon.”

  “You can’t have the jacket. Gimli took it with him. You’ll have to wait.”

  Misha only shrugged at that, surprising Peanut, who had expected her to fly into a rage. “I’m going to my place. I’ll come back here later.”

  She turned to leave.

  “I don’t hate you,” Peanut’s childlike voice said behind her. “I don’t hate you ’cause you got lucky with the wild card and I didn’t. And I don’t even hate you for what you and the Nur did to people like me. I think I got a lot more reason to hate than you, but I don’t, ’cause I think maybe the damn virus has hurt you more than me, after all.”

  Misha had kept her back turned, stiffly, from his first words. “I don’t hate you, Peanut,” she answered. She was tired from the long day, from the flight, from the meeting with Sara and the inchoate feeling of dread that still enveloped her. There was no energy in her to argue or explain.

  “The Nur hates jokers. Barnett hates jokers. Sometimes jokers hate jokers. And you and Gimli and the Russian want to hurt the one guy who looks like he might care. I don’t understand.” Peanut sighed. “So what if he’s an ace? Maybe that explains why he works so hard for the jokers. I might keep it secret, too, if I could. I know how people treat you different and stare at you and try to pretend it doesn’t matter when it does.”

  “Haven’t you listened to us, Peanut?” Misha swung around, sighing. “Hartmann’s a manipulator. He plays with his power. He uses it for his own ends. He hurts and kills people with it.”

  “I’m still not sure I believe that,” Peanut insisted. “Even if I did, didn’t what you and the Nur preached kill? Didn’t you cause hundreds of jokers to die?”

  His mild voice only made the truth of the accusation sting more. Blood on my hands, too. “Peanut—” she began, then stopped. She wanted to bring the veils over her eyes and hide her feelings behind black cloth. But she couldn’t. She could only stand there, unable to look away from his sad, puckered face. “How can you not hate me?” she asked him.

  He almost seemed to smile. “I did, once. Till I met you, anyways. Hey, your society fouled you up. Does that to everyone, huh? I see you fight against it, and I know you care, underneath. Gimli says you didn’t like a lot of what the Nur said, either.” Now he did smile, a tentative grin that heightened the ridges in his thick flesh. “Maybe I could come with you and protect you from Stigmata.”

  She could only smile in return.

  “Well, ain’t this touching?”

  The voice, so utterly unexpected, caused them both to whirl —the words had a strong Germanic accent. A hunchbacked, anemic young man in black stepped through the wall of the warehouse as if it were a mist. Misha knew that cruel, lean face instantly, knew the sickness that lurked behind the eyes. The hammering of fear in her body was reminder enough, and he had the same feral casualness of the figure hanging in Hartmann’s strings.

  “Kahina,” he said in a jittery, quick voice, and with the use of that honorific she knew it was over. The youth was breathing like a nervous thoroughbred, smiling lopsidedly. Hartmann knows. He’s found us. “It’s time.”

  She could only shake her head.

  Peanut moved to put himself between the intruder and Misha. The boy-man’s sardonic gaze flicked toward the joker. “Ain’t Gimli told you about Mackie? Man, everyone’s scared shitless of Mackie. You should have seen the Fraction bitch’s eyes when I offed her. I’ve got an ace better than anything.…” There was an eager satisfaction in Mackie’s rambling voice. He reached for Misha. Peanut tried to strike Mackie’s hand aside, but suddenly the hand shivered and began to vibrate with a fierce thrumming.

  Blood fountained impossibly. Peanut’s severed forearm dropped to the floor.

  Peanut stood for a moment, staring in disbelief as pulsing red jetted from the stump. Then he screamed. His legs buckled; he collapsed. Mackie raised his hand again, a deep buzz-saw whine coming from the blur.

  “No!” Misha shouted. Mackie hesitated, looking at her. The pleasure she saw in the boy made her sick—it was a look she’d seen in her brother, it was a look she’d seen on Hartmann’s face in Allah’s dreams. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please. I’ll go with you. Whatever you want.”

  Mackie’s breath was harsh and loud; emotions crossed his pinched face like quick cloud-shadows. Peanut moaned beneath him. “He’s a damn joker. I thought you wanted them all dead. I can do it for you. It’d be quick; it’d be good.” His face had gone serious now, and the sickness was like a lust in him.

  “Please.” Mackie didn’t answer. Misha stopped and ripped a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress. She knelt beside the stricken joker, who writhed on the floor. “I’m sorry, Peanut,” she said. She wrapped the cloth around his arm above the stump, pulled it tight until the blood flow eased, and knotted it. “I didn’t hate you. I just couldn’t manage to say it.”

  Mackie’s hand touched her arm, and Misha flinched. Though the horrible vibration was gone, his fingers gripped her until she cried out in pain. “Now,” Mackie said. He glanced down at Peanut. His tone was almost conversational. “Next time you see Gimli, tell him Mackie said ‘Auf Wiedersehen’”

  And then he was grinning again as he pulled Misha up. “Don’t be frightened,” he told her. “This is going to be fun. Lots of fun.” His manic laughter cut into her like a thousand glass shards.

  Thursday, 3:40 A.M.

  In the alley behind the Crystal Palace a bulky figure in a black cloak approached a man wearing a clown’s mask. The cloaked figure’s hooded face was hidden behind what looked to be a fencing mask.

  “Okay, Senator, we were the last ones out,” the apparition said. “The rest of the customers are gone. The staff just left; the place is empty. Chrysalis is in her office with Downs.”

  The quiet voice sounded female, which meant that the Patti persona was in charge of Oddity tonight. Gregg’s understanding was that the joker had once been three people, two men and a woman involved in a long-standing love relationship. The wild card had joined them into one being, though the fusion had been incomplete and fluid. Shapes humped and shifted under Oddity’s cloak. Oddity’s body was never at rest—Gregg had once seen it without the concealing fabric, and the sight had been disturbing. It (or perhaps “they,” since Oddity always referred to itself in the plural) was constantly undergoing metamorphosis. Patti, John, Evan: never entirely any one of them, never stabilizing, always struggling against itself. Bones creaked, the flesh bulged and twisted, the features came and went.

  The endless process was agonizing—Puppetman knew that best of all. Oddity gave him the emotional nourishment he craved simply by existing. Oddity’s world was a wash of pain, and the trebled matrices of i
ts mind were quick to shift into black, sullen depression.

  The only constant of Oddity was the strength of its malleable form. In that, Oddity surpassed Carnifex and perhaps rivaled Mordecai Jones or Braun. Oddity also had a great loyalty to Senator Hartmann.

  After all, Oddity knew that Gregg was compassionate. Gregg cared about the jokers. Gregg was the voice of reason against fanatics such as Leo Barnett. Why, he was one of the few who ever asked Oddity about itself, and he listened sympathetically to the long tale of the joker’s life. Gregg might be a nat, but he came among the jokers and talked to them and shook their hands and then kept his political promises.

  Oddity would have done anything Senator Hartmann asked it to do. The thought made Puppetman wriggle with delight inside Gregg. Tonight … tonight held the promise of being delicious.

  Puppetman was tired of playing it safe, even if Gregg was not.

  Gregg forced that hidden personality into the recesses of his mind. “Thanks, Patti,” he said. Through Puppetman he could feel a tinge of pleasure at that—the individual psyches in Oddity liked to be recognized. “You know the rest?”

  Oddity nodded. What might have been a breast pushed sluggishly at the left side of the cloak. “I’ll watch the place. No one gets in or out but the two you told me about. Simple enough.” The words were slurring as the shape of the mouth altered behind the fencing mask.

  “Good. I appreciate this.”

  “No problem for you, Senator. All you ever have to do is ask.”

  Gregg smiled and forced himself to clap Oddity on the shoulder. There were sliding things underneath. He suppressed a shudder as he squeezed slightly. “Thanks again, then. I’ll be out in twenty minutes or so.”

  The gratitude and loyalty radiating from Oddity made Puppetman laugh, inside. Gregg adjusted the clown’s mask as Oddity leaned against the back doors. They groaned; a metal chain snapped inside. Gregg strode through the sagging doors and into the club.