Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty

by George R. R. Martin

  Finn lifted his hand and blotted at the welling blood with a handkerchief. “Relax, we’ll find her.”

  “Will we?” Tachyon licked reflectively at the blood. “More to the point, should we?”

  “Ha! I blast you with my killer mind-attack. And I make it! You lose another life.” Tachyon tossed the tiny cardboard marker into the discard pile. “And I can really do that too.” Blaise’s eyes glittered in the lamplight. “I bet if I worked hard I could kill with my mind.”

  Polyakov glanced up from his newspaper.

  “It’s not a talent to cultivate.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Drop it, Blaise.”

  “Can you?”

  “I said drop it.”

  The small, round chin hardened, the lips narrowing into a mulish line. “Maybe I’ll just have to practice on somebody since you won’t—”

  Tachyon came across the dining table and landed a slap that knocked the boy out of his chair.

  “Tachyon!” bellowed the Russian.

  “Blaise! Blaise! I’m sorry. So sorry. Are you all right?” Aghast, he gathered the child into his arms. “Oh, Ideal, forgive me.”

  The boy swung wildly, striking Tach above the eye. His esper ability poured off him in shuddering silver waves as he struggled to break his elder’s shields. Tachyon quieted Blaise with a lick of his power.

  “Listen to me. I’m horribly tired, and under a lot of stress. I know that’s not an adequate excuse, but I offer it as an explanation. I don’t want you to learn to kill. It does something to your soul because you are so closely linked with your victim. It’s not like make-believe.” He gestured back toward the abandoned Talisman game. “You have to burrow deep, tear away layer after layer of the person’s mind before you can kill.”

  “Have you done it?” Blaise muttered around a swelling lip.

  “Yes, and it haunts me to this day.” Polyakov stepped to the alien’s side and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I weighed Rabdan’s life against the life of the Earth. He had to die, it was necessary but…” He hugged the child close. “You must learn to be kind, Blaise. Don’t even joke about practicing on the humans. Our original sin was treating them as laboratory animals. Don’t you—”

  The trill of the phone interrupted him.

  “Doctor. This is Jane.”

  “Jane, where—”

  “No, no questions. Just listen. I have an address and a telephone number for Croyd. Only one. I heard the ads. I guess I can understand why you have to find him.”

  “Jane, I’m sorry I didn’t help you before.”

  “It’s okay. I was pretty strung out. You’re not going to hurt him, are you? He’s been a friend. I hate to think I’m betraying him, but…”

  “More people will die if you don’t. You’re right to tell me.”

  “Okay. He’s got an apartment on Eldridge. Three twenty-three Eldridge. Third floor. Five five five, four four nine one.”

  “Thank you, Jane, thank you so much. My dear child, we must—” But he was talking to the buzz of a disconnected line.

  He replaced the receiver and stood face-to-face with a nasty moral dilemma. If … when they captured Croyd, and if he awoke in a new form minus the carrier power, well and good. But if this mutation carried over, then the decisions became harder. To keep the man in isolation for the rest of his life?

  Or to kill him.…

  … A woman lying back among pillows and tangled sheets. A sheen of sweat across her dark breasts and belly. The moisture-matted hair of her mons—

  The three-dimensional picture fragmented and vanished.

  Sorry, squeaked Video in Tachyon’s mind. We got the wrong apartment.

  Wait, that might be Croyd.

  He reached out and touched the woman’s mind. It wasn’t Croyd.

  Floater and Video resumed their slow crawl across the back wall of the apartment building.

  There were a few nervous laughs from the people in the van. Elmo shifted uncomfortably. His hazardous-environment suit was scarcely able to contain his bulk, and he looked rather like an ill-stuffed sausage. They had cobbled together suits for Troll and Ernie out of four other suits. So far the seals were holding, but Tachyon winced every time he considered the expense. Video and Floater each had suits, and Tachyon wore his Network-designed spacesuit.

  It was impossible to protect Slither. They had tried a helmet and air supply, but the air tanks kept sliding around on her serpent’s body, pulling loose the hoses. Tach had ordered her to stay out of the fight. She would be a final line of defense if Croyd got past them.

  … Surprisingly neat room. A tall, thin man lounged on the sofa reading Newsweek. Ultrapale skin, odd eyes, brown hair with white roots showing.…

  … Another man seated at the kitchen table playing solitaire. Wonderfully handsome, but an easily forgettable face for all that.…

  Bill Lockwood.

  Tachyon read a soul-deep sense of gratitude and a determination to protect … Croyd!

  He switched his focus to the albino. Sweat broke out on his upper lip and stung his eyes as he struggled to touch the mind. Sliding his hand through the clear bubble of the helmet, he wiped perspiration and tried again. Whirling darkness like a primordial black hole. It was a mind block, but one of the oddest he’d ever felt. He spent another twenty minutes trying to find a way over, under, around, or through it. Finally he reluctantly concluded that it was more like an immunity than an actual shield.

  He explained the situation to his troops, then added, “So we just go in and thump on him. How hard can it be? And remember, if you’re not suited, don’t go into that room.”

  They piled out. With a wave he motioned Slither and Ernie toward the rear alley. Then he and Troll and Elmo headed up the steps to the front door. There were buzzers, but since the lock was broken off the outer door, they didn’t serve much purpose. Cautiously they stepped inside and started climbing for the third floor.

  Fortunately the suit masked the smells, but Tach could imagine them. He had made too many house calls to just such buildings. The stink of rancid grease. The sickly-sweet scent of human and animal wastes clinging in the corners of the stairwells. Sweat, fear, poverty, and hopelessness—they too left a smell. The walls were graffiti-covered, slogans and howls of outrage in several languages.

  I’m in position.

  Video flashed him another picture of the room. Nothing had changed.

  Window? Tachyon asked his recon team.

  Open. In this heat what do you expect? sent back Floater.

  Go in? asked Video.

  Yes.

  The alien motioned to Troll. The security chief took a grip on the knob, sucked in a breath, held it.

  … The albino noticed Floater with Video riding piggyback on his shoulders, crawling in the window. He rose with blinding speed, uttered an oath, and drew a gun.…

  “Now!” yelled Tachyon.

  Troll forced the door. The lock broke with a scream of outraged metal and torn wood. Tach and Elmo tumbled into the room. The albino fired, and missed. Slither, disobeying or having completely forgotten her orders, came coiling up the fire escape like a hunting boa on a tree. She lashed out with her tufted tail and knocked the gun from the albino’s hand.

  “You fuckers!” Cards flew like frightened butterflies as the young man flung aside the table.

  A right punch was coming in. Tachyon tried to deflect it with a quick outward block, but when his arm connected with Lockwood’s, it stopped as if caught in a vise. Tach gasped. Troll, grunting with irritation, let loose with a wide, slow haymaker. His enormous fist slammed into Lockwood’s jaw. No reaction. Tach and Troll stepped back, alarmed.

  Croyd was trying to tie Slither into knots. Elmo waded in and was tossed contemptuously aside. He came back in, his arms driving like pistons. Ernie joined the fray. Floater was trying to scramble across the ceiling back to the window.

  A sound like a side of beef hitting concrete. The pretty boy had landed a hit on
Troll. The big joker doubled over. And Tachyon stared dismayed.

  Thank you, Jesus, that he didn’t hit me! came the hysterical little thought.

  Troll drove two hard left/right punches into Lockwood’s gut.

  Nothing!

  Lockwood wound up and delivered a punch to Tachyon’s head. The Network helmet withstood the blow, but the kinetic force threw the tiny alien across the room. He came up bruised and groaning against the far wall. Troll was raining punches on Lockwood. The young man grinned and hammered in a series of hits that drove Troll across the room. The big joker stood swaying, arms over his helmeted head. Lockwood kicked him hard in the groin, then brought both hands down on the back of Troll’s neck.

  When a tree falls in the forest this is just how it sounds, thought Tach inanely as nine feet of joker went down like a poleaxed ox.

  “Shit,” commented Floater from overhead.

  Tachyon reached out with a powerful imperative. Silver lines of power flowed out from him but failed to wrap like a net about the man’s mind. Instead the power sank like a stone in quicksand.

  SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!

  The power washed back toward him, struck his shields, and passed right through.

  Boomerang power, was Tachyon’s last conscious thought.

  He was dancing the most intricate and wonderful triple minor set, but there were no other men in the dance. Just him, and a long line of women. Blythe and Saaba and Dani and Angelface and M’orat, and Jane and Talli, and Roulette and Peregrine and Victoria and—

  Zabb grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to cut in.

  Muttering and growling, Tach dug his cheek deeper into the pillow. The antiseptic smell and rough texture of the pillowcase infuriated him. I won’t endure a bed like this. How dare they? The infernal cheek!

  He forced up gummed lids, stared into Victoria Queen’s frowning blue eyes.

  Smiled up at her. “You dance divinely.”

  “Oh, wake up!” She jammed a needle into his arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Stimulant. Our hero. You finally meet someone with a superior mind-control power at positively the worst moment.”

  “He was not superior! That was my own power ricocheting back at me. Nothing else could have gotten past my—” He cut off, ashamed by his outraged justification, then continued in a chastised tone, “Did we get them?”

  “No.”

  He dropped his face into his hands. “O ancestors, what a mess.”

  “Yes.” She walked out.

  Croyd escaped. And if Slither died? Another casualty of his failures.

  The click of dainty hooves on tile. “What next, boss?”

  “I commit suicide.”

  “Wrong answer.”

  “I go to the police.”

  “They’ll freak,” remarked the joker as he pulled tangles from his white mane.

  “What choice do I have? I wanted to keep this secret, avoid panic, but Croyd now knows he’s being hunted. He will go to ground. We must have manpower to find him. And this companion. Call Washington, have SCARE search their files for an ace with boomerang powers.”

  The Takisian rose stiffly from the bed. Winced as he explored a bruise on his elbow. Ran his hands through his tangled curls. “I handled this so badly.”

  “You couldn’t know.”

  “How are the troops?” Finn bowed his head and inspected his hands. “What is it? What’s happened? Troll? Slither?”

  “Slither. She went into Black Queen reaction minutes after you went under.”

  “The incubation period…”

  “Must be shortening.”

  “He’s continuing to mutate the virus.”

  “So maybe it will mutate until it becomes nonviral?”

  “I couldn’t be so lucky. Everything I touch leads to death.”

  “Stop it! That’s not true! We don’t have time for you to feel guilty. If anyone’s at fault—I am. I let him leave.”

  “You couldn’t have known he’d become a carrier.”

  “My point exactly. What’s done is done. Let’s get on with the future.”

  “If there is one.”

  “We’ll make it happen.”

  “How did you end up so optimistic and well adjusted?”

  “I’m too dumb to be otherwise.”

  All the King’s Horses

  VI

  THE BIG CORRUGATED METAL garage door rattled overhead as it slid back in its tracks. The opener was old and noisy, but it still did its job. Dust and daylight filtered into the underground bunker. Tom turned off the flashlight and hung it on a hook in the wooden beam supporting the hard-packed dirt wall. His palms were sweaty. He wiped them on his jeans and stood regarding the metal hulks before him.

  The hatch gaped open on his oldest shell, the armored Beetle. He’d spent the last week replacing vacuum tubes, oiling the camera tracks, and checking the wiring. It was as ready as it would ever be.

  “Me and my big fucking mouth,” Tom said to himself. His words echoed through the bunker.

  He could have rented a truck, a big semi maybe. Joey would have helped. Back it up to the edge of the bunker, load the shells, get them over to Jokertown the easy way. But no, he had to go and tell Dutton he’d fly them over. No way the joker would ever believe him now if the damn things got delivered by UPS.

  He looked at the open hatch, tried to imagine crawling into that blackness and sealing the door behind him, locking himself into that metal coffin, and he could feel the bile rise in the back of his throat. He couldn’t.

  Only he had no choice, did he? The junkyard wasn’t his anymore. A crew would be arriving in less than three weeks to start clearing away all the shit that had accumulated here in the last forty years. If the shells were still lying around when they showed up with their bulldozers, the jig was seriously up.

  Tom forced himself to walk forward. No big deal, he told himself. The shell was okay, he could get it across the bay, he’d done it a thousand times. So he had to do it one more time, that’s all. One more time and he was free.

  All the kings horses and all the king’s men …

  Tom bent at the knees, grasped the top edge of the hatch, and took a long, slow breath. The metal was cold between his fingers. He ducked his head and pulled himself inside, swinging the hatch closed behind him. The clang rang in his ears. It was pitch-dark inside the shell, and chilly. His mouth had gone dry, and he could feel his heart shuddering away in his chest.

  He fumbled in the darkness for the seat, felt torn vinyl upholstery, squirmed toward it. He might as well be in a cave at the center of the earth, or dead and buried, it was so black. Faint lines of light leaked in around the outside of the hatch, but not enough to see by. Where the fuck was the power switch? The newer shells all had fingertip controls built into the armrests of the seat, but not this old bucket, oh, no. Tom groped in the darkness over his head and jammed his fingers painfully on something metal. Panic stirred inside him like a frightened animal. It was so fucking black, where were the lights?

  Then, suddenly, he was falling.

  The vertigo crashed over him like a wave. Tom grabbed the armrests hard, tried to tell himself it wasn’t happening, but he could feel it. The darkness tumbled end over end. His stomach roiled, and he bent forward, cracking his forehead sharply against the curving wall of the shell. “I’m not falling!” he screamed loudly. The words rang in his ears as he fell, helpless, locked in his armored casket. His hands thrashed madly, fumbling against the wall, sliding over glass and vinyl, throwing switches everywhere as he gasped for breath.

  All around him the TV screens woke to dim life.

  The world steadied. Tom’s breathing slowed. He wasn’t falling, no, look out there, that was the bunker, he was sitting in the shell, safe on the ground at the bottom of a hole, that was all, he wasn’t falling.

  Fuzzy black-and-white images crowded the screens. The sets were a mismatch of sizes and brand names, there were obvious blind spots, one picture was locked into a
slow vertical roll. Tom didn’t care. He could see. He wasn’t falling.

  He found the tracking controls and set his external cameras to moving. The images on the screen shifted slowly as he scanned all around him. The other two shells, the empty husks, squatted a few feet away. He turned on the ventilation system, heard a fan begin to whir, felt fresh air wash over his face. Blood was dripping into his eyes. He’d cut himself in his panic. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, sagged back in the seat.

  “Okay,” he announced loudly. He’d gotten this far. The rest was candy. Up, up, and away. Out of the bunker, across New York Bay, one last flight, nothing simpler. He pushed up.

  The shell rocked slowly from side to side, lifted maybe an inch off the ground, then settled back with a thump.

  Tom grunted. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, he thought. He summoned all his concentration, tried again to lift off. Nothing happened.

  He sat there, grim-faced, staring unseeing at the washed-out black-and-white shapes on his television screens, and finally he admitted the truth. The truth he’d hidden from Joey DiAngelis, Xavier Desmond, and even from himself.

  His shell wasn’t the only thing that was broken.

  For twenty-odd years he’d thought himself invulnerable once behind his armor. Tom Tudbury might have his doubts, his fears, his insecurities, but not the Turtle. His teke, nurtured by that sense of invincibility, had grown steadily greater, year after year after year, so long as he was inside his shell.

  Until Wild Card Day.

  They’d taken him out before he even knew what was happening.

  He’d been high over the Hudson, answering a distress call, when some ace power had reached through his armor as if it didn’t exist. Suddenly he’d felt sick, weak. He had to fight to keep from blacking out, and he could feel the massive shell stagger in midflight as his concentration wavered. A moment before his vision blurred, he’d glimpsed the boy in the hang glider slicing down from above. Then there’d been a tremendous loud pop that hurt his eardrums, and the shell had died.

  Everything went. Cameras, computers, tape deck, ventilation system, all of it burned out or seized up in the same split second. An electromagnetic pulse, he’d read later in the papers, but all he’d known then was that he’d gone blind and helpless. For a moment he was too shocked to be afraid, punching wildly at his fingertip controls in the darkness, frantic to get the power back on.