Wild Cards: Inside Straight

by George R. R. Martin

  Gloria wouldn’t explain. “Not real death,” is all she said.

  “The rules again are so simple a child could follow them. In the Sex-Scape environment our contestants will be free to pick from a variety of fantasy partners. We’ve packed this program with options, there’s something for every taste, believe you me. We won’t question their selections, but—here’s the catch—we will chart the results. Their suits will tell us who does and doesn’t attain sexual orgasm in the next session, and those who don’t will be handed their walking papers. The suits don’t lie. Find bliss or die, folks, find bliss or die.”

  “You get it now?” said Gloria to me.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “As ever, audience members are cautioned never to interfere with the contestants during play. Follow their fantasies on the monitors, or watch their youthful bodies strain against exhaustion, seeking to bridge virtual lust and bonafide physical response. But no touchee.”

  Kromer was going around, checking the suits. “Who’s gonna be in your fantasy, kid?” he said to me. “The snowman?”

  I’d forgotten how they could watch me talk to Mr. Sneeze on my television. I turned red.

  “Screw you, Kromer,” said Gloria.

  “Whoever you want, honey,” he said, laughing.

  I touched myself a little too. I tried not to think about the audience. I was a little confused about what was what in the suit and with her breathing in my ear so loud but I got the desired result. That wasn’t hard for me.

  Then I could go back to the drawers but Kromer had made me embarrassed about visiting Mr. Sneeze so I went to Mars even though I would have liked to talk to him.

  “How else?”

  “I just pretended. I don’t think they can tell. They just want to see you wiggle around.”

  Well some of the women from the town hadn’t wiggled around enough I guess because Kromer and Ed were taking them out of the contest. A couple of them were crying.

  “I wish I hadn’t,” I said.

  “It’s the same either way,” said Gloria. “Don’t feel bad. Probably some other people did it too.”

  They didn’t kick Lane out but I saw she was crying anyway.

  Kromer brought a man into the back and said to me, “Get into your own cot, little snowman.”

  “Let him stay,” said Gloria. She wasn’t looking at Kromer.

  “I’ve got someone here who wants to meet you,” said Kromer to Gloria. “Mr. Warren, this is Gloria.”

  Mr. Warren shook her hand. He was pretty old. “I’ve been admiring you,” he said. “You’re very good.”

  “Mr. Warren is wondering if you’d let him buy you a drink,” said Kromer.

  “Thanks, but I need some sleep,” said Gloria.

  “Perhaps later,” said Mr. Warren.

  After he left Kromer came back and said, “You shouldn’t pass up easy money.”

  “I don’t need it,” said Gloria. “I’m going to win your contest, you goddamn pimp.”

  “Now, Gloria,” said Kromer. “You don’t want to give the wrong impression.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  I noticed now that Anne wasn’t around in the rest area and I got the idea that the kind of easy money Gloria didn’t want Anne did. I’m not so dumb.

  It was her parents. I guess they heard about the Sexathon, maybe from her boyfriend, who was there too. Lane was sitting crying behind Fearing who was telling her parents to get out of there, and her father just kept saying, “I’m her father! I’m her father!” Her mother was pulling at Fearing but Ed came over and pulled on her.

  I started to get up but Gloria grabbed my arm and said, “Stay out of this.”

  “Lane doesn’t want to see that guy,” I said.

  “Let the townies take care of themselves, Lewis. Let Lane’s daddy take her home if he can. Worse could happen to her.”

  “You just want her out of the contest,” I said.

  Gloria laughed. “I’m not worried about your girlfriend outlasting me,” she said. “She’s about to break no matter what.”

  So I just watched. Kromer and Ed got Lane’s parents and boyfriend pushed out of the rest area, back toward the seats. Fearing was yelling at them, making a scene for the audience. It was all part of the show as far as he was concerned.

  Anne from the van was over talking to Lane, who was still crying, but quiet now.

  “Do you really think you can win?” I said to Gloria.

  “Sure, why not?” she said. “I can last.”

  “I’m pretty tired.” In fact my eyeballs felt like they were full of sand.

  “Well if you fall out stick around. You can probably get food out of Kromer for cleaning up or something. I’m going to take these bastards.”

  “You don’t like Fearing anymore,” I said.

  “I never did,” said Gloria.

  Kromer and Gilmartin were planning some sideshow but it didn’t involve me and I didn’t care. I didn’t want coins thrown at me. I just wanted to get through.

  “You could win the contest,” said Mr. Sneeze.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But Gloria could.”

  Anne sat up in her frame and didn’t say anything. She looked confused. “You’re a bunch of cheaters!” Gloria kept saying. Kromer got her by the wrists and said “Take it easy, take it easy. You’re going scape-crazy, girl.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m crazy!” said Gloria. She twisted away from Kromer and ran to the seats. Mr. Warren was there, watching her with his hat in his hands. I ran after Gloria and said her name but she said, “Leave me alone!” and went over to Mr. Warren. “You saw it, didn’t you?” she said.

  “I’m sorry?” said Mr. Warren.

  “You must have seen it, the way she wasn’t moving at all,” said Gloria. “Come on, tell these cheaters you saw it. I’ll go on that date with you if you tell them.”

  “I’m sorry, darling. I was looking at you.”

  Kromer knocked me out of the way and grabbed Gloria from behind. “Listen to me, girl. You’re hallucinating. You’re scape-happy. We see it all the time.” He was talking quiet but hard. “Any more of this and you’re out of the show, you understand? Get in the back and lie down now and get some sleep. You need it.”

  “You bastard,” said Gloria.

  “Sure, I’m a bastard, but you’re seeing things.” He held Gloria’s wrist and she sagged.

  Mr. Warren got up and put his hat on. “I’ll see you tomorrow, darling. Don’t worry. I’m rooting for you.” He went out.

  Gloria didn’t look at him.

  Kromer took Gloria back to the rest area but suddenly I wasn’t paying much attention myself. I had been thinking Fearing wasn’t taking advantage of the free action by talking about it because there wasn’t anyone much in the place to impress at this hour. Then I looked around and I realized there were two people missing and that was Fearing and Lane.

  I found Ed and I asked him if Lane had dropped out of the contest and he said no.

  “I don’t see how I could,” he said. “I can’t visit her, she has to visit me. And nobody visits me except you.” He hopped and jiggled in his five places. “I’d like it if I could meet Gloria and Lane.”

  “Let’s not talk about Lane,” I said.

  There were only eight people left in the contest. Lane was still in it but I didn’t care.

  I knew if I tried to sleep I would just lie there thinking. So I went to rinse out under my suit, which was getting pretty rank. I hadn’t been out of that suit since the contest started. In the bathroom I looked out the little window at the daylight and I thought about how I hadn’t been out of that building for five days either, no matter how much I’d gone to Mars and elsewhere.

  I went back in and saw Gloria asleep and I thought all of a sudden that I should try to win.

  But maybe that was just the idea coming over me that Gloria wasn’t going to.

  So then I was going to tell Mr. Sneeze about it and that’s when I found out.
I went into his drawer and touched the right numbers but what I got wasn’t the usual five pictures of the snowman. It was pieces of him but chopped up and stretched into thin white strips, around the edge of the black space, like a band of white light.

  I said, “Mr. Sneeze?”

  There wasn’t any voice.

  I went out and came back in but it was the same. He couldn’t talk. The band of white strips got narrower and wider, like it was trying to move or talk. It looked a bit like a hand waving open and shut. But if he was still there he couldn’t talk.

  I WOULD have taken my mask off then anyway, but the heat of my face and my tears forced me to.

  I saw Fearing up front talking and I started for him without even getting my suit unclipped, so I tore up a few of my wires. I didn’t care, I knew I was out now. I went right out and tackled Fearing from behind. He wasn’t so big, anyway. Only his voice was big. I got him down on the floor.

  “You killed him,” I said, and I punched him as hard as I could, but you know Kromer and Gilmartin were there holding my arms before I could hit him more than once. I just screamed at Fearing, “You killed him, you killed him.”

  Fearing was smiling at me and wiping his mouth. “Your snowman malfunctioned, kid.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “You were boring us to death with that snowman, you little punk. Give it a rest, for chrissake.”

  I kept kicking out even though they had me pulled away from him. “I’ll kill you!” I said.

  “Right,” said Fearing. “Throw him out of here.”

  He never stopped smiling. Everything suited his plans, that was what I hated.

  Kromer the big ape and Gilmartin pulled me outside into the sunlight and it was like a knife in my eyes. I couldn’t believe how bright it was. They tossed me down in the street and when I got up Kromer punched me, hard.

  Then Gloria came outside. I don’t know how she found out, if she heard me screaming or if Ed woke her. Anyway she gave Kromer a pretty good punch in the side and said, “Leave him alone!”

  Kromer was surprised and he moaned and I got away from him. Gloria punched him again. Then she turned around and gave Gilmartin a kick in the nuts and he went down. I’ll always remember in spite of what happened next that she gave those guys a couple they’d be feeling for a day or two.

  THE gang who beat the crap out of us were a mix of the militia and some other guys from the town, including Lane’s boyfriend. Pretty funny that he’d take out his frustration on us, but that just shows you how good Fearing had that whole town wrapped around his finger.

  “Well, we did get fed for a couple of days,” I said.

  Gloria didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s go up to San Francisco,” I said. “There’s a lot of lonely women there.”

  I was making a joke of course.

  Gloria looked at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that maybe I can get us in for once.”

  Gloria didn’t laugh, but I knew she would later.

  RED SONJA AND LESSINGHAM IN DREAMLAND

  Gwyneth Jones

  Be careful what you wish for, an old saying warns us, because you just might get it. The same applies to what games you play, as the wry little chiller that follows demonstrates—and who you play with.

  One of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a co-winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction, with her 1991 novel White Queen; she has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel Bold As Love; and she has received two World Fantasy Awards—for her story “The Grass Princess” and her collection Seven Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind, Flowerdust, Escape Plans, Divine Endurance, Phoenix Café, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free, Midnight Lamp, Kairos, Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Iron-wood, The Exchange, Dear Hill, Escape Plans, and The Hidden Ones, as well as more than sixteen young adult novels published under the name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying the Object: A Collection of Short Stories, as well as Seven Tales and a Fable. She is also the author of the critical study, Deconstructing the Starships: Science Fiction and Reality. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.

  She was a tall woman, dressed for riding in a kilt and harness of supple leather over brief close-fitting linen: a costume that left her sheeny, muscular limbs bare and outlined the taut, proud curves of breast and haunches. Her red hair was bound in a braid as thick as a man’s wrist. Her sword was slung on her back, the great brazen hilt standing above her shoulder. Other guests were gathered by an open-air kitchen, in the orange-red of firelight and the smoke of roasting meat. She returned their stares coolly: She was accustomed to attracting attention. But she didn’t like what she saw. The host of the caravanserai came scuttling from the group by the fire. His manner was fawning. But his eyes measured, with a thief’s sly expertise, the worth of the sword she bore and the quality of Lemiak’s harness. Sonja tossed him a few coins and declined to join the company.

  She had counted fifteen of them. They were poorly dressed and heavily armed. They were all friends together and their animals—both terror-birds and horses—were too good for any honest travelers’ purposes. Sonja had been told that this caravanserai was a safe halt. She judged that this was no longer true. She considered riding out again onto the plain. But wolves and wild terror-birds roamed at night between here and the mountains, at the end of winter. And there were worse dangers; ghosts and demons. Sonja was neither credulous nor superstitious. But in this country no wayfarer willingly spent the black hours alone.

  She unharnessed Lemiak and rubbed him down, taking sensual pleasure in the handling of his powerful limbs, in the heat of his glossy hide, and the vigor of his great body. There was firewood ready stacked in the roofless booth. Shouldering a cloth sling for corn and a hank of rope, she went to fetch her own fodder. The corralled beasts shifted in a mass to watch her. The great flightless birds, with their pitiless raptors’ eyes, were especially attentive. She felt an equally rapacious attention from the company by the caravanserai kitchen, which amused her. The robbers—as she was sure they were—had all the luck. For her, there wasn’t one of the fifteen who rated a second glance.

  A man appeared, from the darkness under the ruined gallery. He was tall. The rippled muscle of his chest, left bare by an unlaced leather jerkin, shone red-brown. His black hair fell in glossy curls to his wide shoulders. He met her gaze and smiled, white teeth appearing in the darkness of his beard. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings . . . look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. . . . Do you know those lines?” He pointed to a lump of shapeless stone, one of several that lay about. It bore traces of carving, almost effaced by time. “There was a city here once, with marketplaces, fine buildings, throngs of proud people. Now they are dust, and only the caravanserai remains.”

  He stood before her, one tanned and sinewy hand resting lightly on the hilt of a dagger in his belt. Like Sonja, he carried his broadsword on his back. Sonja was tall. He topped her by a head: Yet there was nothing brutish in his size. His brow was wide and serene; his eyes were vivid blue; his lips full and imperious, yet delicately modeled, in the rich nest of hair. Somewhere between eyes and lips there lurked a spirit of mockery, as if he found some secret amusement in the perfection of his own beauty and strength.

  The man and the woman measured each other.

  “You are a scholar,” she said.

  “Of some sort. And a traveler from an antique land—where the cities are still standing. It seems we are the only strangers here,” he added, with a slight nod toward the convivial company. “We might be well advised to become friends for the night.”

  Sonja never wasted words. She considered his offer and nodded.

  They made a fire in the boo
th Sonja had chosen. Lemiak and the scholar’s terror-bird, left loose together in the back of the shelter, did not seem averse to each other’s company. The woman and the man ate spiced sausage, skewered and broiled over the red embers, with bread and dried fruit. They drank water, each keeping to their own waterskin. They spoke little, after that first exchange—except to discuss briefly the tactics of their defense, should defense be necessary.

  The attack came around midnight. At the first stir of covert movement, Sonja leapt up, sword in hand. She grasped a brand from the dying fire. The man who had been crawling on his hands and knees toward her, bent on sly murder of a sleeping victim, scrabbled to his feet. “Defend yourself,” yelled Sonja, who despised to strike an unarmed foe. Instantly he was rushing at her with a heavy sword. A great two-handed stroke would have cleft her to the waist. She parried the blow and caught him between neck and shoulder, almost severing the head from his body. The beasts plunged and screamed at the rush of blood scent. The scholar was grappling with another attacker, choking out the man’s life with his bare hands . . . and the booth was full of bodies; their enemies rushing in on every side.

  Sonja felt no fear. Stroke followed stroke, in a luxury of blood and effort and fire-shot darkness . . . until the attack was over, as suddenly as it had begun.

  The brigands had vanished.

  “We killed five,” breathed the scholar, “by my count. Three to you, two to me.”

  She kicked together the remains of their fire and crouched to blow the embers to a blaze. By that light they found five corpses, dragged them and flung them into the open square. The scholar had a cut on his upper arm, which was bleeding freely. Sonja was bruised and battered, but otherwise unhurt. The worst loss was their woodstack, which had been trampled and blood-fouled. They would not be able to keep a watch fire burning.