Wild Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  “You?” Des said.

  Tach could not look the joker in the eye. He nodded.

  “Let me get my coat,” Des said. He emerged from the apartment bundled up for the cold, carrying a fur cap and a frayed beige raincoat. “Put your hair up in the hat,” he told Tachyon, “and leave that ridiculous coat here. You don't want to be recognized.” Tach did as he said. On the way out, Des went into the mask shop for the final touch.

  “A chicken?” Tach said when Des handed him the mask. It had bright yellow feathers, a prominent orange beak, a floppy red coxcomb on top.

  “I saw it and I knew it was you,” said Des. “Put it on.”

  A large crane was moving into position at Chatham Square, to get the police cars off Freakers roof. The club was open. The doorman was a seven-foot-tall hairless joker with fangs. He grabbed Des by the arm as they tried to pass under the neon thighs of the six-breasted dancer who writhed on the marquee. “No jokers allowed,” he said brusquely. “Get lost, Tusker.”

  Reach out and grab his mind, Tachyon thought. Once, before Blythe, he would have done it instinctively. But now he hesitated, and hesitating, he was lost.

  Des reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet, extracted a fifty-dollar bill. “You were watching them lower the police cars,” he said. “You never saw me pass.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the doorman said. The bill vanished in a clawed hand. “Real interesting, them cranes.”

  “Sometimes money is the most potent power of all,” Des said as they walked into the cavernous dimness within. A sparse noontime crowd sat eating the free lunch and watching a stripper gyrate down a long runway behind a barbed-wire barrier. She was covered with silky gray hair, except for her breasts, which had been shaved bare. Desmond scanned the booths along the far wall. He took Tach's elbow and led him to a dark corner, where a man in a peacoat was sitting with a stein of beer. “They lettin' jokers in here now?” the man asked gruffly as they approached. He was saturnine and pockmarked.

  Tack went into his mind. Fuck what's this now the elephant man's from the Funhouse who's the other one damned jokers anyhow gotta lotta nerve

  “Where's Bannister keeping Angelface?” Des asked.

  “Angelface is the slit at the Funhouse, right? Don't know no Bannister. Is this a game? Fuck off, joker, I ain't playing.” In his thoughts, images came tumbling: Tack saw mirrors shattering, silver knives flying through the air, felt Mal's shove and saw him reach back for a gun, watched him shudder and spin as the bullets hit, heard Bannister's soft voice as he told them to kill Ruth, saw the warehouse over on the Hudson where they were keeping her, the livid bruises on her arm when they'd grabbed her, tasted the man's fear, fear of jokers, fear of discovery, fear of Bannister, the fear of them. Tach reached out and squeezed Desmond's arm.

  Des turned to go. “Hey, hold it right there,” the man with the pockmarked face said. He flashed a badge as he unfolded from the booth. “Undercover narcotics,” he said, “and you been using, mister, asking asshole junkie questions like that.” Des stood still as the man frisked him down. “Well, looka this,” he said, producing a bag of white powder from one of Desmond's pockets. “Wonder what this is? You're under arrest, freak-face.”

  “That's not mine,” Desmond said calmly.

  “The hell it ain't,” the man said, and in his mind the thoughts ran one after another little accident resisting arrest what could i do huh? jokers'll scream but who listens to a fuckin' joker only whatymi gonna do with the other one? and he glanced at Tachyon. Jeez looka the chickenman's shaking maybe the fucker IS using that'd be great.

  Trembling, Tach realized the moment of truth was at hand.

  He was not sure he could do it. It was different than with Tiny; that had been blind instinct, but he was awake now, and he knew what he was doing. It had been so easy once, as easy as using his hands. But now those hands trembled, and there was blood on them, and on his mind as well . . . he thought of Blythe and the way her mind had shattered under his touch, like the mirrors in the Funhouse, and for a terrible, long second nothing happened, until the fear was rank in his throat, and the familiar taste of failure filled his mouth.

  Then the pockfaced man smiled an idiot's smile, sat back down in his booth, laid his head on the table, and went to sleep as sweetly as a child.

  Des took it in stride. “Your doing?”

  Tachyon nodded.

  “You're shaking,” Des asked. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “I think so,” Tachyon said. The policeman had begun to snore loudly. “I think maybe I am all right, Des. For the first time in years.” He looked at the joker's face, looked past the deformity to the man beneath. “I know where she is,” he said. They started toward the exit. In the cage, a full-breasted, bearded hermaphrodite had started into a bump-and-grind. “We have to move quickly.”

  “In an hour I can get together twenty men.”

  “No,” Tachyon said. “The place they're holding her isn't in Jokertown.”

  Des stopped with his hand on the door. “I see,” he said. “And outside of Jokertown, jokers and masked men are rather conspicuous, aren't they?”

  “Exactly,” Tach said. He did not voice his other fear, of the retribution that would surely be enacted should jokers dare to confront police, even police as corrupt as Bannister and his cohorts. He would take the risk himself, he had nothing left to lose, but he could not permit them to take it. “Can you reach the Turtle?” he asked.

  “I can take you to him,” Des replied. “When?”

  “Now,” Tach said. In an hour or two, the sleeping policeman would awaken and go straight to Bannister. And say what? That Des and a man in a chicken mask had been asking questions, that he'd been about to arrest them but suddenly he'd gotten very sleepy? Would he dare admit to that? If so, what would Bannister make of it? Enough to move Angelface? Enough to kill her? They could not chance it.

  When they emerged from the dimness of Freakers, the crane had just lowered the second police car to the sidewalk. A cold wind was blowing, but behind his chicken feathers, Doctor Tachyon had begun to sweat.

  Tom Tudbury woke to the dim, muffled sound of someone pounding on his shell.

  He pushed aside the frayed blanket, and bashed his head sitting up. “Ow, goddamn it,” he cursed, fumbling in the darkness until he found the map light. The pounding continued, a hollow boom boom boom against the armor, echoing. Tom felt a stab of panic. The police, he thought, they've found me, they've come to drag me out and haul me up on charges. His head hurt. It was cold and stuffy in here. He turned on the space heater, the fans, the cameras. His screens came to life.

  Outside was a bright cold December day, the sunlight painting every grimy brick with stark clarity. Joey had taken the train back to Bayonne, but Tom had remained; they were running out of time, he had no other choice. Des found him a safe place, an interior courtyard in the depths of Jokertown, surrounded by decaying five-story tenements, its cobblestones redolent with the smell of sewage, wholly hidden from the street. When he'd landed, just before dawn, lights had blinked on in a few of the dark windows, and faces had come to peer cautiously around the shades; wary, frightened, not-quite-human faces, briefly seen and gone as quickly, when they decided that the thing outside was none of their concern.

  Yawning, Tom pulled himself into his seat and panned his cameras until he found the source of the commotion. Des was standing by an open cellar door, arms crossed, while Doctor Tachyon hammered on the shell with a length of broom handle.

  Astonished, Tom flipped open his microphones. “YOU.”

  Tachyon winced. “Please.”

  He lowered the volume. “Sorry. You took me by surprise. I never expected to see you again. After last night, I mean. I didn't hurt you, did I? I didn't mean to, I just—”

  “I understand,” Tachyon said. “But we've got no time for recriminations or apologies now.”

  Des began to roll upward. Damn that vertical hold. “We know where they have her,” the jok
er said as his image flipped. “That is, if Doctor Tachyon can indeed read minds as advertised.”

  “Where?” Tom said. Des continued to flip, flip, flip.

  “A warehouse on the Hudson,” Tachyon replied. “Near the foot of a pier. I can't tell you an address, but I saw it clearly in his thoughts. I'll recognize it.”

  “Great!” Tom enthused. He gave up on his efforts to adjust the vertical hold and whapped the screen. The picture steadied. “Then we've got them. Let's go.” The look on Tachyon's face took him aback. “You are coming, aren't you?”

  Tachyon swallowed. “Yes,” he said. He had a mask in his hand. He slipped it on.

  That was a relief, Tom thought; for a second there, he'd thought he'd have to go it alone. “Climb on,” he said.

  With a deep sigh of resignation, the alien scrambled on top of the shell, his boots scrabbling at the armor. Tom gripped his armrests tightly and pushed up. The shell rose as easily as a soap bubble. He felt elated. This was what he was meant to do, Tom thought; Jetboy must have felt like this.

  Joey had installed a monster of a horn in the shell. Tom let it rip as they floated clear of the rooftops, startling a coop of pigeons, a few winos, and Tachyon with the distinctive blare of Here-I-come-to-save-the-daaaaaay.

  “It might be wise to be a bit more subtle about this,” Tachyon said diplomatically.

  Tom laughed. “I don't believe it, I got a man from outer space who mostly dresses like Pinky Lee riding on my back, and he's telling me I ought to be subtle.” He laughed again as the streets of Jokertown spread out all around them.

  They made their final approach through a maze of waterfront alleys. The last was a dead end, terminating in a brick wall scrawled over with the names of gangs and young lovers. The Turtle rose above it, and they emerged in the loading area behind the warehouse. A man in a short leather jacket sat on the edge of the loading dock. He jumped to his feet when they hove into view. His jump took him a lot higher than he'd anticipated, about ten feet higher. He opened his mouth, but before he could shout, Tach had him; he went to sleep in midair. The Turtle stashed him atop a nearby roof.

  Four wide loading bays opened onto the dock, all chained and padlocked, their corrugated metal doors marked with wide brown streaks of rust. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED said the lettering on the narrow door to the side.

  Tach hopped down, landing easily on the balls of his feet, his nerves tingling. “I'll go through,” he told the Turtle. “Give me a minute, and then follow.”

  “A minute,” the speakers said. “You got it.”

  Tach pulled off his boots, opened the door just a crack, and slid into the warehouse on purple-stockinged feet, summoning up all the stealth and fluid grace they'd once taught him on Takis. Inside, bales of shredded paper, bound tightly in thin wire, were stacked twenty and thirty feet high. Tachyon crept down a crooked aisle toward the sound of voices. A huge yellow forklift blocked his path. He dropped flat and squirmed underneath it, to peer around one massive tire.

  He counted five altogether. Two of them were playing cards, sitting in folding chairs and using a stack of coverless paperbacks for a table. A grossly fat man was adjusting a gigantic paper-shredding machine against the far wall. The last two stood over a long table, bags of white powder piled in neat rows in front of them. The tall man in the flannel shirt was weighing something on a small set of scales. Next to him, supervising, was a slender balding man in an expensive raincoat. He had a cigarette in his hand, and his voice was smooth and soft. Tachyon couldn't quite make out what he was saying. There was no sign of Angelface.

  He dipped into the sewer that was Bannister's mind, and saw her. Between the shredder and the baling machine. He couldn't see it from under the forklift, the machinery blocked the line of sight, but she was there. A filthy mattress had been tossed on the concrete floor, and she lay atop it, her ankles swollen and raw where the handcuffs chafed against her skin.

  “. . . fifty-eight hippopotami, fifty-nine hippopotami, sixty hippopotami,” Tom counted.

  The loading bays were big enough. He squeezed, and the padlock disintegrated into shards of rust and twisted metal. The chains came clanking down, and the door rattled upward, rusty tracks screeching protest. Tom turned on all his lights as the shell slid forward. Inside, towering stacks of paper blocked his way. There wasn't room to go between them. He shoved them, hard, but even as they started to collapse, it occurred to him that he could go above them. He pushed up toward the ceiling.

  “What the fuck,” one of the cardplayers said, when they heard the loading gate screech open.

  A heartbeat later, they were all moving. Both cardplayers scrambled to their feet; one of them produced a gun. The man in the flannel shirt looked up from his scales. The fat man turned away from the shredder, shouting something, but it was impossible to make out what he was saying. Against the far wall, bales of paper came crashing down, knocking into neighboring stacks and sending them down too, in a chain reaction that spread across the warehouse.

  Without an instant's hesitation, Bannister went for Angelface. Tach took his mind and stopped him in mid-stride, with his revolver half-drawn.

  And then a dozen bales of shredded paper slammed down against the rear of the forklift. The vehicle shifted, just a little, crushing Tachyon's left hand under a huge black tire. He cried out in shock and pain, and lost Bannister.

  Down below, two little men were shooting at him. The first shot startled him so badly that Tom lost his concentration for a split second, and the shell dropped four feet before he got it back. Then the bullets were pinging harmlessly off his armor and ricocheting around the warehouse. Tom smiled. “I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TURTLE,” he announced at full volume, as stacks of paper crashed down all around. “YOU ASSHOLES ARE UP SHIT CREEK. SURRENDER NOW.”

  The nearest asshole didn't surrender. He fired again, and one of Tom's screens went black. “OH, FUCK,” Tom said, forgetting to kill his mike. He grabbed the guy's arm and pulled the gun away, and from the way the jerk screamed he'd probably dislocated his shoulder too, goddammit. He'd have to watch that. The other guy started running, jumping over a collapsed pile of paper. Tom caught him in mid-jump, took him straight up to the ceiling, and hung him from a rafter. His eyes flicked from screen to screen, but one screen was dark now and the damned vertical hold had gone again on the one next to it, so he couldn't make out a fucking thing to that side. He didn't have time to fix it. Some guy in a flannel shirt was loading bags into a suitcase, he saw on the big screen, and from the corner of his eye, he spied a fat guy climbing into a forklift . . .

  His hand crushed beneath the tire, Tachyon writhed in excruciating pain and tried not to scream. Bannister—had to stop Bannister before he got to Angelface. He ground his teeth together and tried to will away the pain, to gather it into a ball and push it from him the way he'd been taught, but it was hard, he'd lost the discipline, he could feel the shattered bones in his hand, his eyes were blurry with tears, and then he heard the forklift's motor turn over, and suddenly it was surging forward, rolling right up his arm, coming straight at his head, the tread of the massive tire a black wall of death rushing toward him . . . and passing an inch over the top of his skull, as it took to the air.

  The forklift flew nicely across the warehouse and embedded itself in the far wall, with a little push from the Great and Powerful Turtle. The fat man dove off in midair and landed on a pile of coverless paperbacks. It wasn't until then that Tom happened to notice Tachyon lying on the floor under the place the forklift had been. He was holding his hand funny and his chicken mask was all smashed up and dirty, Tom saw, and as he staggered to his feet he was shouting something. He went running across the floor, reeling, unsteady. Where the fuck was he going in such a hurry?

  Frowning, Tom smacked the malfunctioning screen with the back of his hand, and the vertical roll stopped suddenly. For an instant, the image on the television was clear and sharp. A man in a raincoat stood over a woman on a mattress. She was real
pretty, and there was a funny smile on her face, sad but almost accepting, as he pressed the revolver right up to her forehead.

  Tach came reeling around the shredding machine, his ankles all rubber, the world a red blur, his shattered bones jabbing against each other with every step, and found them there, Bannister touching her lightly with his pistol, her skin already darkening where the bullet would go in, and through his tears and his fears and a haze of pain, he reached out for Bannister's mind and seized it . . . just in time to feel him squeeze the trigger, and wince as the gun kicked back in his mind. He heard the explosion from two sets of ears.

  “Noooooooooooooooooo!” he shrieked. He closed his eyes, sunk to his knees. He made Bannister fling the gun away, for what good it would do, none at all, too late, again he'd come too late, failed, failed, again, Angelface, Blythe, his sister, everyone he loved, all of them gone. He doubled over on the floor, and his mind filled with images of broken mirrors, of the Wedding Pattern danced in blood and pain, and that was the last thing he knew before the darkness took him.

  He woke to the astringent smell of a hospital room and the feel of a pillow under his head, the pillowcase crisp with starch. He opened his eyes. “Des,” he said weakly. He tried to sit, but he was bound up somehow. The world was blurry and unfocused.

  “You're in traction, Doctor,” Des said. “Your right arm was broken in two places, and your hand is worse than that.”

  “I'm sorry,” Tach said. He would have wept, but he had run out of tears. “I'm so sorry. We tried, I . . . I'm so sorry, I—”

  “Tacky,” she said in that soft, husky voice.

  And she was there, standing over him, dressed in a hospital gown, black hair framing a wry smile. She had combed it forward to cover her forehead; beneath her bangs was a hideous purple-green bruise, and the skin around her eyes was red and raw. For a moment he thought he was dead, or mad, or dreaming. “It's all right, Tacky. I'm okay. I'm here.”