Wildcards wc-1

by George R. R. Martin

  I slammed the phone down and called Mr. Holmes. He and Earl and David had gotten their subpoenas earlier in the day and had been trying to reach me ever since, but couldn't get ahold of me in Palm Springs.

  "They're going to try to break the Aces, farm boy," Earl said. "You'd better get the first flight east. We've got to talk." I made arrangements, and then Kim walked in, dressed in her tennis whites, just back from her lesson. She looked better in sweat than any woman I'd ever known.

  "What's wrong?" she said. I Just pointed at the pink slip. Kim's reaction was fast, and it surprised me. "Don't do what the Ten did," she said quickly. "They consulted with each other and took a hard-line defense, and none of them have worked since." She reached for the phone. "Let me call the studio. We've got to get you a lawyer."

  I watched her as she picked up the phone and began to dial. A chill hand touched the back of my neck.

  "I wish I knew what was going on," I said.

  But I knew. I knew even then, and my knowledge had a precision and a clarity that was terrifying. All I could think about was how I wished I couldn't see the choices quite so clearly.

  To me, the Fear had come late. HUAC first went after Hollywood in '47, with the Hollywood Ten. Supposedly the committee was investigating Communist infiltration of the film industry-a ridiculous notion on the face of it, since no Communists were going to get any propaganda in the pictures without the express knowledge and permission of people like Mr. Mayer and the Brothers Warner. The Ten were all current or former Communists, and they and their lawyers agreed on a defense based on the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.

  The committee rode over them like a herd of buffalo over a bed of daisies. The Ten were given contempt-of-Congress citations for their refusal to cooperate, and after their appeals ran out years later, they ended up in prison.

  The Ten had figured the First Amendment would protect them, that the contempt citations would be thrown out of court within a few weeks at the most. Instead the appeals went on for years, and the Ten went to the slammer, and during that time none of them could find a job.

  The blacklist came into existence. My old friends, the American Legion, who had learned somewhat more subtle tactics since going after the Holiday Association with axe handles, published a list of known or suspected Communists so that no one employer had any excuse for hiring anyone on the list. If he hired someone, he became suspect himself, and his name could be added to the list.

  None of those called before HUAC had ever committed a crime, as defined by law, nor were they ever accused of crimes. They were not being investigated for criminal activity, but for associations. HUAC had no constitutional mandate to investigate these people, the blacklist was illegal, the evidence introduced at the committee sessions was largely hearsay and inadmissible in a court of law… none of it mattered. It happened anyway.

  HUAC had been silent for a while, partly because their chairman, Parnell, had gotten tossed into the slammer for padding his payroll, partly because the Hollywood Ten appeals were still going through the court. But they'd gotten hungry for all that great publicity they'd gotten when they went after Hollywood, and the public had been whipped into a frenzy with the Rosenberg trials and the Alger Hiss case, so they concluded that the time was right for another splashy investigation.

  HUAC's new chairman, John S. Wood of Georgia, decided to go after the biggest game on the planet.

  Us.

  My MGM attorney met me at the Washington airport. "I'd advise you not to talk with Mr. Holmes or Mr. Sanderson," he said.

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "They're going to try to get you to take a First or Fifth Amendment defense," the lawyer said. "The First Amendment defense won't work-it's been turned down on every appeal. The Fifth is a defense against self-incrimination, and unless you've actually done something illegal, you can't use it unless you want to appear guilty."

  "And you won't work, jack," Kim said. "Metro won't even release your pictures. The American Legion would picket them all over the country."

  "How do I know that I'll work if I talk?" I said. "All you have to do to get on the blacklist is be called, for crissake."

  "I've been authorized to tell you from Mr. Mayer," the lawyer said, "that you will remain in his employ if you cooperate with the committee."

  I shook my head. "I'm talking with Mr. Holmes tonight." I grinned at them. "We're the Aces, for heaven's sake. If we can't beat some hick congressman from Georgia, we don't deserve to work."

  So I met Mr. Holmes, Earl, and David at the Statler. Kim said I was being unreasonable and stayed away.

  There was a disagreement right from the start. Earl said that the committee had no right to call us in the first place, and that we should simply refuse to cooperate. Mr. Holmes said that we couldn't just concede the fight then and there, that we should defend ourselves in front of the committee-that we had nothing to hide. Earl told him that a kangaroo court was no place to conduct a reasoned defense. David just wanted to give his pheromones a crack at the committee. "The hell with it," I said. "I'll take the First. Free speech and association is something every American understands."

  Which I didn't believe for a second, by the way. I just felt that I had to say something optimistic.

  I wasn't called that first day-I loitered with David and Earl in the lobby, pacing and gnawing my knuckles, while Mr. Holmes and his attorney played Canute and tried to keep the acid, evil tide from eating the flesh from their bones. David kept trying to talk his way past the guards, but he didn't have any luck-the guards outside were willing to let him come in, but the ones inside the committee room weren't exposed to his pheromones and kept shutting him out.

  The media were allowed in, of course. HUAC liked to parade its virtue before the newsreel cameras, and the newsreels gave the circus full play.

  I didn't know what was going on inside until Mr. Holmes came out. He walked like a man who had a stroke, one foot carefully in front of the other. He was gray. His hands trembled, and he leaned on the arm of his attorney. He looked as if he'd aged twenty years in just a few hours. Earl and David ran up to him, but all I could do was stare in terror as the others helped him down the corridor.

  The Fear had me by the neck.

  Earl and Blythe put Mr. Holmes in his car, and then Earl waited for my MGM limousine to drive up, and he got into the back with us. Kim looked pouty, squeezed into the corner so he wouldn't touch her, and refused even to say hello.

  "Well, I was right," he said. "We shouldn't have cooperated with those bastards at all."

  I was still stunned from what I'd seen in the corridor. "I can't figure out why the hell they're doing this."

  He fixed me with an amused glance. "Farm boys," he said, a resigned comment on the universe, and then shook his head. "You've got to hit them over the head with a shovel to get them to pay attention."

  Kim sniffed. Earl didn't give any indication he'd heard. "They're power-hungry, farm boy," he said. And they've been kept out of power by Roosevelt and Truman for a lot of years. They're going to get it back, and they're drumming up this hysteria to do it. Look at the Four Aces and what do you see? A Negro Communist, a Jewish liberal, an F D.R. liberal, a woman living in sin. Add Tachyon and you've got an alien who's subverting not just the country but our chromosomes. There are probably others as powerful that nobody knows about. And they've all got unearthly powers, so who knows what they're up to? And they're not controlled by the government, they're following some kind of liberal political agenda, so that threatens the power base of most of the people on the committee right there.

  "The way I figure it, the government has their own ace talents by now, people we haven't heard ou That means we can be done without-we're too independent and we're politically unsound. China and Czechoslovakia and the names of the other aces-that's an excuse. The point is that if they can break us right in public, they prove they can break anybody. It'll be a reign of terror that will last a generation. Not anyo
ne, not even the President, will be immune."

  I shook my head. I had heard the words, but my brain wouldn't accept them. "What can we do about it?" I asked. Earl's gaze held my eyes. "Not a damn thing, farm boy." I turned away.

  My MGM attorney played a recording of the Holmes hearing for me that night. Mr. Holmes and his attorney, an old Virginia family friend named Cranmer, were used to the ways of Washington and the ways of law. They expected an orderly proceeding, the gentlemen of the committee asking polite questions of the gentlemen witnesses.

  The plan had no relation to reality. The committee barely let Mr. Holmes talk-instead they screamed at him, rants full of vicious innuendo and hearsay, and he was never allowed to reply.

  I was given a copy of the transcript. Part of it reads like this:

  MR. RANKIN: When I look at this disgusting New Deal man who sits before the committee, with his smarty-pants manners and Bond Street clothes and his effete cigarette holder, everything that is American and Christian in me revolts at the sight. The New Deal man! That damned New Deal permeates him like a cancer, and I want to scream, "You're everything that's wrong with America. Get out and go back to Red China where you belong, you New Deal socialist! In China they'll welcome you and your treachery."

  CHAIRMAN: The honorable member's time has expired.

  MR. RANKIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

  CHAIRMAN: Mr. Nixon?

  MR. NIXON: What were the names of those people in the State Department who you consulted with prior to your journey to China?

  WITNESS: May I remind the committee that those with whom I dealt were American public servants acting in good faith…

  MR. NIXON: The committee is not interested in their records. Just their names.

  The transcript goes on and on, eighty pages of it altogether. Mr. Holmes had, it appeared, stabbed the generalissimo in the back and lost China to the Reds. He was accused of being soft on communism, just like that parlor-pink Henry Wallace, who he supported for the presidency. John Rankin of Mississippi-probably the weirdest voice on the committee accused Mr. Holmes of being part of the Jewish-Red conspiracy that had crucified Our Savior. Richard Nixon of California kept asking after names-he wanted to know the people Mr. Holmes consulted with in the State Department so that he could do to them what he'd already done to Alger Hiss. Mr. Holmes didn't give any names and pleaded the First Amendment. That's when the committee really rose to its feet in righteous indignation: they mauled him for hours, and the next day they sent down an indictment for contempt of Congress. Mr. Holmes was on his way to the penitentiary.

  He was going to prison, and he hadn't committed a single crime.

  "Jesus Christ. I've got to talk to Earl and David."

  "I've already advised you against that, Mr. Braun."

  "The hell with that. We've got to make plans."

  "Listen to him, honey."

  "The hell with that." The sound of a bottle clinking against a glass. "There's got to be a way out of this."

  When I got to Mr. Holmes's suite, he'd been given a sedative and put to bed. Earl told me that Blythe and Tachyon had gotten their subpoenas and would arrive the next day. We couldn't understand why. Blythe never had any part in the political decisions, and Tachyon hadn't had anything to do with China or American politics at all.

  David was called the next morning. He was grinning as he went in. He was going to get even for all of us.

  MR. RANKIN: I would like to assure the Jewish gentleman from New York that he will encounter no bias on account of his race. Any man who believes in the fundamental principles of Christianity and lives up to them, whether he is Catholic or Protestant, has my respect and confidence.

  WITNESS: May I say to the committee that I object to the characterization of "Jewish gentleman."

  MR. RANKIN: Do you object to being called a Jew or being called a gentleman? What are you kicking about?

  After that rocky start, David's pheromones began to infiltrate the room, and though he didn't quite have the committee dancing in a circle and singing "Hava Nagila," he did have them genially agreeing to cancel the subpoenas, call off the hearings, draft a resolution praising the Aces as patriots, send a letter to Mr. Holmes apologizing for their conduct, revoke the contempt of Congress citations for the Hollywood Ten, and in general make fools out of themselves for several hours, right in front of the newsreel cameras. John Rankin called David "America's little Hebe friend," high praise from him. David waltzed out, we saw that ear-to-ear grin, and we pounded him on the back and headed back to the Statler for a celebration.

  We had opened the third bottle of champagne when the hotel dick opened the door and congressional aides delivered a new round of subpoenas. We turned on the radio and heard Chairman John Wood give a live address about how David had used mind control of the type practiced in the Pavlov Institute in Communist Russia; and that this deadly form of attack would be investigated in full.

  I sat down on the bed and stared at the bubbles rising in my champagne glass.

  The Fear had come again.

  Blythe went in the next morning. Her hands were trembling. David was turned away by hall guards wearing gas masks.

  There were trucks with chemical-warfare symbols out front. I found out later that if we tried to fight our way out, they were going to use phosgene on us.

  They were constructing a glass booth in the hearing room. David would testify in isolation, through a microphone. The control of the mike was in John Wood's hands.

  Apparently HUAC were as shaken as we, because their questioning was a little disjointed. They asked her about China, and since she'd gone in a scientific capacity she didn't have any answers for them about the political decisions. Then they asked her about the nature of her power, how exactly she absorbed minds and what she did with them. It was all fairly polite. Henry van Renssaeler was still a congressman, after all, and professional courtesy dictated they not suggest his wife ran his mind for him.

  They sent Blythe out and called in Tachyon. He was dressed in a peach-colored coat and Hessian boots with tassels. He'd been ignoring his attorney's advice all along-he went in with the attitude of an aristocrat whose reluctant duty was to correct the misapprehensions of the mob.

  He outsmarted himself completely, and the committee ripped him to shreds. They nailed him for being an illegal alien, then stomped over him for being responsible for releasing the wild card virus, and to top it all of they demanded the names of the aces he'd treated, just in case some of them happened to be evil infiltrators influencing the minds of America at the behest of Uncle Joe Stalin. Tachyon refused.

  They deported him.

  Harstein went in the next day, accompanied by a file of Marines dressed for chemical warfare. Once they had him in the glass booth they tore into him just as they had Mr. Holmes.

  John Wood held the button on the mike and would never let him talk, not even to answer when Rankin called him a slimy kike, right there in public. When he finally got his chance to speak, David denounced the committee as a bunch of Nazis. That sounded to Mr. Wood like contempt of Congress.

  By the end of the hearing, David was going to prison, too. Congress adjourned for the weekend. Earl and I were going before the committee on Monday next.

  We sat in Mr. Holmes's suite Friday night and listened to the radio, and it was all bad. The American Legion was organizing demonstrations in support of the committee all around the country. There were rounds of subpoenas going out to people over the country who were known to have ace abilities-no deformed jokers got called, because they'd look bad on camera. My agent had left a message telling me that Chrysler wanted their car back, and that the Chesterfield people had called and were worried.

  I drank a bottle of scotch. Blythe and Tachyon were in hiding somewhere. David and Mr. Holmes were zombies, sitting in the corner, their eyes sunken, turned inward to their own personal agony. None of us had anything to say, except Earl. "I'll take the First Amendment, and damn them all," he said. "If they put me i
n prison, I'll fly to Switzerland."

  I gazed into my drink. "I can't fly, Earl," I said. "Sure you can, farm boy," he said. "You told me yourself." "I can't fly, dammit! Leave me alone."

  I couldn't stand it anymore, and took another bottle with me and went to bed. Kim wanted to talk and I just turned my back and pretended to be asleep.

  "Yes, Mr. Mayer."

  "Jack? This is terrible, Jack, just terrible."

  "Yes, it is. These bastards, Mr. Mayer. They're going to wreck us."

  "Just do what the lawyer says, Jack. You'll be fine. Do the brave thing."

  "Brave?" Laughter. "Brave?"

  "It's the right thing, Jack. You're a hero. They can't touch you. Just tell them what you know, and America will love you for it."

  "You want me to be a rat."

  "Jack, Jack. Don't use those kind of words. It's a patriotic thing I want you to do. The right thing. I want you to be a hero. And I want you to know there's always a place at Metro for a hero."

  "How many people are gonna buy tickets to see a rat, Mr. Mayer? How many?"

  "Give the phone to the lawyer, Jack. I want to talk to him. You be a good boy and do what he says."

  "The hell I will. "

  "Jack. What can I do with you? Let me talk to the lawyer."

  Earl was floating outside my window. Raindrops sparkled on the goggles perched atop his flying helmet. Kim glared at him and left the room. I got out of bed and went to the window and opened it. He flew in, dropped his boots onto the carpet, and lit a smoke.

  "You don't look so good, Jack."

  "I have a hangover, Earl."

  He pulled a folded Washington Star out of his pocket. "I have something here that'll sober you up. Have you seen the paper?"

  "No. I haven't seen a damn thing."

  He opened it. The headline read: STALIN ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR

  ACES.

  I sat on the bed and reached for the bottle. "Jesus." Earl threw the paper down. "He wants us to go down. We kept him out of Berlin, for god's sake. He has no reason to love us. He's persecuting his own wild card talents over there."