Fool’s Run

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “What did I do?” Sidney demanded. “What did I do? You were reading my mind.”

  The Magician looked surprised. “It’s your body language. Every time you get a terrible hand you run your fingers down your nose and sip beer. When you get a good hand, you don’t move and I can feel you concentrate. It distracts me so much I’m having a hard time taking your money.”

  Sidney was silent. He spread out his cards with a sigh, and the Magician looked at them and laughed.

  “So,” Sidney said good-humoredly, “even your merciless streak has its limits.”

  “Apparently so.” He gathered the cards. Then his head turned toward the stage lights behind him.

  Aaron said, “They’re still off.”

  “One more hand?”

  “I’ll try to concentrate less audibly.” Sidney turned to add something to Aaron; his wrist receiver beeped before he could speak. He propped his head on his fist, listening. Aaron scanned the crowd, found the problem in an entrance not far from them.

  A man dressed in the rotting fabrics of the immense, eerie wasteland of the Sector dump had wandered into the club. He looked bewildered by his surroundings. The silvery glow in his eyes told Aaron what drug he needed. Aaron signaled the street patrol; a moment later they saw grey uniforms at the edge of the light spilling out of the door as Sidney’s bouncers talked the wanderer back into the street. Sidney leaned back in his chair.

  “Thank you, Aaron.”

  “It’s odd he strayed so far…They think the world beyond the dump is dangerous.”

  The Magician, about to deal, looked up incredulously from the cards. “You have talked to them?”

  “I’ve been in there a couple of times…It’s a weird place. They have their trails, their territories, their hiding places from people like me, from the world. You walk their paths around mountains, through valleys of junk, all the debris of another century…I’ve seen derelict planes there, even old cruise ships stranded on their sides. You rarely see anyone; you see a movement, a shadow, maybe a kid who hasn’t learned to hide fast enough. It’s always silent, dead silent, and you know you’re watched…”

  “How did you get someone to talk to you?”

  “Not everyone is afraid. Some are just eccentric old-timers who live in the dump because it’s more peaceful than the city. They don’t mind hearing news about the rest of the world.”

  “How,” Sidney asked simply, “did you find the courage to go in there?”

  “I was looking for someone.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “Her.” He resisted an impulse to shift under the Magician’s curious gaze. “No.”

  “The outcasts of this century in the graveyard of the last,” Sidney said thoughtfully. “I wonder what music they play…” He caught the Magician’s smile. “No, I’m serious. Imagine what instruments they might invent, what music would occur to them in such isolation…Speaking of isolation, that reminds me: How would you like a free trip to the Underworld?”

  The Magician’s smile vanished. All the expression in his face disappeared; he looked, Aaron thought, as if he had just become his own effigy. Then he was back among them, his voice dry, slightly shaken.

  “Is there a return ticket?”

  “Did I phrase it that badly?” Sidney wondered.

  “Well, no, but why do you want to send me to the Underworld? I thought you liked my music.”

  “I do. That’s the point. Some creative soul up there realized that the near-total silence on the Underworld might have a debilitating effect on prisoners who will serve their terms and be reabsorbed into Earth society. We have to live with them: that’s the thrust of their Rehab program. To some extent we can determine what it is we want to live with.” His fingers strayed through the deck of cards as if gathering information from them. “They’re up there in that twisted doughnut, spinning around a vacuum. On Earth a prisoner might hear wind. Rain. A cricket. Water flowing. A sound barrier broken. Air traffic. In Corcrow Prison they hear the sea and the factory generators. All the small sounds of the daily life of the society they’re excluded from and will go back to…to live within the continuity of Earth-time, with both feet somewhere near the ground…”

  The Magician made an acquiescent rumble. “I can’t argue with that,” he said mildly. “But why—”

  “Why you? The Rehab Director wants me to go up and listen to their silence. He also wants me to suggest an experimental music program, among other things. I thought of Nova immediately. You’re colorful, you’re too disciplined to get into trouble in the Underworld, and you know what I think of your music. It’s time you got some publicity. You’d do one concert in the Underworld, and if your band agrees, I’ll hand the matter over to the Suncoast Agency and they’ll arrange an off-world tour for you.”

  The Magician’s face was flushed under the smudges of magenta. Once again he was at loss for words. Aaron grinned.

  “You said you needed a change, Magic-Man.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “An off-world tour? With your backing? Sidney, that’s—that’s—”

  “There won’t be much time to prepare: less than a month. But you’ll have a captive audience up there, in more places than the Underworld.” He chuckled indulgently at his own joke. “Think about it. Talk to your band.”

  “They’ll go. I’ll have to get the Flying Wail into shape.”

  “The Agency could provide a smallcraft.”

  “No. I like using my own equipment. I haven’t taken the Flying Wail off-Earth in five years…Sidney, that’s—thank you.”

  “You’re getting too good for this place,” Sidney said, “and you’re welcome.” His big hands swept the clutter of cards back into order. “Now. One more hand. Something easy.”

  “Wild Star. It’s quick and easy. Seven-card draw, jokers wild, draw comes back up—How do you expect me to maintain a poker face with an offer like that?”

  “It’s my strategy,” Sidney said gravely. An inner clock geared to the restless, tidal movements of the night made Aaron shrug himself away from the wall. He lingered, though, to watch Sidney pick up his cards.

  In the next second he remembered to breathe. He willed his bones loose once more against the wall and sent thought-messages to Sidney: Don’t blink. Don’t let your voice change. Pretend it’s a handful of nothing…Sidney shoved a chip into the center of the table. The Magician added five more.

  Sidney matched it. The Magician raised his eyes. “So you do have something…or are you learning to bluff?”

  Someone was standing behind the Magician: a blur of red, a mask. Sidney drew a card for the Magician, faceup: the ace of spades. The Magician eyed it and added to the chips. Sidney matched his bet and upturned a final card.

  Aaron’s eyes were drawn then, almost against his will, by the face behind the Magician. Long, rose-red hair dotted with black heart-pins. An elegant face, painted gold. Wide, straight shoulders. Grey eyes met Aaron’s, unsmiling, opaque, secret. Then Sidney glanced up at her and she smiled.

  “The Queen of Hearts,” Sidney said surprisedly.

  The Magician murmured absently in agreement, and Aaron looked down at the card Sidney had drawn: her face again stylized, enigmatic. He resisted an impulse to tell Sidney to bet the entire Constellation Club.

  “The Ace,” the Magician said, “bets five.”

  “Six,” Sidney said wildly.

  “Call.”

  Sidney laid his cards down one by one. Ten, Jack, Queen, King, Ace of Hearts, and the two wild cards, the jokers, the jesters.

  “Fool’s Run.”

  The Magician whistled without sound. Then he leaned back in his chair and laughed, scattering a worthless collection of spades and diamonds. “Your game, Sidney. Rack in the chips.”

  Aaron lifted his eyes again, feeling oddly dislocated in time and space, as if something, somewhere in an alternate universe, had ended or were about to begin. But the Magician had slid the Queen of Hearts back into the deck
and she was gone.

  FOUR

  Sidney Halleck and Dr. Fiori arrived at the Underworld on the same morning. Chief Klyos, in a sour mood because his transfer request to Southcap Sector had been turned down without even a comment, had Sidney taken to the Hub quarters for visiting officials, where Jeri Halpren was waiting. Then he dealt with Dr. Fiori. The doctor had brought three assistants: two men and a very pretty, very bored young woman whose face changed only when she saw the small, spartan infirmary ward which Jase had allotted to them to live in. The Dream Machine was still drifting along the Underworld’s orbit, to be scooped up later by the dock arms. Meanwhile, Dr. Fiori said, after a brisk glance at the room where the equipment would be set up, he would like to meet the prisoner.

  Jase raised an eyebrow at the verb, but said only, “Come back to my office with me, Dr. Fiori. You’ll be logged in officially as a guest of the Hub, and then I’ll send for half a dozen security guards to escort you to the prisoner. Ms. Barton, Mr. Ames and Mr. Ng, if you’ll wait here a few minutes, someone will come to show you the cafeteria and the rec room, which will be about the only places not off limits to you without my express permission. Enjoy your stay.”

  Dr. Fiori was silent as they walked down the still, grey-carpeted, curving corridor toward the transport spoke. Jase set his palm into the ID slot beside the round door. It opened like the eye of a kaleidoscope to reveal the long transport tunnel, the magnetic track disappearing toward the Hub, and the niches along the walkway where the robot-guards, armed with laser-rifles, stood at intervals, motionless, blindly watching. They walked down the ramp to the first car. Dr. Fiori said mildly, “You seem a little hostile.”

  Jase swallowed several replies. “I’ll feel better when you start realizing where you are. The woman you want to meet is responsible for the deaths of over fifteen hundred people. I’m responsible for you. She’s dangerous and I don’t know how she’ll react to you. At the same time, I don’t want you to hurt her.”

  Dr. Fiori stared at him. The robot-guard, gold and metallic grey, began to blur along the walls as the car sped toward the Hub. “Why do you care?” he asked finally.

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, then, what—”

  “There’s something,” Jase said grumpily, “about all this that makes me very uneasy. She’s been down in the Dark Ring as quiet as a spider in space for seven years. Why did she suddenly attract your attention? It makes me uneasy because sometimes I have a hunch that things rarely happen by chance. They happen because events tug each other, because people’s loves and hates and desires are constantly overlapping, because unfinished business, no matter how forgotten it is, is always asking to be finished. She shouldn’t be down there. But, since we put her down there, we should have the sense to leave her alone.” He swung himself out as the car halted, and gave both his handprint and his name to the ID scanner. It acknowledged him with a series of quick, musical tones, and the Hub gate opened. He added, “At least, that’s what I think. You’re the doctor.”

  Dr. Fiori followed him into the Hub, past the long, curving, smoky wall at the heart of the Hub behind which the central computer silently monitored everything from the robot-guard to the plumbing. Jase’s office faced the main door to the computer room. He was used to the brilliant colored lights which substituted for a view above the main console, but Dr. Fiori gazed at them a moment before he answered.

  “You have ambiguous views about the prisoner.”

  Jase sighed. “I have ambiguous views about just about everything, Dr. Fiori. And you know what? I’m too old to care.” He gestured at the com. “Just give it your name and a vague idea of what you’re doing here. Your voice pattern is important. It’s for the Hub records, in the event you’re caught here during an emergency.” He glanced up to see Dr. Fiori smiling. “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing.” He brushed at his untidy hair. “I’m a little tired. I keep saying trite things, you keep giving me sensible answers. I think that if you’re concerned about the Dream Machine or me or the prisoner, you should come and watch me work.”

  Jase was silent, surprised. “Maybe I will,” he said, and was again surprised, this time at himself.

  Terra Viridian sat in a corner of her cell, one of a vast honeycomb of cells in the enormous walls of the Dark Ring. Dr. Fiori, surrounded by guards on the escalator to the top cells, saw the ring-wall with its individual, delicately glistening cell-shields, and was reminded bizarrely of insects with trembling, translucent wings about to swarm. Terra, on the other side of the shield, no longer even saw it; it was simply a backdrop for her visions.

  Blurred, thick, vertical lines behind a misty, flickering flow of light…The cell-shield vanished; the thick lines became human: guards carrying rifles. She saw them disinterestedly; they belonged to another vision, another dimension. Her mind made them insubstantial, strips of color that could be peeled away from the air and discarded.

  “Terra. Terra Viridian.”

  She heard her name as from another galaxy, across dust clouds and black, starless backwashes of space. In an unknown place something rested. She felt the vague confines of her body.

  She said tiredly, without blinking, “Yes.”

  “I am Dr. Arturo Fiori. I am going to try to help you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said indifferently. Her eyes, enormous, vision drugged, gazed at the cluster of faces. They all might have been speaking, or none of them; it was not important. Stars replaced their faces. The red sun.

  They came back, or else they had never gone. A food tray had appeared in front of her. Someone had eaten a little of the food. And then someone had rested, suspended in a timeless silence, within an amethyst mist.

  “Please come with me.”

  She expected another shower, or a period of pacing in a circle. But they led her into unfamiliar places that protruded insistently into her thoughts. Dr. Fiori was speaking to her. Force fields winked out at her approach, elevator doors opened. She went up or down or sideways through the Underworld, trying to ignore Dr. Fiori, who was talking about loaves of bread. Bread was not in the vision. Nor were yawning doors, so much light, so much movement any part of her other daily life. Terra’s life. Her breathing quickened; she could feel her heartbeat. She blinked rapidly, nervously, but the dark walls loomed; she could not find the vision.

  “A language without words,” Dr. Fiori said, and she said instantly, “Yes,” stopping so abruptly that a rifle prodded her back. “Yes.” Expression came into her eyes. She saw the doctor finally, a rumpled, dark-haired man shorter than she, and in the same moment she remembered that she herself existed within this silent, endlessly curved world. She had fingers, a mouth, a name. How had she gotten here?

  “The sky is red,” she said, remembering.

  “Warped,” a guard murmured. “Warped right out of the galaxy.”

  “Please,” Dr. Fiori said. The rifle tapped her shoulder.

  “Go.”

  She whirled suddenly, terrified by the long walk, the strange freedom. “Are you going to kill me?” The guards had melded into a circle around her, their rifles raised. Dr. Fiori pushed through them to stand in the circle with her. For a second he was terrified, but not of her; she saw that, she felt it, holding him in her cloudy gaze. His voice was gentle.

  “No one is going to hurt you. I want to try to understand you.”

  She held him motionless a moment longer. Then his face flattened, became a photograph, a cartoon. An oval. His mind held no understanding, only vaguenesses. She said wearily, “No.”

  “Trust me.”

  He took her arm. The human touch jerked her back to dangerous shores: loneliness, time passing toward a blank future, memories of other touches. She pulled away from him, panicked again, and began to walk mechanically. The long grey carpet turned into a twisted path through the stars, and then into the crystal sand. She turned away from the world into silence.

  Jase was watching her on one of the monitor screens in th
e computer room. Cameras followed her every movement from her cell to the Dark Ring infirmary. She looked alien, he thought. A head taller than Fiori; a spacer, he remembered, bald and thin as an insect, with huge, secret, insect eyes. He watched closely, tense. If anything happened to Fiori, and word got out that Terra Viridian was doing anything but sitting in the Dark Ring waiting to die, it was his ass in the Big Dipper, and he didn’t want a transfer that far. She had stopped once, turned, and had half a dozen rifles aimed at her so quickly he thought she was dead. She had moved fast, without warning. “Terra Viridian Killed On Rampage In Underworld.” But Dr. Fiori was fast too, breaking in among the guards, talking nonstop. Jase breathed when they moved again: the mad murderer, the babbling, surprisingly courageous doctor, the six guards trained to kill.

  His shift was nearly over; he was looking forward to supper and a beer with Sidney Halleck, one bright spot in the day. It had been lousy: Jeri Halpren annoying him before breakfast about some visiting nightclub band, the transfer refusal, Terra Viridian un-buried, like something in an old movie, wandering wraithlike and ominous around the Underworld, a patrol-cruiser malfunction near the moon during a speed-chase. There was another crater in the moon now. Messages had flashed back and forth for hours, from Artemis, from FWGBI: Have the bodies been found? Yes. No. There was nothing left to find. How did it happen? Whose fault? Who were they? Who is next of kin? Where—Meanwhile, the smallcraft that the cruiser had been pursuing ran out of fuel and was drifting somewhere beyond the backside of the moon, sending erratic and drunken messages for help.

  Nils should have caught this one, Jase thought. He’d have appreciated it.

  Terra was in the Infirmary Ward. Jase turned away from the screen, relinquishing his responsibility to will them all alive. He rubbed his eyes tiredly and was rewarded, when he dropped his hands, with a vision of Jeri Halpren entering his office.

  He made a noise and crossed the hall. Jeri was grinning. We should connect those teeth to a generator, Jase thought wearily. He sat down and let Jeri talk for a few moments, until a salient point struck him.