Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

by George R. R. Martin

  Carlucci extended his hand. “It’s Marty,” he said. “We got to spend a day and a night on a plane, we might as well be friendly about it, you know?”

  Cordelia sensed disapproval from the two older women. She took Carlucci’s hand. She was no jock, but she knew she had a firm grip. Cordelia felt that the man could have squeezed her fingers a lot harder had he wished to. Behind his smile, she sensed a glint of something feral. Not a man to cross.

  “Mr. Carlucci,” said Alcala, “represents a large investors’ group that has entered into partnership with us in the matter of acquiring a major share in global satellite entertainment. They are providing a portion of the capital with which we expect to set up the initial satellite net.”

  “A lot of bucks,” said Carlucci. “But we’ll all make it back and probably ten times as much in about five years. With our resources and your ability to”—he grinned—“acquire talent, I figure there’s no way we can lose. Everybody makes out.”

  “But we do wish to saturate the Australian market,” said Alcala, “and the ground station is already in place. All we need is a signed letter of intent to sell.”

  “I can be very persuasive.” Carlucci grinned again. To Cordelia the expression looked like a barracuda showing its teeth. Or maybe a wolf. Something predatory. And definitely persuasive.

  “You’d better go pack, dear,” said Alcala. “Try for one carry-on bag. Enough clothes to last a week. One sophisticated outfit; a more comfortable one for the outback. Anything else you need you can buy there. Alice Springs is isolated, but it is not an uncivilized place.”

  “It ain’t Brooklyn,” said Carlucci.

  “No,” said Alcala. “No, it isn’t.”

  “Be at Tomlin,” said Rettig, “by four.”

  Cordelia glanced from Carlucci to Rettig to Alcala. “I meant it before. Thank you. I’ll do a good job.”

  “I know you will, dear,” said Alcala, her dark eyes suddenly looking tired.

  “I hope so,” Rettig said.

  Cordelia knew she was dismissed. She turned and headed for the door.

  “See you on the plane,” said Carlucci. “First class all the way. Hope you don’t mind smoking.”

  She hesitated only momentarily, then said firmly, “I do.”

  For the first time Carlucci frowned. Polly Rettig grinned. Even Luz Alcala smiled.

  Cordelia lived in an apartment with a single roommate in a high rise on Maiden Lane near the Woolworth Building and Jetboy’s Tomb. Veronica wasn’t home, so Cordelia scrawled a brief note. It took her about ten minutes to pack what she thought she’d need on the trip. Then she called Uncle Jack and asked whether he could meet her before she hopped the Tomlin Express. He could. It was one of his days off.

  Jack Robicheaux was waiting for her in the diner when she entered from the avenue. No surprise. He knew the transit system below Manhattan better than anyone else.

  Every time Cordelia saw her uncle, she felt as if she were look­ing into a mirror. True, he was male, twenty-five years older, sixty pounds heavier. But the dark hair and eyes were the same. So were the cheekbones. The family resemblance was undeniable. And then there was the less tangible similarity. Both had despaired of any kind of normal growing up in Louisiana; each in young adulthood had fled Cajun country and run away to New York City.

  “Hey, Cordie.” Jack rose to his feet when he saw her, gave her a firm hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “I’m going to Australia, Uncle Jack.” She hadn’t meant to give away the surprise, but it burst out anyway.

  “No kidding.” Jack grinned. “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Yeah?” Jack sat down and leaned back in the green Naugahyde seat. “How come?”

  She told him about the meeting.

  Jack frowned at the mention of Carlucci. “You know what I think? Suzanne—Bagabond—has been hanging around Rosemary and the DA’s office, feeding me a little spare-time work. I don’t hear everything, but I catch enough. I think maybe we’re talking about Gambione cash here.”

  “GF&G wouldn’t go for that,” said Cordelia. “They’re legitimate, even if they do funnel money from the skin mags.”

  “Desperation breeds a special blindness. Especially if the money’s been laundered through Havana. I know Rosemary’s been trying to steer the Gambiones into legitimate enterprise. I guess satellite TV qualifies.”

  “That’s my job you’re talking about,” said Cordelia.

  “Better than hooking for the big F.”

  Cordelia knew her cheeks were coloring. Jack looked repentant. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be bitchy.”

  “Listen, this was really a big day for me. I just wanted to share it.”

  “I appreciate that.” Jack leaned across the Formica table. “I know you’re gonna do just fine down under. But if you need any help, if you need anything at all, just call.”

  “Halfway around the world?”

  He nodded. “Doesn’t matter how far. If I can’t be there in person, maybe I can suggest something. And if you really need a fourteen-foot ’gator in the flesh”—he grinned—“give me about eighteen hours. I know you can hold any fort that long.”

  She knew he meant it. That was why Jack was the only person in the Robicheaux clan who meant anything at all to her. “I’ll be okay. It’s going to be terrific.” She got up from the booth.

  “No coffee?”

  “No time.” She hefted the soft leather carry-on case. “I need the next train to Tomlin. Please tell C.C. good-bye for me. Bagabond and the cats too.”

  Jack nodded. “Still want the kitten?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “I’ll walk you to the station.” Jack got up and took her case. She resisted only a moment before smiling and allowing him.

  “There’s something I want you to remember,” said Jack.

  “Don’t talk to strangers? Take my pill? Eat green vegetables?”

  “Shut up,” he said fondly. “Your power and mine, they may be related, but they’re still different.”

  “I’m not as likely to get turned into a suitcase,” said Cordelia.

  He ignored her. “You’ve used the reptile level in your brain to control some pretty violent situations. You killed folks to protect yourself. Don’t forget you can use the power for life too.”

  Cordelia felt bewildered. “I don’t know how. It scares me. I just would rather ignore it.”

  “But you can’t. Remember what I’m saying.” Braving cabs, they crossed the avenue to the subway entrance.

  “Ever see much Nicolas Roeg?” Cordelia said.

  “Everything,” said Jack.

  “Maybe this will be my ‘walkabout.’”

  “Just make it back in one piece.”

  She smiled. “If I can deal with a bull alligator here, I figure I can handle a bunch of crocodiles in Australia just fine.”

  Jack smiled too. It was a warm, friendly expression. But it showed all his teeth. Jack was a shape-shifter and Cordelia wasn’t, but the family resemblance was unmistakable.

  When she found Marty Carlucci at the United terminal at Tomlin, Cordelia discovered the man was carrying an expensive alliga­tor overnight bag and a similarly appointed attaché case. She was less than pleased, but there wasn’t much she could say.

  The woman working the computer at the ticketing counter gave them seats one row apart in first class—smoking and nonsmoking. Cordelia suspected it wouldn’t make much of a difference to her lungs, but felt she had won a moral decision. Also she suspected she’d feel more comfortable not having to sit with her shoulder rubbing up against his.

  A good deal of the excitement of travel had worn off by the time the 747 set down at LAX. Cordelia spent much of the next two hours looking out at the early evening darkness and wonder­ing if she’d ever get to see the La Brea Tar Pits, Watts Towers, Disneyland, Giant Insect National Monument, the Universal tour. She bought some paperbacks in the gift shop. Finally Carlucci and sh
e were called for the Air New Zealand flight. As with the first leg, they had requested first-class seats on either side of the terminator dividing active smoke from passive.

  Carlucci snored much of the way to Honolulu. Cordelia couldn’t sleep at all. She divided her time between the new Jim Thompson mystery and staring out the window at the moonlit Pacific thirty-six thousand feet below.

  Both Carlucci and she converted some of their traveler’s checks into Australian dollars on the concourse in Honolulu. “The numbers are good.” Carlucci gestured at the conversion chart taped to the window of the change booth. “I checked the paper before we left the States.”

  “We’re still in the States.”

  He ignored her.

  Just to make conversation, she said, “You know a lot about finance?”

  Pride filled his voice. “Wharton School of Finance and Com­merce. Full ride. Family paid for it.”

  “You’ve got rich parents?”

  He ignored her.

  The Air New Zealand jumbo loaded and took off, and the stew­ards fed the passengers one last time in preparation for tucking into the long night to Auckland. Cordelia switched on her reading light when the cabin illumination dimmed. Finally she heard Car­lucci grumble from the row ahead, “Get some sleep, kiddo. Jet lag’s gonna be bad enough. You got a lotta Pacific to cross yet.”

  Cordelia realized the man had a valid point. She waited a few more minutes so that it would look more like it was her own idea, then switched off the light. She pulled the blanket tight around her and scrunched into the seat so she could look out the port. The travel excitement was almost all gone now. She realized she was indeed exhausted.

  She saw no clouds. Just the shining ocean. She found it aston­ishing that anything could be so apparently endless. So enigmatic. It occurred to her that the Pacific could swallow up a 747 without more than the tiniest ripple.

  Eer-moonans!

  The words meant nothing to her.

  Eer-moonans.

  The phrase was so soft it could have been a whisper in her mind.

  Cordelia’s eyes clicked open. Something was very wrong. The reassuring vibration of the jumbo’s engines was somehow distorted, blended with the sigh of a rising wind. She tried to throw the suddenly strangling blanket away and clawed her way up the back of the seat ahead, nails biting into the cool leather.

  When she looked down the other side, Cordelia sharply drew in her breath. She was staring into the wide, surprised, dead eyes of Marty Carlucci. His body still faced forward. But his head had been screwed around 180 degrees. Viscid blood slowly dripped from his ears, his mouth. It had pooled at the bottom of his eyes and was oozing down over his cheekbones.

  The sound of her scream closed in around Cordelia’s head. It was like crying out in a barrel. She finally struggled free of the blanket and stared unbelievingly down the aisle.

  She still stood in the Air New Zealand 747. And she stood in the desert. One was overlaid on the other. She moved her feet and felt the gritty texture of the sand, heard its rasp. The aisle was dotted with scrubby plants moving as the wind continued to rise.

  The jumbo’s cabin stretched into a distance her eye couldn’t quite follow, diminishing endlessly into perspective as it approached the tail section. Cordelia saw no one moving.

  “Uncle Jack!” she cried out. There was, of course, no answer.

  Then she heard the howling. It was a hollow ululation rising and falling, gaining in volume. Far down the cabin, in the tunnel that was also the desert, she saw the shapes leaping toward her. The creatures bounded like wolves, first in the aisle, then scram­bling across the tops of the seats.

  Cordelia smelled a rank, decaying odor. She scrambled into the aisle, recoiling until her spine was flush against the forward bulk-head.

  The creatures were indistinct in the half-light. She couldn’t even be sure of their numbers. They were like wolves, claws clicking and tearing on the seats, but their heads were all wrong. The snouts were blunted off, truncated. Ruffs of shining spines ringed their necks. Their eyes were flat black holes deeper than the surrounding night.

  Cordelia stared at the teeth. There were just too many long nee­dle fangs to fit comfortably into those mouths. Teeth that champed and clashed, throwing out a spray of dark saliva.

  The teeth reached for her.

  Move, goddamnit! The voice was in her head. It was her own voice. Move!

  —as teeth and claws sought her throat.

  Cordelia hurled herself to the side. The lead wolf-creature smashed into the steel bulkhead, howled in pain, staggered upright confusedly as the second leaping monster rammed into its ribs. Cordelia scrambled past the confusion of horrors into the narrow galleyway.

  Focus! Cordelia knew what she had to do. She wasn’t Chuck Nor­ris nor did she have and Uzi in her hand. In her instant respite as the wolf-creatures snarled and spat at one another she wished again that Jack were here. But he wasn’t. Concentrate she told herself.

  One of the blunted muzzles poked around the corner of the galley. Cordelia stared into the pair of deadly matte-black eyes. “Die, you son of a bitch,” she cried aloud. She sensed the power uncoil­ing from the reptile level of her brain, felt the force flow into the alien mind of the monster, striking directly for the brain stem. She shut off its heart and respiration. The creature struggled toward her, then collapsed forward on its clawed paws.

  The next monster appeared around the corner. How many of them were there? She tried to think. Six, eight, she wasn’t sure. Another blunt muzzle protruded. Another set of claws. More gleaming teeth. Die! She felt the power draining from her. This was no feeling she’d known before. It was like trying to jog in quicksand.

  The bodies of the wolf-creatures piled up. The surviving mon­sters scrambled over the barrier, lunging at her. The final one made it all the way into the galley.

  Cordelia tried to shut down its brain, felt the power waning as the creature launched itself down the heap of corpses. As the toothy jaws reached for her throat, she swung a double fist and tried to smash them aside. One of the spines from the thing’s ruff slid into the back of her left hand. Steaming spittle spattered her face.

  She felt the staccato rhythm of the wolf-creature’s breathing hesitate and cease as its body slumped onto her feet. But now she felt a chill spreading across her hand and up her arm. Cordelia grasped the spine with her right hand and wrenched it free. The shaft came loose and she hurled it from her, but the coldness didn’t abate.

  It’ll reach my heart, she thought, and that was the last thing that passed through her mind. Cordelia felt herself collapsing, falling across the crazy-quilt arrangement of monstrous bodies. The wind filled up her ears; the darkness took her eyes.

  “Hey! You okay, kid? Whattsa matter?” The accent was all New York. It was Marty Carlucci’s voice. Cordelia struggled to open her eyes. The man bent over her, breath minty with recent toothpaste. He grasped her shoulders and shook her slightly.

  “Eer-moonans,” Cordelia said weakly.

  “Huh?” Carlucci looked baffled.

  “You’re . . . dead.”

  “Damn straight,” he said. “I don’t know how many hours I slept, but I feel like shit. How about you?”

  Memories of the night slammed back. “What’s going on?” Cordelia said.

  “We’re landing. Plane’s about half an hour out of Auckland. You wanna use the can, get cleaned up and all, you better do it quick.” He took his fingers away from her shoulders. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” Cordelia sat up shakily. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with sodden cotton. “Everybody’s okay? The plane isn’t full of monsters?”

  Carlucci stared at her. “Just tourists. Hey, you have some bad dreams? Want some coffee?”

  “Coffee. Thanks.” She grabbed her bag and struggled past him into the aisle. “Right. Nightmares. Bad ones.”

  In the restroom she alternated splashing cold and hot water on her face. Brushing her teeth helped. She slugged do
wn three Midol and unsnarled her hair. Cordelia did her best with makeup. Finally she stared at herself in the mirror and shook her head. “Shit,” she told herself, “you look thirty.”

  Her left hand itched. She raised it in front of her face and stared at the inflamed puncture wound. Maybe she had caught her hand on something when she’d moved in her sleep, and that had trans­lated into the dream. Perhaps it was stigmata. Either story sounded equally implausible. Maybe this was some weird new menstrual side effect. Cordelia shook her head. Nothing made sense. Weak­ness flooded over her and she had to sit down on the lid of the toi­let. The inside of her skull felt scoured. Maybe she had spent much of the night battling monsters.

  Cordelia realized someone was knocking on the door of the restroom. Others wanted to get ready for New Zealand. So long as they weren’t wolf-creatures . . .

  The morning was sunny. The North Island of New Zealand was intensely green. The 747 touched down with scarcely a bump and then sat at the end of the runway for twenty minutes until the agriculture people climbed on board. Cordelia hadn’t expected that. She watched bemusedly as the smiling young men in their crisp uniforms walked down the aisles, an aerosol jet of pest-killer fogging from the can in each hand. Something about this reminded her perversely of what she’d read of the final moments of Jetboy.

  Carlucci must have been thinking something similar. Having promised not to smoke, he’d moved into the seat beside her. “Sure hope it’s pesticide,” he said. “Be a really nasty joke if it was the wild card virus.”

  After the passengers had murmured, griped, wheezed, and coughed, the jumbo taxied to the terminal and everyone debarked. The pilot told them they had two hours before the plane left on the thousand-mile leg to Sydney.

  “Just time to stretch our legs, buy some cards, make some phone calls,” said Carlucci. Cordelia welcomed the thought of getting some exercise.