Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

by George R. R. Martin

  “Witchetty grub.” Warreen smiled. “It’s one of our national cuisines.” He thrust his hand forward like a mischievous little boy. “Does it turn your stomach, little missy?”

  “Goddamnit. No,” she said with a flash of anger. “Don’t call me that.” What are you doing? she said to herself as she reached for the creature. “Do I have to eat it live?”

  “No. It is not necessary.” He turned and cracked the creature against the desert oak. The witchetty grub convulsed once and ceased struggling.

  Forcing herself just to do it and not think about the act, she took the witchetty, popped it into her mouth, and started chewing. God, she thought, why do I do these things?

  “How do you find it?” said Warreen with a solemn face.

  “Well,” said Cordelia, swallowing, “it doesn’t taste like chicken.”

  The stars came out, spangling a belt across the entire sky. Cordelia lay with fingers plaited behind her head. She realized she had lived in Manhattan for close to a year and never looked for the stars at all.

  “Nurunderi is up there,” said Warreen, pointing at the sky, “along with his two young wives, placed there by Nepelle, the ruler of the heavens, after the women ate the forbidden food.”

  “Apples?” said Cordelia.

  “Fish. Tukkeri—a delicacy given only to the men.” His hand moved, the fingers pointing again. “There, farther on—you can make out the Seven Sisters. And there is Karambal, their pursuer. You call him Aldebaran.”

  Cordelia said, “I have a lot of questions.”

  Warreen paused. “Not about the stars.”

  “Not about the stars.”

  “What, then?”

  “All of this.” She sat up and spread her arms to the night. “How am I here?”

  “I brought you.”

  “I know. But how?”

  Warreen hesitated for a long time. Then he said, “I am of Aranda blood, but was not raised within the tribe. Do you know of the urban aborigines?”

  “Like in The Last Wave,” Cordelia said. “I saw The Fringe Dwellers too. There aren’t really tribal aborigines in the cities, right? Just sort of like individuals?”

  Warreen laughed. “You compare almost everything to the cinema. That is likening everything to the shadow world. Do you know anything of reality?”

  “I think so.” In this place she wasn’t so sure, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

  “My parents sought work in Melbourne,” Warreen said. “I was born in the outback, but cannot recall any of that. I was a boy in the city.” He laughed bitterly. “My walkabout seemed destined to lead me only among drunken diggers chundering in the gutter.”

  Cordelia, listening raptly, said nothing.

  “When I was an infant, I nearly died of a fever. Nothing the wirinun—the medicine man—could do helped. My parents, despairing, were ready to take me to the white doctor. Then the fever broke. The wirinun shook his medicine stick over me, looked into my eyes, and told my parents I would live and do great things.” Warreen paused again. “The other children in the town had taken ill with the same sort of fever. All of them died. My parents told me their bodies shriveled or twisted or turned into unspeakable things. But they all died. Only I survived. The other parents hated me and hated my parents for bearing me. So we left.” He fell silent.

  It dawned in Cordelia’s mind like a star, rising. “The wild card virus.”

  “I know of it,” said Warreen. “I think you are right. My childhood was as normal as my parents could make it until I grew the hair of an adult. Then . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Yes?” Cordelia said eagerly.

  “As a man, I found I could enter the Dreamtime at will. I could explore the land of my ancestors. I could even take others with me.”

  “Then this truly is the Dreamtime. It isn’t some kind of shared illusion.”

  He turned on his side and looked at her. Warreen’s eyes were only about eighteen inches from hers. His gaze was something she could feel in the pit of her stomach. “There is nothing more real.”

  “The thing that happened to me on the airplane. The Eer-moonans?”

  “There are others from the shadow world who can enter the Dreamtime. One is Murga-muggai, whose totem is the trap-door spider. But there is something . . . wrong with her. You would call her psychotic. To me she is an Evil One, even though she claims kinship with the People.”

  “Why did she kill Carlucci? Why try to kill me?”

  “Murga-muggai hates European holy men, especially the Amer­ican who comes from the sky. His name is Leo Barnett.”

  “Fire-breather,” said Cordelia. “He is a TV preacher.”

  “He would save our souls. In doing so he will destroy us all, as kin and as individuals. No more tribes.”

  “Barnett . . .” Cordelia breathed. “Marty wasn’t one of his peo­ple.”

  “Europeans look much like one another. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t work for the man from the sky.” Warreen regarded her sharply. “Aren’t you here for the same purpose?”

  Cordelia ignored that. “But how did I survive the Eer­-moonans?”

  “I believe Murga-muggai underestimated your own power.” He hesitated. “And possibly was it your time of the moon? Most mon­sters will not touch a woman who bleeds.”

  Cordelia nodded. She began to be very sorry her period had ended in Auckland. “I guess I’ll have to depend on the H and K.” After a time she said, “Warreen, how old are you?”

  “Nineteen.” He hesitated. “And you?”

  “Going on eighteen.” They both were quiet. A very mature nineteen, Cordelia thought. He wasn’t like any of the boys she remembered at home in Louisiana, or in Manhattan either.

  Cordelia felt a chill plummeting both in the desert air and inside her mind. She knew the coldness growing within her was because she now had time to think about her situation. Not just thousands of miles from home and among strangers, but also not even in her own world.

  “Warreen, do you have a girlfriend?”

  “I am alone here.”

  “No, you’re not.” Her voice didn’t squeak. Thank God. “Will you hold me?”

  Time stretched out. Then Warreen moved close and clumsily put his arms around her. She accidentally elbowed him in the eye before they both were comfortable. Cordelia greedily absorbed the warmth of his body, her face tucked against his. Her fingers wound through the surprising softness of his hair.

  They kissed. Cordelia knew her parents would kill her if they knew what she was doing with this black man. First, of course, they would have lynched Warreen. She surprised herself. It was no differ­ent touching him than it had been touching anyone else she’d liked. There hadn’t been many. Warreen felt much better than any of them.

  She kissed him many times more. He did the same to her. The night chill deepened and their breathing pulsed faster.

  “Warreen . . .” she finally said, gasping. “Do you want to make love?”

  He seemed to go away from her, even though he was still there in her arms. “I shouldn’t—”

  She guessed at something. “Uh, are you a virgin?”

  “Yes. And you?”

  “I’m from Louisiana.” She covered his mouth with hers.

  “Warreen is only my boy’s name. My true name is Wyungare.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He who returns to the stars.”

  The moment came when she raised herself to take him and felt Wyungare driving deep within her. Much later she realized she hadn’t thought of her mama and what her family would think. Not even once.

  The giant first appeared as the smallest nub on the horizon.

  “That’s where we’re going?” said Cordelia. “Uluru?”

  “The place of greatest magic.”

  The morning sun rose high as they walked. The heat was no less pressing than it had been the previous day. Cordelia tried to ignore her thirst. Her legs ached, but it was not from trudging. She welcomed t
he feeling.

  Various creatures of the outback sunned themselves by the path and inspected the humans as they passed.

  An emu.

  A frilled lizard.

  A tortoise.

  A black snake.

  A wombat.

  Wyungare acknowledged the presence of each with a courteous greeting. “Cousin Dinewan” to the emu; “Mungoongarlie” to the lizard; “Good morning, Wayambeh” to the tortoise, and so on.

  A bat circled them three times, squeaked a greeting, and flew off. Wyungare waved politely. “Soar in safety, brother Narahdarn.”

  His greeting to the wombat was particularly effusive. “He was my boy-totem,” he explained to Cordelia. “Warreen.”

  They encountered a crocodile sunning itself beside their trail.

  “He is your cousin as well,” said Wyungare. He told her what to say.

  “Good morning, cousin Kurria,” said Cordelia. The reptile stared back at her, moving not an inch in the baking heat. Then it opened its jaws and hissed. Rows of white teeth flashed in the sun.

  “A fortunate sign,” said Wyungare. “The Kurria is your guardian.”

  As Uluru grew in the distance, fewer were the creatures that came to the path to look upon the humans.

  Cordelia realized with a start that for an hour or more she had been dwelling within her own thoughts. She glanced aside at Wyungare. “How was it that you were in the alley at just the right time to help me?”

  “I was guided by Baiame, the Great Spirit.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “It was a sort of a corroboree that night, a get-together with a purpose.”

  “Like a rally?”

  He nodded. “My people don’t usually engage in such things. Sometimes we have to use European ways.”

  “What was it about?” Cordelia shaded her eyes and squinted into the distance. Uluru had grown to the size of a fist.

  Wyungare also narrowed his eyes at Uluru. Somehow he seemed to be gazing much farther. “We are going to drive the Europeans out of our lands. Especially we are not going to allow the men-who-preach to seize further footholds.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be very easy. Aren’t the Aussies pretty well entrenched?”

  Wyungare shrugged. “Have you no faith, little missy? Just because we are outnumbered forty or fifty to one, own no tanks or planes, and know that few care about our cause? Just because we are our own worst enemies when it comes to organizing ourselves?” His voice sounded angry. “Our way of life has stretched unbroken for sixty thousand years. How long has your culture existed?”

  Cordelia started to say something placating.

  The young man rushed on. “We find it hard to organize effectively in the manner of the Maori in New Zealand. They are great clans. We are small tribes.” He smiled humorlessly. “You might say the Maori resemble your aces. We are like the jokers.”

  “The jokers can organize. There are people of conscience who help them.”

  “We will not need help from Europeans. The winds are rising—all around the world, just as they are here in the outback. Look at the Indian homeland that is being carved with machetes and bay­onets from the American jungle. Consider Africa, Asia, every continent where revolution lives.” His voice lifted. “It’s time, Cordelia. Even the white Christ recognizes the turning of the great wheel that will groan and move again in little more than a decade. The fires already burn, even if your people do not yet feel the heat.”

  Do I know him? thought Cordelia. She knew she did not. She had suspected none of this. But within her heart she recognized the truth of what he said. And she did not fear him.

  “Murga-muggai and I are not the only children of the fever,” said Wyungare. “There are others. There will be many more, I fear. It will cause a difference here. We will make a difference.”

  Cordelia nodded slightly.

  “The whole world is aflame. All of us are burning. Do your Dr. Tachyon and Senator Hartmann and their entire party of touring Europeans know this?” His black eyes stared directly into hers. “Do they truly know what is happening outside their limited sight in America?”

  Cordelia said nothing. No, she thought. Probably not. “I expect they don’t.”

  “Then that is the message you must bear them,” said Wyungare.

  “I’ve seen pictures,” said Cordelia. “This is Ayers Rock.”

  “It is Uluru,” said Wyungare.

  They stared up at the gigantic reddish sandstone monolith. “It’s the biggest single rock in the world,” said Cordelia. “Thirteen hundred feet up to the top and several miles across.”

  “It is the place of magic.”

  “The markings on the side,” she said. “They look like the cross section of a brain.”

  “Only to you. To me they are the markings on the chest of a warrior.”

  Cordelia looked around. “There should be hundreds of tourists here.”

  “In the shadow world there are. Here they would be fodder for Murga-muggai.”

  Cordelia was incredulous. “She eats people?”

  “She eats anyone.”

  “God, I hate spiders.” She stopped looking up the cliff. Her neck was getting a crick. “We have to climb this?”

  “There is a slightly gentler trail.” He indicated they should walk farther along the base of Uluru.

  Cordelia found the sheer mass of the rock astonishing—and something more. She felt an awe that large stones did not ordinarily kindle. It’s gotta be magic, she thought.

  After a twenty-minute hike Wyungare said, “Here.” He reached down. There was another cache of weapons. He picked up a spear, a club—nullanulla, he called it—a flint knife, a boomerang.

  “Handy,” Cordelia said.

  “Magic.” With a leather strap Wyungare tied the weapons together. He shouldered the packet and pointed toward the summit of Uluru. “Next stop.”

  To Cordelia the proposed climb looked no easier than it had at the first site. “You’re sure?”

  He gestured at her handbag and the H and K. “You should leave those.”

  She shook her head, surveying first his weapons, then hers. “No way.”

  Cordelia lay flat on her belly, peering up the rocky slope. Then she looked down. I shouldn’t have done that, she thought. It might only have been a few hundred yards, but it was like leaning over an empty elevator shaft. She scrambled for a purchase. The H and K in her left hand didn’t help.

  “Just let it go,” said Wyungare, reaching back to secure her free hand.

  “We might need it.”

  “Its power will be slight against the Murga-muggai.”

  “I’ll risk it. When it comes to making magic, I need all the help I can get.” She was out of breath. “You’re sure this is the easiest ascent?”

  “It is the only one. In the shadow world there is a heavy chain fixed to the rock for the first third of this journey. It is an affront to Uluru. Tourists use it to pull themselves up.”

  “I’d settle for the affront,” said Cordelia. “How much farther?”

  “Maybe an hour, maybe less. It depends whether Murga-muggai decides to hurl boulders down upon us.”

  “Oh.” She considered that. “Think there’s a good chance?”

  “She knows we are coming. It depends on her mood.”

  “I hope she doesn’t have PMS.”

  “Monsters don’t bleed,” said Wyungare seriously.

  They reached the broad, irregular top of Uluru and sat on a flat stone to rest. “Where is she?” said Cordelia.

  “If we don’t find her, she’ll find us. Are you in a hurry?”

  “No.” Cordelia looked around apprehensively. “What about the Eer-moonans?”

  “You killed them all on the shadow plane. There is not an endless supply of such creatures.”

  Oh, God, thought Cordelia. I killed off an endangered species. She wanted to giggle.

  “Got your breath?”

  She groaned and got up
from the slab.

  Wyungare was already up, his face angled at the sky, gauging the temperature and the wind. It was a great deal cooler on top of the rock than it had been on the desert floor. “It is a good day to die,” he said.

  “You’ve seen too many movies too.”

  Wyungare grinned.

  They trudged along nearly the entire diameter of the top of Uluru before coming to a wide, flat area about a hundred yards across. A sandstone cliff fell away to the desert only a few yards beyond. “This looks promising,” said Wyungare. The surface of scoured sandstone was not completely bare. Football-size bits of rock were littered about like grains of sand. “We are very close.”

  The voice seemed to come from everywhere around them. The words grated like two chunks of sandstone rubbing together. “This is my home.”

  “It is not your home,” said Wyungare. “Uluru is home to us all.”

  “You have intruded . . .”

  Cordelia looked around apprehensively, seeing nothing other than rock and a few sparse bushes.

  “. . . and will die.”

  Across the rocky clearing, a sheet of sandstone about ten feet across flipped over, slamming into the surface of Uluru and shat­tering. Bits of stone sprayed across the area, and Cordelia reflexively stepped back. Wyungare did not move.

  Murga-muggai, the trap-door spider woman, heaved herself up out of her hole and scrabbled into the open air.

  For Cordelia it was like suddenly leaping into her worst nightmares. There were big spiders at home in the bayous, but nothing of this magnitude. Murga-muggai’s body was dark brown and shaggy, the size of a Volkswagen. The bulbous body balanced swaying on eight articulated legs. All her limbs were tufted with spiky brown hair.

  Glittering faceted eyes surveyed the human interlopers. A mouth opened wide, papillae moving gently, a clear, viscid liquid dripping down to the sandstone. Mandibles twitched apart.

  “Oh, my God,” Cordelia said, wanting to take another step backward. Many more steps. She wished to wake up from this dream.

  Murga-muggai moved toward them, legs shimmering as they seemed to slip momentarily in and out of phase with reality. To Cordelia it was like watching well-done stop-motion photography.