‘We’ve radioed ahead,’ Jillian said. ‘They want us to anchor offshore for quarantine. When they’re sure it’s safe, they’ll send doctors, maybe take us to London Hospital.’
Which was hours by train. Foxworthy felt an awful premonition in his stony heart, made worse by the fact that he had seen this story before: Three ships had gone down in Lübeck’s harbour, seven thousand lives lost.
All the ritual phrases had been said: errors were made, an unforeseeable tragedy, a sad, sad day, etc. Hands that were wrung in one instant had been washed the next.
It wouldn’t be an RAF bomber. Too blatant. Maybe a stray mine, something that could be denied. Or a torpedo from a captured U-boat. The Nazis had been trying to sink the Queens for years, but they were too fast. But anchored off Southampton for an indefinite time? The Queen Mary would be a very large sitting duck, and to abuse the bird metaphor further, it would kill two birds with one stone to sink the plague ship and blame the deed on Nazis who’d flown south to Argentina.
Churchill would have done it quickly. Attlee? It might take a few more days, but Foxworthy knew what foul deeds could be contemplated then ordered for sake of security and safety. He felt a stone-cold certainty now. ‘That will not be happening,’ he decreed. ‘We will go straight to London, closer to the hospital.’
‘Why?’ asked Jillian. ‘They were very clear.’
He told them, glad for the moment for his new whispery voice. They were appalled, but not disbelieving. They’d been through the war themselves.
‘Where do we go, sir?’ asked Gully.
‘The further in, the better. The Isle of Dogs if we can make it. We can be quarantined, but in London, they dare not sink us. They won’t risk plague victims fleeing into the city.’ He glanced to John. ‘Our King Neptune – can he talk?’
‘No,’ said Gully, ‘but Lieutenant Waters taught me semaphore.’
‘Good. Then let us break that record. To London.’
The Thames flooded its highest since 1928. Ships fled the Queen Mary, but those vessels too slow to avoid the onrushing ocean liner found the watery enormity of Lieutenant Edward Waters rising up, but with longer, wilder, literally flowing hair and whiskers, not King Neptune but Father Thames as depicted by Gustav Doré. The crowned titan pushed the ships out of the way with a far more defined set of translucent hands.
Around the bends they went, past Canvey Island and Cliffe Pools, past Gravesend and Grays, past Purfleet and the Dartford Marshes, past Erith, then around the bend to the Isle of Dogs, straight to the infamously noisy bascule bridge miraculously spared by the war. Father Thames reached into his river and pulled out a geyser shaped like a trident, sweeping cars off the bridge and down Manchester Road each way, like a croupier clearing chips off a gambling table.
The drawbridge began to rise, groaning mightily, but it soon became clear that the bridge’s aperture was far smaller than the Queen Mary’s beam. Her draught, however, was narrower. Father Thames dropped his trident back into his river where it dissolved into bubbles and put his watery arms under the Queen Mary and lifted, sloshing right, like a man attempting to manoeuvre an awkward parcel through a narrow gate. He himself stepped through the north end of the bridge, a giant man-shaped wave crashing over it in slow motion, then set the Queen Mary down on the other side.
The ship washed into the lock leading to the West India Docks, everyone aboard clutching the railings. Sparks flew from Foxworthy’s fingers as he gripped the rolled steel joist beside his head, then he ducked down to see out of the window. Lieutenant Waters stood, tottering, thigh-deep in the river, fluid leaking from his sides where the bridge had passed through him, not so much a wave passing over a rock as a hot knife cutting through gelatine. With a look of distress in his swirling blue eyes, he dissolved into water. Foxworthy braced himself as the wave slammed into them.
Sparks flew, people screamed. ‘Aiyeee!’ wailed Chandra from her wheelchair, Paddy behind her, bracing it. ‘O wise Varuna, Ruler of all the Waters, do not let your most blessed and faithful servant perish!’ She raised her elephantine stumps in praise. ‘I have failed in my duties to Ganesh and Kali, and for that I accept my rightful punishment, but heal him! Lend him your strength! His name is your name! His fame is your fame! May the Waters heal and be praised!’
Tears flowed down her cheeks, staining the elephant hide of her once-beautiful face, while Paddy laid a comforting still-human hand on her shoulder.
Jillian Fisher was also crying, but not so much as the Gully twins, bawling from all four heads, and Handsome Harry and the headless crewman whom Foxworthy had never learned the name of had anguished expressions on their handsome and horrible faces.
Foxworthy stood like a stone. This was not the first time he’d seen a brave man die, nor, he feared, would it be the last. But then the waters of the West India Docks’ outer lock began to boil and bubble like something out of Shakespeare’s plays.
‘Praise Varuna!’ Chandra cried, waving her stumps to the Thames. ‘Praise the blessed Waters!’
A wave rose up, frozen like the tip of an iceberg, then two more on each side and two again, the tines of Father Thames’s crown as Lieutenant Waters rose up even larger than all his previous manifestations, a watery titan swelling with the inrushing tide into an aqueous colossus.
He lifted the Queen Mary, like a child picking up a large toy boat, and stepped over the lock to the main pool of the West India Docks, waded a few paces as he drew in more water, growing even larger, then stepped over the Marsh Wall and the sluice gate shattered in the Blitz, stepping into the upper elbow of the Millwall Outer Dock. As if he were picking his way through tidepools, he manoeuvred carefully to the larger lower elbow, now half-drained, and sat down in the rectangular pool as if it were a royal bath, holding the Queen Mary steady as if it were his favourite bath-toy. He glanced over his shoulder to the west, to where the old channel to the Thames had been filled in twenty years ago, the ground now pocked with bomb craters. He gave a jerk of his head and the waters of the Thames flooded over the lip, refilling the pool around them. Lieutenant Waters leaned back, the cataract of water erasing the war’s scars, his whiskers flowing with the incoming tide. His left hand pushed the Queen Mary drifting gently towards the South Dock. Then he waved and slid into the pool, disappearing into the water he was.
A great cheer came from the port bow. Foxworthy followed as everyone rushed there, seeing a crowd of dockers, waving and tossing their hats in the air, then one of them taking to the air himself, screaming as he drifted away on a light southerly breeze like a child’s lost balloon. Another screamed, sinking into the dock as if the wood were quicksand, then a third fell forward, his head breaking off, bowling across the planks as it changed into a coconut and dropped into the water, more coconuts rolling out of his clothes.
The remaining dockers ran away, most still on two legs.
Foxworthy dozed unpleasantly, but that was nothing compared to the past week: the Queen Mary had docked, the crew lifted down by Lookout to secure her anchor chains, but they had remained for quarantine, especially once Jillian had restored her radio repairs and given the authorities a load of codswallop about fears of a hull breach which is why they had come to London rather than anchoring off Southampton.
That a thirteen-year-old girl raised by theatricals could lie like an army requisitions officer should not have come as a surprise.
Foxworthy affirmed Jillian’s false story, then left it to her and Paddy, equally skilled in confabulation, since the radio room was cramped for his new stature and his whispery voice made him hard to understand. He’d then gone outside to smoke, one of the few things that still gave him pleasure or, it seemed, nourishment.
Over that week, he’d sneaked a few nips of Scotch and swallowed a shot glass, but even once he’d succumbed to his monstrous appetites for alcohol and glassware, it was like trying to survive on sugar water and crisps. The contents of the on-board tobacconist only sustained him by chain-smoking.
Other virus victims were starving as well. Lady Arkwright could pretend her tastes had not changed while letting her lei of ravenous ermines gorge themselves on steak tartare, but others were not so fortunate. Foxworthy saw a woman with flowers rooted in her hair swear she would die if she could not go to Kew Gardens. They had prevented her, then watched as she fainted, withering like a cut tulip in the sun.
More victims joined them – dockers they’d infected and soldiers who’d strayed too close to the quarantined Isle of Dogs. Others came from across the city, sent with food, medicine, and promises that doctors would come once they knew how to sanitize the alien spores.
Foxworthy had retired early, still hungry, but mainly cold. He had drifted into a dreamless sleep, but he was awake now.
He heard voices somewhere, one of them a woman’s, familiar. Alice? No, not Alice. He tried to open his eyes, but could only force them open the barest crack, seeing light and then a skeleton. ‘What fresh Hell can this be?’ he tried to say, but couldn’t. He realized his jaw was numb, his arms as well, all of him save the tips of his ears and his eyes, numb as when he was a lad and nearly froze in the blizzard of ’33, the winter his father had died.
Foxworthy then realized that while he couldn’t feel his feet he was standing up, as was the skeleton opposite him. A skeleton only a couple of inches shorter. At first he took it for another victim of the virus, until he saw a sign in eighteenth-century lettering:
Charles Byrne 7′7″
‘The Irish Giant’
Acquired 1783
Behind the giant’s skull was a railing displaying a collection of horns and antlers, and beyond that was the walkway of a gallery lined with bookshelves containing volumes going back centuries.
Foxworthy shifted his gaze to the left, seeing the head of some long-necked dinosaur, then glanced right, at a Doric column on top of which sat the silvered form of Francis Fisher the younger, still in his army uniform, forever frozen with his hand outstretched. He looked more like a beatific icon of St Simeon Stylites, reaching out in benediction, than a young Tommy who’d been unfortunate enough to touch a silver tray just after he’d inhaled an alien virus.
Beyond Francis stood another column topped by a pyramid of coconuts and a small potted palm and beyond that hung a giant speckled egg sitting in a chandelier ring like an enormous egg-cup, suspended like the roc egg in the palace dome in Aladdin. It shone, a dozen lamps trained on it, not just illumination but incubators.
It was the heat from the lamps that had woken him, Foxworthy realized, the warm air circulating in the upper level of the museum, liquefying the bitumen that served as his blood, but only in the top of his head. He was like a stove with the ashes banked, perhaps a few smouldering embers left within him, but not enough fuel for a fire. Pipe smoke and Scotch were not enough to sustain him.
He also realized where he was: the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, the biggest collection of freaks and oddities in London, at least dead ones.
‘I’m not dead!’ he tried to yell, but nothing came out. ‘I’m still alive!’ Again, no words came out of his mouth, not even the faint crackling sound his voice had become, the whisper of flames in a furnace. ‘Please, somebody, hear me!’
Somebody did. The familiar voice sounded close, somewhere beneath the plinth he must be standing on … and it sounded not like just any woman’s voice, but his mother’s. ‘Lord Webb-Johnson, I don’t care if your man from Pompeii was shattered during the Blitz,’ Foxworthy heard his mother say, ‘you’re not exhibiting my Kenneth as a statue – and naked no less!’
‘Mother, I’m here!’ he tried to call, but again, no words emerged.
‘Please, Mrs Foxworthy, think of it this way,’ said a cultured man’s voice. ‘We are a research institution, yes, but we also subsist on donations from the public, including medical oddities. Your Kenneth is gone, but the wild card virus has left behind a very grand statue. Consider it a monument to him. It’s what he would have wanted.’
‘I’m alive and I don’t want it, you bloody toff!’ Foxworthy screamed in his head.
‘I’m a better judge of what my son would want than you,’ his mother said.
‘Your son wanted to save lives,’ the lord pleaded, ‘and so do we!’
‘How?’ his mother asked. ‘You declared him dead!’
‘By every objective medical standard, yes. He has no heartbeat, no pulse, no brain activity – but this wild card virus is entirely new territory!’
‘I live in the old territory. The real world, not some castle in the air! I trust you will see things my way and release my Kenneth’s body to me so I may take him back to Aldworth to be buried beside his father.’
‘No, mother! No!’ Foxworthy tried to yell. ‘I’m alive! I’m still alive!’
‘As you wish, Mrs Foxworthy,’ said Lord Webb-Johnson, admitting defeat.
The last thing Foxworthy recalled was losing consciousness in the back of a cold lorry. He awoke to a drop of sweet fire on his tongue, trickling down the back of his throat. His vision swam, then resolved itself to show him a familiar freckled face. ‘Just a drop of poteen,’ said Paddy. ‘Brought it for the wake, but saved you a taste.’
‘More,’ Foxworthy croaked weakly. ‘More…’ But no sound came out of his lips.
Chandra joined Paddy, who protested, ‘Dear, you shouldn’t be out of your wheelchair.’
‘I can stand,’ Chandra told him. ‘It would pain me more to not say goodbye.’ Her baby elephant foot touched Foxworthy’s cheek. ‘Paddy is taking me back to Bengal, but I am the elephant’s daughter and I shall never forget you. Sleep well.’
His mother smiled down at him next. ‘My Kenneth,’ she said sadly. ‘My brave boy.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘When you returned from the war, I thought you were safe. A mother shouldn’t have to bury a son.’
‘I’m alive,’ he tried to say, but couldn’t. ‘I’m still here.’
She smiled then, as if she had heard, and his stone heart leapt, but then she said, ‘King George knighted you. Star of India and the George Cross too. I couldn’t be prouder. But I don’t know what I’ll do without you…’
‘I’m not gone!’ he tried to scream. ‘Get Paddy to give me more of that damned whisky!’
His mother left, and after the glittering of the sun, he saw Alice standing over him, a vision of loveliness and grief, a veil over her cornflower-blue eyes. She caught her breath, covering her barberry-bright lips with her glove. ‘Oh, Kenneth, what did those monsters do to you?’ She leaned down, whispering, ‘You never asked me, but I know you wanted to. I thought you were going to when you came back. But I wanted you to know, I would have said yes.’ She bit her lip, her lipstick smearing as her tears rolled down. ‘Even like this, I would have said yes.’ She kissed his cold stone lips. ‘I love you, Kenny. Goodbye.’
Alice stepped away, and after a last glimpse of sunlight, the coffin lid was shut. Not even the hellish light from his eyes illuminated the darkness. The fire in his heart was extinguished.
He felt the coffin lurch and then lower, heard the mumbled prayers which could only have ended in ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He heard the earth hitting the coffin lid.
The Wild Cards Universe
The Original Triad
Wild Cards
Aces High
Jokers Wild
The Puppetman Quartet
Aces Abroad
Down and Dirty
Ace in the Hole
Dead Man’s Hand
The Rox Triad
One-Eyed Jacks
Jokertown Shuffle
Dealer’s Choice
Solo Novels
Double Solitaire
Turn of the Cards
The Card Sharks Triad
Card Sharks
Marked Cards
Black Trump
Deuces Down
Death Draws Five
The Committee Triad
Inside Straight
&n
bsp; Busted Flush
Suicide Kings
The Fort Freak Triad
Fort Freak
Lowball
High Stakes
The America Triad
Mississippi Roll
Low Chicago
Texas Hold’em
About the Editor
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN is the author of the international bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is the basis for the award-winning HBO series Game of Thrones. Martin has won the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards for his numerous novels and short stories.
Visit him online at www.georgerrmartin.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @GRRMspeaking
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the editor, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Texas Hold’em
Bubbles and the Band Trip
TUESDAY
Bubbles and the Band Trip
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Bubbles and the Band Trip
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Bubbles and the Band Trip
Jade Blossom’s Brew
Bubbles and the Band Trip
WEDNESDAY
Bubbles and the Band Trip
Beats, Bugs, and Boys
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Beats, Bugs, and Boys
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Bubbles and the Band Trip
Beats, Bugs, and Boys
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Bubbles and the Band Trip
The Secret Life of Rubberband
Texas Hold'em Page 41