Card Sharks

  Ackroyd had watched the whole thing - why should he start to listen to me now? He managed to pull himself off his knees despite the dry heaves and scurried up into the back seat. Following my example he jettisoned the ladder.

  I pressed my stump to the console. Any old where would do. "Ahh -" Nothing like the feel of fusion with a fine piece of machinery.

  "Poor girl," I said. "They've treated you badly. But you'll pull through for us, won't you?"

  I could feel Ackroyd's eyes boring through the headrest into my skull. "Don't we need flight suits?" he demanded.

  "I'll try not to do anything radical enough to black us out." I felt for the twin engines, reWed them, felt their power surge. It's why pilots are such an arrogant lot - there's nothing like the feeling of unbridled power a jet fighter imparts. And they only get it at one remove, poor sods. I got it all.

  A horrible light dawned on Ackroyd. "Do you know how to fly this thing?" he demanded.

  "No."

  He started to clamber out. "I just remembered," he said, "I have an appointment to get my nails done. Pulled out by the roots, that is."

  I dropped my canopy on him, trapping him. "Calm yourself, my boy," I said - I was starting to feel giddy now, I don't mind telling you. "This baby knows how to fly herself."

  Outside, our pursuers drew up alongside in their vehicles, apparently afraid to open fire on one of the Ayatollah's personal warplanes. What they did didn't matter. I showed them our tail, and flame, and we rose into the sky and freedom.

  ***

  The Shi'ites have a prophecy, that the Antichrist will appear in the desert of Khorasan, to lead an army of 144,000 Jews in battle against the faithful at Armageddon. Desert One lay smack in the middle of Khorasan.

  I wonder if Battle knew that all along. Probably not.

  Later they said it was Cy Vance who talked Carter into puppying, after the crash at Desert One. The loss of life shook him, and his bowels turned to water at the thought of what the world would say if he turned a Night Shadow's miniguns on a crowd of civilians in the streets of Tehran.

  Well, all that's true enough - at the crunch, Jimmy Earl didn't have the sand to carry through. But it wasn't just Vance working on him. It was Brzezinski. And Battle, back at Desert One, spinning long-distance tales of how the mission was a wash and it was time to cut his losses.

  I told them over and over at debriefing how I'd seen Casaday there, leading the mob. They said over and over that I was mistaken. That it wasn't Casaday, couldn't have been. Then they told me that he had been trying to pull the mob off our trail.

  Eventually I was told - officially - to drop the matter. I'm a good soldier, and even I have to sleep sometime. I dropped it - openly.

  You wonder how I got the idea there was some kind of high-level conspiracy against wild cards - what brought me clear around the world and back to Vietnam. Do you have an idea, now?

  - That's the story you wanted, but it's not all the story. Here's how our adventure differed from the bad fiction poor old Harvey thought couldn't hurt him: our escapade had consequences. It left marks on the souls of those who survived. It always does.

  Billy Ray survived, of course. He even kept the name I gave him. I'm flattered. We just shipped him back from here; he was a prisoner of war, of sorts. Working for that devil, our old friend Battle.

  Casaday was here too, but he got away. Which was good, because I would have killed him on sight, and Mark would disapprove of that. And I respect Meadows. It's not many hippie peacefreak wimps who conquer their own country from the communists.

  Lady Black - well, once she wasn't my subordinate any more I was free to follow certain leads she'd given me. She's a lovely child. We've continued to keep in touch. 1n more ways than one. I'll spare you the details, but I will say that metal isn't the only kind of substance my spirit will enter into - and some of the other ones conduct energy very slowly.

  As I told her, I do wonderful things with prosthetics.

  Ackroyd never crossed my path again. We're both happier that way. I guess he still blames guns for killing that kid. A real shame his moral courage doesn't match his physical. If he faced up to what he did - instead of blaming objects - I wager he'd sleep better.

  By the way: Harvey Melmoth. The Librarian. He died, you know. Exsanguination resulting from an insult to the arteria femoris, the report read.

  Bullshit. I told you, that bullet never hit his femoral artery. I've seen enough of those wounds to know. Jay Ackroyd was right all along, you see. They sent us to Tehran to die.

  It was a conspiracy. It's still going on; what you're investigating is part of it too. It was following up strands of that conspiracy that led me to Mark and back to Nam. It's big, and it means to finish the wild cards for good.

  One last thing, before you turn that tape recorder off: President Carter took personal responsibility of the failure of the rescue mission, and ordered the records sealed in an effort to protect aces from the storm of recrimination. That was big of him; too bad it didn't work. Aces were blamed anyway, even if the public didn't know which ones were involved.

  But he was wrong again. The responsibility was mine, and mine alone. I lost three good men and women - I don't count Darius, and I hope they pulled him apart much more slowly than they did Amy. The rest of my team was permanently scarred, one physically, all mentally.

  Their blood is on my hands. I grieve them every day. The responsibility is mine.

  So ends the narrative of J. Robert Belew, USSF, retired.

  The Ashes of Memory

  5

  "Hannah, don't sit down! Let's movel"

  "At least let me drink my coffee; traffic was hell coming from Washington. What's up, Arnold?"

  "The call just came in from NYPD. You know that creep Ramblur we talked to the other day - Flashfire? He blew himself up."

  "Jesus -"

  They arrived to chaos. Ramblur had lived in the basement of his apartment building. A hole had been blown in the corner of the foundation, and half the windows in the building were gone. Black streaks showed where fire had gushed from the apartment, but there looked to be little actual fire damage. Hannah and Simpson, both now in slicks and helmets, walked over the thick snarl of firehoses and into the water-dripping stairwell. Chief Reiger greeted them at the door.

  "Well, Ms. Davis! Arnold - how's those kids of yours? Came to see what's left of Flashfire? Come on in.... It ain't a pretty sight."

  The chief was right about that, Hannah decided immediately. Ramblur had evidently been at a workbench set along the wall. Most of the damage to the room seemed to be from the initial explosion - there'd been a small fire, but the force of the blast had snuffed out most of the flames. There were shards of glass everywhere and a few unbroken containers of variously colored powders and granules; Hannah opened the screw top lid to one of them and sniffed. She sifted a little of the powder inside onto her palm. "Calcium hypochlorite," she said. "This guy had a regular chemist's shop here. Better tell your people to be careful in here, Chief, and you'd better keep the tenants out. If he has lithium or potassium around, all you have to do is get them wet and we'll have a real beauty of an explosion and fire here again. Where is he, by the way?"

  Reiger snorted and pointed across the room. Hannah looked, then gasped involuntarily. Bamblur was unrecognizable. The entire front of the body was a charred mess. The right arm was missing; so was part of the torso on that side. The corpse was in two parts lying close together, severed just below the ribcage; bone poked whitely from the black and red tangle. He'd been flung across the room so viciously that the plasterboard above him was cracked and dented from where he'd hit. The entire mess still steamed. "Bet he didn't even have a chance to say 'Oops!'" Reiger said. Swallowing once, Hannah went over and looked more closely at the remains. She crouched down in front of Ramblur, studying the skeletal, charcoal-black face. The jaw hung open as if in eternal surprise.

  "You'd think a pyro with his background and this kind of stockpile woul
d have known What he was doing," she said.

  "Maybe he flunked chemistry 101," Reiger said. "Or maybe something slipped."

  "Maybe."

  Simpson had gone into the bedroom of the apartment. Now he called out. "Hey, Hannah, better take a look over here."

  "On my way." She rose, walked across the room, and then stopped at the door.

  Simpson was holding an iron bar in one hand, a steel rod exactly like those which had held the doors at the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker. At his feet were two canisters the size of small fire extinguishers. Both of them were a bright, telltale green. There were several gallon and a half drums near the bed. Hannah already knew what they would find in them: jet fuel.

  "Congratulations, Ms. Davis," Chief Reiger said, peering into the bedroom behind Hannah. "Looks like you caught your torch."

  ***

  The pool clerk congratulated her like everyone else in the department as he came into her cubicle. Hannah gave him the same tight-lipped smile she'd given the others. "Thanks, Ned. Listen, I have a meeting with Malcolm at three, and I need these tapes and transcripts copied before then. Think you can do it?"

  "Sure. Plenty of time. Bet you get a commendation."

  "Well see," Hannah said. "The earlier you can get that done ..."

  Ned had them back to her at two. Hannah put the copies in a box, sealed it, and walked it down to the mailing department. Then she went and finished typing her report for Malcolm.

  The director glanced through the report, riffling the pages without reading, then set it down in front of him. He folded his hands over it and looked up at her. He gave her his best imitation of a smile. "Very good work, Ms. Davis. I'll be drafting a letter for your personal file with my recommendation that you be considered for promotion."

  "Malcolm -" Hannah started, then exhaled. "I don't want to close this case. I want to keep working on it."

  "Whatever for?" Malcolm blinked. Hannah realized that it was the first time she'd ever seen him do that. "All the evidence is here, Ms. Davis. In fact, it's rare that we have such a clear-out case against a person."

  "That's exactly what bothers me, Malcolm. I ... I'm not saying that Ramblur didn't set the fire. He probably did. I already had the paperwork in motion to get a search warrant for his apartment. But it seems awfully convenient that he managed to blow himself to kingdom come just before we moved."

  "And just what angle do you wish to pursue in this?"

  Hannah hesitated. "I want to go to Saigon and see what I can find on Dr. Faneuil and his nurse. I have the Free Vietnam government's permission to go there, and they're willing to pay my way ..."

  Hannah stopped. Malcolm sat behind his desk like a blue-suited statue, his eyes cold. "Let me get this straight," he said, and there was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. "We have an air-tight case against the arsonist. We have found not only the history of arson with him and a prejudice against jokers, but also the very materials that were used in the fire: the steel bars, the oxygen canisters, and the jet fuel. Yet you want to pursue a far-fetched conspiracy theory, one that not only takes you out of the city, out of the state, but across the entire Pacific Ocean toa country that half the civilized world has yet to recognize as legal. No, Ms. Davis. Absolutely and emphatically, no. Please do yourself a very large favor and accept the rewards your hard work on this case will undoubtedly garner."

  "Malcolm, you have to trust me in this. After all, it's not costing us anything but my time. Not even the plane fare. All I'm asking for is another week or so. If I have to, let me take an unpaid leave. I just ... I just want to be sure."

  "Ms. Davis, which is more likely: that a deranged pyromaniac with a grudge against jokers would burn down the church, or that the fire was a deliberate part of some decades-old conspiracy?"

  "I know what it sounds like ..."

  "Do you? Do you really? Ms. Davis, I am aware that you have gone to the World Health Organization, that you contacted the UN, that you spoke with Free Vietnam's delegation in Washington. I'm telling you now - enough. You will drop this investigation."

  "Or?"

  His expression didn't change. "I should think that someone with your imagination would be able to figure that out," he said.

  Hannah stood. "I don't need to," she told him. "I quit."

  She threw her identification and pass down on his desk.

  ***

  David came in while she was packing. He stood in the doorway of their - his, she reminded herself - bedroom and watched her throwing clothes into her suitcases. "Malcolm Coan called me at the office," he said. "I thought I might find you here, but I really didn't think you'd be this crazy, Hannah. What is it with you? Can't you stand having success? You enjoy wrecking everything anyone's done for you?"

  Hannah didn't answer him. She continued to fold her blouses, to cram pantyhose into the corners of the suitcase. "So this is it?" David said. "You've walked out on your job, now you're walking out on me, too."

  "Yes," she said. "Very observant of you, David. Go to the head of your class."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To some friends."

  "I didn't think you had any friends here. I thought they were all my friends," David suddenly laughed, bitterly. "Oh, I get it. Joker friends. Twisted freak friends. Infected friends. Is he good in bed, Hannah? Did the wild card give him two dicks, or maybe a prehensile tongue?"

  Hannah slammed the suitcases shut, clicked the locks closed savagely. "You're sick, David. Listen to yourself." She swung the suitcases from the bed and started to push past him.

  He blocked the door with his hand. "Move, David," Hannah said. "Please. I don't hate you; this just isn't working out, and I need to do this. Don't destroy my good memories of you with something we'll both regret."

  David glared at her. Hannah thought that he might actually strike, but at last his hand dropped from the door jamb and she moved past him into the living room. He stayed where he was, staring at her as she moved to the door to the apartment and opened it.

  "The jokers aren't worth this," he called after her. "Nothing touched by that damn virus is worth it -"

  She shut the door. Quietly.

  And she wondered.

  ***

  "Father Squid? Quasiman?"

  Hannah knocked again on the door of the apartment a few blocks from the ruins of the church - the address Father Squid had given them when he left the hospital. She heard footsteps beyond the door. A chain rattled, and the door opened to reveal the priest standing there. Quasiman was standing in the middle of the shabby living room behind him, looking like a mishappen statue. Hannah backed up a step. "Ms. Davis?" He looked at the suitcases.

  "I ... I'm in the process of moving. I also need to talk with you. You're going to get a package in a day or two."

  "Why don't you come in, Ms. Davis?" Father Squid said.

  "Hannah," she replied. "Please. Father ... I think I've just done something every crazy and very stupid."

  "That hardly makes you unique," Father Squid said, and smiled under the forest of tentacles. He opened the door fully and stepped back. "Come on in. You'll be welcome, for as long as you need."

  ***

  Father Squid and Quasiman saw Hannah off at Tomlin International two days later. Ambassador Ngu hadn't seemed to care that Hannah was no longer official; the paperwork and tickets arrived at Father Squid's apartment on schedule from the Free 'Nam delegation. Hannah's passport was still valid from a trip to Paris the summer before, and Belew had promised that all the necessary entry papers would it be waiting at Saigon International.

  The flight was an interminable nineteen hours: New York to Dallas / Ft. Worth, Dallas to San Francisco, San Francisco to Honolulu, Honolulu to Tokyo, Tokyo to Saigon. Hannah arrived exhausted, desperately weary of planes and airline food, and bedraggled. The passengers on the flight in had been largely jokers of various descriptions, heading for this new Promised Land of joker freedom. Hannah, as a nat, had been the one out of place, and the joker
s had made that abundantly clear to her. She'd been glad to escape the stares, the whispered comments, and the rudeness.

  She told herself that she'd simply experienced what they had gone through every day. The rationalization didn't ease the hurt.

  The tropical heat and humidity hit Hannah almost immediately, sucking the air from her lungs and causing her cotton blouse and bra to stick to her skin. Palm trees swayed in the hot wind; in the distant haze, the airport buildings shimmered. Inside the air-conditioned but still sweltering terminal, Hannah queued with everyone else for customs. A man approached her as she stood there. He was white, and looked normal enough until she noticed the tiger-like tail protruding from the rear of his jeans and the incisors that showed as he smiled. "You Hannah Davis?"

  She nodded, unsure.

  "Name's Croyd Crenson. Mark Meadows sent me to meet you." He held out his hand and she saw that the tips of his fingers were thick and rounded. The tips of retractable claws gleamed. She took the proffered hand tentatively, and the man grinned. "They're great for peeling oranges," he said. "And other things, too."

  Hannah took her hand away quickly. Croyd continued to grin. His tail lashed and curled around her ankle. It tugged gently. "Come on," he said. "We'll get you past here and get your luggage."

  The tail tugged again, much higher up the leg this time, past the hem of her long skirt. "Aahh, pantyhose," he said as Hannah brushed the tail angrily away. "Nobody wears real stockings anymore." Croyd chuckled. "The tail's great for other things, too," he said. When she didn't answer, he shrugged. "Come on."

  He escorted her past the line, had a brief conversation in halting Vietnamese with the official at the gates, showed him a sheaf of official-looking papers which the man stamped dutifully, then they were waved on. The luggage turntables were close by, but as they approached, Hannah and Croyd both stopped.

  "Quasiman?" The hunchhaek turned. Hannah's suitcases sat alongside him. "Hey, Hannah," the hunchback said, smiling apologetically. "I remember you, but I've forgotten where I am. Awfully hot here, isn't it? I knew where I was, a second ago ..."