Card Sharks

  "Saigon," Hannah told him. "In what used to be Vietnam."

  "Oh." Quasiman accepted that placidly. She might as well have said Manhattan.

  "How?" Hannah asked, "do you keep doing that? - showing up where I am."

  Quasiman shrugged, but one shoulder refused to lift, suddenly hanging limp as if all the muscles had been cut. "I just think about a place, and I'm there. Didn't you know that? I thought I had told you, but I get confused with what I've done and what I'm going to do...."

  Hannah gaped, wondering how in the world she could have been so stupid. All those times he'd snuck past or just showed up ... "Great. You teleport. What else haven't you told me?"

  Quasiman grinned.

  At least Croyd seemed to accept Quasiman's presence with equanimity. "Quas with you?"

  "He seems to be. You know him?"

  "Yeah. I know him and the priest both. He don't exactly need a passport to get by customs. Seems more coherent than normal, for him; you must be a good influence. Come on - I got a car waiting in front." At the car - a ten-year-old Renault whose trunk barely held Hannah's suitcases - Quasiman climbed in back. Croyd opened the passenger side front door for Hannah. "You can sit up front with me," he said. "You definitely got the best seat in the house." His tail lashed the ground. His gaze was not on her eyes.

  Hannah got in the rear with Quasiman and curled in the corner.

  The short drive into the city gave Hannah some small feel for the land. The area around Saigon was flat and heavily farmed. Rice paddies shimmered in the sun in precise, green rectangles. Workers in conical straw hats worked the fields, the pants rolled up to their knees as they moved through the standing water. Carts piled recklessly with furniture or produce or simply packed with families moved ponderously on the side of the road, pulled by oxen and urged on by children wielding long bamboo sticks.

  Then, almost without warning, they were in the city itself: crowded, loud, and dirty. Even with the windows up and the air conditioner's fan roaring, she could hear the sounds of street merchants hawking their wares and the constant blaring of horns in the streets packed with a combination of cars, bicycles, and carts. The city seemed over-full and very foreign - she saw no caucasian faces at all. Whenever they stopped, people stared at their car, pointing and talking. Hannah, already uncomfortable sitting with Quasiman in the back, found herself pressing hard against the corner. Quasiman seemed to have fallen asleep with his eyes open. He swayed back and forth with the car's motion as if he were a test dummy. Hannah had to keep pushing him away from her every time they turned left.

  They came out of the warren of small streets and made the turn onto the boulevard leading to the Presidential Palace. The line of cars in front of them pulled out slowly into the traffic. As Croyd turned the Wheel to follow them, a rusting green Corolla rushed out from the curb, wheeled around them, and stopped in the middle of the intersection directly in front of them. More horns blared, Croyd's among them, as the occupants of the car got out and began running.

  "Go!" Quasiman awakened suddenly, shouting at Croyd and hammering on the back of the seat. His fists put permanent dents in the headrest. "Get past them!"

  Hannah knew that if she'd been driving, she'd have hesitated. She would have turned back to Quasiman to see what in the world the hunchback was shouting about.

  She would have been too late.

  Not Croyd. He stamped his foot on the accelerator, down-shifted, and yanked the wheel right. The car hit the curb, slalomed across grass in the little park on the corner as pedestrians scattered out of their way. They went over the curb again, the suspension bottoming out with a screech, then fishtailed back onto the boulevard. "What -" Croyd yelled hack at Quasiman.

  His question got no further. A sinister, low kah-RHUMMPP! behind them lifted the rear of the car sideways. They landed hard, throwing Hannah against the side with Quasiman on top of her. The car stalled.

  Hannah found that she was looking back through the rear windshield. In the intersection, the car that had cut them off was a blazing inferno. She could see bodies in a street littered with broken glass and sheet metal. She felt schizophrenic. Part of her was busily deciphering the mess: thermite fuse, cheap electronic timer, make sure the tank's about half full so you have plenty of room for fumes. You'd need ten, fifteen seconds to get clear....

  The other part of her wanted to scream.

  "Jesus ..." Croyd muttered. He started the car again and jammed it into gear. They lurched away from the scene. "Car bomb. I'm getting you folks to the palace, fast. Hang on." Leaning on the horn, Croyd rushed them away.

  Hannah looked at Quasiman. He was frowning. "You're hurt," he said, and reached for her forehead.

  She let the stubby, wide fingers touch her, let him brush her hair back from the cut. "Just a scratch," he said, and the relief in his voice was open and gentle. "You'll be okay, Hannah."

  "Thanks," she told him. The Word seemed so inadequate.

  And then the shakes hit her.

  ***

  "That's like an incredible bummer. Wow ... I mean, I'm just totally wiped out by this. I am really, really sorry. I feel like personally responsible, y'know. I'm just glad you had Quasiman along with you."

  Mark Meadows didn't exactly fit Hannah's mental image of a Prime Minister, or for that matter, of a Federal fugitive from justice. Father Squid had explained to Hannah how - with the help of some ace friends - Mark had reclaimed his retarded daughter Sprout from the custody of the state after he'd lost the custody battle in the courts. Hannah had a difficult time picturing the man angry. At first impression, she would have called him - like some of her parents' friends - an "old hippie." He was tall and thin, his thinning hair shoulder-length and pulled back in a pony tail. A scraggly goatee hung like spanish moss from his chin. And his clothing ... the only word Hannah had for it was "bright": loose Vietnamese pants cut from a garish paisley cloth, a strident blue and orange striped tunic, and a green silk scarf. He wore open-toed, leather sandals. He looked out across the lawn of the Presidential Palace to where a smudge of distant smoke still burned beyond the walls, shaking his head. "Some heavy shit has gone down out there over the years," he said. "There's still lots of bad karma floating around. But were putting things together again. Weird political shit like this still happens every once in a while - like a flashback on a bad trip. You shouldn't have had to see it, but the violence is there, part of the total scene. It's getting rarer and rarer, though."

  Mark turned back into the room. He smiled at Hannah. The man had what could only be described as a radiant smile, Hannah decided. Almost beatific, like the picture of the saints she remembered from parochial school. Hannah touched the gauze bandage on her forehead, grimacing slightly as she probed the throbbing lump there. An unbidden shiver ran through her. "Prime Minister -"

  "Mark. I don't really do anything here. This is Moonchild's place, hers and the people's. White folks like us are just guests."

  "Then I'm Hannah," she replied. "That bomb. I have to think it was meant for ..." Hannah swallowed. She couldn't finish the thought.

  Mark had. "I know," he said sadly. "But you gotta believe that it also wasn't meant to be, y'know, like fate had a hand in things and made sure you were safe." Mark patted her on the shoulder, like a brother might. "My friend Moonchild'll make sure that you stay that Way, too. Nothing else will happen to you while you're here. I promise. Moonchild's going to make Free Vietnam a Land of Peace. Man, so much evil has come from here. I figure that the cosmic balance has got to be restored. When a place has been this fucked up for so long, imagine what it's going to be like when it turns around. When that happens, this will be like a paradise."

  He was so earnest that Hannah could only smile back at him. He seemed to be one of those people who had an eternal innocence in their souls - despite all that life had dealt Meadows, he'd kept that.

  "So why don't you tell me about everything's that's going down?" he said.

  "I'm not sure where to start, but I
'll try." For the next half hour, Hannah gave Meadows a synopsis of what she had learned. He was a good listener, interrupting only to ask a few questions or to clarify something, otherwise nodding sympathetically and shaking his head.

  "Far out," he said afterward. "It's like a downer, y'know - all that energy wasted on hating. Fucked up, just totally fucked up." He gave a deep, ponderous sigh. "I can help you, sure. I'll arrange for you to go anywhere and do anything you need to do here. You can go to Xuan Loc yourself and dig around - you know what you're looking for, and that's as safe a place as any. You want to find out about this Faneuil dude, no problem; I'll ask Ai Quoc's staff - he's the Interior Secretary - to look up all the records we have on him. I know Pan at WHO - he's at good guy. I'll give him a call and prod him."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  "Hey, here's your guardian angel now," Mark said. Quasiman had entered the room, hand in hand with a lovely, dark-haired child - a girl on the verge of womanhood. "I want you to meet my daughter, Sprout...."

  ***

  "How did Faneuil die?" Hannah asked.

  Ngo Dinh Yie, one of the elders of the village, pursed his lips and nodded as Croyd translated, then closed his eyes as if remembering. "He was old," Ngo said. "His heart burst. That is what the nurse told us."

  "Margaret Durand?"

  "Yes. She was with my son, Bui, who also lived in the doctor's house, and said that they had found him dead in his bed. He had died in his sleep, peacefully."

  "Did you see the body?"

  The old man frowned, pressing his lips together again. Ngo's face looked like a crumpled brown paper sack. "No ... The nurse, she and Bui took care of the body, wrapping it in a sheet and putting it in the coffin the village woodcarver brought for them." Ngo shook his head. "Western customs. Wasteful."

  "Then. how did you know it was Faneuil?"

  Ngo looked at her as if she were crazy. "I saw his hand, outside the sheet. The doctor always wore a ring, a big gold one with a blue stone and little diamonds set around it. I saw his hand, the doctor's hand, and I saw the ring. We buried the doctor that evening. There -" The elder pointed to the field where a green mound swelled just before the jungle claimed the land. "Everyone grieved. Everyone loved the doctor. I would do anything he asked me to do. Anything."

  "I'm sure you would," Hannah answered. She nodded to Croyd, and he dismissed Ngo. Hannah stopped the tape recorder and leaned hack against the rough wooden railing of the pub.

  Ngo's story matched everyone else's. Three days of interviews and searching the few existing records had yielded nothing more. The recent war had destroyed most of the paper trail pertaining to Faneuil. The conflict had swept over Xuan Loc also, inflicting heavy casualties on the inhabitants. The survivors spoke almost universally with affection for the doctor. Faneuil had set up a small clinic in the village, offering medical care for the surrounding area. Hannah could find nothing overtly malicious in Faneuil's care of the people - but then there weren't a great number of jokers in the area, either. On the surface, Faneuil had been a benign and beneficent presence in the jungle, healing as best he could with extremely limited funding and supplies.

  "Everyone told her that Faneuil had died of a heart attack, even though no one she spoke with had actually seen the body. The two who had - Ngo Dinh Yie's son Bui and Durand - vanished within a week of the doctor's burial. Supposedly they had gone to Saigon, but Meadows's people had found no trace of them there. And that seemed to he where the trail ended.

  The best thing that could be said for their time here was that it had allowed her to begin to deal with the paralyzing fear that had come in the wake of the bomb attack. The first night, in the palace, Hannah couldn't sleep. She relived the explosion in her nightmares, and sometimes she was one of the broken bodies strewn on the street. The constant fear was only now beginning to recede. She didn't think she would ever like Saigon now, no matter how well Moonchild, Mark, and his friends succeeded in their vision of a Land of Peace.

  In a way, Hannah found it amusing. For years she'd been prowling through the aftermath of fires and explosions, reveling in the messy work of finding the cause. She'd learned to look at the victims as just pieces of the puzzle. She'd felt sorry for them, yes, but she'd never really given much thought to the pain and terror they'd felt. She'd never really put herself in their place and imagined what they must have experienced, how it affected them. The fires, the explosions - they'd never reached out for her.

  Now she knew. She wondered if she'd ever he able to see a fire the old way again.

  She wasn't looking at anything the old way any more.

  "Might as well go inside," Hannah said to Croyd. "Too hot out here."

  The one-room building had been Xuan Loc's bar, evidently of Vietnam War vintage, built in a quasi-American style with an old Wooden bar running the width. Quasiman was sitting at one of the tables, staring into space - he'd been that way for an hour, and Hannah was beginning to wonder if he'd come back. Croyd went behind the bar and pulled a bottle of beer from the styrofoam cooler - Croyd had brought cooler, ice, and what seemed to Hannah to be an inordinate supply of beer from Saigon. The ice was long gone, but Croyd didn't seem to mind. "Want one?" Hannah shook her head. Croyd extended a claw from his forefinger and pried off the cap. "Real useful," he said. He went to sit with Hannah and the vacant-eyed Quasiman. Croyd prodded Quasiman's shoulder with a finger. There was no reaction from the joker. "Nobody home," Croyd said, then looked at Hannah. "What's next? You want me to round up some more of the locals?"

  "I guess," Hannah said.

  "You're not getting What you want, huh?"

  "No. Dead ends and more dead ends. No one actually saw Faneuil dead, but everyone's sure he is. Everyone loved him. He's a frigging saint." Hannah sighed. "I'm not surprised that Dr. Rudo couldn't find out anything either."

  Croyd didn't say anything. He swas looking at her strangely. He took a long, slow swallow of the beer and set the bottle down again with an undisguised belch. Hannah could feel his tail brushing her feet under the table. "Rudo," Croyd said. "Dr. Pan Rudo?"

  "Yes," Hannah said. "He's one of the directors of WHO."

  "And he's been helping you with this?"

  "Yes, among others," she said again. "Why?"

  Croyd sniffed. He took another pull at the bottle. The tail swished around her knees, poking tentatively between them. "Damn it, Croyd -"

  "Sorry. Pan Rudo, huh? He sent you here? He knew Faneuil?"

  Hannah didn't answer. "You know Dr. Rudo?"

  "Knew him." Croyd said. "A long while back." He let the tips of his claws rap sharply against the glass bottle. "But I won't ever forget him...."

  The Long Sleep

  by Roger Zelazny

  "Tell me about Pan Rudo," Hannah said.

  "Now I'm talking early fifties," Croyd answered. "That may be too far back for whatever you're after."

  She shook her head.

  "I want to hear about it," she told him.

  He clapped his hands together abruptly, squashing a darting moth.

  "Okay," he said. "I was around twenty years old at the time. But I'd been infected with the wild card virus when I was going on fourteen - so I'd had plenty of experience with it. Too much, it seemed. It still depressed me a lot in those days. I got to thinking about it, and I decided that since I couldn't change the condition maybe I could change my attitude toward it somehow, come to better terms with it. I read a lot of pop psychology books - about making friends with yourself and getting well-adjusted and all that - but they didn't do me any good. So one morning I saw a piece about this guy in the Times. He was chairing a local conference. Kind of interesting. Neuropsychiatrist. He'd actually known Freud, studied with him for a while. Then he was at the Jungian Institute in Switzerland for a time. Got back to physiology then. He was involved with a group doing dauerschlaf research while he was in Zurich. Ever hear of it?"

  "Can't say that I have," she said.

  He took a swallow of beer, moving
his left foot to crush a pawing beetle.

  "The theory behind dauerschlaf is that the body and the mind heal themselves better and faster while a person's asleep than when he's awake," he said. "They were experimenting with the treatment of drug withdrawal, psychological disorders, TB, and other stuff by putting people to sleep for long periods of time, using hypnosis and drugs. They'd induce artificial comas to promote healing. He wasn't into that much when I met him, but I'd learned of it earlier, because of my condition - and the connection intrigued me. I checked him out in the phone book, called, got his secretary, made an appointment. He had a cancellation for later that week, and she gave me that one."

  Croyd took a quick swallow.

  "It was a rainy Thursday afternoon in March of 1951 then, that I first met Pan Rudo -"

  "Do you recall the date as well?" Hannah asked.

  "Afraid not."

  "How is it that you recall the year, the month, and the day so readily?"

  "I count days after I wake up," he replied, "to keep track of how far along I am in my waking cycle. It gives me an idea of how much rationality I have left, so I can make plans for things I want to get done. When the days dwindle down to a precious few I avoid my friends and try to get off somewhere by myself so nobody gets hurt. Now, I woke up on Sunday, I came across the article two days later, I got the appointment for two days after that. That makes it a Thursday. And I tend to remember months when things happen, because my picture of a year is kind of a jagged thing based on seasons. This was spring and rainy - March."

  He took a drink of beer. He swatted another moth.

  "Damn bugs!" he muttered. "Can't stand bugs."

  "And the year?" she said. "How can you be sure it was 1951?"

  Because it was in the fall of the following year, 1952, that they tested the hydrogen bomb in the Pacific."

  "Oh," she said, brow furrowing slightly. "Sure. Go ahead."

  "So I went to see him the year before the hydrogen bomb got tested," he continued. "They were working on it then, you know. They'd decided to go ahead on it back In '48."