Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

  But Gregg couldn’t do that, not with the aces gathered here, the ones Gregg didn’t dare take as puppets because they had mental abilities of their own, or because he simply felt the prospect too risky: Golden Boy, Fantasy, Mistral, Chrysalis. And the one he feared most of all: Tachyon. If they even had an inkling of Puppetman’s existence, if they knew what I’ve done to feed him, Tachyon’d have them on me in a pack, the way he did with the Masons.

  Gregg took a deep breath. The corner smelled overbearingly of pine. “Thanks, boss,” John was saying. Already his lilac fear was receding. Across the room, Gregg saw Father Squid finally disengage himself from the reporter and shamble pitifully toward Hiram’s buffet on his tentacles. The reporter saw Gregg at the same moment and gave him a strange, piercing glance. She strode toward him.

  Amy had seen the movement as well. “Sara Morgenstern, Post correspondent,” she whispered in Gregg’s ear. “Pulitzer,’76, for her work on the Great Jokertown Riot. Cowrote the nasty article on SCARE in July’s Newsweek. Just had a makeover too. Looks totally different.”

  Amy’s warning startled Gregg—he hadn’t recognized her. Gregg remembered the article; it had stopped just short of libel, intimat­ing that Gregg and the SCARE aces had been involved in govern­ment suppression of facts concerning the Swarm Mother attack. He remembered Morgenstern from various press functions, always the one with the hardball questions, with a sharp edge to her voice. He might have taken her for a puppet, just for spite, but she had never come close to him. Whenever they had been at the same affairs, she had stayed well away.

  Now, seeing her approach, he froze for an instant. She had indeed changed. Sara had always been slim, boyish. That was accentuated tonight; she wore tight, black slacks and a clinging blouse. She’d dyed her hair blond, and her makeup accentuated her cheekbones and large, faintly blue eyes. She looked distressingly familiar.

  Gregg was suddenly cold and afraid.

  Inside, Puppetman howled at a remembered loss.

  “Gregg, are you all right?” Ellen’s hand touched his shoulder. Gregg shivered at his spouse’s touch, shaking his head.

  “I’m fine,” he said brusquely. He put on his professional smile, moving out from the corner. Alongside him Ellen and John flanked him in practiced choreography. “Ms. Morgenstern,” Gregg said warmly, extending his hand and forcing his voice into a calmness he didn’t feel. “I think you know John, but my wife Ellen . . . ?”

  Sara Morgenstern nodded perfunctorily toward Ellen, but her gaze stayed with Gregg. She had an odd, strained smile on her face that seemed half-challenge and half-invitation. “Senator,” she said, “I hope you’re looking forward to this trip as much as I am.”

  She took his proffered hand. Without volition, Puppetman used the moment of contact. As he had done with every new puppet, he traced the neural pathways back to the brain, opening the doors that would, later, allow him access from a distance. He found the locked gates of her emotions, the turbulent colors swirling behind, and he greedily, possessively, touched them. He unfastened the locks and pins, swung open the entrance.

  The red-black loathing that spilled out from behind sent him reeling back. The abhorrence was directed toward him, all of it. Totally unexpected, the fury of the emotion was like nothing he’d experienced. Its intensity threatened to drown him, it drove him back. Puppetman gasped; Gregg forced himself to show nothing. He let his hand drop as Puppetman moaned in his head, and the fear that had touched him a moment ago redoubled.

  She looks like Andrea, like Succubus—the resemblance is startling. And she detests me; God, how she hates.

  “Senator?” Sara repeated.

  “Yes, I’m very much looking forward to this,” he said automatically. “Our society’s attitudes toward the victims of the wild card virus have changed for the worse in the last year. In some ways people like the Reverend Leo Barnett would have us regress to the oppression of the fifties. For less enlightened countries, the situation is far, far worse. We can offer them understanding, hope, and help. And we’ll learn something ourselves. Dr. Tachyon and myself have great optimism for this trip, or we wouldn’t have fought so hard to bring it about.”

  The words came with rehearsed smoothness while he recovered. He could hear the friendly casualness of his voice, felt his mouth pull into a proud half-smile. But none of it touched him. He could barely avoid staring rudely at Sara. At this woman who reminded him too much of Andrea Whitman, of Succubus.

  I loved her. I couldn’t save her.

  Sara seemed to sense his fascination, for she cocked her head with that same odd challenge. “It’s also an entertaining little jun­ket, a three-month tour of the world at the taxpayer’s expense. Your wife goes with you, your good friends like Dr. Tachyon and Hiram Worchester . . .”

  At his side Gregg felt Ellen’s irritation. She was too practiced a politician’s wife to respond, but he could feel her sudden alertness, a jungle cat watching for a weakness in her prey. Off balance, Gregg frowned a moment too late. “I’m surprised a reporter of your experience would believe that, Ms. Morgenstern. This trip also means giving up the holiday season—normally, I go home after the congressional break. It means stops at places that aren’t exactly on Fodor’s recommended list. It means meetings, briefings, endless press conferences, and a ton of paperwork that I can certainly do without. I guarantee you this isn’t a pleasure trip. I’ll have more to do than watch the proceedings and cable a thousand words back home every day.”

  He felt the black hatred swelling in her, and the power in him ached to be used. Let me take her. Let me dampen that fire. Take away that hatred and she’ll tell you what she knows. Disarm her.

  She’s yours, he answered. Puppetman leapt out. Gregg had encountered hatreds before, a hundred times, but none had ever been focused on him. He found control of the emotion elusive and slippery; her loathing pushed at his control like a palpable, living entity, driving Puppetman back.

  What the hell is she hiding? What caused this?

  “You sound defensive, Senator,” Sara said. “Still, a reporter can’t help but think that the main purpose of the trip, especially for a potential ’88 presidential candidate, might be to finally erase the memories of a decade ago.”

  Gregg could not help the intake of breath: Andrea, Succubus. Sara grinned: a predator’s smile. He readied himself to assault her hatred again.

  “I’d say the Great Jokertown Riot obsesses both of us, Senator,” she continued, her voice deceivingly light. “I know it did when I wrote my piece on it. And your behavior after Succubus’s death cost you the Democratic nomination that year. After all, she was only a whore—wasn’t she, Senator?—and not worth your . . . your little breakdown.” The reminder made him flush. “I’ll wager we’ve both thought about that moment every day since then,” Sara con­tinued. “It’s been ten years now, and I still remember.”

  Puppetman wailed, retreating. Gregg was startled into silence. My God, what does she know, what is she hinting at?

  He had no time to formulate a reply. Amy’s voice spoke in his ear again. “Digger Downs is heading over at a trot, Senator. He’s with Aces magazine—covers the entertainment types; a real sleazeball, if you ask me. Guess he saw Morgenstern and figured he’d lis­ten in to a good reporter—”

  “Hiya, folks,” Downs’s voice intruded before Amy had finished speaking. Gregg looked momentarily away from Sara to see a short, pallid young man. Downs fidgeted nervously, sniffing as if he had a head cold. “Mind another reporter’s nosing in, Sara love?”

  Downs was a maddening interruption, his manner rude and falsely familiar. He seemed to sense Gregg’s turmoil. He grinned and looked from Sara to Gregg, ignoring Ellen and John.

  “I think I’ve said all I want to—for the moment,” Sara answered. Her pale aqua eyes were still locked on Gregg’s; her face seemed childlike with feigned innocence. Then, with a lithe turn, she spun away from him, going toward Tachyon. Gregg stared after her.

  “Chick’s lookin
g damn good these days, ain’t she, Senator?” Downs grinned again. “Begging your pardon, of course, Mrs. Hartmann. Hey, let me introduce myself. I’m Digger Downs, with Aces magazine, and I’ll be tagging along on this little venture. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

  Gregg, watching Sara disappear into the crowd around Tachyon, realized that Downs was staring at him strangely. With an effort he forced his attention away from Sara. “Pleased to meet you,” he said to Downs.

  His smile felt wooden. It made his cheeks ache.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF

  XAVIER DESMOND

  DECEMBER 1/NEW YORK CITY:

  The journey is off to an inauspicious start. For the last hour we have been holding on the runway at Tomlin International, waiting for clearance for takeoff. The problem, we are informed, is not here, but down in Havana. So we wait.

  Our plane is a custom 747 that the press has dubbed the Stacked Deck. The entire central cabin has been converted to our require­ments, the seats replaced with a small medical laboratory, a press room for the print journalists, and a miniature television studio for their electronic counterparts. The newsmen themselves have been segregated in the tail. Already they’ve made it their own. I was back there twenty minutes ago and found a poker game in progress. The business-class cabin is full of aides, assistants, secre­taries, publicists, and security personnel. First class is supposedly reserved exclusively for the delegates.

  As there are only twenty-one delegates, we rattle around like peas in a pod. Even here the ghettoes persist—jokers tend to sit with jokers, nats with nats, aces with aces.

  Hartmann is the only man aboard who seems entirely comfortable with all three groups. He greeted me warmly at the press con­ference and sat with Howard and myself for a few moments after boarding, talking earnestly about his hopes for the trip. It is difficult not to like the senator. Jokertown has delivered him huge majorities in each of his campaigns as far back as his term as mayor, and no wonder—no other politician has worked so long and hard to defend jokers’ rights. Hartmann gives me hope; he’s living proof that there can indeed be trust and mutual respect between joker and nat. He’s a decent, honorable man, and in these days when fanatics such as Leo Barnett are inflaming the old hatreds and prejudices, jokers need all the friends they can get in the halls of power.

  Dr. Tachyon and Senator Hartmann co-chair the delegation. Tachyon arrived dressed like a foreign correspondent from some film noir classic, in a trench coat covered with belts, buttons, and epaulettes, a snap-brim fedora rakishly tilted to one side. The fedora sports a foot-long red feather, however, and I cannot begin to imagine where one goes to purchase a powder-blue crushed-velvet trench coat. A pity that those foreign-correspondent films were all in black and white.

  Tachyon would like to think that he shares Hartmann’s lack of prejudice toward jokers, but that’s not strictly true. He labors unceasingly in his clinic, and one cannot doubt that he cares, and cares deeply . . . many jokers think of him as a saint, a hero . . . yet, when one has known the doctor as long as I have, deeper truths become apparent. On some unspoken level he thinks of his good works in Jokertown as a penance. He does his best to hide it, but even after all these years you can see the revulsion in his eyes. Dr. Tachyon and I are “friends,” we have known each other for decades now, and I believe with all my heart that he sincerely cares for me . . . but not for a second have I ever felt that he considers me an equal, as Hartmann does. The senator treats me like a man, even an important man, courting me as he might any political leader with votes to deliver. To Dr. Tachyon, I will always be a joker.

  Is that his tragedy, or mine?

  Tachyon knows nothing of the cancer. A symptom that our friendship is as diseased as my body? Perhaps. He has not been my personal physician for many years now. My doctor is a joker, as are my accountant, my attorney, my broker, and even my banker—the world has changed since the Chase dismissed me, and as mayor of Jokertown I am obliged to practice my own personal brand of affirmative action.

  We have just been cleared for takeoff. The seat-hopping is over, people are belting themselves in. It seems I carry Jokertown with me wherever I go—Howard Mueller sits closest to me, his seat cus­tomized to accommodate his nine-foot tall form and the immense length of his arms. He’s better known as Troll, and he works as chief of security at Tachyon’s clinic, but I note that he does not sit with Tachyon among the aces. The other three joker delegates—Father Squid, Chrysalis, and the poet Dorian Wilde—are also here in the center section of first class. Is it coincidence, prejudice, or shame that puts us here, in the seats furthest from the windows? Being a joker makes one a tad paranoid about these things, I fear. The politicians, of both the domestic and UN varieties, have clus­tered to our right, the aces forward of us (aces up front, of course, of course) and to our left. Must stop now, the stewardess has asked me to put my tray table back up.

  Airborne. New York and Robert Tomlin International Airport are far behind us, and Cuba waits ahead. From what I’ve heard, it will be an easy and pleasant first stop. Havana is almost as American as Las Vegas or Miami Beach, albeit considerably more decadent and wicked. I may actually have friends there—some of the top joker entertainers go on to the Havana casinos after getting their starts in the Funhouse and the Chaos Club. I must remind myself to stay away from the gaming tables, however; joker luck is notoriously bad.

  As soon as the seat belt sign went off, a number of the aces ascended to the first-class lounge. I can hear their laughter drifting down the spiral stairway—Peregrine, pretty young Mistral—who looks just like the college student she is when not in her flying gear—boisterous Hiram Worchester, and Asta Lenser, the ballerina from the ABT whose ace name is Fantasy. Already they are a tight little clique, a “fun bunch” for whom nothing could possibly go wrong. The golden people, and Tachyon very much in their midst. Is it the aces or the women that draw him? I wonder? Even my dear friend Angela, who still loves the man deeply after twenty-odd years, admits that Dr. Tachyon thinks mainly with his penis where women are concerned.

  Yet even among the aces there are the odd men out. Jones, the black strongman from Harlem (like Troll and Hiram W. and Pere­grine, he requires a custom seat, in his case to support his extraor­dinary weight), is nursing a beer and reading a copy of Sports Illustrated. Radha O’Reilly is just as solitary, gazing out the win­dow. She seems very quiet. Billy Ray and Joanne Jefferson, the two Justice Department aces who head up our security contingent, are not delegates and thus are seated back in the second section.

  And then there is Jack Braun. The tensions that swirl around him are almost palpable. Most of the other delegates are polite to him, but no one is truly friendly, and he’s being openly shunned by some, such as Hiram Worchester. For Dr. Tachyon, clearly Braun does not even exist. I wonder whose idea it was to bring him on this trip? Certainly not Tachyon’s, and it seems too politically dan­gerous for Hartmann to be responsible. A gesture to appease the conservatives on SCARE perhaps? Or are there ramifications that I have not considered?

  Braun glances up at the stairway from time to time, as if he would love nothing so much as to join the happy group upstairs, but remains firmly in his seat. It is hard to credit that this smooth-faced, blond-haired boy in the tailored safari jacket is really the notorious Judas Ace of the fifties. He’s my age or close to it, but he looks barely twenty . . . the kind of boy who might have taken pretty young Mistral to her senior prom a few years back and gotten her home well before midnight.

  One of the reporters, a man named Downs from Aces magazine, was up here earlier, trying to get Braun to consent to an interview. He was persistent, but Braun’s refusal was firm, and Downs finally gave up. Instead he handed out copies of the latest issue of Aces and then sauntered up to the lounge, no doubt to pester someone else. I am not a regular reader of Aces, but I accepted a copy and suggested to Downs that his publisher consider a companion peri­odical, to be called Jokers. He was not overly enthused about the id
ea.

  The issue features a rather striking cover photograph of the Tur­tle’s shell outlined against the oranges and reds of sunset, blurbed with “The Turtle—Dead or Alive?” The Turtle has not been seen since Wild Card Day, back in September, when he was napalmed and crashed into the Hudson. Twisted and burnt pieces of his shell were found on the riverbed, though no body has ever been recov­ered. Several hundred people claim to have seen the Turtle near dawn the following day, flying an older shell in the sky over Jokertown, but since he has not reappeared since, some are putting that sighting down to hysteria and wishful thinking.

  I have no opinion on the Turtle, though I would hate to think that he was truly dead. Many jokers believe that he is one of us, that his shell conceals some unspeakable joker deformity. Whether that is true or not, he has been a good friend to Jokertown for a long, long time.

  There is, however, an aspect to this trip that no one ever speaks of, although Downs’s article brings it to mind. Perhaps it falls to me to mention the unmentionable then. The truth is, all that laughter up in the lounge has a slightly nervous ring to it, and it is no coincidence that this junket, under discussion for so many years, was put together so swiftly in the past two months. They want to get us out of town for a while—not just the jokers, the aces too. The aces especially, one might even say.

  This last Wild Card Day was a catastrophe for the city, and for every victim of the virus everywhere. The level of violence was shocking and made headlines across the nation. The still-unsolved murder of the Howler, the dismemberment of a child ace in the midst of a huge crowd at Jetboy’s Tomb, the attack on Aces High, the destruction of the Turtle (or at least his shell), the wholesale slaughter at the Cloisters, where a dozen bodies were brought out in pieces, the predawn aerial battle that lit up the entire East Side . . . days and even weeks later the authorities were still not certain that they had an accurate death toll.