Marked Cards

  Gregg had already decided to give this up if he heard nothing by the weekend. But Dutton's next words caused Gregg to lean forward in the shell.

  "How are our friends?" Dutton asked. "Holding up well, I hope."

  "As well as can be expected. I think they're all going a little stir crazy. Father Squid's about ready to go back, at least. That's a small house, after all, and Father Squid says he's getting tired of the sirens at all hours...."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Hannah, you've got to get over this. Hartmann was a goddamn jerk. He betrayed you. Betrayed all of us. He always was a fuck-up, and he didn't deserve what you gave him."

  The words hurt. Gregg felt a shiver run through him in the darkness.

  He was hanging upside down, an overgrown caterpillar hunched under the eaves of the tiny four-room house across the street from the Jokertown district fire station. It had taken him several days to find the place, checking smaller homes located near the Jokertown Clinic, St. Elizabeth Hospital, Fort Freak - the Jokertown police precinct, and - finally - the fire house. The Oddity was in the room with Hannah; the voice carrying through the screened window was John's, bitter and eternally angry. Gregg couldn't see much, but he could smell Hannah's perfume.

  "John, I don't need to hear this again. Please." The familiar voice, touched with a tired huskiness and so close to the screen, almost caused Gregg to lose his grip on the slick painted wood of the eaves.

  "You do need to hear it, Hannah. I'm sorry, but you don't realize how much of an effect you have on our fight. Without you, we're just a bunch of pitiful freaks howling about how oppressed we are. You're our voice, and it's been too damn silent since Hartmann sold us out, since he - " The Oddity's voice broke off.

  "Since he was murdered," Hannah finished for him. "And without Gregg, my voice is being portrayed as that of a paranoid, silly woman, and things are getting worse every day. Death and violence are the only things I seem to be good at bringing out. I'm not effective, I'm not ..." Gregg heard her exhale in disgust. He could imagine her arm swinging wide in frustration, her hair swirling with the motion. "Damn it. Damn it!"

  "Hannah ..."

  Gregg heard the rustling of cloth as Oddity moved. The voice had changed timbre - John had given way to Patti. Even the scent of the triad joker had changed. "Hannah, I'm so sorry. John ... John just says things. Sometimes he doesn't think about other people's feelings. I wish I could help you - I can see how much it hurts."

  Hannah's voice was muffled through Oddity's cloak. "I fell in love with him, Patti. I probably shouldn't have, but I did. And Gregg returned my love - I know that. I'm sure of it. I just want to understand what happened. There had to be a reason, had to be something. He wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't see me - all of a sudden. Then that damn press conference, and the next night..."

  Hannah was silent for a long time. Gregg wondered whether they'd left the room. He relaxed the fingers on his front two hands until the sucking pads released and let his head swing down a few inches. He could see the bulk of Oddity and the back of Hannah's head as she hugged the joker.

  "Something happened to him," Hannah's voice said at last. "I can't ... I don't believe Gregg would just turn like that. Not against us. Not against me." More quiet, then: "God, I hate it when I cry like this."

  "It's okay, Hannah. It's okay...."

  This was perfect. Better than he'd hoped. Gregg's initial plan had been, well, fuzzy. When he'd called Brandon back to tell him he'd located Hannah, they had set up a tentative rendezvous and a time. Brandon had been insistent that only Gregg and Hannah were to meet him there. Somehow, Gregg needed to get Hannah alone and convince her to follow him.

  He'd thought to sneak into Hannah's room and present himself as Battle. He'd tell her that since he'd become a joker himself, he'd had a change of heart. Somehow, he'd convince her that it was in her best interests to follow him - alone - and he'd lead her to the rendezvous.

  The problem was that he knew Hannah wasn't that gullible. She'd suspect Battle would be leading her into exactly the kind of trap Gregg had set, and he no longer had the Gift to help persuade her. He figured he had at best a fifty-fifty chance of his plan actually working, but it had been the only ruse available to him.

  But Hannah had unwittingly given him the edge he needed. Now he knew how to get to her.

  All he had to do was tell her the truth.

  He was Hartmann. He'd been jumped. It hadn't been him who betrayed them, but someone else - probably Battle himself. It had been someone else - probably not Battle, Gregg suspected, but some other poor dupe whose body Battle now inhabited - who had been killed. Only you can help me, Hannah....

  She'd be skeptical, but he could convince her. She wanted to believe, after all. She loved him.

  It was all there for him.

  Except ...

  He couldn't do it.

  The sickness and self-disgust he'd been feeling since he talked with Brandon welled up in him at the thought, and Gregg knew that he'd never find peace again if he went through with this. He didn't need his inner voice to tell him that. He was whole - and there was suddenly no place to shovel the mental shit, no false personality construct to blame for his actions.

  There was only himself in his head.

  Gregg Hartmann, you've gone soft, he told himself wonderingly.

  Glancing back once into the room, where Hannah clung to the comforting Oddity, Gregg let himself drop to the ground. He padded away, the sound of his passage no louder than the wind.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Brandon?"

  Gregg's piccolo voice awakened a few echoes in the warehouse near the East River. The rear doors had been open, just like Brandon had promised. Gregg could smell rat droppings, the papery scent of old packing cartons, the smeared oil on the concrete floor, the gritty residue of ancient machine tool shavings, all overlaid with the strong salty brine of the East River. But he couldn't see anything; all the details were lost in darkness and myopic blur.

  "Brandon, it's Gregg Hartmann." Gregg sniffed again. Yes, there was someone here. He could smell perspiration, and a man's cologne....

  The rustle above warned him too late. The weighted net draped over him with a soft thunk. His body went into overdrive, but all that did was tangle him more tightly in the coarse strands. He threw up on the netting, but it didn't dissolve - he could melt metal, but it looked like other materials were impervious.

  Gregg heard people shouting, saw the lights come on, and when he managed to bring himself back into normal time again, someone he didn't recognize - young, strawberry blond, blue-eyed - was leaning over him, looking down at him with a strange mixture of curiosity and revulsion. Four other burly types were stationed around the net. One of them was familiar: General MacArthur Johnson.

  "What's going on?" Gregg asked Johnson. "Where's Brandon?"

  Johnson just grinned at him, the smile bright in the dark face. It was Mr. Aryan who answered. "He's not here," the man said. "You see, someone who sounded just like you called him about an hour ago and told him that the deal was off. Really, Gregg my old friend, when you kill someone, you should make sure that it's really the person you're after."

  Something in the inflection, in the way the words were phrased, set off alarms in Gregg's mind. "Pan - " he breathed, and the man smiled.

  "So you've guessed. You always were a clever man, Gregg. Where's the Davis woman?" Rudo was dressed in an expensive double-breasted silk suit - rather old-fashioned for his new body. Gregg wondered how joker vomit would look on the lapels - it wouldn't hurt Rudo, but it sure as hell wouldn't smell good.

  "I didn't bring her," Gregg said. "I ... I needed to make sure Brandon was going to keep his word first," he lied. "Let me out and I'll get her."

  Rudo shrugged. "It doesn't matter," he said. "She isn't that large a problem. Not any more. It was you I wanted, Gregg. You're the dangerous one."

  "You were never going to give me a new body. Did Brandon know that?"

&nbs
p; Rudo smiled. "Brandon is an idealist, not a pragmatist. You were supposed to give him leverage over me. He doesn't like the project we're working on. Brandon wanted to negotiate with you and Hannah as collateral: everyone would compromise and everyone would get something they want. Brandon would get my work placed on a back burner, I'd get your little anti-Shark group scuttled, with your help. Even you would get something, Gregg. Too bad Brandon doesn't realize that his phone isn't secure. Too bad, too, that I never could give you a body, even if I'd wanted to do so. You see, all the jumpers really are dead now. Didn't you know that? A shame, really. But I still have some uses for you, Gregg. I probably should just kill you now, but I'd rather demonstrate to you just what we've been doing. What Brandon didn't want us to pursue."

  Rudo gestured to his companions, and they lifted him, net and all, as Rudo brushed lint from his suit.

  "I think you'll be impressed," Rudo told him. "I daresay it will take your breath away."

  A Dose of Reality

  by Laura J. Mixon

  & Melinda M. Snodgrass

  Clara van Renssaeler, Journal Entry, 31 Mar 94

  A viable killer virus continues to elude me. I'm afraid I'll to have to abandon this random-insertion approach. As ever, none of the latest batch are showing any preference for attacking Takis A-infected cells over noninfected cells. The shotgun method for targeting the wild card initiation site is simply not working.

  If only Battle hadn't bobbled the break-in.

  Uncle Pan is outraged at Papa for not supporting the Black Trump effort. Papa just made some sort of conciliatory gesture in the last few days, I gather, so the tension has eased a little between them. A little. Still, Papa's resistance to the plan has made Pan impatient with my delays. As if I had any control over my father!

  But I can understand Uncle Pan's concern. Hartmann's allegations have raised everyone's suspicions. The Feds are probably already digging; eventually they'll turn up a lead that will uncover our work here. We are running out of time, and I am out of ideas.

  Uncle Pan is trying to pull the organization back together and stave off panic, and has insisted I make a presentation at one of his political meetings tomorrow. ("Uncle Pan." It seems odd to call him that. He's now a good eight or ten years younger than I am. I miss the old Uncle Pan, the elderly gentleman from my childhood who let me crawl up into his lap and told me stories, who helped me train my first horse and helped me with my French lessons, and called me PC, his petite cavaliere.)

  He's invited big wheels from all over the world. He says the organization is in serious trouble and my virus is perhaps our last chance to forestall wholesale defections - by forcing them all to focus on a single, common goal: eradication of the wild card, once and for all.

  I'm to give an overview of my research, to make it clear why the Black Trump is necessary, and to "play down the obstacles remaining, if you please, PC." To leave the attendees with the impression only a few details have to be ironed out.

  I loathe this deceit.

  Uncle Pan argues that desperate times call for desperate measures. That if we don't act as a unified entity now, our cause is lost. What is a simple lie, he says, when a world is at stake? He laughs indulgently at my protests and tells me to trust him.

  I suppose it's hypocritical of me to balk. Many things have been done in our cause that I find personally abhorrent.

  If I could just get hold of Tachyon's files, I could transmute the lie into truthl We know his Trump virus, Takis B, is in essence a deletion virus that attaches at the Takis A initiation site. Even if Tachyon hadn't known from his work on Takis A - and the Takisians have clearly finished mapping the human/Takisian genome - to engineer Takis B, Tachyon had to know where that site is on the human genome from the restriction map.

  I've combed all the lab notes he donated to the World Health Organization in the seventies. Notes on his Trump virus work weren't included among them. They have to be somewhere, though - and he developed Takis B in his Jokertown lab. The information has to be there; QED.

  I need that initiation site.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Clara entered the darkened conference room and waited for her eyes to adjust. The meeting was not yet underway, though most of the participants seemed present. No one seemed to notice her, other than the guard who'd opened the door. She chose a seat near the front end of the U at the U-shaped table, opened her satchel and pulled out her speaker's notes.

  Muscular men with semiautomatics peeking out from inside their suit jackets stood at all the entrances. General MacArthur Johnson, Uncle Pan's security chief, stood near the shuttered windows, arms clasped behind his back and feet planted apart. If it weren't for his eyes, he might have been made of obsidian. Pan Rudo, graceful and catlike in his new, ectomorphic Aryan body, paced around the room behind the chairs, listening, exchanging a word here and there. He came over as she sat down, and squeezed her shoulder.

  "Ready?"

  "As I'll ever be."

  "Good. We'll begin in a few moments."

  In a counterpoint to the soft babble of interpreters' voices, the chandelier overhead tinkled in the air-conditioned breeze, glowing a dull amber. Glasses, coffee cups, and ash trays littered the polished mahogany table. The smells of smoke, of foreign perfumes and body odors, clogged Clara's nostrils and throat.

  Perhaps thirty people or so, mostly men, sat at the table. Clara knew only a few of them. General Peter Horvath, an important British Shark for whom her father occasionally provided legal services, was there of course, and Eric Fleming, a multi-millionaire rancher from Australia who had been a close acquaintance of her father's since she was a girl. Most of the rest she knew only by name, if at all. They made up a hodgepodge of races - Caucasian, black, Oriental, Hispanic, Mediterranean - arrayed in a riot of costumes: business suits in a variety of styles, dress uniforms, fatigues, kitenges, robes, boots, loafers, sandals.

  The fat Sikh to Clara's left wore an expensive gray business suit and white turban, for instance, and had a black beard rolled tightly up into the folds of fat at his chin. He chain-smoked, smiled at her in a way that made her uncomfortable, and completely ignored his interpreter, a strikingly beautiful woman in a ruby-red sari, who whispered in his other ear. Clara gave him her most intimidating owl-eyed stare, and eventually he coughed, stabbed out his cigarette butt, and looked away. On her right a tiny, stiff-faced man who might have been Central or South American wore a military uniform with lots of brass and ribbons on the chest. Two Orientals sat with O.K. Casaday - probably North Vietnamese representatives. And three members of the Meta-Greens - an extremist group from Germany, an odd marriage of the skinheads and the Greens - sat near Rudo's chair, looking young and insolent. One had his army boots up on the table.

  Across the table from Clara sat Etienne Faneuil. His body may have been twenty years old, but the leer on his face belonged to a disgusting old man who should have died years ago. And now that he'd returned from his travels and gone into hiding, she had to share a lab - and the results of her research - with the psychotic son of a bitch. Clara shuddered.

  She studied Pan.

  Though it had been months, Clara had yet to feel at ease with this new Pan Rudo, this tall young man with the strawberry blond hair. Resemblances to whom he'd been remained - the fine bones, the violet-blue eyes, the mannerisms - but she couldn't help but feel as if she were dealing with a stranger who pretended to be Uncle Pan. And the way he'd used a wild card power for his own gain seemed wrong to her. More than her father ever had, Pan Rudo had had a vision.

  First Papa, she thought, and now Uncle Pan. My icons are toppling off their pedestals all around.

  Horvath slammed his hand on the table, apparently in response to something the man next to him said.

  "Bugger that!"

  Clara jumped, startled from her reverie.

  "We have to do something about Durand. Now!" He turned to Uncle Pan, who was leaning over, whispering with Faneuil. "What will you do about it, Rudo?" br />
  "And what about von Herzenhagen, for that matter?" Eric Fleming asked, from the other end of the table. "He's cozy with some of my connections - if he turns like Durand has, I'm finished. We have to do something. Assassinate him, if necessary."

  "The hell you say," someone else said. "We should break him out. Pay someone off - whatever it takes. He's no traitor. And we need him."

  Clara glanced at Faneuil at the mention of Durand, and the implied, possible assassination attempt. He didn't twitch an eyelid. No lingering feeling for his old flame. It figured.

  Eric scoffed. "No one is indispensable. Not even you, Carruthers."

  "Hartmann is the real threat," the Central American generalissimo said. "He knows far too much. Even as a joker he's dangerous."

  Twenty arguments erupted at once. Clara buried her face in her hands. Sparks crawled behind her eyelids: incipient migraine. Not now, she thought.

  She hated this. Why couldn't they leave her alone to do her research, and leave her out of these horrid wrangles?

  Uncle Pan said, "Enough." It cut through the pandemonium like a scalpel through flesh. Voices died away and everyone turned to look at him - with a few nervous glances at Johnson, who had moved over to flank Pan, his semiautomatic visible beneath his arm.

  "Stop this bickering. Listen to yourselves. You sound like frightened old women."