Marked Cards

  The phone rang. An international call. Pan.

  His voice was saturated with disgust. "They tell me you slept with him. How could you have sunk so far? I'm sick over this. What would your father say?"

  Her temper flared. "Frankly, it's none of your goddamned business what he'd say."

  "I regret having to resort to this, but you leave me no choice. I've instructed Johnson to hold him at the UN lab. And your mother. You have half an hour to get there, or they die. If you tell your father, or anyone, what's happening, they die."

  My mother? My mother, too?

  "Half an hour? That's absurd! What if I get stuck in traffic? What if the train breaks down?"

  "You're an intelligent woman. I'm sure you'll think of something."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  She made them let her see them. Johnson had them locked up in one of the empty equipment storage rooms in the basement. Bradley lay in the corner on the concrete floor. Joan had made a cushion of her coils to lay his head on, and was stroking his temples. At first Clara missed her; her colors had faded to match the soft grays and greens that surrounded her till she was virtually invisible. The guard locked the door behind Clara, and Joan gradually appeared, turning an agitated blue, yellow, and orange pattern.

  "Maman." Clara swallowed a sob and came over to kneel beside Bradley. "I'm so sorry. Is he all right?"

  "His vital signs are better. I think he's improving."

  Clara checked him. Pulse stronger and more regular, breathing normal, pupils shrinking. She sat down cross-legged and lowered her face into her hands.

  "Thank God. He'll be all right."

  "Darling, what is going on? Who are these people?"

  Clara heard a noise in the shadows, in a dark corner beyond the boiler.

  "Who's there?"

  It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but soon she saw the figure: a rather disgusting-looking, small, insectoid joker with a carapace the color of baby excrement. He - or she - stood, and Clara saw the joker was wearing some sort of collar, attached to about eight feet of high-visibility orange nylon rope, tied to a PVC pipe overhead. This gave the joker a range of about four feet. Both pairs of "hands" were also bound.

  George Battle had been turned into a little yellow insect; she'd heard her father talking about it. And then he'd switched bodies with -

  "Gregg Hartmann," she said.

  Joan gasped. "Oh my! He was telling the truth!"

  The insect nodded, a gesture at once comical and grave. "Dr. van Renssaeler," he piped. "And, I presume, Mrs. van Renssaeler."

  "Maman - " Clara gestured, and Joan slithered after her. The last thing she wanted was for Gregg Hartmann to overhear what she had to say to her mother. He slumped back into the shadows.

  "Clara, darling," Joan demanded, in a whisper, "what is going on here?"

  Clara stared at her mother. She wanted to blame Joan. If only you'd been there when I needed you - if you'd shown me what wild cards really are. Instead you abandoned me to the lies and bigotry of Papa and Uncle Pan. But that was absurd. Plenty of people lost their parents, lost loved ones to the wild card every day, without resorting to what Clara had.

  So, keeping her voice low and making sure Hartmann couldn't hear, she told Joan everything. Without embellishment, without excuses. Joan listened calmly, merely nodding and asking occasionally for clarification.

  "So they plan to use me and Bradley to force you to remake the virus."

  "Exactly. Maman - " Clara's voice broke. "I just found you again. And I've just found the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. I can't let them hurt you. I don't know what to do."

  Tears stood in Joan's eyes. She held out her arms. Clara laid her head on her mother's breast, and Joan held her close, stroked her hair.

  "You must refuse," she said. "There is no alternative."

  There has to be, Clara thought. There has to be.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "I'll be happy to many her, sir." Finn came awake with the ridiculous words on his lips.

  "You have my permission," came a familiar voice.

  Finn forced open his gummy eyelids, and stared into Joan's delicately scaled face. She was laid out full length on the tile floor, so they were almost nose to nose.

  Her tone had been light, but now that he could see her, Finn could see fear like a shadow in her strange eyes.

  "Joan, where the fuck are we?"

  "In a nest of Card Sharks. I guess Senator Hartmann was to be believed."

  There was a flash of movement, and an incredibly silly looking joker scuttled into view, tied to a pipe. Finn felt a momentary flash of chagrin for being a bigot, but it was silly looking. Then in a piping, breathless, cartoon voice it announced:

  "I'm Senator Hartmann."

  Finn stopped feeling guilty - the guy was clearly a bozo.

  "Could you, like, butt out? I'm trying to have a serious conversation here," Finn said. The joker puffed up, bounced up and down on his several legs.

  "I tell you I'm Hartmann. I was jumped into this body."

  Agitated, Finn tried to heave to his feet, discovered his back leg had gone to sleep, and that the tile was very slick, and went down in a welter of legs, hooves and flailing arms. The stupid looking joker raced backwards to avoid being hit.

  "Shit." Joan slithered over, and massaged his leg until the bite of pins and needles signaled its return to life. He tried again, more carefully, and this time got to his feet.

  "I am Hartmann," the joker insisted from across the room.

  "Clara said he's telling the truth," Joan told him.

  "Thank God," the joker senator piped, and sank down onto the floor as if overcome.

  Finn turned back to face (he hoped) his future mother-in-law. "Joan, not to sound unduly humble, or totally stupid, but why would Card Sharks want to kidnap us? I know why they'd want Hartmann, but us?"

  "Because of Clara," she answered softly.

  Finn stared into her unblinking eyes. Forced his jaw closed so he didn't look stupid. "Joan, I'm gonna say this once, so pay close attention ... Huh?"

  "Bradley, what do you," she hesitated. "Feel for my daughter?"

  "I love your daughter. I'm going to marry your daughter. Remember, you gave us your blessing."

  "Remember that, Bradley, when you talk to her." And she slithered away to a far corner of the room, and coiled.

  "Goddamn it. You're being inscrutable. What are you talking about?"

  "You need to hear it from Clara."

  Frustrated, Finn turned to Hartmann. "Do you know what she's talking about?"

  The senator sat up on his hindquarters, and shrugged with his front limbs. "I'm new here too."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  The first time he saw Clara he wasn't able to discuss jack shit with her. She was in the company of two young men. She was looking like a figure carved of ice, her deadpan scientist face in place, but there was a shadow of terror in her green eyes which Finn had a feeling he alone could see. The men were harassing her about something called the "Black Trump" (a title which did not fill him with confidence), and how she had to reproduce her earlier work. Clara refused, and then the two young men brought in two older, larger men who introduced Finn to their close personal friends, Pain and Suffering. At one point the goons took a break, and one of the young men walked up to Finn, grabbed him by the hair, and forced his head up.

  "Recognize me, Bradley?"

  He studied the sleek brown hair, deep-set black eyes, the taut, muscular body. Didn't ring any bells for him.

  "You ruined my reputation. Turned me from saint to monster. I've never forgiven you for that, Bradley. It's a pleasure watching you hurt. It'll be a greater one watching you die."

  There was a hint of a French accent, but it sounded strained like the throat producing it was unaccustomed to the accent. Finn realized who this had to be, and felt bile forcing its way through both his stomachs. He choked it back.

  "Faneuil," Finn forced through cut and swollen
lips.

  "The same." A predator's smile. Finn spat in Faneuil's face, spraying him with blood, spit and a lost tooth. Faneuil fell back with a cry of disgust, groping for a handkerchief to wipe his face.

  The strawberry blond man who was keeping a grip on Clara made a moue of disgust. "You never had any balls, Etienne. Why don't you hit him?"

  "I'm not a thug," said Faneuil in a prissy tone and left.

  The blond guy sighed, looked down at Clara. Gestured to Joan.

  "She's next."

  In the corner Joan reared up out of her coils, and spread her hood. The two thugs who had worked Finn over exchanged dubious glances about their next subject. Hartmann was huddled behind her, his entire body quivering with tension. He didn't have to worry. No one was interested in him right at the moment. This party was being staged for Clara's benefit.

  "What does it matter, Pan?" Clara suddenly blurted out. "If I do what you wish, they'll die anyway."

  "We may be able to arrange something," the man said soothingly.

  "That's horseshit and you know it. I designed this virus. There isn't a vaccine, there isn't a chance you'll only catch a mild case. This is my mother, and my lover. I can't do this." Her back was rigid, the tendons in her throat were stretched and taut, and a pulse was beating wildly. But nothing showed in her voice.

  The man's soothing, unctuous tone grated. "You can watch them suffer, or you can give them a humane death."

  Finn knew her face so well by now. Every nuance, every flicker of emotion. He could see her calculating, deliberating, reaching a decision, and whatsoever that decision entailed, it left death in her eyes. Clara stared at the men. The words emerged, low and grating.

  "All right, I'll do it." And she turned and stalked out of the room.

  And while the physical pain was horrible, it was less agonizing than the nagging terror of this mysterious "Black Trump."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Faneuil and his assistant, Michelle Poynter, both dressed as Clara was in protective clothing, shadowed her around the clean room. She first tried packaging a totally different virus, one of her early, failed ones. But Faneuil stopped her at the onset.

  "Don't play games with me," he said, his voice muffled by the respirator. He had Poynter line up the bottles of solution, the basic ingredients she should be using. The materials were specific to her latest work. They must have been spying on her all along.

  "And we'd better see your wildcard cell cultures die," he said. "If not, one of your joker friends is going to die instead."

  She eyed Faneuil, thinking hard. Both Black Trump strains used virtually all the same ingredients. Faneuil wouldn't know the difference; even another virologist wouldn't, without being familiar with her methods.

  Even Black Trump I was too dangerous a virus to give them. But it was far better than recreating Black Trump II. And it would buy her time.

  She got to work.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  She had tried to lose him in a blizzard of technobabble. Virus sheaths, cell wall resistance, etc. It confused, but couldn't obscure the bottom line - she, Clara, his lover, his lady, had created a virus which would kill wild cards. All wild cards. Aces, jokers, latents. Leaving a world cleansed of their polluting influence. That's why they had tortured him. Finn wished they'd killed him before he had to hear this confession. Before he knew what she had done to "save" him.

  "So what was I?" he asked and his voice emerged as an anguished groan. "Research? Did you fuck me so you could get some hot, fresh joker sperm?"

  "Don't hate me, Bradley," she whispered through stiff, white lips. "I didn't know ... what you were like. I thought you were ... unhappy."

  "Offering us the peace and contentment of the grave? Thank you very much, Clara. A little more van Renssaeler noblesse oblige."

  "Bradley, please." He wanted tears, needed tears. He didn't get them. She was in clinical mode.

  Instead, to his eternal embarrassment, the tears were his. The sob burst out of him. Tore at his chest and throat. The salt in the tears burned in the cuts on his face, and ate like acid at his soul and dreams.

  Throughout all of this Joan and Hartmann were huddled presences in the corner of the cell. Finn plunged away from Clara. She didn't follow. That hurt too. Then Joan reared up, spread her hood, and hissed at him. Startled, Finn ran backwards, hooves skittering on the slick tile. Clara's hands were on his haunches. He bolted from her too. Irrational, he wanted her comfort, and couldn't bear her touch. He wanted the last few hours to be excised. He didn't want to know that while she had wooed him she had been killing him. He wanted to stop loving her.

  Clara started for the door, but Joan shot across the floor, and blocked her daughter's escape.

  "I want to live to be a grandmother," she said in her husky, humorous voice, that couldn't quite hide the fear and tension lurking beneath the surface. "I have a daughter again. I want a son. I want you both to stop fighting and grieving and guilt tripping each other, and think of something."

  For the first time since Clara had begun her horrific confession, she and Finn actually looked at each other. Actually locked eyes. It surprised him a little - she was still Clara ... and he discovered that he still loved her, even as he hated her.

  "Joan, I'm not James Fucking Bond with four feet. I'm a middle-aged out of shape joker."

  "But you're both bright, so think of something," Joan insisted.

  "Don't count on me," Hartmann offered. "This fucking body has a built in flight instinct. Danger rears its ugly head, and I'm gone. Nothing I can do to control it."

  Clara ignored Hartmann. Stared thoughtfully at Finn. "You're stronger than a normal human?"

  "A little. The extra weight helps. I got a lot of kick power in these legs ... but no, I can't kick out that door. And I think they'd notice if I tried."

  "We need to clear the lab," Clara mused.

  "A diversion," Finn amplified.

  "The virus," they both breathed together.

  Hartmann stiffened in alarm. "Won't that... kill us?"

  "We wouldn't really use it," Clara said. "But they watch me whenever I'm near anything toxic so I couldn't even - What?" she asked when she noticed Finn staring speculatively at Joan.

  "I remember the day when you dropped that religious nut cold in twenty seconds. With no permanent effects."

  Joan stretched her mouth open in a travesty of a smile. Snapped shut her teeth. Clara was staring at both of them like they'd gone insane.

  "Mommy dearest's got venom," Joan said sweetly and simply.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Her timing couldn't have been better; the lunch line hadn't yet started to form when she got to the cafeteria. The neighborhood had a deficit of restaurants, and in half an hour the cafeteria would be packed.

  Clara leaned over the counter and sniffed. "Hey ya, Peter. How's the lasagna?"

  Peter, a gangly young black man with a lightning bolt-shaped bald patch over his left temple, a paper hat, apron, and numerous rings in his earlobes, shrugged.

  "Hey, Doc. The usual grub - almost palatable. How come I haven't seen you around in a while?"

  "I've been working nights. How were midterms?"

  "A stone bitch. But I got through them. Even got a B on my microbiology test."

  "Peter, that's terrific! And you thought you'd fail!"

  He grinned. "Yeah, it's cool. Thanks for helping me prepare. Umm, do you think we could go over my microbiology exam together sometime?"

  "Of course. Maybe later in the week. Say, Peter ..."

  She leaned on the counter, glancing at the guard who'd been assigned to follow her around. He was helping himself to a Coke at the soda fountain. That put him - briefly - with his back mostly to her. Clara gave Peter a wink and, pressing a finger to her lips, pulled a vial out of her pocket. She swiftly emptied the contents onto the lasagna, then pocketed the vial.

  Peter gave her a strange look. "What gives?"

  "A little special spice," she said in a low
voice, and jerked her glance toward the guard. "Serve it up as usual. Nobody'll get hurt. I'll explain later."

  Peter nodded slowly. "You got it."

  "But between you and me, I'd avoid the lasagna."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  An hour later, in the clean room, Poynter entered the lab where Faneuil was overseeing Clara's work. Her hair was coming out from under her hood and she looked worried.

  "A technician in the wet chemistry lab has collapsed," she said.

  "The cause?"

  "They don't know. It appears to be a severe flu. The infirmary medic wants you there right away."

  "Keep an eye on her," he said, jerking his chin toward Clara. "Don't leave her alone."

  Clara kept working, while Poynter sat on a lab stool and glowered at her.

  Ten minutes later the phone on the wall by the door rang. Clara started for it, but Poynter snapped, "Leave it!" and grabbed it herself.

  "Uh huh? Yes, an RN degree. Shit! How many? I'll be right there."

  She hung up and turned to Clara. "You're to come with me."

  Clara followed her to the infirmary, and the guard waiting outside followed them both. The medic, a cranky old woman named Janice, was there with Faneuil. Clara leaned against the wall while Poynter, Faneuil, and Janice conferred in low, anxious tones. Inside the infirmary were groans and the sounds of people throwing up.

  As she stood there a young man staggered down the hall toward them, and from another direction, a woman helped another woman along. A crowd of concerned friends and coworkers was gathering.

  "Dr. van Renssaeler!" One of the technicians grabbed her arm. "What's going on?"

  Others turned to look. She said in soft, grave tones, "Everyone should remain completely calm. We have no definite proof that one of the experimental viruses has escaped containment and mutated."

  There were gasps and whispers. "What did she say? What did she say?"

  "An experimental virus is loose!"

  Pandemonium broke. Everyone started running and shouting. Faneuil - who was starting to look a little sickly himself - raised his voice, trying to stem the panic, but Clara might as well have lit the fuse on a bomb.

  She made her way through the ensuing chaos to the clean room. The guards had fled, including her own. She suited up swiftly and entered. The flasks of Black Trump virus she'd made so far were encased in coolers by the door, neatly labeled awaiting verification of the test cultures.