Marked Cards Read online

  Clara lifted the incubator's lid, took the infant in her hands, and - careful not to dislodge electrodes, oxygen, or IV - lowered herself into the rocker by the incubator. She unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse, laid Mary Louise on her bare skin, and rocked her. She was so small Clara could hold her in one hand.

  Mary Louise whimpered. Clara moved Mary Louise's head into the crook of her neck, and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead.

  "Poor little thing," she whispered. "You've had a rough beginning, haven't you?"

  Joan was at the door, watching her.

  "Maman."

  "Hi."

  Both kept their voices low. Joan slithered over and reared next to the rocker. Clara laid a hand on her mother's arm.

  "I remember the first time I held you," Joan said. "I've never known such complete joy."

  Clara gave her a smile.

  "Have you heard anything about your case?"

  "Mitchell says negotiations are going well." Clara shrugged. "We'll have to see."

  After a pause Joan asked, "Have you spoken to Bradley?"

  Clara shook her head. "He's avoiding me. He doesn't want to see me." She glanced over; Joan was looking at her. She shook her head again.

  "I can't face him, Maman. I couldn't bear the look on his face. I couldn't bear his rejection."

  Joan sighed. "Clara, darling, for twenty-five years I suffered, for not going to you, for not braving the look on your face."

  Clara nuzzled the baby-soft hair and skin of Mary Louise's head and said nothing.

  "Don't make the same mistake I did."

  Still Clara said nothing.

  "Do you love him?" Joan demanded.

  Clara gasped. "Of course!"

  Joan squeezed her hand. "Then go to him. He's in his office. Go now. I'll take over with the baby.

  "Just try. This once," Joan said, and gave her a smile. "You can handle it. All he can say is no, right?"

  Clara gazed at her mother, nodded with a sigh.

  "You're right."

  She handed the infant over and kissed her mother on the cool, dry, glittering scales of her cheek.

  "Maman, I am so glad I found you."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Gazing out over the skyline of Manhattan, the dirt, despair and poverty veiled by a spectacular smog-generated sunset, Finn felt again the weight of that newborn child resting in his hands. He had delivered plenty of babies. The birth of this one, however, raised a visceral reaction - fierce joy that she had survived, and despair that he would never hold one of his own.

  He didn't want to think about Clara, but she was an insidious presence in any thought pertaining to babies. She had lost weight in the past days. Since Finn hadn't seen her, the gauntness seemed all the more severe, the shadow of sadness all the darker in her gray eyes. Until she had accepted young Mary Louise from his hands, and her eyes had shone with the same fire of achievement he had felt. Clara had vanished with the baby, carrying her away to the neo-natal unit to begin blood replacement treatments. Finn was avoiding the neo-natal unit. He checked his watch. He'd give it another twenty minutes. By then Clara should be safely gone. Because if he saw her he wasn't sure what he'd do - kiss her or kill her. Probably kiss her.

  "Bradley?"

  He whirled too fast, got tangled in his own legs, the cane and the cast, and went down on his hindquarters. Clara reached out, took a step toward him, then folded back in on herself like a frightened touch-me-not. Finn got his feet under him, and limped behind the desk, placing it like a buffer between him and her disturbing presence.

  "Hi," Finn finally said.

  "Hi."

  Long pause. Finn had to fill the silence. "How's the baby?"

  "Doing wonderfully."

  "We did it," Finn heard himself say, and then he smiled at her.

  Tears clouded Clara's eyes. "You looked at me. This is the first time since ... since ... that you've really looked at me." Finn couldn't think of anything to say. "What do you see, Bradley, when you look at me? Monstrous killer? The woman you made love with? Which?"

  "I don't know, Clara. You tell me which one you are. Explain to me how you could plan genocide when you'd been trained as a healer."

  She half turned, gave him her profile. In a soft voice she began. "For years I'd had nightmares about my mother's death. The wild card had killed her. There was something monstrous about the way it killed her. That's what they told me. Papa hated wild cards. Pan hated them, but with a scientist's objectivity - they would destroy the human race. I was a motherless child being raised by men whose strongest emotion was hate. For years as I studied and worked I lied to myself, told myself I was doing this for the sake of humanity, freeing those poor souls from terrible suffering." She paused, drew a shaky breath.

  "It was a lie. I was doing it as a way to take vengeance against the disease that had stolen my mother." She turned to him. "And then you, a wild card, a joker, destroyed my beliefs. You weren't suffering, horrifying, praying for death. You were living and loving, and you showed me I was the one with no life, no joy. And then you gave me back my mother."

  "Yeah, I'm swell, but that doesn't tell me what you want from me, Clara. Forgiveness? Okay, I forgive you. I don't think it matters a damn because you have to decide if you can forgive yourself - "

  "No."

  The single word interrupted his diatribe. Finn gaped at her. "No? No, what?"

  "I don't want your forgiveness."

  "Then what the hell do you want?"

  "I want to know if you still love me."

  They had both lost that stiff, on their dignity pose, had stopped talking like characters in a soap.

  "Don't the two sort of go hand in hand?" Finn asked.

  "I don't know, do they?" She paused for an instant. "Do you love me?"

  Finn hesitated, hedged. "Do you love me?"

  That dimple was starting to appear. "You have to go first."

  "That's not fair. I have more to lose."

  "How do you figure that?" she demanded.

  "I get rejected more," Finn said.

  "You can't know that. I was terribly unpopular in school."

  "Goddamn it, Clara, if I can survive you driving me crazy I'll probably love you 'til I'm old and gray."

  And then she was in his arms, laughing and crying. Her tears dampened his shoulder, her cheek warm to his touch as he stroked back her hair. They kissed, and it took a few moments for evil reality to intrude.

  Gently he took her by the shoulders, held her at arms length. "Clara, I don't know how long we've got together.... His voice failed for an instant. He coughed to clear the sudden tightness. "The virus ... But however long I've got, I want to spend it with you."

  "I'm working on a vaccine," she said, her voice a thin thread of sound.

  "And you keep working on it, but you can't work too late at night, and you gotta work here because I want to be with you," Finn said.

  Clara sighed, and snuggled in close. "What else can we do, Bradley?" she asked after a few moments of silent communion.

  "Live and hope."

  And he found reasons for both in the taste of her lips.

  The Color of His Skin

  Part 8

  "The Sharks got away with three vials before van Renssaeler could destroy them," Hannah was telling them. "Pan Rudo escaped too, with this General MacArthur Johnson."

  Father Squid's voice was calm and soothing. "The police have assured us that every possible step is being taken to find and apprehend them. Dr. van Renssaeler has come forward and is willing to testify. The authorities - "

  "- will do nothing," Gregg interrupted. "Every last person infected by the wild card virus is now under a sentence of death."

  The voice, coming from high above them, caused everyone gathered in the room to peer up into the shadowed, distant ceiling, where the hulks of the Turtle's old shells loomed, dark ghosts of a painful past. Gregg could see the fuzzy image of the people in the room below: Dutton's skeletal face, Hota
ir in the midst of his flames, Oddity standing silently against the wall, Father Squid, Troll, Jo Ann and her husband, maybe a dozen or more others.

  And Hannah. She peered up to where Gregg was hiding, but his myopic sight could tell nothing about her expression. Still, seeing her again sent the air rushing out of his lungs. For a moment he couldn't breathe, making eye contact with her in the darkness. Somewhere down below, Gregg heard the click of an automatic weapon being taken off safety. The scent of the crowd was bitter and fragile.

  "Oh, Leo Barnett will say he's very concerned," Gregg went on from his perch on the shell. "He may even put together a task force to study the problem, but nothing will happen until it's too late. When you're all dead, maybe they'll build you a nice wall with all your names on it."

  "Who are you?" Hannah called.

  "You won't believe me. No one believes me."

  "Try us."

  Gregg wriggled out the blackened, ruined interior of the Turtle's shell, which still smelled faintly of smoke, sweat, beer, and old food. Someone hit a switch, and Gregg blinked as the tracklights around the ceiling illuminated him. "It's Battle ..." he heard someone say as he made the short leap from the shell to the wall alongside. The pads on his multiple legs gripped the wall; headfirst, he wriggled down to the ground. He could smell the stench of Hotair's Sterno flames, the sharp tang of oil from the weapon he knew was tracking him, and the floral scent of Hannah's hair.

  He started toward her, but as he passed Troll, the joker grabbed a handful of loose skin just behind his head and lifted him like a kitten in the grasp of a mother cat. Gregg's legs began to pump in an automatic frenzy, but the grip was tight and unbreakable and his limbs pumped uselessly in the air. Troll turned him, and Gregg saw the man's grim face.

  "Battle, you son of a bitch," Troll said. "This is for all the jokers who died on the Rox. This is for all of us the Sharks killed." His other huge hand drew back, fisted. Hotair chuckled in the background.

  "No!" Gregg shrilled, his voice piercing. "I'm not Battle, damn it."

  "Like hell," Troll said. "Which is where we're sending you right now."

  "It's true. Please. You have to listen to me." Gregg wriggled at the end of Troll's grasp like a hook-speared worm.

  "Troll!" Hannah said. "Let's hear him out."

  "He's Battle, Hannah. We all know what he's been saying, but - "

  "Troll ..."

  "If I put him down, he'll be gone," Troll persisted. "He's fast, remember? Look at how quick those little feet are going."

  "I can stop ..." Gregg muttered. He forced himself to cease running; it took several seconds, but at last he hung still in Troll's grasp. Troll lowered him carefully to the ground, and Gregg went over to Hannah, rising up with his first two segments as he looked at her.

  "Hannah ..." he began. His body shuddered from the effort of standing up after all the running in place he'd just done; he dropped back to all sixes, peering up at her. "Hannah," he said when he could speak again. "Do you believe me?"

  Grief and hope mingled on Hannah's face, but she pressed her lips together. She glanced at Father Squid and Dutton. "Give me a few minutes with him, Okay?"

  "Hannah," Father Squid began, "I know what Dr. Finn said, but ..."

  "I'm the one who'd know best, aren't I? Just ..." She blinked hard. "A few minutes, that's all." She looked down at Gregg, and he could see nothing in the blur of her face. "Come on," she said, and walked from the gallery into the next room.

  On one side, Jetboy struggled with Dr. Tod in the gondola of the careening dirigible while in the background the bright red pieces of the JB-1 began their long fall to the city Delow. On the other wall, a frozen, tragic scene from the WHO Aces tour: Kahina stood over a bleeding Nur; Hiram Worchester fisted his hand as Sayyid crumpled in agony; Jack Braun gleamed golden while bullets ricocheted from his chest; Tachyon lay crumpled and unconscious. Gregg was there too, his shoulder bloody as Sarah Morgenstern tended to him and Peregrine flew overhead to attack the Nur's guards.

  "Not one of my favorite moments," Gregg said softly.

  "What?"

  "Nothing." Gregg sighed - it sounded like a tea kettle boiling over. She was staring at him, but when their gazes met, she quickly looked away. "Hannah ... I don't know where to start. My God, I've missed you - "

  "Shut UP!" The words were torn from her throat, harsh and shrill. Hannah closed her eyes for a second, biting her upper lip. "Just shut up," she said more calmly, her eyes still closed. When they opened again, she was looking at Gregg's waxen image in the Syrian diorama. He could see her reflection in the glass. "I ... I've never finished grieving for Gregg. The last few days of his life were so strange. He wouldn't see me, wouldn't talk to me or Father Squid. The press conference almost killed me; I felt betrayed and violated and used, and then ..." She stopped. She leaned her forehead against the glass, her hands pressed against it. "When he was murdered, the pain was worse than I thought anything could be. I've never stopped grieving. Not yet."

  She looked at him, and her eyes were as cold and sharp as blue ice. "And then you came around. People told me that you were saying you were Gregg, but ..." Hannah stopped. She looked again at the Syrian exhibit before turning back to him. "Finn said you were there, in the lab. Is that what you came to tell us?"

  "Yes, but it seems you already know it," Gregg said. "But you can't just wait for Barnett to save you. You can't count on the police or the feds or anyone else taking care of the Black Trump. You have to do it."

  "Not me," Hannah said. She was staring at him.

  "What do you mean?"

  Hannah crouched in front of him, close enough that he could see her face clearly. Her breath was mint touched with a lingering trace of coffee. "Let me ask you again. Who are you?"

  "I'm Gregg," he said, and saw her visibly wince with the words. Her smell changed at the same time, subtly. "Hannah, no one wants to believe it, but I was jumped - before that damn press conference, before my body was killed. The Sharks did it: in fact, that was probably Battle who was in my body during that last meeting. Hannah - " His body wriggled; he guessed it was his new equivalent of a shrug. "I remember the first time we made love - in your room at Father Squid's parsonage, after we'd gone to Aces High. Father was gone, Quasiman was sitting downstairs in one of his fugues.... Would Battle know that?"

  Hannah breathed, a hoarse exhalation. Still crouching, she let her head drop. Her long hair hid her face. "I don't believe you. This is a trick."

  Gregg took a breath, cursing his new body and the puny voice it gave him. There was no power to it, no Puppetman, no Gift: it was only a voice and the words had to convince by themselves. It wasn't fair. "The second time we spent the night at my apartment. You said you hadn't figured me for a reader. You asked me if I'd actually read all of the books in my office."

  "No ..."

  "You'd forgotten your toothbrush. I gave you one from the closet in the bathroom: red, I think. We made love again that morning and that - " Gregg stopped and took a breath. "That was the first time you said that you loved me," he finished.

  "Gregg." A whisper. Her head came up. She was staring at him, her hands clenched into tight fists on her knees. Light from the diorama painted harsh shadows under her eyes. "It's really you." It was no longer a question.

  "Yes. I'm Gregg," he said, and the knowledge that she believed him set blood pounding in his temples. Relief flooded through him, its depth surprising him. He hadn't known how important it was that someone - anyone - believe him.

  Hannah sobbed once, a choking gasp that she muffled with her hands. Her eyes were wide and frightened. "I wanted to think it was real," she said. "When I heard from Oddity, Jube, and Jo Ann, I wanted so badly to believe you were still alive. Then when Dr. Finn said it might be true ... Oh God, Gregg ..."

  Her hands came toward him, trembling. They smelled of soap. The first touch was feather light, but it burned deliciously on his skin. Her fingers caressed him, withdrew, then returned, until she cupped his h
ead in her hands.

  He realized that it was the first time anyone had touched him in some way other than violence in months.

  "I'm so sorry," she told him. Tears drew glistening trails down her cheeks. "Gregg ..." On her knees, she pulled him to her. She hugged his joker body to herself, and Gregg marveled. Her warmth was an aching fire, her smell jasmine.

  She still cares - without the Gift, without anything. Yet if it had been Hannah instead of me, if she had been twisted into this mockery, I couldn't... "How can you?" he husked, wonderingly, and a deeper guilt ran through him like a blade.

  Her arms tightened around him. Her voice sounded deep, resonating through him. "How could I not?" she asked him. "I loved what you were, what your are: your mind, your compassion, your leadership. The body ..." She pulled away from him. Her eyes searched his face, unashamed of the tears. "I wasn't your friend for that, Gregg. Please don't hate yourself, because I don't. You're alive - that's what matters. Nothing else."

  If you knew ... Some of that self-loathing spilled out. "That's goddamn easy for you to say," he retorted, the words out before he could stop them, but she only nodded into his rage.

  "I know," she said, and there was no anger in her voice at all, only sympathy. "I still believe it's true."

  "Hannah, they took away everything. Everything I was and everything I had. And I can't... I can't get it back." His body spasmed. "I hate them," he said, and the truth of it rang like cold iron.

  "Then use your hate," she told him. "You say we don't know what we face or how important it is. Then you have to tell them." She nodded her head toward the other room.

  He was suddenly frightened. "No. I've already told you. I - "

  "You don't understand, Gregg. That's what I was starting to say before. I can't lead these people, not any more. I'm a nat, and no matter how much they know that I care, no matter how much I've done, I'm still a nat and the bottom line is that this Black Trump virus doesn't threaten me. I'll do everything I can to help them, but they need a symbol, a focus. That can't be me, not any more; besides, you'd already taken over that spot, ever since I gave you my information. The truth is that it couldn't have been you, either, not as a nat. Father Squid and the others have danced around it politely and they'll deny that anything's changed, but the truth is that this is a joker problem; it demands a joker leader." She paused. He knew what her next word would be.