Wild Cards: Inside Straight Read online

  That meant that Lucy would be expelled. Fahrenheit had killed Fahrenheit—something had to be done. The rules had to be enforced. Anda swallowed hard.

  “If you expel Lucy, I’ll quit,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve.

  Liza laughed. “Oh, chicken, you’re a brave thing, aren’t you? No one’s being expelled, fear not. But I wanna talk to this Raymond of yours.”

  Her dad knocked at the door of her bedroom after she’d showered and changed. “How’s my girl?”

  “Revising,” she said, and hefted her maths book at him.

  “Did you have a fun afternoon on the pitch?”

  “You mean ‘did my head get trod on’?”

  “Did it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I did more treading than getting trodden on.” The other girls were really fat, and they didn’t have a lot of team skills. Anda had been to war: she knew how to depend on someone and how to be depended upon.

  “That’s my girl.” He pretended to inspect the paint-work around the light switch. “Been on the scales this week?”

  She had, of course: the school nutritionist saw to that, a morning humiliation undertaken in full sight of all the other fatties.

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “And—?”

  “I’ve lost a stone,” she said. A little more than a stone, actually. She had been able to fit into last year’s jeans the other day.

  He beamed at her. “I’ve lost three pounds myself,” he said, holding his tum. “I’ve been trying to follow your diet, you know.”

  “I know, Da,” she said. It embarrassed her to discuss it with him.

  “Well, I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you. We both are, your Mum and me. And I wanted to let you know that I’ll be moving your PC back into your room tomorrow. You’ve earned it.”

  Anda blushed pink. She hadn’t really expected this. Her fingers twitched over a phantom game-controller.

  “Oh, Da,” she said. He held up his hand.

  “It’s all right, girl. We’re just proud of you.”

  “Hello, Anda.”

  “Hi, Sarge.”

  Lucy had known the minute she entered the game, which meant that she was still on Lucy’s buddy-list. Well, that was a hopeful sign.

  “You don’t have to call me that. We’re the same rank now, after all.”

  Anda pulled down a menu and confirmed it: she’d been promoted to Sargeant during her absence. She smiled.

  “Gosh,” she said.

  “Yes, well, you earned it,” Lucy said. “I’ve been talking to Raymond a lot about the working conditions in the factory, and, well—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Anda.”

  “Me too, Lucy.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said.

  They went adventuring, running some of the game’s standard missions together. It was fun, but after the kind of campaigning they’d done before, it was also kind of pale and flat.

  “It’s horrible, I know,” Anda said. “But I miss it.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Lucy said. “I thought I was the only one. It was fun, wasn’t it? Big fights, big stakes.”

  “Well, poo,” Anda said. “I don’t wanna be bored for the rest of my life. What’re we gonna do?”

  “I was hoping you knew.”

  She thought about it. The part she’d loved had been going up against grownups who were not playing the game, but gaming it, breaking it for money. They’d been worthy adversaries, and there was no guilt in beating them, either.

  “We’ll ask Raymond how we can help,” she said.

  “Walk out in-game?” Lucy said.

  “No,” Raymond said. “That wouldn’t be very effective. I want them to walk out in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. I’ll call the press in, we’ll make a big deal out of it. We can win—I know we can.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Anda said.

  “The same problem as always. Getting them organised. I thought that the game would make it easier: we’ve been trying to get these girls organised for years: in the sewing shops, and the toy factories, but they lock the doors and keep us out and the girls go home and their parents won’t let us talk to them. But in the game, I thought I’d be able to reach them—”

  “But the bosses keep you away?”

  “I keep getting killed. I’ve been practicing my sword-fighting, but it’s so hard—”

  “This will be fun,” Anda said. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” Lucy said.

  “To an in-game factory. We’re your new bodyguards.” The bosses hired some pretty mean mercs, Anda knew. She’d been one. They’d be fun to wipe out.

  Raymond’s character spun around on the screen, then planted a kiss on Anda’s cheek. Anda made her character give him a playful shove that sent him sprawling.

  “Hey, Lucy, go get us a couple BFGs, OK?”

  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS IS YOUR CRISIS!

  Kate Wilhelm

  Kate Wilhelm began publishing in 1956, but in retrospect, she can more usefully be thought of as belonging to the New Wave era of the mid-’60s instead, because that’s when her writing would take a quantum jump in power and sophistication, and she would begin to produce major work. By 1968, she won a Nebula Award for her short story, “The Planners,” and her work continued to grow in complexity, ambition, depth of characterization, and maturity of expression, until she was producing some of the best work of the early ’70s, particularly at novella length: the famous novella “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” “Somerset Dreams,” “April Fool’s Day Forever,” “The Infinity Box,” “The Encounter,” “The Fusion Bomb,” “The Plastic Abyss,” and many others. She won a Hugo in 1976 for the novel version of “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” added another Nebula to her collection in 1986 with a win for her story “The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky,” and yet another Nebula in 1987 for her story “Forever Yours, Anna.”

  Wilhelm’s other books include the novels The Killer Thing, Let the Fire Fall, Margaret and I, The Winter Beach, Fault Lines, The Clewisten Test, Juniper Time, Welcome, Chaos, Oh, Susannah!, Huysman’s Pets, and Cambio Bay, as well as the collections The Downstairs Room, Somerset Dreams, The Infinity Box, Listen, Listen, Children of the Wind, and And the Angels Sing. In recent years, she’s become as well known as a mystery writer as an SF writer, publishing eight Constance and Charlie novels and eight Barbara Holloway novels. Her most recent books include Skeletons: A Novel of Suspense, The Good Children, The Deepest Water, The Price of Silence, and the nonfiction book Storyteller: 30 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. With her late husband, writer Damon Knight, she ran the Milford Writer’s Conference for many years, and both were deeply involved in the creation and operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

  4 P.M. FRIDAY

  Lottie’s factory closed early on Friday, as most of them did now. It was four when she got home, after stopping for frozen dinners, bread, sandwich meats, beer. She switched on the wall TV screen before she put her bag down. In the kitchen she turned on another set, a portable, and watched it as she put the food away. She had missed four hours.

  They were in the mountains. That was good. Lottie liked it when they chose mountains. A stocky man was sliding down a slope, feet out before him, legs stiff—too conscious of the camera, though. Lottie couldn’t tell if he had meant to slide, but he did not look happy. She turned her attention to the others.

  A young woman was walking slowly, waist high in ferns, so apparently unconscious of the camera that it could only be a pose this early in the game. She looked vaguely familiar. Her blond hair was loose, like a girl in a shampoo commercial, Lottie decided. She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember where she had seen the girl. A model, probably, wanting to be a star. She would wander aimlessly, not even trying for the prize, content with the publicity she was getting.

  The other woman was another sort altogether. A bit overweight, her thighs bulged in the heavy trous
ers the contestants wore; her hair was dyed black and fastened with a rubber band in a no-nonsense manner. She was examining a tree intently. Lottie nodded at her. Everything about her spoke of purpose, of concentration, of planning. She’d do.

  The final contestant was a tall black man, in his forties probably. He wore old-fashioned eyeglasses—a mistake. He’d lose them and be seriously handicapped. He kept glancing about with a lopsided grin.

  Lottie had finished putting the groceries away; she returned to the living room to sit before the large unit that gave her a better view of the map, above the sectioned screen. The Andes, she had decided, and was surprised and pleased to find she was wrong. Alaska! There were bears and wolves in Alaska still, and elk and moose.

  The picture shifted, and a thrill of anticipation raised the hairs on Lottie’s arms and scalp. Now the main screen was evenly divided; one half showed the man who had been sliding. He was huddled against the cliff, breathing very hard. On the other half of the screen was an enlarged aerial view. Lottie gasped. Needle-like snow-capped peaks, cliffs, precipices, a raging stream . . . The yellow dot of light that represented the man was on the edge of a steep hill covered with boulders and loose gravel. If he got on that, Lottie thought, he’d be lost. From where he was, there was no way he could know what lay ahead. She leaned forward, examining him for signs that he understood, that he was afraid, anything. His face was empty; all he needed now was more air than he could get with his labored breathing.

  Andy Stevens stepped in front of the aerial map; it was three feet taller than he. “As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, there is only this scrub growth to Dr. Burnside’s left. Those roots might be strong enough to hold, but I’d guess they are shallowly rooted, wouldn’t you? And if he chooses this direction, he’ll need something to grasp, won’t he?” Andy had his tape measure and a pointer. He looked worried. He touched the yellow dot of light. “Here he is. As you can see, he is resting, for the moment, on a narrow ledge after his slide down sixty-five feet of loose dirt and gravel. He doesn’t appear to be hurt. Our own Dr. Lederman is watching him along with the rest of us, and he assures me that Dr. Burnside is not injured.”

  Andy pointed out the hazards of Dr. Burnside’s precarious position, and the dangers involved in moving. Lottie nodded, her lips tight and grim. It was off to a good start.

  6 P.M. FRIDAY

  Butcher got home, as usual, at six. Lottie heard him at the door but didn’t get up to open it for him. Dr. Burnside was still sitting there. He had to move. Move, you bastard! Do something!

  “Whyn’t you unlock the door?” Butcher yelled, yanking off his jacket.

  Lottie paid no attention. Butcher always came home mad, resentful because she had got off early, mad at his boss because the warehouse didn’t close down early, mad at traffic, mad at everything.

  “They say anything about them yet?” Butcher asked, sitting in his recliner.

  Lottie shook her head. Move, you bastard! Move!

  The man began to inch his way to the left and Lottie’s heart thumped, her hands clenched.

  “What’s the deal?” Butcher asked hoarsely, already responding to Lottie’s tension.

  “Dead end that way,” Lottie muttered, her gaze on the screen. “Slide with boulders and junk if he tries to go down. He’s gotta go right.”

  The man moved cautiously, never lifting his feet from the ground but sliding them along, testing each step. He paused again, this time with less room than before. He looked desperate. He was perspiring heavily. Now he could see the way he had chosen offered little hope of getting down. More slowly than before, he began to back up; dirt and gravel shifted constantly.

  The amplifiers picked up the noise of the stuff rushing downward, like a waterfall heard from a distance, and now and then a muttered unintelligible word from the man. The volume came up: he was cursing. Again and again he stopped. He was pale and sweat ran down his face. He didn’t move his hands from the cliff to wipe it away.

  Lottie was sweating too. Her lips moved occasionally with a faint curse or prayer. Her hands gripped the sofa.

  7:30 P.M. FRIDAY

  Lottie fell back onto the sofa with a grunt, weak from sustained tension. They were safe. It had taken over an hour to work his way to this place where the cliff and steep slope gave way to a gentle hill. The man was sprawled out face down, his back heaving.

  Butcher abruptly got up and went to the bathroom. Lottie couldn’t move yet. The screen shifted and the aerial view filled the larger part. Andy pointed out the contestants’ lights and finally began the recap.

  Lottie watched on the portable set as she got out their frozen dinners and heated the oven. Dr. Lederman was talking about Angie Dawes, the young aspiring actress whose problem was that of having been overprotected all her life. He said she was a potential suicide, and the panel of examining physicians had agreed Crisis Therapy would be helpful.

  The next contestant was Mildred Ormsby, a chemist, divorced, no children. She had started on a self-destructive course through drugs, said Dr. Lederman, and would be benefited by Crisis Therapy.

  The tall black man, Clyde Williams, was an economist; he taught at Harvard and had tried to murder his wife and their three children by burning down their house with them in it. Crisis Therapy had been indicated.

  Finally Dr. Edward Burnside, the man who had started the show with such drama, was shown being interviewed. Forty-one, unmarried, living with a woman, he was a statistician for a major firm. Recently he had started to feed the wrong data into the computer, aware but unable to stop himself.

  Dr. Lederman’s desk was superimposed on the aerial view and he started his taped explanation of what Crisis Therapy was. Lottie made coffee. When she looked again Eddie was still lying on the ground, exhausted, maybe even crying. She wished he would roll over so she could see if he was crying.

  Andy returned to explain how the game was played: the winner received one million dollars, after taxes, and all the contestants were undergoing Crisis Therapy that would enrich their lives beyond measure. Andy explained the automatic, air-cushioned, five-day cameras focused electronically on the contestants, the orbiting satellite that made it possible to keep them under observation at all times, the light amplification, infrared system that would keep them visible all night. This part made Lottie’s head ache.

  Next came the full-screen commercial for the wall units. Only those who had them could see the entire show. Down the left side of the screen were the four contestants, each in a separate panel, and over them a topographical map that showed the entire region, where the exit points were, the nearest roads, towns. Center screen could be divided any way the director chose. Above this picture was the show’s slogan: “This Is Your Crisis!” and a constantly running commercial. In the far right corner there was an aerial view of the selected site, with the colored dots of light. Mildred’s was red, Angie’s was green. Eddie’s yellow, Clyde’s blue. Anything else larger than a rabbit or squirrel that moved into the viewing area would be white.

  The contestants were shown being taken to the site, first by airplane, then helicopter. They were left there on noon Friday and had until midnight Sunday to reach one of the dozen trucks that ringed the area. The first one to report in at one of the trucks was the winner.

  10 P.M. FRIDAY

  Lottie made up her bed on the couch while Butcher opened his recliner full length and brought out a blanket and pillow from the bedroom. He had another beer and Lottie drank milk and ate cookies, and presently they turned off the light and there was only the glow from the screen in the room.

  The contestants were settled down for the night, each in a sleeping bag, campfires burning low, the long northern twilight still not faded. Andy began to explain the contents of the backpacks.

  Lottie closed her eyes, opened them several times, just to check, and finally fell asleep.

  1 A.M. SATURDAY

  Lottie sat up suddenly, wide awake, her heart thumping. The red beeper had come on. On c
enter screen the girl was sitting up, staring into darkness, obviously frightened. She must have heard something. Only her dot showed on her screen, but there was no way for her to know that. Lottie lay down again, watching, and became aware of Butcher’s heavy snoring. She shook his leg and he shifted and for a few moments breathed deeply, without the snore, then began again.

  Francine Dumont was the night M.C.; now she stepped to one side of the screen. “If she panics,” Francine said in a hushed voice, “it could be the end of the game for her.” She pointed out the hazards in the area—boulders, a steep drop-off, the thickening trees on two sides. “Let’s watch,” she whispered and stepped back out of the way.

  The volume was turned up; there were rustlings in the undergrowth. Lottie closed her eyes and tried to hear them through the girl’s ears, and felt only contempt for her. The girl was stiff with fear. She began to build up her campfire. Lottie nodded. She’d stay awake all night, and by late tomorrow she’d be finished. She would be lifted out, the end of Miss Smarty Pants Dawes.

  Lottie sniffed and closed her eyes, but now Butcher’s snores were louder. If only he didn’t sound like a dying man, she thought—sucking in air, holding it, holding it, then suddenly erupting into a loud snort that turned into a gurgle. She pressed her hands over her ears and finally slept again.

  2 P.M. SATURDAY

  There were beer cans on the table, on the floor around it. There was half a loaf of bread and a knife with dried mustard and the mustard jar without a top. The salami was drying out, hard, and there were onion skins and bits of brown lettuce and an open jar of pickles. The butter had melted in its dish, and the butter knife was on the floor, spreading a dark stain on the rug.

  Nothing was happening on the screen now. Angie Dawes hadn’t left the fern patch. She was brushing her hair.