Turn of the cards

Chapter Twenty-seven

Night, and a kata in the rain. This time Moonchild – and the semi-submerged Mark persona – were feeling guilty about being so well rested. The rain had returned in mid-afternoon. Moonchild carried on her martial dance uncaring, serene and lovely, her heavy black hair hanging around her shoulders like seaweed.

The sun had been high up in the sky and the bunker filling with heat like a Cadillac with cement when Mark opened his eyes. He had slept through reveille, which was a much-abused record played over the camp P.A. system. It was a weird note, after even Mark “The Last Hippie” Meadows, Cap’n Trips, had broken down and bought a CD player for his long-lost head shop, the Cosmic Pumpkin, to wake up every morning to the firefight sounds of old-fashioned vinyl getting scratched by a needle. Maybe they figured the cracks in the record would roust out the somnolent better than the recorded bugle solo.

It hadn’t awakened Mark. The miracle was, nobody had come along to kick him awake when he didn’t fall in for P. T. Nor was he in the deep shit he assumed he was, when he turned up at H.Q. at ten o’clock in the morning with his shirt buttoned one hole off to report, heart-in-throat, that he’d overslept. He had been told not to sweat it and was given minor make-work jobs to while the day away inside the perimeter. They hadn’t even made him fill sandbags.

Mark was feeling almost human by evening chow. Afterward the nightly political meetings were held in several big tents, lit by kerosene lamps and smelling of wet canvas, like a militaristic camp revival. Brew taught the one Mark and Croyd wound up at, explaining the history of the Vietnamese war of liberation from a socialist point of view. The young bloods kept getting bored and making noise or dozing off. They were pounced on by Revolutionary Vigilance monitors – other young recruits whose interest in the proceedings had been engaged by giving them red armbands and Authority – written up and told to attend the dreaded daily self-criticism sessions that followed the regular political meetings.

Every once in a while an original joker Brigader would lose his cool at some quietly dry remark Brew made concerning the American involvement in Vietnam and start yelling. Brew never flinched. He just got this sardonic half smile on his heavy, handsome face, listened to what the retread had to say, and then demolished him without ever raising his voice. His refutations didn’t always seem logically watertight to the ever-scientific Mark, but the recipients seldom found an answer to them. Brew fought with words the way his buddy Luce did, toward the same end – total Clausewitzian devastation of the enemy – but his skills were subtler. “Jack the Ripper compared to the Skid Row Slasher,” Croyd said, sotto voce, when Mark mentioned it to him.

When Brew finished with him, the objecting veteran got handed a yellow slip requiring his presence at the ensuing kiem thao session. The veterans accepted them meekly, seeming almost to welcome additional contrition. The young bloods generally had to be threatened with worse, like a good beating by the monitors, or some downtime in the Box. The Box was a recent innovation right out of every direct-to-video prison flick ever made: a tiny tin-roof shed at the foot of the parade ground. Malefactors were locked into it and allowed twenty-four hours or so to enjoy the stunning heat of day and the surprising nighttime chill.

When the indoctrination session ended, the sun was long gone. It was safe for Moonchild to come out and play.

As she moved through her forms, the blocks and punches and startling high kicks, she did not lack an audience. She was an attractive female alone in a camp full of lonely men. The gawkers kept a wet, respectful distance, though, and went easy on the catcalls. They’d all seen how she handled Rhino – or heard, which pumped the act up to more than it was.

Eric Bell stood by himself to the side, near the bunker Mark shared with Croyd, the rain matting his dark-blond hair to his misshapen skull. He was silent, his hands and body at rest.

When she felt the end of her hour nearing, Moonchild finished her practice and turned to enter the bunker. Eric stepped forward. “May I talk to you?” he asked. His voice was low and deep beyond his years.

She tipped her head and regarded him coolly. “You are disappointed that there was no fight tonight, yes?”

The boy shook his head. “Relieved. I don’t have much taste for violence.”

“Really? Why, then, are you here, in the middle of a military camp?”

To her surprise he laughed. “I might ask you the same question. The answer is, I believe in love. But love isn’t all you need, no matter what the Beatles sang. The nats have been grinding our faces in that fact since long before I was born – or you either, I suspect. We must have strength, the strength to protect ourselves. Then our love can begin its work – not in a spirit of confrontation, but confidently and unafraid.”

She dropped her gaze to the mud. “That is very beautiful.”

He laughed again. “I was a street poet in Brooklyn before I came here to be a peaceful guerrilla warrior. I picked up a few oratorical tricks back then. It’s all sleight-of-tongue.”

Her mind filled with an urban street-corner image, young Eric barefoot in torn jeans, addressing an afternoon-rush pedestrian throng. First one man in hardhat and coveralls stopped and turned to listen to him, then a woman in a smart gray executive suit, a delivery boy on a mountain bike, one after another, until the homeward surge stood still to hear the boy poet’s words.

He finished his poem, the words of which Moonchild could not quite hear, though they tantalized with the promise of infinite meaning. The crowd barraged him with dead cats and garbage. She laughed. “That never happened, surely!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together in amused delight.

His distorted features slipped into a highly charming grin. “Not exactly,” he said. “You can call that a sleight-of-mind. Another one of my gifts.”

She smiled and started to turn away, suddenly shy. “The way you handled Rhino…” he said.

She froze, every muscle tensed, as if expecting his next words to strike like a blow.

“It was beautiful,” he said. “You could have hurt him badly, yet you did not. You could have shamed him, too. I guess a lot of the guys think you did. But I know better. I saw the way you gave him a chance to strike you when you helped him up, gave him the pride of choosing to do the right thing. That was the most magnificent thing of all.

“You have an ace’s powers, but none of an ace’s arrogance. You have enormous strengths, but you use them with restraint – yes, and with love. That’s what this place” – he gestured around at the dark, rain-swept camp. – “what Fort Venceremos is all about. You show us the way that, yes, we shall overcome.”

She licked her lips and swallowed. She could find no words.

“I’d like to talk to you more,” he said. “I want to know you. May I see you sometime?”

She nodded, almost frantically, agitated by some emotion she could not identify and the coming transformation. “Ask Mark,” she said quickly. “He is a good man.”

She vanished into the bunker, leaving Eric in the rain.

“Check,” Croyd said, moving his bishop. It tipped over his knight en route. “Excuse it. These digits aren’t really designed for manipulation,”

“Uh-uh,” Mark said, shaking his head. “Can’t do that, man.”

For a being virtually bereft of mimetic muscles, Croyd could muster a hell of an outraged look. “Why the hell not?”

“Revealed check from my queen. Can’t put your own king in jeopardy, man.”

“Shit.” Croyd retracted the move, knocking the white knight down again. “And here I thought I had your back to the wall.” Mark gave him a thin smile. Once upon a time he had been a middling-hot chess player; he’d held a master’s rating in high school and college, playing tournaments, memorizing games by the book-load. Time and extensive experimentation with psychoactive chemicals had left certain gaps in his knowledge, and he hadn’t had much occasion to keep his skills honed since. He still fancied himself a dangerous player.

Unfortunately Croyd played with the banzai intensity of an amateur. All those classical openings painstakingly committed to memory, all Mark’s fianchettos and his Nimzo-Indian Defenses, all his careful strategic analysis, blew right out the door in the face of a player who didn’t know enough to know what he wasn’t supposed to do. Despite the misfire of Croyd’s current attack, Mark saw yet another draw looming a few moves ahead like the face of a glacier.

Somebody rapped on the bunker’s doorpost with something hard. “Hello? Anybody in here?”

“Lizards and old hippies, if that counts,” Croyd called. “Come right on in.”

Brew and Luce entered, Brew folding an umbrella, Luce’s face streaming with rain and his T-shirt soaked transparent and clinging to his rather flabby middle. Umbrellas were bogus, apparently.

Gilbert immediately started batting at the air, which was a near-solid blue haze from about the level of Mark’s breastbone up, with several of his arms. “You’re smoking that damned cigar in here. I don’t know why the Colonel permits tobacco onbase. Smoking is a bourgeois habituation, fostered by capitalist consumer fascism.”

“That must be why every Viet over the age of three years old smokes,” Croyd said affably.

“It can’t really be helping you,” Evan Brewer offered in his sweet-reason voice.

Croyd laughed. “Get real, man. Maybe I’m damaging my tissues and my precious bodily essence. But every two, three months I go night-night and the wild card deals me a whole new set. Where’s the damage?”

“Side-stream smoke adversely affects the health of those around you,” Luce said primly, folding his lower sets of arms while his upper continued to fan.

“What? Meadows? He’s got enough bad habits of his own. A little cigar smoke won’t make him much difference.” He drew on the cigar and released an aromatic jet toward the log beams of the ceiling.

“So, you gentlemen have something in mind, or is this a social call? Us old guys need our sleep. But I guess you know that.”

Luce scowled. He liked to think of himself as a youth in rebellion, although he was old enough to have fathered most of the second-generation Brigaders. “Colonel wants to see you. Now.”

“Are we in trouble?” Mark asked.

Luce glowered, still feeling the sting of Croyd’s “old guys” crack. Brew shrugged. “He didn’t tell us to point guns at you, for what that’s worth,” he said easily.

“Can’t beat old-fashioned courtesy,” Croyd said, standing and sweeping his stubby tail left and right a couple of times as if to shake the kinks out. He swayed briefly, as if drunk, then collected himself. “Let’s not keep the man waiting.

The Colonel’s office was paneled in some dark-stained hardwood. Mark guessed teak, but he wasn’t sure if that came from Vietnam. It was also small, cozy to the point of near claustrophobia for three individuals, their chairs, and a lordly wooden desk.

The room was additionally crowded with two-dimensional occupants, stuck up on the walls and sharing frames with Charles Sobel. There was a young Captain Sobel, painfully earnest, Doug MacArthur chin proudly ajut as General Westmoreland pinned a medal on his chest. There were pictures of Major Sobel, a little older, a little more creased around the eyes, posing with members of the joker Brigade company he had commanded in the early seventies. There were a lot of photos of Sobel in civilian clothes, shaking hands with Jimmy Carter, shaking hands with Andrew Young, shaking hands with Robert Redford, shaking hands with the Hero Twins in Guatemala, shaking hands with Gregg Hartmann, back in uniform to shake hands with joker Brigade survivors in front of the Vietnam Wall, whitewater rafting with Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. He probably shook their hands, too, but for some reason had neglected to memorialize it. “Care for a drink, gentlemen?” Colonel Sobel asked, leaning back in his padded leather chair. Soft New Age music played from a small generator-run CD system. “I have a modest but, if I may say so, fairly high-quality collection of hard liquor.”

Croyd asked for Wild Turkey and settled for Jack Daniel’s. Mark accepted a cognac without specifying a brand name. Alcohol was not his drug of choice.

Sobel poured some brandy for himself and passed the snifter back and forth beneath his nose, savoring the bouquet.

“La lucha continua.” He almost sighed. “The struggle goes on.”

He looked at them. “You may wonder at finding me in such decadent surroundings.”

“Farthest thing from our minds, Colonel,” Croyd said.

“The truth is, life in our materialist consumer-oriented society accustoms one to certain perquisites, certain comforts. It is difficult to do entirely without them. And in truth, why put oneself to the stress of going cold-turkey from decadence, as it were, when there is so much urgent work to be done?”

“No point at all,” Croyd said. “We’re behind you all the way, Colonel.”

He sort of hung his head to one side and gave Mark a big wink. Mark fought an urge to slap him. What the hell was wrong with him?

Sobel nodded. “You gentlemen are aces. Powerful aces. You have a great deal to offer our revolution. And I hope you won’t take it amiss if I mention that you’re getting up in years. Not that you’re old, of course, but, simply put, you aren’t as young as you once were. Neither am I, of course; why, I’m probably older than either of you.”

Croyd raised a three-fingered hand, palm-down, wagged it side-to-side. He was pushing sixty; he had been fourteen when Dr. Tod and Jetboy held the very first Wild Card Day, more or less over his head. His long periods of sleep and the ancillary effects of the wild card virus had kept him in stasis in a sort of indeterminate maturity. His story was not exactly common knowledge. He had told it to Mark in a crystal-meth rush. Over and over.

Not seeming to notice the gesture, Sobel folded his hands on the desk before him. “What I’m saying is, we’re all equal here, but of course I’m willing to take cognizance of both your age and the unique contributions you can make.”

“We want to pull our weight, sir,” Mark said.

Have you gone completely insane, you drug-addled freak? Cosmic Traveler wanted to know. Don’t you know better than to contradict a man who holds life-and-death power over us? And listen to him – do you like filling sandbags?

“You will do that, and more. ’From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.’ You have special needs and special abilities both. You, Dr. Meadows, can call upon your ’friends’ – you’ll have to tell me how you do that, comrade-to-comrade, one of these days.”

“Um,” Mark said.

“I’m also aware of your fine scientific background. We have a crying lack of qualified medical personnel. The Republic’s medical assets are so thinly stretched – another crime to be laid at America’s door, denying this country the aid it needs to expand its medical services.”

They got plenty of gelt to blow on guns and tanks and warplanes, buppie, J. J. Flash thought. Mark had a flash of relief – he was feeling centered enough at the moment that he knew he hadn’t actually spoken the words aloud. Then he glanced frantically at Croyd, afraid he’d say them, or something to their effect. Croyd didn’t, but he gave Mark another bulb-eyed stage wink, which was almost as bad.

“I was therefore wondering,” the Colonel said, “if you’d mind assuming the role of camp pharmacist. It’s far from a fulltime occupation; I just want somebody competent to oversee our precious inventory. You’re clearly qualified – overqualified, if anything.”

“Um,” Mark said again, “sure, sir. I’d be happy -”

“And you, Mr. Crenson, your powers”

“Are unique.” Croyd tossed off the rest of his Evil Jack as if swallowing a particularly juicy bug. “Over the years I’ve learned to be very discreet about my ace powers, Colonel. The nat world isn’t always very understanding, if you catch my drift. You can rest assured that my powers are at your disposal, whenever you may call on them.”

Sobel nodded emphatically. “Of course, of course, I understand. The years of oppression…

He gazed off at his photo collection. “The Socialist Re public is doing a great thing for all aces and jokers here. A great thing. We owe the Republic a heavy debt. And we may be on the verge of being able to begin to pay it back.”

He stood up and turned to face his Wall o’ Photos, placing his back to Mark and Croyd. “The Republic is beset by traitors, gentlemen. While all over the world the faint of heart are turning their backs on revolutionary socialism, Vietnam has the strength to keep fighting the good fight. But even she has traitors gnawing her vitals from within.”

Croyd raised his head suddenly, as if taken by surprise. “Traitors,” he said crisply. “Absolutely.”

Traitors? Mark thought. He had immense respect for the Colonel and the scope of his Lennonesque vision, but he was beginning to feel like the Alan Arkin character in The In-Laws.

“There has been a news blackout throughout Fort Venceremos,” the Colonel said, “but we all know how the rumor mill grinds. You may have heard the stories by now: civil unrest in Ho Chi Minh City, rebellion in the countryside, how the People’s Army has been struck with an epidemic of desertions. And while I frown upon rumor-mongering, I must admit there’s a good deal of truth to the stories.”

He turned. “We may be called upon to demonstrate that we, at least, are loyal to our hosts.”

“Certainly, Colonel,” Croyd said, and Mark had a horrible flash that he was doing as good a Peter Falk impression as his lipless lizard mouth would allow. “We’re with you all the way.” Mark just nodded.

“I knew I could rely on you, gentlemen.”

“So we may have to, like, go to war,” Mark said. Actually he yelled it to Croyd, as the two stumbled across the flooded compound in hammering rain. Croyd was padding along on his hind legs, though his favored mode was all-fours. That would drown him tonight, or at least require him to swim more than walk. Mark didn’t know how geckos fared in water – okay, skinks. Croyd was making heavier weather than usual of locomotion, even allowing for the ankle-deep water.

“Could be,” Croyd said. “Some fun, huh?”

“So a bunch of our guys fought against the Vietnamese years ago. You think they’re really going to like being on the same side with the government if the shooting starts for real?”

“Who knows? It’s in their contract, and these are your pinker shade of Nam vets. I haven’t got it all worked out, to tell you the truth. Half the time the vets come on like they’re way to the left of Lucius Gilbert. Then they suck down a couple Giai Phongs and it’s ’we were winning when I left.’”

He lowered a horny lid to half-mast and laid a finger alongside his broad snout. It was an alarming sight.

“By the way,” he said, “I’m not so sure our Colonel has all his hatches battened down tight. Can’t you just see him with a little face painted on his hand? ‘Seсor Pepe likes zee lizards. Don’t you want a keess…?’”

“Stop that. Colonel Sobel is a great man. He’s a visionary.

“He’s a dude who had you beaten with rubber hoses in a room with drains in the floor, Mark.”

“Never mind that. He was doing what he thought was best; he thought I was a CIA spy or something. Besides, the Vietnamese dudes did the actual beating. Sobel was just watching.”

“If making excuses for people becomes an Olympic event anytime soon, he ready to pack your bags for Barcelona next year because you just qualified.”

“You don’t understand, man. It’s good to have visions. Us wild cards need visions. Especially since some of us can’t see beyond where the next rhinoceros beetle is coming from.”

They reached Croyd’s bunker, ducked inside. “I’m sorry, man,” Mark said, as soon as the rain was off their backs.

“No, touchй, fair’s fair. When you’re right, you’re right.”

Mark shot him a warning look. “All right. I’ll stop with The In-Laws.” He lay down on the pallet he’d made out of blankets.

“So what are your powers this time, man?” Mark asked, sitting on a crate that was there for the purpose.

Croyd laughed. “Well, I can climb walls like a son of a bitch. And I can catch bugs with my tongue.”

Mark was staring at him. “Hey, you try catching bugs with your tongue. It’s not as easy as it sounds. If you or any of these jokers tried it, all you’d do is just mash ’em into the ground. Don’t want to do that; gets ’em all muddy and gritty.”

“Gak,” Mark said. “You mean, you don’t have any powers?”

“Other than those… none I’ve noticed yet. No levitation, no bolts of lightning from my fingertips, nothing like that. And for once I’m actually weaker than a nat. I thought one time my scales were turning color, but it was just a trick of the light. We get your green-flash sunsets from time to time here in scenic Vietnam.”

“What if Sobel finds out you don’t have any of these ’special abilities’ he was talking about? Unless he’s planning on launching a big bug-eradication campaign, he’s gonna be pissed.”

“Who’s gonna tell him?”

Without waiting for an answer, Croyd placed one hand atop the other and rested his head on them. He knew Mark was no informer.

“Hey!” Mark said. “They way you were acting in there, like you were drunk or something”

“So I was a little giddy,” Croyd said without raising his head.

“You’re not getting sleepy, are you?”

“Nonsense,” Croyd said firmly. “I already told you. Lizards don’t sleep.”