Turn of the cards

Chapter Forty-six

Belew’s warning to the Council about presenting the government with too convenient a target so that a single blow could decapitate the rebellion was perfectly correct. Moonchild had not needed to be told in fact. To his surprise, neither did Mark.

It seemed strangely natural for him to spend the next few days divvying up the rebel forces: who should stay behind in the bush to keep raising trouble and who should go to Saigon; how the rebel forces should split up to infiltrate down to the southern capital so that even in a worst-case calamity the government could not catch them all on the march at once. Mark had always heard the military clichй “never divide your forces.” Maybe there were times when that was right. But in the core of him, he knew it wasn’t right now. He acted out that insight with a confidence that frankly amazed him.

When he faltered, he had Moonchild there in his mind to offer suggestions and soft, soothing words of encouragement. J. J. Flash of course took to antigovernment guerrilla warfare like flame to tinder, and what he had to offer was the basic insight that a hundred small fires are a lot harder to put out than one big one – and when they all get bigger and combine, they turn into a firestorm.

Even Cosmic Traveler calmed down enough to offer suggestions, and some of them were actually useful. Who knew better how to keep out of harm’s way than a confirmed coward with an infinity of faces? For all their popular support – which seemed to be causing total consternation to the world’s media – they were still fighting a war of weakness against strength. Trav was weaker than anybody.

Mark suspected his main goal was to get back to Saigon. Now that he’d had time to consider, the Traveler realized he felt much safer in a city than in the paddies or mountains or rain forests. There were four million faces in Saigon, and he could imitate any of them. He couldn’t turn himself into a stand of bamboo.

Only Aquarius, immovably hostile to land-dwellers and all their doings, remained aloof. That was all right. Of all Mark’s personalities Aquarius was the only one who was almost always content to let Mark go along in his own way. Better silence now than another voice in the peanut gallery.

Belew watched everything Mark did, his scrutiny unobtrusive but minute as a circling sparrow hawk’s. He himself said nothing. Either Mark was making all the right moves or the American soldier of fortune figured he was setting himself up for an error he, Belew, could capitalize upon for his own agenda. Mark found he didn’t care. Somewhere he had gotten out of the habit of second-guessing himself.

The tribes came together and flowed apart again, like cloud masses. The storm moved down upon Saigon by divers ways.

The enemy was not totally paralyzed. Despite the Soviets’ defection, the People’s Armed Forces were able to keep both strike craft and helicopters aloft. The rebels generally kept good dispersal, which made them tough to find from the air, and exposed only a few at a time when they got caught. They moved by night, knowing that Soviet-bloc ground-attack aircraft, choppers as well as jets, flew only during daylight.

But sometimes the government pilots got lucky. And PAVN patrols were still thick on the ground, and while some of them were looking mainly to desert, others were still loyal, motivated, and mean. The government still had its spies and informers. It took its toll.

But the guerrilla forces continued to trickle toward Saigon, in a thousand rivulets, like water down a cliff face. The government seemed powerless to stop them.

After a brief respite Mark found himself resorting to the black-and-silver powder even more than before. Maybe Belew was right; maybe he was capable of being a leader himself, maybe he had commanded respect in his own person when he made the decision to go down to Saigon. But Moonchild was still the figurehead of the revolt, the mysterious ace whose quiet word could soothe all tempers and settle all disputes.

Sometimes when she was out, Moonchild felt Eric, probing for her mind. She sealed herself against him. She had chosen her Way. It was too late to change direction.

And then, coming down out of the Cao Nguyen Di Linh into the Cochin lowlands northeast of Ho-ville, Mark’s contingent met white-flag emissaries.

“We’re here to talk to Moonchild,” said the leader of the three jokers. They were scarified, painted, and feathered. In the mottled forest shadow it was hard to tell what was the wild card and what was self-inflicted.

J. Bob Belew turned his head aside, spoke in steadily descending tones. Then he looked back at the three.

“I was telling my boys,” he said conversationally, “to waste you if you looked like causing trouble. They’re Khmer Rouge. Ever hear of them, or hasn’t the Cambodian Civil War come out for Gameboy yet?”

“Save your breath, nat-lover,” said a second joker. “You’ll need it for screaming.”

The leader held up a three-fingered hand. “Easy. We’re here under a flag of truce.”

Mark pushed forward. “Let’s keep everything cool,” he agreed. He realized Belew was casting him as Good Cop in a standard Mutt and Jeff routine. He didn’t see anything to do about it.

The lead emissary frowned him up and down. “We’re here -”

“I’m Moonchild’s personal representative. Ask anybody here.”

The young joker looked mulish. “We have our orders -”

“Let’s just plow these fools under,” Belew said harshly. At the tone of his voice the Khmer Rouge brought up their Kalashnikovs with a multiple clack of safeties. “We have places to go and promises to keep.”

“- but, hey, we’re not slaves,” the joker leader finished. “I guess we can give the message to you.”

Fighting to stifle a grin, Mark said, “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

“The Colonel wants a meet.” He said Colonel without notable affection. “He wants to kiss and make up.”

“He thinks Moonchild will betray her cause.”

“Moonchild’s a wild card.” The joker studied Belew, who as always looked creased and cool despite exertion in the midday heat. “So’re you, I’m guessing – you’re the one they call the Mechanic, aren’t you?”

Belew performed a mock bow. “I have that honor.”

“If you say so. We got briefed on you.” He looked to Mark. “We’re all wild cards. Like it or not, that’s our cause. Colonel thinks we should be together.”

“We’re on our way to pull down the government of the Socialist Republic,” Belew said. “I can’t see your Colonel wanting to get together with us on that.”

The joker boy shrugged. “Fuckin’ Viets think Cambodians are black,” he said. “How much are they ever gonna love us jokers?”

Mark felt his heart jump. The young joker grinned. “Things aren’t like we thought they were when we signed up. Colonel might be closer to your way of thinking than you imagine.”

“I’m willing to concede you were right last time, son,” Belew said. “Don’t press your luck.”

Mark stood looking into the darkness. This was hilly country, forested, not yet flattening out into paddies. The insects were raising their avant-garde orchestration on the soundtrack.

“Wild cards shouldn’t fight each other,” he said.

“It’s a trap,” Belew said.

“I’m going as Moonchild. She can take care of herself.”

“She’s not Golden Boy. She’s not bulletproof. And even if she were the Golden Weenie – no amount of meta-human power can save you forever if enough people want you bad enough.”

Mark shrugged. “If there’s even a chance. Don’t you see? I came out here for a dream – the dream behind the New Joker Brigade. The dream’s still valid, man.”

“Didn’t you hear what your pal Brewer said? Didn’t you see those yahoos today? The dream’s become a nightmare.”

“Maybe it can come back. I – I have to believe that.”

“You have to believe in the Tooth Fairy too.” He turned, walked a few paces away. “It’s Sobel, isn’t it? Your search for an all-knowing Father God figure who can tell you everything’s okay.”

Mark felt his cheeks go hot. “What, are you jealous because you don’t get the role?”

Belew laughed. “Okay. You got me again. Although maybe, just maybe, this is a little too serious for us to be scoring points off each other…”

“Since it’s so serious,” Mark said, “I suppose it’s too serious for me to point out that you started it.”

Belew walked away three steps, walked back. He raised his hands in the air. It wasn’t like him to waste so much motion; Mark had never seen him this agitated.

Unless, of course, he was playing a role.

Belew let his hands drop to his side. “I can’t stop you, can I?”

Mark held up a vial. Inside, it was silver and black. “Not unless your KRs can see in the infrared.”

Belew drew a deep breath through the flared nostrils of his sometime-broken but still-aristocratic nose. “Nobody’s indispensable,” he said, “but some of us are less dispensable than others. I wish you’d reconsider.”

“It’s something I have to do.”

J. Bob arched a brow and looked at him closely. “Is there something here you’re not telling me”

With a faint pop Croyd appeared beside them. “And of course there’s always me, if things go wrong.”

They looked at him. “I beg your pardon?” Belew said.

“I overheard your little discussion. Mark wants to go and meet Colonel Sobel. I just thought I’d pop in and set your minds at ease: I can keep an eye on him. An ear, anyway.”

“How’d you know what we were talking about?” Mark demanded.

“Oh. A new talent I just discovered I had. Clairaudience. And, uh -”

“Teleportation,” Mark said.

“Teleportation. Yeah.” He held his hands out. “So don’t worry Nothing can go wrong.”

It was a temple in the forest, small, with plaster walls and sweeping wood-beam pagoda roof. By decree it had been neglected for years. The wood was weathered, swollen with water and faded by the sun.

Moonchild stood poised before the entryway, hands by her sides, every sense stretched as far as it would go. As agreed, she had come alone.

Nothing. Her night vision was excellent, catlike, but otherwise her senses were no more acute than a nat’s. Her powers of concentration augmented their range. They picked nothing unusual out of the synesthetic forest background noise, the smells and sounds, the movements windblown and movements furtive.

It didn’t mean there was nothing there. She would have to have faith. Either in Colonel Sobel and his dream… or in herself She went inside.

By the light of a pair of candles she could see that the iconoclastic communists had stripped the temple. All that was left was the meter-high statue of the Buddha himself, sitting potbellied and serene with the candles by his knees, and before him a scatter of offerings: bits of candy, flowers, Vietnamese dong notes with petitions and prayers scribbled on them in the modified Roman characters Vietnam had adopted in the seventeenth century, dropped by the faithful and hopeful, undeterred by official disapproval.

“Good of you to join us, Ms. Moon,” said the tall man standing on the Buddha’s right hand.

“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I’m willing to do anything I can if it will help us work together instead of against each other.”

A second man stepped from the darkness at Buddha’s left. The light did fascinating things in the folds of his face. “I’m glad to hear you say that, hon.”

She looked at him. Her hands knotted to fists, slowly unfolded. It was what she had hoped for. It was also what she feared.

“Eric,” she said.

He stepped forward, embraced her, kissed her. She gave him her cheek.

“What’s this? Too good to kiss an ugly joker now?”

“Eric, don’t. I -”

He stepped back. He was grinning at her. “Or are you just ashamed?”

“I have done nothing to be ashamed of.”

He looked at her. She dropped her eyes.

“I have tried to do the right thing,” she said. “It is not always so easy to know what is right.”

“Yes it is.” The Colonel’s voice was low and compelling and rich with overtone. “In this case it is. Come back to us, Isis.”

The tip of her tongue protruded briefly between her lips. “Are you willing to forsake the government’s side, then?”

A low laugh, smooth and rich as melted chocolate. “Not on your life. World revolution’s the only hope any of us wild cards has. Real revolution, the socialist, Marxist, Leninist, Maoist revolution, not this phony fascist reaction your little friends are trying to push off as revolution.”

She backed up an unconscious step, shaking her head in confusion. “I don’t understand. Your emissaries said”

“That the Colonel might be closer to your way of thinking than you imagine,” Eric said. “Right? Because that’s what they were told to say.”

“Is” She could barely make herself say it. “Was that a trick?”

Eric shook his head. “No, my love,” he said, catching hold of her gloved hands, “because I know you. Down inside, the way you think is the way we think. You know our way is right. There’s no reconciliation with the nats, with their world or with their ways. You know that.”

“My people -”

“Fear you and hate you as much as they fear and hate their government. Maybe more. Don’t you see they’re using you? As soon as their rebellion succeeds, they’ll tear you to pieces. They won’t need aces then.”

“No! They need me. They love me.”

“So do I,” Eric said with a rueful grin. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

She hugged him fiercely then, and her tears ran hot down his neck. “Oh, Eric, I’ve missed you so! But I could not stand what was happening at the camp, what we were turning into”

Gently he pushed her away. “I told you before,” he said softly. “We’re in a war for survival. There’s no room for sentiment.”

She tossed her head to clear her eyes of tears. “There is always room for compassion.”

“You talk easily enough of compassion, Ms. Moon,” Sobel said. “How much compassion will the nats show us when you’ve broken the back of our solidarity?”

Us? she thought. She wanted to scream at him, You’re a nat! What would you know about it? But she still felt toward him as if he were a parent. She could not show anger to a parent; she could only hope to change his mind, to make him see…

“The lynch mobs are out there in the night, Isis,” Eric said in a low, intense voice. “The hounds are baying for our blood. Don’t bring them down on our necks, my love. Don’t be a party to -”

Her mind filled with horrific images, burning babies and shredded women. “No!” she screamed, holding futile hands over her ears. “Eric, stop! I won’t let you in my mind anymore! That’s rape.”

Eric stepped back, ruined face stark, hands held out from his sides. He looked to Sobel.

“I’m sorry you see things that way,” the Colonel said.

The room filled with jokers and guns.