Overturned, he retreats to the mouth of the tunnel that leads to his house and hunkers down to think.
There are others out there—too many! Accustomed now, Weston can sense them, hear them, smell them in the dense underground air, connected by this tunnel to the treasures he tries so hard to protect. The labyrinth is teeming with life, but he is reluctant to find out who the others are or how they are. They could be trapped underground like him, miserable and helpless, snapped into fetal position in discrete pits they have dug for themselves. They could be killing each other out there, or lying tangled in wild, orgiastic knots doing amazing things to each other in communal passion pits, or thinking great thoughts, writing verse or plotting revolution, or they could be locked into lotus position in individual niches, halfway to Nirvana or—no!—they could be trashing his stolen art. He doesn’t want to know.
It is enough to know that for the moment, he is alone at a dead end and that, in a way, it’s a relief.
Surprise. For the first time since the runaway tourist forced him underground and Wings flew up to the surface and messed up his life, Weston has nothing to hope for and no place to go. And for the first time since he was four years old, he feels safe.
After a time he takes the pick he had strapped to his backpack in case and begins to dig.
In the hours or days that follow, Weston eats, he supposes: By the time the hole is big enough to settle down in, his supply of granola bars is low and the water in his canteen is almost gone, but he is not ready to go back into his house. In between bouts of digging, he probably sleeps. Mostly he thinks and then stops thinking, as his mind empties out and leaves him drifting in the zone. What zone, he could not say. What he wants and where this will end, he is too disturbed and disrupted to guess.
Then, just when he has adjusted to being alone in this snug, reassuringly tight place, when he is resigned to the fact that he’ll never see her again, she comes, flashing into life before him like an apparition and smiling that sexy and annoying, enigmatic smile.
“Wings!”
Damn that wild glamour, damn the cloud of tousled hair, damn her for saying with that indecipherable, superior air, “What makes you think I’m really here?”
The girl folds as neatly as a collapsible tripod and sits cross-legged on the floor of the hole Weston has dug, fixed in place in front of him, sitting right here where he can see her, waiting for whatever comes next.
It’s better not to meet her eyes. Not now, when he is trying to think. It takes him longer than it should to frame the question.
“What have you done with my stuff?”
Damn her for answering the way she does. “What do you care? It’s only stuff.”
Everything he ever cared about simply slides away.
They sit together in Weston’s tight little pocket in the earth. They are quiet for entirely too long. She doesn’t leave but she doesn’t explain, either. She doesn’t goad him and she doesn’t offer herself. She just sits there regarding him. It’s almost more than he can bear.
A question forms deep inside Weston’s brain and moves slowly, like a parasite drilling its way to the surface. Finally it explodes into the still, close air. “Are you the devil, or what?”
This makes her laugh. “Whatever, sweetie. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he shouts. “I don’t know!”
“So get used to it.”
But he can’t. He won’t. More or less content with his place in the narrow hole he has dug for himself, Weston says, “It’s time for you to go,” and when she hesitates, wondering, he pushes Wings Germaine outside and nudges her along the access tunnel to the hub, the one place where they can stand, facing. She gasps and recoils. To his astonishment, he is brandishing the pick like a club. Then he clamps his free hand on her shoulder, and with no clear idea what he will do when this part is done or what comes next, he turns Wings Germaine in his steely grip and sends her away. Before he ducks back into his territory Weston calls after her on a note that makes clear to both of them that they are done. “Don’t come back.”
Behind him, the cellar waits, but he can’t know whether he wants to go back to his life. He is fixed on what he has to do. Resolved, relieved because he know this at least, he sets to work on the exit where he left her, erasing it with his pick.
In the alternate universe of Wild Cards, reality diverged from ours on September 15, 1946, when an alien virus was released in the skies over Manhattan, and spread across an unsuspecting Earth. Of those infected, 90% died horribly, drawing the black queen, 9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1% gained extraordinary and unpredictable powers that made them aces.
SHELL GAMES
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
When he’d moved into the dorm back in September, the first thing that Thomas Tudbury had done was tack up his signed photograph of President Kennedy, and the tattered 1944 Time cover with Jetboy as Man of the Year.
By November, the picture of Kennedy was riddled with holes from Rodney’s darts. Rod had decorated his side of the room with a Confederate flag and a dozen Playboy centerfolds. He hated Jews, niggers, jokers, and Kennedy, and didn’t like Tom much either. All through the fall semester, he had fun; covering Tom’s bed with shaving cream, short-sheeting him, hiding his eyeglasses, filling his desk drawer with dog turds.
On the day that Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Tom came back to his room fighting to hold the tears. Rod had left him a present. He’d used a red pen. The whole top of Kennedy’s head was dripping blood now, and over his eyes Rod had drawn little red Xs. His tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
Thomas Tudbury stared at that for a long, long time. He did not cry; he would not allow himself to cry. He began to pack his suitcases.
The freshman parking lot was halfway across campus. The trunk on his ’54 Mercury had a broken lock, so he tossed the bags into the seat. He let the car warm up for a long time in the November chill. He must have looked funny sitting there; a short, overweight guy with a crew cut and horn-rim glasses, pressing his head against the top of the steering wheel like he was going to be sick.
As he was driving out of the lot, he spied Rodney’s shiny Olds Cutlass.