Wildcard (21 page)

“Great,” Karl said. “I suppose. Seeker. Step
on in. You were born for this. What do I do with that?”

“Seeker. Figure out seeker first. Just my
guess.”

Martha managed to contact LuvRay again
before meeting the Benefactor. He was easy to find, and she asked
him to go to dinner at a nice restaurant. He agreed as if it were
all the same. A part of her just wanted to be with a man before
this thing. She wanted to feel like a normal woman, just for an
evening.

They were listening to a French song. He
asked her what the words meant. “I don’t want to work. I don’t want
to eat lunch. I only want to forget, then I smoke.”

“Smoke? A cigarette?”

“Yes.” She laughed, sweet and light. “Yes,
of course, a cigarette.” Her eyes, which had been looking generally
at his face, zeroed in on his and she smiled. “Would you care for
one?”

“No, I no want the cigarette.”

“A cigarette, LuvRay.” She touched his arm
with the silky grace of a geisha. She had been classically trained
as one, for a time. A shiver run through him.

“A cigarette,” he said. They went onto the
veranda.

“You know,” Martha said, “Every woman loves
a cowboy if he’s a gentleman, too. And most of them are. They were
raised that way. They were raised to respect women in a way that
few other men are.”

“I am cowboy?”

She laughed, turned to lean on the
railing.

“I am not raised respect women. I am raised
wolves.” He said the phrase uncertainly, as if raising children
were a novel concept.

“Was raised, LuvRay, was raised. Do you mind
if I help your English?”

“You laugh on my mistake?”

“Do you mind?”

“No.”

Martha looked at him as if he were a puzzle
she needed to solve.

“No, LuvRay,” she said, a bit sadly, “I do
not laugh at your mistakes. Quite the opposite. I find you
remarkable. A very rare man, indeed, and I would be proud to be
numbered among your friends.”

“I am no understand.”

“I want to be your friend.”

“Friend is no word on me.”

He sat so still. “You try for sex me.” He
said it as a fact. She was moved by his straightforwardness and
keen perception. She thought of Karl and was struck by the
resemblance between the two men.

She had not seen Karl in many years, but
felt, by instinct, the man he had become. She knew everyone loved
Karl, cherished him without meaning to, felt a need to protect him,
just as she had, years ago.

Touched by self-loathing, she moved to kiss
LuvRay. He snarled threateningly, and she felt a wild animal thrill
at the instant of self-exposure.

“Am sorry,” he said. “Wolf do for other
reason.”

She pulled her wrap tighter. “It’s cold
tonight.”

“Cold make moving feel better. Alive.”

“I suppose it does.” She pulled on her
cigarette, turned to him. “What’s the secret of your whatever it
is, LuvRay? Your power?”

He looked at and through her in his wolf
way.

“You can walk hour and no look ground?” He
let the question hang in the air. For an instant Martha felt that
they were not two separate people, exciting and beautiful. He
probably lived in that feeling.

“What are you doing here, Luvray?”

“I am die here.”

“You came here to die?”

“No, but will.”

“Why did you come?”

“I say. On RJ.” He turned and looked her in
the eyes, leaned in slightly with his mouth open. She had an eerie
thrill of being alone, but watched through a window.

“Maybe kill someone. But I am not know.” He
cocked his head and looked at the moon, a full moon.

She laughed softly while keeping her eyes on
him. “How cliché.”

He closed his eyes and went completely
mournful. He seemed without any thought.

“Want howl.”

“Less cliché.” She looked at the moon,
sexually surprised by the man. “What does it feel like?”

“What it feel like?” He snapped his face
back toward her, mouth open, eager eyes. “I like this question. It
is … lose myself. I am feel good and sad for same time. I miss my
wolves.”

She tried to lose herself in the settled
presence of his gaze, to feel what he felt. The way he looked at
her as if she were no more or less than a blade of grass.

“LuvRay, I need something from you.”

“Yes?”

“I need you to protect Karl. I may die
soon.”

“I before say I do.”

“Women need to hear some things more than
once.”

He nodded.

“I protect Karl. As best as can.”

He looked back at the sky, howling in a
whisper.

Martha drove to the address Dartagnan had
given her, saw a high chain link fence, topped by a V of razor
wire. In the center was a brand new prefab corrugated metal
building. No windows, and one vehicle door. It was open and she
drove in. She left the keys in the ignition of the Mercedes the
Sergeant had given her. The ground outside was unpaved, but the
building had a cement pad. Rough cement, not smooth like usual
indoor. Not slippery when wet.

No people. No movement. A large cylinder
with a conical top made of brushed steel rested in the center. It
was simple looking, but radiated tek, almost alien. There were no
doors. She walked up to examine the thing. It was 5 meters in
diameter, approximately. She did not touch it. The metal was
moving, almost imperceptibly. Tiny traces giving the cylinder a
slightly shimmery quality, but only visible from a few centimeters.
It was a nanotic system, and highly active.

No, it wasn’t nano. It was newer tek. No
name she had heard, yet. She walked around it, noticed a hole on
the second pass, was sure it had not been there on the first. Face
height, 10 centimeter diameter, it had a handle inside. She tossed
a penny at it, and it bounced off. She grabbed the handle and the
hole closed around her hand, trapping it. She felt a wet ooze
forcing itself between her fingers, encasing her hand. A needle
pricked her.

Don’t panic.

The needle took a tiny blood sample. She
knew she needed to do something. Yank. No good. Push. No good.
Twist. The ooze subsided. She twisted the handle 180 degrees.

“Yes? How may I help you?” The voice was
inflectionless, and she had an image of a hospital monitor hooked
to a dead body.

“My name is Martha. I am here to see the
Benefactor.”

“Oh, my.” A feigned tone of surprise came
over the invisible speaker. “We’ve been expecting you.”

The hand hole released her, pricking her
again as it did so. She felt an odd moment of vertigo, felt herself
falling to the ground. Then she was standing again, feeling as if a
short gap had been spliced from a movie. The top of her head hurt.
She felt a tiny hole there, rimmed with…metal?

The handle was gone, nothing in its place.
The hole irised open, tiny short lines appearing, segmenting the
metal in a regular circle. The segments slid back making the circle
a fraction larger. The process repeated until the hole was 30
centimeters in diameter, barely larger than her body.

“Please enter.”

She leapt up, tried to pull herself in.
Sharp edges cut. She let go before any real damage was done.

“Don’t touch the sides, by the way.”

Black inside, and there was no way to step
up. She looked around. A man stood in the corner, arms crossed,
leaning back slightly against the aluminum wall, impassively
watching her. Golf shirt, black slacks, and a baseball cap. She
walked back to the car. It wouldn’t start.

“A minute and 30 seconds,” the man said.

“Till what?”

“Until it closes. Think of it as a noose
around Karl’s neck.”

“How do I get in?”

He turned his palms up and shrugged. She put
the car in neutral, pushed it forward.

“What did you put in my head?”

“A q-link.”

“What’s that?”

“A prototype device for linking to the mind.
It’s quantum technology.”

“Why?”

“I’d tell you more, but we lack the time.
Sorry. The Benefactor will let you know everything you need to
know.”

When the car was close enough, she stood on
the hood. She gauged it. She took a deep breath and dove through
the hole. It closed so quickly that it touched the sole of her
shoe.

She came down inside, in a roll, on a hard
metal floor. She brought her feet into a squat, edged backwards. No
reason why. She was completely in the thrall of this thing. Animal
instinct combined with training. She felt a wall behind her.
Rounded? No. She moved her hand to find the angle of the wall. It
had many small angles as it worked its way around. A hectohedron.
The material was unusual. Cooler than it should be, it felt like a
metal plastic hybrid. It must be nano-material.

Martha counted to 60, crouching.

She could feel the presence of something.
She was watched in the impenetrable darkness.

“I can’t see.”

Some horror stretched from the darkness. It
answered her. Something not human anymore. The voice had lost its
connection to people. It was ancient, a woman’s.

“Oh, you can still see. The lights are out,
that’s all.” It was synthetic, a mechanical throat, by the sound.
“Allow me.”

The lights came on, glaring. Hospital room,
then, nightmare. Martha put up a hand to shield her eyes, but the
light was completely ambient and it didn’t help. There were no
shadows anywhere, and no apparent source of the light. She cupped
her hands over her eyes. Light inside, as well. She closed her
eyes. Dimmer, but still bright.

“Where is the light coming from?”

“Do you like it? It is a little trick one of
the M-Es invented. The air molecules give off light.” The voice was
sandpaper on a chalkboard.

Her eyes adjusted. The thing in front of her
attracted her attention. Or repelled it. It was a mass of medical
machinery and feeding tubes integrated into a carapace covering
something difficult to see, the central focus of the room. The
reason for all this technology - The Benefactor.

The mass had an insane quality of having
been kept alive for far too long. Martha looked over the
bewildering array of fluids, tubes, dials, pumps, breathing
apparatus, monitors, and lights that was the small room. The thing
spoke again.

“Welcome, Martha. Allow me to introduce
myself.” The voice was not machine fabricated, but more a partially
destroyed human voice augmented by a machine, which made the sense
of wrongness far more pronounced. The carapace lifted revealing a
blob of vaguely human shaped tissue penetrated by multiple sensors,
nutrient tubes and unidentifiable medical tek. An impossible face
rested on top, that of a kind looking lady, late sixties, perhaps.
It appeared healthy and even cheerful. Martha choked back a gag at
the sight of that body joined to that head. It looked grafted
on.

“You’re the Benefactor?”

“You’re surprised.” The mouth barely moved.
She appeared to be speaking in a bare whisper, but it was augmented
to slightly above room level conversational tone. It was a subtle
mode of psychological intimidation, one of many. Martha was being
hit by psychic attack on many levels, and the grandmother face made
her hate the thing even more, because of its wrongness. Because it
was the only thing in the room bearable to look at.

“I thought you were a man.”

“Many do. I cultivate that perception. It
looks strange, doesn’t it? I have a skin transplant every few
weeks. I just had one yesterday, knowing you were coming. I wanted
to look my best for you.”

“Skin transplant?” Martha listened to the
machine rhythm of the breathing pumps, wondering how creepy it
would get. “Why do you want me to hate you?”

“Ha ha.” It was a man’s laugh. “I don’t want
you to hate me. I don’t care about that at all. I want you to kill
me.”

She felt disoriented suddenly, briefly, like
she blinked and found herself in another part of the room. She knew
it was not just the words. Something had done it. The ancient thing
had wanted her to feel it at the sound of those words.

“Do you want to kill me?”

Martha didn’t respond.

“Of course you do. I sicken you. I disgust
you. You think it would be a mercy for me to die and you are right.
It would. You think you would be doing the world a favor by killing
me, and that is probably true, as well. You find everything about
me revolting, even the kindness of my face which is so out of place
that it only makes the effect worse.”

Martha nodded a centimeter. “Yes. You’re
pretty nasty.”

“Well, life takes its toll on one.” She
spoke casually, like talking about the weather. “Not much of my
original body left. Maybe none. What happened to the little girl I
used to be?” Machine irony lifted from that man’s laugh again. “All
that wasted innocence.

“I’m so sorry, Martha. My manners. Please
have a seat. Would you like a cup of tea, perhaps?” A chair grew
out of the floor, comfortable, lounge style. “I have just been
alone for so many years, surrounded by machines. I’ve completely
forgotten what it’s like to be in the presence of a human. It’s
quite refreshing, actually.”

“All right. A drink.” She sat down and the
chair adjusted to her. A tray oozed out of the side and solidified.
A drink was there without any visible means of placing it. “Gin and
tonic. How did you know?”

“It was my drink, when my body could
withstand alcohol. Tanqueray is your favorite, I believe?”

“Why would it be my favorite drink, just
because it was yours?”

“Good question, mouse to my cat. Why do you
think?”

Martha sipped her drink. It was quite
good.

“Maybe I’ve just been watching you all these
years and I know what you like.” The voice used the old lady part
of itself to sound sarcastic.