Wildcard (35 page)

He talked to the old man about it.

Who was the Poet? The voice of Wildcard. Why
did he have to find the Poet? He couldn’t tell, didn’t know. Karl
loved being there, didn’t want to leave. Did he have to? Only he
could decide that. He knew he had to go, but why? Something would
change, something needed to change. A door would open wider, more
human would get through.

And Hazel’s food…

And Martha… He couldn’t bear that thought.
He drove it away.

As long as he stayed, things wouldn’t
change. Hazel’s cookies would never taste wonderful, as they
should, would never smell delicious, as they were meant to.

The old man told him something he hadn’t
wanted to say. Wildcard would wait, as long as Karl needed, but it
would break his heart. He was meant to heal something, something
dangerous. Wildcard was afraid of his own madness. Held at bay for
too long, his insanity threatened all of wildspace, and possibly
Earth.

Karl had never met anyone like Hazel or the
old man. They were so simple and unconflicted, so plain, without
the useless ornamentation of society. They were happy with what
they had. He might grow a bit bored, but in the way one grows bored
with grandparents. He wouldn’t stop loving them.

The old man had been around apparently for
thousands of years of subjective time. He possessed an ancient
wisdom, a letting go quality. If he cut his finger or lost a
fishing fly or if one of his animal friends or a favored tree died,
he took it with a sanguine attitude. He was glad they had lived, or
it was wonderful to have known them. He hoped they were happy. When
he cut his finger, he remarked in wonder at the redness of the
blood, or wished he could feel pain better. Pain just had a rubbery
and unpleasant quality, without particularities, like on Earth. It
lacked sharpness.

The day came; Karl awoke and knew. He lay in
the bed, built by the old man out of maple, with a comforter sewn
by Hazel’s skilled hands. A dying art, that. The window was open
and a lark landed on the sill, mocking him with all that he would
soon leave and lose forever. The day was brilliant, begging for an
endless meander with CJ, a striding out to nowhere. A hummingbird
flew in, hovered a challenge above the bed, dared him to be a
warrior. He sat up and it remained there, quivering in front of
Karl, deciding if his face was a nectar filled flower. It
disappeared out the window.

Downstairs, Hazel had a stout canvas pack
already filled with tasteless goodies, enough food for weeks. She
had sewn up an extra pair of pants and two shirts. Multiple pairs
of socks were in the pack, as well. He hefted it. The weight was
right, not too heavy, but filled with enough for travel.

During breakfast, the old man said he had a
present for Karl. A young man couldn’t go adventuring without a
Swiss Army knife, could he? He felt in his pocket, but it wasn’t
there. “I must have lost it somewhere. But…” he shook his head,
hiding his disappointment which rapidly grew worse. Karl had never
seen the old man even mildly upset, and he fell into a frenzy of
distress over the absent gift. He started to cry, then covered his
face.

“It’s OK,” Karl said. “I would have loved
it, but I don’t need it. I’ll be fine.”

“But…but…you were…” the old man looked
around helplessly… “you were supposed to have it. I wanted you to
have it, Karl. I wanted you to have it.” He repeated it softer and
softer. He seemed to think something was terribly wrong. He walked
into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later. He was pained,
but controlled it with a wandering smile and a kiss on the cheek
from Hazel.

She smothered Karl with hugs and worries,
then kissed him on the cheek as well, and the two men set out to
the stream with CJ. Maybe Karl should stay just one more day and
they could find that damn knife. He wanted to, but it was a bad
idea.

They didn’t say anything else until they got
to the little bridge that led across and out forever. Karl didn’t
want to leave. Maybe he should stay. The old man wanted him to have
the knife so much. Just a few more days, a little more
grandparents. The old man would be so happy if Karl had the
knife.

Karl couldn’t do this again, though. If he
turned back he wouldn’t leave, he would stay in that sacred place
forever. And he wanted somebody to taste Hazel’s apple cobbler. He
wanted the old man to smell her bread when he walked back from the
stream with a fresh trout. And it would break the heart of Wildcard
if he stayed. He had to heal the great father. And Martha…Martha
would trapped inside the Benefactor’s darkness.

He hugged the old man for a long minute,
said goodbye to CJ, and left.

The Jester gatekeeper appeared on the
hill-top as Karl crossed the little bridge from the Center. He was
balancing a long pole on his chin and hopping from foot to foot. He
winked at Karl and kept going.

“I’m so happy you showed up. It’s been
boring since you were here last, and pretty much forever before
then. Let’s hang out.”

Karl stayed with him for a few days, learned
to eat fire and juggle garden snakes. The jester taught him all
sorts of fun stuff like flips, games, riddles, and silly kid’s
jokes. They made faces at each other for over an hour, laughing.
The Jester had magic ways of getting food, too, so that Karl didn’t
need to dip into his precious Hazel supplies. That was good, he had
a feeling he might need it soon. After three days it was time to
leave.

“How do I get out of here?”

“The silver spire.” The Jester pointed. “Act
without thinking.”

Karl found and climbed the spire, shouted
“land of two cubed spheres” as he leapt. There was a moment of
disorientation; he felt as if he was looking back as he fell
forwards. He had a flash of being in outer space, surrounded by
millions of stars, but he could breathe or didn’t need to. Then one
of the stars turned deep blue, flew at him, and he was inside a
pub. The crowd turned to look, then went back to their
conversations and pool games. They were rough looking
customers.

“Where am I?” Karl asked the bartender.

“Uncle Slimmy’s 8-ball drinking and beer
playing emporium.”

Karl wrinkled his face.

“The 8-ball. You’re at the 8-ball. You just
came in through the Portal.”

RJ! He would be here. This was his place,
and Karl sensed him, somewhere, out there.

“How can I find somebody?”

“Look for ‘em.” The bartender picked up a
drained beer mug and washed it, chuckling. “You want that Gambler
fellow, if my guess is no mistake.”

“Yeah. Yeah, something like that.”

“We sent him off on a donkey a while back.”
He clucked his tongue, thinking, then nodded. “Is your name Karl?
Somebody left this for you.”

He handed Karl a doll with a pull string,
and a pouch full of money. Karl pocketed the money after his
initial surprise, then drew the string. The doll spoke in a
recorded voice.

“Someone will contact you. To save his life,
you must persuade him to put on the thing he fears. You will have
10 seconds. You cannot give reasons, but must convince him to act
immediately.” The doll’s head blew open with a puffing noise and a
trail of smoke.

“Uh, thanks, I guess.” He handed it back to
the bartender who wouldn’t take it. Karl put it down on the bar.
“What did that mean?”

“No idea.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Oh, him. The swordsman. Nobody knows his
name, but he’s been here a lot. He comes and goes through the
Portal, and he’s the only one that does. Nobody else has ever left
before.”

“He didn’t say anything else?”

“Not really. Well, maybe. Actually, he talks
a lot.”

Karl waited. Finally, the bartender nodded.
“Yessir, I remember now. When he handed it to me, he said,
‘everything is connected, and if you are no fool, this you
understand.’ Something like that. He talked about some wound a
lot.”

“The Wound? What did he say?”

“He said it’s what makes this place so…
different. The wound is trying to get in. Stupid, really. He just
seemed like a big wind-head. Talk, talk, talk, never shut up. Kind
of an asshole, to say truth. Said it was at the end of the desert
and if anybody wanted to find out anything important, go there,
that the rest of old 8-ball world is just fluff and stuff. It was a
crate of camel dung by my notion.” The bartender snorted and wiped
his hands on his apron. “Ridiculous. ‘The wound wants in.’ Come on,
then, I’ll point you to your friend. Though I do think you should
keep better company.”

Karl followed him out the cowboy doors, into
an old west town. Wisps of dust blew along the dirt street. There
were wood sidewalks, sheriff’s, even a brothel. RJ’s kind of place.
A few doors down, past a corral, the bartender pointed, out into
the rocky, dry lands.

“He went that away, to the leftish, past the
cabaret. They back horsed him.”

“Backhorsed?”

The bartender looked at him as if he were
stupid.

“Yeah, brother. Put him on a horse backwards
with a blindfold on and sent him off.”

“You said it was a donkey.”

“I did? Doesn’t matter, it’s still called
what it’s called.”

“Great, then. How can I follow?”

The bartender walked back toward the saloon,
signaled Karl to follow. They stopped at a building called Higgins
Camelry.

“What’s Higgins Camelry?”

“Damn, you’re about as dumb as a post,
aren’t you? It’s a camelry owned by Higgins.”

“What’s a camelry?” Karl didn’t like what he
thought was about to hear.

“It’s a place to rent a camel.”

“Why not a horse?”

“You a dimwit or a suicide attempt? You need
a camel. Nobody going to rent you a horse, anyway. Camels,
Higgins’ll rent.”

Karl looked from bartender to camelry back
to bartender.

“Well, I got some thirsty folks waiting.
Walk or ride, your choice, gopher.”

Gopher? Karl went inside.

Higgins was an Arab. It made sense in a
weird way. Naturally, it would be an Arab who rented camels. He got
the mount without much fuss, using the money he had received in the
pouch. The man put a saddle on the beast. Made of silk and sporting
an attached bright umbrella, it looked like a sheik’s winebago.
Karl asked why the umbrella.

Because it protected a man from the sun. The
silk, apparently, kept a man cool.

Higgins filled up two water sacks and two
canteens. Enough for eight days, if he was careful, it seemed. Did
he have food?

He said he had some.

It wasn’t enough and Higgins sold him more.
Oddly, it was less expensive than water. He made Karl change
clothes because his were too plain colored. The problem, it seemed,
was predators. Brightly colored things advertised poisonousness. So
Higgins dressed him in striped green and white silk pants and a
luminous orange and yellow dotted shirt.

Karl asked how to find someone, but Higgins
was no help. He did, however, show him a room full of ‘desert
entertainments,’ a chance for Higgins to make an additional sale.
Karl got a ukulele. He had learned some basic ukulele in his youth.
It would pass the time. He was surprised; the man didn’t charge him
for it. He was happy Higgins wasn’t the ruthless capitalist he came
off as.

“Thanks for being so helpful,” Karl
said.

“Yes, indeed and you are most graciously
welcome. Kindness accumulates.”

Higgins gave him a brief lesson in camelry
and Karl rode into the thirsty canyon lands. He had attained a
facility with the channeling ability, so he thought of RJ and
picked the direction that seemed right. When the camel wandered
wrong, he nudged it back. Karl had become used to being unfixed in
a place, and 8-ball world had that quality in quantity. It was very
fluid here.

RJ woke up, lifted his hat off his face, and
looked around. He was in a rocky dry place, on top of low dune of
pebbles. He was parched, and the sun was blistering. He had no
water.

He remembered getting drunk as a lord in
that bar. They called it banana-headed. He gambled and lost a lot
of borrowed money, or borrowed whatever passed for money here.
Promises to do strange things, possibly. When he tried to pay with
credit, he had been shanghaied, and put backwards on a mule, with a
bag over his head and his hands tied together behind him.

Someone hit the mule and it started walking.
He tried to get loose, but something cracked him painfully on the
head. He sat there, it seemed hours, bouncing along on the donkey,
until he passed out from fatigue and fell off. No one hit him this
time, but he woke up when he hit the ground. Eventually, he worked
off the bag and freed his hands. His hat lay beside him. It was
night; he put it over his face and slept.

It was hot, hot, and more hot. He sat up,
legs splayed out in a ‘V’. No water. He saw nothing in any
direction except red rock and rippled air. The blue sky glared and
offered no clouds. He had a burlap sack and some rope and his
clothes. They were good clothes, evening wear: a greatcoat with a
tails effect, white shirt, black vest, bow tie, black, light wool
pants, high ‘lanta style riding boots and his black, wide-brim hat.
Quality gentleman’s wear, but it was hardly the best desert
outfit.

He examined his hat; it was different than
he remembered - must have happened when he crossed somehow. It was
still a black, medium size brim, Georgia gentleman’s hat. But now
it was leather. And a bit more supple. The hat he had wanted, but
never found. He had never told anyone he sought it. A nicer hat was
pretty thin for a silver lining, though.

Now he was stranded in a rocky canyonland. A
breeze might be nice. It might just make it feel hotter though. He
walked. An hour or so later, he heard music. He looked around, saw
a sheik, riding a camel, playing a…ukulele? He was sitting
cross-legged, on a carpet draped on the camel’s back, with an
umbrella over his head. It was fixed to the camel and was
hands-free. RJ hoped it would be a new friend. But it was an old
friend, Karl.