Wildcard (38 page)

“Karl? Karl?” RJ had to swat his face a few
times to get a response.

Karl looked at him like he was scenery. Then
he looked at him like he was a stranger.

“Which way? Karl!” He said his name six or
seven times before getting an answer. He breathed a few ragged
jerks, then, in a cadaverous motion, raised his arm, almost falling
with the effort, towards the left opening. In answer, a wind
whispered from it, icy and the first thing RJ had smelled since
crossing into wildspace. An ancient, corrupt stench; the spoor of
unsensing terror.

Karl spasmed, and shrunk away. “It’s so
alone. God.” He twitched his head around, looking to see if anyone
was there. His breath caught, and he put a hand on RJ’s chest.

“You. Are you…real? Are you real?” He
grabbed RJ, hid his head in RJ’s stomach. “I don’t want to go, I
don’t want to go, I don’t want to go.”

RJ wrapped around his head, trying to give
his friend the little warmth he could spare, trying to push some
courage into him. But he had none to offer, so the two men stood,
shivering and clinging to each other. Finally, he pulled Karl’s
head up and forced eye contact. He kept drawing away, but finally
surrendered. “Don’t go, Karl. Just don’t. It’s too much to ask.
Let’s leave.”

“NO!” Karl screamed in sudden fury. “Please,
no,” he begged. “Please don’t leave.”

“No, Karl. I mean us. Both us leave. I mean
that.”

“NO! NO! Don’t leave. Please. Please don’t
leave. Please help me. Please.” He stood and changed and black
menace blazed from him like a darkening star. “You cannot leave. I
forbid it.”

“Who are you?” RJ said.

“I am Wildcard,” he said. “I am such pain, I
am the alone from which hate and no words have ever touched.” Karl
punched him, and RJ felt and heard one of his ribs snap clean as he
bounced back off the canyon walls. “Do not forever leave us against
the dark. Do not leave me alone.”

Karl flailed out his arm and thrashed his
head, fending something off, then pinned Sublime with a clear, void
gaze. “RJ, don’t follow.”

He turned and ran, heckless and blind, into
the left cave. He ran after, stumbling through the cave as fast as
he could. He tore skin and bruised badly on the jagged rocks. Karl
thrashed noisily ahead, falling on the rocks and scrambling along
heedless of injury. He had to be shredding himself, had surely
broken something, a finger or wrist. But he was ignoring all other
wounds.

“Aah, NO! The pain,” he shouted. “Make it
stop.”

“Karl! Wait. I’m following. I can’t let you
play solitaire on this one. Karl! Wait, let’s figure it out.” Karl
huffed, and it sounded like he was crawling. He hoped he wasn’t so
badly injured. The cave dwindled to a tiny tunnel. RJ stopped,
paralyzed by claustrophobia.

But he kept listening to Karl’s madness,
echoing eerily from the tunnel, sounding like it was behind RJ, or
right beside him. The howls were amplified by the space, and Karl’s
fear was not diminishing. He devolved into mostly wordless screams
of terror and rage, but he was pushing on into the black
tunnel.

He hammered his courage into a workable
shape, and crawled into the tunnel.

It went on for hours, the tunnel rising and
falling and Karl screaming. The resonance of Karl’s voice stopped,
suddenly, then came back altered. He picked up speed. He was
terrified, the tunnel was too tight to turn around.

Then he realized why Karl’s echoing had
changed. He fell, head-first, down a shaft.

Karl tumbled and landed on a spit of land,
howling into the blankness below and all around. All he understood
was the loneliness of the Wound.

“NO! Go away. What can I do? Where are
you?”

But it was nowhere, anywhere. The pain had
no place, it just saturated the air. It was distant, away, but
thundering powerful anyway. The torment was deafening.

“Karl,” someone shouted. He didn’t care, all
that mattered was this agony behind a blanket of twisted space. It
was behind the blankness; he couldn’t touch it; he was terrified of
it; he had to find it.

“Karl!”

Somebody, some man, in his face, shouting at
him. He flapped his arms at the man, trying to push him aside. He
had to get past, had to run down the narrow spit of land, had to
leap off, into the blankness. He must go. The Wound needed…he
needed … something … he had to help …

It was so alone.

A hand slapped him. “Who am I?” said a man
who yanked him around.

Karl looked at him. “You’re…you’re…JR.” He
twisted to see the spit of land, fought against the man. “Absurd!”
he screamed. “Absurd!” He had to dive, he had to go.

“Karl. NO! Do not fall off. This is not what
should happen. STAY WITH ME. KARL. STAY HERE. Pull your head
together! Do it. Now. Do it. Do- not- fall- apart on me.”

He struck the man’s face with his hand, saw
the nose gush blood. He spilled as he fell, heard the snap of his
wrist and the slam of pain. His gut clenched and he vomited off the
edge, the hurl vanishing into the void.

The man grabbed his head and forced it
around.

Karl looked up at him, vomit and spit
leaking down his face. “JR? Is that you? Are you…what are we…” He
jerked his head around to take in the blankness and the spit of
land. “This is right. Yes. NO! This is not…this is what…” He turned
and grabbed the man’s shirt in both fists and shook him. His wrist
flamed with the motion, but he ignored it. “We ARE here!”

He let go, turned to the blankness. “You
fucker! You goddamn life-betraying sons of bitches! You evil cunt!
How could you do this? How could even you be so fucking without
mercy?” He fell to his knees, sobbing, and clutched in a fevered
mindlessness at the man’s clothes without looking at him. “How
could anyone be so lacking in mercy? How could you not know?” he
screamed into the void. The man tried to say some things, to calm
him, but Karl couldn’t hear.

“Who do you think you fucking are?” He
stood, shaking his fists wide, spittle flying off into nowhere.
“You can’t play with life like this. You don’t have the fucking
right.”

He moved towards the edge and fell, then
fumbled to his feet. The man, JR or whoever, grabbed him, tried to
help him stay upright. He stumbled forward. He would make it to the
end and leap off. He had to. But the man fought him.

He fell again, vomiting more, begging for
mercy. “No, I have to help it.”

“What is it?” The hand struck him again, and
his mind went clear. He found strength and ran. Something, someone
tackled him and he cracked his face. All he saw was red rock. He
kicked at the man, frantic to free himself.

“No, Karl! Don’t.”

JR. That wasn’t his name; that was his
name.

“Don’t!” The voice was torn away by a wind.
“Stop it.” He sounded faint and distant. Karl kicked him in the
face as hard as he could. Scrambling, falling, getting up, tumbling
again, and running. His hands were ragged, flowing blood. A pain
shot up his wrist when he landed, then he forgot.

A man shouted behind him. He forgot the
other man’s name again already. Whoever, whatever he was, it didn’t
matter. He had to leap into the blankness filled with pain. That
was OK. He had to care for it. Only he could heal the Wound. He had
to.

He stumbled, then leapt, and felt the man’s
hand grab his jacket, and yank him to a halt. He was past the end,
and he fell. The man held on, dangling him like a toy in the
blankness.

He hung there numbly, then began kicking to
get free.

“Karl.” The voice was distant, like it
traveled down the barrel of a tornado. “Come back. Don’t do
this.”

He thrashed against the hold. “It’s OK. I
have to.” Maybe he could make it to the Wound still.

“Climb up. I don’t have the strength to pull
you. Let your pack go, it’s too heavy.”

His mind went clear and free. He looked
up.

“It’s OK, RJ. Only I can do this.”

“No. That’s stupid. NO. Climb up. I’ve grown
fond of you.”

“Just let go, RJ. The Wound is mine to
heal.”

“No one can heal that.”

“I have to try.”

RJ held on for as long as he could.

LuvRay wanted to contact
the Shaman. Something had happened. Something had happened to Karl.
He had not seen him, or spoken to him. But he knew. And the last he
knew before he buried the Trident thing, Karl was looking for the
Shaman.
He knew he should stay away from
Martha, that felt wrong. Martha was gone. He could smell that. The
Benefactor took her, changed her. They had spoken on a telephone
call, an M-E trick. He tried to call RJ, using a number he found.
Martha’s voice answered. LuvRay did not need to see her to know.
Martha was gone.

She was not an enemy now. Not exactly. He
simply had no pack feel for the voice he heard. The wolf-love was
not there. He did not want to meet her. And she seemed to have no
desire to meet, either. They didn’t.

LuvRay knew the best person to help was the
Sergeant. If the General would let him, or order him. He thought he
would, in return for something. LuvRay went back to the Trident
thing, hidden under a tree in the edge of Paris woods. He reached
under to grab it, and as his hand touched it, he was shocked, just
a bit. He leapt back.

“Ow, goddamit it. Holy shit.” Karl’s voice.
Different Karl, but still pack. He continued cursing.

“Karl? Is you?” LuvRay asked. “Why you speak
on Trident thing? I looking you.”

“How did you find me? Fuck. Fuck. Who are
you?”

“Is LuvRay. I touched Trident thing. It
shock me. And you speaked.”

“Put the thing on. NOW. Put it on now,
quickly, no questions.”

LuvRay dove at the tree, his hand extending
into the hole, grabbing for it. It clamped his wrist as his hand
entered. He jerked back his hand, the thing was turning into a
liquid.

Wolf-fear. He moved past it.

He tried to peel the thing off. Some of it
pulled away, but then flowed from between his fingers and encased
his forearm. Small tendrils began sliding up his arm. He pulled
them away, one at a time, but they began to increase in number.

A tendril whipped out, wrapped his left
wrist and bound it tightly to the right. He managed to pull his
knife, but was unable to sever the thing. He put his knee between
his hands to force them apart. A tendril shot up, wrapped around
his neck, then another, then those climbed upward to his face. A
bulge of liquid surged along the two tendrils and they split into
pieces, searching. Another surge and his face was covered.

It found what it was looking for: mouth and
nose. His hands were suddenly free and he was grabbing at the
liquid, clawing it away from his face and out of his mouth and
nose. But it just flowed around and back in. He was suffocating.
The liquid filled his ears, and sound went away.

LuvRay looked at his death and touched the
fear like an old friend. He let it fill his body and soften away
from panic. He considered using the knife to take his own life, but
did not do so. He continued trying to pull it away, but he began to
weaken. It forced its way deeper into his head, tiny threads
slipping around and behind his eyeballs.

RJ disappeared from Karl’s sight and the
rocky ledges under him dwindled and changed into a Portal that
emitted no light, a hole in the Space Between. Beneath the
weightlessness and the plummeting, he gave in to exhaustion. Dreams
disoriented, crossing the barrier, and he was somehow opening it,
trying, but in a different way, for someone else. Martha!

He woke up, shouting her name.

Martha, what connection? He was so tired, he
couldn’t stop sobbing. It was taunting him, the solution, what he
must do, barely unfocused and dancing on the edge of consciousness,
which he lost again, partly, floating in the Space Between, between
what? and the words not thoughts but sadness and missing Martha,
missing Martha so much, would he ever…, he cried and saw her, a
wraith, hungry and alone, vanished into endless nightmare, her own
wound unto herself, and he knew it was her and he wanted to touch
her and he wanted to cry out so he did, but she couldn’t hear and
it was really her and IT WAS REALLY HER and he knew and he couldn’t
get her to see him, she looked through him and then he did it, he
helped her, maybe he freed her, but nobody could tell him so he
guessed in shifty logic of half woken reverie.

He opened the barrier in her dark dream and
maybe she passed through, if she could find it in her awful
wanderings alone. It was all he could do. The fingers of pain and
madness slid from his mind, and Karl fell away. He slept without
dreams, and fell as he did. The Wound was far gone, no longer a
presence, just a memory of inhuman sorrow, and a cosmic mirror of
her aloneliness.

Karl awoke into heartbreak; he would never
see Martha again. But at least she might gain freedom. She had a
way out now, if she could find it. Someone else came across, too, a
dead man. Karl felt a coldness as he realized the awful fact: the
first Sergeant had entered wildspace.

When he woke this time, he was clear. His
body had adjusted himself to the falling sensation. The space
reminded him of RJ’s book. He felt his face and his wrist; they
were mostly healed. He felt a few scars and his wrist was sore, but
sound.

Rotating gradually, he fell for hours, then
days. Trident was inert, a wristwatch with a dead battery, but he
tried frequently. There wasn’t much else to do. He dug around in
his pack, but all he had was a pot, some utensils, food, water, and
a spool of rope. A Star Portal flashed past, close it seemed, and
shot away. It was reddish, not pure white, like the rest..

He was going fast, judging by the velocity
of it.

The days melted into weeks, the weeks into a
month. He went crazy, blithering and babbling in whispers and
shouts, talking to no one. The only proof that he was moving came
from occasional Star Portals flashing past close by. As a Portal
approached, it made a strange whistling noise, which grew in
intensity, and turned blue-white, blazing brilliantly. Then a
flash, as it passed, an instant of dead noise, and it went red. The
whistle changed to a dull, low-pitched hum. Doppler effect, and he
longed for each next ‘event,’ as he named them. When he spotted a
Portal blueing, he would say ‘Doppler’ over and over, once per
second, until the Portal passed. He tried to enter each one, but
failed, so he said ‘Doppler’ more until the redness had faded to
white again.