Wildcard (42 page)

Curious, he examined the features and
functionality of the Swiss Army knife. Toothpick, tweezers,
corkscrew, big blade, little blade, and an awl, it was basic. The
awl was hands-down the best killing tool. Swiss Army knives were
not made to kill. He wondered if he would have to fight here. He
examined the knife for info-tek, but it seemed to have none.

He fingered the scar on the outside of his
right eye, burned from the nanotic ‘surgery’. Nano-waste had leaked
out, searing him there. Just part of the hell of getting such a
fantastic tool, he supposed. The boy Sergeant had no scar there.
Wildcard or this world or whatever had put him here instead of the
boy. More serious, less prone to compromise, the older Sergeant was
more business, harder, tougher. This Sergeant would complete the
mission.

It made him sad. He didn’t want to greet the
situation this way. The boy would make the right choices. He wanted
to play with circumstances, like the boy, but he didn’t know how.
Fuck it. Wildcard would not let the boy do this, apparently. He
walked and walked, another full day and night. It was all he could
think of, just keep moving. Finally, after four days without sleep,
he lay down in a grove of wild apple and peach trees. Four days.
His real body had been stronger than that, could have gone for
another 12 hours at this easy pace, and had done so before. He had
pushed himself to exhaustion under a variety of circumstances,
heated and otherwise. In his job, he had to know his limits.

Here, he had had no action, no sustained
running, no emote-fatigue from being in or near battle conditions.
He chuckled at the irony: he had been walking for four days and he
was a little pissed off because he should be able to walk even more
with no idea where he should go. He didn’t go to sleep naturally,
so after a while, he turned his attention inwards, changed his Beta
waves into Delta waves and sank into a deep sleep. He adjusted
rhythms as he slipped off, so that he would sleep exactly six
hours.

The boy had his pants legs rolled up and
waded in the river, holding his red Converse All-Stars, socks
bunched inside. He felt very happy. He looked up and noticed an old
man fly-fishing, then remembered. The old man, fly-fishing, exactly
as Karl had reported. He was downstream from the boy and facing the
other way. He walked through the stream to the old man.

“Hey, grampa.”

The old man jumped and the Sergeant was
pretty sure the surprise was genuine. The old man hadn’t known he
was there. “Oh, my gosh. You startled me.” He looked at the boy for
a second. “Sergeant,” he said, as if hearing the word for the first
time. A deep sadness flashed across his face. “How are you?”

“I’m alright.” They stood there awkwardly
looking at one another for a few long seconds.

“I didn’t know you were coming. But, I know
why you’re here.”

The boy held his right foot at the level of
the flow so that water made a thin sphere dance over the toe. He
let himself get lost in the wonder of being a boy. “Yeah. Here I
am.”

“Well, I guess you should come to the house
for dinner, son. We’d be tickled to have you, Hazel for sure. Ooh,
boy, you’re in for a great meal.” He could sense the old man’s
delight and he felt ashamed of who he was. “It’s not your fault,
son. Sometimes we just have to play the hand we’re dealt.” He
chuckled. “Hazel and I have been playing cards since Karl came. He
taught us pinochle and gin rummy, which he said he learned from
somebody named RJ.”

He packed his fishing gear and took off his
floppy old fishing cap, and, just like a real grandfather, put it
on the boy’s head. “It’s a hot day, son. Why don’t you wear
this?”

As they were walking to the house, the old
man asked numerous questions. “What’s your favorite colour?”

“Red? I don’t know.”

“Have you ever played baseball?”

“No.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Ha!”

He seemed not to understand that the
Sergeant was quite a bit older, in a certain way, than he appeared.
The grandfather kindness was not feigned, but it seemed a bit
confused, and a bit too earnest. Still, the boy was moved. It was
impossible not to like the old man.

His wife was cooking supper and got excited
at the prospect of another filled chair at the dinner table. “You
two go sit on the porch swing and talk boy-talk until it’s ready,”
she ordered. They swung in the easy rhythm of porch swings, the
boy’s feet occasionally touching the ground and twisting the ride a
bit.

“I’m supposed to kill you.” He felt
frightened, almost like he might cry.

“Maybe,” said the old man. “Maybe. We’ll
see.”

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Well, we can just talk and have dinner.
You’ll know later. Hey, lookey there.”

The old man pointed, but it was nothing,
just a squirrel running across the grass, leaping onto a tree,
going up it with that impossible agility. The boy looked away. The
old woman came out.

“What’s your name?”

“Hazel.” She handed him a perfect-looking
glass of lemonade, frosty except where her fingers had gripped it.
It held the right amount of cubes, and was the color lemonade
should be. She had made it a bit too strong, he could tell, so that
as the ice melted it would be just right. It tasted like …love?
kindness? It had no taste of lemonade, however.

She was watching and seemed a bit
disappointed at his reaction. “I can’t seem to make food taste
right. We haven’t learned how to taste, yet.” She gave him an
inquisitive look. “Hmm,” she said, “maybe.” She went back
inside.

He sipped the lemonade. It was better than
the fruit he had tasted in the forest, almost good. But nothing
like lemonade.

“Are you Wildcard?” he asked the old
man.

“Not really, no.”

“Is she?”

“No, she isn’t at all. Hazel appeared from
the outside. I know where she came from, not exactly where, but I
know…” He paused, searching for the right phrasing. “I know the
meaning of where she came from, which is what matters most. At
least in here. She was made by something outside, to be what
Wildcard wanted to love. She was designed by Wildcard, I suppose,
then made by people. I was alone for a very long time before she
came.”

“I bet. I’ve heard your story.”

“My story is not even remotely as long as
Wildcard’s. His life is measured in ages. He’s existed for more
relative years than humanity. Or at least human civilization. By
far.”

“Yeah, my math is good, excellent actually.
That must have sucked pretty bad. Where is something I could call
Wildcard, if not here?”

“Who wants to know? There’s no answer to
that. I’ve heard of a place called the Space Between. I think
Wildcard may be that space more than he is anything else. But I
really don’t know, laddie.” He comically mimicked a Scottish
accent, poorly. So much simple charm, the old man was unafraid to
be a bit of a fool.

“That sounds right. I’ve been there. I
imagine I’ll be going again, too. How would I kill you? Cut
your…god, I can’t even say it.”

“No, you wouldn’t be able to raise a violent
pinky here. The attempt would be very unpleasant for you. You
wouldn’t get far. Hazel doesn’t know what violence is. I know, but
I’ve never told her. She’d be shocked.”

“She’d be shocked at some of the things I’ve
done,” the Sergeant said.

“Yes, I’m sure she would.” The old man
seemed to have accepted the incongruity of the Sergeant’s age,
finally. He still seemed like a grandfather, though. “Let’s not
talk about that.”

“Then how would I kill you?”

The old man closed his eyes, leaned back,
sipped his lemonade. “You want me to tell you how to kill me. You
must come from a terrible place.” He breathed out a long sigh. “I
honestly don’t know how, son.”

“Yeah, it’s a terrible place. Sometimes.
Mostly, I guess.”

“This is a peaceful place. You’d have to
find a peaceful means. It’d be damn hard on you, I imagine.” He
laughed sadly. “‘This will not be easy’” He seemed to be
quoting.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the title of a Wildcard poem. Probably
about you and what you need to do. The choices you have to
make.”

“Do you remember the poem?”

The old man moved his lemonade to hold it in
both hands, against his belly. “I remember a few lines. It’s a
pretty good one. But I suppose they all are. Maybe I’m biased. We
don’t have a lot to do here. It’s a bit vague, right now. I’ll tell
you later. Maybe we can find it in the book, although what you look
for isn’t always there. You have to take what you get when you open
the book. Sometimes you do get a few choices, though.”

“What book?”

“Wildsong. It’s the poetry of Wildcard. You
just open the page and the right poem is there, the one you need. I
bet I could make yours appear. Hazel could for sure, if she wanted
to. Maybe we’ll look later, if it feels right.”

“OK.” He hopped off onto the porch, to go to
the bathroom. He was more emotionally volatile in here. He moved
into happy and sad fluidly. The man Sergeant was all about perfect
focus. Or not exactly. That was more like the starting point. That
was just a tool. It was all about … finishing. Or something like
that.

He lifted the lid, peed,
flushed. He noticed the off-white walls with a wallpaper trim at
the top. What was that called? The first Sergeant would have known.
Oh, well. He thought about washing his hands, laughed silently, and
saw his face in the mirror. He was a bit older than he thought. His
body looked about fourteen. He should be eleven and a half years.
That was his biological age, adjusting for the month or so he had
probably been here in human time. But he couldn’t tell, really. For
all he knew, it had been 200 years and his body was gone. The
General might have replaced him with another Sergeant. He wondered
about contacting him and didn’t want to. Still, he should when he
could. He opened the medicine cabinet, saw a dropper bottle. It had
a picture on the label. A single drop over a horse with a red
circle and line drawn through it. Underneath that it said: POISON!
Do not ingest
.
He
looked on back of the bottle. Saw a smiley face with a stick figure
of a boy on back. He didn’t know how he could say it was a boy. It
just was. He put the poison in his pocket and walked out of the
bathroom heavier than he went in.

He sat on the swing with the old man. There
was a steaming piece of cherry pie, drowning in whipped cream. It
looked delicious, right out of southern grandmother pie cooking
magazine, and perfectly sliced for a kid, just enough more than a
sixth of the pie to say what it needed to say. Screw the taste, he
thought, picking it up with relish. What a good try, but not right.
He could taste Hazel’s desire to make it right, though. He could
tell all the woman wanted was to make good food and feed people
something they liked. He could taste the love and he was happy to
eat it because of that. That made it good.

“They got any better magazines in there,
yet?” the old man joked.

“No,” the boy replied. “Didn’t notice.”

“She said you could have pie before dinner.
But just this once.”

He finished and set his plate down on the
slatted side table. “Can I… can I stay here? With you?” He was
begging, but didn’t care.

“No.” The old man seemed ancient for a
second, like a sage in high mountains, filled with unbearable
wisdom. He said what must be rather than the tender kindness of a
moment before. It was a hard and definite love. He radiated
uncompromising sorrow. “I’m sorry, broken boy. You cannot stay,” he
whispered. “I think we would actually like you, too. But we aren’t
allowed some choices.”

“Dinner’s ready, boys.” It smelled good, but
in a vague way, and not like food.

It still made the Sergeant hungry, somehow.
He sat down at the kitchen table. Turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade
cranberry sauce, gravy, cornbread, some jello dish with whipped
cream, and an orange coloured puree decorated the board. “What’s
that?”

“Sweet potatoes with cinnamon and sugar. The
secret is baking them for the right amount of time after you take
off the top. Makes the peaks crispy.”

They loaded up the plates. The old woman’s
cooking made him ravenous, even if it didn’t taste like real food.
“I’m afraid I’m not so good at taste.”

“It’s like that everywhere.”

“I like it,” the old man said. “My wife’s
the best cook in the whole universe. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if
Hazel make can’t get taste right. ‘She taught us how to refine love
and mirror that to the myriad worlds’. That’s wildsong about
her.”

“Stop it,” she said, embarrassed but
pleased. “You learned love alone, before I came.”

“True,” he said. “But I didn’t understand
what it meant until you came. I had no idea it had uses. It wasn’t
fun until then. Did you know love is not the same as happiness,
broken boy? My logical mind will not believe that, but it’s true.
Love is pain.”

“‘Love will be lonely for many years, until
you pluck it like fruit from the air.’” Hazel gazed across the
table. “Wildsong about the old man, from before I came. I shall
never understand how you made it all that time alone.”

“Neither will I, pumpkin pie.” They laughed,
sweet, beautiful and old, just enjoying each other’s company. Happy
to have a guest, happy if not. The boy felt welcome, but not
needed.

“Learning love is all he was meant to do. It
took him a very long time.”

“When I learned it alone, Hazel entered my
life. She gave me a place to put it. I think I had to learn it so
that Wildcard could create the vision of Hazel. It took time for
her birth. And I lived alone with that confused longing all that
time. Hundreds of years, Sergeant. Not so long for me, really, but
it felt like a pretty good while.”