Wildcard (47 page)

“I also cast my ballot for the box. It
simply sounds fun.”

“You don’t get a vote, Dartagnan.”

“Sad,” said Dartagnan. “I find democracy to
be so …beautiful.”

“Why doesn’t he get a vote?” Karl thought it
odd, since Dartagnan agreed about the box.

“He threw away that privilege when he
declined to negotiate.”

“But he voted in your favor.”

“Next time he might not. If he has no vote,
I automatically win. I hold command, that is. Maybe he gets a vote
later, if I get an edge from it.”

“How could that happen?”

“If Trident gets cut off, perhaps. Anything
can happen, this is wildspace. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Karl said. “I have some questions
first. You’re the swordsman on 8-ball, obviously. Why was your trap
so elaborate? I mean, the wizard of Oz? That’s so corny.”

“Thank you, dear Karl. Elaboration is the
mark of the artist in these matters. You wouldn’t understand. You
certainly have your gifts, but you lack the creative sensibility.
What does corny mean, by the way? I fail to grasp the word.”

The Sergeant laughed. “It means… God, what
does it mean?…Sort of old-timey and trying to be funny, but not
funny, I guess. Karl?”

“Sounds good to me. Do you have a Webster’s
in your memory bank?”

“Yes, but I prefer Steven’s dictionary, as
it holds a fuller set of cross-referencing and superior
etymologies.”

“Man, you’re a dipshit,” the Sergeant said.
“Talk about missing the point. What’s the definition?”

“‘Of or producing corn. Informal:
unsophisticated, old-fashioned, trite, sentimental, etc. Second
entry: having or relating to corns on the feet.’ Clearly, it’s the
first informal definition.”

“Clearly.”

“I associate it with humor,” Karl said.
“Like something an old guy would think was funny. Anyway, the Oz
thing. Why the big show?”

“Ah, yes, that …” Dartagnan whirled his
hands theatrically, “…wizard entanglement. Poetic execution,
wouldn’t you say?” He waited for a reply. “Wouldn’t you?”

“It was silly.”

“Everyone has to be a critic, don’t they?”
He crossed his arms and looked away with a sniff.

Karl coughed out a bemused noise. “You
asked!”

“Right, sorry. Petty of me, I suppose. But
that wizard,” he said earnestly, “wasn’t he…realized?” Dartagnan
made a fist and shook it dramatically on the word. “As a
character?” He shook the fist again. “Wasn’t he interesting to your
human sensibilities?” He seemed baffled, but in a showy way, like a
B-movie actor hamming out frustration. “Didn’t he grab you?”

“Well, I didn’t think about it like that. I
didn’t know what was happening. But...no, not really. I mean, he
said cool things, I guess, but there was no…person there.”

“Well, what about the puzzle of it?”
Dartagnan curled his fingers around to look at his fingernails.
“Rather my forte, especially the psychological component.” He
turned to the Sergeant. “Did that gesture look arrogant? I wanted
it to. Lordly and above it was the mood I strove for with the
gesture. Did it succeed?”

“The fingernail looking at thing?” The boy
Sergeant laughed. “Um, yeah, sure. Totally arrogant. Lordly. You’re
a master thespian.”

“Sarcastic pup.” A glove flashed out
inhumanly fast and smacked the Sergeant’s face. “Pistols at
dawn.”

“I don’t use firearms, sorry. It’s against
my code.”

“Oh, your code? You wield a code to stave
off the horrors of the world, eh? I knew that. I know the details
of it.”

“Tell me then.”

“I ascertained said code through rigorous
studies of your actions.”

The Sergeant rolled his hands out and cocked
his head.

“What was the meaning of that gesture?”

“I want you tell me what you think my code
is. You didn’t answer my question, you evaded it.”

“Yes, I did. I’ve noticed that humans do so
frequently. And why? Don’t mistake me, I love it. It’s absolutely
fascinating, so alien to a Manufactured Entity’s mode of
engagement. I honestly have to force myself to not answer
directly.”

“You seem to be doing all right now. What’s
my code?”

“Oh,” he said with a breathy exclamation, a
hand wave and an eye roll, “can’t we move on at this point? It’s
become a dead horse in our discourse.”

“That rhymed,” Karl said.

“You noticed? I planned it so.”

“Well, I’m interested in the Sergeant’s
code. Come on, tell us. I want to see if you know what you’re
talking about.”

“I wish to see, as well. Most of it is
laughably obvious. Really, Sergeant, you should hide yourself a bit
more skillfully. At any rate, he has a code of slavish devotion to
the General. He worships the prior incarnation of the Sergeant as a
sort of mythic hero, the protégé emulating and comparing each of
his own actions to the fallen mentor. And, quite admirably, he
loves his comrades in arms. He would readily die for you, Karl. Or
LuvRay, or RJ, or,” Dartagnan wiggled his eyebrows suggestively,
“the extraordinary and stunning Martha. Why is she so compelling to
men, anyway? Is it more than her beauty, which is by modern
standards, beyond the pale, I understand, though I fail to perceive
it myself in the slightest.”

They looked at him without answer.

“Well?”

“You rambled off and lost us.”

“What, for men, is the intensely compelling
factor of Martha?”

“Hard to explain.”

“Yet for Karl, it differs, no? You don’t
regard Martha in that way. You perceive her as a mother, don’t
you?”

The Sergeant put his hands over his eyes.
“God, you’re dense. She raised him for eight years. Of course he
does. Why do you hammer the obvious?”

“It is not at all obvious to me, Sergeant.
She isn’t his genetic mother, he hasn’t spoken to her in years, and
she actively avoided him. Yet still he holds this feeling based
upon a few short years pinched out of a leisurely two decades.”

“He didn’t have a mother. Why are we talking
about all this? It has nothing to do with what we’re doing.”

“Ah, but there we disagree. It is what I do.
I seek to understand, therefore, I have arrived and beg your kind
indulgence. Assist me in my humble quest to approach humanity as a
friend.”

“Look, we need to find some people. You’re
here and we need your help. Get us to Mansworld and you can ask
questions along the way. But, can we just go now?”

“Mister Chose, LuvRay, would you like to go
and get some … whatever you eat? Raw meat, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Fine. I’ll wait, too.” The man in the
tuxedo brought out a small table with a tablecloth pinned in place.
He placed a sun umbrella in the center of the table and a pitcher
and glass on the table. Another man, one of the suited men, brought
out a chair, practically a throne. It was covered in crushed red
velvet, with high armrests, and a rounded back that sat like a
blood halo on the occupant. “Iced mint tea,” the butler said as she
sat down.

“Perfect as always, Savoy.” She turned to
look at LuvRay. “Would you like some shade, mister Chose. I can
have my people provide that for you.”

He said nothing. She nodded at Savoy and he
went into the ship.

LuvRay would have liked Savoy on a different
trail. The man had an honesty, a lack of agenda, that most people
from civilization would never know.

He came out with an umbrella, handed it to
the chair carrier, who moved into place behind LuvRay and held it.
He stood in the sun. LuvRay smelled her purpose. Show power, show
alpha. Alpha already proven, so why fight? He disliked having
somebody hold an umbrella for him or stand behind him. He turned
and took it.

“Only shadow. Leave.”

The Benefactor nodded and the man walked
away.

“You don’t enjoy this desert, Mister Chose?
I do. It feels peaceful. Harsh, but peaceful. I like it.” She
looked around as if it were a tea party with fine English ladies.
“It’s lovely.”

“I like, too. Like mine more.” LuvRay missed
his cave in the desert. Shelter was good, even for a wolf-son.
Things happened there, animals, plants struggling. He had friends
in his desert. Coyotes, snakes, mice. Wolves, of course - family to
him, friends to them. Many more friends. Here there was no one.
Nothing. Just sand and more sand piled on top of sand. Little of
the rich life that he loved so much. Just this woman and her
servants.

LuvRay disliked servants. The idea was
wrong, utterly foreign to him. Like owning a person. He didn’t
understand owning things. Owning other beings was nonsense, a
hateful way to live, and it made LuvRay want to be quiet when
servants were near. He did not speak that language.

“LuvRay, do you think Karl is OK? I’m
worried about him.”

He felt a knife of loyalty when she said it.
He felt the wolf in him that had let Martha into the pack, and she
was Martha. She hit him deep and she knew it. She stared at him
steadily as the two of them felt that subtle power.

“You not smell more bad than Doctor.”

“‘Show me what your warped dream can do in
the vast solemnity of space’”

“No understand.”

“It’s written in fading letters on this
table.” She chuckled, said, “Wildcard,” as if he were an old
friend. “There’s more.”

Wildcard is everybody that has ever thought
of being,

and none of that besides

you, my strayed and straying angel,

might have been the great star in our
sky

my mother, my creator

as i filter light from what i think you
are

from the choices you might have made

as i filter the dark from what you have
become

i see that despair broke you in the wrong
places

we know your difficult question

was your path here guided by our design-

and of course you know the answer

yes and no

and neither, and both

and something more besides

“Beautiful,” she said. “I love his
poetry.”

LuvRay spit. “Don’t you all?”

“I’m calculating the trajectory to the box,”
Dartagnan said. “It may be a while.”

“All right,” the Sergeant said, “since you
seem to be in such a helpful mood now that you have a body, what
are the Star Portals?”

He scoffed. “Humans think time is so
simple.”

Karl made a baffled face.

“Not so good at staying on topic.”

“Star Portal theory, by :3:, translated by
Juniper, and I quote: Star Portals are alternate dimensionality
boundaries and gates (this in a dual sense of entry and blockage).
The time-streams contained within do not occur in parallel or in
contiguous juncture with Earth/Mansworld necessarily, though some
do. However, differing time streams can be twinned. The process
joins differing streams. A human-fit explanation, absurdly
insufficient for Manufactured Entities, could be summed as follows:
when an entity enters a Portal world a twinning thread ‘follows’”
…Dartagnan made finger quotes here and the Sergeant laughed at him
“…yes, Sergeant?”

Dartagnan appeared non-plussed, then wagged
a professorial finger to continue. “‘A twinning thread follows the
being, subtly adjusting the exited and entered time streams into
more congruence. Enough crossings and the time streams may be
called joined…’ I’ll skip a few hundred pages here, Juniper tends
to be rather long-winded. ‘At such point, the dual streams run
roughly parallel,’ etc. etc. You get the idea, I’m certain.”

“Like Mansworld and Earth?”

“No. That is a mirroring. All Earth data is
woven into the fabric of Mansworld as q-code.”

“Woven?” the Sergeant said.

“q-code?” Karl said.

“Alas, you are both infants in a great
forest. Charming fellows, though.” He rested his hand on the pommel
of his sword with a cocky smile. “Q-code is like DNA, atoms and
sub-atomic particles over here. The analogous math is
indistinguishable, at least to a human mind.”

“Why is it so different here, then?”

“Wildcard, you nitwit, what else? The
entirety of wildspace is suffused with his awareness.”

“So… the space is… conscious?”

“No, Karl. Listen with greater attentiveness
when your betters speak and you may one day advance your station.
Consciousness and awareness are different, but related
phenomena.”

“How?”

The boy Sergeant pinched his nose bridge.
“No, please. Can we just…skip this? I can tell this is going to
take a long time and be as useful as a donkey on a freeway.”

“As you wish. You had the question
however.”

“Look, I’m sorry I asked.”

“Karl, are you of a similar mind?”

“No, I want to hear more about the q-code.
It’s totally cool.”

“Yes, rather so. Very well, then. No one
knows what the smallest particle is or why it behaves so oddly. The
old string theory proposed matter-energy waves 1 trillionth the
size of electrons. Now anti-point and backless theories and
experiments have borne out fairly substantial proof of the unity of
every particle in the universe. It’s all one. It is the same on
this side of the barrier. Because of the unique formation of the
q-code, we have these occurrences, this intense connectivity, on
this side. Synchronicity is a usable tool. You can make it happen,
as you will discover. Further, it is but a slight step into the
hypothesis that Wildcard is joining the q-code with the base
substance of your birth universe. How do you like that little plot
twist?”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Yes, in the formal sense of the word, as
well. To a Manufactured Entity, the feat would surpass by far even
the creation of wildspace. And you should give a shit, Sergeant.
Wildcard’s policy thrust will affect your choices profoundly.”

“A super-twinning,” Karl said. “Let’s do it.
How?”

“A big question. Consider: a particle can
be, and half is, in multiple positions before being identified into
a single place.”