Wildcard (52 page)

“I want to stay, but I can’t.”

“I think it’s part of the lesson of Wildcard
falling in love. I write many poems of love when you sleep. I’ve
not written poems like these before. They’re from me, too. Not
from… outside. I’ll probably write poems of loss when you
leave.”

“Who are they to? Who’s reading them?”

“No one? Everyone? Anyone?” She laughed.
“Sorry, I sound like a poem.”

“No problem. It’s who you are. Definitely
part of your charm. I think if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be in
wildspace. You know, you are probably the most widely read author
in the universe. You’d always be number one on the bestseller list
if you didn’t give it all away.”

“What’s a busellerlist?”

He smacked her bare ass, disengaged from
her, and stood. “God, I love you. I love it that you don’t know
what a bestseller list is. I don’t want to tell you. It may spoil
your poetry, give you a profit motive.”

She leaned her head up on her arm to look at
him. “I doubt it.”

“Best. Seller. List. The books that more
people buy.”

“Ah, I see. Money and fame. Nope, don’t
care. Let’s make food, sweet hero.”

“How about hamburgers?” Karl had seen
something to approximate a hamburger in the icebox.

“What’s a hamburger?”

“Boy, for the bestselling author in
wildspace, you sure have a lot to learn.”

Three days later, they came upon the island.
It had a star portal feel to it, and Karl knew it was time to
leave. “I still can’t help feeling I need to learn something from
you.”

“Have you learned nothing from me, Karl?”
She feigned hurt.

“Well, I’ve learned falling in love, the
best thing. I’ve learned I’ll be miserable to say goodbye. But I
need some puzzle piece from you, I think.”

“Maybe you already received it, but failed
to notice.”

“Quite possible. I am a bit spacey.
Especially around you. Shit, have you got any spare clothes? I
don’t want go back and hang out naked with a boy Sergeant. He will
laugh at me mercilessly.”

“Just the rain ponchos.”

“It’ll have to do, I guess.”

They walked onto the island, the stones
hurting their bare feet. It was pretty obvious, possibly not even a
puzzle portal. It resembled a large, glowing piece of paper. Maybe
he could just walk in.

“Karl, aren’t you even going to say
goodbye?”

He had become mesmerized by the portal and
was unconsciously walking towards it.

“You should put on your poncho, too.”

“Not yet.” He laid the poncho down, laid her
on it, and slipped between her legs. He said goodbye many times
between kisses.

When they were done, she said, “Time to go.”
He put on the poncho and walked into the piece of paper.

And out the other side. Still on the island.
He walked around the paper. She was standing there, sexy and naked,
laughing at him. “Funny,” he said. “At least it didn’t hurt. The
Sergeant gets hurt a lot. Well, at least we get to spend more time
together until we figure this one out.”

“I don’t think so, Karl. I know the answer.”
She picked up a stick, walked up to him, and reached above his
head. He twisted his head around to look. She wrote, “Goodbye,
sweet hero.” Then she put her hand on his chest, kissed him, and
pushed him backwards into the giant paper.

Karl floated in reverse. He saw her through
a haze of glowing paper and written backwards on the paper, it said
“Goodnight, musketeer.” The words detached from the paper, floated
towards him, past him. They began to disappear, one letter at a
time, when only the letter “R” was left, he popped into the Space
Between. He looked around. The Sergeant was needling toward him. He
seemed to be firing some sort of weapon, probably Trident, at him,
shouting. Karl couldn’t hear him. Something struck him in the back.
Soft, spreading, thinning. It was enveloping him, but slowly. He
tried to jerk away, but it was useless. He turned his head, felt
his body twist slightly the other way against the momentum of his
head. Dartagnan floated, smiling, 500 yards away at a guess. His
sword was pointed at Karl.

He grabbed out where he thought the
invisible thread might be. He felt it, but his hand passed through.
He jerked about more, and Dartagnan began moving towards him
faster. He stopped. He reached in the pocket of the poncho.
Nothing. The Sergeant’s missile struck, a hard, tight belt. It
severed Dartagnan’s cord narrowly missing his hand. “Nice
entrance,” Karl thought. “How about a hand?”

The Sergeant’s belt thing hurt. It was
pulling fast and taking the air out of him. He was flying right
past the Sergeant, and as he did, the Sergeant slapped a Trident on
his wrist. Karl noticed that his nose was bleeding. The sticky
thing on Karl’s back detached, and clamped onto the Sergeant’s
face.

“TRIDENT!” Karl shouted, “the Sergeant has
some sticky stuff from Dartagnan covering his face. “I don’t think
he can breathe. Or see.”

“Thanks. Boss, if you can hear me, take out
the Swiss Army knife.” Karl saw him do it. “Now hold it up to me.
Quantum blade, shallow depth, frequency instance 40.28.14, fail at
n-string plus 4 variables. Sarge, cut through it.” He couldn’t get
it to cut.

“Trident, it won’t cut. Can you see?”

“Not really, some of the quantum material is
attacking me. I have it in a stasis, but it has cut off my visual
field. We’re lucky to have sound. Sarge, hold the knife up to me
again.” Trident said more gibberish, including a long equation and
the blade turned into an icepick. “Poke it into your eye,
boss.”

His eye?! Karl thought. Oh, yeah.
eyehole.

The Sergeant was going a bit blue. In a
casual, but focused manner, Dartagnan pointed his sword at him.
Karl could almost see the thread hit. The Sergeant was in enormous
pain from the strike. His body spasmed. He somehow managed to open
the small blade on the knife. He held it up to Trident while Karl
gave an update.

“Wrong tool, boss. You want the corkscrew.”
The Sergeant opened the corkscrew without bothering to fold up the
small knife. Trident said more gibberish. “Wrap it around
Dartagnan’s thread, but don’t let it touch.” The Sergeant did. “Now
push hard. Don’t let the screw touch the thread.”

Karl thought it was impossible, even for the
Sergeant. He pushed hard. His arm wasn’t moving, but he was visibly
straining. Dartagnan’s blade exploded just before the Sergeant’s
arm shot forward. The corkscrew broke off and the Sergeant dropped
the knife. His right arm floated uselessly. It was rippling, sort
of, and flickering in and out of existence, almost. The Sergeant
was trying to grab the knife with his other hand, but it was too
far away. He was starting to slow down.

“Trident, he can’t reach the knife. His
right arm is useless.”

Dartagnan floated like a frozen robot, eyes
open.

“OK, boss. Toss me at the knife.” The
Sergeant somehow unhooked Trident with his left hand and flipped
him onto the knife. Trident reeled himself back. The Sergeant
rammed the awl hard into his mouth and moved it around. He pulled
it out and blood came out of the hole.

Karl was glad not to be the Sergeant. He got
hurt badly and often.

“Suh’in fuhhee?” The Sergeant managed to ask
as he poked himself in the right eye with an awl.

“Why did you shove it into your mouth?”

“Hadduh breedth.”

“It was the correct option, Karl,” Trident
said. “It will take several minutes for the tool to free the
Sergeant. It is a fairly simple quantum device.”

“Pretty fancy for a Swiss Army knife. Why
did it cut his mouth? Was that supposed to happen?”

“I designed it for his eye. It probably cut
his tongue.”

“Gross,” Karl said. “What about
Dartagnan?”

The stuff was dissolving from the Sergeant’s
face. Dartagnan twitched a couple of times and came back
online.

“Let’s get back to the ship. It sliced
through my cheek.” His cheek was sliced through from lip halfway to
jaw line. The two bleeding pieces flopped around hideously.

“Without his sword, Dartagnan is much less
powerful,” said Trident. “We can easily defend against him.”

Karl wasn’t so sure. “How do we get back? Do
you have a nano-thread?”

“No, Dartagnan severed it. But I can make a
new one.” He waited until they were almost to the sphere, then
leaned back to throw the pommel of his sword at them. It hit Karl
in the face an instant before he threw it. It didn’t hurt much, but
Karl felt a quantum ooze on his body. The pommel ricocheted and hit
the ship. It disappeared in a flash and the sphere lit up, blazing
like a star for an instant.

“Sorry,” the Sergeant said. “I thought he
would throw it at me. 50-50 chance to be there before he threw
it.”

“Do you think he booby-trapped the
ship?”

“Almost certainly,” Trident said. “But I may
be able to neutralize it.”

Dartagnan floated out there, watching. The
Sergeant watched back. It took about an hour, then suddenly Karl
and the Sergeant were yanked inside the sphere painfully.

“Welcome home, crew.”

Karl looked outside. Dartagnan was gone.

They had been there for over a week now. She
would go onto the ship and be gone for a day, while the men took
shifts and kept an eye on LuvRay. Or the box. He was not sure which
and did not much care. He sensed somehow that she was actually gone
when she disappeared. LuvRay had a pack he had brought. He managed
to rig a tarp to get some relief from the sun. The Benefactor came
to speak to him frequently. She seemed to be looking for something.
He was not sure what. She invited him onto the ship several times,
but he refused. The man LuvRay had come to know as the Mechanic
stepped out of the helicopter, signaled to her.

“Excuse me, mister Chose.” She stood. “There
is someone I would like you to meet.” She went inside and was gone
for perhaps 20 minutes.

She returned with another man in a style of
dress LuvRay had not seen before. Soft leather boots, black hat
with a wide brim pinned on one side. He wore tight pants, long
leather gloves, and a sword. Dartagnan. Wolf-fear arose, not hard,
not deep, just a breeze of wolf-fear. He rode it down, let it drift
off like smoke from a fire.

“Hello, LuvRay, I’m Dartagnan.” He held out
his hand.

“Not do that.”

“Very well.” Dartagnan looked at his palm,
flipped it over, looked at the back.

“You came how? You were on ship?”

Dartagnan puckered his lips and made a
noise. “What’s in the box?”

“Don’t know. You look?”

“Not really, thanks all the same. Have you
opened it, yet?”

“No. Thinked about it. Decide not. What you
think is?”

“I know what it is. It’s a sentient n-space
equation. Many things are in the box, in a potentiality state.”

“No understand, but not sound dangerous. Why
you are scare?”

“This will be incomprehensible to you, but
an n-problem has n dimensions of solution, where ‘n’ represents the
possible interactions of quantum states over percentage
substantiation of probabilistic base points at creation. It
multiplies by a magnitude of the square root of 2 every few
seconds. Time may, and probably does, occur at a very different
rate inside. Probably much faster, possibly backward. The contents
of that box have more solutions than I could calculate. And it is
aware.”

LuvRay said nothing.

“:3: might be able to calculate the number.
He probably has. He discovered the equation.”

“He know what inside?”

“Know? Of course not. He only knows the
number of solutions. Perhaps he could calculate 4 or 5% of the
possibilities. Certainly no more. It is a Schroedinger’s ultimate
puzzle, almost any possible thing, or every possible thing, in a
roiling stasis. Even Wildcard is only a possibility in the context
of the…contents.”

“Why you fear?”

“Why do you?”

“The box is out of place in this world,” the
Benefactor said. “Like Las Vegas in the desert.”

“Agree. Smell wrong.”

“Why don’t we take it back to the human
world? Where it belongs.”

“No.” LuvRay stared through her.

“Well, what shall we do?” Dartagnan asked
her.

“You could kill him.”

“Have your senses departed? I am not harming
LuvRay, and that is much more definite in the vicinity of the box.
I have no death wish. I don’t kill the Named, anyway. You know
that.”

She chuckled. “I can’t believe you fell for
that.”

He turned sharply, stared at her.

“That was a jest? I thank you for the
lesson.” He relaxed, looked back at LuvRay. “Will you kill him
after I go?”

“Maybe. Although, I don’t have a death wish,
either. But I do have an idea.”

“Yes?”

“Since you’ve proven unable to capture the
Savant from the Sergeant-”

“Would you care to battle the Sergeant?”

“You’re the one with a sword. I’m just a
woman. Capture Sublime, then we may be able to persuade Mister
Chose to take the box away from here. Sublime might be the edge we
need to capture Karl. Along with the present you gave me. Even if
lone wolf here won’t help.”

“Very well, I shall find Sublime. You work
on a means to use the information I gave you.”

“Believe me, I already am. Too bad the
Doctor’s dead.”

“Some might disagree. Perhaps :3: will help.
It would be an interesting problem for him.” Dartagnan bowed
gallantly. “Au revoir, friends.”

Dartagnan took out his sword, began turning
in a slow circle, seeking something. LuvRay thought of a wolf-pack
hunting down prey together. Closing in. Dartagnan stopped, focused,
and held it for several minutes, with inhuman stillness. He lunged,
then began making a spiraling movement with the point, walking
forward.