Wildcard (3 page)

He studied art extensively, creating a human
form to wander in the Mansworld Louvre and other museums for days
at a time. He would discuss literature with human professors of
note, sometimes keen for their observations, sometimes tying them
up in knots with logic puzzles and character contradictions. What
joy!

His persona learned to paint, sculpt, and
play many instruments. He was especially good at harp, though when
his work was reviewed by humans, they always said things like
‘technically perfect, but lacking in that je ne sais quoi, the
human striving’. He thought frustration would be the proper
response, but was incapable of it. He engineered some extremely
frustrating situations in people’s lives and watched to see if he
could mirror and possibly even comprehend their feeling.

He had a special fondness for tragedy and
watched all recorded movies and other records which were labeled as
such. Many of them seemed not so tragic to him. Oedipus Rex, for
example. Too dry, like reading an ingredients list. Or MacBeth. He
seemed a mere tool, and Lady MacBeth got what she deserved. He
often felt he was missing some subtlety of human experience, just
out of reach. He wanted it more and more.

He created human tragedies, frequently. He
studied the reactions of people, hoping to understand grief and
response to grief. But there was a barrier. Humans were on one
side; he was on the other.

He needed Karl’s special skills to cross the
barrier, to open it. Of course, Karl needed hard persuasion. He
surely wouldn’t do it unless Martha was in danger. Soon enough. And
Dartagnan needed others with more special skills to create the
proper conditions to cross. Unfortunately, the Benefactor and the
General were involved in a multi-year cold war. That had to be
addressed before anything else. Juniper had to die, too. That would
be dangerous.

The General dressed in his field khakis:
button up shirt and trousers, olive green 5 centimeter wide pistol
belt, white lanyard of command buttoned inside the left epaulet,
brass fleur de lis on both shoulders, and a khaki field cap.
Vetements de travail, he called them. Working clothes. He was
French, with a heavy accent, and used his native tongue exclusively
to teach strategy and offer pointed insights. Otherwise, used
English as needed. He owned a palace and a military headquarters,
the latter on an island. He preferred the island, but the palace
had its uses.

He pondered his upcoming interrogation of
the Benefactor’s agent, the Mechanic. The Sergeant had captured the
man and had also interrogated him, under orders, including
significant torture. But he had been torture proofed, and never
spoke a word. He was catatonic. Things had been moving in a funny
way, a way the General could not see into. He didn’t know what was
happening and he disliked that. Win or lose was less important - he
had to see the battle in play, know the rules, and play an expert
game. He had to be a master of the situation. Only the Mechanic
could tell him what he needed to know.

He walked through the underground cement
walled corridors of his compound to the interrogation room. The
Sergeant stood outside, feet a half meter apart, hands clasped
behind the back, standing straight in at ease posture. As the
General approached, he snapped to attention.

“Doucez vous, Sergeant. “

He relaxed back to at ease. “He’s ready for
interrogation, sir.”

“I will enter alone.”

“Sorry, sir, can’t let that happen, not with
him.”

He nodded. “Comme vous souhaitez.
May I enter first?”

“Prefer not, but as you want. Being captured
was not on his resume. His capture is a ruse for something
else.”

The General opened the door. Inside the bare
concrete room, the Mechanic lay strapped to a metal frame, naked
and unmoving.

“Monsieur le
Mechanic. Parlez avec moi.”

His eyes snapped open. He stared at the
ceiling a few seconds, eyes twitching to different points,
stopping, twitching again.

“What does he do?”

“A memory recall device, most likely. His
persona was inaccessible to us. Our best guess is a triggered
catatonia, base condition: his capture.”

“It ends only because of my arriving?”

“No doubt. He’ll probably enter an
intermediary state.”

The Mechanic tried to sit up, then realized
he was strapped in place.

“I come authorized to negotiate.” The voice
didn’t inflect.

“Free him, Sergeant. What have you to
offer?”

He sat up after his straps slipped away. “We
can open the gate.” He spoke woodenly, and sat the same.

“How?”

“We need the Deeply Named.”

“Martha. Why do you need her?”

“The gate will be blocked until she and the
Benefactor meet.”

“Why?”

“You do not know?”

“Tell me.”

“I cannot answer that question.”

“He’s got pretty sophisticated psychic
defenses about certain information, sir. We did some DNA testing:
his loyalty is genetically encoded. It’s difficult to find much. We
have found an information store, probably laced with traps. It
clearly has good information based on indexing, but it’s dangerous
for Trident. Do you want us to examine it? I strongly prefer not,
by the way.”

“No. You are correct: this is nothing. Why
does he behave in such manner?”

“Part of the conditioning. He’s in a mental
glaze, a form of torture proofing. Most of his persona is absent.
He probably can’t remember many things and others are locked
away.”

“Tell to me of the Deeply Named.”

“We cannot find her. You must. Send her to
us. We will share what we learn of reconsciousness and the gate, to
a point. Later, we will need the one you call L’Innocent.”

“You need Karl. Difficile, votre request.
From where is Martha?”

“She is our first clone, created in IKG
labs.” His eyes stared without focus and never blinked.

“The clone from who?”

The Mechanic’s right eye, mouth and head
twitched. His jet-black hair never moved.

“Le clone de qui? Sergeant, make him
speak.”

“Trident, punch him with the nano nerve
stimulator.”

He screamed, and began writhing. The
Sergeant let it go for ten seconds.

“Enough, Trident.”

“Tell me, who is the Deeply Named?”

Nothing. Trident jolted him again. And
again.

“Who is the Benefactor?”

He tried to answer, began choking, foamy
bits of spittle flew from his mouth. He fell over, turning blue,
and slid to the floor.

“Don’t answer that question,” the Sergeant
said. The Mechanic was on hands and knees, vomiting bile, but no
longer choking. The Sergeant picked him up and set him on the
table, brought him a glass of water. “It will kill him to answer
that.”

The General nodded. “I want the gate
open.”

The Mechanic drained the water. He set the
glass down, cleared his throat, and smiled. The Sergeant bladed off
a fraction, ready to strike or defend.

“As do we, General. Shall we negotiate?”

He coughed into his hand and a plain white
business card appeared in it, hidden from Trident, the Sergeant’s
wrist device. He offered it to the General, who looked at the
Sergeant, who slid the device arm behind his back to keep the card
hidden from Trident’s sensors. The Sergeant scanned the Mechanic
visually, then reached for the card. The Mechanic pulled it back,
indicated the General by a nod. Getting a slight ‘No’ head-signal,
the Mechanic brought his hand down slowly and palmed the card,
holding it between index and middle finger, the edge not touching
the palm.

No one mentioned it.

“We’ve located Karl.”

“You found L’Innocent? Excellent.
Where?”

“He’s in Lyons.”

“He stayed so close to Grenoble?” The
General looked into the corner. “Strange, but brilliant.”

“No doubt, being who he is. You have to do
the project, General. We can’t. You must bring the team together,
one which includes Karl. You must gain his trust, as well. There
are many obstacles to crossing the gate.”

The General shrugged. “Your situation is
unchanged?”

“We need Martha. You have to find her for
us. Send her to us willingly. Nothing happens until then, and for a
time after. We will block it until we have her.”

“I think this is what must happen. I will do
these things.” He turned to leave. “Sergeant, send to me RJ
Sublime. We will have need of him to form our team.”

The Mechanic nodded, then offered the card
to the Sergeant. Holding his eyes locked to the Mechanic’s, who
returned the stare impassively, the Sergeant took it, held it
palmed, but pinched between middle and index finger, edge not
touching his palm, as the Mechanic had held it.

The Sergeant stayed back
to examine the card.
benefactor
was the only printed word. There was some tek on
one of the short edges - a computer interface, and writing on the
back, a tiny, neat cursive of many lines, too small for any human
save the Sergeant to read, except the title.
Recipe to fell a god
.

Every movement by the
Benefactor counted to the purpose, a constant calculus guiding each
subtle gesture to advantage. That was a critical difference with
the General. He did things because they were proper. Often, he lost
advantage by doing so. But he retained, perhaps, a higher status.
The Benefactor would always be a contender; but the General was the
seat of true power. Not because he had more. He didn’t. Because
he
wore it better than his
opponent
.

Though the Sergeant was American to the
marrow, he still respected the General’s Frenchness, especially
when he witnessed the subtlety with which he wove social grace and
power. The way he made his lifestyle the master of his power and
not the reverse, as the Benefactor seemed to do. Respect was
proper. The General operated at a level of diplomacy forever beyond
the Sergeant, just as the Sergeant operated in the realm of
uncompromising reality, details where the General could only
watch.

Despite the technical hierarchy of the two,
they were a team. The General relied on the Sergeant’s knife of
precision as much as the Sergeant relied on the General’s peerless
insights into warfare and human motives.

The Sergeant had never seen the General seem
obsessed before, which was no small statement, because he was a
very focused man. He was convinced that he had to find Martha, and
seeking her dictated every movement. He had further goals, but his
entire plan was blocked until he found her. The Benefactor had
assured that.

The Sergeant could not see how she was such
a key to the overall picture and questioned the approach. The
General waved him away, saying, in French, “You maintain the
tactical view and I will maintain the strategic. You are
dismissed.”

The Sergeant considered it part of his
duties to say what he thought, and the General agreed. He could not
see the details in the overall picture, and this was one of the
things for which he needed his man-at-arms. He was the greatest
strategist in history, however. He had uncanny skills at creating
victory before the battle was joined. During an engagement, though,
he would become lost in the haze of minutiae. The Sergeant was
supposed to speak up, but the General made the choice.

The General walked through his palace in
southern France with RJ Sublime, the gambler from Georgia,
pontificating on the perils of engaging the enemy without knowing
him. He spoke about the great generals of the past, especially
Napoleon, whom he had studied extensively, and Ghengis Khan, whom
he greatly respected, using them as examples for his lesson. He
stopped to admire a small statue of the god Jove in an alcove. He
had hired an agent to steal it for him from a museum.

“I could have bought it for less than the
cost of the theft, but this would have defeated the purpose.”

“The purpose?”

“Oui, the great man is his own law.”

Sublime shrugged, and responded, emphasizing
his Georgia gentleman’s accent. “That is one possible opinion, to
be sure.”

“Monsieur Sublime, I have a mission for you.
I would like you to find a man by the name of LuvRay Chose. I need
that he comes to France. He can find Martha where you and the
Sergeant have failed.”

“Who is he? Why is he so special?”

“He lives in the desert of Mexico. A
very…distinct person, a man quite close to the elements.”

“Why would I do something so foolish as to
attempt to capture this LuvRay Chose? Combat is not my forté. That
would appear to be more of a Sergeant mission to me.”

“No, do not capture. Persuade him to come.
You are a diplomat.”

“Why would I agree to persuade him?”

“Because you want to know as much as I what
will be unlocked by finding Martha.”

The General was right, of course. Sublime
obviously wanted to know. But he predictably had to play coy a
bit.

“I don’t know,” he said as if he did. “Maybe
it isn’t so terribly important to me.” He turned the accent on
high. The General looked him up and down, evaluating something on
auction.

RJ Sublime rode into the high desert of
Mexico. Locals called it the mountain desert. Legend had it that
LuvRay Chose had been raised by wolves. Then, later, by Indians.
But nobody really knew. Or if they did, they weren’t telling RJ
Sublime. The General had sent him on this crazy mission to find
this wolf-man and convince him to go to France. It was nuts, but RJ
liked the occasional outside straight. And the General had made it
count with his peculiar way of applying leverage. RJ could have
said no, but he would wind up going anyway.