Wild Cards Part 1

Wild Cards.

by George R. R. Martin.

PROLOGUE.

From Wild Times: An Oral History Wild Times: An Oral History of the Postwar Years, by Studs Terkel (Pantheon, 1979)

Herbert L. Cranston

Years later, when I saw Michael Rennie come out of that flying saucer in The Day the Earth Stood Still The Day the Earth Stood Still, I leaned over to the wife and said, "Now that's the way an alien emissary ought to look." I've always suspected that it was Tachyon's arrival that gave them the idea for that picture, but you know how Hollywood changes things around. I was there, so I know how it really was. For starts, he came down in White Sands, not in Washington. He didn't have a robot, and we didn't shoot him. Considering what happened, maybe we should have, eh?

His ship, well, it certainly wasn't a flying saucer, and it didn't look a d.a.m.n thing like our captured V2s or even the moon rockets on Werner's drawing boards. It violated every known law of aerodynamics and Einstein's special relativity too.

He came down at night, his ship all covered with lights, the prettiest thing I ever saw. It set down plunk in the middle of the proving range, without rockets, propellers, rotors, or any visible means of propulsion whatsoever. The outer skin looked like it was coral or some kind of porous rock, covered with whorls and spurs, like something you'd find in a limestone cavern or spot while deep-sea diving.

I was in the first jeep to reach it. By the time we got there, Tach was already outside. Michael Rennie, now, he looked right in that silvery-blue s.p.a.cesuit of his, but Tachyon looked like a cross between one of the Three Musketeers and some kind of circus performer. I don't mind telling you, all of us were pretty scared driving out, the rocketry boys and eggheads just as much as the GIs. I remembered that Mercury Theater broadcast back in '39, when Orson Welles fooled everybody into thinking that the Martians were invading New Jersey, and I couldn't help thinking maybe this time it was happening for real. But once the spotlights. .h.i.t him, standing there in front of his ship, we all relaxed. He just wasn't scary.

He was short, maybe five three, five four, and to tell the truth, he looked more scared than us. He was wearing these green tights with the boots built right into them, and this orangy shirt with lace sissy ruffles at the wrists and collar, and some kind of silvery brocade vest, real tight. His coat was a lemon-yellow number, with a green cloak snapping around in the wind behind him and catching about his ankles. On top of his head he had this wide-brimmed hat, with a long red feather sticking out of it, except when I got closer, I saw it was really some weird spiky quill. His hair covered his shoulders; at first glance, I thought he was a girl. It was a peculiar sort of hair too, red and shiny, like thin copper wire.

I didn't know what to make of him, but I remember one of our Germans saying that he looked like a Frenchman.

No sooner had we arrived than he came slogging right over to the jeep, bold as you please, trudging through the sand with a big bag stuck up under one arm. He started telling us his name, and he was still telling it to us while four other jeeps pulled up. He spoke better English than most of our Germans, despite having this weird accent, but it was hard to be sure at first when he spent ten minutes telling us his name.

I was the first human being to speak to him. That's G.o.d's truth, I don't care what anybody else tells you, it was me. I got out of the jeep and stuck out my hand and said, "Welcome to America." I started to introduce myself, but he interrupted me before I could get the words out.

"Herb Cranston of Cape May, New Jersey," he said. "A rocket scientist. Excellent. I am a scientist myself."

He didn't look like any scientist I'd ever known, but I made allowances, since he came from outer s.p.a.ce. I was more concerned about how he'd known my name. I asked him.

He waved his ruffles in the air, impatient. "I read your mind. That's unimportant. Time is short, Cranston. Their ship broke up." I thought he look more than a little sick when he said that; sad, you know, hurting, but scared too. And tired, very tired. Then he started talking about this globe. That was the globe with the wild card virus, of course, everyone knows that now, but back then I didn't know what the h.e.l.l he was going on about. It was lost, he said, he needed to get it back, and he hoped for all our sakes it was still intact. He wanted to talk to our top leaders. He must have read their names in my mind, because he named Werner, and Einstein, and the President, except he called him "this President Harry S Truman of yours." Then he climbed right into the back of the jeep and sat down. "Take me to them," he said. "At once."

Professor Lyle Crawford Kent

In a certain sense, it was I who coined his name. His real name, of course, his alien patronymic, was impossibly long. Several of us tried to shorten it, I recall, using this or that piece of it during our conferences, but evidently this was some sort of breach of etiquette on his home world, Takis. He continually corrected us, rather arrogantly I might say, like an elderly pedant lecturing a pack of schoolboys. Well, we needed to call him something. The t.i.tle came first. We might have called him "Your Majesty" or some such, since he claimed to be a prince, but Americans are not comfortable with that sort of bowing and sc.r.a.ping. He also said he was a physician, although not in our sense of the word, and it must be admitted that he did seem to know a good deal of genetics and biochemistry, which seemed to be his area of expertise. Most of our team held advanced degrees, and we addressed each other accordingly, and so it was only natural that we fell to calling him "Doctor" as well.

The rocket scientists were obsessed with our visitor's ship, particularly with the theory of his faster-than-light propulsion system. Unfortunately, our Takisian friend had burned out his ship's interstellar drive in his haste to arrive here before those relatives of his, and in any case he adamantly refused to let any of us, civilian or military, inspect the inside of his craft. Werner and his Germans were reduced to questioning the alien about the drive, rather compulsively I thought. As I understood it, theoretical physics and the technology of s.p.a.ce travel were not disciplines in which our visitor was especially expert, so the answers he gave them were not very clear, but we did grasp that the drive made use of a hitherto-unknown particle that traveled faster than light.

The alien had a term for the particle, as unp.r.o.nounceable as his name. Well, I had a certain grounding in cla.s.sical Greek, like all educated men, and a flair for nomenclature if I do say so myself. I was the one who devised the coinage "tachyon." Some how the GIs got things confused, and began referring to our visitor as "that tachyon fellow." The phrase caught on, and from there it was only a short step to Doctor Tachyon, the name by which he became generally known in the press.

Colonel Edward Reid, U.S.

Army Intelligence (Ret.)

You want me to say it, right? Every d.a.m.ned reporter I've ever talked to wants me to say it. All right, here it is. We made a mistake. And we paid for it too. Do you know that afterwards they came within a hair of court-martialing all of us, the whole interrogation team? That's a fact.

The h.e.l.l of it is, I don't know how we could have been expected to do things any differently than we did. I was in charge of his interrogation. I ought to know.

What did we really know about him? Nothing except what he told us himself. The eggheads were treating him like Baby Jesus, but military men have to be a little more cautious. If you want to understand, you have to put yourself in our shoes and remember how it was back then. His story was utterly preposterous, and he couldn't prove a single d.a.m.ned thing.

Okay, he landed in this funny-looking rocket plane, except it didn't have rockets. That was impressive. Maybe that plane of his did did come from outer s.p.a.ce, like he said. But maybe it didn't. Maybe it was one of those secret projects the n.a.z.is had been working on, left over from the war. They'd had jets at the end, you know, and those V2s, and they were even working on the atomic bomb. Maybe it was Russian. I don't know. If Tachyon had only let us examine his ship, our boys would have been able to figure out where it came from, I'm sure. But he wouldn't let anyone inside the d.a.m.ned thing, which struck me as more than a little suspicious. What was he trying to hide? come from outer s.p.a.ce, like he said. But maybe it didn't. Maybe it was one of those secret projects the n.a.z.is had been working on, left over from the war. They'd had jets at the end, you know, and those V2s, and they were even working on the atomic bomb. Maybe it was Russian. I don't know. If Tachyon had only let us examine his ship, our boys would have been able to figure out where it came from, I'm sure. But he wouldn't let anyone inside the d.a.m.ned thing, which struck me as more than a little suspicious. What was he trying to hide?

He said he came from the planet Takis. Well, I never heard of no G.o.dd.a.m.ned planet Takis. Mars, Venus, Jupiter, sure. Even Mongo and Barsoom. But Takis? I called up a dozen top astronomers all around the country, even one guy over in England. Where's the planet Takis? I asked them. There is no planet Takis, they told me.

He was supposed to be an alien, right? We examined him. A complete physical, X rays, a battery of psychological tests, the works. He tested human. Every which way we turned him, he came up human. No extra organs, no green blood, five fingers, five toes, two b.a.l.l.s, and one c.o.c.k. The f.u.c.ker was no different from you and me. He spoke English English, for crissakes. But get this-he also spoke German German. And Russian and French and a few other languages I've forgotten. I made wire recordings of a couple of my sessions with him, and played them for a linguist, who said the accent was Central European.

And the headshrinkers, whoa, you should have heard their reports. Cla.s.sic paranoid, they said. Megalomania, they said. Schitzo, they said. All kinds of stuff. I mean, look, this guy claimed to be a prince prince from from outer s.p.a.ce outer s.p.a.ce with magic f.u.c.king with magic f.u.c.king powers powers who'd come here who'd come here all alone all alone to save our whole d.a.m.ned planet. Does that sound sane to you? to save our whole d.a.m.ned planet. Does that sound sane to you?

And let me say something about those d.a.m.ned magic powers of his. I'll admit it, that was the thing that bothered me the most. I mean, not only could Tachyon tell you what you were thinking, he could look at you funny and make you jump up on your desk and drop your pants, whether you wanted to or not. I spent hours with him every day, and he convinced me me. The thing was, my reports didn't convince the bra.s.s back east. Some kind of trick, they thought, he was hypnotizing us, he was reading our body posture, using psychology to make us think he read minds. They were going to send out a stage hypnotist to figure out how he did it, but the s.h.i.t hit the fan before they got around to it.

He didn't ask much. All he wanted was a meeting with the President so he could mobilize the entire American military to search for some crashed rocket ship. Tachyon would be in command, of course, no one else was qualified. Our top scientists could be his a.s.sistants. He wanted radar and jets and submarines and bloodhounds and weird machines n.o.body had ever heard of. You name it, he wanted it. And he did not want to have to consult with anybody, either. This guy dressed like a f.a.g hair-dresser, if you want the truth, but the way he gave orders you would've thought he had three stars at least.

And why? Oh, yeah, his story, that sure was great. On this planet Takis, he said, a couple dozen big families ran the whole show, like royalty, except they all had magic powers, and they lorded it over everybody else who didn't have magic powers. These families spent most of their time feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. His particular bunch had a secret weapon they'd been working on for a couple of centuries. A tailored artificial virus designed to interact with the genetic makeup of the host organism, he said. He'd been part of the research team.

Well, I was humoring him. What did this germ do? I asked him. Now get this-it did everything everything.

What it was supposed supposed to do, according to Tachyon, was goose up these mind powers of theirs, maybe even give them some new powers, evolve 'em almost into G.o.ds, which would sure as h.e.l.l give his kin the edge over the others. But it didn't always do that. Sometimes, yeah. Most often it killed the test subjects. He went on and on about how deadly this stuff was, and managed to give me the creeps. What were the symptoms? I asked. We knew about germ weapons back in '46; just in case he was telling the truth, I wanted us to know what to look for. to do, according to Tachyon, was goose up these mind powers of theirs, maybe even give them some new powers, evolve 'em almost into G.o.ds, which would sure as h.e.l.l give his kin the edge over the others. But it didn't always do that. Sometimes, yeah. Most often it killed the test subjects. He went on and on about how deadly this stuff was, and managed to give me the creeps. What were the symptoms? I asked. We knew about germ weapons back in '46; just in case he was telling the truth, I wanted us to know what to look for.

He couldn't tell me the symptoms. There were all kinds of symptoms. Everybody had different symptoms, every single person. You ever hear of a germ worked like that? Not me.

Then Tachyon said that sometimes it turned people into freaks instead of killing them. What kind of freaks? I asked. All kinds, he said. I admitted that it sounded pretty nasty, and asked him why his folks hadn't used this stuff on the other families. Because sometimes the virus worked, he said; it remade its victims, gave them powers. What kinds of powers? All kinds of powers, naturally.

So they had this stuff. They didn't want to use it on their enemies, and maybe give them powers. They didn't want to use it on themselves, and kill off half the family. They weren't about to forget about it. They decided to test it on us. Why us? Because we were genetically identical to Takisians, he said, the only such race they knew of, and the bug was designed to work on the Takisian genotype. So why were we so lucky? Some of his people thought it was parallel evolution, others believed that Earth was a lost Takisian colony-he didn't know and didn't care.

He did care about the experiment. Thought it was "ign.o.ble." He protested, he said, but they ignored him. The ship left. And Tachyon decided to stop them all by himself. He came after them in a smaller ship, burned out his d.a.m.ned tachyon drive getting here ahead of them. When he intercepted them, they told him to f.u.c.k off, even though he was family, and they had some kind of s.p.a.ce battle. His ship was damaged, theirs was crippled, and they crashed. Somewhere back east, he said. He lost them, on account of the damage to his ship. So he landed at White Sands, where he thought he could get help.

I got down the whole story on my wire recorder. Afterwards, Army Intelligence contacted all sorts of experts: biochemists and doctors and germ-warfare guys, you name it. An alien virus, we told them, symptoms completely random and unpredictable. Impossible, they said. Utterly absurd. One of them gave me a whole lecture about how Earth germs could never affect Martians like in that H. G. Wells book, and Martian germs couldn't affect us, either. Everybody agreed that this random-symptom bit was a laugh. So what were we supposed to do? We all cracked jokes about the Martian flu and s.p.a.ceman's fever. Somebody, I don't know who, called it the wild card virus in a report, and the rest of us picked up on the name, but n.o.body believed it for a second.

It was a bad situation, and Tachyon just made it worse when he tried to escape. He almost pulled it off, but like my old man always told me, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and grenades. The Pentagon had sent out their own man to question him, a bird colonel named Wayne, and Tachyon finally got fed up, I guess. He took control of Colonel Wayne, and together they just marched out of the building. Whenever they were challenged, Wayne snapped off the orders to let them pa.s.s, and rank does have its privileges. The cover story was that Wayne had orders to escort Tachyon back to Washington. They commandeered a jeep and got all the way back to the s.p.a.ceship, but by then one of the sentries had checked with me, and my men were waiting for them, with direct orders to ignore anything Colonel Wayne might say. We took him back into custody and kept him there, under heavy guard. For all his magic powers, there wasn't much he could do about it. He could make one person do what he wanted, maybe three or four if he tried real hard, but not all of us, and by then we were wise to his tricks.

Maybe it was a bonehead maneuver, but his escape attempt did get him the date with Einstein he'd been badgering us for. The Pentagon kept telling us he was the world's greatest hypnotist, but I wasn't buying that anymore, and you should have heard what Colonel Wayne thought of the theory. The eggheads were getting agitated too. Anyway, together Wayne and I managed to wrangle authorization to fly the prisoner to Princeton. I figured a talk with Einstein couldn't do any harm, and might do some good. His ship was impounded, and we'd gotten all we were going to get from the man himself. Einstein was supposed to be the world's greatest brain, maybe he could figure the guy out, right?

There are still those who say that the military is to blame for everything that happened, but it's just not true. It's easy to be wise in hindsight, but I was there, and I'll maintain to my dying day that the steps we took were reasonable and prudent.

The thing that really burns me is when they talk about how we did nothing to track down that d.a.m.ned globe with the wild card spores. Maybe we made a mistake, yeah, but we weren't stupid, we were covering our a.s.ses. Every d.a.m.ned military installation in the country got a directive to be on the lookout for a crashed s.p.a.ceship that looked something like a seash.e.l.l with running lights. Is it my f.u.c.king fault that none of them took it seriously?

Give me credit for one thing, at least. When all h.e.l.l broke loose, I had Tachyon jetting back toward New York within two hours. I was in the seat behind him. The redheaded wimp cried half the f.u.c.king way across the country. Me, I prayed for Jetboy.

THIRTY MINUTES.

OVER BROADWAY!.

JETBOY'S LAST ADVENTURE!.

by Howard Waldrop

Bonham's Flying Service of Shantak, New Jersey, was socked in. The small searchlight on the tower barely pushed away the darkness of the swirling fog.

There was the sound of car tires on the wet pavement in front of Hangar 23. A car door opened, a moment later it closed. Footsteps came to the Employees Only door. It opened. Scoop Swanson came in, carrying his Kodak Autograph Mark II and a bag of flashbulbs and film.

Lincoln Traynor raised up from the engine of the surplus P40 he was overhauling for an airline pilot who had got it at a voice-bid auction for $293. Judging from the shape of the engine, it must have been flown by the Flying Tigers in 1940. A ball game was on the workbench radio. Linc turned it down.

"'Lo, Linc," said Scoop.

"'Lo."

"No word yet?"

"Don't expect any. The telegram he sent yesterday said he'd be in tonight. Good enough for me."

Scoop lit a Camel with a Three Torches box match from the workbench. He blew smoke toward the Absolutely No Smoking sign at the back of the hangar. "Hey, what's this?" He walked to the rear. Still in their packing cases were two long red wing extensions and two 300-gallon teardrop underwing tanks. "When these get here?"

"Air Corps shipped them yesterday from San Francisco. Another telegram came for him today. You might as well read it, you're doing the story." Linc handed him the War Department orders.

TO: Jetboy (Tomlin, Robert NMI) Jetboy (Tomlin, Robert NMI)

HOR:.

Bonham's Flying Service Hangar 23 Shantak, New Jersey

1. Effective this date 1200Z hours 12 Aug '46, you are no longer on active duty, United States Army Air Force.

2. Your aircraft (model-experimental) (ser. no. JB1) is hereby decommissioned from active status, United States Army Air Force, and rea.s.signed you as private aircraft. No further materiel support from USAAF or War Department will be forthcoming.

3. Records, commendations, and awards forwarded under separate cover.

4. Our records show Tomlin, Robert NMI, has not obtained pilot's license. Please contact CAB for courses and certification.

5. Clear skies and tailwinds, For Arnold, H.H.

CofS, USAAF

ref: Executive Order #2, 08 Dec '41

"What's this about him having no pilot's license?" asked the newspaperman. "I went through the morgue on him-his file's a foot thick. h.e.l.l, he must have flown faster and farther, shot down more planes than anyone-five hundred planes, fifty ships! He did it without a pilot's license?"

Linc wiped grease from his mustache. "Yep. That was the most plane-crazy kid you ever saw. Back in '39, he couldn't have been more than twelve, he heard there was a job out here. He showed up at four A.M.-lammed out of the orphanage to do it. They came out to get him. But of course Professor Silverberg had hired him, squared it with them."

"Silverberg's the one the n.a.z.is b.u.mped off? The guy who made the jet?"

"Yep. Years ahead of everybody, but weird. I put together the plane for him, Bobby and I built it by hand. But Silverberg made the jets-d.a.m.nedest engines you ever saw. The n.a.z.is and Italians, and Whittle over in England, had started theirs. But the Germans found out something was happening here."

"How'd the kid learn to fly?"

"He always knew, I think," said Lincoln. "One day he's in here helping me bend metal. The next, him and the professor are flying around at four hundred miles per. In the dark, with those early engines."

"How'd they keep it a secret?"

"They didn't, very well. The spies came for Silverberg-wanted him and and the plane. Bobby was out with it. I think he and the prof knew something was up. Silverberg put up such a fight the n.a.z.is killed him. Then, there was the diplomatic stink. In those days the JB1 only had six .30 cals on it-where the professor got them I don't know. But the kid took care of the car full of spies with it, and that speedboat on the Hudson full of emba.s.sy people. All on diplomatic visas. the plane. Bobby was out with it. I think he and the prof knew something was up. Silverberg put up such a fight the n.a.z.is killed him. Then, there was the diplomatic stink. In those days the JB1 only had six .30 cals on it-where the professor got them I don't know. But the kid took care of the car full of spies with it, and that speedboat on the Hudson full of emba.s.sy people. All on diplomatic visas.

"Just a sec," Linc stopped himself. "End of a doubleheader in Cleveland. On the Blue Network." He turned up the metal Philco radio that sat above the toolrack.

". . . Sanders to Papenfuss to Volstad, a double play. That does it. So the Sox drop two to Cleveland. We'll be right Sanders to Papenfuss to Volstad, a double play. That does it. So the Sox drop two to Cleveland. We'll be right-" Linc turned it off. "There goes five bucks," he said. "Where was I?"

"The Krauts killed Silverberg, and Jetboy got even. He went to Canada, right?"

"Joined the RCAF, unofficially. Fought in the Battle of Britain, went to China against the j.a.ps with the Tigers, was back in Britain for Pearl Harbor."