Card Sharks

'I need you,' Quasiman persisted. 'They need you, Hannah, all of the ones who died.'

She remembered the bodies in the ruins of the church, the twisted, black shapes. They all look the same once they're crisped…. Hannah stopped. 'Quasiman, look at me. I'm one of those nats the jokers hate. I don't have joker friends; in fact, most of the people I know are wild card bigots. I've gone out of my way to avoid everything to do with the wild card since I came to New York. I … I'm really uncomfortable around people like you. I don't want you to touch me; I don't even want you near me.'

'Father Squid said you have a kind face.'

'Father Squid has a handful of slimy tentacles for a nose. What does he know about faces? Now please leave me alone so I can do my job.'

Quasiman put himself in front of her. He stared at her. 'If you did believe me, what would you do now?' he asked.

Hannah sighed. 'I don't know. I'd check out Tanaka's story. I'd look up the guy he called Troll, probably, just to verify — '

Quasiman's face had lit up. 'Good!' he exclaimed. 'The clinic's this way. Hurry.' The hunchback waved a hand at her, then set off down the sidewalk at a surprising clip, limping badly. His pants flapped strangely around his right thigh, as if most of the muscles that should have been there weren't. No wonder he's gimpy. Quasiman never looked back to see if she was following.

'Quasiman!'

The joker didn't answer. Hannah stood, hands at her sides. The other people on the busy street — an unsettling mixture of Asians and jokers — were staring at her. 'Damn it,' she said. 'This isn't fair.'

But she followed.

***

The connection didn't hit her until she saw the name engraved over the doors of the clinic building: BLYTHE VAN RENSSAELER MEMORIAL CLINIC. Hannah remembered history classes and documentaries about the wild card, and now strange echoes of those were awakened. She was walking in a world where figures lived and walked who had only been names in books and newspaper articles: the alien Dr. Tachyon, whose people had brought the wild card virus to Earth; Tachyon's ill-fated love affair with Blythe, the wife of Henry van Renssaeler, which had ended during the H.U.A.C. hearings with Blythe's insanity, back in the '50s. …

… and now a joker named Chop-Chop had given her a tale about Blythe's daughter and Henry's plot to burn down Jokertown. Tanaka was right about one thing. Nothing is simple here …

Quasiman had stopped at the walk leading to the building. 'Hey!' Hannah called. The joker looked back at her but there was no recognition in his eyes. He scowled at her and started to walk back the way they'd come. Hannah stepped into the grass to avoid him. 'Shit,' Hannah said. If she hadn't already been in front of the place, she would have left.

But she went in, showed her ID, and asked the receptionist for Doctor Tachyon. Then she sat down to wait, finding a corner seat and putting her briefcase on the chair next to her so no one would sit there. She tried to pretend that she didn't take any interest in the carnival freak show that continually walked past her.

'You're Agent Davis?'

Hannah was startled from her reverie. A centaur in a white lab coat was frowning at her. She didn't know why that startled her so much — the clinic was awash in strangeness: a fish-faced joker with his head immersed in a globe of water was sitting across from her, a shape-shifting something that looked to be made of quicksilver had oozed from the clinic doors not two minutes earlier, and the far corner of the room writhed with what looked to be a quartet of upright forearms, the hands of which were having an animated and soundless conversation with one another.

A human torso grafted onto a palomino pony's body shouldn't be so distracting. At least the centaur's upper body looked completely normal. In fact, that part of him was rather handsome. Hannah decided to concentrate on that. 'Yes, I'm Agent Davis,' she said.

'I'm Dr. Bradley Finn. I'm afraid Doctor Tachyon is … out of the country at the moment. The receptionist told me that you also wanted to see Troll. This is his day off. I want you to know — '

The centaur stopped. Looked down. One of the forearms was tugging at his rear left fetlock. Hannah could see little pseudopods at the bottom of the mobile limb. 'Listen, Fingers, Dr. Cody will be with you in a few minutes, okay?' Dr. Finn said. The hand nodded like a hand puppet to Finn, then seemed to notice Hannah and waved. Feeling foolish, Hannah gave a quick wave back. Scuttling on the pseudopods, the arm went back to its companions.

The frown came back to Finn's face. 'One of your people was already here today, a Peter Harris, asking about the fire victims that were brought here.'

'You don't look pleased.'

'I'm not.'

'I'm sorry, Doctor,' Hannah said. 'I'm sure your main concern is the well-being of your patients. But you have to understand that we need information if we're going to catch the arsonist. And that means we have to talk to the survivors, even at times when we'd rather not bother them. I know that's usually not easy for them, and sometimes we're dealing with people in a lot of pain — '

Hannah stopped. Finn was holding up his hand. 'Hold on,' he said. 'I think we have things a little backward. Why don't we go into my office — ' He escorted Hannah through the clinic doors, his hooves clicking on the linoleum. They passed consultation rooms, most of them empty in the early morning. Another doctor, a woman with an eye patch, crossed from room to room down the hall in front of them, nodding to Finn. The doctor's office held a normal chair sitting before an abnormally high desk. Finn waved Hannah to the chair and moved behind the desk. She could see that the furniture was built for his convenience, so that he could work without having to bend down or sit. Hannah pulled the tape recorder from her purse, along with her notebook. She showed Finn the recorder; he shrugged and she set it on the edge of the desk.

'I wouldn't have minded if your man Harris had wanted to interview people,' Finn said without prelude, glancing once at the turning hubs of the cassette and then ignoring the machine. 'I could have understood that. But all your Harris did was check to see who we'd signed in. That's what bothered me. I actually asked him if he wanted to talk to them, but he just laughed. He didn't say that he had better things to do with his time, but he sure as hell implied it. What he did say was that he was 'following routine, that's all.' I asked him if he thought that maybe the death of a hundred jokers justified something more than just routine. He told me, and I quote: 'Not from me, it doesn't.' I don't take well to bigotry, Ms. Davis, and your Harris is, frankly, a jerk.'

Hannah could feel the heat of her cheeks. 'Harris is working for me,' she told the centaur. 'I apologize, Dr. Finn. A fire like this isn't routine. Not to me. I assure you that I'll check this out. All the patients here were available for Harris?'

'The ones that lived,' Finn answered.

'I'm sorry, Doctor. I really am.'

Finn looked slightly mollified. He nodded, fiddled with the stack of papers in his in-basket. 'I hope so,' he said. 'Three of the people were brought here DOA; we lost two of the other ten people during the night. Almost all the rest are in for a long and extremely painful reconstruction, if they can afford it. So … are you going to talk to them?'

Hannah wondered if she hesitated a fraction of a second too long. 'Yes. If you don't mind …?'

'I'll take you in.' Finn started out from behind the desk, then stopped. He cocked his head at her as a muscle twitched in his long, gold-silk flank. The long tail flicked once. 'You asked about Troll,' he said. 'It's none of my business, but on Black Queen Night Troll was here from the afternoon until the next morning. Any of us can verify that.'

Hannah shook her head. 'I — ' she started, then let the air out of her lungs in a loud exhalation. 'I think I can skip Troll. Someone thought he might know something about an old plot against jokers.' She smiled to show that she gave the notion no credence, but Finn wasn't sharing the joke. 'It's nothing,' she said.

'Are you saying that this wasn't just random violence?' Finn was holding very still. Hannah could see the muscles tightening along his neck, and the tail was swishing back and forth like an angry cat's.

'No, I'm emphatically not saying that. In fact, in cases like this, it's very unlikely.