George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] (24 page)

“Does that mean I’m the winner?” He finds the thought incredibly exciting—as if he’d just been told he was going to start in the big game.

“I couldn’t possibly tell you something like that.” Which in no way means that he
isn’t
the winner—the first American Hero! “It would be best for all of us, I think, if you tried very hard not to think that. To simply play the game. By the rules.”

“I thought there were no rules.”

“The apparent rules. The rules we make up as we go along.” Berman suddenly puts his hands to his face, the gesture of a much older man. “Do I have your promise to… play that way?”

“Yeah. By the rules we make up as we go along.” For a moment, he wishes Big Bill Norwood could be sitting in the breakfast nook. Or maybe that nasty little Nic Deladrier. How do you like Stuntman now?

Jade Blossom enters. “Oh,” she says, her mouth forming that single syllable most prettily.

Berman stands, and a look passes between him and Jade. With utter certainty, Jamal realizes that Berman has been
after Jade—and so far, unsuccessfully. Berman makes a grand gesture, midway between an introduction and a surrender. “You two must have a lot to talk about.”

Then he leaves.

Almost instinctively, as if searching for a human touch as much as an erotic thrill, Jamal reaches for Jade.

But she raises a hand. “Wait a second.”

Behind Jade, Jamal sees Art blinking sleep out of his eye, gesturing for Diaz to raise the camera.

“Now.” And she takes his hand.

Metagames

“YOU LOSE.”

Are there worse words in the universe to hear?

Sure. “You’ve got cancer” tops it, but the odds are low that I’ve got cancer at age nineteen. Right now, though, I’m a loser.

The Diamonds are losers. And we’re doing it on national television. Not to mention the coverage we’re getting on
YouTube.com
and every freaking blog in the universe.

And now we’re going to Discard. Again.

I hate Discard.

“This sucks.”

That was Tiffani, and her West Virginia accent got thicker when she was mad. She was changing out of her show clothes into her sweats. I tried not to sneak a look at her, but she wasn’t being shy about changing in front of me. And why would she be anyway? It was just us girls here. Her skin was the color of white oleanders, and she smelled like sweet sweat and musky roses.

“I am sick of losing challenges,” she said as she hooked her bra. “We would have won if Matryoshka had kept control of his copies.”

“Yeah, I hate losing, too.” I didn’t like the camera being on us as we changed, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was in the contract. The only time you could be alone was in the bathroom. And then you had to be
alone.
No one could come in with you unless there was a camera following. No wonder I felt like I was going crazy.

Of course, in my pre-wild-card life I’d been shot almost naked by some of the best photographers in the business. Not that any of them would recognize me now. I’m big as a house.

I grunted as I pulled on my pants. I was still pretty large, even after all the bubbling in the last challenge. There had been one last hard hit before we lost, and it had plumped me up.

There was a knock on the door. Ink stuck her head in the room. She was a tiny girl with spiky black hair and tattoos writhing across her body. “They’re set up and ready for the Discard ceremony,” she said.

Tiffani glanced in the mirror. She looked amazing—her cloud of fiery hair a sharp contrast to her milky skin.

I didn’t bother to look at myself. I knew I’d be disappointed.

Jetman and Matryoshka were sitting at the table when we arrived. Matryoshka had recombined himself, so he was at his full intellect. Not that his full intellect was any great shakes, but he was a nice guy, and he made great pierogi. Not as good as the late, lamented Second Avenue Deli in New York, but damn good nonetheless. We were the same age, but I always felt as if I were older than him. Like a big sister.

“Come along, children,” said the Harlem Hammer. He was the one judge I actually liked.

Tiffani and I took our seats. The Hammer had a deck of cards in front of him. The Discard deck. Blarg.

I glanced at Tiffani. Her mouth was pulled in a tight line. Losing that last challenge had been horrible. We
all
hated losing.

“I think we did okay, until the end,” said Matryoshka.

Tiff shot him a look that could have melted glass. “Well, it doesn’t matter how we did up until the part where we lost, does it?” she snapped.

Matryoshka looked at her like a wounded puppy. I felt bad for him.

“I think you’re being too harsh on Ivan,” Jetman said. He
was slightly older than the rest of us and, because of his obsession with Jetboy, he tended to have old-fashioned notions about things. “He can’t help getting kind of, well, er, uhm…”

“Stupid?” I said and immediately hated myself. It was true, but…

“I’m sorry, Ivan.”

Matryoshka shrugged. He was stoic, I’ll say that for him. The Harlem Hammer tried to get us talking about the challenge, but we weren’t much help. We’d lost every one thus far. Our team was pretty much decimated. And now we had to throw another person under the bus.

The cards were dealt and I slowly picked up my hand. Tiffani, Jetman, Matryoshka, and my own face stared back at me. Tiffani had plucked her card out, and it was already lying facedown on the table. She looked calm and cool, and I wished I felt as certain about whom to choose.

I doubted I would be chosen. I was the only one who had performed well on all the challenges. I figured, if the Diamonds ever hoped to win one, they needed to keep me.

Jetman had a way with gadgets and he always managed to come up with the right gizmo during challenges. And he could fly with his jetpack, which came in handy. Oh, and his guns were good, too. One shot sleeping gas and the other a net.

I fiddled with the edge of Matryoshka’s card. Despite the fact that his Mini-Me’s got dumber and dumber as he divided, they could be effective at overwhelming opponents. I looked at Tiffani’s card. There was a slight smile on her face in the photo. It made the corners of her aquamarine eyes crinkle. She was pretty much impervious to harm, and that was great except… well, she sucked in a fight.

I pushed that thought away. It wasn’t really fair. She didn’t choose to have a power with no real offensive capabilities. And Tiffani and I had been together since the Atlanta tryouts. We were the only two who had made the show from Atlanta. She’d never voted against me, and I’d never voted against her. I guess we had a sort of unspoken alliance.

I glanced up and caught Jetman looking at me. I felt a stab
of fear in my stomach. Maybe he
was
thinking of putting me in the Discards.

“You need to make your selections,” the Harlem Hammer said. His voice was deep and reminded me of the Barry White albums my parents used to play. I shoved that away, too. I tried not to think about my parents anymore.

Matryoshka pulled a card from his hand and placed it facedown on the table. Jetman followed.

“What’s it going to be, Bubbles?” the Hammer asked me. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I sighed and picked a card. The Harlem Hammer gathered our discards, shuffled them, and made a small deck.

He turned the first card over. Tiffani’s face stared up at us. I glanced at her. She gave me a tight smile, then looked back at the board.

The next card was Matryoshka. He frowned and shook his head slightly. Another card turned. Matryoshka again.

“One vote left. Is it going to be two pair or a set?”

With quick efficiency, The Hammer dealt the last card.

Matryoshka.

Tiffani breathed a sigh of relief. So did I.

Matryoshka and Jetman were already standing, shaking hands, and doing that back-slapping thing guys did to prove that they liked each other, but not in a “gay” way. I stood and walked around the table. Matryoshka and I hugged. He was a big guy, but his arms barely made it around my girth. I felt terrible that I had chosen him, but I had to think of the team—and who would be the best American Hero.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at my reflection, depressed about voting Matryoshka off. I started thinking about all the other nice people I’d voted to discard. Blrr and the Maharajah were both really decent. Joe Twitch had some issues, though, and I knew he had pissed Tiff off.

“Michelle, you know you can’t be in there for too long.” It was Ink—again.

I glowered at my reflection. I’d been using a colored hair
spray to change my platinum hair to black. The shade did nothing for me—turning my skin sallow rather than the pale olive luminescence which had earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars in modeling contracts. But no one had recognized me thus far. The dark hair alone wouldn’t have masked my identity—but my wild card did.

The face staring back wasn’t the one I knew. The upward-slashing cheekbones, so beloved by photographers, were buried under chubby pink flesh. The sculpted jaw line that had once made my neck look even more swanlike was obscured by a roll of fat. Only my eyes were unchanged. I called them dog-shit brown. They were fringed with one of my genetic quirks—a double row of long black lashes.

I was a freak of nature long before my card turned. I’m taller than average, and my legs and arms are abnormally long for my body. In short, I was a photographer’s dream. I’d been modeling since I was a child. My parents had leased me out to the highest bidder and exploited me like carnival barkers peddling Siamese twins.

But then my card had turned.

Things were different now. People didn’t stare at me in the same way. And when I did catch someone’s eye, now there was usually a breathtaking look of pity there.

Ink banged on the door again. “Michelle, you have a contract. Everyone else has already done their Confessional.”

“Can’t I go to the bathroom in peace?” I put the toilet lid up and let a small bubble rise on my fingertip, then let it drop into the water with a satisfying plop. It looked pretty until it hit—as iridescent and apparently insubstantial as any soap bubble. But I’d given it plenty of density, and it sounded convincingly turdlike. Unfortunately, it was heavy enough that it chipped the porcelain, but I decided that no one would be likely to notice.
That should keep Ink from bugging me for a few minutes.