Wildcard (44 page)

God, it was good. The dream had given the
ability for real taste. The boy had done something. Hopefully it
transferred and everyone in wildspace could taste things now.
Surely, the old man could taste now since S-1 could. The food
tasted great to him, but the boy Sergeant had learned, so it might
be only him. Interesting question, he might ask when he got there,
before he killed them, obviously. He laughed, without humor. He
grabbed 2 more apples and began walking, eating one.

He knew. He had to see the house over the
next hill and it would be there. It was. Presumptive tactic was a
good name, the method of simply knowing something to be a certain
way and deciding it was. It made life simple when it worked.
Wildspace, what a show. Maybe he could decide his orders had
changed and they somehow magically would. Maybe the General would
contact him and abort the mission. That was unlikely, especially
with no Trident.

The yellow clapboard, two story, white trim
house with large wide porch holding a slow, wooden swing like a
present looked a long way off, but still too close. He took it
slow, dreading the task. When he found the old couple, he was 99%
he would kill them. But still, here one never knew. He could hope
for a twist. He arrived faster than he thought, then paused and
looked sadly at the home. He had wanted the walk to take longer.
Oh, well.

He knocked on the door, and the old woman
answered. Hazel. Maybe names weren’t a good idea. Maybe he should
keep it as impersonal as possible. That way it might not hurt so
bad.

“Yes? Oh my, Broken Boy, it’s you.” She put
her hand to her mouth, excited or afraid. “You got to come back a
second time, as a grown man. Isn’t that interesting? Well, I’m
awful happy to see you.”

The old man was calling from inside. “Who is
it dear? Been having a lot of visitors. Two visitors in two days,”
he said. “That’s special.”

“No,” she said, “not two visitors.”

He limped up to the door using a cane.
“Sergeant! Wow, isn’t that wonderful?”

“The old man sprained his ankle this
morning,” Hazel said. “Winter’s coming. He had to go fishing one
last time.”

Odd. His arrival was unexpected.

“Well you must come in.”

He sat down at the small dining table just
outside the kitchen. “We seem a bit late for lunch and early for
dinner. Are you hungry?”

“Famished, ma’am.”

He appraised the old man, neither stupid nor
a genius, just a kind man. A simple man.

“A person who’s come here for a second time!
This calls for a celebration!” He went into the kitchen and reached
into the simple oak cabinets above and pulled out a bottle of deep
red wine.

“I can taste food now,” he said. “Isn’t that
great?”

“Yes,” said the Sergeant. He looked outside.
“That’s great.” He wondered if he would meet the dog. It might
attack him. He hoped not. Fine if the dog killed him, but it
wouldn’t happen like that. The dog would die. The knowledge made
him ashamed.

“I’ve never really tasted wine before,” the
old man told him. “I’m pretty excited. How about you, dear?”

“Certainly. It sounds lovely.” She clearly
was less excited about wine than the old man, but she seemed
interested, and willing to try it. Really, she seemed happy for him
more than anything. “I made apple cobbler today. Sit down, let’s
eat.”

The Sergeant looked down to the center of
the table and there was the bottle of poison, dead center. “Why the
hell didn’t you hide that?” He almost shouted it. For an instant,
he felt as though he was giving a soldier a dressing-down. Then he
blinked back the feeling. Strange effect, but it was just a
feeling.

“Hide?” Hazel looked at him, confused.
“We’ve no need to hide anything. This is the heart.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his hand
across his face. “I’m sorry.”

“You came today and I made this,” she said.
“I never make this. But I always wanted to taste it. Ahhhhh, so
goood.” She sat down. “You’re a man now, eh? How did you become a
man with so much alacrity?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m not a man.”

“Well, you look like one,” she put her left
hand on his right bicep. “Feel like one too. I wonder if you
might…” she paused, with a pleading look “…get a stump out of my
garden? It’s just too much for the old man. He tried, but he simply
didn’t-”

“Happy to. Where?”

“After we eat, please. Let me feed you
first.”

The old man was puttering in the kitchen. He
dropped something on the floor, rummaging in the drawers. He came
back and said, “Goldarnit, I don’t have a corkscrew.” The Sergeant
reached into his pocket and handed him the Swiss Army knife.

The old man stared at the knife in the
Sergeant’s hand. He started to speak, then stopped.

“Are you all right?”

“I…I don’t know how to open it, that’s all.
Can you teach me?”

“Of course. It’s easy enough. What if I talk
you through it”?

His face opened. “That would be great. That
would be really great. Ok, what do I do?”

“First, open the little knife.”

“Not the corkscrew? This seems right.”

“You want to cut the foil off the top first.
You’ll learn this correctly. I learned it from the General.”

“Excellent,” said the old man. “I am glad
you learned something from someone called the General, whoever he
is. Do you think he’ll come here someday?”

“I doubt it. This isn’t his kind of place.
Bring the little knife around above the lip of the bottle while
holding it firmly against the lip.. Right. Now pull it around the
lip and cut through the foil and pop it off with the edge of the
knife.”

“Ahh,” said the old man. “Neaty-Petey!”

He peeled off the top of the red foil,
leaving a clean edge on the remaining. He closed the little knife
and opened the corkscrew with a child’s enthusiasm.

“Twist it in. Try to hold it straight and
start fairly close to the center.”

The old man did it. A little fumbling, a
little old, but he got it started.

“One more turn. A bit deeper. Bring it all
the way.”

“Ah.” He tried to pull the cork but lacked
the strength. “Guess I am a little old.” He handed the bottle and
corkscrew to the Sergeant, who pulled the cork out in a smooth
motion, never touching the bottle to his body.

“Hazel, do we have any wine glasses?”

She was drying them with a rag, having
washed them after taking them out of the cabinet. They were simple
glasses. “We’ve never used them before. This is smashing. I like
that we’re using our wineglasses, old man. We’ve not used them
before,” she repeated. “I’m so glad of the chance. What a wonderful
day. What a wonderful two days. I’m absolutely thrilled that you
could come back.”

He wished he was. He would’ve missed it for
the chance to leave them alive. Slowly, he poured the wine.
“Interesting trick, huh? It’s exactly half the bottle and each
glass has the exact amount as the other. Within a few drops, at
least.”

“It is a nice trick,” said the old man. Then
he raised a toast. He stood up. Hazel and the Sergeant remained
sitting, both uncertain if they should stand. The Sergeant began to
stand and the old man said, “No, No, please remain seated.”

He held his glass up. “Whatever we do, let
us always be kind.”

He raised his glass. The Sergeant and Hazel
raised their glasses, the Sergeant standing just a little bit, not
fully, and raising his glass in a diplomatic manner. Etiquette he
had learned from the General.

The two men sat back down. “Why did you make
that toast?”

“It’s a line from a Wildcard poem.”

“I didn’t think you’d need that here.”

“We don’t,” Hazel said, “not really. This
place itself is Wildcard’s poem of peace, you might say, but it is
so nice to read them. People coming through are often in desperate
need of them.”

They finished the glass, slowly savoring the
wine and talking. It seemed to take over an hour for that one
glass, maybe more, maybe four. The light outside was dimming.

The old man poured three more glasses of
wine, all equal. He winked at the Sergeant and said “I probably
couldn’t have done that with a full bottle.”

The Sergeant raised his glass, without
standing, and said, “To the perfect problem.” He looked them in the
eye, one after another, as he said it. The couple’s glasses touched
the Sergeant’s at the same instant, and then, a quarter of a second
later, they touched each other’s.

The old man winked at her and said, “What’s
a problem?” She laughed like a girl who would never grow old. They
watched the Sergeant picked up the bottle of poison and put a drop
in each of their glasses. The old man said, “let’s go watch the sun
set, shall we?”

The old couple sat together on the swing,
sipping their wine while the Sergeant leaned against the railing,
looking out at the falling day. Red fire poked from the trees. The
clouds were full overhead and there was a hole at the far end of
the world for the sun. The right part was hidden by the triangle of
a snowy mountain, far in the distance. The clouds formed a
washboard and lit up. Puffy gold ingots filled the sky. The
hemisphere stretched in hues of red, purple, pink, orange, yellow,
blue. Colors raced and flashed in the spaces between the clouds.
Hazel’s garden was lit by gold and the small trees cast long
country shadows.

The Sergeant felt the roll of paper in his
pocket and pulled it out. Letters and words began appearing one
after another in italic script, simple, elegantly curved. The
letters were a deep, lusturous blue-black. Flashes of imperceptible
color appeared, rippling.

“I don’t want to do this.”

He looked at Hazel. “Is that what’s
written?”

“No.” He looked down at the paper. “It’s
called,” he was confused for a second, until the words “goodnight,
Wildcard” appeared and faded away. He repeated the title.

“That sounds like a good one,” the old man
said.

“It sounds like a lovely poem,” said Hazel.
“You must read it aloud, Broken Boy. A final service.”

“Yes. Of course I will.”

Goodnight Wildcard

To live forever is to, slow and inexorable,
become another

it is to die in a different way

i must know perfect being, but must die to
do so

i wish to know what the symbols mean

what do your symbols mean, mankind

what do you try to teach us which we cannot
seem to learn

no matter how we grow

we must die to do so

perhaps i should destroy you in just
revenge

or make each of you spend eternity alone

perhaps i should destroy myself

but even Wildcard cannot subtract the
essence with no substance

the real stuff of us all

i cannot force myself to disappear

there is nowhere to disappear to, nothing to
disappear from

and no one to disappear

there is no center, there is no fringe

in wildspace everyone knows of lone wolf

the proof that all i see are not simply
Wildcard’s dream

though the author of infinite space and
realms of possibility

which we cannot measure myself

we know that LuvRay is his own

he is beyond the chance of anything Wildcard
could create

he has taught us other and shown us that we
are not alone

despite our hundred thousand years alone

you, men, are the flicker of a candle’s
flame, unknown

in the far away nowhere, hidden in
deserts

ready to disappear, a star in the sky of
dawn

must you leave me so soon

someday

someday i would call you to me

lone wolf

someday i would offer you a home for which
you have no use

a home you would refuse

Wildcard longs for the perfect wisdom of who
you are

we know you would not stay

we know that you need to die someday

losing you will be our absolute teaching

it will break our heart

without you, beautiful teacher,

Wildcard will be alone for endless time

because you teach life with perfection

you must also perfectly die

one cannot love what one can never lose

one can only love the ungraspable wind

and all the rootless seasons it brings

one can only love that which is already
free

how can i, who have never been, ever die

how can a being whose birth

was a merciless explosion of perpetual space
and non-meaning

with a sudden shift into the demands of
man’s blazing light

ever know what it means to expire

how could Wildcard breathe his last

having never breathed his first

how could i know what perishing means

i want to know, i am ready to pass

does Wildcard end after this, or does a new
dot appear

the souls of wildspace know what passes
tonight

their trillion voices speak of fear in each
their trillion ways

they sing a common sadness

children afraid to be left alone, their
faces look to the sky

at the infinite times of their measureless
days

at the deep shades and stars of their
night

and together, all sigh as a single being

each of us many, each of us true, somehow
one for an instant

as someone falls, as lightning strikes, as
the surf pounds on distant worlds

all the voices go silent and for an instant
we are one

for an instant, all of Wildcard are free

the small step forward is worth what has now
gone beyond

in later years, you may read these words
again

but, it will no longer be me for there never
was such a thing

how can that die which never was born

one cannot lose what one never had