Wildcard (56 page)

“Too bad. I think this icepick is deadly
accurate. Combined with my throwing abilities…I would have liked to
see how you fared.”

“Yeah, me too. Oh, well. Sorry, no time.
Gotta find a poker playing drunk and the reincarnation of that dead
body over there. Damn. I had a good time with you, Karl. See you in
the next life, brother.” He looked back at Dartagnan.

“Well, I guess we will work together.”

“Agreed.”

“Should we work with him, LuvRay?”

“Not want with you or you. Bad luck, bad
news.” He looked at the Sergeant, then at Dartagnan. “Maybe I stay
here and drink firewater. It does not drunk me here, I think. But I
choose travel with you. Find Karl.”

“All right, Dartagnan,” the Sergeant said,
“carry the box.”

Dartagnan analyzed a matrix of 413 possible
responses to the statement. He chose the top five based on a
criteria of personality veritas and situational appropriateness. He
permutated these five into ten variations each, then chose his
favorite from each set and picked one of the resulting five at
random.

“Up yours,” he said. It seemed out of
character, but Dartagnan had hidden depth he intended to reveal in
measured doses. “Leave the damned thing here, I care not. I shall
not carry it. Remain with it if you wish, I should rather not be in
the thing’s vicinity. I seek the reincarnation.”

The Sergeant was laughing. “It’s OK, I knew
you’d say no.”

“No RJ?” LuvRay asked.

“No, the Benefactor has slain one, or
several it now sounds, of the Named. It would be foolish to
continue that alliance. Perhaps I shall search out Sublime if it
furthers the aim of finding the Savant.” Dartagnan stuck his pinky
in his nose, began picking furiously. Everyone looked away, as
usual. He wondered why they always looked away from that particular
gesture. He could not understand embarrassment, and he tried hard
to be frustrated by the lack of understanding. He failed in that
attempt, as well.

“You think you’ll find him without us?” The
Sergeant asked. “I can’t tell either way. Should we work
together?”

“I am uncertain.”

“LuvRay? We need your help.”

“Not understand word, ‘should’. Never have.
‘Is’ only I understand.”

“Yes, Sergeant. Don’t you read poetry?”
Dartagnan said. “‘Is’ is the basis, ‘should’ is the straying.”

“But,” said LuvRay, “we are stane gie.”

“Stane gie?”

“Different tribe, same need. Join by fate.
Stane gie. We are together but no bond of tribe. Always is sadness,
but it is what we are.”

“All right, if LuvRay says so, I am in
accord. Let us work together. But I shall not carry that ill-fated
box.”

The Sergeant picked up the poem where
Dartagnan had laid it on the table, looked at it.

“Good. I’m game. Well, I don’t want to carry
it. I need hands-free. And I need mobility, so I don’t want it
strapped to my back. LuvRay?”

“No. I will stay with, but carry no
more.”

“He was reared by wolves, not by mules, boy
Sergeant.”

Dartagnan looked to the bartender, who had
shouted a few times at him from across the room, pointing to a sign
at the end of the bar, a paper pasted to the wall by what appeared
to be chewing gum. The paper said, in black marker with poor
handwriting “No Roughhousing.” He had admonished Dartagnan and the
Sergeant during the standoff, but calmed down immediately when they
reached a détente, apparently accustomed to such behaviours. Part
of the 8-Ball. He was cleaning up.

“My good man, we seek suitable transport.
Would you be so kind as to point us in the correct direction.”
Dartagnan did not like the way ‘correct’ sounded in the sentence,
and practiced his best dissatisfied frown afterwards. Humans moved
their eyebrows down, part of the frown in his estimation, while
performing the definitive part of the frown, a pinching of the lips
and drawing back of the corners of the lips, not, as traditionally
indicated, a downturn of the corners.

They often enacted the frown after an
awkward statement, especially a failed conversational gambit, such
as an ill-flown jest or an insight about which no one cared. He
tried it, liked it, and decided to add it officially to his
repetoire of gestures. He stood at a slight angle to the man,
striking a relaxed, yet subtly heroic pose, wholly suited to the
situation. This was a proper adventure, after all.

“Two doors down. Camels.”

“Excellent. Camels are superb for
adventures. Perhaps the Sergeant could be persuaded to port the
baggage at least to the transport. Gentlemen, shall we seek the
Savant or the Gambler?”

“RJ. He can help us find Karl.”

“RJ,” LuvRay said.

“Let us depart, then.”

“No need go.” LuvRay pointed.

The other two looked, saw a poker table in
the corner. RJ Sublime sat, smirking, a whiskey and a folded hand
of cards in front of him, a woman on either side.

“Karl was not reborn here,” said RJ. “We
should leave.”

“How is it, pray tell, that we failed to
observe your presence?”

“It’s my world, Darts. Easy when you live
here.”

“Darts,” said the Sergeant. “Nice. Mind if I
use it?”

“Delighted if you would. Good to see you
again.”

“You too, RJ. You too.”

“And you, LuvRay.” LuvRay touched his
fingertips together and nodded, some Indian gesture.

“It is delightful to see all of you again,
together in one place.” Dartagnan wanted to see if he could fit in.
They looked at him. Consternation seemed to be the appropriate
response to their stares, so he looked at each of them in turn as
if he sought some undercurrent of social assistance. He received
none, attempted to look as if he were humiliated but hiding it.
“How do we determine the appropriate destination, gentlemen?”

“I say we get on the ship and wait for it to
go,” the Sergeant said. “But we need to prevent the Benefactor
hijacking us again.”

“I can ensure that will not happen.”

“You’re staying outside the ship,
Dartagnan.”

“I expected as much. Perfectly acceptable.”
Dartagnan enjoyed saying such foolish phrases. “Acceptable”, after
all, meant not perfect. “Perfectly acceptable” was a contradictory
phrase, part of the delightful human experience. Juniper would
never have said something like that. He would have found it
offensive or stupid. And :3: almost never put two consecutive words
together.

RJ stepped over, told them to get a drink
and sit down. “Let’s do this right. We need to have a drink
together, first.”

“Capital idea.”

“Why not?”

“I changed my name, by the way. One of the
ways I was able to hide from you. I’m known as JR Absurd here. Been
a while Dartagnan.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna call you JR, RJ,”
said the Sergeant. “Sorry.”

“Nor shall I. You remain RJ.” Dartagnan
paused, wanting to add something as if he thought of it a moment
later. “To us, at least.” He intentionally, and he thought
cleverly, timed it incorrectly, said it too fast and too loud. He
watched their faces when he did so. He decided to study subtle
social nuance gone awry and anticipated keeping it up the entire
day, unless he whimsically changed his mind.

Doing things whimsically was a key element
to being Dartagnan. He programmed himself to be whimsical. He hoped
he could watch some other faux pas. He wanted the study to be more
comprehensive than just his mistakes and others’ responses. That
would produce very limited data. Nowhere near as useful.

“Fair enough,” said RJ, “I’ll change my name
back for you boys.”

“JR, you leaving, sugar?” The women walked
over. Dartagnan sought the right word for their response.
Disappointed? No. They appeared crestfallen. Perfect.

“Crestfallen, ladies. Are you crestfallen?”
Part of the SAP, or Social Awkwardness Program. Really SASP, Social
Awkwardness Studies Program was a more accurate title, but he
relished… no, “appreciated”, the play on words with sap in its
slang meaning. A sap would definitely be socially awkward. He knew
what the women’s response would be, they were shills. He ignored
them, focused on the Sergeant. ‘Disgusted.’ He was ‘disgusted.’ No,
too strong. ‘Annoyed’ was better, more accurate. Dartagnan chuckled
knowingly.

“What’s the matter with you, D? Do you have
a virus or something?”

Perhaps he did. He checked.

No, he was clean. He was merely being too
obvious with his research. He needed a feint. “Never been better.”
Slightly too quick. that was good. It made him appear to be
covering something. “I merely feel that a hasty launch is called
for.”

“What?” said LuvRay.

“We need to leave,” the Sergeant
translated.

“Glad you agree, Sergeant. Shipward, ho!”
Dartagnan hurried the conversation elsewhere, in what he hoped was
an obvious bid to dodge analysis of his behaviour.

No brief steely-eyed scrutiny from his
companions. Drat! They cared not, or failed to notice. So difficult
to get these things right. He seemed to arouse suspicion merely by
arriving, but could not seem to properly induce it with shifty
actions. They just thought him to be malfunctioning or ignored the
acts in question. LuvRay seemed to perceive something, but
Dartagnan made no attempt to understand him. He was too subtle in
his gestures and sentiments, too foreign. Still, he often wondered
what LuvRay was thinking.

RJ looked at the women, “Sorry, baby, you
know how it is. It appears I need to ride off with the posse. Bad
guys to catch and so forth.”

Dartagnan admired his movie star delivery.
Masterful. Which one was he speaking to? Dartagnan had no idea.
Somehow he addressed both with the singular ‘baby.’ Why not babies?
“Sorry, babies, you know how it is.” He wanted to say it, but knew
it was grievously out of character. He wished RJ would, but knew he
would not. Second conversational uses seemed to work poorly. Even
if the first use was a complete success. However, a second use
almost seemed to work better if the first attempt miscarried. This
was definitely a fine art, however.

Dartagnan thought that humans must admire
the pluck (pluck!) of trying to succeed where one had failed with
the same tactic only instants before. He tried to analyze what
success and failure meant in this regard. Useless concepts, all in
all. Still, one had to have some basis for judgement. Or maybe
not.

“Yes, ladies, we are on a high road to the
devil himself and, sadly, require the services of your boon
companion. Sad for you, but we are unstintingly fallow in our
appreciation of his assistance.” Most likely, everyone would fail
to understand his ‘fallow’ metaphor.

“Should we take Karl’s body?” RJ asked. The
Sergeant had propped it up in the corner, on a bench seat.

“No,” LuvRay said. “Karl is no there.”

The Space Between. RJ and the Sergeant each
had one side of the box.

Trident attached a line to the ship. He
hooked up the others in the same way, except Dartagnan, who had
pulled out his sword and was using it to reel himself in. He
remained attached outside, pulled out the icepick and examined it,
then pretended it was a nail file. He feigned sleep, snoring loudly
when they failed to move.

“Dartagnan, why don’t you get us going?”

“Mais oui. I thought you would never ask.”
He took out his sword, pointed it, circling, zeroing in, then held
it inhumanly still, pointed. Four hours later, Dartagnan sheathed
his sword, and they began to move.

The journey took over a month, and it was
boring. They didn’t talk much. Sublime played solitaire, tried to
teach them poker, got no takers. After a week, he asked the
Sergeant if Dartagnan could come inside.

“LuvRay?”

“Is not problem.”

Dartagnan entered, pretending to be relieved
and obsequiously thankful to the Sergeant. The Sergeant ignored him
and went back to his training. He chose catastrophe and crisis
evaluation and rapid response. He concentrated on difficult
friendly fire situations, ethics under fire for treating seriously
wounded, memory tasking, battle surgery and battlefield composure.
He put himself under heavy fire simulation for days of subjective
time, then passed out exhausted for 6 hours, got up and did it
again.

Dartagnan and Sublime played dice, poker,
and even taught each other magic tricks, bar tricks and grifts.
Dartagnan managed to procure a leather pouch of tobacco after
Sublime’s ran out. Nobody asked where he got it. Dartagnan had a
trick where he could throw an empty bottle in the air and when he
caught it, it was full. Even the Sergeant liked it.

“You are no happy now,” LuvRay told the
Sergeant.

“Karl’s death. Took a lot out of me. I think
the fun part is over, LuvRay.”

“Me, too.”

LuvRay spent a lot of time outside the ship.
He found the space incredibly peaceful, better even than his
desert. Things were happening, too. A type of life, a movement, a
sense of coming into being and dying, again and again. The great
cycle of the spirits. Small things, beyond the ordinary senses,
large things, slowly rising, slowly forming, outside of the range
of human time abided there. He asked Dartagnan if it was a
trick.

“No, it’s real. In its way. It’s like a
quantum life. I don’t understand it, but I perceive it, too.”

LuvRay liked that. He told RJ, who tried to
explain irony to LuvRay. It made some sense, that he despised
Dartagnan for being a created mind, and that Dartagnan was the only
other one who could perceive the space-life because he was created.
LuvRay was glad of that, too. He always wanted to know about things
like irony. It seemed subtle, a civilized version of smell, maybe.
LuvRay didn’t mind if the journey took a long time. He liked the
peace of the great space.

The center was their destination. The ship
moved against the Portal, and they entered without obstruction. The
meadow and gatekeeper awaited.