Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

Hannah didn't answer him. She continued to fold her blouses, to cram pantyhose into the corners of the suitcase. "So this is it?" David said. "You've walked out on your job, now you're walking out on me, too."

"Yes," she said. "Very observant of you, David. Go to the head of your class."

"Where are you going?"

"To some friends."

"I didn't think you had any friends here. I thought they were all my friends," David suddenly laughed, bitterly. "Oh, I get it. Joker friends. Twisted freak friends. Infected friends. Is he good in bed, Hannah? Did the wild card give him two dicks, or maybe a prehensile tongue?"

Hannah slammed the suitcases shut, clicked the locks closed savagely. "You're sick, David. Listen to yourself." She swung the suitcases from the bed and started to push past him.

He blocked the door with his hand. "Move, David," Hannah said. "Please. I don't hate you; this just isn't working out, and I need to do this. Don't destroy my good memories of you with something we'll both regret."

David glared at her. Hannah thought that he might actually strike, but at last his hand dropped from the door jamb and she moved past him into the living room. He stayed where he was, staring at her as she moved to the door to the apartment and opened it.

"The jokers aren't worth this," he called after her. "Nothing touched by that damn virus is worth it — "

She shut the door. Quietly.

And she wondered.

"Father Squid? Quasiman?"

Hannah knocked again on the door of the apartment a few blocks from the ruins of the church — the address Father Squid had given them when he left the hospital. She heard footsteps beyond the door. A chain rattled, and the door opened to reveal the priest standing there. Quasiman was standing in the middle of the shabby living room behind him, looking like a mishappen statue. Hannah backed up a step. "Ms. Davis?" He looked at the suitcases.

"I … I'm in the process of moving. I also need to talk with you. You're going to get a package in a day or two."

"Why don't you come in, Ms. Davis?" Father Squid said.

"Hannah," she replied. "Please. Father … I think I've just done something every crazy and very stupid."

"That hardly makes you unique," Father Squid said, and smiled under the forest of tentacles. He opened the door fully and stepped back. "Come on in. You'll be welcome, for as long as you need."

Father Squid and Quasiman saw Hannah off at Tomlin International two days later. Ambassador Ngu hadn't seemed to care that Hannah was no longer official; the paperwork and tickets arrived at Father Squid's apartment on schedule from the Free 'Nam delegation. Hannah's passport was still valid from a trip to Paris the summer before, and Belew had promised that all the necessary entry papers would it be waiting at Saigon International.

The flight was an interminable nineteen hours: New York to Dallas / Ft. Worth, Dallas to San Francisco, San Francisco to Honolulu, Honolulu to Tokyo, Tokyo to Saigon. Hannah arrived exhausted, desperately weary of planes and airline food, and bedraggled. The passengers on the flight in had been largely jokers of various descriptions, heading for this new Promised Land of joker freedom. Hannah, as a nat, had been the one out of place, and the jokers had made that abundantly clear to her. She'd been glad to escape the stares, the whispered comments, and the rudeness.

She told herself that she'd simply experienced what they had gone through every day. The rationalization didn't ease the hurt.

The tropical heat and humidity hit Hannah almost immediately, sucking the air from her lungs and causing her cotton blouse and bra to stick to her skin. Palm trees swayed in the hot wind; in the distant haze, the airport buildings shimmered. Inside the air-conditioned but still sweltering terminal, Hannah queued with everyone else for customs. A man approached her as she stood there. He was white, and looked normal enough until she noticed the tiger-like tail protruding from the rear of his jeans and the incisors that showed as he smiled. "You Hannah Davis?"

She nodded, unsure.

"Name's Croyd Crenson. Mark Meadows sent me to meet you." He held out his hand and she saw that the tips of his fingers were thick and rounded. The tips of retractable claws gleamed. She took the proffered hand tentatively, and the man grinned. "They're great for peeling oranges," he said. "And other things, too."

Hannah took her hand away quickly. Croyd continued to grin. His tail lashed and curled around her ankle. It tugged gently. "Come on," he said. "We'll get you past here and get your luggage."

The tail tugged again, much higher up the leg this time, past the hem of her long skirt. "Aahh, pantyhose," he said as Hannah brushed the tail angrily away. "Nobody wears real stockings anymore." Croyd chuckled. "The tail's great for other things, too," he said. When she didn't answer, he shrugged. "Come on."

He escorted her past the line, had a brief conversation in halting Vietnamese with the official at the gates, showed him a sheaf of official-looking papers which the man stamped dutifully, then they were waved on. The luggage turntables were close by, but as they approached, Hannah and Croyd both stopped.

"Quasiman?" The hunchhaek turned. Hannah's suitcases sat alongside him. "Hey, Hannah," the hunchback said, smiling apologetically. "I remember you, but I've forgotten where I am. Awfully hot here, isn't it? I knew where I was, a second ago …"

"Saigon," Hannah told him. "In what used to be Vietnam."

"Oh." Quasiman accepted that placidly. She might as well have said Manhattan.

"How?" Hannah asked, "do you keep doing that? — showing up where I am."

Quasiman shrugged, but one shoulder refused to lift, suddenly hanging limp as if all the muscles had been cut. "I just think about a place, and I'm there. Didn't you know that? I thought I had told you, but I get confused with what I've done and what I'm going to do…."

Hannah gaped, wondering how in the world she could have been so stupid. All those times he'd snuck past or just showed up … "Great. You teleport. What else haven't you told me?"

Quasiman grinned.

At least Croyd seemed to accept Quasiman's presence with equanimity. "Quas with you?"

"He seems to be. You know him?"

"Yeah. I know him and the priest both. He don't exactly need a passport to get by customs. Seems more coherent than normal, for him; you must be a good influence. Come on — I got a car waiting in front." At the car — a ten-year-old Renault whose trunk barely held Hannah's suitcases — Quasiman climbed in back. Croyd opened the passenger side front door for Hannah. "You can sit up front with me," he said. "You definitely got the best seat in the house." His tail lashed the ground. His gaze was not on her eyes.

Hannah got in the rear with Quasiman and curled in the corner.

The short drive into the city gave Hannah some small feel for the land. The area around Saigon was flat and heavily farmed. Rice paddies shimmered in the sun in precise, green rectangles. Workers in conical straw hats worked the fields, the pants rolled up to their knees as they moved through the standing water. Carts piled recklessly with furniture or produce or simply packed with families moved ponderously on the side of the road, pulled by oxen and urged on by children wielding long bamboo sticks.

Then, almost without warning, they were in the city itself: crowded, loud, and dirty. Even with the windows up and the air conditioner's fan roaring, she could hear the sounds of street merchants hawking their wares and the constant blaring of horns in the streets packed with a combination of cars, bicycles, and carts. The city seemed over-full and very foreign — she saw no caucasian faces at all. Whenever they stopped, people stared at their car, pointing and talking. Hannah, already uncomfortable sitting with Quasiman in the back, found herself pressing hard against the corner. Quasiman seemed to have fallen asleep with his eyes open. He swayed back and forth with the car's motion as if he were a test dummy. Hannah had to keep pushing him away from her every time they turned left.