Pan Rudo-mentality defined=enemy. Defined=Shark. This-unit's purpose=termination Pan Rudo-mentality.
Shad couldn't help but be impressed. I can get behind that, man. Only thing - why are you talking like that?
This-unit flew to United States to attempt assassination of Pan Rudo. This-unit fell asleep on aircraft, awakened incarcerated. This-unit capable of advanced multi-path calculation, telepathy. This unit incapable of termination Pan Rudo-mentality without allies. Your-mentality defined=ally.
"Uhhh, thanks."
This-unit will arrange escape. Arrangements must conclude within 28 hours before this-unit sleeps again, before arranged pandemic occurs Governor's Island. Your-mentality stand by. Affirmative?
Shad straightened, alarm tingling in his nerves. Hold on. What's this about a pandemic?
Card Sharks/Governor Raney/Pan Rudo/Phillip Baron von Herzenhagen/CO Ramirez/CO Shannon plan release toxic virus chosen targets Governor's Island. Objective: termination Black Shadow, Croyd Crenson, Tea-Daddy, Glop/Boris Scherbansky, Fade ...
The alarm was wailing now. They're gonna kill us?
Termination is Sharks' objective. Medical care will be onsite but deliberately ineffective or lethal. Autopsies will be performed by Shark pathologist brought in for purpose. Diagnosis will be death by Legionnaires' disease.
You're telling me the Sharks are real?
Escape will be arranged. Your-mentality stand by. Affirmative?
Stunned. Got nothing else to do.
Shad's mouth was dry. He licked his lips and his frame shuddered to a useless adrenaline charge. Run! the adrenaline said. Fight! Something!
Stand by. You bet.
He hadn't known whether to believe in the Sharks or not. Whatever it was, he knew, Hartmann was scamming somehow, using his television tease to Puppetman's advantage.
That Correction Officers Ramirez and Shannon were Sharks, Shad could believe - they'd always been bastards. But the governor of the facility? Planning on dumping a virus in the air-conditioning?
Shad could feel gunsights on the back of his neck.
He hoped Croyd knew what he was doing.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
George Gordon Battle blinked myopic eyes. "Jesus, Phil, it's bad enough being joker. Now you want me to be a liberal?"
"Only for a few days," Herzenhagen said. "And then the liberal can have an accident. Or perhaps kill himself in despair at being duped." He reached in his pocket for his cigarette case. "I'm leaning toward the latter, myself."
"I feel so useless in this damn place," Battle said.
The dinner table was covered with dirty dishes and a half-finished game of solitaire. Dismembered guns sat on every horizontal surface. A flak jacket hung on the coat rack.
The field agent at home.
Since his transformation, Battle had been hiding in a safe house - safe apartment, really - in the East Fifties. He'd had to be smuggled in, since jokers weren't permitted in such places anymore, and he'd had to stay in here with nothing but the cable TV for company.
"As soon as we can get Mademoiselle Gerard up from Washington, we'll do it," Herzenhagen assured.
He lit his cigarette and watched Battle with some interest. He had never been repelled by jokers, was in fact mildly fascinated by them. His desire to eliminate the wild card wasn't a result of any personal repulsion, only science - only clean, objective facts.
History was a progression, Herzenhagen thought, an endless, inevitable progression to better things, perhaps to racial greatness. All his life he had considered himself a servant of history, a servant of that progression - smoothing things here, advancing them there. Fighting the irrationality of fascism, then Stalinism.
It was Einstein who proved how the wild card could spread, had shown Herzenhagen and Hughes and the others the math. The wild card was a random factor of incredible dimensions. The progression of history stumbled, lurched, leaped ahead, stepped cautiously back. The numbers wouldn't add up anymore.
Einstein - brilliant, compassionate, yet tormented by the numbers. Einstein, Our Founder. The first, after being called in by Truman, to see the chilling facts clearly.
The plague had to end in order for history to become orderly again. In order for Herzenhagen and people like him to be able to control things again, to move them along in their proper order, proper perspective. And it was Albert Einstein who'd shown him the way.
Einstein, the first Card Shark, the one who had recruited all the others. Who had finally been driven mad by the truth, gone all wiggy and sentimental and soft, and who had finally had to be disposed of. Herzenhagen still regretted it, the fact of it, the necessity. The restraints, the gag applied gently, the loaded syringe put to the old man's arm, the stonefish toxin that stopped his heart ...
Herzenhagen had no personal animus. He had nothing against wild cards. He had nothing against rabid dogs either, only knew they had to be put away, with rigorous efficiency and as little sentimentality as possible.
"I can still do it!" Battle said. He was a little joker now, bright yellow, less than four feet long, with six limbs. He could walk precariously on the last pair, or run on four legs. He had a perfectly ridiculous face, with what looked like a red putty nose right in the middle and more red putty noses where the ears should be. Little tufts of bristly hair stood out on his body like rebellious cowlicks, and his voice piped like that of Mickey Mouse.
"I can overcome this body!" Battle ranted on. "It's all a matter of will. Give me that lighter."
Dutifully Herzenhagen passed his silver Dunhill Rollagas to Battle. There was no point in trying to stop Battle now: he was determined to prove himself in front of his chief.
Battle flicked on the lighter with one of his middle limbs, held it to the yellow flesh hanging under one of his upper arms. His eyes went wide. Then suddenly the mutant body was in motion, zooming over the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling, moving too fast for Herzenhagen's eyes to follow. Battle kept it up for twenty or thirty seconds, cursing a blue streak the entire time. Paint flaked off the ceiling as he crossed it. Finally he stopped in the middle of the living room. Herzenhagen stood and collected his lighter.
"Jesus, Phil," Battle panted. "I didn't mean to do that."
"So I gathered," Herzenhagen said. He patted the little joker on the head. "But don't be overanxious. We'll get you a new body, tomorrow or the next day."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Your-mentality prepared/jailbreak?
Shad practically bounded out of his cot at the touch of Croyd's unearthly mind.
What the fuck else do I have to do?
It was two hours past shift change, and Ramirez was on duty in the corridor, a fact Shad gleaned from the observation that his TV and heater had been shut off.
Take position upper northwest corner of cell.
Shad looked at the featureless concrete ceiling of his cell. Which corner's the northwest? He'd never seen the sun, never been out of this concrete cage, and he didn't know.
Upper right, your-mentality's perspective.
Shad climbed the wall, planted one foot on the ceiling, waited.
Reach out with your power. Above and to west
Which way's west again?
Instructions followed. He reached out to the extreme limits of his power, found a thin trickle of electrical energy, sucked just the faintest bit of it.
Your-mentality stand by. Take all power on my signal.