The ambulance was pulling away, sirens screaming, when she reached street level. A string of cabs and passenger cars cut her off, not letting her creep in behind the ambulance. She swore and slapped the steering wheel - bullied her way into traffic as a second set of flashing lights appeared in the rear view mirror. Another ambulance pulled up to the curb at her apartment building and two paramedics got out.
A horrible suspicion began to form. Why did the other ambulance have four paramedics? She hadn't told them he was a four-hundred-pound joker. And why take him to Lenox Hill, which had a no-wild cards policy?
She abandoned her car in the middle of the street, ignoring the curses and horns of the drivers she'd trapped on the narrow, one-way street, and raced over to the paramedics getting out of the new ambulance.
"Whom are you here for?"
"We're here to pick up a heart attack victim," the woman said. "Apartment 6G."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
The apartment showed no evidence of a break-in or struggle. She tried her father again. He was still out. She left a message for him to call her at home right away.
The phone rang. An international call. Pan.
His voice was saturated with disgust. "They tell me you slept with him. How could you have sunk so far? I'm sick over this. What would your father say?"
Her temper flared. "Frankly, it's none of your goddamned business what he'd say."
"I regret having to resort to this, but you leave me no choice. I've instructed Johnson to hold him at the UN lab. And your mother. You have half an hour to get there, or they die. If you tell your father, or anyone, what's happening, they die."
My mother? My mother, too?
"Half an hour? That's absurd! What if I get stuck in traffic? What if the train breaks down?"
"You're an intelligent woman. I'm sure you'll think of something."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
She made them let her see them. Johnson had them locked up in one of the empty equipment storage rooms in the basement. Bradley lay in the corner on the concrete floor. Joan had made a cushion of her coils to lay his head on, and was stroking his temples. At first Clara missed her; her colors had faded to match the soft grays and greens that surrounded her till she was virtually invisible. The guard locked the door behind Clara, and Joan gradually appeared, turning an agitated blue, yellow, and orange pattern.
"Maman." Clara swallowed a sob and came over to kneel beside Bradley. "I'm so sorry. Is he all right?"
"His vital signs are better. I think he's improving."
Clara checked him. Pulse stronger and more regular, breathing normal, pupils shrinking. She sat down cross-legged and lowered her face into her hands.
"Thank God. He'll be all right."
"Darling, what is going on? Who are these people?"
Clara heard a noise in the shadows, in a dark corner beyond the boiler.
"Who's there?"
It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but soon she saw the figure: a rather disgusting-looking, small, insectoid joker with a carapace the color of baby excrement. He - or she - stood, and Clara saw the joker was wearing some sort of collar, attached to about eight feet of high-visibility orange nylon rope, tied to a PVC pipe overhead. This gave the joker a range of about four feet. Both pairs of "hands" were also bound.
George Battle had been turned into a little yellow insect; she'd heard her father talking about it. And then he'd switched bodies with -
"Gregg Hartmann," she said.
Joan gasped. "Oh my! He was telling the truth!"
The insect nodded, a gesture at once comical and grave. "Dr. van Renssaeler," he piped. "And, I presume, Mrs. van Renssaeler."
"Maman - " Clara gestured, and Joan slithered after her. The last thing she wanted was for Gregg Hartmann to overhear what she had to say to her mother. He slumped back into the shadows.
"Clara, darling," Joan demanded, in a whisper, "what is going on here?"
Clara stared at her mother. She wanted to blame Joan. If only you'd been there when I needed you - if you'd shown me what wild cards really are. Instead you abandoned me to the lies and bigotry of Papa and Uncle Pan. But that was absurd. Plenty of people lost their parents, lost loved ones to the wild card every day, without resorting to what Clara had.
So, keeping her voice low and making sure Hartmann couldn't hear, she told Joan everything. Without embellishment, without excuses. Joan listened calmly, merely nodding and asking occasionally for clarification.
"So they plan to use me and Bradley to force you to remake the virus."
"Exactly. Maman - " Clara's voice broke. "I just found you again. And I've just found the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. I can't let them hurt you. I don't know what to do."
Tears stood in Joan's eyes. She held out her arms. Clara laid her head on her mother's breast, and Joan held her close, stroked her hair.
"You must refuse," she said. "There is no alternative."
There has to be, Clara thought. There has to be.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"I'll be happy to many her, sir." Finn came awake with the ridiculous words on his lips.
"You have my permission," came a familiar voice.
Finn forced open his gummy eyelids, and stared into Joan's delicately scaled face. She was laid out full length on the tile floor, so they were almost nose to nose.
Her tone had been light, but now that he could see her, Finn could see fear like a shadow in her strange eyes.
"Joan, where the fuck are we?"
"In a nest of Card Sharks. I guess Senator Hartmann was to be believed."
There was a flash of movement, and an incredibly silly looking joker scuttled into view, tied to a pipe. Finn felt a momentary flash of chagrin for being a bigot, but it was silly looking. Then in a piping, breathless, cartoon voice it announced:
"I'm Senator Hartmann."
Finn stopped feeling guilty - the guy was clearly a bozo.
"Could you, like, butt out? I'm trying to have a serious conversation here," Finn said. The joker puffed up, bounced up and down on his several legs.
"I tell you I'm Hartmann. I was jumped into this body."
Agitated, Finn tried to heave to his feet, discovered his back leg had gone to sleep, and that the tile was very slick, and went down in a welter of legs, hooves and flailing arms. The stupid looking joker raced backwards to avoid being hit.
"Shit." Joan slithered over, and massaged his leg until the bite of pins and needles signaled its return to life. He tried again, more carefully, and this time got to his feet.
"I am Hartmann," the joker insisted from across the room.
"Clara said he's telling the truth," Joan told him.
"Thank God," the joker senator piped, and sank down onto the floor as if overcome.
Finn turned back to face (he hoped) his future mother-in-law. "Joan, not to sound unduly humble, or totally stupid, but why would Card Sharks want to kidnap us? I know why they'd want Hartmann, but us?"
"Because of Clara," she answered softly.
Finn stared into her unblinking eyes. Forced his jaw closed so he didn't look stupid. "Joan, I'm gonna say this once, so pay close attention ... Huh?"
"Bradley, what do you," she hesitated. "Feel for my daughter?"
"I love your daughter. I'm going to marry your daughter. Remember, you gave us your blessing."
"Remember that, Bradley, when you talk to her." And she slithered away to a far corner of the room, and coiled.
"Goddamn it. You're being inscrutable. What are you talking about?"
"You need to hear it from Clara."
Frustrated, Finn turned to Hartmann. "Do you know what she's talking about?"
The senator sat up on his hindquarters, and shrugged with his front limbs. "I'm new here too."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
The first time he saw Clara he wasn't able to discuss jack shit with her. She was in the company of two young men. She was looking like a figure carved of ice, her deadpan scientist face in place, but there was a shadow of terror in her green eyes which Finn had a feeling he alone could see. The men were harassing her about something called the "Black Trump" (a title which did not fill him with confidence), and how she had to reproduce her earlier work. Clara refused, and then the two young men brought in two older, larger men who introduced Finn to their close personal friends, Pain and Suffering. At one point the goons took a break, and one of the young men walked up to Finn, grabbed him by the hair, and forced his head up.