Mark grimaced.
“Some people say no one ever won a fight,” Belew said. “They lie. But there’s always a cost. Always a butcher’s bill. You pay a price in blood, whether you’re scratched or not.”
He walked over and touched Mark on the shoulder. “Time for a change,” he said softly. “Your public’s waiting.”
“Thanks,” Mark said.
Belew gathered up his crutches and left the room. I hope I don’t have to kill him someday, Mark thought.
Mark looked toward the window. The night had come down outside. It was time for the new president to address her constituents.
He took his hand from his pocket, held the vial it held up to the light. Black crystals swirled among silver. He brought it to his lips, hesitated. He would never take one of the potions again without that moment of fear, that glass-breaking instant of decision.
He took the potion.
A moment later Moonchild bent to turn off the television. “Goodbye, Eric,” she said. There was no pain in the space he had occupied in her soul. Just void. “The Dream is in my hands now.”
She stepped to the French doors that gave onto the balcony. She could feel the adulation of the crowd coursing through them like benevolent radiation. Like the healing rays of the moon.
The opportunity before her was great: to turn South Vietnam into a safe haven for all those touched by the wild card; to lay the foundation for a better world. To give peace a chance, the way the song said.
It was also terrible. A fleeting glimpse of such opportunity as this had led Sobel and Eric astray. Had led them to mortgage their souls, to become in the end that which they had dedicated themselves to struggling against.
But we know well always try to do what’s right, Mark said from just below the surface of her mind. We won’t give in to the temptations of power Won’t make all the same mistakes.
Yeah, J. J. Flash thought. Right.
The white jetliner turned its nose wheel into a quicksilver pool of sun-shimmer on the Tan Son Nhut runway and stopped. Mark’s motley honor guard of jokers, Montagnards, and ethnic Vietnamese snapped as close to attention as they ever got. Feeling his heart going all light and drifty in his chest, Mark looked left and right at them and thought it was a good thing he didn’t take this presidential trip too seriously.
Especially since he wasn’t actually the president.
The ramp was wheeled up to the door of the plane. It opened. A slim young woman in jeans and a white T-shirt with teddy bears on it came down the steps. Her long blonde hair gleamed in the sun.
Mark craned his head, looking past her. Then he looked more closely at her. She was studying him with a puzzled look.
They broke toward each other, running gangle-legged and careless, hit and hugged, their tears mingling.
“Daddy!”
“Sprout!” He hugged her again, then held her away to look at her. “Honey, you look all grown up now.”
She threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, “I didn’t recognize you. You look so strong.”
“I’ve been getting lots of exercise, honey,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of the sun.”
“Daddy, I love you.”
He felt tears sting his eyes. He smiled. “Honey, I love you too. More than anything in the world.”
THE VIETNAM WAR
A Personal Statement
I did not go to Nam. I was too young (just). I could have arranged to, had I worked at it, but the truth is I didn’t want to.
In the sixties and seventies I had two feelings about the War:
First, I thought the American involvement in Vietnam was wrong, from a moral, political, and military point of view. It’s no reflection on those who fought there; they didn’t make the policy.
Second, I thought communism was a bad thing. I did not support the government of North Vietnam. I simply believed that the U.S. government had no business spending our lives and treasure trying to make other people behave the way it wanted them to.
Nothing has happened since the end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam to cause me to amend those views.
This book is not an expression of nostalgia for the war I missed; I’m glad I missed it. It is not a working-out of some weird national angst over the War. It isn’t a “Vietnam War book.” It’s a thriller — I hope, anyway — and a WILD CARDS novel. It’s set in 1991, not 1967. I hope people will approach it on its own terms.
VICTOR MILÁN
May 11, 1992