Aces High by George R. R. Martin
He combed through her hair with his fingers. “All right.” He held her awhile longer, then let her go. “Do you want anything? A drink?”
“Some coffee, if you have any.”
He put water on the stove and ground a handful of beans watching her over the breakfast bar. “What I can’t understand,” he said, “is why I can’t get anything from these people’s minds.”
“You don’t think I’m making all this up?”
“I know you’re not,” Fortunato said. “I could tell if you were lying.”
She shook her head. “You take a lot of getting used to.”
“Some things are more important than social niceties.” The water boiled. Fortunato made two cups and took them to the couch.
“If they’re as big as you think they are,” Eileen said, “they’re bound to have aces working with them. Somebody who could set up blocks for them, blocks against other people with mental powers.”
“I guess.”
She drank a little of the coffee. “I met Balsam this afternoon. We all got together at the bookstore.”
“What’s he like?”
“Smooth. He looked like a banker or something. Three-piece suit, glasses. But tanned, like he plays a lot of tennis on weekends.”
“What did he say?”
“They finally mentioned the word ‘Mason.’ Like it was the last test, to see if it would freak me out. Then Balsam gave me a history lesson. How the Scottish and York Rite Masons were just offshoots of the Speculative Masons, and that they only went back to the eighteenth century.”
Fortunato nodded. “That’s all true.”
“Then he started talking about Solomon, and how the architect of his temple was actually an Egyptian. That Masonry started with Solomon, and all the other rites had lost the original meaning. But they say they’ve still got it. Just like you figured.”
“I have to go with you tonight.”
“There’s no way you could get in. Not even if you disguised yourself. They’d know you.”
“I could send my astral body. I could still see and hear everything.”
“If somebody else came here in their astral body, could you see them?”
“Of course.”
“Well? It’s a hell of chance to take, isn’t it?”
“All right, okay.”
“It has to be just me. There’s no other way.”
“Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I went inside you,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The power is in my sperm. If you were carrying—”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Of all the lame excuses to get somebody into bed…” She stared at him. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“You can’t go in there alone. Not just because of the danger. Because you can’t do enough by yourself. You can’t read their minds. I can.”
“Even if you’re just—hitching a ride?”
Fortunato nodded.
“Oh God,” she said. “This is—there’s so many reasons not to—I’m having my period, for one thing.”
“So much the better.”
She grabbed her left wrist and held it close to her chest. “I told myself if I ever went to bed with a man again—and I said if—it would have to be romantic. Candlelight and flowers and everything. And look at me.”
Fortunato knelt in front of her and gently moved her hands away. “Eileen,” he said. “I love you.”
“That’s easy for you to say. I’m sure you mean it and everything, but I’m also sure you say it all the time. There’s only two men I’ve ever said it to in my life, and one of them was my father.”
“I’m not talking about how you feel. I’m not talking about forever. I’m talking about me, right now. And I love you.” He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
It was cold in there and her teeth started to chatter. Fortunato lit the gas heater and sat down next to her on the bed. She took his right hand in both of hers and held it to her mouth. He kissed her and felt her respond, almost against her will. He took his clothes off and pulled the covers over the two of them and began to unbutton her blouse. Her breasts were large and soft, the nipples tightening under his tongue as he kissed them.
“Wait,” she said. “I have to … I have to go to the bathroom.”
When she came back she had taken the rest of her clothes off. She was holding a towel in front of her. “To save your sheets,” she said. There was a smear of blood on the inside of one thigh.
He took the towel away from her. “Don’t worry about the sheets.” She stood naked in front of him. She looked like she was afraid he would send her away. He put his head between her breasts and pulled her toward him.
She got under the covers again and kissed him and her tongue flickered into his mouth. He kissed her shoulders, her breasts, the underside of her chin. Then he rolled onto his hands and knees above her.
“No,” she whispered, “I’m not ready yet…”
He held his penis in one hand and moved the head of it against her labia, slowly, gently, feeling the brittle flesh turn warm and wet. She bit her lower lip, her eyes closed. Slowly he slipped inside her, the friction sending waves of pleasure up his spine.
He kissed her again. He could feel her lips moving against his, mouthing inaudible words. His hands moved up her sides, around her back. He remembered that he was used to making love for hours at a time and the thought amazed him. It was all too intense. He was full of heat and light; he couldn’t contain it all.
“Aren’t you supposed to say something?” Eileen whispered, breathing raggedly around the words. “Some kind of magic spell or something?”
Fortunato kissed her again, his lips tingling like they’d been asleep and were just now coming back to life. “I love you,” he said.
“Oh God,” she said, and started to cry. Tears rolled down into her hair and at the same time her hips moved faster against him. Their bodies were flushed and hot and sweat ran down Fortunato’s chest. Eileen stiffened and kicked. A second later Fortunato’s own brain went white and he fought off ten years of training and let it happen, let the power spurt out of him and into the woman and for an instant he was both of them at once, hermaphroditic and all-encompassing, and he felt himself expand to the ends of the universe in a giant nuclear blaze.
And then he was back in bed with Eileen, feeling her breasts rise and fall under him as she cried.
The only light came from the gas heater. He must have slept. The pillowcase felt like sandpaper against his cheek. It took all his strength to roll over onto his back.
Eileen was putting on her shoes. “It’s almost time,” she said.
“How do you feel?” he said.
“Unbelievable. Strong. Powerful.” She laughed. “I’ve never felt like this.”
He closed his eyes, slid into her mind. He could see himself lying on the bed, skeletal, his dark golden skin disappearing into the shadows, his forehead shrunken to where it blended smoothly into his hairless scalp.
“And you,” she said. He could feel her voice echoing in her chest. “Are you all right?”
He drifted back to his own body. “Weak,” he said. “But I’ll be okay.”
“Should I … call somebody for you?”
He knew what she was offering, knew he should agree to it. Caroline, or one of the others, would be the fastest way to get his power back. But it would also weaken his bond to Eileen. “No,” he said.
She finished dressing and bent over to kiss him lingeringly. “Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t thank me.”
“I’d better go.” Her impatience, her strength and vitality were a physical force in the room. He was too distant from it to be jealous of her. Then she was gone, and he slept again.
He watched through Eileen’s eyes as she stood by the front door of the bookstore, waiting for Clarke to close up. He could have moved all the way into
Until the hands grabbed him and shook him awake and he was looking into a pair of gold shields. “Get your clothes on,” a voice said. “You’re under arrest.”
They gave him a holding cell to himself. It had a gray tile floor and gray-painted cement walls. He squatted in the corner and shivered, too weak to stand. On the wall next to him somebody had scratched a stick figure with a giant dripping prick and balls.
For an hour he’d been unable to concentrate long enough to make contact with Eileen. He was sure Balsam’s Masons had killed her.
He shut his eyes. A cell door banged closed down the hall and brought him back. Concentrate, goddamn it, he thought.
He was in a long room with a high ceiling. Yellow light flickered off the distant walls from banks of candles. The floor was black-and-white-checkered tile. At the front of the room stood two Doric columns, one on either side, that didn’t quite reach the ceiling. They stood for Solomon’s temple; they were named Boaz and Joachim, the first two Masonic Words.
He didn’t want to take control of Eileen’s body, though he could if it came to that. From what he could tell she was all right. He could feel her excitement, but she wasn’t in pain or even especially afraid.
A man matching Eileen’s description of Balsam stood at the front of the room, on the dais reserved for the Worshipful Master of the Temple. Over his dark suit he wore a white Masonic apron with bright red trim. He wore a tabard like an oversized bib around his neck. It was white too, with a red looped cross in the center. An ankh.
“Who speaks for this woman?” Balsam asked.
There were a dozen or more others in the room, both sexes, all of them in aprons and tabards. They made a curving line along the left side of the room. Most of them seemed normal enough. One man had bright red skin and no hair at all, an obvious joker. Another seemed terribly frail, with thick glasses and a dazed expression. He was the only one not wearing street clothes under his apron. Instead he was wrapped in a white robe a couple sizes too large for him, with a hood and sleeves that hung down over his hands.
Clarke moved out of line and said, “I speak for her.” Balsam handed him an intricate mask, covered in what seemed to be gold foil. It was a hawk’s head, and it completely covered Clarke’s face.
“Who opposes?” Balsam said.
A young oriental woman, rather plain, but with an undefinable sexual quality, stepped forward. “I oppose.” Balsam gave her a mask with long, pointed ears and a sharp face. When she put it on, it gave her a cold, disdainful look. Fortunato felt Eileen’s pulse begin to pick up.
“Who claims her?”
“I claim her.” Another man came forward and took a mask with the jackal face of Anubis.
The air behind Balsam rippled and started to glow. The candles flickered out. Slowly a golden man took shape, lighting the room. He was as tall as the ceiling, with canine features and hot yellow eyes. He stood with folded arms and looked down at Eileen. Her pulse leapt and stuttered and she dug her fingernails into her palms. No one else seemed to notice that he was there.
The woman wearing the pointed mask stood in front of Eileen. “Osiris,” the woman said. “I am Set, of the company of Annu, son of Seb and Nut.”
He felt Eileen open her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything the woman’s right hand exploded against her face. She fell over backward and slid three feet across the tiles. “Behold,” the woman said. She touched her fingers to Eileen’s eyes and they came away wet. “The fertilizing rain.”
“Osiris,” said the jackal-headed man, stepping up to take the woman’s place. “I am Anubis, son of Ra, Opener of the Ways. Mine is the Funeral Mountain.” He moved behind Eileen and held her against the floor.
Now Clarke was kneeling next to her, the golden man looming behind him. “Osiris,” he said. Light glittered from the tiny eyes of the hawk mask. “I am Horus, thy son and the son of Isis.” He pressed two fingers against Eileen’s lips, forcing her mouth open. “I have come to embrace thee, I am thy son Horus, I have pressed thy mouth; I am thy son, I love thee. Thy mouth was closed, but I have set in order for thee thy mouth and thy teeth. I open for thee thy two eyes. I have opened for thee thy mouth with the instrument of Anubis. Horus hath opened the mouth of the dead, as he in times of old opened thy mouth, with the iron which came forth from Set. The deceased shall walk and shall speak, and her body shall be with the great company of the gods in the Great House of the Aged One in Annu, and she shall receive there the ureret crown from Horus, the lord of mankind.”
Clarke took something that looked like a wooden snake from Balsam. Eileen tried to pull away, but the jackal-headed man had too tight a grip on her. Clarke swung the snake back and then gently touched Eileen’s mouth and eyes with it four times. “O Osiris, I have established for thee the two jawbones in thy face, and they are now separated.”
He stood aside. Balsam bent over her until his face was only inches away and said, “Now I give to thee the hekau, the word of power. Horus hath given thee the use of thy mouth and thou canst say it. The word is TIAMAT.”
“TIAMAT,” Eileen whispered.
Fortunato, numb with fear, pushed himself into Balsam’s mind.
The trick was to keep moving, not to get overwhelmed by the strangeness of it. If he kept triggering associations he would end up in the part of Balsam’s memory that he wanted.
At the moment Balsam was near ecstasy. Fortunato followed the images and totems of Egyptian magic until he found the earliest ones, and from there made his way to Balsam’s father, and back through seven generations to Black John himself.
Everything Balsam had ever heard or read or imagined about his ancestor was here. His first swindle, when he took the goldsmith Marano for sixty ounces of fine gold. His escape from Palermo. Meeting the Greek, Altotas, and learning alchemy. Egypt, Turkey, Malta, and finally Rome at age twenty-six, handsome, clever, carrying letters of introduction to the cream of society.
Where he met Lorenza. Fortunato saw her as Cagliostro had, naked before him for the first time, only fourteen years old but dizzyingly beautiful: slim, elegant, olive-skinned, with jet-black wavy hair spread out around her, tiny perfect breasts, smelling of wild coastal flowers, her throaty voice screaming his name as she wrapped her legs around him.
Traveling through Europe in coaches lined in deep green velvet, Lorenza’s beauty opening society to them without reservation, living on what they begged in the halls of nobility and handing out the rest as alms.
And finally England.
Fortunato watched as Cagliostro rode into the forest on the back of a blooded ebony hunter. He’d gotten separated, not quite by accident, from Lorenza and the young English lord who was so taken with her. Doubtless His Lordship was having his way with her even now in some ditch beside the road, and doubtless Lorenza had already found a way to turn it to their advantage.
Then the moon fell out of the sky in the middle of the afternoon.
Cagliostro spurred the stallion toward the glowing apparition. It touched down in a clearing a few hundred yards away. The horse wouldn’t get closer than a hundred feet, so Cagliostro tied him to a sapling and approached on foot. The thing was indistinct, made of angles that didn’t connect, and as Cagliostro came toward it a piece of it detached itself …
And that was all. Suddenly Cagliostro was riding back toward London in a carriage with Lorenza, full of some high purpose that Fortunato couldn’t read.
He ransacked Balsam’s mind. The knowledge had to be there somewhere. Some fragment of what the thing in the woods had been, what it had said or done.
That was when Balsam jerked upright and said, “The woman is in my brain.”
He was looking through Eileen’s eyes again, enraged at his own clumsiness. Things had gone hideously wrong. He found himself staring into the face of the little man with the thick glasses and the robe.
And then he was back in his cell.
Two guards had him by the arms and were dragging him toward the door. “No,” he said. “Please. Just a few more minutes.”
“Oh, like it here, do you?” one of the guards said. He shoved Fortunato toward the door of the cell. Fortunato’s foot slipped on the slick linoleum and he went onto all fours. The guard kicked him near his left kidney, not quite hard enough to make him pass out.
Then they were dragging him again, down endless faded green corridors, into a dark-paneled room with no windows and a long wooden table. A man in a cheap suit, maybe thirty years old, sat on the other side of the table. His hair was medium brown, his face unremarkable. There was a gold shield pinned to the jacket pocket. Next to him sat a man in a polo shirt and expensive sport coat. He had excessive Aryan good looks, wavy blond hair, icy blue eyes. Fortunato remembered the Mason that Eileen had described, Roman.
“Sergeant Matthias?” the second guard said. The man in the cheap suit nodded. “This is the one.”
Matthias leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Fortunato felt something brush his mind.
“Well?” Roman asked.
“Not much,” Matthias said. “Some telepathy, a little TK, but it’s weak. I doubt he could even pick a lock.”
“So what do you think? Does the boss need to worry about him?”
“I can’t see why. You could hang him up for a while for murdering that kid, see what happens.”
“What’s the use?” Roman said. “He’d just plead self-defense. The judge’d probably give him a medal. Nobody cares about those little bastards anyway.”
“Fine,” Matthias said. He turned to the guards. “Kick him loose. We’re done with him.”
It took another hour to get him back on the street, and of course nobody offered him a ride home. But that was all right. Jokertown was where he needed to be.
He sat on the steps of the precinct and reached out for Eileen’s mind.
He found himself staring at the brick wall of an alley. He was empty of thought or emotion. As he struggled to break through the clouds in her brain he felt her bladder let go, and felt the warm urine spread in a puddle under her and quickly turn cold.