Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump by George R. R. Martin Page A

He'd been quarantined, put under observation twenty-four hours a day by a bunch of white-coats who looked at him as if he were some kind of interesting, but ultimately disgusting, bug. When they weren't sticking him with a needle to draw blood, scraping his tongue with a popsical stick, or knocking him on the knee with some fucking little rubber hammer, they were asking him to piss in a bottle or do even more disgusting things with other bodily fluids. Worse, the TV set didn't even get cable and by the end of the week Ray was so wound with pent-up energy and frustration he was ready to explode.
    The only positive thing was that so far he'd showed no sign of having the Black Trump. The doctors at first considered this a minor miracle since Ray had been trapped on a plane with Crypt Kicker, breathing the same air for an hour or so before he'd realized the ace was infected. Then it dawned on the dome-heads that Bobby Joe Puckett wasn't your ordinary type of guy. He was already dead, for one thing, and one of the scientists postulated that maybe he didn't breathe, "as we know it," therefore he didn't pass the contagion on to Ray. They were pissed that Ray had kicked the body overboard rather than bringing it in for study.
    But that was okay. Ray was pissed, too.
    He had way too much time on his hands, and very unlike himself, spent a lot of it brooding. He had always thought of himself as, well, invincible. More than once he'd taken wounds that would've killed most men, from the time the pack of werewolves had gnawed on him to the time Mackie Messer had unzipped him from crotch to sternum. But he'd always come back. He was the toughest bastard on the planet. Nothing could bring him down. Nothing, apparently, but a bunch of microscopic bugs too small for him to see. It bothered him. It bothered him a lot.
    It was still bothering him when someone knocked on the door and came in without waiting for him to say anything. That was another thing that bothered him. The fucking doctors were always doing that, knocking and then coming right on in. But this time it wasn't a doctor.
    "Hello, Ray," he said as he entered the tiny quarantine chamber. "How're we feeling?"
    In Bush's day the Special Executive Task Force had been headed by Dan Quayle, but Quayle (thankfully) had had little to do with day-to-day operations. Department heads had had free rein, but as it turned out that hadn't worked so well, either. Barnett's election had changed things. His VP, ex-General Zappa, had been given other duties and to show what a swell guy he was Barnett had turned the SETF over to one of "them." Of course, the "them" he'd turned it over to was the most unwaveringly conservative, boringly whitebread of "them" possible.
    "Hi, Nehi. We're feeling just fine."
    Nephi Callendar, the ace known as Straight Arrow, sighed like Job, only even more put-upon. "That's Nephi , Ray. Actually 'sir' would be more appropriate. Even 'Mr. Callendar.'"
    "Right," Ray said. "Listen, sir, you'd better get me out of here before I start breaking things. There's a lot that has to be done."
    "You think I don't know that? Get dressed. We have an important meeting."
    "Oh, a meeting," Ray said as he went to the closet. "You don't know how much I've missed going to meetings the past week. You can't imagine the hours I've spent here pining away, wishing I had a meeting to go to."
    "No," Callendar admitted, "I probably can't."
    There was a limo waiting for them outside Walter Reed Hospital. Ray whistled when he saw it. "Jeez, you're moving up in the world, Nehi. I remember when you were just one of the guys in the Secret Service. Now you get to be the token wild carder on Barnett's staff with your own chauffeured limo and all."
    "Try not to be offensive, Ray, if you can."
    "All right," Ray said as the limo pulled out into traffic. "I'll try."
    "Fine. As you know, the Task Force's currently operating under a special directive from the President to clear up this Card Shark