Wild Cards

The Secret Life of Rubberband by Max Gladstone Part 1

THE BAGS WERE LATE, protesters howled outside, and Robin Ruttiger, guidance counselor of Xavier Desmond High, had lost a student.

“You have so many,” observed his unhelpful friend Jan Chang, who nobody called Sparkplug where she could hear them, before she turned the page of her highlighted and ballpoint-pen-annotated National Enquirer. She wore black jeans and a black leather jacket and would have looked completely foreign to San Antonio, Texas, even without the pulsing blue veins that webbed her skin. “Surely you can miss just one.”

Robin scanned the posh chaos of the Gunter lobby, which boiled with teachers, parents, and kids who wore the T-shirts of eight different high school jazz bands. He covered the mic of his phone, even though the hold music probably didn’t care about the noise. “Antonia was over by the ferns a second ago. You’re sure she didn’t come out this door?”

Jan did glance up this time, over the rim of the thick black sunglasses she wore to protect other people’s eyes from hers. Robin raised a hand to block the electric glare. “That would require my having any clue what she looks like.”

“Why did you even come, if not to help?”

She rolled her eyes, then pressed her sunglasses back into place. “I’m here because my niece is competing against your students in a band meet or match or whatever they call these things; said niece, charmingly devout, is convinced that residing in a historically haunted hotel puts her soul at risk; my breeder kid sister indicated that if I showed up to protect her against the ghost, she’d stop bugging me about having forgotten the birthdays of her various spawn for the last six years; and you owe me half a month’s rent and don’t get to throw shade.” She turned the page. “If one of your kids has been kidnapped by our reptoid overlords, that’s your problem.”

“I’m more worried about those asshole protesters, who do exist, than about the reptoids, who don’t.”

“Spoken like a reptoid stooge. And I don’t think they’re protesting assholes.”

“When there are real aliens in the world, I don’t know why you feel the need to invent—” He stopped himself. “Antonia’s a dark-haired girl, about five four, black gloves.”

Jan raised the tabloid between them.

“Fine.” He turned from her, covered the mic again—the hold line had started playing what he really hoped was not a Muzak cover of James Brown’s “I’ll Go Crazy.” “Wally, have you seen Antonia?”

The enormous pile of iron whose birth certificate read Wally Gunderson, and whose ace name was Rustbelt, though most people shortened it to Rusty, shrugged. Joints creaked and red flakes drifted down to the lacquered wood floor Rusty was trying not to scuff with his enormous boots—or were those feet? Rusty didn’t need to wear clothes, but Robin was glad he made the effort, even if his sharp metal edges pressed disconcertingly against his lime-green polo shirt and dad jeans. “Oh, she’s here for sure, yeah. We brought them all in from the van, right through the door, and then Bubbles told off those jerks outside. The kids are fine. Have you got through to that delivery company there about our bags yet?”

Robin didn’t know what he expected an enormous metal man to sound like, but the strong North Range accent always caught him by surprise. “I’m listening to the hardest working hold music in show business.” Outside, the protesters’ roars gained a rhythm: Hell no, jokers gotta go. Christ Jesus. “I just—I really need to know where everyone is. Okay?” How could he have lost a kid already?

“Well, that’s Yerodin right there.” Rusty pointed through the crowd, past mounds of instrument cases, to his adopted daughter, Yerodin, who he hadn’t let out of his sight all day. Yerodin, who the other kids called Ghost, hovered over the arm of a couch, hugging one leg as she talked with Adesina Pond, who looked like an animate obsidian statue with cobalt wings.

“That’s two out of seven, at least.” The speaker on Robin’s Nokia hadn’t worked right since he dropped the phone in a vat of acid six years back, but even with the pops and fuzz he could hear the bad synths had marched on to “Try Me.” “Hold this.” Wally took the phone with the care of a man trying not to break a butterfly wing, and raised it to the geared pit where his ear should have been.

Robin craned his neck over the crowd. He was six feet two, and would have had a decent angle on the lobby even without playing his card—especially since most of the crowd were teenagers. But he was here to chaperone the students of Xavier Desmond High, and he’d just shouldered through a horde of angry nat protesters after an armed standoff. No use pretending to be normal.

So he stretched.

Body mass pressed up into his neck. Skin expanded. The bones he was very good at pretending to possess stopped mattering. His chest caved in, his arms grew frail, his watch clattered to the floor, and it all felt so relaxing. He smiled, and made himself stop when his neck was only twelve feet long.

From up here he could see most of his students, though the Xavier Desmond High School Jazz Band—the Jokertown Mob—was certainly living up to the “Mob” part of its name. Lanky Peter Jacobson, aka Segway, zipped through the crowd on his wheels. Morpho Girl, there, was still talking with Ghost—a ten-year-old girl raised, if you call it that, by people who hoped she’d one day be a weapon. Ghost, intangible, glanced over her shoulder at the crowd beyond the hotel doors. Marissa, aka something—she changed her handle every few weeks—had struck up a conversation with a Chinese girl wearing a bright silver cross and a Detroit Detonators T-shirt. He spotted Asti and Sean showing something he really hoped was not a fake ID to the lobby bartender, and—

“How’s it going, Mister R?” Jacobson hopped over a luggage cart, spun midair, and landed with a squeal. A bellhop glared.

“Fine,” Robin called down. “Segway, have you seen Antonia?”

Jacobson beamed at being called by his card name. Robin often wondered what it was about drawing the card that triggered an obsession with pseudonyms. Not that Robin Ruttiger himself, aka (no matter how he tried to forget it these days) Rubberband, had a leg to stand on in that regard. “She looked tired. Maybe she, like, went upstairs for a nap?”

“Thank you.” He snapped back down to size. Segway swept past, bent down, and tossed Robin his watch. He stretched his wrist thin to slide it on. “Wally, can you watch the door? And stay on the phone?”

“You bet.” Rusty stuck up his thumb, ground his jaw, and listened to James-less Brown.

Robin flattened himself, everything except his feet. (He didn’t need shoes, but he liked wearing them.) He caught his watch in his hand this time—no sense testing the “full shock-absorbing power” any more than necessary—as he snaked through the crowd. “Excuse me. Pardon. Pardon me. Passing through.” The mothers and kids and hotel employees didn’t notice, or did and didn’t care, or did and recoiled in horror, for which he didn’t blame them. Flattened out, he looked like people did in cartoons after they’d been bulldozed by an enterprising coyote. He wriggled to the stairs, stretched his arms up fourteen feet—ten years of practice and it still felt weird reminding himself he didn’t have shoulder joints anymore—caught the overhead railing, pulled his skin like a, well, like a rubber band, and snapped up through the air to land on the second floor in a tangle of overextended limbs.

The mezzanine, at least, was quiet. He sorted himself out, adjusted his watch, and straightened his collar.

Antonia Abruzzi stood alone by the window, staring down in silhouette at the protesters’ flags and signs. Her long dark hair perched on her head, wound in intricate braids. She looked fifteen and fifty at once. She wore gloves, even if her hands didn’t fill them right. She had removed her left glove, and the long thin tentacles she had instead of a hand fanned over the window like brush bristles mashed flat.

He approached. The chant rhythm outside had changed; he couldn’t guess the words, now. Below, Sean led the kids in a chant of their own:

Jokertown, Jokertown, Jokertown Mob!

Stick that bullshit in your gob!

“Hey,” Robin said. “I know it’s a mess down there, but Ms. Oberhoffer and Ms. Pond and Mr. Gunderson and I really need to know where everyone is.”

“You know where I am,” Antonia said.

“I do now, yeah.”

She didn’t turn.

“Would you like to talk?”

“No.”

“Antonia, I know walking through that crowd was hard. They’re small-minded, angry people. But we won’t let anyone hurt you.” It was hard to keep the anger from his voice. “Until Ms. Pond has us all checked in, we really need to know everyone’s in the same place, and safe. Could you please come join the others?”

Jokertown, Jokertown, Jokertown Mob!

There aren’t many words that rhyme with “ob”!

Antonia turned away from the street. Her face was another country. He thought she might be about to speak.

A slow wave passed through the protesters outside and below; placards and crude signs parted to reveal a black delivery van. Rusty shouted from the lobby: “Hey, Robin! I just got through! They say their fella’s arriving now.” His volume would have been perfect on a construction site, but was out of place in a four-star hotel.

Robin spread his hands, apologetic. “Those are the bags. I really have to go. Could you please come downstairs with me, and join the others?”

“Fine.” The edge in her voice meant he’d screwed up. He told himself he was okay with that, for now.

Robin had worked with teenagers long enough to wait for her to descend the stairs first. When she was back with the herd, he vaulted the railing, fell to the lobby, and slithered through the crowd to Rusty’s side. “Let’s go.”

Thank God the delivery guy was a nat, or looked like one. Robin didn’t think the protest would get violent—more violent, anyway, since words had a violence all their own—but it helped that they wouldn’t think the delivery guy was bulletproof. Scared and angry people turned to violence when they thought they lacked other options—and to violence more vicious the less hope they thought they had. Fifty years of American public education had barely scratched the comic book myths: people still thought bullets bounced off aces and jokers. There was always a chance those myths would make it easier for some asshole to pull a trigger.

He wished Bubbles had thought up a better way to defuse the situation than reminding the protesters she was invulnerable, but, hey, spilt milk.

Robin signed three times on the delivery guy’s iPad—once they found a stylus, since neither his nor Rusty’s skin conducted normally, though for different reasons—and wheeled a cart piled with a suitcase Jenga tower down a ramp to the street. Someone tossed a tomato that splattered on the hot sidewalk and sizzled.

“What the—”

“Keep walking, Rusty.”

The cart’s left wheel wiggled. A hotel doorman rushed to open the side doors, and they pushed through air-conditioned steam into the lobby. Another tomato flew, and landed by Robin’s feet. People shouted nonsense Robin tried not to hear. The tower of bags teetered overhead.

Together, Robin and Rusty shoved the cart through the door. Jacobson applauded. Bubbles, still arguing with the front desk, glanced over her shoulder and grinned. Marissa, who’d left her new friend with the cross to nap in a chair, tried to high-five Yerodin, but passed through. Wheeling the cart over toward the packed instruments, Robin felt, briefly, like he had everything under control.

Then he heard a high-pitched giggle, glimpsed a grinning, bleeding spectral face, and felt the luggage cart lurch to one side.

Robin and Rusty both grabbed the cart, but one particularly heavy suitcase on top of the stack had already tipped loose and arced through the air, tumbling toward the Jokertown Mob’s piled instruments.

Time did its slow-motion crisis thing.

Robin cursed. He and Rusty lunged for the suitcase at once. Robin’s arms stretched out, caught the case, pulled it clear of the instruments—leaving Rusty in midair, diving to intercept a case that did not exist. Which would have been fine, if his arc wasn’t set to bring several hundred pounds of iron down on top of the band’s brass.

Robin dropped the suitcase and reached for Rusty, thinking, Too late, too late—

He heard a whoop and saw a familiar flash of gold, and Rusty landed hard on the floor, three feet to the left of the instruments. His iron elbows dug deep gouges in the wood.

The milling musicians of the Gunter lobby had hushed in horror as they watched the suitcase fall. They held their breath as Wally dove through the air. The applause after the averted disaster, Jacobson hopping on his wheels, Yerodin cheering, even Ms. Oberhoffer whistling approval, deafened.

Years had passed since Robin had last seen the golden lasso that snared Rusty’s shoulders, but he recognized it at once, as he recognized the voice raised in a triumphant “Yee-haw!” and recognized the jangle of spurs. Because Jerry Jeff Longwood—or, God love him, Kozmic Kowboy—did nothing by half measures. Not even the hearty backslap that almost knocked Robin double.

“Howdy Robin! Buddy! Sorry ’bout the lasso, there, partner, but you looked like you were in a sore spot.”

Jerry Jeff knelt to help Wally free of the lasso, which had snagged on his shoulder gears. The Kozmic Kowboy wore his full regalia: chaps and vest and hat and boots and crossed belts, his big iron on his hip. (Robin hoped it wasn’t loaded.) His mustaches drooped beautifully, and if there were streaks of gray in that dark hair these days, the cowboy hat covered them. Riches and fame and family life seemed to have added nothing to Jerry Jeff but a few smile lines around the corners of the eyes.

“Thanks,” Rusty said, which Robin should have said first. But, in Robin’s defense, he hadn’t yet remembered how words worked.

“How” was a good start. “Jerry Jeff, what are you doing here?”

“You didn’t think you could come to Texas without your old friend Jerry Jeff dropping in, did you? This here competition’s been all over the news, and folk knew your school was coming, and I thought, maybe he’ll be in town. And good thing for you I did! Come on, put ’er there.” Before Robin could pull away, he found his hand enveloped in a calloused handshake that, in a pinch, could double as a hydraulic press. Jerry Jeff wasn’t a big man, but they made men tough in whatever comic book cowboy land he came from.

“Robin,” Rusty said, “you know this fella?”

“Yes.” Robin did his best to smile. “We were on American Hero together.” American Hero, the reality TV series spotlighting “tomorrow’s heroes today!,” was the opportunity of a lifetime for its contestants. Some applied for money, some for fame, some because they wanted to make a difference, and some because they didn’t see much difference between the three. When the second season casting call went out, Robin Ruttiger had been two years into his new life as an ace, using his gifts to rescue cats from the treetops of Akron, Ohio, and Jerry Jeff Longwood was already the darlingest, dandiest star-spangled rider, roper, and cowboy crooner on the rodeo circuit.

And years later, here they were.

After saving the instruments, Jerry Jeff accepted Ms. Oberhoffer’s half whistled, half signed thanks—he might not have been able to sign fast enough to follow and the frantic list of his concerts she’d watched on YouTube, but he must have gotten the general notion, since he tipped his hat to her and bowed and said, “That’s right kind of you.” She blushed, and fanned herself.

Jerry Jeff tipped his hat to Ms. Pond, too—they seemed to have met somewhere, which he had to admit made sense, given Bubbles’ fame—and asked if he could borrow Robin to catch up for an hour or two. Robin tried to look utterly occupied, can’t leave the kids, first night in a new city, but Sharon was too busy swooning to object, and Bubbles wouldn’t hear of parting old friends reunited. “The kids have their rooms, and I think after this morning we’ve all earned a rest. Take a few hours off. Wally and I can handle the orientation.”

“Ah,” Robin said. “Great.” He wished he sounded more convinced. “I’ll be back in time for the mixer.”

Sharon whistled.