Free Wild Cards: Death Draws Five by George R.R. Martin, John J. Miller Page B

celeb—if she wasn’t going to exploit her son on national television, neither was Barbara Walters—who ultimately turned out to be Kitty O’Leary from Channel Seven KASH Eyewitness Evening News.
    It all came together nicely, Jerry thought, observing from the wings. The auditorium was packed with an eager audience. Peregrine looked beautiful on the comfy sofa which was part of the temporary set arranged on the stage. They opened the program with Peregrine and the extremely photogenic Kitty O’Leary chatting about how difficult it was being a mother in modern times, especially when you had to worry about the wild card virus as well as drugs, alcohol, and unprotected teen sex.
    Jerry suddenly felt a restless presence at his side and looked at a nervously smiling John Fortune who had joined him in his vantage spot in the wings.
    “Hey, you look great in make-up,” Jerry cracked, trying to break the tension a little for the clearly agitated kid.
    “Thanks a load,” John Fortune said with heavy teenage sarcasm. He took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure about this television stuff. What if I say something stupid?”
    “Then you’ll join the ranks of everyone else who’s ever been on TV,” Jerry said. He punched the kid in the shoulder in a comradely manner. “Be cool. You wanted to be an ace.”
    “Yeah,” John Fortune agreed. “It’s so much better than the alternative.”
    “The point is,” Jerry said, “when you’re a star, you have to take the sour with the sweet.”
    Of course, Jerry thought, I’m so utterly anonymous that I constantly change my face and I call myself Mr. Nobody. Who am I to preach to the kid? But then—nobody ever said that you have to live what you preach.
    “But I’m not a star,” John Fortune muttered.
    Jerry suddenly knew what to say. “You’re not a star now, kid, but after you go out on that stage, you’ll come back one!”
    John Fortune suddenly smiled. “You think so?”
    “I know so,” Jerry said, thinking, Thank God for “Forty-Second Street.”
    Sudden applause welled up from the audience.
    “Cue,” whispered one of the back-stage flunkies, making a shooing motion in John Fortune’s direction.
    “You’ve got the genes, you’ve got the talent,” Jerry said. “Go knock ‘em dead.”
    John Fortune nodded silent thanks and stepped out onto the stage, a fixed grin plastered on his face. The Living Gods had already appeared, presenting a colorful background chorus as the kid made his way onto the set. Jerry could see Siegfried and Ralph, with, yes, a pair of leashed tigers, waiting for their entrance cue in the other wing.
    Better the kid than me, Jerry thought, remembering with little fondness his pitiful career as the shape-changing comedian known as the Projectionist. Still, there was no sense dwelling on his own past. He smiled as he realized that the long-running drama he’d been a peripheral participant in over the last sixteen years was finally coming to an end. And a happy end at that. John Fortune wouldn’t need a bodyguard any more. He’d cheated the odds and won a well-deserved chance at life. Sure, “ace” wasn’t the safest occupation, but Jerry didn’t know any that went around with a coterie of bodyguards. Even Peregrine wouldn’t make him do that. With her son having cleared the biggest hurdle in his life she was sure to back off and give him some room to breathe.
    “You Creighton?”
    Jerry turned. His eyes went wide in surprise as he recognized the speaker. “Billy Ray?”
    Ray glanced at his companion, a smoking babe in a leather jumpsuit with a body like a young Sophia Loren and a frown on her handsome face. Ray’s expression suddenly matched hers.
    “Do I know you?” Ray asked.
    “Uh. No. No, I don’t think so,” Jerry said. Too many faces, too many identities, he thought. It was getting difficult to keep straight who and what each of his many guises was supposed to know.
    Of course, he and Ray had crossed paths before, when