"You have some kind of damned alien brujeria in mind." Lothario grin: "But of course."
She slumped. "You made yourself a hero with these swarmlings, Doctor. And you know more about this kind of thing than I do." Sidelong: "But you fuck me up with a civil liberty beef on this, 'rnanito, I'm just simply gonna shoot you."
As soon as he touched the mind, he knew.
He was a dentist, a short, athletic, ruddy man in his fifties who lived in the building next door to Warren's. He'd been out walking the dog around the block-a daring act at that time of the night-and seen a peculiar-looking man emerge from the alleyway that ran behind the apartments. The man stopped for a moment, not ten feet away, looked the intrepid dentist straight in the eye, and shambled off into the Park.
The story jibed with that of the other two witnesses, one of whom was the super of Warren's building, who had been investigating a broken-in back door when he was clubbed down from behind, the other a woman who had for reasons best known to herself been looking down into the alley from the apartments across. They had both glimpsed a large, pallid, manlike shape coming out the back door and lurching down the alley. But neither could offer anything but the most general description.
Tachyon had only to brush the dentist's mind to know his story was untrue. Not a lie; he believed it implicitly. Because it had been implanted.
Reluctantly, Tach dug deeper. The old pain of Blythe had receded, he no longer went clammy inside at the mere thought of using his mental powers; it wasn't that. The nature of the implant clearly revealed what sort of being had made it.
All that remained was to uncover which individual from among a very few possibilities. He had a good idea.
In a way it didn't matter. The implications were already inescapable.
And monstrous beyond anything Tach had imagined.
"I mislike that place," grumbled Durg at'Morakh bo Zabb Vayawand-sa as they mounted the rickety back stair to their flat in a less than fashionable corner of the Village.
Rabdan sneered back over a gold shoulder-board. "How can you cavil? You never went inside."
"The Gatekeeper, the one with the strange dead face, he wouldn't let me."
"Ha! What would the Vayawand say, if they knew one of their precious Morakh sports permitted a groundling to say him nay? Truly, their sperm runs thin."
Durg flexed a hand that could powder granite. The tough white twill of his uniform sleeve parted at his biceps with a sound like a pistol shot. "Zabb brant Sabina sek Shaza sek Risala commands I fight only as needful to the mission," he grated. "Even as he commands me to serve one as unworthy as you, to test my devotion. But I warn you: some day your incompetence will lose you the master's pleasure. And on that day I pluck your limbs off, little man, and squash your head like a pimple."
Rabdan tried to laugh. It stumbled, so he tried again. "So hostile. Such a pity you could not have seen: a woman flayed, a maid dismayed; quite stylish entertainment. When the groundlings are destroyed some rare talents shall be lost, I must admit."
They came to the top landing and their door. Rabdan paused outside, furrowed his brow as his mind probed within.
It would not do to be ambushed by groundling burglars. Durg stood silently a few steps below. His kindred were of the Psi Lord class, but like most Morakh he was virtually mind-blind. If Rabdan detected danger, then he would fulfill his function.
Satisfied, Rabdan unlocked the door and stepped inside. Durg followed, closed it behind him. From the hallway to the bedrooms stepped a figure.
"Tisianne! But I searched-"
"You of all my cousin's people could never drive a probe I could not deflect,"
said Tachyon. "It bodes ill for us all that I find you here. Indeed, perhaps for all of Takis."
"But worst for you," Rabdan said. He stepped to one side. "burg, dismember him."
"Zabb's monster!" Tach hissed, despite himself.
"The little prince," Durg said. "This will be sweet."
A second figure appeared at Tachyon's side. "Doctor, who is this?" Moonchild asked, squinting a little in the bright light of the single lamp on the low table.
She saw a small man --even to her, unmistakably Takisian-with fine sharp features, metallic blond hair, pale eyes that bulged and rapidly blinked. The being lumbering across the threadbare carpet of the little living room she found harder to classify. He was short, barely above five feet, but terrifically muscled, literally almost as broad as tall. Yet his head was a Takisian elf-lord's, long and thin, austere of feature: beautiful. The contrast was jarring.
"My cousin's toady Rabdan," Tach said, "and his monster, Durg." For all that he had lived four decades among jokers Tach could scarcely stomach sight of the Morakh killer. This was not a near-Takisian Earther twisted into a grotesque misshape; this was the sight most abhorrent to Tach's people, a perversion of the Takisian form itself. Part of what made Morakh so terrible in war was the revulsion they instilled in their foes.
"He's a creature bred by a family hostile to mine. An organic killing machine, powerful as an elephant, trained to perfection." Durg had halted, perfect brow furrowed at this new arrival. "Even by our standards they're almost indestructible. Zabb took this one in a raid when he was a pup; he transferred his loyalty to him."
"Doctor, how can you speak of a human being that way?"
"He's not a human," he gritted, "and watch him." Squat as a troll, Durg lunged with a speed no human could match. But Moonchild wasn't strictly human; whatever she was, wherever she came from, she was an ace. She caught gold-braided sleeve behind the hand that grabbed for her, tugged, pivoted her hips. Durg shot past to slam into the wall in an explosion of plaster.
"How did you find us?" Rabdan asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
"Once we found that man whose mind you tampered with, I knew Takisians were still on Earth," Tach said, sidling away from Durg, "and from the ineptness of technique I deduced it could be none but you. Once we knew what to look for, you weren't that hard to trace. Your appearance is distinctive, and you would hardly cower in an abandoned warehouse and subsist off rats and stray cats like the swarmlings."
"Of course-" he nodded at Rabdan's white-and-gold outfit, "I never guessed even you'd be fool enough to venture out in Zabb's own livery."
"The groundlings find us the height of fashion. And would you have swans go about in the guise of geese?"
"When the swans' mission-" Durg came up from the depression he'd made in the plasterboard, moaning, shaking off plaster powder like water "-is to pass for geese, then yes."
Durg's hand lashed out in a vicious knifehand that caught Moonchild in the ribs and threw her into the bar that separated living room from kitchen. Wood splintered. Tach started forward with a cry. Grinning, Durg came for him.
Moonchild lunged from the wrecked bar, took two mincing steps forward, kicked Durg in the side of the knee. His leg buckled. She slammed a second kick into the side of his jaw. He groaned-his hand flashed up, caught her ankle, yanked her forward into reach of his other arm.
He grappled for a backbreaking hold. Tach started forward again. Rabdan's hand came out of his tunic with the flat black glint of an arrester. "Go for him and I'll finish you now, Tis."
Moonchild slammed an elbow down on top of Durg's head. Tach heard teeth slam together like a trap. She swung cupped palms viciously inward against his ears.
He groaned, shook his head, and she writhed free.
. . . Durg was on his feet facing her. She kicked for his chest. He blocked without effort. She flew at him with bolas fury, kicking for head, knee, groin.
He gave back several steps, then as she struck again leapt up and lashed out with both feet, kicking Moonchild across the room to smash against the outside wall.
Tachyon hesitated. He could attempt to seize Durg's mind, but that ran him up against the sole psionic ability the Morakh possessed, an all-but-insurmountable resistance to mental compulsion. While he concentrated on Durg, Rabdan would kill him . . . if he tried to fight down Rabdan's rather feeble screens, Durg would kill Moonchild. He reached for his pistol, hoping the girl would not think too harshly of him.
She stirred. Durg was shocked; when he kicked someone that hard, they stayed down. He hurled himself forward, heedless.
She met him halfway. Grabbing his tunic front she fell backward with her boot in his belly, projected him over her. The combined force of his leap and her thrust drove him like a rivet through the wall, four stories above the street.
"Oh, dear," she said, standing, " I hope I didn't hurt him." She ran to the hole. "He's still moving." She clambered out without hesitation.
Guessing she could take care of herself Tach let her go, still all aback. Durg was as strong as some powerhouse human aces. Moonchild, though she had metahuman strength, was nowhere his match-she had mastered him with skill alone, Durg the master slayer.
Rabdan came out of freeze and threw open the door. Tachyon's mind grabbed his like a mailed fist. And squeezed. And now, friend Rabdan," he remarked, "we are going to talk.
It was bad. Rabdan was an incompetent and more than something of a coward. Yet he was a Psi Lord, and at the last he behaved as one, the worse for him. No normal shield he might erect could keep the subtle Tisianne from prying the last crumb of information from his brain. But Rabdan in extremis went heroic, put the deathlock on, laid his name upon it. All that he was opposed Tachyon, and no subtlety, no artifice, no force, could get past such an opposition and leave anything of Rabdan intact.
Perhaps that was Rabdan's final cunning; knowing his distant cousin's softness of heart, he gambled that Tisianne would turn away from the awful finality of unraveling his mind skein by skein.
Rabdan's judgment was never the best.
Joy, joy, joy. My master comes again so soon. Or is something wrong, that he has so much time for me of a sudden?
Knock it off, Baby.
"Hi, Baby. What's happenin'?" She twinkled her lights in happy greeting and sphinctered open a lock in her side. The damned rock was headed for Earth, of course. Zabb's people had deflected it months ago. Not much; it would take tremendous amounts of power to change the moment of such a mass by any appreciable amount. A sliver of a degree, scarcely perceptible-but over time, enough.
It was a rock familiar to the groundlings, its reappearance unremarkable.
Nonetheless Rabdan and Durg had been sent down to make sure its intended recipients didn't realize its itinerary had changed. What luck, then, when the alteration in course had been noted by the one man absolutely no one in authority would listen to-whose having claimed the rock for his own, as it were, would mean every other scientist on the planet would shun it like offal. The Takisians could have asked for nothing better to seal the planet's fate. No one would realize what was happening until the asteroid was so close its path was unmistakable. And that would be too late, not all the thermonuclear weapons in all the planet's stockpiles could forestall the wrath to come.
But their ally had panicked. Zab's ally. Much as he hated his cousin, Tachyon could barely bring himself to believe it. The vast lump of malignance which was the Swarm Mother had detected Hellcat as she floated in orbit around the world it intended, in its dim, insistent way, to make its own, and had attacked. And somehow, for his own mad reasons, once the attack was repulsed, the warhound of the Ilkazam had made alliance with the greatest enemy of his house--of all Takisians.
Together they had made a plan. Semisentient, the Mother had perceived only that the plan was detected when Dr. Warren made his announcement. It acted in haste leaving Rabdan something less than leisure to try to undo the damage it had wrought.
It had seemed fabulous fortune to spot on the Jokertown streets a being who might be mistaken for a swarmling. So Rabdan and Durg went up to Central Park and made themselves a witness. How can it fail? Rabdan had gloated to his comrade.
Tach had given Rabdan the final mercy no Takisian could deny another. Moonchild accepted that his heart gave out unexpectedly under mind probe, and Tach felt soiled at having lied to her. Tach took the pictures purloined from Warren's lab to Baby. Her astrogational analysis confirmed Rabdan's story. A hasty planning session, a night spent trying to sleep.
Now Trips and Tachyon were ready to launch a genuinely harebrained scheme to Save the World. There was no time to come up with a better one. It might already be too late.
And out there Zabb waited. Zabb. Who'd killed Tach's Kibr. And betrayed all Takis. In his warship: Zabb.
Jake was trucking down the street with his bottle of La Copita in its paper bag in hand. On the waterfront, in Jokertown, and him a nat, and it was no damned thing to do at this hour of the night, especially if you were this shitfaced.
But Jake wasn't sure where he'd wandered since the big fuck with the head like an iguana threw him out of his bar for messing on the floor. A good thing he'd thought to carry a spare in his coat pocket.
A rumbling took his ear. He stopped and watched as the top came off a building right in front of him-not exploding, not collapsing, but coming off in a piece, neatly as you please, like the lid off a box. It set down gently on the roof next door, and then this gigantic seashell covered all over with tiny specks of light came floating up out of the building. Nary a sound was made. It hovered against the dull-orange sky while the roof floated back into place. Then it angled upward and was gone, lining out for the Long Black.
Very deliberately, Jake walked to the nearest storm drain, and with precise aim dropped his half-full La Copita bottle down it. Then he walked very rapidly out of Jokertown.
"I never thought of, like, flying a starship from your bedroom, man," Captain Trips said, clearly enchanted.
"I think your people would call this a stateroom, yes?" As a matter of fact, it looked like a cross between an Ottoman harem and Carlsbad Caverns. In the midst of it all was a huge canopied bed piled with fat cushions, and in a dressing gown in the midst of that lay Tach. He had long ago sworn to die in bed; Takisian biotechnology made it possible to achieve that goal and a heroic demise at the same time, if you were so inclined.
"There is no formal command center--bridge?--on a ship such as this. On most warships, such as my cousin's vessel Hellcat, there is, but on a yacht, no." He felt a sizzle of fury from Baby at the mention of Hellcat's name. They were rivals of long standing.
"A Takisian symbiont-ship is psionically controlled. The pilot can receive information directly, mentally, or visually. For example . . ." Tach gestured and an image of Earth sprang into being on a curve of membranous bulkhead next to the bed. A yellow line reached away from it, describing their orbit. Then like a computer animation the globe spun away, dwindled, until an out-of-scale image of their entire projected flight path from Earth to 1954C-1100 was displayed.
Trips applauded. "That's fantastic, man. Groovy."
"Yes, it is. You Earthers are attempting to create sentience in your computers; we have grown sophonts who are capable of performing computer functions. And much more."
"How does Baby feel about all this?"
The picture vanished. Words appeared: I am honored to convey lords such as Master Tis and yourself-though I'm afraid you may poke me with that hat, it's so tall.
Trips jumped. "I didn't know she could do that."
"Neither did I. She's stealing knowledge of written English from me with a very low-powered drain-which is mildly naughty. However, she knows I .am indulgent, and will forgive her."
Trips shook his head in amazement. He was sitting on a chair that had thrust itself from the floor for him and adjusted to his frame when Tach finally convinced him to sit on it. "Not that I don't have faith in Baby," he said, "but isn't your cousin's vessel, like, a warship?"
"Yes. And you don't have to ask the question you're hoping not to have to. Under normal circumstances Baby would have no chance against Hellcat-and don't go static in my head like that, Baby, or I'll spank you! It's true."
"But Baby is fast, even with her ghostdrive gone, none faster. And maneuverable.
And, frankly, smarter than Hellcat. But the important factor is that Hellcat was badly injured by the Swarm attack. A Swarm Mother as ancient and vast as this one generally will have developed biological weapons antibodies, almost-against Takisians and their ghostships. We use similar weapons against them, since only a full war fleet can carry enough firepower to harm even a small one, whereas infection can spread of itself. Zabb fought off a boarding attack, with sword and pistol and bioweapons, and was able to drive off the swarmlings. But Hellcat was infected and damaged, and though they arrested the sickness she will be a long time healing."
Softly: "And Zabb felt each of her wounds as his own, whatever you may say of him." His eyes stung.
Mournfully Trips shook his head. "Talking about fighting bums me out, man."
"This must be hard for you, given your pacifist convictions. But your role in what lies ahead is not martial, and I'll fight only if attacked."
"But Moonchild fought. Most of the others would too. I've never fought in my life. I only hit one person, and he hauled off and busted my nose, and then one day I'm in, like, someone else's body while she throws some muscle-bound alien through a wall."
"It was a glorious spectacle," said Tach, chuckling despite himself.
"Being an ace is turning out to be a pretty heavy trip." Tisianne, I feel her!
Hellcat comes.
Tach rumpled his hair and sighed. "I fear it's time, my friend." He swung his legs out of bed and rose. "I'll see you to the lock."
Luminance paced them down a curving corridor. "You're sure you--he--can find the rock?" Tachyon said.
"It's not like there're going to be many others in the vicinity, Doc."
The bitch is shaping interception orbit. Max weapons range in twenty minutes.
Head her off Baby.
They stopped by the inner sphincter of the crewlock. Tach and Trips embraced, both weeping, both trying not to show it. "Good luck, Mark."
"Same to you, Doc. Say, this whole ship is Baby, isn't it?"
"That's right."
Self-consciously, Trips leaned over and lightly kissed a brace whose form flowed like a stalagmite. "Bye, Baby. Peace."
"Good-bye, Captain. Godspeed."
Pandering to primitive superstitions, Tach chided as they withdrew politely around a bend.
Amusement. What will the new person be like, Tis?
I don't know. I'm eager to see. Another Moonchild was too much to hope for.
Fortuitous enough that they had access to an ace with a combination of powers that gave them some small chance of success.
"Doctor?" The voice rolled around to them like liquid amber, deep and rich.
Tachyon walked forward.
The visual impact stopped him in his tracks. Ace as Greek god: tall, elaborately muscled, a jaw like a bridge abutment, a clear green gaze, a nimbus of curly blond hair, all wrapped in a skintight yellow suit with a sunburst blazing on the chest. "I," the vision said, "am Starshine."
"The honor is entirely mine," Tach said reflexively. "Quite correct. You are a militarist, representative of a decadent and repressive civilization. I am about to attempt to avert a horror brought upon my world by your unbridled technology, while you engage in combat with another faction of the same technocratic gang that afflicted Earth with your satanic virus in the first place. Under the circumstances I find it difficult to wish you success, Doctor. Nonetheless, I do so." Tachyon's voice seemed to have vanished, and Baby was making little staticky phosphene pops in his head. "I'm so grateful," he managed at last.
"Yes." Starshine stroked his heroic jaw. "Perhaps I shall compose a poem, about the moral dilemma I face-"
"Hadn't you better go face the asteroid first?" Tach almost screamed.
Starshine scowled like Zeus caught by Hera, but he said, "I suppose so."
The lock dilated. "Farewell," Tach said. "Thank you." He stepped through.
As the outer lock cycled open, Baby transmitted the view from outside very square centimeter of her skin was photosensitive at need-to Tach's mind.
Starshine floated out into vacuum, turned his face into the full glare of the sun, now more or less astern, and appeared to take a deep breath. Then he pushed off from the ship, arms and body straightened to a line, and he became a single brilliant yellow beam bisecting eternal night.
"Photon transformation," Tach said, impressed. "Like the tachyon transformation of our ghostdrive, but allowing only lightspeed. Incredible." For a moment he felt almost proud of the wild card.
He shook the sensation off. "I'm going to find it hard," he remarked, "to like that one."
He's sure a prick. I liked the Captain ever so much better.. Tis, they're coming.
Floating, timeless. Pure release, nonexistence/coexistence with all the universe. The final consummation: satori in a laser beam.
But duration must be. Resolution, downward to ego. To matter.
The asteroid awaited. An unlovely lumpish mass of slag, seeming to fall toward Starshine, though his line of sight ran perpendicular to its path.
He rubbed his jaw and frowned. He had a lot more to say to that alien doctor, about the evil his kind had brought the world, about his own culpability in luring that pathetic burnout Trips into wild dangers. But it would have to wait; time passed.
He wondered how much time he had. From the memories he shared with Mark and the rest, he knew the drug lasted an hour. He hoped he could do what had to be done in that time.
He held out a hand. A beam of light leapt from it to Tezcatlipoca's pockmarked surface, dazzling white-hot. A circle of rock raced the spectrum and boiled from the surface in a glowing jet.
He was fabulously strong. But all his strength would not divert the evil mass.
Nor did he have the power to destroy the rock. What he could do was use his sunbeam to heat a spot on its flank, so that the stuff of the asteroid flared away like a rocket exhaust at right angles to its orbit. Even now, a million miles from Earth, a tiny deflection would make all the difference.
But even the tiniest deviation in the asteroid's course would require fantastic amounts of energy. And an unknown amount of time.
By increments Starshine increased his output. He felt alive, and huge, and full of power; he could not fail, here before the holy Sun's naked eye, with her energy to sustain him.
At stake was a planet, his planet, Earth, green and gravid.
And, incidentally, his own life, and that of Mark Meadows and the other entities whose existence was somehow locked in his.
At detection's instant Tach knew Hellcat's deadliest weapon was out. The coherent tachyns of her ghost lance would have strewn Baby's component atoms-and his-across a dozen dimensions in an attosecond if it still functioned, and with Baby's ghostdrive gland had also gone her tachyon sense, so they would have had no warning. But Tach gambled that the Swarm attack had disabled the tachyon beam. It would have been the Mother's most urgent target; the planetoid-beings feared the lance, even small ones such as Courser-class ships like Hellcat carried.
Zabb's ship was far from helpless, though. As Baby thrust on a course tangent to hers, crossing outsystem from the path Starshine had taken, a pulse of purple light flashed by to port. I
was expecting that, Baby said smugly as she threw herself into an evasive dance, intricate as a minuet, which kept her crossing Hellcat's bows as the other vessel rounded on her.
Together they sent forth a probe, Tach directing Baby's greater raw psionic powei to scan the other craft. He sensed damage that brought bile to his throat, raw wounds with edges burned or withered gaping in Hellcat's flanks. She seeks our lives, he thought, but no faithful ship of Takis deserves the taint of swarmling contagion.
Before he could gain a sharper vision he was cut off by mental force like a guillotine blade. No matter; Baby had sensed enough to evaluate what capacity her rival still possessed. Still, he was surprised.
Spavined slut, consort of barges! Tach felt Hellcat's anger stab Baby like a spear. This jaundiced sun shall taste thee and thy weakling lord.
Brave talk, thou who cannot waddle fast enough to catch me!
Your mental powers have grown, cousin, he projected. A dry chuckle came into his mind. Adversity forces growth. You've come, Tisianne. I take it you found my emissaries on Earth?
Baby was reporting Hellcat's status: Tegument weakened in several sections; a lesion in her main drive organ . . . I have, thought Tach.
Rabdan was a fool. You've disposed of him? I perceive you have. And Durg? His death was clean, I trust.
He lives, cousin. With malice: He's transferred his loyalty to the groundling who bested him. Your former captive, Captain Trips.
White-hot anger spike: You lie! A moment. But no. Perhaps you begin to understand why I've taken the steps I have, then, Tis.
According to plan, Baby shaped a curving orbit on constant boost. Despite her best efforts Hellcat could not close the range. Her fire control had suffered as well; at this distance the overwhelming superiority of her firepower was cancelled by the more precise aim of Baby's single heavy laser-picking at her, forcing her to trade pursuit for evasion.
I understand you've betrayed our clan and our people, Tach thought.
It seems so, Tis. But consider: this virus you loosed on that hot, heavy world threatens our existence far more surely than the mindless Swarm.
The experiment was a success.
Therein lies the danger. These altered groundlings, these aces, aided you to escape against all our strength. Now you tell me a gangling weakling bested the deadliest bare-hand fighter Takis has produced. Do you not in this see the eclipse of our kind, Tisianne?
Perhaps the fall of the Psi Lords is overdue.
And you call me traitor. The thought felt more wearily amused than outraged.
You would've destroyed the entire species. Of course. They're groundlings.
Agony splashed Tach's brain like acid. He was thrown half out of bed as Baby's acceleration compensator slipped. Baby! Are you all right?
A grazing wound, Lord Tis. I'm fine. But there was a tentative note; she'd never been injured in battle before. He caressed her with a brief, healing mind-touch, drove fiercely at Zabb, So you made common cause with the filthy Swarm?
You've seen what they did to poor Hellcat. This Mother's encountered Takisians before, or shared plasm with another who had, and survived-which ought to tell you much, cousin mine. A pod seeded swarmlings in orbit on the far side of this adoptive world of yours, where they remained inert until we drifted in among them. Then they were upon us, with acid, quick-acting pathogens, and brute force.
We drove them off. Tach's mind filled with images stolen from Rabdan's, of battle in wavering light against amorphous beings whose touch might mean death by irreversible dissolution. Of swordblades glinting, and screams, and the most desperate defense of all, laser pistols flaring in the corridors while peristaltic spasms racked Hellcat's whole fabric. We lost four your old weapons-master among them. The next attack would have finished us. So I chose negotiation.
Violet eyes clenched shut. Sedjur.
After we repulsed the assault, Zabb continued, I managed to touch the swollen dimness that is the Mother's consciousness even as we tended our wounded and flushed the passageways with antibiotic emulsion, to impress on her that I wished to deal. She understood but vaguely; I believe she felt something akin to curiosity at my temerity, wanted to examine me at closer range. I traveled to her in a single lifeboat, passed within.
Baby was back in control of herself; her violent high-gee maneuvering no longer so much as rippled the surface of the brandy remaining in the goblet by the bed.
Sweat stood out in cool domes on Tach's forehead. Despite himself he felt awe of his cousin-even admiration. To journey alone and unarmed into the colossal body of the Mother, ancient enemy, bogey of a million cradle stories-that took courage from the epic songs.
And this above all was why Zabb had done it, Tach knew: he had suffered humiliation at Tach's hands, he who had never known defeat. He had to perform some fabulous deed or have his significance, his virtu, drain from him like water from a broken vessel. And to a Takisian even treason was glorious, if grand enough in scale.
Inside a great cavern I stepped from my craft and stood upon the very substance of our oldest foe. The walls around seemed festooned with strands of black moss, illuminated by witchlights in half a hundred pallid covers; the stink was such my vision dimmed. But I made contact with a mind as huge and diffuse as a nebula. After a fashion, we communicated.
The monster and I alike had interest in destroying life on this Earth of yours.
So we came to an accommodation. Bile bubbled into Tach's mouth in shocked reflex. We came to an accommodation. With what insouciance his cousin passed the thought, as if it did not at once describe the greatest treason and the greatest act of courage their kind had known. I honor you, Zabb. I must. If you win this day, they'll sing your song for a thousand generations. But . . . I despise you.
I'll try to bear up.
Tach shuddered in a breath. And you murdered Benafsaj. I had to do so. She would never have consented to taking action against you and your precious Earth, to say nothing of treating with the Swarm. To all appearances she died in the swarmling assault; Rabdan saw to it, you'll be pleased to know. A tear fell to the silk coverlet.
Zabb. I'm coming to kill you.
Perhaps you even can, so weakened is Hellcat. Or it may be I'll kill you. A weary chuckle. Either outcome is satisfactory, from my point of view.
Baby screamed.
Suddenly Tach was bouncing around the organiform opulence of his stateroom. He smelled hot silicone; his mind reverberated to his vessel's anguish.
Now, bitch, came Hellcat's thought, sizzling with hatred, thou cant flee no longer. A blue-white flare unfolded as Hellcat threw her drive into terminal triumphant overdrive, closing for the kill.
Baby, Baby! Her mind was white-noise terror and pain. Symbiont-ships had advantages over nonliving craft, could think for themselves, could heal themselves of damage. But they had wills of their own, and those could be broken.
Tach grabbed a projection, clung, spread his mind to encompass his tormented ship. Air rushed from a two-meter gash in her hull, tumbling her through space.
Oh, Baby, get control of yourself!,
He felt the demon breath of a laser pass her by. Daddy, Daddy, I can't, I can't!
Light pulsed from the walls in random splashes of color. He summoned all his healing strength, all his love and empathy for his ship, poured his whole being on the terrified flames within her. I love you, Baby. But you must let me help you.
No!
Our lives lie at stake. A whole world's at stake. Slowly terror ebbed. The ship's wild gyration damped, and Tach felt her compensator TK field enfold him once again. He breathed once more.
Hellcat had shape now without magnification, a spiked darkness alive with tiny lights, riding a tidal wave of fire. Her triumph filled Tach's head as a laser spiked forth and one of Baby's sponsons evanesced in a flash. Scream for mercy, coward! Thou'll float forever friendless!
DAMN YOU! Baby's internal lights dimmed as she channeled all power to her laser.
A scarlet spike impaled Hellcat just ahead of her drive. She shrieked-then again, louder, a tumult of agony that went on and on until Tach thought his brain would burst.
1954C-1100 was vomiting its own substance into space. For a moment Starshine almost wished he'd brought some sort of instrument, to measure his progress.
Time was fast running out, and no sign of that treacherous alien technocrat returning. It would be good to know if his sacrifice was going to be in vain.
He firmly squelched the thought. He would at least die free of the subtle chains of technology. And the green Earth would live a while longer, until the land-rapers and technofreaks burned her out. But he would have done his part.
He began composing his final poem; a poignant piece, the more so since there were none to hear it above the asteroid's silent photonic scream but the other entities who made up the composite which was Captain Trips.
When he could think again: Baby, are you all right? We won! Lord Tis, I beat her!-An image of Hellcat, lightless and torn, tumbling away on a cometary path, away from the world her master had sought to devastate.
Zabb! Zabb, do you still live? No reply, and he wondered why his pulse quickened anxiously.
And then, I do. Damn you. Can you do nothing right? What of our people?
Three died when your shot blew the drive: Aliura, Zovar S'ang, that servant wench you were so fond of. All vanished in a gout of flame. Are you then proud, Tisianne?
He sat dead still, cold emptiness within. He had murdered his own kinsman, first Rabdan, then these others. And Talli, his playmate, who'd warned him of Zabb's intentions when he and Turtle and Trips were kidnapped. All for a good cause, of course. Yet could not Zabb claim the same? You've won. Take your vengeance, Tisianne.
Baby, match vectors with Hellcat. This must be quickly done.
But, Master . . . What?
Starshine-he's about to revert to Captain Trips. What are you waiting for? A rising note. Do you gloat, Tisianne? It isn't like you. Finish it.
Tach stared blankly at the membrane-wall ahead, where Baby formed an image of her stricken foe. His pride demanded consummation. And practicality: as long as Zabb lived, Tachyon was in mortal peril, and Earth besides.
Tis: when my mother cast that mongrel bitch who pupped you down the stairs, I watched. I stood by the balustrade and laughed. The way her head lolled on her neck
But Tachyon laughed. Enough. Save your venom for the Void, Zabb.
Shoot, then. Damn you, shoot.
No. Repair your ship if you can, limp back to Takis, fly to Network space and live as a renegade. Live in the knowledge that I've bested you again. That you betrayed your lineageand failed.
He threw up a wall against a surge of fury. Baby, find the Captain quickly! She sheered away, her own drives a yellow coma.
. . . destroy you, Tisianne, I swear . . . he sensed. Then Zabb was gone out of range, tumbling into the infinite hole of night.
The shine of his hands winked out. As they did, Starshine felt a sickness, a shifting of the very fabric of his being. At least I died in the Sun's embrace .
Three hundred seconds later Baby braked to match velocity with a form hanging apparently lifeless above a stillglowing crater in the asteroid's flank. Gently she reached out with her grappler field, caught up the purple-clad form with blood dried in rings about mouth and ears, the silk hat which followed it like a purple satellite, drew them within her. As her master bent weeping over his friend she set her prow toward the world which had become their home.
"Mark, Mark old man!" Dr. Tachyon exploded through the door of the Cosmic Pumpkin, arms full of bouquets and bottles of wine in paper bags.
Mark wheeled his chair in from the head shop. "Doc! It's, like, far out to see you. What's the occasion?" His face had an unnaturally ruddy cast where vacuum had burst capillaries beneath the skin, and until his eardrums healed he was hearing by a little bone-conduction unit taped to the mastoid process beside his left ear, but on the whole he didn't look too bad for what he'd survived.
"What's the occasion? What's the occasion? Doughboy is cleared of all charges, he comes home today. You're a herothat is, your friend the Captain is. And I, of course. There's a celebration at the Crystal Palace, and the drinks are on the house. "
"What about those bottles?"
"These?" A smile. "I might be having a private celebration of my own, after the festivities at Chrysalis's."
He stuck out a bouquet. "These are for you. Let me be the first to congratulate you, Mark."
Mark sniffed. "Uh, thanks, Doc."
"Shall we away? Why don't you slip into-you knowmore formal clothing?"
Mark glanced away. " I, uh, like, I think I better stay here. I got the store and Sprout to look after, and I'm not getting around too well."
"Nonsense. You must come. You've earned adulation, Mark. You. You're a hero."
His friend evaded his eye. "Brenda will be more than happy to look after the shop and Sprout for you."
"Not so fast, buster," said the woman behind the counter. "And I'm Susan."
Tach fixed her with a penetrant stare. After a moment she crumpled. "I, I guess I could."
"But this chair," Mark whined.
"Do you require assistance, Mistress Isis?" a voice asked from the rear of the store, deep and resonant like an alien gong. Durg at'Morakh bo-Isis Vayawand-sa emerged into the deli, a collector's-item Steppenwolf tee shirt stretched to near explosion across his giant chest. He was limping, his cheeks puffy and bruised, but otherwise little the worse for wear. "I can carry you wherever you wish to go, Mistress."
Mark's drunkard's flush deepened. " I wish you'd quit calling me that, man. My name's Mark."
Durg nodded.' "As you wish, Mistress. If you wish to conceal your name from the envy of your weaker fellows as you conceal your form, I shall use your nom de guerre when there are groundlings present."
"Jesus," Mark said. For his part Tach was annoyed that the Morakh had managed to learn that Moonchild's real name (whatever that meant) was Isis Moon, which was more than he knew. He was also more than slightly amused.
"Splendid," he said, shifting his grip on his burdens. "You run upstairs and change, and I'll meet you at the Palace."
"Where'll you be?"
"I've an appointment first." Durg picked Mark up, wheelchair and all, and carried him up the stairs.
Sara Morgenstern's face was flushed almost as deeply as Mark's, here in the late-afternoon gloom of Tach's office. "So you did it," she breathed.
He was aware of the scent ou her, sensed her excitement. He could barely contain his own. "It was simple," he lied. "Tell me. How was the crime committed?"
He told her, with a minimum of embellishment, since concupiscence enjoyed a higher priority even than inflating his ego. And when he finished he saw to his amazement that her eager expression had collapsed on itself like a fallen souffle. "Aliens? It was aliens?" She could barely force the words out; her disappointment beat at his frontal lobes like surf. "Why yes, new-stage swarmlings in league with my cousin Zabb. And that's an important part of this story you will write, the danger posed by this new manifestation by the Swarm.
Because this means the Mother's not been content to go and leave this world in peace."
The bouquet he'd given her dropped to the floor. A dozen roses lay around her feet like trees flattened by an air-bursting bomb. "Andi," she sobbed, face distorted, shellacked with tears. Then she was gone, heels ticking heedlessly down the corridor.
As they receded Tach knelt, tenderly picked up a single blood-red bud. I will never understand these Earthers, he thought.
Tucking the flower into the buttonhole of his sky-blue coat, he stepped delicately over the other flowers, shut the door, locked it, and went out whistling to join the celebration.
JUBE: SIX
Subways were a human perversion that Jube had never quite grown accustomed to.
They were suffocatingly hot, the smell of urine in the tunnels was sometimes overwhelming, and he hated the way the lights flickered on and off as the cars rattled along. The long ride on the A train up to 190th Street was worse than most. In Jokertown, Jube felt comfortable. He was part of the community, someone familiar and accepted. In Midtown and Harlem and points beyond, he was a freak, something that little children stared at and their parents studiously failed to notice. It made him feel almost, well, alien.
But there was no avoiding it. It would never do for the newsboy called Walrus to arrive at the Cloisters in a taxi. These past few months it had sometimes seemed as though his life was in ruins, but his business was doing better . than ever.
Jube had discovered that Masons read newspapers too, so he brought a large armful to each meeting, and read them on the A train (when the lights were on) to take his mind off the smells, the noise, and the looks of distaste on the faces of the riders around him.
The lead story in the Times announced the formation of a special federal task force to deal with the Swarm menace. The ongoing jurisdictional squabbles between NASA, the Joint Chiefs, SCARE, and the secretary of defense-all of whom had claimed the Swarm as their own-would finally be ended, it was hoped, and henceforth all anti-Swarm activities would be coordinated. The task force would be headed by a man named Lankester, a career diplomat from State, who promised to begin hearings immediately. The task force hoped to requisition the exclusive use of the VLA radio telescopes in New Mexico to locate the Swarm Mother, but that idea was drawing heavy flak from the scientific community.
The Post highlighted the latest ace-of-spades murder with pictures of the victim, who had taken an arrow through his left eye. The dead man had been a joker with a record as long as his prehensile tail, and ties to a Chinatown street gang variously known as the Snowbirds, the Snowboys, and the Immaculate Egrets. The Daily News--which featured the same murder, minus the art-speculated that the bow-andarrow killer was a Mafia hit man, since it was known that the immaculate Egrets of Chinatown and the Demon Princes of Jokertown had been moving in on Gambione operations, and Frederico "the Butcher" Macellaio was not one to take kindly to such interference. The theory failed to explain why the killer used a bow and arrow, why he dropped a laminated ace of spades on each body, and why he had left untouched the kilo of angel dust his latest victim had been carrying.
The National Informer had a front-page color photograph of Dr. Tachyon standing in a laboratory with a gawky, bewhiskered companion in a purple Uncle Sam suit.
It was a very unflattering picture. The cutline read Dr. Tachyon and Captain Zipp pay tribute to Dr. Warner Fred Warren. `His contribution to science unparalleled,' says psychic alien genius. The accompanying article suggested that Dr. Warren had saved the world, and urged that his laboratory be declared a national monument, a suggestion it attributed to Dr. Tachyon. The tabloid's centerfold was devoted to the testimony of a Bronx cleaning lady, who claimed that a swarmling had attempted to rape her on the PATH tubes, until a passing transit worker transformed himself into a twelve-foot-long alligator and ate the creature. That story made Jube uneasy. He glanced up and studied the others in the A train, hoping that none of them were swarmlings or were alligators.
He had the new issue of Aces magazine too, with its cover story on Jumpin' Jack Flash, "The Big Apple's Hottest New Ace. Flash had been utterly unknown until two weeks ago, when he'd suddenly appeared-in an orange jumpsuit slit to his navel-to extinguish a warehouse fire on South Street that was threatening to engulf the nearby Jokertown clinic, by drawing the flames in on himself and somehow absorbing them. Since then, he'd been everywhere-booming along through the Manhattan sky on a roaring column of fire, shooting flame blasts from his fingertips, giving sardonic and cryptic interviews, and escorting beautiful women to Aces High, where his penchant for flambeing his own steaks was giving Hiram fits." Aces was the first magazine to plaster his foxy grin on its cover, but it wouldn't be the last.
At the 59th Street station a slender, balding man in a three-piece suit got on the train and sat across the car from Jube. He worked for the Internal Revenue Service, and was known in the Order as. Vest. At 125th Street, they were joined by a hefty, gray-haired black woman in a pink waitress uniform. Jube knew her too. They were ordinary people, both of them. They had neither ace powers nor joker deformities. The Masons had turned out to be full of such people: construction workers and accountants, college students and moving men, sewer workers and bus drivers, housewives and hookers. At the meetings Jube had met a well-known lawyer, a TV weatherman, and a professional exterminator who loved to talk shop and kept giving him cards ('Lots of roaches in Jokertown, I'll bet').
Some were rich, a few very poor, most just worked hard for their living. None of them seemed to be very happy.
The leaders were of a more extraordinary cut, but every group needs its rank and file, every army its privates. That was where Jube fit in.
Jay Ackroyd would never know where he had made his mistake. He was a professional private investigator, shrewd and experienced, and he had been painstakingly careful once he had realized what he was dealing with. If only he had been a little less talented, if only Chrysalis had sent a more common sort of man, they might have gotten away with it. It was his ability that had tripped him up, the hidden ace power. Popinjay, that was the street name he loathed: he was a projecting teleport who could point a finger and pop people somewhere else. He had done his best to stay inconspicious, had failed to pop a single Mason, but Judas had sensed the power nonetheless, and that had been enough. Now Ackroyd had no more memory of the Masons than did Chrysalis or Devil John Darlingfoot. Only Jube's obvious jokerhood and conspicuous lack of power had spared his mind and his life . . . that, and the machine in his living room.
It was dark by the time the A train pulled into 190th Street. Spoons and Vest walked briskly from the subway while Jube trudged after them, newspapers under his arm. The harness chafed under his shirt, and he felt desperately alone.
He had no allies. Chrysalis and Popinjay had forgotten everything. Croyd had woken as a bloated gray-green thing with flesh like a jellyfish and had promptly gone to sleep again, sweating blood. The Takisians had come and gone, doing nothing, caring less. The singularity shifter, if it was still intact and functional, was lost somewhere in the city, and his tachyon transmitter was useless without it. He could not go to any human authorities. The Masons were everywhere; they had penetrated the police, the fire department, the IRS, the transit authority, the media. At one meeting, Jube had even spotted a nurse who worked at the Jokertown clinic.
That one had troubled him deeply. He had spent several sleepness nights floating in his cold tub, wondering if he ought to say something to somebody. But who? He could whisper Nurse Greshams name to Troll, he could report Harry Matthias to his captain, he could spill the whole story to Crabcakes at the Cry. But what if Troll was a Mason himself? Or Captain Black, or Crabcakes? The ordinary Masons saw their leaders only at a distance, and frequently in masks, and there were rumors of other high-degree initiates who never came to meetings, aces and power brokers and others in positions of authority. The only one he could really trust was himself.
So he had gone to their meetings, listening, learning. He had watched with fascination when they donned their masks and acted out their pageants and rituals, had researched the attributes of the mythological gods they aped, had told his jokes and laughed at theirs, had made friends with those who would befriend a joker and observed the others who would not. And he had begun to suspect something, something monstrous and troubling.
He wondered, not for the first time, why he was doing this. And found himself remembering a time long ago, aboard the great Network starship Opportunity. The Master Trader had come to his cabin in the guise of an ancient Glabberan, his bristling hair gone black with age, and Jhubben had asked why he was being honored with this assignment. "You are like them," the Master Trader had said.
"Your form is different, but among those warped and twisted by Takisian bioscience, you will be lost, another faceless victim. Your thought patterns, your culture, your values, your moralities-these are closer to the human norms than those of anyone else I might select. In time, as you dwell among them, you will become still more alike, and so you will come to understand them, and be of great value on our return." .
It had been true, all true; Jube was more human than he would ever have guessed.
But the Master Trader had left one thing out. He had not told Jhubben that he would come to love these humans, and to feel responsible for them.
In the shadow of the Cloisters, two youths in gang colors stepped out to confront him. One of them had a switchblade. They knew him by now, but still he had to show them the shiny red penny he carried in his pocket. Those were the rules. They nodded to him silently, and jube passed within, to the great hall where they were waiting with their tabards and masks, with their ritual words and the secrets he was terrified to learn, where they were waiting for him to arrive, to conduct his initiation.
BY LOST WAYS
By Pat Cadigan
It was unseasonably hot for May, a fast preview of deep summer, and the children gathered at the fire hydrant made a timeless scene. The only thing missing was expertise-no one knew how to release the water from the hydrant. Never mind that such a thing would result in a precipitous drop in the local water pressure, seriously impairing fire fighting, which was why arsonists were always willing to accommodate a gaggle of sweaty kids on a hot day. But there was never an arsonist around when you needed one.
The man in the mom-and-pop convenience store was not watching the kids; he was watching the young woman with the shoulder-length auburn hair and the wide green eyes who was watching the kids. He'd been tracking her since she'd gotten off the bus three days before, usually from the shelter of one of his favorite tabloids, like the one he was holding now. The headline read: WOMAN TURNS INTO
JOKER, EATS MATE ON WEDDING NIGHT!! Harry Matthias had always had a taste for the lurid.
The girl across the street, however, was anything but lurid. Girl suited her better than young woman, even though he was reasonably sure she was over twenty-one. Her heart shaped face was unmarked, unlined; unfinished.
Unsophisticated, very attractive if you looked twice and he imagined most people did. You'd never think that she was anything other than one more innocent morsel throwing herself into the jaws of the big city. But Harry, more often referred to as Judas, knew differently. The Astronomer would reward him handsomely for this one.
Or rather, the Astronomer's people would. The Astronomer himself didn't bother with you, not if you were lucky, and Judas had been very lucky, almost too lucky to live. He'd gone from being a joker groupie, what they'd called a jokee (and laughing at him, too, when they said it) to being an ace himself. A very subtle ace, to be sure, but very useful with his ability to detect another ace and the power involved. His power had come out that night in that crazy cabaret, the jokers Wild. Saved his life; they'd been about to serve him up proper when the spore had turned and he'd exposed that shape-shifter woman. What changes they'd put her through, to coin a phrase. He didn't like to think about it but better her than him. Better anyone than him, even the girl across the street, though it would have pained him; she was attractive. But he was only delivering her to the Masons, where she wouldn't be wasted. What a talent she had; they'd probably pin a medal on him when he brought her in. Well, they'd pay him, anyway, enough to take the sting out of being called Judas. If he'd felt any sting, which he didn't.
The girl smiled and he felt himself smiling in response. He could sense her power gathering itself. Absently, he tossed a few coins at the cashier for the tabloid and stepped out onto the sidewalk with the paper under his arm. Once again he found himself marveling; even though he knew it took a special power all its own to detect an ace, he was still amazed that people never knew when they stood before something greater than themselves, whether it was an ace, TIAMAT, or the One True God. He glanced at the sky. God was on coffee break and TIAMAT had yet to arrive; right now it was just him and the girl, and that was company enough.
He alone felt it when she let fly. The power surged out of her both like a wave and like a fusillade of particles. The magnitude was frightening. This was a power primeval, something that felt old in spite of the relative newness of the wild card virus, as though the virus had activated some ability native but dormant for centuries.
Could be, he thought suddenly-didn't every primitive people have some kind of rite meant to call down the rain? Without warning, the fire hydrant popped and water gushed out onto the street. The kids waded in cheering and laughing, and she was enjoying them so much, she never noticed his approach.
"Police, miss. Come along quietly." The complete surprise on her face as she stared at the badge he held under her nose made her seem younger still. "You didn't really think you were going to get away with this, did you? And don't play innocent-you're not the only ace we've ever had in this town, you know."
She nodded meekly and let him lead her away.
The Cloisters were completely wasted on her. She didn't bother to look up at the soaring French Gothic architecture or even the ornately carved wooden door where he delivered her like so much goods into the waiting hands of Kim Toy O'Toole and Red. He resisted the urge to kiss her. For a guy named Judas, kissing would be pouring it on too thick. Hey, little girl; she hadn't even noticed the absense of police uniforms.
Red had been mildly florid until the wild card virus had bitten him. Now he was completely red all over and hairless as well. He thought of it as a comparatively tolerable condition.
"Maybe I've got some red Indian in me," he would say from time to time. He didn't. His wife, Kim Toy, was the offspring of an Irish career Army man and the true love he had met while on R&R in Hong Kong. Sean O'Toole had been a Mason, but he would barely have recognized the organization his daughter had turned to after her own spore had bloomed and she had discovered that the combination of mental power and pheromones could dazzle men far more greatly than was usual for a reasonably attractive woman. Red hadn't needed that kind of dazzling. Good thing; sometimes she couldn't help making it fatal.
They took the fresh piece Judas had brought them and stuck her in one of the old downstairs offices where interrogations (interviews, Roman would always correct them) could take place in privacy. Then they sat down outside in the hall for an unscheduled break. Roman would be along at any moment, after which they would have to dispose of the girl however the Astronomer thought best.
"Little creep," Red muttered, accepting an already-lit cigarette from Kim Toy.
Little creep was a term that always referred to the Astronomer. "Sometimes I think we ought to stomp his ass and run."
"He's going to own the world," Kim Toy said mildly. "And give us a piece. I think that's worth keeping him around for."
"He says he's going to give us a piece. Like he was a feudal lord. But we're not all samurai, wife o' mine."
"Neither am I. I'm Chinese, fool. Remember?" Kim Toy looked past her husband.
"Here comes Roman. And Kafka." She and Red sat up and tried to look impassive.
Roman was one of the Astronomer's high-level flunkies, someone who could visit those segments of society that would have been considered above most of the questionable types the Astronomer had recruited. His blond good looks and flawless grooming gave him entree almost anywhere. It was whispered that he was one of the rare 'reverse jokers,' someone the spore had made over from a hideously deformed wreck into his present state of masculine beauty. Roman himself wasn't saying.
Following along behind him was his antithesis, the one they called Kafka or the Roach (though not to his face), for he looked like nothing so much as a roach's idea of a human. No one made fun of him, however; the Shakti device that the Astronomer had said would be their salvation was mostly Kafka's doing. He'd figured out the alien instrument that had been in the Masons' custody for centuries and he had singlehandedly designed and constructed the machine that completed its power. Nobody bothered him; nobody wanted to.
Roman gave Red and Kim Toy a minuscule nod as he headed for the office door and then stopped abruptly, almost causing Kafka to bump into him. Kafka leaped back, clutching his skinny arms to himself, panicked at the prospect of any contact with someone who washed less than twelve or thirteen times a day.
"Where do you think you're going?" Roman's smile was flat.
Kafka took a brave step forward. "We've found six aliens passing as humans in the last three weeks. I just want to make sure she's human."
"You want to make sure she's human." Roman gave him an up-and-down. "Judas brought her in. The ones Judas brings us are always human. And the Astronomer doesn't want us scaring off the good one§, which is why I interview them when they first get here. You'll pardon me for saying so, Kafka old thing, but I don't think your appearance will be any too reassuring. "
Kafka's exoskeleton rasped as he turned away and went back down the hall. Kim Toy and Red watched him go, neither of them caring to break the silence by so much as letting out a breath.
"He was watching the monitors when she came in," Roman said, straightening his expensive, tasteful tweed jacket. "Pity. I mean, the man obviously wouldn't mind getting next to such a nice female but the way he is ."
"How's your wife, Roman?" Red asked suddenly. Roman froze in the middle of brushing an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeve. There was a long pause. One of the incongruous overhead fluorescents began to hum.
"Fine," Roman said at last, slowly lowering his arm. "I'll tell her you asked after her."
Kim Toy elbowed her husband in the ribs as Roman went into the office. "What the hell did you have to do that for? What was the point?"
Red shrugged. "Roman's a bastard."
"Kafka's a bastard! They're all bastards! And you're a fool. Next time you want to hit that man, get up and break his nose. Ellie Roman never did anything to you."
"First you're telling me how you want to own the worldexcuse me, a piece of it-and then you're chewing me out for throwing Roman's wife up to him. Wife o'
mine, you're a real Chinese puzzle sometimes."
Kim Toy frowned up at the buzzing light, which was now flickering as well. "It's a Chinese-puzzle world, husband o' mine."
Red groaned. "Samurai bullshit."
"State your name, please. In full."
He was arguably the best-looking man she had ever met in person. "Jane Lillian Dow," she said. 3n the big cities, they had everything, including handsome men to interrogate you. I heart New York, she thought, and suppressed the hysteria that wanted to come bubbling up as laughter.
"And how old are you, Ms. Dow?"
"Twenty-one. Born April first, 19--"
"I can subtract, thank you. Where were you born?" She was terrified. What would Sal have thought? Oh, Sal, I wish you could save me now. It was more a prayer than a thought, cast out into the void with the dim hope that perhaps the wild card virus could have affected the afterlife as well as this one and the late Salvatore Carbone might come trucking back from the hereafter like ectoplasmic cavalry. So far, reality still wasn't taking requests.
She answered all the man's questions. The office was not especially furnished-bare walls, a few chairs, and the desk with the computer terminal. The man had her records in under a minute, checking the facts against her answers.
He had access to her whole life with that computer, one reason why she'd been so reluctant to register with the police after her wild card spore had turned itself out in high school five years before. The law had been enacted in her hometown long before she'd been born, and never taken off the books when the political climate had changed somewhat. But, then, not much had changed in the small Massachusetts town where she'd grown up. "I'll be licensed and numbered like a dog," she'd said to Sal. "Maybe even taken to the pound and gassed like a dog, too." Sal had talked her into complying, saying she'd draw less attention to herself if she obeyed their laws. When they could account for you, they left you alone. "Yeah," she'd said. "I'd noticed how well that kind of thing worked in Nazi Germany." Sal had just shaken his head and promised that things would work out.
But what about this, Sal? They're not leaving me alone, it's not working out.
New York was the last place she had expected to be picked up by the police as an ace and, when a break came in the questioning, she said so.
"But we're not the police," the handsome man told her pleasantly, making her heart sink even lower.
"Y you're not? But that guy showed me a badge . . ."
"Who did? Oh, him." The man-he'd told her to call him Roman-chuckled. "Judas is a cop. But I'm not. And this is hardly a police station. Couldn't you tell?"
Jane scowled into his slightly incredulous smile. "I'm not from here. And I saw what happened a few months ago on the news. I figured after that the police would just set up anywhere they needed to or had to." She looked down at her lap where her hands were twisting together like two separate creatures in silent combat. "I wouldn't have told you about Sal if I'd known you weren't the police."
"What difference does that make, Ms. Dow? Or can I call you Jane, since you don't like to be called Water Lily?"
"Do what you want," she said unhappily. "You will anyway. "
He surprised her by getting up and telling the people in the hall to bring in some coffee and something to eat. "It occurs to me we've kept you here far too long without refreshment."
"The police wouldn't do that for you, Jane. At least, not the New York City police."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Sure. Then, I guess I'll have some coffee and be on my way."
The man never stopped smiling. "Where have you got to go?"
"I came here-here to New York, I mean-looking for Jumpin' Jack Flash. I saw him on the news . . ."
"Forget it." The smile was still there but the eyes were cold. "You can't do anything for each other."
"But "
"I said, forget it."
She looked down at her lap again.
"Come on, Jane." His voice softened. "I'm just trying to protect you. You need it. I can just imagine what a hot dog like that would do to an innocent little morsel like yourself. Whereas the Astronomer has a use for you."
She lifted her head again. "A use?"
"A use for your power, I should have said. Forgive me." Jane's laugh was brief and bitter. "A use for my power is a use for me. Maybe I am innocent next to you but I'm not stupid. Sal used to warn me about that."
"Yes, but Sal wasn't an ace, was he? He was just a pathetic little swish, one of that very early kind of joker we've always had in the world. One of nature's mistakes."
"Don't you talk that way about him!" she flared, moisture suddenly beading on her face and running down her arms and legs. The man stared at her wonderingly.
"Are you doing that on purpose? Or is it just a stress reaction?"
Before she could answer, the red man and the Oriental woman came in with a platter of small, neatly made sandwiches. Jane subsided and watched as the couple laid everything out on the desk, even pouring the coffee.
"Fresh from the Cloisters' own kitchens," Roman said, gesturing at the platter.
"An ace has to keep her strength up."
"No, thanks."
He jerked his head at the couple, who took positions on either side of the door.
More water ran down Jane's face and dripped from the ends of her hair. Her clothes were becoming saturated.
"It's water pulled out of the air around me," she said to Roman, who was beginning to look alarmed. "It happens sometimes when I'm under pressure or-or whatever."
"Fight or flight," he said. "Adrenaline produces sweat to make you more slippery, harder to hold onto. Probably the same principle at work."
She looked at him with new respect. Even Sal hadn't thought of that and he'd been pretty smart, coming up with all those experiments to test the depth and range of her power. It was only because of Sal that she knew her power was effective on things no more than half a mile away from her. He had also figured out that she could cause atoms to combine to make water as well as call already-existing water out of things, and he'd been the one to calculate it would take her forty-eight hours to recharge after exhausting the power, and coached her on how to stretch her energy out so she wouldn't spend herself all at once. "No good being completely defenseless," he'd said. "Don't ever let it happen." And since that one time back home in Massachusetts, she hadn't and never would again. Sal had watched over her for those two days when she'd been half afraid and half hopeful that the power was gone for good. But Sal had been right about its return; she'd been prepared to hand herself over to him completely.
He'd refused her. Once again, she'd offered herself and he'd turned her down. He couldn't be her lover, he'd said, and he wouldn't be her father. She would have to be responsible for herself, just like anyone else. And then, as though to drive the point home, he'd gone back to his apartment and drowned in the bathtub.