Ace In The Hole

8:00 P.M.

Spector was sweating buckets. Getting onto the podium had been no problem. Making himself stay there was. The convention hall was huge, much bigger than he'd imagined, seeing it on TV. Thousands of people, millions if you counted the TV audience, would be looking in his direction. He peered at the lighted network booths and strained to see if he could recognize Connie Chung, or Dan Rather, or what's-his-name from CNN. It kept his mind occupied enough to keep his feet planted on the stage.

Jesse Jackson was speaking, his powerful voice rising and falling in his usual Southern preacher style. Jackson's nomination as VP was obviously the price Hartmann had paid to get him to drop out of the presidential contest.

Spector couldn't see any way to get at Hartmann while he was on stage. Better to wait until he was escorting the senator back to his hotel and let him have it then. He could run off to telephone an ambulance and slip away. Everyone would be too caught up in the moment to miss him. Then it would be back to Jersey and a little peace and quiet. He just had to bide his time.

"It was all my idea. People are saying the campaign came up with it, but the whole thing was my call." Jack gave a theatrical sigh. " I was wrong, but it seemed like a good idea at the time."

The newscasters were filling time with celebrity interviews. Below the CBS skybooth, the convention was humming, awaiting the candidate. Half of them seemed to be masked.

Jack smiled ruefully into Walter Cronkite's crinkled eyes. "It all seemed to fit together. All the wild card violence-and remember, I was attacked twice myself-it all seemed aimed at hindering Senator Hartmann's candidacy and promoting the Reverend Barnett's. When I saw Barnett personally, I saw how charismatic he is. With people like Nur-al-Allah in the worldremember, he's another charismatic religious leader who happens to be a wild card-I just jumped to the wrong conclusion."

"So you are satisfied that there are no wild cards in the Barnett camp?"

Jack offered a pacticed, cynical smile. "If they're there, they're well-hidden." He laughed, disingenuous. "They'd have to be, Walter."

Behind Cronkite a couple dozen video monitors showed the cameras panning the convention. People waved signs, danced, laughed behind their masks. Sweating men in headphones busied themselves over consoles.

Cronkite seemed in an easy, conversational mood, hardly the hard-ass reporter right now. Still, his question stung. "Do you think you should apologize to the Barnett campaign?"

Jack gave another patent smile. "I already have, Walter. I delivered a personal apology to Fleur van Renssaeler yesterday afternoon." He tightened the smile, looked into the camera. Take that, Fleur, he thought.

"So how do you feel now that Gregg Hartmann has finally won the nomination?"

Jack stared into the camera and felt his smile freeze. " I think," he said carefully, "that I messed up a few too many times to feel happy with much of anything, Walter."

Cronkite put an over-the-audio speaker in his ear, listened for a moment, then looked up and said, "I understand the candidate is about to speak. Thank you, Jack, and we'll switch now to Dan Rather and Bob Scheiffer."

The red light on the camera went o$: The crowd was roaring, cheering, on their feet.

Jack wished with all his heart that he could cheer with them.

For a long moment Tachyon was disoriented. Then he spotted the California banner, and he knew where he was. The speakers podium thrust like the prow of a ship into the crowded hall. On its various tiers and levels stood the great and powerful. Claw-like his hand closed on a man's shoulder, and he forced the reporter aside.

"Hey, asshole! Watch out."

"Move," Tach snarled, and pushed past him. Deeper into the crowd. Searching for a clear view.

"… THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES…" The words finally penetrated Tachyon's haze. "… GREGG HARTMANN!"

The fifteen-thousand people in the Omni erupted. The band blared out "Stars and Stripes Forever." Cheers, screams, whistles. Balloons floated down to be batted aside by wildly swinging Hartmann signs. Tachyon shuddered under the assault of sound and the proximity of so many people.

His aching eyes focused on the podium. Gregg grinning, waving, linking hands with Jackson. Ellen, wan and drawn in a wheelchair at his side, smiling. Suddenly what had been only a peripheral bit of information penetrated. Eighty percent of the people in the Omni wore masks. What had been a merely hopeless task had now become impossible. There was no way by ships or stars that he could locate James Spector in time to prevent the killing.

He wept while all around him the crowd screamed.

"… the next president of the United States, Gregg Hartmann!"

The crowd went wild out in the Omni. Green-and-gold Hartmann signs waved back and forth as the band played. The nets on the ceiling rained balloons down on the cheering delegates.

Puppetman was nearly in orgasm. The pent-up emotions of the long week were being released in one huge celebration, and the sheer tidal force of it was staggering. Gregg took off his clown's mask and stepped forward onto the speaker's platform, raising his arms in victory; they shouted back to him fiercely, the noise almost deafening. He had to shout to Jesse to come forward with him. They clasped hands, raised them waving to the people, and the cheering redoubled, drowning out the band, making the Omni shake with the thunderous acclamation.

It was glorious. It was ecstasy.

The ovation went on for long minutes. Gregg waved, raised his hands, nodded. He saw Jack Braun up in the CBS booth with Cronkite, pointed and smiled, giving him a thumbs-up salute. He kissed Ellen, in a wheelchair at the rear of the podium. He grinned at Devaughn, at Logan, at everyone. Behind their masks, he knew they were all smiling back at him.

We did it! The power in him was drunk with the adulation. It's all ours, everything.

Gregg could only grin helplessly in agreement. All ours.

When they finally quieted slightly, he stepped to the podium. He looked up at the packed stands, at the shoulderto-shoulder mob on the floor. Many of them were in masks, joining with those on the platform.

"Thank you, every last one of you," he said huskily, and they roared again. He raised his hands; the cheering softened. It felt good, being able to do that.

"This has been the hardest struggle of my life," he continued. "But Ellen and I never gave up hope. We trusted in the judgment of all of you out there, and you haven't let us down."

The chant was sweeping across the convention floor:

"Hartmann! Hartmann!" A wave, a torrent, it swept them all up. "Hartmann! Hartmann!" Gregg shook his head in feigned modesty, letting it all wash over him and grinning down at them.

"Hartmann! Hartmann!"

And the grin suddenly went frozen on his face. Somehow, Mackie was down there in the front ranks of the crowd, grinning like all the rest, a hunchbacked boy-man dressed all in black and leather. A chill rattled down Gregg's spine.

It's okay, Puppetman murmured inside his head. It's okay. I can control him. But Gregg shivered, and when he leaned toward the microphones again, his voice had lost some of its enthusiasm.

Forging across the floor between delirious delegates in white plastic straw-like hats with HARTMANN emblazoned on them, Mackie felt as if he were made of air. He never felt any different when he went insubstantial-phased out-but if he did this was how he might feel. As if he was just going to diffuse like a cloud at any moment.

He hadn't slept last night, wedged in between a pair of stinking winos on the bus from the New York Port Authority. The business-suit pervo, with a taste for the slightly bizarre, who'd picked him up in Times Square had obviously realized the kind of love he was looking for was expensive to come by in the age of AIDS hysteria; he was carrying quite a roll of cash in his pocket. Even after Mackie had peeled away the bloodstained hundred on the outside there was more than enough for a plane ticket. But he hadn't dared take a plane. They might be watching the airports for him; he'd let himself be seen three times now.

Der Mann would be very disappointed.

He was up there on the podium now. A tropism of love and contrition drew Mackie to him. He was not supposed to approach Hartmann in public. He would not. He just needed the nearness of him.

He pushed out from under the array of press boxes, hanging over the packed court like the Death Star. Eel-like he flowed between shouting men with strained shirt buttons and fat women in pastel dresses, every face shining with sweat and grease and greed for the spoils of the love feast of capitalism.

The spectacle would have disgusted and intimidated him had he any room in his mind for thoughts that weren't of Hartmann. Of love and duty and failure.

The podium rose before him like a blue Rhine castle. He didn't see the Man yet, but the man on stage was talking about him. He looked to the wings, trying to catch sight of Hartmann.

White motion took his eye. Tiers of VIP boxes rose either side of the podium like layers of a wedding cake. A diminutive figure in a white dress was excusing its way past seated dignitaries on the level to the left of and even with the podium. It wore a flamboyant bird mask of white feathers that gleamed like silver under the lights.

He started to think, filthy joker cunt. Then he realized what had drawn his attention.

The way she moved. He could always recognize a person by posture, the way she carried herself, the way her limbs and body acted together. He could always pick his mother, the bitch, out of a mob of Sankt Pauli whores by her walk.

Now he recognized Sara Morgenstern, who had greater claim on him than any woman since his mother died. Joyous fury bubbling within him, he began to force his way through the mob. He would not fail his man again. Or her.

Hartmann was speaking. The crowd, chanting his name, would barely let him get a word in edgewise. Jack wandered around the CBS skybooth and tried to stay out of everyone's way.

The monitors showed a crowd going mad. Jack watched and wondered what he could do.

He could tell people. But he'd had a chance just now, and he couldn't.

He couldn't be the Judas Ace again. He couldn't start a new round of persecutions.

He reached for a cigarette, and then he saw the leather boy on one of the monitors.

He couldn't mistake the slight, hunchbacked figure, not even behind the mask. The puny body and arrogant, jerky walk was an unmistakable combination. "Hey!" Jack said. A surge of adrenaline almost knocked him off his feet. He jumped forward just as the freak walked off camera. "That's the killer!" He jabbed a finger at the monitor. "Right here! Where's that camera pointing?"

The director looked at him with fury in his eyes. "Will you get-"

"Call the Secret Service! That's the chainsaw killer! He's on the convention floor!"

"What-"

"Where's that camera pointed, goddamn it?" "Uh-Camera Eight? That's on the right side of the podium…"

"Damn!" The freak was right under the candidates.

Jack looked around frantically. The commentators, deep into their zen, had yet to hear his panicked shouts. "Camera Eight." This from the director. "Pan left and right. Ready Eight? Cut Eight."

Jack jumped up on the desk in front of Cronkite and lashed out with a foot. The safety glass on the front of the skybooth bulged outward, a network of cracks appearing around Jack's foot. A startled Cronkite wheeled back on his desk chair, barking out oaths sea-dog style, as Jack put his foot through the safety glass, then punched out to widen the hole.

The beams supporting the Omni Center's ceiling were just in front and overhead. Jack jumped, caught an I-beam with both hands. He moved hand-over-hand along the beam toward the podium. This was going to take forever. He swung back, forward, pushed himself o$, flew from one supporting beam to the next.

He'd done this for years on NBC. The old Tarzan reflexes came back without thought.

There was sudden commotion. Hartmann's speech had been interrupted. He was too late.

As Gregg Hartmann strode forward through torrents of applause, Sara deliberately moistened her lips. How confidently he walks. He thinks he's a god.

But there were no gods any more. Just men and women, some with more power than any mortal could safely use. The purse fell open beneath numbed fingers as if of its own accord. She reached a gloved hand inside. The metal and checked rubber of the grip were cool fire, burning her fingers. "Andi," she whispered. She drew the pistol. Letting her purse dangle from her forearm by one strap she raised the weapon both-handed.

Mackie was practically running through the close-packed delegates, using cattle-prod buzzes of his elbows to wellpadded rumps to clear a path, phasing out when he had to.

He'd do Sara fucking Morgenstern on nationwide TV, fuck her right straight through the heart with his good right hand. Der Mann would be so proud.

He felt pressure in the armpits and then his feet paddled air as he was hoisted off the floor by the collar of his leather jacket. "Not so fuckin' fast, joker," a voice grated in his ear.

Squirming, he was turned around into a blast of boozeand-tobacco breath. His captor was a large man in a bonewhite jumpsuit, with black hair hanging into his face. It was a strange sort of face. It looked as if it had been busted into its component parts and hastily super-glued back together. The nose was a mangled mass, the cheekbones mismatched, and the green eyes burned at different angles.

"You better not fuck with me, goddamn you!" Mackie screeched, half-blind with fury. "I'm goddamn not a joker! I'm Mack the Knife!"

The big man winced from the shower of angry spittle. "You look like Jack the Shit to me, junior. Now let's you and me and my good right hand go somewhere for a little talk, nice and private like -"

Mackie lashed out with his own right hand.

His fingertips touched the knobbed right cheekbone with a noise and smell like a dentist's drill going into a tooth. They slashed through cheek and lip and bone, cutting away half the lower jaw at a slant. Nude teeth grinned at him a millisecond before washing out in a rush of blood. The big man dropped him and clapped both hands to the spurting ruin of his face.

Mackie turned back to the podium. A woman with orange-dyed hair stood in his path, her mouth a tunnel right down to her belly. He hacked her out of his way like an explorer taking a machete to an inconvenient branch.

Der Mann would have to understand. There was no time for subtlety any more.

She hadn't expected the screams so soon. She was betting her vengeance since her life was forfeit anyway-that every eye in the Omni would be locked on the podium as Gregg began his speech. But no one in the VIP seats nearby showed any sign of being aware of her. The three dots of the sights rose before her eyes like fat white moons seeking auspicious alignment.

Peripheral vision betrayed her. There was a commotion amid the Mississippi delegation, right up front of the podium. For all her efforts to see nothing but Hartmann and the rising moons, her eyes flicked briefly in that direction.

She felt the strength puff from her like air from a burst balloon. He had come. The leather kid. Slashing a bloody swath through the crowd, straight for her.

Hartmann was speaking. Mesmerized, Tachyon watched the movement of the mouth and heard not a word. Overlaid upon the plain familiar features was another face-bloated, dissipated, evil-Puppetman leered down at him.

Sickened, he dropped his gaze. Stared blankly at his stump. His thoughts chased one another like swirling leaves. Have to stop him.

How?

Have to do something. What?

Must think.

Have to stop him.' How?

How? How?

Screams cut into the words of the candidate, the cheers of the crowd. Thin, like a trickle of blood pushing into healthy tissue. Spreading now, becoming a hemorrhage. The reporters surrounding Tachyon sensed that something was happening. They began to lurch forward, carrying Tach with them. They came up against a wall of fleeing humanity. Delegates, mouths wide with terror, running for the exits.

The world narrowed to thrashing arms, the stench of fear. Tachyon's shields reeled under the onslaught of fifteen-thousand people reacting in either terror or confusion.

A burly man, the buttons that covered his chest chattering like castanets, caromed into the tiny alien. Tach screamed, a shrill tearing sound as the bandages covering his amputation caught on the man's belt buckle, and he was yanked after him. He lost his footing and went down, the bandage tearing free.

Feet pounded across Tachyon's back driving the breath from his chest. He felt his cracked ribs give. A red-hot poker had been driven into his chest. Driving deeper with every breath he took.

But it was nothing compared to the agony of his arm as terrified humans ran over him, their heels grinding the stump into the floor of the Omni.

I am going to die. Terror lay thick and choking on the back of his tongue. A tiny thread of fury shot through him. No! I am damned if I will die in this humiliating fashion. Trampled by hysterical groundlings.

It took all his concentration to think through the suffocating blanket of pain. Braun's mind was a familiar glow in the midst of madness. His power lashed out, nestled close like a homing bird returning to a place of safety. He read the confusion and hesitation in the big ace's mind.

Jack, save me! Tach?

Help me! Help me!

He couldn't hold the contact any longer. With a sigh he dropped away.

But Jack was coming.

A freight-train weight smashed into Mackie from behind. It drove his right hand, held like a spearhead at the end of his stiffened arm, right into the chest of a man with a pink shirt and beige tie. Irresistible, the mass forced him onward, down. His hand exploded out of the man's ribcage in a welter of blood. He hit the floor. His head rebounded off hardwood, and he felt something snap in his chest.

Squealing with rage and pain, he put a buzz all over his body. His attacker yowled and rolled away. He jumped to his feet.

" You fucker, you fucker, I'll cut your dick off and make you eat it!" He was screaming in German now, but it didn't matter; his hands would do all the talking that mattered.

Through a screen of tears he saw a fist swelling toward his face. Something tugged his mind, an eyeblink of doubt, of distraction. Belatedly he started to phase.

The blow caught him on the chin, snapping his head back…

And then passed harmlessly through.

Gregg had stopped speaking, though with the cheering and chanting, no one seemed to have noticed as yet. Looking down, he saw Carnifex bull his way toward Mackie, making a visible wake in the crowd. Mackie, with some second sense, noticed the ace at the same time and turned, snarling. The hands were buzzing now. Someone next to Mackie screamed and pointed, and then everyone was trying to make space around the hunchback as Carnifex shouted and charged.

Puppetman shouted with him, exultant. Good. The boy's no use anymore. Let Carnifex kill him.

Mackie will carve him up, Gregg told the power. They're both puppets. We can control this game.

It was a strange blend of ecstasy and fear. It tasted so good.

Yes, get rid of Mackie. That wasn't going to be easy. Mackie swung, and a line of blood followed, ruining the front of Carnifex's spotless uniform even as the ace swung a fist and knocked Mackie backward off his feet. Already the blinding, pulsing red of pain and terror was swelling in Carnifex's mind. The ace in white was backing up a step, watching Mackie's hands as the kid levered himself off the floor, grinning despite his smashed, ruined mouth.

Puppetman reached out. He found the fear in Carnifex and clamped down on it brutally. Then he reached for Mackie, looking for the switch in that crazed mind that would render him vulnerable.

There, Puppetman said in satisfaction. There.

A gunshot sounded loud in Gregg's ear. In that moment, Puppetman startled with him, losing Mackie for a precious instant as the packed auditorium erupted in horrified screams, as panic and terror drifted through the air like a thick fog. "My god, they're killing each other!" someone cried.

"Stop!" Gregg shouted into the microphones, but his voice was lost in the uproar.

Have to do it, she realized, now. Before he gets here. She willed into her arms the strength to straighten, to raise the blunt black pistol.

Bleating in terror, a tall, gangly man with gray hair fringing a narrow promontory of skull came boiling out of his chair like a stork frightened from a canebrake. A flying elbow hit the gun and spun it out of Sara's grasp.

She shrieked in despair as it cartwheeled over the front of the box and into the crowd.

Gunfire crashed from the podium, and Gregg Hartmann vanished under a wave of Secret Service suits.

Spector jumped when something shattered the glass up in the media booth. It froze him for an instant and agents were already swarming over Hartmann and the other big wheels, pushing them into the wings or knocking them to the floor. He ran several steps toward the senator, but two other men had him face down behind the podium.

The screams were deafening. Spector couldn't think with all the racket. Gunshots. He saw several agents firing toward a target in the crowd. Golden Boy was swinging on the girders overhead toward the area where the men were shooting. Spector piled on top of Hartmann. The senator grunted, but didn't turn over to face him. In a moment or two he would look over his shoulder, and Spector would be waiting.

Jack swung from beam to beam like a desperate pendulum. He couldn't tell what was going on up on the platform. He could see Billy Ray's white suit, Secret Service with guns, delegates stampeding-no Hartmann, no hunchback. There was just the unmistakable impression of violence being done. He flung himself to a beam above his own California delegation, then stopped.

Gregg Hartmann was the secret ace, a killer. Why should he care what happened to the man?

While he hesitated, he heard a scream resonate in his mind. Tachyon was down in the stampede, being trampled. He hesitated again. The cry came again. He saw there was no one directly below him, then dropped.

He danced back. His chin felt as if someone had hit him with a hammer and his neck muscles groaned. If he'd taken the full force of the blow, it would have snapped his neck. Who is this?

His vision cleared. He staggered as if he'd been punched again. It was the black-haired man with the spare-parts face. Leering at him with his deaths head grin. The front of his jumpsuit was red-splashed now, as by a spastic eating spaghetti in red sauce. The blood-geyser bad dwindled to a trickle. "S'ow you a thing or two, you little son o' a hnitch!" the big man bellowed. He swung a haymaker at Mackie.

Terror yammered in his brain. I can't beat this monster! Fighting down the fear Mackie phased, just ahead of impact that would have pulped his forebrain. The big man's momentum carried him right through him. He recovered with a tiger's quickness, spinning around with his hands coming up to strike or defend.

Mackie was right after him, anger overwhelming persistent fear. He aimed a stroke at the temple. Let's see how he does with his head cut in half.

The big man snapped up a hand in a knife-edge block. Fingers tumbled like clothespins from a sack as Mackie sliced through it. The black-haired man threw himself backwards into the crowd, just managing to keep from catching the buzz saw hand in his skull.

His breath tore at the right side of his chest like talons. He must have cracked a rib when that big fucker tackled him. He phased through the curtain wall at the foot of the podium, into the hidden moat that separated the delegates from the stand. From the corner where the square-sectioned column of the podium proper met the facing of the elevated dais a muscular young man with a wire trailing from one ear gaped at him and hauled a tiny machine-pistol from inside his dark suit coat. Mackie met his eyes and grinned, unaware that his nose was bleeding and his smile a ghastly clown's.

The Secret Service man's finger convulsed on the trigger. A spray of nine-millimeter bullets passed through where Mackie wasn't and ripped into the crowd behind. The fresh screams of the shot almost made Mackie come.

He cut the Secret Service man's neatly pressed legs out from under him, right below the knee. The agent toppled shrieking into the moat, leaving blood splashed across the front of the dais and his lower legs standing. Briefly.

White ziggurat steps flanked the podium, too large to serve as stairs. Mackie began to clamber up them.

A blow from behind sprawled him across the second. Dazed, he felt himself picked up and flung like a doll. He smashed into the outer wall of the moat.

He was broken inside. "Mutti," he groaned. "Mommy."

It was the black-haired man, who had clubbed him down with his mangled hand and thrown him with the good one. Who was snarling at him from the foot of the podium, peeling what lips Mackie had left him, back from his teeth.

Who gathered himself and leapt like a tiger on a staked kid.

In desperation, Mackie thrust himself from the wall, bringing up a hand. Bringing on that buzz.

His hand met resistance. Fluids drenched his face, hot and sticky.

The big man crashed through the retaining wall trailing loops of gut like greasy purple-gray pennons.

Lying on her stomach on the VIP box's floor, Sara had a perfect shot at Hartmann. He was buried for the moment beneath a pile of Secret Service bodies, but they were concentrating on what was happening in the audience. No one was sparing the dignitaries' seats any attention at all. When they let him up, she'd have him dead to rights.

Except she'd lost her gun.

She drummed a fist on the floor of the box with a deliberate self-hating cadence.

Gregg had no chance to recover.

Two Secret Service people hit him like blitzing linemen, shoving him down on the floor with guttural, wordless yells, their guns out. Colin, the joker, piled directly on top of him, almost knocking his breath away. "Stay down, Senator!" Puppetman snarled at the interference.

He could still hear the buzz saw whine of Mackie's hands, tangled with the crowd's screams, as Carnifex plowed into the boy. But he couldn't see, couldn't pull the strings easily because he didn't know what was happening.

Let me go! Just let me have them! That's the only chance. Gregg let loose all hold of Puppetman, lying there underneath the guards as the power reached out, savage. He mind-raped Carnifex, slicing out the pain and the fear, pumping the adrenaline so high that he could almost feel the ace's heart pounding in his own head. At the same time, he tried to dampen Mackie's insane rage, but that was like handling fire- it burned, it twisted in his grasp.

Smash him! Puppetman screamed to Carnifex. Use that damn strength and make the little man another bloodspot on the floor.

Then he felt Billy scream in agony despite the mindblock and even as he gulped at the pain greedily, he knew Mackie had won this battle. The weight on top of him was gone. Half a dozen of the Secret Service were shouting on the podium as Gregg struggled to get up, to see again. "He's cutting us to pieces-"

Then there was more gunfire, loud, and too close.

With frantic palm strokes Mackie wiped his opponent's blood from his eyes. The bitch was gone. Damn, damn, damn. He had to find her, he could not fail again-

He looked up. Hartmann was nowhere in sight. Had something happened to him, happened to the Man? Weeping tears and blood, coughing up bloody snot, he scrambled up, a broken toy on a giant's stairs. Unimpeded, up onto the ramp that gave onto the dais from stage right. Hartmann was lying there beneath half a dozen young men in suits. He looked all right. Grateful tears filled Mackie's lower eyelids.

He felt a hot breath on his cheek, heard a yell of agony from behind him as the bullet went home. A dark-suited man knelt beside the Senator on his knees, pointing a gun at him with both hands.

He tried to phase. Doubt and fatigue clamped his mind. I can't

Yellow fire reached for him from the short muzzle. Black fire exploded in his chest. He fell.

Strong arms dragged Spector off Hartmann and spun him toward the crowd. "He's cutting us to pieces. Get your piece out. We've got to nail him," said the Secret Service man who'd pulled him upright.

It was true. A little hunchback was slicing men to pieces with his buzzsaw-like hands. Spector popped the leather restraint and hauled out his gun. What the hell, might as well look the part; it could help him get free later. Spector kneeled and fired. The gun had more kick than he'd expected and the bullet took down a man well behind the fight. He steadied his gun hand with his free arm and aimed, then squeezed off three more rounds. The hunchback spun and went down.

Spector turned back toward Hartmann. "Are you all right, Senator?"

Hartmann looked up and Spector caught his eye.

Darkness pulled at Mackie with seductive arms. He fought it. There was something he had to do. Someone Terror burst inside him. His eyes came open.

He lay spread-eagled across a tier. The dais's facing hid the Senator from him. Der Mann needs me!

That need gave him strength. He made his limbs respond to his will. Made himself climb, despite the tendency of hands and Keds to slip in the red liquid that covered the ledge.

Der Mann lay where he had been before. But his neck was craned, and he was staring fixedly up at a tall, gaunt Secret Service agent. His expression seemed both elated and terrified.

Hatred for the skinny agent hit Mackie like amphetamines. He's the one who shot me! But worse than that, he was doing something to the senator. Mackie couldn't see what, but he knew.

He limped forward. His right foot dragged. Each step sent a white-hot poker through his belly. He needs me. I won't- -fail-him-again.

Spector felt something in Hartmann resist him for a moment, then it sucked him in like a whirlpool. His deathpain boiled into the senator's mind; every excruciating detail, the broken bones, the fiery blood, the choking, rushed out.

But something was wrong. Hartmann's mind wasn't reacting like any of the others. It was bloating, feasting on Spector's death. Spector pushed harder. Slowly, the other mind gave way under the pressure and began to fade.

So good so tasty but it hurts and it kills… it isn't real it can't be real it isn't possible…

But it was and Puppetman's voice had faded to a whisper and left completely and even the pain that leaked into Gregg from Puppetman was like a searing acid poured down his psyche so that he wanted to scream and plead and beg don't kill me don't kill me I don't want to die.

But he couldn't break that awful gaze, couldn't tear himself away from those strange, sad, pained, startled, hurt eyes, those eyes that weren't Colin's at all but someone else's… . and he knew that he was going to die, that he would be next, that he would follow Puppetman into the void behind those eyes.

"You're killing me!" Gregg spat with all the strength he had left, hoping that those eyes would blink or look away or turn…

… and there was nothing left in his world but those eyes…

The dark-clad back loomed ahead of. Mackie like a narrow cliff. Mackie swayed. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a long, long time.

Instead he raised his right hand, brought the buzz. He looked at his fingers, a pink blur. The sight gave him strength. He swung his hand in a flat sweeping cut.

Spector could barely stay on his feet. His knees wobbled from the strain. He'd given Hartmann everything he had, and felt hum go under. But the son of a bitch was staring at him, blinking. It simply wasn't possible.

Spector remembered the gun in his hand. He centered it on Hartmann's chest. He heard a sound like a giant bee, and hesitated. He felt a grinding pain in his neck. The convention hall spun, over and over, then rushed up and slammed him in the face. His ears were roaring, but none of the sounds seemed to make sense. There was a body lying on the floor not far from him. It was Colin; at least, it looked like the joker. But he didn't have a head. There were ribbons of tattered flesh on the neck where it had come off. All Spector could see were rushing feet.

It had to be a dream. Like the one he'd had before, only worse. He felt sick and paralyzed, but at the same time strangely euphoric. He'd just close his eyes and bring things back under control.

The head had rolled against the back of the podium. Feeling as if he were drifting on air Mackie limped toward it through roaring silence.

Painfully he leaned forward. His body felt like a dry twig that broke in a new place with every few degrees he bent.

He picked up the head, straightened slowly. He held the head up, to show to Gregg, to show to the herd of frightened sheep in white hats who trampled one another in their frenzy to flee him.

"I'm Mackie Messer," he croaked. "Mack the Knife. I'm special."

He brought the head to his face, kissed it full on the lips. 'The eyes opened.

Spector felt something on his mouth. He opened his eyes. The hunchback was staring down at him, a mocking smile on his lips. It wasn't a dream. The realization was like a fist in his chest, but he didn't have a chest anymore. The little fucker had sliced his head off. He was going to die. After all he'd lived through, he was going to fucking die! Again.

Spector fought through his panic and locked eyes with the hunchback. He channeled his pain and terror through his eyes and into the man who'd killed him. The world began to shake and blur. Spector felt the darkness closing in and tried to push it all into the hunchback. A familiar fear crept into Spector. He felt very alone.

The darkness was complete.

Mackie tried to pull his eyes away. The head's eyes held them with black-hole suction.

Something was shaking his soul to pieces. His body began to shake in sympathy, vibrating faster and faster, out of control. He felt his blood begin to boil, felt himself sweating steam from every pore.

He screamed.

The skin on the severed head's cheeks crisped and blackened from the friction of Mackie's fingers. The buzzing fingers met bone, began to shake the skull to pieces, to agitate the fluids within the rounded box of its cranium to the boiling point.

But the eyes-

The leather boy exploded. Sara dropped her head into her arms, felt wet impacts in her hair that would stay with her forever.

When she looked again, there was nothing left of hunch back or head but red-and-black splashes steaming all over the podium.

There was a dead moment.

Then Gregg was pushing aside his blanket of Secret Service agents, struggling to his feet. The crowd had flowed back from the podium like mercury from a fingertip. Now it washed forward again with a roar that went on and on.

That's it. He's president now. This guarantees it. The death of his ace assassin was no comfort. President Gregg Hartmann would have no need of German psychopaths to deal with his opponents.

If we even get that far. Steele had hinted that Soviets would launch a first-strike rather than see Hartmann inaugurated.

Her head was a dead weight. She let it drop, and let the grief pour out in hopeless tears.

Jack just tossed people out of the way till he found Tachyon, then picked the little man up and stuffed him securely under one arm. Gunshots cracked out; the stampeding crowd accelerated. There was wild but confused violence on the platform. Jack couldn't see a thing.

Jack bulled his way through the crowd, parting them like the Red Sea. Finally he and Tachyon stood in front of the massive white podium, but from his low angle they could see nothing.

Whatever had happened seemed to be over. Gregg Hartmann rose from the crush of Secret Service and brushed himself off as he walked uncertainly to the microphones.

"Damn," Jack said. "We're too late."

There were still people shouting and screaming in the hall; there was still panic as they stampeded for the exits or stared at the podium in frozen horror.

Yet the impression Gregg had was somehow one of silence, of a frozen moment like a still photograph. He could hear his own breath, gasping and very loud in his ears; he could feel very clearly the hands of the Secret Service man on either side of him. He could see Jesse Jackson being herded off the podium, Ellen blockaded by a cordon of uniformed security, dignitaries on the floor or standing with hands to faces or running blindly from the scene.

There was more blood and gore than Gregg had thought possible.

And a strange, echoing void inside his head. Puppetman?

There was no answer. Puppetman? he queried again. Silence. Only silence.

Gregg took a shuddering breath. He allowed himself to be. hauled to his feet, then shrugged away the restraining hands that wanted to pull him from the podium. "Senator, please-"

Gregg shook his head. "I'm fine. It's over." And it was very clear what he had to do now. The path was laid out before him, a gift. Puppetman was gone, and the loss was as if some great, dark burden had been lifted from him, a burden he hadn't even been aware that he was carrying. Gregg felt good. There was carnage and destruction all around him, and yet…

Later. Later we'll know.

He straightened his jacket, tugged at his tie. He arranged the words in his mind, knowing what he would say. Please. Please be calm. This is what happens when jealousy and hatred are allowed to grow. This is the fruit we receive from the seed of prejudice and ignorance. This is the bitter feast we endure whenever we turn away from suffering.

Words to salvage a presidency from ruin. Brave Hartmann, cool Hartmann, compassionate Hartmann. Hartmann before the eyes of a nation: a calming, competent leader in the midst of crisis.

Gregg stepped forward to the mikes. He looked out to the crowd and raised his hands.

Tachyon's left arm was locked about Braun's neck. His right lay across his chest. Blood stained the bandage over the amputated end. The pain from his broken ribs and his arm was so great that he couldn't lift his head from Jack's shoulder as the big ace cradled him in his arms.

Jack had returned to his place in the California delegation. The Omni smelled like a slaughterhouse, the airconditioner unable to banish the sickly sweet odor of blood. The sharp scent of gunpowder still hung in the air, the smell of shit from the released bowels of the dead. Shock seemed to hold the entire convention.

James Spector was dead.

The hunchbacked assassin was dead. But Hartmann remained.

Tachyon gnawed at his lower lip.

The candidate broke free of the clinging Secret Service agents. Head back, shoulders squared, hands outstretched in benediction, a gesture of calm, or reassurance.

He stepped to the microphone.

And in that moment Tachyon knew what to do.

Gregg began to speak, his gaze searching and pleading with the people in the seats. "Please," he began, his voice calm and deep and compelling.

And then… .. Tachyon was in his head. The alien's strong, insistent presence took Gregg's struggling ego and pushed it backward, stepping in front of him even as Gregg resisted desperately and uselessly.

"Please be calm… Hey, shut the fuck up and listen to me!" his voice shouted without any volition on his part, echoing throughout the Omni. He saw himself in one of the monitors above the floor, and he was smiling, smiling that oily, practiced campaign smile like nothing at all had happened. "Oops, got a little too vehement there, didn't I?" He felt himself giggle, of all things, tittering like a child. Gregg tried to stop the laughter, but Tachyon was too strong. Like a helpless ventriloquist's dummy, he spouted someone else's words.

"But you have to admit you did shut up, didn't you? That's better. Hey, I'm calm. Let's all be calm. No panic in a crisis, not me. No way. Your next president doesn't panic. Uh-uh."

Down on the floor, the exodus had stopped. The delegates were staring at him. His casual, amused delivery was more chilling and horrible than any screaming fit could have been. Above the sobbing and moaning behind him, he heard Connie Chung in the VIP section shout into her mike, "Get the cameras on Hartmann! Now!"

Inside, he continued to fight uselessly against the bonds Tachyon had placed on his will. So this is what it feels like to be a puppet, he thought. Let me go, damn you! But there was no escape. Tachyon held the strings, and he was a practiced puppeteer himself.

Gregg chuckled, glanced back at the carnage, and then shook his head as he turned back to the crowd. He held his arm straight out from his body toward them, his palm down and fingers spread wide.

"Look at that," he said. "Not even a tremble. Cool as a damn cucumber. So much for the old '76 worries, huh? Maybe this is a good thing in the long run, if it puts all that business to rest."

John Werthen and Devaughn had come forward to pull him away from the mikes, and he watched himself flail his arms at them, pushing them away and grabbing at the mikes desperately. "Go away! Can't you see that I'm just fine? Back off! Let me handle this." John looked at Devaughn, who shrugged. Gregg tugged his hopelessly soiled suit coat back into position as they let go of him hesitantly. He gave that eerie smile for the cameras once more.

"Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes." He chuckled again and waggled a finger at the delegates. "This is not acceptable behavior and I won't have it," he scolded them as if talking to a class of schoolchildren. "We had a little problem up here but it's over. Let's forget it. In fact-"

He giggled and bent down to the stage. When he straightened again, his forefinger was dripping with a thick, bright red liquid. "I want you to write `No More Violence' a hundred times as punishment," he said, and he reached out to the clear acrylic panel in front of the lectern and traced a large smeary "N" on it. The first loop of the "O" was barely legible.

"Oops, out of ink," Gregg declared gaily, and bent down to the stage again. This time he plopped something meaty and unidentifiable down on the lectern with a distinct wet plop. He dipped his finger into it like a quill pen into an inkwell. Someone was being noisily sick again behind him, and there were screams from down on the floor. He could hear Ellen sobbing and pleading with anyone who would listen: "Get him out of there. Please, stop him…" John and Devaughn came forward again, and this time they took hold of him firmly, one on each arm.

"Hey, you can't do this!" Gregg spluttered loudly. "I haven't finished yet: You can't-"

It was over. At least it was over. Tachyon's control dropped from him and he sagged in their arms, silent. Gregg tried not to see the horrified faces he passed as they escorted him backstage: Ellen, Jackson, Amy. He cursed Tachyon, knowing the alien was still there.

Damn you for this. You didn't have to do it this way. You didn't have to humiliate and destroy me like that. Couldn't you see that Puppetman was dead? Damn you forever.