Aces High

II.

Brennan left the clinic a little before midnight and went home to the one-room apartment on the fringes of Jokertown that was his base of operations. There was a sense of organized clutter about the apartment, which consisted of a bathroom, kitchen area, and living area with a sofa-bed, ancient rocking chair, and an obviously handmade workbench overflowing with equipment any bowyer would recognize. And some that a bowyer wouldn't.

He pulled the bed out of the sofa, stripped, and flopped down with a bone-weary sigh. He slept for twenty-four hours, completing the healing process that Mai had begun. He was ravenously hungry when he awoke and was fixing himself a meal when there came a light knock on the door. He peered out of the peephole. It was, as he had expected, Mai, the only person who knew where he lived.

"Trouble?" Brennan asked, seeing the worry on her usually-placid features. He stepped aside to let her into the room.

"I don't know. I think so."

"Tell me about it." He went behind the counter that divided the kitchen area from the rest of the apartment and poured water from the pot whistling on the stove into two small, handleless teacups. They were porcelain, hand-painted with the colors of a dream. They were older than the United States and the most precious things Brennan owned. He handed one to Mai in the rocking chair, and sat down on the rumpled bed opposite her.

"It's Dr. Tachyon." She sipped the hot, aromatic tea, gathering her thoughts. "He's been acting… strange."

"In what way?"

"He's been brusque, demanding. And he's neglecting his patients."

"Since when?"

"Yesterday, since coming back from his meeting with the man from the State Department. There's something else." She balanced the precious teacup on her lap and took a folded newspaper from the purse that she had set beside the rocker.

"Have you seen this?" Brennan shook his head.

The headlines screamed TACHYON TO LEAD ACE ASSAULT AGAINST SPACE MENACE. A picture below the bold letters showed Tachyon standing with a man identified as Alexander Lankester, head of the Anti-Swarm Task Force. The accompanying article stated that Tachyon was recruiting aces to follow him in an assault against the Swarm Mother orbiting the Earth beyond ballistic missile range. Captain Trips and Modular Man had already agreed to go along.

Something was wrong, Brennan thought. Tachyon had hoped the singularity shifter would end the request for such a useless assault. Instead, it seemed as if the opposite were happening.

"Do you think the government is blackmailing him into doing this?" Brennan asked. "Or is controlling his mind somehow?"

"It is possible," Mai shrugged. "I only know that he may need help."

He looked at her for a long moment and she calmly returned his gaze.

"He has no friends?"

"Many of his friends are poor, helpless jokers. Others are hard to reach. Or may not be inclined to act swiftly if the government is somehow involved."

Brennan stood up and turned his back to her while carrying his teacup back to the counter. The network of human relationships was reaching out, ensnaring him in its sticky grip once again. He dumped the dregs of his tea into the sink and gazed into the bottom of the teacup. It was the blue of a perfect, depthless pool, the blue of an empty, endless sky. Looking into it was like contemplating the void. It was pleasurable in its utter peacefulness, but not, Brennan realized, his particular pathway to enlightenment.

He turned around to face Mai again, his mind made up. "All right. I'll check it out. But I don't know anything about things like mind control. I71 need some help."

He reached for the phone and dialed a number.

Brennan had rarely been in the public rooms of the Crystal Palace, though he had spent more than one night in the rooms on the third floor. Elmo nodded as he came in, without commenting on the case he carried. The dwarf gestured to the corner table where Chrysalis sat with a man wearing black jeans and a brown leather jacket. He had handsome, regular features, except for his bulging forehead.

"You," Fortunato said as Brennan came up to their table. He looked from Brennan to Chrysalis. She regarded him with a level gaze, the blood pulsing steadily through the arteries of her glass-clear throat. She looked at Brennan and nodded coolly, showing no sign of the passion that Brennan knew from the time he spent on the Palace's third floor.

"This is Yeoman," she said as Brennan took the third seat at the table. "I believe that he has some information you might find interesting."

Fortunato frowned. Their last meeting hadn't exactly been cordial, though there was no actual animosity between the two.

"Word has it that you're looking for a way to get at the Swarm. I know something that could help."

"I'll listen. "

Brennan told him about the singularity shifter. He told no lies, but he shaded things skillfully, having been coached by Chrysalis as to the approach that would most likely sway Fortunato to help him investigate Tachyon's strange behavior. "What can you do beside making your mind go away?" Fortunato asked when Brennan was done with his story.

"I can take care of myself. And most others who might try to interfere with us."

"You that crazed killer the papers been speculating about lately?"

Brennan reached into his back pants pocket and withdrew a card. He dropped it face up on the table in front of Fortunato. The sorcerer-pimp looked at it, nodded.

"Me and the Black Shadow are the only aces of spades I know of." He looked up at Brennan. "But I guess there's room for one more. The only thing I don't understand is what you get out of this," he said, turning to Chrysalis.

"If this works out, whatever I want. From both of you… "

Fortunato grunted. He stood up.

"Yeah. You always do. Well, come along. We'd best be checking if that alien Beau Brummell's still got all his brains." Brennan drove them through the early-morning darkness to Tachyon's apartment. Out of the corner of his eye he occasionally caught Fortunato studying him, but the ace chose not to ask any questions. Fortunato hadn't accepted him yet, Brennan realized, and he was still wary and watchful, if not openly distrustful. But that was all right. He wasn't sure of Fortunato yet, either.

He parked the BMW in the alley beside Tachyon's apartment building. He and Fortunato got out and looked up at the building.

"We go in by the front door," Fortunato asked, "or the back door?"

"When there's been a choice, it's always been my policy to go in by the back."

"Smart man," Fortunato murmured, "smart man." Fortunato watched with a dubious expression, but said nothing as Brennan took his case from the BMW's trunk, opened it, slung his compound bow over his back, then attached the quiver of arrows to his belt.

"Let's go."

They made their way to the rear of the apartment building, and Fortunato burned a bit of his psychic energy in bringing down the fire-escape ladder. They cat-footed along the fire escape until they came to the window of Tachyon's apartment, and peered inside his bedroom.

The room, lit by the light from an overturned bedside lamp, was a shambles. It had been tossed by an impatient searcher who hadn't bothered to set things right again. Brennan and Fortunato glanced at each other.

"Something weird is happening," Fortunato muttered. The window was locked, but that wasn't an obstacle to Brennan. He removed a circle of glass from the lower pane with his glass cutter, reached a hand in, unlatched the window, and silently slid it up. He put out an arm, stopping Fortunato from entering, and laid a finger across his lips. They listened for a moment, but heard nothing.

Brennan went in first, leaping down from the windowsill as silently as a cat, his strung bow in his left hand, his right hand hovering near the quiver velcroed to his belt. Fortunato followed, making enough noise to cause Brennan to stare at him accusingly. The ace shrugged and Brennan led the way through the room. In the hallway that led to the kitchen, living area, and guest bedroom, they heard a series of crashes, hollow thumps, and occasional shattering sounds, as if a careless or uncaring searcher were rummaging through the rooms deeper in the apartment.

They went quietly down the hall, passing a closed door to a guest bedroom. The hall opened out into the apartment's living room, which looked as devastated as a trailer park after a tornado. A slight, short man with long curly red hair was methodically pulling books off their shelves, looking behind them.

"Tachyon," Brennan said aloud.

He turned and looked at the two in the hallway, totally calm, utterly unstartled. He started toward them, no expression at all on his face.

Fortunato suddenly put a hand in the small of Brennan's back and pushed, sending him sprawling to the carpet. "That's not Tachyon!" he shouted.

The next few seconds seemed to Brennan as if he were viewing a videotape on fast forward. Fortunato was doing something to time. He became a blur rocketing through the air toward the Tachyon look-alike, but was just as quickly thrown aside as soon as the two of them touched.

Brennan drew an arrow and snapped off a shot from a kneeling position.

The arrow was fletched with color-coded red and black feathers. Its shaft was hollow aluminum, packed with plastic explosives. Its tip was a pressure-sensitive detonator. The arrow was too heavy to be aerodynamically stable over long distances, but the thing masquerading as Tachyon was less than twenty-five feet away.

Brennan's arrow struck it high on the chest and exploded, sending a shower of flesh and green ooze over the room. The thing was flung backward by the impact. Its upper half disappeared, leaving a twitching pair of legs attached to a trunk that spilled inhuman organs and oozed a thick green ichor. It was some moments before the legs ceased their attempts to walk.

"What was that thing?" Brennan shouted over the roaring in his ears:

"Damned if I know," Fortunato said, getting up from where it had flung him. "I tried to scan its mind, but it had no mind. Nothing human, anyway."

"It looked like Tachyon," Brennan said in a lower voice, his hearing returning to normal. "Down to the last detail." He frowned, looked at Fortunato. "Tachyon's mind wasn't taken over. He was replaced."

"When was the last time you saw what you're certain was the real Tachyon?"

"Yesterday. At the clinic. Before he went to a meeting at the Olympia Hotel with that Lankester fellow from the State Department."

"Let's check in."

The frail, white-haired old man in the bellhop uniform lifted Brennan over his head and slammed him against the wall. Brennan hit the wall hard and slid down to the carpet, panting like a dog for breath. He was in trouble.

The bellhop loomed over him, no expression at all on his lined face. Brennan surged to his knees, his lungs on fire, and saw the bellhop's eyes roll up in his head. The bellhop tottered backward, windmilling his limbs as if he were caught in a hurricane wind. He did a crazy staggering dance and crashed through the window at the end of the hall. It was a long way to the street below.

Brennan pulled himself upright while Fortunato flexed his fingers. He took Brennan's arm and said, "No brains to control, but you can push them around."

"Someone probably heard that," Brennan gasped, the breath returning to his lungs.

"I could have let it smash you flat."

"There's that." He took a deep, grateful breath. "We need to lie low for awhile."

They stopped in front of one of the rooms.

"How about this one?" Fortunato asked. Brennan shrugged silently. Fortunato put his hand on the knob and reached out with his mind. Tumblers clicked and bolts lifted and the door opened.

"It'll take them some time to track us down," the ace said as they entered the dark hotel room. "How many agents you think they have?"

"No telling," Brennan said, stretching his aching back carefully. "More than I suspected, for sure."

"I thought you were surreptitious as shit."

Brennan shook his head. The plan had been for him to scout the floor where Lankester's suite was located, gathering what intelligence he could, while Fortunato used his mental powers to monitor his progress from the stairwell. The false bellhop had spotted and attacked him almost immediately. It was all Brennan could do to hang on until Fortunato arrived. "We'd better try our alternate plan," Brennan said.

"It may take some time."

Fortunato settled himself on one of the double beds, legs crossed in front of him, back straight, hands dangling in his lap. He stared ahead at nothing. Brennan stood between him and the door, listening for sounds in the corridor outside, as he removed his bow and quiver of arrows from the case Fortunato had kept for him while he scouted the hotel.

Fortunato seemed to sink deep into a trance, not unlike, Brennan thought, a student of Zen descended into zazen, the state of meditation. After a moment, a set of ram's horns materialized from Fortunato's bulging forehead, shimmering and indistinct in the darkness.

Brennan watched with pursed lips. His Zen training had taught him that there was no such thing as magic, but here was evidence to the contrary, right before his eyes. What was magic, perhaps, but unexplained science?

Brennan filed the question away for later meditation as Fortunato abruptly opened his eyes. They were pools of darkness, his pupils dilated so much that they almost swallowed the irises. His voice was husky, a little shaken.

"They're all around us, those things," he said. "At least twenty. Maybe more. They're not human, not even of this Earth. Their minds, if you could call them that, are alien, utterly beyond my experience."

"Are they Swarm creatures?"

Fortunato rose with easy, fluid grace, shrugged. "Could be. I thought the best they could do was hulks that looked like the Pillsbury doughboy. I thought bellboys and shit like that was beyond them."

"Maybe they've refined their technique." Brennan held up a hand, pressed his ear to the door. The footsteps in the corridor beyond passed by their room as he and Fortunato waited quietly. "What about Tachyon?"

Fortunato frowned. "I contacted one human mind. A maid. She didn't realize anything unusual was going on. A little pissed off that the guests on this floor weren't tipping too well. Weren't tipping at all, in fact. There was also something I touched by the elevators. Could've been Tachyon's mind, but there was a blanket on it, a fence around it. I could catch only vague, filtered notions. They were full of weariness. And pain."

"It could be Tachyon?"

"It could."

Brennan took a deep breath. "Any plans?"

"All out of 'em."

The two looked at each other. Brennan touched the quiver at his side.

"I wish you had a weapon," he said.

"I do. Several." He tapped his forehead. "And they're all in here."

They waited until it was quiet in the corridor outside, then opened the door and moved fast. They ran as quietly as they could down the hotel corridor, hung a right as it turned to a T, and found themselves by the bank of elevators. In a niche, of to one side, was something that looked like a linen closet. Brennan notched an arrow and drew it back while Fortunato gestured the door open.

Brennan lowered the bow.

"Sweet Christ in heaven," he murmured. Fortunato glanced from him to the closet, and froze. '

Tachyon was inside. His hair, drenched with sweat, fell over his face in limp curls. His eyes stared through the tangle of hair. They were puffy and bloodshot, and glazed with pain and weariness. The shelves and linens had been removed from the closet, making room for Tachyon and the thing that embraced him. Tachyon was pressed against a vast, purplish couch of biomass that bound him with a score of ropy tendrils across his neck, chest, arms, and legs. The thing pulsed rhythmically, rippling like a fat lady bouncing on a water bed.

Tachyon was set into a hollow in its surface that cupped him securely, perfectly following his contours and dimensions. His eyes focused upon Fortunato, flicked to Brennan. "Help," he croaked, his lips working for several moments before any sound came out.

Brennan reached down, drew the knife he carried in an ankle sheath, and slashed at the tendrils binding Tachyon to the thing. It was like cutting through hard, stretchy rubber, but he sawed away grimly,- ignoring the increasing pulsations of the thing and the greenish ichor that splattered himself and Tachyon.

It took a minute to saw through all the tendrils, but even then it still clung to Tachyon. It was then that Brennan noticed the suckers fastened to the sides and back of Tachyon's neck. "How do we get you out?" he asked.

"Just pull," Tachyon whispered.

Brennan did, and Tachyon began to scream.

The doctor finally came free. He collapsed into Brennan's arms, stinking of sweat and fear and alien secretions. He was deathly pale and bleeding profusely from the points where the suckers had fastened. The wounds didn't look serious, but there was, Brennan realized, no telling how damaging they actually might be.

"Look out," Fortunato said, "we've got company." Brennan looked up the corridor. A dozen of the human simulacra were approaching, dressed as bellhops, maids, and ordinary men and women in dresses and three-piece suits. In the middle of them was Lankester of the State Department. Brennan dragged Tachyon over to the elevator as the creatures advanced at a steady pace, their faces composed and utterly unemotional. Fortunato joined him, a worried look on his face.

"What do we do now?"

"Punch for an elevator."

The things were twenty feet away when they heard the chime of an arriving elevator.

"Take him," Brennan said, thrusting the limp, barely conscious form of Tachyon into Fortunato's arms. He drew an arrow from his quiver as the elevator door swished open. Inside were three middle-aged men dressed in conservative business suits with Shriner's hats on their heads. They stared wide-eyed as Fortunato dragged Tachyon inside. Fortunato looked at them.

"Basement, please," he said. The one standing by the panel of buttons punched it automatically as Fortunato stopped the door from closing with his foot. Brennan placed three explosive arrows in the midst of the advancing creatures. The first one hit Lankester in the chest. The second and third exploded to the left and right of him, blowing gore and protoplasm all over the hotel corridor. He fell back into the elevator and Fortunato let the door close.

Brennan leaned on his bow, took a deep, relieved breath. The Shriners huddled together fearfully in the corner of the elevator.

Fortunato looked at them. "First time in town?"

"So Lankester had been replaced by one of these newgeneration swarmlings some time ago?" Brennan asked. Tachyon nodded and took a long pull from the mug Mai handed him. It was full of thick black coffee, laced generously with brandy.

"Before I ever met him-it. That's why it was pushing for that insane attack plan. It knew we wouldn't be able to really harm the Swarm Mother, yet such an attack would make everyone think something concrete was being done to fight the menace." He paused, took another long pull from the mug. "And there's another thing. The Swarm Mother might want specimens of aces."

Brennan looked at him quizzically. "Specimens?"

"To take apart and replicate from her own biomass."

"Shit," Fortunato murmured. "It wants to grow its own aces. "

They were in Tachyon's office at the clinic. Tachyon had cleaned up, but was still pale and shaky from the ordeal he had undergone. There was a bandage around his neck where the Swarm creature had attached its suckers.

"What happens now?" Brennan asked. Tachyon sighed, set the mug aside.

"We attack the Swarm Mother."

"What?" Fortunato said. "That Swarm thing scramble your brains? You just said it was insane to attack the Mother."

"It was. It is. But it's the best option open to us." He looked from Fortunato, who was openly incredulous, to Brennan, who looked blankly noncommittal. "Look, the Swarm has started a new wave of attack which is much more ' sophisticated than its previous ones. There's no telling how far they've managed to penetrate into the government."

"If they could replace Lankester," Brennan murmured, "who else might they have gotten?"

"Exactly. Whom does it have?" Tachyon shuddered. "The possibilities are mind-boggling. If it could replace enough key personnel to carry it off, it'd think nothing of starting a worldwide nuclear exchange and simply waiting the necessary millenia until the surface of the planet is inhabitable once again."

"It's obvious that we can't trust anyone from the government to help us attack the Swarm Mother. We have to do it ourselves."

"How do we do that?" Fortunato asked in a tone that indicated he wasn't won over by Tachyon's arguments. "We have the singularity shifter," Tachyon said, his voice rising eagerly. "We need a weapon, though. Takisians have successfully used biological weapons against Swarm Mothers in the past, but your biological sciences aren't sophisticated enough to produce a suitable weapon. Perhaps I can come up with something…"

"There is a weapon," a quiet voice said. The three men turned and looked at Mai, who had been silently listening to their conversation.

Tachyon stared at her, and then sat upright in his chair, sloshing the brandy-laced coffee over the front of his brocaded dressing gown.

"Don't talk nonsense," he said sharply.

Fortunato looked from Tachyon to Mai. "What is this shit?"

"Nothing," Tachyon said. "Mai works with me at the clinic. She's used her power to help some of my patients, but it would be out of the question for her to get involved in this."

"What power?"

Mai lifted her hands, palms facing outward. "I can touch a person's soul," she said. "We become one and I find the sickness in it. I take the sickness to myself and soothe it, smoothing the curves of the life pattern and mending the breaks. We can then both become well again."

"Meaning, in English?" Fortunato asked.

"She manipulates genetic material," Tachyon said with a sigh. "She can mold it in near any way she visualizes. I suppose she could use her power on the Swarm Mother in a reverse manner to cause cellular disruption on a massive scale."

"She can give the Mother cancer?" Fortunato asked. "She probably could," Tachyon conceded. "If I allowed her to get involved, which I'm not. It would be insanely dangerous for a woman."

"It's insanely dangerous for anyone," Fortunato said sharply. "If she's the best bet against that Mother and she's willing to try, I say let her do it."

"And I forbid it!" Tachyon said, sloshing coffee from his mug as he slammed it against the arm of his chair.

"It is not for you to forbid," Mai said. "I must do it. It is my karma."

Tachyon turned to Brennan. "Can't you talk some sense into her?"

Brennan shook his head. "It's her decision," he said slowly. He wished he could agree with Tachyon, but Brennan knew he couldn't interfere with Mai's karma, her chosen path to enlightenment. But, Brennan resolved, she wouldn't walk her path alone.

"That's settled, then," Fortunato said flatly. "We get Mai up to the Swarm Mother and she sticks it with a fatal dose of cancer. I'm going too. I want a piece of that motherfucker myself. "

Tachyon looked from Fortunato to Mai to Brennan and saw that nothing he could say would change their minds. "All right," he sighed. He turned to Fortunato. "You'll have to power the singularity shifter," Tachyon said. "I can't do it myself." He dragged his fingers through his curly hair. "The swarmling temporarily burned out some of my powers in trying to suck out my memories for the duplicate Tachyon. We can't afford to wait until they come back."

"I can, however, ferry a boarding party close to the Swarm Mother in Baby. Fortunato can shift the party inside the Swarm Mother. Speed and stealth will be necessary, but the boarders will need some protection. Modular Man perhaps, or maybe one of Trips's friends.. ."

Brennan shook his head. "You said speed and stealth would be necessary. If you sent Modular Man in there blazing away, he'd bring down the defenses of the Swarm Mother in an instant. "

Tachyon massaged his forehead wearily. "You're right. Any suggestions?"

"Of course." Brennan took a deep breath. This was getting far from his original reasons for coming to the city, but he couldn't let Mai face the Swarm without him. He wouldn't. "Me."

"You?" Tachyon said hesitantly. "Are you up for it?"

"He was up for rescuing you from the blob," Fortunato broke in. He looked at Brennan, the doubt in his eyes replaced by certainty. "I've seen him in action. He can handle himself," Tachyon nodded decisively. "It's settled, then." He turned to Mai. "I don't like sending a woman into danger, but you're right. You're the only one who has a chance of destroying the Swarm Mother."

"I'll do what I have to," she said quietly.

Tachyon nodded gravely and took her hand in his, but a cold chill passed through Brennan at her words. He was sure that Tachyon had heard an entirely different meaning in them than he had.

Lift-off was something Brennan filed away as an interesting experience. He would not willingly seek it out again, but the sight of the Earth in Baby's viewscreens was a scene of awesome beauty that he would carry for the rest of his life. He felt almost unworthy of the sight and wished that Ishida, his roshi, could view it.

There were three others in the Arabian Nights fantasy that was Tachyon's control room. Tachyon guided his ship in silence. He was still hurting from his mistreatment by the Swarm. Brennan could see that he kept himself going by willpower alone. His face was lined with weariness and uncharacteristic tenseness.

Fortunato virtually crackled with impatient, nervous energy. He had spent the time before lift-off charging his batteries, as he had put it. He was now ready, and impatient for action.

Only Mai seemed calm and unmoved. She sat quietly on the control room's couch, her hands in her lap, watching everything with unworried interest. Brennan watched her watch. She had agreed readily to Tachyon's plan. How she would carry it out, though, was a different matter. That thought worried him.

After a time, Tachyon spoke, tension and weariness cracking his voice.

"There it is."

Brennan peered over Tachyon's shoulder at the globular monstrosity that filled Baby's forward viewscreens.

"It's immense," he said. "How do we find our way around it?"

Tachyon turned to Fortunato. "Instruct the singularity shifter to take you to the middle of the thing. You should end up pretty close to where you want to be. You can find the nerve center by tracking its mind." Tachyon felt the mind of his ship tug at his brain. What is it, Baby?

We're approaching the Swarm Mother's detector range. Thank you. He turned to the others. "You'd better get ready. It's almost time."

Fortunato took out the singularity shifter from the backpack in which Tachyon had hidden it in the spare bedroom of his apartment. In the bottom of the pack was a. 45 automatic in a shoulder rig.

"What's this?" Fortunato said. He looked at Tachyon. "You may need it," the doctor said. "It's going to take more out of you than you know, to power this jump." Fortunato touched the butt of the gun, looked at Tachyon. He shrugged. "What the hell," he said, and strapped it on. He hefted the singularity shifter, and he and Brennan and Mai formed a circle. All helped hold'the shifter. Brennan glanced at Mai. She looked back steadily. Out of the corner of his eye he saw in a viewscreen a brilliant flash of light wink out from the Swarm Mother. Baby rocked as the organically generated particle beam struck her, but her defensive screens held. Brennan felt a soft whisper in his brain.

Remember. You must not allow Mai or Fortunato to be captured by the Swarm Mother.

He looked up at Tachyon, who stared at him steadily for a moment, then turned back to his viewscreen.

"Go!" Tachyon shouted.

Fortunato's eyes closed, his brow furrowed in concentration. Spectral ram's horns glimmered from the sides of his head. Brennan felt a sudden wrenching, a tearing as if every cell of his body were being hurled apart. He couldn't breathe with lungs that were no more, he couldn't relax muscles that were torn into their constituent molecules and hurled across hundreds of miles of empty vacuum. He stiffled a scream and his consciousness slammed up against a wall of nausea. The trip was worse than his jaunt to the clinic, for it seemed to last forever, though Tachyon had said a journey by singularity shifter lasted no time at all.

Then, suddenly, he was whole again. He and Mai and Fortunato were in a corridor that was dimly lit by large blue and green phosphorescent cells in the translucent ceiling and walls. Ropy tendrils ran below their feet, presumably conduits for whatever was used as blood and nutrients in the thing. The air was hot and wetly humid and smelled like a greenhouse gone bad. Its oxygen content was enough to make Brennan giddy until he adjusted his breathing. He felt light on his feet, though there was a definite gravitational pull. The Swarm Mother, he realized, must be spinning, producing artificial gravity that was necessary for directed organic growth.

"Are you all right?" he asked his companions.

Mai nodded, but Fortunato was breathing harshly. His face was an ashen mask.

"The… space faggot was right.."he panted. "That was a bitch." His hands were shaking as he fumbled the shifter back into the backpack.

"Relax-" Brennan began, and fell silent.

Somewhere ahead in the twisting, rolling passageway was a vast sucking sound.

"Which way do we have to go?" Brennan asked quietly. Fortunato concentrated mightily. "I can sense some kind of mind up ahead." He pointed in the direction of the sucking sound. "If you could call it a mind…"

"Great," Brennan muttered. He unslung his bow. "Listen," Fortunato grabbed Mai's arm. "You could help me out…"

"No time for that," Brennan said. "Besides, Mai will need all her own energy to get through this thing. And so will L" Fortunato began to say something, but the sucking sound, which was getting louder and louder, was suddenly right upon them when a grotesque green and yellow mass of protoplasm rolled down a bend in the tubular corridor toward them. It had a score of suckers placed randomly over a globular body that nearly filled the passageway.

"Christ!" Fortunato swore. "What is that thing?"

It was plastered to the side of the corridor, scouring the wall and floor with myriad suckerlike mouths that were ringed by hundreds of foot-long cilia.

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out," Brennan said. "Let's get going."

He selected an arrow and laid it loosely on the string of his bow, and started to edge past the thing. Mai and Fortunato followed warily. The thing continued to scour away. The cilia of the mouths facing them quivered eagerly as they passed, but the creature made no move toward them.

Brennan sighed in relief.

The blue phosphorescent twilight tinged their surroundings with a sense of soft-focus unreality as they followed the passageway deeper into the Swarm Mother. The unmoving air was so thick with the scents of living things that it reminded Brennan of the jungles of Vietnam. He kept glancing around, twitching with nervousness, feeling as if he were in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. He couldn't shake the ominous, oppressive sensation of being watched.

They followed the undulating passageway for half an hour in tense silence, always expecting, but never actually facing, a deadly attack from the Swarm Mother's killing machines. They stopped when the corridor branched into a Y -shaped fork. Both tines of the Y seemed to be leading in the direction they needed to go.

"Which way?" Brennan asked.

Fortunato rubbed his swollen forehead tiredly.

"I can hear a thousand little twitterings. Not real minds, at least not sentient minds, but their noise is driving me crazy. The big one is still up ahead, somewhere."

Brennan glanced at Mai. She looked at him placidly, as if willing to let him make all the decisions. Brennan tossed a coin in his mind and it came up heads.

"This way," he said, taking the right fork.

They hadn't gone a hundred yards before Brennan realized that something was different in this passageway. The air smelled sweet, almost cloying. It was difficult to breathe, yet at the same time almost intoxicating. The odor grew stronger as they advanced.

"I'm not sure I like this," Brennan said. "Do we have a choice?" Mai asked. Brennan looked at her and shrugged. They went on, turned a sharp bend in the passageway, and stopped, staring at the scene before them.

The passageway widened to forty feet across. On both sides of it, hanging near the ceiling, were scores of grotesque swarmlings with shriveled limbs and huge, swollen abdomens. They were nursing from what looked like swollen nipples jutting from the walls of the passageway.

In turn, Swarm creatures of every size and description crowded around each of the hanging swarmlings, jostling for a place at one of the hollow tubes dangling from their swollen abdomens. The Swarm creatures ranged in size from tiny, insectlike entities to tentacular monstrosities that must have weighed several tons. There were hundreds of them.

"It looks like they're feeding," Fortunato whispered. Brennan nodded. "We can't go through there. We'll have to go back and try the other branch."

They started back down the passageway, and suddenly stopped when they heard a quiet buzzing, as if from a multitude of small wings, drift down toward them from the way they had come.

"Shit," Fortunato said in disbelief. "We're caught in the middle of a damn shift change."

"The first Swarm creature we ran into ignored us," Brennan said. "Maybe these will too."

They hugged the wall of the passageway-it was warm, Brennan found, and pliable to the touch-and were as quiet and unobtrusive as they could be. They waited.

A swarm of the insectoid creatures buzzed down the corridor. They were four to six inches long with segmented bodies and large, membranous wings. The first few passed them by and went straight to the feeding chamber, and Brennan thought they were safe. But then one stopped and landed on Mai. Another joined it, then another and another. She looked down at them calmly. One landed on Brennan's shoulder. He stared at it. Its mouth parts consisted of multiple mandibular arrangements. One set of mandibles began tearing at the fabric of Brennan's shirt while another stuffed fragments of cloth into its little mouth.

Brennan brushed the thing aside distastefully and stepped on it. It crunched loudly under his foot, like a cockroach, but two had already taken its place on Brennan's body. He heard Fortunato swear and knew they were crawling over him, as well.

"Let's try to move away from them," he said quietly, but that did no good. The bugs followed and landed on the three in increasing numbers.

"Run for it," Brennan called, and they took off down the corridor.

Some of the swarm continued on to the feeding chamber, but more followed them down the passageway in an angrily buzzing cloud. Brennan batted at them as he ran, knocking some out of the air. He slapped at the ones crawling on him, but there were many to take the place of those he knocked down or crushed. They landed on his face and arms and he could feel their thousand little feet crawl all over him. They seemed to be most interested in his clothes, and, more importantly, his bow and arrows. It was as if they were scavengers programmed to dispose of nonliving matter. But that didn't make them harmless. Brennan felt their sharp mandibles tear into his flesh nearly as often as not. The buzzing of their wings and the clacking sounds of their mandibles were loud in Brennan's ears. They had to get away from them.

They reached the point where the passageway divided into the Y, looking desperately for something, anything, that would enable them to shake the little scavengers. Fortunato ran down the other branch of the passageway and Brennan and Mai followed. The floor was slick with moisture. Its surface was uneven. The moisture caught in shallow pools that set off a fine spray of liquid as they slogged through them. The liquid was warm and clear, though murky. They splashed down the corridor and the swarm of insectoids seemed to pull back. Fortunato flopped down into a shallow pool that had gathered in one of the deeper hollows, and rolled around and around, dislodging and crushing the insectoids that were crawling all over him. Brennan and Mai joined him. Brennan kept his lips shut tightly, but the murky liquid drenched him from head to toe. It looked, and smelled, like tepid water with fine particles suspended in it. Brennan was not particularly eager to ingest any of it.

Brennan glanced at his companions as they crouched in the shallow pool. Their clothes looked like they had been attacked by a legion of moths, and they had numerous cuts and gouges, but no one seemed badly injured. The swarm of persistent insectoids hovered over their heads, buzzing, it seemed to Brennan somewhat angrily.

"How do we get rid of them?" he asked, irritated himself. "I may have enough left to send those little mothers somewhere," Fortunato ground out.

"I don't know-" Brennan began, and never got a chance to finish.

The surface below their feet fell away as a sphincter opened. All the liquid in the passageway gushed downward and they went with it. Brennan had time to take a deep breath and a tight grip on his bow. He reached out and grabbed Mai by an ankle as she was sucked down into darkness and he swirled down after her, cursing as he lost half the arrows in his quiver.

There was more liquid in the passageway than he had realized. They were caught in a rushing vortex with no air to breathe and no light to see by. Brennan held tight to his Mai's ankle, remembering Tachyon's silent warning.

They splashed down into a large chamber, totally submerged in a pool of liquid the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Brennan and Mai bobbed to the surface and treaded water, glancing about. Fortunately, this chamber was lit by the same blue phosphorescence as the passageway above. Fortunato swam over to join them, fighting against a current that was drawing them to the other end of the pool.

"What the hell is this?" Fortunato asked.

Brennan found that it was hard to shrug while treading water. "I don't know. Maybe a reservoir? All living things need water to survive."

"At least those bugs are gone," Fortunato said. He struck out for the side of the chamber, and Brennan and Mai followed.

They scrabbled up the slope, going slowly and cautiously because the surface was wet and slippery. They finally flung themselves down, panting, for a moment's rest. Brennan patched up the worst bug-bites with bandages from the small first-aid kit he carried on his belt.

"Which way now?"

Fortunato took a moment to orient himself, and then pointed. "There."

They went on through the belly of the beast. It was a nightmarish trek through a strange realm of organic monstrosities. The passageway they followed opened up into vast halls where menlike creatures mewling in half-formed idiocy hung by umbilical cords from pulsating ceilings, led through galleries where sacks of undifferentiated biomass quivered like loathsome jellies while awaiting sculpting by the will of the Swarm Mother, passed by chambers where monsters of a hundred alien forms were being manufactured for what purpose the Swarm Mother alone knew. Some of these last were developed enough to be aware of the interlopers, but they were all still attached to the body of the Mother by protoplasmic umbilical cords. They snapped and snarled and hissed as Brennan and the others passed by, and he was forced to put arrows through the brains of a few of the more persistent creatures.

Not all had the inhuman forms of swarmlings. Some were manlike in shape and appearance, with human faces. Recognizable human faces. There was Ronald Reagan with slickedback hair and a twinkle in his eye. There was Maggie Thatcher, looking stern and unyielding. And there was Gorbachev's head, strawberry-colored birthmark and all, set upon a mass of quivering protoplasm that was as soft and puffy as a human body sculpted from bread dough.

"Sweet Jesus," Fortunato said. "It looks like we got here just in time."

"I hope so," Brennan murmured.

The passageway began to narrow and they had to stoop, and finally get down on hands and knees and crawl. Brennan looked back at Fortunato and the ace nodded them on.

"It's ahead. I can feel it pulsing: feed and grow, feed and grow."

The flesh of the tunnel wall was rubbery and warm. Brennan disliked touching it, but he pushed himself forward. The tunnel narrowed until it was so cramped that Brennan realized he couldn't bring his bow to bear. They were helpless, and traveling into the most dangerous area in the Swarm Mother, her nerve center. He shoved on through a crawlway of living flesh for a hundred yards or more, Mai and Fortunato following him, until at last he popped out into an open space. Fortunato followed and they both helped Mai down.

They looked around. It was a small chamber. There was hardly room in it for the three of them and the large, tri-lobed, gray-pink organ suspended in the middle of the chamber by a network of fibrous tendrils that penetrated into the floor, ceiling, and walls.

"This is it," Fortunato muttered in an exhausted voice.

"The nerve center of the Swarm Mother. Its brain or core or whatever you want to call it."

He and Brennan turned to Mai. She stepped forward and Brennan took her arm.

"Kill it," he urged. "Kill it and let's get out of here." She looked at him calmly. He could see his reflection in her large, dark eyes. "You know I've sworn to never harm another sentient being," she said quietly.

"Are you crazy?" Fortunato cried. "What did we come here for?"

Brennan released her arm and she walked toward the organ suspended in the net of nerve fibers. Fortunato looked at Brennan. "Is the bitch crazy?"

Brennan shook his head, unable to speak, knowing that he was losing another. No matter which way this turned out, he was losing another.

Mai slipped around the tendrils 'and placed her palms against the flesh of the Swarm Mother. Her blood began to flow down the organ of the alien creature.

"What's she doing?" Fortunato asked, caught between fear and anger and wonder.

"Merging."

The narrow tunnel that led to the Swarm Mother's sanctum began to dilate. Brennan turned to face the opening. "What's happening?"

Brennan nocked an arrow to his bowstring. "The Swarm Mother's resisting," he said, and shut his surroundings, shut Fortunato; shut Mai even, from his mind. He narrowed the focus of his being until the mouth of the tunnel was his universe. He drew the bowstring to his cheek and stood as taut and ready as the arrow itself, ready to shoot himself into the heart of their enemy.

The fanged and taloned killing-machines of the Swarm Mother poured through the opening. Brennan fired. His hands moved without conscious direction, drawing, pulling, loosing. Bodies piled up by the mouth of the tunnel and were cleared away by the creatures trying to push their way inside and by the blasts of the explosive arrows. Time ceased to flow. Nothing mattered but perfect coordination between mind and body and target, born from the union of flesh and spirit.

It seemed like forever, but the resources of the Swarm Mother were not inexhaustible. The creatures stopped coming when Brennan had three arrows left. He stared down the corridor for over a minute before he realized that no more targets were in sight and he lowered his bow.

His back ached and his arms burned like they were on fire. He looked at Fortunato. The ace stared at him, shook his head wordlessly. Brennan's consciousness returned from the pool where his Zen training had sunk it.

A sudden movement caught his eye and he turned. His hand dropped to the quiver at his belt, but stopped before it drew an arrow. There were three forms, man-sized, man shaped, at the mouth of the tunnel. A sense of dislocation swept through Brennan like a cold wind and he lowered his bow. He recognized them.

"Gulgowski? Mendoza? Minh?"

He went forward as if in a dream as they stepped over and around the blasted bodies of the swarmlings, coming to meet him. Brennan was numb, caught between joy and disbelief.

"I knew you would come," Minh, Mai's father, said. "I knew you would rescue us from Kien."

Brennan nodded. A feeling of vast weariness swept over him. He felt as if his brain were isolated from the rest of his body, as if somehow it had been wrapped in layers of cotton batting. He should have known all along that Kien was behind the Swarm. He should have known.

Gulgowski hefted the briefcase he carried. "We've got the evidence here to nail the bastard, Cap'n. Come here'n take a look. "

Brennan dropped his bow, stepped forward to look into the briefcase Gulgowski proffered, ignoring the shouts behind him, ignoring the blasting roar that reverberated through the corridor.

Gulgowski, holding out the briefcase toward him, staggered. Brennan looked at him. It was odd. He had only one eye now. The other had been shot out and thick green fluid was running sluggishly down his cheek. But that was all right. Brennan seemed to remember that Gulgowski had been shot in the head before, and lived. He was here, after all. He looked at the briefcase. The handle melted into the flesh of Gulgowski's hand. They were one thing. The mouth of the briefcase was lined with rows of sharp teeth. It jerked at him, the teeth snapping.

He felt a sudden shock as something hurled itself at his knees from behind. He went down and lay with his cheek pressed against the floor of the chamber, feeling its pulsating warmth, and glanced back in annoyance.

Fortunato had tackled him. The ace released his hold on Brennan, kneeled, and drew the. 45 again. Brennan looked up at his men. Fortunato shot pieces of them away, part of a face here, a bit of an arm there. Fortunato cursed in a steady stream as he fired the. 45 and Brennan's men died again. Brennan felt a surge of tremendous anger. He half-stood and closed his eyes. The roar of gunfire stopped as Fortunato ejected an empty clip, but the stench of powder was in the air, the thunder of gunfire was in his ears, and the hot, humid smell of the jungle was in his nose. He opened his eyes again. Ghastly caricatures of men, faces and body parts shot away, dripping green slime, were shambling toward him. They weren't his men. Mendoza had died in the raid on VC headquarters. Gulgowski had been killed by Kien later that night. And Minh had been killed years later by Kien's men in New York City.

Although his brain was still foggy, Brennan picked up his bow, and shot his last explosive arrow at the simulacra. It hit the caricature of Minh and exploded, sending gobbets of biomass everywhere. The backblast knocked Brennan down and took out the other two simulacra as well.

Brennan took a deep breath, and wiped slime and crushed protoplasm from his face.

"The Swarm Mother took their images from your mind," Fortunato said. "The other things were just buying time so it could prepare those walking wax-dummies."

Brennan nodded, his face hard and set. He turned from Fortunato and looked at Mai.

She was almost gone, nearly covered by the gray-pink flesh of the alien being. Her cheek rested against the pulsating organ and the half of her face that Brennan could see was untouched. Her eye was open and clear.

"Mai?"

The eye turned, tracking the sound of his voice, and focused on him. Her lips moved.

"So vast," she whispered. "So wondrous and vast." The light in the chamber dimmed for a moment, then came back.

"No," Mai murmured. "We shall not do that. There is a sentient being in the ship. And the ship itself is also a living entity. "

The floor of the chamber shook, but the light remained on. Mai spoke again, more to herself than Brennan or Fortunato.

"To have lived so long without thought… to have wielded so much power without consequence… to have traveled so far and seen so much without realization… this shall change… all change. .."

The eye focused again upon Brennan. There was recognition in it that faded as she spoke.

"Don't mourn, Captain. One of us has given herself to save her planet. The other has given up her race to save… who knows what? Perhaps some day the universe. Don't be sad. Remember us when you look to the night sky; and know we are among the stars, probing, pondering, discovering, thinking innumerable wondrous things."

Brennan blinked back tears as the eye in Mai's face closed. "Good-bye, Captain."

The singularity shifter began to throw off sparks. Fortunato slung the pack off his back. He looked down at it, startled. "I'm not doing that. She… it."

They were back on the bridge of Tachyon's ship. The three men stared at each other.

"You succeeded?" Tachyon asked after a moment.

"Oh yeah, man," Fortunato said, collapsing on a nearby hassock. "Oh yeah."

"Where's Mai?"

Brennan felt a stab of anger cut into him like a knife. "You let her go," he cursed, taking a step toward Tachyon, his hands clenched into quivering fists. But his eyes told who he really blamed for Mai's loss. He shuddered all over like a dog throwing off water, then abruptly turned away. Tachyon stared at him, then turned to Fortunato.

"Let's go home," Fortunato said.

After a while, Brennan would remember Mai's words, and wonder what philosophies, what realms of thought, the spirit of a gentle Buddhist girl melded with the mind and body of a creature of nearly unimaginable power would spin down through the centuries. After a while, he'd remember. But now, with a sense of pain and loss as familiar to him as his own name, he felt none of that. He just felt half past dead.