Jokertown Shuffle

II

Life in the USSA wasn't so bad. The variety of clothing wasn't great, and people tended, to have a lot of moles and winkles and carbunkles on their faces-Shad hadn't realized how much cosmetic surgery had altered the looks of ordinary people back in his own New York-but on the other hand there weren't any jokers filling the streets with their agony and no homeless people wandering the streets, and the doctors at the Jean Jaures Memorial Clinic had patched him up without asking for his insurance card first. There wasn't any wild card or AIDS or Jokertown or Takisians or Swarm, and there hadn't been a Second World War because the Socialists had taken power in Berlin in 1919 and hung onto it, no one had ever heard of Hitler, and there wasn't a cold war or atom bomb, and the Big Apple still bopped along in its own distinctive way.

Or maybe bopped wasn't the right word. The thing Shad found himself missing most of all about his own world was the music. Jazz had stopped evolving around 1940-big bands here in 1990 toured the country playing "Mood Indigo" and "Satin Doll" exactly the way Duke Ellington had in -I940, note for scripted note. Most of the musicians were black-jazz and blues were national cultural resources, forms of "folk art" created by the "Protected Negro Minority." Early rock and roll had been considered an offshoot of the blues and more or less restricted to black people-white performers were discouraged because they were thought to be ripping off a protected culture-and without the white audience, the form had died.

No Charlie Parker. That was what Shad found hard to adjust to. No John Coltrane. No Miles Davis. Dizzy Gillespie fronted something called the Fort Wayne People's Folk Orchestra and blew some good licks, but it wasn't anywhere near the same.

In the hospital he'd claimed amnesia-he just couldn't remember who he was or why he'd been shot or why he was dressed in a Halloween costume. The police hadn't believed him-strip-searched him at gunpoint right in the emergency room in fact, with the doctor and nurses protesting-but his fingerprints didn't turn up in the Central Criminal Computer Registry in Maryland (the computer search took three days with the wretched equipment they had), and they had nothing to hold him on. They concluded he was an illegal immigrant, but by the time the authorities arrived to deport he'd already slipped out into the night, clumsy in his arm-and-shoulder cast, and within twenty-four hours he got himself a job maintaining the awful sound equipment in an illegal samba club on the East Side. The stuff still had tubes, and it needed all the help it could get.

Illegal samba club… and it wasn't the club that was illegal, it was the music. Samba was against the law-Latin music was considered subversive because South America wasn't in the Socialist bloc but allied with Imperial Japan. But despite the law, there were illegal samba clubs parked on half the street corners in Harlem and all down the East Side-this was, after all, the Big Apple, and in the Apple you could find everything. If people couldn't have rock and roll, they had to have something. And some of the club's biggest patrons were the sons and daughters of high FarmerLabor party members, so the place was pretty safe.

Shad spent his free hours looking for Chalktalk. She'd disappeared the second she got him into the E-room. When he asked the hospital personnel, no one could remember seeing her.

He still didn't know why she'd been following him. He didn't know why she helped or whether she'd somehow plotted the whole thing.

The attitudes toward him were different here, and it took him a while on the street before he finally figured it out. In his own New York, white people looked at him like he was a criminal, or anyway a potential criminal. There were some jewelry stores that wouldn't even unlock their doors for him, even after he waved fistfuls of money through the window. But the crime and homicide rates for blacks weren't particularly high here, and people looked at him differently-the Protected Negro Minority was a historically oppressed race struggling to elevate itself toward an equality that, despite everyone's best efforts, they seemed not to have reached.

In short, white people treated him as if he were mildly retarded-good-hearted and deserving of sympathy, but a little slow. It wasn't his fault if he needed a little extra help, of course-Forces of History were responsible, after all, not peoples-but all that meant was that nobody expected much from him.

After he figured out what was going on, Shad fit in well enough. He liked being patronized a lot less than. he liked being feared, but he was still himself inside, whoever that was. The masks he wore were different, but they were still masks.

He still wore the night's mask best of all. He went for long walks after the club closed, quartering the parts of the city that, in another reality, were Jokertown. Music ran through his head, music that didn't even exist here, and pictures rolled through his memory, images of that portable concentration camp set up in the brownstone warehouse, the joker in the necktie with his head blown off, the hard con-boss look in Lisa Traeger's eyes, crates of gold and drugs, Nelson Dixon and Blaise exchanging high fives on the boardroom table…

The green hills of someplace he'd probably never see again.

Hanging them from lampposts, he figured, was too good for them.

He knew exactly where he wanted to go once he got home. And what he was going to do there.

On the long four A. M. walks, he plotted everything out, step by step. Impossible as it seemed.

And then one warm August night it became possible. There she was, sketching on the sidewalk with her baseball cap on the concrete next to her. Chalktalk. It happened too suddenly, too normally, for him to be surprised. So he crossed the street and put a Nikolai Bukharin five-dollar coin in her cap. Her picture was a daylight street scene with a gold-plated Empire State Building in the background. She glanced up with bright green eyes and gave him a strange little grin. "Remember me?" he said. "I want to go home now" She gave a weird little giggle that sent a chill up his spine. 'The she put her chalk in a little belt pouch, put her cap on her tangled dark hair, stood up suddenly, and grabbed his hand. Ignoring the little coin that rang in the gutter, she hauled him out of his crouch and down the next alleyway at a half run. Then she rudely pushed him into the wall and put her arms around him. A little keening sound came from her throat. Her hands pawed at him urgently. She started grinding her hips against his crotch like an old whore running on autopilot.

The smell of decaying garbage crawled down the back of Shad's throat. "Hey," Shad said, "are you serious, or what?" Her lips drew back in a snarl. One hand clamped on his crotch, the other crooked in front of his face. Distant streetlights gleamed on sharp mother-of-pearl claws. Shad's balls tried to tunnel up to his eye sockets.

"Okay," Shad said. "Whatever you want. You mind if we get up in some fresh air? This garbage smell is gonna make me puke."

She didn't seem to care one way or the other, so he picked her up in his arms and walked up the wall to the roof. The action amused her, and she stroked his cock through his ill-made proletarian pants. Once atop the roof, he took off his black-market quilted jacket from Manchukuo and laid it down. The street artist dragged her Levi's off over her work boots, lay down on the jacket, and gave her strange little giggle again. He took off his shoes and pants, and dropped to his knees between her legs. The scent of rut reached him, and he felt a tide of blood flush his skin, blast through the roof of his skull, and carry him away to someplace else.

What followed was fast and brutal, and by the time the act was over, his clothes were in shreds, and there were a couple dozen cuts on his back. Panting for breath and faintly sick to his stomach, he felt as if he'd been hit by a truck loaded with pheremones.

Shad got painfully to his feet and started dragging his clothes on. The girl looked up at him gleefully and started rolling around on the roof, skinny pale legs and buttocks contrasting with the heavy coat shed never taken off. He picked up his Manchukuoian jacket and shrugged it on. He felt a chill and stole a little heat from the still autumn night, his cloud of darkness rising above the building as he drank in scarce photons.

He wondered if this was what she'd had in mind all along, if this was why she'd been following him around. Maybe she had a crush on him.

Funny way to show a crush, though.

The street artist came up behind him, put her arms around his waist. She pressed herself very close behind him and began rocking back and forth, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. Her hands rubbed lower, pressing over his cock.

"I have an apartment near here," he said. "You mind if we go there, or does this have to happen out of doors?" She didn't appear to care one way or another. Shad picked her up, covered them both with darkness, and went straightline, up and over buildings, till he came to his own illegal loft. He snapped on the light for which he stole electricity from Peoples' Edison. The street artist was already on the bed, legs parted, arms stretched out.

Shad looked down at the naked vulva and the skinny legs in their heavy boots. Little stones from the flat tar roof were still clinging to her skin. "Not much time for romance in your life, huh?" he said. He bent down, began undoing bootlaces. "Let's at least get these off, okay?"

The second act was only a little less frenzied than the first, and afterward Shad lay facedown on the bed while she carefully licked the blood from the wounds she'd clawed into him. It had become obvious by now that she didn't bathe very often. He got her into his shower and scrubbed her down while she made little bubbling sounds and did a kind of dance, arms over her head, spinning around and around on her toes while the warm water splashed down around her.

When he handed her one of his threadbare proletarian towels, she raised it to her nose and took a suspicious sniff before she used it. Naked, her hair wet, her thin body looked maybe all of twelve years old. Great, Shad thought, now he'd added pedophilia to his list of crimes.

He took his billfold out of his pocket and took out the photo he'd carefully cut out of a 1988 issue of the New York Herald and Worker that he'd found in the library. He showed it to her. "This is where I'd like to go," he said. "Ellis Island. The Rox. Okay?"

She took the picture, looked at it without interest, then handed it back to him. She climbed into his narrow bed, curled up, and closed her eyes.

He sat down on the edge of the cot and looked down at her. Her body was covered with scars and calluses, and there was a big yellow bruise on one shoulder. What looked like a long knife slash ran down the side of one thigh. Shad traced the scar with his finger, and sadness welled up the back of his throat.

"Shit, girl," he said, "you don't have to live like this. Even in my world we can find somebody to take care of you. Hell, I'll take care of you. It doesn't matter that you can't talk." He looked up at her. "You understand me? IT take care of you, okay? Back in the world, I've got more money than I know what to do with. We can live like royalty. Anyplace you want, anything you want. Okay?"

The street artist was asleep.

He curled up next to her, spoon-style, and tried to work out exactly what it was he'd just proposed, taking care of a mute feral joker girl whose talents seemed confined to chalk sketching and indiscriminate animal sex. This would not, he concluded, be the sort of relationship of which Social Services would approve.

Other consequences occurred to him. If this was her usual mode of sexual contact, she'd probably picked up any number of diseases, some of which were known only by acronyms, some of which might be from other worlds. Maybe he ought to be soaking his dick in alcohol. And if he'd managed to get her pregnant-well, both parents were wild cards, and that meant a 100 percent certainty that the kid would inherit the bent wild card DNA, which meant a 99 percent chance of jokerhood or death when the virus manifested. He wondered how much sadder this could get.

He found out later, sometime the next morning, when the street artist woke up and elbowed him awake. She pushed him over on his back and started rubbing her crotch against his dick. He was hard almost instantly, and she reached down to insert him as casually as if she were handling a bar of soap. Her intent cat's eyes were fixed intently on his. His vision was better than hers, reached into more spectra.

She leaned over him when she came, hips pumping blindly over his groin. Her claws gripped his mattress, punctured his sheets. Her mouth was open, and strange croaking sounds came out. He could look past her teeth and see, glowing with IR heat, the stub of a tongue that ended in a mass of scar tissue.

Someone had cut her tongue out.

She fell asleep instantly, her head on his chest. Shad wanted to cry.

Take care of her? What a joke.

Hours later, he awoke to the scratching of chalk. He opened gummed eyes and saw the street artist back in her clothes, drawing something on the particleboard floor. A plastic plate near her hand held a half-eaten sandwich made from some Polish sausage he had in his icebox.

He looked at the clock and saw it was late afternoon. He dressed, had a sandwich, and watched her work.

She was drawing a cavern-irregular walls, stalactites, strange subterranean gleams. The sketch occupied the whole floor, and large parts weren't finished yet.

"The Rox," Shad said. He pointed at his clipping again. "Ellis Island. You understand?"

She looked up at him and wrinkled up her face, then went back to her sketch.

Shad gazed bleakly into a future in which he was dragged from one world to another by this child, used for sex in one venue after another. Love-slave of the multiverse. Wonderful.

It was night before Chalktalk was finished. Shad put on his darkest clothes, black Kenyan cords, navy shirt, the boots he'd come in, his quilted Manchukuoian jacket. If they were going spelunking, it was likely to get cold. He made two packages of food, wrapped them in tinfoil, stuffed one in his pocket and gave the other to Chalktalk. He thought about getting flashlights and decided it would be a worthwhile investment. He went to the store and bought two big electric lanterns.

He stepped up behind her, looked at the growing picture, put his hand on her shoulder. She gave him an irritated look and shrugged the hand off.

Looked like the romance had gone out of their relationship. The picture deepened, the third dimension dropping away, receding to a glittering cavern.

The girl took his hand, and reality fell away.

Darkness, darkness entire. Shad felt right at home.

He flicked on the lantern, and Robert Fallon Penn lunged out of the night, garrote in hand, smiling his twisted blood-flecked smile.

Neil was ten years old when he'd last seen Penn. Penn's partner, Stan Barker, was sodomizing Neil from behind while Penn played with his garrote, putting on the pressure till he started to black out, then sportively easing up, prolonging the agony 'a little longer.

He, his father, his mother, and his little sister had spent the weekend under torture, and Neil was the last one left alive. Stan Barker had just cut his father's throat, and Shad remembered how slippery the floor had been, how his hands and knees slid in the darkening wetness while Penn jerked on his throat with his wire and Barker clutched at his hips…

And now Bob Penn was back, leering at him, blood flaking off his lips because he'd bitten off Mrs. Carter's nipples. Lightning burned through Shad's nerves. He gave a scream and swung the lantern. Somehow Penn avoided injury. Chalktalk looked at him impatiently. She grabbed his sleeve and tried to pull him toward Penn.

"No!" Shad yelled. He pulled Chalktalk out of danger, flinging her to the ground, and launched himself at Penn. His fists and feet went clear through the man. Shad could hear Stan Barker's giggle and knew that Penn's partner was somewhere out there in the dark. Shad screamed in anger and terror, and tried to drain the heat from Penn's body. There was scarcely any there, no more than if Penn had been a ghost.

Chalktalk picked herself up and walked impatiently through Penn's body, then turned back to Shad and shrugged. Sanity wedged its way into Shad's panicked mind. He reached out, passed a sword hand through Penn's body. Chalktalk turned away and padded on, her bright lantern held high.

Shad passed his hand through Penn again. His heart drummed against his ribs. There was a deep ache in his throat where the police had given him the tracheotomy that saved his life.

Penn wasn't there. He was an illusion.

Shad watched closely, and he saw that the Penn illusion didn't seem very lifelike-it was huge and distorted, a sixteenyear-old maniac seen through the eyes of his ten-year-old victim.

Chalktalk's lantern was fading into the distance. Shad took a deep breath and followed, his spine tingling as he turned his back on the killer of his family.

Penn didn't follow.

Shad caught up to Chalktalk. His hands were trembling, and his voice shook. "Where the hell are we?" he asked. Chalktalk said nothing, natch. Shad looked around.

He was in Carlsbad Caverns, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Tall formations, lightless passages, the constant drip of water. Formations where illusions of mass murderers lurked. Shad wondered if they were under the high New Mexico desert, until he saw the graffiti, spray-painted on a bright vein of quartz: JUMP THE RICH.

Somehow, Shad knew, he was right where he wanted to be.

Then there was the sound of clattering footsteps, the clank of weaponry. The squawk of a walkie-talkie. It didn't sound much like an illusion.

The locals knew he was here. Shad turned to Chalktalk. "Go back a ways, okay? These are some bad people coming. Maybe you better make a sketch and get yourself out of here."

He looked up at him with shadowed dark eyes, then shrugged, squatted, reached for her chalk.

She walked up the wall, covered himself with darkness, and moved forward along the ceiling. Putting himself between Chalktalk and pursuit.

Shad turned off his lantern and navigated on IR. He entered a chamber twenty feet high, moved forward between limestone columns, and saw jokers, half a dozen, all wearing some kind of informal war-surplus battledress, most carrying M-16 assault rifles. Kafka led them, unmistakable in his brown chitin, holding a walkie-talkie and a four-battery flashlight. He wasn't carrying a weapon. Even in his haste he was careful not to touch any of the other jokers.

Shad remembered he had some kind of contamination phobia.

High-powered flashlights swept the confined area of the stair. Shad deepened the black cloak around him and waited. "No sight of him yet," Kafka reported.

"He's right there." A high-pitched, almost comical voice came out of the hissing walkie-talkie. "He's watching you. And he recognized you from somewhere."

Watching you. The thought rolled through Shad's mind. Someone knew he was here, someone who couldn't see him… Maybe the person who had called Penn into being.

Shad tried to make his mind blank.

"He's onto me," the high-pitched voice warned. "And he can hear you."

Kafka jumped wildly, his flashlight beam dancing. Then he scuttled under the staircase, put his back to the wall. "You and you! Over there!"

Two jokers charged with weapons ready, the sound of their boots echoing.

"He's right there," the high-pitched voice said. "He's right near you."

"That's right," said Shad. He kicked loose from his perch, dropped to Kafka's side, snatched the flashlight. He shone the flash upward into his own face and let the darkness fall away from the part of his body facing Kafka, so that Kafka could see his face and upper body. He let Kafka see his pose, standing upright with his right arm horizontal and bent, hand under his chin, the edge of his hand pressing against his throat.

"Who will help the widow's son?" he asked.

Rifles clattered as they were brought to bear. But Shad was standing too close to Kafka for them to fire, and the other jokers couldn't see what was going on.

Kafka's astonishment was clear, even on his inhuman face. He looked frantically left and right, then leaned closer, his eyes glittering in the light of the flash. "Who are you?"

"A stranger going to the West, to search for that which was lost."

"Where do you come from?"

"From the East."

"What is your task?"

"To trample the Lilies underfoot."

Kafka goggled at him. Shad gave him a severe look. The most difficult trick, he'd found, was to speak all this nonsense with an absolutely straight face.

"Will you not aid me, brother?" he asked. "In the name of the widow's son?"

"Who are you?"

"In the Brotherhood, my name is Gains Gracchus." He pretended to lose patience. "Do I have to do the fucking handshake, or what?"

Kafka seemed puzzled. "I seem to remember the name."

"I've been away for a long time."

"Kafka! Kafka!" The jokers were shuffling, trying to play their flashlights through the darkness that Shad had set up between them. "Are you okay?"

"I'm all right." Kafka tried to peer out past Shad. His mouth parts worked nervously. "What do you want of me?" he asked.

"Nothing. I need to know where the jumpers are quartered."

"Kafka!" The high-pitched voice shouted from the walkie-talkie. "There aren't any Egyptian Masons anymore! You know that as well as anyone. He's just trying to trick you!"

"That is the governor, I take it?" Shad said. "I have no business with him. Just with the jumpers. Will you let me pass or not?"

Kafka hesitated. Shad expanded the darkness that surrounded him, eating photons, surrounding Kafka with night.. The joker guards behind began to scuttle backward from the expanding sphere.

"Kafka," said the governor. "Bring him to me. I will give him an interview"

"I don't know that I need an interview," Shad said. "I don't know that we have a lot to say to each other."

"Yes we do, shad," said the high voice.

Surprise rolled through Shad's mind. No one called him that.

"Yes, I know your name for yourself," the governor said. "And I know more than that, including a few things you don't know" A small pause. "And we have to discuss your friend, little Chalktalk."

" Who?"

The voice turned impatient. "Governor Bloat knows all and sees all, my son. I know you didn't come alone, and I have another group of guards watching your friend. I don't think you have time to interfere with them before they follow any orders I should care to give, particularly if the order is swift and violent."

Indecision fluttered through Shad's mind. He'd been spinning this out with the intention of giving Chalktalk a chance to get away.

Images of Barker and Penn floated through his mind. "How do I know this isn't a trap?" he asked.

"If it is, you can kill me. I know it's within your capabilities. It's a small island, and I'm-" a strange little high-pitched giggle, "I'm not exactly built for running."

Kafka told his troops to return to their quarters. Shad let the darkness fall from Kafka's path. The joker led him down a lengthy stone corridor, then up a surprising staircase, all pink-veined marble like something out of Phantom of the Opera. Once up the stairs, they were in a building. The walls were covered in layers of flaking white paint, and there were doors on either side.

Ellis Island. Beneath which, Shad knew, there was not supposed to be an extensive cavern complex. Things had obviously changed around here.

A penguin, wearing a funnel for a hat, appeared from one door, made a graceful figure eight on its ice skates, disappeared through another door.

Shad stared. He'd hung out in Jokertown for a long time, but he'd never seen anything like that. And it was on ice skates. There wasn't even any ice here.

Another giggle came from the walkie-talkie. "Brother Shad, you ain't seen nothing yet!"

Kafka led him out into a balcony overlooking a large hall filled with well, filled with the governor, the sluglike body gleaming with moisture, dappled with oozing black matter.

Bloat's smell clawed its way up the back of Shad's throat. His arms, shoulders, and head were those of a boy of maybe eighteen. He looked as if the slug were in the process of eating him.

"Welcome," the governor said, "to the Rox."

"Thank you." Shad walked up the wall, then stepped onto the ceiling. He strolled inverted across the plaster till he hung over Bloat's little head. Bloat's eyes tracked him as he moved, even though he was in darkness.

Kafka stayed behind on the balcony, pacing nervously. With all Kafka's phobias, Shad wondered, how could he stand even to be in the same room with his boss?

"You seem to have given poor Kafka a crisis in loyalties," Bloat said. "He thought all that was long behind him."

"Once a Mason, always a Mason."

"He knows you were supposed to have been killed. He fears you might be one of the Astronomer's surviving agents. That you might kill him."

Kafka's mouth parts worked as he listened to this.

"If I'd wanted him dead," Shad said, "he'd be dead." He wondered if the firing squad was lined up outside the doors, waiting for him to leave.

"If we're going to talk," Shad said, "let's do it." Bloat's look was mild. "Why are you here, Shad?"

"My plan is to snap the neck of every jumper in the place."

"And get Tachyon out if you can. I can read that."

"Then why did you ask the question?" Sharply.

"I think," Bloat said, "that I'll let you do one, and not the other."

"Which one? Which other? And how could you stop me if I wanted to do both?"

"Your notion of killing the jumpers has a certain attractiveness, I must admit. And if you could get Blaisehe's their leader, you see, and a very disturbed person-that would be… well, it would end any number of problems."

"I'll get him first thing, if you like."

"He's not on the Rox at the moment, unfortunately. He gets restless, and he's off bringing in supplies."

"I can wait."

"For God's sake, Governor!" Kafka's voice cut the silence. "Why are you bargaining with him? Do something!"

"I don't have a whole lot of choice, do I?" For once, Bloat sounded like a sulky adolescent. "Considering that my prime minister hasn't quite worked out which side he's on." Then Bloat looked up at Shad, his eyes glittering. "There are over a hundred jumpers on this island, Shad. Can you really kill them all? Could you kill them all?"

Shad hesitated. Kids, he thought. Not all of them killers, not all of them crazy.

"There aren't enough lampposts to hang them all from," Bloat said. "That's your usual method, isn't it? But a coldblooded massacre-that's not your style. Never was. You just start the ball rolling, and the bad guys kill each other." Bloat gave a sour laugh. "It may happen yet. This is not a happy island. Not happy at all." His eyes narrowed as he looked at Shad. "You think you're a killer, though, don't you."

"Cut the shit, Governor. Say what you've got to say." Bloat's look grew more searching. Shad felt cold crawling along his nerves. "You think you're a berserker. You've gone berserk; therefore, you must.. ." Bloat shook his head. "You've been tampered with."

Shad gave a laugh. "Believe what you like, Bloat."

"Your mind-it shares some mental characteristics with some of our other citizens. Shroud, File, Video, Peanut. Even the Oddity. And I've talked to Tachyon, and he knows…" The high-pitched voice trailed away.

Shad's nerves wailed at him to get away, kill Bloat, turn his head into an ice cube, and fight his way out before Bloat could spring whatever trap he was setting up.

"I'm getting impatient, Governor," he said.

"Someone has tampered with you," Bloat said. "Someone has turned you into a berserker-has made you kill."

Anger lanced through Shad. " I advise you to stay out of my head!" he snapped.

Bloat paid no attention. "It's very subtle. The individual doing it was moving very quietly, just making little alterations. Masking your inhibitors, accenting the violence, the rage…"

Bloat's face was intent, absorbed, his expression almost ecstatic. "Yes, he's been at you, all right. It's almost invisible, but I can see the fingerprint, now that I'm sensitive to it. The same individual who drove Peanut to madness, who inflamed the Oddity's self-loathing and hatred…" Bloat's eyes bored into Shad's heart. "That wasn't you who strung up that first man. Or the next few, either. That wasn't your ecstacy-that was some filthy pervert having an orgasm in your mind."

Shad's mouth went dry. "Bullshit," he said. "Nobody's been with me all this time."

"This is the wild card!" Bloat said. "Who says it can't be operated by remote control?"

"So who was it, asshole? Give me a name."

"What is your grudge against the jumpers, exactly?" Bloat snarled. "I know-they stole your self. But it was only your body they took. What will you do with the man who tampered with your mind? Who sent you on a fifteen-year murder spree, because he had you convinced that was who you were?"

Shad hesitated. Then a cold resolve filled him. "He would deserve death," he said.

"Probably. The man has certainly killed. But you don't have to kill him, of course. That's your choice now. You don't have to do any of this."

"Give me his name."

Bloat narrowed his eyes. "Let's make a deal, Shad. The name in exchange for an understanding."

Shad looked down at him. "Talk."

" I do not like having Tachyon imprisoned here. It's an embarrassment. Tachyon has been a great friend to jokers over the years. She was brought here without my permission, and if you take her off, I-"

"Her?"

Bloat hesitated, then spoke. "Tachyon is at present residing within the body of a sixteen-year-old girl." The words seemed to come with difficulty, and Bloat's cheeks seemed hot. He spoke quickly, as if he hoped Shad wouldn't notice. "Here's the deal, Shad. You spare the jumpers. Take Tachyon off the island. Prime Minister Kafka will let you have one of our speedboats. And I'll give you the name."

"And if someone tries to stop me?"

Bloat thought for a moment, then sighed. "Do what you have to do."

"And Chalktalk?"

Bloat giggled again. "She left the island a long time ago, quite in her own fashion. I wouldn't have molested her, in any case. She's been here before, and-"

"And she's a joker."

Bloat's voice was sharp. "She's a joker who has been badly hurt. Which,"-eyes narrowing-"I see you understand."

"You know the story?"

"No. Her mind is opaque to me. But I can guess. Your concern for her speaks well of you. Before Senator Hartmann turned you into a murderer, you probably would have turned out well."

Shad was stunned. Hartmann…

Hartmann. The only person he'd had regular contact with for years.

"You gave me the name," Shad said, "but I haven't said yes to the deal."

"Yes, you did," Bloat said. "You just never said it out loud."

Shad was silent.

"Kafka will have a boat waiting for you on the east side," Bloat went on. "A Zodiac-you'll get wet, but you'll move fast. You don't want to head for Jersey City-the authorities have set up too many searchlights, and you'll be spotted."

"Searchlights won't see me."

"They have radars out there, too. Hooked to missile batteries, Kafka tells me, and to something called the 20mm Vulcan Air Defense System. Which sounds pretty intimidating to me."

Shad hesitated. He could absorb photons in the electromagnetic spectrum as well as the visual and infrared, but his control was lessened when he was dealing with something he couldn't see.

"I'll have to raise an alarm sooner or later," Bloat said, dismissing the thought for him. "I'm supposed to be omnipotent that way. But I'll tell the jumpers you ran for Brooklyn. They'll search in that direction."

"And where will I really go? Manhattan?"

"Too well patrolled by the coast guard and air force. Head south, toward Staten Island. You should be able to come ashore in one of the Bayonne terminals without difficulty." Shad thought about it.

"That's settled, then," Bloat said. "Follow my friend the penguin. He'll lead you straight to Tachyon." Shad hesitated. "Move fast," Bloat said, "before word of your presence gets out."

Move fast. The best piece of advice he had all night. The penguin skated into the room, gliding effortlessly on the ceiling. Dark smoke that smelled of brimstone poured from his funnel cap. The penguin cruised a nonchalant circle around Shad, then made a silent glissade toward the Administration Building entrance.

Shad's nerves wailed an alert, but there wasn't any ambush waiting. Shad followed the penguin out of the building and to the infirmary, passing behind a joker sentry without alerting him. The western horizon glowed: huge searchlights set up on the jersey shore had the entire island in their grip. Breakers boomed in the distance. A cold Atlantic wind cut through his light Manchukuoian jacket.

The penguin led Shad to the door of the infirmary and passed through without opening it, leaving a faint whiff of brimstone behind. Shad opened the door-heavy institutional steel pitted by salt water-and stepped inside. Music slammed from off-white corridor walls, and Shad heard laughter somewhere, but no one was in sight. There were no guards, and no security seemed in place.

The penguin was gliding up a staircase to Shad's right. Shad followed up two flights. The Dead Kennedys filled the staircase with exuberant hardcore. On the floor above were roughly finished rooms right under the eaves. A white boy lay asleep on a mildew-eaten couch, his boom box and a space heater plugged into a thick orange extension cord. A halfeaten bowl of rice and Vienna sausages lay on the floor. An M-16 was propped on the wall.

Some sentry.

Okay, Shad thought, I'll try it Bloat's way.

He ate photons and called the darkness down, filling the room with night, then snatched the boy out of sleep. He broke one arm, then the other, then whispered into the boy's ear.

"Okay, kid," he said, "here's how I see it. I don't want to kill you, and you don't want to die. So lead me to Tachyon and I'll let you live, okay?"

The boy screamed, a full-throated yell of imbecile terror that echoed louder than the Dead Kennedys. Shad smashed the boy's head against a wall until the screaming stopped, then dropped the boy to the floor.

Hell. That sort of thing always worked in the movies. Most of the rooms held only supplies. There was only one door that was locked, and that was with a simple wooden bar. Shad threw up the bar and pushed the door open. God, she seemed young. And tiny, barely reaching Shad's breastbone. Chill sorrow rolled through him as he realized she was pregnant.

The darkness rained away as Shad let Tachyon look at him… '

"I m Black Shadow," Shad said, "and you're outta here."

"Bloat told me." Her voice was soft. Maybe once she'd been pretty, he thought. Now she looked like a war refugee. "He didn't say you were pregnant. Follow me."

She followed him out the door, her eyes downcast. She had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, but the shoulders were slumped. She wasn't anything like shad's memories of Tachyon. Shad couldn't picture her as anything but a lost girl.

Somebody had tried to break this child, and probably succeeded.

Apparently no one had heard the sentry's scream. Shad led Tachyon down the two flights of stairs, then looked cautiously into the corridor. No one in sight. He opened the door to the outside and stepped out.

A dark-haired young woman stood there, holding an M-16 casually at port arms as she walked tiredly home from guard duty. Shad recognized her as the one who had left her eye in Shelley's hotel room. She had both eyes now, and they narrowed as she saw Shad, without his cloak of darkness, coming toward her. She worked the bolt of the gun and pointed it at him.

Shad stepped for her and struck out, one medium-force punch to the face with his left, a grab for her gun with the right. He intended nothing more than to stun her for a short time and take her weapon.

Instead, he knocked her block off.

Shad's nerves gave a white-hot wail as the woman's head left her shoulders. It struck the ground, where both eyes popped out, then rolled, parts scattering-an ear, the jaw, the tongue.

The body toppled, and one arm came off, but nothing ceased to move-the legs and arms flailed, even the arm that had come adrift. The eyes, once they'd stopped bouncing, swiveled and seemed to try to focus. When Shad had yanked the gun away, one hand came off at the wrist and clung to the gunstock. A finger held down the trigger. The gun leaped as it fired.

Shad's stomach queased as he tore the hand away. Fingers fell like snowflakes. He dropped the rifle, picked Tachyon up in his arms, and ran, trying not to step on any of the woman's parts.

Tachyon's blanket snapped around them in the cold Atlantic wind. Shad heard running footsteps behind. "Durg! " Tachyon shrieked. "Look out!"

Shad didn't know what a `durg' was. He turned. A squat little man was racing after them, twenty yards behind, and was clearly gaining.

"He's a Morakh!" Tachyon said. "Be careful!"

Shad had no clearer idea of what a Morakh was than a durg, but in view of Tachyon's urgency, it seemed serious. He slowed and called a cloud of darkness into being around the Morakh, then watched with his infrared sense as the short man stumbled and fell sprawling. Shad laughed, then accelerated toward the harbor. The island was tiny, and he needed to get off it before too much alarm was raised.

He heard footfalls behind, slower this time, then accelerating. He looked over his shoulder once more and saw the short man gliding purposefully through the darkness. He was moving his head back and forth as if straining to hear something over the sound of his own footsteps.

Shad put Tachyon down. "Head for the harbor," he whispered. "I'll catch up with you."

"Careful." Tachyon swayed. "Morakhs are deadly. More deadly than you can possibly imagine."

"So am I, far as that goes."

Tachyon began to run, clumsy in her off-balance body. The short man's head jerked upward at the sound of their words, and then a smile spread across his features, and he began to trot purposefully toward Shad. He wore jeans, heavy boots, and a dark muscle shirt over his formidable, wide torso. His hair was ash-blond. He looked like the shortest Mr. America in history.

Shad planted himself in the man's path and ate heat from the Morakh's frame. He had absorbed a lot of photons since his arrival on the Rox and his efficiency wasn't great. The Morakh slowed a scant five yards away, and anger twisted his features.

"Who will not face Durg at-Morakh bo Zabb in a fair fight?" he demanded.

"I won't," Shad said, and started to eat more photons. But the Morakh moved with incredible speed as soon as he heard Shad's words. Astonishment flared in Shad's mind as he ducked a ferocious punch; then a spin kick slammed against his thigh, bringing pain crackling along his nerves, Shad let the kick's momentum help whirl him away. He hit the ground and rolled under a flurry of kicks and punches, then rose to his feet in a fighting stance. He'd lost control of his cloud of darkness, and it dissipated. Durg closed with him, fists and feet reaching.

Durg was clearly faster and stronger than a normal human. But then, so was Shad. And Shad had the longer reach.

Durg charged, trying to get inside Shad's guard. Shad sidestepped the rush and caught Durg in the solar plexus with a wheel kick, then stepped to the side and rear again, spun, lifted a rear kick, caught Durg in the solar plex yet again with a force that jarred Shad's spine.

Durg grunted but kept coming. Shad spun again as the range closed, lashing out with a backfist followed by a reverse punch that landed square in the center of Durg's face. It felt as if Shad had punched a bridge abutment.

Durg fired a short chopping wheel kick off his front foot. Shad blocked with both arms, but the kick knocked him twelve inches sideways in any case. Durg bored in and followed up, fists and elbows flashing. Shad managed to block most of the strikes, but one punch was only partly deflected, and a bolt of agony crackled up Shad's left side. He could feel his ribs bending as they absorbed the punch.

Shad clawed for the shorter man's eyes, then slammed an elbow into Durg's face and drove the Morakh back. Pain rang through Shad's arm. It was like trying to shove a cement truck.

Durg blinked blood from his eyes, and in that instant Shad focused his wild card and drew more heat from him. Durg shuddered, but his fighting instinct was still to attack.

Shad kicked him full force in the knee as he came on, but it slowed Durg only slightly, and the Takisian fired a glancing heel hook by way of reply that rattled Shad's teeth. Shad blocked one strIke after another, pulling more heat from the alien, watching with cold incredulity as the Morakh blanched but kept on coming.

Somewhere in Shad's mind flashed the memory that Takis was a wintery planet. They liked the cold there.

He kept eating photons anyway. He was out of ideas. Durg put his head down and charged. Pain crackled through Shad's ribs again as the Morakh's head thudded into his torso. Shad was driven back, and then his injured leg folded, and he went down with the Morakh on top. Despairingly he grabbed for all the heat he could. The Morakh's hands wrapped Shad's throat, and the memory of Robert Penn and his garrote rose like bile. Shad slammed desperate palm heels into Durg's temples.

And then the Morakh shuddered and collapsed. His skin was ice-cold. Shad rolled the heavy body off and rose. Something was grinding along his left shoulder and back. If he was lucky, he'd just ripped a lot of muscle tissue and ligament: otherwise, he'd lost some ribs. He limped for the harbor. Tachyon stood with Kafka and one of his joker soldiers, standing on the pier, watching a Zodiac inflatable boat roll dangerously in the tidal surge twelve feet below.

Shots split the air. They were far off.

"Some of my soldiers," Kafka said. "Bloat is telling them you're over on the south side."

Shad looked down at the wooden ladder, slippery with spray, leading to the boat lurching at the end of its painter. He picked up Tachyon gently, and his ribs screamed in shock. He ignored them, and went down the ladder. A wave soaked his legs below the knee as he waited for the Zodiac to move closer to the ladder, and then he gathered his legs under him and jumped. His injured leg put them a little off course, but Shad landed on the soft rubber bottom of the boat, caught his balance against the surging movement, eased Tachyon to a position near the bow, and jumped aft to the outboard. He peered at it, reached uncertainly for the pull-start.

"There's a self-starter, "-Kafka called.

Shad found it, grateful not to have to torque his torso after all he'd been through. "Thanks, brother," he said. "In the name of the widow's son."

He started the engine, revved it, put it in gear. Kafka dropped the painter.

They were off.

Kafka didn't wave good-bye. The Zodiac breasted every wave and crashed heavily into the troughs with a thud that rattled more pain from Shad's ribs. A frigid Atlantic wind made a mockery of the August night. Spray drenched both passengers, but at least the boat moved fast. Shad surrounded the boat with darkness, taking in all the warmth he could. He headed out into the bay until the lights of the coast guard facility on Governor's Island began looking too bright, then swung south.

If there was any pursuit, he never saw it.

The Statue of Liberty glowed on the right, its torch seeming to twinkle in the rushing air. Shad let the darkness fall away from them so that Tachyon could see.

"There," he said. "Your lucky sign for tonight." Tachyon gazed out in wonder. Her long blond hair whipped out in the wind. Shad couldn't tell whether her face sparkled with spray or tears.

"Liberty," Shad said.

The lights of Bayonne and the south Jersey City docks loomed to their front. Then there was something else, a black pillar rising out of the darkness dead ahead. It made a sucking, growling noise.

"Look out!" Tachyon shouted, and Shad threw the rudder over. The Zodiac skated over a roller, then fell. The pillar passed astern. Shad could see something rotating on top.

He dropped the cloak of darkness around the boat. Tachyon gazed at him with blinded eyes. "What was that?"

"I'm not sure. I think maybe it was the snorkel of a submarine."

"The what?"

"A snorkel, along with the periscopes and radars. The old-time diesel subs used to have to surface for air, see, till the Germans invented the snorkel during World War Two. Now they just put the snorkel up and breathe through that. But I don't know if we've got any diesel subs left in the fleet."

"Who'd put a submarine here?"

"The Russians. If we're lucky."

"In New York harbor?"

"You'd never get a nuclear sub over Sandy Hook-too big. But maybe a small diesel." Something cold climbed Shad's spine. "Look," he said, "this is too weird. If that was a submarine, they're listening to our prop on their hydrophones, and they heard us leave from Ellis Island. If they've got their radio mast up, they could be telling other people we're here. I don't think I want to get close to the Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne. There might be some kind of military op going on. I'm going farther south."

"Where?"

"I don't want to get out into the Atlantic. You'd freeze to death out there. I think I'll head for the Kill Van Kull. We can get lost in the commercial traffic and try to get ashore either in Jersey or Staten Island."

Tachyon said nothing, just huddled deeper into her blanket.

The Zodiac spent most of its time in the trough of waves, and Shad's visibility was not ideal, but he scanned the bay when the boat was on the crests and saw two big coast guard cutters heading for them, searchlights panning the water. Both were right on target. It had been a sub, then, and it was guiding the cutters right to them.

Shad zigzagged-north, then south-then increased speed and dashed between the two boats. They were wearing dark wartime camouflage instead of their normal white paint. One of them was using a loud-hailer, but Shad didn't understand a word.

The boats seemed to lose track of him after that probably distance affecting the sub's ability to track his outboard propeller.

Its entrance white with swirling tidal foam, the brightly lit commercial channel of the Kill Van Kull gaped ahead. Somewhere a siren whooped, its sound torn by the wind. A helicopter came out of nowhere, a strange insectlike thing, and passed directly overhead at high speed.

Shad looked up in surprise to see an odd-looking ballbearing-shaped turret on its nose, a stubby muzzle questing left and right as if sniffing for a target. The rotor downdraft turned the water white.

Tachyon, blind, turned an alarmed face upward. Shad curved toward the Staten Island shore, his head swiveling wildly as he tried to keep the chopper in view. The helicopter banked and came back again, heading straight for him.

They've got IR capability, Shad realized, and he tried to eat every bit of heat in the air, soak up every photon. Tachyon gave a convulsive shiver inside her blanket.

The turret gun fired. Water flew skyward ten yards off the port bow.

Too close. Shad swung the Zodiac madly to starboard. Whatever happened to the rules of engagement? he wondered.

The chopper blasted overhead. It had stubby wings and what looked like jet-engine pods.

The Zodiac bounced madly in the tidal swirl as it entered the Kill Van Kull. The chopper turned again, heading right for them. Shad wondered frantically if they had radar that could detect them.

"Fuck this!" he shouted to Tachyon. "I'm just gonna surrender, okay? Don't tell 'em who I am. And I'll slip out of custody when I can."

Tachyon looked blindly in his direction and gave a nod. The chopper fired, rockets this time, one blinding-white streak after another. Concussion slammed the boat. A world of white water fell like Niagara into the boat. The Zodiac kicked high from an impact, and Shad found himself flying, tumbling through the air, air blown from his lungs by the power of an explosion…

Freezing water boiled around him. He screamed and held his hands over his ears as more concussions battered him. Water poured down his throat. He kicked out, broke surface, shook water from his eyes…

The boat was careening on, heading for Bayonne with no one at the tiller. Shad caught a glimpse of flying blond hair, heard a distant scream, and then the turret gun opened up again, filling the water with white fountains.

A wave exploded over his head, and when Shad came up, he couldn't see the boat. He sucked heat and light from the water and struck out for the shore. The roar of the chopper faded.

The water was frigid and the swim endless, but the tidal swirl was heading in the right direction and helped. Finally Shad climbed up a deserted pier on Staten island, and as the breath rasped in his lungs, as he looked out on the Kill Van Kull from a position much higher than a wave-tossed boat, he saw what it was all about, why they'd been so desperate to stop anyone leaving the Rox.

Ranked in the sheltered waters of the Kill Van Kull, hidden from Ellis Island by the sprawling turmoil of Bayonne, were quiet rows of ships in wartime camouflage. Landing ships, supply craft, a small helicopter carrier with its craft parked on deck. The helicopter that had attacked him was only one of several patrolling the ship channel. Trucks, their headlights lined up as far as Shad could see, were offloading combat-ready troops on the piers, and the soldiers were marching onto the landing ships.

They were going for the Rox, and they were going soon. Shad stood dripping on the pier, watched the soldiers moving up the gangplanks, felt his ribs ache, and tried to add up wins and losses.

He'd been to the Rox and back, but the person he'd come to rescue was drowned or blown to bits. He'd broken the jumpers' extortion scheme, but the police weren't going to forget what his jumped body had done to them. He'd lost Chalktalk, and he'd lost Shelley, and the jumpers hadn't lost anybody.

Fuck it. He'd lost. There wasn't any winning in it.

And Shelley had lost, and Tachyon, and if the invasion force was anything to judge by, so had the jumpers, and Kafka, and Bloat.

Time to hid and figure out what he was going to do next. Shad turned and limped down the pier, and the night raised its welcoming mask and swallowed him.

Lovers

V

Tachyon lay on the oil-stained sands of the New Jersey shore and vomited up what felt like several gallons of polluted water. No Takisian is a good swimmer-the home world was too cold to encourage that particular sport-and in her present condition Tachyon was about as lithe as a wading hippo. So she was amazed and delighted to find herself once more safely ashore, however dirty and depressing the vista might be.

She rolled onto her back and waited for her heart to slow its desperate pounding. Illyana was sending out waves of puzzlement over her mother's distress. Tachyon sent back images of black water, trying to show the baby the reason for her fear and the fact that it no longer existed. Illyana's confusion deepened, and Tach felt a burst of pleasure from the fetus as she contemplated her watery home.

That brought a laugh to her lips, and Tachyon sat up. "All right, you little fish, so I'm an irrational coward. But you won't be so smug once you've joined the rest of us out here on dry land."

Sometime during that nightmare dog paddle, she had lost or kicked off her shoes. Water squished through the thick material of her tube socks as she stood and tried to get her bearings. Walking was going to be difficult, and her clammy clothes…

She realized what she was doing and throttled the complaining thoughts. "Burning Sky," she said with disgust. "You're free. Free, and you're bitching about wet socks."

Tachyon threw back her head and let out a whoop of joy. "I'M FREE! FUCK YOU, BLAISE! I'M FREE!" The joyous words echoed oddly among the rusting cranes and rotting piers that lined the New Jersey coast.

It was all the celebration she allowed herself. She was still dangerously vulnerable, and dangerously close to the Rox. She had to make her way back to the clinic, and quickly. As she paused to get her bearings, the moldering skyline suddenly gave her a heart-squeezing sense of deja vu. Strange, because she had never in her life stood on this shore at the edge of the leprous bay, gazing across the cancerous rot of industrial parks.

Someone else's memory.

Despite her former body's formidable powers, she had not made it a habit to walk through the private parts of people's minds. That narrowed the possible owners of this particularly intense memory. And since only the Great and Powerful Turtle lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, it was a safe bet the memory was his.

Tommy. Yes! Tommy could get her home without the dangers attendant to hitchhiking. And if Blaise came after her, Turtle could handle him. Now all that remained was to find the junkyard that hid the Turtle and housed the man inside the shell.

It was like having due north embedded in the cortex of the brain. She matched junkyards against the memory compass in her head until at last the images merged. Beyond the twelve-foot-high chain link, abandoned cars formed steel glaciers. Tilted piles of tires, like a giant's collection of rotting donuts, loomed against the light haze that was Manhattan. The problem was the fence.

She cast along the fence like a hunting dog until she found the gate. An enormous and well-oiled padlock leered at her. Hefting it in her hand, she wished that somewhere in her misspent youth she'd learned to pick a lock. Great fantasy-totally useless. Even if she_ possessed the knowledge, she lacked the tools. Crowbar. Same problem. No tool, probably not enough strength.

She reluctantly dropped the lock, and it fell back against the gate with a crash that set the metal to shivering and ringing. A dog began to bay. Tachyon considered just standing outside the gate and bawling like a hurt steer until someone emerged. But what if this was the wrong junkyard? And what if the proprietor emerged with a shotgun and didn't notice the gender and condition of his caller until he'd replied with both barrels?

She returned to a section of fence that sagged between the uprights. That left a two-foot space between the rolled barb wire and the top of the links. Monkeylike, using fingers and toes, she began to climb the fence. It was almost impossible with her belly in the way. She found a way to make it possible though it put enormous strain on her back.

At the top. Eyeing the points on the chain link. The rusting barbs. She went wriggling through, feeling hot burn as several barbs opened lines on her back. The stabbing pain in her stomach and thighs from the chain link. Now the hard part, maneuvering around to find a toehold…

In another lifetime Tachyon had often warned his pregnant patients about increasing clumsiness as the pregnancy advanced. How they should avoid step stools, ladders.

Add chain link fences, she thought as her foot slipped, a link tore open her palm and she fell backward off the fence. Illyannnnnaaa. What began as a name in the mind became a shriek in the throat as she plummeted. Fortunately the gods and ancestors gave woman padding. It hurt, and she suspected she had bruised her tailbone, but no bones were broken, and Illyana continued to slumber.

Mindful of dogs, Tach crept through the dungheaps and gravestones of an industrial society. Near the center of the yard five boulevards intersected in an open area, a sort of junkyard Etoile with the Are de Triomphe formed by a weather-beaten and sagging old shack squatting like a tired old man in the center.

It was the right junkyard. Tommy's memories of a lifetime of childhood games in and around that old house jostled in Tachyon s mind like rudderless boats. The feelings engendered were so warm that she forgot caution and walked slowly and openly toward the front steps.

Only the quick rush of feet on the hard ground prevented her from being knocked down. She spun as the big black Labrador-Doberman cross sprang at her. His shoulder hit her in the thigh, and she teetered wildly but kept her feet. It circled back as she lunged for the porch, though its safety appeared dubious.

Tach had been master of a pack back home on Takis.

Only there the hunting beasts had a wingspan of thirty feet and jaws that could bite through a man. Given that for training, how hard could one ninety-pound dog be? She had her back against the screen door, beating out a tattoo with a heel as the animal growled, barked, and snapped about her ankles.

"Down, sir!" She tried to deepen her voice, hold back the quaver of terror. The dog whined, buried its muzzle briefly between its paws like a man holding his head in confusion.

The porch light snapped on, and then she heard Turtle. "It's three o'clock in the fucking morning!"

It was music. It was warmth, and breakfasts in bed, and hot baths, and everything safe and good. She looked back over her shoulder. Tommy Tudbury, the Great and Powerful Turtle, was a plump middle-aged man dressed only in pajama bottoms, and as his eyes met Tachyon's, he surreptitiously reached down and hitched the waist of his pajamas up and over the bulge of his potbelly.

Tach drew a deep breath and said in a surprisingly steady voice, "Tommy, it is I, Tachyon."

"And I'm the pope." The dog was keening softly. Tommy glanced down in annoyance. "Jetboy, scram." The dog bounded off into the darkness.

"I am Tachyon," she insisted. "I was jumped-"

"And killed. They televised the memorial service on the local joker cable station."

"I an not dead. I've been imprisoned on Ellis Island for seven months. Whoever said I was dead lied. I've got to get back to the clinic, and for that I need your help." She considered for a moment, then added. "But first… I need a drink."

"Shit! You just might be Tachyon," snorted the Turtle. And Tachyon was too relieved even to be offended. "Tell me something only Tachyon could know"

"I found you, didn't I?" That didn't seem to cut it. "I faked your death in eighty-seven. You yanked me out an Atlanta hotel window in eighty-eight-"

"Okay, okay." But there was the oddest expression in his brown eyes. Uncomfortable under the scrutiny, Tach hugged herself, and half turned away. "Well, I guess you better come in."

As she followed him through the door, Tach noticed that the screen had been repaired. It looked as if a twisted black-wire spider had died and joined with the metal of the screen. Tommy's bare feet slapped on the linoleum floor as Tach followed him down the hall and into the tiny kitchen. It was extremely well appointed-dishwasher, double-door refrigerator, electric knife sharpener, coffee maker, coffee-bean grinder-in short, a gadgeteer's delight.

"All I've got is bourbon."

"That's fine." The chink of glass on glass. Tom thrust a tumbler under her nose. The whiskey fumes caressed her nose with a smell that promised the warmth of hearth fires. Greedily she grabbed the glass, threw back the bourbon. It hit like napalm exploding, and she gagged. Tommy held her shoulders.

"Stupid," wheezed Tach. "I haven't had a drink in seven months."

Ton waved the bottle. "You want another?"

"No, I can't. It's bad for the baby."

"Baby?" Turtle echoed in a pinched, strangled voice. Despite herself, Tachyon laughed. "You are an old bachelor." Tommy's eyes dropped to her thickened waist. He spun away, ran his hands through his hair. "Oh… shit… this is too fuckin' weird."

"You ought to try it from my side." For a long moment, they stood in silence. It soon became uncomfortable. Tommy was staring at her so oddly.

"What?" Tach finally demanded. "You really are beautiful."

Her hands flew to her cheeks, covering the betraying flush. "Don't be an idiot," she said gruffly. She then peeked at him through the curtain of her hair. "Tommy, do you have a mirror?"

"Why?"

"I… I have never seen myself. I have lived in this skin for seven months, but I have never seen myself."

Pity flared in his eyes. Gruffly he said, "Come on." She followed him down the hall and into the small bedroom. A full-length mirror hung on the closet door. Tommy reached out and snapped on the ceiling light. The wallpaper was an elegant stripe design known as Versailles. Tach had used it in one of her apartments. The room was dominated by a big-screen TV, but that would be logicalTommy had owned a TV repair shop. Atop the television was the head of an incredibly handsome man. In place of hair, a clear radar dome covered the top of the skull.

"Modular Man?"

"It's all I've got, just the head. I'm going to get it working sometime."

"You're very strange." She resumed her scrutiny of the room. Framed prints and posters on the walls, tumbled pile of books on the bedside table. The bed itself was a canopied dream, a bed for a Renaissance prince.

"You're a romantic," said Tachyon as she crossed the room. "And a very bad sleeper," she added with a glance at the bedclothes, which were humped and twisted like cloth' mountains riven by an earthquake.

But the moment had come, and she forced her attention to the mirror. It was a little figure, a defiant urchin in her faded denim coveralls. The shoulder straps crisscrossed the thin white T-shirt. The breasts were swollen; her body preparing itself for motherhood. The thrust of her belly was greater than she had expected, and she found it embarrassingparticularly with Turtle watching.

She moved in closer, inspected the silver gilt hair cascading over her shoulders and reaching to her hips. The shape of the face was actually familiar. Like her own, it tapered to a pointed little chin, but it was soft and innocent. No wrinkles formed a net of years about the eyes; no deep gouges marred the vulnerable mouth. Tachyon noticed she had a rather short upper lip, which left her with a constant and quizzical little porpoise smile. Only in the eyes did her ordeal, and the years that burdened her soul, reveal themselves. They were a deep smoky gray with a darker circle around the iris, and they were haunted and very sad.

She turned back to Tommy. "Ideal, it's so… young." Tach turned back to the mirror. Noted the bones of her clavicle etched beneath the white skin. She was painfully thin, which made the distended belly look more like a victim of starvation than pregnancy.

"What do you need, Tachy?" asked Turtle.

"A bath-I'm sticky with salt. A meal. And sleep."

"Bathroom's through there. I'll fix you some food, and the bed." He pointed.

An hour later, she was clean, sated, and exhausted. Tach climbed into the big canopied bed wearing a soft flannel shirt of Tommy's. Her hair was still damp, and she could almost feel the tangles forming, but she didn't care.

With his feet planted well apart and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his bathrobe, Tommy was a pudgy Colossus of Rhodes standing guard at the door. "Could I…"

"What?"

"Nah, never mind."

"What?"

"It's nothing."

"What?" repeated Tachyon with rising irritation.

He sucked in a bushel's worth of air and let it out in a long breath. "Could I… brush your hair?"

Tach smiled, and for the first time she saw the effect a lovely woman could have on a man. The Ideal knew she had felt it often enough. But what power.

"I'd like that, Tommy."

She held out her hand, and as he crossed to her, he plucked a silver-backed brush from the dresser. It was such an oddly elegant thing to see in Tommy's broad soft hand. He settled cross-legged on the bed behind her. Tach fidgeted for several seconds until she found a position that would accommodate her belly and not cramp Illyana. Waves of sleepy contentment were washing off the baby, and it was about to put Tach to sleep.,

Tommy's hands moved through her hair, lifting and separating the silky strands. Occasionally a strand would catch on his skin, and the tug to her scalp was amazingly sensual and relaxing. The brush massaged her scalp and flowed softly through her hair. He was so gentle, there wasn't a single painful pull.

Tachyon was very aware of Tommy, but despite her exhaustion and the dreamy state induced by the brushing, there was still a shivering along all her nerves. Her skin seemed almost to crawl when Tommy approached too close. It hurt to say it. She could anticipate the hurt in his eyes, but she had to.

Planting a hand on the mattress, she cranked around until she could look him in the face. "Tommy, I can't have you sleep in this bed with me."

It was like a curtain drawing across his face. Hurt, anger, shame. "What?… You think I'd-"

"No, of course not. It's not you." The words lay like ground glass in the back of her throat. She prevaricated.

Perhaps if she were to sneak up on it, it could be said. "This body wasn't in this condition when I entered it."

"What are you trying to say to me?" Aggression laced each word, making it cut razor sharp.

"Tommy… I was… raped."

Saying the words released the floodgates of terror. Tach's fear and anguish struck the baby, and Illyana jerked away. The wild movement of the fetus pulled an involuntary groan from Tachyon.

Tommy's arms wrapped around her. Rocking her softly, he said. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So sorry"

The soothing words were murmured into the back of her head. Each syllable released with a tiny puff of warm air that feathered her hair and caressed her skin, but Tach flinched in Turtle's embrace, and the tears she should have been shedding jammed up somewhere in the middle of her chest. He missed her reaction. She could feel the panic rising. And she knew if she moved too quickly, if Tommy tightened his hold, if she tried to release the emotions that wrapped like steel bands about her chest, she would shatter into a million sparkling shards. When had flesh and bone been replaced with glass, Tach wondered?

Carefully she enunciated the words, trying to keep the shrill cry of terror from her voice. "You have to let go of me. Quickly!"

Water dancing on a hot skillet couldn't have moved faster. Tom's arms snapped away from her body like a trap opening, and he scooted on his rump to the foot of the bed. "I was only trying-"

"I know. It's not you, it's me. Please, Tom, don't look at me like that. I don't want to hurt you."

"Do you want to talk-"

"No."

"You brought it up."

"Only so you would let me go. So you would understand." Tommy got up from the bed. Laid the brush carefully back on the dresser. Dug his hands deep into his pockets. When he turned back, he was smiling. Injecting a note of lightness into his voice, he asked, "So, what's the drill?"

Tach followed his lead. She forced a smile and said, "First we sleep. Then we go to the clinic, and you establish my bona fides."

"Sounds good. I'll be on the couch if you need me."

She knew she had hurt him. She knew she couldn't do anything to alleviate his pain. "I do need you, Tommy," she managed to say as he was leaving. "And I'm glad you're here." She wasn't sure if he'd heard her.

Somewhere a distant woodpecker was chattering out its rapid-fire signature. Tachyon dug her cheek deeper into the down pillow, tried to block it out.