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  "You bastard." Her voice was shaking as hard as her hands. A button twisted off as she tried to close her blouse. "Nothing matters to you but yourself. This is not just about me... about a lifetime trapped. Blaise is going to Takis. My people are going to suffer... perhaps die because you can't be bothered to help."

  "Aliens," said Fortunato, edging the word with ice.

  It threw Tachyon completely off stride. She faltered, gaped. "What?"

  "Aliens. I don't give a rat's ass about the sufferings of faggots from outer space. Your people brought the wild card to Earth. What was the toll on Wild Card Day? Sixty thousand dead? Let this Blaise do his worst." Fortunato was talking to her back. A vise had closed around her chest as the guilt slammed home. Mental wails were coming from Illyana as she tried to absorb, understand, buffer against the fire storm of emotions that tore through her mother. It was almost a flashback. The peaceful garden became Central Park. The screams of the dying and the deformed. And the smell -- smoke and feces and vomit. Wild Card Day. September 15, 1946.

  "Hey, Tachyon."

  She kept walking.

  "I'll give you this much -- Jube the Walrus isn't a joker. In fact, he's not even human."

  That got her. Frowning, Tach turned back to face the ace. "You're mad."

  "No. I'm the most powerful ace in the world, remember?"

  "Even if it's true, how does that help? What in the fuck am I supposed to do with that?" Tachyon walked back to the bench, glared at the ace.

  Fortunato stood and smoothed the folds of his kimono, glanced down into Tachyons bitter face, shrugged. "Hey, you're not my problem. It's not my responsibility to take care of you."

  "Or anyone else." Tight and low the words had to fight their way past her lips.

  "I thought you would have gotten that by now."

  "Oh, yes, I got it. Now get this!"

  It was an effort to keep her balance, but Tach managed, and watched with satisfaction as the toe of her shoe impacted squarely with Fortunato's crotch. He clutched himself and dropped, groaning, to his knees. The twilight bird song was punctuated with the sounds of gags and retching. Tach watched dispassionately as vomit and spittle decorated the grass.

  "There must be a thousand women who wish they could have done that," said Tach pleasantly. "I'm glad it got to be me."

  As she walked back across the bridge, Tach couldn't help reflecting how soothing the sounds of a Zen garden could be.

  "You went to Japan for a day?" The customs officer was a hirsute individual with a five o'clock shadow at ten o'clock, and brows that looked like knotted bird nests. "And you've got no luggage?"

  "Yes ... and yes."

  The line behind Tachyon was becoming restive. The Japanese might be patient about queues back home, but not in New York. They wanted to reach the fleshpots of Manhattan and find a blond cutie -- rather like the one holding up the parade. Despite Tachyon's fecund condition she had been groped five times on the flight back to the States. The fifth assailant had earned himself a black eye.

  Resigning herself to the necessity of explanations, Tach began, "I went to Japan solely for a meeting. You have my passport with a letter from Senator Kennedy. It should be apparent what has happened to me."

  Cody was no doubt waiting beyond customs. It made Tach crazy to be so close to home, and to be stalled by an officious --

  There were suddenly two men on either side of her. Dark suits, white shirts. Every thread of their polyester screamed federal cop.

  "Dr. Tachyon, if you could come with us please."

  She took one last longing look at the sliding doors cycling open and closed, disgorging people into freedom. The man on her left closed a hand around her upper arm. Resistance melted under the hot breath of fear.

  Chapter Five

  Interrogation rooms the world over have the same look and feel and smell. Tachyon had experienced them in France, Germany, and Spain. Had spent several memorable days in New York's Tombs in the early sixties fighting off nightmares born of the d. t.'s. So, although the smiling General Zappa might describe this as a "debriefing," Tach knew better. It was rubber-hoses time again.

  Only the man wielding the hose would be the civilian representative of the United States government. She glanced again at Phillip von Herzenhagen's blood-suffused face and took tighter rein on a mount called terror. The special assistant to Vice President Quayle was fat and pink like a marzipan bonbon, and he had entered the room just brimming with jocularity and bonhomie. Then he decided to interpret Tachyon's ignorance for intransigence, and his mood had shifted.

  Tach's eyes roved the room, seeking inspiration from the cinder-block walls. There had been cinder blocks in her basement cell on the Rox, she recalled. Zappa was seated across a scarred wooden table from her. The scrape of chair legs against the concrete floor pulled her attention back to her inquisitors.

  Von Herzenhagen strode across the room and yanked up the venetian blinds. Bloat's castle bulked fantastic against the sky.

  "How the hell does somebody create that?"

  Tach shrugged. "You know as much as I do. It's called wild card."

  "This creature is the most dangerous threat the United States has ever faced. Power like that --"

  Resting her palms on the table, she leaned in intently. "-- is paltry when compared to that of a Hitler, a Pol Pot. We're talking about a boy, a desperate boy who is doing his best to protect and care for his people. If you would stop throwing soldiers at him and try talking --"

  "We don't negotiate with terrorists!"

  "Since when did jokers become terrorists?" Tach shouted.

  Zappa stepped in as peacemaker. "I'd call the jumps an act of terrorism."

  "You're lumping two very diverse groups with competing interests into a single entity. Bloat -- Teddy -- represents the jokers, is trying to protect them, and the Ideal knows they have suffered at your hands."

  "How many jokers are on that island?" von Herzenhagen demanded.

  "How many times do you want to hear the same words? I don't know."

  "How the hell could you not know? You were on that fucking rock for seven months!"

  Tach was furious now at his tone, the hardness of the wooden chair, the whole damn situation. "And for the first five months I was locked in a basement, and the remaining two in an attic! I wasn't given a guided tour!"

  "A guess," Zappa said soothingly.

  "A lot -- thousands maybe."

  "You're lying." Von Herzenhagen's face was inches from hers. Tach's heart gave a skip, and nausea clawed at her guts. "Ellis Island is a quarter of a mile of ship ballast."

  His hand closed on her wrist, and her slender control snapped. Tach jerked hard to the left, sending herself and the chair careening to the floor.

  "Holy Christ!" Zappa's voice distant and above her.

  Both the men dropped to their knees next to her. The male heat washed off them in waves. She could smell the stale cigarette smoke on von Herzenhagen's breath. He gripped her shoulders, and Tach began screaming, a thin, tearing sound shattering off the brick was.

  "Don't hurt me! Ancestors, please don't hurt me!"

  "Then tell us what we want to know," von Herzenhagen said.

  "Jesus shit, Phil," Zappa snapped. "She's... he's scared to death."

  "Tell me!"

  "There are... caverns... miles and miles... of them. Please, please, don't hurt me," Tach whimpered. She had curled into a fetal position, arms folded protectively across Illyana.

  With a forefinger Zappa pushed up her sleeves, lightly touched the bandages. "Phil, lay off her now, okay?"

  The slamming of the door was the reply.

  The accommodations were nicer than the Rox, but it was still a cell. The window gave her a view of Ellis Island, and Tachyon wondered if that was deliberate. She whiled away the hours watching military aircraft cut the skies over New York Harbor.

  The sun went down, and the castle glittered with lights. Like stars peeking through massed thunderclouds. An Ab scre
amed past and disturbed from their rest a flock of winged creatures; they exploded off one of the tower battlements like wind-torn smoke.

  Which would win in the coming conflagration? Tach wondered. Fantasy or technology? Oh, Teddy, they are going to destroy you and your poor little fairy-tale kingdom.

  She half expected a reply. For months she and the joker governor of the Rox had maintained first a dream, and then a true telepathic communication. He had loved her and wooed her and finally found the strength to help engineer her escape. Too bad the freedom had lasted only five days. A lot of people had died to secure that brief interlude.

  Gathering her feeble powers, Tach actually did reach out and mind-search for the Outcast. The telepathic signal seemed to be reflected back to her. The increase in Bloat's powers had closed his mind as well as his kingdom to her. And, realistically, what could he do to aid her this time, this mammoth mountain of oozing flesh topped with the head and torso of a nineteen-year-old boy?

  With a sigh Tach abandoned the view and returned to her bed. They at least kept her supplied with books, newspapers, a television. The drawback was she could count the passing days in the changing dates. She read until sleep dragged at her lids, then snapped out the light and fell headlong into what she hoped would be a night of forgetfulness.

  The snick of the lock brought her bolt upright, bile clawing at the back of her throat. Moonlight glinted off the soldier's belt buckle. This was it then. They had come. Blaise. Rape...

  A shadowy form darted past the guard, carrying something. Tach screamed, shrill and desperate. Light exploded in her eyes, leaving floating red dots imprinted on the retina.

  "Shit, Tachy, shut up! They'll have my nuts!" A harsh whisper. A familiar voice. Digger Downs. Sleazy reporter for a sleazy rag called Aces.

  Tach raked back her hair with a trembling hand. Climbed up off the floor. Air trickled back into lungs, and Tach tried to stop shaking. Digger snapped another picture.

  "God, this is great. Could you turn sideways?

  Humiliation gnawed at Tach's guts like a frenzied animal, and she wanted to kill something. "So who's the father? Inquiring minds want to know." Digger grinned at her, the smile deepening as he saw her hands closing into fists. "Can't make me pour brandy over my head now, can you, Tachy? So, how's it feel?"

  It surprised her, how fast she moved despite her ungainly bulk. The back of the metal chair slid easily into her hands.

  "Goddamn you!" Three quick steps, heft, swing. "You son of a bitch!" Bring the chair down firmly on the top of the head.

  "Owwww!" Digger's camera went flying. Tach had to give the reporter points for doggedness. He went scrabbling on hands and knees across the floor for the fallen camera. Tach whacked him again, hard, across the back this time. "Shit!"

  "You could have helped me. Instead you shame and humiliate me!" The word spiraled into a shriek as Tach flung the chair at him.

  Digger recovered the camera, scrambled to his feet, and went barreling for the door with Tach running awkwardly after him. The guard was in a panic at the noise and uproar. The wad of bills peeping coyly from his shirt pocket wasn't enough to get busted for. He stiff-armed Tachyon, his palm taking her hard in the chest. The blow knocked her to the floor. She was on her back, legs open, belly thrust aggressively for the ceiling. Digger took a final picture.

  "Even better than a profile," he said.

  The door slammed shut.

  "I am an American citizen. You cannot hold me without cause. I demand that I be released." Tach was discovering that stiff speeches delivered in soprano voices don't have much impact.

  The office was a thrown-together affair. Metal desk, a very nice leather executive's chair, filing cabinets of three different colors. Headquarters of an army on the move, thought Tachyon.

  Von Herzenhagen didn't respond. He just stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on his desk and swiveled his chair to face a filing cabinet. He began rooting through the files while Zappa said, "You're a necessary resource during this crisis."

  "What resource? I have no powers to assist you. I have told you all that I know about the situation on the Rox. You have to let me go." Silence. "There are laws in this country, and you are breaking them."

  Von Herzenhagen emitted a sound of satisfaction and swiveled back to face Tachyon and Zappa. He was holding a piece of computer printout. With a snap of the wrist he unfolded it. It was a very long piece of paper. Offered it to Tachyon.

  The heading read, KELLY ANN JENKINS. Under it was an impressive array of charges. Accessory to armed robbery. Accessory to kidnapping. Accessory to assault and battery. Accessory to murder. It was quite a rap sheet.

  Tach tossed it back onto the desk with a disdainful flick of the fingers. "So? What has this to do with me?"

  "You are Kelly Ann Jenkins," von Herzenhagen said.

  "Fascinating. And I thought I was here because I am Dr. Tachyon."

  "Fingerprints say you're Kelly Ann Jenkins." Von Herzenhagen smiled from the teeth out. "I don't think you're in any position to make demands, Doctor. Now be a good boy, and maybe we won't put you in the county jail. Inmates are very hostile toward jumpers. You won't like your treatment there, and sometimes the guards are just a little slow responding to screams."

  Tach stared down into that round, pink face and felt the walls of her prison close even tighter about her.

  Chapter Six

  French braiding was every bit as hard as it looked -- harder. Tachyon was trying to while away the long hours by mastering this esoteric skill, and so far was failing miserably. It made her crazy that as accomplished a surgeon and violinist as herself could not plait dead protein.

  As she frowned into the mirror, a retina-searing flare of golden light suddenly filled the room, reflecting off the glass.

  Explosion! Big one! The first panicked reaction was to dive for cover. Then she saw him hovering outside the barred window.

  "Starshine!" Tach cried, and ran for that fantastic figure in its formfitting yellow costume, green trunks, boots, and gloves, a sunburst blazing on his massive chest.

  He turned an ireful green eye upon her. "Well, I see that muckraking little excuse for a journalist was correct. But why he feels he must utilize his talents in this kind of cheap sensationalism.

  From the hallway came the sounds of running feet, orders being shouted. Tach lost the thread of Starshine's diatribe.

  "If this is a rescue, could you... " She made a tumbling motion with her hands. "Could you... get on with it?"

  "Take cover."

  Tach darted around the bed and huddled between it and the wall. She risked one glance as Starshine unleashed a flaring yellow sunbeam from his hand. Tach ducked and covered her head, and the outer wall of the building exploded into the room. Coughing, wiping plaster dust from her face, Tach tripped and dodged fallen bricks to the hole. The snap and snarl of weapons fire had now been added to the chaos. Bullets went whining off Starshine's energy field.

  The ace landed lightly in the room, dropped the field, and lifted Tachyon into his arms. Looking up into that handsome square-jawed face crowned with a nimbus of waving blond hair, Tach reflected that Starshine was, physically, at least, the perfect rescuer for a damsel in distress. Unfortunately his touch had bile rising in the back of her throat.

  "Doctor, I hope the graveness of your present situation has finally brought home to you the dangers attendant with unregulated scientific research."

  The door was swinging open. "How about the dangers attendant in guards with guns?" Tach squeaked.

  Starshine sniffed, raised his energy field, and shot out the ragged hole. Tach looked ahead and saw a pair of Apache helicopters chewing their way toward an interception. Starshine put on a burst of speed that pressed Tach deeper into the man's arms, and they were past the choppers.

  "Where are you taking me?"

  "I would have thought you would have had enough of men making decisions for you." They dived abruptly, using the warehouses that line
d the Jersey coast as a screen from both visual and radar sighting. "I'm doing you the courtesy of treating you as a fully realized woman with the capability to make decisions for yourself."

  "I am not a woman."

  Starshine looked down at her in disgust. "How typical. You have been given this chance to explore the life-affirming power of the female, and you reject it. I've done a poem on this very subject." He sucked in a breath, opened his mouth, Tach cut in.

  "Before you start quoting yourself, could you please direct us to Hook Road in Bayonne? There's an abandoned junkyard there. Right on New York Bay. We'll be safe there."

  "Incredible. I wonder what psychological problems this reveals, comparing your female state to garbage."

  "Fly," Tach said wearily. She was even too tired to remonstrate as Starshine declaimed his latest ode.

  Thomas Tudbury was an overweight man in his forties, and Tachyon and Starshine were standing in his kitchen. Thomas Tudbury was also supposedly dead. His alter ego, the Great and Powerful Turtle, lived on, and thus far his secret hiding place was known only to Tachyon and Joey Di Angelis. Which explained his present fury and consternation. Starshine had folded his arms across his chest and was eyeing Tom with Olympian disdain. Tach knew that was part of the problem. It wasn't helping Tom to have this Adonis in his face.

  "Jesus, Tachy, why did you have to come here?"

  "If you're scared, you don't have to worry. We weren't traced," Starshine said. "I saw to that."

  "Hey, dumbshit --" Tom began.

  Tach quickly interrupted. "Where else could I go? They'll be watching the clinic, my friends. They locked me up, Tommy. I can't take being locked up anymore!" Her voice had gone all ragged and stretched.

  Tom slumped into a chair. "Christ, Tach, you just tumble from one crisis to another." He scrubbed at his face with a hand, took a pull on his beer. "Anybody want anything?"

  "Do you have any Perrier?" Starshine asked.