"Why not?"
"That would require killing him."
Jay's eyes flicked in reaction to that bald statement.
"Jesus Christ, what is it with you Takisians? You've never heard of psychiatrists?"
"Do you want to capture him for me?"
Jay had the grace to blush. He looked down. "Not particularly."
Tach turned away. "I am wounded, Jay, wounded in ways which can't even be seen.
I just want to be left alone."
"That's not an option that's open for you." There was a grimness, a seriousness to the detective's expression that Tachyon had never seen before. It was a little frightening. "There are people who are actors on history. They can't step off the stage no matter how much they might like to. You're one of those people-you poor bastard."
There was no answer to that. Again silence held the room. Tach finally crossed to the bar, and poured out a brandy. "A little early in the day, isn't it?"
"Don't nag. You have unalterably depressed me, now you must take the consequences."
"Hey, it ain't my problem. You can go to hell anyway it suits you. Just don't try to blame me."
Tach set aside the snifter, untasted. "And what of Mark?"
"No trace. Oh, I know he's somewhere within the environs of greater Manhattan, but I don't know where."
"Why is this so difficult? Mark Meadows is a lovely but totally ineffectual person. How could he evade you this long?"
"He's had some help. The jokers seem to be protecting him, and most important, he doesn't want to be found."
"His protectors must know that we can be trusted."
"Look, if we get the information, how long until the cops have it? Meadows is a wanted fugitive. Don't forget that." "All this fuss over a child-custody hearing. They've ruined a man for nothing."
"They've ruined him for being an ace. His little girl was just the excuse."
"What lovely times we live in." Tach sighed. "Well, keep looking."
Jay rose. "And Blaise?"
"You've told me what I needed to know. Now it's just a matter of warning my friends and protecting. myself."
Jay hesitated at the door. "You won't. . ."
"He is my grandchild. The last of my blood. The only heir I will ever have. I can't. . ." His voice, too, died away to nothing.
" I think you're a fool."
"So you have said before." Jay left. And Tachyon drained the brandy.
The shrilling of the telephone dimly penetrated the thunder and rush of the shower. Tach heard the answering machine kick in. He continued to shampoo his long red hair as his own familiar voice droned through the message. There was the nasal squeal of the signal, and then Cody's voice. "I've rented us a room at the Ritz." Sputtering, Tach shut off the flow of water. "There comes a time when you can't hide from sex anymore. Meet me."
Tach just stood as shampoo ran down his forehead, and a sudden rush of testosterone brought his cock to rigid anticipatory attention. The soap hit and burned his eyes. Cursing, he switched the water back on, and quickly rinsed. He hurried but seemed to be scarcely moving. His fingers had become clumsy with surprise and nervous expectation. He picked his finest outfit. He wore it only to Hiram's annual Wild Card Day dinners, but tonight merited such elegance.
As he fingered the soft material, he wondered at her choice for a rendezvous.
The hotel seemed rather sterile. But her son, Chris, was a factor at her apartment, and to enter Tachyon's would seem like too much a capitulation for this proud woman.
After dressing, he critically surveyed his reflection in the mirror. Short, yes, by human standards, but very slim. The riot of red curls brushed the shoulders of his coat. The lines about mouth and eyes were too deep for his ninety-one years, but the years on earth had not been kind. The worst flaw was that ugly extrusion on the end of his right arm. He wanted to be able to caress her with all the mastery of a Takisian mentat prince.
The front door bell shrilled. The boy with the flowers. Tach grabbed his wallet, and forced himself not to run.
At the hotel door he gave one final twitch to the goldtipped lace at his throat, adjusted the roses, and gave one quick peremptory knock with the artificial hand.
"It's open, come in," called Cody.
Tachyon entered. There was a room-service cart at the foot of the bed. Caviar, petits fours, a wedge of camembert cheese, and most important, champagne cooling in a silver bucket.
Cody stepped out of the bathroom. There was something hesitant, almost awkward about her stance. Tach understood. He felt damnably nervous and awkward himself.
He found himself focusing on the black negligee she was wearing. It revealed her charms in startling ways, and Tach was a little surprised that she would wear such a sexy gown. But then, what did he really know of this woman and her fantasies? He had always seen her as the perfectly cool, incredibly professional surgeon. Perhaps she liked to be a houri in the bedroom to offset that rather severe image.
"I want you to promise me something."
"Anything," said Tach as he proffered the roses. They were like splashes of blood against the black of her gown. "Don't read my mind."
Tach was puzzled, a thread of suspicion curled in his mind. But his cock was demanding instant attention, and if he refused he might never bed this woman.
"All right," he said slowly. "But might I know why?"
"I need to feel ... safe."
He laughed to off-set the sense of hurt and the taint of disappointment that had wormed its way into his libidinous pleasure. "That's funny, I always feel safer when I can joincompletely-with my lovers."
"Well, do this for me. Promise me."
" I promise."
She seemed vastly relieved because she suddenly smiled. The bouquet of roses went sailing into a chair. "Do you want to waste time with all this romantic bullshit?"
"Did you have a better suggestion?" He felt like he was enunciating past a mouthful of cotton balls.
"Uh-huh." She walked to him, pushed his jacket off his shoulders.
As he wriggled and jerked to free himself from the confining material, Tach leaned forward and kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. He kicked off his shoes, and suddenly got a lot shorter without the benefit of the two-inch heel. His eyes were now exactly at breast level. It was an attractive vista. Her hands were at his belt now, opening the waist band of his pants, pulling them down. They snagged at his ankles, and he tottered trying to regain his balance.
She chuckled far back in her throat and gave him a push that toppled him onto the bed. Reached down and grabbed his pants, pulling them off as if she were shucking an ear of corn.
His jockey shorts came with the pants, and he felt rather vulnerable and silly in his stockings and shirt, his erection rampant among the coppery hairs of his brush.
Cody tumbled onto the bed with him, and pulled him over on top of her. Tangling her hands in his hair, she pulled his face down and kissed him hard. Her tongue slipped between his teeth, and it was that clumsy adolescent sucking, coupled with the faint snick of a door opening, that alerted him to the danger. He tried to roll away, but the false Cody's fingers twined and clutched at his hair like thorn branches.
A quick mentatic check revealed that there were seven opponents in the room, counting the woman in the bed, and a terrifying ice wall of mental shielding that could only be Blaise. Tach's mind control lashed out. The false Cody dropped into slumber and one other assailant. The Takisian was then busy fending off a mind attack from Blaise. A heavy weight landed between his shoulder blades, knocking the wind from his body. He sucked desperately for air like a failing pump billow, then tried to exhale violently as the chloroform-soaked cloth covered his mouth and nose. It was hopeless. The fumes from the drug ate at his control, at consciousness. Tachyon managed to roll onto his back. His finally vision was of Blaise pouring out a glass of champagne and raising it in an ironic salute.
When the first jolt of electricity arced through his testicles, Tachyon thought he would die.
He had been climbing slowly toward consciousness, dimly aware of a musty, moldy odor, a too-full bladder, the dull headache that was the legacy of a drug-induced sleep, then ...
PAINT A scream ripped like acid from his throat, and Tach's body flopped like a dying fish on the decrepit old mattress upon which he rested. A crushing vise closed about his mind. Tachyon tasted Blaise. Panicked. Fought back with everything he had. The pressure retreated. He could focus now-nightmare vision-Blaise wielding a cattle prod. This couldn't be real, a dreaaaam. Another blast of soul-searing agony. Nobody could hurt this much and stay alive. The jaws were back. Teeth penetrating the perfect crystal sphere of his mental shields.
NO!.
Pain, the shattering of self, a cacophony of jabbering, excited, hungry, needy, angry minds. And then one mind.
One mind alone. A familiar, terrifying mind holding him like a bug in amber.
Hello, Grand-pere, crooned Blaise.
Tachyon beat feebly at the awesomely powerful mind control that gripped him.
"Now," said Blaise.
Now what was all he thought before the world went mad. For one wild distorting moment Tachyon was staring down at his own body. Another shift and tilt, and a second of wrenching nausea. Tachyon fought for control, fought to stay conscious. Succeeded. Barely.
He realized he was sitting on the stained linoleum floor. There were hands beneath his arms, yanking him to his feet. Tach stared up into Blaise's exulting face. Lips skinning back in a snarl, the Takisian psi lord tried to gather his power and found-nothing.
Blaise laughed in great gusting whoops. It was a maddening, terrifying sound.
"Oh, Grandpa." Tachyon was swung up into the teenager's arms. "You're going to wish I had only killed you." Fury exploded behind his eyes, and Tach swung hard at Blaise's face. Connected, and then froze in shock: There was a hand at the end of his right arm! Chipped pink polish created an odd piebald effect on the nails. Bile clawed at the back of his throat.
Blaise flung him down on the mattress. Tachyon fought to remain conscious. The very deepest part of himself. That which was Tachyon ran screaming and yammering about his head. Searching for what had been lost. Found only silence, darkness.
My power, he wailed.
A tearing sound, and cold air struck Tach's chest. Rough hands gripped the waistband of the blue jeans, broke the button, ripped open the zipper. Blaise's nails gouged into his legs as the boy yanked down the pants. They snagged.
Muttering oaths, Blaise crawled backward and started to pull off the tennis shoes. It was involuntary. Later he would regret it, but Tach kicked Blaise square in the face.
Blood from Blaise's broken nose spattered on Tachyon's bare legs, on the filthy tiles. Blaise twined a hand in Tach's hair, pulled him up, and slugged him in the face. Tachyon tried to defend, to respond, but he felt weak, disoriented. He knew he had been jumped, one part of him even acknowledged to what, but acceptance was impossible.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening. Not to me. He hurt too much to keep fighting. Tears and blood made a slimy mixture on his face. Blaise stood up. He seemed a colossus towering spraddle-legged over Tach's prone body. Slowly he unzipped, pulled out his rigid penis. Tachyon thought he had endured the worst this or any world had to offer. He was wrong.
Muscles shivered with strain, but still she held him at bay. He had not yet managed to violate her. Blaise was muttering curses as he gripped the soft flesh around her knees and tried to yank her legs apart. She tried to claw his eyes, but he was too quick for her.
Suddenly Blaise pulled her upright by the hair and drove two punishing blows into her gut. Air gusted out like a deflating balloon, and Tachyon wretched. Her legs went flaccid.
"Hold him," ordered Blaise. .
Two boys jumped to obey. One on each leg, they played make-a-wish with the shuddering pain-racked body.
With a coarse grin, Blaise raked his nails across the breasts, cruelly twisted the nipples. Involuntarily, Tach yelped. Gentle now, the fingers trailed across the waist, the slight curve of the belly, brushed the mons.
Tach screamed, and Blaise was on him like a wild animal. Teeth tore at his lips and breasts. Methodically Blaise pounded at Tachyon, driving deeper into her.
The room was echoing with his screams. With the cheers of the onlookers.
"NO, NO! STOP IT! STOP IT!" The girl in his body screaming her protest.
How odd, Tachyon thought as consciousness slipped from her. I hadn't realized my voice was so deep.
The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat
III.
There are times when life is good....
Sometimes the pleasure even comes from odd sources. I've had only a few conversations with Prime. He isn't on the Rox much; when he is, he tends to avoid me. It's because he knows that I can see through his iceman facade. It's because he knows that I see all the deepening cracks behind the smooth cold exterior. He knows that I see the obsession that torments him and titillates him all at the same time.
All the pressure, pent up for years and years and years behind his emotionless wall (not as good a wall as mine), and David-poor David-cracked it with just his presence. David's death was a jackhammer blow. Walls: I have mine; Prime has his; and his is crumbling as the Berlin Wall crumbled last month.
Or... I've thought of it another way, too, sometimes. Prime, if you watch him, is like a dormant volcano all covered with snow, but steaming through fumaroles that hint at the turmoil underneath.
That's a better image, overall. And I wonder when he's going to explode. I worry, too, because Prime holds Blaise in check. Without Prime ...
I was about to witness the unveiling when Kafka came rattling into the lobby, all excited. He hardly glanced at the huge draped package set before me. All out of breath, he just asked where it came from.
"It's a present from Nelson Dixon." Latham-Prime-stood next to the drapes. He sniffed, still playing iceman. Blaise wasn't there, though Molly Bolt and K.C.
were. The laughter of my jokers drifted down from the balcony and around the lobby. Peanut beat his one arm against my side, guffawing. I beamed down at the dimwitted joker in affection. Shroud, Marigold, Vomitus, Video, Elmomaybe a half a hundred all told in the lobby area, and all their thoughts crowded into my mind.
No wonder I'm so big. I have to hold so many people. Kafka looked as bewildered as a roach can look. He repeated what I'd just said, obviously confused.
"Well, Dixon signed the check," I told him. "Nice of him, wasn't it?"
Kafka blinked several times. "Well, I don't know where he got it, and I certainly don't have the foggiest notion of why it works, but it's humming right along. I hooked it up."
Sometimes even mind readers are confused. Belatedly, I looked at the images in Kafka's head and realized we weren't talking about the same thing at all. He was talking about a generator. I told him that I was glad he'd finally managed to get his hands on one to bring over to the Rox.
Kafka just shook his head (well, his whole body, actually). "You didn't buy it, Governor?" More confusion radiated from the joker. He looked at me, at Prime, at Peanut and the rest of the jokers gathered around. "It was sitting there in the subbasement, and it wasn't there two days ago. It doesn't look like any generator I've ever seen."
The picture in his mind looked exactly like a generator to me, but Kafka sighed.