George Martin - Dead Mans Hand

Brennan prayed that the little alien would pull through. They were friends and comrades, having fought both the Swarm and the Shadow Fists together, but also Brennan felt that Tachyon was one of the few people in the world who understood his motivations. Tachyon knew why he'd been compelled to fight Kien and the Shadow Fists. He had a sense of personal duty as deep as Brennan's.

As he watched the clip of Tachyon losing his hand for the nth time, Brennan suddenly recognized someone else in the scene. Popinjay was at Tachyon's side. What the hell was the PI doing in Atlanta? Had he abandoned Chrysalis's case, or had some clue taken him to the convention?

As Brennan was wondering about all this, Father Squid returned, carrying a gym bag and a large, flat-sided leather case. He put the bags down before Brennan and said seriously, " I don't know if I should be encouraging you in this, Daniel."

"You're not encouraging me, Father. You know that I'm doing only what must be done." He unzipped the leather case and took out his backup bow. The police had his other bow, and most of his arrows, but Brennan had some left. Enough, he hoped.

He opened up his gym bag and took out a black jumpsuit. He draped it over a chair and continued to wait for the dark.

"I wish George was here," Blaise said.

For a moment Jay thought the boy was talking about George Bush. The hospital waiting room had two television sets, both tuned to the convention, and he'd been hearing a lot about George Bush from the commentators. He was about to tell the kid that the last thing any of them needed right now was a Republican when it dawned on him that Blaise meant his jolly old KGB uncle. "George is in New York," Jay told him. Mackie Messer was in New York, too, but he wasn't in the Tombs. Jay had phoned. Mackie had freaked out, turned a couple of his cellmates into Alpo, and walked right through the bars.

The carnage in front of the Omni kept playing and replaying in his head, like a bad splatter movie. Jack Braun was one of the champion weenies of all time, but maybe he was right, maybe Jay had fucked up, had inadvertently saved Mackie Messer by popping him away before Braun could get to him. Or maybe he'd saved Tachyon's life. He just wasn't sure. And whether Golden Boy could actually have gotten to Mackie or not, teleporting him into the Tombs had been a ghastly mistake. There were other places Jay could have picked, empty, deserted places where no one would have died. Mackie was psychotic, he knew that from Digger, he should have thought about what his reaction would be when he found himself in that cell. But there hadn't been time to think. Everything had happened so goddamned fast…

A horsefly was buzzing around Jay's head. He brushed it away and sighed. This afternoon was over. There was nothing he could do about it now. Except live with it. For a long, long time.

They were the last ones left in the waiting room. A few reporters still haunted the steps outside, but only family, friends, and VIPs had been admitted to the hospital itself. There had been quite a few during the first hour of their vigil. jokers by the score had come and gone, some bearing flowers or books or other tokens of their esteem. Hiram Worchester sat with Jay for almost an hour during the dinner recess, pale and silent. "I have to get back to the floor," he said when he finally stood to leave. "Tell him I was here." Jay had promised that he would. Leo Barnett prayed for Tachyon and the TV cameras during his visit. "Lord," the reverend had proclaimed, "Hear me now, and spare this sinner. Grant him his life, that he may come to wisdom at last, and know Your power and mercy, O Lord, and accept You into his heart as his personal savior." Carnifex had swung by briefly, flashed his badge, and grilled one of the doctors. Jay was too far away to overhear what was said, but Ray seemed satisfied. A man in a cheap rubber frog mask had stuck it out longest, pacing restlessly as they waited for word, finally leaving as quietly as he had come. He was the last; now there was only Jay and Blaise.

"You think Tisianne is going to die?" Blaise asked. He didn't sound very upset about the possibility; his tone was more one of idle curiosity than of fear.

"Nah," Jay said. "If he was going to die, he'd have done it already. We been here, what, three hours? They got to have him stabilized by now." He wasn't sure who he was trying to reassure, the boy or himself.

"If he dies, Baby belongs to me," Blaise mused. "Baby?" Jay said, confused. "What baby?"

"That's his spaceship," the boy said, with all of a child's contempt for an adult who didn't know something he assumed everyone ought to know. "It's a stupid name. I'm going to think up a better name for her when she's mine."

"Tachyon's not dead yet," Jay said.

Blaise yawned. He was stretched out across his chair in a boneless sprawl that said he could care less, his legs thrown up carelessly on the coffee table. "Was it really as gross as they say?" he asked. His eyes moved restlessly, tracking the fly as it circled around his head. "The Secret Service guy, the one who drove me, he said there was blood and fingers and everything just flying through the air."

"It was real ugly," Jay said. The conversation was making him distinctly uncomfortable.

"I bet he cried," Blaise said contemptuously. "He should have let me come, I could have grabbed the guy with my mind, just like that!" He shot his hand out suddenly and caught the fly in his fist. Jay could hear it buzzing between the boy's fingers. "I could have made him cut himself up." Blaise closed his fist hard around the fly. "That would have been something," he said casually, opening his fingers and staring at the remains of the insect with a strange little smile on his face.

Jay had a sudden image of the little hunchback killer lopping off his fingers one by one and singing "I'm a Little Teapot" as blood fountained from the stumps. "You know, Blaise," he said, "you are one weird fucking kid." Maybe he was being uncharitable. The boy might be in shock, terrified at the thought of losing his only living relative, hiding fear beneath a pose of indifference and adolescent bravado. Only somehow Jay didn't think so.

The boy looked up at him. Beneath his tousled mass of glittery red hair, his eyes regarded Jay haughtily. They were purple, Jay saw, so dark that they were almost black.

Under the bright fluorescent light of the hospital waiting room, they looked like pools of violet ink. "I'm not a kid," Blaise informed Jay. "On Takis I'd be leaving the women's quarters."

"Figures," Jay said. "Just when you get old enough to want in, they throw you out."

The tunnels were dark, deserted, and very quiet. Brennan had figured they would be. He knew that the police had staked out the Crystal Palace, but he'd hoped they didn't know about the secret underground entrance Chrysalis had built.

And they didn't. At least so far it seemed as if they didn't. Brennan had left Father Squid's rectory with the priest still watching over a sleeping Jennifer and had gone underground two blocks from the Palace. He left the main line at Henry Street and went down the tunnel he'd used to gain access to the Palace the night he'd surprised the Oddity in Chrysalis's bedroom.

There was, he remembered, a short spur off the tunnel that he'd never investigated before. He stopped before it, debating his course of action, the only light a dim beam from the flashlight he held in one hand. In the other was his bow, already assembled.

As he stood there debating with himself he heard a noise coming from the tunnel before him. It was a small, skittering noise, as of many tiny feet trying to be silent. He shone his light into the darkness with little effect.