George Martin - Ace In The Hole

"Help me."

"Jesus Christ! Have you heard a word I've been saving?" Sweat had formed dark rings beneath the ace's armpits. "What are we going to do?"

"I'll tell the Secret Service that I was randomly skimming in a crowd, and picked up the surface thoughts of the assassin. His intent, but not his target or his method."

"Yes, yes, good." A new worry intruded. "But will they believe you?"

"They'll believe me. You humans are all so impressed by my mental powers." He patted Worchester's arm. "Do not worry, Hiram. We will stop him."

It was sheer bravado. And Tach had a feeling that Hiram knew.

"You sure this is where you want out, ma'am?" the uniformed driver asked, craning to peer through the window at the tent city sprung up like post-rain mushrooms in Piedmont Park. Day was really starting to happen, paling the flames of the occasional camp fire dying on the trodden grass. "I'm sure," she said and stepped out. The air was already congealing with a colloid of heat and wet, and diesel fumes, and the smell of secretions, human and not quite. She shut the door. The cruiser pulled away.

She resisted the urge to shoot the car a bird. When she'd asked for police protection, they'd just stared at her. Hoping to contain hysteria and speculation, the Atlanta police were stonewalling on the Peachtree murder. Even Ricky's name was being withheld, ostensibly pending notification of his mother in Philadelphia. Sara's involvement had not been announced either; perhaps in part as a buy-off gesture, the APD spokeswoman was telling the press that the murdered man's companion was being held under protective custody.

Sara knew full well that the Atlanta police were trying to damp dynamite in a mason jar-the explosion, when it came, was going to be that much worse for the attempt. All the same she was glad of it. Ricky's colleagues would learn his identity soon enough, and infer that she was the woman who'd been' with him when he was slain.

She dreaded what would happen then. She didn't even have a stirring of temptation to use the inevitable interrogation to try to expose Hartmann. She knew how futile that would be; Tachyon had done his job too well.

She put on her broad-brimmed hat, hoisted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder. The intrepid reporter-now free lancewalking among the wretched of the earth, not to mention the butt-ugly, gathering their stories of anguish and repression: an act good for a few hours in the middle of a crowd.

She was afraid to be alone. Deathly afraid.

She began to limp up the hill.

Gregg didn't think he'd slept much at all the night before. The last ballot hadn't been cast until early morning, and then there'd been a mild staff celebration in the green room-he'd broken the eighteen-hundred-vote barrier. The hope was that the momentum would swing him to 2,081 and the nomination by evening. "Three hundred votes. Piece of cake," deVaughn had said.

And Gregg didn't care. He didn't care.

Gregg stood at the window of his suite looking down at the crowds swirling below in the morning sunshine-Hartmann supporters, mostly, from the hats. He rubbed his eyes, sipping on black coffee in a Stvrofoam cup. The coffee burned in his stomach; Puppetman burned in his head.

"Goddamn it, you have to feed me," Puppetman wailed, and with the voice came the presence's agony-that feeling of slow starvation.

"I can't." Gregg could feel that emptiness in his own stomach, a steady craving. "I want to, but we can't. You know that. "

"We don't have a fucking choice, not any more." Puppetman clawed at him with mental talons. Gregg's fingers clenched the heavy curtains. The sight of people walking in the morning sunshine mocked Puppetman's hunger. He wanted them. He wanted to leap down like a panther and ravage them. His fingers whitened with the intensity of his grip.

"Back in New York-" Gregg began, but Puppetman cut him off.

"Now! We won't get to New York for another week. I can't wait that long. You can't wait that long."

"What the hell do you want me to do?" Gregg raged back in desperation. "It's not me, it's Gimli. We have to do something about him. Give me another day," Gregg pleaded. "Now!"

"Please.." Gregg was nearly sobbing. His head throbbed with, the pain of holding Puppetman back. He wanted to rip his skull open and gouge out the demanding power with his bare hands.

"SOON, then, goddamn it! Soon, or I'll make you crawl again. I'll strip you naked and make you beat yourself off in front of the press. Do you hear me? I'll eat you if I can't have anyone else. Gimli's right in that."

Puppetman raked his mind again and Gregg gasped with the pain. "Leave me alone!" he shouted. His knotted fingers tore the curtains from the wall in a fury. Thev crashed to the ground in a thunder of rods and hooks. Gregg hurled his coffee cup across the room, splattering the plush furniture and burning his hand. "Just leave me alone!" he screamed, his fingers dragging at his face.

"Gregg!"

"Senator!"

Ellen had come from the bedroom. At the same time, Billy Ray burst in through the hall door. Both of them stared at Gregg and the wreckage of the room, Ellen with a stark horror on her face, and her hands folded protectively over her stomach. "My god, Gregg," she said. It was a whisper this time. "I heard you arguing… I thought there was somebody else here…" Her voice trailed off.

Gregg blinked stupidly, shocked. For the first time Gregg realized that Puppetman had spoken out loud. He'd been holding a goddamn out-loud conversation with Puppetman and hadn't known. The horror of it made him moan.

Ellen glanced at Ray.

Billy looked from Ellen to Gregg, stared for long seconds. Then he backed out of the suite, closing the door behind him. Gregg was gasping in the middle of the room. He forced his breathing to slow. He tried to shrug, to pretend it had been nothing. "Ellen…" he began, but couldn't say anything.

He was suddenly crying, like a child frightened of the dark.

Ellen came to him with a brave smile, cradling his head on her shoulder and stroking his hair. "It's okay, Gregg," she murmured, but he could hear the terror in her voice. "It's okay now. Everything's all right. I love you, darling. You just have to rest." Words. Just words.

Gregg could hear Gimli's laughter and-for just a moment-he wondered why Ellen seemed to ignore it.

"The great state of Iowa! God's country! Corn country!" (Tachyon wondered how the man could keep up this kind of enthusiasm after so many ballots.) "Casts four votes for Senator Al Gore!"

The Omni Convention Center made Tachyon think of a giant funnel. People, like tiny grains of spices, all clinging to the precipitous sides while gravity tried to tumble them willy-nilly into the level area of the basketball court. It was an exaggeration of course, but the facility did give the alien vertigo.

Dribbling powdered sugar down his coat front, Tachyon hurriedly balanced his cruller on top of his coffee cup, snatched up his fountain pen, and jotted down the number. Then glanced at the running totals in five columns each headed by an initial. Gore was definitely floundering. Only a matter of time now. Hartmann had crawled painfully to nineteen hundred. Tach drew the back of his hand across his gritty, aching eyes. His session with the Secret Service had lasted until five. By then it seemed pointless to go to bed.

"Your boy's in trouble," said Connie Chung, sliding into a folding chair behind him. The headset with its antenna made her look like a lopsided insect.

"My boy, as you put it, is doing just fine. Once Gore drops out-"

"You're going to be in for a rude shock."

"What do you mean?" asked Tach, alarmed.