George Martin - Ace In The Hole

Tears rolled from Doughboy's button eyes. "I mith him. I mith him tho."

She reached up. She wasn't tall enough. He bent over until she could wrap her arms around his neck.

"I know you do, honey," she said through her own tears. "Thank you for helping me. I'll bring you candy soon. I love you."

She kissed his cheek and walked quickly away without looking back.

"Doctor!"

He studied the handsome dark face, the intense eyes actively scanning the lobby of the Marriott. Missing nothing. Tach bowed slightly. "Reverend."

"Deserting the floor of the convention?"

"Too chaotic."

"And disappointing?" suggested Jesse Jackson softly.

"It will be all right." Tach cocked his head speculatively. "And you, entering the stronghold of the enemy?"

"Gregg Hartmann is not my enemy."

"Ah, then you would have no objection to dropping out, and handing your delegates to the senator?"

Jackson laughed. "Doctor, you beat me to the punch. May we talk?" He indicated a sofa near one wall of the upper lobby. AP, Time, the Sun Times, and the Post began circling like barracuda. Straight Arrow, the Mormon ace from Utah, and Jackson's ace bodyguard, eyed them with an unblinking stare. The news of Tachyon's bombshell had spread quickly through the security forces. To Tachyon's knowledgeable eye the lobby seemed filled with discretely armed men.

"Wouldn't your suite be more private?" asked the Takisian dryly.

The flash of white teeth behind the mustache. "Private is not what I'm after. Let 'em speculate."

Tachyon debated. Decided that perhaps he and the Reverend Jackson could use one another. Some might speculate that Tachyon's support of Hartmann was wavering. Others might decide that Jackson was about to endorse Hartmann.

They settled onto the sofa. The tall black man, the diminutive alien with one leg tucked up beneath him.

"I want you to transfer your support to me," said Jackson bluntly.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. I'm the logical candidate to represent the jokers and aces. Together we can build a new world."

"I've been here forty-two years, Reverend, and I'm still waiting for that new world."

"You must not give in to cynicism, pessimism and despair, doctor. I hadn't expected that from you. You're a fighter-like me. " Tachyon didn't speak, and Jackson went on. "We have the same interests."

"Do we? I want to see my people protected. You want to be president."

"Help me become president, and then I can protect your people-a-ny people too." He frowned at the far wall. "Doctor, my foreparents came to America on slave ships. You came here in a spaceship, but we're in the same boat now. If Barnett becomes president we all suffer."

Tachyon shook his head more in confusion than negation. "I don't know. Gregg Hartmann has been our friend for twenty years. Why should I abandon him now?"

Help me. Kill me. Believe ine. He ruthlessly silenced the voices.

"Because he can't win. The senator is stalling. My people are reporting "Anyone-but- Hartmann" coalitions springing up all over the convention. If Gregg Hartmann can't stop Leo Barnett, Michael Dukakis certainly cannot."

"And you can?"

That self-confident grin that had galvanized a country. Like an arc light in its intensity. "Yes, I can." The smile faded, and he stared intently down at Tachyon. "I understand. I know abandonment, and people being mean to you, and saying you're nothing and nobody and can never be anything. I understand." His hand gripped the Takisian's shoulder.

Tachyon laid his hand over Jackson's. The same perfectly manicured nails, the same long slender fingers, but white on black. "Why is it when you and Barnett are reputed to serve the same god, your gods are so different?"

"A good question, Doctor. A very good question."

A Flying Ace glider sighed softly onto the tile at Tachyon's feet. He picked it up, stroked the molded white scarf with a forefinger. Jackson stared at the painted black face. His hand rose reflexively, and he drew his fingers down his cheek.

"Is your reluctance to back me entirely due to your loyalty, or is it because I'm black?"

Tach's head snapped up. "Burning Sky, no." He rose. "Believe me, Reverend, if I should ever decide to transfer my support from Gregg Hartmann you would be my first choice."

"You see, you have a charisma that is almost Takisian in its magnitude."

Jackson smiled. "And I take it that's a compliment?"

"Of the highest, Reverend, of the highest."

Gregg's room-service lunch sat untouched and cold on the coffee table of the suite. The Sony blared unheeded, and Tachyon sat like some damn wooden god on the couch.

Dangerously near the surface, Gregg could hear Puppetman's voice, mingled with Gimli's mocking laughter. It took all of his concentration not to lose himself in the subliminal chatter and say something that would reveal the conflict underneath.

Worst of all, Gregg was afraid that Puppetman might start speaking out loud again.

He paced restlessly in front of the windows. The entire time he could feel Tachyon's violet gaze on him: judging, appraising, cool. Gregg knew he was talking too much, but the motion and the monologue seemed to help keep Puppetman down.

"Barnett's up another hundred votes in the last ballot. One-hundred votes! We've gained what-twenty, twenty-five? Someone's got to start plugging the holes, Doctor. Hell, Charles said he'd talked to Gore's staff and was told Gore was planning to stay in. That was just last night, for chris'sakes. Barnett must have promised him the damn VP spot in return for the delegates. We've got half the press yapping about an `Anyone but Hartmann' movement, which means some of the on-the-fence delegates are going to start believing it. Barnett's already benefited from that garbage; Dukakis is back there smiling and shaking hands and waiting for the deadlock or a deal."

"I know all this, Senator," Tachyon said. There was a trace of impatience in his voice as he folded delicate hands on his lap.

"Then let's start doing something about it, damn it." The alien's cool haughtiness made Gregg's temper flare, and Puppetman rose with the irritation. No, idiot, he told the power. Not with him here, of all people. Please.

"I'm doing what I can," Tachyon said with clipped, precise words. "Browbeating those who support you isn't likely to get you anywhere, Senator. Especially not among your friends."

Gregg had no 'friends', no confidants-unless he counted Puppetman. He suspected Tachyon was the same. They called each other 'friend,' but it was mostly the residue of a political/social relationship that went back to the mid-sixties, when Gregg was a councilman and, later, mayor of New York. Gregg had performed favors for Tachyon, Tachyon had done the same for him. They both affected the politics of the liberal, the left. That far they were friends.

Tachyon was an ace. Gregg was afraid of aces, especially aces who could read minds. He knew that if Tachyon suspected the truth, the alien would not hesitate even one moment in revealing Gregg to the public.

So much for friendship. The thought made Gregg angrier yet.

"Then let's talk frankly. As friends," Gregg shot back. "The talk is all over the convention. You've been chasing Fleur van Renssaeler like some horny teenager. There are things here more important than your gonads, Doctor."

Gregg had never dared to speak to Tachyon that way before, not to a person with such a formidable mind power, not with Puppetman lurking in his head. Tachyon flushed a deep red. He rose to his feet with swift offended dignity. "Senator-" he began, but Gregg wheeled around with a chopping motion of his hand.

"No, Doctor. No." Gregg's anger was a glowing coal stuck in his chest. He wanted to use his fists on the prissily dressed man and see that fine, aristocratic nose flatten and splatter blood over the frillv satin shirt. Gregg gritted his teeth to keep from shouting in fury, from backhanding Tachyon's arrogant face. He ached to kick the man in his goddamn alien balls. It wasn't only Tachyon. It was the whole frigging day-the way his momentum had come to a wheezing halt on the convention floor, the eternal gnawing of Puppetman, the chortling of Gimli, Mackie's failures in New York and here since Chrysalis's death, Ellen: everything.