George Martin - Ace In The Hole

Tachyon's left arm was locked about Braun's neck. His right lay across his chest. Blood stained the bandage over the amputated end. The pain from his broken ribs and his arm was so great that he couldn't lift his head from Jack's shoulder as the big ace cradled him in his arms.

Jack had returned to his place in the California delegation. The Omni smelled like a slaughterhouse, the airconditioner unable to banish the sickly sweet odor of blood. The sharp scent of gunpowder still hung in the air, the smell of shit from the released bowels of the dead. Shock seemed to hold the entire convention.

James Spector was dead.

The hunchbacked assassin was dead. But Hartmann remained.

Tachyon gnawed at his lower lip.

The candidate broke free of the clinging Secret Service agents. Head back, shoulders squared, hands outstretched in benediction, a gesture of calm, or reassurance.

He stepped to the microphone.

And in that moment Tachyon knew what to do.

Gregg began to speak, his gaze searching and pleading with the people in the seats. "Please," he began, his voice calm and deep and compelling.

And then… .. Tachyon was in his head. The alien's strong, insistent presence took Gregg's struggling ego and pushed it backward, stepping in front of him even as Gregg resisted desperately and uselessly.

"Please be calm… Hey, shut the fuck up and listen to me!" his voice shouted without any volition on his part, echoing throughout the Omni. He saw himself in one of the monitors above the floor, and he was smiling, smiling that oily, practiced campaign smile like nothing at all had happened. "Oops, got a little too vehement there, didn't I?" He felt himself giggle, of all things, tittering like a child. Gregg tried to stop the laughter, but Tachyon was too strong. Like a helpless ventriloquist's dummy, he spouted someone else's words.

"But you have to admit you did shut up, didn't you? That's better. Hey, I'm calm. Let's all be calm. No panic in a crisis, not me. No way. Your next president doesn't panic. Uh-uh."

Down on the floor, the exodus had stopped. The delegates were staring at him. His casual, amused delivery was more chilling and horrible than any screaming fit could have been. Above the sobbing and moaning behind him, he heard Connie Chung in the VIP section shout into her mike, "Get the cameras on Hartmann! Now!"

Inside, he continued to fight uselessly against the bonds Tachyon had placed on his will. So this is what it feels like to be a puppet, he thought. Let me go, damn you! But there was no escape. Tachyon held the strings, and he was a practiced puppeteer himself.

Gregg chuckled, glanced back at the carnage, and then shook his head as he turned back to the crowd. He held his arm straight out from his body toward them, his palm down and fingers spread wide.

"Look at that," he said. "Not even a tremble. Cool as a damn cucumber. So much for the old '76 worries, huh? Maybe this is a good thing in the long run, if it puts all that business to rest."

John Werthen and Devaughn had come forward to pull him away from the mikes, and he watched himself flail his arms at them, pushing them away and grabbing at the mikes desperately. "Go away! Can't you see that I'm just fine? Back off! Let me handle this." John looked at Devaughn, who shrugged. Gregg tugged his hopelessly soiled suit coat back into position as they let go of him hesitantly. He gave that eerie smile for the cameras once more.

"Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes." He chuckled again and waggled a finger at the delegates. "This is not acceptable behavior and I won't have it," he scolded them as if talking to a class of schoolchildren. "We had a little problem up here but it's over. Let's forget it. In fact-"

He giggled and bent down to the stage. When he straightened again, his forefinger was dripping with a thick, bright red liquid. "I want you to write `No More Violence' a hundred times as punishment," he said, and he reached out to the clear acrylic panel in front of the lectern and traced a large smeary "N" on it. The first loop of the "O" was barely legible.

"Oops, out of ink," Gregg declared gaily, and bent down to the stage again. This time he plopped something meaty and unidentifiable down on the lectern with a distinct wet plop. He dipped his finger into it like a quill pen into an inkwell. Someone was being noisily sick again behind him, and there were screams from down on the floor. He could hear Ellen sobbing and pleading with anyone who would listen: "Get him out of there. Please, stop him…" John and Devaughn came forward again, and this time they took hold of him firmly, one on each arm.

"Hey, you can't do this!" Gregg spluttered loudly. "I haven't finished yet: You can't-"

It was over. At least it was over. Tachyon's control dropped from him and he sagged in their arms, silent. Gregg tried not to see the horrified faces he passed as they escorted him backstage: Ellen, Jackson, Amy. He cursed Tachyon, knowing the alien was still there.

Damn you for this. You didn't have to do it this way. You didn't have to humiliate and destroy me like that. Couldn't you see that Puppetman was dead? Damn you forever.

Tachyon lay in bed. They had wanted to put him back in the hospital, but he had fought that like a maddened creature, and Jack had kept him out of the hands of the doctors. He had allowed them to rebandage his stump, rewrap his ribs, but no more. He had even refused the pain pills. Because somewhere in this city was his grandchild, and Tach needed a clear head to find him. His brain seemed to be battering at the confines of his skull as he searched, but only darkness answered him.

Pain took him, and he hung over the side of the bed and retched. The memory of those final chaotic minutes at the convention reared up and added to his confusion. Hartmann's mind beating like a trapped and terrified animal at the iron confines of Tachyon's mind-control.

For an instant remorse gripped him, then slowly Tachyon raised the ugly ungainly stump, and studied it. Hate replaced the momentary flicker of regret. I'll never do surgery again. Damn him to eternal wandering!

His jaw set in a stubborn, bitter line, and he crawled from the bed. The Nagyvary lay in its case. City light filtered around the edge of the curtain and glimmered on the polished grain of the wood, danced on the strings. Gently he drew the fingers of his left hand across the strings releasing a sigh of sound. Rage filled him. Snatching out the violin, Tachyon swung it hard against the wall. The wood splintered with a horrible brittle sound. Several strings broke with sharp jarring notes; a musical scream of pain.

His final swing pulled hum off balance, and Tach instinctively threw out his right hand to catch himself. Screamed. Black spots danced before his eyes, and suddenly he felt hands on his shoulders. Someone lifting him.

"You damn fool! What now are you doing?" asked Polyakov, depositing him back in the bed.

"How… how did.. you… get in?"

"I'm a spy, remember?"

The worst of the agony receded. Tach touched his upper lip with his tongue, tasting salt. "This isn't very good trade craft," said Tachyon.

"We needed to talk." George was rummaging about Tach's discarded clothes until he found the flask.

"You could have just left," the alien whimpered, and hated himself for his weakness. "Slipped away to Europe, the Far East… begun again. And left me to face the inharmonious music."

Polyakov gulped down brandy. "I owe you too much for that. "

A tiny, bitter smile touched Tachyon's thin lips. "What? You don't believe in Gregg's tragic breakdown?"

"I believe that he had a little help." A sigh.

"It was damn close." Polyakov grunted. "More exciting that way."

Tachyon accepted the flask, and took a sip. "You don't like exciting. You like subtle and efficient. George, what are we going to do? Share a cell at Leavenworth?"