George Martin - Aces High

He looked around. A couple of secretaries nibbled late lunch by the front window, under the weathered aegis of a cigar-store Indian. "Where's your daddy?"

Her mouth carameled shut, she nodded her head left toward the head shop.

"What are you staring at, buster?" a voice demanded. He blinked, focused belatedly on a sturdy young woman in a soiled gray CUNY sweatshirt standing behind the glass deli display. "I beg your pardon?"

"Listen, you male chauvinist asshole, I know about you. Just watch yourself."

Belatedly Tach recalled Mark Meadows's interchangeable pair of clerks. "Ah-Brenda, is it?" A pugnacious nod. "Very well, Brenda, let me assure you I had no intention of staring at you."

"Oh, I get it. I'm not a debutante type like Peregrine, not your kind at all. I'm one of those women men like you don't see." She ran a hand through a stiff brush of hair, reddish with tea-colored roots, sniffed.

"Doc!" A familiar stork figure stood bent over in the doorway to the head shop.

"Mark, I am so glad to see you," Tachyon said with feeling. He kissed Sprout on the forehead, ruffled her pigtailed hair, set her on the murky linoleum. "Run and play, dearest child. I would speak with your father."

She scooted off. "Have you a moment, Mark?"

"Oh, sure, man. Always, for you."

A pair of kids with leather overcoats and dandelion-climax hair lurked among the paraphernalia and vintage posters on the other side, but Mark was not the suspicious type. He nodded Tach toward a table by the far wall, collected a teapot and a couple of mugs, and followed, loose-limbed, bobbing his head slightly as he walked. He had on an ancient pink Brooks Brothers shirt, a fringed leather vest, a pair of vast elephant bells faded almost to the hue of the white firework bursts tiedyed into them. Shoulder-length blond hair was crimped at his temples by a braided thong. Had Tachyon not seen him in the full splendor of his secret identity, he'd have thought the man had no sense of dress at all.

"So what can I do for you, man?" Mark asked, beaming happily through the glass planchets of his wire-rims.

Tach set elbows on the tablecloth-also tie-dyed-pursed his lips as Mark poured. "A joker named Doughboy has been arrested for murder. A young woman reporter has come to me maintaining that be's innocent."

He drew breath. " I myself believe it, too. He is a very gentle individual, for all that he is huge and hideous and possesses metahuman strength. He is… retarded."

He waited a moment, heart hanging in his throat, but what Mark said was, "So it's a rip-off, man. Why do the pigs say he did it?" The epithet was spoken without rancor.

"The murdered man is a Dr. Warner Fred Warren, a popular astronomy-to use the term loosely-writer in the tabloids. To give you some idea, he wrote an article last year entitled, `Did Comet Kohoutek Bring AIDS?"'

Mark grimaced. He was not your standard hippie, disdaining/distrusting all science. Then again, he was a latecomer to the faith, who had gotten into Flower Power at a time when everyone else in the Bay Area was getting heavily into Stalin.

"Dr. Warren's latest prognostication is that an asteroid is about to strike the Earth and end all life, or at least civilization as you know it. It did create quite a bit of controversy; amazing what attention you Earthers lavish on such folly. The police theorize that Doughboy heard his friends talking about it, became frightened, and one night last week went into the doctor's lab and beat him to death."

Mark whistled softly. "Any evidence?"

"Three witnesses." Tach paused. "One of them positively identifies Doughboy as the man he saw leaving Warren's apartment building the night of the crime."

Mark waved a hand. "No problem. We'll get him free, man."

Tachyon opened his mouth, shut it. Finally he said, "We need to see what other information they have amassed in the case. The police are not proving cooperative. They tell me to mind my own business, almost!"

Mark's blue eyes drifted off Tach's sightline. Tach sipped his tea. It was stringent and crisp, some kind of mint. "I know how you can take care of that. Does Doughboy, like, have an attorney?"

"Legal Aid."

"Why don't you get in touch with him, offer to act as unpaid medical expert."

"Splendid." He looked quizzically at his friend, head tipped like a curious bird. "How do you know to do that?"

"I don't know, man. It just came to me. So, like, where do I come in?"

Tach studied the tabletop. In the background forks clove tofu and thunked against earthenware cushioned by soggy romaine lettuce. It had been as much for the tonic effect Mark had on his spirits that he'd come here from the Tombs. But still…

He was out of his depth; he was, as he'd assured Sara, no detective. Now, Mark Meadows, the Last Hippie, didn't on the surface appear a much more promising candidate for sleuth, but he happened also to be Marcus Aurelius Meadows, PhD, the most brilliant biochemist alive. Before dropping out he'd been responsible for a number of breakthroughs, laid the groundwork for many more. He was trained to observe and trained to think. He was a genius.

Also, Tach liked the cut of his coat, which in itself was about enough for a Takisian.

"You've already helped me, Mark. This is your world, after all. You understand its ways better than L" Though I've been on it longer, he realized. "And there are your friends. You do have, ah, others than the two we met on my cousin's ship?" Mark nodded. "Three others, so far."

"Good. I hope these prove more tractable than the others." He hoped one or the other of the Captain's alter egos would have skills that might fall handy; fortunately he could imagine no purpose the surly were-porpoise Aquarius might serve, but the vainglorious coward Cosmic Traveler was another matter. And, even to save poor Doughboy from death in life, he wasn't ready to endure the Traveler again so soon.

He scraped his chair back and rose. "Let us go play detective together, you and L"

The kid had cammie pants and a Rambo rag, standing there on the corner of Hester and the Bowery trying to hold down magazine pages against the wind's tugging. Tach glanced over his shoulder. The article was slugged, "Dr. Death: Selfmade Cyborg Soldier of Fortune Battles Commies in Salvo." The kid looked up as the two men took their places beside him at the newsstand, truculence tightening lean Puerto Rican features. His expression flowed like wax into awe.

He was looking at the center button of a yellow paisley vest. Out over his forehead an immense green bow tie with yellow polka dots blossomed from a pink shirt collar. To either side hung a purple tailcoat. A purple stovepipe hat, its green band embossed in gold peace signs, threatened the wateredmilk overcast.

Yellow-gloved fingers flashed a V "Peace," said the beaky norteamericano face hovering up there amid all that color. The kid tossed the magazine at the proprietor and fled. Captain Trips stood blinking after him, wounded. "What'd I say, man?"

"Never mind," chortled the being behind the counter. "He wouldn't have bought it anyway. What can I do you for, Doctor? And your colorful friend here?"

"Mm," said Mark, sniffing, nostrils wide, "fresh popcorn."

"That's me," Jube said. "That's how I smell." Tachyon winced.

"Far out!"

For a moment glass-bead eyes stared, blue-black skin rumpled up Jubal's forehead: orogenic surprise. Then he laughed.

"I get it! You're a hippie."

The Cap'n beamed. "That's right, man."

Blubber shook. "Goo-goo-goo-Jube," he bellowed. "I am the Walrus. Pleased to meetcha."

He did look like a walrus, five foot nothing, hanging fat, a big smooth skull. with random hair-tufts sticking out from it here and there like rusty shaving brushes, flowing into the collar of his green and black and yellow Hawaiian shirt without the intervention of a neck. He had little white tusks stuck at either end of his grin. He pushed out a Warner Brothers cartoon hand, three fingers and a thumb, which the Captain eagerly shook.