George Martin - Aces High

"I thought I had mutilated a human being, a joker," she said. She was on her feet. She raced toward a building to Tach's right, crossing behind the lumbering swarmlings, launching herself again, this time on a trajectory Tach would have sworn would take her to the third floor of the structure. But he didn't see, because when she entered the building's shadow she vanished.

To reappear seconds later, feetfirst right through the middle of the second swarmling. Cloth tore, biomass gave, and the being just generally came apart as she hit pavement and rolled.

A moment and she was up again, sprinting forward, dropping low to support herself on one hand while her leg swept before her in a scything kick. The first swarmlings legs simply snapped out from beneath it at the knees. It landed on the stumps, plodded imperturbably on. Grimly, Moonchild closed.

Sirens were chasing each other up the sky when she finished. Tachyon applauded softly as she walked up to him. "I owe you an apology, lovely lady, for what I was thinking about you. "

She started to smooth back her hair, looked at her fingers, used her wrist instead. "You need never apologize to me, Doctor. You had reason to think as you did. But I must never use my arts to permanently harm a thinking being. And I thought I had."

He gathered her into his arms. She laid her head on his shoulder. Indeed, he thought. He was not sure how he was going to explain this to Mark…

She pushed herself away. "It won't do for me to be found here. Too many questions."

"But wait. Don't go-there's so much to say!"

"But no time to say it." She kissed him on the cheek. "Be careful, Father," she said, and once more disappeared.

"So you really did turn up swarmlings, Doctor," said Lieutenant Pilar Arrupe, taking a plastic-tipped black cigarillo out of her mouth. "You are definitely the most active expert witness I ever saw.

"

`Father,' he was thinking. An honorific, nothing more. "Sure did a number on those mothers," observed a patrolman who clutched a riot gun like a talisman.

"With a little help from his friends, Dr, Smith and Dr. Wesson," somebody else offered.

The street was full of flashing blue lights and uniforms and camera crews. "Guns don't do much against those Swarm fuckers," the first cop said.

"So how did you overcome these creatures, Doctor?" asked a reporter, thrusting the foam phallus of a mike under his nose. . "Mystic fighting arts."

"Get these jerks out of here," Arrupe said. To Tach's disappointment she wasn't pretty. She was stumpy and thicklegged, with a bulldog face and; tiff short hair, like Brenda's at the Pumpkin. She had dark freckles liberally smeared across her pug nose. But her eyes were sharp as glass shards.

"Well, Lieutenant," he said. "Will you let Doughboy go now?"

"You have got alleged swarmling stuff in the victim's lab, and you got a whole street full of unmistakable swarmling parts, except where they used to look like Godzilla's baby they now look like derelicts, which may or may not be an improvement. It's a hell of a state of affairs."

"You won't."

"I have a witness, Doctor."

"Burning Sky, woman, have you no compassion? Don't you care for justice?"

"Do you think I'm just of the boat from San Juan? This is a solid citizen, doesn't know Doughboy from the Pope, has no grudge against jokers, and he walks in and describes him personally. And don't tell me witnesses are unreliable. They are. But this one's solid."

Tach combed back his hair with clutching fingers. "Let me talk to . him." She rolled her eyes. "It's important. Something is happening, not just Doughboy. I know it."

"You have some kind of damned alien brujeria in mind." Lothario grin: "But of course."

She slumped. "You made yourself a hero with these swarmlings, Doctor. And you know more about this kind of thing than I do." Sidelong: "But you fuck me up with a civil liberty beef on this, 'rnanito, I'm just simply gonna shoot you."

As soon as he touched the mind, he knew.

He was a dentist, a short, athletic, ruddy man in his fifties who lived in the building next door to Warren's. He'd been out walking the dog around the block-a daring act at that time of the night-and seen a peculiar-looking man emerge from the alleyway that ran behind the apartments. The man stopped for a moment, not ten feet away, looked the intrepid dentist straight in the eye, and shambled off into the Park.

The story jibed with that of the other two witnesses, one of whom was the super of Warren's building, who had been investigating a broken-in back door when he was clubbed down from behind, the other a woman who had for reasons best known to herself been looking down into the alley from the apartments across. They had both glimpsed a large, pallid, manlike shape coming out the back door and lurching down the alley. But neither could offer anything but the most general description.

Tachyon had only to brush the dentist's mind to know his story was untrue. Not a lie; he believed it implicitly. Because it had been implanted.

Reluctantly, Tach dug deeper. The old pain of Blythe had receded, he no longer went clammy inside at the mere thought of using his mental powers; it wasn't that. The nature of the implant clearly revealed what sort of being had made it. All that remained was to uncover which individual from among a very few possibilities. He had a good idea.

In a way it didn't matter. The implications were already inescapable.

And monstrous beyond anything Tach had imagined.

"I mislike that place," grumbled Durg at'Morakh bo Zabb Vayawand-sa as they mounted the rickety back stair to their flat in a less than fashionable corner of the Village.

Rabdan sneered back over a gold shoulder-board. "How can you cavil? You never went inside."

"The Gatekeeper, the one with the strange dead face, he wouldn't let me."

"Ha! What would the Vayawand say, if they knew one of their precious Morakh sports permitted a groundling to say him nay? Truly, their sperm runs thin."

Durg flexed a hand that could powder granite. The tough white twill of his uniform sleeve parted at his biceps with a sound like a pistol shot. "Zabb brant Sabina sek Shaza sek Risala commands I fight only as needful to the mission," he grated. "Even as he commands me to serve one as unworthy as you, to test my devotion. But I warn you: some day your incompetence will lose you the master's pleasure. And on that day I pluck your limbs off, little man, and squash your head like a pimple."

Rabdan tried to laugh. It stumbled, so he tried again. "So hostile. Such a pity you could not have seen: a woman flayed, a maid dismayed; quite stylish entertainment. When the groundlings are destroyed some rare talents shall be lost, I must admit."

They came to the top landing and their door. Rabdan paused outside, furrowed his brow as his mind probed within.

It would not do to be ambushed by groundling burglars. Durg stood silently a few steps below. His kindred were of the Psi Lord class, but like most Morakh he was virtually mind-blind. If Rabdan detected danger, then he would fulfill his function.

Satisfied, Rabdan unlocked the door and stepped inside. Durg followed, closed it behind him. From the hallway to the bedrooms stepped a figure.

"Tisianne! But I searched-"

"You of all my cousin's people could never drive a probe I could not deflect," said Tachyon. "It bodes ill for us all that I find you here. Indeed, perhaps for all of Takis."

"But worst for you," Rabdan said. He stepped to one side. "burg, dismember him."

"Zabb's monster!" Tach hissed, despite himself.

"The little prince," Durg said. "This will be sweet."

A second figure appeared at Tachyon's side. "Doctor, who is this?" Moonchild asked, squinting a little in the bright light of the single lamp on the low table.