George Martin - Aces High

"What's the occasion? What's the occasion? Doughboy is cleared of all charges, he comes home today. You're a herothat is, your friend the Captain is. And I, of course. There's a celebration at the Crystal Palace, and the drinks are on the house. "

"What about those bottles?"

"These?" A smile. "I might be having a private celebration of my own, after the festivities at Chrysalis's."

He stuck out a bouquet. "These are for you. Let me be the first to congratulate you, Mark."

Mark sniffed. "Uh, thanks, Doc."

"Shall we away? Why don't you slip into-you knowmore formal clothing?"

Mark glanced away. " I, uh, like, I think I better stay here. I got the store and Sprout to look after, and I'm not getting around too well."

"Nonsense. You must come. You've earned adulation, Mark. You. You're a hero."

His friend evaded his eye. "Brenda will be more than happy to look after the shop and Sprout for you."

"Not so fast, buster," said the woman behind the counter. "And I'm Susan."

Tach fixed her with a penetrant stare. After a moment she crumpled. "I, I guess I could."

"But this chair," Mark whined.

"Do you require assistance, Mistress Isis?" a voice asked from the rear of the store, deep and resonant like an alien gong. Durg at'Morakh bo-Isis Vayawand-sa emerged into the deli, a collector's-item Steppenwolf tee shirt stretched to near explosion across his giant chest. He was limping, his cheeks puffy and bruised, but otherwise little the worse for wear. "I can carry you wherever you wish to go, Mistress."

Mark's drunkard's flush deepened. " I wish you'd quit calling me that, man. My name's Mark."

Durg nodded.' "As you wish, Mistress. If you wish to conceal your name from the envy of your weaker fellows as you conceal your form, I shall use your nom de guerre when there are groundlings present."

"Jesus," Mark said. For his part Tach was annoyed that the Morakh had managed to learn that Moonchild's real name (whatever that meant) was Isis Moon, which was more than he knew. He was also more than slightly amused.

"Splendid," he said, shifting his grip on his burdens. "You run upstairs and change, and I'll meet you at the Palace."

"Where'll you be?"

"I've an appointment first." Durg picked Mark up, wheelchair and all, and carried him up the stairs.

Sara Morgenstern's face was flushed almost as deeply as Mark's, here in the late-afternoon gloom of Tach's office. "So you did it," she breathed.

He was aware of the scent ou her, sensed her excitement. He could barely contain his own. "It was simple," he lied. "Tell me. How was the crime committed?"

He told her, with a minimum of embellishment, since concupiscence enjoyed a higher priority even than inflating his ego. And when he finished he saw to his amazement that her eager expression had collapsed on itself like a fallen souffle. "Aliens? It was aliens?" She could barely force the words out; her disappointment beat at his frontal lobes like surf. "Why yes, new-stage swarmlings in league with my cousin Zabb. And that's an important part of this story you will write, the danger posed by this new manifestation by the Swarm. Because this means the Mother's not been content to go and leave this world in peace."

The bouquet he'd given her dropped to the floor. A dozen roses lay around her feet like trees flattened by an air-bursting bomb. "Andi," she sobbed, face distorted, shellacked with tears. Then she was gone, heels ticking heedlessly down the corridor.

As they receded Tach knelt, tenderly picked up a single blood-red bud. I will never understand these Earthers, he thought.

Tucking the flower into the buttonhole of his sky-blue coat, he stepped delicately over the other flowers, shut the door, locked it, and went out whistling to join the celebration.

Subways were a human perversion that Jube had never quite grown accustomed to. They were suffocatingly hot, the smell of urine in the tunnels was sometimes overwhelming, and he hated the way the lights flickered on and off as the cars rattled along. The long ride on the A train up to 190th Street was worse than most. In Jokertown, Jube felt comfortable. He was part of the community, someone familiar and accepted. In Midtown and Harlem and points beyond, he was a freak, something that little children stared at and their parents studiously failed to notice. It made him feel almost, well, alien.

But there was no avoiding it. It would never do for the newsboy called Walrus to arrive at the Cloisters in a taxi. These past few months it had sometimes seemed as though his life was in ruins, but his business was doing better. than ever. Jube had discovered that Masons read newspapers too, so he brought a large armful to each meeting, and read them on the A train (when the lights were on) to take his mind off the smells, the noise, and the looks of distaste on the faces of the riders around him.

The lead story in the Times announced the formation of a special federal task force to deal with the Swarm menace. The ongoing jurisdictional squabbles between NASA, the Joint Chiefs, SCARE, and the secretary of defense-all of whom had claimed the Swarm as their own-would finally be ended, it was hoped, and henceforth all anti-Swarm activities would be coordinated. The task force would be headed by a man named Lankester, a career diplomat from State, who promised to begin hearings immediately. The task force hoped to requisition the exclusive use of the VLA radio telescopes in New Mexico to locate the Swarm Mother, but that idea was drawing heavy flak from the scientific community.

The Post highlighted the latest ace-of-spades murder with pictures of the victim, who had taken an arrow through his left eye. The dead man had been a joker with a record as long as his prehensile tail, and ties to a Chinatown street gang variously known as the Snowbirds, the Snowboys, and the Immaculate Egrets. The Daily News-which featured the same murder, minus the art-speculated that the bow-andarrow killer was a Mafia hit man, since it was known that the immaculate Egrets of Chinatown and the Demon Princes of Jokertown had been moving in on Gambione operations, and Frederico "the Butcher" Macellaio was not one to take kindly to such interference. The theory failed to explain why the killer used a bow and arrow, why he dropped a laminated ace of spades on each body, and why he had left untouched the kilo of angel dust his latest victim had been carrying.

The National Informer had a front-page color photograph of Dr. Tachyon standing in a laboratory with a gawky, bewhiskered companion in a purple Uncle Sam suit. It was a very unflattering picture. The cutline read Dr. Tachyon and Captain Zipp pay tribute to Dr. Warner Fred Warren. `His contribution to science unparalleled,' says psychic alien genius. The accompanying article suggested that Dr. Warren had saved the world, and urged that his laboratory be declared a national monument, a suggestion it attributed to Dr. Tachyon. The tabloid's centerfold was devoted to the testimony of a Bronx cleaning lady, who claimed that a swarmling had attempted to rape her on the PATH tubes, until a passing transit worker transformed himself into a twelve-foot-long alligator and ate the creature. That story made Jube uneasy. He glanced up and studied the others in the A train, hoping that none of them were swarmlings or were alligators.

He had the new issue of Aces magazine too, with its cover story on Jumpin' Jack Flash, "The Big Apple's Hottest New Ace. Flash had been utterly unknown until two weeks ago, when he'd suddenly appeared-in an orange jumpsuit slit to his navel-to extinguish a warehouse fire on South Street that was threatening to engulf the nearby Jokertown clinic, by drawing the flames in on himself and somehow absorbing them. Since then, he'd been everywhere-booming along through the Manhattan sky on a roaring column of fire, shooting flame blasts from his fingertips, giving sardonic and cryptic interviews, and escorting beautiful women to Aces High, where his penchant for flambeing his own steaks was giving Hiram fits." Aces was the first magazine to plaster his foxy grin on its cover, but it wouldn't be the last.