George Martin - Jokertown Shuffle

That brought a laugh to her lips, and Tachyon sat up. "All right, you little fish, so I'm an irrational coward. But you won't be so smug once you've joined the rest of us out here on dry land."

Sometime during that nightmare dog paddle, she had lost or kicked off her shoes. Water squished through the thick material of her tube socks as she stood and tried to get her bearings. Walking was going to be difficult, and her clammy clothes…

She realized what she was doing and throttled the complaining thoughts. "Burning Sky," she said with disgust. "You're free. Free, and you're bitching about wet socks."

Tachyon threw back her head and let out a whoop of joy. "I'M FREE! FUCK YOU, BLAISE! I'M FREE!" The joyous words echoed oddly among the rusting cranes and rotting piers that lined the New Jersey coast.

It was all the celebration she allowed herself. She was still dangerously vulnerable, and dangerously close to the Rox. She had to make her way back to the clinic, and quickly. As she paused to get her bearings, the moldering skyline suddenly gave her a heart-squeezing sense of deja vu. Strange, because she had never in her life stood on this shore at the edge of the leprous bay, gazing across the cancerous rot of industrial parks.

Someone else's memory.

Despite her former body's formidable powers, she had not made it a habit to walk through the private parts of people's minds. That narrowed the possible owners of this particularly intense memory. And since only the Great and Powerful Turtle lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, it was a safe bet the memory was his.

Tommy. Yes! Tommy could get her home without the dangers attendant to hitchhiking. And if Blaise came after her, Turtle could handle him. Now all that remained was to find the junkyard that hid the Turtle and housed the man inside the shell.

It was like having due north embedded in the cortex of the brain. She matched junkyards against the memory compass in her head until at last the images merged. Beyond the twelve-foot-high chain link, abandoned cars formed steel glaciers. Tilted piles of tires, like a giant's collection of rotting donuts, loomed against the light haze that was Manhattan. The problem was the fence.

She cast along the fence like a hunting dog until she found the gate. An enormous and well-oiled padlock leered at her. Hefting it in her hand, she wished that somewhere in her misspent youth she'd learned to pick a lock. Great fantasy-totally useless. Even if she_ possessed the knowledge, she lacked the tools. Crowbar. Same problem. No tool, probably not enough strength.

She reluctantly dropped the lock, and it fell back against the gate with a crash that set the metal to shivering and ringing. A dog began to bay. Tachyon considered just standing outside the gate and bawling like a hurt steer until someone emerged. But what if this was the wrong junkyard? And what if the proprietor emerged with a shotgun and didn't notice the gender and condition of his caller until he'd replied with both barrels?

She returned to a section of fence that sagged between the uprights. That left a two-foot space between the rolled barb wire and the top of the links. Monkeylike, using fingers and toes, she began to climb the fence. It was almost impossible with her belly in the way. She found a way to make it possible though it put enormous strain on her back.

At the top. Eyeing the points on the chain link. The rusting barbs. She went wriggling through, feeling hot burn as several barbs opened lines on her back. The stabbing pain in her stomach and thighs from the chain link. Now the hard part, maneuvering around to find a toehold…

In another lifetime Tachyon had often warned his pregnant patients about increasing clumsiness as the pregnancy advanced. How they should avoid step stools, ladders.

Add chain link fences, she thought as her foot slipped, a link tore open her palm and she fell backward off the fence. Illyannnnnaaa. What began as a name in the mind became a shriek in the throat as she plummeted. Fortunately the gods and ancestors gave woman padding. It hurt, and she suspected she had bruised her tailbone, but no bones were broken, and Illyana continued to slumber.

Mindful of dogs, Tach crept through the dungheaps and gravestones of an industrial society. Near the center of the yard five boulevards intersected in an open area, a sort of junkyard Etoile with the Are de Triomphe formed by a weather-beaten and sagging old shack squatting like a tired old man in the center.

It was the right junkyard. Tommy's memories of a lifetime of childhood games in and around that old house jostled in Tachyon s mind like rudderless boats. The feelings engendered were so warm that she forgot caution and walked slowly and openly toward the front steps.

Only the quick rush of feet on the hard ground prevented her from being knocked down. She spun as the big black Labrador-Doberman cross sprang at her. His shoulder hit her in the thigh, and she teetered wildly but kept her feet. It circled back as she lunged for the porch, though its safety appeared dubious.

Tach had been master of a pack back home on Takis.

Only there the hunting beasts had a wingspan of thirty feet and jaws that could bite through a man. Given that for training, how hard could one ninety-pound dog be? She had her back against the screen door, beating out a tattoo with a heel as the animal growled, barked, and snapped about her ankles.

"Down, sir!" She tried to deepen her voice, hold back the quaver of terror. The dog whined, buried its muzzle briefly between its paws like a man holding his head in confusion.

The porch light snapped on, and then she heard Turtle. "It's three o'clock in the fucking morning!"

It was music. It was warmth, and breakfasts in bed, and hot baths, and everything safe and good. She looked back over her shoulder. Tommy Tudbury, the Great and Powerful Turtle, was a plump middle-aged man dressed only in pajama bottoms, and as his eyes met Tachyon's, he surreptitiously reached down and hitched the waist of his pajamas up and over the bulge of his potbelly.

Tach drew a deep breath and said in a surprisingly steady voice, "Tommy, it is I, Tachyon."

"And I'm the pope." The dog was keening softly. Tommy glanced down in annoyance. "Jetboy, scram." The dog bounded off into the darkness.

"I am Tachyon," she insisted. "I was jumped-"

"And killed. They televised the memorial service on the local joker cable station."

"I an not dead. I've been imprisoned on Ellis Island for seven months. Whoever said I was dead lied. I've got to get back to the clinic, and for that I need your help." She considered for a moment, then added. "But first… I need a drink."

"Shit! You just might be Tachyon," snorted the Turtle. And Tachyon was too relieved even to be offended. "Tell me something only Tachyon could know"

"I found you, didn't I?" That didn't seem to cut it. "I faked your death in eighty-seven. You yanked me out an Atlanta hotel window in eighty-eight-"

"Okay, okay." But there was the oddest expression in his brown eyes. Uncomfortable under the scrutiny, Tach hugged herself, and half turned away. "Well, I guess you better come in."

As she followed him through the door, Tach noticed that the screen had been repaired. It looked as if a twisted black-wire spider had died and joined with the metal of the screen. Tommy's bare feet slapped on the linoleum floor as Tach followed him down the hall and into the tiny kitchen. It was extremely well appointed-dishwasher, double-door refrigerator, electric knife sharpener, coffee maker, coffee-bean grinder-in short, a gadgeteer's delight.

"All I've got is bourbon."

"That's fine." The chink of glass on glass. Tom thrust a tumbler under her nose. The whiskey fumes caressed her nose with a smell that promised the warmth of hearth fires. Greedily she grabbed the glass, threw back the bourbon. It hit like napalm exploding, and she gagged. Tommy held her shoulders.