He clutched feverishly at the lapels of Trips's coat. "I'm an idiot. An idiot.
The answer's been right in front of me, and I missed it."
"What?"
"The Network device."
"Huh?"
Andami was regarding him curiously, and Tach quickly dropped to a whisper. "It's not a bowling ball. It's a singularity shifter." He hurriedly slipped his feet into his pumps. "Years ago, before I left home, one of the Master Traders discussed the possibility of selling my clan a new experimental teleporting device. He demonstrated one, and said they might become readily available after a few more tests. This has to be one of those devices. And it's in the main: hold."
Trips was completely bewildered by his babblings. He grabbed for the only remark he had understood. "Yeah, but we're, like, not in the main hold."
"How to get us all there?" Tach's fingers scrabbled in his hair. "If we're all together, I think I could trigger the device and send us home. The greater the telepathic ability, the greater accuracy, and the size of. what can be carried.
That was the theory. Of course the Master Trader could have just been puffing.
Hard to tell with the Network. They have the souls of greedy tradesmen."
"Uh .. what's the Network?"
"Another spacefaring race, actually a number of spacefaring races, but we don't have to concern ourselves with that. The point is that a singularity shifter is here, on this ship, and it can get us home. Of course if Turtle had the device, that means the Network is present on Earth, and that could mean trouble." He scrubbed at his face. "No, one problem at a time. How to get to the hold."
"Like, what goes on there?"
"Well, obviously it's used for cargo storage, and when there's no cargo-which is
'most of the time, on a ship of this class-it's used for recreation. Dances and so forth."
Trips looked dubious. " I don't suppose we can invite everybody to a dance."
Tach laughed. "No." His expression went flat. "But we can invite them to a duel."
"Huh?"
"Hush a moment. I must think on this."
And he finally did what he should have done from the beginning. He thought like a Takisian instead of like an Earthman.
"Got it?" Trips asked when he again opened his eyes. "Yes."
He lay back down, and probed for a familiar mind. Turtle. There's a way out of this.
Yeah? The mental tone was one of utter defeat and hopelessness.
The device you had, it can send you home. Yeah, but it's--Just shut up, and listen. We're all going to be in the cargo bay--Why?
Would you stop! Because I'm going to get us there. The attention will be on me, and while it is you must get that device.
Now?
You know how. I can't!
Tom, you must! It's our only hope.
It's not possible. The Great and Powerful Turtle could do it, but I'm just Thomas Tudbury-the Great and Powerful Turtle.
No, I'm just an ordinary man who's on the wrong side of forty, drinks too much beer, doesn't eat right, and who works at a fucking electronics repair shop. I'm no fucking hero.
You are to me. You gave me back my sanity and probably my life.
That was the Turtle.
Tom, the Turtle is a conglomeration of iron plates, TV cameras, lights, and speakers. What makes Turtle, Turtle is the man inside. You're the ace, Tom, it's time to come out of the shell.
Terror was coming off the man's mind in powerful waves, battering at Tach's shields, making him doubt his own plan. I can't. Leave me alone.
No, I'm going through with this, and you're going to have to come up to scratch, because if you don't, I will have died for nothing.
Died! What do you...
He broke the telepathic link wondering if he might have put too much pressure on Turtle's- fragile emotions. Too late to worry about it now.
Kibr?
What, boy?
We find your tone to be less than pleasing, Ajayiz'et Benaf'saj.
She moderated her tone, adding a formal overlay of respect, if not for him, at least for his position. What is it you wish, clan head?
Summon the crew, there is a ceremony of adoption to be observed.
What trick are you up to?
Wait and see, or deny me, and be forever curious, he said impudently.
Her laughter glittered in his mind. A challenge. Very well, my little prince, we will see just what it is you are up to.
They had all gathered in the bay. Tom looked about, and let out an anguished cry, "My shell!"
Zabb's lips skinned back in a harsh smile. "We jettisoned it. It was taking up far too much room."
Tach paid little attention to Turtle's distress. His eyes roved quickly about the room ascertaining that the singularity shifter was still in its place.
"It had infrared and zoom lenses, and tuck-and-roll upholstery, and-" Zabb laughed. "You puke!"
Zabb stepped forward, fist upraised.
"Zabb brant Sabina sek Shaza sek Risala, touch my stirps, and I will not give you the courtesy of facing me. I will kill you like a cur in the street." Zabb froze, and turned slowly to face his small cousin.
"What farce is this?"
"As a breeding member of the house of Ilkazam I exercise my right to add, by blood and bone, to my line."
"You would embrace these humans?" asked Benaf'saj.
"I would. "
She raked them with an imperious glance. "They will, I think, add little to your consequence."
Tach stepped between Trips and Turtle, and gripped them by their wrists. "I would rather have them bound and bonded to me than many who can make a greater claim to that right."
His eyes slid to Zabb.
"Very well, it is your right." The old woman settled herself on a stool that Hellcat obligingly extruded for her. "Do you agree to this adoption, understanding the duties and obligations of those so honored?"
Three pairs of eyes stared at Tach, and he nodded slightly.
"We do," Asta said firmly when the two men continued to stand and dither.
"Know then that you, and all your heirs and assigns, are forever bound to the house of Ilkazam, line of Sennari through its son, Tisianne. In all matters be great, and bring glory and service to this house."
"Are we, like, Takisians now, man?" asked Trips in a penetrating whisper.
"This ritual is to bind the psi-blind to a house. You would not be permitted to mate with any member of the mentat class, but you are deserving of our aid and protection."
"So we're serfs," Tom rasped.
"No, more like equerries. Mere servants are never formally adopted." He turned on his heel, and pinned Zabb with a hard glance. "But by my fathers, you, cousin, have given me insult, and shown both contempt and abuse toward my stirps, and I will have satisfaction."
Before Zabb could move, Benaf'saj spoke up. "You need not accept this challenge.
Courtesy does not apply retroactively to the psi-blind."
The commander swept her a bow. "But, Ajayiz'et, it will give me the greatest pleasure to meet my beloved cousin. Rabdan, you will act for me?"
"Yes, Commander."
"And Sedjur, you will act for me?" Tachyon asked. The old man managed a nod.
The two men moved quickly to an arms locker, and Tach joined his friends. As he kicked off his shoes, stripped out of his coat and brocaded waistcoat, and began tucking up his ruffles, he said quietly, "Stay well together. Tom, you know what you must do, but for god's sake act quickly." He ignored the human's frantic head shakings. "Fortunately the small sword gives the advantage to the defense, but I will be hardpressed to hold off Zabb. The attention of my family will be focused on me. No one should notice your actions, and once you have the device I will send you home."
"What about you?" muttered Tom.
Tachyon shrugged. "I stay here. It is, after all, a matter of honor. I won't run."
"I hate fucking heroes."
"Has someone something with which to tie back my hair?" Asta dropped to one knee, and rummaged about in her capacious dance bag. Pulling out a toe shoe, she tore the pink ribbon from the shoe, and held it out to the Takisian. It clashed horribly with his metallic red curls.
"Sir," Sedjur said softly. He was holding out a chain-mail sleeve which covered the sword arm up to the elbow, and a beautifully etched and hammered sword. The hilt was inlaid with semiprecious stones, and the filigree work on the basket was so fine that it looked like lace.
"Don't look so depressed, old friend."
"How can I not? You're no match for him."
"Unkind of you to say so. Especially when you trained me."
"And him; and I say again, you are no match for him."
"It is necessary." His tone indicated that the subject was closed, and he stared autocratically over the old retainer's head while the armor was strapped to his right forearm.
Asta giggled hysterically when a resin box was brought over, and Tach carefully coated the soles of his stockinged feet. She clapped her hands over her mouth, and subsided.
Tach, moving to the center of the room, hefted his rapier several times to accustom himself to its weight, and to remind his muscles of old skills, long unused. He didn't blame Asta for tittering. To modern humans this archaic ritual fought with archaic weapons must seem strange, especially in a spacefaring race.
But there were sound reasons for the Takisian devotion to bladed weapons. They had atomic and laser weapons, but for hand-to-hand combat inside the skin of one of the living ships, a weapon that did not exceed the reach of the arm was better. An indiscriminate firing of projectile or coherent light weapon could badly damage a ship, and then it wouldn't much matter if the crew had won or not. There was also the Takisian love of drama. Virtually any fool could learn to fire a gun. It took real skill to be a swordsman.
Zabb joined him, and said in an undertone, "I have been looking forward to this moment for years."
"Then, I am delighted to be able to oblige you. It doesn't do to be denied so fondly a wished-for occurrence."
Their swords flashed in a brief salute, and engaged with a scrape of steel on steel.
Tom was no expert on the niceties of fencing, but he could see that this fight bore little resemblance to the brief glimpses of Olympic fencing he had seen on television. The speed was the same, but there was a deadly intensity about the two men as they fought for their lives. Their eyes were locked on each other, and the shifting of their stockinged feet on the floor of the ship made a soft whispering counterpoint to Tach's gasping breaths.
His companions were staring at him, Trips with the look of a desperate basset hound, Asta the tip of her tongue just moistening her lips. Tom slowly turned his head, and stared at the black ball where it rested on the shelf only feet away. He reached out, struggling so hard that sweat popped out along his forehead and upper lip, and he found a great, yawning emptiness. The device didn't even quiver.
Trips moaned, and Tom looked back just in time to see the foible of Zabb's blade glance across Tach's upper arm. A trail of red followed its path. Tach withdrew with more haste than grace, and barely parried a vicious thrust from his cousin.
Trips, his watery blue eyes wild behind the thick lenses of his glasses, flung himself forward, and landed on Zabb's shoulders. With a snarl the Takisian reached back, and flipped the hippie neatly across the room. Trips lay stunned on the luminous deck, gasping like a fish. Several of Zabb's guards dragged him back, and dumped him on the floor between the other humans.
"I can't, I just can't," Tom whispered frenziedly.
"You fucking wimp, " Asta enunciated clearly, and turned her back on him, returning her attention to the duel which had begun again.
Tach blinked hard, trying to clear the stinging sweat from his eyes. Each breath burned, and tiny tongues of flame seemed to be licking at the muscles of his sword arm. Watch, watch, he urged himself.
Blade, coming up so fast it was just a blur.
He parried with a sharp beat, the force of the blow vibrating down his already-overtaxed muscles.
A riposte . . . but not with the blade. With his mind. A section of shield flowed, wavered. He thrust, hit, and Zabb staggered under the mental attack. He charged back. Corps a corps. Zabb's breath hot on his face. The blades hopelessly tangled between them. Tach strained, trying to throw Zabb back, but he was overmatched. The mind, a gray, implacable wall. No, not quite!
Tach jerked his body to one side, avoiding a vicious knee to the groin, leaped back, and kicked Zabb's back leg out from under him. Envelopment, but his cousin was too fast for him. Zabb parried, and followed with a swift riposte, and a mind blast. It slid of Tach's shields.
His vision seemed to be blurring around the edges. No stamina. Wind almost gone.
Turtle!
He tried a wild, desperate thrust in tierce. Zabb tapped it aside almost contemptuously. He was a demon. That smile, still in place, and only a few beads of sweat mingled in the curly sideburns. His lashes dropped, hooding his eyes, and he pressed the attack. Nausea lay thick on his tongue as Tach realized that Zabb had only been toying with him before.
"Would you like to call it quits, beloved cousin?" whispered his tormentor. "Of course you would. But it's not to be. As promised, I am going to kill you."
No breath to answer the taunt, he just shook his bead, more to clear the sweat than to deny the statement. He lanced out with a desperate mental blow which was turned by Zabb's shields, and then, like a miracle, he saw an opening. He lunged, blade scraping along Zabb's. Zabb took his foible in a flashing parry, and passed on, his point searching for the heart. Time thrust! Lure to the unwary. Death!
He was sure he was seeing it: the brief flaring of the nostrils, the sardonic half-grin. Steve Bruder, with the same mannerisms as he crushed Tom's hand. Fuck you! he flung at
Zabb as the power washed through him, tingling in his extremities. He reached out, and . . .
The blade coming swift and true, then miraculously pulled off line. Not much room, but enough! Tachyon brought up his sword, parrying on the forte.
A plentitude of targets offered themselves. The heart, the belly, a shoulder cut? Tach caught his lower lip between his teeth, and for one wild, glorious moment considered driving the point deep, deep into that hated body. He lunged, and their eyes met for one eternal, frozen moment. The blade turned in his hand, the hilt taking Zabb neatly in the chin with a sound like an ax hitting wood.
Zabb's sword clattered to the floor, and he pitched forward on his face. There was a gasp like a rising'wind from the assembled watchers. For a moment Tach stared at his sword, then flung it aside, and knelt beside his cousin. Gently he rolled him over, and cradled the larger man in his arms.
"You see, I couldn't do it," he whispered, and he wondered why there were tears pricking at his eyelids. "I know you'd rather I killed you, but I couldn't. And despite our training, death is not preferable to dishonor."
Tom stood, his hands clenched at his sides, and reveled in the waves of excitement and joy that were washing through his body. He had done it. True, he had used enough concentration to shift a bulldozer, and the end result had been only a minute deflection. But it had been enough! Tach would live indeed, had won-because of Tom's action. With a little swagger he faced the alien device. It flashed through the air, landing with a satisfying smack in Tom's hands.
"Come on, Tachy, time to go," he sang out, his round cheeks flushed with excitement.
Tach laid Zabb gently down, and leaped to his friends. Not a single relative made a move.
Tom handed over the device with an awkward little bow. Tach returned the salute.
"Well done, Turtle. I knew you could do it."
He looked to Benaf'saj, made an elegant leg, winked, and ordered them home.
It was like being in the center of a vortex of nothingness. Icy cold and utter darkness, and for Tachyon the feeling that his mind was being torn into tiny, tattered streamers by the stress of holding all four travelers within the envelope of the singularity shifter.
By the ancestors, he wailed. At least let us land on dry land.
Tachyon crumpled, the device rolling from his nerveless fingers. Trips was squatting in a gutter holding his head in his hands, and muttering over and over, "Oh wow!" Tom retched a few times as his abused stomach tried to decide just where in space and time it was currently residing. There was a growing commotion, people yelling, windows being flung open, horns blaring as cars rolled to a stop, their occupants gawking at the tableau on the sidewalk. Tom dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, looked down at Tach, and quickly dropped to his knees beside the Takisian. Blood was pumping sluggishly from the long gash on his arm, and was running from his nose, and he was alarmingly white. The alien seemed to be scarcely breathing, and Tom pressed his ear to his friend's chest. The heartbeat fluttered erratically.
"Is he gonna be all right, man?" mumbled Trips.
"I don't know." Tom threw back his head, and stared up at a ring of black faces.
"Somebody get a doctor."
"Shit, man, they just popped in from nooowhere."
"Teleportin' honkies. You think they be aces, or what?"
"Doctor, git a doctor," bawled a burly man.' Asta backed slowly away from the circle of spectators, her eyes searching quickly for the black ball. A couple of kids were inspecting the device, and she stepped to them.
"I'll give you five dollars each for that."
"Five dollars! Shit! It just be a bowlin' ball with no'holes in it. What good that gonna do you?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised," she said softly, and fished her billfold out of her dance bag. The exchange was quickly made, and she tucked away the alien device.
The howling of sirens presaged the arrival of the police and an ambulance. Tach was loaded in, and Tom started to climb in with him. "Hey, where's the gizmo?"'
Asta opened her mouth, blinked several times, and closed it. "Gee, I don't know." She peered about as if expecting it to materialize from the Harlem landscape. "Maybe somebody in the crowd took it."
"Hey, buddy, you want to get your friend to the hospital or not?" growled one of the ambulance attendants.
"Well . . . look for it," Tom ordered, and climbed in. Asta gave an ironic wave to the departing ambulance. "Oh, I will."
And Kien is going to be so pleased with this.
She sauntered away, searching for a subway station to carry her to the waiting arms of her lover and commander.
The padlock opened with a grating snap, and Tach pushed open the small side door to the warehouse. Trips and Turtle followed him into the echoing gloom, and Trips muttered something unintelligible at the sight of the ship resting in the center of the vast, empty building. The amber and lavender lights on the points of her spines glimmered faintly in the gloom, and dust spiraled in from all sides as she quietly collected and synthesized the tiny particles into fuel. She was singing one of the many heroic ballads that made up such a large part of ship culture, but cut off when she perceived Tach's entrance. The music was, of course, inaudible to the two humans.
Baby, he telepathed to her.
Lordly one. Are we going out? she asked with pathetic eagerness.
No, not tonight. Open please.
There are humans with you. Do they also enter?
Yes. This is Captain Trips, and Turtle. They are as brothers to me. Honor them.
Yes, Tisianne. I am pleased to have your names.
They cannot hear you. Like most of their kind, they are mind-blind.
Sorrow.
There was the ache of another kind of sorrow in his chest as he led the way to his private salon. Memory-it could be so clear-the day his father had taken him to select this ship. All gone now.
He settled back among the cushions on the bed, and ordered, Search and contact.
There are lordly ones present? Yes.
And one of my kin? Baby asked, again with that pathetic eagerness.
Yes.
Seconds stretched into minutes, Tach lounging at his ease on the bed, Trips perched like a nervous roosting bird on a settee, and Tom bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet. The wall before Tachyon shimmered, and Benaf'saj's face appeared. The ship boosted his powerful telepathy, and the link was made.
Tisianne.
Kibr. You were expecting the call? Of course. I've known you since I was in diapers.
Yes, I know.
You have surprised me, Tisianne. I think Earth has had a beneficial effect upon you.
It has taught me many things, he corrected in a dry tone. Some more pleasant than others. He paused, and fiddled with the foaming lace beneath his chin. So, does it continue to be dagger points between us?
No, child. You may stay with your rustic humans. After the defeat you dealt him, Zabb has no hope of the scepter. You should have killed him, you know. Tach just shook his head. Benaf'saj frowned down at her hands, and straightened her rings.
So we part. It is disappointing that we have no specimens, but the success of the experiment cannot be denied, and it will delight Bakonur to have our data.
This effort will be the salvation of the family yet.
Yes, Tach replied hollowly.
I will send a ship every ten years or so to check on you. When you are ready to return to us we will welcome you. Farewell, Tis.
Farewell, he whispered. "Well?" asked Tom. "They'll leave us in peace."
"Like, I'm really glad you're not gonna leave."
"So am I," he said, but his tone lacked certainty, and he stared mournfully at the glowing wall as if trying to pull back the image of his granddam.
A warm, capable hand with its short, stubby fingers closed firmly over his shoulder. A moment later Trips had gripped his other arm, and he sat silent, basking in the wash of love and affection coming off both the men, driving back his homesickness.
He laid a hand over Tom's. "My dearest friends. What an adventure we have had."
"Yeah, life is, like, pretty neat, man."
"Why didn't you kill him?" Tom asked.
Tach shifted, and stared up into Tom's brown eyes. "Because I would like to believe in the possibility of redemption."
Tom's grip tightened. "Believe it."
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS
By Victor Milan
CONTROVERSIAL SCIENTIST BRUTALLY SLAIN IN LAB, the headline read.
"You should see what it says in the Daily News," she said. "Young lady," Dr.
Tachyon said, shoving the sheaf of New York Timeses away with fastidious fingertips and settling back perilously far in his swivel chair, "a policeman I am not. A doctor I am."
She frowned at him across the meticulous rectangle of his desk, cleared her throat, a small, fussy sound. "You have a reputation as father and protector to jokertown. If you don't act, an innocent joker is going to go down for murder."
It was his turn to frown. He ticked the high heel of one boot against the desk's metal lip. "Have you evidence? If so, the unfortunate fellow's legal counsel is the man to take it to."
"No. Nothing."
He plucked a yellow daffodil from a vase at his elbow, twirled its bell before his nose. "I wonder. You are perceptive enough to play on my sense of guilt, surely."
She smiled back, made a deprecating hand-wave, forestanimal quick and almost furtive, but slightly stiff. It was coming to him, irrelevantly, how acculturated he had become to this heavy world; his first reaction had been that she was scarcely this side of painfully thin, and only now did he appreciate how closely she approached the elfin pallid Takisian ideal of beauty. An albino almost, skin pale as paper, whiteblond hair, eyes barely blue. To his eyes she was drably dressed, a peach-colored skirt suit, cut severely, worn over a white blouse, a chain at her neck, as pale and fine as one of her hairs.
"It's my job, Doctor, as you're well aware. My paper expects me to know what goes on in Jokertown." Sara Morgenstern had been the Washington Post's expert on ace affairs since her coverage of the Jokertown riots ten years ago had gleaned her a nomination for the Pulitzer prize.
He made no response. She dropped her eyes. "Doughboy wouldn't do that, wouldn't kill anyone. He's gentle. He's retarded, you see."
"I know that."
"He lives with a joker they call the Shiner, down on Eldridge. Shiner looks after him."
"An innocent."
"Like a child. Oh, he was arrested in '76 for attacking a policeman. But that was . . . different. He- it was in the air." She seemed to want to say more, but her voice snagged.
"Indeed it was." He cocked his head. "You seem unusually involved."
"I can't stand to see Doughboy get hurt. He's bewildered, afraid. I just can't keep my journalist's objectivity."
"And the police? Why not go to them?"
"They have a suspect."
"But your paper? Surely the Post is not without influence."
She shook back icefall hair. "Oh, I can write a scathing expose, Doctor. Perhaps the New York papers will pick it up. Maybe even Sixty Minutes. Maybe-oh, in a year or two there'll be a public outcry, maybe justice will be done. In the meantime he's in the Tombs, Doctor. A child, lonely and afraid. Do you have any idea what it's like to be unjustly accused, to have your freedom wrongfully taken away?"
"Yes. I do."
She bit her lip. "I forgot. I'm sorry."
"It's nothing."
Tach leaned forward. "I'm a busy man, dear lady. I have a clinic to run. I keep trying to convince the authorities that the Swarm Mother won't necessarily go away simply because we defeated her first incursion, but instead may be preparing a new and even deadlier attack.." He sighed. "Well. I suppose I must look into this."
"You'll help?"
"I will."
"Thank God."
He stood up and came around to stand by her. She tipped her head back, lips curiously slack, and he had the sense that she was trying to be alluring without quite knowing how to go about it.
What is this? he wondered. He was not normally one to pass up an invitation from so attractive a woman, but there was something hidden here, and the old Takisian blood-feud instincts made him sheer away. Not that he sensed a threat; just a mystery, and that in itself was threatening to one of his caste.
On a whim, half irritated that she was making an offer and making it impossible to accept, he reached out and snagged the chain at her throat. A plain silver locket emerged, engraved with the initials A. W in copperplate. She reached for it quickly, but cat-nimble he flipped it open.
A picture of a girl, a child, no more than thirteen. Her hair was yellow, the features fuller, the grin haughtier, but she bore an unmistakable resemblance to Sara Morgenstern. "Your daughter?"
"My-my sister."
"A. W.?"
"Morgenstern was my married name, Doctor. I kept it after my divorce." She half-turned away, knees pressed together, shoulders hunched. "Andrea was her name. Andrea Whitman."
"Was?"
"She died." She stood up rapidly.
"Sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
"Uncle Tachy! Uncle Tachy!" A blond projectile hit him in the shin and wrapped about him like seaweed as he stepped up to the door of the Cosmic Pumpkin ('Food for Body, Mind, & Spirit') Head Shop and Delicatessen on Fitz-James O'Brien Street, near the border of Jokertown and the Village. Laughing, he bent down, scooped the little girl up and hugged her. "What did you bring me, Uncle Tachy?"
He rooted in a pocket of his coat, produced a caramel cube. "Don't tell your father I gave you this." Wide-eyed solemn, she shook her head.
He carried her into amiable clutter. Inside he was clenched. Hard to believe this beautiful child of nine was mentally retarded, like Doughboy, permanently consigned to four.
Doughboy had been easier, somehow. He was immense, over two meters tall, an almost-spherical mass of white flesh, hairless, faintly bluish, face bloated almost to featurelessness, raisin eyes staring out from fat and tears. He was in his late twenties. He could not remember ever being called by anything other than a cruel nickname from a bakery's registered trademark. He was frightened.
He missed Mr. Shiner and Mr. Benson the newsdealer who lived below them, he wanted the Go-Bot Shiner had bought him shortly before the men came and took him away. He wanted to go home, to get away from strange harsh men who poked him with their fingers and called him mocking names. He was pathetically grateful to Tachyon for coming to see him; when Tach took leave, in the bile-green visitation room in the Tombs, he clung to his hand and wept.
Tach wept too, but afterward, when Doughboy couldn't see.
But Doughboy was obviously a joker, victim of the wild card virus Tach's own clan had brought this world. Sprout Meadows was physically a perfect child, exquisite even by the exacting standards of the lord-lines of Ilkazam or Alaa or Kalimantari, sweeter-tempered than any daughter of Takis. Yet she was no less deformed than Doughboy, no less a monster by the standards of Tach's homeworld-and like him would have been instantly destroyed.
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."