Tach blinked and shook his head, realizing the large and convolute piece of equipment whose identity he'd been puzzling over the last half-minute was possibly the world's most intricate bong. "What did you find, then?" he demanded. Mark passed him a slip of paper. "I don't, like, have enough data to confirm the structure of that protein chain. But the chemical composition, the proportions . . ."
Tachyon felt as if a coin were being dragged down the vertebrae in his neck.
"Swarmling biomass," he breathed. Mark gestured at a bale of papers stacked on a bench. "You can check the references on this, analyses from the Swarm invasion.
I-"
"No, no. I trust your work, Mark, more than anyone's but mine." He shook his head. "So swarmlings murdered Dr. Warren. Why?"
"How about how, man? I thought swarmlings were great big things, like in some Japanese monster movie."
"At first, yes. But a Swarm culture-a Mother-how to say?- evolves in response to stimuli. Its first brute-force attack failed. Now it refines its approach-as I've been warning those fools in Washington it might, all along." His mouth tightened. "I suspect that it is now attempting to emulate the life-form that repulsed it before. Such is a common pattern for these monsters."
"So you've had a lot of experience with these things?"
"Not I. But my people, yes. They are, you might say, our bitterest enemies, these Swarm creatures. And we theirs."
"And now they're, like, infiltrating us?" Mark shuddered. "I think they are a long way from being able to pass undetected. Yet something about this troubles me. Usually at this stage of a Swarm incursion they are not so discriminating."
"And why did they pick on poor Fred?"
"You begin to sound like that horrid woman, my friend." Tach grinned, clapped him on the shoulder. "I hope we'll find the answer to that question when we track these horrors down. Which is the next thing we must do."
"What about Doughboy?"
Tach sighed. "You're right. I will call the police, first thing in the morning, and tell them what we learned."
"They're never gonna buy it."
"I can but try. Get rest, my friend."
They didn't buy it.
"So you found swarmling tissue in Warren's lab," rasped the Homicide South lieutenant in charge of the case. By phone she sounded young, Puerto Rican, harassed, and as if she did not at the moment love Tisianne brant Ts'ara of House Ilkazam. "You are taking a very active interest in this case for a medical expert witness, Doctor."
" I am trying to perform my civic duty. To prevent an innocent man from suffering further. And, incidentally, to alert the proper authorities to a frightful danger which may threaten this entire world."
"I appreciate your concern, Doctor. But I'm a homicide investigator. Planetary defense is not in my jurisdiction. I have to get permission just to go into Queens."
"But I have solved a homicide for you!"
"Doctor, the Warren case is under investigation by the competent authorities, which is us. We have a witness who positively identifies Doughboy leaving the scene at the right time."
"But the tissue samples-"
"Maybe he was growing them in a petri jar. I don't know, Doctor. Nor do I know the credentials of whoever identified this alleged swarmling tissue-"
" I assure you I am an alien biochemistry expert-"
"In several senses." He jerked slightly back from the receiver; perversely, he was starting to like this woman. "I'm not saying I doubt you, Doctor. But I can't just wave my hand and let your man walk free. That's up to the DA.
Whatever you have, take to Doughboy's attorney and have him present it. And if you've really found more swarmlings, I'd suggest you take that up with General Meadows at SPACECOM." Who is Mark's father. "And one more thing, Doctor."
"What is that, Lt. Arrupe?"
"Get off this case or I'll chuck your ass in the joint. I don't need amateurs muddying the water."
Chrysalis looked at him with a face glass-clear and china bone. "Anything strange happening in Jokertown?" she drawled in that hermaphrodite British accent of hers. "Whatever makes you think anything strange might happen here?"
He sat at one end of the bar, well away from the morning regulars. He wasn't exactly a stranger at the Crystal Palace. He never quite relaxed here, just the same.
"Not just Jokertown. This part of Manhattan, from Midtown south."
She set down a glass she was polishing. "You're serious?"
"When I say strange, I mean strange for jokertown. Not the latest outrage at jokers Wild. Not Black Shadow dangling some mugger from a streetlamp by his foot. Not even another bow-and-arrow murder by that maniac with his playing cards. Something out of what passes for the ordinary hereabouts."
"Gimli's back."
Tach sipped his brandy and soda. "So they say."
"What are you paying?"
He raised a brow.
"Dammit, I'm not just a back-fence gossip! I pay for my information."
"And are well paid. I've contributed my share, Chrysalis."
"Yes. But there's so much you don't tell me. Things that go on at the clinic . .
. confidential things."
"Which shall remain confidential."
"All right. Goodwill in this mutant community is my stock in trade too, and you don't have to remind me how influential you are. But someday you'll go too far, you metal-haired little alien fox. "
He grinned at her. And was gone.
Tring. Tach winched one eye open. The world was dark but for the usual Manhattan light-haze and perhaps a little moonlight oozing in through open curtains, silvering the bare female rump upturned beside him on the maroon coverlet of his water bed. He blinked, gummily, and tried to remember the name of the person to whom the buttocks belonged. They were really outstanding buttocks.
Tring. More exigent this time. One of this world's most satanic inventions, the telephone. Beside him the glorious buttocks shifted slightly and a pair of shoulders came into view from behind a ridge of comforter.
Trrrr- He picked up the phone. "Tachyon."
"It's Chrysalis."
"Delighted to hear from you. Do you have any idea what hour of the night it is?"
"One-thirty, which is more than you knew. I've got something for you, Doctor darling."
"Whozat, Tach?" mumbled the woman at his side. He patted her rump abstractedly, trying to remember her name. Janet? Elaine? Blast.
"What is it?" Cathy? Candi? Sue? Chrysalis hummed a tune.
"What in the name of the ideal was that?" he demanded. Mary? Confound Chrysalis and her damned humming!
"A song we used to sing, back when I was at camp. `Johnny Rebeck.'"
"You called at one-thirty in the morning to sing me a campfire song?" Belinda?
This was getting to be too much. "'And all the neighbors' cats and dogs will nevermore be seen/They've all been ground to sausages in Johnny Rebeck's machine."'
Tach sat up. "What is it?" the woman beside him demanded, petulant now, turning toward him a face masked with sleep and dark hair.
"You've got something."
"Like I told you, luv. Not Jokertown, but nearby. Around Division, next to Chinatown. Dogs and cats disappearingstrays, pets; people in these parts aren't too concerned with leash laws. And pigeons. And rats. And squirrels. Several blocks are just devoid of the usual urban wildlife. Jokes about oriental cuisine aside, I thought this might qualify as your strange event."
"It does." Ancestors, how it does! She purred. "You owe me, Tachyon."
He was swinging his legs out of bed, wishing for courtesy's sake he could remember this young woman's name to send her packing. "I do."
"And by the way," Chrysalis said, "her name's Karen."
"Doctor," Trips said through a cloud of his own breath, "do you have any idea what Brenda called me when I phoned her to come look after Sprout at this hour of the night?"
In the weeks he'd known Mark, it was the first time he had heard him voice a complaint of any sort. He sympathized. "I don't want to even imagine, dear Mark.
But this is crucial. And I feel we have no time to waste."
Mark crumpled. "Yeah. You're right. Doughboy's got it a whole lot worse than anything I've ever known. I'm sorry, Doc. "
Tachyon looked at this man, a brilliant scientist whom personal demons had driven to batter himself into little more than a derelict, and honestly wondered. He stroked his arm. "No harm done, Mark."
Not far away the cars hissed over the Manhattan Bridge. They had here a dark side street in a none-too-prepossessing part of town, small shops and shadows and loan sharks and derelict manors, gray cramped buildings winking here and there with broken windows in the glow of a single fading streetlight. Not an hour to be abroad here, even without the prospect of otherworldy menace.
"This may just be a false alarm," Tach said. "When Chrysalis told me about the animal disappearances, it occurred to me that swarmlings need food, and unless this culture advances more quickly than any I've heard of, they could scarcely buy it at the A&P "
He stopped, faced his friend, gripped him by the biceps. "Understand this now, Mark. There may be nothing here. But if we've found what. we are looking for, we are going to be confronting a monster like something from a horror movie. But it's real. It's the enemy of every living organism on this planet, and it is utterly without compunction."
Mildly, Mark gestured up the block. "Does it look anything like that, man?"
Tach stared at him a moment. Slowly he swiveled his head right.
A figure stood on the corner at the end of the block nearer the overpass. A coat was stretched around it, a hat pulled low, but even muffled as it was there was no hiding that its proportions were never those of a normal human being.
"Excuse me a moment, man," Trips said. He pulled away, and holding hat on head ran from the apparition, rounding the corner with knee-swinging sole-slapping strides.
Coward! blazed up nova in Tach's breast, and then, But no, I cannot be so hard on him, for he is no fighter and this is a menace strange to his kind. He squared his shoulders, straightened his cravat, and turned to face the creature.
It took a swaying step forward, another. One foot made a sucking sound as it came off the asphalt. From the darkness behind it another figure lurched; clothed the same way, its outline different but clearly kindred. Ah, Benafsaj, you were right to doubt me. I never imagined there might be two. He readied his spirit for death.
"Doctor."
His head snapped round. A young woman stood beside him, dressed from throat to soles in black broken only by the sideways commas of a yin-yang design on her chest. The emblem was matched by a black mask which curved up from her left cheekbone across the right side of her forehead, leaving half her face bare. She was taller than he. Her hair was black and lustrous. What he could see of her face looked Oriental and breathtakingly beautiful.
He performed a courtly if abbreviated bow. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."
"I am Moonchild, Doctor. And I have the honor of knowing you-if not exactly at first hand."
It was beginning to seep through his blood-brain barrier. "You're one of the Captain's friends."
"I am."
Danger always made his blood run high. At least that was his subsequent excuse for the lechery that gripped him now. "Dearest child," he breathed, grabbing her hands, "you are the loveliest sight these eyes have beheld in ages . . ."
Even in the diffuse glow he saw her blush. "I will do my poor best to aid you, Doctor," she said, misunderstanding . . . maybe.
She whirled from him and glided down the street, relaxed and poised and deadly-seeming as a stalking leopard. He marveled at her aura of strength, her liquid grace, the play of buttocks beneath her tight black suit-buttocks were much with him, tonight. He trotted after her, Takisian-unwilling to let a woman face danger.
When she was twenty meters from the nearer swarmling she flowed into a charge, at ten launched herself clear of the street with panache that made him gasp. She pirouetted in flight, snapped her right heel around behind her, pivoting, driving a perfect spinning back kick into the shoulder of the beast. There was a dry squelch, dropped-pumpkin sound. The thing gave back. Still spinning, Moonchild rebounded, touched lightly down, recovered into battle stance.
The monster's arm fell off. Dropped right out of its sleeve. She freaked.
All at once she was all over the street without even moving. Screaming, wailing, thrashing like a three-way catfight, sinking to the pavement all the while.
Tachyon stared. But she made such a strong start, he thought plaintively.
For a moment the swarmlings seemed to stare at her too. Then as one they turned back to face Tachyon, the chemoreceptors that had alerted them to his nearness guiding them inexorably toward the hated, dreaded Takisian. An empty sleeve flapped grotesquely against the first one's side. Tach reached for its mind. It was like clutching fog. His thought passed ineffectually through the diffusion of electrochemical signals that made up the thing's mind. Unsurprised, he pulled out the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson, leaned into an isosceles stance, gun gripped bothhanded, sights lined up on the center of that unlovely mass, inhaled, held it, squeezed twice. The pistol produced a very satisfactory amount of flame and recoil and noise. No other results.
Shocked, he lowered the pistol. The beast was twenty meters away; he couldn't have missed. Then he saw the two small holes, right where they should have been, one on either side of the buttoned coat-front. Mental attacks weren't the only things that passed right through a swarmling.
"I'm in trouble," he announced. He aimed for the shadow beneath the hat-brim, fired twice more. The hat flew off. So did great chunks of the diseased-potato mass within that served the being as a head. It came on.
Moonchild had quit screaming and beating at herself, and sat with hands between knees, watching intently. "Bullets don't hurt them," she said, voice raw from screaming. "They--they're not human."
"Very observant." He fired off the last two, started backing away, groping in a pocket for a speed reloader, hoping he had one.'
"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."