Aces High

As Jube sipped his drink, he caught a whiff of familiar perfume, and turned his head just as Chrysalis seated herself on the stool to his left. "Good morning," she said. Her voice was cool and faintly British. She was wearing a spiral of silver glitter on one cheek, and the transparent flesh beneath made it seem to float like a nebula above the whiteness of her skull. Her lipstick was silver gloss, and her long nails gleamed like daggers. "How's the news business, Jubal?"

He gri

"All right." Jube sipped at his planter's punch through a straw. "At the Chaos Club they put little parasols in these."

"At the Chaos Club they serve drinks in coconuts." Jube nursed his drink. "That place on Division, where they film the hard-core stuff? I heard it's a Gambione operation. "

"Old news," Chrysalis said. It was closing time. The lights came up. Elmo began to circulate, stacking chairs on tables and rousting the customers.

"Troll is going to be the new chief of security at Tachyon's clinic. Doc told me so himself."

"Affirmative action?" Chrysalis said drily.

"Partly," Jube told her. "And partly it's just that he's nine foot tall, green, and almost invulnerable." He sucked up the last of his drink noisily, and stirred the crushed ice with his straw. "Guy at the cophouse has a lead on jokers Wild."

"He won't find it," Chrysalis said. "If he does, he'll wish he hadn't."

"If they had any sense, they'd just ask you."

"There's not enough money in the city budget to pay for that information," Chrysalis said. "What else? You always save your best for last."

"Probably nothing," Jube said, swiveling to face her. "But I hear Gimli's coming home."

"Gimli?" Her voice was nonchalant, but the deep blue eyes suspended in the sockets of her skull regarded him sharply. "How interesting. Details?"

"Not yet," Jube said. "I'll let you know."

"I'm sure you will." Chrysalis had informants all over Jokertown. But Jube the Walrus was one of the most reliable. Everyone knew him, everyone liked him, everyone talked to him.

Jube was the last customer to leave the Crystal Palace that night. When he went outside it had just begun to snow. He snorted, held his hat firmly, and trudged off down Henry, pulling the empty shopping'cart behind him. A patrol car came up alongside him as he was passing under the Manhattan Bridge, slowed, and rolled down a window. "Hey, Walrus," the black cop behind the wheel called out. "It's snowing, you dumb joker. You'll freeze your balls off."

"Balls?" Jube called out. "Who says jokers got balls? I love this weather, Chaz. Look at these rosy cheeks!" He pinched his oily, blue-black cheek, and chortled.

Chaz sighed, and opened the back door of the blue-andwhite. "Get in. I'll ride you home."

Home was a five-story rooming house on Eldridge, just a short ride away. Jube left his shopping cart under the steps by the trash cans as he opened the police lock on his basement apartment. The only window was completely filled by a huge air conditioner of ancient vintage, its rusted casing now halfcovered with blowing snow.

When he turned on his lights, the red fifteen-watt bulbs in the overhead fixture filled the room with a murky scarlet twilight. It was bone-cold inside, scarcely warmer than the November streets. Jube never turned on the heat. Once or twice a year a man from the gas company came by to check on him and make sure he hadn't rigged the meter.

Under the window, pans of green, decaying meat covered the top of a card table. Jube stripped off his shirt to reveal a broad, six-nippled chest, got himself a glass of ice to crunch, and picked the ripest steak he could find.

A bare mattress covered the floor of his bedroom, and in the corner was his latest acquisition, a brand-new porcelain hot tub that faced a big-screen projection TV Except that 'hot tub' was a misnomer, since he never used the heating system. He had learned a lot about humans in the last twenty-three years, but he'd never understand why they wanted to immerse themselves in scalding water, he thought as he undressed. Even the Takisians had more sense than that.

Holding the steak in one hand, Jube carefully lowered himself into the icy water and turned on the television with his remote control to watch the nevys programs he'd taped earlier. He popped the steak into his wide mouth, and began to chew the raw meat slowly as he floated there, absorbing every word that Tom Brokaw had to say. It was very relaxing, but when the newscast ended, Jube knew it was time to go to work.

He climbed out of his tub, belched, and dried himself vigorously with a Donald Duck towel. An hour, no more, he thought to himself as he padded across the room, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood floor. He was tired, but he had to do some work, or he'd fall even more behind. Standing at the back of his bedroom, he punched out a long sequence of numbers on his remote control. The bare brick wall in front of him seemed to dissolve when he hit the final digit.

Jube walked through into what had been the coal cellar. The far wall was dominated by a holocube that dwarfed even his projection TV A horseshoe-shaped console wrapped around a huge contour chair designed for Jube's unique physiognomy. All along the sides of the snug chamber were machines, some whose purpose would have been obvious to any high school student, others that would have baled Dr. Tachyon himself.

Primitive as it was, the office suited Jube just fine. He settled into his chair, turned on the power-feed from the fusion cell, and took a crystalline rod as long as a child's pinky from a rack by his elbow. When he slid it into the appropriate slot on the console, the recorder lit from within, and he began to dictate his latest observations and conclusions in a language that seemed half music and half cacophony, made up in equal parts of barks, whistles, belches, and clicks. If his other security systems ever failed him, his work would still be safe. After all, there wasn't another sentient being within forty lightyears who spoke his native tongue.

UNTO THE SIXTH GENERATION

By Walter Jon Williams

Prologue

He was still smoking where the atmosphere had burned his flesh. Heated lifeblood was ru

Lights strobed at him from the end of the alley. They dazzled his eyes. Hard sounds crackled in his ears. His blood was steaming on the concrete as it cooled.

The Swarm Mother had detected his ship, had struck at him with a vast particle charge generated in the creature's monstrous planetoid body. He had barely the opportunity to signal Jhubben on the planet's surface before his ship's chitin was torn apart. He'd been forced to seize the singularity shifter, his race's experimental power source, and leap into the dark vacuum. But the shifter had been damaged in the attack and he had been unable to control it-he had burned on the way down.

He tried to summon his concentration and grow new flesh, but failed. He realized that he was dying.

It was necessary to stop the draining of his life. There was. a metal container nearby, large, with a hinged lid. His body a flaring agony, he rolled across the damp surface of the concrete and hooked his one undamaged leg across the lid of the container. The leg was powerful, intended for leaping into the sky of his light-gravity world, and now it was his hope. He moved his weight against the oppressive gravity, rolling his body up the length of his leg. Outraged nerves wailed in his body. Fluid spattered the outside of the container.