Aces High

They went quietly down the hall, passing a closed door to a guest bedroom. The hall opened out into the apartment's living room, which looked as devastated as a trailer park after a tornado. A slight, short man with long curly red hair was methodically pulling books off their shelves, looking behind them.

"Tachyon," Bre

He turned and looked at the two in the hallway, totally calm, utterly unstartled. He started toward them, no expression at all on his face.

Fortunato suddenly put a hand in the small of Bre

The next few seconds seemed to Bre

Bre

The arrow was fletched with color-coded red and black feathers. Its shaft was hollow aluminum, packed with plastic explosives. Its tip was a pressure-sensitive detonator. The arrow was too heavy to be aerodynamically stable over long distances, but the thing masquerading as Tachyon was less than twenty-five feet away.

Bre

"What was that thing?" Bre

"Damned if I know," Fortunato said, getting up from where it had flung him. "I tried to scan its mind, but it had no mind. Nothing human, anyway."

"It looked like Tachyon," Bre

"When was the last time you saw what you're certain was the real Tachyon?"

"Yesterday. At the clinic. Before he went to a meeting at the Olympia Hotel with that Lankester fellow from the State Department."

"Let's check in."

The frail, white-haired old man in the bellhop uniform lifted Bre

The bellhop loomed over him, no expression at all on his lined face. Bre

Bre

"Someone probably heard that," Bre

"I could have let it smash you flat."

"There's that." He took a deep, grateful breath. "We need to lie low for awhile."

They stopped in front of one of the rooms.

"How about this one?" Fortunato asked. Bre

"It'll take them some time to track us down," the ace said as they entered the dark hotel room. "How many agents you think they have?"

"No telling," Bre

"I thought you were surreptitious as shit."

Bre

"It may take some time."

Fortunato settled himself on one of the double beds, legs crossed in front of him, back straight, hands dangling in his lap. He stared ahead at nothing. Bre

Fortunato seemed to sink deep into a trance, not unlike, Bre

Bre

Bre

"They're all around us, those things," he said. "At least twenty. Maybe more. They're not human, not even of this Earth. Their minds, if you could call them that, are alien, utterly beyond my experience."

"Are they Swarm creatures?"

Fortunato rose with easy, fluid grace, shrugged. "Could be. I thought the best they could do was hulks that looked like the Pillsbury doughboy. I thought bellboys and shit like that was beyond them."

"Maybe they've refined their technique." Bre

Fortunato frowned. "I contacted one human mind. A maid. She didn't realize anything unusual was going on. A little pissed off that the guests on this floor weren't tipping too well. Weren't tipping at all, in fact. There was also something I touched by the elevators. Could've been Tachyon's mind, but there was a blanket on it, a fence around it. I could catch only vague, filtered notions. They were full of weariness. And pain."

"It could be Tachyon?"

"It could."

Bre

"All out of 'em."

The two looked at each other. Bre

"I wish you had a weapon," he said.

"I do. Several." He tapped his forehead. "And they're all in here."

They waited until it was quiet in the corridor outside, then opened the door and moved fast. They ran as quietly as they could down the hotel corridor, hung a right as it turned to a T, and found themselves by the bank of elevators. In a niche, of to one side, was something that looked like a linen closet. Bre

Bre

"Sweet Christ in heaven," he murmured. Fortunato glanced from him to the closet, and froze. '

Tachyon was inside. His hair, drenched with sweat, fell over his face in limp curls. His eyes stared through the tangle of hair. They were puffy and bloodshot, and glazed with pain and weariness. The shelves and linens had been removed from the closet, making room for Tachyon and the thing that embraced him. Tachyon was pressed against a vast, purplish couch of biomass that bound him with a score of ropy tendrils across his neck, chest, arms, and legs. The thing pulsed rhythmically, rippling like a fat lady bouncing on a water bed.

Tachyon was set into a hollow in its surface that cupped him securely, perfectly following his contours and dimensions. His eyes focused upon Fortunato, flicked to Bre