Aces Abroad

"Shut up. Doctor Tachyon, you have my personal apology." Neuma

Tachyon sensed Sara beside and behind him like a whiteout shadow. She'd just finished narrating a sketch of what had just happened into the voice-actuated mike clipped to the lapel of her coat. She seemed calm.

He gestured at the ambulances crowded together like whales with spi

"Three bystanders were injured by gunfire, and one policeman. Another officer will require hospitalization but he, ah, was not shot."

"What were you thinking of?" Tachyon screamed. He thought he'd blasted all his fury out of him, all over the plainclothes officers who'd been stumbling across each other demanding to know how the terrorists could possibly have gotten away. But now it was back, filling him up to overflow. "Tell me, what did you people think you were doing?"

"It wasn't my people," Neuma

"It was all a setup," Xavier Desmond said, stroking his trunk with leaden fingers. "That millionaire philanthropist who lent the ransom-"

"Was fronting for the political police."

"Herr Neuma

"The officer was aiming his weapon at a crowd of people through whom the terrorists were fleeing," Tach said tautly. "He could not have fired without hitting i

The plainclothesman turned red. "You interfered with one of my officers! We could have stopped them=" Neuma

The man swallowed and walked away, sending hostile looks back over his shoulder at Tachyon. Tachyon gri

"Oh, Gregg, my God, what have we done?" sobbed Hiram. "We'll never get him back."

Tachyon tugged on his elbow, more trying to encourage him to his feet than help him. He forgot about Hiram's gravity power; the fat man popped right up. "What do you mean, Hiram, my friend?"

"Are you out of your mind, Doctor? They'll kill him now."

Sara gasped. When Tach glanced to her she looked quickly away, as if unwilling to show him her eyes.

"Not so, my friend," Neuma

He stuck hands in the pockets of his trousers and gazed off across the misty park at the line of trees that masked the outer fences of the zoo. "But now the price will go up."

"The bastards!" Gimli turned, whipping rain from the tail of his raincoat, and beat fists on the mottled walls. "The cocksuckers. They set us up!"

Shroud and Scrape were huddled over the thin, filthy mattress on which Aardvark lay moaning softly. Everybody else seemed to be milling around a room crowded with heavy damp as well as bodies.

Hartma

A thought went home like a whaler's bomb-lance: Tachyon!

Does that alien demon suspect? is this a convoluted Takisian plot to get rid of me without a scandal?

Puppetman laughed at him. `Never attribute to malice what may adequately be explained by stupidity,' he said. Hartma

Mackie Messer stood shaking his head. "This isn't right," he said, half-pleading. "We have the senator. Don't they know that?"

Then he was raging around the room like a cornered wolf, snarling and hacking air with his hands. People jostled to get out of the way of those hands.

"What do they think's going on?" Mackie screamed. "Who do they think they're fucking with? I'll tell you something. I'll tell you what. Maybe we should send them a few pieces of the Senator here, show them what's what."

He buzzed his hand inches from the tip of the captive's nose.

Hartma

"Calm down, Detlev," A

Detlev was slang for faggot, Hartma

A

Wolf put his arm around Mackie's shoulders. "There, Mackie, there. A

Hartma

"He's a good boy," Wolf said, giving Mackie another hug and letting him go. "He's the son of an American deserter and a Hamburg whore another victim of your imperialist venture in Southeast Asia, Senator."

"My father was a general," Mackie shouted in English. "Yes, Mackie; anything you say. The boy grew up ru

"And he's been sooo helpful," A

You win, Puppetman said. What?

You're right. My control isn't perfect. And this one is too unpredictable, too… terrible.

Hartma

Such a waste; he'd be such a perfect puppet. And his emotion, so furious, so lovely-like a drug. But a deadly drug.

So you've given up. Relief flooded him. No. The boy just has to die. But that's all right. I've got it all worked out now.

Shroud squatted over Aardvark like a solicitous mummy, bathing his forehead with a length of his own bandage, which he'd dipped in water from one of the five-liter plastic cans stacked in the bedroom. He shook his head and murmured to himself.

Eyes malice-bright, A

"Joker blood's been shed-again," Shroud said levelly. "It better not have been for nothing."

A

"Shut up, you bitch!" Gimli yelled. Spittle exploded from the center of his beard as he lunged for the redhead. With a scratch of chitin on wood Scrape interposed himself, threw his horny arms around his leader as guns came up.