Aces Abroad

"Hounfour?" Peregrine asked.

"Oui. A temple. A church. A voodoo church."

"Sounds interesting," Chrysalis said.

"It's got to be more interesting than looking at anchors," Ray said insouciantly.

Calixte smiled, his good humor going no farther than his lips. "As you wish, msie. I must go now."

"What about these policemen?" Tachyon asked.

"They will continue to protect you," Calixte said depreciatingly, and left.

"They're nothing to worry about," Ray said, "leastways while I'm around." He struck a consciously heroic pose and glanced at Peregrine, who looked down at her drink.

Chrysalis wished she could feel as confident as Ray. There was something unsettling about the Tonton Macoute sitting in the corner of the lounge, watching them from behind his dark glasses with the unblinking patience of a snake. Something malevolent. Chrysalis didn't believe that he was there to protect them. Not for one single, solitary second.

Ti Malice particularly liked the sensations associated with sex. When he was in the mood for such a sensation he'd usually mount a female, because, on the whole, females could maintain a state of pleasure, particularly those adept at self-arousal, much longer than his male mounts could. Of course, there were shades and nuances of sexual sensation, some as subtle as silk dragged across a sensitive nipple, some as blatant as an explosive orgasm ripped from a throttled man, and different mounts were adept at different practices.

This afternoon he wasn't in the mood for anything particularly exotic, so he'd attached himself to a young woman who had a particularly sensitive tactile sense and was enjoying it enjoying itself when his mount came in to report.

"They'll all be at the di

He could understand the mount's report well enough. It was, after all, their world, and he'd had to make some accommodations, like learning to associate meaning with the sounds that spilled from their lips. He couldn't reply verbally, of course, even if he'd wanted to. First, his mouth, tongue, and palate weren't shaped for it, and second, his mouth was, and always had to be, fastened to the side of his mount's neck, with the narrow, hollow tube of his tongue plunged into his mount's carotid artery.

But he knew his mounts well and he could read their needs easily. The mount who'd brought the report, for instance, had two. Its eyes were fastened on the lithe nakedness of the female as it pleasured itself, but it also had a need for his kiss.

He flapped a pale, ski

He forced a stream. of spittle down his tongue and into his mount's carotid artery, sealing the breach in it, then gingerly climbed, like a frail, pallid monkey, to the male's back, gripped it around the shoulders, and plunged his tongue home just below the mass of scar tissue on the side of its neck.

The male grunted with more than sexual pleasure as he drove his tongue in, siphoning some of the mount's blood into his own body for the oxygen and nutrients he needed to live. He rode the man's back as the man rode the woman, and all three were bound in chains of inexpressible pleasure. And when the carotid of the female mount ruptured unexpectedly, as they sometimes did, spewing all three with pulsing showers of bright, warm, sticky blood, they continued on. It was a most exciting and pleasurable experience. When it was over, he realized that he would miss the female mount-it had had the most incredibly sensitive skin-but his sense of loss was lessened by anticipation.

Anticipation of new mounts, and the extraordinary abilities they would have. ii.

The Palais National dominated the north end of a large open square near the center of Port-au-Prince. Its architect had cribbed its design from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., giving it the same colo

The inside of the Palais stood out in stark contrast to everything else Chrysalis had seen in Haiti. The only word to describe it was opulent. The carpets were deep-pile shags, the furniture and bric-a-brac along the hallway they were escorted down by ornately uniformed guards were all authentic antiques, the chandeliers hanging from the high vaulted ceilings were the finest cut crystal.

President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier, and his wife, Madame Michele Duvalier, were waiting in a receiving line with other Haitian dignitaries and functionaries. Baby Doc Duvalier, who'd inherited Haiti in 1971 when his father, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, had died, looked like a fat boy who'd outgrown his tight-fitting tuxedo. Chrysalis thought him more petulant-looking than intelligent, more greedy than cu

Tachyon, wearing an absurd peach-colored crushed-velvet tuxedo, was standing to his right, introducing Duvalier to the members of his tour. When it came Chrysalis's turn, Baby Doc took her hand and stared at her with the fascination of a young boy with a new toy. He murmured to her politely in French and continued to stare at her as Chrysalis moved down the line.

Michele Duvalier stood next to him. She had the cultivated, brittle look of a high-fashion model. She was tall and thin and very light-ski

She drew back a little as Chrysalis approached and nodded a cold, precise millimeter, without offering her hand. Chrysalis sketched an abbreviated curtsy and moved on herself, thinking, Bitch.

Calixte, showing the high status he enjoyed in the Duvalier regime, was next. He said nothng to her and did nothing to acknowledge her presence, but Chrysalis felt his stare boring into her all the way down the line. It was a most unsettling feeling and was, Chrysalis realized, a further sample of the charisma and power that Calixte wielded. She wondered why he allowed Duvalier to hang around as a figurehead.

The rest of the receiving line was a confused blur of faces and handshakes. It ended at the doorway leading into the cavernous dining room. The tablecloths on the long wooden table were linen, the place settings were silver, the centerpieces were fragrant sprays of orchid and rose. When she was escorted to her seat, Chrysalis found that she and the other jokers, Xavier Desmond, Father Squid, Troll, and Dorian Wilde, were stuck at the end of the table. Word was whispered that Madame Duvalier had had them seated as far away from her as possible so the sight of them wouldn't ruin her appetite.

However, as wine was being served with the fish course (Pwason rouj, the waiter had called it, red snapper served with fresh string beans and fried potatoes), Dorian Wilde stood and recited an extemporaneous, calculatedly overblown ode in praise of Madame Duvalier, all the while gesticulating with the twitching, wriggling, dripping mass of tentacles that was his right hand. Madame Duvalier turned a shade of green only slightly less bilious than that of the ooze that dripped from Wilde's tendrils and was seen to eat very little of the following courses. Gregg Hartma