Down And Dirty

"We're sisters in this."

Sara stepped from the curb and hailed a cab parked down the street. The nat driver stared at her through the rear-view mirror. His gaze was rude and direct; Sara turned her face away. "Where you going?" he asked with a distinct Slavic accent.

"Head uptown," she said. "Just get me out of here." "What he did to me, he would also do to you. Don't you notice how your feelings for him change when he's with you, and doesn't that also make you wonder?"

Aah, Andrea. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

Sara sat back and watched the rain smear the towers of Manhattan through the windows.

Blood Ties

III

A grid map of Manhattan from Eighty-seventh down to Fifty-seventh Street glowed on the computer. Tachyon punched in a marker. Brought up another thirty-block section. Studied the two red dots. Wished he had a really big screen that could give him a full view of all of Manhattan. Decided that despite the growing crises at the clinic he would have to spend several hours aboard Baby. Her wetware and hardware were far superior to anything on Earth, and she could give him a full-screen view of this mysterious and elusive wild card source.

Victoria Queen, the clinic's chief of surgery, entered without knocking.

"Tachyon, you can't go on like this. Spending time with the joker patrols, working with patients, doing research, and racing around with your grandson trying to be superdad."

He dug his thumbs into his gritty eyes, then rapped his knuckles against the CRT screen. "The answer is here somewhere. I just have to find it. Eighteen new cases of wild card in a four-day period. It's not rational, it shouldn't be happening. I had hoped it was something simple. A hitherto undisturbed cache of spores. But the dispersal of the cases makes that impossible. I put in a call to the National Weather Service, and they're up sending weather tapes covering the past two weeks. Perhaps that will be the key. Some climactic and seismic anomoly that has caused this outbreak."

"Pointless and hopeless, and a waste of your already limited time."

"GODDAMN IT!" He used the desk to lever himself out of his chair. "I've got the goddamn press breathing down my neck, demanding answers, demanding some reassurance for their readers. How long can I continue to make reassuring noises before this becomes a full-scale panic? And just think what Barnett will do with thatl."

She gripped his wrists, pi

"I am bred to be responsible. By blood and bone. By a thousand generations. This is my town, my people, MY GRANDSON, AND MY CLINIC,

AND YES, MY VIRUS!"

"I'M NOT!" Snatching his hands away, he stormed across the room.

PEOPLE, YES, AND AT BASE EVERYONE OF THEM HATES MY GUTS!" Laying his head against the wall, he burst into wild sobs.

The woman's face hardened. Filling a glass with water from the bathroom tap, she yanked him around by a shoulder and flung it full in his face.

"That's enough! Get hold of yourself!" She punctuated each word with a hard shake.

Coughing, he mopped his face, drew a shaky breath. "Thank you, I'm all right now."

"Go home, get some sleep, accept some goddamn help. Get Meadows in here to help with the research, and let Chrysalis run the goddamn patrols."

"And Blaise? What do I do with Blaise?" He scrubbed at his face. "He's the most important thing in my life, and I'm neglecting him."

"The problem with you, Tachyon," she said as she walked out of the office, "is that everything is the most important thing in your life."

A routine appendectomy. He shouldn't have taken the time, but Tommy was Old Mr. Cricket's nephew, and you don't ignore old friends. Tach stripped out of the bilious green scrubs, brushed out his cropped hair, and made a face. He then took a turn through each of the clinic's four floors.

The hospital had been dimmed for the evening. From various rooms he heard muted televisions, the low hum of conversation, and from one a sad, hopeless sobbing. For a moment he hesitated, then entered. Powerful mandibles and opaque oval eyes stared out framed by stringy gray hair. The emaciated body beneath the hospital gown revealed it to be a woman.

"Madam?" He lifted the chart. Mrs. Willma Banks. Age seventy-one. Cancer of the pancreas.

"Oh, Doctor, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean… I'm fine really. I don't mean to be a bother… that nurse was so sharp-"

"You're not a bother. And what nurse?"

"I don't mean to be a talebearer or unduly troublesome." It was obvious that she was, but Tachyon listened politely. No matter how tiresome a patient might be, he insisted upon courtesy and service from his staff. If someone had violated this most basic rule, he wanted to know.

"And my children never come to see me. I ask you, what's the good of children if they abandon you when you most need them? I worked every day for thirty years so they could have the advantages. Now my son, Reggie-he's a stockbroker with a big Wall Street firm-he has a house in Co

There was nothing to say. He sat, her hand resting lightly in his, listening. Brought her a glass of cranberry juice from the nurses' station, and had a few rather sharp words with the floor staff. Moved on.

The coffee he'd been drinking all day was jumping in the back of his throat, sour with stomach acid. Well, if he was going to feel bilious he might as well get it over all at once. He pushed open the door to a private room and entered. He could ill afford the space, but no patient deserved to be placed with the horror that lay comatose behind his door. After forty years of viewing wild card victims he had thought he was inured to anything, but the man who lay twisted on the bed made a mockery of that assumption.

Caught partway between human and alligator, Jack's body was warped by the u

Tachyon shuddered and hoped that deep within his coma Jack was beyond pain. For this had to be agony. For years Jack had faithfully, patiently visited C.C. Ryder. Now, ironically, she had been cured and released into a new life while the faithful, patient Jack had taken her place.

"Oh, Jack, what lover grieves for you, or did he die before you entered this living death?" he whispered.

Lifting the chart, Tachyon read again his notes, which indicated that the AIDS virus did not advance when Jack was in his alligator form.

Memories lay like scattered leaves, black and sear. Tachyon walked among them, flushing with guilt for this was an intrusion. Deep within Jack's dying mind lay a spark of light, a fitful glitter. The human soul. Deeper yet the trigger that would throw Robicheaux completely into his alligator form. A touch from Tachyon, and the transformation would be permanent.