It had to be a dream. Like the one he'd had before, only worse. He felt sick and paralyzed, but at the same time strangely euphoric. He'd just close his eyes and bring things back under control.

The head had rolled against the back of the podium. Feeling as if he were drifting on air Mackie limped toward it through roaring silence.

Painfully he leaned forward. His body felt like a dry twig that broke in a new place with every few degrees he bent.

He picked up the head, straightened slowly. He held the head up, to show to Gregg, to show to the herd of frightened sheep in white hats who trampled one another in their frenzy to flee him.

"I'm Mackie Messer," he croaked. "Mack the Knife. I'm special."

He brought the head to his face, kissed it full on the lips. 'The eyes opened.

Spector felt something on his mouth. He opened his eyes. The hunchback was staring down at him, a mocking smile on his lips. It wasn't a dream. The realization was like a fist in his chest, but he didn't have a chest anymore. The little fucker had sliced his head off. He was going to die. After all he'd lived through, he was going to fucking die! Again.

Spector fought through his panic and locked eyes with the hunchback. He channeled his pain and terror through his eyes and into the man who'd killed him. The world began to shake and blur. Spector felt the darkness closing in and tried to push it all into the hunchback. A familiar fear crept into Spector. He felt very alone.

The darkness was complete.

Mackie tried to pull his eyes away. The head's eyes held them with black-hole suction.

Something was shaking his soul to pieces. His body began to shake in sympathy, vibrating faster and faster, out of control. He felt his blood begin to boil, felt himself sweating steam from every pore.

He screamed.

The skin on the severed head's cheeks crisped and blackened from the friction of Mackie's fingers. The buzzing fingers met bone, began to shake the skull to pieces, to agitate the fluids within the rounded box of its cranium to the boiling point.

But the eyes-

The leather boy exploded. Sara dropped her head into her arms, felt wet impacts in her hair that would stay with her forever.

When she looked again, there was nothing left of hunch back or head but red-and-black splashes steaming all over the podium.

There was a dead moment.

Then Gregg was pushing aside his blanket of Secret Service agents, struggling to his feet. The crowd had flowed back from the podium like mercury from a fingertip. Now it washed forward again with a roar that went on and on.

That's it. He's president now. This guarantees it. The death of his ace assassin was no comfort. President Gregg Hartmann would have no need of German psychopaths to deal with his opponents.

If we even get that far. Steele had hinted that Soviets would launch a first-strike rather than see Hartmann inaugurated.

Her head was a dead weight. She let it drop, and let the grief pour out in hopeless tears.

Jack just tossed people out of the way till he found Tachyon, then picked the little man up and stuffed him securely under one arm. Gunshots cracked out; the stampeding crowd accelerated. There was wild but confused violence on the platform. Jack couldn't see a thing.

Jack bulled his way through the crowd, parting them like the Red Sea. Finally he and Tachyon stood in front of the massive white podium, but from his low angle they could see nothing.

Whatever had happened seemed to be over. Gregg Hartmann rose from the crush of Secret Service and brushed himself off as he walked uncertainly to the microphones.

"Damn," Jack said. "We're too late."

There were still people shouting and screaming in the hall; there was still panic as they stampeded for the exits or stared at the podium in frozen horror.

Yet the impression Gregg had was somehow one of silence, of a frozen moment like a still photograph. He could hear his own breath, gasping and very loud in his ears; he could feel very clearly the hands of the Secret Service man on either side of him. He could see Jesse Jackson being herded off the podium, Ellen blockaded by a cordon of uniformed security, dignitaries on the floor or standing with hands to faces or running blindly from the scene.

There was more blood and gore than Gregg had thought possible.

And a strange, echoing void inside his head. Puppetman?

There was no answer. Puppetman? he queried again. Silence. Only silence.

Gregg took a shuddering breath. He allowed himself to be. hauled to his feet, then shrugged away the restraining hands that wanted to pull him from the podium. "Senator, please-"

Gregg shook his head. "I'm fine. It's over." And it was very clear what he had to do now. The path was laid out before him, a gift. Puppetman was gone, and the loss was as if some great, dark burden had been lifted from him, a burden he hadn't even been aware that he was carrying. Gregg felt good. There was carnage and destruction all around him, and yet…

Later. Later we'll know.

He straightened his jacket, tugged at his tie. He arranged the words in his mind, knowing what he would say. Please. Please be calm. This is what happens when jealousy and hatred are allowed to grow. This is the fruit we receive from the seed of prejudice and ignorance. This is the bitter feast we endure whenever we turn away from suffering.

Words to salvage a presidency from ruin. Brave Hartmann, cool Hartmann, compassionate Hartmann. Hartmann before the eyes of a nation: a calming, competent leader in the midst of crisis.

Gregg stepped forward to the mikes. He looked out to the crowd and raised his hands.

Tachyon's left arm was locked about Braun's neck. His right lay across his chest. Blood stained the bandage over the amputated end. The pain from his broken ribs and his arm was so great that he couldn't lift his head from Jack's shoulder as the big ace cradled him in his arms.

Jack had returned to his place in the California delegation. The Omni smelled like a slaughterhouse, the airconditioner unable to banish the sickly sweet odor of blood. The sharp scent of gunpowder still hung in the air, the smell of shit from the released bowels of the dead. Shock seemed to hold the entire convention.

James Spector was dead.

The hunchbacked assassin was dead. But Hartmann remained.

Tachyon gnawed at his lower lip.

The candidate broke free of the clinging Secret Service agents. Head back, shoulders squared, hands outstretched in benediction, a gesture of calm, or reassurance.

He stepped to the microphone.

And in that moment Tachyon knew what to do.

Gregg began to speak, his gaze searching and pleading with the people in the seats. "Please," he began, his voice calm and deep and compelling.

And then… .. Tachyon was in his head. The alien's strong, insistent presence took Gregg's struggling ego and pushed it backward, stepping in front of him even as Gregg resisted desperately and uselessly.

"Please be calm… Hey, shut the fuck up and listen to me!" his voice shouted without any volition on his part, echoing throughout the Omni. He saw himself in one of the monitors above the floor, and he was smiling, smiling that oily, practiced campaign smile like nothing at all had happened. "Oops, got a little too vehement there, didn't I?" He felt himself giggle, of all things, tittering like a child. Gregg tried to stop the laughter, but Tachyon was too strong. Like a helpless ventriloquist's dummy, he spouted someone else's words.

"But you have to admit you did shut up, didn't you? That's better. Hey, I'm calm. Let's all be calm. No panic in a crisis, not me. No way. Your next president doesn't panic. Uh-uh."

Down on the floor, the exodus had stopped. The delegates were staring at him. His casual, amused delivery was more chilling and horrible than any screaming fit could have been. Above the sobbing and moaning behind him, he heard Connie Chung in the VIP section shout into her mike, "Get the cameras on Hartmann! Now!"