"Now kneel to me, Grandpa, and beg."

Tach got to her knees. She was staring down at Blaise's bare feet. There was dirt beneath the large toenails. It sickened her in some perverse and bizarre way. And she realized that no self-abasement would soothe or satisfy the demon creature before her. She sprang to her feet and spit in Blaise's face. There was a gasp like a sighing wind from the watching teens. Numbly, Blaise reached up and wiped away the spittle. Studied his fingers. His face was blank, expressionless. Then suddenly it twisted into a hideous grimace, and he backhanded Tachyon. She flew across the room, and came up hard against the far wall.

Blaise was on her. This time, as he drove into her, beat her unmercifully about the face and head. His ejaculation when it came was like a hot tide in her abused body. Blaise gave her one final cuff, but the sexual release seemed to have spent his fury. Without a backward glance, the boy, stood up and dressed, and he and his entourage left the cell.

For a long time Tachyon just lay on the floor.

The Temptation of Hieronymous Bloat

Two weeks later, and I have tried to get her out. I knew it wouldn't do any good to talk to Blaise, so I didn't. But I knew Blaise's thoughts. I knew that he had a grudging respect for Prime, even possessed a fear of the man who could create a jumper and couldn't be jumped himself, and so I tried that way.

I had to. It was bad enough that I had to hear Tachyon's mindvoice. But now… now she is in all my dreams too. I have them every night. She waits for me in my sleep, patiently.

It hurts. It makes me want to take Blaise and throttle the bastard.

I did try. Really. I talked to Prime-Latham.

Latham folded his hands on the new pair of Dockers he was wearing. Zelda made muscle-magazine poses behind him. He waited, filling his mind with old contracts and legal briefs, so that I had a difficult time knowing what he was really thinking. "I'm a busy man, Governor, and I really can't stay here very long," he said. "What is it you want?"

"I want your assistance," I told him. "Blaise has done something stupid and dangerous. I assume you know what I'm talking about, or do I have to draw you a picture of a certain red-haired alien who has had an involuntary sexchange operation?" I grinned down at him. "I used to be able to draw pretty well. I could have drawn a picture."

Latham only blinked. The dense contract language in his mind parted just long enough for him to speak-he really was very good at hiding his thoughts. "What Blaise does is his own business, not mine," he said.

He gave me a smile that belonged on a codfish. The events of the last month had taken their toll on Latham, but he still had the cold act down well, if a little cracked around the edges.

"Kidnapping Tachyon was dumb," I continued. "Even if Blaise hadn't brought his grandfather here, I would've said that. I supposed Blaise gets the stupidity naturally. Tachyon's certainly done some idiotic things himself-backing out on Hartmann comes to mind-but overall, we jokers owe Tachyon a hell of a lot. I don't want him hurt."

Zelda just snorted. "Why," Latham asked, "should I do anything at all?"

"Because," I said, a little bewildered that he could even ask, "a man like Tachyon doesn't deserve what Blaise is doing to him." That seemed clear enough to me.

Latham just pursed his lips and nodded. He sniffed, delicately. "Sympathy," he said at last, "is more foolish than revenge as a motive for doing something." He waited. "In my opinion."

I gave him all the rest then. "Look, you don't have to do it out of common decency if that offends you. Do it because Blaise has made the situation for the jokers a hundred times worse. You've heard the news reports. Bush has told Congress he'll consider a revival of the exotic laws if they'll put the legislation on his desk. The courts are playing hardball with any joker accused of any crime. Two states have already passed bills for mandatory sterilization of wild card carriers. The editorials in the papers are full of hatred and venom. Jokertown is a police state, and Koch's making noises about `no more tolerance of scofflaws and squatters who take over public property'-he always did have a way with words. The jumpers have the entire city paranoid and armed. Kelly isn't going to be able to masquerade as Tachyon for long. Taking someone with his high visibility will force the authorities to look at my Rox."

Zelda pursed her lips in sarcastic sympathy. Latham just sat there, hands steepled under his chin.

"I know you, Prime," I continued. "You hide your thoughts well enough when you're sitting here in front of me, but not always. I know everything you know. All I have to do is whisper the right things to the Egrets, or maybe just tell the authorities what a certain prominent city attorney is up to…" I left the sentence unfinished.

Zelda had gone alert and tense. The legal script in Latham's mind shredded like tissue paper. In Latham's mind, everything was cold. So cold. "Let me give you some advice, Governor," he said as softly as ever. "Never bluff with blackmail. It is always a very weak hand. "

"It's not a bluff. I'll do it. I will."

Latham almost smiled as guards came to attention all around us. He glanced at them slowly, calmly, then looked back at me. His hands didn't move. Not a muscle twitched in his face, and his mind stayed blank.

That frightened me more than anything he could have said.

I couldn't follow through. He was right. Kafka was right too-bluffing really is a dangerous game.

So I'm sorry, sorry because the Rox needs the jumpers. We need Prime and Blaise and all the rest.

Latham knew it. I knew it.

But I promise you. I will find another way.

Madman across the Water by Victor Milan

The boys from DEA paid a visit to the New Dawn Wellness Center just after morning rush when a few last late-running yuppies-if that isn't a contradiction in termswere polishing off their bulghur-wheat doughnuts and the center's famous low-cal, low-cholesterol, vegetarian "fried eggs," with tofu whites and whipped-squash yolks. Enough onlookers to be duly impressed, but not enough to get underfoot or in line for serious hurt. In the last winter of the 1980s, America's drug warriors could do no wrong in the eyes of the press, the public, or the law, but the powers that be felt that if the shithammer came down-as every member of the strike team devoutly hoped-it wouldn't do to have too many punctured civilians bleeding on camera.

Especially at the scene of what, if it came off, would be the media bust of the decade: the DEA versus a renegade ace.

While agents in civilian garb secured the customers and the single brush-cut, stocky, grumpy female clerk, a threeman element of the Covert Lab Enforcement Team dashed through the restaurant in their black Darth Vader togs, CAR-15s with fat suppressors shrouding the barrels clutched in their black-gauntleted hands. One of them paused to bang his Kevlar-helmeted head against the jamb of the door to the back before dashing upstairs.

"We're waiting on you, Lynn," his buddy Dooley said as he came highstepping up to the second floor. Dooley's mask muffled his words, but Lynn knew he was grinning, with the ESP that came from being pals since eighth grade. Lynn grinned back and bobbed his head.

He and Dooley pressed backs to either side of the door while Matteoli slipped the rubberized tip of a big orange wrecking bar between the frame and the door and popped it open. The other two wheeled inside, Lynn low and left, Dooley high and right.

"DEA! Covert Lab Enforcement Team! Freeze, motherfuckers!"

It was a fairyland, a fucking fairyland. It wasn't very big, but neither of them had ever seen anything like it outside a government facility or university. This was their eleventh lab bust, and they'd never even seen half the equipment in here. The only things out of place were the two men standing in the middle of all that gleaming technology. The CLET strike force had been briefed to expect the kind of scum that would hang around an overage hippie. Not a middle-aged black guy and a leaner younger Hispanic dude in jackets and ties.