"You're an outlaw. The first thing you do is accept that. The second is, kick some ass."

He stared at his hands. "Yeah. I guess so."

Her leather jacket slumped down beside him. He jumped, looked up at her.

She was skinning her Jane's Addiction T-shirt off over her head. Her breasts were small and conical. The nipples stood up into points.

" I lied," she said, undoing her fly. "There is something else you're going to do first."

He was instantly hard. To his horror, his erection tented up the front of the blanket he had wrapped around him poncho-style. He tried to edge away.

"But, uh, Blaise-" he stammered. "But Bloat-"

"But nothing." She covered his mouth with hers.

There were eight million stories in the naked city. Most of them were about assholes. The Great and Powerful Turtle looked over the monitor screens around the control console of his shell and thought pissed-off thoughts about how there was never anything good on television.

He canted his shell and slid down for a look at the crowds by Madison Square. "Imagine," he said aloud. "I'm up here looking out for that asshole, George Bush."

The president was in town to confer with the new mayor. A number of the more prominent public aces had volunteered to help ensure there were no incidents, with the grudging acquiescence of police and city officials. It wasn't that they liked Bush. The very idea that anyone might think he did pissed Turtle off no end. But this jumper thing was getting way the hell out of hand. It was more than mere media hype.

Given the country's current mood, anything that happened to Bush was liable to be blamed on aces and the Medellin cartel, a connection George had done so much to establish in the public mind. And if an ace, even a jumper, had anything to do with actually harming the president…

It would be easy to call the consequences unthinkable. But they were all too thinkable. They'd make McCarthy look like the Phil Donahue Show. So the Turtle was up here farting around to watch over a man who'd just as soon see him in a concentration camp. Great. Just fucking great.

A disturbance below. A stout black woman, hat askew, sat on the sidewalk. A skinny youth elbowed his way through the tourist throngs clutching her handbag by a strap.

"Don't these assholes ever give it a break?" Turtle asked the air. He punched up the megaphone. "Okay, dickweed, this is the Great and Powerful Turtle. Hold it right there or I'll spoil your whole damn day."

The purse snatcher looked left and right, but not up. "What a weenie," Turtle said, and winced as he felt his amplified words reverberate through his armor plate. Forgot to dump the mike. Great.

He reached down with his teke hand and grabbed the kid by the ankle, swooping him into the air. While the crowd gawked and pointed- "git a picture o' that, Martha, or the folks'll never believe us back in Peoria"-he carried the kid, the top of his head ten feet off the pavement, back to where the stout black woman was picking herself up. He shook the kid up and down until he let go of the handbag. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Turtle," the woman called. "God bless you."

"Yeah, lady, anytime." He stuffed the kid in a dumpster and flew off.

"George fucking Bush," he said. "Jesus." Fortunately he'd turned the microphone off.

"This is never gonna work," Mark Meadows said, feeling his head again. The Grecian Formula he'd doused his head with to cover the punk racing stripes had reacted funny with some of the dye, and now it felt as if he'd been moussing with old paint.

Up front in the driver's seat, Durg impassively kept his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel, just like the old song. His head looked odd sprouting from his collar and broad, suit-coated shoulders, like some narrow vegetable.

Frowning, K.C. scrunched herself farther down next to Mark. "Quit fussing, will you? Jesus."

Mark plucked at his tan corduroy sport coat and improbably wide maroon tie, and ran his fingers under the harness of his shoulder holster. There was nothing in the shoulder holster; Mark had a terror of guns, and like a good modern liberal knew for a fact that if he carried one, it would instantly take possession of his mind and cause him to rush into a subway and start shooting black teenagers. But K.C. insisted he at least wear the holster so he'd have the appropriate bulge under his left arm.

"I'm never gonna pass for a cop. I look like a total geek."

"You don't know much about cops, do you? We should have got you a bad hairpiece too. And maybe strapped a pillow to your stomach so you'd look like you'd put in your time on a Dunkin Donuts stool. Besides" she turned and stretched quickly to kiss his cheek-"you are kind of a geek, babe. Lucky for you I got kinky tastes."

He shuddered. " I don't know what I think I'm doing. I got no right to involve you and Durg in this."

K.C. fell back against the seat, bounced briefly. "You don't have a gun, sugar, so you couldn't hold one to my head."

" I live to serve," Durg said.

Mark's loosely strung-together collection of features twitched in irritation. "That's just a cliche, man. Your life is your own."

"Perhaps it is a cliche among your kind. To the Morakh, it is biological fact. For me, a master is like food-I can go without, but only for a short period of time. Then I must weaken and die."

"Things work different on our world, man."

"My genes are not of this world. They make me what I am."

"You must hate what they've done to you," K.C. said. "The people who created you."

He glanced over the butte of his shoulder. The look in the lilac eyes was amusement. It hit her like a blow. "What they have done to me, lady, is give me life. And strength, and agility, and skill. They have given me perfection. Among your kind I am an ace. Among Takisians I am an object of awe, even terror. Are these things not glorious? All they ask of me in return is that I do what I am uniquely equipped to do. I see no disparity."

"A man who knows what he wants." K. C. leaned forward and breathed in Mark's ear. "I think I love him."

She nipped Mark's earlobe. He blushed furiously. She giggled.

Durg cleared his throat. "We approach our objective."

"All right." K. C. subsided in her seat. "I'm back to being a bad little prisoner girl now. Kind of like a skinny, mean Michelle Pfeiffer."

Her short neutral-colored hair had been washed and combed out wet into bangs. She wore a scuffed leather jacket over tight black pants and a white T-shirt with three defiant transverse slashes across the belly. No spikes; when they committed you to the juvie justice system, they relieved you of props like that. She did look like a skinny, mean Michelle Pfeiffer.

"So, how'd you get this gig, anyway, Durg? What's a Takisian doing hanging out with a skinny Earthling biochemist kind of guy?"

"I came to this planet with Prince Zabb of House Ilkazam, cousin and blood-foe of the being you know as Dr. Tachyon. Dr. Meadows, more loyal a friend than Tachyon deserves, fought to aid him. In one of his avatars he bested me in single combat, thereby winning my loyalty. I have found him a good master, if somewhat prone to forget his servant."

"Sounds kinky," K.C. said.

They topped a hill, rolled down a block of shabbygenteel stone buildings with plenty of wrought iron at ground level. On the right, Reeves showed the street a blank high wall looped with strands of razor tape, a gate of wrought-iron spikes.

"Why are you slowing so soon, man?" Mark asked as Durg braked.

Durg nodded his narrow head. "That sedan at the head of the next block. It has two occupants in the front, more perhaps in back. I am disquieted."

"The windshield's so dark," K.C. said, "how can you see anything?"

"He can see, man," Mark said. "Should I drive on?"