In the reception area a couple of uniforms stood, making sure the staff didn't go pressing their noses to the front door and giving away the show or getting in the way of any stray slugs. They gaped at the intruders.

"Mr. President," the black cop said.

"Just a moment," a heavyset black woman in a mauve dress with an outsize collar exclaimed. "That's not really the president."

Durg pushed K. C.'s body to the scuffed hardwood floor. His arm whipped out with the big black Colt in his fist. "But this is really a gun. Nobody move."

K. C. guided Norwalk's body past him. Keeping clear of his line of fire, he relieved the black cop of his sidearm, tossed it to Durg. He caught it one-handed, pointed it at the other cop as K. C. disarmed him.

"Oh, my," the man who looked like George Bush said. "I don't approve of firearms. People might use them to defy the law"

"Shut the fuck up," K.C. Norwalk said. To the administrator in the mauve dress she said, "Sprout Meadows. Where?"

"I won't tell you."

K.C. pointed the second officer's pistol at her. "If I kill you, maybe somebody else will be a little more sensible." "Lieutenant Norwalk," the white cop breathed.

"Blow me, Patrolman. Now, where's the girl?" She cocked the pistol. "One-"

"Rec room. Annex in the back, second floor."

Turtle blinked and stabbed a finger at the control of his police-band radio, overriding the automatic scanner. He punched it back three channels, to the broadcast that had belatedly caught his attention.

"-tell you it's the president of the United States!" a voice was insisting. "George Bush. The weenie himself. He's on some kind of cockamamy spot inspection-"

The Turtle frowned. Bush was supposed to be under massive guard, addressing a Turn-In-Your-Parents rally somewhere in Harlem. He looked at the digital readout, checked the freek against a dog-eared looseleaf notebook hung beside his console. Brooklyn.

The voices were still arguing about whether the president could possibly be at something called the Reeves Institute. He turned his shell east.

Sprout Meadows sat to one side looking at the pictures in a magazine with a yellow cover. She liked to look at that magazine because it always had nice animals in it. Sometimes it almost seemed she could tell what the words said. But never quite.

Fine Young Cannibals were on the television high on the wall. A couple of girls were arguing over whether to keep watching MTV or switch to Santa Barbara. It sounded as if they were going to start hitting each other at any moment. Sprout was getting good at telling things like that. Fortunately the other girls had gotten bored with picking on her; she was mostly left alone these days. That meant the counselors scolded her for not getting more involved in what the other girls did. She hated being scolded. But she hated getting picked on more.

She glanced up. The monitor lady was watching her intently, just as she'd thought. That always happened when other girls got ready to fight. Sprout thought it was because the monitor lady got in trouble if she reported that the other girls were fighting but got rewarded if she told on Sprout. But that probably just meant Sprout was stupid, like the other girls always told her.

The door opened. Two men walked in. One of the girls squealed in surprise. The monitor stepped forward, frowning. "I'm sorry, you're not supposed-my God, it's President Bush."

"Yes. Yes it is. How perceptive of you to notice." He smiled and nodded at her, then looked around the room. "Sprout? Is there a Sprout Meadows here?"

Cheeks burning, Sprout dropped her National Geographic and stood up. She couldn't say a word. Inside she quailed, knowing that he'd never see her because she couldn't make herself talk.

But he did. He smiled and dropped to one knee. "Come here, honey. I've come to take you to your daddy."

The movies notwithstanding, a human being is not physically capable of aiming two handguns at different targets with any degree of accuracy. A Morakh is. Somehow the two police officers sensed it.

They hadn't offered any backchat when he ordered them to drop their trousers around their ankles. Now he'd gotten them to cuff themselves together, back-to-back, and stand to one side, still covered by the Colt, while a nervous staffer pulled the phones out of the wall under the watchful eye of the service revolver. The people outside were still dithering. Everything seemed to be under control.

He knew it couldn't last.

"I can't believe this is going so smoothly," K.C. said as they approached the stairwell. Her voice sounded strange in her ears; everything sounded strange in her ears. She was getting antsy to get back in her own body. She'd never liked long-term jumps. They disoriented her, and her borrowed bodies never seemed to respond well to her commands.

"Are you really taking me to my daddy?" Sprout asked George Bush, who was holding her hand.

"Yes, I am. I'm not really the president, you see. I'm one of your daddy's friends. Cosmic Traveler, I'm called."

Her face lit up. "Oh, I know! The blue one. The one everybody says is a weenie."

Black, and menacing in his borrowed cop suit, Blaise stalked down the reform-school corridor, head buzzing with fury and the disinfectant smell that forced its way into his nostrils like probing fingers. He had set the perfect trap for Meadows: the pigs had the drop on him, and even if Meadows found the balls to act, no matter how powerful a "friend" the ancient hippie summoned, he or she couldn't make his companions bulletproof Meadows didn't have the spine to write them off and drive for his daughter on his own. Blaise knew that as he knew he could make a five-year-old skip rope into the path of a speeding semi.

Yet Meadows had found a way through the jaws of the perfect trap.

I was right to fear him! he yammered in his mind, as if Bloat could read him from here. He's too powerful! He must be destroyed!

Ahead of him Blaise saw that the corridor led into a waiting room of some sort. A familiar pair of legs encased in skintight black protruded from the left, lying up against a chest-high wood-sided planter.

He paused, unsnapped the safety strap on his holster. He'd left the riot gun propped inside the side door he'd let himself in through. To a European, a shotgun is a peasant's weapon.

He preferred the precision of a handgun, and was vain of the combat shooting skills his grandfather had drilled into him. He drew the pistol. It was one of the new Walther nine millimeters with an ultra-high-capacity magazine. Solid Euroworkmanship; he approved. He shifted to the right-hand wall of the corridor ard moved forward with the pistol held in both hands, ready.

The rest of K. C. came into view. She lay with her arms cuffed behind her. Her head hung listlessly on her neck. Blaise recognized a common jump reaction. K.C. wasn't home right now. His pulse raced with hunter's eagerness. Swiftly, sure, he glided forward into the foyer.

As expected, the monster was there, positioned to cover both the front door and the white-faced D-home staffers. The Morakh. The ultimate abomination-a variant Takisian.

Despite the hostility between Tachyon and Morakh, Durg had often been set to watch young Blaise. The boy had a nasty way with baby-sitters. But a Morakh mind cannot be controlled. Try as he might, Blaise had been unable to dent Durg's mindshield.

But that was then. Blaise had grown, and learned. He was unique, a new thing beneath the sun of Takis or Earth, and he knew no rules.

He reached for Durg's mind. It was like grabbing at a wall, massive as battleship steel, friction-free as glass. Yet for just a moment he actually had a grip. The narrow head snapped around, the lilac eyes found his and widened.

The tree-trunk arm swung around. Blaise narrowed his focus, pouring his entire being into a desperate attempt to stop it. It was like trying to keep a tank gun from traversing. The heavy Colt rose inexorably on-line.