It was an outlandish picture they presented. Four burly Chinese in satin jackets and mirrored sunglasses; some with guns drawn, others with (what the sensational press called) suspicious bulges under their arms. A joker perched like an obscene bug on the back of the couch, and the reptile leaning nonchalantly against the piano, cleaning his long, sharp nails with a switchblade. Then there was Tachyon, tiny and rumpled, his hair tangling on his shoulders, gown gaping to reveal his pale chest, and the head of his cock peeking like a shy bird between the folds of material.

The joker by the piano gestured, and two of his men swung out straight-back chairs from the dining room table. "Dr. Tachyon, please, sssssit down. Then we can talk. Tommy."

One of the Chinese glanced up, alert, quivering like a dog on a scent. "Please tie the good doctor. I wouldn't want him trying anything sssstupid. Then I might have to hurt the lady."

Roulette and Tachyon were hustled to the chairs, and he gave her a concerned glance. She smiled with a confidence she didn't feel, and said, "What a blow. Betrayed by popular culture yet again."

"I don't understand."

"In the Fu Manchu books the yellow peril is always mysterious and exotic. Spoils it when the goons have names like 'Tommy,' and speak with flat Brooklyn accents."

Snake-face's long forked tongue lolled out, and he eyed her with hostility. "You want exotic, jussst keep it up, and I'll let the bosss handle you. He'll give you all the exotic you can ssstomach. "

Tachyon sat with relaxed elegance, but his lips were white and Roulette realized that the sting was still paining him. Tommy finished binding him to the chair with the belt of his dressing gown, and tilting back his head Tachyon drawled, "Of course, I am delighted to have your company, but might I know to what I owe this singular pleasure?"

Snake-face pulled out a chair with his foot, and straddled the seat, arms folded across the back. Roulette was free, but one of the thugs had placed a hand on her shoulder, and she was very aware of all those guns, and if there was one thing she had learned from her police-officer father it was Don't fuck with a gun.

"Tachy, we've come for the book."

The alien's coppery, upswept brows climbed toward his bangs. "My good man, I have something in excess of a thousand volumes in this apartment. To which book do you refer?"

"Hit him," came the flat reply.

Tommy swung, there was a sound like a dull axe biting into wood, and Tachyon spat out a mouthful of blood. Roulette noticed he was careful to aim the sticky glob onto the lap of his gown, and thus protect the white carpet.

"The book."

"I'm not a lending library."

This time Tommy moved to the front, gathered a fold of the gown in a fist, hauled Tachyon up against his bonds, and gave him several hard backhands. The Chinese was wearing a number of rings, and Roulette bit back a squeak as the metal dug into the alabaster skin. When he finished, the alien's lip had split, his nose was bleeding, and one eye was blackening.

"Hiram will no doubt refuse me entrance tonight," he murmured around his rapidly swelling lip. "He does so like a gentleman to be point de vice."

The forked tongue unrolled and flicked caressingly across Tachyon's face licking up the blood. "Tachy, maybe you don't underssstand. I'm going to have that book if I have to take you apart to get it."

Tachyon dropped the affected, maddening tone, and said bluntly, "I truly don't know what you're talking about. What book?"

The joker stared implacably back at him. "It was ssstolen, I know you have it, and I'm going to get it back."

The alien sighed. "Very well, please, search my home, but I assure you I have no stolen book."

"Ssssearch it, tear the place apart." Tachyon winced. "But tie her first. We don't want to be distracted."

Tommy pulled a thin cord from his pocket, and quickly bound her hand and foot to the chair. They scattered and began to ransack the apartment. The wasp continued to sit on the couch buzzing and chittering to itself: A cascade of books tumbled from an upper shelf hitting and shattering a delicate celadon bowl as they fell. Pain and anger flickered deep in Tachyon's eyes, but his voice was level, almost conversational, as he said, "Twice in as many months. This is quite beyond everything. I can forgive the swarmling, it was a mindless monster and so destroyed without thought, but these thugs "

"I thought you had powers. He-someone told me you did." Roulette said in a low voice.

"I do."

"Then, why didn't you use them?"

"I began to, then I heard you scream, and I realized there were more than four. I can control three humans," he whispered, "but the hold is weak, and if I should also have to fight…" He turned the full force of his beautiful eyes on her. "I was afraid you would be hurt if my powers proved less strong, or my reflexes less quick than pride would like me to admit. And that wasp is damnably fast." An aggrieved grumble. "So what do we do?"

"Wait, and pray for an opportunity. I wish you didn't have shields," he added fretfully. "I could keep contact with you telepathically. Ah well, no good mourning for a fled ship."

"Shhh."

"Yellow really isn't your color, mv dear," he said, responding quickly to her warning. One of their captors gave them a suspicious glance as he walked past, and Roulette said pettishly for his benefit, "I don't need a commentary on taste from you. You're the one who picked this cat-vomit yellow"

The Chinese's mouth spread in a wide grin that displayed a good deal of pink gum and a gold-capped tooth, and he passed into the kitchen alcove.

Tachyon cast her a rueful glance. "Cat vomit? I'd always thought it to he a particularly lovely shade of lemon." Roulette laughed, and the alien gave her an approving look. "Good girl, well get out of this yet."

"What a team," she replied dryly.

5:00 p.m.

The dark current swept around his legs and the alligator welcomed it. The pulsing water had started to rise only a short time before; first just a film creeping across the rocky floor of the tunnel, then a succession of gradually higher waves. Now the water lapped around his belly, a quartet of small eddies tugging at his legs where the haunches creased into his armored sides.

The alligator's tail swung back and forth ponderously, impatiently. He wanted the water to float him away from the, hard floor and to give him the buoyancy he needed for true swimming. The water meant freedom.

But the level rose no further, and so the alligator plodded on. Various objects, chunks of a varietv of substances, nudged against him. He nuzzled some of them with his snout before they were swept away in the current.

The scents were largely unpleasant. There was nothing there worth the devouring. Lumps of something soft batted against him and were gone.

He briefly detected meat, but it was carrion and he had no taste for that now. Instead of snapping up the ragged object, the alligator forged on. Something alive and delectable still lay ahead of him. He knew that, and, knowing it, forced his nearly insatiable hunger into abeyance.

Under his feet, through his ears and nostrils, through the very wave action of the current, he could feel the pulse of the city. Now it beat in time with his own body.

He ignored the slight pain in his belly. It was as nothing compared to his appetite.

Ahead and behind, the dark tunnel stretched on forever.

He had been trying to reach Tachyon for two hours now, and Hiram was growing concerned.

Everyone agreed that the little alien had left Jetboy's Tomb soon after completing his speech, in the company of an attractive black woman. But where had they gone? His home phone did not answer, and down at the Jokertown clinic, Troll insisted he hadn't seen the doctor all day. Tachyon was probably out somewhere drinking, but where? Hiram had called all of his usual haunts one after the other, had even tried Freakers and the Chaos Club and the Twisted Dragon on the off chance that the Takisian might have decided to drown his guilt on unfamiliar turf: No one had seen Tachyon since the early afternoon, when he left the ceremonies at the Tomb.