"Gimme a break, Hiram," Jay said. "They're arguing about whether they ought to vote about how to vote on whether some guy can give a speech."

"Yes," Hiram snapped, "and it might just be crucial. If you want to see Topper so badly, just say so and I'll buy you a cassette. George Kerby was never that color, dead or alive." Jay looked at him sharply. "What did you say?"

"I said that George Kerby was never-"

"Shit!" Jay swore. "Goddammit."

"What is it?" Hiram said. He came ponderously to his feet. "Jay, are you all right?"

"No," Jay said. "I'm dumb as a plank. George Kerby, George Fucking Kerby. The assassin, Hiram! Chrysalis was being clever. The airline ticket was made out in the name George Kerby."

Hiram Worchester was scarcely a slow man. "Tickets in the name of a ghost," he said.

"Yeah," said Jay. "A ghost. A specter."

"James Spector!" Hiram said.

"And both George Kerbys came back from the dead," Jay said. "She hired that sonofabitch Demise."

Hiram knew what Demise was capable ou "We have to let them know," he said. He crossed the room, picked up the phone, and punched for the operator. "Connect me to the Secret Service."

The door opened. Dr. Tachyon stepped quietly into the room, head bowed. Hiram looked at him with dread, the telephone momentarily forgotten in his hand. "It… it's not true, is it?" he said desperately. "Tell me that it's all some hideous mistake, Gregg can't be…"

Tachyon looked up with pity in his lilac eyes. "Hiram," the alien said softly. "My poor, poor Hiram. I saw his mind. I saw the Puppetman." The little man shuddered. "It is a thousand times worse than we could ever have imagined." Tachyon sat on the carpet, buried his head in his hands, and began to weep.

Hiram stood there with his mouth open. Jay had never seen him look so used up, so beaten, so fat. He took the receiver away from his ear and stared at it as if he had never seen a telephone before, his face gray as ash. "God forgive me," he said, in a barely audible whisper. Then he hung up the phone.

It was Brennan's day for fighting lizards. Kant was strong, but in his frenzy he forgot whatever combat techniques he knew. Brennan blocked Kant's taloned hand as it raked at his eyes, caught the cop's other wrist, and flung him hard against the bed's footboard. Kant crouched, panting, and when Brennan leapt on him, he flicked open a switchblade he'd grabbed from the heap of clothes piled next to his sand pool. Brennan changed direction in midleap, but wasn't quite fast enough. The knife slashed open his T-shirt and the skin underneath, drawing a line of blood from belly button to nipple across Brennan's stomach and chest.

Wraith walked out of the wall as Brennan flung himself to the other side of the bed. Kant saw her and his eyes bugged out of his head. He twisted frantically from side to side, trying to watch both Jennifer and Brennan at the same time.

"We're not going to hurt you," Jennifer said in her most soothing voice. "We want to help."

"Help me?" Kant asked, his voice high-pitched, hysterical, and mean. "If you want to help me, get me the goddamned kiss!"

Brennan lunged across the bed, grabbed Kant's knife wrist, and yanked hard, pulling Kant down. The knife plunged into the mattress. Brennan leaped on him and Kant twisted savagely, gutting the water bed.

Water spewed from it as if a dam had broken. Brennan and Kant tumbled apart and the cop washed up next to Jennifer, wet as a wharf rat, sputtering and spitting. He grabbed Jennifer, drew the knife back to slash. She ghosted. He swung through her, teetered off balance, and Brennan grabbed him from behind and rammed him through the screen of the television set. It exploded with a loud crash. Kant hung inside it, stunned, until Brennan pulled him out. The cop was- dazed and bleeding from a dozen cuts on his face and chest. Brennan slapped the knife from his hand and kicked it away, then pushed him down and sat on his chest. "What's this about a kiss?" Brennan asked.

Kant moaned, unconsciously licking the blood that ran from his nose and lips.

"Is it Ezili? Do you want her?"

Kant tossed his head from side to side. His eyes were stunned and glazed, but there was still a powerful need in them.

"Noon!" he howled. "That bitch."

"What then?" Brennan demanded, shaking Kant by the shoulders.

"The Master. Ti Malice. His kiss, so sweet, so sweet." Brennan and Jennifer exchanged baffled glances. "Who's Malice?"

"My master."

Brennan suddenly remembered where he'd seen a sore like the one on Kant's neck. "Is he Sascha's master, too?" Kant shook his head, still dazed and bewildered, and Brennan slapped him to get his attention. "Sascha;- the bartender at the Crystal Palace. Is Malice his master, too?"

"Yes."

"Where are they?"

"I don't fucking know! They're gone. They left me behind!"

"Who did your master take with him?"

"Some mounts," Kant mumbled. "I don't know them all."

"Did he take Sascha?"

Kant sobbed wordlessly, uncontrollably. "Christ," Brennan said.

He stood and dragged Kant to the bed. He took the pair of cuffs he found among Kant's clothes piled on the floor and chained the cop to a bedpost. Kant crouched in a puddle on the floor, weeping and picking at the sore on his neck.

Brennan took the phone on the nightstand by the bed and dialed Fort Freak. "Maseryk," he said. "This is an emergency. Life or death."

It took the detective only a moment to answer.

"This better be good," he said, his voice harsh and flat. "It's your partner," Brennan said. "He's strung out." There was a shocked silence. "Drugs?" Maseryk asked after a moment.

"I don t think so. Look," Brennan said, cutting off any more queries. "I think you'd better get to Kant's apartment, fast. He needs help. And Maseryk-"

"You owe me." He hung up the phone and turned to Wraith. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"What are we going to do?" Hiram asked when Tachyon's sobbing had finally begun to subside.

"Blow the whistle," Jay said.

Dr. Tachyon bounded to his feet. "No!" he said. "Are you mad, Ackroyd? The public must never learn the truth."

"Hartmann's a monster," Jay objected.

"No one knows that better than I," said Tachyon. "I swam in the sewer of his mind. I felt the vileness that lives inside him, the Puppetman. It touched me. You can't imagine what that was like."

"I'm not a telepath," Jay said. "So sue me. I'm still not going to help you whitewash Hartmann."

"You do not understand," Tachyon said. "For close to two years Leo Barnett has been filling the public ear with dire warnings about wild card violence, inflaming their fears and their mistrust of aces. Now you propose we tell them that he was right all along, that a monstrous secret ace has indeed subverted their government. How do you think they will react?"

Jay shrugged. He was too tired and beat up for intellectual discussions. "Okay, so Barnett gets elected, big deal. So we have a right-wing dork in the White House for four years. We managed to survive Reagan for eight."

Dr. Tachyon was having none of it. "You cannot know the half of what I found in Hartmann's mind. The murders, the rapes, the atrocities, and him always at the center of his web, the Puppetman pulling his strings. I warn you, if the full story ever becomes known, the public revulsion will touch off a reign of terror that will make the persecutions of the fifties look like nothing." The alien gesticulated wildly. "He killed his own unborn child and feasted on the pain and terror of its death. And his puppets… aces, jokers, politicians, religious leaders, police, anyone foolish enough to touch him. If their names become known-"

"Tachyon," Hiram Worchester interrupted. His voice was low, but the anguish in it was as plain as nails on a blackboard. Dr. Tachyon glanced guiltily at Hiram. It was hard to say which of them looked most frightened.