That last he'd even tried, had flown to Brazil on wings of light, begun destroying bulldozers and work camps with his energy beams, putting the workmen to flight, burning the rotor off a Gazelle gunship that had tried to drive him away-though begrudgingly he had caught it before it crashed, and eased it to a soft landing on a sandbar. Unworthy as they were, he didn't want the crew's deaths weighing down his soul.

He had gotten so engrossed in his mission, in fact, that he'd overstayed his hour, stranding Mark in a smoldering patch of devastation in the middle of the Amazon basin with a whole regiment of the Brazilian army closing in and mightily pissed off. Even with his other friends to call on, Mark had some bad moments getting back to the States. He'd been so miffed he hadn't summoned Starshine for six months afterward.

It did no good, of course. The Brazilian government borrowed more money from the World Bank and bought more and bigger earth-raping machines. The destruction went on with barely a hiccup.

The truth is, the world doesn't need more aces, he thought. It doesn't need us at all. We can't do anything real.

He looked into the sun. Its roaring song of life and light blinded him, suffused him. But for all his exaltation, he was a mote-a spark, quickly consumed.

And he knew that he had come to his truth.

Dr. Pretorius leaned back in his swivel chair and crossed hands over his hard paunch. His suit was white today. He looked like a hip Colonel Sanders.

"So, Dr. Meadows, do you have a decision for me?" Mark nodded, started to speak. A door opened behind Pretorius and the words stuck tight in Mark's throat. A woman had slipped silently into the room-a girl, maybe; she looked more like a special effect than a human. She was five and a half feet tall, inhumanly slim, and blue-blue green, actually, gleaming in the same shade as the dyes used in blue ice. The room temperature, already cool, had dropped perceptibly.

"You haven't met my ward, have you? Dr. Meadows, let me present Ice Blue Sibyl."

She looked at him. At least she turned her face toward him. Whatever she was made of looked hard as glass, but seemed constantly, subtly to be shifting. Her features seemed high-cheekboned and forward thrusting, though it was hard to be sure. Her body was attenuated as a mannequin's and almost as sexless; though she appeared to be nude, the tiny breasts showed no nipples, nor did she display genitalia. Still, there was some alien, elflike quality to her, something that caused a stirring in Mark's crotch as she looked at him with her blue-glass stare.

She turned her face to Pretorius, tipped it attentively. Mark got the impression that some communication passed between them. The lawyer nodded. Sibyl turned and walked to the door with sinuous inhuman grace. She stopped, gave Mark a last glance, vanished.

Pretorius was looking at him. "You've decided?" Mark reached out and hugged his daughter to him. "Yeah, man. There's only one thing I can do."

"Hello? Is anyone here?" Dr. Tachyon stepped cautiously through the open door. Today he wore an eighteenthcentury peach coat over a pale pink shirt with lace spraying out the front of a mauve waistcoat. His breeches were deep purple satin, caught at the knee with gold rosettes. His stockings were lilac, his shoes gold. Instead of an artificial hand, he wore a lace cozy on his stump, with a red rose sprouting from it.

Amazement stopped him cold. The Pumpkin was gutted. Tables were overturned, the counter torn up, the magazine racks lying on their backs, the psychedelic-era posters gone from the walls. Somewhere music played.

"Burning Sky! What's happened here? Markl Mark!" Through a doorway at the back that looked curiously naked without the beaded curtain that had always hung there stepped a remarkable figure. It wore torn khaki pants, a black Queensrykche T-shirt stretched to the bursting point across a disproportionately huge chest. With a narrow head and finely sculpted, almost elfin features set on an inhumanly squat body, the newcomer looked the way pretty-boy movie martial-artist Jean Claude Van Damme would if they put him in a hydraulic press and mashed him down him a foot or so.

He stopped and turned a cool smile on Tachyon. "So. The little prince." His English had a curious, almost Eastern European accent. Just like Tachyon's.

"What have you done to Mark?" Tachyon hissed. His flesh hand inched back toward the little H amp;K nine-millimeter tucked in a waistband holster inside the back of his breeches.

The other put fist to palm and flexed. Cloth tore. "Served loyally and without stint, as befits a Morakh." Being destroyed as an abomination befits a Morakh, Tachyon thought. He was about to say so when an equally outlandish apparition loomed up behind the creature. This one had a gray sleeveless sweatshirt and paint-splashed dungarees hung on a frame like a street sign and graying blond hair clipped skull close. He seemed to consist all of nose, Adam's apple, and elbows.

"Doc! How are you, man?" the scarecrow said. Tachyon squinted at him. "Who the hell are you?" The other blinked and looked as if he were about to cry. "It's me, man. Mark."

Tachyon goggled. A blond rocket in cutoffs shot out the door, hit the Morakh in the middle of his broad back, scaled him like a monkey, and seated itself with slim bare legs straddling his rhinoceros neck.

"Uncle Tachy!" Sprout chirped. "Uncle Dirk is giving me a piggyback ride."

"Indeed." Ignoring the Morakh's scowl, Tach stepped close to kiss the girl on her proffered cheek.

Durg at-Morakh was the strongest non-ace on Earth: no Golden Boy or Harlem Hammer, but far stronger than any normal human. He was not human; he was Takisian-a Morakh, a gene-engineered fighting machine created by the Vayawand, bitter enemies of Tachyon's House Ilkazam. He had come to Earth with Tachyon's cousin Zabb, a foe of a more intimate nature.

Now he served Mark, having been defeated in unarmed combat by Mark's "friend" Moonchild. He and Tachyon tolerated each other for Mark's sake.

Tachyon gripped his old friend by the biceps. "Mark, man, what has happened to you?"

Mark grimaced. Tachyon realized he had never seen his chin before.

"It's this court thing," Mark said, glancing at his daughter. "They start taking depositions soon. Dr. Pretorius said I needed to, like, straighten up my image."

Taking his cue, Durg patted Sprout's shins and said, "Let us go for a walk, little mistress." They went out into the sunlight on Fitz-James.

"`Dr. Pretorius,"' Tachyon repeated with distaste. The two regarded each other like a pair of dogs who claim the same turf. "He thinks you should then give in, change the way you lives-the way you wear your hair?"

Mark shrugged helplessly. "He says if I challenge the system, I'll lose."

"Perhaps if you had a more competent lawyer."

"Everybody says he's the best. The legal version of, like, you."

"Well." Tach fingered his narrow chin. "I admit I've no cause to believe that your justice' is aptly named. What are you doing to your store?"

"Pretorius says if I go in as a head-shop owner I'll get blown out of the water. So I'm selling off the paraphernalia and letting Jube take the comix as a lot. I'm making the Pumpkin into more a New Age place. Gonna call it a `Wellness Center' or something."

Tachyon winced.

"Yeah, man, I know. But it's, like, the eighties."

"Indeed."

Mark turned and went into the back, where he had boxes of refuse piled to go into the dumpster in the alley. Tachyon followed.

"What music is this?" he asked, gesturing to a tape player with a coat-hanger antenna.

"Old Buffalo Springfield. "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing."' He dabbed a fingertip at a corner of his eye. `Always has made me cry, darn it."

"I understand." Tach plucked a silken handkerchief from the sleeve of his stump and dabbed at the sweat that daintily beaded his eyebrows. "So Pretorius thinks changing your life-style at this late date will impress the court? It seems a childishly obvious expedient."