The voice had the natural elegance of a classic noble vampire-which made her smile easier-and the man himself was everything his office was not, cut from a mold uniquely his own. She found herself looking down at him as they sidled past each other, exchanging positions. He was a head shorter. Her left hand went out in greetingwhich was when her conscious mind twigged to what her unconscious had already registered, that Tachyon's right arm ended at the wrist.

He responded with a soft left-handed handshake, the slightest of smiles acknowledging and appreciating her courtesy.

"A meeting I've been looking forward to, actually, for quite some time. Scent -I don't know if you're aware, but he's the director of our Vietnam Veterans Outreach Program has been singing your praises to these many years." He motioned her to take a chair. She'd seen pictures of him, of course, but on paper-and especially,- the tube-it was easy to dismiss his eccentric costumes as just that, costumes, the man himself trivialized into a character from some tacky teleplay.

"But I suspect," he continued, "the anticipation is not quite mutual."

"Is it that obvious," she replied, thinking deliberately loudly, or did you read my mind to discover it?

In person, his appearance was no less outrageous, but far more effective. Living embodiment of an eighteenthcentury aristo. Plum trousers tucked into gray suede buccaneer boots, ruled green shirt beneath orange, doublebreasted waistcoat, the effect actually enhanced by its contrast with the white hospital-issue lab coat that stood in for the burgundy frock coat hung on a corner rack.

He motioned toward the papers she'd moved. "Much appreciated," he told her, ignoring her inner and outer response. "It's often far too easy to be overwhelmed by the clutter here. As you might have guessed, I am far from the most organized of souls. And good secretaries, especially in Jokertown, are damnably hard to find."

The pieces of his face didn't fit together in any manner that might be considered classically handsome, yet the sum of the parts was undeniably attractive. The same description had often been applied to Cody. Though the end result in his case is, she thought, somewhat more delicate. A sling cradled his right arm, the stump swathed in fresh bandages, a recent wound. There'd been no hint of this in the letter he'd sent inviting her to New York. Wonder what I've missed fighting fires in the boonies? she thought. It also helped explain the fragility in his manner, she'd seen it herself too often in casualty wards. And she remembered her own reactions, coming out of anesthetic to discover her right eye gone.

"That what you want from me?"

"Hardly, given your resume." He looked quizzically at her. "Are you always this direct?"

"Yes," she said simply.

A sudden shadow crossed the inside of his eyes and she knew somehow she'd slipped through his barriers, touched a memory as painful as her own. Her face flushed, with anger and resentment, and she didn't bother masking her exultation at this small, trivial score. Who the fuck do you think you are, cock? she snarled silently, hoping he was listening. What the hell right do you, does anyone, have to pick someone else's brain, goddammit, isn't anything private anymore?

"Truthfully," he continued, as though nothing untoward had happened, and Cody found herself admiring his damnable alien poise as much as she was infuriated by it,

"I'd forgotten all about my letter in the press of recent events. I never expected an answer."

"Desperation has a way of overcoming even the most primal terrors."

"How clever. I only caught the one news broadcast. What exactly happened?"

She shrugged. "I shot my mouth off, got my ass shot off in return."

"Uncomfortable."

"I should introduce you to my kid, he has exactly the same opinion."

"I'd like to meet him. I have a grandson myself."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you. A true blessing, actually.". From the way he spoke, the faintest coloration to his tone, she wondered if that was as true as he obviously wanted it to be.

"I'm glad for you."

"And I am still curious."

"Well"-she sighed-"after Chris was born, I packed in city life and headed for the high country. My folks left me their ranch-not really much as spreads go, nowhere near big enough to support itself, but heaven to live on-so I based myself there and hung out my shingle. Small-town GP, doing emergency surgery on the side. Figured there'd be the end of things. Until the fires."

"They're still burning. Last spring, hardly anyone knew what we were in for. Forest Service followed policy and let the lightning strikes burn uncontested. But the weather turned vicious-no rain, sun baking the woods tinder dry, winds whipping the flame front into firestorms. Alarm went out to damn near every fire-fighting outfit in the country. Indians handled the brunt of the work, about the best there are at this business."

"You ever wonder, Doc, if your virus affects the inanimate substance of the earth itself? Some of those Indians do. You value your hide, steer well clear of Apaches and the Cheyenne. They view the world as a living being, as much so as humanity itself. They see what the wild card does to people, they wonder if it can twist-even murder-the planet the same way."

"That's preposterous." He was genuinely shocked. She barely noticed. She was in the center of a broad mountain meadow with a beaten crew-most so tired they couldn't stand, much less run for their lives-staring in horror at a wall of flame two hundred meters away, where five minutes before there'd been a stand of magnificent timber.

"Maybe. Fires sure seemed alive to us. Sneaky and intelligent, and vicious as a bear trap. Forest Service brought in some joker crews to handle the scutwork cleanup in the low-intensity areas. They should have been fine. Probably, in any other fire, any other summer, they would have. I'm sure you can guess the rest."

"How bad was it?"

She met Tachyon's gaze. "Backfire caught a joker team, tore 'em up pretty badly. I was running the aid station inside Yellowstone. Seven came in still alive. All critical, badly burned, but they had a chance. We bundled 'em all into a Huey and sent it to our main receiving hospital. They turned 'em away. Said they had no bed space. Bullshit, of course, we'd transferred half their patients precisely so there would be room for our casualties. But they were adamant, no admittance. Three other hospitals on our list, got the same response from each. Pilot had to bring 'em back. I was running an aid station-the whole point of our existence was to get our injured into the air and out to a proper full-care facility as fast as humanly possible. I didn't have the staff, I didn't have the equipment, to cope with anything more. Took 'em two days to die. For one, in the end, drugs didn't help. He was screaming, like a baby-this high-pitched shriek, somehow he made himself heard even over the roar of the fire-I found myself once looking around for an ax or shovel, cursing myself for not having my gun handy. I wanted to smash that poor creature's head in, just to shut him up. I lost it, totally, I think by then I was more than a little crazy myself. I found a network crew, gave 'em a live interview on morning television."

"I saw that. You were quite impassioned."

"Lot of good it did me. Hospitals had covered themselves perfectly. They hit back with loads of righteous indignation. By the time they were through, they'd made a plausible case it was my fault. All things considered, it wasn't the best of times to take a stand for joker rights. I'd grown up there." A softness had crept into her voice, an eerie echo of what she'd heard earlier in Tachyon's, as though neither could still quite believe what had happened to them. "I'd made that place my home, it was where I raised my son-and five minutes on the Today show burned it up as completely as the North Fork fire did the Gallatin Range. Forest Service"-she made a face-"shipped me out on the next chopper. Got home, discovered my attending privileges at the local hospitals had been revoked. Within a week, I started losing patients. Within a month…"