Down And Dirty wc-5

by George R. R. Martin

  Blaise reached up and laid his fist against Tachyon's mouth. Tach kissed it. In a sudden, abrupt topic change the boy asked. "Uncle Claude wasn't a very good person, was he?"

  "No, but one can partially understand his reasons. It's never easy to be a joker."

  "What would you do if you were a joker?"

  "Kill myself." Blaise gaped up at the indescribable expression on his k'ijdad's narrow face.

  "That's silly. Anything is better than dead."

  "I can't agree. You'll understand when you're older."

  "Everybody tells me that." Pouting, Blaise left the kitchen and flung himself on the sofa. "Jack, Durg, Mark, Baby. I suppose it must be true if ships and humans and Takisians all agree. But I didn't mean being a yucky joker like Snotman. What if you were like Jube, or Chrysalis or Ernie?"

  "I still couldn't live with it." Tach joined him on the sofa. "My culture idealizes the perfect. Defective children are destroyed at birth, and otherwise normal individuals are sterilized if it's determined that they lack sufficient genetic worth."

  "So to be ordinary is as bad as being de… defective," he asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

  "Well, not quite, and too random a gene pattern can also endanger a person. I was almost sterilized because of my Sennari blood, but my outstanding mental abilities were deemed to outweigh the unpredictable Sennari, and my other… failings."

  "Do you have a little boy on Takis?"

  "No."

  Tachyon briefly wondered if the sperm he had left banked on Takis still existed, or if Zabb's supporters had seen it destroyed. Or even worse, had Taj impregnanted some female? It was ironic that in a culture as technologically advanced as the Takisian, there was a fundamental distrust of artificial insemination, and artificial wombs. The wombs made a certain degree of sense; in a telepathic culture it was best that the child be linked with its mother, but there was little justification for the sex act.

  Except for the obvious ones.

  Ten nwnths! Ten months without sex.

  He jerked his mind from that unpleasant thought and focused again on Blaise. There was so much to teach him about his Takisian culture, and yet should he really bother?

  The child could never be presented to the family. He was an abomination. Also there was much in Takisian culture that didn't bear close scrutiny. How to indicate to an eleven-yearold child that the blood feuds, the controlled breeding, the tension and almost unbearable expectations that were part and parcel of life among the psi lords, were not romantic or wonderful, but rather deadly in the extreme, and had driven his grandsire to this alien world?

  "Tell me a story."

  "What makes you think I know any stories?"

  "You're more like a fairy tale than real. You have to know stories."

  "All right. I'll tell you how H'ambizan tamed the first ship. Long ago-"

  "No."

  "No?" Blaise's expression suggested that his grandfather was an idiot. "Ahhh, of course. Once upon a time." He cocked an inquiring eyebrow. Blaise nodded, satisfied, and snuggled in closer under Tachyon's arm. "And so long ago that even the oldest Kibrzen would lie if they told you they remembered, the people were forced to journey through the stars aboard ships of steel. What was worse, they weren't allowed to build these ships, for the Alaa-may their line wither-had signed a contract with Master Traders, and the people were forbidden to build space-going vessels. So the wealth of Takis bled into space, and into the pockets of the rapacious Network."

  "What's the Network?"

  "A vast trading empire with one hundred and thirty member races. One day H'ambizan, who was a notable astronomer, was drifting among the clouds in the birthplace of stars, and he came upon an amazing sight. Playing among the clouds of cosmic dust like porpoises in the waves, or butterflies through flowers, were vast incredible shapes. And H'ambizan fell to the deck, clasping his ringing skull, for his head was filled with a great singing. His assistants died of joy and shock for their minds could not absorb the thoughts of the creatures. But H'ambizan-being of the Ilkazam-was made of sterner stuff. He controlled his fear and pain and lanced out with a single thought. A single command. And so great was his power that the honor of ships fell silent and gathered like nursing whales about the tiny metal ship."

  "And H'ambizan choose the leader of the honor, and suited against the vacuum, he stepped upon the rough surface of the ship. And curious, Za'Zam, father of ships, made a cavity to receive the man."

  "And then H'ambizan mind-controlled the ship and made him carry him home!" cried Blaise.

  "No. H'ambizan sang, and Za'Zam listened, and they both realized that after a thousand thousand years of loneliness they had found the separate halves of their souls. Za'Zam realized that guided by these strange small creatures the 'Ishb'kaukab would leave their nomadic pastoral lives and achieve greatness. And H'ambizan realized he had found a friend."

  Tach leaned in and kissed the top of the boy's head. Blaise, chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip, glanced up. "Why didn't H'ambizan realize that now he could fight the Network? Why did he realize something silly?"

  "Because this is a story of longing and regret."

  "Is this supposed to be subtle?"

  "Yes."

  "But did H'ambizan and Za'Zam fight the Network?"

  "Yes."

  "And did they win?"

  "Sort of."

  "Is this true?"

  "Sort of."

  "Isn't that like being a little bit pregnant?"

  "What would you know about that?" Blaise lifted his nose and looked superior. "Someday when I'm not so tired, I'll tell you about the genetic manipulation and eon-long breeding program that took place before we had ships like Baby."

  "So there weren't wild ships?"

  "Oh, yes, there were, but they weren't as bright as this tale indicates."

  "But… But…"

  Tach laid a finger on the child's lips. "Later. Your stomach's been growling so loud I was afraid it would jump out and take a bite out of my arm."

  "A new wild card power! Killer stomachs!"

  Tach threw back his head and laughed. "Come, little kukut, I'll buy you dinner."

  "At McDonald's."

  "Oh, joy."

  The tutor hasn't quit.

  The thought was so breathtaking that it brought him up short.

  "The tutor hasn't quit!" Tachyon repeated with dawning wonder.

  He ran to the office door, flung it open. Dita slewed around to stare nervously at him.

  "The tutor hasn't quit!" he shouted. "Dita, you're wonderful!" Blood washed into her cheeks as he kissed her and pulled her around the office in a lurching polka. He dropped her back into her chair and collapsed on the sofa, panting and fanning himself. The weeks of unremitting work and strain were taking their toll. " I must see this paragon for myself. I'll be back in one hour."

  He could hear Blaise's voice piping like a young bird, or a silver flute, and the deeper rumbling tones of the man's voice. A cello or a bassoon. There was warmth in that voice, and comfort, and something tantalizingly familiar. Tachyon stepped out of the tiny foyer and into the living room. Blaise was seated at the dining room table, a stack of books before him. A heavyset older man with graying hair and a faintly melancholy expression kept the boy's place with a blunt forefinger. His accent was musical, rather like Tachyon's.

  "Oh, ideal… no!"

  Victor Demyenov raised his dark eyes to meet Tachyon's lilac ones. His expression was both ironical and slightly malicious.

  "K'ijdad, this is George Goncherenko." His grandsire's alarming rigidity seemed to penetrate, and the boy faltered and added,

  "Is something wrong?"

  "No, child," said George/Victor. "He is merely surprised to see us getting along so well. You have terrified so many of my predecessors."

  "But not you," said Blaise. Then he added to Tachyon, "He's not scared of anything."

  You had better be afraid of me! Tachyon shot at the KGB agent telepathically.


  No, we hold one another in the palms of our hands. "Blaise, go to your room. This gentleman and I need to talk."

  "No."

  "DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!"

  "Go, child." George/Victor coaxed him with a gentle hand. "It will all be all right." Blaise gripped the older man in a fierce hug, then ran from the room.

  Tachyon flung himself across the room and poured a brandy with hands that shook with fear and shock.

  "You! I thought you were out of my life! You told me you were retiring. It was finished. You lied-"

  "Lied! Let's talk about lying! You withheld something I needed. Something which cost me everything!"

  "I… I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Oh, come now, Dancer, I trained you better than that. You deliberately withheld the information about Blaise. You have enough tradecraft to have known the value of that little piece of information."

  Hamburg, 1956. A shabby but clean boarding house, and victor doling out booze and women in limited doses while he trained and questioned the shattered Takisian. A few years, and they had kicked him loose to continue his descent into the gutter. He had given them all that he had, and it hadn't been enough. The secret had gnawed at him for years, but thirty years was a long time, and he had begun to think himself safe. And then had come the phone call during the final leg of the World Health Organization tour, and his KGB control was back in his life.

  "My superiors learned of Blaise, his potential and power, but I who trained you and ran you was left ignorant. They did not assume it was stupidity, but rather duplicity. They drew the only conclusion." His raised eyebrows drew the answer from his former pupil:

  "They assumed you had rolled over, become a double agent."

  Victor grimaced a bit at the theatrical phrase. The brandy exploded in the back of his throat as Tachyon tossed it down. Some explanation, some justification seemed necessary.

  "I wanted him safe from you."

  "I would say I am the least of his problems."

  "What do you mean? What do you mean by that?"

  "Nothing. Never mind."

  "Is that a comment on me?"

  "Good god, no. I merely point out that we live in dangerous times."

  "Victor, are they looking for you?" Tachyon asked, not certain if he referred to the Russian's KGB masters or to the CIA.

  "No, they all think I'm dead. All that remains is a charred car and a pair of corpses burned past recognition."

  "You killed them."

  "Don't look so shocked, Dancer. You too are a killer. In fact we have more in common then you might think. Like that child."

  "I want you out of my life!"

  "I'm in your life for good. You better get used to it."

  "I'll fire you!"

  Demyenov's voice froze him before he had taken three steps. "Ask Blaise."

  Tachyon remembered the hug. Never in the weeks since he had smuggled Blaise out of France had the child given him so affectionate a gesture. The boy obviously loved the grizzled Russian. What would it do to Tach and the boy's relationship if he now abruptly removed this man? He sank onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands.

  "Oh, Victor, why?" He didn't really expect an answer, and he didn't get one.

  "Oh, yes, since we're going to be friends you should know my true name. Friends don't lie to each other. My name is Georgi Vladamirovich Polyakov. But you can call me George. Victor is dead-you killed him."

  Addicted to Love by Pat Cadigan

  The view of the city from Aces High was breathtaking, even inspirational. Beached on the shores of the afternoon, Jane stared blindly down at it from the kitchen window, frustration and unhappiness doing their usual waltz in her stomach. Behind her the kitchen staff worked away at winding down the afternoon luncheon service before preparing for the dinner custom, politely ignoring the fact that she'd left the salad they'd made for her untouched. Her appetite was poor these days. Lately she had even abandoned the pretense of wrapping the food up for later and tossing it out on the sly.

  She knew there were whispers that she'd gone anorexic, not exactly the best advertisement for a place such as Aces High. It was like a bad joke on Hiram, after he'd increased her responsibilities at the restaurant from hostessing to pinchhit supervising. Hiram was pretty weird himself these days, but he wasn't shedding any weight. He'd been on a roundthe-world goodwill tour. Hiram Worchester, Goodwill Ambassador. It beat the hell out of Jane Dow, Mafia Dupe.

  Memories of the time with Rosemary drove her deeper into depression. She missed her; rather, she missed the person she'd thought Rosemary had been and the work she'd thought she'd been doing for her. It had all sounded so fine and noble trying to counteract the antiace, antijoker hysteria that had been building up, fueled by hysterical extremist politicians and evangelists. Rosemary had been a real hero to her, someone with a shining light around her; she'd needed a hero very badly after all the nastiness with the Masons and the terrible, grotesque murder of Kid Dinosaur. Her own brush with death had not left much of an impression on her, except for the contact with that horrible, evil little creature called the Astronomer. She had seldom thought of it afterward, and Rosemary had been the antidote to the Astronomer's poison.

  Until March, when she began to find herself thinking that it might have been better if Hiram had just let her plummet to the street.

  She seemed to have an unerring instinct for getting mixed up with exactly the wrong people. Maybe that was her real ace power, not the water-calling ability. She could hire herself out as a bad-guys detector, she thought sourly, change her name from Water Lily to Dowsing Rod. Yes, I just love these people, I'd follow them anywhere, do anything for them-call the cops, they must be white slavers and kiddie pornographers.

  Her mind gave her an image of Rosemary Muldoon, smiling at her, praising her for her hard work, and she felt a pang of disloyalty and guilt. There was no way she could think of Rosemary as a truly bad person. A big part of her still wanted to believe that Rosemary had been sincere about the work, that whatever else she had been involved with as the head of a Mafia family, Rosemary really had wanted to do something for the victims of the wild card virus.

  Yes, she thought fiercely, there was plenty of good in Rosemary, she wasn't like all the others. Maybe something awful had happened to her that had driven her to accept and embrace the Mafia. She could understand that; God, could she understand it.

  Her mind shoved aside the memory and came to rest on the man named Croyd. She still had the phone numbers he'd given her. Anytime you want some company, someone to talk to… I bet I could listen to you for hours. Maybe even all night, but that would be up to you, Bright Eyes. No one had ever showed quite so much panache flirting with her. Mirrorshades Croyd, calling her Bright Eyes; she was unaware of smiling at the memory. There had been no link exposed between him and Rosemary's organization, Either it was buried too deeply or he'd been another idealist like herself. Since she wanted to believe it was the latter, that most likely meant it was the former-and she was still tempted to take out those phone numbers and surprise him by calling him. There was no way she could ever really bring herself to do it, which could well have been why he'd given her the numbers in the first place.

  Her whole life was upside down and backward. Maybe that was what the wild card virus had really done to her, fixed it so she would live as the butt of every practical joke the world could play on her.

  Abruptly Sal's voice seemed to be speaking to her in her head: You're not being fair with yourself. You never believed the Masons were good, you weren't blind to what the Astronomer really was. And as for Rosemary, she was just a whole lot smarter than you, street smart-she took advantage of you and that should be her shame, not yours. If she even has the capacity to feel shame.

  Yeah, Salvatore Carbone would have said something very like that to her if he'd been alive. The fact that she could come up with it herself must have meant she wasn't completely hopeless, she thought. But the idea didn't improve
her mood or bring her appetite back.

  "Excuse me, Jane," said a voice behind her. It was Emile, who had started at Aces High not long before she had and was now the new maitre d'. She wiped at her wet face hastily, glad that she had managed to gain more control over her tendency to pull enormous amounts of water out of the air when under stress, and turned around, trying to smile at him politely. "I think you'd better come down to the loading dock."

  She blinked at him in confusion. "Pardon?"

  "A situation has developed and we think you're the only one who could handle it."

  "Mr. Worchester always-"

  "Hiram isn't here and frankly we doubt he'd be much use if he were."

  She stared up at Emile tensely. Emile was one of the most vocal (and unforgiving) critics of Hiram's behavior, a group that seemed to gain more members every day, all of them disgruntled employees and all of them, to her complete dismay, more in the right than she wanted to admit.

  Ever since his return from the tour Hiram had been… strange. He seemed to have little real interest and no enthusiasm for Aces High these days, acting as if the restaurant were some awful albatross around his neck, a burdensome annoyance that was keeping him from something of greater importance. And he was behaving abominably toward his staff, his almost courtly manners had disappeared, and he ranged from distracted to abusively rude. Except for herself. Hiram was still friendly toward her, though it seemed to be an enormous and obvious effort to control himself and focus his attention. He had always been attracted to her; she'd known that since the night he had saved her life; and she felt guilty for not feeling the same way toward him. Being obligated to someone who cared for her when she couldn't return the affection was one of the most uncomfortable situations she could imagine. She had repaid him for the expensive clothes, and she had made every effort to be the best employee he could have asked for in exchange for the security of the job (and the generous salary) he'd given her. Lately that meant taking up for him, even against people who had known him far longer than she had and supposedly had many more reasons to be devoted to him. Some of these were the most virulent, maybe because they had so many more better days to remember at Aces High. If only she could get through to Hiram, she thought, looking into Emile's cold green eyes. If only she could make him understand how badly he was eroding his own authority and credibility and respect, he would be able to halt this terrible decline, turn it around, and become Hiram Worchester, Grand Master Restauranteur, again. Right now, it was as if he were dying.