Aces High

  He wondered what time it was. Sprout might be home from kindergarten by now. He could trust Susan to keep an eye on her for as long as the Pumpkin was open, but once the head shop closed who would watch her? Surely Susan wouldn’t just leave her alone if Mark hadn’t returned. He tried to pace his tiny prison, but kept misjudging in the inky blackness, and slamming into the walls.

  “I gotta get out of here, and help Dr. Tachyon. He’ll know what to do.” He began fumbling around in his leather pouch and emerged with a vial. He held it up before his eyes and peered, but to no avail. It was too dark to see the glass, much less the color of the powder it contained.

  “Oh, bummer, man. If I get Flash he can burn down this door, but Starshine can’t work in the dark. And Moon child…” He poked at the unyielding wall. “I don’t know she could bust this or not.”

  He returned the vial to the pouch and fished out another one. And dithered. And returned it and tried another. And finally pulled out two. His head wove back and forth between the bottles like a puzzled stork. He put them away, and clutched his head.

  “I gotta do something. I’m an ace, man. People are depending on me. This is like a test, and I gotta prove I’m worthy.”

  He went back to his fruitless pawing through the pouch. He imagined he could feel the ship moving, hurtling them out beyond the orbit of Neptune, carrying him away from Sprout. His beautiful, golden-haired daughter who would never be mentally more than four years old. His Alice-in-Wonderland darling who needed him. And he needed to be needed. His fingers closed convulsively about a vial, he yanked it out muttering, “Ah, fuck it.”

  Unstopped the bottle, and tossed back the contents. Later he might know if his choice had been an appropriate one.

  Talli had brought him a meal. Delicate meat- and fruit-filled crepes that had been his favorite back home. The first mouthful choked him, and he tossed the rest down the toilet. His restless pacings had accomplished nothing except to give him a cramp in his left calf, so he seized a brush from the dressing table in the lavatory, and tried to soothe himself by brushing his hair. The rasp of the bristles over his scalp felt good, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders.

  Then Hellcat gave a tiny shudder, and ringing through his mind came a loud, aggrieved “OW!” Obviously this ship did not believe in suffering in silence.

  Traveler? he wondered. Had that puling coward finally decided to do something? Or could it be Turtle, overcoming his psychological block, ripping through the door, squashing Zabb into jelly …

  Hellcat was making such a psi racket that he didn’t think anyone would notice a nonshielded communication with Turtle. The probe lanced out.

  Oh shit!

  Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.

  There was no sense of danger in Turtle’s mind, and Tach sighed. I take it you are not in the process of rescuing us.

  I can’t, Turtle sullenly replied. I told you that.

  Tom, he said gently, and remembered only when he heard Turtle’s gasp that he wasn’t supposed to have revealed his knowledge of the man’s secret identity. He plunged on. Couldn’t you just try. I’m sure if you tried you could—

  I CAN’T! How many times do I have to tell you, I can’t. And I seem to remember a booze-soaked derelict who kept whining about not being able to do it, and then felt hurt when I wasn’t very understanding. Well, the shoe’s on the other foot, Tachy. You be understanding.

  The slap hurt. He was fully aware of the debt he owed to Turtle, but he didn’t like to have his nose rubbed in his past sins. They were just that … past. The virus is encoded in your very cells.…

  I know that. How can I ever forget it? It’s ruined my fucking life! You and Jetboy, and your goddamn fucking Takisians. Just leave me the fuck alone.

  Turtle lacked the mental skills to actually block Tachyon, but he could layer every meaningful thought beneath a thick blanket of anger, making it very difficult to read or send. Tach sucked in several sharp breaths through his nose, and reminded himself that this was his oldest friend on Earth. He wondered if he could mind-control Turtle, and force him to override his emotional block. But no, the trauma was too deeply buried to reach by such a sledgehammer technique. His father with his skills could.… Tach hugged himself, rocking back and forth as grief crashed down and bore him under yet again.

  The sound of screams, crashes, and curses pulled him back. He frowned at the door, then began backing slowly toward the bed as he realized that the sounds were getting closer. A lot closer. Very close. A large gray fist slammed through the door. The spatulate fingers closing on the rough edges of the hole tensed and a large section of door came ripping loose. Hellcat screeched, and the clear, viscous fluid that served as blood in the sentient ship flowed from the wound. It had soon set into clear, frozen rivulets. Tach stared with dread fascination as section by section the door came down. And lumbering through the uneven hole came a huge, stocky man with glabrous grayish skin and a bald head with a bulging forehead. Takisians were hanging off him like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

  “Mind-blast him!” screamed Zabb, slamming a fist into the creature’s face. He danced back as the monster plucked a soldier from his back and pitched him toward Zabb.

  One Takisian was not being dislodged even by the creature’s great strength. A delicately drawn face set upon a mountainous body, and an expression of dogged ferocity. Durg at’Morakh bo Zabb. Zabb’s pet monster. Revulsion and disgust clawed at the back of Tach’s throat. He darted for the ruined doorway, thoughts tumbling wildly.

  Not by those hands. Wash in my blood if you must, Zabb, but not—

  And came up against three feet of tempered steel. Slowly he raised his eyes to his cousin’s.

  No, by my hand.

  A regretful but predatory smile touched Zabb’s lips, and he lunged. Tach, skittering backward, lost his footing on the slick floor and went down. It saved his life, for the blade passed only inches above his head. There were more thumpings and crashings as the grotesque gray apparition staggered about the room dislodging Takisians and clawing futilely at Durg. Benaf’saj strode into the room, and Zabb lowered his blade; apparently he was not yet prepared to do out-and-out murder in the presence of an Ajayiz’et. Tachyon had never been so glad to see anyone.

  The old lady let loose with a blast of mental energy that rattled the synapses of everyone in the room, and the creature collapsed like a felled tree. Bruised and battered crew members swarmed over the prone form, binding him with tangler ropes.

  She pinned her commander with a cold gray-eyed gaze. “Would you be so good as to explain this tumult?”

  “We found the creature.”

  “Really?” The accents were freezing.

  Zabb sucked at his cheeks, his eyes avoiding his granddam’s. “Well, he does seem to have changed form again.”

  Benaf’saj pinned Rabdan with a look. “And may we assume that these vials have something to do with the changes?”

  A nervous clearing of the throat. “That would seem logical.”

  “So, where are these vials?”

  “I don’t know, Kibr. Perhaps he has hidden them somewhere about the ship.”

  “Or perhaps they are only present when he is in his human form.” She eyed the ruined door. “It will take Che Chu-erh of Al Matraubi,” she said, referring to the ship by its full pedigree name, “some time to repair this door. Post guards. They can watch both Tisianne and this creature, and if the human returns, search him for the vials. Then, I trust, we will have no more of these ill-bred commotions.” She left with a rustle of brocaded skirts.

  Tach pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and knelt beside the strange captive. “You are?” he asked as he gently wiped at the blood flowing sluggishly from a sword wound.

  The man glared up at him then reluctantly growled, “Aquarius.”

  “How do you do. I am Tisianne brant Ts’ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian, otherwise known as Dr. Tachyon.”

  “I know.” He stared coldly p
ast Tachyon’s left shoulder.

  He bent in low and whispered. “Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve? Something that might help us take out—” he jerked his chin toward the door, and the two rigid guards, “them?”

  Aquarius stared rancorously up at him. “I turn into a dolphin, and I swim real fast.”

  The expression, together with his harsh, angry tone, snapped the thin thread of patience to which Tachyon was still managing to cling.

  “You will forgive my bluntness, but that does us very little good in our present predicament.”

  “I did not ask to be here, land-dweller.” And closing his eyes Aquarius proceeded to ignore both his fellow prisoner and his captors.

  Tach unlimbered his hip flask, and while he paced made substantial inroads on the brandy. Twenty minutes later he noticed that Aquarius’s skin was starting to crack and peel.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. I must remain moist, or I am damaged.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so fifteen minutes ago?” Aquarius did not answer, and with a snort of aggravation Tach went trotting into the lavatory, and emerged with a glass of water. It didn’t make much of an impression on the large form on the floor.

  “Andami, could you bring me a pitcher or a bucket?”

  The younger man worried his lower lip between his teeth. “My orders are to stay here.”

  “There are two of you.”

  “You’ll try something.”

  “Am I your prince?”

  “Yes. But you’ll still try something, and I’m not about to get another reprimand from Zabb.”

  “May your line wither,” he gritted, and resumed his harried trotting.

  The next thirty minutes passed slowly as Tach tried to keep ahead of the rapid drying of the merman’s skin. He was pouring a glass of water onto Aquarius’s face when suddenly the form wavered and shifted, and there was Captain Trips, coughing and sputtering as the water ran up his nose.

  Startled by the abrupt transformation, Tach yelled, dropped the glass, and backed off.

  Trips stared fuzzily about the cabin, then down at his long, lanky form still festooned with loosely wrapped tangler ropes. He had lost a lot of bulk with Aquarius’s departure, and as he rose the ropes sloughed off him, landing in a tangled heap on the floor around his feet.

  He removed his glasses, and furiously polished them, all the while blinking myopically at Tachyon. The glasses were replaced, and he muttered.

  “Oh, bummer, man.”

  Andami hurried over, and quickly riffled through Trips’s pockets. He located the leather pouch with three unused vials. Tachyon craned to see, but the brightly colored powders looked singularly innocuous. He itched to get his hands on the substances, and do a full analysis. Something that could transmute a human form … and then it hit him. Captain Trips was not a nut—he was an ace.

  “Captain.” He thrust out his hand. “I owe you an apology.”

  “Uh … me, man?”

  “Yes.” Tach seized the man’s limp hand, and gave it a hearty shake. “I doubted your story. In fact, I thought you a harmless lunatic. But you are an ace. And a most unusual one at that. These potions?”

  “Help me call my friends.”

  He stepped in close, and lowered his voice. “And I don’t suppose you have any more…” He winked, and Trips stared blankly down at him. Tach sighed. Nice, the man might be, but he wasn’t precisely quick on the uptake. “Have you any more secreted about your person?”

  “Oh no, man. It takes a long time to make this stuff, and I didn’t think I’d be running into aliens. I mean, we beat the Swarm, and I didn’t expect … I’m really sorry, man. I didn’t mean to let you down.…”

  “No, no. You couldn’t have known, and you did very well.” The Captain beamed, and Tach realized, with an overwhelming sense of failure and unworthiness, that this man adored and admired him.

  And I’m going to fail him.

  Tach crossed to the bed, and slumped down, his hands hanging limply between his thighs. Trips, with a sensitivity that the alien hadn’t expected, crossed to the other side of the room, and left him alone with his miserable thoughts. Sometime later there was a tentative touch on his shoulder.

  “Excuse me, man, I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering, like, how much longer until you got us…” He broke off, and splotches of red suffused his long face. “See, I got this little girl, and she’s probably home from school by now, and the shop will be closing, and I’m afraid Susan won’t stay with her, and Sprout’s, like, not able to take care of herself.” His long fingers twisted desperately through each other.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could do something. I wish I was the leader everyone thinks I am. But I’m not. I’m a fraud, Trips, both among my own people and among yours.” The gangling hippie laid an arm across Tach’s shoulders, and he leaned his head against the bony support of Trips’s shoulder.

  Trips gave a mournful shake of his head. “It’s not like it is in the comics. In the comics the good guys always win. They’ve always, like, got the right power at the right time.”

  “Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way. I’m very tired.”

  “Why don’t you sleep awhile. I’ll keep watch.”

  Tach wanted to ask him “Against what?” but he appreciated the generosity that had sparked the offer, and remained quiet. He kicked off his shoes, and Trips tenderly pulled a coverlet up to his chin.

  He realized muzzily, as sleep claimed him, that he had always used bed and booze as an escape, and today he had used both. The right power at the right time. The thought nagged at the edges of his consciousness. The right power—

  “By the Ideal!” He shot bolt upright, and kicked away the coverlet.

  “Hey, what, man?”

  He clutched feverishly at the lapels of Trips’s coat. “I’m an idiot. An idiot. The answer’s been right in front of me, and I missed it.”

  “What?”

  “The Network device.”

  “Huh?”

  Andami was regarding him curiously, and Tach quickly dropped to a whisper. “It’s not a bowling ball. It’s a singularity shifter.” He hurriedly slipped his feet into his pumps. “Years ago, before I left home, one of the Master Traders discussed the possibility of selling my clan a new experimental teleporting device. He demonstrated one, and said they might become readily available after a few more tests. This has to be one of those devices. And it’s in the main hold.”

  Trips was completely bewildered by his babblings. He grabbed for the only remark he had understood. “Yeah, but we’re, like, not in the main hold.”

  “How to get us all there?” Tach’s fingers scrabbled in his hair. “If we’re all together, I think I could trigger the device and send us home. The greater the telepathic ability, the greater accuracy, and the size of what can be carried. That was the theory. Of course the Master Trader could have just been puffing. Hard to tell with the Network. They have the souls of greedy tradesmen.”

  “Uh … what’s the Network?”

  “Another spacefaring race, actually a number of spacefaring races, but we don’t have to concern ourselves with that. The point is that a singularity shifter is here, on this ship, and it can get us home. Of course if Turtle had the device, that means the Network is present on Earth, and that could mean trouble.” He scrubbed at his face. “No, one problem at a time. How to get to the hold.”

  “Like, what goes on there?”

  “Well, obviously it’s used for cargo storage, and when there’s no cargo—which is most of the time, on a ship of this class—it’s used for recreation. Dances and so forth.”

  Trips looked dubious. “I don’t suppose we can invite everybody to a dance.”

  Tach laughed. “No.” His expression went flat. “But we can invite them to a duel.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hush a moment. I must think on this.”

  And he finally did what he should have done from the beginning. He
thought like a Takisian instead of like an Earthman.

  “Got it?” Trips asked when he again opened his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  He lay back down, and probed for a familiar mind.

  Turtle. There’s a way out of this.

  Yeah? The mental tone was one of utter defeat and hopelessness.

  The device you had, it can send you home.

  Yeah, but it’s—

  Just shut up, and listen. We’re all going to be in the cargo bay—

  Why?

  Would you stop! Because I’m going to get us there. The attention will be on me, and while it is you must get that device.

  How?

  You know how.

  I can’t!

  Tom, you must! It’s our only hope.

  It’s not possible. The Great and Powerful Turtle could do it, but I’m just—

  Thomas Tudbury—the Great and Powerful Turtle.

  No, I’m just an ordinary man who’s on the wrong side of forty, drinks too much beer, doesn’t eat right, and who works at a fucking electronics repair shop. I’m no fucking hero.

  You are to me. You gave me back my sanity and probably my life.

  That was the Turtle.

  Tom, the Turtle is a conglomeration of iron plates, TV, cameras, lights, and speakers. What makes Turtle, Turtle is the man inside. You’re the ace, Tom, it’s time to come out of the shell.

  Terror was coming off the man’s mind in powerful waves, battering at Tach’s shields, making him doubt his own plan. I can’t. Leave me alone.

  No, I’m going through with this, and you’re going to have to come up to scratch, because if you don’t, I will have died for nothing.

  Died! What do you—

  He broke the telepathic link wondering if he might have put too much pressure on Turtle’s fragile emotions. Too late to worry about it now.

  Kibr?

  What, boy?

  We find your tone to be less than pleasing, Ajayiz’et Benaf’saj.

  She moderated her tone, adding a formal overlay of respect, if not for him, at least for his position. What is it you wish, clan head?