"Bush won't debate you, Gregg. He won't come near a platform with you and he'll make you look like a fool when you insist. Resign, Gregg."
"Look, Charles, I'm the candidate. Don't you get it? It doesn't matter what you or anyone else thinks. This convention elected me and by god, I'm running. I've got Jacksonhe's charismatic.."
"He'll also pull out of the ticket if you try to continue this charade," Devaughn sniffed like a prissy English lord. Like Tachyon. "You broke down, Gregg. America saw you on TV acting like a gibbering fool and they wonder how you'd react in a crisis in the White House. They don't want your finger on the button, Gregg. And frankly, neither do I."
"Damn it, that wasn't me that broke down, I tell you. It was Tachyon doing it. He took over my mind. I've told you that now a hundred times."
"So you say. You'll have a hell of a time proving it, though, won't you? Frankly, Gregg, that's going to sound like just another weak excuse. Or are you claiming Tachyon did it to you in '76, too?"
"Goddamn you!" Gregg roared. He pushed Devaughn with both hands, and the big man rocked backwards, a suddenly frightened look on his face. "I'm not resigning!"
"Take your hands of me, Gregg."
Gregg looked at Devaughn. With Puppetman, I'd make the bastard crawl.. He took a deep breath and stepped back. He rubbed his hands on his pants as if they were dirty. "I've made up my mind on this," he said softly.
Devaughn stared at him scornfully. "Then they'll reconvene the convention whether you like it or not. If you fight, you come out with nothing. You'll be made to look like a total ass. Resign, and maybe you can salvage at least your dignity from this mess. That's my final piece of advice for you, Senator." He stressed the last word mockingly.
Gregg went over to the couch, picture-tube glass crunching under his wingtips. He flung himself down on it. He cursed monotonously to himself, Devaughn watching silently.
When he finally looked up, the words he spat out tasted like ash.
"I've been hanging on with my damn fingertips, and now you're getting your kicks jumping up and down on them until I let go, aren't you? Well, you get your wish. Tell Tony to write the damn resignation," Gregg said. "He can write whatever he wants; I don't care. You read it-you'll get the most fucking pleasure out of it. And tell Amy to make arrangements to get me and Ellen out of Atlanta. I don't want to see any reporters. You got it?"
Devaughn sniffed. His gaze was scornful and superior, and Gregg ached to tear it from his face, but he didn't have the power anymore.
"Tell them yourself. I don't work for you anymore." Devaughn shook his head. "I had it all for you and you blew it. I'm going to see if Dukakis can use my talents. "
Devaughn left the room with prissy dignity. A Secret Service man stuck his head in, glanced at Gregg and the shattered glass on the rug, and shut the door again. Gregg sat there alone for a very long time.
9:00 A.M.
Somehow over the years he had managed to spend a lot of time in morgues. And no matter how beautifully appointed, how perfectly cleaned, nothing could hide the essential factthey were freezers for dead human meat.
"I appreciate your coming down here," the M.E. was saying as he led Tachyon into the operating room. His eyes slid to Tachyon's stump, and quickly away. "Especially after… but I've never seen anything like this, and you're the expert."
"No problem. It's sort of fitting somehow."
The M. E. helped him into gown and mask. They walked to the table. A wan-faced woman was clutching rib cutters to her chest, and eyeing the headless body with wary alarm.
The corpse had been slit from sternum to groin, the ribs cut and pulled- aside. But pale yellow fat was growing across the glistening intestines. The ribs were putting out bony tendrils. Skin had grown across the severed neck, and pooching up from the center of the neck, like a finger thrust into a drum, was a tiny bud. Tachyon bent in for a closer look. Fascinated and horrified and unable to stop himself.
"It's almost as if it's… trying to… to… "
"To grow a new head, yes." Tach jerked back when he realized the embryonic head had eyes.
What if they suddenly opened? Would Demise's power remain? Would he make good his threat even from beyond the grave?
Stupid! He's always killed from beyond the grave. Bending Tachyon slid his dagger from its boot sheath, and jabbed it sharply into a buttock. The body arched and jerked. "Shit!" screamed the woman, and the M.E. didn't stop running until he reached the door.
Clinging to the swinging door, he stuttered, "Wha… what the fuck is that?"
"A mistake. A major miscalculation on my part. My nemesis and a reminder not to play God. May I suggest that we dispense with the autopsy, and move straight to cremation?"
"Great. You'll get no argument from me. What about the ashes? Are there any next of kin?"
A humorless smile touched Tachyon's lips. "I suppose I stand in loco parentis. I'll take them."
"Doc, you are one weird dude," sighed the woman, and she snipped off a rib that had grown beyond the edge of the chest cavity.
10:00 A.M.
Sara winced and let the newspaper fall into mud drenched by firehoses and churned by a thousand feet of various descriptions.
You're right, damn you, she thought, in case Tachyon happened to be listening in. He wouldn't, though that Takisian honor of his. That damned expedient Takisian honor.
He'd laid it right on the line, as straightforwardly as he'd laid her Friday night, and even less gently: You cannot unmask Hartmann. It would hand the election to Barnett on a platter. How many innocent joker lives are you willing to spend on your vengeance?
"None," she said.
A couple of joker faces looked at her with shellshock blankness. None of them recognized her; she had a leopard mask on today. It had been lying in a gutter on Peachtree. The riot hadn't mashed it beyond usefulness.
Something crunched beneath her foot. She kicked at it until a sign emerged from the mud, hand-lettered at the JADL headquarters tent for last night's demonstration. The message almost made her smile.
Judas Jack, 1950
Traitor Tach, I988
Two of A Kind
With Mackie dead she'd been able to return to her own room. She was dressed today in blue jeans and a loose pale-blue blouse. She let her Reeboks carry her past a CBS remote van, where an earnest young black stringer was talking into a yellow-foam phallus.
"Piedmont Park remains virtually deserted after a night of rioting in which three hundred jokers were arrested. Several dozen jokers wander, as if dazed, among the trampled ruins of the tent city; Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young has rescinded his order that any jokers found on the street should be arrested on sight, following a personal plea in the early hours of this morning by Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Debate still rages over Governor Harris's refusal to declare martial law… "
They were few enough, but they were in a sense her people. She walked among them for the last time. No joker would trust her again, and she had sworn on her soul never to reveal the secret that would vindicate her in their eyes. For their sake she had to let them hate her.
For my sake. Unless I never plan to pass another mirror with my eyes open.
Tom Brokaw spoke to her from a portable television resting on an upturned ice chest and being ignored by a listless black joker with glowing blue carbuncles covering his face and such of his body as his coveralls left bare.