"A fucking vision. A fucking golden vision. And look at me!" screamed the sandy-haired man. "Look at me!"

"Why does it have to be a woman?" wailed a woman. "Maybe you got her power. Fuck me. FUCK ME!"

Tachy had ruthlessly mind-controlled her. And the babbling man, and anyone else who had seemed likely to make trouble. The remaining jokers had stared at him like targets at a county turkey shoot.

They were less intimidated now.

Like this pathetic blackmail from a dying man.

"I'm sorry," Tachyon said again to Grogan, and left the room.

And stumbled into a lurking pack of jokers. "Good morning."

"What's good about it," growled a big joker with a mouthful of cilia in place of teeth. It made his diction mushy, and Tachyon had to strain to understand him.

"You're alive, Mr. Konopka, which is more than many unluckier ones can claim," the alien snapped. He pulled off his stethoscope and jerked it between his hands.

"You call this livin'?" said a woman. " I look like a monster, my husband's left me, I lost my job-"

"Everyone's got a story," said Tachyon shortly, heading down the hall. They followed him.

Konopka stepped in front of the Takisian and stopped him with a hard jab to the small alien's chest.

"What are you doing to find that woman?"

For a long moment Tachyon warred with conflicting emotions: to placate them with a soothing lie, or be damned to them; and tell them the truth.

The joker gave him another jab with a forefinger tipped with a long, sharp nail. "Huh? Huh? Answer up-"

Tach ran out of patience. "I'm doing precisely nothing to find that woman."

"You motherfucker, I'm gonna kill you." Konopka drew back a fist.

Another man cried, "You don't care about us!"

Tachyon whirled on him, seized him by the shoulders. "No! That's not true. Xuan, I care more than you can conceive. But I must also care for Jane. Look at you." He raked the crowd with a lilac-eyed glance. "You're like hunting animals."

"That girl can cure us. You gotta find her." The anger drained from Xuan, replaced with a humble pleading. Konopka jerked the alien around to face him. "You owe it to us, Tachyon, because you made us what we are, and you can't do fuck to cure us!" There were shouts of agreement.

Tachyon glanced to the nurses' station, where Tina was dithering over the switchboard. He gave an infinitesimal shake of the head. All this situation needed was the arrival of security.,

"All of you return to your rooms."

"No brush off, Tachyon!"

"Listen to me," he pleaded. "That girl is a person, a human being. Not a fucking machine designed to cure jokers. You would have killed her three days ago. Consider the terrible dilemma with which she is faced. Think of her too and not only of yourselves. How can I trust you when I can't even trust myself to do what is right and proper by Jane?"

Finn had popped out of an elevator and now stood with a foreleg upraised as if ready to paw the linoleum floor. With a low murmur the crowd began to disperse. All except Konopka. He gathered up a handful of the burgundy satin coat and lifted Tach's feet from the floor. Finn cantered daintily forward, whirled on his slender forelegs, and landed a kick square in the center of Konopka's ass. With a roar the joker dropped Tachyon and spun to face this new attack.

"Cut it out!" yelled Finn. "And get the hell back to your room." Konopkds fist lashed out. Finn danced back, but four legs are less dexterous than two. The blow landed.

"Nat ass-kisser!"

Tachyon dropped Konopka snoring to the floor.

"Why didn't you do that a long time ago?" asked Finn, rubbing at his reddening cheek.

"Possibly because I'm tired of victimizing them." Tachyon whirled, his long-tailed coat rustling around him. Finn had to trot to keep pace.

"It's not your fault."

"Which part of this mess? The creation of the virus? No, not entirely my fault. The fact that Croyd's become a carrier? Again, probably beyond my control. The fact that Jane has become the most hunted person in Jokertown? Maybe not. But she is my responsibility, and I've got to find her and protect her if I can." Tachyon slammed his fist into the elevator wall, breaking the skin across his knuckles.

Finn lifted his hand and blotted at the welling blood with a handkerchief. "Relax, we'll find her."

"Will we?" Tachyon licked reflectively at the blood. "More to the point, should we?"

"Ha! I blast you with my killer mind-attack. And I make it! You lose another life." Tachyon tossed the tiny cardboard marker into the discard pile. "And I can really do that too." Blaise's eyes glittered in the lamplight. "I bet if I worked hard I could kill with my mind."

Polyakov glanced up from his newspaper. "It's not a talent to cultivate."

"Can you do it?"

"Drop it, Blaise."

"Can you?"

"I said drop it."

The small, round chin hardened, the lips narrowing into a mulish line. "Maybe I'll just have to practice on somebody since you won't-"

Tachyon came across the dining table and landed a slap that knocked the boy out of his chair.

"Tachyon!" bellowed the Russian.

"Blaise! Blaise! I'm sorry. So sorry. Are you all right?" Aghast, he gathered the child into his arms. "Oh, Ideal, forgive me."

The boy swung wildly, striking Tach above the eye. His esper ability poured off him in shuddering silver waves as he struggled to break his elder's shields. Tachyon quieted Blaise with a lick of his power.

"Listen to me. I'm horribly tired, and under a lot of stress. I know that's not an adequate excuse, but I offer it as an explanation. I don't want you to learn to kill. It does something to your soul because you are so closely linked with your victim. It's not like make-believe." He gestured back toward the abandoned Talisman game. "You have to burrow deep, tear away layer after layer of the person's mind before you can kill."

"Have you done it?" Blaise muttered around a swelling lip.

"Yes, and it haunts me to this day." Polyakov stepped to the alien's side and rested a hand on his shoulder. "I weighed Rabdan's life against the life of the Earth. He had to die, it was necessary but…" He hugged the child close. "You must learn to be kind, Blaise. Don t even joke about practicing on the humans. Our original sin was treating them as laboratory animals. Don't you-"

The trill of the phone interrupted him. "Doctor. This is Jane."

"Jane, where-"

"No, no questions. Just listen. I have an address and a telephone number for Croyd. Only one. I heard the ads. I guess I can understand why you have to find, him."

"Jane, I'm sorry I didn't help you before."

"It's okay. I was pretty strung out. You're not going to hurt him, are you? He's been a friend. I hate to think I'm betraying him, but…"

"More people will die if you don't. You're right to tell me."

"Okay. He's got an apartment on Eldridge. Three twentythree Eldridge. Third floor. Five five five, four four nine one."

"Thank you, Jane, thank you so much. My dear child, we must " But he was talking to the buzz of a disconnected line.

He replaced the receiver and stood face-to-face with a nasty moral dilemma. if… when they captured Croyd, and if he awoke in a new form minus the carrier power, well and good. But if this mutation carried over, then the decisions became harder. To keep the man in isolation for the rest of his life?

Or to kill him…

… A woman lying back among pillows and tangled sheets. A sheen of sweat across her dark breasts and belly. The moisture-matted hair of her mons-

The three-dimensional picture fragmented and vanished. Sorry, squeaked Video in Tachyon's mind. We got the wrong apartment.

Wait, that might be Croyd.

He reached out and touched the woman's mind. It wasn't Croyd.

Floater and Video resumed their slow crawl across the back wall of the apartment building.