Sara stood on the corner of South across from the Jokertown Clinic. A cool front had moved in from Canada; low, scudding clouds spat wet circles on the pavement.

Sara glanced again at her watch. Misha was over an hour late. "I"ll be there. I promise you, Sara. If I"m not there, know it"s because he stopped me."

Sara cursed under her breath, wishing she knew what to think, what to feel.

"You"ll have to decide what to do then."

"Can I help you, Ms. Morgenstern?" Tachyon"s deep voice made her start. The scarlet-haired alien peered down at her with a look of intense concern on his face that she might have found comical at another time; during the recent junket, he"d more than once indicated he found her attractive. She laughed, hating the hysteria she heard in the sound.

"No. No, Doctor, I"m all right. I was ... I was waiting for someone. We were supposed to meet here...."

Tachyon nodded solemnly, his startling eyes refusing to let her go. "You seemed nervous. I watched you from the clinic. I thought perhaps there was something I could do. Are you sure there"s nothing I can help you with?"

"No." Her denial was too sharp, too loud. Sara was forced to smile to soften the effect. "Really. Thank you for asking. I was just about to leave, anyway. It doesn"t look like she"s going to show."

He nodded. He stared. At last he shrugged. "Aah," he said. "Well, it was good seeing you again. We don"t need to be strangers now that the trip is over, Sara.

Perhaps dinner one night?"

"Thank you, but. . ." Sara bit her lower lip in agitation, just wanting Tachyon to leave. She needed to think, needed to get away from here. "Maybe next time I"m in the city?"

"I"ll hold you to that." Tachyon inclined his head like a Victorian lord, staring at her -strangely, then turned. Sara watched Tachyon make his way across the street to the clinic. The sky was beginning to let down a steady drizzle.

Streetlights were flickering in the early dusk. Sara looked again up and down the street. A joker with oddly twisted legs and a carapace scuttled from the sidewalk to the cover of a porch. Rain began to pool in the trash-clogged glutters.

"We"re sisters in this."

Sara stepped from the curb and hailed a cab parked down the street. The nat driver stared at her through the rear-view mirror. His gaze was rude and direct; Sara turned her face away. "Where you going?" he asked with a distinct Slavic accent.

"Head uptown," she said. "Just get me out of here." "What he did to me, he would also do to you. Don"t you notice how your feelings for him change when he"s with you, and doesn"t that also make you wonder?"

Aah, Andrea. I"m sorry, I"m so sorry.

Sara sat back and watched the rain smear the towers of Manhattan through the windows.

Blood Ties

III.

A grid map of Manhattan from Eighty-seventh down to Fifty-seventh Street glowed on the computer. Tachyon punched in a marker. Brought up another thirty-block section. Studied the two red dots. Wished he had a really big screen that could give him a full view of all of Manhattan. Decided that despite the growing crises at the clinic he would have to spend several hours aboard Baby. Her wetware and hardware were far superior to anything on Earth, and she could give him a full-screen view of this mysterious and elusive wild card source.

Victoria Queen, the clinic"s chief of surgery, entered without knocking.

"Tachyon, you can"t go on like this. Spending time with the joker patrols, working with patients, doing research, and racing around with your grandson trying to be superdad."

He dug his thumbs into his gritty eyes, then rapped his knuckles against the CRT screen. "The answer is here somewhere. I just have to find it. Eighteen new cases of wild card in a four-day period. It"s not rational, it shouldn"t be happening. I had hoped it was something simple. A hitherto undisturbed cache of spores. But the dispersal of the cases makes that impossible. I put in a call to the National Weather Service, and they"re up sending weather tapes covering the past two weeks. Perhaps that will be the key. Some climactic and seismic anomoly that has caused this outbreak."

"Pointless and hopeless, and a waste of your already limited time."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n IT!" He used the desk to lever himself out of his chair. "I"ve got the G.o.dd.a.m.n press breathing down my neck, demanding answers, demanding some rea.s.surance for their readers. How long can I continue to make rea.s.suring noises before this becomes a full-scale panic? And just think what Barnett will do with thatl."

She gripped his wrists, pinning his hands to the desk. Leaned in until their noses were almost touching. "You can"t be responsible for every d.a.m.n thing that happens in the world! For gang wars in Jokertown, and right-wing cranks running for President! Or for wild card either."

"I am bred to be responsible. By blood and bone. By a thousand generations. This is my town, my people, MY GRANDSON, AND MY CLINIC, AND YES, MY VIRUS!"

"DON"T BE SO f.u.c.kING PROUD OF IT!".

"I"M NOT!" s.n.a.t.c.hing his hands away, he stormed across the room.

"YOU"RE ARROGANT AND IRRATIONAL!".

"SO WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST? TO WHOM DO I ABDICATE THIS RESPONSIBILITY? WHOM DO I.

CONDEMN TO BEAR THE GUILT AND THE HATE! MY PEOPLE, YES, AND AT BASE EVERYONE OF.

THEM HATES MY GUTS!" Laying his head against the wall, he burst into wild sobs.

The woman"s face hardened. Filling a gla.s.s with water from the bathroom tap, she yanked him around by a shoulder and flung it full in his face.

"That"s enough! Get hold of yourself!" She punctuated each word with a hard shake.

Coughing, he mopped his face, drew a shaky breath. "Thank you, I"m all right now."

"Go home, get some sleep, accept some G.o.dd.a.m.n help. Get Meadows in here to help with the research, and let Chrysalis run the G.o.dd.a.m.n patrols."

"And Blaise? What do I do with Blaise?" He scrubbed at his face. "He"s the most important thing in my life, and I"m neglecting him."

"The problem with you, Tachyon," she said as she walked out of the office, "is that everything is the most important thing in your life."

A routine appendectomy. He shouldn"t have taken the time, but Tommy was Old Mr.

Cricket"s nephew, and you don"t ignore old friends. Tach stripped out of the bilious green scrubs, brushed out his cropped hair, and made a face. He then took a turn through each of the clinic"s four floors.

The hospital had been dimmed for the evening. From various rooms he heard muted televisions, the low hum of conversation, and from one a sad, hopeless sobbing.

For a moment he hesitated, then entered. Powerful mandibles and opaque oval eyes stared out framed by stringy gray hair. The emaciated body beneath the hospital gown revealed it to be a woman.

"Madam?" He lifted the chart. Mrs. Willma Banks. Age seventy-one. Cancer of the pancreas.

"Oh, Doctor, I"m so sorry. I didn"t mean ... I"m fine really. I don"t mean to be a bother... that nurse was so sharp--"

"You"re not a bother. And what nurse?"

"I don"t mean to be a talebearer or unduly troublesome." It was obvious that she was, but Tachyon listened politely. No matter how tiresome a patient might be, he insisted upon courtesy and service from his staff. If someone had violated this most basic rule, he wanted to know.

"And my children never come to see me. I ask you, what"s the good of children if they abandon you when you most need them? I worked every day for thirty years so they could have the advantages. Now my son, Reggie-he"s a stockbroker with a big Wall Street firm-he has a house in Connecticut, and a wife who can"t stand to look at me. I"ve only been to their house once when she was away with my grandchildren."

There was nothing to say. He sat, her hand resting lightly in his, listening.

Brought her a gla.s.s of cranberry juice from the nurses" station, and had a few rather sharp words with the floor staff. Moved on.

The coffee he"d been drinking all day was jumping in the back of his throat, sour with stomach acid. Well, if he was going to feel bilious he might as well get it over all at once. He pushed open the door to a private room and entered.

He could ill afford the s.p.a.ce, but no patient deserved to be placed with the horror that lay comatose behind his door. After forty years of viewing wild card victims he had thought he was inured to anything, but the man who lay twisted on the bed made a mockery of that a.s.sumption.

Caught partway between human and alligator, Jack"s body was warped by the unnatural pressures of the wild interacting with the AIDS virus. The bones of the skull had elongated, producing the snout of an alligator. Unfortunately the lower jaw had not transformed. Small and vulnerable, it hung below the razor-sharp teeth of the upper jaw. Stubble darkened the chin. In the torso area, skin melded to scales. The line between the intersecting areas had split into angry red lines, and serum oozed from the cracks.

Tachyon shuddered and hoped that deep within his coma Jack was beyond pain. For this had to be agony. For years Jack had faithfully, patiently visited C.C.

Ryder. Now, ironically, she had been cured and released into a new life while the faithful, patient Jack had taken her place.

"Oh, Jack, what lover grieves for you, or did he die before you entered this living death?" he whispered.

Lifting the chart, Tachyon read again his notes, which indicated that the AIDS virus did not advance when Jack was in his alligator form.

Memories lay like scattered leaves, black and sear. Tachyon walked among them, flushing with guilt for this was an intrusion. Deep within Jack"s dying mind lay a spark of light, a fitful glitter. The human soul. Deeper yet the trigger that would throw Robicheaux completely into his alligator form. A touch from Tachyon, and the transformation would be permanent.

He was a physician. Sworn to the task of saving lives. Jack Robicheaux lay under sentence of death. The presence of the wild card twined into the code of his cells currently held the AIDS virus at bay. But it merely delayed the inevitable. Eventually Jack would die.

Unless.

Unless Tachyon changed him forever. What was not human could not die from a human disease.

But was life worth any price? And did he have the right?

What should I do, Jack? Do I make this choice for you since you can"t make it yourself,, Was it any different than unplugging a respirator? Oh, yes.

Later, as he leaned back against the elevator wall as it whined slowly to the ground floor, he considered again Queen"s advice that he bring in help. But so much of this only I can do. And there"s only one of me. And everyone wants a piece. Shaking his head like a tired pony, he stepped out into the emergency room.

And was nearly run down by a nurse hurrying past with a vial of the trump.

Thirty-two, he thought, upping the count, and followed her through the screen.

Finn was preparing the injection. Stepping to the gurney, Tachyon began a fast exam. The woman"s blouse was open, revealing the rich cafe au lait of her skin.

Monitors were taped to her chest; a nurse held a mask over mouth and nose. A noxious slime covered the patient"s body, wetting her clothing, pouring from every pore. It was a measure of his physician"s detachment that he didn"t recognize her until he peeled back an eyelid. The nurse removed the mask to give him room to work, and...

Gagging, he pushed aside the smelling salts. Fought free of the restraining hands.

"Are you all right?"

"Doctor?"

"Drink this."

"Forget me!" Clinging like a drunk to a nurse"s arm, he struggled to his feet.

Catching Finn"s wrist, he forced away the syringe. "WHAT THE h.e.l.l ARE YOU DOING?".

"It"s ... it"s our only shot ... it"s wild card."

"IT CAN"T BE! I KNOW THIS WOMAN! SHE"S AN ACE!" The joker recoiled from the madness in Tachyon"s face. The Takisian resumed his examination. Finn pranced forward and gripped him hard. "You"re wasting time! You"re costing her the one chance she"s got! It"s wild card!"

"Impossible! The virus was designed to resist mutation. She"s a stable ace.

She"s can"t be reinfected."

"Look at her!"

Panting, Tach stared from the syringe to Roulette"s oozing body and back again.

"Give it to me!"

His fingers slipped on the foul-smelling mucous film, and the needle sc.r.a.ped across the vein. Roulette cried out. "Wipe this away."

But as fast as they wiped, it bled still faster from her pores. Finally Tachyon jammed home the needle. Ancestors. Let it work. Let this be one time when it works!

But recently it seemed his prayers had only been met with silence.

Roulette was beginning to resemble a thousand-year-old mummy as the moisture leached from her body. Suddenly her lids fluttered open; she stared blankly up into his face.

"Tachyon." A croaking whisper. " I was coming back. To you." She sucked in air-a sound like a dying accordian. "Are you still waiting?"

"Yes."

"Liar. I"m dying. You"re off the hook."

"Roulette." His skin crawled to touch her, but he forced himself to lay his cheek against hers. His tears mingled with mucus.

"You destroyed my life. You and your disease. Finally it"s finishing the job.

I"m ... so ... glad."

Long minutes later Finn tugged Tach away and drew up the sheet. Pain shot through the alien as his knees cracked onto the cold tile floor. Hands balled against his mouth, he fought back sobs. Partly from grief Partly from guilt, for he hadn"t been waiting.

Mostly from terror.

"I got really mad today, but I thought about it like you said, and I didn"t control them."

"Good." Tachyon stared into the refrigerator as if seeking enlightenment from a carton of sour milk and a bowl full of moldy peaches. "What was that?" The boy stiffened. "Oh, Blaise, I"m so proud of you." The rigidity went out of the small body under Tachyon"s tight embrace. "And you"re speaking English. I noticed that, too. I"m just so tired it takes me a few beats to catch up."

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?"