Gulgowski hefted the briefcase he carried. "We've got the evidence here to nail the bastard, Cap'n. Come here'n take a look. "
Brennan dropped his bow, stepped forward to look into the briefcase Gulgowski proffered, ignoring the shouts behind him, ignoring the blasting roar that reverberated through the corridor.
Gulgowski, holding out the briefcase toward him, staggered. Brennan looked at him. It was odd. He had only one eye now. The other had been shot out and thick green fluid was running sluggishly down his cheek. But that was all right. Brennan seemed to remember that Gulgowski had been shot in the head before, and lived. He was here, after all. He looked at the briefcase. The handle melted into the flesh of Gulgowski's hand. They were one thing. The mouth of the briefcase was lined with rows of sharp teeth. It jerked at him, the teeth snapping.
He felt a sudden shock as something hurled itself at his knees from behind. He went down and lay with his cheek pressed against the floor of the chamber, feeling its pulsating warmth, and glanced back in annoyance.
Fortunato had tackled him. The ace released his hold on Brennan, kneeled, and drew the. 45 again. Brennan looked up at his men. Fortunato shot pieces of them away, part of a face here, a bit of an arm there. Fortunato cursed in a steady stream as he fired the. 45 and Brennan's men died again. Brennan felt a surge of tremendous anger. He half-stood and closed his eyes. The roar of gunfire stopped as Fortunato ejected an empty clip, but the stench of powder was in the air, the thunder of gunfire was in his ears, and the hot, humid smell of the jungle was in his nose. He opened his eyes again. Ghastly caricatures of men, faces and body parts shot away, dripping green slime, were shambling toward him. They weren't his men. Mendoza had died in the raid on VC headquarters. Gulgowski had been killed by Kien later that night. And Minh had been killed years later by Kien's men in New York City.
Although his brain was still foggy, Brennan picked up his bow, and shot his last explosive arrow at the simulacra. It hit the caricature of Minh and exploded, sending gobbets of biomass everywhere. The backblast knocked Brennan down and took out the other two simulacra as well.
Brennan took a deep breath, and wiped slime and crushed protoplasm from his face.
"The Swarm Mother took their images from your mind," Fortunato said. "The other things were just buying time so it could prepare those walking wax-dummies."
Brennan nodded, his face hard and set. He turned from Fortunato and looked at Mai.
She was almost gone, nearly covered by the gray-pink flesh of the alien being. Her cheek rested against the pulsating organ and the half of her face that Brennan could see was untouched. Her eye was open and clear.
"Mai?"
The eye turned, tracking the sound of his voice, and focused on him. Her lips moved.
"So vast," she whispered. "So wondrous and vast." The light in the chamber dimmed for a moment, then came back.
"No," Mai murmured. "We shall not do that. There is a sentient being in the ship. And the ship itself is also a living entity. "
The floor of the chamber shook, but the light remained on. Mai spoke again, more to herself than Brennan or Fortunato.
"To have lived so long without thought… to have wielded so much power without consequence… to have traveled so far and seen so much without realization… this shall change… all change. .."
The eye focused again upon Brennan. There was recognition in it that faded as she spoke.
"Don't mourn, Captain. One of us has given herself to save her planet. The other has given up her race to save… who knows what? Perhaps some day the universe. Don't be sad. Remember us when you look to the night sky; and know we are among the stars, probing, pondering, discovering, thinking innumerable wondrous things."
Brennan blinked back tears as the eye in Mai's face closed. "Good-bye, Captain."
The singularity shifter began to throw off sparks. Fortunato slung the pack off his back. He looked down at it, startled. "I'm not doing that. She… it."
They were back on the bridge of Tachyon's ship. The three men stared at each other.
"You succeeded?" Tachyon asked after a moment.
"Oh yeah, man," Fortunato said, collapsing on a nearby hassock. "Oh yeah."
"Where's Mai?"
Brennan felt a stab of anger cut into him like a knife. "You let her go," he cursed, taking a step toward Tachyon, his hands clenched into quivering fists. But his eyes told who he really blamed for Mai's loss. He shuddered all over like a dog throwing off water, then abruptly turned away. Tachyon stared at him, then turned to Fortunato.
"Let's go home," Fortunato said.
After a while, Brennan would remember Mai's words, and wonder what philosophies, what realms of thought, the spirit of a gentle Buddhist girl melded with the mind and body of a creature of nearly unimaginable power would spin down through the centuries. After a while, he'd remember. But now, with a sense of pain and loss as familiar to him as his own name, he felt none of that. He just felt half past dead.
JUBE: SEVEN
There was a knock on the door. Dressed in a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and a Brooklyn Dodgers tee shirt, Jube padded across the basement and peered through the spyhole.
Dr. Tachyon stood on the stoop, wearing a white summer suit with wide notched lapels over a kelly-green shirt. His orange ascot matched the silk handkerchief in his pocket and the foot-long feather in his white fedora. He was holding a bowling ball.
Jube pulled back the police bolt, undid the chain, lifted the hook from the eye, turned the key in the deadlock, and popped the button in the middle of the doorknob. The door swung open. Dr. Tachyon stepped jauntily into the apartment, flipping the bowling ball from hand to hand. Then he bowled it across the living-room floor. It came to rest against the leg of the tachyon transmitter. Tachyon jumped in the air and clicked the heels of his boots together.
Jube shut the door, pressed the button, turned the key, dropped the hook, latched the chain, and slid shut the police bolt before turning.
The red-haired man swept of his hat and bowed. "Dr. Tachyon, at your service," he said.
Jube made a gurgling sound of dismay. "Takisian princes are never at anyone's service," he said. "And white isn't his color. Too, uh, colorless. Did you have any trouble?"
The man sat down on the couch. "It's freezing in here," he complained. "And what's that smell? You're not trying to save that body I got you, are you?"
"No," said jube. "Just, uh, a little meat that went bad." The man's outlines began to waver and blur. In the blink of an eye, he'd grown eight inches and gained fifty pounds, the red hair had turned long and gray, the lilac eyes had gone black, and a scraggly beard had sprouted from a square-cut jaw.
He locked his hands around his knee. "No trouble at all," he reported in a voice much deeper than Tachyon's. "I came in looking like a spider with a human head, and told them I had athlete's feet. Eight of them. Nobody but Tachyon would touch a case like that, so they stuck me behind a curtain and went for him. I turned into Big Nurse and ducked into the ladies' room down from his lab. When they paged him, he went south and I went north, wearing his face. If anyone was looking at the security monitors, they saw Dr. Tachyon entering his lab, that's all." He held his hands up appraisingly, turning them up and down. "It was the strangest feeling. I mean, I could see my hands as I walked, swollen knuckles, hair on the back of my fingers, dirty nails. Obviously there wasn't any kind of physical transformation involved. But whenever I passed a mirror I saw whoever I was supposed to be, just like everyone else." He shrugged. "The bowling ball was behind a glass partition. He'd been examining it with scanners, waldoes, X rays, stuff like that. I tucked it under my arm and strolled out."