"Is something wrong?"
"No, child," said George/Victor. "He is merely surprised to see us getting along so well. You have terrified so many of my predecessors."
"But not you," said Blaise. Then he added to Tachyon, "He's not scared of anything."
You had better be afraid of me! Tachyon shot at the KGB agent telepathically.
No, we hold one another in the palms of our hands. "Blaise, go to your room. This gentleman and I need to talk."
"No."
"DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!"
"Go, child." George/Victor coaxed him with a gentle hand. "It will all be all right." Blaise gripped the older man in a fierce hug, then ran from the room.
Tachyon flung himself across the room and poured a brandy with hands that shook with fear and shock.
"You! I thought you were out of my life! You told me you were retiring. It was finished. You lied-"
"Lied! Let's talk about lying! You withheld something I needed. Something which cost me everything!"
"I… I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, come now, Dancer, I trained you better than that. You deliberately withheld the information about Blaise. You have enough tradecraft to have known the value of that little piece of information."
Hamburg, 1956. A shabby but clean boarding house, and victor doling out booze and women in limited doses while he trained and questioned the shattered Takisian. A few years, and they had kicked him loose to continue his descent into the gutter. He had given them all that he had, and it hadn't been enough. The secret had gnawed at him for years, but thirty years was a long time, and he had begun to think himself safe. And then had come the phone call during the final leg of the World Health Organization tour, and his KGB control was back in his life.
"My superiors learned of Blaise, his potential and power, but I who trained you and ran you was left ignorant. They did not assume it was stupidity, but rather duplicity. They drew the only conclusion." His raised eyebrows drew the answer from his former pupiclass="underline"
"They assumed you had rolled over, become a double agent."
Victor grimaced a bit at the theatrical phrase. The brandy exploded in the back of his throat as Tachyon tossed it down. Some explanation, some justification seemed necessary.
"I wanted him safe from you."
"I would say I am the least of his problems."
"What do you mean? What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
"Is that a comment on me?"
"Good god, no. I merely point out that we live in dangerous times."
"Victor, are they looking for you?" Tachyon asked, not certain if he referred to the Russian's KGB masters or to the CIA.
"No, they all think I'm dead. All that remains is a charred car and a pair of corpses burned past recognition."
"You killed them."
"Don't look so shocked, Dancer. You too are a killer. In fact we have more in common then you might think. Like that child."
"I want you out of my life!"
"I'm in your life for good. You better get used to it."
"I'll fire you!"
Demyenov's voice froze him before he had taken three steps. "Ask Blaise."
Tachyon remembered the hug. Never in the weeks since he had smuggled Blaise out of France had the child given him so affectionate a gesture. The boy obviously loved the grizzled Russian. What would it do to Tach and the boy's relationship if he now abruptly removed this man? He sank onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands.
"Oh, Victor, why?" He didn't really expect an answer, and he didn't get one.
"Oh, yes, since we're going to be friends you should know my true name. Friends don't lie to each other. My name is Georgi Vladamirovich Polyakov. But you can call me George. Victor is dead-you killed him."
Addicted to Love by Pat Cadigan
The view of the city from Aces High was breathtaking, even inspirational. Beached on the shores of the afternoon, Jane stared blindly down at it from the kitchen window, frustration and unhappiness doing their usual waltz in her stomach. Behind her the kitchen staff worked away at winding down the afternoon luncheon service before preparing for the dinner custom, politely ignoring the fact that she'd left the salad they'd made for her untouched. Her appetite was poor these days. Lately she had even abandoned the pretense of wrapping the food up for later and tossing it out on the sly.
She knew there were whispers that she'd gone anorexic, not exactly the best advertisement for a place such as Aces High. It was like a bad joke on Hiram, after he'd increased her responsibilities at the restaurant from hostessing to pinchhit supervising. Hiram was pretty weird himself these days, but he wasn't shedding any weight. He'd been on a roundthe-world goodwill tour. Hiram Worchester, Goodwill Ambassador. It beat the hell out of Jane Dow, Mafia Dupe.
Memories of the time with Rosemary drove her deeper into depression. She missed her; rather, she missed the person she'd thought Rosemary had been and the work she'd thought she'd been doing for her. It had all sounded so fine and noble trying to counteract the antiace, antijoker hysteria that had been building up, fueled by hysterical extremist politicians and evangelists. Rosemary had been a real hero to her, someone with a shining light around her; she'd needed a hero very badly after all the nastiness with the Masons and the terrible, grotesque murder of Kid Dinosaur. Her own brush with death had not left much of an impression on her, except for the contact with that horrible, evil little creature called the Astronomer. She had seldom thought of it afterward, and Rosemary had been the antidote to the Astronomer's poison.
Until March, when she began to find herself thinking that it might have been better if Hiram had just let her plummet to the street.
She seemed to have an unerring instinct for getting mixed up with exactly the wrong people. Maybe that was her real ace power, not the water-calling ability. She could hire herself out as a bad-guys detector, she thought sourly, change her name from Water Lily to Dowsing Rod. Yes, I just love these people, I'd follow them anywhere, do anything for them-call the cops, they must be white slavers and kiddie pornographers.
Her mind gave her an image of Rosemary Muldoon, smiling at her, praising her for her hard work, and she felt a pang of disloyalty and guilt. There was no way she could think of Rosemary as a truly bad person. A big part of her still wanted to believe that Rosemary had been sincere about the work, that whatever else she had been involved with as the head of a Mafia family, Rosemary really had wanted to do something for the victims of the wild card virus.
Yes, she thought fiercely, there was plenty of good in Rosemary, she wasn't like all the others. Maybe something awful had happened to her that had driven her to accept and embrace the Mafia. She could understand that; God, could she understand it.
Her mind shoved aside the memory and came to rest on the man named Croyd. She still had the phone numbers he'd given her. Anytime you want some company, someone to talk to… I bet I could listen to you for hours. Maybe even all night, but that would be up to you, Bright Eyes. No one had ever showed quite so much panache flirting with her. Mirrorshades Croyd, calling her Bright Eyes; she was unaware of smiling at the memory. There had been no link exposed between him and Rosemary's organization, Either it was buried too deeply or he'd been another idealist like herself. Since she wanted to believe it was the latter, that most likely meant it was the former-and she was still tempted to take out those phone numbers and surprise him by calling him. There was no way she could ever really bring herself to do it, which could well have been why he'd given her the numbers in the first place.
Her whole life was upside down and backward. Maybe that was what the wild card virus had really done to her, fixed it so she would live as the butt of every practical joke the world could play on her.