ALWAYS WANTED TO MEET YOU. I READ ABOUT YOU WHEN I WAS JUST A KID."
"Turn it down," Tach croaked weakly.
"OH. SURE. Is that better?" The volume diminished sharply. "It's noisy in here, and behind all this armor I can't always tell how loud I sound. I'm sorry if we scared you, but re couldn't take the chance of you saying no. We need you."
Tach stayed just where he was, shivering, shaken. "What do you want?" he asked wearily.
"Help," the Turtle declared. They were still rising; the lights of Manhattan spread out all around them, and the spires of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building rose uptown. They were higher than either. The wind was cold and gusting; Tach clung to the shell for dear life.
"Leave me alone," Tachyon said. "I have no help to give you. I have no help to give anybody."
"Fuck, he's crying," the man in the frog mask said. "You don't understand," the Turtle said. The shell began to drift west, its motion silent and steady. There was something awesome and eerie about the flight. "You have to help. I've tried on my own, but I'm getting nowhere. But you, your powers, they can make the difference."
Tachyon was lost in his own self-pity, too cold and exhausted and despairing to reply. "I want a drink," he said. "Fuck it," said frog-face. "Dumbo was right about this guy, he's nothing but a goddamned wino."
"He doesn't understand," said the Turtle. "Once we explain, he'll come around. Doctor Tachyon, we're talking about your friend Angelface."
He needed a drink so badly it hurt. "She was good to me," he said, remembering the sweet perfume of her satin sheets, and her bloody footprints on the mirror tiles. "But there's nothing I can do. I told the police everything I know."
"Chickenshit asshole," said frog-face.
"When I was a kid, I read about you in Jetboy Comics," the Turtle said. "`Thirty Minutes Over Broadway,' remember? You were supposed to be as smart as Einstein. I might be able to save your friend Angelface, but I can't without your powers. "
"I don't do that any longer. I can't. There was someone I hurt, someone I cared for, but I seized her mind, just for an'' instant, for a good reason, or at least I thought it was for a good reason, but it… destroyed her. I can't do it again."
"Boo hoo," said frog-face mockingly. "Let's toss 'im, Turtle, he's not worth a bucket of warm piss." He took something out of one of the pockets of his leather jacket; Tach was astonished to see that it was a bottle of beer.
"Please," Tachyon said, as the man popped off the cap with a bottle-opener hung round his neck… ip, Tach said.
"Just a sip." He hated the taste of beer, but he needed something, anything. It had been days. "Please."
"Fuck off," frog-face said.
"Tachyon," said the Turtle, "you can make him."
"No I can't," Tach said. The man raised the bottle up to green rubber lips. "I can't," Tach repeated. Frog-face continued to drink. "No." He could hear it gurgling.
"Please, just a little."
The man lowered the beer bottle, sloshed it thoughtfully. "Just a swallow left," he said.
"Please." He reached out, hands trembling.
"Nah," said frog-face. He began to turn the bottle upside down. "'Course, if you're really thirsty, you could just grab my mind, right? Make me give you the fuckin' bottle." He tipped the bottle a little more. "Go on, I dare ya, try it."
Tach watched the last mouthful of beer dribble down onto the Turtle's shell and run off into empty air.
"Fuck," said the man in the frog mask. "You got it bad, don't you?" He pulled another bottle from his pocket, opened it, and handed it across. Tach cradled it with both hands. The beer was cold and sour, but he had never tasted anything half so sweet. He drained it all in one long swallow.
"Got any other smart ideas?" frog-face asked the Turtle. Ahead of them was the blackness of the Hudson River, the lights of Jersey off to the west. They were descending. Beneath them, overlooking the Hudson, was a sprawling edifice of steel and glass and marble that Tachyon suddenly recognized, though he had never set foot inside it: Jetboy's Tomb. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"We're going to see a man about a rescue," the Turtle said. Jetboy's Tomb filled the entire block, on the site where the pieces of his plane had come raining down. It filled Tom's screens too, as he sat in the warm darkness of his shell, bathed in a phosphor glow. Motors whirred as the cameras moved in their tracks. The huge flanged wings of the tomb curved upward, as if the building itself was about to take flight. Through tall, narrow windows, he could see glimpses of the full-size replica of the JB-1 suspended from the ceiling, its scarlet flanks aglow from hidden lights. Above the doors, the hero's last words had been carved, each letter chiseled into the black Italian marble and filled in stainless steel. The metal flashed as the shell's white-hot spots slid across the legend:
I CAN'T DIE YET, I HAVEN'T SEEN THE JOLSON STORY
Tom brought the shell down in front of the monument, to hover five feet above the broad marble plaza at the top of the stairs. Nearby, a twenty-foot-tall steel Jetboy looked out over the West Side Highway and the Hudson beyond, his fists cocked. The metal used for the sculpture had come from the wreckage of crashed planes, Tom knew. He knew that statue's face better than he knew his father's.
The man they'd come to meet emerged from the shadows at the base of the statue, a chunky dark shape huddled in a thick overcoat, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Tom shone a light on him; a camera tracked to give him a better view. The joker was a portly man, round-shouldered and well-dressed. His coat had a fur collar and his fedora was pulled low. Instead of a nose, he had an elephant's trunk in the middle of his face. The end of it was fringed with fingers, snug in a little leather glove.
Dr. Tachyon slid off the top of the shell, lost his footing and landed on his ass. Tom heard Joey laugh. Then Joey jumped down too, and pulled Tachyon to his feet.
The joker glanced down at the alien. "So you convinced him to come after all. I'm surprised."
"We were real fuckin' persuasive," Joey said.
"Des," Tachyon said, sounding confused. "What are you doing here? Do you know these people?"
Elephant-face twitched his trunk. "Since the day before yesterday, yes, in a manner of speaking. They came to me. The hour was late, but a phone call from the Great and Powerful Turtle does pique one's interest. He offered his help, and I accepted. I even told them where you lived."
Tachyon ran a hand through his tangled, filthy hair. "I'm sorry about Mal. Do you know anything about Angelface? You know how much she meant to me."
"In dollars and cents, I know quite precisely," Des said. Tachyon's mouth gaped open. He looked hurt. Tom felt sorry for him. "I wanted to go to you," he said. "I didn't know where to find you."
Joey laughed. "He's listed in the fuckin' phone book, dork. Ain't that many guys named Xavier Desmond." He looked at the shell. "How the fuck is he gonna find the lady if he couldn't even find his buddy here?"
Desmond nodded. "An excellent point. This isn't going to work. Just look at him!" His trunk pointed. "What good is he? We're wasting precious time."
"We did it your way," Tom replied. "We're getting nowhere. No one's talking. He can get the information we need. "
"I don't understand any of this," Tachyon interrupted. Joey made a disgusted sound. He had found a beer somewhere and was cracking the cap.