WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS 293

the building next door to Warren’s. He’d been out walking the dog around
the block—a daring act at that time of the night—and seen a peculiar-
looking man emerge from the alleyway that ran behind the apartments.
The man stopped for a moment, not ten feet away, looked the intrepid
dentist straight in the eye, and shambled off into the Park.
The story jibed with that of the other two witnesses, one of whom was
the super of Warren’s building, who had been investigating a broken-in
back door when he was clubbed down from behind, the other a woman
who had for reasons best known to herself been looking down into the
alley from the apartments across. They had both glimpsed a large, pallid,
manlike shape coming out the back door and lurching down the alley.
But neither could offer anything but the most general description.
Tachyon had only to brush the dentist’s mind to know his story was
untrue. Not a lie; he believed it implicitly. Because it had been implanted.
Reluctantly, Tach dug deeper. The old pain of Blythe had receded, he
no longer went clammy inside at the mere thought of using his mental
powers; it wasn’t that. The nature of the implant clearly revealed what
sort of being had made it. All that remained was to uncover which indi-
vidual from among a very few possibilities. He had a good idea.
In a way it didn’t matter. The implications were already inescapable.
And monstrous beyond anything Tach had imagined.

“I mislike that place,” grumbled Durg at’Morakh bo Zabb Vayawand-sa

as they mounted the rickety back stair to their flat in a less than fashion-
able corner of the Village.
Rabdan sneered back over a gold shoulder-board. “How can you cavil?
You never went inside.”
“The Gatekeeper, the one with the strange dead face, he wouldn’t let
me.”
“Ha! What would the Vayawand say, if they knew one of their pre-
cious Morakh sports permitted a groundling to say him nay? Truly, their
sperm runs thin.”
Durg flexed a hand that could powder granite. The tough white twill
of his uniform sleeve parted at his biceps with a sound like a pistol shot.
“Zabb brant Sabina sek Shaza sek Risala commands I fight only as need-
ful to the mission,” he grated. “Even as he commands me to serve one as

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 294 ACES HIGH

unworthy as you, to test my devotion. But I warn you: some day your in-
competence will lose you the master’s pleasure. And on that day I pluck
your limbs off, little man, and squash your head like a pimple.”
Rabdan tried to laugh. It stumbled, so he tried again. “So hostile. Such
a pity you could not have seen: a woman flayed, a maid dismayed; quite
stylish entertainment. When the groundlings are destroyed some rare
talents shall be lost, I must admit.”
They came to the top landing and their door. Rabdan paused outside,
furrowed his brow as his mind probed within. It would not do to be am-
bushed by groundling burglars. Durg stood silently a few steps below. His
kindred were of the Psi Lord class, but like most Morakh he was virtually
mind-blind. If Rabdan detected danger, then he would fulfill his function.
Satisfied, Rabdan unlocked the door and stepped inside. Durg followed,
closed it behind him. From the hallway to the bedrooms stepped a figure.
“Tisianne! But I searched—”
“You of all my cousin’s people could never drive a probe I could not
deflect,” said Tachyon. “It bodes ill for us all that I find you here. Indeed,
perhaps for all of Takis.”
“But worst for you,” Rabdan said. He stepped to one side. “Durg, dis-
member him.”
“Zabb’s monster!” Tach hissed, despite himself.
“The little prince,” Durg said. “This will be sweet.”
A second figure appeared at Tachyon’s side. “Doctor, who is this?”
Moonchild asked, squinting a little in the bright light of the single lamp
on the low table.
She saw a small man— even to her, unmistakably Takisian—with
fi ne sharp features, metallic blond hair, pale eyes that bulged and rapidly
blinked. The being lumbering across the threadbare carpet of the little
living room she found harder to classify. He was short, barely above five
feet, but terrifically muscled, literally almost as broad as tall. Yet his head
was a Takisian elf-lord’s, long and thin, austere of feature: beautiful. The
contrast was jarring.
“My cousin’s toady Rabdan,” Tach said, “and his monster, Durg.” For
all that he had lived four decades among jokers Tach could scarcely stom-
ach sight of the Morakh killer. This was not a near-Takisian Earther
twisted into a grotesque misshape; this was the sight most abhorrent to
Tach’s people, a perversion of the Takisian form itself. Part of what made
Morakh so terrible in war was the revulsion they instilled in their foes.

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“He’s a creature bred by a family hostile to mine. An organic killing

machine, powerful as an elephant, trained to perfection.” Durg had halted,
perfect brow furrowed at this new arrival. “Even by our standards they’re
almost indestructible. Zabb took this one in a raid when he was a pup; he
transferred his loyalty to him.”
“Doctor, how can you speak of a human being that way?”
“He’s not a human,” he gritted, “and watch him.”
Squat as a troll, Durg lunged with a speed no human could match.
But Moonchild wasn’t strictly human; whatever, she was, wherever she
came from, she was an ace. She caught gold-braided sleeve behind the hand
that grabbed for her, tugged, pivoted her hips. Durg shot past to slam into
the wall in an explosion of plaster.
“How did you find us?” Rabdan asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Once we found that man whose mind you tampered with, I knew
Takisians were still on Earth,” Tach said, sidling away from Durg, “and
from the ineptness of technique I deduced it could be none but you. Once
we knew what to look for, you weren’t that hard to trace. Your appearance
is distinctive, and you would hardly cower in an abandoned warehouse and
subsist off rats and stray cats like the swarmlings.
“Of course”— he nodded at Rabdan’s white-and-gold outfit— “I never
guessed even you’d be fool enough to venture out in Zabb’s own livery.”
“The groundlings find us the height of fashion. And would you have
swans go about in the guise of geese?”
“When the swans’ mission”— Durg came up from the depression he’d
made in the plasterboard, moaning, shaking off plaster powder like water—
“is to pass for geese, then yes.”
Durg’s hand lashed out in a vicious knifehand that caught Moonchild
in the ribs and threw her into the bar that separated living room from
kitchen. Wood splintered. Tach started forward with a cry. Grinning,
Durg came for him.
Moonchild lunged from the wrecked bar, took two mincing steps for-
ward, kicked Durg in the side of the knee. His leg buckled. She slammed
a second kick into the side of his jaw. He groaned—his hand flashed up,
caught her ankle, yanked her forward into reach of his other arm.
He grappled for a backbreaking hold. Tach started forward again. Rab-
dan’s hand came out of his tunic with the flat black glint of an arrester.
“Go for him and I’ll finish you now, Tis.”
Moonchild slammed an elbow down on top of Durg’s head. Tach

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 296 ACES HIGH

heard teeth slam together like a trap. She swung cupped palms viciously
inward against his ears. He groaned, shook his head, and she writhed
free.
. . . Durg was on his feet facing her. She kicked for his chest. He blocked
without effort. She flew at him with bolas fury, kicking for head, knee,
groin. He gave back several steps, then as she struck again leapt up and
lashed out with both feet, kicking Moonchild across the room to smash
against the outside wall.
Tachyon hesitated. He could attempt to seize Durg’s mind, but that
ran him up against the sole psionic ability the Morakh possessed, an all-
but-insurmountable resistance to mental compulsion. While he concen-
trated on Durg, Rabdan would kill him . . . if he tried to fight down
Rabdan’s rather feeble screens, Durg would kill Moonchild. He reached
for his pistol, hoping the girl would not think too harshly of him—
She stirred. Durg was shocked; when he kicked someone that hard,
they stayed down. He hurled himself forward, heedless.
She met him halfway. Grabbing his tunic front she fell backward with
her boot in his belly, projected him over her. The combined force of his
leap and her thrust drove him like a rivet through the wall, four stories
above the street.
“Oh, dear,” she said, standing, “I hope I didn’t hurt him.” She ran to
the hole. “He’s still moving.” She clambered out without hesitation.
Guessing she could take care of herself Tach let her go, still all aback.
Durg was as strong as some powerhouse human aces. Moonchild, though
she had metahuman strength, was nowhere his match—she had mas-
tered him with skill alone, Durg the master slayer.
Rabdan came out of freeze and threw open the door. Tachyon’s mind
grabbed his like a mailed fist. And squeezed.
“And now, friend Rabdan,” he remarked, “we are going to talk.”

It was bad. Rabdan was an incompetent and more than something of

a coward. Yet he was a Psi Lord, and at the last he behaved as one, the
worse for him. No normal shield he might erect could keep the subtle
Tisianne from prying the last crumb of information from his brain. But
Rabdan in extremis went heroic, put the deathlock on, laid his name upon
it. All that he was opposed Tachyon, and no subtlety, no artifice, no

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