"h.e.l.lo, Blaise. Had a good time for the past week?"

"I've come for two things. My stones and you."

Her smile was crooked and a little hateful. "Your problem, my son, is that you've always thought your stones were bigger than they are."

" I can make you love me!" Blaise cried.

"No, you can make me hate you. Love you have to earn."

Cody was standing stock still. A pillar of ice and darkness. Blaise ran his eyes down that slim tall form. Noted her hand tucked into the fold of her lab coat.

The glint of the scalpel between her fingers. He smiled.

"Cody, you're so stupid," Blaise crooned. The scalpel fell from nerveless fingers. "I don't give a f.u.c.k how you feel."

The coat fell with a sigh to the linoleum floor.

"Because I can. . ."

The blouse joined the coat on the floor. ". make you. . ."

She stepped out of her skirt. "... love me."

Had it connected, the blow would have ruptured a kidney.

But Blaise's karate training gave him a split-second warning. The young man spun away from Tachyon's thrust kick and caught his grandfather by the ankle. Floor met chin with head-ringing force, and Tachyon tasted blood as his teeth snapped shut on his tongue. He rolled to the side. Blinked in consternation as the heel of Blaise's boot slammed into the floor where his head had rested only a second before. Tachyon got his legs beneath him and bounded to his feet. Blaise charged, and the older man fended him off with the artificial hand. The digits couldn't be bent to form a proper spear hand, but the hard plastic fingers still managed to sink a satisfying distance into the teenager's solar plexus.

Blaise let out a sound like a dying air brake, and Cody lunged for her surgical gear as Blaise's mind control broke. "Would you f.u.c.k this macho bulls.h.i.t!" she screamed. "And just mind-control him!"

For an instant Tachyon was distracted by the sight of the completely naked Cody s.n.a.t.c.hing up and wielding a chest separator like a modern-day Hippolyte.

First rule of combat never, never, never get distracted. Blaise landed a palm strike to the face. With a dreadful mushy sound the cartilage in Tach's nose let go, and blood fountained over his chest, forming a red bib on the elaborate peach-colored coat.

Belatedly the Takisian brought up his hands in defense. He and Blaise circled each other warily.

Feint, feint. Tachyon lashed out with his mentat's power and struck the gla.s.s-smooth surface of Blaise's shields. Struck again and a tiny cobweb of cracks appeared in the structure. At this rate it was going to take until next Tuesday to breach the boy's shields. And Tach didn't have that long.

Too much booze and not enough exercise was taking its toll. He was panting like a ruptured hog. Blaise landed a body blow that resurrected memories of broken ribs from the year before.

Suddenly Cody was there. With a deft twirl of the chest separator she landed a walloping blow to the back of Blaise's head. He staggered, but then Cody froze and began advancing stiff legged on Tachyon.

"You see, Granpere." Blaise's smile was feral. " I can control her and fend you off. Mentally and physically. All at the same time."

Blaise's coercive ability was the most powerful Tach had ever confronted, but it was brute force. The subtleties of high-level mentatics were beyond him.

Contemptuously Tachyon batted aside Blaise's grip on Cody. Interposed himself between the teenager and the woman. His mental shields enfolded her close as an embrace.

Cody was raging. Her thoughts ripped off her like sparks off a shorting fuse.

d.a.m.nd.a.m.nd.a.m.n. Stags. Runtingbed.a.m.nedstags. Me a d.a.m.n shuttlec.o.c.k. Notatoy!

Releaselmakefree!

Cannot. Dare not. Tachyon sent to her. Help me, he begged.

Tachyon licked blood from his upper lip and endured three punishing body blows as he closed with Blaise. Clawlike, the artificial hand closed about Blaise's arm just above the elbow. It could exert enough pressure to crush a metal cup.

Its effect on human tissue was also quite satisfying. Blaise screamed, and Tachyon's nostrils flared with wild, joyous pleasure as he slammed his left hand over and over again into Blaise's face.

Touch her, will you? No! None but me! She is mine! Mine! MINE!

Blaise tried a ball shot, but Tach was too quick for him. The blow landed on his thigh. The older man responded with a hammer blow to the boy's nuts. A scream ripped through the morgue.

Tachyon could feel Blaise's mind control scrabbling at his shields, but the teenager was in too much pain, too disoriented by hate and interrupted l.u.s.t to muster any effective challenge to Tach's power.

Suddenly there were hands tearing at his shoulders. "Stop it! Stop it! You're going to kill him."

Tach snarled, ignored her, continued the pleasurable business of reducing his enemy to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp. The hands were gone. Tach heard the slap of Cody's bare feet on the tile as she ran.

Agony! The formaldehyde burned like acid in the cuts on his face, his eyes. Tach and Blaise both fell back. And at last it penetrated. Blood l.u.s.t, the killing.

He had been on the verge of murdering his own grandchild. Horrified, Tachyon stumbled back, lost his footing in the slick blood, and went windmilling to the floor.

Blaise, his face a mask of blood, cradling his mangled arm, snarled down at Tachyon. "You're dead!"

Crablike, Blaise scuttled for the door. Flung it open and bolted from the morgue. Tachyon shook off the fear that held him and struggled to his feet.

"Where are you going?" cried Cody. "Must... catch him. Apologize. Help him."

"It's too late for that!"

Tach tottered for the door, but the pain from his broken nose made him dizzy.

Tach sent out a telepathic bellow for Troll and was amazed when the nine-foot-tall joker appeared a second later.

"Doc, are you okay?" the security guard asked. "Of course he's not okay,"

snapped Cody.

Troll opened and closed his mouth several times as he contemplated the stark-naked chief of surgery.

"Blaise," Tach mumbled around a split and rapidly swelling lip.

"He lit out of here like a scalded cat," said Troll, then added ruefully. "Sorry I'm so late getting here, but I knocked myself clean out."

"Help me get Dr. Tachyon to emergency," Cody ordered. "We've got to fix that nose."

"Put on some clothes," ordered Tachyon.

"What's the matter? You've never seen a naked woman before?"

"I do not wish the entire world to see my woman." "Your woman? Your woman?"

Tach retreated from her acid laced thoughts. "Slip of the tongue," the Takisian muttered weakly.

"Owwwww! What are you using?" Tachyon complained nasally. Cotton wadding and splints clogged his nose, and his throat was becoming sore as he struggled to breathe through his mouth. "An entrenching tool?"

"Don't be such a baby." The probe hit the steel tray with a metallic clatter.

"You're going to need a new nose. Any preference?"

"How about just like the one I had."

"Don't waste a golden opportunity"

"Why should I change it?" It annoyed him that she didn't like his nose.

"It was trifle on the long side," Cody said coolly. "It was patrician and aristocratic."

"It was a honker."

Tach absorbed this. Reluctantly admitted, "My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother always hated my nose."

"Then allow me to be creative."

"All right."

Cody worked in silence for several minutes, then a little gruffly she asked, "How did you know?"

"We were halfway to Tomlin International when I realized I had forgotten a grant application."

"The one from HEW?" she interrupted. "Yes."

"I've got it. I inadvertently picked it up when I was in your office this afternoon. I'm sorry."

"Sorry? You should thank whatever ancestors guard your back. So fortuitous a gift should not be demeaned. Anyway, Riggs started back, and at about Fifth Avenue I heard you screaming your head off. Riggs spared no effort, and as a result we had a police escort all the way to the clinic."

"Well ... thanks." She made a minute adjustment, and Tach sucked in a pained breath. "I seem to be making a habit of having you rescue me."

"It is my pleasure."

"Well, it's no pleasure for me. I'm accustomed to taking care of myself."

"You would do the same for me," said Tach gently. Cody prefaced her words with a long sigh as if she regretted the emotion that drove the response. " I suppose I would."

That girl was back. Lips skinned away from his teeth at Blaise whirled on her.

"Why the f.u.c.k are you following me?"

"You look like you need that place to go." The angle of her cigarette as it hung limply from her lips seemed to mock him.

"I don't need d.i.c.k from you."

" I can show you something you'll like," Molly Bolt said.

Blaise smiled. "You're a really skinny, ugly little runt. I doubt your p.u.s.s.y's going to be much nicer."

The girl's face closed down like a series of slamming doors. "You're so f.u.c.king stupid. Okay, fine, we'll show you."

He felt the pressure of a mind. Then a second, a third, more and more joined in a desperate attempt to do something to him. Molly's tough-girl act was starting to fray at the edges. Blaise grinned at her. Reached out and closed his power about the watchers in the shadows. Last of all he took Bolt. It felt sweet to save her until last. Blaise commanded, and eight kids walked out of the shadows of the alley. Stood shoulder to rigid shoulder with their leader. Molly's eyes raged at him.

"What are you?" whispered a girl whose white-blond hair formed a shimmering nimbus about her little face. Blaise considered the question for a long time. It deserved a lot of consideration. Finally he said, "Inhuman." Blaise patted down Molly Bolt and pulled out a package of cigarettes. Lit one. Took a long drag.

"Now, what was it you wanted to show me?"

"Read my mind," spat Molly.

It angered Blaise that he couldn't. Tachyon would have been able to. That cranked the anger a little higher. "What are you going to do with us?" Molly asked.

"Sell you as lawn jockeys." The laugh emerged as a tight little whinny.

"Let us go ... please," cried the blond girl. "You wont f.u.c.k with me?"

" I swear it," said Molly, pleading a little now. "We need you. Now I know why."

"What were you going to show me?"

"Let us go."

Blaise released them. Truth was, his overstretched mental powers were starting to quiver like a too tightly wound guitar string. But his little humans never suspected.

Molly ran a hand across the spikes of her multicolored hair. Sauntered to the mouth of the alley. The sidewalks were filled with rush-hour humanity. The sun sank like a bloated red sack into an ocean of brown-green smog. In the canyons between the buildings night had already fallen. "So, pick one," said Molly.

"One what?" asked Blaise.

"Person," said a skinny kid whose face seemed to be one angry blackhead.

"For what?" Blaise asked. He hated to ask. It made him look stupid.

"To humiliate," said the blond teen in her soft littlegirl voice.

"Or kill," offered another of the gang.

Blaise scanned the crowds. Listened to the blare of car horns. The thrum and rumble of hundreds of tires racing across the uneven asphalt of Broadway.

"Hurry" prodded Molly Bolt.

Blaise ignored her. Eventually he spotted what he was looking for. A carefully combed head of carrot-red hair, a business suit on the inexpensive side of nice.