Wild Cards [09] Jokertown Shuffle Read Online Free PDF Page A

physical world. She would fade until nothing was left.
    Tachyon looked up at Brennan. "We'll take her to a security room on the top floor," Tachyon said in a low voice. "I'll examine her thoroughly there."
    They went down the corridor, up an elevator to the top floor, then down another corridor that was dark and obviously rarely used. The room they took Jennifer to had a steelreinforced door and thick wire mesh on the windows. Once inside, Brennan carefully lifted her onto the bed and watched anxiously as Tachyon examined her.
    "Will she be all right?" Brennan finally asked after Tachyon straightened up, a distant, worried expression on his face." Her wounds," Tachyon said, "are not life-threatening. You did a good job of field-dressing them, and I can carry on from there. She should be in no danger from them." Brennan detected a hesitancy in Tachyon's voice. "She will be all right?"
    Tachyon's eyes, as he looked straight at Brennan, were uncertain. "There is something else... wrong. Terribly wrong. I could not touch her mind."
    Brennan stared at the alien physician. "She's dead?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice. Father Squid put a steadying hand on Brennan's right forearm as Brutus moaned softly from the head of the bed.
    Tachyon shook his head. "Look at her, man. She still breathes. The blood still rushes through her veins. Her pulse is steady. Faint, but steady."
    Tachyon seemed to be speaking in riddles, but the years Brennan had spent in a Zen monastery made him used to that. Tachyon was making a koan, a Zen riddle designed to teach a subtle lesson about the nature of life.
    Brennan's mind seized on that familiarity of form like a life raft tossing about on the ocean of emotion raised by the possibility of Jennifer's death. "When is life like death, and death like life?" he said so softly that Tachyon and Father Squid could barely hear him. He looked from the priest to the doctor. "When the mind is gone," he finished.
    Tachyon nodded. "That's correct. The strange thing is, I can detect no organic reason for her... emptiness."
    "Was she attacked on the mental plane?" Father Squid asked.
    Tachyon shook his head. "I could detect no damage to indicate forcible entry and removal of her mind. It's almost as if it'd been lost ... somehow. . ."
    "Can you find it again?" Brennan asked.
    Tachyon looked at Brennan, uncertainty in his eyes. "I wouldn't even know where to begin," he said simply. Brennan groaned and grabbed the bed's headboard with enough force to crush a section of its tubular piping. "There's Trace," Father Squid said.
    "Trace?" Tachyon snorted and shook his head. "That charlatan!"
    Brennan looked at Father Squid. "What are you talking about?"
    "A mysterious ace who calls herself Trace. No one seems to know much about her, but she has strange mental capabilities. She can find nearly anything that's been lost by `looking' back on its pathway of existence."
    "Can she find lost minds?" Brennan asked. "I doubt it," Tachyon said firmly.
    Father Squid shook his head. "I don't know," the priest said. "She has other rather odd powers. Or claims to."
    "Get her," Brennan said. "Get anyone who can help."
    "I'll try," Father Squid said doubtfully.
    "If you can't bring her here," Brennan said forcefully, "I will."
    The priest shook his head. "No amount of coercion would ever work on Trace. If she wants to help you, fine. If not, nothing on earth will ever make her change her mind. And she is the wrong person to anger."
    "So am I," Brennan said.
    "Don't make a hard situation more difficult," Father Squid pleaded.
    "Okay." Brennan took deep breaths to calm himself. "Go make the call, or whatever it takes to get this Trace here. Tell her I'll do anything I can, anything she wants, if she'll only help."
    Father Squid, eyes closed, nodded. "I already have," he said.
    Latham chivvied the last bit of eggs Benedict onto his fork with the last half of the last muffin on the plate sitting on Kien's desk. "Bloat is getting to be