Read [Wildcards 10] - Double Solitaire for Free Online Page B

in intently. "-- is paltry when compared to that of a Hitler, a Pol Pot. We're talking about a boy, a desperate boy who is doing his best to protect and care for his people. If you would stop throwing soldiers at him and try talking --"
    "We don't negotiate with terrorists!"
    "Since when did jokers become terrorists?" Tach shouted.
    Zappa stepped in as peacemaker. "I'd call the jumps an act of terrorism."
    "You're lumping two very diverse groups with competing interests into a single entity. Bloat -- Teddy -- represents the jokers, is trying to protect them, and the Ideal knows they have suffered at your hands."
    "How many jokers are on that island?" von Herzenhagen demanded.
    "How many times do you want to hear the same words? I don't know."
    "How the hell could you not know? You were on that fucking rock for seven months!"
    Tach was furious now at his tone, the hardness of the wooden chair, the whole damn situation. "And for the first five months I was locked in a basement, and the remaining two in an attic! I wasn't given a guided tour!"
    "A guess," Zappa said soothingly.
    "A lot -- thousands maybe."
    "You're lying." Von Herzenhagen's face was inches from hers. Tach's heart gave a skip, and nausea clawed at her guts. "Ellis Island is a quarter of a mile of ship ballast."
    His hand closed on her wrist, and her slender control snapped. Tach jerked hard to the left, sending herself and the chair careening to the floor.
    "Holy Christ!" Zappa's voice distant and above her.
    Both the men dropped to their knees next to her. The male heat washed off them in waves. She could smell the stale cigarette smoke on von Herzenhagen's breath. He gripped her shoulders, and Tach began screaming, a thin, tearing sound shattering off the brick was.
    "Don't hurt me! Ancestors, please don't hurt me!"
    "Then tell us what we want to know," von Herzenhagen said.
    "Jesus shit, Phil," Zappa snapped. "She's... he's scared to death."
    "Tell me!"
    "There are... caverns... miles and miles... of them. Please, please, don't hurt me," Tach whimpered. She had curled into a fetal position, arms folded protectively across Illyana.
    With a forefinger Zappa pushed up her sleeves, lightly touched the bandages. "Phil, lay off her now, okay?"
    The slamming of the door was the reply.
     
    The accommodations were nicer than the Rox, but it was still a cell. The window gave her a view of Ellis Island, and Tachyon wondered if that was deliberate. She whiled away the hours watching military aircraft cut the skies over New York Harbor.
    The sun went down, and the castle glittered with lights. Like stars peeking through massed thunderclouds. An Ab screamed past and disturbed from their rest a flock of winged creatures; they exploded off one of the tower battlements like wind-torn smoke.
    Which would win in the coming conflagration? Tach wondered. Fantasy or technology? Oh, Teddy, they are going to destroy you and your poor little fairy-tale kingdom.
    She half expected a reply. For months she and the joker governor of the Rox had maintained first a dream, and then a true telepathic communication. He had loved her and wooed her and finally found the strength to help engineer her escape. Too bad the freedom had lasted only five days. A lot of people had died to secure that brief interlude.
    Gathering her feeble powers, Tach actually did reach out and mind-search for the Outcast. The telepathic signal seemed to be reflected back to her. The increase in Bloat's powers had closed his mind as well as his kingdom to her. And, realistically, what could he do to aid her this time, this mammoth mountain of oozing flesh topped with the head and torso of a nineteen-year-old boy?
    With a sigh Tach abandoned the view and returned to her bed. They at least kept her supplied with books, newspapers, a television. The drawback was she could count the passing days in the changing dates. She read until sleep dragged at her lids, then snapped out the light and fell headlong into what she hoped