Fear that man

use the blackjack. He could kill all three of you- split-split-splat- just like that.” The tapkeeper wrung his hands like dishcloths. He cast a glance at all three of them, searching for some sign of weakness, then looked back to Buronto.
        Almost as if he had seen a signal, Buronto started across the room, directly toward them.
        “Please leave,” the tapkeeper said.
        “I think maybe we had better,” Sam suggested.
        “Why?” Gnossos asked. “The blackjack bit? He won’t hurt us. Remember, every pain we feel, he feels ten times over.”
        “But-” the tapkeeper began.
        “You’re talking about me,” Buronto said, stepping up to their table. And his voice was like the voice of a canary-high and sweet and melodic. The trio stared at one another for a moment, astounded. The tiny voice again seeped from the massive throat. “Were you talking about me?”
        Sam tittered, then let go and burst out laughing. Gnossos followed with his thunder-laugh. Hurkos fought it, seeming to be comfortable in his recently self-imposed melancholy and reluctant to leave it.
        Buronto spoke again: “Stop laughing at me!”
        The word “laughing” was so high-pitched that his voice cracked in the middle of it. And Hurkos too burst out laughing, spraying the table with saliva he had been fighting to hold back with the laugh.
        “Stop it! Stop it!” Buronto shouted.
        But the tension within the three of them had been at a peak. They had been restless, nervous, on edge since the encounter with the jelly-mass. The constant state of expectancy had honed their nerves to sharp, thin wires that were ready to vibrate wildly if only slightly plucked. And big Black Jack Buronto’s voice-or the strange anachronism that passed for a voice-had been the tuning fork that had set them all roaring as the tension drained. They laughed wildly. They laughed without control, tears streaming down their faces. They laughed all out of proportion to the joke.
        “Oh, no, no, no,” the tapkeeper moaned. He chanted it over and over as if it were a litany.
        “Shut up!” Buronto roared squeakily. His mouth was foaming. Little flecks of mad white… He brought a colossal fist down on the simu-wood table, knocked all the glasses off. But this too only served to send the trio into paroxysms of laughter. Hurkos was leaning on Gnossos, and Sam had his head thrown back, howling.
        Black Jack muttered something incomprehensible, all meaning flooded away by burning rage. Clasping one fist in the other, he smashed the wedge of his flesh onto the tabletop, shattered the thing into two halves that stood separately for a moment until the weight of the broken top pulled the laminated leg apart and the table collapsed into the laps of the three Naturals. They ceased their laughter.
        Buronto now had a face like a jungle animal. Great swatches of ugly blue discolored the uniform red of his countenance. His teeth were bared and foam-flecked. He snarled and spat and screeched unintelligible things between his teeth. He was mad as all hell and all hell could not have prevailed against him had he turned on it. He latched onto Hurkos’ chair, ripped it out from under the Mue and sent him crashing to the floor.
        “What the hell?” Gnossos said to the tapkeeper. “He’s an Unnatural, but he’s also a Sensitive!”
        “He’s a Sensitive, yes,” the tapkeeper shouted as. Black Jack smashed Hurkos’ chair into the wall again and again, more violent with each vicious swing. “He’s a Sensitive and feels the victim’s pain. But he was more of an Unnatural than the doctors knew. He was also a masochist!”
        The color drained from the poet’s face as snowy realization swept in to take its place. “Then he likes being a Sensitive because-”
        The bartender finished: “He likes to feel pain!”
        Buronto had finished with the chair. There was nothing left of it that could be pounded against the wall. Splinters and scraps of plastic lay over the floor and surrounding tables. The wall was worse for the encounter too. Black Jack Buronto, obviously, would not care if he killed a hundred men. A thousand. He turned to them, plodding through the mounting wreckage. He tossed aside anything that stood in his way, knocking over tables, smashing chairs and lamps and robotenders. He lashed out at Hurkos, struck a blow that sent the small Mue tumbling across another table and