Double solitaire

Chapter Twenty-One

If God is a woman, She looks like that grand old dowager seated in the center.

It was an irreverent thought, and it sent Mark back to an embarrassed contemplation of his thumbnails. Jay Ackroyd was sleeping, supported only by his tailbone and the back of his head in the uncomfortable little chair. Mark figured he’d let the detective sleep unless he started snoring.

While this might be the most critical hurdle Tisianne had yet scaled, for the humans it was stone-cold boring. The entire affair was being conducted in Ilkazal in the private mode, so that an audible word exploded into the tense silence maybe only once or twice a minute.

The hall felt like a rococo courtroom. A mosaic tile floor showed some glorious scene from Ilkazam history, and a skylight faceted like a giant diamond formed most of the roof. The moonlight streaming through those facets broke into its component colors, and rainbows danced and clashed with the assembly’s gaudy clothes.

The seven old crones stared down from their curving dais at Tisianne. They should be passing an eye back and forth, Mark thought, for their gray hair and cold expressions reminded Mark of the Greek legend of the Graeae. Mark wondered why the Doc didn’t collapse beneath the weight of that hostile scrutiny, but she remained a proudly erect little figure with a rainbow snagged in her pale blond hair and dyeing the fabric of the elaborate clothing that had somehow been produced in only a few hours. Mark had a feeling there was some heavy nanotechnology at work here.

There had been a couple of uncomfortable moments dealing with the House tailor. Jay had been loud and crude in his rejection of any suggestion that he forgo the pleasure of wearing a sports coat and slacks. The tailor had retorted that it was beneath his dignity to design for a Tarhiji. Jay had retorted that the guy was a Tarhiji, so what was his fucking problem. And besides which he was better than any damn mincing fairy. Tachyon – no Tisianne, damn it, he had to remember that – had yelled at both of them. Then Taj had entered and gotten results.

Mark glanced over at Ackroyd. His outfit was nice but in no way matched the magnificence of Mark’s suit. The tailor had been overwhelmed by Mark’s size and designed to accentuate the length of the ace’s lanky body. The colors were great, but the little hat kept dropping tassels into Mark’s eyes, and the fluttering ribbons made Mark feel like a cornstalk bedecked to ward off birds.

Zabb came sliding down the row to join them. Mark flinched, and his hand shot down next to his chair to reassure himself of the presence of the blessed briefcase. Mark did another quick count. It hadn’t changed since the last frenzied count an hour before – Four Starshine, four J. J. Flash; three Moonchild, four Aquarius, three Cosmic Traveler.

Traveler had acceded to Zabb’s request and had even joined in the spirit of the plot and improved on the original plan. It was a real bummer that this most cowardly of Trips’s “friends” was forming a bond with this most charming of enemies. Now, with the elaborate pin delivered to Onyze’s suite, Mark just had to wait for the other shoe to drop – for Zabb to kill the kid.

Given that Zabb had tried to destroy Mark’s home planet, it was sort of jarring to be working with him. But goddamn, Zabb could be charming, and he’d certainly thrown his support behind the Doc’s bid to regain his throne and his body. Like early in the evening. Zabb had arrived, taken a look at Tis’s outfit, and vanished again. When he returned, he was carrying a pair of elaborate hair combs that appeared to be cut out of solid emeralds.

“They’re mine,” he explained. “They wouldn’t have suited your coloring in your former guise. In your current one they suit you very well.”

And Mark realized that with their pale, almost white blond hair, Tisianne in her borrowed body and Zabb looked very much alike. Tis was wearing the combs now, the hair caught up over each ear.

Remembering the combs set another synapse firing, and Mark began to worry again about Jay. Ever since the detective’s return with the Doc, he had been sullenly silent, and the lines about his mouth were driven deeper as if he were holding back some raging anger. Trips had probed and had his nose bitten off and spit back at him. All Ackroyd would say was, “Ask our little princess,” in a tone so bitter that it sent Mark’s stomach scurrying for cover against the back of his spine. He hadn’t asked Tisianne – she had enough to deal with, and there was a haunted look in her eyes that made the peaceful, gentle ace want to hit someone as if that could somehow transfer the pain she was feeling.

Zabb slid into the chair beside Mark, slipped an arm through his. I guess we’re buddies now, thought Mark.

“I think we’re in very good shape,” Zabb whispered into Mark’s ear.

Mark nodded, tried to unobtrusively pull his arm free. Just an uptight American, he thought. I can’t get used to all this touching, especially between men.

“I mean, after all, they can’t deny she’s Tisianne.”

“So what happens? They say she’s the Doc, and then she’s ruler of the House?”

“Not quite, they will wait to be advised.”

“As to whether the consensus in the House is to make her Raiyis?”

“Yes.”

“You’re making this sound almost like a democracy.” That laugh like a wolfs yip. “Not hardly. Basically it’s a precaution to make certain the choice isn’t so unpopular that we end up with a family blood feast.”

“That’s coming anyway,” Trips said, depressed and tortured with guilt over Traveler’s involvement in a planned murder.

“You’re far too pessimistic.” Zabb gave Mark an encouraging buffet on the shoulder. Then his attention was drawn to something telepathic that was transpiring on the dais.

The oldest of the old crones folded her hands carefully on the table before her and bowed her head as if in deep and profound thought.

Lifting her head, she began, “Distaffs and sword sides, stirpes and domestics.” It was audible speech, and her focus was over the heads of the nobility, and on the servants clustered about the back wall. “Before we come to the matter before us, it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of the Raiyis.”

A murmur moved like a moaning wind through the crowd, and Mark whipped his head around so hard to stare at Tisianne that he thought he’d snapped his neck. The Doc stood perfectly still, and the blankness of her expression was the giveaway.

“My God, now he’s got to live with that too,” Mark murmured, in his distress losing control of his pronouns.

“Life on your planet has finally given Tis a spine. I’m impressed. I didn’t think she could do it,” Zabb said. His voice redolent with satisfaction, he added, “And it certainly caught Egyon on the hop. That he did not expect out of us.”

The old lady was continuing. “Tell your families, and honor Shaklan with your grief. The city and House will observe three days of mourning beginning tomorrow… May his spirit draw near and guide us.”

“May we do honor for him,” came the litanous response from the assembly.

Briskly the old lady said, “So we dispense with the dead and resume our march to the future.” The sharp old eyes were bent again on Tisianne. “It is clear you are Tisianne, however altered. Welcome home.”

“Thank you,” Tis said, bowing as deeply as her pregnancy would permit.

“On the issue of your elevation this council will convene at midnight and hear the decision of the swords. In the meantime, Taj, you will continue to serve as regent.” The old man rose and bowed, crossed to Tisianne, tucked her arm beneath his, and led her toward the door. The meeting was obviously over.

Mark stood, relieved to have his six-foot-four-inch frame out of a chair designed for midgets, and grabbed convulsively for his briefcase.

“What the hell is a sword?” Jay asked.

“The male head of each distinct breeding line within the family,” Zabb explained.

The crowd eddied about them. Little conversation knots formed and broke, servants threw open doors, accepted a pair of gloves from a passing master, and continued smiling, always smiling. Mark wondered if the Tarhiji were really that happy, or just terrified.

“There are women here,” said Jay suddenly.

“Yes,” Zabb answered,

“And not just the old broads and servants.” Mark winced.

Zabb chuckled. “Yes, so?”

“So where’s the harem?”

“Rarrana is not included in the tour… Unless you’d like to alter your plumbing in exchange for a peek?”

“No thanks, but how come these -”

“They’re sterilized. We don’t keep women in seclusion because they’re women. We keep them there because they’re breeding.”

Zabb swung a chair around with his foot and straddled it. Pulled out the Takisian equivalent of a cigarette case and offered it. Both humans declined. Zabb shrugged, placed the cigarette between his lips, and a servant seemed to come boiling up from beneath a chair to light it.

“Assassination attempts are rarely directed at men. We just settle for them because they’re usually all we can reach, and it’s a convenient way to vent spleen. No, pregnant females are the preferred target. Kill one, and you’ve ruined hundreds of years of careful genetic planning.”

“Gee, the girls must be really touched to know they’re so important.”

“We do value our women,” Zabb said, stung by the sarcasm in the detective’s voice.

“Yeah, as brood mares.”

“Do you ever get to marry for love?” Mark asked.

“We marry for power, we breed for posterity, we love… only rarely.”

“Great culture you got here,” Jay grunted.

They were settled in Tisianne’s old suite. Servants were still arriving with arm-loads of stored furniture, paintings, a computer, musical instruments, holostage. There was at least a lull in the politicking. Tis was slumped on the window seat, staring up at the moonlit glacier crawling like a frozen waterfall over the edge of the cliff. Taj had just entered, and she was giving him her profile.

Coldly she said, “I see you didn’t see fit to preserve my room.”

“I was extremely annoyed with you,” was the unfazed reply. “And as for your father’s office – we went back a lot of years. Also, I was maintaining the illusion he was going to get well someday.”

Tis drew a hand across her forehead. “I’m sorry. Irritability seems to be the domain of pregnant women. Is Skatt coming?”

“On his way.”

“What approach do I take with him? Ideal,” she pushed back her hair, stood, and began to pace. “I don’t know any of these swords. Half of them were children when I was here.”

“There were a lot of deaths forty years ago. A lot of vacancies to fill with too-young candidates. And you’re just a memory, or a figure in a tale to most of them.”

“So they don’t fear me.”

“And you’re not precisely intimidating now.”

Jay looked up from where he was switching channels on the holo. “We could give her a bazooka to hold. The Madonna of the AK-47.”

Tis ignored him. “Where’s Zabb?”

“Delivering a thinly veiled threat to Pshara.”

Tis shook her head. “I wish I could really trust him.” She sighed. “But back to the problem at hand. How do I handle Skatt?”

“Offer him Revenue. He likes money, and he doesn’t respond well to threats.”

“That will annoy Rad’gar.”

“He’s one of Egyon’s pack. Nothing we do will make him happy.”

“And we don’t want him handling the finances anyway,” Tis concluded.

Mark was hanging about the edge of the conversation. At the lull he pushed to her side and took her hand.

“You should, like, take a break. We could… talk.”

She didn’t need to be a telepath to understand his drift. “It’s too fresh to even look at, much less discuss.” She pulled free and walked away.

“It won’t stay bottled up forever,” the ace warned.

“It’s down there with all the other ghouls in the basement. They’ll keep each other occupied until such time as they all break out at once, and I go stark raving mad.”

“Sorry to add to your burdens, your princess-ship,” Jay said. “But just in case I run into Blaise on the street, I better have someplace to send him other than Yankee Stadium. Have you got jails here? Dungeons, whatever? Or will you take deliveries here?”

Tis looked to her uncle. “Do we still have the holding cells in the labs? Where we tested the Enhancer on prisoners?”

“Yes. We still occasionally use them,” Taj said.

“Take Mr. Ackroyd there. Let him see the cells.”

“May I ask why?”

“No,” Tis said shortly.

There was a tap on the door. They both glanced toward it.

“You can handle Skatt without my guidance?” Taj asked.

“I think I can manage.”

Taj bowed and led Jay out another door of the suite.

Tis nodded to a servant, and the carved double door was opened. Arranging her features into a smile of welcome, Tis moved with what grace she could muster to greet him. Evaluated the warmth of admiration in his green eyes as he studied her physical charms. Pretty warm. She gave his fingers a slight squeeze and drew him toward a settee. She was definitely getting the hang of this body.

“This is really charming and intimate. Dinner in an airplane hangar with five or six hundred of your closest relatives.”

“It’s prettier than that,” Mark protested.

“Okay, dinner in a baroque barn. Jesus, do they have to feed this herd at every meal? Doesn’t anybody have a hot plate in their room? Wish I had a hot plate in my room.”

“The Doc needs us here.”

“Bullshit. Even our little princess for a day couldn’t wrangle us a seat at the head table. If shit starts happening, Tachy’s toast.”

Mark wasn’t having any part of Jay’s bad mood, and that pissed the detective off even more. Placidly the gawky ace took another bite of highly spiced meat and mumbled around the mouthful, “You’ll have her out of harm’s way in an instant. I’m not worried.”

“Glad one of us isn’t.”

“I think this is pretty impressive,” Mark said, indicating the dining room.

“What, that they can flop food on the table three times a day? Then I’m really impressed with the Jokertown Soup Kitchen. They probably feed a thousand derelicts a day.”

Mark surveyed the glittering crowd. Musicians performed softly in a recessed alcove set high in the wall. The balconies overhanging the room were filled with a gaggle of very young Takisians peering down at the diners. Nearby stood sentries, rifles cocked across their chests. Servants slipped through the hall clearing dirty plates and replacing empty entrйe dishes with full ones. Service was family-style Chinese. A myriad of dishes to sample, all highly spiced, or very sweet, laid on a bed of a grainlike substance. It had a nuttier flavor than rice and a chewier consistency, and from the way Jay was frowning and pushing it around his plate, it didn’t sit any better on his palate than it did on Mark’s.

“I think I’ve figured out the food,” Mark said.

Jay grunted. “Good, when you figure out where I can get a patty melt and a beer, let me know.”

“This is a cold planet. People in colder climates tend to crave heavily spiced or gamy food and sweets. I’m a little surprised that the ruling class had an ideal of beauty which favors the slender. Usually plumpness is valued in harsher climates… indicates you’ve got wealth. Still, the ordinary folks do tend to be kinda pudgy -”

“Thank you, Professor. Will there be a quiz tomorrow?”

“I’m sorry, I’m doing it again. It’s just… just so interesting.”

Jay was frowning at a languid noble who had dispensed with a chair and instead reclined on a settee by the table. His eyes were closed, and a beautiful young woman hunkered next to him on the floor and carefully fed him morsels from the plate she held in her lap.

“I’m surprised at you. This society hardly embodies the values of the Summer of Love. It’s violent, and these psi lords are a bunch of drones.”

“The highborn aren’t totally useless. The medical advances are, like, a direct result of the research done by the Houses.”

“But it’s done only for their own reasons.”

“Well, yeah, but, like, why quibble with the result?”

Jay checked his watch. It was a reflexive and totally useless glance; it was still set for New York time. “We ought to be getting close to the witching hour. I think it’s time for Tisianne to get control, muster an attack, and take Blaise and this girl. I’m ready to blow this Popsicle stand.”

“I don’t think the Doc has a clue about what to do once he has control of the House. If these Vayawand dudes are guarded like this place, it isn’t going to be all that easy to dislodge Blaise, especially now that he’s the Raiyis.”

The annoyance seemed to sprout like a weed, taking root somewhere in the pit of Jay’s stomach and blossoming in the back of his throat. “Meadows, you know what your ace power is – it’s to be boring and -”

But there was a commotion at the head table, and Meadows’s face had gone a strange, sickly green white color. Jay jerked around and stood so fast his chair crashed over backward. But it wasn’t Tisianne. Instead it was the pouty boy Onyze who was on his feet, hands clawing at his throat, and emitting a thin, tearing scream that was really awful to hear.

Jay had to hand it to them. Takisians were stone-cold calm in a crisis. Guards encircled their charges, there was the piercing hum of lasers being charged, or cocked, or whatever the hell one did with a coherent-light weapon. But no panic, no mass stampede for the exit. In fact the only people running seemed to be Trips and he, and they were headed toward the trouble instead of away from it.

“Dumb,” Jay muttered as he bounded up the steps onto the dais holding the head table.

Zabb had his hands on Tisianne’s shoulders, holding her in place. There was a cold, Medusa-like look on the Doctor’s face, but her body arched toward the suffering young man, yearning to go to his aid: Takisian and human conditioning at war with each other. It was Zabb’s steel grip that decided the outcome.

Egyon reached his boy puppet and ripped open his elaborate vest and shirt. There was a thing, some kind of crystalline insect, attached to the base of Onyze’s throat. Wielding a knife, Egyon flipped the creature off. It hit the table with a brittle sound, skittered a few steps, then froze, and as Jay watched, its structure began to rearrange itself until it resembled a jeweled pin in the design of the sword crest – identical to the one nestled in the lace at Egyon’s throat.

The creepy crawler might be off Onyze’s throat, but it was clearly too late for the young man. Some powerful poison was at work. The death rattle was loud as Egyon lowered the Ilkazam pretender to the floor. Jay expected some kind of respect for the dead, but Egyon sprang to his feet, leaving the sightless eyes staring fixedly up at the painted mural on the ceiling. His hand was in his pocket, and Jay somehow suspected he wasn’t jacking off.

“This is murder. You’ve broken House Peace,” Egyon said.

Zabb laid dainty fingertips against his chest. “I?” He glanced around the circle of nobles. “I think a more useful question is who gave Onyze the ankatai’li?”

Silence like the grave. The eyes of the Kou’nar slid toward Egyon. Anger gave way to confusion gave way to belligerence.

“What?” he demanded truculently.

“My lord,” said one of the nobles. “It was you who placed the badge on Onyze’s lace.”

“Impossible! I didn’t see the boy until we gathered here.”

A bitshuf’di, one of the neutered women, spoke up. “I saw you, my lord. Do you call me a liar?”

Meadows looked like a man who’d had the crap kicked out of him. Jay didn’t exactly understand how Meadows’s ace power worked, but he had a very strong feeling, honed by years of careful observation, that one of the gawky ace’s “friends” was behind the tragic demise of young Oinky and old Eggy’s current predicament.

“A rather drastic way to signal the transfer of your support to Tisianne,” Zabb goaded.

And Egyon bit, firing directly through the material of his pants pocket at Tisianne.

Only Tisianne wasn’t there. A split second before the destructive thread of light could strike her, Zabb flung the girl into Jay’s arms. Her balance was lousy, front heavy as she was. Jay had one foot on the dais, the other down a step. The conclusion was foregone. They went tumbling down the steps to the parqueted floor of the dining room. It suited Jay fine. Overhead he could hear the roar and snarl of weapons fire. And Jay hated guns. Any kind of gun. So he unlimbered his. Making a gun out of his finger, he pointed it at Tisianne.

She grabbed his forefinger and bent it painfully back. “No!” Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Don’t reveal your power. Save it for a real emergency.”

“I’d say this qualifies,” Jay spat as a bullet threw chips off a marble tile.

Guards had formed a protective wedge about the detective and their princess and were blazing away. Jay spent half a second worrying about Trips, hoping the gawky ace had the good sense to keep his head down – he couldn’t stand it. Curiosity won out over his very rational fear of guns and the people who used them. Jay abandoned Tisianne in the center of her nest of guards and went crawling back up the steps to the dais. He was half-afraid she’d follow, but apparently the sex change had endowed the alien with some brains.

Ackroyd cautiously poked his head above the level of the top step in time to see Taj snatch up a rifle from a fallen guard, blow the back of Egyon’s head off, and duck back into cover beneath the table. Zabb, a few feet away, frowned in annoyance. “?***@^? you, I wanted to kill him.”

“I didn’t have time for your posturings,” grunted Taj.

Jay wanted to cheer the old man. The detective didn’t know Tachyon particularly well, but even on short acquaintance there had been so many times when he’d felt the same irritation with all the Takisian bullshit. Taj was a Takisian, but apparently his bullshit threshold was as low as Jay’s.

“Did you arrange this?” Taj asked as he bounced up and snapped off another shot.

On the other side of the dining room a man screamed, clutched his gut, and pitched onto his face. Jay might like Taj, but he was going to be really pissed if the old guy turned out to be a crack shot. Then he comforted himself, there were so many tracers, both laser and bullet, that there was no telling who’d shot the poor dumb bastard.

“Naturally,” Zabb replied, and he fired. Zabb was a crack shot. Of course, thought Jay.

There was no sign of Meadows.

Then, rising on a pillar of flame like a Hebrew phoenix, came an amazing figure, short, wiry, with bright red hair and a sharp, sardonic face. The skintight orange jumpsuit bordered with flames and cut down to the navel was a shout of bad taste – except on Takis.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash opened both hands with an unfolding lotus gesture, and gouts of flame washed from his palms, down the length of the head table. The effect of this apparition on the Takisians was profound. The gun and laser fire stuttered to a halt, there were a few seconds of silence, then whispers ran like playing children around the large room.

“Burning Sky,” breathed Taj, and Jay thought it was an appropriate exclamation.

“Ancestors, how many are there?” Zabb said.

J. J. Flash, twiddling his feet like a faggy ballet dancer, descended to where Tisianne lay huddled in the center of her guards. The heat of his passage was like a sunburn across Jay’s back. Flame dripped off his fingertips, and sparks danced in his red hair.

Hovering over Tisianne, he lifted one hand and bestowed a kiss on the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. “Hey, princess, heard there was a damsel in distress. What dragons would you like slain?”

“You could start by killing the people who are shooting at us,” gritted Tach as she snatched her hand back.

“Sounds like a plan,” and Flash was gone, propelled by a gout of fire that left a singe on the rose marble floor.

The appearance of this fire elemental in their midst had taken the fight out of all but the most dedicated Kou’nars. The rest of the Takisians seemed to have decided that if Tisianne and his cadre had this kind of fire power, they would probably like to be on Tisianne’s side.

A few shots were directed at the flying ace. The bullets affected him not at all, and the lick of laser fire he positively enjoyed, giggling as if it tickled. One bright Kou’nar thought to pick up a pitcher of water and fling the liquid toward the ace. It was a good idea – badly executed. Flash encased him in a suit of fire, reducing his attacker to a cinder.

Taj glanced over at Zabb. “Are you responsible for him?”

Zabb hesitated, grinned. But whatever he said, it was too fast and too complicated for Jay’s rudimentary Takisian. He became aware of Tisianne yelling.

“Jay, tell them to stop congratulating each other about how brilliantly the experiment succeeded and get control!”

Jay yelled back. “Come up here and tell ’em yourself.”

“I can’t. They won’t let me.”

That got his attention. Sure enough Tis was being forcibly but gently restrained by a pair of guards. She looked mad enough to bite nails, and Jay thought that if she really were a woman, he’d hate to be the man who married her.

Nobody seemed to be shooting anymore, so Jay risked a brief sortie into the erect position. “Hey!” he shouted in English. Zabb’s head whipped around. “Her princess-ship wants you to shut the fuck up and take the fuck control of the bad guys.”

The council had reconvened. There was a much larger crowd this time, partly because the rulership of their House was to be decided, but mostly because Takisians were actually a lot like humans. The ones who’d missed the momentous dinner party were pissed and wanted to get at least a taste of the excitement. And who could tell… maybe the fire creature would appear again. Maybe there would be more bloodshed.

Jay circulated through the room while they waited for the seven old broads to show. From the snippets of conversations he could hear and understand, the citizens of the House Ilkazam were positively misty-eyed over the success of their pet virus and regretted that the experiment had not been carried to fruition. Jay had seen the same expression in the eyes of retired Vietnam generals – if only we’d been allowed to really fight. For the Takisians the argument was – if only we’d known how successful the field test had been. We’d have used the virus. We’d rule Takis now.

With a ninety percent fatality rate, Jay wished they had used the damn wild card. He wasn’t feeling too terribly generous toward Takisians in general, and Ilkazam in particular right now.

His perambulations brought him back to where Tisianne and Meadows sat in hunched misery. Their hands were tightly clasped as if the support would somehow help, but they were both drowning, and they knew it. Jay didn’t feel a lot of sympathy.

“He played it so well. The cadets and swords may suspect that he was behind Onyze’s death, but they can’t prove it. Mark” – she reached up and pushed back a straggling tendril of dirty blond-gray hair – “you should never have let him manipulate you so.”

“They were going to kill you, Doc. You and the baby. What was I supposed to do?”

“Let Zabb do his own dirty work -”

“Or you,” interrupted Jay. “You’re pretty good at doing the expedient thing too.”

He hadn’t meant to say it, but the memory of that pitiful, shrunken creature being callously put to sleep rose up and gagged him. Folding his arms across his chest, he started to sit down.

With a sweep of a foot Mark kicked the chair out from under him. Jay landed painfully on his tailbone and found himself staring up and up at the immensely tall ace. There was a light in Meadows’s mild blue eyes which Ackroyd had never seen.

“Don’t be so fucking self-righteous. So you haven’t killed… yet. Maybe you just haven’t faced the time when… like, someone special is in terrible danger, and you’ve gotta… well, you’ve just gotta do… things.” Meadows’ voice trailed away into silence, and Jay was acutely aware that his eyes behind their distorting lenses were awash with tears.

Tisianne’s voice was dead level, but anger hummed along the edges of each word. “If it will make you any happier, Mr. Ackroyd, I can assure you that I am suffering.” She contemplated some internal vision, and it was not a happy one. After several moments she gave herself a shake and resumed. “You can despise me, Mr. Ackroyd, I’m not paying you for your friendship or your approval. I’m paying you – both of you – to protect me, and for you to succeed in that task, you must work together. So at least call truce.”

“Let’s see if I can boil down the flowery Takisian bullshit into plain English. So I can be bitched off at you, but I have to be nice to Meadows?”

“Yes.”

“That I can handle,” Jay concluded as the crowd settled, and the council resumed their chairs.

Responding to a telepathic call, Tisianne left her place in the audience and walked front and center. After a few minutes twenty-three stern-faced men joined her, Taj among them. Despite the portentous expressions it was tough to take any of it seriously. They were all so tiny, and so improbably dressed. Jay kept expecting them to burst into song like the Mayor of Munchkin Land welcoming Dorothy. It actually wasn’t a half-bad analogy, the detective mused, Tachyon as Dorothy.

“Meadows is definitely the scarecrow,” Jay muttered. “I’ll be the tin woodsman. Too bad the cowardly lion didn’t have the stones to board the ship.”

Trips speared him with an elbow, and Jay realized Taj had begun speaking.

“Shaklan is dead. A direct-line heir has returned. I have served as caretaker to the honor and power of this House, but a grave crisis faces us. The time for caretakers is past. I relinquish my office to Tisianne brant Ts’ara.”

“How say the swords?”

It was like high-stakes bidders at a Las Vegas blackjack tournament. A single finger would be lifted, an eyebrow raised, but no words spoken. Jay didn’t know if they were just an uncommonly surly lot, or if they didn’t want to be formally on record.

The old lady gave a wintry smile. “Twenty ayes and three??* amp;##*.” It was a word Jay didn’t understand, but since it didn’t sound like the various forms of negatives he knew, he assumed it meant abstentions. “An unprecedented display of unanimity for the Ilkazam,” she said. “We must be in very grave trouble.”

Nobody responded to her gallows humor. In fact the swords all stood staring down at their toes like unruly little boys faced with an indignant mother. The seven old ladies leaned in toward one another. With their gray-and-white heads and the silver-and-gray dresses, the effect was like watching Stonehenge monoliths gathering for a conference. The confab didn’t last long. The spokeswoman swept the crowd with imperious eyes, then bent that quelling gaze back on Tisianne.

“Tisianne brant Ts’ara, the regency being at an end, and the council having previously established your identity, we place in your hands -”

Meadows slewed around to face Jay. A huge smile split his face, and he gave the detective a thumbs-up signal. Jay forgot how pissed he was. He felt the smile coming and raised his hand -

“Excuse me.” Zabb was sauntering up the central aisle.

“Oh, fuck,” moaned Mark.

“This is no longer Tisianne the son of Ts’ara. This is Tisianne the daughter of Ts’ara.” There was a sharp murmur throughout the watchers. “The position of Raiyis is barred to women. Theirs is a higher purpose. One that my cousin is manifestly fulfilling.” And Zabb laid a hand tenderly on Tisianne’s swollen belly.

The slap rang loud in the silent room.

Tisianne, her hand still upraised, stood quivering with unleashed fury. Zabb kept smiling. Kept his hand on her stomach.

Taj jerked forward, anger and shock making him clumsy. “You miserable abortion. Tisianne is a man.”

“Have you ever seen a pregnant man?” To the council he said, “I agree, the mind is male, but the body… You’ve all borne children. You know where her focus is.” He slapped her belly. “Do you want her leading this House when we are on a war footing?”

“She’ll recover her rightful body,” Taj objected.

“And when she does, I’ll be happy to allow her… er, him, to resume his station.”

“You monster.” Tis’s voice was husky, shaking with emotion. “Without the power of this House I can never recover myself. Congratulations, Zabb, you have what you’ve always wanted, and you didn’t even have to kill me for it.”

Softly Zabb said, “Which is precisely why I arranged it this way.” The nobleman faced the council. There was a manic light in the pale gray eyes. “Rule, Kib’r, is it a man or a woman?”

Jay could see the answer even before the old woman spoke. “Woman.”

“And who is now direct heir?”

“Wait!” yelled Taj. “I am the regent -”

“You abdicated that position,” snapped back Zabb.

“Rule, Intayes! Who now has the right to rule House Ilkazam?”

“You.” No emotion crossed that lined face. It could have been a death mask.

Zabb swung Tisianne up into his arms. Jay expected the alien to start spitting and fighting. Instead she seemed stunned. Zabb started walking for the door. Mark, dragging his briefcase, went blundering in pursuit, barking his shins on chairs, tripping with agitation. Jay followed. They caught Zabb at the door. Pissed as he was at the little shit, the blank look in Tisianne’s eyes frightened Jay. He wondered if this latest blow had snapped her mind.

Zabb held up a restraining hand, palm out. “No, gentlemen. I am taking my sweet cousin to quarters more appropriate for her sex and condition. And unneutered males are not permitted.”

There must have been a telepathic summons, for suddenly the two humans were caged by a ring of guards.

Trips remembered late-night and drunken conversations with Tachyon when the alien had talked of the murder of his mother. Of the plots and counterplots that swirled about the harem, and he called out desperately to Zabb’s retreating back, “She’ll be killed there.”

Zabb paused, glanced back. “Oh, I think not. After all, she has family there too.”

“Then she really hasn’t got a prayer, you miserable fuck!” Jay said.