Double solitaire

Chapter Twenty-Four

There was a quality reminiscent of the little boy as Jay Ackroyd stood with his nose pressed against a floor-to-ceiling port and watched the Takisian ships go about their mysterious and shiply business. Tisianne seemed inclined to ignore the detective, but Mark gave her a nudge and jerked his head at Jay.

“You should, like, introduce Jay to your sisters.”

Tisianne turned wide gray eyes on him. “Why?”

Despite the solemnity of the occasion Mark couldn’t fully suppress the little smile that tugged at his mouth. “’Cause when he gets a load of your sisters, it’ll, like, bum him out big time that he rejected Rarrana.”

“I like that,” said Tis, and led the little band of Sennari women over to the human.

Lurching along behind them, Mark felt like a particularly ungainly basset hound mothering a clutch of baby chicks. At first he’d been surprised that the women were allowed out of Rarrana, but Roxalana had pointed out it was only the children of the late lamented Shaklan. Even for the funeral of the Raiyis, Ilkazam wasn’t going to risk most of its breeding females.

It took a light touch to the shoulder to draw the detective’s attention away from the vista of stars and ships.

“Jay, I wish you to meet my sisters. Sisters, Jay Ackroyd.” The six Sennari women acknowledged the detective with regal little inclinations of their golden heads.

“We had despaired of ever meeting you,” said Roxalana, as always the spokeswoman for the sisters.

Jay regained control of his jaw and forced out, “Yeah, well, when Tachy’s out in the wide world, I’m there to guard her.”

“How very noble of you.”

“I also wanted to see a Takisian funeral.”

“Somewhat less noble of you.”

In this time of danger it wasn’t prudent to empty the House for Shaklan’s funeral, but there still seemed to be a lot of people milling about Ship Home, both Zal’hma at’ Irg and Tarhiji.

The Ilkazam orbital platform was not only a military installation, it was the breeding facility for the living ships. Hence the name, hence the hundreds of ships of all sizes, shapes, and ages drifting about, grazing on the stellar dust, and huddling close to the platform as if seeking to say farewell to their former Raiyis.

Tis and her sisters went off to prepare the body of heir father. Mark joined Jay at the port. Ships were still arriving. Through a secondary port set in the lock, He could watch the ships actually enter the docking bay. There was already a ship at rest there, a ship without lights or ornamentation. Mark could see the white wounds where the decorations had been removed. As each ship flew back out of the bay, it made a point to brush sides with the funeral ship – for so Mark assumed it had to be. Mark suddenly flashed on a memory of Egyptian pharaohs, and he hoped the faithful steed didn’t have to share the fate of its master. It seemed kind of barbaric for the Takisians, but they were such an odd mix of violence and elegance that you never knew.

The last mourners arrived, and the outer lock cycled closed. In answer to some telepathic message the crowd entered the bay and formed double ranks with those closest in relationship to Shaklan nearest to the ship. Taj then came walking down the center carrying the body of his brother-in-law. At various points he would pause, and family members would place tokens – mostly folded bits of foil, but occasionally very valuable pieces of jewelry – in the folds of the corpse’s clothing and whisper into its ear.

Each of the sisters had some small object. Tisianne only leaned in and kissed the cold lips. Taj stared hard at her. Tis waved him on. The old man vanished into the ship.

Pandasala leaned in. “No gift, no proof of virtu for our father?”

Tis’s faced seemed shuttered. “Nothing I could give him would forestall the curse – if he decides to curse me.”

Taj emerged moments later, his arms empty. The corpse had been left in the ship. The mourners retreated behind the lock, and the outer door cycled open. Silently the dark ship lifted off and flew out into the blackness of space.

“Where are they going?” Jay asked.

Tis remained silent, staring out at the stars.

Roxalana’s brow twitched briefly in a small frown as she regarded her brother, then she answered. “No one living knows. The ship that carried them in life carries them in death and takes them… somewhere.”

“They don’t, like, commit suicide by diving into a sun or something, do they?” Mark asked, eager to have that concern assuaged.

“No, no,” Roxalana said. “The body is preserved by the cold and vacuum of space. We want our dead to know where their bodies rest.”

“Why?” Jay asked.

Pandasala replied, “A ghost without a body to return to will take up residence in a living descendant – or so the superstition holds.”

Cillka spoke up. “A crash, fire, any accident that destroys the body is almost a worse tragedy than the death itself.”

“And the little gifts?”

“All our actions are designed to either appease or find favor with the ancestors. As one of those ancestors heads out, we like to remind them of how wonderful we are. So compositions, poetry, a novel, a scientific achievement, artwork, we send something along.”

“Christ, if you could find the cosmic cemetery, a grave robber would have a field day,” Jay said.

“I think the ships would prevent that,” was Melant’s rather dry reply.

“Ships.” Jay snapped his fingers. “Hey, I better not miss my bus. Catch you later.”

“What an extraordinary man,” Roxalana murmured.

“Is that a compliment?” Mark asked.

“Hardly.” She laid the tips of her fingers on his wrist. “Vindi, you may escort me to my ship.” As they moved away, she added very quietly, “I am very pleased that you are guarding my brother.”

Jay had picked a crowded shuttle with more than the normal complement of Tarhiji aboard. It had the virtue of being away from Zabb, and none of the watchdogs the Takisian had placed on Jay wanted to ride with the hired help, so for the moment Jay was free from surveillance. It was the first step in his plan to escape Ilkazam and head for Vayawand. Somebody had to stop farting around and snatch Blaise. Otherwise he and Meadows had become permanent residents.

The ship landed in the great courtyard in front of House Ilkazam, and most of the Tarhiji headed for the gates ready to return home after a long day of pampering the shitheads. So far luck was favoring him. Jay’s fruitbar clothes were a little fancy for a servant, and he was a little tall to pass easily, but his coloring was pure Tarhiji, and nobody really looks at servants. Right? Or so he hoped as he ducked his head and scuttled sideways into the shelter of a number of other bodies.

Several more shuttles had landed, and Jay spotted a couple of his bird dogs looking frantically about for him. They didn’t look at the gaggle of servants heading for the tram.

Slick as snot off a hog’s back, he thought as they passed through the gates and the great panels slid shut behind them.

“The calnite, please,” Tisianne said, and indicated a syringelike device. Cap’n Trips gingerly plucked the instrument from among its fellows and placed it in Tisianne’s hand.

“Is this going to hurt?” asked the grubby, tear-stained six-year-old whose broken arm was the object of Tisianne’s attention.

“No.”

“That’s what Manka said when she told me to jump… but it did.”

The lower lip thrust pugnaciously forward, but the effect was somewhat marred by an unhappy wobble.

“Maybe now you won’t do silly things just because people tell you to.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t do this.”

“Maybe you would like a swat?” Tis asked severely.

There was a screen up which prevented the child from seeing how his arm had been peeled open, skin and muscle laid back to reveal the broken bone. Tisianne had already fitted the ragged ends back together. Now, bending in close, she delicately placed the tip of the syringe at the juncture and sent the genetically altered bacteria into and onto the bone. There it would follow its genetic mandate and grow bone.

“Do you guys clone? You gotta know how. Your technology’s advanced enough,” Mark suddenly asked.

“We can, but we don’t.”

“Why not?”

“When a culture is more concerned with fitting old minds in young bodies, and loses interest in young minds in young bodies, that culture is dying.” She flashed Mark a quick smile. “We grow children the old-fashioned way. Also, you clone enough, and genetic read errors creep in.”

“A copy of a copy of a copy.”

“That’s right.” Tis finished sealing the soft tissue with a sterile fixative that left only a pale pink line.

Tach touched a panel, and the screen flashed once and vanished. Grunting a bit with effort, she lifted her little patient off the table and set him on his feet. The cradle mother was waiting outside the cubicle.

“As good as new,” Tach said as she handed over the boy.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” sighed the other woman.

The child was staring down at his arm with excitement and wonder. “Look, it isn’t pink no more. My line is white. Maybe Momma won’t ever know.”

“There’s a wonderful human phrase that applies in this situation. Say ‘fat chance,’” Tis said.

Mark and Tis went strolling. Rarrana was huge, and Mark sensed he’d only seen a fraction of it.

“Zabb’s put a big negatory on giving me a lab,” Mark said.

“He’s hoping you’ll run out of drugs. Then you and I will both be without friends, and he can kill me with impunity.”

“I’m tellin’ you, man, Zabb doesn’t want you dead.”

“Mark, you are gullible, naive, and sweet. You think everybody has a touch of goodness in them.”

“I know Blaise doesn’t,” Mark defended. “And I know Zabb doesn’t want you dead.”

They had reached an intersection of several corridors. One wall looked out of place, breaking the symmetry of the architecture. Tis suddenly stopped and stared at that wall for a long, long time. Mark reached hesitantly out and touched her hair.

“Doc?”

“This is where my mother died.”

The ace’s head swung back and forth like a puzzled crane’s. “I thought she, like, fell down stairs or something?”

“There used to be a stairway here. Father had it destroyed… the entire wing walled off. Her suite was down there.”

So much of Takisian life, particularly a Takisian woman’s life, seemed centered indoors. It heightened Mark’s sense of claustrophobia. And this place was really giving the ace the creeps.

“Hey,” he blurted. “Let’s go outside while there’s still some light left.”

Tis shook herself free of her reverie. “While there’s still some autumn left. It will be winter soon.”

They went to the private garden off Tisianne’s suite, an odd diamond-shaped plot of ground that seemed to have been created more by architectural oversight than any plan. High walls in four different styles and three different colors peeped coyly through the leaves and trumpet-shaped flowers of a climbing vine. It was like a fat woman hiding her physical shortcomings behind gauzy veils and hoping the covering would distract the eye.

As usual there was a fountain making water music, but a sharp wind was warping the shape. Dark clouds were scudding across the sun like a nightmare’s mane dulling the crystal fire of the crushed-quartz path that wove through the parterre flower gardens and trees. Since their last walk it had been raked back into its curving pattern, and now here they went raping the perfect symmetry with crude footprints. It made Mark a little crazy. Every day he wrecked some person’s life work, and yet he never saw the phantom raker.

They came to roost on a bench beneath what Mark had dubbed the grape arbor for lack of a better phrase. It was an arbor, there was fruit growing on it, and the smell was very alluring, but a sampling produced effects like a shot of bad Mexican water. Mark knew, he had succumbed to temptation.

Tis sighed heavily, leaned back on one hand, and rested the other high on the bulge point of her belly. Sunflower, Mark’s wife lo these many years ago, had assumed just such a position when she’d been pregnant with Sprout. Maybe all pregnant women did. A universal in any culture. In any species. On any planet.

“I haven’t asked before, but, like, are you handling this?”

“No, I never thought it would get this far. I was sure Kelly would have to handle, well… the messy bits.”

“It’s about a month away, right?”

“Yes.”

“You want to talk about, like, uh, how you’re feeling?”

Tis laughed, a hollow sound devoid of humor. “I’d almost rather talk about my father, and that walloping load of guilt.” Mark opened his mouth, but she forestalled him with an upraised hand. “Just kidding. Fear is easier to face than guilt. And that’s what I’m feeling. I’m absolutely, totally terrified. I don’t want to have this baby. Somebody else has got to have this baby for me.” She levered herself to her feet and paced nervously up and down in front of him. “I have been shot, beaten, poisoned, slashed, and raped. Pain is an old companion to me. But this pain terrifies me. I’ve seen women in hard labor…” Her voice trailed off, and she stared out at the eastern sky where the first evening stars were just beginning to show. “Maybe Jay will come ambling back with Blaise and my body in tow.” She turned back to Mark. “I have that fantasy a lot. Stupid, isn’t it?”

Very slowly, for the words cost him, Mark said, “I used to go to sleep at night and think that if I just hoped long enough or prayed hard enough, when I woke up in the morning, Sprout would be all right. She wouldn’t be retarded. We all have crazy fantasies.”

Even an imagination as fertile and creative as Jay’s couldn’t turn Ilkala into New York City. No self-respecting New Yorker would build office buildings in pale lavender, lime green, dusty rose… the list of offensive pastel colors went on and on. And while the Takisians built tall, they built tall wrong. The multistory buildings couldn’t really be called skyscrapers, they were too spindly for that. Meadows, in another of his endless, fucking lectures, had explained that too. Something about how Takis had a relative mass about one-third? Two-fifths? – some damn number or other – of Earth norm, so the gravity was less, and buildings could look anemic.

And everybody could be a flit, thought Jay sourly as he surveyed his fellow passengers on the tram. It seemed a prosaic description for an impeccably clean means of conveyance which had no apparent means of propulsion. It hummed lightly up the deep valley to within a mile of the House Ilkazam, depositing servants, and the occasional slumming psi lord, and went humming back to the city. If the New York subway system was a tenth this nice – He cut off the thought ruthlessly. He didn’t want to like anything about Takis in his present mood. The seats. Yeah, the seats were way too small. Not comfortable at all.

Mollified by finding fault, he returned to a sour contemplation of his physical surroundings. He had no idea where to exit the tram. The rush of events hadn’t left him with much time to peruse the guidebooks. What were the sights and attractions of Ilkala? Did Takisians write guidebooks? Did Takisians take vacations? He tried to picture the Takisian equivalent of a Hawaiian shirt and failed utterly. Some things man was not meant to see.

At least there was a bizarre familiarity to the entire commuting ritual. In place of briefcases the business people possessed wafer-thin laptop computers that were attached by fine filament wires to a throat patch. Jay presumed they were all dictating information to the critters rather than typing. Seemed sort of cumbersome. Other people read (the books were shimmering projections at eye level, which adjusted for a shift in your posture) or listened to music on tiny radios disguised as ear clips. The competing musical styles formed whispers in the air. Apparently Takis had avoided the boom-box phenomenon.

Yeah, as cranky as they all are, they’d come over and beat the crap out of you for infringing on their ear space, Jay mused.

The number of young moms and young dads with babies and toddlers in slings or glider prams were about equal. Apparently child rearing was an equal-opportunity task among the Tarhiji. And then there were the old, all of whom were treated with the gravest courtesy.

The tram sighed to a stop, and about half the passengers rose and began to disembark. Though they were clearly in a financial and business district, Jay decided to go with the flow. He joined the mass exodus.

“Excuse me,” Jay said in halting Sham’al. The woman turned and looked at him with an expression of polite inquiry. “What is this office that you’re going into?”

“Jhaconda and Stirpes. We’re providers of @^ amp;*.” Static again. Jay shook his head. She tried to explain. “We guarantee objects against loss or damage. People too.”

She vanished into the building, and Jay accosted another worker well dressed, at least by Takisian standards. And got the same answer. Again. And again. He’d either hit the wrong street, or everyone on Takis was either a pooftah or an insurance salesman. It was really depressing. Jay was beginning to wish he’d followed the young moms and dads, or the old grandmas and grandpas shopping or wherever they were going.

Interspersed with the office buildings were shops of various kinds. Jewelry, shoes, clothes, electronic gadgets. As he strolled and gawked, certain facts pummeled their way past the resistant barriers in his mind. The streets were very clean. No garbage in the gutters. No graffiti marring the pastel walls. There were lots and lots of tiny parks complete with the obligatory Takisian fountain, flowers, grass, and trees. And no homeless people sleeping in them. No homeless huddled like shapeless sacks in doorways or shuffling down the sidewalks accosting passersby for money.

Maybe they kill ’em and eat ’em.

Or maybe there weren’t any. It didn’t jibe with the implicit and (in his brief experience) the fucking explicit cruelty of the culture, or the elitism of the psionic overclass. Then Jay reflected on his brief acquaintance with Tachyon – the paternalistic attitude the alien held toward humans in general and jokers in particular. The whole noblesse oblige act. Probably the motive was pride – there aren’t going to be any hungry or homeless people in our cities, by damn – but the result was good, grudging though Jay’s admission of that fact might be.

They think they’re so goddamn special, Jay thought resentfully, though no psi lord was in view to trigger the reaction. And it’s just a fluke of genetic mutation which could be a universal gift if the elegant lords and ladies would deign to mix their precious bodily fluids with some of the lower order.

No, that wasn’t the problem. Metaphorically and literally speaking, the telepaths would fuck the mind blind with the greatest alacrity. They just wouldn’t breed with them.

Jay wished he had someone with whom to share these thoughts and revelations, and then suddenly the emotion that had been tugging at the edges of his mind like a shy child came clearly into focus. He was lonely. He didn’t have a damn soul on Takis to talk to… come to that, he didn’t have a damn soul to talk to back in Manhattan. He had an inflatable sex doll that doubled as a receptionist. He knew a couple of sympathetic waitresses at the Java joint who served him patty melts and coffee and let him ramble, but he realized he knew nothing about them beyond their names. His one deep friendship with Hiram Worchester had sorta gone down the shitter when Jay helped unearth the evidence that Hiram was a murderer – however exonerating the circumstances.

Jay’s thoughts went back to Vi and Flo at the seedy Times Square coffee shop, spurred no doubt by the aromas floating through the open door of the Takisian equivalent. Jay hesitated a few more minutes. Then a pretty woman, carrying an armful of cut flowers, came whisking through a back door and began filling the empty vases on the fifteen tables.

Like most of the Tarhiji she was on the zaftig side, but her soft hair looked like spun caramel, and the pure oval shape of her face reminded Jay of a painting he’d seen in one of his catechism books – the Madonna of the Cherries. It was the only picture of the Virgin he’d ever liked. Instead of looking sappy the Virgin looked sensual, and she seemed genuinely thrilled to be kissing her baby.

The woman sensed his scrutiny, looked up, and frowned. “Are you eating? Or rusticating?”

“It’s a little early for lunch,” said Jay, amused at her acidity.

“Then move out of my doorway so you don’t block the paying trade.”

That decided it. Jay walked in and settled at a table. Nodded toward the empty vase.

“I haven’t got a flower yet.”

The lips parted, were folded back into a tight line. The woman searched through the bouquet until she located one rather sickly, wilted bloom and placed it in the vase. Her velvet brown eyes challenged him. Jay just laughed. She completed her preparations, returned to Jay’s table, and stood, arms akimbo, staring at him.

“What?” the human asked.

“Are you eating or are you still rusticating?”

“Gimme a menu, and I’ll order. I’m not a mind reader.”

Sighing like a mother confronted by a backward child, she lightly touched an indentation in the lip of the table. The menu sprang to life in the air above the table. The squiggles looked like worm trails in the dust.

Jay shot her a sheepish look. “I forgot… I speak Takisian, I don’t read it.”

“Don’t speak it very well, either.”

“You always this nice to everybody who comes in?” She stared, a wall of unblinking hostility filming her eyes. “I’m surprised you have any customers at all.”

“I have the kind of customers I like.”

“And I take it I’m not among the select. Well, you want to translate this for me? Got anything on there that resembles a patty melt?” he added.

She didn’t. And the explanation didn’t help much. Too many of the words were unfamiliar. He finally settled on something that appeared to have cheese and bread in it – maybe it was a sandwich – and a bowl of soup. There weren’t too many ways to wreck soup – he hoped.

It was an open-face sandwich made of something that resembled raw spinach stirred with cream cheese and nuts. It was way too yuppie for Jay’s taste.

“You got anything with burnt pieces of animal flesh in it?”

“You don’t want this?” she indicated the sandwich.

“No.”

“Are you going to pay for both?”

“Naturally.”

“Is the soup to your satisfaction?”

Jay didn’t mistake the polite words for politeness. There was a sting on the edge of them.

“Yeah, the soup’s great.”

It was a thick, dark concoction with tiny blue beans that looked like a cross between lentils and pintos. Floating in it were dried yellow critters that gave it a sharp, citrusy taste. And it was really good. Jay wondered if he could get the recipe for Hiram. He told the woman about his friend and the restaurant, and how he’d really love this soup.

“Only problem,” Jay said, “the produce delivery is going to be a bitch over twenty-three light-years.”

He thought that might get some reaction out of her. How often did you meet an alien? Up until a month ago he’d met only one. In retrospect he decided one would have been enough. His revelation didn’t impress her.

“What are you doing off the Bonded station? We don’t permit aliens on the Crystal World.”

“Would you believe I’m a close personal friend and bodyguard to the heir to House Ilkazam?”

“No.”

Jay studied that pretty face, the soft, rich swell of her bosom beneath her blouse. Dispensed with the notion of trying to impress her. He’d settle for getting to know her.

“Have you got a name?”

“Several.”

“Does that translate to mean you’re married?”

The question seemed to strike a nerve. There was the briefest flicker of pain in those dark eyes. “No, I’m not marriageable material.”

“Lot of my dates have said that about me. Hi, I’m

Jay Ackroyd.” She stared at the out-thrust hand with the air of someone who couldn’t identify the appendage. Oh, that’s right, you Takisians don’t shake hands. You all seem to move straight to the kissing. Great custom as long as I’m not meeting a man.” He was babbling. He knew it. It embarrassed him. He couldn’t stop. It was her, she made him nervous.

Her dark eyes had gone wary. She studied him, and Jay had the feeling that she was actually seeing him for the first time. “How did you get here?”

“That’s a really long story.”

She turned away. “Then I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re pretty fucking cool about meeting up with an alien. Aren’t you gonna call the cops, or get scared?”

“I’ve been up to the Bonded station to look at aliens.”

“You make it sound like a trip to the zoo.”

“Isn’t it?” It wasn’t actually a smile, but a dimple did appear briefly in her left cheek.

Jay grinned in delight. She was really pretty when she stopped frowning. The door to the restaurant opened, and three men entered. The detective and the woman turned, and Jay didn’t need his hostess’s reaction to tell him these were cops – it was depressing to discover “The Look” transcended light-years.

“You will come with us please.”

“And if I say no?”

He felt another mind closing like a vise around him, and too late he realized that although these goons were dressed in the less opulent Tarhiji fashion and their hair was brown, they were psi lords.

“Okay, okay, okay!” he stuttered out just before the compulsion became overwhelming.

Two of the men took his arms and marched him to the door. Jay grabbed the jamb and managed to call back. “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again.”

The spokesman for the trio tossed a credit jewel to the proprietress. “Bill it to the House.”

Jay’s last sight was of the woman deliberately crushing the crystal under a heel.

Out in the street they released him. Jay twitched his coat straight and pushed back his hair. “How the hell did you find me so fast?”

It wasn’t hard. We just had to look for a ridiculous foreigner asking stupid questions.”

The crackle of the foil as it was wadded into trash by Taj’s fist was a very strong clue that Jay had again managed to walk straight into the middle of a cow patty.

“I do not think a friendship with this woman is the wisest course you could pursue. I foresee a dark outcome.”

“You read tea leaves too? What, are you telling my fortune here?”

“I’m not concerned about you, Mr. Ackroyd. I am concerned about not reawakening an old shame in this House -”

“There is one really annoying habit that all you Takisians share. You can’t cut to the chase. Just say it. Straight.”

“Hastet benasari Julali attracted the attention of a young nobleman, and they began a clandestine love affair. She should have known better. He certainly did. If he desired the woman, he needed only to petition to bring her into the House as a La’b.” Jay correctly translated that as toy. It pissed him off. “My young relative sired a child on her – an act absolutely forbidden by our law and custom. Because of her extreme youth, and the early stage of her pregnancy, her life was spared.”

“What did you do to her?”

“The child was aborted. Hastet neutered.”

“That’s what she meant about not being a marriageable commodity.”

“Our culture places a great value on children, Mr. Ackroyd.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” Taj either missed or chose to ignore the sarcasm. “What happened to the dickweed who knocked her up?”

“He was of the Most Bred.”

“Translate… nothing. I think she got the raw end of this deal.”

“She is lucky to be alive.”

“I’m going to see her again.”

“I would prefer you not.”

“Where’s the harm? She’s a little low-class nothing. I’m a little low-class nothing.”

Jay realized that, for whatever reason, he amused Taj. The old man suddenly smiled. “I suppose it will do no harm.”

“And as long as we’re gettin’ along so great – tell Zabb to call off the fuzz. Since it seems Meadows and I have become permanent citizens, I’d like to get a look at the real estate.”

“I’m uncertain for whom that is a greater tragedy.”