Double solitaire

Chapter Six

French braiding was every bit as hard as it looked – harder. Tachyon was trying to while away the long hours by mastering this esoteric skill, and so far was failing miserably. It made her crazy that as accomplished a surgeon and violinist as herself could not plait dead protein.

As she frowned into the mirror, a retina-searing flare of golden light suddenly filled the room, reflecting off the glass.

Explosion! Big one! The first panicked reaction was to dive for cover. Then she saw him hovering outside the barred window.

“Starshine!” Tach cried, and ran for that fantastic figure in its formfitting yellow costume, green trunks, boots, and gloves, a sunburst blazing on his massive chest.

He turned an ireful green eye upon her. “Well, I see that muckraking little excuse for a journalist was correct. But why he feels he must utilize his talents in this kind of cheap sensationalism.

From the hallway came the sounds of running feet, orders being shouted. Tach lost the thread of Starshine’s diatribe.

“If this is a rescue, could you… “ She made a tumbling motion with her hands. “Could you… get on with it?”

“Take cover.”

Tach darted around the bed and huddled between it and the wall. She risked one glance as Starshine unleashed a flaring yellow sunbeam from his hand. Tach ducked and covered her head, and the outer wall of the building exploded into the room. Coughing, wiping plaster dust from her face, Tach tripped and dodged fallen bricks to the hole. The snap and snarl of weapons fire had now been added to the chaos. Bullets went whining off Starshine’s energy field.

The ace landed lightly in the room, dropped the field, and lifted Tachyon into his arms. Looking up into that handsome square-jawed face crowned with a nimbus of waving blond hair, Tach reflected that Starshine was, physically, at least, the perfect rescuer for a damsel in distress. Unfortunately his touch had bile rising in the back of her throat.

“Doctor, I hope the graveness of your present situation has finally brought home to you the dangers attendant with unregulated scientific research.”

The door was swinging open. “How about the dangers attendant in guards with guns?” Tach squeaked.

Starshine sniffed, raised his energy field, and shot out the ragged hole. Tach looked ahead and saw a pair of Apache helicopters chewing their way toward an interception. Starshine put on a burst of speed that pressed Tach deeper into the man’s arms, and they were past the choppers.

“Where are you taking me?”

“I would have thought you would have had enough of men making decisions for you.” They dived abruptly, using the warehouses that lined the Jersey coast as a screen from both visual and radar sighting. “I’m doing you the courtesy of treating you as a fully realized woman with the capability to make decisions for yourself.”

“I am not a woman.”

Starshine looked down at her in disgust. “How typical. You have been given this chance to explore the life-affirming power of the female, and you reject it. I’ve done a poem on this very subject.” He sucked in a breath, opened his mouth, Tach cut in.

“Before you start quoting yourself, could you please direct us to Hook Road in Bayonne? There’s an abandoned junkyard there. Right on New York Bay. We’ll be safe there.”

“Incredible. I wonder what psychological problems this reveals, comparing your female state to garbage.”

“Fly,” Tach said wearily. She was even too tired to remonstrate as Starshine declaimed his latest ode.

Thomas Tudbury was an overweight man in his forties, and Tachyon and Starshine were standing in his kitchen. Thomas Tudbury was also supposedly dead. His alter ego, the Great and Powerful Turtle, lived on, and thus far his secret hiding place was known only to Tachyon and Joey Di Angelis. Which explained his present fury and consternation. Starshine had folded his arms across his chest and was eyeing Tom with Olympian disdain. Tach knew that was part of the problem. It wasn’t helping Tom to have this Adonis in his face.

“Jesus, Tachy, why did you have to come here?”

“If you’re scared, you don’t have to worry. We weren’t traced,” Starshine said. “I saw to that.”

“Hey, dumbshit -” Tom began.

Tach quickly interrupted. “Where else could I go? They’ll be watching the clinic, my friends. They locked me up, Tommy. I can’t take being locked up anymore!” Her voice had gone all ragged and stretched.

Tom slumped into a chair. “Christ, Tach, you just tumble from one crisis to another.” He scrubbed at his face with a hand, took a pull on his beer. “Anybody want anything?”

“Do you have any Perrier?” Starshine asked.

Tom rolled an eye, grabbed Tach by the wrist, and pulled her out of the room.

Hurriedly Tach said, “He’ll only be here for, oh, maybe another twenty minutes.”

“If he’s going to leave, couldn’t he do it now?”

“He’d have to become somebody else, and I’d rather have him become the person he truly is -”

Hands on her shoulders, he halted her nervous pacing. “Are you okay?”

“Yes… no. I’ve got to get to Manhattan. Please, Tommy, just let Mark stay here. As soon as I’m back, we’ll both go away, and you can be comfortable again.”

Tommy scrubbed his face with both hands, sighed, said, “You want somebody to go with you?”

“No, alone is better.”

“You’re not going to the clinic, are you?”

“No. I need to break into someone’s house. And for that I need Jay Ackroyd.”

“The dame entered my office. She moved with an aggressive waddle that let me know right away she was trouble. I waited. How would she come on to me? The ever-popular ploy of the pregnant woman – the flood of tears? The premature labor -”

Tachyon had a feeling that Jay Ackroyd was going to continue in this irritating vein for a good long while. So she poured his coffee in his lap. The stream of bad prose became a stream of invective. Ackroyd yanked tissue from the box on his desk and mopped at his crotch.

“Motherfucker! I just got these back from the cleaners.” Jay looked up, aggrieved. “And you could have burned my willie off.”

“A small loss,” said Tachyon, and she carefully settled into a chair. It was apparent from the banner headline – TACHYON’S TORMENT: WHO’S THE FATHER? – and the photo on the cover of Aces magazine why Jay was so sanguine about her appearance. Also piled on the desk were five newspapers. CIVIL WAR? queried one headline. WAR IN THE BAY? asked another. Tach shivered and looked away.

“Is there some reason why you’re here, or did you just feel an overwhelming need to take it out on a convenient man for the predicament you’re in?”

“I wish to hire you.”

“First, a question. How’d you get off Governor’s Island?”

“I escaped,” Tachyon replied.

“Great.” Jay swiveled around in his chair and peered through the venetian blinds at the street below. “Is there an army of goons right behind you?”

“No. I was careful.”

“So what’s the job? Look for a runaway father?”

The only thing that kept her from going down the detective’s throat was the knowledge that wisecracking was as natural to Jay Ackroyd as breathing. Even when it would result in a lot less pain, the private investigator couldn’t resist shooting his mouth. It usually ended with a fist in said mouth, but Jay persevered. He was either very brave or very stupid. Tachyon still hadn’t decided which.

“I want you to teleport me into Jube’s apartment.”

“When he’s not there?”

“Of course when he’s not there,” snapped Tach, exasperated. “If he was there, I would just knock on the door.”

“So why don’t you do that?”

“It would be rude to search a house with the owner present.”

That boosted Ackroyd out of his chair. He took a nervous turn about the small office. “I’ve never been in Jube’s apartment. I can’t teleport if I haven’t been there.”

“Liar.” It was a moment that called for succinctness. “You were busy entertaining Finn and Dutton with tales of Jube’s exotic sculptures.”

“Jesus, is nothing private in this crappy town?”

“No. Now will you do as I ask?”

“Look, do this much for me. At least give me a fucking reason. I like Jube.”

Tachyon unconsciously massaged the peak of her belly with her palm. The bigger she got, the better it felt. It was Jay’s fascinated stare that made her aware of what she was doing. Flushing, she quickly dropped both hands into her lap and gripped them tightly.

“I have reason to believe that Jube is not a joker.”

Ackroyd goggled at her. “Meaning?”

“Well, if he’s not a joker, and he’s not a nat… you’re the detective, figure it out.”

“Alien?”

Tach nodded.

“That’s crazy. They don’t make aliens that look like that.”

“How would you know?” pointed out Tach logically.

“Well, you should know.”

“It’s a big universe out there.”

The detective ran a hand through his brown hair. He looked distracted.

“Will you help me, Jay?” asked Tach, for the first time allowing a little of her desperation to creep into her voice. “Jube may be my last hope.”

“Oh, shit.”

The stench of rotting meat was overpowering. Tach clapped a hand over her mouth, ran for the john, and vomited up the contents of her stomach. After rinsing her mouth, she plucked several tissues from a box. Holding them over her nose, she cautiously reentered the bedroom.

A bare mattress covered the floor, and a hot tub filled with icy water occupied one corner. A window air conditioner was set on high, and it had obviously been blowing for a long time. The temperature in the room was arctic.

Breathing through her mouth in quick pants, Tachyon stepped into the living room of the basement apartment. The source of the stench was pans filled with steaks, all cheerfully turning green on the top of a battered old card table. But all this strangeness paled before the fantastic device that occupied the center of the room.

Jay had described it as a sculpture, modern art created by a demented mind. But it was actually future technology, built by an inventive alien mind. Tachyon watched in fascination as the tachyon transmitter seemed to shiver, and a flare of St. Elmo’s fire ran the length of it.

She now had a pretty good idea what she was looking for.

Twenty minutes later she was still looking. Somewhere the Network vacu had a monitoring station. A place to spy upon this unsuspecting little world. A place to prepare the contracts that would ultimately deliver the humans into bondage.

“No,” she said aloud to the interior of the closet she was inspecting. “This is my world. I will protect it.” The fifty or so Hawaiian shirts were unimpressed with this impassioned little whisper.

From the front room there was a click of a well-oiled bolt snapping back. It might have been the fall of a guillotine. Tach huddled among some baggy black trousers, tried to still the frantic beating of her heart. Stomach acid raced up the back of her throat. Illyana yammered.

No, baby, thought Tach miserably, this is not a good place to be.

Maybe he wouldn’t find her. Maybe he’d drop off his paper, check his phone machine, leave for a dinner with friends. But luck was not favoring the heir to the House Ilkazam. Heavy footsteps entered the room. Jube let out a belch reminiscent of a bus backfiring.

The closet door was pulled completely open. Flight was impossible. Was it too much to hope that Jube was hopelessly nearsighted?

“Jesus Christ!”

Hope withered with a tiny whine. Tach gathered dignity and outrage about herself like a queen wrapping herself in ermine. Stepped to the door. Jube had a rotting steak in one hand, and a Hawaiian shirt in the other. Tach stared at the six nipples lining the broad black chest like dainty yellow pimples. The shirt dropped to the floor, and a fat, three-fingered hand closed tight around Tach’s wrist. Jube yanked her unceremoniously from the closet.

“How typically Takisian,” said Jube, and it didn’t sound like a compliment.

“How much more like a Network vacu,” spat Tachyon. “I at least came openly to these people. You live in secret among them, waiting for the proper moment. How much do you stand to make on this transaction, soul seller?”

“How did you find out?” demanded Jube. Seen this close, his tusks looked threatening. “I know damn well you didn’t figure it out for yourself. I’ve been fooling you for twenty years. And I don’t think a body shift suddenly boosted your IQ.”

Tach felt the flush rising from her neck to the point of her widow’s peak. Insults stood poised to fly, but she only managed to get her mouth open before there was an urgent knocking on the door.

“Go away!” yelled Jube.

“Open the goddamn door,” came the voice of Jay Ackroyd. “You got my client in there, and he… she… shit… hasn’t paid yet.”

Jube favored Tachyon with another glare, as if involving the ace had somehow deepened her sin, and waddled ponderously to the door. Jay slouched in.

“You blew the punch line, Jay,” Jube grumbled. He then turned a sour eye on the detective. “And what a way to repay me for my great hospitality, sneaking her in here.”

“Sorry, but she’s got this crazy-assed idea that you’re an alien…

“I am,” Jube said so quietly that Jay missed it.

He sailed on. “I should have known it was just hysterics or something.”

“Are you listening to him? And by the way, I am not hysterical.”

“You’re pregnant out to here.” Jay demonstrated. “Of course you’re hysterical. I’d be hysterical What did you say?”

“I am,” Jube repeated.

Jamming his hands into his pockets, Jay took an abrupt turn around himself. “Great. That’s just fucking great.”

Tachyon could understand the emotion, the terrible sense of betrayal. “If you’d really been a joker, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But all the time you were laughing at them.” Distress made her choke a little on the words.

It seemed to distress Jube almost as much. The jowls seemed to lengthen and quiver with sadness. “That’s not true. On this world, in this place, I am a joker. I understand.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t. However horribly they may treat you, whatever abuse – verbal or physical – is directed toward you, you have the ultimate comfort. You know you are normal. For all I know, you’re a thing of beauty on your home world. You will never understand deformity.”

“And you can, little prince?” The sarcasm edged the words like acid. Jube tossed the steak back onto a plate; it landed with a wet splat. “Well, shall we get down to business?” Tach cringed. “There’s only one reason for this little surreptitious social call. You want a message sent.”

Tach eyed the joker – no, Network operative, she corrected herself – from beneath lowered lashes. “You would send one?”

“Of course.”

Tachyon almost stepped into the pause, but the words died in her mouth as Jube added, “For a price. Everything has a price, Tachyon,” Jube concluded in answer to her look.

“That, more than anything, convinces me you are Network.”

Ackroyd stepped in. “Let’s pretend for a minute that I’m just a guy. A nice, human guy who doesn’t know what the fuck you’re both talking about.”

“What are you?” Tach asked, ignoring Jay.

“Glabberan.” The pronunciation made it sound like Jube had ripped loose a tonsil.

“Gesundheit,” Jay said. “So how the hell did you end up here?”

“The Network brought him,” said Tachyon.

“That again.”

“Them,” corrected Jube. His voice swelled with pride. “One hundred and thirty-seven member races working -”

“For domination and oppression. Their contracts are so unconscionable, the bargains so hard, that people are crushed beneath them,” Tach said.

She spoke from knowledge. Eight thousand years ago the Takisians had staggered beneath burdensome payments. The Network had been more than happy to sell the fledgling space-farers’ ships, but without the knowledge or the technology to repair them or build more. There was always a hitch in a Network contract. Then the Takisians had discovered the lshab’kaukab, and bred them to serve their needs. The Network had resented this loss of a market, and a vicious war had been fought. Eventually the Network withdrew, but the Takisians had never forgotten the cost in blood and wealth. They had also never forgotten the shame of their economic servitude.

“Now, Jay, having heard the skewed Takisian view of the universe, will you give me equal time?” Jay shrugged his assent. “Yes, we’re traders, yes, we drive a hard bargain because for us the highest law is the contract. But unlike them” – a point to Tachyon – “any race is free to join the Network, and we don’t care how distasteful your personal habits might be.”

Tach couldn’t stand it. “They have no honor. No sense of right or wrong. They just grub for advantage. For eight thousand years they’ve been trying to regain their hold on Takis – and for eight thousand years they’ve been failing.”

“Guys… uh, people. I’m not getting paid by the hour on this one.” To Tachyon he added, “I was hired to pop you in here so you could find out if Jube was an alien or not. He is, so I’ll be going, and you two can trade insults all afternoon.”

“Don’t you care at all that your world is under siege?”

“I see one fat guy in a really tacky Hawaiian shirt. Doesn’t look like the front wave of an invasion to me.”

“Then you’re an idiot.” Tach turned her back and folded her arms, resting them on the bulge of her pregnancy.

“Bye.” Jay waggled his fingers at the alien pair.

“Wait.” Jay turned inquiringly back to Jube. I must have your solemn promises that you will not reveal my secret.”

“I don’t have to drink any blood or anything, do I?” Jay asked.

Jube frowned, puzzled. Tach bit her lip in vexation. “No,” the Glabberan replied.

Jay nodded thoughtfully. “And if I don’t promise?”

“I make no deal with her.”

Jay and Tach measured glances. The alien acquiesced with a sharp little bob of the head.

“You got my word.”

She had to force the words. “By Blood and Bone I swear.”

Jay left.

Jube picked up the remote control to his television and waddled into his bedroom. Tachyon waddled after him. She watched as the Network agent entered a complex series of numbers onto the remote. As the last digit was struck, the bare brick wall at the back of the apartment seemed to dissolve. Sixty years ago it had been a coal cellar. Now it was a beachhead for a poisonous invasion force. Pushing aside her repulsion, Tachyon forced herself to concentrate. The back wall held a gigantic holocube. A horseshoe-shaped console curved about that cube, and nestled in the center was a chair contoured for Jube’s squat bulk. More machines lined the walls. Some Tachyon could identify. Most she couldn’t.

Jube walked past her and settled with a grunt into his chair. He looked back inquiringly at Tachyon. Gnawing nervously at the inside of her cheek, the Takisian dithered.

Yes, her predicament was desperate, but did she have the right to endanger Takis for one hundred and twenty pounds of male flesh?

“Are we doing this?” asked Jube, shattering her thoughts and sending them skittering in all directions. Tach nodded mutely.

There was a place on the console where Tach could sit. It wasn’t terribly comfortable, but Jube showed no inclination to offer his chair. The sausagelike fingers caressed the keypad. He glanced up at Tach. Like most people his eyes kept drifting to the swell of her belly. Tach steeled herself for the inevitable question. But Jube surprised her. Instead of the irritating bleat of “How does it feel?” the alien said wistfully, “I haven’t had a child yet. May never get to now. One of the trade-offs for taking up Network service.”

“Yes, I suspect there isn’t a Glabberan female within twenty light-years.”

Jube busied himself with the keypad before answering. “I could impregnate myself.” The joker smiled at Tach’s eye-widening reaction. “We Glabberan are hermaphrodites. But I had a feeling that me fetching up pregnant was going to be tough to explain in terms of the wild card. It would stretch even your credulity.”

“Is that how I seem to you? Credulous?”

A form flickered to life on the holocube. The language was unfamiliar, the form was not. Tach had read enough contracts in her life to recognize one. She could feel depression crawling down her body like men on a treacherous, icy cliff.

“It’s a function of your upbringing. You Takisians measure everything by your cultural imperative. You can be incredibly murderous and devious, but overall you’re an endearingly forthright race. You take honor and vows and blood debts and all that baggage very seriously.”

Tach indicated the holocube. “And all this time I thought a contract was sacrosanct to the Master Traders. If you’re telling me it’s not, I shall have to rethink these negotiations.”

The big head shook ponderously from side to side. “Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that. We’ll honor the letter of the law… it’s just sometimes the spirit that escapes us.” And Tach thought she heard an echo of regret in the joker’s voice like half-heard summer thunder. “You Takisians will put yourselves through oceans of shit to fulfill a vow. Well just find a new way to interpret a clause and spare ourselves a wade in the shit.”

Tachyon’s names – both the Takisian and the human nom de guerre – appeared in the lines of alien prose as startling and incongruous as icebergs in a goldfish pond. Jube’s hand dropped into his lap, and he looked up at Tach out of small pouched eyes.

“Okay, what exactly do you want?”

“More to the point – what is this going to cost me?”

“I thought we should settle on an open contract. Payment to be made later.”

Outrage made her voice a squeak. “I am not so stupid as to sign a blind contract with you.”

Jube rubbed thoughtfully at his upper lip. “Tell you what, in memory of an old friendship – I’ll let you exclude anything you want.”

Tach eyed the other alien suspiciously. “How will you show a profit?”

“I’ll manage. Now what am I selling you?”

“Passage to Takis.”

Again that head shake like a statue waking. “No can do. I’m not a captain. All I have at my disposal is a slightly jury-rigged tachyon transmitter.”

“So you’re telling me I have to haggle with you over the price of a message, and again with some rapacious ship’s captain for passage?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“You really are the most disgusting bloodsuckers.”

“Deal or not, Tachyon. It’s not my belly expanding with each passing day.”

“Very well.” She began to tick off on her fingers. “I won’t give you the clinic.”

“Don’t want it anyway,” grunted Jube as he began to type.

“My holdings on Takis are exempt.”

“Okay.”

“You can’t have Baby.”

“You don’t have her either,” pointed out the joker with irritating logic.

With as much dignity as she could muster, Tach looked down her nose and said, “I will… just as soon as you can send a message.”

“Anything else?”

“My bank accounts, investments, personal possessions.”

Jube shrugged dismissively. “Paltry to a Master Trader.”

There was something in the joker’s eyes that raised warnings like the skirt of a hurricane approaching shore. Tach almost stuttered in her haste to add, “And me. Either this body or the other. You can’t have them.” Jube nodded and typed in the condition. “Or any portion of them. My brain is not going to end up running a mining operation on some outer moon.” Tach canted her head back and considered. The effort of trying to outguess, outthink, outmaneuver the Network was summoning a prickling headache that settled low in her forehead with all of the irritating persistence of too-long bangs.

“My knowledge, work, research on the wild card, or any related genetic research.” Hastily she added, “Nor will I submit to experimentation to try to determine the source of our telepathy.”

“In short we can’t have a piece of body, soul, or mind.”

“Correct. This body, or the real one.”

Jube cocked his head, eyed her curiously. “Why so protective of this body? You’re just renting, so to speak.”

“I feel a certain… obligation,” said Tach slowly. “I must guard her future encompassed by this body… And there is… our child.” Tach stared down at her hands.

“I just hope she’s being as careful with mine.”

“Anything else?”

“What?” Tach lifted dazed eyes, pulling herself almost by main force back to a limbo world of regrets and fears and might-have-beens.

“The contract,” Jube prompted gently. “Is there anything else you’d like to exclude?”

Tach wearily shook her head. Jube hit a key with an aggressive little finger. From the maw of another unidentifiable contraption, a silvery paper was expelled. It was cold and slick in Tachyon’s fingers like mercury made solid and rolled as cellophane. The words (in English now) were etched into its surface, starkly red against the silver.

“Very interesting color choice,” she said dryly. “Do I sign in blood too?”

“Nothing so exciting,” grunted Jube. “And there’s nothing significant about the color. This is mycar, virtually indestructible, but a bitch to read. The red shows up better.”

“Certainly gets your attention,” Tach agreed as she carefully perused the document.

It contained the usual whereofs and theretos, and parties of the first part and parties of the second part. It was a party that Tachyon would rather have missed. But stripped down, the legal flesh boiled away until only the bones remained, it basically said that Jhubben of Glabber, representative of the Network, would send a message summoning a fast ship to Earth. In consideration for this service Tachyon, aka Prince Tisianne of the House Ilkazam, agreed to pay Jube an unspecified amount, or perform some service to be determined at some later, unspecified date. It made Tachyon crazy even to contemplate signing it.

So of course she signed it. What other choice did she have?

“Are you going to send the message?” asked Tach.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just as soon as you’re out of my apartment,” came the patient if rude reply.

“You don’t trust me?”

“No,” said Jube firmly as he got a hand under elbow and assisted her off the console. “Jube the Walrus and Dr. Tachyon trusted each other. Prince Tisianne and Jhubben of the Network -”

“Are implacable enemies.”