Double Solitaire

Chapter Fourteen

"Am I the only person who's not bothered by this? These people are full of bloodsucking worms!"

Cap'n Trips ran one long, bony forefinger through a pile of Scrabble tiles. "And I suppose we could be described as people full of shit. Aliens are different, Jay, that's why they're aliens."

"That's sorta what Tachyon said, only she was a lot snottier."

Jay returned to a glum contemplation of his tiles. A sharp cry of terror from the Doc drew the detective away to investigate. Jay crossed back from the bunk. The tiny whimpering sounds had ceased. Settling back into his chair, Jay jerked a head toward the sleeping Tachyon. "She seems all right now."

"I think the nightmares are getting better," said Mark.

"I think you're dreaming."

"I was hoping." Mark looked back at the tiles. The selection hadn't improved. Nothing suggested itself.

"Has he got anything in that bag of tricks to help?" Jay indicated the medical bag.

"Can't... the baby."

"Oh yeah..." A pause while Jay frowned at his tiles. "How do you spell titillate?" Mark spelled it.

"Shit. I need another l."

Jay spelled out tit. Mark carefully recorded the detective's three points.

TRY hung alluringly off on the left side of the board. Mark gathered up his tiles and spelled out tryptophan.

"What the fuck is that?" Jay yelped.

"It's an amino acid." Mark had hit a triple-word score, and double points on the y. He now led Jay by a hundred and eighty points.

Jay collected two new tiles, leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and eyed Mark. "What did happen out on the Rox?"

Mark shrugged. "He got jumped."

"By who? With who?"

"She hasn't told you?" Jay shook his head. "It's, like, really private to her, you know? So I probably shouldn't..."

"I'm trying to do a job here, Meadows. A little information would help." Mark remained stubbornly silent. "Look, from the performances she puts on every time she goes to sleep, I gotta figure her current condition isn't due to her catlike Takisian curiosity to experience sex from the other side."

"No." Mark mournfully admitted.

"Judging by the way she reacts every time one of us touches her, I'm figuring she got raped." Mark just kept staring, giving away nothing. Jay's next words sent the comforting little delusion of his poker face fleeing. "By Blaise, right?" Mark tried to control the reaction, but his head snapped up. Jay smiled humorlessly. "You may be kicking butt in Scrabble, but don't ever gamble with me."

"Okay, so now you know."

Jay shook his head. "It's really disgusting."

"It wasn't the Doc's fault!"

"Really? She'd probably disagree with you. So would I."

Anger has a taste, almost a physical presence. Mark could feel it battering against the back of his teeth. "Oh, why?" He wanted it to sound casual, instead emerged in sharp razorlike exhalations.

"Tachyon had me searching for Blaise a year ago because she was scared to death of the little shit. And after my investigations I could see why." The detective glanced back toward the bunk. "All and all I don't know if Tachy is such a great candidate for motherhood... shit, fatherhood... fuck it -- parenthood. He sure screwed up with Blaise."

Mark hadn't noticed when he'd picked up the Scrabble tile, but suddenly it was there, and he was twisting it through his fingers. "Blaise is crazy! Certifiably, clinically crazy. For years Doc tried to provide a stable and normal home environment. He tried with love to undo twelve years of sickness. And yeah, it's a bummer he failed, but at least he tried."

"He should have gotten some qualified help, but he's so damn arrogant ... I guess he thought he could be a kid shrink too."

"That's not fair!" Mark cried. "It's real easy for you to sit there and throw stones, but you were partly to blame." The flush appeared in Jay's cheeks so fast he might have been slapped. The tile between Mark's fingers snapped, and both men jumped. Suddenly horribly selfconscious, Mark tossed away the shards of the tile.

"How do you know about Atlanta?" Jay demanded. He was breathing hard.

Mark ducked his head. "The Doc told me. Not too bright, taking a thirteen-year-old off to play detective. Course you couldn't predict that Ti Malice creature would possess him, and then use Blaise's mind control to kill that poor joker, or that Blaise would enjoy it so much. Any more than Doc could predict how his spoiling would fuck with the kid. You guys were trying to care. It just all went funky and triggered the craziness."

Jay didn't say anything, just sat for a long moment with his head bowed. "Meadows," he said finally. "I apologize. I was royally out of line."

Mark cleared his throat selfconsciously. "Hey, I didn't mean to rant at you. He's just my closest friend... and personally, I think the Doc will make an awesome parent. She adores kids."

"He must, otherwise she wouldn't have let this one get her stretched out to here." Jay demonstrated, then shook his head. "How do you suppose she's handling it? If I suddenly got switched... had something growing inside me..."

"I don't think Takisians are as hung up about gender as we are. Kids are also, like, the wealth of the family. And there's the telepathy. If you had bonded mind to mind with your baby, could you kill her?"

"Probably not."

Mark swallowed hard, past the question that lay like a lump in the center of his throat. "Hey, man, I don't mean to be nosy, but I gotta ask it." Jay nodded assent, but warily. "Why are you along on this trio

"I need to have my head examined."

"No... seriously."

The detective sat silent, his face an unmoving, uncommunicative mask. It went on for so long that Mark was beginning to writhe with embarrassment. Finally Jay sighed, and Mark also exhaled in relief.

"I don't know," Jay said in so serious a tone that it hung oddly on his lips. "Not out of friendship, like you. Oh, don't get me wrong. I like Tachy well enough, but..." The shrug said it all. "Maybe it's a funny kind of chauvinism. For years they've been sneaking in on us, manipulating us, watching us. Now we're coming. Taking it home to them."

Jay stared down at the backs of his hands. Turned them palms up, either startled to find they moved, or searching for meaning in the creases and lines. Mark tried and failed to resolve the very ordinary man he saw with the individual living inside that skin.

"And what about you?"

Jay's question pulled him back. Mark fitted the broken tile together. Pressed hard. Laid the pad of one finger against it and pulled. It was still broken.

"I read them all... Clarke, Asimov, 'Doc' Smith. My dad flew state-of-the-art test planes. He was too old for astronaut training. I was all... wrong. No stomach for regimentation, the wrong attitude for the academy. They would have eaten me. He founded Space Command. His son couldn't pass the evaluation for the airforce academy. Maybe it broke his heart... I don't know. We don't talk much... never have."

Mark paused, remembering the last time he'd seen that erect, iron-haired figure, his hands resting on the shoulders of his granddaughter, sending his son out on the run from the government the general had sworn to defend. No, they hadn't talked, but somehow Marcus had understood.

Softly Mark resumed. "Now I'm going. Now I finally have something I can share with him."

"So you're into this for everyone but you."

"No," Mark shook his head. "I'm looking..."

"For what?" Irritation sharpened Ackroyd's tone. It seemed Ackroyd wasn't a man with a lot of patience for soul searching.

"I don't know."

She knew she was driving them slowly mad. Even Mark was showing rebellion in the tight line of his lips, or the annoyed inhalations each time she refused to acknowledge their remarks. Unless they were couched in Takisian, of course. Then she listened and responded, but in the careful, simple phrases of a parent to a precocious five-year-old.

She joined them at the table carrying several articles of clothing. Jay sighed. "Benaji, sala'um, wai'r'sum --"

"No," Tach interrupted in English. "Today we move on. You've learned Sham'al -- loosely translated, industry speak. Now you have to get a taste of Ilkazal in the public mode."

"Time out." Jay gave the sign.

Before the detective could get wound up, Mark intervened. "We don't have time to learn every language spoken on Takis, Doc."

"I'm not expecting you to, but all you've learned is the lingua franca, if you will. The language of commerce, and communication to the lower classes. There is a diplomatic tongue, Amlas, used only between Houses. Then there is the language of each House, private and public. You don't need the private -- you haven't wives or children to address. I doubt you'll need Amlas -- why should you be negotiating with the rival Houses on behalf of the House Ilkazam? But if you don't have at least a nodding acquaintance with Ilkazal, you'll be dismissed as mere servants or aliens."

"We are aliens," pointed out Mark.

"There are aliens and then there are aliens. I want you in the ship category. Able to speak Sham'al and know a bit of Ilkazal."

"So we can't parlay vous in English at all?" Jay asked, totally confusing the issue.

"Not at all. Like the ships, you have your own private language --"

"We're not going to have to learn ship talk too, are we?" asked Mark hastily.

She said reassuringly, "No, it's far beyond humanoid understanding. It's telepathy based on complex mathematics. When broken down and made audible, it resembles music more than anything else."

Mark's homely face became almost handsome as he smiled in delight. "Awesome, man, the music of the spheres. Maybe old Sir Thomas wasn't so far off."

Tachyon chuckled, the first laugh she'd enjoyed in weeks. The image of one of Baby's relatives hanging in the sky and singing softly to a British poet was irresistible.

Jay pulled her back. "So let me get this straight. As allies you've got your ships and that's it?"

"And the Network has one hundred and thirty-seven member races." Jay shook his head. "I think we're playing in the wrong league."

"You're not playing in any league at all," said Tachyon. "You're still a farm team."

"And who calls us up is still in doubt?" asked Mark.

Tach just nodded. She never did get to return to her dissertation on Takisian linguistics. The door to the cabin opened, and Zabb entered. Her reaction startled and dismayed her. The Tachyon mind cried out for her to assume a fighter's stance, prepare for attack. The body responded by placing a hand protectively over her belly. Fortunately, Mark and Jay were more practical. They shifted quickly, Mark shielding her with his body, Jay hanging by her left shoulder.

"Sit, hounds." Zabb patted soothingly at the air with his palms. "I've not come to harm my cousin, merely invite" He broke off abruptly, his mouth twisting in a crooked half smile that fifty years ago Tachyon had learned to resent and distrust. "Dear me, sweet Tisianne, what do I call you? English is such a primitive and cumbersome language. Are you a he, a she, or an it? Pronouns, I believe they're called... slippery things."

"Not half so slippery as you," said Tachyon bitterly.

Overall she'd made peace with her temporary gender change, and the sidelong looks from her friends and her enemies affected her very little. Until Zabb. Before him she knew humiliation, and the corrosive anger at her ludicrous situation became an actual pain in the center of her chest. Illyana, rightly perceiving the anger as being directed at her small baby self, shifted nervously and sent out a telepathic begging cry to her mother.

Reminded of her duty and obligation, Tachyon made a conscious effort to bury the anger, sent waves of comfort and love washing across the baby's unhappy little mind until she was rocked back into the peaceful dream state of the womb.

Wonderful, I'm turning my child into a codependent even before birth.

It raised an interesting question she had never before considered. Telepathic mothers could in fact begin imprinting, affecting their children long before their physical appearance in the world. But Tachyon's mind was male. So what behavior and thought patterns was Illyana absorbing?

"Hello, Tis? Are you with us?" Tach's head jerked back up, and she stared consideringly up at Zabb. "Will you come walking or no? And without them. I must speak with you privately."

A chorus of nos met his statement. Zabb's lips narrowed almost to invisibility beneath the sharp, elegant line of his mustache.

"Don't be such an idiot, Zabb. We've both spent our lives surrounded by guards. Why should it bother you? Unless you're afraid of my particular guards?"

"Burning Sky! You think you could present me with anything I would fear? Bring them if you think my word is not enough."

Tachyon stared at him. Heard the bravado echoing in the first sentence. Sensed the pain in the second. What a strange relationship we have, she thought. You taught me to ride and let me take the reins of the sleigh on Crystal Night. I've eluded your assassins, felt the cut of your blade as we dueled to the death. And each time I've cheated you. You are my adored enemy.

"Stay here," she heard herself saying. "I will walk out with my cousin."

"You've lost your fucking mind," said Jay.

"Perhaps... but I don't think I'll lose my life." She glanced back over her shoulder at the two humans. Smiled. "And if my judgment is poor, and his words dishonored, I'll trust you to kill him for me."

"I don't know about you, but I really hate that guy," Jay said conversationally as the door closed. "And I'm not going to let him waltz off with Tachy. Time for a little snoop-and-poop action."

"I'll snoop and poop with you." Meadows was busying himself with the briefcase.

"Meadows, I'm a detective. Taking you along is like taking a fucking semaphore --"

Jay didn't see which vial the gangly ace took, but suddenly there was a whirlwind, and blankets went sailing off the bunks like hysterical chickens. The little figure shrugged herself free of the cocooning blankets, and Jay felt his jaw drop.

Jet black hair fell like an ebony waterfall down her back. The black jumpsuit hugged every curve of her lovely body. The white yin/yang symbol on her chest drew the eye to her perfect breasts.

"You're living inside Mark Meadows? Holy shit, I'm going to be a lot nicer now."

"As we speak, our quarry eludes us," she said in a soft, pretty voice. There was a hint of censure in the words, and the remark was offered with a modest dropping of the eyes.

"Uh... yeah, right. Who the hell are you?" Jay asked plaintively, as they stepped through the door.

"Isis Moon... Moonchild."

Once in the corridor, Moonchild dimmed the lights. Shadows dripped from the walls. She stepped into one of them and promptly vanished. Jay briefly wondered how she'd feel about divorce work. He almost lost her several times, but each time a small hand reached out from the shadows, lightly touched his wrist, and led him on.

Down a left-branching corridor they heard voices: Zabb's clear tenor, and Tachyon's bell-like tones. Jay pressed himself against the wall and craned until he could peer around the doorjamb. It looked like an armory, with racks of weapons hung on the walls and several spacesuits hanging from hooks.

Tachyon was fiddling with the arm of a suit. She sighed, dropped it, and turned to face her cousin. "Are you still worrying about that damn throne? If it's any comfort to you... I don't want it." She shook her head. "And Zabb, it's over. Whether I want it or not, you can't have it either."

"Oh?"

"We've each made our choices. Mine was set fifty years ago when I went in pursuit of Ansata and the virus to try to prevent a holocaust. Your course was set five years ago when you betrayed your House and sold yourself to the Network. Takis may be a stop for each of us, but it can never again be home."

"You're the most self-righteous little vacu," Zabb returned angrily. "You pretend it was necessary for you to deal with the Network in order to protect Takis. Abortion! It was self-interest, pure and simple. Why don't you admit that all this altruism is really just a pose to cover your pathetic grandstanding for attention?

"You couldn't hold your own in the true Takisian fashion -- no aptitude for command, and no stomach for war. Even your science -- you were a synthesizer, not an innovator. You didn't invent the Enhancer project, you could only build on the work of others.

"You destroy everything you touch, Tis. Poor damned Ansata who carried the virus to Earth. If you'd let him carry out his mission, the death and suffering among those groundlings would have been much reduced. But you got to be a ministering power, the noble lord bountiful.

"And what about your own world? You damn near destroyed the family by your noble posturings. You left me to face our enemies." Zabb ripped open his tunic, and revealed the left side of his body. It was a mass of puckered white scar tissue. Tach threw out a hand and backed away.

So far as Jay could tell, Zabb didn't do a damn thing, but suddenly Tachyon threw her hands over her face, let out a scream, and collapsed.