Double Solitaire

Chapter Thirty-Seven

After her release from Rarrana Tisianne had rejected overtly female dress. No one seemed to notice except her, and the ambivalence that gripped her was both alarming and infuriating. For some reason a return to pants and boots full-time was almost as uncomfortable as those first weeks in Rarrana when she adapted to the confinement of skirts.

Then three days before the ball, a parade of relatives began marching through her suite, and she discovered they had noticed. It began with Mark and an overly casual "Are you gonna wear something pretty to the ball?" Then Taj demanded she wear something appropriate. Zabb had ordered her. Tis in a fury had informed him she wouldn't attend at all. And it all culminated with Roxalana, who had simply taken matters into her own capable hands and had a gown made.

It was a beautiful dress with layers and layers of petticoats, and a wide, sweeping skirt made from multicolored panels. The worst aspect of the gown was the neckline, which plunged deep over the breasts and left her shoulders and much of her back bare.

"Wow. You're, like, beautiful, man," Mark said as Tis frowned at her image in the full-length mirror.

"After months of looking like an overstuffed ottoman, anything would be an improvement. Gena, bring me a lace shawl." The girl obeyed, and Tis arranged it around her shoulders and tucked it into her decolletage. Gena pinned it in place with a corsage.

"Oh, don't do that," Mark objected.

"Shut up."

There was a chime at the door. A guard scanned and opened it to reveal Roxalana in the company of two of her bodyguards. She circled Tisianne critically.

"Very nice, but this will not do." She quickly unpinned the corsage and twitched away the shawl.

"What is this? Do you think the sight of my bosom is going to so move the Master Trader he will drop his demands?"

"No, I just hate to see the lines of a fine dress ruined by prudery." Lani pinned the flowers in Tis's elaborate upswept hair.

There was another chime. Taj stuck his head in. "I'm off to collect the hawker." He nodded. "Very nice, but you need jewelry."

He was gone again before Tis could formulate a really crushing reply. A sound suspiciously like a chuckle emanated from Mark's direction. "Would you like to make any comments?" Tis asked with razor-sharp sweetness.

"Uh, I think I'd wear gloves. You know, those real long ones."

The chime sounded again. "Ideal, is this Grand Central?" Tis exploded. "Maybe I should put in a revolving door?"

Zabb entered. Tis spun in a circle, affording him a good look, "Does this meet your approval, my lord?"

Zabb kissed Roxalana on the cheek. "You look lovely as always, vindi." She did, in her red-and-amber gown. Zabb surveyed Mark. "And you look... remarkable."

And that also was the truth. The ace wore a long swallow-tailed coat of pale blue, a knee-length waistcoat in bright crimson, both of which accentuated his great height and thinness. The ensemble was completed with knee breeches in blue, crimson stockings, and green ankle boots.

Zabb cleared his throat and turned to face her. Tis realized he was nervous. She mentally tensed.

"Weeks ago I offered you your mother's jewels. You refused." Zabb removed a long, flat box from an inner pocket. "I hope this time you'll accept. You should be properly adorned for the ball, as befits an Ilkazam princess."

Tis had frozen at the sight of the blue-and-orange box with its embossing of moonstones in the design of flowers. A memory held her. Tisianne standing on his mother's lap. Ts'ara heedless of the damage his muddy shoes were doing to her dress. Pressing and twisting the pretty gems with tiny child's fingers. She had told him that they were a ship's tears. He knew better now. Ships don't cry. Tisianne wanted to.

Tis accepted the box and snapped it open. Rings, ear-tips, necklaces, bracelets. A riot of glittering, sparkling color. She lifted out a five-strand choker of pearls. Frowned.

"Wait," she said. Zabb paused, almost out the door. "There's a mistake, these weren't hers --"

Without looking back he said, "They're yours. I had them made for you. Wear them for me."

Tis sank speechless into a chair. Stared at the closed door.

Roxalana lifted the pearls from her nerveless fingers and clasped them about her throat.

"Enjoying yourself?" Zabb inquired, handing Bounty and Tis iced silamums.

Tis accepted the drink gratefully. The windows of the ballroom were fogged, trapped as they were between a room full of bodies, and the snow-buried gardens outside, and she was finding conversation with a Master Trader to be emotionally draining. Oh, the creature was everything charming and proper, but she couldn't control the skin creep that told her this was the enemy.

"Most assuredly," Bounty said. "I'm measuring my experiences against the memories of the last Master Trader on Takis."

"Eight thousand years," Zabb said, a pointed reminder.

"Have the Takisians changed much?" Mark asked.

"Yes and no. Technologically they're a good deal more advanced." Bounty paused and watched the intricate dance unfolding in the center of the ballroom. "Their family affiliations seem to have become far more rigid. There used to be more flux between families. Overall it's still a warrior culture overlaid with the trappings of civilization."

"Are you implying we are not civilized?" Zabb asked.

"I'm saying it's only skin-deep."

"Why?" Tis asked.

"Your highest loyalty is reserved for the vow between individuals, usually within your own clan. That's a hallmark of a primitive society."

"It's worked rather well for us," Zabb said.

"But has it?" the Master Trader mused. "You've never really managed to forge long-term and broad alliances that would enable you to undertake colonization projects, exploration." Bounty set his empty glass on the tray of a passing Tarhiji waiter. "Well, I think it's time to talk business."

"You don't let up, do you?" Zabb asked. "And there is nothing to discuss. I will not return."

"I think your vaunted Takisian honor is a sham if you can violate your promise to me."

"Bluntly, you're not worthy to receive my sworn word."

Mark suddenly snapped his fingers. "I finally figured it out. What you guys remind me of. I thought Renaissance Italy, and Saudi Arabia, and a little samurai stirred in, and there are facets of all of that, but mostly you're like the Mafia."

Zabb and the Master Trader were looking confused. Tis knew her face was a study in embarrassment because Mark was absolutely right. She laughed. "Oh, Ideal, what does that make me? A Mafia princess?"

"Of Mars," Mark added, and laughed. "It'll be the next Hollywood hit."

"Raiyis, I don't wish to fight," Bounty said. "But --"

A sudden thought struck Tisianne. "Bounty, when my cousin was found, he was adrift in a dying ship. Life support was dying with Hellcat. He had to sign that contract. Which makes it duress, which makes it unconscionable, which makes it illegal."

"No, that's not duress. Duress is if I held a gun to his head and said I'll kill you if you don't sign. His own misfortune is not my fault."

"But you'd take advantage?" Tis asked.

"Of course, that's business."

"Oh, man, you're making corporate America look benevolent." Mark sadly shook his head. "Maybe you guys aren't so groovy."

Bounty frowned. "Where are you from?"

"Oh, I'm an Earthman."

"Interesting."

Zabb pulled the Master Trader back from his thoughtful contemplation of Mark. "I don't want trouble, and it's no secret I can't afford a fight with you right now. So what will it take to make you go away? Money, jewels, pharmaceuticals?"

"Your currency is worthless to me. Your jewels and drugs I can synthesize." Bounty considered. "I want another pilot."

"I can't force any of my people to serve you. I'll give you a Tarhiji."

Bounty shook his head. "I want a telepath."

"What about art?" Tis suggested. "That's unique."

"Personal service or real estate. That's what I prefer."

"You're doomed to disappointment," Zabb said, and tucking Tisianne's arm beneath his he drew her away. They walked in silence for several moments, then Zabb said, "Thank you, cousin, for speaking up on my behalf. I was a little surprised, but thank you."

"Sorry it didn't do any good. They really are the most awful barbarians." He was staring at her so intently that she could almost feel the pressure of his eyes on her skin. Nervously she changed the subject. "You know, other than my usurpation this room was the site of one of the most humiliating moments in my life."

"Again delivered courtesy of me."

"Naturally."

"Sixty years ago, wasn't it?" Zabb asked.

"Something like that."

"Well, let's see if I can make it up to you." Zabb bowed and vanished into the crowd. Tis leaned against a wall and watched the dancing. Eventually Mark found her.

"I've discovered the source of my sensual pleasure in the sound of these skirts." She shook hers. "It's a child's memory of his mother. All I can really remember is her perfume, and the whisper of her elaborate clothing."

"It's, like, really romantic looking. Doc... maybe I shouldn't say this, but Zabb is, like, really --"

"I know. I realized the signals I've been sending are very much damsel distressed." She looked up at the human. "Mark, I need a therapist. I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my self" His fingers tightened comfortingly around hers.

The music intruded into her reverie. A melody she recognized. Tri'ava and Pandasala swooped down on her like diving parrots, each grabbing her beneath an arm, and began tugging her toward the center of the ballroom...

"Come," Panda said.

"He's waiting," Tri'ava said.

"You'll never believe," Panda burbled.

"What he's done," they finished in chorus.

Alarmed, Tis went rushing ahead. Zabb was indeed waiting. There was an unholy light in his gray eyes as he held out a pair of crystal-heeled slippers. As the heels struck, the air was filled with a sweet chiming. Tis started retreating, stepped on her hem, and went down in a welter of skirts.

Zabb grinned down at her. "Tis, you're looking like a clumsy oaf again."

"No!" She fended him off with both hands. "Oh, no.

"Let's see if you can get through 'Crystal Flowers' this time without making a fool out of yourself," Zabb said, removing her dancing shoes.

"You fiddled with my shoes. Wrecked the tones."

He struck the heels together again, playing an ascending scale. "I haven't this time." He slipped her foot into a shoe.

"I don't remember it." Gray eyes met gray eyes. "And I've certainly never danced it from the woman's side."

The other shoe went on, and Zabb pulled her to her feet. "Rely on me. I'll get you through it."

Pandasala on one side, and Cillka on the other, caught up her skirts so her feet would be free.

"You've been a chair warmer long enough tonight," Cillka said.

"Celebrate a little," added Pandasala.

They gave her a push toward Zabb. Even just walking to the dance floor, their heels struck music from the parqueted wood floor. Tis's chest was tight with nerves.

All Takisian dances were intricate, the footwork complicated, but 'Crystal Flowers' surpassed them all, for there was one entire line of the music missing from the orchestration -- it was to be provided by the dancers' shoes.

The base of the heel striking the floor was one note, the crystal tap on the toe another, and there were five more notes in ascending order on the high heels. It required precision to tap one heel against the other at precisely the proper level to elicit the necessary note and complete the music.

While Zabb and Tis hung to the side waiting for the music to figure back to the beginning, Tis nervously played scales, reminding herself of the placement of the notes.

"Relax, you're a good musician. This is all in the ear," Zabb said.

"And the feet," Tis said bitterly, as Zabb led her in and they were into it.

For the first few measures the music was her biggest worry. Then the pattern of the dance intruded with burning clarity. During an intricate side movement Zabb bent and brushed her wrist with his lips, Tis closed her eyes briefly. Bobbled and missed a note.

"Oh, shit!"

"It's only one note."

"It's this whole dance!" she said bitterly.

It had its origin in country peasant dances. A spring dance, the historians thought, to celebrate the return of life and the running sap. And not only in trees and flowers, but men and women as well. Its country incarnation was bawdy and sexual. The Zal'hma at' Irg had refined it over the generations, but it was still a wildly romantic dance. Tis had loved it as a young man. It was an excellent barometer of a women's interest.

They had progressed past the fingertips and wrist and graduated to the temple and the corner of the mouth. Zabb smelled of spice and musk. Forcing a detached academic interest, which she really didn't feel, Tis noticed that it was much easier to steal a kiss when you're taller than the woman. Her mind pursued the trivial, hoping it would still the torrent of emotions and sensations rushing through her body.

I ought to just quit. Leave now. I ought to. Goddamn hormones!

Music and motion, and that white chiseled face. The skin on his upper lip was paler than the rest of his face. Ideal, he shaved his mustache! His hand closing on hers. Final figures now. Zabb brushing light kisses onto her mouth with each pass. The final kiss. This was the acid test. This was where the woman told you if she was interested or not. This was...

He captured her. It was questionable if she'd ever really meant to flee. Arms closing around her in tight embrace. A long, deep kiss to last the final measure. The music stopped. Zabb pulled back. Rivulets of sweat matted his sideburns and beaded his forehead. White blond elf locks hanging about that narrow face. And a look in those pale gray eyes.

No wonder women flee from us. The hungry pressure from those eyes. All the anguished wanting!

Tis began to back away. Zabb thrust a hand at her. Control snapped, and she fled from the dance floor, her shoes making a wild ringing as she ran. The murmur of the crowd rising like a wind storm from behind her. She had done it again. Caused another scene at a family ball.

A stitch in her side finally brought her to a gasping halt. Footsteps coming. Her heart lifted -- rescue... from herself. Tall, but not tall enough. Blond, but the wrong blond. Dangerous not safe. Zabb not Mark.

Tis slumped against the wall. Zabb thrust his hands into the pockets of his duster-like coat and offered support to the other wall of the corridor. They eyed each other across a three-foot chasm.

"Don't you think we ought to do something about... this." She shook her head, a quick, terrified gesture. Zabb ran a frantic hand through his hair. "Ideal! You are driving me mad!"

"This is insane. You hate me."

"Not true. You stood between me and ambition. That impediment has now been removed."

"Impediment to what? Fucking me? You've done that very well, thank you, for a very long time."

Zabb grabbed her shoulders. "You talk too much, Tis. You have always talked too much!"

She watched as her terror slammed into him. His hands leapt from her shoulders as if shocked. He clutched his elbows. Retreated again to the opposite wall.

"I'm sorry. I frightened you. I'm sorry."

For a long moment they regarded one another. "How can I sleep with you? How? I'm wounded in ways you can't see, and I don't fully understand," Tis said.

"Then let me try to heal you."

That drew an incredulous laugh. "Heal me? Sex is about trust and vulnerability, and a little like dying. How can I trust you?"

The crooked little smile couldn't quite cover the desperation huddled in the back of his eyes. "Think of it as sublimation. I'll get this gnawing need to kill you out of my system."

Tisianne studied Zabb with growing calculation. A reluctant smile broke. "Think it will work?"

"Ancestors only know."

"Are you a good lover?"

"The best."

"All men say that," Tis said dismissively. "I even said it."

Planting a foot on the wall behind her, Tis pushed off. Stopped directly in front of him. Almost touching. She caught his chin between her fingers. Pulled his face down. Kissed him. Retreated back to her wall. No pockets. She buried her hands in the folds of her gown. Regarded him. There are many things to be said for telepaths. One is they know when to keep silent.

"All right," Tis said. "Prove it."

They had been at it for an hour. Fumblings, groping, awkward kisses from Tis, expert foreplay by Zabb. None of it worked. Each time he attempted to enter her, the terror returned. Tis lay on her back in Zabb's bed and felt tears tangling wet and hot in the hair over her temples. Zabb wiped them away.

"Tis, do you remember your first toy?"

The question startled her from her internal pain. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Zabb seated cross-legged on the foot of the bed. "Yes, Roxalana selected her, and father auditioned her."

"And you had learned to play with her."

"Yes."

"How old were you?"

"Fourteen."

"And what did she teach you?"

"About a thousand positions."

"No, what's the first and most important lesson a toy teaches you?"

"That sex is a state of mind," Tis replied slowly.

"And what happened to you at Blaise's hands was not sex. It was violence." He stretched out next to her again. His skin was cold against her. He lifted her hand and laid it on his cock. "Now, you make love to me. Arouse me the way the male Tisianne liked to be aroused. I will not touch or caress you until you tell me to. You're not powerless now, Tis. In this bed, at this moment, you control me."

Hesitantly she began to explore his body. Zabb lay supine and helpless beneath her, and she liked the looming sense of power it gave her to look down at him as she knelt between his outflung legs. Under her delicate ministrations she soon had him at rampant attention. His excitement began to communicate with her borrowed body.

With a mouth gone suddenly dry she said, "Now, Zabb, now touch me."

He laid a long forefinger against his temple, then against hers. "Touch me here first, Tis."

Emotionally she retreated, though the body didn't move. Lovemaking between telepaths was a total sharing. For almost fifty years Tachyon had been forcing the joining. With Zabb it would be a merger. She opened her mind to him and found no violence there. She read his arousal and pleasure, and for an instant he had returned to her the sensation of a penis. He gently stroked her labia, nipped at her nipples, and she fed back her pleasure to him.

Terror burned away in the passion of her orgasm. It was only after she had experienced her pleasure that he allowed himself a release. And only after his cries died away did she allow herself to giggle.

"What?" Zabb muttered against her breast.

It feels... so strange. Ideal, I'm leaking." She wriggled from beneath him and padded to the bathroom, his sperm coating her inner thighs.

When she returned, he was under the covers. He lifted a corner, and she crawled in, curled up next to him.

"What? What do you want? You have that look again," said Zabb.

"Do it again please."

Much later she heard him ask. "So how was it?'

Tis stretched her arms back over her head and lightly traced the carving on the headboard with her fingertips. The room was redolent with the scent of cinara wood from the fire and sex. She gave Zabb a mischievous glance.

"Don't you mean how was I? That's what men really mean."

Zabb shoved a pillow behind his back and lit an illusion. He glared down at Tach lying next to him. "You are the most irritating Takisian."

Tis shrugged, rolled up onto an elbow, and threw back her hair. Scanned the beside table. "When did you order spetza?"

Zabb reached down by the bed and with a rattle of ice pulled out a bottle of sparkling wine. "A long time ago."

"I must have been sleeping."

"An admission... I wore you out." Tis just looked at him as she accepted the glass. "What was it like" You're the only man to have made this journey."

"What about lawmerates?"

"It's a cheat. Surgical alteration, hormonal therapy. You are a woman."

Tis lifted a breast. "Here." Then tapped her temple. "Not here. Well, multiple orgasms are definitely an improvement over one. I discover it is much harder to let go as a woman. There is a passivity, a vulnerability that frightens me, but that may just be a result of my early female experiences." She paused and took a swallow of the sweet, sparkling wine.

"Sex is more significant somehow. Biology talking, I suspect. For men it's a five-minute commitment. For women, a potential fourteen years until their children leave Rarrana. But much of this you know. It's an advantage of telepaths."

"Much of my drive in joining is vanity. It's as if I'm looking in a mirror. Her pleasure reflects back to me how marvelous I am." The bald honesty and the insight of the admission stunned her. Tis looked at Zabb with new respect, and there was a twinge of guilt.

"You're right. I hadn't really thought about it, but you are absolutely right. I did the same thing. Ideal, what pigs we men can be." She snuggled closer to him, and he put an arm around her shoulders.

"You're going to be a very good lover. Having known what pleases you as a man, you can apply it and please your partner."

"Going to be?" Tis asked.

"Your impression was correct. You do hold back."

"Rape has a way of doing that to you," Tach said a little dryly.

"I think it's more a function of being technically a virgin."

"You have an elastic view of virginity."

Zabb was warming to the theme. Excitement growing with each word. "In fact, you're the most virginal of virgins. You have no sexual sense of self. You're learning it here, in my bed, in my arms. You've never known another man --"

"Just hundreds of women," Tis said, torn between amusement and irritation.

There was a chime. Zabb sat up, all quivering alertness, and Tis knew he had read some telepathic summons. Taj entered, and Tisianne, suddenly shy, pulled covers up to her chin.

"Raiyis, forgive the intrusion, but we have received a private priority message from Blaise." The formal mask slipped, and he looked at Tisianne. "I think you better hear it... now."