Double Solitaire

  Mark's hand was in his pocket. Jay was willing his to stay there. But the Takisian made no move even to enter the room, and Jay felt the hair on the back of his neck start to lie down again. There was something predatory in the way Zabb was eyeing Tachyon, and Jay began to think that maybe Meadows wasn't totally paranoid. Maybe this smiling man really did intend to kill Tachyon.

  "Forgive my laxity as a host. I've had a ship to run.

  Zabb said something to Nesfa in an unknown language. She responded in the same clicks and pops. He crossed to her and ran a hand softly across her belt and gently cupped the hip pouch. The familiarity made Jay want to hit him.

  "I didn't want your society, Zabb, just your efforts as a carter," replied Tachyon with a fine hauteur that set oddly on her very youthful features.

  Zabb laughed. "Oh, cousin, you do that very well, but you chastise me for becoming a laborer while you have spent the past forty years ministering to filth?" He propped his shoulders against a wall and included Mark and Jay in the conversation. "On my world saints are suspect. Only the mad act without a hefty dose of self-interest. So I think my cousin is mad. Or hopelessly tainted. After all, he has become an Earth-woman." Again that laugh.

  "I think we ought to get back to our room," said Mark.

  Jay agreed, but another, less wise, part of himself hated to be routed by this supercilious, smiling bastard.

  "An excellent idea, but leave my kinswoman. We have need of private conversation," Zabb said.

  "Now, you didn't strike me as stupid," said Jay conversationally. "Arrogant, and maybe a little too inclined to lead with your chin -- most of you military types have that problem -- but not stupid. Why do you think we're along on this little party? It sure ain't for the great view or the superb accommodations."

  "You're not seeing the Doc alone." It lacked the wit and panache of Jay's remarks, but it got the point across.

  Zabb sighed, a heavy, studied sound of noblesse oblige oppressed by gaucherie. "How very tiresome you humans are." He turned to Tachyon. "Cousin, are you afraid?"

  Jay squeezed his eyes shut. Praying, but doubting that Tach had the self-control to ignore that red flag.

  "Afraid of you?"

  Here it comes, Jay almost moaned aloud.

  "Of course I am." The ace's eyes snapped open, and he stared in amazement at that queenly little figure with its rampantly out-thrust belly. "But I repose my faith in my friends and the strength of your word. My friends I'm sure about, your word... " Her voice trailed off significantly, and she gave a little shrug of the shoulders that said a book-full.

  Zabb may have tossed a flag, but Tach had jabbed in a poniard. A dark flush rose in his cheeks. The Takisian spun on his heel and exited. Tach slumped suddenly.

  "I shouldn't have come out. I shouldn't give him a chance at me."

  "Yeah, that's what I've said all along. Come on, baby, I'll take you back," Mark said softly. "Jay?"

  "I... uh, think I'll stay here and help Nesfa with the planting."

  Mark's blue eyes were very knowing behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Jay flushed and wondered if his growing sexual need was apparent to everyone.

  "So, here we are. Just the two of us."

  Nesfa looked up from the bamboo. "Yes."

  "So, are you married?"

  "Excuse?"

  "Married. Got a husband? Mate?" The concept didn't seem to be penetrating.

  "I don't... understand."

  Jay decided words were getting in the way. He bent and kissed Nesfa lightly on the lips. Her face brightened. "Ah, you wish to exchange."

  "Yeah, yeah, that's it." God, what an ambassador he'd make.

  Nesfa stood and led Jay to a sofa. This was becoming more promising by the minute. She ran her hands around his waist and frowned in perplexity.

  "Where is your #@$****?"

  Jay leered. "A little lower." He unzipped, and, by damn, she was a fast learner. Her hand had him out in a second, caressing and exploring his penis.

  Jay began kissing her. Nesfa seemed to like that. So did he, once he got used to the strangeness of her taste, sort of pepper and lemon. Her hair was twining and coiling around his head, tickling his face. There was a new, moist weight on his arm. Jay opened his eyes and looked down. A wormlike thing was oozing out of the jewel-encrusted pouch, wrapping itself about his arm, climbing. Its torpedolike head was dripping gore.

  Jay screamed hoarsely and threw himself backward off the couch. Nesfa was sitting like a sack of abandoned laundry. The lovely face had gone slack and empty. The worm was quivering, casting its head in small circles, searching for Jay.

  It began to undulate its way back into the pouch. Jay jumped to his feet, gripped the top of the shift in both hands, and ripped. It fell away to hang like tattered seaweed over the heavy belt. There was a hole in the pouch. A hole in the shift. A hole in Nesfa. The worm thrust its head back into the woman's body. The light and animation came back into her face.

  "Jay, what is wrong? You do not wish to exchange?"

  Jay stared down at his now-limp penis hanging through his fly. He shuddered as he remembered another crawling parasite: Ti Malice. With shaking hands Jay stuffed himself back in his pants and ran.

  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."
r />   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.