Summon the crew, there is a ceremony of adoption to be observed.
What trick are you up to?
Wait and see, or deny me, and be forever curious, he said impudently.
Her laughter glittered in his mind. A challenge. Very well, my little prince, we will see just what it is you are up to.
They had all gathered in the bay. Tom looked about, and let out an anguished cry, “My shell!”
Zabb’s lips skinned back in a harsh smile. “We jettisoned it. It was taking up far too much room.”
Tach paid little attention to Turtle’s distress. His eyes roved quickly about the room ascertaining that the singularity shifter was still in its place.
“It had infrared and zoom lenses, and tuck-and-roll upholstery, and—” Zabb laughed. “You puke!”
Zabb stepped forward, fist upraised.
“Zabb brant Sabina sek Shaza sek Risala, touch my stirps, and I will not give you the courtesy of facing me. I will kill you like a cur in the street.” Zabb froze, and turned slowly to face his small cousin.
“What farce is this?”
“As a breeding member of the house of Ilkasam I exercise my right to add, by blood and bone, to my line.”
“You would embrace these humans?” asked Benaf’saj.
“I would.”
She raked them with an imperious glance. “They will, I think, add little to your consequence.”
Tach stepped between Trips and Turtle, and gripped them by their wrists. “I would rather have them bound and bonded to me than many who can make a greater claim to that right.” His eyes slid to Zabb.
“Very well, it is your right.” The old woman settled herself on a stool that Hellcat obligingly extruded for her. “Do you agree to this adoption, understanding the duties and obligations of those so honored?”
Three pairs of eyes stared at Tach, and he nodded slightly.
“We do,” Asta said firmly when the two men continued to stand and dither.
“Know then that you, and all your heirs and assigns, are forever bound to the house of Ilkazam, line of Sennari through its son, Tisianne. In all matters be great, and bring glory and service to this house.”
“Are we, like, Takisians now, man?” asked Trips in a penetrating whisper.
“This ritual is to bind the psi-blind to a house. You would not be permitted to mate with any member of the mentat class, but you are deserving of our aid and protection.”
“So we’re serfs,” Tom rasped.
“No, more like equerries. Mere servants are never formally adopted.” He turned on his heel, and pinned Zabb with a hard glance. “But by my fathers, you, cousin, have given me insult, and shown both contempt and abuse toward my stirps, and I will have satisfaction,”
Before Zabb could move, Benaf’saj spoke up. “You need not accept this challenge. Courtesy does not apply retroactively to the psi-blind.”
The commander swept her a bow. “But, Ajayiz’et, it will give me the greatest pleasure to meet my beloved cousin. Rabdan, you will act for me?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“And Sedjur, you will act for me?” Tachyon asked. The old man managed a nod.
The two men moved quickly to an arms locker, and Tach joined his friends. As he kicked off his shoes, stripped out of his coat and brocaded waistcoat, and began tucking up his ruffles, he said quietly, “Stay well together. Tom, you know what you must do, but for god’s sake act quickly.” He ignored the human’s frantic head shakings. “Fortunately the small sword gives the advantage to the defense, but I will be hard-pressed to hold off Zabb. The attention of my family will be focused on me. No one should notice your actions, and once you have the device I will send you home.”
“What about you?” muttered Tom.
Tachyon shrugged. “I stay here. It is, after all, a matter of honor. I won’t run.”
“I hate fucking heroes.”
“Has someone something with which to tie back my hair?”
Asta dropped to one knee, and rummaged about in her capacious dance bag. Pulling out a toe shoe, she tore the pink ribbon from the shoe, and held it out to the Takisian. It clashed horribly with his metallic red curls.
“Sir,” Sedjur said softly. He was holding out a chain-mail sleeve, which covered the sword arm up to the elbow, and a beautifully etched and hammered sword. The hilt was inlaid with semiprecious stones, and the filigree work on the basket was so fine that it looked like lace.
“Don’t look so depressed, old friend.”
“How can I not? You’re no match for him.”
“Unkind of you to say so. Especially when you trained me.”
“And him; and I say again, you are no match for him.”
“It is necessary.” His tone indicated that the subject was closed, and he stared autocratically over the old retainer’s head while the armor was strapped to his right forearm.
Asta giggled hysterically when a resin box was brought over, and Tach carefully coated the soles of his stockinged feet. She clapped her hands over her mouth, and subsided.
Tach, moving to the center of the room, hefted his rapier several times to accustom himself to its weight, and to remind his muscles of old skills, long unused. He didn’t blame Asta for tittering. To modern humans this archaic ritual fought with archaic weapons must seem strange, especially in a spacefaring race. But there were sound reasons for the Takisian devotion to bladed weapons. They had atomic and laser weapons, but for hand-to-hand combat inside the skin of one of the living ships, a weapon that did not exceed the reach of the arm was better. An indiscriminate firing of projectile or coherent light weapon could badly damage a ship, and then it wouldn’t much matter if the crew had won or not. There was also the Takisian love of drama. Virtually any fool could learn to fire a gun. It took real skill to be a swordsman.
Zabb joined him, and said in an undertone, “I have been looking forward to this moment for years.”
“Then, I am delighted to be able to oblige you. It doesn’t do to be denied so fondly a wished-for occurrence.”
Their swords flashed in a brief salute, and engaged with a scrape of steel on steel.
Tom was no expert on the niceties of fencing, but he could see that this fight bore little resemblance to the brief glimpses of Olympic fencing he had seen on television. The speed was the same, but there was a deadly intensity about the two men as they fought for their lives. Their eyes were locked on each other, and the shifting of their stockinged feet on the floor of the ship made a soft whispering counterpoint to Tach’s gasping breaths.
His companions were staring at him, Trips with the look of a desperate basset hound, Asta the tip of her tongue just moistening her lips. Tom slowly turned his head, and stared at the black ball where it rested on the shelf only feet away. He reached out, struggling so hard that sweat popped out along his forehead and upper lip, and he found a great, yawning emptiness. The device didn’t even quiver.
Trips moaned, and Tom looked back just in time to see the foible of Zabb’s blade glance across Tach’s upper arm. A trail of red followed its path. Tach withdrew with more haste than grace, and barely parried a vicious thrust from his cousin. Trips, his watery blue eyes wild behind the thick lenses of his glasses, flung himself forward, and landed on Zabb’s shoulders. With a snarl the Takisian reached back, and flipped the hippie neatly across the room. Trips lay stunned on the luminous deck, gasping like a fish. Several of Zabb’s guards dragged him back, and dumped him on the floor between the other humans.
“I can’t, I just can’t,” Tom whispered frenziedly.
“You fucking wimp,” Asta enunciated clearly, and turned her back on him, returning her attention to the duel that had begun again.
Tach blinked hard, trying to clear the stinging sweat from his eyes. Each breath burned, and tiny tongues of flame seemed to be licking at the muscles of his sword arm.
Watch, watch, he urged himself.
Blade, coming up so fast it was just a blur.
He
parried with a sharp beat, the force of the blow vibrating down his already overtaxed muscles.
A riposte … but not with the blade. With his mind. A section of shield flowed, wavered. He thrust, hit, and Zabb staggered under the mental attack. He charged back. Corps a corps. Zabb’s breath hot on his face. The blades hopelessly tangled between them. Tach strained, trying to throw Zabb back, but he was overmatched. The mind, a gray, implacable wall. No, not quite!
Tach jerked his body to one side, avoiding a vicious knee to the groin, leaped back, and kicked Zabb’s back leg out from under him. Envelopment, but his cousin was too fast for him. Zabb parried, and followed with a swift riposte, and a mind blast. It slid off Tach’s shields.
His vision seemed to be blurring around the edges. No stamina. Wind almost gone. Turtle!
He tried a wild, desperate thrust in tierce. Zabb tapped it aside almost contemptuously. He was a demon. That smile, still in place, and only a few beads of sweat mingled in the curly sideburns. His lashes dropped, hooding his eyes, and he pressed the attack. Nausea lay thick on his tongue as Tach realized that Zabb had only been toying with him before.
“Would you like to call it quits, beloved cousin?” whispered his tormentor. “Of course you would. But it’s not to be. As promised, I am going to kill you.”
No breath to answer the taunt, he just shook his head, more to clear the sweat than to deny the statement. He lanced out with a desperate mental blow that was turned by Zabb’s shields, and then, like a miracle, he saw an opening. He lunged, blade scraping along Zabb’s. Zabb took his foible in a flashing parry, and passed on, his point searching for the heart.
Time thrust! Lure to the unwary. Death!
He was sure he was seeing it: the brief flaring of the nostrils, the sardonic half-grin. Steve Bruder, with the same mannerisms as he crushed Tom’s hand. Fuck you! he flung at Zabb as the power washed through him, tingling in his extremities. He reached out, and …
The blade coming swift and true, then miraculously pulled off line. Not much room, but enough! Tachyon brought up his sword, parrying on the forte.
A plentitude of targets offered themselves. The heart, the belly, a shoulder cut? Tach caught his lower lip between his teeth, and for one wild, glorious moment considered driving the point deep, deep into that hated body. He lunged, and their eyes met for one eternal, frozen moment. The blade turned in his hand, the hilt taking Zabb neatly in the chin with a sound like an ax hitting wood. Zabb’s sword clattered to the floor, and he pitched forward on his face. There was a gasp like a rising wind from the assembled watchers. For a moment Tach stared at his sword, then flung it aside, and knelt beside his cousin. Gently he rolled him over, and cradled the larger man in his arms.
“You see, I couldn’t do it,” he whispered, and he wondered why there were tears pricking at his eyelids. “I know you’d rather I killed you, but I couldn’t. And despite our training, death is not preferable to dishonor.”
Tom stood, his hands clenched at his sides, and reveled in the waves of excitement and joy that were washing through his body. He had done it. True, he had used enough concentration to shift a bulldozer, and the end result had been only a minute deflection. But it had been enough! Tach would live—indeed, had won—because of Tom’s action. With a little swagger he faced the alien device. It flashed through the air, landing with a satisfying smack in Tom’s hands.
“Come on, Tachy, time to go,” he sang out, his round cheeks flushed with excitement.
Tach laid Zabb gently down, and leaped to his friends. Not a single relative made a move.
Tom handed over the device with an awkward little bow.
Tach returned the salute. “Well done, Turtle. I knew you could do it.”
He looked to Benaf’saj, made an elegant leg, winked, and ordered them home.
It was like being in the center of a vortex of nothingness. Icy cold and utter darkness, and for Tachyon the feeling that his mind was being torn into tiny, tattered streamers by the stress of holding all four travelers within the envelope of the singularity shifter.
By the ancestors, he wailed. At least let us land on dry land.
Tachyon crumpled, the device rolling from his nerveless fingers. Trips was squatting in a gutter holding his head in his hands, and muttering over and over, “Oh wow!” Tom retched a few times as his abused stomach tried to decide just where in space and time it was currently residing. There was a growing commotion, people yelling, windows being flung open, horns blaring as cars rolled to a stop, their occupants gawking at the tableau on the sidewalk. Tom dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, looked down at Tach, and quickly dropped to his knees beside the Takisian. Blood was pumping sluggishly from the long gash on his arm, and was running from his nose, and he was alarmingly white. The alien seemed to be scarcely breathing, and Tom pressed his ear to his friend’s chest. The heartbeat fluttered erratically.
“Is he gonna be all right, man?” mumbled Trips.
“I don’t know.” Tom threw back his head, and stared up at a ring of black faces. “Somebody get a doctor.”
“Shit, man, they just popped in from nooowhere.”
“Teleportin’ honkies. You think they be aces, or what?”
“Doctor, git a doctor,” bawled a burly man.
Asta backed slowly away from the circle of spectators, her eyes searching quickly for the black ball. A couple of kids were inspecting the device, and she stepped to them.
“I’ll give you five dollars each for that.”
“Five dollars! Shit! It just be a bowlin’ ball with no holes in it. What good that gonna do you?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she said softly, and fished her billfold out of her dance bag. The exchange was quickly made, and she tucked away the alien device.
The howling of sirens presaged the arrival of the police and an ambulance. Tach was loaded in, and Tom started to climb in with him. “Hey, where’s the gizmo?”
Asta opened her mouth, blinked several times, and closed it. “Gee, I don’t know.” She peered about as if expecting it to materialize from the Harlem landscape. “Maybe somebody in the crowd took it.”
“Hey, buddy, you want to get your friend to the hospital or not?” growled one of the ambulance attendants.
“Well … look for it,” Tom ordered, and climbed in.
Asta gave an ironic wave to the departing ambulance. “Oh, I will.”
And Kien is going to be so pleased with this.
She sauntered away, searching for a subway station to carry her to the waiting arms of her lover and commander.
The padlock opened with a grating snap, and Tach pushed open the small side door to the warehouse. Trips and Turtle followed him into the echoing gloom, and Trips muttered something unintelligible at the sight of the ship resting in the center of the vast, empty building. The amber and lavender lights on the points of her spines glimmered faintly in the gloom, and dust spiraled in from all sides as she quietly collected and synthesized the tiny particles into fuel. She was singing one of the many heroic ballads that made up such a large part of ship culture, but cut off when she perceived Tach’s entrance. The music was, of course, inaudible to the two humans.
Baby, he telepathed to her.
Lordly one. Are we going out? she asked with pathetic eagerness.
No, not tonight. Open please.
There are humans with you. Do they also enter?
Yes. This is Captain Trips, and Turtle. They are as brothers to me. Honor them.
Yes, Tisianne. I am pleased to have your names.
They cannot hear you. Like most of their kind, they are mind-blind.
Sorrow.
There was the ache of another kind of sorrow in his chest as he led the way to his private salon. Memory—it could be so clear—the day his father had taken him to select this ship. All gone now.
He settled back among the cushions on the bed, and ordered, Search and contact.
There are lordly ones present?
&nbs
p; Yes.
And one of my kin? Baby asked, again with that pathetic eagerness.
Yes.
Seconds stretched into minutes, Tach lounging at his ease on the bed, Trips perched like a nervous roosting bird on a settee, and Tom bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.
The wall before Tachyon shimmered, and Benaf’saj’s face appeared. The ship boosted his powerful telepathy, and the link was made.
Tisianne.
Kibr. You were expecting the call?
Of course. I’ve known you—
Since I was in diapers, yes, I know.
You have surprised me, Tisianne. I think Earth has had a beneficial effect upon you.
It has taught me many things, he corrected in a dry tone. Some more pleasant than others. He paused, and fiddled with the foaming lace beneath his chin. So, does it continue to be dagger points between us?
No, child. You may stay with your rustic humans. After the defeat you dealt him, Zabb has no hope of the scepter. You should have killed him, you know. Tach just shook his head. Benaf’saj frowned down at her hands, and straightened her rings. So we part. It is disappointing that we have no specimens, but the success of the experiment cannot be denied, and it will delight Bakonur to have our data. This effort will be the salvation of the family yet.
Yes, Tach replied hollowly.
I will send a ship every ten years or so to check on you. When you are ready to return to us we will welcome you. Farewell, Tis.
Farewell, he whispered.
“Well?” asked Tom.
“They’ll leave us in peace.”
“Like, I’m really glad you’re not gonna leave.”
“So am I,” he said, but his tone lacked certainty, and he stared mournfully at the glowing wall as if trying to pull back the image of his granddam.
A warm, capable hand with its short, stubby fingers closed firmly over his shoulder. A moment later Trips had gripped his other arm, and he sat silent, basking in the wash of love and affection coming off both the men, driving back his homesickness.