Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “White Sands, three days. Well, I’d best get planning.” She drained her shake and slid out of the booth.

  “Tachyon.” She stopped and looked back. “In memory of the old joker news vendor who told bad joker jokes, take this, and don’t think too harshly of me,” Jube said.

  He placed it on the table. A tangle of wires topped with a yellow-green crystal. Tach’s eyes widened slightly.

  “Thank you, Jube. It will help.”

  “Cool,” breathed Trips as the heavy sunken door swung up to reveal the Turtle shell.

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Tach asked again nervously.

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah, I got sandwiches.” He hefted the wicker hamper. “Plenty to drink.”

  “Don’t get pulled over,” Mark said seriously. “I bet there’s an open-bottle law for turtle shells too.” He then allowed a delighted smile to crease his cheeks. Tom and Tach just stared up at the big ace, then began laughing.

  “What a team,” Tom said. “Your relatives haven’t got a prayer, Tachy.”

  “They could not withstand us before,” the girl replied. She stepped forward and gave the ace a quick hug. Tom started to close his arms around her, then abruptly dropped them.

  “Like, go in peace, man,” Trips said, flashed Tom the peace sign, then vigorously shook the smaller man’s hand.

  Tom entered the shell. Trips and Tach stepped back and watched the great armored shell slide silently out into the night. It dwindled quickly as it climbed. Their last sight of it was as it crossed like a small, self-propelled shadow across the face of the moon.

  “Awesome,” Mark sighed.

  Jay and Mark were waiting for her in a corner booth. The nightclub was jumping at nine o’clock with a bad salsa band making conversation virtually impossible. It wasn’t deterring the patrons, however. The rumble of three hundred voices provided a bass counterpoint to the wailing singer.

  “How’d it go?” Mark asked. Under the colored strobe lights his face seemed to dissolve and re-form every third second. It was sickening.

  “Not so well,” Tach said. The memory of Cody’s tears gnawed at her. “She wanted to come with me. Impossible of course. A woman of childbearing years. Impossible.” She sat down at the table and briefly buried her face in her hands. “I love that woman. And I have brought her nothing but pain.” Tach threw her hair back. Turned to Jay. “So have you completed the arrangements for our journey?”

  “Yeah.” He pushed three tickets across the table.

  Tach stared at them. Blinked and looked again. They had not changed, they were still … “Bus tickets?” Tachyon finally said.

  Jay threw out his hands palms up. “Hey, they’re watching the airports, trains don’t go anywhere close to where we need to be—”

  “I thought you would charter a plane or something.”

  “With what?” Jay asked. “You got no money. I got no money. He”—jerk of a thumb at Mark—“sure as hell ain’t got no money.”

  “But a bus? I’m pregnant. The last time I rode a bus was from Lisbon to Amsterdam in 1953. It was awful.”

  Jay just shrugged. Mark laid a hand soothingly on Tach’s shoulder. Withdrew it quickly as she tensed. “Doc, it’ll be okay. They’re a lot more comfortable now.”

  “There are three tickets here.” Tach eyed the detective suspiciously.

  “I’m coming with you. Make sure you get there safe.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t merely a ploy to drive up your fee?”

  “Bitchy, bitchy. Watch it, you’re going to give motherhood a bad name.” Jay checked his watch. “We better get rolling. The bus leaves at ten.”

  Hours later she leaned against the window, her head pillowed on Mark’s rolled-up jacket, and watched the night ratchet past. Jay was snoring loudly in his seat. Mark was as silent as a statue. Tach could sense he was awake.

  He whispered to her, “Scared, baby?”

  “Yes. I am no one. I live nowhere. Belong no place. I wish someone could find me again.”

  “Someone will. You.”

  Chapter Eight

  AS THE DOORS TO the office swung closed behind him, Durg again wondered if his line carried a recessive for insanity. He had been stolen from this House at age twelve. Now, one hundred and ninety-six years later, he was returning. His boot heels drew music from the harmonically sensitive floor. It seemed an entire symphony’s worth of walk to the great desk.

  Durg knew his attention should have been focused upon L’gura, Raiyis of House Vayawand. But there had been three rulers of the House since Durg’s kidnapping, and of greater and more terrifying interest was the Morakh who stood behind and slightly to the left of the Raiyis’s chair. Yes, she was standing absolutely still, but there was the poised quivering of a recently shot arrow. She was ready to fight. To kill. Her honey brown hair had been twisted up into an elaborate knot like a temple chatri. Down, it would probably stretch to her knees. She was very beautiful.

  Lighter-boned than a Morakh male, she was still massive when measured against her master. L’gura was thin to the point of emaciation, and his chalk white skin set off the green and blue of the jewels implanted in his cheeks and beneath his brows. He was placidly watching Durg’s approach.

  It is a mark of his confidence in his Morakh that they leave the guards outside, Durg thought. And almost too late he reacted to her slashing attack. Too long among humans. Too long on a world where guests enter unarmed into rooms.

  Durg tucked into a tight ball, thus missing the larynx-crushing blow. The roll was supposed to take her in the shins. She was too fast. She sprang lightly over him, delivering a vicious thrust kick to the kidneys as she passed. Ignoring the pain, Durg snapped onto his back and caught her by the ankle. Threw her hard into the far wall. He regained his feet just in time to counter her next attack. He now had his objective. He endured two punishing blows in order to close with her. He drove his heel down hard on her instep and speared her in the throat with his right elbow, while with his left hand he drew the ceremonial sword swinging in its scabbard at her side. He used her own momentum to send her stumbling past him, and he quickly ran to L’gura, knelt, and offered the sword and the back of his neck.

  “Malika, enough!”

  At that shouted command from her master, the woman skittered to a stop inches from Durg’s unprotected back. The aching between his shoulder blades diminished to a mere itch.

  L’gura stood and threw the sword back to his Morakh. “It seems he is worth enough to let him live.”

  “He is still a traitor and tainted,” Malika replied.

  “But so interesting. A renegade Morakh who returns home in a stolen Ilkazam ship with an Ilkazam noble and an abomination in tow.” L’gura resumed his seat. “If your story is intriguing enough, I’ll let you live long enough to complete it.”

  Durg omitted nothing. He told of his theft by a raiding Ilkazam party led by Prince Zabb. His years of service to House Ilkazam. The journey to Earth to evaluate the success of the Ilkazam Enhancer experiment. His secret command to locate and kill the heir to House Ilkazam, Prince Tisianne. His defeat at the hands of a woman touched by that Takisian Enhancer. His abandonment, and his years on Earth. How by the grace of the Ideal a powerful weapon had been delivered into his hands.

  “Two, in fact,” Durg amended. “And I realized I had a coin valuable enough to buy my return to the House of my birth and blood.”

  L’gura said nothing, just stroked his upper lip thoughtfully. Malika, having ascertained she would not interrupt her master, stepped in. “Why now? Why in all these long years did you decide that now was the moment?”

  “I wished to breed. I heard you were available.”

  L’gura laughed at his Morakh’s outraged expression. “Durg at’ Morakh bo…” The Raiyis of House Vayawand raised his brows inquiringly.

  “Blaise,” Durg supplied the name of his master.

  “… bo Blaise, you are a most unusual Morakh. Tainted, yes, but very interesting. N
ow, tell me of this coin, and why it is valuable to me.”

  “Will it buy me back into my House?”

  “If it is valuable enough.”

  “Is the heir to House Ilkazam worth anything to you?”

  L’gura leaned back in his chair. Spoke to the ceiling. “If you actually held Tisianne.” He snapped suddenly forward and pinned Durg with a look. “But you do not. You possess a body animated by the mind of a mudcrawling girl-child.”

  “True, but the Ilkazam won’t know that.”

  “And what happens when the real Prince Tisianne arrives and proves us all liars?”

  “He will not. The human mudcrawlers are primitive. Years ago they attained their moon, then lost their will and nerve for space travel. They have no ships capable of crossing the void. The only ship was Prince Tisianne’s, and we have removed that means of escape.”

  L’gura sighed. “I have no interest in gene money. I wish to defeat Ilkazam.”

  “As do we. We are not proposing a kidnapping, a hostage situation. My master suggests that it might be more to your benefit if Tisianne brant T’sara seems to have willingly switched his allegiance.”

  “It has never happened,” Malika said.

  Durg shifted to look at her. “Then how much more impact this betrayal will cause.”

  “No one will believe it,” L’gura said.

  “They will. They will hear my young master speak, and he has the power of words.”

  “Not enough to keep him alive. He is a half-breed horror.”

  “Again, you are correct, but surely it is enough to keep him alive a few days?”

  “You’re bargaining with me, Morakh. Are you sure you weren’t stranded among the Network vacu instead of mudcrawlers?”

  “The question is … are you buying?”

  L’gura stared at Durg for a long, long time. Durg knew the man was regretting the genetic manipulations that had left the Morakh completely opaque to even the most powerful telepath. When you were certain of your pet’s loyalty, it was not a problem. When you weren’t … Durg smiled inwardly but allowed no hint of his internal pleasure to show on his face.

  “Three days for your half-breed.”

  “That should be enough for him to prove his usefulness.”

  “There will be no reprieve,” L’gura warned.

  “As you say, Most Bred.”

  And Durg bowed his way out of the office.

  “We have little time,” Durg said softly to Blaise.

  “Do it,” Blaise ordered, and Kelly closed his eyes and contacted Baby.

  And the ship swallowed the Vayawand guard left on duty until the arrival of the House shuttle. Durg spared a moment to ponder the communication that had sprung up between the ship and the bogus Tachyon and regret it, but it was serving its purpose now, and soon Kelly would be separated from the other stolen female.

  “I’ve bought you three days, but don’t trust it. Treachery is the great Takisian art form. They’ll try to kill you before the deadline and take Kelly for themselves.”

  “So I’ll jump this L’gura guy—”

  “No! We save that.”

  “So how the fuck do I convince this guy not to croak me?” Blaise paced a few nervous steps away, and back again. “I knew we shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You are an abortion, afterbirth, the most filthy thing they can imagine. Which means they will underestimate you. I will select the target and upon my command use your mind control. Strike when they are unaware. Kill them quickly.”

  Durg had already selected the target—Malika, the Morakh guard. Perhaps it was a quirk of Blaise’s madness coupled with his freakish mind-control power, but the young man had found the key to a Morakh’s mind. At their first encounter Durg had repelled the mental attack, but Blaise had come close to scratching the surface of that opaque mind. Months of practice had provided Blaise with the secret. Now all their lives depended upon whether the knack would translate from Morakh to Morakh.

  The boy’s shrill objection pulled Durg back. “And then they’ll kill me!”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Are you brave enough to risk the roll of those dice?”

  The young man stared down into Durg’s eyes. There was fear there, and Durg remembered Blaise was only sixteen. But House Tandeh had been founded by just such a “boy.” Then that wild, fearsome smile touched Blaise’s lips, and Durg felt something akin to a chill pass down his spine.

  “What the hell. I’ve always been lucky.”

  “The greatest danger in Vayawand lies in the fact that the revolutionary energy of the masses will be dissipated in spurts, in isolated explosions. Our task as the founders of the Committee of Action consists of unifying the masses and investing them with the greatest possible force. With that titanic power behind us we will sweep to power, not only in Vaya, but across the whole of the planet.”

  The Most Bred and the Tarhiji (Kelly had discovered that meant the mind-blind bulk of the population) servants—sat enthralled. Kelly stifled a yawn. One servant let out a small hiccup of sound, an aborted cheer. He was quickly shushed, but then Sekal leapt to his feet and lifted his wineglass to Blaise.

  “It is wonderful! It is … brilliant, it is … it is…”

  “But what does it mean?”

  It was a soft and languid voice, and it belonged to an extremely elderly, extremely precious nobleman by the name of Bat’tam. From the moment of their arrival he had been a constant visitor at their suite, but the attraction wasn’t Blaise. In fact, this was the first time Bat’tam had ever addressed a word to the young man. No, Bat’tam came for Kelly—or rather to lust after the flesh that Kelly currently inhabited. It made Kelly crazy.

  Blaise stared down into Bat’tam’s sagging, wrinkled face. “What does it mean?” the young man repeated softly. His purple black eyes swept the dinner table, and the now-silent nobles. “It means I shall make you the rulers of Vayawand … and the conquerors of Takis.” And then he began to sing in a rich baritone.

  The sound drowned out Bat’tam’s plaintive query of “How?”

  “Arise, ye prisoners of Vayawand! Arise, ye wretched of Takis, for Justice thunders condemnation, a better world’s in birth. No more tradition’s chains shall bind us, arise, ye slaves; no more in thrall! Takis shall rise on new foundations, we have been naught, we shall be all!”

  The tune was stirring, the words simple. Several of the nobles, and a few of the Tarhiji servants, tried it out on the chorus. Durg slipped down the table refilling wineglasses. Bat’tam lifted his and then locked eyes with the Morakh.

  “I hope your master can fight as well as he can talk,” Bat’tam said.

  Durg blinked slowly several times, then finally said, “He doesn’t need to. This battle’s already won.”

  Chapter Nine

  A SMALL AVALANCHE OF white gypsum sand heralded Mark’s return.

  “No sign of the army.” He slapped energetically at his pants legs, and sand hopped like terrified fleas from the material.

  “What a relief,” Jay said. “I was sure worried that a bunch of jeeps and tanks and helicopters were gonna come sneaking up on us.”

  Mark’s face crumpled.

  “POPINJAY,” boomed Turtle through the speakers set into his shell. “IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE AN ASSHOLE, WHY DON’T YOU JUST CLIMB BACK IN THAT RENTAL CAR AND LEAVE?”

  “Because I want to see the spaceship. And don’t call me Popinjay, damn it.”

  “They’re metal. They’re not beautiful like our ships,” Tach murmured, speaking almost more to herself than her companions.

  Mark knelt and began rooting through the luggage. There wasn’t much. While Jay had gone to rent a car, Mark and Tach had bought a few changes of clothing in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Tach had also added a deck of cards and a traveling Scrabble set to her meager belongings. Mark and Tommy were so excited about this journey that Tach hadn’t had the heart to tell them how stone-cold boring space travel could be.

  The snap of the latches was
loud in the desert darkness. Flicking on a pocket flashlight, the tall ace once again surveyed his stash of powders.

  “They haven’t changed since the last time you checked—four hours ago,” Jay said.

  Mark rocked back to squat on his heels. “I know. I just keep wishing I could have made more. I’ve got four of everybody. That’s it.”

  “Mark, we have pharmaceuticals on my planet,” Tach reminded him.

  “Yeah, but it’ll take time to get the proper chemical equivalents, and if things get hot, we may not have it.” He shook his head and shut the case.

  “Well, let’s just hope the Network baggage handlers didn’t train at Tomlin International,” Jay said. “Otherwise your dope is history.”

  Mark grinned. “I think this qualifies as carryon.”

  Tach was listening with perhaps half an ear to the humans’ conversation. Mostly she scanned the explosion of light that was the Milky Way. A star dislodged itself from its fellows and began a slow arcing fall toward Earth.

  “There, Mr. Ackroyd, there’s your spaceship.”

  Jay frowned up the line of her arm. “Uh-uh, shooting star.”

  “Spaceship.”

  The star continued its descent. Jay gnawed at his lower lip. “Okay, airplane then.”

  “JESUS, ACKROYD,” Turtle said. “YOU SOUND LIKE A UFO DEBUNKER. IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE THERE’S GOING TO BE A SPACESHIP, WHY ARE WE ALL STANDING AROUND FREEZING OUR BUTTS IN THE DESERT?”

  “I don’t know about you. Me, I’m getting two hundred bucks a day.”

  Lifting her wrist, Tach checked the sweep hand on her watch. No, it wasn’t an illusion; the pilot of the Network vessel was descending at terrifying speed. Then suddenly Turtle and Popinjay’s bickering was drowned under the crash of an enormous sonic boom.