Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “Made any more progress?” Tisianne asked, as she shut off the computer and turned to face Taj. They were in the medical labs of House Ilkazam.

  Not by the flicker of an eyelash did the older Takisian indicate that he read the wealth of fury and sarcasm behind the four words. “A little. It hurt us when we lost our two best researchers.”

  “Ansata’s death was his own choice. A simple surrender was all that was required.”

  “Or you could have released his ship.”

  Tis wasn’t going to buy one instant of guilt. She buried the brief flash that tried to surface. “That was never an option. I weighed fifteen lives against the thousands on Earth. Ansata lost. And as for my absence—I was unavoidably detained.”

  Jay surprised Tisianne by speaking up. Obviously he understood Takisian better than he spoke it. “If your ship hadn’t been damaged, would you have stayed?”

  Slowly she said, “Probably not. I was very young, and I was making a grand gesture in the best and grandest Takisian style. You were just faceless masses who were going to be so very, very grateful. Only later did I learn to love you.”

  “You have reason to be grateful, groundling,” Taj said. “You obviously have received some great and potent power, or you would not be a companion to Tisianne.”

  Jay didn’t have to climb down the alien’s throat, Tis did it for him. “Grateful! Grateful! The Ideal curse you and leave you childless. Is Jay’s power worth tens of thousands of lives? Is it worth the damage to his life, concerned as he must be over the fate of any children he may sire? Is it worth the loss of all that I am? What was conceived in this room I am now carrying to fruition.”

  She spun away and tried to regain control of her ragged breaths. The fury, the anguish helped propel her to a cabinet. It kept her from thinking too much about the purpose of the drug she was loading into an epispray.

  “I see you haven’t lost your flare for impassioned speeches. Do you still favor desperate causes?” Taj asked.

  He was trying to fathom the mind of a person who would run off to save the inhabitants of an alien world. Trying to see if she regretted throwing away her birthright and her future. Tis thrust the epispray deep into her pocket and looked her uncle straight in the eye.

  “I’d do it again … in a second.…”

  His expression softened. “That’s my Tisianne. Your father would be proud.”

  “Did he ever forgive me?”

  “No … but he missed you to the end.”

  “It’s time I saw him.”

  The infirmary was almost empty. There was one young man floating in a biogerm bubble. The bubbles hung from the ceiling by long filaments that monitored the injured body, but it did look as if the patient had been swallowed by a Portuguese man-of-war. Tis also thought of them as placenta pods. They served the same function as the womb, growing a healthy body, and the individual floating in their soothing soup often seemed to revert. Like the man before them, curled on his side, his thumb in his mouth, eyes squeezed shut, and nutrient feeds stabbing his body at a hundred different points.

  “Gross,” Jay said, but Tis wasn’t certain whether he was reacting to the bubble or the horrendous wounds that raked the man’s flesh, laying bare the various levels and colors of a Takisian body.

  At the far end of the ward lay a pair of heavy plasteel doors like the entrance into a security vault. And it was a safe of sorts; it was designed to protect the most precious and powerful of the House Ilkazam as they healed. The guards took up positions at the door to the infirmary, and about the vault doors. Taj stood before the access panel, an abstract piece of appliqué art with multicolored silicon crystals, each of them flashing with white lights. Taj sent the telepathic code, and order became chaos. Crystals flashed with clashing and discordant colors, and then the doors slid slowly open with a soft whine.

  “Do you want me to wait outside with the hired help?” Jay asked.

  Tis couldn’t force words past the lump in her throat. She shook her head and entered. Jay followed.

  Shaklan was also floating in a biogerm bubble, also curled into a fetal position, but there was no sense of the healing infant. This was a breathing, excreting husk. Rollers had been placed in the palms of each clawlike hand to prevent them from closing into permanent fists. The hip bones thrust like knife blades against the gray skin of the pelvis, and the bones of the rib cage fell away to a shrunken belly. Long, long hair floated like seaweed about the shriveled body.

  Tisianne evaluated the vital signs being constantly monitored from the control panel. The monitors certainly supported the general consensus that the mind and soul of Shaklan brant Fleva sek Agem had fled.

  “You still want the scan?” Taj asked.

  “Yes.”

  She keyed the panel, and the nutrient bath began to drain away. An examination table rose out of the floor and gently received the desiccated body. Pulling aside the gelatinous bubble, Tis stared into the face of this half-dead thing and tried to reconcile it with the face of her father. It had the proper shape. That was all.

  Taj gathered her hand in his, physical contact helping him to capture and augment her own feeble mental powers. They went searching and found nothing. The flesh breathed, the mind was gone.

  She paced, felt as if something were battering at the top of her skull. Found her hand thrust deep into her pocket clenching the epispray. She marched all the arguments through her head. The conclusion was inescapable.

  She forced herself back to her father’s side. Laid a hand against a hollow, stubbled cheek.

  “Daddy…” She was a little embarrassed using the human word, but she had always liked it. It spoke of warmth and affection, and the Takisian High House equivalent didn’t suggest intimacy, much less love. “I’ve come home. I’m sorry for the things I said. I … love you.…” The sound died as if strangled, and she walked away.

  Taj followed and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Do you want me to…?”

  “No!”

  Tis held out her hand, and Taj laid a pair of tiny golden scissors on the palm. The hair was lank and wet as she separated out a strand and snipped it off. Carefully she wrapped this token of her father around one wrist.

  Shaklan’s lips held a hint of warmth, and it almost shattered her resolve. Then courage, pragmatism, love, and selfish need spurred her, and Tis pulled out the epispray. Laid it against her father’s arm.

  Jay’s fingers closed on her wrist, and the pain forced her to drop the epispray.

  “What are you doing?” The enunciation was ice careful.

  Tisianne’s eyes fluttered up to meet his. What she read there made it impossible for her to speak.

  “Freeing him,” Taj said softly as he gently freed Jay’s fingers from around Tis’s wrist. “From a death in life.”

  “You’re going to put your own father to sleep?”

  “I have to,” Tis said so quietly that she wasn’t even sure the words were audible. “He’s been kept alive as a pawn. Now his presence is no longer necessary. In fact it’s a hindrance.”

  “That’s what Zabb was laying on you. Remove that last life standing between you and your goddamn throne. Jesus, I can’t believe you.”

  His scorn hurt. It struck her skin like a lash, and she almost quailed. She went searching for anger and found a thimbleful. It would suffice in lieu of courage. “I expect neither your understanding nor your approval. I expect you to do the job I hired you for,” Tis spat out.

  Jay’s face shut down like shutters slamming closed. Jammed his hands into his pockets and turned away. Tisianne sucked in a deep breath, held it, and depressed the key. Twenty seconds later Shaklan’s chest seemed to collapse with the exhalation of his final breath.

  Sweeping up her hip-length hair, Tis flung it across the body to form a golden shroud. From deep within her a shriek formed, drove upward, punching through her throat like a geyser of acid. The sound that emerged was like nothing human or Takisian. It was the cry of a wounded and dying ani
mal.

  For Shaklan, Raiyis of the House Ilkazam, was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  IF GOD IS A woman, She looks like that grand old dowager seated in the center.

  It was an irreverent thought, and it sent Mark back to an embarrassed contemplation of his thumbnails. Jay Ackroyd was sleeping, supported only by his tailbone and the back of his head in the uncomfortable little chair. Mark figured he’d let the detective sleep unless he started snoring.

  While this might be the most critical hurdle Tisianne had yet scaled, for the humans it was stone-cold boring. The entire affair was being conducted in Ilkazal in the private mode, so that an audible word exploded into the tense silence maybe only once or twice a minute.

  The hall felt like a rococo courtroom. A mosaic tile floor showed some glorious scene from Ilkazam history, and a skylight faceted like a giant diamond formed most of the roof. The moonlight streaming through those facets broke into its component colors, and rainbows danced and clashed with the assembly’s gaudy clothes.

  The seven old crones stared down from their curving dais at Tisianne. They should be passing an eye back and forth, Mark thought, for their gray hair and cold expressions reminded Mark of the Greek legend of the Graeae. Mark wondered why the Doc didn’t collapse beneath the weight of that hostile scrutiny, but she remained a proudly erect little figure with a rainbow snagged in her pale blond hair and dyeing the fabric of the elaborate clothing that had somehow been produced in only a few hours. Mark had a feeling there was some heavy nanotechnology at work here.

  There had been a couple of uncomfortable moments dealing with the House tailor. Jay had been loud and crude in his rejection of any suggestion that he forgo the pleasure of wearing a sports coat and slacks. The tailor had retorted that it was beneath his dignity to design for a Tarhiji. Jay had retorted that the guy was a Tarhiji, so what was his fucking problem. And besides which he was better than any damn mincing fairy. Tachyon—no Tisianne, damn it, he had to remember that—had yelled at both of them. Then Taj had entered and gotten results.

  Mark glanced over at Ackroyd. His outfit was nice but in no way matched the magnificence of Mark’s suit. The tailor had been overwhelmed by Mark’s size and designed to accentuate the length of the ace’s lanky body. The colors were great, but the little hat kept dropping tassels into Mark’s eyes, and the fluttering ribbons made Mark feel like a cornstalk bedecked to ward off birds.

  Zabb came sliding down the row to join them. Mark flinched, and his hand shot down next to his chair to reassure himself of the presence of the blessed briefcase. Mark did another quick count. It hadn’t changed since the last frenzied count an hour before—four Starshine, four J. J. Flash, three Moonchild, four Aquarius, three Cosmic Traveler.

  Traveler had acceded to Zabb’s request and had even joined in the spirit of the plot and improved on the original plan. It was a real bummer that this most cowardly of Trips’s “friends” was forming a bond with this most charming of enemies. Now, with the elaborate pin delivered to Onyze’s suite, Mark just had to wait for the other shoe to drop—for Zabb to kill the kid.

  Given that Zabb had tried to destroy Mark’s home planet, it was sort of jarring to be working with him. But goddamn, Zabb could be charming, and he’d certainly thrown his support behind the Doc’s bid to regain his throne and his body. Like early in the evening. Zabb had arrived, taken a look at Tis’s outfit, and vanished again. When he returned, he was carrying a pair of elaborate hair combs that appeared to be cut out of solid emeralds.

  “They’re mine,” he explained. “They wouldn’t have suited your coloring in your former guise. In your current one they suit you very well.”

  And Mark realized that with their pale, almost white blond hair, Tisianne in her borrowed body and Zabb looked very much alike. Tis was wearing the combs now, the hair caught up over each ear.

  Remembering the combs set another synapse firing, and Mark began to worry again about Jay. Ever since the detective’s return with the Doc, he had been sullenly silent, and the lines about his mouth were driven deeper as if he were holding back some raging anger. Trips had probed and had his nose bitten off and spit back at him. All Ackroyd would say was, “Ask our little princess,” in a tone so bitter that it sent Mark’s stomach scurrying for cover against the back of his spine. He hadn’t asked Tisianne—she had enough to deal with, and there was a haunted look in her eyes that made the peaceful, gentle ace want to hit someone as if that could somehow transfer the pain she was feeling.

  Zabb slid into the chair beside Mark, slipped an arm through his. I guess we’re buddies now, thought Mark.

  “I think we’re in very good shape,” Zabb whispered into Mark’s ear.

  Mark nodded, tried to unobtrusively pull his arm free. Just an uptight American, he thought. I can’t get used to all this touching, especially between men.

  “I mean, after all, they can’t deny she’s Tisianne.”

  “So what happens? They say she’s the Doc, and then she’s ruler of the House?”

  “Not quite, they will wait to be advised.”

  “As to whether the consensus in the House is to make her Raiyis?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re making this sound almost like a democracy.”

  That laugh like a wolf’s yip. “Not hardly. Basically it’s a precaution to make certain the choice isn’t so unpopular that we end up with a family blood feast.”

  “That’s coming anyway,” Trips said, depressed and tortured with guilt over Traveler’s involvement in a planned murder.

  “You’re far too pessimistic.” Zabb gave Mark an encouraging buffet on the shoulder. Then his attention was drawn to something telepathic that was transpiring on the dais.

  The oldest of the old crones folded her hands carefully on the table before her and bowed her head as if in deep and profound thought.

  Lifting her head, she began, “Distaffs and sword sides, stirpes and domestics.” It was audible speech, and her focus was over the heads of the nobility, and on the servants clustered about the back wall. “Before we come to the matter before us, it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of the Raiyis.”

  A murmur moved like a moaning wind through the crowd, and Mark whipped his head around so hard to stare at Tisianne that he thought he’d snapped his neck. The Doc stood perfectly still, and the blankness of her expression was the giveaway.

  “My God, now he’s got to live with that too,” Mark murmured, in his distress losing control of his pronouns.

  “Life on your planet has finally given Tis a spine. I’m impressed. I didn’t think she could do it,” Zabb said. His voice redolent with satisfaction, he added, “And it certainly caught Egyon on the hop. That he did not expect out of us.”

  The old lady was continuing. “Tell your families, and honor Shaklan with your grief. The city and House will observe three days of mourning beginning tomorrow.… May his spirit draw near and guide us.”

  “May we do honor for him,” came the litanous response from the assembly.

  Briskly the old lady said, “So we dispense with the dead and resume our march to the future.” The sharp old eyes were bent again on Tisianne. “It is clear you are Tisianne, however altered. Welcome home.”

  “Thank you,” Tis said, bowing as deeply as her pregnancy would permit.

  “On the issue of your elevation this council will convene at midnight and hear the decision of the swords. In the meantime, Taj, you will continue to serve as regent.” The old man rose and bowed, crossed to Tisianne, tucked her arm beneath his, and led her toward the door. The meeting was obviously over.

  Mark stood, relieved to have his six-foot-four-inch frame out of a chair designed for midgets, and grabbed convulsively for his briefcase.

  “What the hell is a sword?” Jay asked.

  “The male head of each distinct breeding line within the family,” Zabb explained.

  The crowd eddied about them. Little conversation knots formed and broke, se
rvants threw open doors, accepted a pair of gloves from a passing master, and continued smiling, always smiling. Mark wondered if the Tarhiji were really that happy, or just terrified.

  “There are women here,” said Jay suddenly.

  “Yes,” Zabb answered.

  “And not just the old broads and servants.” Mark winced.

  Zabb chuckled. “Yes, so?”

  “So where’s the harem?”

  “Rarrana is not included in the tour.… Unless you’d like to alter your plumbing in exchange for a peek?”

  “No thanks, but how come these—”

  “They’re sterilized. We don’t keep women in seclusion because they’re women. We keep them there because they’re breeding.”

  Zabb swung a chair around with his foot and straddled it. Pulled out the Takisian equivalent of a cigarette case and offered it. Both humans declined. Zabb shrugged, placed the cigarette between his lips, and a servant seemed to come boiling up from beneath a chair to light it.

  “Assassination attempts are rarely directed at men. We just settle for them because they’re usually all we can reach, and it’s a convenient way to vent spleen. No, pregnant females are the preferred target. Kill one, and you’ve ruined hundreds of years of careful genetic planning.”

  “Gee, the girls must be really touched to know they’re so important.”

  “We do value our women,” Zabb said, stung by the sarcasm in the detective’s voice.

  “Yeah, as brood mares.”

  “Do you ever get to marry for love?” Mark asked.

  “We marry for power, we breed for posterity, we love … only rarely.”

  “Great culture you got here,” Jay grunted.

  They were settled in Tisianne’s old suite. Servants were still arriving with armloads of stored furniture, paintings, a computer, musical instruments, holostage. There was at least a lull in the politicking. Tis was slumped on the window seat, staring up at the moonlit glacier crawling like a frozen waterfall over the edge of the cliff. Taj had just entered, and she was giving him her profile.