Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire
Page 22
Even an imagination as fertile and creative as Jay’s couldn’t turn Ilkala into New York City. No self-respecting New Yorker would build office buildings in pale lavender, lime green, dusty rose … the list of offensive pastel colors went on and on. And while the Takisians built tall, they built tall wrong. The multistory buildings couldn’t really be called skyscrapers, they were too spindly for that. Meadows, in another of his endless, fucking lectures, had explained that too. Something about how Takis had a relative mass about one-third? Two-fifths?—some damn number or other—of Earth norm, so the gravity was less, and buildings could look anemic.
And everybody could be a flit, thought Jay sourly as he surveyed his fellow passengers on the tram. It seemed a prosaic description for an impeccably clean means of conveyance which had no apparent means of propulsion. It hummed lightly up the deep valley to within a mile of the House Ilkazam, depositing servants, and the occasional slumming psi lord, and went humming back to the city. If the New York subway system was a tenth this nice— He cut off the thought ruthlessly. He didn’t want to like anything about Takis in his present mood. The seats. Yeah, the seats were way too small. Not comfortable at all.
Mollified by finding fault, he returned to a sour contemplation of his physical surroundings. He had no idea where to exit the tram. The rush of events hadn’t left him with much time to peruse the guidebooks. What were the sights and attractions of Ilkala? Did Takisians write guidebooks? Did Takisians take vacations? He tried to picture the Takisian equivalent of a Hawaiian shirt and failed utterly. Some things man was not meant to see.
At least there was a bizarre familiarity to the entire commuting ritual. In place of briefcases the business people possessed wafer-thin laptop computers that were attached by fine filament wires to a throat patch. Jay presumed they were all dictating information to the critters rather than typing. Seemed sort of cumbersome. Other people read (the books were shimmering projections at eye level, which adjusted for a shift in your posture) or listened to music on tiny radios disguised as ear clips. The competing musical styles formed whispers in the air. Apparently Takis had avoided the boom-box phenomenon.
Yeah, as cranky as they all are, they’d come over and beat the crap out of you for infringing on their ear space, Jay mused.
The number of young moms and young dads with babies and toddlers in slings or glider prams were about equal. Apparently child rearing was an equal-opportunity task among the Tarhiji. And then there were the old, all of whom were treated with the gravest courtesy.
The tram sighed to a stop, and about half the passengers rose and began to disembark. Though they were clearly in a financial and business district, Jay decided to go with the flow. He joined the mass exodus.
“Excuse me,” Jay said in halting Sham’al. The woman turned and looked at him with an expression of polite inquiry. “What is this office that you’re going into?”
“Jhaconda and Stirpes. We’re providers of @ ^ &*.” Static again. Jay shook his head. She tried to explain. “We guarantee objects against loss or damage. People too.”
She vanished into the building, and Jay accosted another worker well dressed, at least by Takisian standards. And got the same answer. Again. And again. He’d either hit the wrong street, or everyone on Takis was either a pooftah or an insurance salesman. It was really depressing. Jay was beginning to wish he’d followed the young moms and dads, or the old grandmas and grandpas shopping or wherever they were going.
Interspersed with the office buildings were shops of various kinds. Jewelry, shoes, clothes, electronic gadgets. As he strolled and gawked, certain facts pummeled their way past the resistant barriers in his mind. The streets were very clean. No garbage in the gutters. No graffiti marring the pastel walls. There were lots and lots of tiny parks complete with the obligatory Takisian fountain, flowers, grass, and trees. And no homeless people sleeping in them. No homeless huddled like shapeless sacks in doorways or shuffling down the sidewalks accosting passersby for money.
Maybe they kill ’em and eat ’em.
Or maybe there weren’t any. It didn’t jibe with the implicit and (in his brief experience) the fucking explicit cruelty of the culture, or the elitism of the psionic overclass. Then Jay reflected on his brief acquaintance with Tachyon—the paternalistic attitude the alien held toward humans in general and jokers in particular. The whole noblesse oblige act. Probably the motive was pride—there aren’t going to be any hungry or homeless people in our cities, by damn—but the result was good, grudging though Jay’s admission of that fact might be.
They think they’re so goddamn special, Jay thought resentfully, though no psi lord was in view to trigger the reaction. And it’s just a fluke of genetic mutation which could be a universal gift if the elegant lords and ladies would deign to mix their precious bodily fluids with some of the lower order.
No, that wasn’t the problem. Metaphorically and literally speaking, the telepaths would fuck the mind blind with the greatest alacrity. They just wouldn’t breed with them.
Jay wished he had someone with whom to share these thoughts and revelations, and then suddenly the emotion that had been tugging at the edges of his mind like a shy child came clearly into focus. He was lonely. He didn’t have a damn soul on Takis to talk to … come to that, he didn’t have a damn soul to talk to back in Manhattan. He had an inflatable sex doll that doubled as a receptionist. He knew a couple of sympathetic waitresses at the Java Joint who served him patty melts and coffee and let him ramble, but he realized he knew nothing about them beyond their names. His one deep friendship with Hiram Worchester had sorta gone down the shitter when Jay helped unearth the evidence that Hiram was a murderer—however exonerating the circumstances.
Jay’s thoughts went back to Vi and Flo at the seedy Times Square coffee shop, spurred no doubt by the aromas floating through the open door of the Takisian equivalent. Jay hesitated a few more minutes. Then a pretty woman, carrying an armful of cut flowers, came whisking through a back door and began filling the empty vases on the fifteen tables.
Like most of the Tarhiji she was on the zaftig side, but her soft hair looked like spun caramel, and the pure oval shape of her face reminded Jay of a painting he’d seen in one of his catechism books—the Madonna of the Cherries. It was the only picture of the Virgin he’d ever liked. Instead of looking sappy the Virgin looked sensual, and she seemed genuinely thrilled to be kissing her baby.
The woman sensed his scrutiny, looked up, and frowned. “Are you eating? Or rusticating?”
“It’s a little early for lunch,” said Jay, amused at her acidity.
“Then move out of my doorway so you don’t block the paying trade.”
That decided it. Jay walked in and settled at a table. Nodded toward the empty vase.
“I haven’t got a flower yet.”
The lips parted, were folded back into a tight line. The woman searched through the bouquet until she located one rather sickly, wilted bloom and placed it in the vase. Her velvet brown eyes challenged him. Jay just laughed. She completed her preparations, returned to Jay’s table, and stood, arms akimbo, staring at him.
“What?” the human asked.
“Are you eating or are you still rusticating?”
“Gimme a menu, and I’ll order. I’m not a mind reader.”
Sighing like a mother confronted by a backward child, she lightly touched an indentation in the lip of the table. The menu sprang to life in the air above the table. The squiggles looked like worm trails in the dust.
Jay shot her a sheepish look. “I forgot.… I speak Takisian, I don’t read it.”
“Don’t speak it very well either.”
“You always this nice to everybody who comes in?” She stared, a wall of unblinking hostility filming her eyes. “I’m surprised you have any customers at all.”
“I have the kind of customers I like.”
“And I take it I’m not among the select. Well, you want to translate this for me? Got anything on ther
e that resembles a patty melt?” he added.
She didn’t. And the explanation didn’t help much. Too many of the words were unfamiliar. He finally settled on something that appeared to have cheese and bread in it—maybe it was a sandwich—and a bowl of soup. There weren’t too many ways to wreck soup—he hoped.
It was an open-face sandwich made of something that resembled raw spinach stirred with cream cheese and nuts. It was way too yuppie for Jay’s taste.
“You got anything with burnt pieces of animal flesh in it?”
“You don’t want this?” she indicated the sandwich.
“No.”
“Are you going to pay for both?”
“Naturally.”
“Is the soup to your satisfaction?”
Jay didn’t mistake the polite words for politeness. There was a sting on the edge of them.
“Yeah, the soup’s great.”
It was a thick, dark concoction with tiny blue beans that looked like a cross between lentils and pintos. Floating in it were dried yellow critters that gave it a sharp, citrusy taste. And it was really good. Jay wondered if he could get the recipe for Hiram. He told the woman about his friend and the restaurant, and how he’d really love this soup.
“Only problem,” Jay said, “the produce delivery is going to be a bitch over twenty-three light-years.”
He thought that might get some reaction out of her. How often did you meet an alien? Up until a month ago he’d met only one. In retrospect he decided one would have been enough. His revelation didn’t impress her.
“What are you doing off the Bonded station? We don’t permit aliens on the Crystal World.”
“Would you believe I’m a close personal friend and bodyguard to the heir to House Ilkazam?”
“No.”
Jay studied that pretty face, the soft, rich swell of her bosom beneath her blouse. Dispensed with the notion of trying to impress her. He’d settle for getting to know her.
“Have you got a name?”
“Several.”
“Does that translate to mean you’re married?”
The question seemed to strike a nerve. There was the briefest flicker of pain in those dark eyes. “No, I’m not marriageable material.”
“Lot of my dates have said that about me. Hi, I’m Jay Ackroyd.” She stared at the outthrust hand with the air of someone who couldn’t identify the appendage. “Oh, that’s right, you Takisians don’t shake hands. You all seem to move straight to the kissing. Great custom as long as I’m not meeting a man.” He was babbling. He knew it. It embarrassed him. He couldn’t stop. It was her, she made him nervous.
Her dark eyes had gone wary. She studied him, and Jay had the feeling that she was actually seeing him for the first time. “How did you get here?”
“That’s a really long story.”
She turned away. “Then I don’t want to hear it.”
“You’re pretty fucking cool about meeting up with an alien. Aren’t you gonna call the cops, or get scared?”
“I’ve been up to the Bonded station to look at aliens.”
“You make it sound like a trip to the zoo.”
“Isn’t it?” It wasn’t actually a smile, but a dimple did appear briefly in her left cheek.
Jay grinned in delight. She was really pretty when she stopped frowning. The door to the restaurant opened, and three men entered. The detective and the woman turned, and Jay didn’t need his hostess’s reaction to tell him these were cops—it was depressing to discover “The Look” transcended light-years.
“You will come with us, please.”
“And if I say no?”
He felt another mind closing like a vise around him, and too late he realized that although these goons were dressed in the less opulent Tarhiji fashion and their hair was brown, they were psi lords.
“Okay, okay, okay!” he stuttered out just before the compulsion became overwhelming.
Two of the men took his arms and marched him to the door. Jay grabbed the jamb and managed to call back. “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again.”
The spokesman for the trio tossed a credit jewel to the proprietress. “Bill it to the House.”
Jay’s last sight was of the woman deliberately crushing the crystal under a heel.
Out in the street they released him. Jay twitched his coat straight and pushed back his hair. “How the hell did you find me so fast?”
“It wasn’t hard. We just had to look for a ridiculous foreigner asking stupid questions.”
The crackle of the foil as it was wadded into trash by Taj’s fist was a very strong clue that Jay had again managed to walk straight into the middle of a cow patty.
“I do not think a friendship with this woman is the wisest course you could pursue. I foresee a dark outcome.”
“You read tea leaves too? What, are you telling my fortune here?”
“I’m not concerned about you, Mr. Ackroyd. I am concerned about not reawakening an old shame in this House—”
“There is one really annoying habit that all you Takisians share. You can’t cut to the chase. Just say it. Straight.”
“Hastet benasari Julali attracted the attention of a young nobleman, and they began a clandestine love affair. She should have known better. He certainly did. If he desired the woman, he needed only to petition to bring her into the House as a La’b.” Jay correctly translated that as toy. It pissed him off. “My young relative sired a child on her—an act absolutely forbidden by our law and custom. Because of her extreme youth, and the early stage of her pregnancy, her life was spared.”
“What did you do to her?”
“The child was aborted. Hastet neutered.”
“That’s what she meant about not being a marriageable commodity.”
“Our culture places a great value on children, Mr. Ackroyd.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Taj either missed or chose to ignore the sarcasm. “What happened to the dickweed who knocked her up?”
“He was of the Most Bred.”
“Translate … nothing. I think she got the raw end of this deal.”
“She is lucky to be alive.”
“I’m going to see her again.”
“I would prefer you not.”
“Where’s the harm? She’s a little low-class nothing. I’m a little low-class nothing.”
Jay realized that, for whatever reason, he amused Taj. The old man suddenly smiled. “I suppose it will do no harm.”
“And as long as we’re gettin’ along so great—tell Zabb to call off the fuzz. Since it seems Meadows and I have become permanent citizens, I’d like to get a look at the real estate.”
“I’m uncertain for whom that is a greater tragedy.”
Chapter Twenty-five
THE MOST NOTABLE THING about the aftermath of battle is the stench. Acrid smoke catching in the back of the throat. The sickly sweet smell of blood, roasted flesh. Next is sound. The ears slowly recover from the screams and the discharge of powerful weapons. Then you hear the hopeless whimperings of the wounded and dying.
Blaise had handled his first battle well, and Durg was pleased. The first blooding was always the most critical. Of course, his fears had been slight. The boy took an almost evil delight in inflicting pain. The question had been whether he was a coward as many bullies tended to be. He wasn’t.
Only one small doubt niggled and worried at the edges of the Morakh’s mind and spoiled his pleasure in the victory. The boy had not confided in Durg the most essential part of his planned assault on House Rodaleh.
The memory still made Durg’s mouth go dry as he remembered how at the height of the battle Blaise had flung away his weapons and, using a throat mike and button speakers to amplify his voice, exhorted House Rodaleh’s Tarhiji troops to join with him.
And they had!
So the dice had fallen well, but the action told Durg more plainly than a conversation that Blaise had begun to believe his own press. Invincible, invulnerable.
“Hear me, my people. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, and a thousand years from now men will still say this was their finest hour.”
Durg motioned to his fellow Morakh, and they shoved the ruling line of House Rodaleh forward to meet their conqueror. The Tarhiji fell back like snow touched with a hot blade.
Blaise jumped down from the back of the dead ship and stared down into the face of Aleh, Raiyis of House Rodaleh. Beads of sweat suddenly popped out on Blaise’s upper lip. So the man was prepared, and his shields were up, thought Durg. There wasn’t time for a long, drawn-out mentatic battle with the blind watching. Durg forced the Raiyis to his knees before Blaise.
“I have your House, Aleh brant Agat sek Vereem,” Blaise said. “I don’t need to offer you a second chance, but I’m a reasonable man, so I’m going to give you that chance. Will you join with House Vayawand?’
Silence. Durg jabbed Aleh with his thumb. “Answer.”
“I do not speak with abominations,” Aleh said, and by speaking to a Morakh he had made it clear he considered Blaise even lower.
With a regretful shake of his head, Blaise drew his sword and offered it to a nearby Tarhiji. He then indicated the captured nobles of House Rodaleh with a sweep of his hand. “These are yours to do with as you please. I know what would please me.” Blaise shoved Aleh toward the Tarhiji Blaise had armed.