Melinda Snodgrass - Double solitaire

’Bout time, thought Jay.

“I wasn’t here. Perhaps I should have been, but my presence wasn’t going to lessen the damage done to Ilkala.” She indicated the city with a wave of a hand.

“The damage was foredestined when we initiated the ill-conceived experiment.”

“If you’d allowed us to test the virus properly -”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference!”

“That’s excusatory crap!” Zabb shouted. “The meta-Takisian powers that the virus would have provided us, coupled with our psionic gifts, would have made us the undisputed rulers of Takis.”

“No, she’s right,” said Mark softly. “On Earth we’ve had the wild card for almost fifty years, and guns and bombs are a match for any ace. It’s like John Lennon said, man, we’ve just gotta give peace a chance.”

“Taj and my father should have seen this attack coming,” Tachyon argued. “Our culture is poised on a knife’s edge of malice, rivalry, and self-interest. You threaten to upset the balance of power that completely, and of course the other families are going to attack.”

Baz broke in with an agitated burst of singsong. Pissed, Jay decided, because he couldn’t understand. Tachyon and Zabb twittered back, but there were sudden odd pauses, and Jay realized it was because they had switched to House talk, which relied rather heavily on telepathy. Jay just hoped that Zabb wasn’t stealing the family farm from Tach’s weakly shielded human brain. Over the years Tachyon had kept stressing that there was a very strong code of etiquette governing telepathic eavesdropping, but Jay didn’t trust Zabb. A month with the guy had left no doubt – he was a total dickweed.

Tach turned back to her human companions, pressed a hand against the swell of her pregnancy as if holding back nausea. “Baz says there’s a claimant to the Raiyis’tet who is trying to end the regency. I really did return just in time.” The soft chin stiffened. “And now that I am home, it is time I dropped the groundling name and assumed my proper identity. I am Tisianne brant Ts’ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian. Prince of House Ilkazam.”

“Okay, man, like, I’m with you.” Mark nodded several times for emphasis, then glanced back out the window, and his breath caught with all the wonder of a four-year-old coming downstairs to find the Christmas tree up and the presents waiting. “Oh, it’s so cool!”

Jay pressed his nose to the window, eager to see. During the talk they had flashed across the basin of the caldera and were now back in the mountains. The ship raced through a winding canyon, careful to remain below the level of the cliffs, and coming far too close to the rock walls for Jay’s taste. Carved out of the stone were dwellings. At least Jay assumed they were dwellings – if not, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cut pillars and lancet windows for an elaborate facade. They rounded a final curve, and suddenly a house lay revealed, coiling like a crystal-and-marble dragon’s tail across a high mountain meadow. Like the first structures they’d seen, part of it was carved from the rose-colored cliff face.

Below that frowning fortress the land had been terraced to form pretty gardens filled with flowers, blossoming trees, and fountains. Despite the flowers, Jay had a feeling it was late autumn in Ilkazam. The leaves of the trees flashed winter fire and lay like colorful scattered scarves on the grass.

Bordering each garden were more buildings with no interlinking architectural style. Most of them were colorful with plenty of windows. Most extended no higher than two stories.

With one awesome exception. A single tower, which looked as if it had been built from smoky crystal, pointed warningly toward the sky, and as he stared down the length of that narrow valley, Jay decided he never wanted to experience a windstorm in the needle. The cliffs had to create a hellacious wind-tunnel effect, and that building would be swaying like a ten-dollar hooker on six-inch heels.

A wall surrounded this improbable edifice, and it seemed like a pretty archaic and wimpy way to hold back enemies in a spacefaring culture. Jay said as much, and Mark nudged him with an elbow, indicating guard posts on the cliffs. Jay looked closer and saw the blunt muzzles of weapons thrusting like alligator snouts from the cracks and fissures in the cliff wall.

“Lasers,” whispered Mark. “Big ones by the look of it. Missile silos, and there’s a flickering in the air over that wall – maybe a forcefield?”

“Fairy-tale palace with great big horror-movie teeth,” grunted Ackroyd. “Clad we’re invited. I’d hate to crash this party.”

“Burning Sky, you are Tisianne,” Taj said, and there was no joy in the words.

The regent of the House Ilkazam dropped his head into his hands and tugged nervously at the hair over his temples. Tisianne had known his uncle a long time. For this terribly refined, terribly controlled man, this was the equivalent of hysterics.

What was it Jay had said about invited guests? thought Tisianne. But the invitation was most grudgingly offered. The kind of invitation you issue to unexpected drop-ins and shirttail relatives. Somehow my arrival here has made a bad situation worse.

There had been no honor guard, just a single equerry with a couple of Tarhiji soldiers to whisk them through back doors and forgotten hallways to the office of the Raiyis. The pair of guards flanking the elaborate double doors had insisted the travelers be scanned even though Tis told them repeatedly it wouldn’t do any good. The three human bodies were outside the genetic mapping of Takis. Jay had taken it with ill grace, yelping loudly at the pinprick as blood was withdrawn from his wrist, and had spent the next few minutes muttering about alien poisons and precious bodily fluids. Finally the infrared trip wires, which flashed across the door at random and ever-changing heights and angles, were disconnected, and they entered.

Though opulent, the office was clearly a space designed for a busy man to work, and work efficiently. For an instant Tis wondered if her human companions were disappointed. Then she forgot all about them and their reactions. It struck hard and deep as a blow that nothing in the room had changed since Tis had stood here before his father forty-four Earth years ago and shouted bitter defiance into that beloved face. They were the last words they had ever spoken to each other.

On one wall hung a portrait of Tis and his mother done just before her death. On the desk a shifting holograph filled with pictures of Tisianne – riding, dancing, skating, reading. There was also a starkly simple flower arrangement. The petals and leaves reflected back the lights and stung Tisianne’s eyes. As a youth Tis had excelled at the art of flower arrangement. That had been his last creation for his father. Shaklan had had the flowers freeze-dried and lacquered to preserve this final gift from a rebellious child.

And now Taj had unwittingly brought home her sin and her loss by playing patient caretaker to a mausoleum in memory of a half-dead man.

What kind of a Takisian are you, Taj brant Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian, thought Tisianne, that you have no ego?

And that was the thought which had apparently elicited the outburst from Taj. It was very embarrassing for Tisianne. She knew the mentatics training she had force-fed this borrowed body was marginal at best, but she hadn’t even known she was being scanned.

Taj raised his head and waved them toward chairs. Zabb sprawled with elegant, mocking ease. He wore his Network uniform like a defiant shout. Trips sidled crabwise toward a heavily carved high-back chair. Once seated, he perched stiffly and uncomfortably upright as if caged. Jay was as cool and insouciant as ever. He sat down, relaxed, and waited – it was the detective’s gift. Tis selected a comfortable settee. None of these aggressively masculine chairs seemed designed to accommodate a pregnant woman’s unique physique, and she saw no reason to suffer.