Melinda Snodgrass - Double solitaire

So now they were all sitting silently in Baby’s control room, watching the Network vessel draw closer. Blaise stood alone in the center of the room, his strongbox clutched tightly beneath one arm. Tis and Kelly were curled up in the massive canopied bed that was an extrusion of the ship herself. Jay and Mark were pressed against the ship’s walls.

As if he’s diseased, and he can somehow infect us all, Tis thought, then realized Blaise already had. There was not an individual in the room who would emerge unscathed from their contact with the young man.

Gazing at that lean and elegant figure, Tisianne had to remind himself that this was Blaise. Zabb died trying to keep his word to me. Oh, ideal, how I shall miss him.

The Network ship extruded a walkway from its lock to Baby’s.

“Very phallic,” Blaise remarked. He grinned at Tisianne and ran his tongue slowly across his lips.

Like a small animal, the terror uncoiled. Tis sucked in a deep breath and indicated the lock. Blaise walked through, then noticed they were all following.

“A send-off. How touching.”

“I just want to be sure you’re really gone,” Mark said.

The Network had never really achieved the artificial gravity of the Takisian living ships. Walking the length of the walkway was a little like pulling loose from taffy.

The Ly’bahr were waiting. Blaise tossed the strongbox to the nearest warrior. Its arm moved in a blur of motion to snatch the box from midair.

“Let’s not say goodbye, Grandfather. Let’s say au revoir because I have a feeling we will meet again. Kiss for old times’ sake?”

Kelly was trembling at his side. Tis just stared at Blaise impassively.

“Zabb brant -” the Lybahr began.

“No. Blaise Andrieux -”

“You have breached contract with the Network. Penalty clause one hundred and thirty-two, subsection C, is now in effect.”

“What are you ranting about, tin man?” Two Ly’bahr moved up on each side. Gripped Blaise by an arm and lifted him off the ground. “What the fuck is going on!” Blaise demanded shrilly.

They carried him effortlessly down a corridor, Blaise screaming curses, questions, demands. Bounty hesitated, then asked, “You insist upon witnessing this?”

“Absolutely,” Tis replied.

The Network master indicated a door. The humans were preternaturally silent as they trailed after Tisianne. Inside, a monitor filled one entire wall, giving a view of a sterile laboratory. Blaise was immobilized on a table. Fear clouded the gray eyes. He strained to lift his head.

“What are you doing to me?” he cried in terror.

“You will serve the remainder of your contract monitoring irrigation functions on Zanac,” said one of the Ly’bahr. “But a humanoid body is inefficient and costly to maintain. Your brain is all that is necessary.”

With a soft humming a caplike device was extruded from the end of the table and affixed to Blaise’s head.

“Grandfather, help me!” Tisianne could feel the fascinated and horrified gaze of the humans between his shoulder blades. To the Ly’bahr, Blaise screamed, “I’m not Zabb! I’m not. I jumped him. I stole his body. He’s dead. I’m Blaise! Tell them!” he shrieked hysterically at the ceiling. It was as if with Zabb’s stolen telepathy he could sense his grandfather watching.

“Jesus, he’ll jump!” Jay said suddenly.

“To an alien mind encased in a metal body? Impossible,” Tis said quietly. “And he has to see us to reach us.

A high-pitched whine filled the air. Blaise screamed, a sound so raw that it seemed impossible for a human throat to produce it. Mark let out a small cry like a frightened kitten, and Jay retched. Kelly’s arm slipped around Tis’s waist, but he read the exaltation in her mind.

“I think we’ve seen enough,” Tis said as the top of Blaise’s stolen skull was carefully twisted off.

Bounty nodded and returned the strongbox. “Good doing business with you, Raiyis. And you’ll want this.” He handed over the contract signed by Blaise which had ceded Ilkazam to the Network.

Tisianne spun on his heel and led Jay, Mark, and Kelly back through the umbilical.

“Jesus Christ.” Jay gulped air. “Vengeance as an art form.”

“Your fee,” Tis said, and handed the detective the strongbox.

They were almost back to Takis before Mark spoke. “Today, for the first time in all the years I’ve known you, you really felt like a Takisian to me.”

“Don’t be an idiot! Set her aside? On what grounds?”

Taj clutched distractedly at his hair, raging across the room and back again. Tis stared at his image in the mirror and made a face at the abject terror of the tailor fitting the coat. The paunch Kelly had grown for him made him feel heavy and ungainly, and the need for a drink ached in every muscle and fiber.

“How about that I don’t love her, and she’s a conniving and dangerous bitch?”

“Recall that Vayawand has agreed to cadet status. Marriages are a good way to cement such conquests,” Taj countered.

Tis briefly closed his eyes. “Why do you always have to be right?”

“A virtue of old age.”

“There is another matter,” Tis said. “I made a bargain with Yimkin to send him a bride. I’ll abide by that promise, but this is the last time we do it. We’re not going to barter and sell our women like chattel any longer.”

“As my lord commands.”

“I understand that since the wounded soldiers have returned to their own Houses, there is a move to reestablish Rarrana.”

“Yes, of course.”

“No, I’m abolishing it. End of discussion.”

The old man moved to Tisianne and laid an arm across his shoulders. “Tis, this is your experience talking.”

“Absolutely.”

“Rarrana is one of our cherished -”

“It doesn’t make any damn sense. From age fourteen to forty our girls are free to join in the life of the House. Then at forty they are married, start producing babies, and lose their freedoms. Why are they more precious at forty than they were at twenty-three?”

“Because they’re pregnant.”

“It stays abolished.”

“You are condemning our women to death!”

“Who is going to kill them? We’ve got bigger problems then preying on one another. The cities of Alaak, Ban, and Lira were totally destroyed. There’s going to be hunger in the southern hemisphere after Blaise’s scorched-earth policies. The Most Bred of House Rodaleh and Jeban have almost all been killed.”

Tisianne’s voice was spiraling upward. Taj suddenly gave his nephew’s arm a shake. “Tis, take a woman. If not Mon’aella, someone. It will help you remember who and what you are.”

“That’s a person I don’t want to remember.” He smiled at the puzzled expression on his uncle’s face and gently laid a hand on Taj’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Uncle. I am only a little mad.”

Jay paused at the top of the biogerm bubble and looked down at Hastet. “Hey, when I get out of the pickling vat, we’ve got to talk.”

“About what, please?”

“Well… us.”

“What about us?”

Takisians were discreet, that much could he said for them. The doctors assigned to oversee Jay’s regrow moved politely away.

“You know.”

“I know nothing. If you want me, you are going to have to ask for me.” She whirled and was gone. Jay thought about running after, then decided he’d look stupid in his little breechclout and nose plugs.

Mark found Roxalana packing. She waved to her maids to continue and led him onto the glass porch off her suite. It was rich with the scent of flowers.

“Busy?”

“It’s a useful substitute for worry.”

“What have you to worry about?” Mark asked.