Double Solitaire (2019 Edition) Read online

  “Yes, I suspect there isn’t a Glabberan female within twenty light-years.”

  Jube busied himself with the keypad before answering. “I could impregnate myself.” The joker smiled at Tach’s eye-widening reaction. “We Glabberan are hermaphrodites. But I had a feeling that me fetching up pregnant was going to be tough to explain in terms of the wild card. It would stretch even your credulity.”

  “Is that how I seem to you? Credulous?”

  A form flickered to life on the holocube. The language was unfamiliar, the form was not. Tach had read enough contracts in her life to recognize one. She could feel depression crawling down her body like men on a treacherous, icy cliff.

  “It’s a function of your upbringing. You Takisians measure everything by your cultural imperative. You can be incredibly murderous and devious, but overall you’re an endearingly forthright race. You take honor and vows and blood debts and all that baggage very seriously.”

  Tach indicated the holocube. “And all this time I thought a contract was sacrosanct to the Master Traders. If you’re telling me it’s not, I shall have to rethink these negotiations.”

  The big head shook ponderously from side to side. “Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that. We’ll honor the letter of the law … it’s just sometimes the spirit that escapes us.” And Tach thought she heard an echo of regret in the joker’s voice like half-heard summer thunder. “You Takisians will put yourselves through oceans of shit to fulfill a vow. We’ll just find a new way to interpret a clause and spare ourselves a wade in the shit.”

  Tachyon’s names—both the Takisian and the human nom de guerre—appeared in the lines of alien prose as startling and incongruous as icebergs in a goldfish pond. Jube’s hand dropped into his lap, and he looked up at Tach out of small pouched eyes.

  “Okay, what exactly do you want?”

  “More to the point—what is this going to cost me?”

  “I thought we should settle on an open contract. Payment to be made later.”

  Outrage made her voice a squeak. “I am not so stupid as to sign a blind contract with you.”

  Jube rubbed thoughtfully at his upper lip. “Tell you what, in memory of an old friendship—I’ll let you exclude anything you want.”

  Tach eyed the other alien suspiciously. “How will you show a profit?”

  “I’ll manage. Now what am I selling you?”

  “Passage to Takis.”

  Again that head shake like a statue waking. “No can do. I’m not a captain. All I have at my disposal is a slightly jerry-rigged tachyon transmitter.”

  “So you’re telling me I have to haggle with you over the price of a message, and again with some rapacious ship’s captain for passage?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

  “You really are the most disgusting bloodsuckers.”

  “Deal or not, Tachyon. It’s not my belly expanding with each passing day.”

  “Very well.” She began to tick off on her fingers. “I won’t give you the clinic.”

  “Don’t want it anyway,” grunted Jube as he began to type.

  “My holdings on Takis are exempt.”

  “Okay.”

  “You can’t have Baby.”

  “You don’t have her either,” pointed out the joker with irritating logic.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, Tach looked down her nose and said, “I will … just as soon as you can send a message.”

  “Anything else?”

  “My bank accounts, investments, personal possessions.”

  Jube shrugged dismissively. “Paltry to a Master Trader.”

  There was something in the joker’s eyes that raised warnings like the skirt of a hurricane approaching shore. Tach almost stuttered in her haste to add, “And me. Either this body or the other. You can’t have them.” Jube nodded and typed in the condition. “Or any portion of them. My brain is not going to end up running a mining operation on some outer moon.” Tach canted her head back and considered. The effort of trying to outguess, outthink, outmaneuver the Network was summoning a prickling headache that settled low in her forehead with all of the irritating persistence of too-long bangs.

  “My knowledge, work, research on the wild card, or any related genetic research.” Hastily she added, “Nor will I submit to experimentation to try to determine the source of our telepathy.”

  “In short we can’t have a piece of body, soul, or mind.”

  “Correct. This body, or the real one.”

  Jube cocked his head, eyed her curiously. “Why so protective of this body? You’re just renting, so to speak.”

  “I feel a certain … obligation,” said Tach slowly. “I must guard her future encompassed by this body.… And there is … our child.” Tach stared down at her hands. “I just hope she’s being as careful with mine.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What?” Tach lifted dazed eyes, pulling herself almost by main force back to a limbo world of regrets and fears and might-have-beens.

  “The contract,” Jube prompted gently. “Is there anything else you’d like to exclude?”

  Tach wearily shook her head. Jube hit a key with an aggressive little finger. From the maw of another unidentifiable contraption, a silvery paper was expelled. It was cold and slick in Tachyon’s fingers like mercury made solid and rolled as cellophane. The words (in English now) were etched into its surface, starkly red against the silver.

  “Very interesting color choice,” she said dryly. “Do I sign in blood too?”

  “Nothing so exciting,” grunted Jube. “And there’s nothing significant about the color. This is mycar, virtually indestructible, but a bitch to read. The red shows up better.”

  “Certainly gets your attention,” Tach agreed as she carefully perused the document.

  It contained the usual whereofs and theretos, and parties of the first part and parties of the second part. It was a party that Tachyon would rather have missed. But stripped down, the legal flesh boiled away until only the bones remained, it basically said that Jhubben of Glabber, representative of the Network, would send a message summoning a fast ship to Earth. In consideration for this service Tachyon, aka Prince Tisianne of the House Ilkazam, agreed to pay Jube an unspecified amount, or perform some service to be determined at some later, unspecified date. It made Tachyon crazy even to contemplate signing it.

  So of course she signed it. What other choice did she have?

  “Are you going to send the message?” asked Tach.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Just as soon as you’re out of my apartment,” came the patient if rude reply.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “No,” said Jube firmly as he got a hand under her elbow and assisted her off the console. “Jube the Walrus and Dr. Tachyon trusted each other. Prince Tisianne and Jhubben of the Network—”

  “Are implacable enemies.”

  Chapter Seven

  “JUBE WILL USE YOU as our message drop.”

  “Oh, goody.” Jay was canted back in his chair, feet on the desk, sucking on coffee. “So added to aiding and abetting a felon, we have consorting with aliens and smuggling aliens.… The damn INS is going to love me.”

  Tach ignored him. “It will be at least a week before the ship arrives, but I will check with you every day just to be on the safe side.”

  “And where will you be staying?”

  “In New Jersey. That is all you need to know.”

  “And how are you going to get back there?”

  The detective’s bland face was even more bland than usual. Tach eyed him suspiciously. “What? What have you heard? What do you know?”

  “City’s been sealed.”

  “This is not a big problem,” was the acerbic reply. “I assume at some time you have been to New Jersey?”

  “Yeah, but the only place I remember really well is a nightclub in Jersey City.”

  “It will do.”
r />   Jay formed the fingers of his right hand into the shape of a gun, pointed at Tach.

  The owner of the nightclub was very annoyed. He thought Tach was a runaway who had been sleeping in his club. He also thought she was drunk; actually a front-heavy Tach was trying to overcome the effects of the teleport. Balance regained, she took a quick glance about the shadowed and silent club. It was pretty sleazy, but then this was New Jersey … and Jay.

  “I’m callin’ the cops!”

  “Please do. I’m with the Department of Health and Public Safety. We’re making an undercover sweep, and let me tell you, a night exploring your kitchen and bathrooms…” The owner blanched.

  “We’ve had some help problems,” the man whined.

  Tach was heading for the front door. “Well, get them fixed!”

  She found a pay phone a block from the club. Dialed the junkyard.

  Tachyon was resting in a recliner, a pillow supporting the small of her back, feet up to relieve the swelling in her ankles. The pressure of two pairs of eyes finally penetrated her darting, whirling thoughts. She looked up, meeting Tom Tudbury’s concerned look, and Mark Meadows’s thoughtful gaze.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s, like, really weird watching you, man. At times you’ve got this faraway peaceful look like you’re telling the world, ‘I’m pregnant, so you and your problems can just go piss off.’ And other times I look in your eyes, and it’s pure Tachyon.”

  She stared at the lanky human. His six-foot-four-inch frame was too long for the sofa, so his remarkably big feet hung over the end of the couch like moving crates that had suddenly taken a mind to wearing tennis shoes. Ragged ends of hair just brushed the back of his collar. Once it had hung below his shoulders.

  Tach sighed and let go of the past. “Ideal, I’m losing my self.”

  “Much of what we are is defined by our biology,” Mark reminded her.

  “How depressing.” She sat silent for a moment, then asked, “I’m curious—how did you know to rescue me?”

  “They, like, read in Taos, New Mexico, too. I’d joined a commune—”

  “There still are some?” It was the first thing Tommy had said in hours.

  “Yeah, a couple. Anyway, we went into town for groceries, and I saw the headline on Aces. So I came.”

  A strange expression twisted Tommy’s face, regret and guilt. Because he didn’t come for me? Tach wondered. Aloud she said, “You shouldn’t be here, Mark. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve gotten pretty good at this. I know how to buy fake ID. I can spot tails … well, most times,” he amended, and the pale blue eyes blinked rapidly behind the thick lenses of his glasses. It was a brief glimpse of the man he had been.

  “I miss my sweet Mark. My innocent one,” said Tach softly.

  “Mr. Bush’s meaner and crueler attitude toward wild cards sent him away,” Mark said in a feeble attempt at a joke.

  It was a bizarre set of events which had turned the former flower child into a fugitive from federal justice. Mark’s ex-wife had returned after years of absence and demanded custody of the couple’s intellectually challenged daughter, Sprout. Kimberly based her case on Cap’n Trips’s unfitness as a parent because he was a wild card. The court agreed but didn’t find the former Mrs. Meadows too tightly wrapped either. They removed Sprout to the care of New York’s foster services. Mark objected strenuously to this and, enlisting the aid of his “friends,” broke his child out of the juvie home. That made him a criminal. It was a mad world, Tachyon decided.

  “Anyway, I’m here, Tachy, and I want to help. So tell me what you need,” Mark concluded.

  She laughed. “Blood and Ancestors, where to start.” She sobered.

  “Go on,” Tom prodded her out of her abstracted silence.

  “I haven’t been home in almost fifty years, and I’m coming home at a distinct disadvantage. I don’t have my powers. I have to prove who I am, reclaim my place, and then I can start worrying about locating Blaise and my body. And how do I force Blaise to make the switch? And what if he kills my body to stop me? What if he’s already killed my body?”

  “First answer me a question,” Tom said. “Why do you believe Blaise is on Takis?”

  “Because of the company he took. My ship, my body … and Durg.”

  A slap couldn’t have hit Mark harder. His fingers scrabbled at the back of the sofa, and he came bolt upright.

  “Durg. I left him standin’ on the side of the road. K.C. was dead, Blaise was on our trail, and about half a thousand cops right behind him. I didn’t want Durg in trouble with the law. I was trying to protect him.”

  “Leaving him was the worst thing you could have done. He’s Morakh. They’re bred for only two purposes—killing and loyal service. A Morakh cannot exist without a master.” She sighed.

  A delicate shivering was running through Mark’s hands. “So I caused this.”

  Tach stood, crossed to him, and closed her fingers briefly around his. “No, Mark, no. Assigning blame at this late date is quite useless, and anyway, the original sin is mine. I brought Blaise into my world in a spray of bullets and blood.”

  “He never knew you killed his guardian,” Tom said.

  “Some things, maybe, are sensed by the soul.”

  Tom set aside his beer and, propping his elbows on his knees, regarded her over the top of steepled fingers. “Are you planning to ask for some help?”

  Stiffly she said, “I would not so impose. Besides, I can handle matters myself.”

  “Damn stiff-necked Takisian. You’d put your head in a noose just to prove it’s a pretty necklace.”

  “The point?” she gritted, eyeing him down the length of her upturned nose.

  “From what you’ve told me, you’re going back to a pretty Byzantine and poisonous environment. You’re going to need bodyguards.”

  “Tommy, I could not ask it of you.”

  “You’re not. I’m offering.”

  “Oh, man.” Tachyon had never seen it outside of a movie screen, but Mark actually slapped his forehead. “I’m so dense. Now I remember you. You’re the Turtle!”

  “Yeah, I’m the Turtle. An embarrassed and red-faced Turtle. I should have been the one to break her out of Governor’s Island.”

  “No, man, you’re, like, a hero. You don’t break the laws. Me”—he shrugged—“I’m already a fugitive from federal justice. What’s another count on the rap sheet?”

  Tom’s face clouded at the memory of the last time he’d faced off with Mark Meadows—or rather one of Mark’s “friends.” J. J. Flash, Esquire, had firmly and comprehensively kicked Turtle’s armored behind. Mark remembered at precisely the same moment and sucked in air in a quick little hiccuping gasp.

  “An … uh, I’m real sorry about Flash, but I had to get my kid.”

  “Forget it.” Tommy waved him off.

  Tachyon reasserted control over the conversation. “Gentlemen, I thank you for your most generous offers, but this—”

  “Makes perfect sense. Me and my ‘friends’ would be happy to go. Give Turtle here some backup.”

  Tach nibbled at a forefinger, studied them from beneath her lashes. Two middle-aged men, and a more incongruous pair could not be imagined. Mutt and Jeff. And, Ideal, she loved them both so much … and could use them so much.

  Slowly she said, “Aces would do more than provide me with protection. If I was to return with you two in tow, it would improve my standing immeasurably.” She smiled humorlessly. “On Takis reality is often shaped more by appearances than by objective fact.”

  Tom suddenly stood and took a turn about the living room. His plump cheeks had gone pink, and his brown eyes were shining.

  “Another planet. Shit, I’ve hardly been to another state except New York. My whole life I’ve been waiting for this. When I was a kid, I’d stand at my bedroom window and watch the ships passing down the Kill. Just shadows and lights in the dark, going someplace wonderful. I wanted to be on those
ships so bad.”

  Tach held out a hand to him. “Now you will be.”

  They were seated in a diner in Bayonne. Since Jube had traveled via Ackroyd’s finger, it was another charming establishment worthy of Jay’s low-class tastes. Jube’s colorful shirt flared like an abstract painting against the tattered red plastic booth.

  “It’s been set. White Sands in three days’ time.”

  Her mouth suddenly gone dry, Tach took a quick gulp of her vanilla shake. “How … how ironic,” she said, and remembered her arrival forty-seven years before at those same White Sands. “The area is much more heavily guarded than it was in 1946. Are you sure this is wise?”

  “This is a Network ship. Nothing can detect it.”

  “A slight exaggeration. You’ve been trying to run the Takisian sensor net, and failing—spectacularly, I might add.”

  Jube brought his broad three-fingered hand down hard on the table. Glasses, salt and pepper shakers, and Tach, all jumped. “I haven’t been doing squat about invading or infiltrating, or infecting Takis. I’ve been settled on Earth studying a most admirable group of aliens who have been royally fucked over by you.”

  Shame set her to plucking nervously at the strands of hair that had broken free from her braid.

  “I am sorry, Jube. Old hatreds make mockery of recent friendships. We are not representatives of our respective cultures, are we?” She turned strained and desperate eyes to Jube.

  Taking her hand, Jube said softly, “If it’s any comfort to you, I’m not a negotiator. I’m a scientist, an anthropologist, that’s all. And I do love these people … at least as much as you do.”

  Tach nodded. Her throat suddenly hurt too much to talk. Jube’s words had reminded her of just how much she was leaving, and the responsibilities she couldn’t help but fear she was evading. The sealing of the city could only mean that another attack on the Rox was imminent, and Tach wondered if this time Bloat could survive. She should stay and try to help, but the ship was arriving, and there wouldn’t be another. She did calculations and decided that if the Ideal favored her, she could be restored to her body, and back on Earth in two months. Could Teddy hang on that long?