A bare mattress covered the floor, and a hot tub filled with icy water occupied one corner. A window air conditioner was set on high, and it had obviously been blowing for a long time. The temperature in the room was arctic.
Breathing through her mouth in quick pants, Tachyon stepped into the living room of the basement apartment. The source of the stench was pans filled with steaks, all cheerfully turning green on the top of a battered old card table. But all this strangeness paled before the fantastic device that occupied the center of the room.
Jay had described it as a sculpture, modern art created by a demented mind. But it was actually future technology, built by an inventive alien mind. Tachyon watched in fascination as the tachyon transmitter seemed to shiver, and a flare of St. Elmo’s fire ran the length of it.
She now had a pretty good idea what she was looking for.
Twenty minutes later she was still looking. Somewhere the Network vacu had a monitoring station. A place to spy upon this unsuspecting little world. A place to prepare the contracts that would ultimately deliver the humans into bondage.
“No,” she said aloud to the interior of the closet she was inspecting. “This is my world. I will protect it.” The fifty or so Hawaiian shirts were unimpressed with this impassioned little whisper.
From the front room there was a click of a well-oiled bolt snapping back. It might have been the fall of a guillotine. Tach huddled among some baggy black trousers, tried to still the frantic beating of her heart. Stomach acid raced up the back of her throat. Illyana yammered.
No, baby, thought Tach miserably, this is not a good place to be.
Maybe he wouldn’t find her. Maybe he’d drop off his paper, check his phone machine, leave for a dinner with friends. But luck was not favoring the heir to the House Ilkazam. Heavy footsteps entered the room. Jube let out a belch reminiscent of a bus backfiring.
The closet door was pulled completely open. Flight was impossible. Was it too much to hope that Jube was hopelessly nearsighted?
“Jesus Christ!”
Hope withered with a tiny whine. Tach gathered dignity and outrage about herself like a queen wrapping herself in ermine. Stepped to the door. Jube had a rotting steak in one hand, and a Hawaiian shirt in the other. Tach stared at the six nipples lining the broad black chest like dainty yellow pimples. The shirt dropped to the floor, and a fat, three-fingered hand closed tight around Tach’s wrist. Jube yanked her unceremoniously from the closet.
“How typically Takisian,” said Jube, and it didn’t sound like a compliment.
“How much more like a Network vacu,” spat Tachyon. “I at least came openly to these people. You live in secret among them, waiting for the proper moment. How much do you stand to make on this transaction, soul seller?”
“How did you find out?” demanded Jube. Seen this close, his tusks looked threatening. “I know damn well you didn’t figure it out for yourself. I’ve been fooling you for twenty years. And I don’t think a body shift suddenly boosted your IQ.”
Tach felt the flush rising from her neck to the point of her widow’s peak. Insults stood poised to fly, but she only managed to get her mouth open before there was an urgent knocking on the door.
“Go away!” yelled Jube.
“Open the goddamn door,” came the voice of Jay Ackroyd. “You got my client in there, and he… she… shit… hasn’t paid yet.”
Jube favored Tachyon with another glare, as if involving the ace had somehow deepened her sin, and waddled ponderously to the door. Jay slouched in.
“You blew the punch line, Jay,” Jube grumbled. He then turned a sour eye on the detective. “And what a way to repay me for my great hospitality, sneaking her in here.”
“Sorry, but she’s got this crazy-assed idea that you’re an alien…
“I am,” Jube said so quietly that Jay missed it.
He sailed on. “I should have known it was just hysterics or something.”
“Are you listening to him? And by the way, I am not hysterical.”
“You’re pregnant out to here.” Jay demonstrated. “Of course you’re hysterical. I’d be hysterical What did you say?”
“I am,” Jube repeated.
Jamming his hands into his pockets, Jay took an abrupt turn around himself. “Great. That’s just fucking great.”
Tachyon could understand the emotion, the terrible sense of betrayal. “If you’d really been a joker, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But all the time you were laughing at them.” Distress made her choke a little on the words.
It seemed to distress Jube almost as much. The jowls seemed to lengthen and quiver with sadness. “That’s not true. On this world, in this place, I am a joker. I understand.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t. However horribly they may treat you, whatever abuse – verbal or physical – is directed toward you, you have the ultimate comfort. You know you are normal. For all I know, you’re a thing of beauty on your home world. You will never understand deformity.”
“And you can, little prince?” The sarcasm edged the words like acid. Jube tossed the steak back onto a plate; it landed with a wet splat. “Well, shall we get down to business?” Tach cringed. “There’s only one reason for this little surreptitious social call. You want a message sent.”
Tach eyed the joker – no, Network operative, she corrected herself – from beneath lowered lashes. “You would send one?”
“Of course.”
Tachyon almost stepped into the pause, but the words died in her mouth as Jube added, “For a price. Everything has a price, Tachyon,” Jube concluded in answer to her look.
“That, more than anything, convinces me you are Network.”
Ackroyd stepped in. “Let’s pretend for a minute that I’m just a guy. A nice, human guy who doesn’t know what the fuck you’re both talking about.”
“What are you?” Tach asked, ignoring Jay.
“Glabberan.” The pronunciation made it sound like Jube had ripped loose a tonsil.
“Gesundheit,” Jay said. “So how the hell did you end up here?”
“The Network brought him,” said Tachyon.
“That again.”
“Them,” corrected Jube. His voice swelled with pride. “One hundred and thirty-seven member races working -”
“For domination and oppression. Their contracts are so unconscionable, the bargains so hard, that people are crushed beneath them,” Tach said.
She spoke from knowledge. Eight thousand years ago the Takisians had staggered beneath burdensome payments. The Network had been more than happy to sell the fledgling space-farers’ ships, but without the knowledge or the technology to repair them or build more. There was always a hitch in a Network contract. Then the Takisians had discovered the lshab’kaukab, and bred them to serve their needs. The Network had resented this loss of a market, and a vicious war had been fought. Eventually the Network withdrew, but the Takisians had never forgotten the cost in blood and wealth. They had also never forgotten the shame of their economic servitude.
“Now, Jay, having heard the skewed Takisian view of the universe, will you give me equal time?” Jay shrugged his assent. “Yes, we’re traders, yes, we drive a hard bargain because for us the highest law is the contract. But unlike them” – a point to Tachyon – “any race is free to join the Network, and we don’t care how distasteful your personal habits might be.”
Tach couldn’t stand it. “They have no honor. No sense of right or wrong. They just grub for advantage. For eight thousand years they’ve been trying to regain their hold on Takis – and for eight thousand years they’ve been failing.”
“Guys… uh, people. I’m not getting paid by the hour on this one.” To Tachyon he added, “I was hired to pop you in here so you could find out if Jube was an alien or not. He is, so I’ll be going, and you two can trade insults all afternoon.”