“There were a lot of deaths forty years ago. A lot of vacancies to fill with too-young candidates. And you’re just a memory, or a figure in a tale to most of them.”
“So they don’t fear me.”
“And you’re not precisely intimidating now.”
Jay looked up from where he was switching channels on the holo. “We could give her a bazooka to hold. The Madonna of the AK-47.”
Tis ignored him. “Where’s Zabb?”
“Delivering a thinly veiled threat to Pshara.”
Tis shook her head. “I wish I could really trust him.” She sighed. “But back to the problem at hand. How do I handle Skatt?”
“Offer him Revenue. He likes money, and he doesn’t respond well to threats.”
“That will annoy Rad’gar.”
“He’s one of Egyon’s pack. Nothing we do will make him happy.”
“And we don’t want him handling the finances anyway,” Tis concluded.
Mark was hanging about the edge of the conversation. At the lull he pushed to her side and took her hand.
“You should, like, take a break. We could… talk.”
She didn’t need to be a telepath to understand his drift. “It’s too fresh to even look at, much less discuss.” She pulled free and walked away.
“It won’t stay bottled up forever,” the ace warned.
“It’s down there with all the other ghouls in the basement. They’ll keep each other occupied until such time as they all break out at once, and I go stark raving mad.”
“Sorry to add to your burdens, your princess-ship,” Jay said. “But just in case I run into Blaise on the street, I better have someplace to send him other than Yankee Stadium. Have you got jails here? Dungeons, whatever? Or will you take deliveries here?”
Tis looked to her uncle. “Do we still have the holding cells in the labs? Where we tested the Enhancer on prisoners?”
“Yes. We still occasionally use them,” Taj said.
“Take Mr. Ackroyd there. Let him see the cells.”
“May I ask why?”
“No,” Tis said shortly.
There was a tap on the door. They both glanced toward it.
“You can handle Skatt without my guidance?” Taj asked.
“I think I can manage.”
Taj bowed and led Jay out another door of the suite.
Tis nodded to a servant, and the carved double door was opened. Arranging her features into a smile of welcome, Tis moved with what grace she could muster to greet him. Evaluated the warmth of admiration in his green eyes as he studied her physical charms. Pretty warm. She gave his fingers a slight squeeze and drew him toward a settee. She was definitely getting the hang of this body.
“This is really charming and intimate. Dinner in an airplane hangar with five or six hundred of your closest relatives.”
“It’s prettier than that,” Mark protested.
“Okay, dinner in a baroque barn. Jesus, do they have to feed this herd at every meal? Doesn’t anybody have a hot plate in their room? Wish I had a hot plate in my room.”
“The Doc needs us here.”
“Bullshit. Even our little princess for a day couldn’t wrangle us a seat at the head table. If shit starts happening, Tachy’s toast.”
Mark wasn’t having any part of Jay’s bad mood, and that pissed the detective off even more. Placidly the gawky ace took another bite of highly spiced meat and mumbled around the mouthful, “You’ll have her out of harm’s way in an instant. I’m not worried.”
“Glad one of us isn’t.”
“I think this is pretty impressive,” Mark said, indicating the dining room.
“What, that they can flop food on the table three times a day? Then I’m really impressed with the Jokertown Soup Kitchen. They probably feed a thousand derelicts a day.”
Mark surveyed the glittering crowd. Musicians performed softly in a recessed alcove set high in the wall. The balconies overhanging the room were filled with a gaggle of very young Takisians peering down at the diners. Nearby stood sentries, rifles cocked across their chests. Servants slipped through the hall clearing dirty plates and replacing empty entrйe dishes with full ones. Service was family-style Chinese. A myriad of dishes to sample, all highly spiced, or very sweet, laid on a bed of a grainlike substance. It had a nuttier flavor than rice and a chewier consistency, and from the way Jay was frowning and pushing it around his plate, it didn’t sit any better on his palate than it did on Mark’s.
“I think I’ve figured out the food,” Mark said.
Jay grunted. “Good, when you figure out where I can get a patty melt and a beer, let me know.”
“This is a cold planet. People in colder climates tend to crave heavily spiced or gamy food and sweets. I’m a little surprised that the ruling class had an ideal of beauty which favors the slender. Usually plumpness is valued in harsher climates… indicates you’ve got wealth. Still, the ordinary folks do tend to be kinda pudgy -”
“Thank you, Professor. Will there be a quiz tomorrow?”
“I’m sorry, I’m doing it again. It’s just… just so interesting.”
Jay was frowning at a languid noble who had dispensed with a chair and instead reclined on a settee by the table. His eyes were closed, and a beautiful young woman hunkered next to him on the floor and carefully fed him morsels from the plate she held in her lap.
“I’m surprised at you. This society hardly embodies the values of the Summer of Love. It’s violent, and these psi lords are a bunch of drones.”
“The highborn aren’t totally useless. The medical advances are, like, a direct result of the research done by the Houses.”
“But it’s done only for their own reasons.”
“Well, yeah, but, like, why quibble with the result?”
Jay checked his watch. It was a reflexive and totally useless glance; it was still set for New York time. “We ought to be getting close to the witching hour. I think it’s time for Tisianne to get control, muster an attack, and take Blaise and this girl. I’m ready to blow this Popsicle stand.”
“I don’t think the Doc has a clue about what to do once he has control of the House. If these Vayawand dudes are guarded like this place, it isn’t going to be all that easy to dislodge Blaise, especially now that he’s the Raiyis.”
The annoyance seemed to sprout like a weed, taking root somewhere in the pit of Jay’s stomach and blossoming in the back of his throat. “Meadows, you know what your ace power is – it’s to be boring and -”
But there was a commotion at the head table, and Meadows’s face had gone a strange, sickly green white color. Jay jerked around and stood so fast his chair crashed over backward. But it wasn’t Tisianne. Instead it was the pouty boy Onyze who was on his feet, hands clawing at his throat, and emitting a thin, tearing scream that was really awful to hear.
Jay had to hand it to them. Takisians were stone-cold calm in a crisis. Guards encircled their charges, there was the piercing hum of lasers being charged, or cocked, or whatever the hell one did with a coherent-light weapon. But no panic, no mass stampede for the exit. In fact the only people running seemed to be Trips and he, and they were headed toward the trouble instead of away from it.
“Dumb,” Jay muttered as he bounded up the steps onto the dais holding the head table.
Zabb had his hands on Tisianne’s shoulders, holding her in place. There was a cold, Medusa-like look on the Doctor’s face, but her body arched toward the suffering young man, yearning to go to his aid: Takisian and human conditioning at war with each other. It was Zabb’s steel grip that decided the outcome.
Egyon reached his boy puppet and ripped open his elaborate vest and shirt. There was a thing, some kind of crystalline insect, attached to the base of Onyze’s throat. Wielding a knife, Egyon flipped the creature off. It hit the table with a brittle sound, skittered a few steps, then froze, and as Jay watched, its structure began to rearrange itself until it resembled a jeweled pin in the design of the sword crest – identical to the one nestled in the lace at Egyon’s throat.