Pandasala replied, “A ghost without a body to return to will take up residence in a living descendant – or so the superstition holds.”
Cillka spoke up. “A crash, fire, any accident that destroys the body is almost a worse tragedy than the death itself.”
“And the little gifts?”
“All our actions are designed to either appease or find favor with the ancestors. As one of those ancestors heads out, we like to remind them of how wonderful we are. So compositions, poetry, a novel, a scientific achievement, artwork, we send something along.”
“Christ, if you could find the cosmic cemetery, a grave robber would have a field day,” Jay said.
“I think the ships would prevent that,” was Melant’s rather dry reply.
“Ships.” Jay snapped his fingers. “Hey, I better not miss my bus. Catch you later.”
“What an extraordinary man,” Roxalana murmured.
“Is that a compliment?” Mark asked.
“Hardly.” She laid the tips of her fingers on his wrist. “Vindi, you may escort me to my ship.” As they moved away, she added very quietly, “I am very pleased that you are guarding my brother.”
Jay had picked a crowded shuttle with more than the normal complement of Tarhiji aboard. It had the virtue of being away from Zabb, and none of the watchdogs the Takisian had placed on Jay wanted to ride with the hired help, so for the moment Jay was free from surveillance. It was the first step in his plan to escape Ilkazam and head for Vayawand. Somebody had to stop farting around and snatch Blaise. Otherwise he and Meadows had become permanent residents.
The ship landed in the great courtyard in front of House Ilkazam, and most of the Tarhiji headed for the gates ready to return home after a long day of pampering the shitheads. So far luck was favoring him. Jay’s fruitbar clothes were a little fancy for a servant, and he was a little tall to pass easily, but his coloring was pure Tarhiji, and nobody really looks at servants. Right? Or so he hoped as he ducked his head and scuttled sideways into the shelter of a number of other bodies.
Several more shuttles had landed, and Jay spotted a couple of his bird dogs looking frantically about for him. They didn’t look at the gaggle of servants heading for the tram.
Slick as snot off a hog’s back, he thought as they passed through the gates and the great panels slid shut behind them.
“The calnite, please,” Tisianne said, and indicated a syringelike device. Cap’n Trips gingerly plucked the instrument from among its fellows and placed it in Tisianne’s hand.
“Is this going to hurt?” asked the grubby, tear-stained six-year-old whose broken arm was the object of Tisianne’s attention.
“No.”
“That’s what Manka said when she told me to jump… but it did.”
The lower lip thrust pugnaciously forward, but the effect was somewhat marred by an unhappy wobble.
“Maybe now you won’t do silly things just because people tell you to.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t do this.”
“Maybe you would like a swat?” Tis asked severely.
There was a screen up which prevented the child from seeing how his arm had been peeled open, skin and muscle laid back to reveal the broken bone. Tisianne had already fitted the ragged ends back together. Now, bending in close, she delicately placed the tip of the syringe at the juncture and sent the genetically altered bacteria into and onto the bone. There it would follow its genetic mandate and grow bone.
“Do you guys clone? You gotta know how. Your technology’s advanced enough,” Mark suddenly asked.
“We can, but we don’t.”
“Why not?”
“When a culture is more concerned with fitting old minds in young bodies, and loses interest in young minds in young bodies, that culture is dying.” She flashed Mark a quick smile. “We grow children the old-fashioned way. Also, you clone enough, and genetic read errors creep in.”
“A copy of a copy of a copy.”
“That’s right.” Tis finished sealing the soft tissue with a sterile fixative that left only a pale pink line.
Tach touched a panel, and the screen flashed once and vanished. Grunting a bit with effort, she lifted her little patient off the table and set him on his feet. The cradle mother was waiting outside the cubicle.
“As good as new,” Tach said as she handed over the boy.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” sighed the other woman.
The child was staring down at his arm with excitement and wonder. “Look, it isn’t pink no more. My line is white. Maybe Momma won’t ever know.”
“There’s a wonderful human phrase that applies in this situation. Say ‘fat chance,’” Tis said.
Mark and Tis went strolling. Rarrana was huge, and Mark sensed he’d only seen a fraction of it.
“Zabb’s put a big negatory on giving me a lab,” Mark said.
“He’s hoping you’ll run out of drugs. Then you and I will both be without friends, and he can kill me with impunity.”
“I’m tellin’ you, man, Zabb doesn’t want you dead.”
“Mark, you are gullible, naive, and sweet. You think everybody has a touch of goodness in them.”
“I know Blaise doesn’t,” Mark defended. “And I know Zabb doesn’t want you dead.”
They had reached an intersection of several corridors. One wall looked out of place, breaking the symmetry of the architecture. Tis suddenly stopped and stared at that wall for a long, long time. Mark reached hesitantly out and touched her hair.
“Doc?”
“This is where my mother died.”
The ace’s head swung back and forth like a puzzled crane’s. “I thought she, like, fell down stairs or something?”
“There used to be a stairway here. Father had it destroyed… the entire wing walled off. Her suite was down there.”
So much of Takisian life, particularly a Takisian woman’s life, seemed centered indoors. It heightened Mark’s sense of claustrophobia. And this place was really giving the ace the creeps.
“Hey,” he blurted. “Let’s go outside while there’s still some light left.”
Tis shook herself free of her reverie. “While there’s still some autumn left. It will be winter soon.”
They went to the private garden off Tisianne’s suite, an odd diamond-shaped plot of ground that seemed to have been created more by architectural oversight than any plan. High walls in four different styles and three different colors peeped coyly through the leaves and trumpet-shaped flowers of a climbing vine. It was like a fat woman hiding her physical shortcomings behind gauzy veils and hoping the covering would distract the eye.
As usual there was a fountain making water music, but a sharp wind was warping the shape. Dark clouds were scudding across the sun like a nightmare’s mane dulling the crystal fire of the crushed-quartz path that wove through the parterre flower gardens and trees. Since their last walk it had been raked back into its curving pattern, and now here they went raping the perfect symmetry with crude footprints. It made Mark a little crazy. Every day he wrecked some person’s life work, and yet he never saw the phantom raker.
They came to roost on a bench beneath what Mark had dubbed the grape arbor for lack of a better phrase. It was an arbor, there was fruit growing on it, and the smell was very alluring, but a sampling produced effects like a shot of bad Mexican water. Mark knew, he had succumbed to temptation.
Tis sighed heavily, leaned back on one hand, and rested the other high on the bulge point of her belly. Sunflower, Mark’s wife lo these many years ago, had assumed just such a position when she’d been pregnant with Sprout. Maybe all pregnant women did. A universal in any culture. In any species. On any planet.
“I haven’t asked before, but, like, are you handling this?”
“No, I never thought it would get this far. I was sure Kelly would have to handle, well… the messy bits.”
“It’s about a month away, right?”