Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire

by Melinda Snodgrass

“I don’t remember it.” Gray eyes met gray eyes. “And I’ve certainly never danced it from the woman’s side.”

  The other shoe went on, and Zabb pulled her to her feet. “Rely on me. I’ll get you through it.”

  Pandasala on one side, and Cillka on the other, caught up her skirts so her feet would be free.

  “You’ve been a chair warmer long enough tonight,” Cillka said.

  “Celebrate a little,” added Pandasala.

  They gave her a push toward Zabb. Even just walking to the dance floor, their heels struck music from the parqueted wood floor. Tis’s chest was tight with nerves.

  All Takisian dances were intricate, the footwork complicated, but “Crystal Flowers” surpassed them all, for there was one entire line of the music missing from the orchestration—it was to be provided by the dancers’ shoes.

  The base of the heel striking the floor was one note, the crystal tap on the toe another, and there were five more notes in ascending order on the high heels. It required precision to tap one heel against the other at precisely the proper level to elicit the necessary note and complete the music.

  While Zabb and Tis hung to the side waiting for the music to figure back to the beginning, Tis nervously played scales, reminding herself of the placement of the notes.

  “Relax, you’re a good musician. This is all in the ear,” Zabb said.

  “And the feet,” Tis said bitterly, as Zabb led her in and they were into it.

  For the first few measures the music was her biggest worry. Then the pattern of the dance intruded with burning clarity. During an intricate side movement Zabb bent and brushed her wrist with his lips. Tis closed her eyes briefly. Bobbled and missed a note.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “It’s only one note.”

  “It’s this whole dance!” she said bitterly.

  It had its origin in country peasant dances. A spring dance, the historians thought, to celebrate the return of life and the running sap. And not only in trees and flowers, but men and women as well. Its country incarnation was bawdy and sexual. The Zal’hma at’ Irg had refined it over the generations, but it was still a wildly romantic dance. Tis had loved it as a young man. It was an excellent barometer of a women’s interest.

  They had progressed past the fingertips and wrist and graduated to the temple and the corner of the mouth. Zabb smelled of spice and musk. Forcing a detached academic interest, which she really didn’t feel, Tis noticed that it was much easier to steal a kiss when you’re taller than the woman. Her mind pursued the trivial, hoping it would still the torrent of emotions and sensations rushing through her body.

  I ought to just quit. Leave now. I ought to. Goddamn hormones!

  Music and motion, and that white chiseled face. The skin on his upper lip was paler than the rest of his face. Ideal, he shaved his mustache! His hand closing on hers. Final figures now. Zabb brushing light kisses onto her mouth with each pass. The final kiss. This was the acid test. This was where the woman told you if she was interested or not. This was …

  He captured her. It was questionable if she’d ever really meant to flee. Arms closing around her in tight embrace. A long, deep kiss to last the final measure. The music stopped. Zabb pulled back. Rivulets of sweat matted his sideburns and beaded his forehead. White blond elf locks hanging about that narrow face. And a look in those pale gray eyes.

  No wonder women flee from us. The hungry pressure from those eyes. All the anguished wanting!

  Tis began to back away. Zabb thrust a hand at her. Control snapped, and she fled from the dance floor, her shoes making a wild ringing as she ran. The murmur of the crowd rising like a wind storm from behind her. She had done it again. Caused another scene at a family ball.

  A stitch in her side finally brought her to a gasping halt. Footsteps coming. Her heart lifted—rescue … from herself. Tall, but not tall enough. Blond, but the wrong blond. Dangerous not safe. Zabb not Mark.

  Tis slumped against the wall. Zabb thrust his hands into the pockets of his dusterlike coat and offered support to the other wall of the corridor. They eyed each other across a three-foot chasm.

  “Don’t you think we ought to do something about … this.” She shook her head, a quick, terrified gesture. Zabb ran a frantic hand through his hair. “Ideal! You are driving me mad!”

  “This is insane. You hate me.”

  “Not true. You stood between me and ambition. That impediment has now been removed.”

  “Impediment to what? Fucking me? You’ve done that very well, thank you, for a very long time.”

  Zabb grabbed her shoulders. “You talk too much, Tis. You have always talked too much!”

  She watched as her terror slammed into him. His hands leapt from her shoulders as if shocked. He clutched his elbows. Retreated again to the opposite wall.

  “I’m sorry. I frightened you. I’m sorry.”

  For a long moment they regarded one another. “How can I sleep with you? How? I’m wounded in ways you can’t see, and I don’t fully understand,” Tis said.

  “Then let me try to heal you.”

  That drew an incredulous laugh. “Heal me? Sex is about trust and vulnerability, and a little like dying. How can I trust you?”

  The crooked little smile couldn’t quite cover the desperation huddled in the back of his eyes. “Think of it as sublimation. I’ll get this gnawing need to kill you out of my system.”

  Tisianne studied Zabb with growing calculation. A reluctant smile broke. “Think it will work?”

  “Ancestors only know.”

  “Are you a good lover?”

  “The best.”

  “All men say that,” Tis said dismissively. “I even said it.”

  Planting a foot on the wall behind her, Tis pushed off. Stopped directly in front of him. Almost touching. She caught his chin between her fingers. Pulled his face down. Kissed him. Retreated back to her wall. No pockets. She buried her hands in the folds of her gown. Regarded him. There are many things to be said for telepaths. One is they know when to keep silent.

  “All right,” Tis said. “Prove it.”

  The experiment hadn’t begun all that auspiciously. From the moment of her return Tis had worn long sleeves, hiding the evidence of her suicide attempt. Now, naked before Zabb, her cousin had seen the healing wounds, and demanded an explanation. Tisianne had answered tersely that she felt it was her duty to protect the body she was wearing, and the child she had been carrying, and would say no more about the matter, but it had placed an aura of unease over the entire proceeding.

  And now they had been at it for an hour and getting nowhere. Fumblings, groping, awkward kisses from Tis, expert foreplay by Zabb, and none of it worked. Each time Zabb attempted to enter her, the terror returned. Tis lay on her back in Zabb’s bed and felt tears tangling wet and hot in the hair over her temples. Zabb wiped them away.

  “Tis, do you remember your first toy?”

  The question startled her from her internal pain. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Zabb seated cross-legged on the foot of the bed. “Yes, Roxalana selected her, and father auditioned her.”

  “And you had learned to play with her.”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “And what did she teach you?”

  “About a thousand positions.”

  “No, what’s the first and most important lesson a toy teaches you?”

  “That sex is a state of mind,” Tis replied slowly.

  “And what happened to you at Blaise’s hands was not sex. It was violence.” He stretched out next to her again. His skin was cold against her. He lifted her hand and laid it on his cock. “Now, you make love to me. Arouse me the way the male Tisianne liked to be aroused. I will not touch or caress you until you tell me to. You’re not powerless now, Tis. In this bed, at this moment, you control me.”

  Hesitantly she began to explore his body. Zabb lay supine and helpless beneath her
, and she liked the looming sense of power it gave her to look down at him as she knelt between his outflung legs. Under her delicate ministrations she soon had him at rampant attention. His excitement began to communicate with her borrowed body.

  With a mouth gone suddenly dry she said, “Now, Zabb, now touch me.”

  He laid a long forefinger against his temple, then against hers. “Touch me here first, Tis.”

  Emotionally she retreated, though the body didn’t move. Lovemaking between telepaths was a total sharing. For almost fifty years Tachyon had been forcing the joining. With Zabb it would be a merger. She opened her mind to him and found no violence there. She read his arousal and pleasure, and for an instant he had returned to her the sensation of a penis. He gently stroked her labia, nipped at her nipples, and she fed back her pleasure to him.

  Terror burned away in the passion of her orgasm. It was only after she had experienced her pleasure that he allowed himself a release. And only after his cries died away did she allow herself to giggle.

  “What?” Zabb muttered against her breast.

  “It feels … so strange. Ideal, I’m leaking.” She wriggled from beneath him and padded to the bathroom, his sperm coating her inner thighs.

  When she returned, he was under the covers. He lifted a corner, and she crawled in, curled up next to him.

  “What? What do you want? You have that look again,” said Zabb.

  “Do it again, please.”

  Much later she heard him ask. “So how was it?”

  Tis stretched her arms back over her head and lightly traced the carving on the headboard with her fingertips. The room was redolent with the scent of cinara wood from the fire and sex. She gave Zabb a mischievous glance.

  “Don’t you mean how was I? That’s what men really mean.”

  Zabb shoved a pillow behind his back and lit an Illusion. He glared down at Tach lying next to him. “You are the most irritating Takisian.”

  Tis shrugged, rolled up onto an elbow, and threw back her hair. Scanned the bedside table. “When did you order spetza?”

  Zabb reached down by the bed and with a rattle of ice pulled out a bottle of sparkling wine. “A long time ago.”

  “I must have been sleeping.”

  “An admission … I wore you out.” Tis just looked at him as she accepted the glass. “What was it like? You’re the only man to have made this journey.”

  “What about lawmerates?”

  “It’s a cheat. Surgical alteration, hormonal therapy. You are a woman.”

  Tis lifted a breast. “Here.” Then tapped her temple. “Not here. Well, multiple orgasms are definitely an improvement over one. I discover it is much harder to let go as a woman. There is a passivity, a vulnerability that frightens me, but that may just be a result of my early female experiences.” She paused and took a swallow of the sweet, sparkling wine.

  “Sex is more significant somehow. Biology talking, I suspect. For men it’s a five-minute commitment. For women, a potential fourteen years until their children leave Rarrana. But much of this you know. It’s an advantage of telepaths.”

  “Much of my drive in joining is vanity. It’s as if I’m looking in a mirror. Her pleasure reflects back to me how marvelous I am.” The bald honesty and the insight of the admission stunned her. Tis looked at Zabb with new respect, and there was a twinge of guilt.

  “You’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it, but you are absolutely right. I did the same thing. Ideal, what pigs we men can be.” She snuggled closer to him, and he put an arm around her shoulders.

  “You’re going to be a very good lover. Having known what pleases you as a man, you can apply it and please your partner.”

  “Going to be?” Tis asked.

  “Your impression was correct. You do hold back.”

  “Rape has a way of doing that to you,” Tach said a little dryly.

  “I think it’s more a function of being technically a virgin.”

  “You have an elastic view of virginity.”

  Zabb was warming to the theme. Excitement growing with each word. “In fact, you’re the most virginal of virgins. You have no sexual sense of self. You’re learning it here, in my bed, in my arms. You’ve never known another man—”

  “Just hundreds of women,” Tis said, torn between amusement and irritation.

  There was a chime. Zabb sat up, all quivering alertness, and Tis knew he had read some telepathic summons. Taj entered, and Tisianne, suddenly shy, pulled covers up to her chin.

  “Raiyis, forgive the intrusion, but we have received a private priority message from Blaise.” The formal mask slipped, and he looked at Tisianne. “I think you better hear it … now.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  ZABB KEYED THE HOLOSTAGE, and Blaise appeared in the audience chamber of House Vayawand. There was an infant on his lap. At the foot of his throne sat Jay and Hastet. They had the blank, stuffed look of people enduring severe mind control.

  It took several seconds for images and words to penetrate the pounding in Mark’s head. Jay’s mulitated hands were cuffed in his lap; the raw stumps of his fingers looked like little screaming mouths.

  “You want her, Grandfather? Come and get her. You’ve got three days, and then she dies. I’ll send her back to you in bits and pieces.”

  That sentence came through with appalling clarity. Mark’s hand closed like a vise on Tisianne’s shoulder, but whether to hold her in place or as support for himself, he couldn’t say.

  The images shuddered and vanished. “Do you want to hear it again?” Taj asked.

  Zabb shook his head. “No … I believe we’ve grasped the most salient point.”

  Tis rose very carefully, as if any incautious movement would shatter her or break her fragile emotional control, and started for the door. Mark trailed faithfully after her.

  “You are not going there!” Zabb exploded.

  “You are quite right; I am not going there.”

  That shook Mark. He’d assumed this purposeful movement had a destination. “Doc, Illyana—” Trips remonstrated.

  “Is lost to me! Even if I went to Blaise, he would keep me from her!”

  Mark remembered Sprout being led away by the child-welfare people. Remembered the gray jail that had held his child. But he’d gotten her out, even though it cost a woman’s life. Tisianne wilted slightly under the ace’s angry and incredulous expression.

  “And what if he kills her?” Mark said.

  “It won’t be the first time.” Zabb shrugged. “And babies are easy, you can always make more.”

  Tis nodded. “Cousin, this hurts, I won’t deny it. Have I permission to withdraw and rest?” Zabb waved permission, and they left the Raiyis’s office.

  Back in Tisianne’s chamber, she drew out the Network damper. Tis looked up at Mark, and he saw the shadow of Medea and Cerridwen and the Medusa in her face. She took a tight grip on Mark’s hand and said in a low, passion-filled voice. “We’ll leave tonight. I think Traveler will be of most use.”

  “Pretend to be surrendering to Blaise?”

  “Correct.”

  “This won’t be easy,” Mark warned.

  “It’s got to be tried.”

  Mark ran a hand across his mouth. “What a bummer. Poor Jay.”

  “Gimme a second,” Jay mumbled.

  After the bounce/cast they had been escorted to a sumptuous suite—and the doors had been locked behind them. Jay availed himself of a wall, leaned his back against it, and slid to the floor. The black spots dancing before his eyes receded, but he knew they were just waiting for another chance to return. He tried to remember the last time he’d slept.

  Hastet stood over him, absently patting Illyana on her swaddled bottom. The baby was crying. So what else is new? thought the detective. Hastet looked as if she were going to cry.

  “Shit, my hands hurt so much.” Jay was embarrassed at the thickness of his voice.

  Quick footsteps approaching the door. Jay scrambled awkw
ardly to his feet. The black spots came raging back. The lock cycling. Tachyon—no, Kelly—entered.

  “I’m Kelly Jenkins, these are my rooms. You may stay here with me, but I must have your word that you won’t try to escape. Otherwise the doors stay locked.” He turned and looked at Hastet. “Now may I see my child?”

  Hastet’s eyes sought Jay’s. The ace shrugged. “Might as well, can’t dance.”

  Kelly accepted the baby. He supported the tiny red gold head with his real hand, the artificial appendage under her body. The man bowed his head, and the long red hair shrouded the child. And amazingly the baby stopped crying.

  “Telepathy,” said Hastet at Jay’s wild glance.

  “It won’t hold her for long,” Kelly said. “I told her I was ‘mother,’ but she knows I’m not Tachyon.” He flashed a grim smile. “You ever heard a mental raspberry?”

  He had just settled down to an evening’s orgy with a toy when the Vayawand traitor came calling.

  “She’s gone.”

  Zabb put aside the girl and frowned at the older man. “What are you maundering about?”

  Bat’tam grabbed his arm, gave it an urgent shake. “She’s taken a l’lail. Traveling overland. There’s a storm coming.” He stressed each word like a teacher speaking to a particularly dim student.

  “Damn the girl. She gave her word. Is she trying to drive me mad? I should have killed him as a pup.” The words came out in sharp staccato bursts as Zabb tried to analyze and control his tumbling emotions.

  “Then why are you making love to a substitute?” Bat’tam demanded, and pointed at the terrified La’b. Zabb looked from the Vayawand nobleman back to the toy, her long hair carefully dyed white blond, her similarity of features to the female Tisianne.

  “Ancestors curse you.”

  Mounted on a shujukis, snow swirling in his face, he could barely discern the wingtips of the raptor. Zabb held contact with his guard by the mindnet. The shujukis were mountain-bred snow hunters, tracking by body heat. He searched by mentatics for that familiar, infuriating signature. It was not his gift, and he was making a botch of it. She was hiding from him and making a botch of it. The imperfect shields cut in and out like a child playing peekaboo through its fingers.