On one wall hung a portrait of Tis and his mother done just before her death. On the desk a shifting holograph filled with pictures of Tisianne – riding, dancing, skating, reading. There was also a starkly simple flower arrangement. The petals and leaves reflected back the lights and stung Tisianne’s eyes. As a youth Tis had excelled at the art of flower arrangement. That had been his last creation for his father. Shaklan had had the flowers freeze-dried and lacquered to preserve this final gift from a rebellious child.

And now Taj had unwittingly brought home her sin and her loss by playing patient caretaker to a mausoleum in memory of a half-dead man.

What kind of a Takisian are you, Taj brant Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian, thought Tisianne, that you have no ego?

And that was the thought which had apparently elicited the outburst from Taj. It was very embarrassing for Tisianne. She knew the mentatics training she had force-fed this borrowed body was marginal at best, but she hadn’t even known she was being scanned.

Taj raised his head and waved them toward chairs. Zabb sprawled with elegant, mocking ease. He wore his Network uniform like a defiant shout. Trips sidled crabwise toward a heavily carved high-back chair. Once seated, he perched stiffly and uncomfortably upright as if caged. Jay was as cool and insouciant as ever. He sat down, relaxed, and waited – it was the detective’s gift. Tis selected a comfortable settee. None of these aggressively masculine chairs seemed designed to accommodate a pregnant woman’s unique physique, and she saw no reason to suffer.

The computer screen inset in the polished desktop sprang to life. Taj bent and read, and the light flowing up from below accentuated the lines of strain and turned the eye sockets into dark hollows. With a sigh he pushed back from the desk and swiveled in his chair to face Tisianne.

“Your mind is Tisianne’s, the body contains not a platelet of Takisian blood. But the child you carry is not only part Takisian, but carries the genetic markers of House Ilkazam.”

“It’s a rather long and complicated story.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

Tis was. Her teeth sketched at her lower lip. “Please, I must know, is Blaise here?” Taj gave her a look. She subsided.

The older man turned to Zabb. “If I didn’t have larger problems to deal with, I’d chastise you with a laser whip. Your little stunt sent that Network ship careening into our space, violating the boundaries established by treaty.” Zabb started, surprised. “This behavior was easily discouraged, but the precedent set is unfortunate.”

“But they were discouraged?”

“They’ve withdrawn to the Bonded platform.” Taj smiled humorously at Zabb’s expression. “Did you think they’d go meekly home? You’ve breached a Network contract, and we’ve fired shots – the first shots fired against a Network vessel in over eight thousand years. For all I know, we may be at war again. All because of you.’,

“I have always had a remarkable effect on people,” Zabb drawled, and Baz choked.

Taj quelled the lesser noble with one slitted glance. “Get back to Ship Home. I want extra patrols flown. Keep a watch on that Network vacu.”

Baz nodded quickly and exited.

Taj drummed fingers on the desk, the overlong nail on his left thumb hitting with a sharp click as he studied the humans. “And what do I do with you?”

Tis moved to stand between Jay and Trips. “They don’t know House Talk very well. Try Sham’al. And you needn’t do anything with them. They are my bodyguards, and one is of my line. I adopted him.”

“How… like you.” Taj pushed back his hair, folded his hands as if to keep them still. “They carry the Enhancer in the pattern of their genes.”

Enhancer threw them. Tis explained that it meant the virus. Trips had nothing to say to that. As usual Jay did.

“We call it the wild card,” said Jay. The English term sounded strange coming at the end of a burst of Takisian.

“Wild card?” Taj looked to his nephew for amplification.

“It’s a term from an Earth card game called poker. It’s meant to imply randomness, something that strikes without warning.”

Taj nodded, absorbed this, then, cocking an eyebrow at Tis, said, “I’m still waiting to hear how your soul came to reside in this pretty pregnant vessel, and I’m most intrigued to discover how you managed to impregnate yourself.”

“The father of the child is Blaise, my grandson.”

“So you’re carrying your great-granddaughter?”

“Yes.”

“Fascinating. An incest for which there is no name.”

“It was a subtle revenge.”

“This grandson of yours sounds very Takisian.”

“If that’s synonymous with crazy, you’d be right,” Jay said. Tis and Trips winced. For the first time Taj really seemed to focus on the detective.

“For a mudcrawler you are very fearless… or foolish.”

“A little of both actually. Can I ask a question?” Taj nodded assent. “You’re the first old geez – uh, older person I’ve seen here. How old are you?”

“Nine hundred and twenty-three.”

“Jesus Christ! Does everybody live to be nine hundred?”

“Barring unforeseen… er, accidents, which is rather difficult to do,” Zabb drawled. “We can live much longer.”

Taj looked significantly at Tisianne. “Well, I’m waiting.” Tisianne opened her mouth, closed it. Her uncle sighed. “Yes, Tis, your situation is ludicrous, but I don’t see how talking about it will make it any worse. And I cannot help – you or the House – unless I know precisely with what I’m dealing.”

Slowly at first, then with growing animation, she told the tale. The last great fight with Shaklan when Tisianne had begged his father to halt testing of the Enhancer on a small, insignificant planet filled with genetic doubles of the Takisians. His pursuit of the test ship, its destruction, and the release of the virus.

She recalled the early days when ten thousand people had died in Manhattan, when hideous and twisted jokers had wandered like living scars on the face of the city. She spoke of the few, the lucky few who were blessed with metahuman powers – the aces. Taj glanced with interest at the two humans. It didn’t take a genius to conclude that they possessed these metahuman powers. If there was a Takisian racial flaw, it was unbridled curiosity. It was already beginning to eat at the regent.

Tis glossed over the terrible days of the McCarthy witch hunts, her deportation, the years of drunken wandering. It was then he had sired a daughter. Taj’s expression grew thunderous, and she blanched a bit. Hurried on to the founding of the Jokertown Clinic to care for the victims of the wild card. The discovery that he had a grandson: a quarter-Takisian boy who had been raised by vicious revolutionaries and possessed not an ounce of pity or morality. The outcrossing of genes had somehow produced a mind-control power of terrifying dimensions. She touched on the enemies and crises she had faced – the Swarm invasion, the Astronomer, the jumpers, Bloat – and her great nemesis, Blaise.

“There was an ace, his wild card was to bestow this jumper power on adolescents. Blaise became a member of this gang, and to revenge himself upon me, he switched me into the body of this girlchild. He held me prisoner, and he… he… he would…”

Her voice had started to jump, and strength drained from her body. She felt her knees buckling. Zabb reached her first. Swung her up in his arms and carried her to the settee. Her vision cleared. Taj stared down at her, white-faced with shock. Obviously her emotions, the memories, had been too strong. They had forced themselves past the shields that the old man was maintaining for politeness’ sake. Even Zabb, who would cavil at nothing, was shaken.

“This piece of rotting afterbirth raped you?” Zabb shouted. Tis shrank from his anger.

“Hey, guys, yeah, it’s a lousy thing, but we’re all adults here,” Jay said. “It’s not like it never happens -”