“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.

The creepy crawler might be off Onyze’s throat, but it was clearly too late for the young man. Some powerful poison was at work. The death rattle was loud as Egyon lowered the Ilkazam pretender to the floor. Jay expected some kind of respect for the dead, but Egyon sprang to his feet, leaving the sightless eyes staring fixedly up at the painted mural on the ceiling. His hand was in his pocket, and Jay somehow suspected he wasn’t jacking off.

“This is murder. You’ve broken House Peace,” Egyon said.

Zabb laid dainty fingertips against his chest. “I?” He glanced around the circle of nobles. “I think a more useful question is who gave Onyze the ankatai’li?”

Silence like the grave. The eyes of the Kou’nar slid toward Egyon. Anger gave way to confusion gave way to belligerence.

“What?” he demanded truculently.

“My lord,” said one of the nobles. “It was you who placed the badge on Onyze’s lace.”

“Impossible! I didn’t see the boy until we gathered here.”

A bitshuf’di, one of the neutered women, spoke up. “I saw you, my lord. Do you call me a liar?”

Meadows looked like a man who’d had the crap kicked out of him. Jay didn’t exactly understand how Meadows’s ace power worked, but he had a very strong feeling, honed by years of careful observation, that one of the gawky ace’s “friends” was behind the tragic demise of young Oinky and old Eggy’s current predicament.

“A rather drastic way to signal the transfer of your support to Tisianne,” Zabb goaded.

And Egyon bit, firing directly through the material of his pants pocket at Tisianne.

Only Tisianne wasn’t there. A split second before the destructive thread of light could strike her, Zabb flung the girl into Jay’s arms. Her balance was lousy, front heavy as she was. Jay had one foot on the dais, the other down a step. The conclusion was foregone. They went tumbling down the steps to the parqueted floor of the dining room. It suited Jay fine. Overhead he could hear the roar and snarl of weapons fire. And Jay hated guns. Any kind of gun. So he unlimbered his. Making a gun out of his finger, he pointed it at Tisianne.

She grabbed his forefinger and bent it painfully back. “No!” Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Don’t reveal your power. Save it for a real emergency.”

“I’d say this qualifies,” Jay spat as a bullet threw chips off a marble tile.

Guards had formed a protective wedge about the detective and their princess and were blazing away. Jay spent half a second worrying about Trips, hoping the gawky ace had the good sense to keep his head down – he couldn’t stand it. Curiosity won out over his very rational fear of guns and the people who used them. Jay abandoned Tisianne in the center of her nest of guards and went crawling back up the steps to the dais. He was half-afraid she’d follow, but apparently the sex change had endowed the alien with some brains.

Ackroyd cautiously poked his head above the level of the top step in time to see Taj snatch up a rifle from a fallen guard, blow the back of Egyon’s head off, and duck back into cover beneath the table. Zabb, a few feet away, frowned in annoyance. “?***@^? you, I wanted to kill him.”

“I didn’t have time for your posturings,” grunted Taj.

Jay wanted to cheer the old man. The detective didn’t know Tachyon particularly well, but even on short acquaintance there had been so many times when he’d felt the same irritation with all the Takisian bullshit. Taj was a Takisian, but apparently his bullshit threshold was as low as Jay’s.