Tisianne forced a rictus of a smile. “Shouldn’t be too long now.”

Something touched his neck. Jay bellowed, flopped like a hooked fish in his armchair. Snorted awake. The fringes of the nightmare were receding like wind-torn clouds. Cillka was bending over him.

“It’s time.”

“Goddamn, it’s about damn time.”

Getting out of the chair revealed aches and cricks in muscles he didn’t even know he possessed. Jay groaned, stretched, shook back a sleeve to check his watch. Two A.M. or the Takisian equivalent thereof. He knew the days were slightly shorter on Takis. It was too frustrating to figure out. Maybe it meant he was living longer to have extra -

The memory of the preceding night and day finally penetrated. Memories of bone-aching boredom. Meals had been the highlights. He thought he’d eaten eight just to pass the time. Guiltily he recalled that Tisianne probably hadn’t had such an easy, boring day and two nights.

“Poor little thing. Isn’t this kind of a long time?”

“The body’s small, it’s the first, and… he’s resisting.”

She led him into the corridor. Pandasala and Tri’ava fell in behind like flanking guards. They looked tired. Cillka snatched the query from his mind. “No one is due to birth tonight. We’re having to block Tisianne’s pain from the women’s quarter lest someone alert Zabb. It means we absorb it. It’s not easy.”

“Yeah, and you get to divide it six ways. How much more pleasant for Tisianne.”

The doors to Tisianne’s suite opened when they were a foot away. Roxalana playing door guard. Only a single lamp was lit. In the shadows Jay heard a desperate panting. He remembered rabbit hunting with an uncle one autumn. He had wounded a doe and trailed the blood into the woods. The sounds emerging from beneath the bush were very reminiscent of this.

The other three sisters abandoned him. Roxalana softly closed the door. Jay found his knees were shaking as he approached the bed. Mark had his arm around Tisianne’s shoulders as if he’d just assisted the girl onto the edge of the bed.

Jay wanted to say something, but the words seemed to be jammed up somewhere in the back of his throat. Tisianne looked awful. Her face had gotten very puffy in the final weeks of the pregnancy, and with its current ashen color it looked like three-day-old dough. The pale eyes were bone dry, but rimmed by red, and the gilt hair had lost its glitter. It hung like dirty cobwebs around her shoulders. Jay did some mental arithmetic and figured that the alien had been in labor around thirty-seven hours. Small wonder she looked like shit.

Roxalana plucked a package from a table. It had been wrapped in a glistening rainbow paper and tied with gold and silver ribbons.

“She’ll need clothes. There are also several changes of diapers, and a breast pump and self-heating bottles.” Jay swallowed hard. His part in this was suddenly starting to look a lot more complicated.

Mark accepted the bundle and shifted Tisianne’s medical bag to his other hand. “Send me first,” he instructed Jay. “I can make sure things are ready for the Doc. Give me, say, five.”

“Got it. Sure hope Hastet is still waiting. She expected us last night.”

Tisianne’s unresponsiveness was starting to scare the detective. She just kept staring off into space, her arms clutching her belly.

“If this Tarhiji doesn’t know her duty, she at least knows what’s good for her,” was Roxalana’s cold reply.

Again Jay was seized with a dislike so intense it was almost physical. Then Tisianne let out this horrible grunting sound. In a lot of ways a scream would have been easier. Anxious to do anything, Jay popped Meadows.

“My,” was Roxalana’s terribly well-bred reaction. “What a very useful skill. I have longed for it at particularly dull parties.”

“Unfortunately I can’t do it to myself,” Jay said as he watched the sweep hand on his wristwatch.

“What is the range?”

“I don’t know” And then Jay remembered the hideous parasite Ti Malice, and that place, and wondered how far away nightmares lived. Decided he really didn’t want to know – he was afraid it was no farther than the floor beneath his bed. Just thinking about the place was giving him the cold sweats. Time. Jay teleported Tisianne.

Once she was safely away, he asked, “This is taking a lot longer than I expected. Are we likely to have any little surprise visits from Zabb?”

Roxalana shook her head. “I expect this House to be under attack within the month. That should hold his attention more than tormenting Tis.”

“Why didn’t we involve Taj?”

“Because he would not support our actions. He believes the child should die.”

“So why are you involved? You ladies have always struck me more as the Furies than the Graces.”

The smile was as calculating as the light from your average computer. “Because however flawed and inferior this child might be, she still carries my brother’s blood, and mated to a properly bred Ilkazam, she could produce a valid claimant to the Raiyis’tet. And knowing she lives will make Zabb sleep less easy at night, and may… may keep us alive. I am a mother too, Mr. Ackroyd. I wish to see my children thrive. And now we must see you safely through the doors of the quarter.”

Back in Cillka’s room Jay donned the five layers he’d removed through that interminable night and day. As he stood, swinging his ridiculous hat by its ribbons, the woman suddenly reached up and mussed his hair, pulling a lock down onto his forehead. Her smile was pure mischief.

“If you had really spent this many hours in my bed, you would not look so tidy.”

“If I’d spent thirty hours banging you, I’d need a wheelchair, and you wouldn’t be awake.”

She arranged his hat and tied it in place. “You humans are the most awful braggarts -”

Whatever other insults she was going to offer got lost as she got that poleaxed expression that Jay had learned meant a heavy-duty telepathic message coming in. Whatever she heard it was bad. She pressed her hands against her mouth, yanked them down, and blurted, “My husband!”

“Oh, great!” Jay groused. “My nuts just became sweetbreads.”

“He doesn’t care about toys. The problem is he’ll recognize you.”

“And realize that I’m not a toy!” That aspect of the situation hadn’t struck her. When it did, her reaction was all that he could hope for. Cillka panicked and went screeching about the room like a frenzied hen.

“Look, I majored in ‘hide’ in detective school. You got a closet? Under the bed?”

“He’ll scan. Read your mental signature.”

“Too bad I was sick the day we did ‘invisible to telepaths.’ Okay, get out in the hall, distract him. I’ll -”

“He’s got guards. They’ll have surrounded the suite.” Cillka began to cry.

“What, is a conjugal visit to a Takisian wife like sleeping with a black widow? Hubby’s got to come armed for the fucking?”

“Help!” Cillka suddenly screamed. It didn’t do a thing for Jay’s already raw nerves.

“I’m trying!” Jay shouted back, then he realized that she’d simply voiced a telepathic all-points bulletin.

Roxalana, Melant, and Pandasala answered the call. Several connecting doors opened, and the three women came flying through, shedding clothes like trees losing leaves in an autumn storm. As Roxalana hauled Jay toward the bed, the other two applied themselves to physics of undressing while in motion. By the time they all tumbled onto the bed, the detective was down to a shoe, one sleeve from his breakaway outfit, and his hat.

He heard Cillka coo out a name, then the rest of the conversation went into the private mode, and he had no idea what was happening. Couldn’t see what was happening either, because his face was pressed firmly between a pair of milk-heavy breasts. Jay wondered if he ought to have a Freudian childhood flashback now? Instead he decided to avail himself of what providence had offered. He dropped soft little kisses onto the soft skin, felt one nipple crinkle beneath the application of a tongue tip.