Jube walked past her and settled with a grunt into his chair. He looked back inquiringly at Tachyon. Gnawing nervously at the inside of her cheek, the Takisian dithered.

Yes, her predicament was desperate, but did she have the right to endanger Takis for one hundred and twenty pounds of male flesh?

“Are we doing this?” asked Jube, shattering her thoughts and sending them skittering in all directions. Tach nodded mutely.

There was a place on the console where Tach could sit. It wasn’t terribly comfortable, but Jube showed no inclination to offer his chair. The sausagelike fingers caressed the keypad. He glanced up at Tach. Like most people his eyes kept drifting to the swell of her belly. Tach steeled herself for the inevitable question. But Jube surprised her. Instead of the irritating bleat of “How does it feel?” the alien said wistfully, “I haven’t had a child yet. May never get to now. One of the trade-offs for taking up Network service.”

“Yes, I suspect there isn’t a Glabberan female within twenty light-years.”

Jube busied himself with the keypad before answering. “I could impregnate myself.” The joker smiled at Tach’s eye-widening reaction. “We Glabberan are hermaphrodites. But I had a feeling that me fetching up pregnant was going to be tough to explain in terms of the wild card. It would stretch even your credulity.”

“Is that how I seem to you? Credulous?”

A form flickered to life on the holocube. The language was unfamiliar, the form was not. Tach had read enough contracts in her life to recognize one. She could feel depression crawling down her body like men on a treacherous, icy cliff.

“It’s a function of your upbringing. You Takisians measure everything by your cultural imperative. You can be incredibly murderous and devious, but overall you’re an endearingly forthright race. You take honor and vows and blood debts and all that baggage very seriously.”

Tach indicated the holocube. “And all this time I thought a contract was sacrosanct to the Master Traders. If you’re telling me it’s not, I shall have to rethink these negotiations.”

The big head shook ponderously from side to side. “Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that. We’ll honor the letter of the law… it’s just sometimes the spirit that escapes us.” And Tach thought she heard an echo of regret in the joker’s voice like half-heard summer thunder. “You Takisians will put yourselves through oceans of shit to fulfill a vow. Well just find a new way to interpret a clause and spare ourselves a wade in the shit.”

Tachyon’s names – both the Takisian and the human nom de guerre – appeared in the lines of alien prose as startling and incongruous as icebergs in a goldfish pond. Jube’s hand dropped into his lap, and he looked up at Tach out of small pouched eyes.

“Okay, what exactly do you want?”

“More to the point – what is this going to cost me?”

“I thought we should settle on an open contract. Payment to be made later.”

Outrage made her voice a squeak. “I am not so stupid as to sign a blind contract with you.”

Jube rubbed thoughtfully at his upper lip. “Tell you what, in memory of an old friendship – I’ll let you exclude anything you want.”

Tach eyed the other alien suspiciously. “How will you show a profit?”

“I’ll manage. Now what am I selling you?”

“Passage to Takis.”

Again that head shake like a statue waking. “No can do. I’m not a captain. All I have at my disposal is a slightly jury-rigged tachyon transmitter.”

“So you’re telling me I have to haggle with you over the price of a message, and again with some rapacious ship’s captain for passage?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“You really are the most disgusting bloodsuckers.”

“Deal or not, Tachyon. It’s not my belly expanding with each passing day.”

“Very well.” She began to tick off on her fingers. “I won’t give you the clinic.”

“Don’t want it anyway,” grunted Jube as he began to type.

“My holdings on Takis are exempt.”

“Okay.”

“You can’t have Baby.”

“You don’t have her either,” pointed out the joker with irritating logic.

With as much dignity as she could muster, Tach looked down her nose and said, “I will… just as soon as you can send a message.”

“Anything else?”

“My bank accounts, investments, personal possessions.”

Jube shrugged dismissively. “Paltry to a Master Trader.”

There was something in the joker’s eyes that raised warnings like the skirt of a hurricane approaching shore. Tach almost stuttered in her haste to add, “And me. Either this body or the other. You can’t have them.” Jube nodded and typed in the condition. “Or any portion of them. My brain is not going to end up running a mining operation on some outer moon.” Tach canted her head back and considered. The effort of trying to outguess, outthink, outmaneuver the Network was summoning a prickling headache that settled low in her forehead with all of the irritating persistence of too-long bangs.

“My knowledge, work, research on the wild card, or any related genetic research.” Hastily she added, “Nor will I submit to experimentation to try to determine the source of our telepathy.”

“In short we can’t have a piece of body, soul, or mind.”

“Correct. This body, or the real one.”

Jube cocked his head, eyed her curiously. “Why so protective of this body? You’re just renting, so to speak.”

“I feel a certain… obligation,” said Tach slowly. “I must guard her future encompassed by this body… And there is… our child.” Tach stared down at her hands.

“I just hope she’s being as careful with mine.”

“Anything else?”

“What?” Tach lifted dazed eyes, pulling herself almost by main force back to a limbo world of regrets and fears and might-have-beens.

“The contract,” Jube prompted gently. “Is there anything else you’d like to exclude?”

Tach wearily shook her head. Jube hit a key with an aggressive little finger. From the maw of another unidentifiable contraption, a silvery paper was expelled. It was cold and slick in Tachyon’s fingers like mercury made solid and rolled as cellophane. The words (in English now) were etched into its surface, starkly red against the silver.

“Very interesting color choice,” she said dryly. “Do I sign in blood too?”

“Nothing so exciting,” grunted Jube. “And there’s nothing significant about the color. This is mycar, virtually indestructible, but a bitch to read. The red shows up better.”

“Certainly gets your attention,” Tach agreed as she carefully perused the document.

It contained the usual whereofs and theretos, and parties of the first part and parties of the second part. It was a party that Tachyon would rather have missed. But stripped down, the legal flesh boiled away until only the bones remained, it basically said that Jhubben of Glabber, representative of the Network, would send a message summoning a fast ship to Earth. In consideration for this service Tachyon, aka Prince Tisianne of the House Ilkazam, agreed to pay Jube an unspecified amount, or perform some service to be determined at some later, unspecified date. It made Tachyon crazy even to contemplate signing it.

So of course she signed it. What other choice did she have?

“Are you going to send the message?” asked Tach.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just as soon as you’re out of my apartment,” came the patient if rude reply.

“You don’t trust me?”

“No,” said Jube firmly as he got a hand under elbow and assisted her off the console. “Jube the Walrus and Dr. Tachyon trusted each other. Prince Tisianne and Jhubben of the Network -”

“Are implacable enemies.”