Chapter 18

 

 

 

"Just don't," said Cara grimly, "expect me to feel sorry for Polly."

"Just because she gave you five years of misery and tried to kill you?" said Jared. "You can't forgive a few little misunderstandings like that?"

"I'm an unforgiving person," she explained. "I'm sure it's very difficult for her, stuck in a strange dimension, not knowing how to get along, but I really don't care what problems she has."

"Saizy had a good idea, though," said Jared, "to enlist these people to help us get the portal closed. So at least there won't be any more of them coming through."

"That would be fine," agreed Cara, "and then we can think of a way to get rid of the ones who are here."

"Send them off somewhere else," agreed Jared, smiling at her over the breakfast bar and Al's latest batch of cookies. Polly would have loved them; she was, most likely, having them for dessert at this very moment, before Lillian dragged her off to clean up the kitchen. Lillian and Phyllis were determined that Polly would learn the rudiments of domestic life before she wandered off to some other body or some other dimension. Besides, she didn't much like cleaning, and forcing her to do something she didn't like gave the Hardesty sisters a great deal of pleasure.

"Use Patterson's disruptor," said Cara. She considered it. "Is it immoral to use Patterson's invention to get rid of Patterson's girlfriend? It doesn't seem quite right, does it?"

"When we get to that point," said Jared, "she won't be Patterson's girlfriend any longer."

"Yes, we're going to have to think about that," said Cara. "It isn't fair to him to let him go on thinking she's a real person who loves him."

A popping noise in the living room heralded the arrival of Maud, in a flash of diamonds and a sheen of silk; she hadn't bothered with a jacket, since she hadn't come from outside. "Hello, Mother," said Cara. "It's a chilly night, isn't it? Would you like some coffee?"

"Thank you," said Maud, and came up to the breakfast bar; Jared offered her a cookie and she pulled up a vacant stool and perched on it. "I came," she said, "to find out just what you people think you're doing with those samples Saizy is collecting."

"What do you think we're doing?" said Jared.

Maud selected a cookie and took the coffee cup Cara offered. ""Obviously you're doing genetic analyses," she said. "What I want to know is what you expect to find, and why you want it. We're answering your questions, you know. Don't you believe us?"

"Oh, yes," said Jared, "as far as it goes. Which is never far enough. We can always use more information. And it's nice to have the concrete proof of your existence, for that matter."

"I'm right here," said Maud crossly. "How much more concrete does it need to be? And incidentally, why hasn't Saizy been pestering me for a sample?"

"Feeling left out?" Jared inquired. "We don't need to pester you. We already have a sample. Very informative, too. It was the first one Saizy did."

"What?" said Maud, holding her coffee cup.

"From Alliance General," Jared explained. "They took samples for cloning; remember? They're part of your estate, and you named me executor."

Maud put down the cup, looking annoyed. "I forgot about that," she said. "Trust you not to forget."

"Saizy said," Cara remarked, "that you really are my mother."

"I told you that." Maud bit into the cookie.

"But it's nice to have proof," said Cara. "One way or the other, it's good to know for sure who I am."

"Who you are," said Maud, "is a lot more than your genes. You should know that; you both should." She lifted her coffee cup.

"But this analysis can give us a new perspective on who we are," said Jared. "For instance, Issio and I found out something we would never have guessed without Saizy's work." Maud frowned at him. "We appear to be related," said Jared. "Right across species lines; Saizy says we seem to be second cousins."

Maud looked at him over the rim of her cup. "Oh," she said, and put the cup down again.

"You don't seem surprised," said Jared, trying to gauge her reactions; she looked deeply into her cup and avoided his eyes. "Is it possible," he said, following a line of thought that had been developing for several days, "that your people had a hand in my conception, and Issio's, as well as the ones you call your children?"

A pause, and Maud shrugged. "Certainly your heritage is of interest to us," she said. "If you wonder why, consider your younger niece."

"So it would be to your advantage," said Jared, "to take an active role in arranging it. Right?" She didn't look at him; across the breakfast bar Cara propped her chin on her hand and studied her mother with great attention. "Issio and I are both interested in this mingling of species that produced us. As far as Issio and Saizy understand, it can't be done in the ordinary way; if my great grandmother played around with Issio's great grandfather, they might have shocked their respective communities and they might have enjoyed themselves, but they couldn't have had a baby together. It has to have been done artificially. Issio says we don't have the technology; Saizy says she thinks it a remote possibility in time, but she has never heard of it being done successfully, even in the Institute for Genetic Research."

"I'm sure they're right," said Maud. "It would be a very difficult thing to do at this point in your scientific development."

"How about at your point?" said Jared.

"You combined the native species with your species," said Cara. "You would certainly have the ability to crossbreed the native species." Maud looked at her and bit down on her cookie. "What do you know," said Cara, "about Issio's family? What do you know about Jared's father?"

"Me, personally?" said Maud. "A big beautiful black guy. Obviously." She glanced at Jared. "Your mother and her family, you say, tended to be short or medium in height; you're tall. They had a great mixture of racial types, but you are visibly black. And you are, of course, beautiful. Isn't he?" she said to Cara, who laughed and nodded.

"But what do you know about him?" she asked again.

This possibility hadn't really occurred to Jared; when he thought of Maud's people interfering in his genetic heritage, he thought of it as having happened several generations back, with Gram, perhaps; it had not struck him that the interference might have been more recent then that. But Cara had a point; his unknown father had had at least as much influence upon him genetically as Ava and her family, just as his absence had had as much influence as Ava's presence. He looked at Maud, trying to read her, having as little success as he had ever had.

She looked back at him. "Who he was," she said, "isn't at all useful to you to know. The only concern would be his genetic heritage. His identity beyond that isn't important."

"No," he agreed. "But do you know?"

After a moment she shook her head. "There are those who do," she said. "It was important that he come from the proper stock. I wasn't that closely involved. And – I didn't want to know, to tell you the truth. That wasn't my concern. My job was to find the right – candidate. It didn't require –" She paused, looking down into her cup. "Personal involvement," she said finally. "That was entirely accidental."

There was a silence. He could not have begun to define his thoughts and feelings in words.

Cara reached over the breakfast bar and touched Maud's hand lightly and then took her cup back to the coffee maker for a refill. "What about Issio?" she asked over her shoulder. "The family that never could be identified. Was he – specially engineered?"

She brought back the cup and Maud took it. "Yes," she said, "again by others; I don't know the details. Properly designed," she added with a faint smile, "and the egg was laid in a strange nest, relying on others to bring him up. Unluckily these foster parents died. He managed for himself. Very well; he is an excellent man. We are satisfied. We don't need to think of the price he paid. That isn't important to us. He and Zarei's daughter produced Shamri; that's what matters. We give no thought at all to the personal side."

She sighed. "Unfortunately, you people have forced us to give some thought. Zarei says that Sofi may not be able to go back to work next year. She wants to, because she loves teaching, and her income would certainly be welcome, with two daughters; they don't want to accept anything from Gina's father, and Willis won't be in a position for years to give much in support. But there's a problem in finding day care for Shamri. The Zamuaon community here is a little more liberal-minded than Sofi's father, but they still don't approve of Sofi and Issio, and they certainly don't want to deal with a child sanctifying this misalliance. Zarei says she would look after Shamri herself, but Sofi – well, as you can imagine, she isn't sure about that. Still, Zarei is there every day, taking part, and maybe by next fall, Sofi will be convinced."

"Does it have to be Zamuaon day care?" said Cara. "Because Mimi and Phyllis and Lillian would just love to look after Shamri. Maybe something could be worked out with them and with Zarei. Unless Sofi doesn't want that much Earthian influence."

"I don't think that's the issue," said Maud. "She wants Shamri safe and well cared for, whoever does it; if it could be done in your little community here, I think she'd accept that."

"I'll do some checking," said Cara. "So all those personal problems are being worked out, Mother. You don't have to worry."

"The thing is," said Maud, "we do worry. This is not what we planned to do. So you have corrupted us," she added, with a smile in Jared's direction, "just as you have corrupted the fly."

"As it turns out," said Jared, deciding to allow the subject to shift, "we could corrupt the fly with a couple of cheeseburgers and a chocolate bar."

"Have you any good information from her?"

Jared shrugged. "Information. I don't know how good. I don't know how truthful." He still couldn't read Maud, but he didn't have to read her to feel her relax as the conversation moved into a less personal direction. He gave her an account of their lunch in the pet store, including, because he thought Cara would enjoy it, a description of the Bvasti parrots and their audience.

What he had found out about Issio, and what he had found out about himself, he would save for consideration later. He didn't think he would get anything more from Maud just now.

 

Carter said that the inscriptions on the arches were positively in the language of his people, adapted for physical senses on this side. He did not know, he said, if it was also the language of those who drove his ancestors out through the portals in the first place. He thought that was an interesting theory. "So we might be related somehow," he said, "the same race, or a similar race. At least sufficiently related to share a language."

"I am thinking," Jared said, "of the problems of translating a non-vocal language, which is really not verbal, into a written language, which does rely upon words, that kind of symbol."

"Words instead of images," said Carter. "That is very interesting. So your thought would be that it isn't strictly a mental language?"

"When you think of it," said Jared, watching as Patterson and Sandy bent over the printouts on the table across the basement, and Louise consulted with Weston, and Ned frowned darkly over the copy of Carter's second document, potential translations penciled in, "what sort of culture would develop around communication that was entirely mental? Without words, without that symbolic process; they would be extremely different from us."

"By my observation," said Carter, "the enemies are extremely different from us."

"But they certainly do understand how to use language," said Jared. "Not the sort you'd necessarily like to hear, but they certainly do use it." Yvonne Marie, tiring of her bone, got up from the cushion in the corner, stretched first her front legs and then her back legs, and came across the room, wagging, to allow Jared and Carter to pet her. "I think," said Jared, "it might be instructive to hear what Polly would say about these glyphs, if she could translate any part of them."

"You don't want to bring her down here," said Carter, looking horrified.

"Oh, hell, no," said Jared. "I want her nowhere near what we have here. But – " He got up and went to look over Sandy's shoulder. "Can we print out those glyphs on plain paper, without the background?" he asked Weston. "So that we can look at them independently from where they were found."

"I guess so," said Weston.

"We could use the highlighting function," said Sandy, "and they should come out looking like they were printed on paper or something like that. If that's what you want. But why?"

Jared wasn't going to say anything with Patterson standing two meters away from him. "Just an idea I had," he said. "Let's try it."

 

Now the rain had finally stopped and the sun was out, giving at least an illusion of warmth. Mimi and Clyde, Phyllis with help from Weston and Sandy and Willis, and the Bahtan girls were doing the final seasonal chores in their gardens. Cara, getting advice from the experienced gardeners, was doing things to the little line of flowers she had planted behind the car port at the beginning of summer; they were bulbs, she said, and they ought to come up again next spring. At least this was what Evvie told her.

And the next spring and the next; Jared liked to think of all those springs to come, when the little line of flowers would keep appearing, and he and Cara would be watching for them.

Sofi brought Shamri out after her nap, warm in the red sweater and a nest of blankets, to lie on the picnic table and be admired. No leaves, she observed, peering through the slanting afternoon rays of the autumn sun. No yellow leaves. No green leaves. No red leaves.

"The leaves have all fallen on the ground, pretty baby," said Jared, sitting at the table across from Sofi, letting Shamri grip his finger. She had strong hands for so small a baby, and her vision was excellent now, and he was continually amazed at what went on in her mind. "Soon it will get much colder, and then there will be snow." He called up a vision of snow in his mind, falling white and quiet over the street, covering the branches and the fence posts and the picnic table. Shamri looked at it with interest.

Pretty snow, she said.

"But cold; you'll need your snowsuit, and blankets, too," he told her, trying to remember just how cold winter air felt against his face and his hands, to give her an idea of what it was like.

When? When? Time was a concept poorly understood yet, but Shamri was trying hard. The snow wasn't now, she could see that, and soon wasn't now, and later wasn't now; when was snow?

"Very soon," said Sofi. "A matter of weeks only, love. Although," she added, looking at Jared across the table, "it will seem like a long time to our Shamri, who has only been in this world for a few weeks. Not quite two months."

"It seems much longer," said Jared, but of course he had known Shamri longer than two months. It had been in the late summer when she began to communicate with her family and with him. She had been an active part of their lives for all that time.

By the end of winter she would be a big girl, he thought, able to accomplish many of those feats she yearned to attempt now. She would be turning over; she would be sitting up by herself. She would be vocalizing a lot by then, but he expected her to be slow in learning to talk; she communicated so well now with her mind that she wouldn't see the point to ordinary spoken language.

Talk to Aunt Phyllis and Aunt Lillian, said Shamri unexpectedly, picking up this line of thought in his mind. She kicked her legs and switched her tail; her grandmother had given her a small spiral tail ring in gold which was supposed to expand as she grew, and it glittered in a stray sunbeam.

"That's true, pretty baby," he agreed. "You can talk to them best in words."

So I learn words, said Shamri, clearing up that little issue.

"There is Daddy's car," said Sofi, glancing toward the D'ubian corner as Issio's car turned onto their street, and Shamri kicked happily again. Daddy was home, and Sister would come with him, and her family would be complete. "He is early tonight," said Sofi. "I thought Gina had a meeting of the storytelling group."

Getting out of Issio's car, Gina didn't even wait to drop her book bag on the porch before she came to join the group at the table. "You look so pretty in your sweater!" she exclaimed to Shamri, who waved her arms and switched her tail again. Gina let go of the book bag and gathered up the baby, blankets and all; Issio, joining them, stroked his younger daughter's head and settled beside Sofi while Gina sat beside Jared.

"You did not have your meeting?" Sofi asked, and Gina, letting Shamri grab at her finger, shook her head and shrugged.

"You didn't go to your meeting, " said Jared; it was right there at the top of her mind, a group of kids, lots of voices, a sense of disappointment, a sense of not belonging. He glanced at Sofi and saw that she and Issio had picked up on it too.

"They just want to talk about school dances, stuff like that," said Gina, and she tried making a funny face for Shamri, who greatly appreciated it.

"You don't like stuff like that?" asked Jared. "No school dances?"

Gina wrinkled her nose and then laughed when Shamri tried to reach for it. "But that isn't what I thought the group was about," she said. "And they don't make up stories to tell; they don't want to bother with that. They think people who do that are weird. They like stories other people wrote already."

"So," said Sofi, "this is not the right group for you."

"I'd rather work with Ann," said Gina. "She knows about writing."

"Yes, Ann is good to work with," agreed Sofi, reaching across the table to touch Gina's arm;

Gina flashed her a smile and returned her attention to Shamri, leaving the three adults to share thoughtful glances. It was, of course, a difficult age for anyone, Jared reflected, suspended between childhood and adulthood, and Gina, who had been freely sharing the adult dramas of the neighborhood, who could not be protected from them, was probably finding it more difficult than most. Certainly a child who had lived through last summer had very little to share with her age mates, who had no doubt spent their summer at camp, or visiting relatives in the mountains or at the seashore.

He could see that it was going to be a problem.