Chapter 7

 

Gina

 

 

Gina and Willis hung on to Terry while Mom made arrangements for their boxes to be taken to the place where they were going to live during the school year. They had docked at the space port in a city called Bridgeton and that was where their schools were – the primary for Gina and Terry and the secondary for Willis.

Mom also had to make sure her luggage was transferred to a new space liner, to take her to Saffosio, and it took time. Terry thought all the noise and movement was exciting, and he wanted to see everything, and it wasn’t quite enough to have Willis and Gina walking him about outside the office where Mom was. He kept tugging them this way and that, to see it all at once.

Finally Mom came out, with a big tall Bahtan Gina realized was a male, the first she had ever seen face to face. He was very tall and looked strong, with heavy shoulders and thick arms, and the wide hips and legs the females had, but no breasts or udders or whatever you would call them below the waist. And he had little horns on his forehead. He picked up their carry-on bags in one hand, and led the way through a maze of passageways and offices and warehouses, machines and cars and scurrying people, to a parking area where there was a row of green cars under a sign "Taxi Service." Mother put a credit chip to the scanner of the nearest car, supervised while the Bahtan put the bags into the luggage area in the back, and then shooed the children into the front of the car. It had two long seats facing each other, and an autodriver under the front window. Mom fed into its slot a card with the address coordinates of their destination, and the doors clicked as they locked and the taxi rolled away from the parking area.

"I have something for you kids," said Mom, as the taxi threaded its way through what looked to Gina like a thousand other vehicles coming and going around the space port. She pulled herself away from the window and saw Mom reaching into her purse and pulling out a cloth bag closed with a drawstring. She opened it and spilled a mass of fine silver links into her hand; the links separated into three silver chains, each with a pendant attached.

"This is for Willis." Mom handed him one of the chains with a round pendant. "And this is for Terry," she said, looping the next chain around his neck, "and this is for Gina." Gina took hers in her hand and looked at the pendant, which was the same as the one Terry and Willis had; it was round and thick with a design of interwoven cords or ribbons, curled in and around like a big knot. She had seen a pendant like this before. She had, in fact, seen two of them.

"It’s supposed to bring you luck," said Mom. "I have one like it in my jewelry box. Put it on." Gina slipped it over her head; it was light but it felt vaguely warm against her skin. Gina thought of the tall thin man dressed in white, the man she had seen with Mom in the nursery, the one she had seen outside in the fields, looking into the grassy hollow at her. He had worn a chain with a pendant, she remembered, and wasn't this the design on the pendant? She thought it was. And the Zamuaon woman she had seen with him wore one also, and they had taken hold of those pendants and vanished. She had watched them do it.

Mother had touched all three pendants and she hadn't disappeared. Gina touched her pendant cautiously, but she didn't disappear either.

"Thank you, Mom," said Willis politely, putting on his chain, and Gina and Terry murmured their thanks also, and Mom put the cloth bag back into her purse and shut it and turned to look out the windows.

The space port on Linden's World and the town around it had looked huge to Gina, but it was nothing at all compared with Bridgeton. Gina gazed, awed, at the buildings, big, tall, short, sprawling, offices and stores, signs with colored lights, vast windows to display the goods the shops carried, cars everywhere, and trucks as big as the farm trucks and bigger, and taxis like the one that carried them. And there were people, millions, Gina thought, of people, walking and riding and standing in clumps talking and running in and out of the stores and the offices and rushing across the streets with a fine disregard for the vehicles, which simply lifted up over their heads and then returned to their usual running position half a meter off the ground.

Gina could not imagine how she could find her way around so big a place, with so very many people crowding everywhere; it frightened her to think of trying to get through these streets to find where she wanted to go.

There were streets lined with houses, too, sprawling big places Mom said were apartment houses where several families lived, each in their own rooms, and smaller places where just one family lived, and now and then a shop on a corner or tucked between two houses. There were cars parked all over, and people walking, not as many here, and children playing on lawns. Gina could not begin to think how much space was filled just with houses where people could live, and they were all close together, not at all like their house on Linden's World where there were no other houses. It was more like the workers' village, but that had been really small, a cluster of houses with nothing else for many many kilometers.

And then there was a huge complex of sprawling buildings filling the flat land on one side of the street and rising up the hill behind; there was a gigantic sign carved from stone and surrounded by bright fall flowers beside a sweeping driveway at the front of this complex. It read, "Alliance University of Arts."

Then they curved around a great stretch of grass and trees and flowers and fountains and pools, with people, alone or in groups, walking on stone-paved paths or sitting on concrete and foamstone benches.

On the other side of this area was another sprawling complex of big buildings, this one behind a sign of twisted metal and foamstone with trees and bushes around it; the sign read, "United Alliance Institute of Sciences."

And then there were scattered shops and places Mom said were restaurants, where people could go and buy meals and eat, and other places Mom said were bars where grownups could buy drinks, and then there were more houses and lawns and driveways and playing children and people walking.

They came to a corner; it looked as if someone had started to build a house there and got tired of it after they did the basement and just covered it with black plastic-looking stuff. The taxi turned the corner past this unfinished house. There was a line of houses on either side of the street here, three identical houses with small lawns and roofed shelters for cars on their left, a small place buried in a yard full of trees and a big two-story place on their right, and at the end of the street another great big house, an old one, white, with a porch all around it, and two stories and small windows just under the peaks of the roof, which would be an attic, Gina guessed. Behind all of these houses were trees, so many trees crowded all together, a mass of trees like a circle of forest surrounding them. Gina had seen pictures of forests in vids; she had never seen one in person.

The taxi stopped in front of the big old house at the end of the street. "Well," said Mom brightly, "here we are."

The taxi doors sighed open, and Mom popped out, and Willis and Gina and Terry, a little more slowly, followed. Gina moved close to Willis; Terry just stood and stared and then reached out and got a fold of Mom's shirt. She ignored him.

The front door of the house opened and two huge women appeared, smiling and waving. They were both tall and fat, wearing tight jeans and stretched-out T-shirts; the smaller one (only slightly smaller) wore her dark hair, streaked with grey, in a braid down her back nearly to her waist, and the bigger one had short black and grey hair in bushy curls. "Welcome home!" this bigger woman called to them, and the two of them crossed the porch, causing the floor to creak, and came down the steps and shook hands with Mom, Terry still clutching her shirt.

"Lovely day, isn't it, you'd never know it was almost fall," said the smaller woman. "Did you have a good trip?"

"Oh, yes, it was fine," said Mom. She waved her hand toward Willis and Gina, standing very close together beside the taxi. "This is Willis, and Gina," she said, "and this is Terry here." She patted him on the head. "Kids, these are the Hardesty sisters; you'll be staying with them while you go to school here. This is Lillian Hardesty." That was the bigger one with the curls. "And this is Phyllis." That was the smaller one with the braid. Gina couldn’t see the thoughts inside either of them. She didn't know them.

"We're so glad to have you here," said the smaller one, smiling at the three of them. "Do you want to get your bags and come in? And we'll show you your rooms."

"Get the bags, Willis," said Mom, and she tugged her shirt out of Terry's hands and pushed him in front of her as she followed the Hardesty sisters into the big old house.

Gina took her own bag, and Willis took his and Terry's, leaving Mom's bag in the taxi.

The bedrooms were upstairs, Gina's room overlooking the front of the house and the street. She looked out the window and she could see the taxi waiting at the gate, and the big two-story place next door, with the curtains mostly drawn; there was a little space between the curtains on the front window downstairs, and she could see the curtains quivering as though people moved behind them. And she could see trees on the other side, but she couldn't see the little house there. On the other side of the street, she could see the covered basement on the corner, a plastic sheen through the extravagantly-growing weeds, and then the three identical little houses. The two houses nearest the Hardesty place seemed unoccupied, but the one at the end had a pair of old people out in the yard, fiddling with the plants around their porch, a man and a woman, Gina thought.

They seemed to be stealing looks at the taxi.

Gina turned back to her room, which was very nice, with rosy-white paint on the walls and a rosy quilt on the bed, and went across the hall to Willis' room; this one was more masculine, with a blue quilt and dark trim, and a nice view of the trees that circled the street. There were a lot of trees, a real forest; she couldn't see if there was anything beyond it,

Willis had his bag open on his bed but he wasn't unpacking; he was standing, looking everywhere but at Mom, who was sitting on the end of the bed.

Mom was all sparkly inside.

Terry, his face troubled, was standing in the middle of the room. His room was next down the hall, and there were several empty rooms – the Hardesty sisters said they were cutting back on boarders "because we’re not getting any younger," the bigger one explained, "so there'll be just the three of you this year." One of the sisters, the smaller one, had the room next to Gina's, and the bigger one had the room at the end.

They were both downstairs doing something or other; Gina could hear them walking, and could catch a few murmured remarks, nothing loud enough to understand. No one in this room was talking at all, until Mom looked at her watch and said, "Well!" and stood up.

"Mom – " said Willis, and Mom gave him a bright sparkly smile.

"Let's not draw it out; goodbyes are so tiresome," she said. "I'll let you know as soon as I'm settled; you can call me anytime then. And I’ll see you all next summer."

"Mom," said Gina hesitantly.

"You're all registered at your schools, and Lillian and Phyllis will take good care of you. They are very nice ladies and their references were absolutely excellent, or of course I would never leave you here." She beamed at all three of them, and then she went over to Willis and pecked his cheek; he stood still and unresponsive. She came over to Gina and pecked her too, a quick cool pressure of lips and a puff of perfume. Then she put her arm around Terry and kissed his forehead and let go of him and headed for the door.

"Mom?" said Terry.

"Next summer," said Mom briskly. "You three be good, now." And she headed off down the hall.

"Mom," said Terry.

Gina could hear her going down the stairs. "Well, have a good winter, and thanks so much for taking the kids," she called to the Hardesty sisters.

"You’re leaving?" said one of them, sounding surprised. "We were thinking – dinner or something – "

"That's so nice," said Mom, "but I have a shuttle to catch, so I really must go now."

"Mom!" said Terry, and he turned and started for the door and Gina grabbed him. "Mom!" he called.

The front door slammed shut.

"Mom! Mom! Mom!" screamed Terry, tearing himself away from Gina, and he flung himself into the hall with Gina and Willis after him; he skidded down the stairs, actually sliding down the last three steps, and ran past the Hardesty sisters, who were standing together in an archway that led from the entry into a dining room, large and dark. They looked bewildered and not very happy. Gina thought they might be mad, probably at Terry and at Gina and Willis for not controlling him, which scared her.

Terry struggled briefly with the front door and got it open before Willis, now in the lead, could grab him, and he ran out onto the front porch just as the green taxi made a fine sweeping turn and headed down the street, between the rows of houses, around the corner with the covered basement, off to the universities and the institutes and the homes and apartments and the offices and stores and the space port and Mom's shuttle.

Screaming "Mom!" over and over, Terry ran as fast as he could down the street after the taxi, with Willis and Gina running after him, but he actually made it three blocks away from the Hardesty house before they could catch up with him and lead him back, still screaming and crying, so that people came out of their houses to see what was going on.

The Hardesty sisters met them about a block from the covered basement, sweaty and panting. The bigger one tried to talk to Terry, but he just screamed louder and closed his eyes, and Willis finally told them Terry would be better if they didn't try to reason with him. "We can take care of him, Gina and me," he said.

So they walked back to the Hardesty house, Gina holding one of Terry’s hands and Willis holding the other, and Terry between them crying and calling for Mom over and over. They went around the corner of the abbreviated house, and passed the elderly couple working in the yard, who looked at them; the woman, who was small and had slanted Earthian Asian-looking eyes, said something to one of the Hardesty sisters and she just shook her head silently. Across the street, a man was sitting on the top step of the house with all the trees; he was very brown-skinned and looked pretty old himself, and he was watching with a frown. Gina supposed all the noise was disturbing him.

Terry resisted going up the steps to the Hardesty house, but Willis picked him up and carried him, and Gina hoped once they were inside with the door shut they wouldn't be disturbing the neighborhood, anyway.

The good thing was that coping with Terry kept her from thinking too much herself.