Chapter 42

 

Jared

 

 

The chime on Jared's phone roused him and Cara abruptly to early dawn and the first bird chirps; they both sat up and he fumbled at the night stand and got the phone turned on. "Yes?" he said, his mind struggling to come on line again, picturing emergencies at the Institute or, heaven forbid, Patterson arrested for slugging his not-yet-ex-wife and needing bail.

"Jared?" said a small distant voice, and he snapped entirely awake.

"Gina?" he said.

"Did I wake you up?" she asked. "I know it's awfully early where you are. I'm really sorry."

Cara and Jared shared a look and then she grabbed the housecoat with the faded flowers and got out of bed, and he scrambled out on his side. "It's fine, Gina," he said, and noted that the small light was winking; she was attached to her screen. "Let me get this on the computer, okay? How are you doing? You're up early." He tried to estimate the time difference. "Or is it mid-morning there?"

"It's maybe about eight," she said. "I don't have a clock, but the sprinklers came on a while ago. They do that at seven. I'm awfully sorry getting you up."

"Not a problem," he said, "but where are you? Are you in the house?"

"No," she said, "not exactly."

Jared yanked on his jeans and grabbed the old black T-shirt as Cara made the computer connection in his study, and Gina's face appeared on the screen; she was indeed not exactly in the house. She was sitting in a sort of grassy hollow, the sun on her tangled short blond hair. She had a bruise on the side of her face, and her torn shirt hung from one shoulder, revealing more bruises on arms and shoulder, and giving a glimpse of her first bra.

Jared sat down hard in front of the computer. "Gina," he said. "Honey. What happened?"

Cara was scrolling her phone furiously, but Sofi and Issio were already dashing across the back yard; Jared hadn't been conscious of doing it, but he could imagine what sort of a yell he had sent out to their Big Ears.

"I got away," said Gina, "and I got Willis into the shed, but I don't know what to do now. I can't get Lillian to answer. And those men are still in the house, so I can't go back there."

Cara opened the study porch door for Sofi and Issio; the three of them clustered behind Jared in front of the computer. He heard the little gasp Sofi gave at her first sight of Gina. "Where's Phyllis?" he asked.

"She took Terry to town," said Gina. "Willis said – and he wanted me to go with them but I thought, and Dad told me –"

"Dad told you?" said Jared, keeping his voice very calm.

"He told me I had to stay. Out of respect," said Gina. "Phyllis took Terry and left Lillian here, to go with Willis and me. But then Lillian got sick, and so did Willis, and Dad – he got mean. Like he used to get when he was alive. When he was drinking."

"Oh, I do not like this," whispered Sofi.

"You hear Dad?" said Jared, trying to sound very reasonable. "Do any of the others hear him?"

Gina gave a little wavering smile. "I guess," she said, "I got a fly of my own. Or something. I can't see him. I just hear him. He yells and the other men hear him too. He tells them – things. Things to do. And they do them."

"What does he tell them?" asked Jared, and she flushed and looked down, away from him. "Never mind, honey, that's okay," he said; on second thought he had a pretty good idea what Gina's It was saying. "So Phyllis took Terry to town; was this before the funeral?"

Gina shook her head, made a try at a coherent narrative. "No, after, when the farm masters, the ones who brought their families, all left. It's only some of them that stayed. Dad's special friends. For the wake, they said." She looked past the screen, possibly in the direction of the house. "They were drinking, a lot. Willis said we had to go away, get to town, and Phyllis took Terry. I wanted my screen. I went upstairs and Dad –" She stopped with a mild shudder. "And when I went downstairs they were drunk, and noisy, and when Lillian and I tried to leave – and she fell down, she couldn't stand up, and Willis was stumbling, and they tried to grab me. I guess because of Dad, what he was saying – they brought women from town or somewhere. Three of them. So they didn't really need –" She stopped abruptly.

Jared felt Cara's hand groping for his; he caught it and gripped it firmly. It was cold. "But you got away?" he said.

"Willis kept trying to fight them. And then he, they knocked him down, he couldn't get up and Lillian was swinging at them and she yelled at me to take Willis and get outside. So I did. But he couldn't walk and I couldn't get him very far; I got him to the shed and put him in the far corner where maybe they won't see him, and he, well, he won't move or talk or anything. He's breathing," she added, on a hopeful note. "But Lillian is still in there. And I don't know what to do."

It wasn't an ideal solution, but it was all Jared could think of at the moment. "Your mom?" he said. "Is she still there?" She wasn't much, but she might do something to protect her daughter, he thought.

"She didn't come," said Gina. "She sent flowers."

Jared crossed Gillian off the list of people he would continue to tolerate even if he didn't much like them.

"Are there cars?" asked Issio. "These farm masters, they came in cars?"

"If you could get into one, you could put it on automatic," said Cara, "and get into town. We could call Phyllis and have her meet you. It isn't that big a town, is it?" she appealed to the others.

"I thought of that. They have their cars parked all over," said Gina. "I thought if I could get into one, and get Willis too, we could – but they're all locked." Jared felt a blast of frustration beyond anything he had known; he wanted to leap through the screen into Gina's world and do something to protect her, and he couldn't. He could only sit here offering advice, and he didn't even have any advice about locked cars.

He might not have an answer, but Issio did. "I can tell you how to break a lock," he said, and patted Jared's shoulder. "You are not the only one with a past," he said to Jared. "I can tell you how to do this, Gina, if you can reach a car."

"What's the situation at the house?" asked Jared. "If they spent the night drinking they may be asleep now."

Gina shook her head. "I heard them yelling a lot just awhile ago," she said. "I don't think they're all asleep."

"You must go very carefully," said Sofi. "You must watch closely. But I do not think you should wait; they know you are gone, do they not? And they will look for you." Gina turned rather pale, looking around quickly as if she expected to see one of them sneaking up on her. Cara looked at Sofi dubiously, but Sofi shook her head. "We must deal with the situation as it is," she said. "Gina must get away now, and we will help her as we can."

"Very good advice," said Maud, by the back door, "but advice is not enough. We must act immediately."

She advanced into the room, jewels flashing in the early morning light and the computer glow; she had her hair up in its convoluted curls and she was wearing loose summer pants, a floating shirt, light colored, probably silk; she looked, in fact, pretty much as she always had, and Jared could hear her footsteps on his floor, as solid as any of them. She came up behind his chair, Sofi giving way by a few centimeters on one side, Issio leaning away on the other, and Cara moving up beside Jared, still clutching his hand. On the screen, Gina looked up and spotted her and stared.

"Where are you, child?" said Maud, leaning toward the screen with her hand on the back of Jared's chair. "You're out in the fields?"

"Y-yes," said Gina.

"Well, that was a good decision," said Maud, "getting out of that house, and you must stay right there; your father is coming to get you." Gina's eyes widened with fear. "Not," said Maud, "that idiot McIntosh. Your father, child, as fast as he can get dressed, which he should be doing at this moment. Now, where exactly are you?"

Gina opened her mouth, shut it again, and then made another effort. "My father?" she said. "The man –"

"Yes, yes, now where should he go when he gets there? He can probably find you with a little thought," said Maud, "because he can usually follow energy traces, but it would be faster if you could tell us where you are."

Gina took a breath. "He was here before," she said. "There's a hollow beyond the house, a pool and grass and flowers, and I used to come here when I was little, and once he came here and I saw him."

"All right," Maud said. "He will be there in a few minutes. You will stay where you are, and wait for him."

Jared squeezed Cara's hand once, quickly, and let go and stood up, reaching for Issio and thrusting him into the chair. "Talk to her," he said, and he grabbed Maud's arm, which felt very substantial, and pushed her back out of the range of the screen, toward the living room door. "Her father is going to get her in a few minutes?" he said, keeping his voice low. "How the hell is he going to do that, Maud? Is he on that planet? No? Do you have any idea how far away Linden's World is? If I caught a flight this minute it would still take me six days to reach her!"

"How is it that you are talking to her in real time?" inquired Maud.

Jared resisted an impulse to shake her into some kind of sense. "Because we have the technology to do that," he said, "and I haven't the faintest idea how it's done; I don't even care how it's done. Images and voices are not solid objects like people; they travel differently, I guess. How in hell does that help Gina?"

"The way you are receiving her voice and her image," said Maud, "is the way her father is going to go to her. There are formulae; I could get them for you if you want, but I know you're not a mathematician. And neither am I, but Chazaerte will be able to reach her in five minutes or so, if he can ever get his shirt buttoned. We don't go over this space," she said, as one stating the obvious. "Or through it. We go outside it. So do these voices and images. You don't know this, no one here does, they just know it works. It's all right, Jared, it's going to be fine." She pulled away from him and went back to the computer, leaning over Issio's shoulder. "You say Willis is there at the farm?"

"Yes, he's in the shed," said Gina.

"Very good," said Maud. "Your father is almost ready; he will bring you straight back here, I think. That would be the best. Your friends can take care of you while he goes back for Willis and who is it? Lillian?"

"And we have to get Terry too," said Gina, paying no attention to the impossibilities of the situation, and Jared came back to the computer, leaning over Issio's other shoulder.

"We can call Phyllis and Terry," he reminded her. "They're safe right now; they're in town."

"And we will get them after we have Willis and Lillian safe," said Maud.

Gina gazed over Issio's shoulder. "You're Maud," she said, and Maud nodded. Gina darted a quick glance at Jared and Issio, and another at Cara, who was holding Sofi's hand as Sofi was gripping hers, and then looked up again quickly over the screen, where Jared presumed the house was. "I hear something," she said. "Shouting or something. Like they’re fighting again."

Jared seized Maud's arm and pulled her out of screen range once more. "He is going there," he said, "going in or out of space, whatever, and he is going to bring her here; is that right?" She nodded and opened her mouth to speak and he overrode her. "Is he the only one who can do this, or do you have this ability too?" She lifted her eyebrow again, but she nodded, without trying to speak this time. "In that case, you can go there, and you can take me with you, and he can button his shirt at leisure. We will get her and bring her back."

"You don't know how –"

"Neither does Gina, and you propose to bring her," said Jared. Maud looked at him dubiously. "Look, Gina knows me. She barely knows this other person; he pops in and out and she doesn't even know his name."

"Chazaerte," said Maud.

"Whatever," said Jared. "Rumpelstiltskin, if you like. Just get me to Linden's World, Maud."

She hesitated, cast a rather hunted look at the screen, sighed and shook her head. "This is probably a mistake," she said, which Jared took for a qualified agreement.

"So what do we do?" he demanded.

"Take hold of my hand," she said, "and don't do a single thing; I don't need you messing this up. I'll do the work."

"Jared –" said Cara, and he reached for her and kissed her once, quickly, trying to pass the message; I will be back; it will be all right. He was sure of none of it, only that he had to try.

"Talk to her, tell her I'm coming," he said, and he took Maud's hand, which was surprisingly warm and solid for a woman dead over a year. She gave a little "Humph" sound, closed her fingers around his, and took hold of her pendant, just as Gina had said these strange people did.

Jared was aware of Sofi and Issio and Cara all looking at him, their eyes large and luminous in the haze that rapidly filled the room; the fog obscured the eyes and the familiar features of his study and even the screen, and there was nothing but fog, with a vague purple tint as if the sun were beginning to rise somewhere far beyond, casting colors before it. And there was Maud's hand, holding his firmly, and her other hand making rapid movements over the face of her pendant..

The fog cleared as if someone had yanked it away; he saw stalks of some sort of plant taking shape around him, more stalks, sunshine, the smell of damp dirt and ripening vegetation; the stalks were in rows, he saw, endless rows, planted in mechanical perfection, grown nearly as tall as he was, but there was a curve in the rows as if the planting machines had adjusted to go around some imperfection in the land; following the curve, he found he was standing holding Maud's hand on the edge of a fair-sized hollow, lined with grass and studded with flowers. There was a little spring-fed pool of water in the middle, and beside this pool was Gina, kneeling with her screen propped up on a slab of protruding rock. There was blood on her side and and the front of her pants legs, and her pants were ripped up the side seam almost to her hip; she wore a bag slung over her shoulder, where she had carried her screen and phone, he supposed.

He let go of Maud and stepped into the hollow; Gina looked up with a start from the screen, where he glimpsed faces, Sofi, Issio, Cara; she half rose, ready to run, and then she saw who he was. "Jared!" she cried, and flung herself into his arms, clinging to him with all her strength, and he held her tightly, small body and fragile bones trembling against him.

"It's all right," he said. "I'm here. It's all right." Which was a nonsensical thing to say; his mere presence was no guarantee of anything but someone else on her side, but it seemed to comfort her; he could read that much. And, holding her, he could see for himself how she was; they had certainly intended to rape her – fumes of alcohol and red greedy faces and fat groping hands – and they had certainly abused her, as the bruises proved, but she had managed to escape them; nightmare image of Lillian, swaying back and forth and swinging her large heavy fists at the attackers, who looked, in Gina's memory, like fat ugly gargoyles, driven forward by a screaming voice somewhere behind and above them, someone urging them to kill the bitch, grab the little cunt.

They did not look sane; nothing in that memory looked sane.

And the weight of Willis, who was much bigger than Gina, dragging him moaning and muttering out the back door and then there were the shadows of the shed; and something about car doors and then the screaming from inside the house, and she was running, sprinting through the crop rows to a childhood sanctuary where she would be safe, at least temporarily.

Jared looked over Gina's head at Maud, who was coming down into the hollow; she quirked an inquiring brow at him and he managed a quick nod, and then he carried Gina back down to the rock by the pool and crouched, holding her on his lap, so he could see the screen and be seen back in his study. "I’m here, I have her," he said, and all three faces showed surprise and relief.

"You will bring her back here?" said Issio.

There was a rattle and a thump behind Jared, and he turned sharply, ready to thrust Gina at Maud and take on whatever threat had arrived, but what he saw didn't look especially threatening. It was, beyond doubt, the man who claimed to be Gina's father, the same thin, pale, blue-eyed man who had been in the alley by Dr. Frank's office, and in Jared's back yard. He looked much less impressive this morning. His hair, thrust behind his ears, could have used a comb, and he was clad in red jogging shorts with a white stripe, and a red and white striped shirt buttoned crookedly down his chest, and a red hooded jacket, hanging open. His red running shoes, which were about level with Jared's chin as he hesitated on the edge of the hollow, were extremely clean, barely worn, and he had thick white socks with a red stripe at the top; his legs were so hairless they might have been shaved.isHis

He came down the side of the hollow and Gina lifted her head and stared; he stopped a few feet away, looking at her with real dismay; his face seemed to wince. Jared felt he liked him a little better for that.

"So," said Maud, "you're finally here. You're buttoned wrong."

"I was in a – situation," he said.

"Humph," said Maud.

He crouched down and reached out toward Gina tentatively, and she looked at his hand as if she weren't quite sure what to do with it, but after a moment she let him take one of her hands; the other arm she kept tightly around Jared's neck. "We'll take you back," he said to Jared. "You and Gina together."

"No, you can't, you have to get Willis!" she exclaimed. "Please, Jared! You have to get Willis! And Lillian; they could have killed her!"

"No," said Maud. "You'd know if they have. Your group," she said to Jared's skeptical glance, "is bound very tightly together; you'd know if anything happened to one of you. We will get Willis, child, but first you will go with Jared and your father "

"You have to get Willis," Gina said, holding on to Jared. "You have to get him, Jared."

"I will," he said recklessly. "I will get Willis. And Lillian. You go with your father; he can take you home. Stay with Cara and Sofi and Issio, okay? And I'll be there as soon as I can."

"You'll get them?"

"I promise," he said, "that I will get them. Now go on home, honey." He unwound her arm and stood up and handed her over to the man in the red shorts. He was not sure this was the right thing to do, he felt no confidence in this man or in Maud, but he didn't have that many choices. At least this man – Chazaerte, Maud had said; whatever sort of name that was – seemed to be concerned about Gina. "You get her home," he said, "and believe me, if anything happens to her, anything at all –"

"I'll get her home and I'll be back," said Chazaerte, wrapping his arms around her. "Hang on to me, Gina."

"Wait," said Maud, bending to pick up the screen. "She will be there in a minute," she said to the faces crowded onto the surface. "While you're waiting for us, try to get hold of Phyllis and Terry in town. Get an address. We'll go after them last; they're not in danger right now." She clicked the phone off and folded the screen and thrust them into the bag over Gina's shoulder. It was the small screen Issio and Sofi had given Gina last Solstice, Jared saw, and the matching phone he had given her; they had come in handy, he thought.

Gina cast a look at Jared, and he nodded and smiled, and the air opened and swallowed them up, Gina and Chazaerte, with a soft noise like a padded door, he thought, closing into a padded frame, perhaps in a padded room, which was probably what they all needed.

The hollow was deep enough and the stalks in their rows high enough to keep even Jared and Maud hidden. He didn't know where the house was, but the picture he had gotten from Gina's mind suggested a direction; he moved up the sloping bank and spotted a grey roof over a second story, not all that far away. "Over there," he said, and reached a hand back without thinking to help Maud. She took it and came up beside him easily; her heart had certainly undergone a miraculous improvement, he noted.

"So," she said, "Sir Jared, White Knight, how do you plan to slay these dragons? Be aware that the children are our priority. Terry appears to be safe right now, but we must get Willis as quickly as possible. She put him in a shed; do I have that right?"

Chazaerte had taken Gina into that misty purple, and, Jared hoped, through that place to Bridgeton, on Haivran, to Jared's own study, in fact. Chazaerte, who Maud claimed could follow energy traces, whatever that meant. And Maud had moved him, Jared, through that purple fog and would, she said, take him back home in the same way. Power, Jared thought; she had power she had, for thirteen years, managed to conceal from him.

And how could that surprise him; he himself had concealed power from her, although nothing like her power, only little Ears that could not even read her; he tried again, met again that unyielding white surface that covered the inner self.

But he did have power, and he was not in the mood any longer to conceal it, at least not from her. He felt, in fact, an impulse to meet power with power. "The shed's behind the house," he said. "I saw it from her mind, gardening things, a lot of dirt, no one has been there for awhile. She dragged him in there and covered him up with whatever she found, rags, that sort of thing. He was unconscious, pretty badly hurt, I thought, looking at him."

Maud stared at him.

"You saw this from her mind," she repeated. "You mean – she told you – but she didn't; I would have heard."

"Probably," he said. It was unworthy of him, but he enjoyed her amazement. "We'd better go get him. This way," he said, and took her arm and walked her with him through the rows of stalks, trying to be reasonably quiet, but suspecting the inhabitants of the house weren't seriously on guard. "I trust that what's-his-name will be able to find us when he returns? How did he find us in the first place, by the way? And how did you know what was going on?"

"There are ways," she said. "You don't seem to like Chazaerte."

"I don't know Chazaerte," said Jared, "but I think Gina deserves better in a father."

"A more involved parent, perhaps?" said Maud. "She doesn't need him for that. She has all of you. We may not make the best parents, but he cares about all three of them. And yes, he will be able to find us. This is one of his talents. You say you saw that shed or whatever it is? How?"

"What does it matter?"

She pulled to a stop again, halting him, too. "Ears," she said, staring at him. "You have Ears. Lalia was right, all these years ago; she is right; you have Ears. I knew the latent ability would be there – but it's not latent, is it. You actually have it. Ancient gods, that explains so much. How does it happen you never told me about it?"

"Who's Lalia?"

"A friend. You didn't say anything to me."

"It never came up," said Jared; how, anyway, could he explain it? It was; that was all.

"Can you read me?"

"No, never could."

"Hmm," said Maud. "Interesting. Neither can Lalia."

They paused in sight of the back of the house; it was a two-story place, smaller than he would have expected for the master of an estate encompassing thousands upon thousands of kilometers. It was ordinary in size and shape and entirely unsoftened by the slightest attempt at landscaping. There were no plants, no bushes, no flowers that he could see; there were steps from the back door with a thin metal hand rail, a clutter of aircars parked without order, like a handful of toy cars dropped carelessly in the dirt. The shed, unpainted, built of scrap wood, was tacked on to the house beside the back steps; it was closed and quiet. So was the house. In all directions around the cleared area that made up the back yard, the rows of ripening grain stretched to the horizon. From here you could not see the imperfection that produced Gina's hollow.

He was afraid that Maud would want to keep on discussing his Ears, but at the sight of the house she refocused at once. "We must be careful," she said. "From what Gina said, the creature is in the house."

"Gina's Fathervoice," said Jared with a certain grim humor, and Maud smiled, evidently aware of Cara's Mothervoice and the D'ubian Progenitorvoice, although how she knew about it was a matter far more interesting than his Ears, he thought.

"So what do we do now?" she inquired, leaving the command of the campaign to him, curious, he saw, to find out what he would do

"We try to get to the shed without anyone from inside seeing us," he said.

There was a thump and a rattle of stalks behind him and he spun, moving, again without thought, between whatever was behind them and Maud, and from the house he heard a shriek and a raucous laugh and several bangs; things were about to get interesting, he thought, and impatiently brushed back the stalks in front of him and found himself looking at the red-clad form of Chazaerte, an expression of unhappy resignation on his pale face, holding his pendant with one hand. The other arm was gripped firmly by both of the strong gray-black hands of Issio.

"I have arrived," Issio announced, and released Chazaerte's jacketed arm; his claws caught briefly in the sleeve and made a small ripping sound, and Chazaerte winced. "Now we will get Willis and Lillian."

"Now we will," agreed Jared, feeling much better about the whole thing.