Chapter 54

 

Maud

 

 

Across the room, Wundra bent over Mimi on the couch. Maud was glad to see that; Mimi had not stopped crying for a moment since they arrived at the hospital. "It's probably just the shock," said Cara, nodding toward Mimi, but she didn't sound all that positive.

"Probably," said Maud, who was positive it was not shock.

"How," said Cara, eyes on Mimi, "did you know?"

And that was a question that would naturally arise. "We watch," said Maud, choosing her words with care. "In certain areas where we believe there could be problems; since they moved the fly into Clyde's basement, for instance."

"Because you thought the Its would help each other?

"A possibility. We know they talk," Maud pointed out.

"They really do," agreed Cara. "And now the fly is loose again."

"Yes, and now there are three of them."

"You truly don't know where they come from?"

"No." Maud considered it. Whatever information Maud gave her would, in time, be reported to Jared; that was about all Cara was likely to do. She was not without power – they all agreed on this – but it was small, undeveloped, and she seemed entirely unaware of it. She used it rarely, only under great pressure, without knowing she was doing it.

"The fly got our attention," said Maud, "but we wonder about Dr. Lindstrom. She had brain damage – "

"A stroke, they said. Partial paralysis. As far as her mind went," said Cara, very calm and crisp, "her speech and her behavior, I actually didn't see that much difference. You're thinking that thing in the fly – that's what it is, right? A being inside the fly? Do you think it was in, uh, Dr. Lindstrom too?" She wasn't calling the woman "mother" any more; she had called Maud "mother", but Maud doubted there was any affection attached to the title, no matter which "mother" she addressed. If anything, Maud suspected that Cara was quietly underlining their difference in age and life style. That was more subtle than she would have expected from Cara, but it was possible.

"We are wondering," said Maud, "although I agree; there was very little difference in her personality. A little more violence."

"When I was eight," said Cara, "she threw a chair at me. A really heavy big one. Because she thought I was wasting time reading fiction instead of studying."

They hadn't seen that; they had not, at that time, been watching, only checking in at intervals. Appalled, trying not to show it, because it would do no good now, Maud looked across the waiting room at the windows, avoiding Cara's eyes. "I hope you ducked," she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

"Oh, yes, I was used to it – but it gouged a big hunk out of the wall," Cara answered, in exactly the same tone, and Maud glanced at her and found those blue eyes studying her very coolly, curious to see how she would react. "So no," said Cara, "she wasn't all that different."

Maud had to admit she owed this girl something, some sort of explanation at least. "The thought," she said, "the plan, was that there would be material comfort and intellectual stimulation; we didn't know the woman was a lunatic. She was, of course, from the start."

"What if you'd known?" asked Cara, unemotionally seeking information. "Or found out?"

And that was a very good question; Cara did not belong between or in their places and Maud had been in no situation at that time to take on the raising of a child below or above. "I don't know," she said honestly, "but we would have had to do something. Make other arrangements."

"Murder Dr. Lindstrom?" suggested Cara. "Kidnap the kid and put her into another family somewhere else? Carry her off to Never Never Land?"

A reference entirely in Cara's specialty; this ancient childhood literary classic came from Earth in the early industrial period Cara studied. Maud saw that glint of humor and mischief in Cara's eyes again; it made her feel a certain kinship with this girl that she had never felt before. "Pixie dust," she said, "would be a great help."

"I always wanted to learn how to fly," said Cara cheerfully. Across the room Jared glanced at Cara and at Maud, hesitated, visibly decided not to interfere; he sat down with Issio near the table, where the D'ubians could join in the conversation. Maud was grateful for his restraint.

"Flying would have been nice. I left you in a bad situation in your childhood," said Maud. "And I have put you in an awkward situation now; I am very aware of this. I did not intend to do it. You and Jared are entitled to be let alone. But I didn't have a great deal of choice. Those beings, whatever they are, have clearly targeted you, all of you. We can't tolerate this kind of threat. We have to do what we can to fight it. We may be in a slightly better position than you are to do this."

"Because, like them, you aren't Alliance," said Cara. "A different species entirely."

"Yes," said Maud.

"And so am I," said Cara, "and Gina and her brothers. I don't think Terry cares. Gina worries about it."

"She shouldn't," said Maud. "Nor should you. There is some genetic heritage from our people in much of the populace." And this was true, up to a point, and Cara did not need to know how she and Gina and the others differed from this generality.

"And some of ours," said Cara, "in yours, if I understood Dr. Maarchesin correctly. So that your people could survive here. Where did you come from, by the way? To start with?

"A world in another dimension," said Maud, "or so our history tells us. Refugees from a war, driven out, unable to return, so that our ancestors had to find a way to survive here."

"I have read speculations," said Cara, "that beings from somewhere else, other worlds, other universes, perhaps, had to do with creating Earthians in the first place. Maybe Bahtans and Zamuaons too. I don't know about D'ubians. Or anyway they influenced them, gave them the tools to build civilization."

"Actually our ancestors claimed to find traces of an advanced species of some sort on Old Earth, but if it happened, it was before our time."

Cara weighed it. "You had to have interacted with our people. To breed. Unless you could do it artificially back then, too."

"Our ancestors had some technology." Which was an understatement, but it had little to do with the breeding programs. "I understand there was interaction too."

A hospital employee with a noter was trying to get Mimi's attention, to get her thumb print on the forms. Mimi was crying; Wundra was explaining.

"How do you get from one universe to another?" asked Cara.

"You go through a door," said Maud. "Metaphorically speaking."

"Would the door," said Cara, "still be there? Metaphorically speaking?"

And where had that question originated, Maud wondered. A suggestion that they might just as well go back to the door and leave through it? Or was it something else? "The doors are still there," she said, "but they can't be used. They're closed and locked." Something tickled at the very back of Maud's mind, but she couldn't quite get hold of it.

Cara's hand drifted to the traveler hanging around her neck on its silver chain. "Locked," she mused, holding on to the pendant, and the hospital employee took her noter and hurried off to the desk, getting her phone out of her pocket as she walked. It looked as if someone was going to take Mimi's condition seriously, and about time.

Sure enough, someone in scrubs emerged from some inner fastness to confer with Wundra and bend over Mimi, trying to get her attention. "A doctor, I think," said Maud.

"Good," said Cara. "What time is it?" The clock on the wall insisted that it was past five, although the heavy clouds and the rain pouring down the windows kept it dark. "I wonder if Jared is going in to work today," she said. "I should ask him. He said something about picking up Mr. Patterson. He had some car trouble."

"Too bad," said Maud, and spotted that sparkle of humor again. "What happened to his car?" she asked. She had very little interest in Jared's coworkers, but she was growing much more interested in Cara the longer they talked. It was possible that she had underestimated the girl, just as most people underestimated Terry.

"His not-quite-ex-wife sawed it in half," Cara explained, perfectly straight-faced.

"That's a problem," Maud agreed.

 

She dropped off her raincoat and found Carter checking their power source, at the moment a routine activity. There were no threats and no problems. Oliver, Carter said, was visiting Alicia, so there was no problem from that quarter right now, either. The longer that lasted, the happier Maud would be, even if it took Alicia, never her favorite person, to achieve it.

Carter listened with a frown to her account of the evening's activities. "Three of them in the neighborhood," he said. "I don't like that."

"No, and what's worse, we have lost track of the fly. She could be anywhere."

"The other two might have escaped too, with everyone at the hospital," said Carter.

"I don't think the D'ubian It could. Jared put him into a jar and fastened down the top."

"The fly was in a jar." And this was true, so Maud detoured to Mimi and Clyde's house, landing in the main room of the basement.

She was not the first one there; Issio and Jared looked up, startled. "Maud," said Jared, and Issio sighed.

"We must, it seems, become accustomed," he muttered, and went back to the big canning jar, in which cramped quarters the D'ubian It was moving sluggishly. "She says," he told Jared, with a jerk of his head toward Maud, "that we must keep the things alive, although it seems a great waste of effort."

"The being inside the It will be released if you kill it," said Maud.

"Perhaps it would then go elsewhere," said Issio, locating a nail and a manual hammer among Clyde's tools. "Perhaps it would take on a less offensive shape."

"I have this vision of a cursing cricket," said Jared, and Issio twitched his tail. He tapped several nail holes in the jar lid for ventilation and Jared moved the jar into the insulated room where it had been kept in its aquarium.

"You're not going to work today, are you?" Maud asked him.

"Of course I am," said Jared, with a sigh. "Between D'ubian Its and fast visits to far-away planets and weddings and other small interruptions, I've missed too many days already. Weston will stay on task no matter what, unless an It comes flying through the projection of the sixth arch and goes for his throat. But Sandy Ott keeps her hours short anyway, with the kids and day care problems, and no one knows about Patterson."

"By the way, speaking of your wedding, congratulations and best wishes from us all," said Maud. "I hope you're both very happy."

He smiled. "I am," he said, casting a challenging glance her way. "Cara invited you to the reception," he said. "And by the way, if you're in touch with Carter, I would be glad to have him there."

"I'll tell him. Thank you."

The other It was fussing around under the overturned clay pot; it thrust a spiny green-gray leg through the drainage hole when Issio tapped on the side of the pot. So Cara hadn't killed it. "I will get a cage," said Issio, "and I will find out what this sort of thing eats." He regarded the waving leg with disgust.

Filthy fucking pimp, said the thing under the flower pot in a conversational tone, and Issio aimed a kick against the side of the pot. The leg withdrew.

"I'll buy a bird cage on my way home tonight," said Jared, "a good sturdy one."

"The things we must do," sighed Issio.

"How are Clyde and Mimi?" asked Maud.

"Clyde is doing pretty well," said Jared. "Broken bones sealed, cuts and gashes. They checked his heart; they thought maybe that was why he fell. But his heart's fine, of course. Mimi is a little more complicated; they can't find any obvious injuries, but she's pretty confused."

"She did not make sense even to us," said Issio, "and at least we know what she is talking about when she mentions Its and jars and aquariums. Dr. Frank admitted her for tests, and for observation. He spoke of the possibility of a stroke. Myself, I think concussion more likely. She fell also, did she not?"

Maud was glad that someone had thought about it and come to this conclusion. She nodded, and Jared lifted an eyebrow. "And you know this how?" he inquired.

"That doesn't matter," she said. "The point is that we knew in time to do something useful to prevent further damage."

And they needed to place their devices a little more strategically, but not with witnesses, and anyway this wasn't Maud's area of expertise; she needed Zarei or Chazaerte for that. So she went to look for them.

Chazaerte was occupied; there was no sign of him anywhere. Zarei was with her mother and sister yet. The only one in the little downtown Bridgeton apartment was Carter, done with the power source, watching the monitors over a cup of tea that smelled like perfume.

Maud declined a cup for herself, and lay down on the couch and fell asleep. It had been a long night.

When she woke Zarei was there with Carter, watching Issio on the monitor in Clyde's basement as he slid a thin sheet of foamwood under the overturned foamstone flowerpot while Jared steadied it. The edge of the board caught on something, and the Fathervoice let out a yell and a few choice obscenities; presumably the board had caught a toe or a claw on one of those spiny legs. Issio, not looking as if the prospect of hurting the creature concerned him, shoved the board past the obstruction until the end of the board protruded out the far side of the pot.

"What time is it?" Maud asked, sitting up.

"After four in the afternoon," said Carter, and Zarei switched her tail and headed into the kitchen, emerging with a cup of extremely black coffee; just smelling it opened both of Maud's eyes.

In the basement, Ollie came over to hold one end of the board while Issio held the other and Jared held the center, a hand against the flower pot. Evvie opened the back of the large metal cage and Ollie and Issio and Jared maneuvered the pot over the cage door, removed the board, and lifted the pot enough to shake it. It was heavy; it took the three of them and great effort to do this.

The green and warty thing inside fell into the cage; Jared rolled the flower pot away and Evvie banged the cage door shut and latched it. Issio leaned the board against the wall and produced a padlock from his pocket and secured the door with it. There was a chance the spiny legs could work the latch, but the creature wasn't apt to be able to handle the padlock.

"This," said Issio, in his best classroom-lecture voice, "is an animal native to Linden's World. It was originally named, by those who come from Earth, a stoad, this being a combination of the Earthian words 'spider' and 'toad'. Very witty. You will observe it has some physical characteristics of each animal."

The Fathervoice advised Issio to engage in sexual practices with a three-legged Bahtan owl; Evvie and Ollie frowned at it.

"Despite appearances," continued Issio, "it is a warm-blooded egg-laying species."

"Not," said Ollie firmly, "in our basement."

"Wrong sex," said Jared. "It seems to be male."

The Fathervoice opined that Jared also appeared to be male and offered this as proof that appearances could be deceptive. Issio backhanded the cage, knocking it across the table, and the Fathervoice fell silent.

"What does it eat?" asked Evvie.

"Its diet is primarily smaller grain-eating reptilian animals, commonly regarded as varmints on Linden's World," said Issio. "It prefers to eat this prey live, but it has been observed consuming carrion also, so we assume that it will eat fresh raw meat from the butcher shop." The Fathervoice assured him that he would settle for a few fingers, or possibly more intimate body parts; Issio showed the very tips of his fangs and the Fathervoice stopped abruptly. "It will eat this meat when it is hungry enough," he said. "I will bring meat when I bring blood." He paused, looking at the heap of broken glass on the table. "I had forgotten," he said. "There is no need for blood at this time, until we recapture the fly."

"Which Maud wishes us to do as soon as possible," said Evvie.

"Maud," said Issio, "has many wishes. I do not see her putting these creatures into cages and jars and aquariums; I do not see her explaining to a butcher why she must have fresh blood as well as fresh meat. I do not see her trying to sleep while these things scream curses all night long. I do not see her trying to find secure places where these things may scream their curses without disturbing persons who do not know what is happening, such as persons making deliveries, or missionaries, or even sellers of encyclopedic data cubes who work door to door. He thought," Issio explained, "that it was my wife. He offered the address of a domestic abuse refuge."

Tired as he appeared, Jared grinned at that.

The work party moved on to the jar, where the Progenitorvoice, much livelier, scratched at the glass and dripped orange venom. Jared opened the door of the second birdcage. It was a sturdy one, with steel bars. "I bought this at the Wild Nature pet store," he said. "The clerk said it was the sort of cage that could hold razor-beaked Zamuaon ferazasu."

"There are persons who keep razor-beaked ferazasu?" said Issio. "This is very courageous of them. I might even say foolhardy."

"Yes, I didn't know they made pets of them either," said Jared, "but the clerk said they're very popular among the young professionals, especially, she said, accountants and tax attorneys. I could probably write an excellent paper about that, if I ever have time and energy to write anything again."

At any rate, it looked strong enough to hold a venom-dripping D'ubian It, Maud thought, and it had more room than the aquarium. Issio held the cage, Jared lifted the jar to the cage door and carefully unscrewed the lid, and when the It refused to leave the jar and go into the cage, Issio turned the cage on its back and Jared shook the jar, hard; gravity did its job, and the It fell into its new home.

They set the cage upright, and then Jared put on the heavy glove he had also bought, a necessity when dealing with razor-beaked ferazasus, he explained, and probably sharp-fanged six-legged D'ubian Its also. With his hand and arm protected, he put in the litter box, the bowl of water, and the box of worms. The creature attached itself to his gloved hand, chewing vigorously on his index finger, and he scraped it off against the bars of the cage as he withdrew.

Issio secured that door, also, with a padlock

Ollie and Evvie picked up the Fathervoice in its cage and bore it upstairs while Jared phoned Al to tell him his new pet was caged and ready, and Al said he would get it right after dinner. His voice on the other end of the line was nice and clear; the recording devices Chazaerte and Zarei had placed were excellent. Maud could hear Al saying that he was going to put it in the back room of the Hardesty basement, an area old Mr. Hardesty had designated as a root cellar, whatever that was. It had never been finished; the walls were basic foamstone and it had a dirt floor and Al had prepared it for habitation by putting in a cell-powered light behind bars, so if the It somehow got loose it wouldn't be able to do anything with the light bulb or the fuel cell. Maud wasn't sure what the It could do with a bulb or a cell, but she thought it would be a good thing not to find out. She approved of the precautions.

Issio and Jared swept up the fragments of the glass jar and the assorted dried twigs and Issio pocketed Sofi's silver chain and Jared gathered up the silver axes and Ann's chain and they left, closing the insulated door behind them. The blood stains on the floor had been mopped up, and the place looked quite normal.

Carter switched monitors and adjusted the focus. Sofi and Ann were at the picnic table, looking with nearly identical expressions of disgust at the Fathervoice in his cage, muttering to himself in mingled Earthian and Bahtan as Ollie and Evvie displayed him for their audience. "That thing is gross," said Ann, and Sofi put a protective hand over her abdomen, shielding her daughter.

"We shall lock it into our basement room," said Evvie. "If Jared wishes to speak with it, he may come at any time."

Jared gave Ann her chain and sat down beside Sofi. The Bahtan girls bore the cage across the street, with the stoad's muttered obscenities trailing after them. Evvie balanced the cage on the fence post as Ollie opened the gate; carrying the cage in front of them, they pressed through the shrubbery around the gate, and there was a shriek and a raucous laugh and a Bahtan male with polished horns and a towel around his waist sprang out of the bushes and backed away from the cage. The Fathervoice, who sounded pleased to have a victim, offered a few raunchy suggestions in Bahtan and the male backpedaled away from him toward the front door, where Mutai, who must have been watching from the front hall, let the whole procession inside.

"I love this neighborhood," said Ann.