Chapter 73.

 

Jared

 

 

Standing beside him in their own living room, Cara, holding her new shoes, got the remote and darkened their windows. Jared unbuttoned his blue shirt and took it off and looked at it; he wouldn't have to worry about wearing it again, anyway.

And Cara would never have to wear her new dress either, and it was a shame; it had been very becoming to her. He began to undo the fastenings down her back, and she smiled at him over her shoulder. "Well, this certainly wasn't what we planned," she said. "Poor Mimi and that damned fly. And Numum. Imagine that. We even know his name. Not at all what we expected."

"Nothing seems to go the way we expected," he said. "Maybe we should give up planning." He let the pale silk slide to the floor. She was wearing a full slip because the dress had been thin and nearly sheer, and he began to work it up over her hips.

"You have ulterior motives," she said. "I can tell."

"I have to try," he explained. "I'd hate for you to go across the ocean to join a celibate service order." She giggled and lifted her arms so he could get the slip over them. He was amused to see that Ann's color scheme had extended even to underwear, sheer and lacy and blue. He tossed the slip aside and ran his hands over the smooth skin between bra and panty line.

"But you know I don't like hugging and kissing and that sort of thing," she said, tossing her shoes aside, leaning back against him.

Throw her on the floor and fuck her brains out! shouted a voice from the kitchen, and Cara jumped and uttered a little scream.

Jared wheeled around. There was a bag of flour from the farmer's market on top of the food keeper; Cara had been talking about trying her hand at bread dough and Clyde said the local flour did better on the shelf than in the keeper. She was planning to get a canister for the flour, but at the moment it was still in its paper bag, and the creature sat on the top of it, rocking back and forth in high glee.

Just grab her by the hair, boy, advised the stoad. The bitches love it! Don't take any nonsense, either; she tries to argue, just knock the idea right out of her head. They love when you take charge.

"Damn!" said Cara. "Damn!"

"Oh, hell," said Jared, and he reached, meaning to hold her back from the thing, but it was too late; she was already in the kitchen, grabbing up a spatula from the sink. She swung at the stoad and hit the bag of flour, which split, a cloud of white powder erupted over the end of the kitchen and clung to walls and floor and appliances. Dusted with flour, the stoad scurried across the counter and she banged the counter right in front of it with the flat of the spatula. It dodged, and Jared grabbed the kitchen towel and threw it over the creature, thinking to snare it, and it scrambled out from under and jumped off the counter and scuttled off across the floor heading for the living room, leaving a trail of flour behind it, going remarkably fast for a creature of its size. But then, it did have eight legs. Cara followed with the spatula, smacking the floor and driving it off from the bedroom area. It headed across the living room, and Jared caught up her slip and knotted the top end tightly and called to her, "Don't let it get under the couch!"

She hit the floor in front of the couch viciously, causing the stoad to veer off toward the front door, and Jared slapped the open end of the slip over it and held it down to the floor. The stoad bucked and yelled, and Cara came up from behind, slid the spatula under the hem of the slip and the body of the stoad, and scooped it up into the slip, and Jared closed the open end and knotted it.

His phone rang.

Cara got it out of his pocket, looked at the indicator, and handed it to him; Jared stood with the struggling stoad in the knotted slip in one hand, the phone in the other, and pushed the button. "I have a nuntulpo in Sofi's carry on bag," announced Issio.

"I have a stoad tied up in Cara's slip," said Jared. "I take it that Mimi was busy this evening."

"I will take the bag to the Hardesty basement," said Issio. "I hope that the cage is not damaged."

"I will take the slip to the Bahtans," said Jared. "See you in the street."

"Wait a minute," said Cara. "I'm not staying here alone." She ran off to the bedroom and returned in her striped housecoat, still barefooted, and the two of them took the struggling creature in the knotted garment outside where Issio, not looking very happy, was taking the carry on bag toward the Hardesty house, holding it with both hands. A string of curses issued from the bag. The stoad seemed to be settling for yells and howls.

Clena opened the Bahtan door and gazed at the squirming heaving knotted slip. "The stoad escaped," said Jared briefly, and she giggled.

"Somebody come and get the stoad!" she called up the stairs, and after a moment Numum appeared, still in his orange flowered shorts, with Ollie hanging on his back with her arms over his shoulders, laughing gleefully and dragging her feet on the stairs as he descended. "Stoad," said Clena again, and fell with her back against the wall beside the front door; she glided down the wall and landed in a sitting position on the floor. Ollie slid off Numum's back and landed more or less seated on the second step from the bottom; she was wearing huge black satin panties and a flowered lei, and she couldn't seem to stop laughing. A spiny green leg came poking through the fabric of the slip, and she pointed at it and laughed harder.

Numum grabbed a jacket left on a bench by the stairs and wrapped it around the imprisoned stoad, and led the way to a door under the stairs; when the lights came up they revealed steps going down. Jared and Cara followed; Numum carried the stoad down the stairs and across a foamstone floor to a heavy metal door with a closely barred window, which stood partly open.

Inside there was a table, not unlike the arrangement at Clyde's house, holding the cage, door open, padlock lying beside it. "I did not hear your neighbor down here," remarked Numum, opening the jacket and lifting the fabric package of stoad. Jared made a try at undoing one of the knots, but he had done too good a job of tying it in the first place; finally Numum handed the whole bundle to him and went to get the pruning shears; he cut the slip open over the bottom knot and the stoad fell into the cage with a loud Bahtan curse. Jared slammed the cage door shut, and Numum snapped the padlock into place and shut the door on the screams and curses. The light inside stayed on, presumably for the comfort of the prisoner. He did not sound as if he were comforted.

Numum offered the slip to Cara who waved it off with a shudder; he thrust it into the basement chute as they went by on their way upstairs. Ollie was still sitting on the stairs and Clena was on the floor by the door, and they were both giggling. "Do you need some help?" Jared asked Numum, and he shook his head and smiled.

"I am fine," he said, and he picked up Clena under one arm, as he had held Mimi, and got Ollie under the other arm, and started up the stairs with both of them as easily as Jared might have carried Gina or Terry.

Issio was leaving the Hardesty house as Cara and Jared left the Bahtan house. "The cage was undamaged," he reported. "Mimi picked the lock."

"Here, too," said Jared. "They're pretty drunk; Numum seems to be taking care of them."

"Amazing," said Issio. "Also they are drunk in there." He pointed over his shoulder. "Chazaerte is downstairs. He and Willis are yelling at each other. Patterson is watching that they do not begin to fight. Our Ann," he added, "is asleep on the dining room table. With her noter."

"I'm sure she's tired," said Cara, sounding only moderately sympathetic.

"It was," said Issio, "a memorable party."

He waved and went back into his house, which was quiet with the lights turned low. Jared and Cara went on to their own house, where Jared dimmed the lights and Cara stood in the middle of the living room; after a moment he realized that she was shuddering. "Those things!" she said to him. "That damned stoad! That horrible fly! That ugly nuntulpo! I hate those things! I hate everything about them!"

And so did he, and something had to be done about them, but there was nothing to do tonight but hold Cara very tenderly until the shudders stopped.

 

The neighborhood was almost eerily quiet Sunday morning. Cars, parked crookedly at curbs, remained as they had been left. Birds scolded over unfilled feeders. Mowers wandered across lawns aimlessly, carrying out last week's programming. Darkened windows remained darkened.

Even those party-goers who had not touched the wine had had a very late, hard night.

Mimi, or the fly within her, had only been drugged, and her night had been strenuous but it had ended in enforced rest. She roused early; Jared was vaguely aware of her voice next door screaming outrage in at least three languages. After a few minutes she fell abruptly silent. "Used the infuser," he muttered into Cara's hair when she raised her head a couple of centimeters.

"Good," she said, and yawned, and went back to sleep with her head on his shoulder. They hadn't had more than a sip of the wine, but it had been past three before they went to sleep. It was nearly noon when they finally roused enough to get out of bed. The day was overcast, sticky with heat and humidity; Jared turned up the Climate Control and lightened the windows while Cara was in the shower. As he passed the front window he caught movement out on the front lawn, and looking out he saw Maud and Carter and Chazaerte and Zarei, sitting at the picnic table together playing cards.

Maud and Carter looked tired, but they had been home, wherever home was, and had changed out of their formal wear. Chazaerte was still wearing his light tan suit, much creased, and a shirt buttoned to the throat despite the heat, and his pendant, highly polished. His eyes were heavy and dull. He looked the worse for wear. And Zarei was still in her party garb, a vivid green satin skirt, a lace blouse, four earrings in each ear, two ankle bracelets on her left ankle, which was the only one Jared could see from where he stood, and enough tail rings to make her a menace when her tail switched.

He darkened the window and retired to the kitchen, where he could get a coffee cup. The cleaner had been busy while they slept; the flour on the living room floor was gone, and most of the flour in the kitchen was gone too; there was a dusting over the countertop and he swiped it into the sink with the towel he had tried to use on the stoad.

Cara appeared in her summer shorts and his favorite sun top, her pale hair a cloud about her face. "Why is the window still dark?" she asked and reached for the remote and lightened it and looked out. "Oh," she said, and stood for a moment watching and then she darkened the window again and came to the breakfast bar and took the cup he handed her. "I wonder if Ned and Louise are awake yet," she said.

"No one else seems to be," said Jared.

Their neighbors to the west were awake, though; Issio and Gina came quietly across the back yard and in through the back door with a quick knock. They had come, they said, to invite Jared and Cara to breakfast. Gina assured them there was Earthian-style food and Sofi made really good pancakes, and had Jared and Cara seen who was playing cards in the front?

The four of them traveled from house to house by the back yard; Sofi did indeed make good pancakes and Issio ate two, while explaining that this sort of food was in no way appealing to Zamuaons. For one thing, it was much too sweet.

"But you have to be polite," said Cara.

"My wife is expecting a baby," Issio explained. "It would be wrong to upset her." He and Sofi exchanged a look; Jared hoped that he and Cara, many years down the road, would be able to look at each other that way. He thought they might.

"We found the D'ubian It under our bed," Sofi told them over coffee, with one cup heavily sugared and creamed for Gina. "It took time, catching it, until Issio thought of the carry on bag. Gina and I scooped the It up in it, and Issio fastened it shut while we lifted it, very carefully."

"Jared tied a knot in the top of my slip," said Cara, "and snared the stoad with it."

"Cara," he recalled, noticing it seemed funnier today, "found it on the flour bag in the kitchen; she chased it around with a spatula until I got the slip over it, and then she scooped it into the slip. Numum helped us get it into the cage in the Bahtan house. Mimi must have let it out."

"We need to think what to do with these creatures," said Sofi. "We need to think what to do with Mimi."

"Perhaps," said Issio, jerking a thumb in the direction of the picnic table, "they have some ideas."

"The strong ones," said Gina, looking at Jared, and Jared saw it in her mind; Lalia in Wark's Ferry, the strong ones, the old ones, himself and Issio. Were they strong enough, Gina wondered, to do something about the fly? Issio regarded the thought and he and Jared frowned at each other.

"I have no idea what that means," said Jared.

"You and I, we know nothing of our families, of our heritage," said Issio. " You do not know your father, and very little of your mother's family. I do not know either parent. How do we know what we are?"

"Maud chose Jared for his genes," said Cara; "that's perfectly clear. Our extraordinary children. And you two," nodding to Sofi and Issio, "were destined. They said."

Jared and Issio looked at each other. "That's great," said Jared. "Are we here only for, well, stud services?"

"Lalia," said Sofi. "We could ask her. Is she still here?" Jared felt her put out her mind. "Yes, at Clyde's," she said. She searched the situation for a moment. "Clyde is awake but not well." Jared could easily believe that. "I do not think the sisters will be available for this afternoon; perhaps by tonight. The nurses are awake. Lalia thinks they should earn their salary today, since they did not last night."

"Good idea," said Jared, "as long as we're all here in case something goes wrong."

"If it does, we can always call Numum," said Cara. "What do you suppose that's all about?" she asked the rest of them, and they all shook their heads.

"Not typical behavior," said Issio.

"Misborn," murmured Gina. "All of them, Mutai said."

All of us, Jared thought, contemplating the neighborhood.