Chapter 36.

 

Jared

 

 

"Right away" was a bit of an exaggeration; Willis came in from the Academy by supertrain Friday afternoon, while Phyllis and Lillian made the travel arrangements to Linden's World; the earliest flight left around noon on Saturday. Gina and Terry and Willis were going, of course, and so were the Hardesty sisters, at the insistence of Willis, who said it was now his goddamned farm and his goddamned house according to the will and he would invite anyone he goddamned pleased, and if he could have the whole neighborhood there he would.

Terry and Gina needed Phyllis and Lillian, he told Jared over the somber neighborhood dinner Friday night at the Hardesty house. There was no one there for them on Linden's World, he said, and Jared, remembering the glimpse he had had of Gina's memories, believed it. Cara, tentatively, mentioned their mother, and Willis laughed bitterly. Oh, she would be there, he said, and her new contract husband, no doubt with their return tickets clutched in their hands.

"We need them," he said, nodding to Phyllis and Lillian passing the potato salad the Bahtan girls had made. "And I don't want Gina and Terry to have to come home alone, after the funeral."

"You're not going to stay, then, on Linden's World," Ann said to Gina, sitting between her and Sofi, and Gina raised uncertain blue eyes to her brother. Willis shook his head emphatically.

"I feel like we should," she said to him. "You shouldn't be there all by yourself. You already had to give up the Academy."

"And that's enough; you're having your education, Gina," said Willis firmly. "You and Terry; you know that. They won't be gone," he said to the table in general, "more than a month. At the most. Six days there and six days back, and a week on the farm; that should be enough."

"And you are staying," said Al, with regret, and Willis shrugged.

"Someone has to run the farm," he said.

He had already made his resignation official at the Academy; he had brought his possessions with him, his books, his clothes, with the exception of his uniform. The things he had left at the Hardesty house, remnants of his boyhood, would be shipped to Linden's World later, after the Hardesty sisters and Gina and Terry came back and packed them up.

Cara sat across the table from Jared with Gina and Ann and Sofi, who was daintily consuming little squares of raw meat rolled in seasonings, skewered on toothpicks; Phyllis understood the palates of her neighbors very well. The Bahtan sisters were munching their way through a pile of seed cakes dipped into a sauce with a truly remarkable smell, and the D'ubians, clustered supportively around Terry, were passing hunks of chocolate cake back and forth. D'ubians had a huge craving for sweets. Jared could remember from the neighborhood grocery on Danmira how the groups would order candy and cookies and cakes by the case; they would happily wrestle huge boxes of sugary goodies out the front door of the store, pushing and pulling in a small disorderly mob.

Willis sat with Clyde and Mimi and Al and Issio, drinking the Zamuaon beer Issio had brought. The awkward boy of fourteen had turned into a young man. Jared could remember Willis so well, uncomfortably adolescent, sitting on the Hardesty front porch, polite to the strangers who populated the neighborhood, faintly belligerent as he positioned himself next to Gina and Terry, ready to protect them if anyone threatened. He still would, Jared thought, but at least he knew he didn't have to worry about the neighborhood. They were all safe here, and he would keep Gina and Terry here, even as he gave up his own ambitions.

And this was a great shame. Not that there was much choice, if he intended to keep the farm operating. Gina and Terry were too young to take charge there; he was the only adult, the head of the family, whether he liked it or not. Whatever his feelings, and knowing him, Jared could well imagine his feelings, he was taking on his responsibilities, as a man must.

Gina and Terry were both quiet; Gina was hanging on to Sofi and Issio and Terry was sticking with the D'ubians. No one was crying, which was understandable. No one was close to the man they called Dad; no one had much of a relationship with him. But he had been somewhere in the background of their lives, and losing him was a serious matter, however little they knew him.

And the manner of his death was upsetting by itself, although, Jared thought, if you were going to mess around with the wives and daughters of the men who worked for you, you could expect that someday their tolerance would run out. Willis had tried to cover it up; he told Gina and Terry that it must have been some accident with the farm equipment, and he turned away from their incredulous stares, but later he had admitted to Clyde and Jared that it had been a piece of farm equipment with a club and a large sharp knife, and they were never going to know what had really happened. The workers' community had closed up against all authority; no one knew anything, no one saw anything, no one was anywhere around, everyone had at least three people to verify where they had been for the past two days.

Gina was not quite out of hearing range when Willis told them this. Jared felt her there, hesitated, let her stay. She listened; he could feel her taking it in and filing it away with her memories of Eugene McIntosh. She understood more than she should have to at her age, he thought, but that had been true for most of her life. It was harder to tell with Terry. He was unnaturally quiet for Terry but he seemed to be taking it as well as a ten-year-old could. His mind was still filled with sunshine and music, although the music was quieter than usual, minor in key.

Sometimes the universe worked very badly, Jared thought, pacing through the living room. The streetlights were on now, illuminating the houses up and down the street, and the woods beyond the houses rustled with the evening breeze; in the living room, the ceiling lights played over the heads of the gathering, and seven of them wore the silver chains and the pendants displaying the Celtic knot, a symbol found in the ancient relics of two planets.

The universe did not always work for the benefit of its inhabitants, but it was certainly never dull, Jared reflected.

 

Ann got there an hour before the travelers left; Gina stopped fussing over her suitcase and went to hug her, and Willis, who had met her at dinner yesterday, patted her arm in absent-minded greeting as he headed for the stairs. "Terry, you ready yet?" he called toward the upstairs hall, and Terry shouted back something that sounded agreeable, at least. If numbers of workers alone could do it, Terry would have been packed for some hours; the D'ubian group, recklessly disregarding the sunlight, and staying up far beyond their bedtime, had been with him all morning.

Al and Jared went upstairs to help Lillian and Phyllis with their suitcases. The Hardesty sisters were unnaturally formal in skirts and jackets and dress shoes, and probably girdles; Lillian in particular seemed to be having a little trouble breathing. Phyllis frequently brushed at the fabric stretched over her broad hips, vaguely uncomfortable. They followed their suitcases down the stairs and supervised from the porch as Jared and Al piled them in the back of the Bahtan van. Willis appeared, lugging Terry's suitcase. "He'll be along in a minute," he said, heaving the suitcase on top of the pile, and went over to look at the flowers opening in the Bahtan yard.

Jared and Al went back to the living room, where Ann was giving a fashionable twist to the scarf she was threading through Gina's short hair. Cara and Sofi were finding room in her carry-on bag for the reader with the Harry Potter series from the Twenty-First century. Terry, with the D'ubian group around him, came down the stairs, and Mimi went to hug him and pack a bag of candy into the pocket of his jeans.

"You be good, now," she said.

"You don't have to worry about us," said Terry with his sunny smile. "We'll be fine. We'll be back before summer is even half over."

"That's right," said Al, "and we'll go out fishing as soon as we can."

"Hey, great," said Terry, "and this summer we have to go camping; you promised, Jared, remember? Up in the mountains, with Al and Issio, and Gina and Cara can come too," he added generously. "You might get too tired," he told Sofi, who rolled her eyes.

"Even the children," she said.

Terry adjusted the strap around his chest that held his guitar. It was his most prized possession; there was no way he was going to be parted from that, even if he did have to leave the Hardesty piano behind. Phyllis and Lillian were trying to decide if he should have proper piano lessons or if they should just let the D'ubians show him their own innovative style. Jared suspected it was already too late for formal lessons.

"We'll go camping," he promised, "before summer is over, as many of us as we can fit in."

"It's too bad about Dad," said Terry, "but anyway we still have our real father, so it'll be okay." He investigated the bag of candy Mimi had given him, selected a piece, and offered samples to the D'ubians clustered around him.

The entire room fell silent. Even the D'ubians stood still, looking from Terry to Dural as if hoping for an explanation.

"Your real father?" said Jared very carefully.

"Sure," said Terry, "the one who visits out in the woods, you know."

"You know him?" asked Gina in a strained voice. "You've met him?"

"Of course," said Terry, looking surprised. "Lots of times. Haven't you?"

After a moment, Gina said, "Oh, yes," and reached out to grip Sofi's hand. "I didn't know you met him, that's all."

"I met him when I was really little," said Terry. "I thought maybe he lived back on the farm, but he comes here all the time. He comes to all the concerts. He comes to your plays and things, too. That open house thing at school, with your story. He said he was at Willis' graduation, but I didn't see him there." He offered the candy again, and the D'ubians accepted one apiece. "He has a chain with a thing on it just like ours," said Terry, giving his pendant a casual flick of the finger. "So does Cara's mom."

"You mean that fly thing?" said Gina, startled.

"No, silly, flies don't have chains," said Terry impatiently. "That woman that comes sometimes with our real father, with all the hair, you know." He twirled his finger around his own blond head, showing swirls and knots of hair. "That fly isn't Cara's mom," he said, with faint scorn. "She just thinks she is, because she paid all those credits."

"My mom," said Cara, very slowly, "comes with your real father? How do you know who she is?" She moved back beside Jared and he felt her hand groping for his; he took it and held it firmly and hoped she couldn't feel how his heart was pounding. My daughter, Maud said, lying in her bed, her long white hair in braids; usually she had it swept up in rolls and curls that looked like the Celtic knot on his pendant and hers.

Figuratively, he had told Gina, sitting in the porch swing. Only figuratively. But that was assuming that Maud had actually died, that Carter had found her and called the ambulance before he called Jared . . . Carter, white-blond hair, blue eyes, tall, like Maud, like the strange man from the woods.

"She told me she was your mom," said Terry, with a matter-of-fact shrug, "And your mom comes sometimes too, Sofi. She's nice; she wears lots of jewelry and stuff. She's fun."

The front door opened with its trumpet fanfare, and Willis came in. "Hey, Gina, Terry, we got to get going," he said, and looked around at the neighborhood gathering, apparently not noticing how still and quiet everyone was. "I really liked seeing all of you again," he said, "and Terry and Gina will be back before the month is over, and I'm coming too, any time I get a chance, okay? And you guys have to come to Linden's World. There isn't much there, just a lot of crop land, but it's a big house and we can make our own parties, right?"

Clyde shook his head as one shaking off a dream, and went to thump Willis on the back and Mimi came to hug him, and that set everyone in motion again, all the hugs and kisses and waves and shouted goodbyes as the loaded van, Ollie driving, finally trundled down the street and around the corner by the D'ubian house and was gone.

Sofi, looking unusually grim, and Evvie and Cara, very quiet, went to check through the Hardesty house for cookers left on, coffee makers still operating, windows thrown wide to whatever early summer rains might come upon them; the rest of the group wandered out onto the porch and stood in a cluster, not unlike the D'ubians, who formed their own clump by the old table with the potted plants, staying in the shade and murmuring with hoods together.

"Everything is as it should be," said Sofi, leading the way out onto the porch, and Cara shut the door behind them, trying it to make sure the lock was engaged, not that it mattered. If any burglar were foolhardy enough to approach the house, at least one of the neighbors would spot him long before he did any damage. The trumpet fanfare would warn them, if nothing else did. And if any of them needed to get into the house, if a tornado hit, for instance, or if a comet fell through the roof, they had their prints on the door pad to let them in.

Having checked the lock, Cara came to Jared and he put both arms around her and held her; he could not think of anything at all to say. "That woman with all the hair," she said. "That has to be Maud." She didn't say anything about an impersonator, and neither did Jared. It struck him now as a naïve theory.

"I thought," said Mimi, "that it might be Gina and Terry's father you were connected with. I really did. There's a resemblance, you have to admit that."

"Also there is a resemblance to Maud," said Sofi. "I have seen her many times with Jared; I saw her on the lawn that day."

"They all look alike," said Clyde, sounding impatient. "That Zamuaon woman; I want to know about her, if there's any resemblance – "

"No," said Sofi, very decidedly. "She is even fat," she added, and Ann nodded.

"But blond," she said. "I haven't seen this Maud, have I? But Cara, if you have to be related to someone, she's got to be better than Dr. Lindstrom." And that was, Jared thought, an interesting point of view, or at least an interesting way of putting it. "I knew Dr. Lindstrom," Ann said, appealing to the others. "She was – well, you know what she's like. That's her in the jar; I swear it."

"She paid all those credits," said Clena, frowning. "That is what Terry said. So the fly thinks she is your mother, Cara, because of the engineered conception for which she paid, but she is not. And you think she is, but –"

"All the time it was Maud," said Cara, and lifted her face to Jared. "Like mother like daughter?" she inquired with a ghost of humor.

And this was far enough off the mark that Jared could smile and shake his head. "No," he said. "No," tenderly, and he held her closer, and she laid her head against him.

"This," said Mimi, "is the strangest tangle I have ever run into. Flies and blond strangers; and imagine Terry wandering off into the woods talking with his real father, when we're all being so careful not to let on the man exists, so we won't confuse the boy."

"It is what Terry does," said Dural, unprompted by his group. "It is how he is. He acts as he acts. He always has. That is our Terry." The four other brown hoods all nodded in unison and they were, Jared thought, entirely right. That is our Terry.

"We need," he said, holding Cara close, "to talk to these people. I suppose we need to talk to the fly, too, for what good that does."

"It cooperates very little," agreed Issio. "And the blond people are seldom here."

"Unless you're Terry," said Mimi, "and then they come popping out of the woodwork and sit down and chat for hours."

"Just the woods," said Clyde. "Not the woodwork." Mimi swatted at him and huffed. "That's where we have to look for them, people, out in the woods. Find them and see if they will tell us what's going on."

"See if they will tell us the truth," said Wundra. "We have no way to be sure any of this is really so. We need to remember this. You need to remember, Cara," she told Cara, and, head against Jared's shoulder, she nodded. "And you also, Sofi." Sofi snorted and folded her arms.

"And likely," said Al gloomily, "they've all taken off for Linden's World to watch Gina and Terry. Does any of this make any sense to any of you?"

"Not much," admitted Jared, "which is why we need to talk to them. We don't have enough information. About anything," he said, looking down at Cara, thinking about Maud, and Rapunzel, and Celtic knots on the insides of arches.

"Okay," said Mimi, in a businesslike tone. "We're all going to keep an eye out for these people; we need to get out and walk in the woods and watch for them."

"You are right," said Sofi. "I myself would like to speak with the Zamuaon woman. I do not like what Terry said. 'Sofi's mom,' he said. I already have a mother. I will speak with this being. This will not," she added, as Issio made an abrupt movement beside her, "be a cause of stress to me." He opened his mouth, and she lifted a claw. "Say nothing," she advised, and he shut his mouth with a snap.

 

"What I'm wondering," said Jared, leaning back with his elbow against the Cycle Finished chute, comfortably at his ease, "is if you remember anything about Or2. Or did that get lost in your transformation into – whatever you are now?" Issio, upright on the other stool with his arms folded, studied the jar with great concentration, saying nothing.

Perched on a twig with two withered leaves, the fly invited him to go lap up the feces of Bahtan tree worms.

"So you don't remember?" said Jared. "Too bad. Or perhaps they weren't your memories to start with; perhaps those were Dr. Lindstrom's memories. You can copy her speech, I suppose, but you can't copy her memories."

The fly suggested that he add to his diet the urinary output of Zamuaon cragbugs.

"You wouldn't care," said Jared, "to tell us just exactly what you really are."

The fly advised him to try the entrails of the triple-winged blunt-nosed four-toed Bahtan carrion eater for dessert, which struck Jared as being an inventive idea; the thing was unquestionably intelligent, if unpleasant company.

"House flies," said Issio, sitting with folded arms on the other stool, "live on average twenty-seven days inside, away from natural enemies. The life span is shorter outside. We might," he said, showing the tips of his fangs in an alarming smile, "turn her loose outside, if she shows no more cooperation."

"Sound like a good idea?" Jared asked the fly, who turned away from him and began to groom her front legs again.

You won't run the risk of stirring up that sentimental brat, lover boy. She might kick you out of her bed if you hurt me.

"We could say," said Issio, "that it was an accident."

"A regrettable accident," agreed Jared, and the fly looked at him over her upraised legs.

You believe you can kill me, you puny creatures?

"That," said Jared to Issio, "from a fly in a jar. Pretty good, isn't it."

"Highly amusing," said Issio, glowering over his folded arms.

And perhaps, after all, I have information you want, asshole. You going to take the chance of losing that?

"Oh, no," said Jared, with a half a glance at Issio, "but maybe we can find another way of getting the information."

And he plunged at once into her mind, feeling Issio right behind him, as solid a presence as if they both been physical. And they were not, but they both ran up against the barrier of thorny branches with an impact that felt nearly physical. Beyond the branches the golden light shimmered and shifted out of their reach.

Issio grabbed the nearest branch and pulled at it. Jared could have sworn he saw Issio's actual hands, the gray-black body hair, clamped around the dark twisted branch, shaking it, trying to bend it. He put his hands beside Issio's and tried for himself; even together they couldn't move it.

A knife, said Issio, and paused to think, and there it was in his hand, the big old butcher knife from his kitchen, the one Sofi used almost daily. It had a shining sharp blade and a nick in the handle where Issio had dropped it last year in the basement, dressing out a short-horned yearling ergila from his autumn hunt.

You see, you should train, he told Jared, and he lifted the knife and slashed at the branch, creating a small dent in it.

Jared, grinning at his friend, concentrated also and came up with the cell-powered carving knife from Lillian's kitchen; it sliced nicely through roasts and did well on Mimi's bread loaves, but it didn't do much on these dark twisted bushes. He tried a thin branch, and then he tried the branch Issio was chopping at; it didn't work. Saw? he suggested, and thought of Clyde's workshop, the gleaming power saw he had used on foamboards in his back yard.

Very nice, said Issio, looking with approval at the carving knife that had turned into the power saw in Jared's hands. But better with training. With such strength, think what you could do if trained.

Jared felt the saw in his hands, just as he felt the branches, just as he had felt the carving knife. He tackled the branch he and Issio had worked on, sawing in the crease they had made; the saw whined and wheezed and finally bit into the wood and chewed nearly two-thirds of the way through the branch before it ceased, with a mechanical moan.

Bastards. Man whore. Nameless scum. The fly thrust and cast them out; the tools dissolved and Jared found himself sitting on the stool once again, empty-handed, looking at Issio on the other stool. Issio looked back.

The fly eyed them and returned to her front legs, rubbing them delicately together, balancing on the twig. A little of the animal blood Issio had squirted into the jar first thing this morning was left, pooled under the larger twig, the one with no leaves. She had consumed most of it; her appetite was good.

Jared took his elbow off the chute and sat up, and the fly stopped grooming and looked at him. Satisfied, man whore? If I gave you information, have you enough brains to understand it? Or did you fuck 'em out already? Maybe you started with your mother, pretty boy?

Issio grabbed Jared's arm as if he fully expected his friend to turn around and smash the jar against the wall, but Jared, accustomed to the class of insults favored by their flying friend, settled for a laugh as he stood up. "Talk while you can," he advised the fly.

Lame brain! You wear that damned piece of shit around your neck and you don't even know what it's for. You haven't got the brains to figure out how to use it! You can't get rid of me. You can't escape me. You'll never get away from me, you and that little slut you sleep with!

And she began her banshee shrieks again, battering herself against the side of the jar so that Sofi's silver chain shifted and jangled and that, Jared knew all too well, was the end of the conversation.

He and Issio went back up to the kitchen. The sunlight stretched over the street and the houses and the woods behind. The Monopoly players were still at it around the picnic table. Sofi and Clena and Cara were sitting on the grass beside them, talking with Ann.

Issio gripped his silver pendant. "She refers to this?" he said. "What does she mean, what it is for?"

"She's right. We don't know what it's for," said Jared. "But they're connected with those strangers; we do know that."

They took hold of the pendants, Gina told him, and then they vanished. At least the blond man had, and the plump Zamuaon, right in front of her. Jared took hold of his, but nothing happened; he could feel the small weight of the disk, which was thick and always felt a little warm to the touch, but he didn't seem to be vanishing, which was probably good. If he had gone somewhere else, he didn't know how he would get back again and he didn't know what this somewhere else might be.

Had Maud known? he wondered.