Chapter 38

 

Jared

 

 

Cara, feeling much better, caught a ride the next morning to the Institute with Issio and Sofi, who were going shopping together for a change, and Jared left Weston and Patterson to finish up on the first arch and took her out to lunch. Weston wanted to check out his figures once more; he thought there was a small discrepancy developing between Jonah's estimates and Gustav's figures. Patterson had no interest in leaving the lab; the judge had refused to issue the restraining order on the grounds that the couple had taken up too much of the court's time already with pure stupid nonsense, and Patterson's not-yet-ex-wife had been seen lurking around the parking lot this morning. Jared figured he and Weston would be drafted as bodyguards when Patterson finally nerved himself to step outside tonight.

But that was tonight. This noon he and Cara had lunch, and lingered downtown to look at the posters in the theater district and discuss whether they wanted to go out dancing somewhere this weekend, since Jared had volunteered to teach her. He couldn't see any problem with Cara learning. She liked music, and she had natural grace and a good sense of rhythm, he thought.

He drove her home. The car making a left turn three blocks from the D'ubian corner to fall in behind them was familiar, was, in fact, Issio and Sofi also headed home; he waved out the window, and a white arm and a black and grey arm waved back out of opposite sides of the car. "She's doing so well," said Cara. "Ollie and Evvie say they're pleased with her; the baby is healthy and so is she."

"That," said Jared, "is because Issio is holding his breath and counting every step she takes. He's putting more work into this pregnancy than she is."

They were even with the D'ubian house now, and he caught a flash of movement on their lawn, something in the overgrown grass. Cara leaned forward to look. "Jared! That's the It!" she exclaimed, and he hit the brake fast; behind him Issio's aircar brushed his collision shield and sailed up and over him and parked right in front. He and Sofi scrambled out of their car as Jared and Cara sprang out of theirs, and a stream of little people in brown robes tore out of the front door of the half-a-house, waving axes and nets.

The It was a blur of movement, pale wings and legs and teeth, ripping at the plastic over one of the living room windows; what they had seen from the street was the rapid movement as the thing flew back and forth in the grass around the foundation, yanking and tearing the plastic. "The It! The It!" shouted Dural, and down the street Clyde and Mimi came running, waving nets, and there was a door banging from the direction of Al's house, and voices from the Bahtan house.

Jared and Issio jumped over the low fence and Cara and Sofi shoved through the little gate, almost lost in the tangle of weeds and bushes. The noise warned the It, who gave a shrill screech and rose up into the air and the middle-sized D'ubian swarmed up the side of the house swiping at it with his/her net; it lifted itself just out of his/her reach and laughed nastily when he/she fell back to the ground.

Arriving by way of a leap over the front fence, Clyde swung his net, missed, drove the thing back against the wall, and Mimi ducked under Clyde's arm and made a try at it while it was at a fairly low altitude; it darted away from her, down to the ground by the foundation, where it streaked through the weeds and the grassy patches heading north at a pretty good speed. Jared could have at least headed it off, if he had had a net; somehow he hadn't thought of taking a butterfly net to work with him, so he was poorly armed for this conflict. But the thing dodged past him, the long thin tail sweeping the dirt behind it, and Jared stamped his left foot down on the tail and put his weight on it.

It brought the creature to a halt with a horrible howl of pain and fury; it scrabbled in the dirt as the D'ubians and Clyde and Mimi and Sofi and Issio and Cara all converged, and then, unexpectedly, it flipped backwards, twisting the tail under Jared's foot, and it sank its teeth into his left leg.

The pain was intense; it felt like nothing so much as six or eight huge white-hot spikes driven into his calf muscle. He lifted his foot, trying to shake off the source of such extreme pain, and the thing hung on and then it was ripped loose as if something he couldn't see struck it; it hit the side of the house with a heavy thud and another howl and bounced off the wall toward him again and Cara kicked it, hard, toward one or two or three of the several nets waiting for it.

Jared was aware of blood, not all that much of it, he thought; he put his foot down and took a step and his ankle gave way at once. "Oh, hell," he said, and went down, caught on his way to the ground by small white Earthian hands, square gray-black Zamuaon hands. The pain was amazing; he found himself unable to speak. There was a lot of screaming somewhere else, and people yelling, and one of the D'ubians was shouting about a pot, get the pot, bringing Jared a confused vision of a large stew pot to hold the It, which they must have captured; he hoped they had. He couldn't clearly see.

"Earthian; is it safe?" said Cara's voice.

"Makes the poison – be not harmful," said Dural, sorting among five languages for the right term.

"Neutralizes it," said Jared, finding his voice again; it sounded very distant, and he watched, charmed, as the words formed in the air before him and began to drip, letter by letter, off the ceiling of the sky. "Hal-lu-ci-na-to-ry," he remarked, observing each syllable rolling off his tongue and landing in the grass, to break open in sparkling fragments of glass.

He felt the pain lessening; his leg was growing numb from the knee down, which was fine with him.

"– the hospital," said Ollie's voice.

"Explaining how?" said Sofi.

"In the car," said Cara decisively, "and you call Dr. Frank."

"That thing," said a D'ubian voice, not Dural's, "and here, with you. Use much."

Movement, a blur of sky and grass and fence posts. He was in the car, and he was lying down with the seat back reclined, and Cara was bending over him holding his hand, which was entirely reversed; she was supposed to be lying down, with the blanket wrapped around her, and he was supposed to be holding her hand. He tried to point this out to her, but the dome light opened up into a huge yellow flower with black worms dripping out of it, an unusual sight, and he paused to watch that instead.

"Oh, this is different," said Dr. Frank, sounding pleased.

"This thing!" said Cara in a very strong voice, and something somewhere screeched and Lana gave a yell and Rose said something about teeth and orange foam, was that the poison?

"Cave," said Dural, somewhere around Jared's left shoulder. "Neutralizes it." He sounded proud of having the word.

"Hmm," said Dr. Frank. "Rose? Get the lab on the screen, will you?"

Jared thought he ought to sit up and see what was going on. It was possible that they needed him to explain it. But as long as the tiles on the ceiling kept shifting in shadowy patterns, it was hard to remember what it was all about. He watched a light over his leg as it shifted through the color spectrum, playing D'ubian musical exercises on the flute.

"Ought to be in the hospital," said Dr. Frank, through a lot of voices in the room, and Jared knew that Cara did not want to go to the hospital, not after her mother had been taken there, bloody and already dead.

"No need," he said, very clearly, and the voices silenced. "Not alone."

"Not for a moment," said Cara; she was standing to his right, holding his hand with both of hers, anchoring him. He saw her clearly; he smiled, and she smiled back. So she was all right; he went back to watching the tiles dance and sway to the music, which was red and yellow.

After awhile, he saw the tiles give way to the blue of sky again, and he was lying somewhere with Cara on one side of him and Sofi on the other; Issio was, he thought, driving. There was no hospital. He had been in the hospital, he remembered, years ago. He had been about twelve; that was when he had knocked Pete across the alley and then T.R. came up behind him and got him with a hunk of foamwood; it was silly of him to go up against Pete without his friends to back him. He ended in the emergency room; the cops found him and took him, and he said his mother wasn't home, and after awhile they said he didn't have a concussion and they let him go, with his head half shaved and a sealed wound down the scalp. His friends admired it greatly. He could see them clearly. Two of them were in the mines now, getting drunk every weekend, sobering up in the drunk tank. One was in Corrective Therapy. One had had his memory wiped.

One was dead. "It was a robbery," he said, "robbery gone bad."

"So you told us," answered Issio. "That is very sad. But it is good that you are not with them."

"Left them," said Jared, trying to find the memory. "Had to."

"Clearly," said Sofi. He had an impression of Cara's blue eyes; she looked as if she might have been crying, and she hated to cry; he had begun to understand that; she hated to show that much weakness to anyone, even to him. But she was holding on to him tightly, and her hand still anchored him.

Then it was the Bahtan sisters, all of them, he believed, moving back and forth and around, and he was lying on his bed at home. The ceiling wasn't moving any more, and he was aware of breeze through the windows, through the metal mesh of the screen on the porch, and he wasn't in pain, but he wasn’t sure his leg was still there; he didn't want to worry Cara about it right now, though. She didn't need any more stress. Even if she had the blue pills, she didn't need any more stress. She was still holding his hand but she was doing something with pillows with her free hand and Issio and Clyde were bracing him up until she got the pillows in place.

He watched Wundra, who was filling a very professional-looking infuser; it was easy to forget that the sisters, who spent such vigorous and lusty hours off-duty, were all trained and licensed. Clena and Evvie were taking excellent care of Sofi and her little daughter. It had been a good choice, he thought, on Sofi's part, however eccentric it had seemed at the time. Evvie and Clena were by the window right now, talking earnestly and quietly, and just beyond them in the corner by the closet was a knot of brown robes, five small people clinging together, seeking shelter and support. Sofi was crouched beside them, speaking to them in a calm, steady voice, as if trying to reassure them.

Mimi was at the foot of the bed, clutching some sort of little container in both hands, explaining to Al, "It's in the pot here. Dr. Frank said as much as he seems to need; the purple stuff is okay."

"It doesn't look okay," said Al dubiously.

"Neutralized," said Dural from the closet, sounding hopeful, and Sofi patted his shoulder.

Jared decided that since they were all here, whatever was going on was no doubt being taken care of; he closed his eyes and left them for a little while.

When he opened his eyes, Maud was bending over him.

 

It was dark beyond her shoulder on the porch, the lawn stretching to the trees; it was dark in the rest of the house, but here there was a light on, low. He couldn't see the clock from where he lay, but he thought it was late, very late. He felt strange, light in head, light in body, but he had both his legs and nothing hurt very much, which was an improvement.

He looked at Maud, at that slim elegant figure, at the long neck and the perfect oval face, only lightly lined, and the sharp clear blue eyes, and the white hair, piled in its complex knots on her head. The silver chain and the pendant dangled between her breasts. She had her diamond earrings again. This was the face, this was the body he had loved for years.

But it wasn't her hand he felt on his; he turned his head, only a matter of centimeters, and there was Cara on the other side of the bed. She had pulled the old recliner from her house up against the bed facing him, just as he had once done, so that whenever he opened his eyes, she was right there. She was holding his hand in both of hers, but her eyes were closed and her head sagged gently to the side.

"I made sure she was asleep," said Maud quietly, "before I came in."

"You're dead," said Jared, and she raised a beautifully shaped eyebrow.

"I'm sure," she said, "that you've already realized I'm not."

"The woman I loved," said Jared, keeping his voice low, not to wake Cara, "is dead. If you're not dead, you're not the same woman. I don't know you."

"You know me," she said, smiling.

"You used me."

"Perhaps," she said. "But I loved you."

"Who are you?"

"You know who I am," said Maud.

"I know who you say you are."

"You're angry."

"You left me," said Jared, "to mourn you as dead, and now that I've found a life again, and a woman I love, you've come back – for what?

"You think I want to resurrect what we had, you and I – "

"No," said Jared. "No, Maud, that isn't an option."

"I know that," she said. "I knew that when I left. I had no plan to contact you. You should never have known. You wouldn't have, if those damned creatures – " she glanced at his leg and sighed.

"Then why did you come back?"

"Not to get in your way. I promise you that." She glanced at Cara warily, but Cara was lying still; he could feel no movement from her.

"It doesn't matter," said Jared. "There's nothing to say that Cara can't hear."

"Admirable," said Maud, looking amused. "And as it should be." She put her hand, slim, white, cool, against his forehead. He saw diamonds flashing on her fingers. "The poison is burning its way out," she said. "You'll be better by tomorrow. Thank the gods you're resistant. Be careful with those creatures, though. I think they mean you harm. All of you."

"What do you know about these things?"

"Not enough," said Maud. Her slim hand brushed his cheek.

He turned irritably away from it. "What is this about?" he demanded. He needed a clear answer. He needed an end to mysteries.

She sighed. "We thought – but we didn't realize these creatures – and it looks as if you will need us. And very likely we will need you. So here I am."

"Maud," he said, using that imperative tone that had once cut through her equivocations, but she shook her head.

"Later. When you're stronger. Be well," she said, and turned and started away from the bed, and feeling his hand in Cara's hands, he thought there was at least one question that could be dealt with quickly and simply.

"Terry," he said, "told us that you said you were Cara's mother." She paused, looking out the window toward the porch and the lawn and the woods, where, who knew, that blond man might be waiting, and perhaps even the plump Zamuaon woman. "Rapunzel," he said. "You said you didn't have children."

"Maud Clipper didn't," she said, and glanced over her shoulder at Cara in the recliner. "I myself contributed genetic material for two children, although I have had little contact with one of them. Rapunzel," she said, with a faint smile, and then she opened the door to the porch and stepped through it. Her shoes could be heard, a light clicking sound on the porch floor. He watched her cross the lawn, the grass bending under her feet, small night insects jumping out of her way. She was solidly physical. He hadn't noticed what she was wearing, shirt, pants, light colored. She did not look different from the way she had a few years ago, before her heart began to give her trouble. Wherever she had been during the past year, she had found a way to heal her body.

He turned his head and met Cara's blue eyes, wide open, watching him. "Cara mia," he said, his mind clear enough to wonder how much she had heard, when she had woken up. She had, of course, been awake all the time, he thought, she had heard everything.

"She's very beautiful," she said.

"I love you," he said, the best and truest answer he had.

"I love you too," she said. "Go back to sleep."

"Lie down with me," he said, feeling the great empty expanse of the bed, and she considered it for a moment; she was still dressed, he saw, and her hair was loose. It touched his face as she bent to kiss him, and then she slid into bed beside him. With her body warm against his, he could sleep again.