Chapter 44

 

Jared

 

 

By the time Jared and Issio got back into the kitchen, Maud and Chazaerte were there, bending over Lillian. "You found the women?" Maud asked, looking up, and Jared nodded. "If you two can take one side, we can take the other, and we'll get her home," she said.

Jared raised his head; he couldn't make out the words but he could hear the tones of the Fathervoice at the front of the house. "Should we try to catch that thing?" he inquired of the company in general. "There must be a jar or something around here."

"Sir Jared," said Maud, sitting back on her heels, "Sir Issio, you have already done more than enough for one morning, rescuing a fellow knight and a great many damsels in distress. Forget the damned dragon and come home with us. You have two of those things already. I don't like the idea of three in one neighborhood. We know where this one is; we can come back and get it another time. And I can't think, off-hand, of a household more deserving of this creature."

And that was a point, Jared had to concede; he shrugged at Issio, who shrugged back, and then they bent to lift Lillian's bruised arm and limp leg on the left while Maud and Chazaerte lifted from the right. Even with four of them, she was a substantial weight, and she moaned, as Willis had, which was disturbing.

Chazaerte balanced Lillian with one arm and reached for his pendant. "No time for fumbling. I'll do it," snapped Maud.

"I don't fumble," he protested, but he dropped his pendant. There was the haze again, the purple-hued haze that spread peace around the curls of fog, a quiet that was a welcome change from the uproar in the McIntosh house. Somewhere Jared heard a high light tinkling sound, like glass wind chimes in a gentle breeze.

They came out of the fog in the living room of Jared's house. Willis was lying, tarp under him, on the couch with Wundra and Mutai bending over him wiping off blood and murmuring together; Gina was crouched on the floor beside him, holding his hand. She was wearing one of Cara's buttoned-down shirts, sleeves rolled up and shirt tails pooling on the floor around her.

"They're back!" exclaimed Mimi, and Ollie and Clena leaned out of the bedroom. "Bring her in here," called Cara, and Jared and Issio, Maud and Chazaerte carried Lillian through the living room and into the bedroom, where Cara and Sofi had the bed ready for her. They laid her down very gently, but not gently enough; she moaned again. Evvie peeled the remains of clothes off her as Clena and Ollie began to examine her. Al, dressed in blue flowered shorts, still clutching the baseball bat, ran into the room and pushed Maud aside for a closer look.

Cara put her arms around Jared's neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, hard. "You got them," she said. "You really got them." He put his arms around her but not quite fast enough; she spotted the knuckles on his right hand and grabbed his wrist for a better look. "You hit someone," she said.

"Several someones," said Issio, arms around Sofi.

"Good," said Cara, and Sofi hugged Issio with enthusiasm.

"Excellent work," she said.

"Our women are bloodthirsty," remarked Issio, returning the hug, and Jared grinned at him and removed his hand from Cara's grasp and got his arms around her again.

"Your women saw what those beasts did to Willis and Gina," said Cara.

"Is she hurt badly?" asked Gina from the doorway, and she slipped into the room to stand at the foot of the bed; she did not look reassured at Lillian's appearance. Chazaerte, who had been straightening out the pillows under Lillian's head, abandoned the attempt and walked over to Gina, and stalled there, opening and shutting his mouth, apparently trying to think of something to say.

"Look, don't be upset, she'll be all right," he said finally. "So will Willis; you did well, getting him out of the house."

Maud came to the doorway and touched Cara's shoulder lightly. "Were you able to find Phyllis and Terry?" she asked.

"Yes, Cradle of Space hotel, by the spaceport, room 623; they're fine, just very anxious about everyone else," Cara said. "You can tell Terry's okay." She nodded toward the study with a smile; the D'ubians were all there, Jared guessed, and Terry still had his guitar. "We wanted to keep the line open," Cara explained, "and Mimi thought it would be a good idea to keep Terry where we could see him. She was afraid he'd wander off. So the D'ubians got him busy playing with them. Phyllis is there watching."

"There are certainly broken fingers," said Clena, by the bed. "Willis has a leg broken in at least two places, possibly broken ribs also, fingers, arm. We are going to need a scanner and a bone sealer."

Sofi looked at the bedroom clock. "It is too early for Dr. Frank," she said. "It is not yet eight. He is not in his office. Perhaps we should take them to Emergency."

"And tell them what?" said Mimi. She was, as Chazaerte said, in her fuzzy pink slippers and her pink quilted robe. Her pocket sagged with the weight of the beam pistol. "They were attacked on Linden's World last night so we brought them home this morning? They're certainly going to believe that."

"They fell down the stairs," said Jared firmly, pointing at the phone on Cara's side of the bed; Sofi reached it and handed it over, and he scrolled for Dr. Frank's home number, which, Cara being Terry's neighbor, was downloaded into her phone.

"What are you people doing over there?" demanded Dr. Frank. "Is there some sort of war I don't know about? Gang fights? Family feuds?"

"This is Thursday, isn't it?" said Jared. "It's been a whole week since we've seen you. Look at all the business we bring you; you can retire to Saffosio and live like a king, just on the credits from our neighborhood."

"Besides, I thought Willis had them back on that farm of theirs," said Dr. Frank. "That's why I haven't seen Terry for so long. A couple of weeks, at least."

"They just got back today," said Jared. Maud passed him, with Chazaerte, conferring, holding their pendants; they had one more trip to take to Linden's World. Jared thought of going also, but the most dangerous part was done and Cara was holding on to him as if she would never let him go. He kept his arm close about her. "So if we bring Willis, can you see him right away?" he inquired, and Dr. Frank sighed.

"Yes, I suppose. Rose ought to be in the office in fifteen minutes or so. She can let you in."

Leaving the Bahtan girls to pack their two patients up, Jared went to look into the study with Cara. Terry, in front of the screen on Linden's World, was strumming his guitar happily with a semicircle of D'ubians around Jared's screen, playing flutes and their little lute-like stringed instruments. Phyllis was sitting beside Terry, and she lifted an anxious face toward Jared; he nodded to her and gave her a quick smile. They could give her the details when Maud and Chazaerte got them home, he thought.

Mimi leaned in the doorway to signal to Clyde. "Do you have those foamwood boards from the partition?" she asked. "We need stretchers." Clyde, sitting in Cara's desk chair, sprang up and ran out the back door and across the porch.

"I have to get dressed," said Cara, and Jared let her go and went on into the living room. He offered a hand to shift Willis to the improvised stretcher, but Mutai and Wundra and Clyde had that under control; in the bedroom Ollie and Clena and Evvie, slightly hampered by Al, were handling Lillian. "I will get the van," said Ollie, running through the living room to the door; a moment later Jared could see her through the front window, the van backed up to the walk. Ollie made room in the back, tossing out a coil of rope, a handful of handcuffs, what looked like leg irons. She came back in and held the door for Mutai and Wundra and Clyde with Willis on the foamwood board.

Cara, pants and buttoned shirt, her hair still loose, ran out of the bedroom and caught Gina before she got out the front door. "You're exhausted," she said. "You stay here. I'll go; I'll let you know what happens." Gina hesitated. Behind her, Ollie and Clena and Evvie and Al came out the bedroom door with Lillian balanced on the second board, a blanket loosely draped over her.

"I also am going," said Sofi, dressed, from the front porch. "You can trust us to care for Willis, Gina. Issio?" she appealed to her husband as Gina made a move toward the door, and he picked up Gina and sat down in the small armchair holding her on his lap; she watched anxiously as Lillian was carried out the front door, turned her head to look through the windows as the patients were loaded into the van, and then she subsided against him, face buried against his gray-black shoulder.

The van departed, closely followed by Cara's car. The D'ubians in the study played their music. Mimi and Clyde conferred on the porch steps. Jared, suddenly feeling tired, sat down in the big arm chair and looked at Issio and Gina, who was now very still and quiet in his arms.

"As the D'ubians said," remarked Issio. "Sofi and I shall have our child; I believe this now. But also we shall have Gina. We share her with you others."

"You'll be a good father," said Jared, smiling.

"At any rate I shall be better than hers," said Issio, glancing down at Gina. He considered for a moment. "Either of them," he clarified.

"That wouldn't take much," said Jared, and Issio nodded agreement. He relaxed in the small armchair, holding the girl who was, Jared suspected, already asleep; Jared stretched his legs and arms and looked at his bruised knuckles with rueful amusement. "A pair of academics," he remarked to Issio. "Pretending to be fighters."

"It has been many years for me," said Issio, "but we did well, I believe."

There was a stir, a break in the music, and then the guitar strummed with greater volume and the D'ubians cheered; Gina shifted and settled again when Issio put his hand over her ear. Craning his neck toward the study, Jared saw Maud's light-colored shirt and a swarm of D'ubians surrounding a blond boy with a guitar. Mimi and Clyde came in from the porch and Mimi ran in her fluffy slippers to fold Phyllis in an embrace. Jared got himself to his feet and went to hug her too; she looked tired and overstressed, tendrils of hair escaping from her long braid, shirt and pants rumpled and creased from a nightlong vigil.

Looking composed and cool, Maud came past the knot of brown robes and took Jared's arm, steering him out into the living room. "You see? They are all home safely. Do you care to apologize for your doubts about us?"

"No," said Jared. "I see no reason we should have trusted you; I'm not sure we should now."

She eyed him, amused. "You are going to hold my death against me, aren't you," she said.

"My dear Maud," said Jared, "you did use me. I am not certain why; I don't know what your objective is. But I know you did, and yes, I tend to resent that. My species –" using the word deliberately, marking the difference between himself and Maud " – is odd in that way."

"Also," murmured Issio, regarding Maud darkly, and she smiled at him.

"Splendid," she murmured. "Both of you, truly splendid. Dear Jared, you are only partly right, and you can indeed trust us, whether you believe it or not. Whatever else you think, at least you must realize that we can't intend harm to our children."

"All right," said Jared. "Convince me. I promise to listen carefully to anything you say."

"Oh, not now," said Maud. "There is too much going on; it is too early, or too late; everyone is tired and busy. Take care of your people, Jared; you and Issio. We will talk another time, I promise you."

"Always another time," said Jared. "That was what Gina said, too. What's-his-name promised to talk to her another time, and never quite managed it."

"Chazaerte," said Maud, "feels she, like Willis, is not comfortable with his relationship to them. It makes him a little reserved."

"Since he never tried to establish a relationship," said Jared, "I can see how they'd feel. And daughters abandoned in bad families have mixed feelings about the parents who left them." She shot him a look; she knew he referred to more than the McIntosh children.

"Sometimes things happen," she said, "not entirely in our control. Well. We will talk later; I promise we will; don't look so suspicious. You have things to tell me, too, you know." She reached up and touched his face quickly and he moved himself out of the way. She turned back to the study. "Chazaerte?" she said, and he looked up from Terry and the D'ubians. He had his hands in the pockets of his hooded jacket; his heavy white socks had streaks of dirt and, caught in the elastic, a small curled leaf from another world, far away.

"I'm going to the doctor's office," he said to Maud, and he took hold of his pendant and was no longer there.

"As I said," Maud remarked. "We allow no harm to come to our children. Believe me." She smiled at Jared, put her hand over her pendant and was also gone.

"Imagine," said Mimi, coming up behind Jared, "all these years I thought you needed a ship for space travel." She shook her head. "I'm going to take Phyllis to the doctor's office. She wants to see Lillian," she said, and Jared looked at the pink robe and the fluffy slippers and the silhouette of the beam pistol in her pocket.

"I'll drive her," he said. "Issio has Gina; you keep an eye on Terry."

"The D'ubians have Terry," said Mimi. "No one needs to worry about him."

"I," said Issio, "always worry about Terry."

 

Rose, phone in one hand, looked at him with real dismay. "Oh, no, Jared," she said. "You don't have any weird animals with you, do you?"

"Just Phyllis," he said, "to see Lillian." Rose sighed with relief and waved him back to the examination rooms. It wasn't hard to find the right ones; Al was leaning against the wall beside one door, still in his blue flowered shorts but without the baseball bat, talking with Mutai.

If Chazaerte was here he was invisible, which Jared would not put past him.

"It is the drug," said Mutai as Jared joined them; the door to the examination room was ajar and he could see people moving about inside and hear Dr. Frank's voice giving orders; Willis was on the table. "It is a heavy dose they were given; it depresses the respiratory system. The doctor wants them in the hospital where they can monitor, and where they have equipment to help them breathe, if they must."

Inside the room, Willis lay on the table and snored thickly in a disposable hospital gown, which gave an excellent view of the cuts and bruises his clothes had hidden. Clena and Lana were working on sealing the smaller cuts; Dr. Frank, bone sealer in hand, was studying the scanner screen. Cara and Sofi were at the back of the room, staying out of the way; Ollie and Evvie and Wundra must have been with Lillian in the other room.

Dr. Frank glanced over the screen and identified the newcomer. "Ha! Just the man I want to see!" he exclaimed. He handed the bone sealer to Clena and grabbed Jared by the arm and propelled him out into the hall. "Mutai, go and help Clena. Al, go see if Rose found hospital beds yet. Jared, into the office here." He pushed Jared into a tiny space mostly filled with a large desk, a desk chair, and two visitor's chairs which were laden, like the desk and the shelves on all walls, with readers and printouts and more readers and odd papers and more readers and assorted portable screens and cubes and chips and more readers. "Sit," he said, and slammed the door shut, sending a pile of loose pages fluttering down from the shelf nearest the door. Jared reached for the papers and caught a handful; Frank took them and tossed them into a convenient corner.

"I have a problem here," said Frank. "Willis and Lillian aren't in shape to answer questions. The Bahtan sisters and your lady and Sofi keep saying they fell down the stairs, and they won't say anything else. I know your neighborhood; I know how you all stick together. I figure I can talk to you as well as to anyone, and you've always been a sane man; you might answer me."

"Mutai says you want to put them in the hospital."

Dr. Frank nodded. "And I know this is something the whole bunch of you wants to avoid, which is why you brought them to me instead, but they need more than even the sisters can do at home. And they're good; under most circumstances I would trust them. They just don't have the equipment the hospital has. And there are going to be questions."

Jared settled for a shrug. Dr. Frank flung himself down in the desk chair, which groaned and spit three data cubes and a broken pencil onto the floor.

"Willis is in bad shape," he said. "Drugged; we're analyzing that. Broken leg, two places, broken arm, three broken ribs, three broken fingers on his right hand, two on his left, concussion. Two molars and one incisor knocked out. More bruises and abrasions than I could count. Want to know how I read this? Someone, probably several someones, wanted to keep him quiet and out of the way; they drugged him. I think that came first. They gave him a lot; they either knew he's drug-resistant or they didn't care if they killed him. He refused to be quiet and keep out of the way; he fought the drug as well as he could. So they pounded on him, and he pounded back; that's the broken fingers. Even drugged, he was highly motivated. But eventually they got him down, probably kicked him around a little – that's the ribs – and he passed out.

"Now," he continued. "Clena said, because I know the kids and I asked, that they looked at Gina and she's okay. That by itself tells me something about Willis and his motivation. I know that boy; he would kill to protect his sister and his brother. And so would Lillian, which may account for her condition. She was drugged too, massively. And she stood there flailing away with her arms and her fists. Four broken fingers. Compound fracture of her left arm, right shoulder wrenched; someone got hold of that arm and tried to pull it off, I'd say. Someone pulled out a handful of hair, someone kicked her right knee or hit her with a hammer, something like that; it's shattered. I can seal most fractures but this one may take reconstruction. It took a lot to get her down. She wasn't going to give up."

Jared tried not to wince or shudder; his hand clenched into a fist, causing the swollen knuckles to protest, and Dr. Frank glanced down and gazed thoughtfully at the bruises. "You hurt your hand," he remarked.

"I ran into a door," said Jared, looking him in the eye.

"Right," said Dr. Frank, looking back. "Jared. I've known you for years; you've been in and out of here with those children hundreds of times. I've seen you. You'd fight to the death for them too, just like Lillian and Willis. And this was," said Dr. Frank, "a hell of a fight. Wish I had seen it. And the hospital is going to have questions about it. For instance, since I gather they just came in from Linden's World, we'd like to know if it happened on the ship, or in the port. Whoever attacked them, should we call the cops here or the Defense police to get them?"

"They fell down the stairs," said Jared. "A freak accident. Lillian and Willis had trouble sleeping on the ship; they took something to help them. They're both drug-resistant, and they took a lot. It made them lose their balance. You know those stairs at the Hardesty house; hardwood, that nice little post at the top, with the knob, and the banister, and the hardwood floor down below."

"Like hell," said Dr. Frank.

"We all saw them," said Jared. "We can all swear to it. I don't see how the hospital has any choice but to accept it, if we all stick to it."

"Where's Phyllis?" asked Dr. Frank. "Where's Terry? For that matter, why isn't Gina here? I can't imagine her not wanting to come with her brother."

"Gina's tired from the trip; we wouldn't let her come. She's with Issio and Sofi. Terry is with the D'ubians. They're both fine. I brought Phyllis down to be with Lillian. She's fine, too." Dr. Frank's frustration was obvious; Jared felt sorry for him. "Look, what do you need to be satisfied?" he asked.

"The truth would be nice," said Dr. Frank.

"The truth." Jared reflected that he himself barely believed the truth; he could guarantee that no one else would. "Okay," he said, "you want the truth – the truth is that after McIntosh's funeral, his closest friends had a wake for him and it got out of hand. Willis sent Phyllis and Terry to town, and he was going to follow with Lillian and Gina but they were caught. Willis fought as long as he could stand; Gina dragged him out of the house while Lillian held off the mob, and then Gina hid in the fields and called home. So we went and got her and Willis and Lillian, and while we were at it we went to town and found Phyllis and Terry and brought them home too. Okay?"

Dr. Frank blinked once, hard. "These injuries," he said, "occurred no later than last night. Linden's World is a week away, the last I heard."

"Six days," said Jared.

"So you got them home how?"

"We have," said Jared, "very powerful friends. Very fast ones."

Dr. Frank gazed at him, looked down at his knuckles, looked back up at him. "And to tell the truth, the injuries support your story," he said.

"Or else," said Jared, "Willis and Lillian were disoriented and fell down the stairs. Take your choice."

"Shit," said Dr. Frank.

"What I can tell you is that if there are any bad guys in the story – and I'm not saying there are – they're far away; they're not going to bother anyone on Haivran; they're not going to attack Willis or Gina or Terry or Lillian or anyone else."

"Did you bury the bodies?" inquired Dr. Frank, glancing at Jared's hand again. Jared judged from his expression that he was only half joking.

"No bodies," said Jared. "A few bruises. Probably some headaches. Issio has a heavy fist."

Dr. Frank meditated. "Shit," he said again. "Well. You say everyone witnessed these terrible falls on the stairs. You'd better make sure to tell them what they saw, so the stories match. And in case Willis and Lillian wake up talkative, they need someone to tell them, too." He sighed, profoundly, and opened a desk drawer and began to rummage through it. "Issio okay?" he inquired, and Jared nodded. He extracted a tube of something and tossed it to Jared. "For those knuckles. Topical; healing accelerator; three times a day. Use plenty. Your whole damned neighborhood is drug-resistant. Must be something in the air. I should write a paper."

"Thanks, Frank," said Jared, meaning it, and Dr. Frank sighed again and nodded.

"I must be out of my head," he said. "What a day. And it isn't even ten in the morning yet."