Chapter 56

 

Jared

 

 

It was fully dark out by now, a lovely summer night with a sky full of stars and neither moon visible yet; Sofi and Issio walked back to their own house, and Cara and Jared gathered up scattered glasses and cups and turned on the insect repellers and opened windows; it was still warm, but it looked like it might cool down before morning, and the air felt good.

The doorbell chimed imperatively twice, and Cara, the closest to the door, opened it when their caller didn't.

"We have Terry," announced Dural on the front porch. "We share him with you others. But we have Terry."

"Of course you do; we all know that," said Cara, and she stood aside and ushered five small brown-robed persons into the living room.

"We have Terry," said Dural again, looking from Cara to Jared. "We hear Willis has concerns. We think the farm is not good. No place is good but this, here." He pointed to the ground under his feet. "We have Terry. We have no progeny; we have Terry. We have credits for progeny. We spend on Terry, and he stays here."

"Terry is progeny," said Durakal, and all five of them nodded.

"I guess he is," agreed Jared, and they nodded again. "You want me to try and explain this to Willis?" he asked.

"Willis does not understand, maybe," said Duran, "except from Earthian."

Jared considered it; he thought that it was a shame if Willis was unable to understand what the D'ubians felt for Terry, or for that matter what Sofi and Issio felt for Gina; it occurred to him that it wouldn't even hurt Willis to face Chazaerte and try, as the rest of them did, to understand what his heritage was from that side. Jared had been willing enough to act as interpreter, but perhaps it wasn't a role he should take. Perhaps they really shouldn't have a go-between.

"Are they asleep up there?" he asked, going to the window to see if there were any lights in the Hardesty house; Lillian's light was on, he saw, and there was a light in the dining room area downstairs. Cara met his eyes and then she reached for her phone and scrolled for a number.

"Did I wake you up, Lillian?" she asked. "Do you know if Willis is awake yet? He is? Is Phyllis downstairs? Could you call down and ask her to let in some visitors? Well, yes, it's late but it's kind of important; they want to see Willis." She listened. "That's Al downstairs," she told the company in the living room, "and he'll let you in the back door so the trumpets won't play and wake up Phyllis; you're going?" she asked Jared.

"Yes," said Dural firmly, getting a grip on the side of Jared's gray T-shirt.

"You also," said Duroh, taking Cara's hand in both of hers.

"No matter what," said Jared, "Willis isn't going to kill you, you know. You don't need bodyguards."

"We wish Willis understands," said Duran. "We wish to be sure."

Willis was lying in bed not paying any particular attention to the vid and its virtual figures wandering through his room, or to his brother or his sister, sitting on the end of his bed. He looked with surprise at the party being ushered into his bedroom at nearly eleven at night. Cara nodded at Jared and drew Gina and Terry away down the hall, and Jared stayed with the D'ubians, shutting the door to Willis' room and taking up a position beside it, looking, he supposed, as if he intended to prevent possible escapes.

"Willis," he said by way of introduction, "our D'ubians have something to say to you."

"Oh," said Willis. "Oh. Okay." He lifted the remote and turned off the vid, and Jared gestured at Dural and the other four D'ubians nudged their spokesperson forward. With the rest of the neighborhood, they were now quite freely speaking for themselves, but they were still not comfortable enough with Willis.

Past time they got comfortable, Jared thought, and folded his arms and waited until Dural found the right words.

 

Jared only intervened once, to clarify which D'ubian was which; he was proud, himself, to know the names for each individual in the group, not at all common with non-D'ubians, and he wanted to be sure Willis knew how special it was; he seemed to, and he made an effort to speak to each one. Jared was pleased with that. Of all the neighborhood, Willis had paid the least attention to the D'ubians; it was good to see him paying attention now.

He was very comfortable with Issio and Sofi, so when they arrived Jared let them in and retired into the hall himself. Despite their attempts to be quiet, there had been enough noise to rouse Phyllis and she was at the end of the hall listening to Cara, and so was Al, perhaps as a surrogate for Lillian. Spotting Jared, he waved him over.

"So the D'ubians have Terry," he said, "and Issio and Sofi have Gina. And I guess we all knew that. But do you know that Mimi and Clyde and Lillian and I have Willis? I bet you didn't think of that."

"No, I guess I didn't," said Jared, realizing that it was, in fact, true. The special bond Willis had formed in Haivran was to that group, who had taught him how to shoot a beam pistol and showed him how to modify his first car, and helped him study for his entrance exams to the Academy.

"So I'm going to talk to him too," said Al, looking dignified in red-striped pajama bottoms and a much-washed undershirt, and he strode down the hall and opened the bedroom door and joined the conference within.

Cara touched his arm. "Terry took his guitar out on the porch, but Gina is sitting on the stairs," she said. "I think someone ought to go talk to her." She took Phyllis' arm and went on into Lillian's room, to bring her up to date, and Jared briefly considered whether Sofi and Issio might not be the proper persons, but they were with Willis.

He sat beside Gina, who was about halfway down the stairs, leaning against the banister and looking down at the darkened living room. "This is home for us," she said, starting right in the middle, knowing that he could catch up with her. "For five years. That's a long time for Terry and me. It's half his life. But Willis is right. We aren't really your children."

"That's not true," he said. "You are our children. You're my little sister; you know that."

She looked at him and he felt her mind; she had always been the most open of all his people, the easiest to read, and the years and the training from Sofi and Issio had made it easier. And she could read him easily too; he had begun to take it for granted.

Anyway it saved time and the effort to put words around the truth; he let her explore his mind, and what she found there let her relax; when Cara joined them quietly a little later, Gina was resting against his shoulder and he had an arm around her, which left him an arm and a shoulder for his new wife. The three of them sat together, in a warm silence.

"One more thing," said Cara, finally, "a piece of news; I had this from Lillian. Guess who has arranged with Al to see his house tomorrow, since he's going to put it on the market? He feels really bad; it's a mess, he says, he hasn't done anything there since Lillian got home. And it's a little place, just one bedroom, but he's going to show it anyway. Guess who!"

"Not someone like Maud, I trust," said Jared, thinking of the chaos that would create.

"Thank heavens, no, not at all. He's going to show it to Ann," said Cara, and Gina lifted her head and looked around Jared.

"Really? She might live right here in the neighborhood?"

"She actually has a down payment," said Cara. "She hasn't spent it all on earrings and wedding bells that play music. And Al is really anxious to get rid of the place; he says he'd keep the price down."

"What can I say?" said Jared, comfortable between two of his favorite people. "Oh, wow!"

"I love this neighborhood!" Cara and Gina sang out, in chorus.

 

Cara was on the front porch in the afternoon sunshine, surrounded by readers and noters; Jared pulled into his driveway and she looked up with a smile. "You're early!" she called to him as he got out of the car.

"They threw me out," he said. "Ott said I should go get a nap; she said newlyweds never get enough sleep. And," he added, "she snickered."

"If she knew what's been keeping us up," said Cara, "she'd be so disappointed." She moved two readers out of the way and he sat down beside her. "Just ideas for that article," she said, showing him her noter. "I thought while everything was quiet – Terry and Gina went with Issio and Sofi to that big used media sale at the mall. Everyone across the street is working. Well, Ollie's in class. Ann went to the bank. About financing for the house."

"Have you heard anything about Mimi and Clyde?"

"I went up to the hospital with Sofi and Gina this morning. Clyde's doing really well. He's in a chair; they might let him out tomorrow. Mimi – she still isn't making much sense." They looked at each other painfully.

"Do they know anything?"

She shook her head. "Maybe a little stroke, but they're not sure."

"I want to run up there tonight."

"I'll come too. Their house looks so empty."

"It looks wrong," he said, glancing across the lawn at the unused cars parked in Clyde's driveway, and the vacant front porch.

An angry voice rose somewhere in the vicinity of the Hardesty house. There was a moment of silence, and then the voice again, a little louder; it sounded, he thought, like Willis, but who was he talking to? He had been quiet and depressed; then he had been quiet and thoughtful. He had not been angry, at least not obviously.

Now there was a thump, and a yell, not from Willis, he thought, and Lillian's voice, loud and indignant, calling for Al, and there was more thumping, and then the trumpet fanfare as the front door was flung open. Out came Al, dragging along a struggling sputtering man, a thin blond man looking very undignified indeed.

"There!" Al said, and flung the blond man across the porch and down the steps, where he landed in the dust beside the front walk. Struggling to his feet, shaking dust from pale tan pants, blue shirt buttoned to the throat despite the hot day, he started for the steps again and Al drew himself up and folded his arms and glared at him.

Gina's former bedroom window banged all the way open. "Scram!" shouted Willis, leaning out as far as he could with the insect repeller sparking and bending around him. "We've got along just fine without you! Get the hell out of here! We don't need you!"

"You're my son!" said the pale man, straightening his sleeves, a thin cloud of dust arising from them. "I have a right –"

"Bet me!" yelled Willis, and he slammed the window shut.

"Your brother! Your sister!" cried Chazaerte, and yanked at his shirt collar and stormed up the porch steps to be met by Al, unmoving, at the top.

"The man said you should leave," said Al, and Chazaerte hesitated.

"You have to be reasonable," he said, and Al, apparently disagreeing, glowered at him and took a menacing step toward him. "Your sister!" Chazaerte yelled at the door, and Al took another step. "My children," he said to Al, and Al, unimpressed, took a handful of blue shirt and shoved, and Chazaerte went flying off the porch steps back into the dirt.

"You don't understand!" he exclaimed, sprawled in the dirt.

"No," said Al, "I don't. I never had any children, myself. Wanted them, but it didn't happen. If I had them, I damned sure wouldn't leave them for a pair of drunken drug-addled degenerates to bring up, and then come back when they're grown and say, hey, you're my kids, let's all be friends."

"Look," said Chazaerte, sitting up with a little care, as if things hurt; so they could be hurt, Jared thought, bruised, maybe, cut, shot, whatever. "You don't – it isn't like that, and right now, when they need –"

"Not from you, you slimy white slug!" yelled Lillian from Gina's window. "They don't need anything from you! They have real people; they have us!"

"They're my children!" protested Chazaerte, starting to lever himself up on the porch rail, and Ann's car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street and Ann, conservative in tailored pants and shirt, her going-to-the-loan-officers outfit, came scrambling out screaming, "Charles! Charles!"

Chazaerte cast a panicked look over his shoulder and scrabbled to his feet, with dust flying in a cloud around him, and Ann abandoned her car, door hanging open, and ran up the street toward him as fast as she could go in high heels. "What are you doing to him? What are you doing to Charles?" she demanded.

"Good god," said Al blankly. "This is Charles? Charles No-Last-Name?"

"I got home just in time," Jared told Cara.

"I should –" she started to get up, and he caught her hand and pulled her back down on the step.

"They have to work it out for themselves," he said, which was true and a good excuse not to interrupt the entertainment.

"What are you doing here!" said Ann to Charles No-Last-Name, and Chazaerte looked from her to Al and back to her, cornered between them; Al, folding his arms again, chuckled. He, like Jared, seemed to be appreciating the situation.

"You could always do that thing you do with the pendant," he advised Chazaerte, pointing to the pendant around his neck. Above them, Lillian and Willis were both at Gina's window, leaning out; someone had turned off the insect repeller.

"Yes, good time to vanish, don't you think?" Lillian called down helpfully, and Chazaerte closed his eyes and shuddered. Cara got up, pulling Jared behind her, and headed down the street. "I'm sorry," she said to Ann, who was clutching Chazaerte's arm, looking desperately confused. "This is Gina's father. I didn't know he was your Charles."

"Gina's –" Ann let go of his arm so abruptly that he staggered backward and grabbed at the porch rail to keep from falling in the dirt a third time. The look she turned upon him was nearly as lethal as a laser ray. "You're Gina and Terry's father?" she said. "You're that – useless no-good creature who goes zapping around seducing – oh, my god!" she exclaimed, and backed abruptly away, running into Jared, who steadied her and steered her gently toward Cara. She pulled away. "You slimy worm!" she shouted at Chazaerte, who put out his free hand toward her; she slapped it away indignantly. "Don't you touch me!" she said, and he backed up, rubbing his hand, and bumped against the porch rail and gave a little yip of pain.

"All right," said Maud, striding into the group from behind Cara. "That's enough of this foolishness. Can't you do anything right?" she demanded of Chazaerte, who looked, Jared thought, as if he might cry. "Come on," she said, getting a grip on his nearest available wrist, and she closed her free hand around her pendant, nodded at the assembled company, and said, "Excuse us," and they were both gone.

Ann, clutching at Cara, burst violently into tears.

 

They got her into the Hardesty house, where Phyllis, who had been watching through the front door, poured a slug of good imported whiskey into a cup of coffee before she offered it to Ann. Lillian and Willis, balancing uncomfortably on their crutches at the head of the stairs, urged the party to come up, and Ann, still sobbing, ran up the stairs to be enfolded in Lillian's ample arm, the healthy one. Phyllis and Al and Jared and Cara, carrying Ann's doctored coffee cup, followed.

It was funny and horrible, Jared thought, watching as Cara coaxed Ann to drink her coffee, Lillian and Phyllis on either side of her. Willis, looking much more like himself than he had looked since Linden's World, paced about the room as well as he could on crutches, cursing at Chazaerte and commiserating with Ann. Cara passed tissues; Ann described, in disjointed sentences, the declarations and promises Charles/Chazaerte had made to her. Al sat down on the hassock in the very farthest back corner of the bedroom, removing himself as far as possible from the emotional upheaval, and Jared, leaning against the door frame, didn't laugh.

After awhile the trumpet fanfare could be heard from the front door and Gina, followed by Sofi and Issio, came running up the stairs and into Lillian's room, where she looked at Ann and got the story then and there. "Oh, no," said Gina, and embraced Ann, and Cara handed her the tissues and came to Jared at the doorway; he put his arms around her and shared a speaking look with Sofi and Issio.

"A consulting firm!" exclaimed Ann and burst into a fresh volley of tears, and Phyllis reached for a new box of tissues and Jared backed out into the hall, bringing Cara with him.

"I think Phyllis and Lillian can handle it," he said to her as Sofi and Issio followed.

"Her Charles," said Sofi, marveling, "was our Chazaerte. Imagine!"

"Now we know," said Jared, "where he was trying to button his shirt the morning we went after Gina and Willis. He said he was in a situation; that was why he was slow in arriving."

"Ann said Charles got up and dressed and left very suddenly," Cara remembered.

"Thirteen demons!" exclaimed Sofi. "What is it that he does? He wanders about seducing likely Earthian females? What is his purpose in this?"

"Well," said Jared, grinning.

"Apart from that," said Sofi. "Did he plan to impregnate our Ann, also? As he did Gina's mother?"

"You don't think!" said Cara, appalled; Ann avoided babies as she would avoid the D'ubian It.

"Perhaps," said Sofi, "we should encourage her to be tested. In case. Issio is correct. We know very little of their purposes, but breeding –"

"Seems to be on their agenda," agreed Jared, serious now.

"I'll suggest it," said Cara, and a phone began to chime somewhere in the hall; she and Jared and Sofi and Issio all checked their pockets and Issio clicked his phone on.

"Yes, Evvie," he said, and listened and looked at Jared. "Yes, I will come, close the door," he said. "Let no one inside. I will bring Jared. Immediately." He clicked off the phone, stowed it in his pocket. "Evvie is at the hospital," he said. "She says the fly is in Mimi's room. We need a butterfly net."

"Gina's," said Sofi, darting into Gina's room to find it. When Issio tried to take it from her she held on to it grimly. "Say it!" she said to him. "By all the demons, say it! Stress! And I shall rip your ears off!"

"Ann needs–" said Issio hopefully.

"And your tail!" snarled Sofi.

And Cara wasn't about to be left behind either; Jared reached for her hand. "Our bloodthirsty women," he said to Issio, "aren't going to stay behind. Come on. We can take my car."

"My car is already in the street. I left it behind Ann's car," said Issio, heading for the stairs.

"Should we tell them?" asked Cara, looking back at Lillian's door, and Sofi, with the butterfly net, shook her head.

"I have told Gina, also Jared has," she said, and Cara took a moment to think and then nodded. This was, Jared thought, the first time they had acknowledged, in words, what was going on among them, and Cara's awareness of it. She seemed undisturbed. She seemed to take it as calmly as if Sofi had explained that they had called Gina on her phone.

They hurried out past the trumpet fanfare; one of them had shut Ann's car door, but the car itself was still blocking the street, Issio's car behind it, and the D'ubian car, much dented and scraped, behind Issio's. Issio muttered a Zamuaon curse, but five brown-robed persons and one blond boy were already scrambling into the car; Durakal, in the driver's seat, started it up and Duran, the last to get in, waved wildly at Issio. He had three butterfly nets in each hand.

"We go to the hospital!" he shouted, and dived into the car and slammed the door and it took off, straight up.

"What do they do at the hospital?" said Sofi. "Do they know? How do they know?"

"We'll find out," said Jared, opening Issio's car door and ushering her into the passenger seat. Overhead the D'ubian car swept over the trees and the rooftops, and Cara got into the back seat with Jared; Issio, muttering, pushed the button and lifted up right over the treetops himself, following.