Chapter 59

 

Jared

 

 

"I can explain, sir," said Patterson.

"I wish you would," said Jared, letting his arm go.

"It's – she's got the power tools, sir," said Patterson in a piteous voice.

Jared turned his back and went to the window, looking out on a pleasant curve of the park; there was a nice sweep of grass, and flower beds, and meandering paths lit by the gentle glow of the night lights. No one was visible. No watchmen walked the paths; no security robot rumbled past on its rounds, no not-yet-ex-Mrs. Patterson lurked in the underbrush with a power tool. After a few minutes Jared managed to get the corners of his mouth under control, and most of the laughter stifled.

He turned back. Cara and Gina were looking at the visible glyphs with great absorption. Maud was sitting at the head of the table, looking at Patterson with the expression of one observing an interesting form of insect life. Patterson, who was crouched in the chair at the foot of the table, hunched into his sweatshirt, was looking at nothing.

"So you're sleeping under the conference table," Jared said, and Patterson ducked his head.

"She knows where my sister lives," he said. "Sir."

"I'm sure she does," said Jared. "Should I ask why you're sleeping under the table and not in your office?"

"My office is kind of full," said Patterson, keeping his head down.

"Of what?"

Patterson drew a deep breath. "Well, there's the table," he said, "and the buffet, and the bed frame is kind of big, even when there's only half of it, and, well, all the pipes."

"Pipes?" said Cara.

"From the bathroom," explained Patterson. "It's really hard to saw a bathtub in half."

Jared got his back turned again just in time, putting his hand firmly over his mouth; Cara, behind him, gurgled once and came hastily to join him at the window. He didn't dare look at her. "Promise me," he said to her, as soon as he thought his voice might be steady enough, "that we won't end up sawing a bathtub in half."

"If we do," said Cara, "I get to have the power tools."

"I see you divided the mattress too," said Maud, and Jared risked a glance over his shoulder; she was looking under the table, poking at something. Gina crouched down and pulled out a blanket, slashed in half with scissors or possibly a dull butcher knife.

"Oh," Gina said, reaching again, and brought out half of a pillow, fortunately not a down pillow; the raw edge of foam looked odd, however, wrapped in half of a pillowcase.

"Patterson," said Jared, "you are an inspiration. See what a fine example you are setting for the younger generation. Now Gina will know what to do if she wants to end a marriage one of these days."

Gina lifted another object into the lights, looked at it, gave a little gasp of laughter, and Patterson grabbed it and crushed it to his chest. "See what that monster is capable of doing," he said.

"Your wife cut your teddy bear in half?" said Gina with sweet innocence, and Patterson glared at her and hugged the half a bear tightly to him, and Jared lost it entirely. It had been an odd day and a long strange night, not to mention an odd and long and strange week, with much too little sleep. He collapsed on top of the storage unit, laughing until tears came to his eyes; even when Cara pounded on his shoulders and demanded he stop before she started too, he couldn't stop, and when she collapsed laughing into his lap he could do nothing but put his arms around her and keep on laughing.

"It's not funny," protested Patterson, hugging the teddy bear.

"Young man," said Maud, "I suggest you take your half a mattress and your half a blanket and your half a pillow and your half a stuffed whatever and go find another place to sleep."

"I'd be very happy to do that, ma'am, but I can't find another place," said Patterson, sounding alarmed. "If I go out of this building, she's going to get me. You know she's going to get me. You can't do that to me! Anyone could tell –"

"She can't," said Gina, "cut you in half. Can she?"

"'If she can do this," said Patterson, shaking the half a teddy bear, "she is capable of doing anything!"

"Stop that laughing, you two," said Maud crossly. "What are we going to do with this ridiculous person? He can't stay here, but if we throw him out, he wants us to believe we will be party to his murder."

"Power tools!" wailed Cara and collapsed against Jared's shoulder in a fresh spasm of laughter.

"Let him stay," said Jared, wiping his eyes. "He can run the screens for us. And if you say one word about this to anyone," he continued, shaking a finger at Patterson, "I will tell everyone at the Institute about your teddy bear; you hear me?"

"Sure, boss," said Patterson, brightening at the prospect of not being thrown out into the clutches of an irate woman armed with power tools. "I'd be glad to run the screens. Do you want me to unchain the box with the lenses?"

"Only if you put that silly-looking thing down," said Maud, eyeing the bear.

With Patterson at the screens, the images came up as clearly as if they stood on the surface of Or2 looking at the real arches; he could handle the projector too, although not as well as Weston, and he made the fine adjustments that clarified the glyphs on the inside of the arches. Jared got up on the table top and reached down to hand his companions up, Cara with the box of lenses, and Gina, and finally Maud, who was still frowning at Patterson.

"He's probably the best in the business at image enhancement," Jared told her, "and he has a secondary degree in anthropology, which is very helpful in this project; he's extremely good at what he does. We couldn't manage without him." Patterson sat up a little straighter and lifted his head; the effect was somewhat diminished by the half a teddy bear in his lap. "He really stinks at managing his personal life, but he's outstanding at his job."

"Where do you find these people, Jared?" said Maud.

"I attract them," said Jared, grinning. "Like a magnet."

Cara opened the box; they had managed to corner three lenses Friday afternoon, but the box now contained five, Jared saw. "Weston and I sneaked into the lab after work," Patterson said, "when they were fixing dinner. We got two more lenses before they saw us."

"They were fixing dinner in the lab?" said Gina.

"Roasting wieners," said Patterson, "over the burners."

Jared thought if he seriously contemplated that image, he would start laughing again; he concentrated on passing out the lenses instead. "What we're looking at," he told them, "is the inside of the arches, the glyphs that we missed the first few years. Look up right at the center of the arch," he told Maud, as she adjusted her lens.

"To see what?" she said, lifting her head and the lens.

"Oh!" said Gina, and she jerked back from the lens and looked without it and then lifted the lens again. "Oh!"

This was the third arch, so there were Celtic knots imprinted just about eye-level with Cara; Jared pointed this out to Gina, and Cara crouched to see the screen by Patterson's right elbow, where the center of the arch above Maud was coming up; he flipped a switch and brought the image into stark relief.

Maud looked through the lens silently, not moving.

"So," said Jared. "Maud, my dear. What do you think?"

"I see why you insisted on bringing me here," said Maud. She turned to her right, sweeping the lenses down the right leg of the arch, pausing to study the knot imprinted on that side as Gina studied the left leg. "Interesting," she said.

"Oh, very," agreed Jared, and she lowered the lens and looked at him.

"And you expect from me – what?" she said, and she turned her eyes to Patterson, who was making another adjustment and peeking at her over the top of the screen; he had no idea what was going on, of course, but despite what recent events suggested, he wasn't all that dumb.

"We're holding his half a bear hostage," said Jared, feeling reckless. "Consider yourself free to say anything."

"I won't speak a word outside this room," said Patterson, hanging on to his bear.

"Very well," said Maud, looking highly entertained. "In that case, my dear old friend, I will tell you that you are operating under a faulty assumption."

"Which is?"

"You think that we know something about these arches."

"They certainly have symbols you know something about." He pointed at the nearest Celtic knot. Gina had taken her pendant off and was comparing it with the symbol, line for line.

"Yes, indeed, and some of the glyphs here on the face of the arch – I can't translate them myself, never did learn the old language, I'm afraid, but I might be able to find someone to help you there. An old friend of yours," she said. "Carter has always been interested in ancient history." She regarded the arches. "It might be worthwhile to bring him in on this," she said.

"Carter," said Jared. He thought of the bushy-haired man standing outside the lift in the hospital; he thought of Carter as he had seen him last, fussily arranging his luggage into a taxi in front of Maud's apartment house, patting his pockets to be sure he had everything he needed, stewing about his shipboard reservations. And yet, he had sent greetings through Chazaerte; unimaginable as it was, Carter was part of this strangeness. "All right," he said, "Carter. But what can you tell us? For instance, what does this symbol mean? These medallions? That damned fly suggested that it is possible for us to use them, if we knew how."

Patterson blinked at him; he smiled blandly back. Patterson lowered his head to the nearest screen.

"She did?" said Maud.

"Under a certain amount of duress," said Jared. "She pointed out that we have these things around our necks and don't know what to do with them. Which, of course, tells me that it would be possible to do something if we did know. And then there is the matter of this symbol, appearing on the pendants, and also on the arches here."

"Duress?" said Maud, amused. "You see, girl, he really is a bully."

"Maud," said Jared firmly, and she laughed.

"Yes, yes, full disclosure. Which I myself never agreed to, you know."

"No doubt I can find some way to threaten you," said Jared, "having become a bully."

"You're all witnesses," said Maud, appealing to her audience; she pointed a finger at Patterson, who looked at the long, well-shaped, polished fingernail in some alarm; this made her laugh again. "Oh, this is wonderful," she said. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world. You don't know, you people, what you have and what we don't. Very well, Jared; as best I understand it the symbol is, well, a sort of signature, from our very earliest days in this universe. It identifies us, and our people down here." Jared put his hand on his pendant and raised both eyebrows. "And those involved with us," she said. "And your favorite fly is correct; you could use the travelers if you could control them properly, which would take a great deal of training. This fly speaks Alliance languages," she explained to Patterson, "especially the Alliance expletives and they managed to trap her in a specimen jar until the stoad from Linden's World broke the jar and let her loose. He, incidentally, speaks only Bahtan and Earthian and Trade, but he knows a great many vulgarities in those tongues. The D'ubian creature, however, the one who bit Jared, is nearly as fluent as the fly."

"Oh," said Patterson, hanging on to his teddy bear.

"And what these are, I suppose, the Or2 arches,"she pointed to the projections rearing over the table,"would be the portals. I give you this information without your asking, as I hope you notice. But unfortunately, I don't know very much more than you do about these portals. They aren't ours," she said, smiling at Jared. "They don't belong to the enemies, either. The fly and the stoad and the nuntulpo and their friends. I don't actually know who built them. I can only guess, just as you do."

"They aren't yours," said Jared.

"No, they aren't."

"So whose are they?"

Maud shrugged. "Carter might have an idea. I'm afraid I never took a real interest in history."

"But," said Jared, guessing, "you came through them. When you came into this universe."

"Our ancestors did," said Maud. "I did not, personally, have anything to do with them. I am not quite that old," she told Gina, who blinked and smiled.

"All right, then," said Jared. "The arches were there, and your ancestors came through them. And these are the arches which were under study,"if you could call what Dr. Fuck-em Lindstrom was doing 'study', "at the time of the, well, accidents on Or2."

"In which my, uh, Dr. Lindstrom had her stroke," said Cara, "if that's what it was."

"So that these arches could also have something to do with the Its," said Jared, "if you are suggesting that Dr. Lindstrom was somehow – affected by one. We know the Its know something about the pendants, which gives us one connection, and this – "

"Carter thinks it likely," said Maud. "I am beginning to think so myself. The Its appeared just about five years ago, as well as we can tell. We didn't notice them at first, but looking back, we suspect that was when – "

"She blew up an arch," said Patterson. "That one, she tried to blow it up." He pointed toward the fourth arch, rising out of his chair to do so. Maud turned her lenses on the nearest leg of this arch and frowned at it; Cara swept hers over the outside.

"You can't tell," she said.

"Well, it didn't work; it didn't blow up," said Patterson. "But that was five years ago."

"Perhaps," said Maud, "she managed to open it."

"They were closed," said Jared, trying to pin down all of this information.

"Our ancestors passed through them," said Maud, "and the portals closed behind them. Tradition says that they locked, making it impossible to return." She looked around at Patterson. "Isn't this instructive?" she said to his gaping mouth.

"Ma'am," he said. "I guess you didn't come from, uh, around here?"

"Actually I, myself, did," said Maud. "The general neighborhood, so to speak. My ancestors did not, however."

This raised many interesting questions, but Jared tried to focus on the main topic, not diverting onto intriguing side paths. "Your people came into our universe," he said, "and someone locked those arches to keep you here. Doors tend to open both ways, don't they?"

"A door could be locked on one side, and only the people on that side have the key," said Patterson helpfully. Jared looked down at him and he bent his head to the screen again. "Sir," he said meekly.

"Bully," murmured Cara, and Jared didn't dare look at her; just the tone of her voice told him he would start laughing again if he did.

"A crude explanation," said Maud, "but I think essentially correct. Those are the doorways; the doors are locked from the other side and we do not have the keys. Or they were locked, until Dr. Margo Lindstrom exercised her vocabulary and her armaments."

"She blew the doors open," said Jared. "And an It came through and attached itself to her – "

"And we thought it was a stroke," said Cara.

"Maybe there was a stroke too," said Jared. "But the Its – " he considered it. "And if they came from where your people came from, Maud, is it possible that they are related to your people?"

"If so, only very remotely," said Maud, "But we know they don't handle this dimension much better than our ancestors did; they have sought out vehicles, physical bodies native to this plane, which our ancestors did not."

"Because they were the good guys?" said Gina, standing under the fourth arch.

"Because they didn't think of it," said Maud. "Most likely."

"Vehicles," said Cara, "like the fly?"

"Initially Dr. Margo Lindstrom," said Maud. "For at least one of them. At her death, the fly, of course."

"Dad," said Gina, "the one Terry says is our not-real dad." Maud shrugged.

"Apparently. I don't know how he would have been chosen," she said. "Dr. Lindstrom was actually on Or2 when the portal was opened. That McIntosh fool was not."

"Neither was the D'ubian progenitor," said Cara. "My – Dr. Lindstrom didn't like D'ubians much; she didn't like to work with them."

"So this is a mystery," said Maud. "They do not travel as we do. They don't seem to have the same technology."

"Going outside space," said Jared, remembering what she had said.

"Yes, I suppose you could say another plane. They don't seem to do that. At least none of us have seen them in our places. So they are apparently confined to this material plane. They could have gotten onto one of the research ships, of course, in the area. They could have spread through the Alliance that way."

"So these enemy persons sort of like take over, possess people and flies and things?" said Patterson, groping. "What for?" He shot a quick apprehensive look at Jared and clutched at his bear, but he clearly couldn't restrain his curiosity.

"As far as we can see," said Maud, "the ones we know of, anyway, are after our children."

"That is to say," said Jared, "Cara and Sofi, and Gina and Willis and Terry?"

"Yes. And the Hardesty girls, and the Bahtan sisters, Al, the Dokkers."

"Everyone?" said Cara, startled.

"All related, however slightly, to our people." Gina wanted to speak, and then changed her mind; Jared couldn't feel what she was thinking, but it was a question about this surprising bit of information. She was hoping Maud would answer without being asked. "We believed initially that they wanted to find a way to get at our children," said Maud. "They don't seem to have any clear idea how to do this, but the threat is certainly apparent. I know Dr. Lindstrom tried to kill you," she said to Cara, and Patterson gave a little gasp. "And look at Mimi and Clyde. They have some mental power. As we do, as Gina does, and you, Jared, so it seems, although from a different source."

"The fly," said Jared, "attacked Cara and me when we first met." Which reminded him of Chazaerte, leaning against the building on the corner behind Dr. Frank's office, watching as he carried Cara in through the back door. "Do you," he said, "know anything about this?"

"Only in general, that Cara was injured and you took her to the doctor. Which alerted Chazaerte," she told Cara, "as Jared has no doubt told you."

"You were watching?" said Cara, looking as horrified as Jared felt. Being observed in so intimate a moment by anyone, let alone his deceased lover, was not a good thought, and it made him wonder what else she might be watching.

"No, no," said Maud. "Only from the outside, I promise you; we saw Jared carry you out of the house. We did have an eye on Clyde's basement, with two of the creatures kept down there, but we were not watching him and Mimi upstairs."

Jared thought she was telling the truth, more or less; those were the signals he was picking up, anyway, from someone whose tones and body language he was accustomed to reading even if he couldn't touch her mind. He nodded to Cara, who looked relieved. But that left other concerns, just as unpalatable. "You think they threaten Cara? Gina?"

"It seems so," said Maud.

Jared felt Gina, just a touch of alarm; she was thinking of Terry, and of Willis. He was thinking of her, too. "No, we'll deal with it," he told her. "Don't worry about it."

"Yes, we'll handle it," said Maud. "Among us, we will."

"But Mother," said Cara, and Patterson made a startled little sound that caused them all to focus on him for a moment.

"You said 'Mother'," he explained.

"You have a problem with that?" inquired Jared, enjoying his status as bully, and Patterson gulped.

"No, sir, but I thought –" he looked from Cara to Maud and back again and then ducked his head and began to fiddle with the screen again.

"Aren't you glad," said Cara, "that you picked tonight to sleep under the table?"

"It beats running into my wife," said Patterson. He looked up warily at Maud. "Actually it's kind of interesting. I never met someone out of the Alliance before."

"You might very well have, young man," said Maud, "and never knew it. I myself have passed quite successfully as an Earthian; so have Lalia and Carter. And Chazaerte, apparently, convinced Ann he was an ordinary businessman."

"Mother," said Cara, apparently deciding to treat Patterson as one of the family, "any handsome young man who paid attention to her would convince her."

"Well, with her heritage," said Maud, "she ought to be a little more careful."

There was a brief pause. "Her heritage?" said Jared carefully.

"You didn't realize?" said Maud. "She doesn't seem to have a pendant, that's true. That horrible aunt must have thrown it away, or lost it, or taken it for one of her own brats. I know her mother left her one."

"Her mother?" said Cara. "You mean – her real mother – ?"

"Yes," said Maud. "Her mother was one of our people. I see you didn't know."

"Creative hair dye," said Jared to Cara, and she nodded.

"Yes, and the eye color. But who is her mother? Is she around somewhere? Do you know her? It isn't – "

"Yes, I know her mother," said Maud, looking as if she regretted opening the subject. "She isn't where – she isn't available. No, it's not Lalia, and you must know it isn't me."

"She has wanted her mother all of her life," said Cara. "She has. Oh, lord, I have to tell her about this. She'll want – I have to tell her."

"I'll tell her," said Maud. "There isn't much I can say, but I'll tell her."

"Is that," said Gina, "why she loves the neighborhood?"

"Because she's one of us," said Cara. "Of course it is. We've all been drawn there, haven't we. We're all connected."

"But not Jared and Issio," said Gina, at last coming out with her own question. "You didn't say anything about them. They're not the same as the rest of us, are they. That was the other thing I was going to ask. Dr. Maarchesin said – about Jared and Issio – the old ones. The strong ones. She seemed to feel you were different somehow," she said to Jared.

"She did?" said Jared, startled. The old ones, the strong ones; he had not picked that up from Lalia, and he had no idea what it meant.

"I told you. You're very powerful," said Maud. "Powerful enough to conceal it from all of us for years. You come from a slightly different genetic line, both you and your friend, and you will become more powerful as you learn to use it. That's your heritage. That's Issio's heritage. Your children will be extraordinary." She beamed at Cara, who blushed again, and Jared decided it was time to change the subject. He ought to pursue the matter of the "slightly different genetic line," but looking back at his own genetic line, he felt a little reluctance. None of them had had Ears, at least none he knew. And Issio's line was lost altogether; Issio said that was probably just as well. Jared climbed off the side of the table and reached to lift Cara down, and then reached again for Maud; Gina slid down by herself in the easy way of youth.

"What time is it?" Maud inquired, and Patterson looked up at the clock on the wall.

"It's nearly five-thirty," he said. "It must be light outside. We should lighten the windows."

"We should get home," said Jared, reluctant to stop now; the flow of information was much too interesting, and who knew when they would find Maud so talkative again? But even Gina looked tired now, and they still had to sort out Ann's problems; he had promised to get her to the police station, hadn't he, at some point in the day? And Clyde might be released from the hospital, and there was the pressing matter of the fugitive fly.

"I will contact Carter," said Maud. "He will be interested to see these projections, anyway. All of our people would." She eyed the great curving arches one more time. "If we could set up something like this another time?" she said to Jared, and he thought she actually sounded as if she meant it.

"Any time," he said.

"I'll let you know later today if I can contact the others," said Maud, and she came over to him and lifted the silver chain and the pendant over his head; he did not try to prevent her this time.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," he said, and she laughed, folded her hand around the pendant, and was gone.

Patterson stood up cautiously, clutching his half a bear, and peered into the corners of the room and looked up at the ceiling. "She left," he said finally.

"And so should we," said Jared. "Let's turn this off for now and lock up the lenses again, and maybe tonight or tomorrow we'll try again." Patterson would, he supposed, still be under the table here; his conscience nudged him. Leaving a colleague to sleep on half a mattress with half a blanket under a conference room table, listening in terror for a power tool-wielding not-yet-ex-wife, seemed very cold. On the other hand, Ann probably had the couch in their house, if Zarei hadn't put her in their bed. He glanced at Cara, who was thoughtfully regarding the edge of the half a mattress, leaking stuffing onto the conference room floor.

"We could put one of those folding beds in the study," she said to him. "We have lots of blankets and sheets. Do you think?"

"Yes," he agreed, a little reluctantly. "I do. Get what you need, Patterson, and come on home with us for now. You'll sleep better."

"Oh, Dr. Ramirez, that is very kind," said Patterson, hugging his half a bear. "But I don't want to put you to any trouble."

"No trouble at all," said Jared, resigned. "Come join the crowd."