Chapter 60

 

Jared

 

 

Jared drove Ann to the police station Saturday afternoon; having promised, he felt obligated to make sure she actually got there and made her statement and signed it. Then he took her to her apartment; he had intended to leave her off there to collect whatever she needed and pack it into her own car, but she was nervous about being there alone. Jared didn't think even Chazaerte would be foolish enough to show up at her apartment again, but he wouldn't have thought Chazaerte would be foolish enough to try to climb into Ann's bed last night; there was no telling about such people, he thought.

So he carried a second suitcase down to her car, saw her safely into it, and followed it back to their neighborhood, up to her usual parking space between the Hardesty house and Issio's house, where she had to share space with Dr. Frank's car. He had arrived while they were gone and was, Jared discovered, already in the Hardesty house, looking unfamiliar in a flower printed shirt and summer shorts instead of his scrubs or his office shirt and pants. He was helping Clyde get up the stairs; the meeting was evidently set for Lillian's room again.

Patterson, whose wardrobe was somewhat diminished, was still in his running shorts and an old T-shirt of Jared's. The not-yet-ex-wife had got to his closet, but only, he assured them, after he had got at hers. He confided that he would have liked to have seen her face when she saw her lysantia fur coat.

He came over to take Ann's second suitcase; she was going into the room down the hall from Gina's room until Al's house was ready. Al said she could move in next week, as soon as he got his own things out, even if the final paperwork wasn't done. His realtor protested, having had several bad experiences with such generosity, but Jared thought it would work out fine with Ann.

And Patterson, as long as he did not bring the wrath of his not-yet-ex-wife down upon the neighborhood, was welcome, Phyllis insisted, to stay in the room next to Willis, if he would help out with Lillian and Willis after work. Newlyweds, she said, should have their house to themselves. Mutai, who thought it was extremely funny, had already gone with him to collect his alarm-laden bike in their van, and they were trying to work out a way that he could get his few whole possessions from his sister's house without his wife tracking them back to 24^th Avenue. Mutai thought that if they moved things very early in the morning it might work.

He would be good for comic relief, at least, Jared thought. Willis, hearing the story of the half-a-bear, had laughed for fifteen minutes, Phyllis reported.

Ollie was representing the Bahtan household this afternoon, and Duroh and Durata had come together; the other three D'ubians and Terry were on the porch with their instruments, as usual. It was crowded up in Lillian's room, which would not have bothered the D'ubians, but might have made the rest of them uncomfortable; the D'ubians accepted this without understanding it. Sofi and Issio were already there with Gina, and Al, with the D'ubian It spitting in its cage, was sitting with Lillian, and Willis was in the armchair by the door, and Clyde had the small armchair, although he was pretty steady; his bones had sealed well, Dr. Frank said. He looked uncomfortably lonely, however, without Mimi. It had been hard for him to leave Mimi behind at the hospital, and it felt wrong to all the rest of them. They would all take turns staying with her, of course, but it wasn't the same as having Mimi at home, recovered.

Phyllis perched on the bed; Cara settled very close to Jared on the floor, holding hands with him. Their two guests were in desk chairs brought in for the occasion, set beside the student desk where Ollie had placed the cage containing the stoad from Linden's World. Sofi and Issio and Phyllis and Ann, when she joined them, had all placed themselves between the desk and Gina, who was definitely and positively not looking at the cage.

Patterson and Dr. Frank did look at the cage, frequently and uncomfortably, although the spitting D'ubian nuntulpo rated a little attention also. Patterson watched with great fascination as the Progenitorvoice selected a worm for his afternoon snack, examined it with great attention as he drooled orange foam, and then bit its head off in one great snap. Gazing at this spectacle, Patterson leaned his elbow on the desk a little too close to the stoad cage, and the thing poked him with a spiny leg and said, casually but quite clearly in Trade, Fuck off, creep.

Both Patterson and Dr. Frank jumped. "Did that thing speak?" said Dr. Frank.

"He really does!" exclaimed Patterson, moving his elbow out of range. "She said so!"

"All right," said Lillian, "I think we're all here. Jared, you start."

"Me?" he protested, and heard the rest of the company all murmuring encouragement. "When did I turn into the official speaker?" he demanded.

"You are the best at explaining these matters," said Sofi, her tail twitching restlessly on Lillian's bed. "We are all agreed upon this. You start."

"Oh, hell," he said, and cast about in his mind for the best place to start. He thought probably the Its would be the mostly likely beginning.

He had been a little afraid that the Its would fall silent in the presence of strangers; he himself would have, he thought, playing dumb, making his captors look like lunatics and fools trying to persuade the visitors that the creatures were intelligent and could talk.

But the Its were apparently inspired by additions to their audience. As Jared began a somewhat edited account of the fly, the stoad whistled and hummed cheerfully, and the D'ubian It selected another worm, inspected it centimeter by centimeter, and then knotted it around its neck, a squirming cravat, and began to perform a sort of belly dance, remarkably suggestive for a six-legged membranous-winged lizard dripping orange poison from his fangs.

Seeing that he had the attention of Dr. Frank and Patterson, the It burst into song in a fairly good tenor; the song was in D'ubian, unintelligible to most of them, but it had an obscene sound and it made Duroh gasp and back away until she was against the wall under the front window. The It lingered over the refrain, spitting foam, and Duroh pulled herself turtle-fashion into her robe, and Durata sprang to her feet, seized a stylus from Lillian's desk, and stabbed it through the bars of the cage at the creature, who prudently retreated out of reach.

"Okay," said Al abruptly, coming to his feet. "Whatever that thing is saying, I've had enough of it." He grabbed the cage, lifting it away from Durata and the stylus, and headed for the door as the thing inside continued to dance and sing, a little louder to be sure his audience would not be deprived of a single syllable. Durata dropped the stylus and went over to Duroh and wrapped around her so the two together formed a ball of brown fabric under the window.

The stoad turned to look at Ollie and suggested, in cheerfully detailed Bahtan, that she perform several acts for his entertainment; Ollie backhanded the cage, knocking it against the wall and jarring the inhabitant into momentary silence. "Interesting," said Dr. Frank, regarding the stoad warily and then turning back to Jared. "You were saying?"

The stoad shifted its body around and, calling Gina by name, invited her to service him. "Okay, that's it," said Cara, springing to her feet and seizing Gina, and she and Sofi had Gina out the door before Gina could protest. This freed Jared to help Dr. Frank and Patterson and Ollie in restraining Issio in his charge at the cage, tail bushed, claws exposed.

"You live with these things?" said Dr. Frank.

"In the basement," panted Ollie, hanging on to Issio's right arm, ducking the claws. "We cannot hear him there."

"We have been advised," said Jared, "that killing them would make the situation worse."

"I do not intend to kill him," snarled Issio. "I intend to rip off his legs. One at a time. Very slowly."

"I intend to put out his goddamned eyes!" said Willis, balancing on his good leg and bringing his crutch down on the top of the cage, hard; luckily the cage was strong. "And rip out his filthy tongue! Stinking rotten old man! I've wanted you dead my whole life!" He slammed down the crutch again.

Useless motherfucking little asshole! yelled the stoad.

"Have you heard what you need?" Ollie asked Patterson and Dr. Frank. "Because if you have, I believe this thing should return to our basement now."

"God, yes, get it out of here," said Patterson, helping Jared and Dr. Frank set Issio down on the edge of the bed, where he slowly subsided. Ollie grabbed the handle of the cage and the creature inside jabbed her hand with a spiny leg.

"Do that again," she said, "and I shall chop your leg off." The stoad withdrew the leg, and she bore the cage out of the room and down the hall. After a moment they could hear the trumpet fanfare as she went out the front door. Willis muttered something and stumped off out the door, balancing on his crutches. Issio shook Jared and Dr. Frank off and pulled his shirt straight, and Dr. Frank sat down on his chair rather abruptly. Patterson, prepared by the conference with Maud in the small hours of the morning, sat down more calmly and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Tell them about the fly," Jared said to the rest of them, and went out of the bedroom. The door to Gina's former bedroom was open; he looked in and found Sofi and Cara and Gina in a cluster on the end of Gina's bed, and Willis standing near his sister, hanging on his crutches. Cara had her arms around Gina, who was crying, and Sofi was trying to embrace both of them.

"Really," Cara was saying, "what we have to remember is that they aren't related to us at all, he never was your father, she never was my mother, they're just –" And then, unexpectedly, she clapped a hand to her head and jerked away from the light of the window and closed her eyes.

"Oh, hell," said Jared, recognizing the signs. Willis moved in and took Gina and Jared sat down on the bed and put both arms around Cara. "Headache," he explained to the rest of them, turning Cara's face against his chest.

Her pills, said Gina, hand over her mouth, shaking off her tears. She needs her pills.

"I will get her pills," said Sofi. "They are in your bathroom?"

"Medicine cabinet," said Jared. "Second shelf. The big blue ones. Sofi, send Terry; don't run back and forth yourself."

"I am pregnant," said Sofi. "Not disabled."

"I should take you home, sweetheart," he said into Cara's hair, and she shook her head and winced at the pain caused by the movement.

"It'll get better. It can't stay this bad for long," she said, which was not, in Jared's experience, at all true. Gina wiped her eyes with a wad of tissues and sat with Willis' arm around her, watching Cara anxiously.

"Damn these creatures!" said Willis. "Well," he said when Jared glanced at him, "they caused all this. What that son of a bitch said to Gina, and then they gave Cara that headache. Just like him, making all the trouble he can just for the hell of it."

"The headache?" said Jared, holding Cara.

"Sure, you can feel the, well, whatever it is. The power, sort of, coming at her. Both of them in the room and Cara; they really don't like her, do they?"

"Migraine," said Cara into Jared's shirt front.

Jared thought about it. He couldn't remember if that first headache had come before or after she fell, he had no idea if it was a cause or a symptom or a misery in addition to her ribs and the gash in her side. And the fly had been there, bumping around her living room. The second headache had come at night as she slept in the bedroom with the breeze outside rustling the leaves in the little woods, and the night bird or insect or bat, whatever it had been, bumping against the screen around the back porch.

At any rate, it had been a flying thing, and now that he thought of it, it had been about the size of the nuntulpo, and the nuntulpo had been loose at that time, if he remembered correctly. That was after it had broken through the D'ubians' window, and before it had been captured at the side of the house.

And today two of the creatures had been in the same room with her.

"Oh, hell," he said again. "Oh, hell."