Chapter 76

 

Jared

 

 

Carter showed up at the Institute Monday morning and sat down with Jared's team to go over his notes and compare glyphs. With or without Carter and his people, Jared had already determined what they were doing for the rest of the summer. "We go over these arches, these projections," he told Sandy and Patterson and Weston, "starting with the first one again; we study them with every technique we can think of, millimeter by millimeter, and we record every crack and every bump and every weathered abrasion, and we compare what we find with every other glyph on every other arch, and every line of the information Carter has brought us."

It sounded like a daunting task, but Sandy and Patterson and Weston greeted it with the enthusiasm of scholars and academics allowed to submerge themselves in their obsessions. Leaving them at it, Jared retired to his office to handle other business. He had just disconnected after talking with Willis when Cara called. "The real estate agent says the men he hired can't fix the old house," she announced.

"Why not?"

"They were indicted for racketeering last Friday. So the business is closed."

"Oh, hell," said Jared. "Well. There must be other people who can replace a floor and fix holes in the walls."

"I had an idea," said Cara. "If you approve."

"It's your house, Cara mia; you don't need my approval. And besides," said Jared, a bridegroom of two weeks, "I'm sure I will."

"Well," she said, "how about Numum?"

Jared thought about Numum. "Numum is fine," he said, "but does he know anything about fixing floors and walls? Didn't Ollie say he worked on the docks?"

"Yes, and he probably doesn't know much about houses, but Ann's cousin does, you know, the one who married the vid tech with the twin boys?"

"Oh, that one," said Jared. Between Cara and Ann he had heard a great deal more about Ann's cousins than the cousins would appreciate. He wasn't sure that any of them would be an improvement over the indicted racketeers.

"He used to work at this kind of thing. Floors and walls and counters, the hand-made expensive stuff. But then he had that accident, and his back – for which," she added, primly, "he receives disability."

"Sorry to hear it," said Jared, grinning.

"But he can supervise, and tell Numum what to do, and the boys are a little older than Gina is; they help. And they'd be cheap. He wouldn't want to risk his disability. So what do you think, darling?"

He couldn't help laughing. "Once upon a time," he told her, "I thought when I had my degrees I could make enough money to hire professionals."

"But this way we can help our friends," she said.

"Which is the reason we have these little jobs in the first place," he agreed.

"So you don't think –"

"Sweetheart, I just got off the phone with Willis," he said, "having advised Louise to hire him to fix her fuel cell. Of course I think. Call Ann's cousin, and talk to Numum. Or we could find someone else with experience to work with Numum; he can use the skills when Sofi and Issio start their house addition."

"Besides," Cara pointed out, "he needs to have people working with him who can hold off any other Bahtan girls who see him, so they won't try to steal him."

"Because he is a very fine male," agreed Jared, laughing.

"I'll go talk to him right away," she said. "Darling, I love you."

"I love you too," said Jared. If worse came to worse, they could always install a carpet over the damaged floor and put lots of paint on the walls; he wanted Cara to get a good price for her house, but they could afford to take a little less if they had to, and Numum really could use the experience if he was going to be their neighborhood handyman.

That afternoon Dr. Louise arrived, briefcase and purse in hand. The young man Jared sent to fix her car had done an excellent job, she said, beaming; he was fast and efficient and not at all expensive. Dr. Ned, she said, wasn't feeling well today. His stomach was bothering him. Something had not agreed with him on Saturday; Jared suspected that whatever it was, it was blue. He was beginning to understand that Ann had made some alterations in his selection of wine and other beverages.

So Louise was there alone to represent the committee, which was not gathering yet, what with late summer vacations and all. And this was frustrating, but she had had an idea overnight; since when the committee members finally came they would be coming from various points on Haivran, and, in at least two cases, other planets altogether, why should they not gather in Bridgeton rather at the usual meeting place in Tuania? The arches, or their virtual constructs, were here, with a team who knew how to make the best of them, and who were qualified to discuss the glyphs on them. Dr. Ramirez was here. The Drs. Wood were here. And the special advisers, she said carefully, eyeing Carter, seemed to be largely based here. It would be efficient if the committee met here also.

Jared liked the idea, if only because he saw the beginning of the school sessions looming ahead. It was probably short-sighted of him; the Institute would certainly cover his classes for him for whatever time it took to address the committee in Tuania, and his sophomore Language Arts class was in no way as important as the Azuri/zai project. But the fact was, he liked teaching, he liked his students, he was even prepared to like the waiter from the place on 43rd Avenue. And Cara would need to stay here; she had her own classes and students at the University.

If the meetings were here, it would simplify his life greatly. And Patterson and Weston and Ott could easily take part, and receive the notice and approval they deserved after this long strange summer.

"Excellent idea," he said to Louise, and handed her up to the table top, where Patterson was calling in adjustments to Weston to bring the top of the third arch down within easy view. "And I'm sorry about Ned, but I'm glad you could come by today, while Carter is here, if you have any new questions."

"Well, I had an ulterior motive," she told him. "I was wondering if you had heard from Issio today." He was beginning to get more than surface thoughts from her; they were getting better acquainted. And this time he got a clear image, not unlike the one he and Issio had played with last night, the two of them waving censors of incense and chanting arcane charms; it made him smile, which brought an interested look from Louise, only beginning to explore the idea about his Ears.

"I have," he said, "heard from Issio. He has acquired a white mouse in a very nice cage, with a thumb key padlock; we are trying to decide who should be registered on it." Ott looked across the table at him with amused curiosity; he shrugged at her.

"I would think just the two of you," said Louise, "and your wives, of course."

"Maud," said Carter, switching lenses.

"A mouse cage?" murmured Ott, glancing at Patterson, who beamed, as one in the know, and turned his back, making it clear that the information was available only to those such as himself with the highest clearances.

"And," Jared told Louise, "we still aren't quite sure what to do with it. But I guess we'll find out. Probably tonight. You would be available tonight?"

"If I wouldn't be in the way," she said.

"Of course not." Jared glanced at Ott and Weston across the table and relented. "We're trying an experiment," he said, "and if it works we'll tell you all about it. And if it doesn't, we'd just as soon no one knew anything."

"About the arches?" asked Weston.

"Peripherally," said Louise. "Certainly related to the open portal."

Which she thought Jared and Issio might be able to close, a thought Jared was in no way ready to entertain. The idea of driving the It out of Mimi's body was daunting enough. He thrust it hastily to the very back of his mind, where with luck it might get lost, and went to look at the screens over Ott's shoulder instead.

His phone rang; it was Cara, and he went out to the hall to answer privately. "It's all worked out," she told him. "They're going to start tomorrow, Numum and Ann's cousin. His name is Wayne, by the way, Wayne Knowles. Ann and I'll go with them and see what they think should be done. And Issio brought the mouse home, and we decided we should keep it over here until tonight, so Gina won't see it and get attached to it. Sofi took her shopping for school clothes this afternoon. Willis is in a very good mood; he told her to buy anything she wanted."

"Louise is in a good mood too. She says he did an excellent job. She wants to come tonight; Ned is still not feeling well, she says. I wonder what Ann did to our liquor order."

"I think I'd rather not know. Tell Louise she's invited for dinner, if she likes."

But Louise thought she'd better go home and check on Ned; she would come by around seven-thirty, she said, unless Jared thought it would be better to wait until later, after dark, maybe. He told her the dark of the moons would be preferable but they would try to manage with what they had, and he saw her off cheerfully and collected Patterson for the ride home from work. Patterson was, he said, saving up for a new car, and he was thinking he could probably ride his bike back and forth in the meantime, since his not-yet-ex-wife was out of town and less apt to attack him in transit. But it seemed silly to Jared, since they were both headed in the same direction.

With Ione Patterson out of town, however, Jared was careless about watching for cars following him; he didn't actually notice the white car behind his until he was a block and a half from the D'ubian half-a-house and realized that it had been on his tail since he left the Institute. "Do you recognize that car?" he asked Patterson, and Patterson opened the window and craned out to see.

The laser beam missed him by about five centimeters and got a toy wagon some child had left out in the street just past the 24^th Avenue intersection. It exploded in a clatter of wheels and metal fragments, the body vaporized.

Patterson yanked his head back into Jared's car and hit the floor, and Jared punched on the manual drive and sailed past the intersection, aware, vaguely, of a swarm of brown hoods boiling out of the D'ubian house into their overgrown yard. The white car followed; Jared increased speed. Patterson, on the floor, moaned.

"You should have let me buy that pistol!" he said. "I bet you don't have a gun in this car at all!"

"Of course I don't," said Jared. "Was that idiot shooting at you?"

"It's my brother-in-law, I know it is!"

Jared pulled out his phone and hit the emergency button. Calling in the police was, from his earliest training, seldom his first thought, but it was time, he thought, to turn this matter over to the people his tax money paid to handle lunatics who shot at their brothers-in-law. The dispatcher answered; he turned the corner at 26^th Avenue, heading east, as far away from his neighborhood as he could manage at the moment, and another shot went past the back of his car, doing damage to a very nice flowering bush in the corner of someone's yard.

In the rear view mirror, he got a glimpse of a much-dented black car following closely after the little white car; he didn't have time to think about it, though. He was trying to describe the situation to the dispatcher and explain exactly where he was and where he was headed.

He turned north on 40th Street, the white car behind him, the black car following the white car, and a small tan car following the black car, coming up right beside the black car, as a matter of fact, and a red car appeared around the corner, going very fast as if trying to catch up. A yellow load hauler swung into the street heading in their direction; it shot straight up in the air to avoid their little parade and the driver, a Zamuaon with black and white spotted body hair, leaned out the window and shouted down at them, shaking his fist.

The dispatcher said police cars were being sent to block the street; he was to drive straight on 40th until he got to the 49^th Avenue intersection; he should go over the blockade and park on the far side, and the police would handle it from there. "I'll bet," said Patterson from the floor, bitterly, and Jared, seeing a glimpse of something like a laser pistol protruding from the driver's side of the white car, lifted abruptly and let the beam pass under him, to do very sad things to a large tree on the right side of the street. The white car rose in pursuit, he dropped down, and the red car in the rear of the procession lifted and something flashed.

The white car jerked in the air and dropped abruptly, spinning around, facing the way it had come; the black car swung to the right and the tan car swung to the left and the red car stopped short right in front of the white car as it landed in the street, hard.

Jared stopped his own car. "Stay down," he said to Patterson, and turned to watch as the driver of the white car came raving out of his vehicle, waving a laser pistol in the air and screaming like the fly. Al emerged from the red car, holding his own laser pistol, probably the one Mimi had stolen Saturday night; Issio came out of the tan car with Willis' old baseball bat in hand, and a flock of brown-robed persons poured out of the black car.

Jared got out of his own car, but matters were well under control by then. He called the dispatcher back while Issio separated the man from his pistol and the D'ubians spreadeagled the fellow on the hood of his car and Al, looking quite happy, covered him with his pistol. Patterson crawled out of Jared's car, looked the situation over, and made a charge for their assailant, and Jared caught him by the shirt collar and held on.

The dispatcher said she was sending the police to their location, and reminded him that it wasn't good for his friends to do anything rough to their prisoner. Jared, watching with appreciation as Duroh held the man's left ankle, Durakal gripped his right ankle, Duran clutched his left wrist, and Durata swung back and forth while hanging on to his right wrist, assured the dispatcher that his friends were being very careful.

People were coming out of the houses on either side of the street; they gathered in small groups on the sidewalks, watching.

"There are cops coming!" Jared called down the street, and Issio waved and put the brother-in-law's pistol down on the top of his tan car and Al beamed and walked around the side of the white car, so that the man on the hood could get a better view of Al's weapon. Dural climbed up on top of the white car, apparently to supervise the proceedings. "Thanks, everyone!" Jared called to them, and Al gave him a thumbs-up.

"Our pleasure," he called back.

"Goddamned pervert!" screamed the man on the car hood.

They all settled back to wait for the police.