Chapter 83

 

Jared

 

 

The back window to the bedroom, hidden among the trees, had been pried open, the window frame scratched and gouged in the process. It was a good-sized window, but there were threads and a pretty good chunk of fabric caught in the rough spots of the frame; the threads and the fabric bore a definite resemblance to the too-snug T-shirt and the overstuffed stretch pants last seen on Ione Patterson. Jared, having been in unpleasantly close contact with that body, could testify to that, not that he was going to.

So she had come in and out through the window; once inside she had apparently gone to the basement, where she opened the cage and dispatched the mouse with a single blow on the head; there was blood on the hammer, Ollie said, examining it. Either before or after that, she smashed the vid player and drove the hammer through all of the vids. Then she went upstairs, placed the dead mouse in the middle of the kitchen table, and went on to saw up the bicycles behind the Hardesty house.

Ann was in favor of calling the police back; she regarded this as a case of homicide. That crazy woman had broken into her house and killed her mouse. She should have to pay for this; Ann seemed in favor of reinstating the ancient barbarity of the death penalty instead of simple brain wiping. Jared thought it was interesting, in a way, that Ann should have become attached to an evil-tempered monster whose most obvious talent was creative cursing in multiple languages. It either said something about Ann and her needs, or about the Its and their ability to influence those about them.

He didn't see anything to be gained by calling the police. They would no doubt take notes and include this little brutality in their reports, but that was where it would end. The death of a mouse would upset no one but those in the neighborhood, who knew all too well what this might mean. No one cared about the death of a fly, either, and see what that had led to.

Sofi and Cara took Ann into Sofi's living room and gave her tissues and told Issio and Jared to hush while they explained it all to her. "It couldn't have been her, all by herself," Cara said earnestly. "How would she know the mouse was even there? She didn't do any other damage – well, the vid player."

"That was most likely the act of the mouse," said Sofi, and Cara nodded.

"Out of pure nastiness," she said. "Ann, you know that woman is crazy. Poodle molesting! And expecting Patterson to bail out her brother! She would have been easy for that It to influence. Weakness, remember? Like Dr. Lindstrom and her anger. Like McIntosh and his booze and his drugs. She didn't have good control over her mind, and the It could get into it."

"Exactly," said Sofi. "She influenced the woman to break into your house. Then she allowed the woman to kill her, so that she was free to enter a new vehicle, Ione Patterson's body."

"Which then," said Jared, "went into the Hardesty back yard and broke up the bicycles; what kind of sense does that make?"

"Possibly," said Issio, "she is playing with us. Showing off. Also irritating us. This is typical of her people, from what I have so far seen."

And that was very true, Jared had to admit. "She let us all see her, try to capture her, and then she escaped and she's out there somewhere –" a very unpleasant thought; the fly/mouse/Ione Patterson was free to do whatever she chose, and her choices in any of those guises had never contributed to their well-being.

"Oh, god," said Ann, mopping tears. "You think Dr. Lindstrom is lurking around in Ione Patterson's body? Oh, god, oh, wow."

Issio looked deeply into his coffee cup and then he put it down on the breakfast bar and went to the lower cupboard by the sink, dug briefly in the back of the second shelf, and emerged with a glass bottle about two-thirds full of some dark amber liquid. He unscrewed the top and the smell filled the kitchen and caused Sofi, in the living room with Ann and Cara, to cough. "Zamuaon life water," he said, and offered the bottle to Jared. Jared's eyes watered at the fumes.

"Thank you, but not now," he said.

"I did not think so," said Issio, sounding amused, and he poured a healthy slug of the stuff into his coffee cup and lifted the bottle toward Cara and Ann. "Not for Sofi," he said, "but perhaps you might care for some?"

"Issio, it's not even eight in the morning!" said Ann, sounding awed.

"I am unaware of any law prohibiting life water before eight in the morning," said Issio, "especially in times of great need." He screwed the top back on, returned the bottle to its shelf, and picked up his coffee cup. He drank deeply, with appreciation.

The idea hit Jared hard. "Oh, hell, the Institute," he said. "Ione Patterson probably doesn't know the details, but she knows Patterson was working with me on the translations. If she knew it, the It knows it. I need to get down there."

Issio drained his cup in two more gulps and put it down. "I will come," he said. "You will need muscle," he said, when Jared started to protest, and he was right; Ione had escaped from no fewer than five of them. Alone, Jared had no chance at all.

"You need more," said Ann, and she cast aside the sodden tissues and pulled out her phone and began scrolling. Issio headed off for the bedroom and clothes, and Jared put down his cup and started for the car port, with Cara right after him.

"Sweetheart," he said, thumbing open the car door.

"I'm not listening to overprotective cavemen," she said firmly, and jumped into the passenger seat. Issio, pulling on a T-shirt, vaulted over the end of his porch rail, where Sofi, heavy with Shamri, stood glowering; Ann, beside her, was talking rapidly on the phone. Issio waved and climbed into the back seat, and Jared punched in the Institute address and started to back out of the car port.

"Wait, wait!" shouted voices behind him, and he stopped the car to let Ollie and Numum scramble in beside Issio. At the end of the street, Al and Willis came out of the Hardesty house, trumpets blaring as they opened the door, and Phyllis and Lillian were seen back inside hanging on to Patterson, who seemed to feel it his duty to join them. Al waved at Jared's car and he and Willis fitted themselves into the little runabout Willis had been getting road worthy.

"Stay with Mimi!" Cara shouted at Clyde, who was waving his rolling pin on the porch.

"Take care of everyone!" Jared called to him, and he stopped waving, looking disappointed. Jared punched the drive button again and dialed up the speed, and the car took off with Willis and Al right behind him in the little runabout. As they passed the D'ubian house, Jared caught sight of five brown hoods piling into the battered black car. "Do they have their axes?" he asked.

"Yes," said Issio, craning to see.

"If Ione Patterson is there," said Cara, "she's going to regret it."

The oversized black car was parked at the end of the Institute parking lot, with the look of a car that has been there for a long time. And the red car with the wrestling tournament decal was beside it. So the mad scientists were in possession of the lab, but there were no other cars visible. Jared led the way into the building, holding the door for Al and Willis, who held it in turn for the five D'ubians, and then he led them down the hall, listening to their many footsteps echoing in the early morning silence. The silver axes glittered very nicely as the overhead lights came on for them.

The conference room door was locked; Jared opened it with a stab of his thumb, and there was the table, with the arches, five of them this time, looming over the table top, and there was Weston, noter in hand, sitting over the projector; he jumped up as the door opened and banged his knee on a table leg. "Dr. Ramirez!" he exclaimed, and stared, open-mouthed, as the whole procession filed into the room.

"Ah!" said Duroh, gazing up at the arches. "These are excellent projections! These are the arches from Or2! These are very good!"

"Virtual constructs!" exclaimed Duran, and the five of them scrambled up on the table top, waving their axes. Weston, staring, backed away, one careful step at a time.

Jared swept the room with a watchful eye; everything seemed to be exactly where they had left it the night before, and he saw no huge women with power tools – not but what she had been forced to abandon a couple of those tools by the Hardesty house. "We were in the neighborhood," he said to Weston. "Just thought we'd drop by."

"I thought you were that woman," said Weston, looking uneasily at the nearest silver ax, wielded by Durakal with splendid disregard for anyone around him.

"What woman?" said Jared.

"I guess it's Patterson's ex, that big fat woman; she was here before? About the poodle? She showed up at the door just when I was going in. I told her he wasn't here, and she got mad, and when I wouldn't let her in – but she doesn't have clearance for this project, does she?"

"Absolutely not," said Jared.

"She tried to knock down the door with this big wrench thing." He measured with his hands spread; it was, indeed, a big wrench thing. "I told her through the door that I was going to call the cops, and she hit the thumb pad a few times and then she left. I saw her outside; she was pounding on one of the trees." He gestured through the window, and Jared looked out at the park, at the tree with a huge white scar on the side.

"I do not like this," said Issio, looking over his shoulder.

Jared felt he didn't like it much either. "We had better notify Security," he said. "She can't be allowed to get in here."

"Will Security do anything?" asked Willis. "I mean, really do anything?"

"I begin to think," said Issio, "that we will need weapons. I do not like this thought. I have never wished to harm anyone. But this woman is very strong, and she can do much damage, and I do not know how many of us it would take to stop her."

Weston stepped back, away from Durata who was swinging her ax in great ecstatic arcs as she examined the glyphs. "Is that silver?" he asked in a small voice.

"Oh, yes," said Durata, with an angelic smile, and paused to show it to him. "We sharpen them often," she assured him.

"You think you need more weapons?" he asked Jared.

"Beam pistols," said Willis. "Low power, stun, maybe. I had one when I was a kid. We don't have to kill her." He considered it. "We shouldn't kill her," he said. "Should we."

"We’re not killing anyone," said Jared, seeing Weston's frightened expression. "You did well, keeping her out of here," he told Weston. "Call Security, and I wonder if we shouldn't think of shutting down entirely for a few days. We have too much information here and it's too important to risk it."

"We could lock up the equipment," said Weston. "The data cubes and all." He considered it. "I could take them home with me," he offered.

"That would put you at risk," said Al.

Jared thought they were all at risk anyway; there wasn't much they could do about that except for locking doors and windows and watching out for big fat angry women with large wrenches. "There's a safe in my office," he said. "We could put the cubes in there, and put the equipment into storage with the other units."

"I heard, once," said Issio, "of thieves who were unable to break into a safe where they found it. Therefore they stole the entire safe, to work on it at their convenience. Has your safe security beams? A defense system?"

"Not to my knowledge," Jared admitted.

"What does Ione Patterson know about safes?" asked Weston.

"She isn't exactly Ione Patterson at the moment," said Willis. "She's probably just as crazy, but she's a lot smarter."

"The Drs. Wood!" exclaimed Cara. "We need to call them and warn them!" She dug out her phone and moved over by the window, looking out at the damaged tree. Jared looked around; Ollie and Numum were standing beside the table, hand in hand, gazing up at the arches in awe, as the D'ubians ran back and forth exclaiming in excitement, and even Al was examining the constructs with great interest.

"No, absolutely not," said Cara into the phone. "Yes, but that was Mimi. This is a big fat crazy person with a bunch of tools. You saw her. You know what she's like."

"That's it," said Willis. "We tell the authorities she's out of her mind and dangerous, and have her picked up –"

"And evaluated?" said Jared. "That would be interesting."

"Would it hurt anything?" said Willis. "The problem would be if they had to shoot her, if she was attacking someone, and she could do that. She probably will do that, unless we stop her."

"If they evaluate her in jail," said Ollie, "they will find that she is very crazy. She has strange visions. She believes she is not herself. She thinks she is another person, an Alliance scientist, perhaps a fly. She may tell them that she is from another place altogether, where people are very different than they are here, just balls of energy without bodies. This will be very interesting to the authorities."

"And they will keep her," said Issio, "and if they wipe her mind, so what?"

"Does that work?" asked Weston, visibly trying to keep up.

Jared thought of his boyhood friend, who, brain wiped, had found useful and intellectually challenging work supervising street cleaning robots for the city. "It removes tendencies toward violence," he said, feeling reservations – but were they justified in this case? "It removes memories, so if the violence is due to upbringing or trauma, it removes the cause. And it removes the memories of any pleasure or profit from the violence. They have to be reparented," he explained, "which sometimes helps."

"Reparenting an It?" murmured Issio.

"So I should call the cops?" said Weston.

"Yes, come to our house," said Cara, and disconnected and thrust her phone back into her pocket clip. "They're coming over," she said, "and I'm thinking we all need to stick together until this person is found. Because we really are all at risk."

"You can share Patterson's room," Jared said to Weston and turned his back on Weston's appalled look while he scrolled his own phone for Sandy's number. Willis began to look over the equipment with an eye to helping shut it down, and Al dragged Ollie and Numum away from the projections; the D'ubians climbed down off the table, flourishing their axes.

"We hide the cubes," said Dural, "in our warehouse. We have many cubes, also sound equipment, projectors. We have a good safe, very fine security beam. It sets off many alarms, also sets down a small force field to capture any who attempt to open. There are very many competitors in our business," he explained with a charming smile and a wave of his ax.

Jared held the phone away from his ear as Sandy's fright grew hysterical, and Cara, back on her own phone, lifted a hand to get his attention. "Phyllis says the Otts can stay there, if they don't mind being all in one room."

"Gina stays with us," said Issio, moving the end of the table to get at the cables underneath.

"Terry stays with us," said Dural, folding up the screen at the other end of the table.

"So there's lots of room," said Willis, lifting the projector with Weston's help.

But the Otts chose to go to her mother's house down in Miramani, several hours away by car, so that they had an urgent need to get on the road at once. "Call us if there's any trouble," Jared told her, "and have a good visit; we'll let you know when it's safe up here."

The D'ubians distributed data cubes in various inner pockets of their robes as Al and Willis and Weston locked the equipment in the storage room, with Issio standing guard in the hall. Remembering just in time, Jared located the Zeilmars, currently locked in their storage box behind a light panel on the ceiling, and Durakal took the box and the bicycle chain securing it and made the whole thing vanish up his sleeve, which Jared found interesting; the box looked much bigger than the sleeve.

Dural led the way down the hall to the door, the other four trooping behind him, all of them jauntily waving their silver axes. By now the mad scientists were aware that something unusual was happening, and they were peering out of the lift in a sort of horrified fascination. Jared waved to them as he and Willis dragged Weston out of the conference room; Weston was convinced there was still something left to do there. Al and Issio went out to scout the parking lot and the rest of them followed when Al signaled that it was safe.

"Beam pistols," said Willis, and he nodded and smiled at the mad scientists and shoved Weston out the door in front of him.

Jared let Weston off at the front door of the Hardesty house, gripping the overnight bag he had hastily filled at his apartment. He hadn't taken more than one step toward the front porch when Patterson pounced upon him, babbling frantically about Ione and power saws and flies and exercise wheels for mice. Cara giggled; Jared felt a twinge of conscience, abandoning Weston like this, but he saw that Louise and Ned were already parked in front of his house, and he swung his car into the car port.

Al and Willis drove Weston down to the police station to file a complaint against the woman who had threatened him outside the Institute and done damage to a tree in the park. Patterson wanted to go too, but Lillian persuaded him to stay on the grounds that they needed his protection. The D'ubians reappeared, slightly denting but not flattening the corner of their fence as they parked.

Louise had brought a recorder, and she immediately went to corner Ann and get all the details; Ann let her into the house and a little later, Jared saw Ann and Louise and Gina reverently burying something in a small black plastic box in the flowerbed to the west of the house. Both Ann and Gina were wiping away tears. He made a mental note to select, if it ever came up again, a less appealing alternative host for the vagrant It.

He hoped it would come up again. He didn't like to think of the It in permanent possession of Ione Patterson.