Chapter 84

 

Jared

 

 

It was around ten in the morning, although it felt much later; they had started their day indecently early. Jared was on his front porch, enjoying the last pleasantly cool breeze of the day – afternoon would come down with a blast of heat, he thought – looking with Dr. Ned through the noters he had brought from the Institute. He thought he had got everything of value. He was probably being overcautious, but it made him feel better to have everything under his direct supervision with the It wandering about loose in such a large and dangerous vehicle. Louise and Ned, who had looked at the wreckage of the bikes in the Hardesty back yard, tended to agree.

"What the hell, Jared?" exclaimed Maud, materializing on the front step not two meters away from him. Ned jumped and dropped his stylus.

"And good morning to you," Jared said, looking up from the noter he was flipping through. Carter appeared beside her, with his pendant in a death grip and a roll of printouts in his other hand, and Jared gave him a nod in greeting.

"We've come from the Institute," Maud said. "There isn't even a screen left in the conference room. What the hell are you doing? Don't tell me you people are so short-sighted that you've shut down the project!"

"Good Lord, what an idea!" exclaimed Dr. Ned.

"I thought you had ways to know what we're doing here," said Jared.

"They're not," said Maud, looking uncomfortable, "entirely foolproof."

"Sorry to hear that. You know," said Jared, "if you and your people could provide us with some way of contacting you – I'm sure you don't have phones with you, but there must be something."

"Messaging service," said Dr. Ned. "Pick up messages passing through. Have someone check every morning. Six of you, aren't there? Somebody could find time. Take turns."

Maud opened her mouth, closed it, took a deep breath, and came up on the porch, leaning against the railing and folding her arms. "A splendid idea we will certainly discuss," she said. "And speaking of messages, you might have left one for us at the Institute. Even a note, simple, primitive, scrawled on the back of a printout, in the middle of the conference room table. Weighted down with a coffee cup, perhaps."

Carter cleared his throat. "Actually we did speak to those men," he said, "from, I believe, the lab upstairs? They were in the conference room; they told us they had seen you put away your equipment and leave, and they were afraid you might have forgotten the Zeilmar lenses, which are very valuable, of course. They were searching the room to be sure you had put them away safely. If not, they were willing to take the lenses into safekeeping themselves."

"I'll bet they were," said Jared, grinning. "They were even willing to break into the conference room to do it. I know I left it locked."

"There was," said Carter, "some damage to the thumb pad. But the short one with the mustache thought it might have been caused by those little men in the brown robes with the silver axes. He was very impressed with the silver axes."

"So," said Maud, "what were our D'ubian friends doing at the Institute? Why did you shut down all the equipment? Where's that man Weston?"

"The fellow with the red hair," said Carter, "said that Mr. Weston was dragged bodily out of the building by a great mob of people talking about beam pistols. He feared for his safety, obviously."

"And he was going to check on that," said Jared, "just as soon as he located the Zeilmars. Well, those little men with the silver axes took the Zeilmars, and the data cubes too. The mob dragged Weston bodily into the Hardesty house, but once he put down his overnight bag, Willis and Al took him to the police station. And Sandy Ott is headed out of town with her husband and her children. It's been an interesting morning."

"Police station," said Maud, and Dr. Ned offered her his chair and went inside to locate another; Carter perched on the porch railing with his printouts, and Jared put aside his noter and tried to condense the story without leaving out any of the more important details. Across the street, Louise and Ann, with Gina between them, left Ann's house and paused in sober conversation on that side of the street; Gina spotted Maud and Carter and came across to join them, leaving Ann and Louise to walk back to the Hardesty house with their heads together.

"So she destroyed your bike," Carter said to Gina sympathetically.

"Terry says he'd rather use the air scooter anyway," she said. "And Willis said he thought he could fix them."

What was upsetting Gina at the moment was the mouse, which had, indeed, been an unpleasant sight in the kitchen; Jared could see her revulsion, and feel the emotional turmoil from Ann. He and Gina were getting sufficiently acquainted with Ann to read her a little; Ann was perfectly aware of the thing that had taken up residence within the mouse, but she had been a cute little thing, with tiny twitching whiskers, and a charming way of standing up on her hind legs and wriggling her nose while she cursed Ann in the rawest of dockside Bahtan. Ann was grief stricken.

"Maybe," said Gina, "we could find her a nice normal mouse for a pet. Do you think?"

"I think that would be a good idea," said Jared, reflecting that it would be a safer attachment for Ann than an It, or a Charles No-Last-Name and, probably for that reason, less appealing. Ann didn't seem to do safe.

 

Weston said that the cops had taken down the information and promised to handle the situation, whatever that meant; he was a little bitter about it. He felt they were not being taken seriously. Willis said he knew damned well they weren't being taken seriously, and went to canvass the neighbors and find out how many knew how to operate low-power beam pistols. Everyone did, as it turned out, and every household seemed to have one, tucked in a drawer or stuffed under a mattress. The wonder, Jared thought, was that no one had come out shooting during any of their varied crises this summer, except for Mimi, of course.

He hadn't happened to mention to Cara that he owned a beam pistol of his own, stashed under the old sweatshirts on the back of the closet shelf, where Terry was unlikely to find it. Ava, a woman in a risky profession, living in a bad neighborhood alone with a child, had owned one and, in their neighborhood, her child had learned from his friends how to use it. He had bought his own when he first came to Haivran, living initially in a crowded downtown apartment house where crime was less common, but certainly not unknown. He left it on low power, and he had never done more than target shooting, going to the range now and then with Maud, who was an excellent shot. It would be ironic if he first fired it to serious purpose in this peaceful neighborhood.

But he wasn't sure how Cara felt about living with a pistol; people unaccustomed to weapons seemed to believe that they were a danger by themselves, as if they might jump off the closet shelf all alone and start shooting, and he hadn't wanted to alarm her.

And she looked at him, startled, when he admitted to owning such a thing. "I didn't know that," she said, and sat very quietly on the porch step, gazing at the grass and thinking deep private thoughts; he finally sat down beside her and put an arm around her carefully, waiting for the explosion in whatever shape it took.

"Actually," she said, after a minute or two, "I thought maybe you didn't like having things like that around. Because you don't even watch the violent vids, so I thought you might be one of those people who don't approve."

"I always kept mine in my underwear drawer," said Maud in a matter-of-fact tone. "Where do you keep yours?"

"On the shelf behind the mystery readers," said Cara, and stole a quick look at Jared; she had, he realized, been braced for an explosion from him. "It's just a little one. I was alone with an invalid for years," she pointed out as Jared started to laugh. "I thought just in case, so I took a class and learned to shoot it."

"Better than the way I learned," he said. "My friend, the one who ended up with his memory wiped, was the one who taught me. In an alley behind his uncle's bar."

"We still do not know how to deal with the creatures inside," said Sofi, who had settled on the end of the lawn recliner where Issio was sprawled, half asleep in the sun. "These pistols will only affect the vehicles."

"Fine with me," said Willis. "A little affecting might get their attention. They like sensation? Let's give them some sensation." He was limping a little more now; he had been on his feet since the very earliest crack of dawn, and it was beginning to get to him, but he looked as if he had enjoyed every second of it.

 

Afternoon came in a blaze of heat that drove most of them inside. It was quiet. There was no sign of Ione Patterson. Jared and the Drs. Wood looked over noters and printouts. Willis and Weston and Patterson entered into a prolonged conference on the Hardesty front porch, eventually gathering around the old table, clearing off the potted plants and getting out noters and passing them back and forth. Maud and Carter, who wanted to consult the others, departed. Gina persuaded Ann to work with her on illustrations for her story about Wark the Quarg, which captured Ann's attention and kept both of them busy in the comfort of Climate Control. Terry, unable to ride his bike, discouraged from leaving the neighborhood, spent the afternoon sitting on the Hardesty front steps strumming his guitar.

Needing distraction himself, Jared exercised his cooking skills with the farmers market ingredients in the food keeper and on the shelves. Cara had been at home this summer while he was at the Institute through the afternoons, so she had ended up doing more than her fair share of the household chores, including the meal production. And it wasn't a job he minded doing, either. So the Drs. Wood and Sofi and Issio and Cara all ate a heartier dinner than the weather called for, after which Ned went to sleep on the couch and Louise went to the Hardesty house to talk with Ann again.

Jared and Cara had just got the last of the dishes into the dishwasher when Sandy Ott called from her mother's house. They had had a nice trip, she said, and was there any trouble up there?

"I've been thinking, Dr. Ramirez," she said. Using his formal title was not, Jared thought, a good sign; that had become, during this eventful summer, the signal that something serious was coming. "This is really big, isn't it? This isn't just some academic exercise, what we're doing; this involves the whole Alliance, our future, and this isn't just some crazy woman after us; this is whoever came through that portal, our enemies. Right?"

"I think so, yes," said Jared.

"Well," said Sandy. "The thing is that my boys are pretty little. Six, and four, and three; they're young, you know? And my husband, he's an accountant; he's not into this sort of thing. And I guess these creatures wouldn't hesitate – I mean, our families are at risk, aren't they?"

Oh, hell, Jared thought, she's bailing out. And why wouldn't she? She had her family to think about; she hadn't signed on to battle mysterious beings who manifest in the shape of lunatics wielding power tools. He couldn't argue with that. He supposed he would feel much the same way in her place. "What are you telling me, Sandy?" he asked her gently, feeling regretful sympathy.

"So I can't bring them back to Bridgeton," she said. "The kids, especially, and I don't think Lewis should – and it's going to take a little while to get them settled here, although Mom is being very helpful. So I just don't see how I can get back to work before Tuesday."

"Tuesday," repeated Jared, surprised.

"I know I'm leaving you in the lurch," she said. "And I'm awfully sorry. But the kids are so little, you know. If I stay until Monday – and then I can be back in plenty of time for work Tuesday morning. If you could possibly get by until then –"

"Tuesday morning," said Jared, "is just fine. Don't give it another thought."

"I'm sorry it's going to take so long. I know how important this project is."

"Not a problem," said Jared. "Do what you need to for your family, and stay in touch. Who knows, things may have changed by Tuesday. If not, don't plan on staying home alone; we've got Weston here, and the Drs. Wood, and we'll find room for you, too."

"Thank you," she said. "That makes me feel better. And if I know my kids are safe – so I'll call you, and I'll be back probably Monday night."

"Excellent," he said, and disconnected with relief. They could contact Dr. Graystone about borrowing equipment, he thought, and set it up somewhere in the neighborhood. He wished his basement was in better shape, but perhaps he could borrow Clyde's, or Ann's; there would be room there to put up the virtual arches, a few at a time, and tied in with the Institute computers – and Carter could just as well be here, would probably prefer to be here, everything considered –

Weston appeared on the doorstep as the sun sank toward the top of the trees behind the Hardesty house. "We've rigged a security system," he announced. "Willis McIntosh and Al Crane and Lillian Hardesty and Patterson and I. You've got some really smart people here. Willis is young, but I swear he knows things I never heard of. Al and Patterson and I are going into the trees to put up sensors, and Lillian and Willis are setting the alarms on their front porch. Anyone crossing the line, say about where the trees meet the lawn back there, should set off a hell of a noise; we're going to know about it." He paused, thinking. "We should probably warn people," he said. "Like the Bahtan girls. If they go into the trees tonight or anything."

"I don't think they'll need to," said Jared; they certainly wouldn't want anyone outside the neighborhood to be aware of their private arrangements, so he wouldn't go into details, but he suspected they had everything they needed right in their own house at the moment. "But I'll let them know, and the D'ubians, of course, when they get up."

The D'ubians were happy about the alarm system, which would give them a little backup; they planned to stand watch during the night hours, Dural explained, allowing everyone else a chance to sleep, and they settled down with their silver axes in a circle in the middle of the street and got out their instruments. The music wrapped the neighborhood in soft harmony, and the night breeze turned cooler, driving off the daytime heat.

Willis and Weston arrived on Jared's porch and spread out, along the porch rail, a collection of small objects. "Motion and sound activated," said Weston. "Very sophisticated receivers. I haven't seen anything this good even in the theoretical stage. No way of telling who was picking up what they were recording, but someone was interested in watching the neighborhood. They were all through the trees around the houses here. We found them when we were putting up our alarm system."

"So who would be doing that?" said Willis. "And hey, look at this." He took his pendant out of his collar and held it over one of the receivers; the pendant gave a small jump and began to vibrate very gently. "I never saw it do that before," he said, tucking the pendant away again.

"Oh, hell," said Jared, at last understanding how Maud and her people knew what was going on in the neighborhood. His only surprise was that their method should be so ordinary, something that anyone might have used. "Did you get them all taken down?" he asked. "I think we should put them in a nice dark box in a basement somewhere." He picked up the nearest one, examined it, and then spoke into it. "Goodnight, Maud, dear," he said, and put it down, laughing.

Half an hour later his phone chimed; he pulled it out of his pocket, thinking of policemen and strange fat madwomen and break-ins at the Institute and Sandy and her family, among other potential crises. But when he glanced at it, he saw the call came from one Lalia Maarchesin, M. D., in Wark's Ferry.

"Hello?" he said.

"Goodnight, Jared, dear," said Maud, and broke the connection.

 

The alarms went off around four in the morning; they were, indeed, very loud, the trumpet fanfare from the Hardesty front door expanded into a full marching band. Jared and Cara were out on the street, armed and reasonably dressed, in only a few minutes to join the rest of the neighborhood; it looked as if everyone had slept with clothes at hand and pistols under pillows. Leaving the D'ubians – minus Terry, who was asleep on Jared's front lawn with a blanket and a pillow, looking entirely comfortable – to guard the home front with their axes, the rest of them fanned out into the woods, where they found nothing at all. Weston and Willis were inclined to think that Ione had been frightened off by the sound of the alarm. Patterson was inclined to think that she had climbed a tree out of sight and was waiting until they all went back to bed to attack. Jared was inclined to think that she would break any tree she tried to climb.

They all went back to bed and slept well into the morning without further interruption.