Chapter 86
Jared
"I have to tell Phyllis and Lillian," said Willis, getting up, and Gina jumped up to join him and took a step and then stopped abruptly and turned back, looking surprised.
"I heard that!" she exclaimed, and reached out and put a hand on Sofi's abdomen. "Sister, she said sister!" she said.
"She does not have many words yet; she feels sister," said Sofi, looking modestly pleased at the achievements of her offspring. "She has done this all week," she told Cara, and then her green eyes fell upon Jared, and she reached out and took his hand, surprising him, and placed it next to Gina's hand. "Open your mind," she said to him.
He felt small movements under his fingers, and then he felt small movements under the touch of his mind; she was tiny but strong, this person who reached out with little finesse but infinite curiosity, blundering past thoughts and memories for which she had no context into feelings she understood perfectly. "Shamri," he said, and she heard him, just as they said, and recognized his voice; she had heard it many times before. He felt her respond, happy, warm, contented. He felt Gina and Sofi, and for an instant he saw his face, sent to Shamri by Gina. The baby knew dark and light and she was still trying to understand images but she inspected this one and filed it in her mind with others, Sofi and Issio and Gina and Terry and Cara and – the whole procession of the neighborhood was stored in that little head, he saw, all one-of-us-related-love-safety.
But she was very small yet and she was growing tired. He drew back very gently and she let him go; he looked at Sofi, smiling, and then at Cara, who was gazing with wonder. "She's really there!" he said, which wasn't the most intelligent comment, but it was all he could think of at the moment to describe the complete little person she was already, more than two months from birth.
"She is young for this," said Sofi, patting Shamri fondly. "Most do not communicate until just before birth."
"All Zamuaon babies – " said Jared.
"Oh, yes. Mothers and their babies, also fathers, sometimes siblings." Sofi nodded at Gina. "My grandmother came to the tank to speak with me before I was fully developed; it is what we do. And when our children are being born, we speak to them, the father, or another relative, to help them through what can be great stress for the child. In this way the mother is also helped. Issio studies," she added, nodding in the direction of their house. "Shamri is very young, but she knows many more people than most babies, all of you, I think, and now she has felt you." She patted Jared's hand. "She sleeps now," she told Cara, "but I want her to also touch you, perhaps tomorrow."
"But I can't speak to her –" said Cara, and Sofi waved away her objections.
"And also," she said briskly, "you are aunt to her sister, so you are aunt to Shamri; she must know her family." She cast a look at Willis, who was watching dubiously. Seeing her eyes on him, he flushed and shifted uncomfortably.
"Listen, we should go show this letter to Phyllis and Lillian," he said to Gina, and took off toward the Hardesty house with his sister hurrying after him.
"Incredible," Jared said, trying to fit words around the experience, and Cara smiled, eager and wistful at the same time.
"I wish I could talk with her," she said. And he wasn't sure what to say to that. He put out his mind, not for the first time, but he could feel no more than the very surface of her thoughts, just as usual.
"She knows your voice," he said. "I saw that. And Sofi, and probably Issio and Gina, have sent her your image, what you look like. Imagine, she'll be able to recognize us when she's born!"
The D'ubians were back; the music could be heard through the open windows, drifting sweetly through the night air from the harmonic circle in the middle of the street. Some night-flying moth blundered into the repeller on the window over the couch, where the two of them lay together with the lights dialed down, enjoying the touch of coolness that darkness brought into the house. Cara was a light sweet weight against him; he held her, feeling smooth skin under his hand, the light flimsy sun top, the touch of her bare toes against his leg, moving just a little, teasing. He knew that the Hardesty house was filled nearly to overflowing; he felt that he ought to worry about that more than he did, but he was glad to be alone with Cara.
Across the street he could see a light upstairs in the Bahtan house, but it was otherwise dark. There was a light in the basement of Issio's house, and there were lights on the second floor in the Hardesty house, where some of the multitude of residents were wakeful, but the neighborhood was settling to sleep.
"I've heard something about Zamuaon birth traditions," said Cara, "but not any detail."
"I know a little. The father, usually, although it can be anyone the mother is comfortable with, goes into her mind to talk her through the contractions. Actually," said Jared, "they take her virtually out of her body; they've practiced this, while she was pregnant, so they can build a place, a fantasy place, where she can be, her mind and most of her senses occupied there and away from her body. And because by then they're in touch with the baby, more or less, they take him or her there too. It feels more real than hypnotism; it feels as if they're really there. Away from the actual childbirth process."
"Is that possible?" said Cara. "Does she experience labor at all, then?"
"Not really. As I said, she is virtually out of her body; she doesn't feel much of anything in the real world."
"And it works?"
"Oh, yes." Yes, indeed, it did work; he had reason to know that, because that was the technique he had used years ago with Helen, helping her to fight an agonizing and losing battle against her disease. It was her Little Ears working with his, and a technique they had devised for themselves under less stress, playing with their minds as he had seldom done before, lacking playmates. Helen had had her sister, and could teach him some of what the two of them had devised in childhood. It had been a pleasant partnership with a client who became, like Trudy, a dear friend.
Helen, his concert companion, his theater-going partner; she was the only client of whom Maud had been a little jealous. And he had loved her a little, but ultimately not enough, and no one knew it better than Helen herself. But he missed her. He heard from her sister Heather now and then; she was dating someone, which was good, and the children were teenagers in secondary; Helen's son must be about ready to graduate, in fact.
Time passed.
Tomorrow was Saturday. With the equipment in Ann's house, they could get some work done. He hoped Carter would stop by; early last week he had given Jared a copy of an old scroll, something he believed predated the Romans in Britain on Old Earth, and Jared had been picking at the inscriptions; he thought he recognized similarities to the glyphs. The glyphs would be imprinted to warn away Maud and Carter's ancestors and would be, necessarily, in their language, no matter what language the writers used among themselves. Which was a point, he thought, he ought to bring up to Carter; did they, perhaps, all speak the same language? To what extent were they related?
In what language did beings of energy converse, anyway?
The music in the street stopped abruptly; voices started. Cara, half dozing in his arms, roused and stirred and he lifted his head to listen. "No, we are only authority," said Dural's voice, and Jared heard the rapid pattering of little feet crossing the street, coming up his walk, selecting the house where there was still a dim light in the front room. Cara sat up, pulling her sun top straight, and he swung his feet off the couch and went to the door.
It was Duroh on the front porch. "Alarm in our warehouse goes off," she announced. "Police call us; they are investigating."
"We'll come," said Jared. "Tell Issio," he said to Cara, and she fumbled for her phone and, since he had been thinking of Ears just now, he put out his mind and to his surprise reached Issio easily across the drive, sitting in the basement study with a reader. "Never mind, Cara mia, I've got him," he said, and she blinked and smiled and put her phone away. Duroh waved to the rest of the D'ubians, clustered around Dural as he talked to the police with many gestures. They headed off for the old black car, parked just around the corner.
"I come," said Issio, jumping over his porch rail. Sofi and Gina, in nightgowns, appeared in the doorway behind him. "Call Willis," Issio said over his shoulder, and plunged into Jared's car; Cara, hopping on one foot and then the other to get her sandals on, came after him. Jared paused just long enough to grab their beam pistols, no longer hidden.
The D'ubian car took off; he followed.
He had no idea at all where the warehouse was, but he guessed it would be somewhere in the general area of the theater district, close to the music studios, and that was where the black car was headed. Issio, in the back seat, checked out his own pistol, looked at Jared's, and examined Cara's. "This will need a new fuel cell this year," he observed, "but it will work now on low power." He turned it in his hand, looking at it, nodding. "Sofi should have such a one," he said, and handed it back to Cara. "She will be alone with Shamri during the day. I have not previously thought of danger, but now I must."
"Alone," said Cara, "with Phyllis and Lillian and Al and Clyde and Mimi, and whichever of the sisters isn't on shift, and maybe Numum too."
"That," said Issio, "is true." His tail tapped thoughtfully against the seat. "Still," he said.
The D'ubian car made a corner and dived down an alley, not well lighted, and Jared followed; there were four police cars, two with flashing lights, parked by an industrial-sized chute outside a wide door, half-opened. This led into an elderly foamwood building tucked between a three-story place with two alarm-laden doors and no visible windows, and a small place with a single light over a barred window and a rickety fire escape angling up to the rooftop.
Jared briefly considered suggesting that Cara stay safe in the car with her pistol, but he had a good idea of how she would react to that now. He had gotten off with it once or twice, but he doubted he'd have such luck again. He glanced at her hopefully, and she smiled sweetly and scrambled out of the car after him as Issio came out of the back seat; they fell in behind the D'ubians, who had Terry with them, armed as usual with his guitar.
Dural in the lead, the small army marched through the open door. Inside was a good-sized room under a high ceiling with cabinets lining the front and side walls, all security sealed, bars of red warning lights running from the ceiling to the simple foamstone floor. In the middle of the front wall was a heavy metal safe, with a door large enough that Jared could have entered it without bumping his head, and thumb and retina pads guarding locks that might have held back a rampaging giant. The Azuri/zai project had no security beyond a couple of thumb locked doors. Jared gave brief thought to the competition to be expected in the music business, and wondered if he shouldn't teach Terry techniques of self defense before he turned him loose in the Conservatory.
Not surprisingly, the safe door was still closed, and security beams pulsated around it. Security beams, or something equally iridescent, ran from floor to ceiling in a square shape in front of the safe, and there were four uniformed policemen and three uniformed policewomen, laser pistols in hand, and two women not in uniform standing around this square. Although armed, the police did not seem to be on high alert; they stood at ease, talking together, pistols pointing at the ceiling, and the two women in suits walked back and forth talking into their phones.
One of the uniformed policemen spotted Dural and said something, and one of the two suits disconnected her phone and thrust it into its pocket clip. "Duri group?" she asked, coming forward.
"Yes," said Dural, offering his thumb for the ID pad. "I speak."
"And you are?" asked the suit, looking at Jared and Issio and Cara.
"Friends: we invite," said Dural, passing the ID pad to Issio, who stood nearest.
"My name is Ortiz. Detective. The alarm went off, as we told you on the phone," said the woman in the suit, "and the patrolmen responded. Found the door pried open. No other damage they could see. I was notified because of the wants on Ms. Patterson."
"She was trying for the safe when the force field caught her," said one of the uniformed policewomen, and as Dural led the way toward the safe, they moved aside to allow a clear view.
It was Ione Patterson, looking even more uncombed and unwashed, stretch pants torn to offer an unwelcome glimpse of her thigh, T-shirt smeared with dirt, one poodle earring missing; she clutched a laser rifle in one hand, and a power drill in the other, and she had a very large wrench at her feet. She stood, screaming soundlessly, entrapped in a square force field reaching from floor to ceiling; now and then she swung either the rifle or the drill against the shimmering wall of her prison, and it made a remote thudding noise.
"If you want to turn off one side of the force field," said Detective Ortiz to Dural, "we can trank her and get her out of here." She glanced briefly at the beam pistols carried by the civilians, looked up with mild curiosity at the faces of those carrying them; their IDs would show the registration, of course, but she was probably wondering why they had turned out for a simple burglary so well armed. She was probably wondering, in fact, why so large a group had turned out at all.
Clearly their assistance was not needed.
Dural waved Terry over to the side of the room, with Duran and Duroh as guards, and then he went to the east wall and thumb-stabbed a pad and opened a panel. "I open east side," he announced, and three of the uniformed police moved to that side, one carrying a small black pistol which held, Jared supposed, the trank shots. Ione Patterson was paying no attention; she had got her rifle to her shoulder and she was trying to shoot through the front of the force field, but her rifle had nowhere near enough power; he could see the laser beam splashing like a shot from a child's water pistol against the solid wall.
"Now," said the policewoman, lifting and sighting down the barrel of the black pistol, and Dural tapped several buttons in sequence and the shimmering wall on Ione Patterson's left folded open; there was a series of small popping noises, and Ione gave a great screech and toppled, like a tree felled by an ax, stiff and straight against the front wall of the force field, which gave a faint sound like a groan and held her like a sagging hammock. Two of the policemen reached in and grabbed her nearest arm and pulled, and a policewoman stepped inside the force field and got her other arm and pushed, and after a moment another policeman stepped in also and got her around her waist and heaved. Among the four of them they dragged her out, with great effort, and Dural made some adjustments to the buttons and the force field vanished.
The other three uniforms came to help; the seven of them, panting, bore her out of the warehouse. One of them opened the back of the nearest police car and there was a brief struggle while they worked together to bend her at the hips and the knees and get her fitted inside. They placed her in the middle of the back seat where she sat for a moment and then tipped over to the right and fell on the seat out of sight. The rear end of the car jounced.
The two suits appeared with the drill and the rifle and the wrench; Dural glanced at the controls, shut the panel, and then led the way out into the alley again. Jared and Cara and Issio took up the rear; Jared felt a little silly with his pistol.
"We go sign many complaints," Dural said, as Duran and Durakal shut and locked the wide door. "Tell everyone they are safe. I think she stays with police for some time; they wish to –" he jabbed at the top of his head with his finger, trying to demonstrate. "Fix head," he said, and grinned broadly.
Terry adjusted his guitar over his shoulder and walked over to join Dural. "Isn't that a really neat force field?" he said. "They got good stuff in here; nobody is going to get at any of our things with all this good stuff."
He would, of course, be familiar with the warehouse as well as the studio, and he seemed entirely undisturbed by this aborted invasion. "Yes, you do have good stuff," agreed Jared, amused. "Good enough to catch Ione Patterson and the fly inside her."
Terry gave him a look of surprise. "Oh, that's not the fly," he said.
"Mouse," Jared corrected himself.
Terry shook his head. "Cara's not-real mother?" he said. "That isn't her. I don't know where she is. I haven't felt her for days. That's someone else. A whole other It, like the one in that man who tried to shoot you and Mr. Patterson. He," Terry said, looking back at the other D'ubians for confirmation, "was really loud. This one is pretty loud; I heard her the day she came by, before she cut up our bikes. But she isn't as loud as the other one."
"This isn't the fly?" said Cara.
"You speak," said Issio, "of entirely different Its? Not the ones we already know?"
"Well," said Terry reasonably, "you know these two now. Right?"
Policemen were getting into their cars, slamming car doors, turning off the flashing lights. "We're leaving for the station; can you follow us?" called Detective Ortiz in Dural's direction, and Dural turned and waved.
"If our Terry says," he told Jared, "this is true. These are new Its. So now we know five of them. This is too bad," he added, and the rest of the Duri group nodded dolefully. "We go sign complaints," he said, brightening, and he waved his troop forward, to the old black car. "You tell everyone," he said, "and we discuss later."
Terry, guitar and all, trotted happily off with Durata; the six of them got into the black car and Durakal, in the driver's seat, put it into motion in the wake of the police cars, clipping the chute, scraping the side of the greasy-looking foamstone building on the other side of the alley, jerking abruptly into the air and then dropping to bounce on the collision shield, which whined with overuse. The procession reached the end of the alley and turned south.
"Oh, hell," said Jared, holding Cara's hand.
"Indeed," said Issio.
And then, for a few weeks, nothing happened.
Author's Note
So some of the problems are under control, and life seems to be much brighter. But we still don't know who the entities are, or what they really want, and who's to say no new entities will appear? And what kind of problems will they create when they arrive? And how will our friends cope with this?
As the man said, it's not over till it's over . . .
The next volume, Misborn II, will be coming out soon. Watch for it; there are some surprises coming up!
In the meantime, if you would like a little more perspective on Jared and on his time with the Premier Escort Agency, clients he will always remember and experiences that shaped him, and his long love affair with Maud –
Check my Smashwords author page by clicking on my name:
The six novellas listed there will give you a glimpse of Jared's earlier life. They're listed for adults only, although none of them contain explicit material – suggestive, certainly; he worked for an escort agency, after all! And the ideas contained in the stories are not really appropriate for children.