The Family Tree (34 page)

They drove the rest of the way in virtual silence, with Soaz growling and Izzy gloating and the countess calming them all by saying that morning was almost sure to come again because it always had before.

I
t took me a while to sort out what we had found out, or thought we had. Jared was the umminhi who had been mated to Dora, only not really. More like enslaved, I thought. She was mated to him as I was to Sultan Tummyfat: as cook, washer-up, mender. Only she did it of her own will, it was not done to her, only perhaps it was, for the Woput might have enchanted her.

As we ate the late supper Dzilobommo had prepared, Izzy and I spoke of what it might feel like, having Woput enter into one. Dora said Jared had been hit by lightning, and Woput might feel like that. Dora wondered out loud whether Jared remained after Woput came, or whether the person was all Woput now? Did Woput know what Jared knew? Izzy and Soaz joined this discussion, which was to no purpose for nobody knew any answers. Dora said she would find out, she wanted to know, she would ask Jared’s mother.

The talk went on, but the countess did not join in. She left the table and went into the sleeping room. Also, I
did not feel like arguing. I was tired. The onchiki had been playing with the soap again, and they were tired. Blanche and Dzilobommo had been arguing about food. They were tired. When we had eaten, we weary ones went into the other room and almost closed the door. We could still hear Izzy and Soaz and the humans, but it was less noisy.

For some reason I started thinking about technology. Izzy said magic wouldn’t work where there was technology. On Dora’s bed was a wonderful mattress. Soft, but resilient, like moss in the woods, but without twigs. Was this mattress technology? I would like to have this mattress, even if I couldn’t do magic on it. Except a certain kind, maybe.

“Stop giggling,” said Lucy Low, sticking her nose in my neck and curling tightly against me.

In the big room, the voices stopped. Outside, trees moved and night birds called. In this strange world, in this strange time, trying to do strange things no one had done before, I was at home among friends upon a lovely mattress. I thought to myself that there are worse things than comfort. At that moment, everything else could wait.

W
hile the guests settled themselves, Dora and Abby poured themselves each a drink and sat sipping at them while the place grew quiet. After a peek into her bedroom, they decided not to disturb the people piled on her bed. Instead, they held a whispered conference, set the alarm for five thirty, then unfolded the couch in the living room and lay down upon it, still fully dressed. When the clock rang, Dora made coffee, Abby shook the sleep from his eyes and announced his intention of going home to pack some clothes and toiletries and pick up his own sleeping bag and air mattress. Dora surprised herself by kissing him good-bye, then surprised herself even more by doing it again.

“Hey, Dora,” he murmured into her ear. “You could come with me. Help me pack.”

She sagged against him, tempted, then drew resolutely away. “We already assigned me a duty this morning, McCord. Don’t throw us off course.”

“I’m not being irresistible. You are.”

She giggled. “It’s all my fault, right, my hair all which away, and sleep in my eyes and my mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage, no offence to Blanche. It’ll keep, Abby. Won’t it?”

He answered her with an incendiary look, hugged her again and was gone. Dora breathed heavily for a few moments, then washed her face, called a cab, and wakened Oyk and took him with her to the avenue to meet it.

“I don’t carry no dogs,” the driver said belligerently.

“This is a police dog,” said Dora, showing her badge and trying to ignore Oyk’s expression, which was one of disdain.

“That’s no police dog. Police dogs don’t have tails like that.”

“I didn’t say a German Shepherd, I said a police dog. He’s a tracking dog. I lost a notebook on an investigation yesterday, and I brought the dog to help me find it.”

“So how come you don’t got a police car.”

“Because I’d just as soon the lieutenant doesn’t know I lost my case notes, you mind?”

Still belligerently, the cabby took them to Randall Pharmaceuticals, where Dora had him wait while she and Oyk went down along the outside of the fence into the woods at the bottom of the hill. There Dora fished a dog-eared notebook from her pocket and leaned against a tree while Oyk slipped under the fence and up the hill to the pens. He returned shortly, then he and Dora came back to the cab, she triumphantly waving the notebook.

Home again, she carried the phone into the bathroom and called Abby’s pager. When he called back, she said:

“Oyk told all of them to get ready for a jailbreak tonight. Oyk and I figured if he could get under the fence, everybody else could get under it, or over it, and all of them can dig out of their pens and hide the holes. All we have to do is transport them here for the time
being. I figured we’ll rent two vans, one for the predators and one for the prey, just in case. Then when we get them here, Soaz and Izzy can keep them separated.”

“That doesn’t take care of the ones inside,” Abby argued. “The fence isn’t electrified, but I know damned well the building has all kinds of security.”

“One thing at a time.” Dora said, feeling slightly annoyed with him. “We can’t do everything at once! If the pens are easier for us, they’d be easier for the Woput, too.”

She did not say Jared. She was ninety percent sure Jared was the Woput, but she did not say Jared. She felt saying his name might invoke his attention. She didn’t want to see him, or confront him, or accuse him. She wanted to ask his mama one last question, then she wanted quietly to dispose of him, once and for all, decisively, without anyone’s noticing. It was like having stepped into dog shit. One did not display it. One did not say, out loud, “dog shit.” One wiped one’s foot and tried to ignore the smell.

“You’re going to see your ex-ma-in-law?” Abby asked, reading her mind.

“This morning. Phil and I’ll make time to drive over there. I just want one answer from her.”

“Last night I got to thinking. If he killed Winston, maybe you could prove it.”

She choked and had some trouble clearing her throat. “I thought of that myself, Abby. It was one of the first things I thought of last night when Jared popped up as a suspect, but I have a little trouble coming up with probable cause for an investigation. If I tell the lieutenant that a bunch of otters and cats and pigs and dogs and monkeys told me that somebody came from three thousand years in the future and invaded the body of my ex-husband in order to kill off a bunch of scientists and talking animals and so forth…” Her voice trailed off into hiccoughing self-mockery.

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “I get the picture.”

“What is probable cause?” asked Izzy, when she had hung up.

“You’re awake,” she said unnecessarily.

“I woke up when you went out. I have been considering protective magic for this place. What is probable cause?”

“It’s a protection for citizens. It says that police people cannot just stop you or harass you or invade your house or place of employment, or your car or your boat or whatever, unless there is probable cause to think you committed a crime.”

Izzy frowned. “Does this apply only to your people or to…no. In this time, others are not people, so of course it applies only to your people. If an…animal kills someone, what happens?”

“Well, people get killed by animals every year. Campers or hikers provoke bears, or run afoul of bull elk. Swimmers get eaten by sharks. If the animal can be caught, we usually kill it. Usually. Of course, if the animal is smart enough to get away, nothing happens. It wouldn’t be investigated like a homicide.”

“So, if ‘bear’ or ‘cat’ killed Woput, you would not have to investigate,” he said thoughtfully.

“It wouldn’t be required by my job, no,” she said, searching his face, which was enigmatic.

“And would you yourself require it?”

“I wouldn’t look very hard,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Ah, given the circumstances, I might not look at all.”

He blinked at her. She busied herself, carrying the phone back to the kitchen and saying to the group at large:

“Listen, will you all be okay here today? I mean, you’ve got to stay out of sight. Does everyone accept that? If you go out, do it without clothes, please. Don’t talk to people. And by the way, Lucy Low, you and Mince and Burrow stay out of the soap. I noticed last night your fur is getting all tangled and messed up. I’ll try to remember to bring home some conditioner.”

“They get bored,” said Izzy. “So do I. Even in Palmia, with the aunts, I have seldom been so bored.”

“Watch television. Listen to music.” She showed him how to work the TV, radio and CD player. “What might be really helpful would be for you to go out in the woods and see how much magic you can do. You said there were constraints last night. It might be a good idea to know where they are, because we may need to fight fire with fire, so to speak.

“By the way, Abby and I brought lots of food yesterday. There’s stuff in the refrigerator and the cupboards for Oyk and Irk and the veebles, too. By tonight, we should have a lot of information we don’t have now.”

And she was out, away, leaving Izzy to crouch by the window and peer out at the morning forest.

“This isn’t how quests are supposed to go,” said the countess from behind him. “We’re supposed to be engaged in acts of derring-do. We should be rescuing Prince Sahir.”

“Dora has that in hand,” said Oyk. “We went out there very early this morning.”

“How was he?” asked the countess.

“Very angry,” replied Oyk. “The others in his pen do not respect princes, particularly. They told him to shut up and await events. He had several new bruises and at least one tusk puncture.”

“Do you realize that Dora and Abby are cannibals?” the countess sniffed, angered on behalf of the absent prince. “They have meat in their cold box.”

“They aren’t cannibals,” said Izzy. “They do not eat intelligent creatures. Difficult though it may be for us to keep in mind, our people in this time are not intelligent. Umminhi in this time eat scuinan flesh, but pigs can’t talk. But then, in our time, scuinans eat umminhi flesh, and humans can’t talk.”

The countess flushed. It was true. Old umminhi, or those unsuited to carrying burdens, were routinely slaughtered. Their meat, called veel, was ground for the
making of veeliki-bana, a kind of stuffed pastry that was served with chile sauce. The meat of the very young ones, which were slaughtered only after a lengthy fattening, was considered a delicacy for the gourmet trade.

“Dora and Abby are as ethical as you and I,” said Izzy. “Hard to believe, but true.”

“The Zhapanees eat sea people,” said Soaz. “And the sea people are speaking people in this time, too. There’s a book about it here.”

“Abby says Zhapanees live in such crowded conditions, many of them don’t think of their own women as people, much less other tribes,” said Izzy patiently. “Also, that book concerns attempts by nature lovers to make Zhapanees stop eating sea people. It is as Dora says: some umminhi in this time are good; some are bad. Some are smart, some are stupid. Even among our peoples, this is so.”

“Where are Zhapanees?” asked Lucy Low. “Near or far?”

This led to the bookshelf again, and the book of maps Dora had already shown them. Zhapan, or Japan, or Nippon, was very far, across a great ocean.

“Where is Crawling Sea?” Lucy demanded. They looked. Dora had shown them where they were, and there was no Crawling Sea. No Sharbak Range. No Big or Little Stonies.

“It could be on other side of world,” said the countess. “Some far place from this. Or, nearby, but perhaps a great upheaval happened, an earthquake or volcano.”

“Maybe we have come to another world,” said Lucy Low.

Izzy shrugged. “No. If we had much time and little to do, we could find Crawling Sea and mountains and all. I would rather watch TV.” Privately, he had decided to do what Dora suggested: go out in the woods and see how much magic was possible.

Dora, meantime, had arrived at the precinct, apologized to Phil for missing work the previous day, explained she’d had a bad day. “I thought maybe you and
I could run over and find out from Mrs. Winston if she knows of any friends her husband had up in Alaska.”

“Alaska?”

“The guy out at Randall Pharmaceuticals, he mentioned Dr. Winston had some friends in Alaska. They might have a lead for us, and maybe his wife knows who they are, or, maybe they’ll be in Winston’s address book.”

They phoned. Mrs. Winston was at work. They phoned her at work. Mrs. Winston knew exactly where her late husband’s address book was. She would call the housekeeper and Phil could pick it up anytime this morning. Fine. Yes. She was glad to know they were still working on it. She had thought she’d be over her grief by now, but the longer she was without her husband, the more she missed him.

“I don’t know about this case,” Phil said, hanging up the phone. “Everything seems to be getting more and more tangled up.”

“Cases get that way sometimes,” she opined. “Then they straighten out. Come on, Phil. Let’s go pick the thing up. And on the way, let me stop at the boardinghouse for a minute. I want to ask my former mother-in-law something.”

Mrs. Gerber had aged in recent weeks, Dora thought. She had new lines around her mouth and eyes.

“Jared isn’t well,” she confided in a whisper. “Dora, you shouldn’t have left him. He was fine when he had you to take care of him. These days, it’s hard for him to get up and go to work.”

“Well, he wasn’t fine when we lived together, Momma Gerber. He got that poisoning, you know. I think it may have long-term effects. Or it could be an effect of that time he got hit by lightning, when he was a boy….”

“He got over that completely.”

“I wanted to ask you about that. Did he seem different to you, after that happened?”

“Well, of course he did, Dora. You couldn’t have
something like that happen and not feel different! He had trouble pronouncing his words, and he kind of had to think what he was going to say, and for a while he was real slow remembering people’s names and how to get places. Why, right there at first, he didn’t even know who I was.”

“Did he get all his memory back?”

Mrs. Gerber flushed. “No. He used to have this sweet little thing he’d say to me at night, even when he was a big boy, and after he got hit by lightning, he never said it again. Like it just went out of his head.”

Dora shook her head, speaking without thinking. “I can’t figure out why he ever married me….” He, meaning the Woput.

“Well, I know why,” said the older woman, pinching her lips together. “Those girls at his office, chasing him all the time, inviting him to dinner, all that, drove him out of his mind. Jared does not like being bothered! He picked you, Dora. A nice, quiet girl, accommodating, not demanding, someone who’d be grateful for a quiet home. He asked me if you kept your room neat, and I said, like a pin. He wanted someone he could have around without being bothered all the time.”

For a moment Dora couldn’t speak. “Not exactly fair to me, was it?”

Momma Gerber pinched her lips again, even more tightly. “I don’t know why not. A good home. Good food. There’s many a woman would consider that a bargain. And you had your own work, too. It wasn’t as though you sat around there all day.”

Dora stood up. “It grieves me to admit that some women would have settled for that. I’m no longer one of them.” She took a deep breath, patted Mama Gerber on the shoulder and went back out to the car.

“You’re looking all nervy,” said Phil. “Like Charlene before she goes to the beauty parlor.”

“Yeah, well, we women get that way. We get this longing for the hair dryer, Phil.”

He didn’t hear the sarcasm. “Hair dryer?”

“The sound it makes, and the fact it surrounds your whole brain in warm air. You sit there on that worn mother-of-pearl leatherette and your thoughts kind of evaporate. You find yourself reading about Michael Jackson or Elizabeth Taylor for the thirtieth time as though you actually cared. You become for a time what women are supposed to be, totally vacuous and compliant….”

He finally caught on. “You’re on the prod! So, what’s with Jared and his mama?”

“I don’t much care,” she lied.