The Family Tree (40 page)

“Niagara…?” Francis cocked his head, questioningly.

“Private joke,” said Abby. “Just remember it.”

“And Korèsans are who?”

Abby replied. “A local religious group who believe in the diversity of life. Friends. Allies. Headed by a man named Vorn Dionne.”

Dora looked out the window for a moment, fretfully. “Actually, I’ll have to get in touch with Dionne. I’ve got to tell him we saw Calclough at the lab.”

“Quit simmering,” Abby advised her, with a fond though slightly apprehensive glance. “We’ll be home in five minutes.”

They turned down the swerving lane that led past Dora’s house, down the aisle of trees where leaves danced in the sun, past hillocks of greenery marking the presence of houses, through white-trunked groves, then green-trunked ones, through glades of flowers. They drove. They drove further. The lane turned. They drove through more groves and more glades and were back on the avenue.

“What?” asked Francis.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Dora muttered. “Try it again, Abby.”

They tried it again, with the same result. The road did not lead where it was supposed to lead.

Abby parked under the usual tree. “Do you suppose if we walked…?”

Dora shook her head. “Phone.”

“You don’t have a cellular phone.”

“Too expensive. There’s one at the drugstore on the corner.”

She stood in the booth, nervously shifting from foot to foot, listening to the repetitive ringing. At last the machine picked up, and she said loudly, “This is Dora. Someone please pick up the phone! This is Dora, I need to speak to someone. Please pick up the phone. Come on, somebody…”

“Dora?” It wasn’t a voice she recognized.

“May I speak with Izakar, please?” she asked.

“Dora, are you alone?”

“Abby’s here.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Pretty much, yes. Blanche?”

“Yes. Izzy’s outside holding an enchantment on the woods to keep something nasty out. The nasty has been trying to get in here ever since you left.”

“Can Izzy let us through?”

“Just you and Abby?”

“And a small, gray parrot. His name is Francis.”

The phone thunked hollowly as Blanche set it down. Dora heard voices, the clatter of hooves on the stairs. After a time, a returning clatter, then a rustle. “Dora. Izzy says look at your watch, then walk down the lane for as many minutes as it usually takes you, then stop and watch the time. Exactly fifteen minutes from now, he’ll drop the spell for just a moment. You should be able to see your car. Use that as a landmark and come to the house, or where it ought to be. He’ll let you through.”

“Fifteen minutes from now,” said Dora. “Are you looking at a clock?”

“Now,” said Blanche, and hung up.

Dora stopped at the van to collect Francis, then she and Abby walked down the lane. “How long does it usually take us?” she wondered, looking at her watch.

“It takes me about ten minutes,” said Abby. “When I don’t hurry.”

“Well, let’s not hurry.”

They walked for ten minutes, seeing nothing that looked at all familiar. They stopped.

“Five minutes to wait,” Dora remarked.

“Something stinks,” said Abby. “Like something dead.”

She looked up. The thing had never come in daylight, but the smell was unmistakable. She handed Francis to Abby and took her gun from its holster.

“You always carry that?” Abby asked.

“Well, I’m supposed to,” she said. “And lately, I’ve considered it sensible.”

There was something up there in the trees. She could feel it. So could Francis, for he was looking where she was looking.

“It’s up there,” the parrot whispered. “I can see it against the light. Like a shadow.”

“How big?” asked Dora.

“Too damned big,” said Francis feelingly. “I should have stayed in the lab.”

“Calclough hasn’t had time to do this,” whispered Abby. “We didn’t take more than twenty minutes detouring to Mrs. Winston’s place.”

Dora shook her head. “It isn’t Calclough. This has been going on all morning.”

“A car has just appeared,” muttered Francis. “Behind you.”

There was a car, Dora’s, facing the other way. They darted toward it, turned right and raced into absolutely uncharted territory. A hole opened. They plunged through in a cloud of nauseating stench, feeling the hole close around them. Something huge and terrible tried to come after them and hit an invisible barrier, screaming in rage.

They were standing just outside Dora’s gate. Inside, Izzy was busy with three fires and three candles marking a six-pointed star, with lines and signs laid out on the ground, with the pouring and mixing of ingredients as he kept up a chanted though breathless encouragement of whatever power he had summoned. They didn’t interrupt him.

The countess was waiting, and she led the way past the veebles and up the stairs to the living room, where Nassif and Blanche awaited them.

Dora took time only to introduce Francis to Blanche, then went directly to the phone and called Harry Dionne. “Is your dad there, Harry?”

“The archpriest is present, yes.” Harry was miffed about something. He and his father had probably been at it again.

“Archpriest, whatever, tell him we’re under siege here. I need to talk to him.” She put her hand over the phone and asked, “Did Izzy say anything about where this is coming from or who’s doing it?”

“The person, whoever, has to be close,” offered Nassif. “Since the nasty is in the direction of the street, Izzy thinks it’s out that way.”

“Then we need to go out the back door, don’t we? Through the woods. Hello, Your Worthiness? Listen…”

Across the room, Abby murmured, “What happened, exactly?”

Nassif answered. “You had only been gone a little while when Izzy got very restless. He said he smelled trouble. Then we all smelled it, getting stronger and stronger. Izzy grabbed his kit and went outside. I helped him. We got the fires lit and he was making a barrier against the smelly thing when we heard it.”

“Heard it?” asked Dora, turning from the phone. “On the roof?”

“No. Heard it screaming. Should it have been on the roof?”

“That’s where it’s been before.” She turned back to her conversation with the archpriest.

“So you heard it screaming, like what?” asked Abby.

“Like a huge bird. So then Izzy sent the onchiki and the armakfatidi out into the trees, to get wood, to keep the fires going. They’ve been going back and forth ever since.”

“Why do the fires have to keep going?”

“To keep the kettles steaming, because that’s what keeps the spell going.”

“Why doesn’t he put it on the stove?” asked Abby.

“Too techno,” said the countess. “Too many hightech parts.”

“Where’s Sahir?”

“He went out, early, before this happened. Soaz and Sheba and Oyk and Irk are looking for him. Inside the barrier, needless to say.”

“How big is this barrier?”

“Izzy says he’s got it out about a quarter mile.”

“Can he take a break? I need to talk to him,” said Dora, hanging up. “Vorn Dionne is willing to help, but we’ll have to tell him what kind of help we need.”

They clattered downstairs, where Izzy beckoned to Abby, showing him what to do, telling him what to say, then staggered over to Dora, shaking his head. “I told Lucy Low and Dzilobommo to find the others and bring them in. We’ll have to make a break for it pretty soon. I can’t keep this up.”

“We may not have to. Can the person who’s doing this, that is, the Woput, can he be located? Is there some way that Vorn Dionne and his people can find him, and stop him, while he’s concentrated on us, here?”

“Killing him won’t help.”

“I know that. Vorn knows that. But maybe he can tie him up, or gag him or something.”

“Well, the sorcerer is nearby, I’m sure of that. So, tell Vorn to bring enough people to do a search, have them start down at the avenue, where you always park, then come this way, well spread out. They’ll be looking
for someone more or less out in the open. He’ll have a fire, too. In this kind of spell, fire is always the enabler. He…or, I suppose, she will obviously be doing something strange. Gestures, powders, invocations. Sneak up on him or her, get a bag over his head and gag him. Don’t let him, or her, keep the use of eyes or tongue. Oh, and put out the fire. That’s important, put out the fire.”

Dora retreated upstairs to the phone. Abby, between gestures, remarked, “Dora says this thing has been on the roof before.”

“Not this thing hasn’t,” muttered Izzy, returning to his task. “A little one, maybe, but not this thing.”

They kept up the fires. The onchiki and armakfatidi returned to be introduced to Francis. After a time Sheba and Soaz, Oyk and Irk returned, but there was no sign of Sahir.

S
ahir had spoken to me before he went away that morning. He had said he needed to be by himself, “to think.” I probably should have talked him out of it, but at the time, Sahir’s doing some thinking seemed a good idea. We were all, to use Dora’s words, rather pissed with Sahir.

The nasty thing came not long after, and we spent the next few hours scurrying about, some of us helping Izzy while others searched for Sahir. At one point, the phone rang. We didn’t answer it, of course, but the machine did, so we heard the message. It was the elder with the eye patch, the one who had said he would go to the boardinghouse. He said the Woput had gone into either Ms. Michaelson—because they’d been introduced to that reputedly talkative woman and she hadn’t said a word—or Mr. Fries, the messy one—because they’d noticed him neatening up the dining room. I wrote this down, to tell Dora.

Then it was just more of the same until the phone
rang again, and we heard Dora’s voice, then she and Abby and the new psitid arrived. Dora talked to the priest, but nothing changed for what seemed like forever. Poor Izzy was so tired and sick, I worried about him, and then about four o’clock in the afternoon, the nasty thing went away, bang, just like that.

Izzy almost fell down, he was so exhausted. Abby carried him upstairs and Dzilobommo made something restorative. Dora and I went out looking for whoever or whatever. We found Vorn Dionne out in the street with several other people, mostly young and mostly rather husky, and in the midst of them all, tied up and gagged and blindfolded, was a woman.

“Is that Momma Gerber?” said Dora, disbelieving. “Momma Gerber!”

It was Momma Gerber, kicking and struggling like someone a lot younger and stronger than she looked. The archpriest’s men carried her back to the house. Abby took one look and told us to put the tied-up woman somewhere where she couldn’t hear us. He and quite a group of Vorn’s people took her out in the woods and tied her to a tree, very tightly. A couple of young men stayed there to guard her, and when the others returned, Vorn picked two—both elders—to stay with him while the rest of his people went back to wait at their vehicles.

Abby dropped into a chair, rubbing at his head with both hands, as though he had a pain. “We saw Mr. Calclough at the lab. There’s a message on the machine from your colleagues who went to the boardinghouse. They think it’s either Ms. Michaelson or Mr. Fries. Now, you’ve got Momma Gerber.”

“I was afraid of this,” said Izzy in a faint, pained voice. “After Rosa killed Jared, when we heard that howl, it sounded like more than one voice. Then when we spoke of the boardinghouse and I realized Woput-Jared had known all the occupants, I thought he might have occupied more than one of them. I’m afraid we’ve got a hive of Woputs by now.”

“All of them sorcerers?” asked Vorn, with a significant glance at his colleagues, then answered himself disgustedly, “Of course.”

“As I see it,” Izzy went on, pulling himself up on the pillow, “the longer we wait, the worse it will get. If we move immediately, we may have the advantage of surprise. Right now they think Momma-Woput has us pinned down. At this point, the other Woputs don’t know that we know who or where they are. Mr. Calclough didn’t see Dora or Abby at the lab. The Korèsan couple who inquired at the boardinghouse did so anonymously.”

“But if Momma knows,” asked Dora, “won’t the others know, too?”

Izzy shook his head. “The Woput had one personality up until he split,” said Izzy. “But the minute he split, he was in separate bodies that were receiving separate sensory information. At that point, he started diverging. All of them know everything the Woput knew up until he took over their bodies, but from that point on, each of them began to differentiate. They’re doing what they’re doing by agreement, not by mind reading.”

“You’re sure?” asked Vorn.

“I’m almost absolutely sure,” said Izzy. “I sensed only one normally powerful mind out there. If they could link minds, I think I’d have noticed more oomph to it somehow.”

“So the others don’t know we’ve got Momma,” Abby muttered. “They don’t know we know where they are. Which may mean they haven’t laid on any protection.”

“Why this all-out assault?” Dora wanted to know. “Momma-Woput didn’t know the animals were gone from the lab. Only Calclough-Woput knew that.”

“I think Sahir talked,” I said sadly. “I think he told Jared-Woput we were from the future. The Woputs don’t only want to kill the people from the lab, they also want to kill us.”

“Did Sahir tell you that?” asked the countess.

I shook my head, ashamed of my prince. “No. But that’s the only way I can explain how he’s been acting.”

“He has been acting oddly,” said the countess. “But he is outside our consideration right now. If he’s out there in the woods somewhere, he’ll come back, or he won’t. If that thing got him, he won’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

“My point is,” said Izzy, “we can’t afford to wait here for him. We’ve done everything here that we can do. If we’re to surprise anyone, we have to go to the boardinghouse now. We have to take the time control. Once they’re all in the house, we can set the field so it catches them all, us all. Except Abby and Dora and the Korèsans, of course. Once we’re back where we started from, even a whole hive of Woputs can’t do much damage.”

“You should warn the Weelians they’ll be coming,” said the archpriest, looking at his two friends, who nodded, yes, they should be warned. “If that’s possible.”

“We can send a message through,” mused Izzy. “The control can be adjusted to a larger or smaller field. But there are only two uses of the control left. If we send a message, that will leave us with only one use, and a large number of us to move.”

“Well then, send some of us with the message,” said Blanche. “Get those of us who would be less useful in the business out of the way. Then the final use won’t need to be so…powerful.”

This idea met general agreement. Logistically, it made sense. The onchiki could go back, and Blanche, and Sheba, and the armakfatidi. The countess insisted upon staying, “seeing it through,” as she said. We all agreed we might need Soaz, but Soaz wanted Sheba to be safe.

“But we’ll take the veebles now,” cried Lucy Low.

“And me,” said Francis, turning to Blanche for confirmation. “I’d consider it an adventure.” The two of them had been huddled for the last several hours, getting to know one another.

We counted: this would leave six, or seven, if Sahir
showed up. Plus Abby and Dora and the Korèsans. Enough to regroup and replan if we had to, as Izzy remarked.

The countess, Dora, Soaz and I went to get the control, Soaz taking the lead, as usual, and going directly to the pack where the control had been. He dumped the pack’s contents on the ground and rummaged through them looking for the red leather case, which was not there.

“Ah,” said the countess. “Well, well.”

“It’s gone!” screamed Soaz. “We’re trapped here.”

The countess soothed. “Only the case is gone, Soaz. I think we have to accept that Sahir took it. I think he probably wanted to go back by himself.”

“But why?” Soaz yowled.

“So he could tell everyone how brave he’d been,” I said bitterly. “So he could tell them how he’d fought heroically for us, but we’d all died.”

“But if we don’t stop the Woput,” said Dora, “his people will perish. He knows we need the control for that.”

The countess shrugged. “I think to Sahir, the future of his people or any people is peripheral to his picture of himself. Is it not so with people now? You and we are not very different, Dora. Looking beyond one’s own lifetime is very difficult. Only highly evolved creatures can do it, and none of us, perhaps, are evolved that far.”

She sounded more sad than angry. I was angry. Sahir hadn’t gotten away with the control, of course, because we’d hidden it, but I was still angry!

“You moved it!” Soaz accused us.

“We were concerned,” the countess replied. “Let us say, we were not sure all was well with Prince Sahir.”

When we retrieved the control, we took it back upstairs and told everyone what had happened. Izzy was sitting up, less pale, a little recovered. Nothing was to be gained by waiting, so we all agreed. Izzy checked the little window, to be sure how many uses we had left, and it still showed the number two, two uses only until
it recharged itself or did whatever else it was supposed to do.

People mumbled to one another, saying half-hearted good-byes. We trooped downstairs, rather disheartened. Parting is never easy, particularly when things are so uncertain. Those who were to make the journey assembled outside the door to Dora’s place: Lucy Low, Mince and Burrow; the veebles; Dzilobommo and Dzilula; Blanche and Francis; and Sheba—reluctantly. She didn’t want to leave Soaz, but he insisted. Dora knelt beside the onchiki and hugged them, stroked the veebles, bowed to the armakfatidi and the others.

Izzy took the key from around his neck, turned on the control, fiddled with the setting, getting it just right, then backed off until the little green light went on to tell him he was out of the field. He lifted one hand in farewell as he pressed the button. They went, all at once. I was looking very closely, and I saw them rise like smoke, like smoke vanishing in a wind.

The archpriest had stood at Izzy’s shoulder, following every step of the procedure with total concentration. Now he and his two friends came with us as we, much sobered, returned upstairs. Dora stroked the chair where Lucy Low and her brothers had been lying. “I will miss them.”

“There are others, here,” said the archpriest, examining her face with that same intent look he had displayed downstairs, as though he was memorizing her. “Perhaps you will make their protection your lifework.”

“I’d like that,” Dora said, smiling at him. “It would be like a return to paradise.”

“In recognition of that intent, I have a present for you,” said Vorn. He fished in a pocket and took out a pendant that hung from a slender chain. “Silver and malachite,” he said. “The colors and symbol of Korè.”

He held it out where we could see it. The polished green stone was mounted in silver and inlaid with a silver tree, each twig perfect and distinct.

“When you see someone wearing this sign, you will
know you are seeing one of Korè’s people.” Vorn put his hand on her shoulder, smiled at her, patted her in a fatherly fashion, and she leaned forward to hug him. I think she was as surprised as he was. When he put the chain around her neck, she had tears in her eyes.

Vorn turned to Abby, to present him with another, similar jewel, this one on a bracelet. Abby didn’t weep, but he did seem properly solemn when he held out his wrist and let Vorn fasten it there. I thought it was nice of Vorn to have made the gesture. Abby and Dora had done so much for us, and we really had no way to repay them.

Vorn’s people fetched the several cars and vans they had arrived in so we could load everyone aboard, including the Woput woman, now with a bag over her head. We were careful to say nothing at all in her hearing, just in case Izzy was wrong about the new Woputs being separate creatures.

We parked in front of Jared’s old place, broke open the back door and went in, taking Momma-Woput with us and putting her in the basement. We all felt it likely that the Woputs would either be at the boardinghouse, or gather there to await a report from Momma. Dora knew the place well, and at her direction Oyk and Irk went on reconnaissance, anonymous as any two small dogs, peeking through windows to see who was where, while some of the Korèsans helped by walking by on the sidewalk to see what cars were there. The rest of us waited as patiently as possible.

Only five persons were there when they first looked. They went back and forth over the next hour or so, telling us who had come, who was there. We talked some about Sahir. The countess and Soaz were both worried about him. Vorn Dionne said he would provide a sanctuary for Sahir, if and when he showed up, and that solved that problem. I confess to being relieved. Sahir had behaved very badly indeed, but I had hated the thought of his being left behind, with no friends to care for him.

By sunset, Oyk and Irk had counted all the five people Dora had identified, plus four others. With Momma, that made ten.

“Jared said there were ten,” Dora commented. “That must be all of them.”

According to Oyk and Irk, the ten were busily engaged in preparing for something that looked sorcerous. Sending the nasty back to Dora’s place, possibly. Well, nasty though they might, it would do them no good. Nobody was home at Dora’s place, and by the time she got back, the Woputs would be gone.

By this time darkness was well advanced, so we got Momma-Woput out of the basement and carried her through the trees, slipping across the vacant lanes left for cars, and arriving at last at the rear of the house. Dora said that in ordinary times this would have been impossible, but now the trees gave us excellent cover. The plan was that we would assemble in the paved area at the rear of the house, along the alley. The control would be set to make a large field, including both the area and the house itself, so we could all go through at the same time on the single charge remaining in the control. Vorn Dionne would take charge of using the control, and afterward he would hide it and the key where it would never be found. At first we had thought Abby and Dora would do this, but the archpriest convinced us he was better qualified for this task, since secrecy was his business. His custody of the control would keep any future Woput from coming back and meddling.

So Abby and Dora were left with no role beyond waving us good-bye and letting us say one last time how grateful we all were. We had kept everything very simple. We had gone over it a dozen times without thinking of anything that might go wrong with it.

Of course, we’d ignored one element.

We assembled in back of the house, taking roll, as it were, to be sure we were all present and accounted for. Momma Woput was laid against the building, still tied. Izzy took charge of setting the control properly, double-
checking, before turning the device over to Vorn. At that point Vorn’s people, who had surrounded the house to keep anyone from leaving, went away from the boardinghouse, back into the trees, well out of the way. Oyk and Irk made a final circuit and came to tell us everyone was inside. They joined the rest of us at the rear of the house.