The Family Tree (41 page)

Abby and Dora backed off until Vorn said they were out of the field, though they were still quite close enough to say good-bye. I could see tears on Dora’s cheeks. Vorn called to her, asking if she had her pendant, and she said yes.

“Hold it, my dear. It will comfort you in the separation,” he said. “And hold on to Abby, as well.”

Vorn’s people waved from the woods. Vorn himself moved his finger toward the button…

And Sahir came screaming out of the woods like a comet, yelling no, no, no, they couldn’t do that to him, they’d lied to him, the control wasn’t in the case. We turned, appalled, just in time to see him hit Dora’s legs, to see her grab for Abby, to see them both go tumbling, just as Vorn’s finger came down…

And we all went somewhere else.

T
he transit, returning, was no more pleasant than the transit going. Momma Gerber came with us, and Mrs. Sohn, Ms. Michaelson, Mr. Calclough, Mr. Fries, Mr. Singley, and four unnamed but irate individuals we had never seen before. Evidently they hadn’t been holding any of their sorcerous materials when the button got pushed, for whatever enchantments they had been up to did not survive the trip. Dora and Abby arrived with us. The control stayed in the past, as had been intended.

Sahir was with us, needless to say, still in a rage, screaming and frothing at the mouth. Soaz took it for about a split second, then hit him a blow that carried him all the way off the timeworm and onto the platform. Soaz was very seriously annoyed.

Brother Red was there, with others. “Which ones?” he demanded of Izzy, who wordlessly pointed out all of the Woputs.

“Them?” asked Brother Red, pointing to Abby and Dora.

“Friends,” said Izzy. “Let them alone. They weren’t supposed to have come.”

The brothers couldn’t take their eyes from Dora. They helped her off the Wheel, paying more attention to her than they did to the ten Woputs, who were only belatedly manhandled into a kind of vault at one side of the area, stripped to rid them of any sorcerous materials they might have about them, and the door locked upon them.

“What are you going to do with them?” asked Dora. “And why don’t you take those silly hoods off? We know what you are.”

Brother Red fumbled with his veils, removing them slowly. I thought him a not unpleasant looking human (as I was being careful to call them for Dora’s sake), though rather sickly, no worse than some we had seen in the past.

“What are you going to do with them?” Dora repeated.

Brother Red shook his head slowly. “When Blanche came and told us about them, we hoped they might be of fertile or childbearing age, but we’re afraid they’re too old. So…we could kill them. Or we could turn them loose. Or, we could turn them over to Faros VII. He would probably appreciate that.”

She held out her hand. “I’m Dora. And you are?”

He took her hand and didn’t let it go. “I know.” He stared at her, eating her with his eyes, ignoring Abby who stood next to her. “You might as well just call me Brother…Red.”

Sheba had been waiting for Soaz, and he went to her, rubbing her face with his own. Looking over their heads, I saw the others waiting on the balcony: the onchiki, the armakfatidi, Francis and Blanche.

Brother Red finally tore himself away from Dora. “Did you succeed?” he asked Izzy. “Did you save your tribes?”

“Probably,” said Izzy in a very weary voice.

The countess nodded. “Probably,” she confirmed, more firmly. “Yes, very likely.”

Brother Red fixed his eyes on Dora once again. “Then perhaps we can concentrate on saving ours….”

Over the next hour or so, every Weelian in the place had a few suggestive words with Dora who, obviously, did not know what the Weelians were hinting at. We did not enlighten her, for though Dora was going through the motions of good sense, it was all on the surface. Both she and Abby were in a state of shock. They kept going over it and over it. “Vorn should have had us stand farther back. I thought we were too close. Maybe he didn’t read the field properly.” And so on. Then, when they’d said it once, they said it over again.

The countess sympathized. I sympathized. No matter how much we felt for them, the control was still back in the twenty-first century, and neither Dora nor Abby could accept the implications of that even though they knew it to be true. They couldn’t go back. Until or unless the Korèsans figured out how the thing worked and either sent it or brought it into the future, where we were. When we were. Which could not be until, unless, the thing recharged to the point that was possible. If the Korèsans decided it was a good idea. Which they might not.

They were both full of comments and questions about what had happened, but they were too shaken even to formulate them sensibly. Each of them would start to say something, then grimace, as though the words caught in their throats. I noticed how the two of them clung together, just as Vorn had told them to do, he wearing his bracelet, she her pendant, almost as though they’d been going-away gifts.

We all were ushered up out of that gloomy place into the courtyard where I had played with the onchiki what seemed a lifetime ago. I realized how short a time it had actually been when I saw one of the imperial guards lounging against the wall in the sun, obviously just now recovering from the wounds he had received during the battle on the shore. He saw Brother Red’s unveiled face,
and there was a moment’s tension, which was immediately soothed by the countess. The tension passed. Luckily, the guard was phlegmatic and not very bright.

We hadn’t eaten in hours, and we were voraciously hungry, a condition which Dzilobommo’s ministrations greatly eased. After the meal, we went to the dormitory, each of us taking possession of a bed, a place, leaving a corner for Dora and Abby to be together. They could not seem to get out of touching distance, one of the other. I could understand that. They were the only familiar beings to one another. The rest of us, well-intentioned though we might be, were still strangers.

The imperial umminhi were still in the stable, awaiting our return, and when Dora and Abby questioned the strange chattering they heard from the adjoining building, I personally took them to see the creatures.

“My God,” said Dora. “They look like Olympic athletes.”

Now that I had seen
humans
, I knew what she meant. Indeed, the umminhi were very lean and muscular. Their teeth and bones were good, important in a beast of burden, and their hair was glossy. These creatures had been recently groomed and oiled, so their skins were glossy also, set off by the silver collars and breeders’ tags all umminhi wore. Seen like this, more than a dozen of them, they were almost frightening.

Abby said, “They have to be healthy, of course. No breeder would keep unhealthy ones alive to breed from.”

The umminhi stared at Dora and Abby. Their nostrils flared. Three of them, a gelding and two stallions, came closer to the gate, eyes flashing.

“Tohwnawaitohwnawaitownahwaeeee,” the gelding muttered. Another umminha replied with a mutter of its own.

“What’s that?” Dora asked, glancing at Abby. He raised his eyebrows at her, then looked back at the umminhi.

“Oh, Dora, they just do it,” I said. “It doesn’t mean
anything. They make that kind of chattering, over and over. My little mare, Honey, made the same noises.”

“Ohaeaitgreoraike, owheyonglai,” chattered one of the stallions.

“Owheyonglai, owheyonglai,” the gelding repeated, coming to the barred stable door, where he and the stallions pressed tightly against the barrier, their collars gleaming between the bars, their eyes fixed on Dora and Abby.

Dora actually reached out a hand to touch their collars. I grabbed her wrist and snatched it back. “Careful!”

“There’s no need for this,” Dora said in a half hysterical voice. “If there ever was.”

“There is a need!” I said. “They have to be kept locked up. Sometimes they attack people.”

Dora turned away with a stunned, frantic look on her face. “Really? Have you ever known one to?”

I tried to think. I hadn’t actually known of a case, but I’d heard stories.

“Yswaiaimte,” the stallion whickered. “Aiiii?”

To me the call was unmistakably sexual, and I flushed. Dora, however, turned around and looked at the beast, a long, long look, turning away again with a troubled face. Well, I knew that trouble. I had felt the same when I saw on the television how ponjic people were treated by the humans in Dora’s time. And sea people. And even Onchik-Dau, in circuses. It is sad to put bars around any creature, truly, but the umminhi could not live long if they were not kept. They are too stupid to survive in the wild.

We went back to the dormitory for a few hours sleep. Then we had another meal and drank some of the brothers’ ale, after which Abby and Dora wandered back to the stables again, where I heard their voices and those of the umminhi, almost a conversation. Honey and I used to sound like that, when I was a child. I used to have conversations with her, me talking, her chattering. I could understand Dora and Abby. They thought the
umminhi were like themselves. It would take time before they could accept that they were not.

Finally, in the early evening, we met in the courtyard, to tell the assembled brothers about the Great Enigma, about the Korèsans, the trees, everything that had happened. When we came to the end of our story, they had questions to ask of Sahir, who sat against the wall, refusing to say anything except, “Ask Soaz.” He had talked to Soaz, for Soaz had threatened to castrate him if he didn’t.

Yes, Soaz said, Sahir had taken the red leather box without ever looking inside it. He had eavesdropped on our plans, then he’d hidden in one of the vans at Dora’s house, intending to go to the boardinghouse and move the Woputs himself, thereby erasing the many stains to his honor.

“And would you have come back with the Woputs, Prince Sahir?” Brother Red asked him. “And if so, would you have left the control for your friends? Or would you have abandoned them where they were to return to your own time alone? To tell whatever story you would.”

Sahir looked at the sky and did not answer, which led us to believe we already knew the answer.

The countess was much saddened by all this. I knew she had liked Sahir. But then, some males are pleasant in a sexual way when they have nothing else at all to recommend them. I suppose the same is true of females. The following morning, after many surprises, the countess remarked as much to me, over tea.

During all this, I continued to notice the regard which the brothers gave to our
human
travelers, to Dora particularly. They were so intent upon her that it made her nervous. “It’s like walking through a prison,” she whispered to us. “All those men, eating you up with their eyes!”

“Perhaps it is somewhat similar,” said the countess. “They have been here, without female companionship,
for a very long time. And, as I have heard Abby remark, you are very attractive, Dora.”

By this time, the reality of the situation was beginning to sink in on both the humans, and their initial confusion was giving way to a kind of despair. They understood that all of us had lives to go back to or forward to, except themselves. When this was finally said, openly, by Dora herself, Brother Red contradicted her. There was a place for her, he said. She could live among her kind at Chamony.

“At Chamony?”

They described it, the orchards, the fountains, the pleasant leas, the little houses, so cozy. The children…

“Abby and I could go there?”

No, said the brothers, Abby could not be allowed to stay with her there.

She demanded explanation, of course, which was forthcoming. The brothers explained fully what they had only hinted at previously, in great detail with many statistics and talk of genetics, and how she was still young enough to have ten or twelve children, or even more. During this lecture, Dora fell into a long, twitchy silence which I thought betokened dismay but instead erupted in a seething ire that escalated into pure rage.

“So you’d have me be a slooge!” she screamed at Brother Red. “A brood mare, a bitch dropping a litter, a breeding sow!”

The countess cringed, for this was very dirty language.

Dora plunged on: “Well let me tell you this, you male chauvinist…person! I would rather die!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Brother Red in a tight, angry voice. “We did prefer that you help us voluntarily.”

Abby turned quite red. “Do you mean to tell me you’ll make her go there whether she wants to or not? Make her…breed? Whether she wants to or not?”

“We have no choice.”

“But that’s quite immoral,” said the countess. “Quite
improper. After all she has done for us—”

“For you!” cried Brother Red. “Yes, for you! Not for us! Not for humanity! I’m sorry, but we’ve voted on it. Abby may do as he likes, but Dora must go to Chamony.”

She rose, pale as ashes. “I’ll leave here now.”

“You can’t. The road is guarded. The cliffs are impassible.”

She looked around at the Weelians. So did the rest of us. They all had that peculiar expression, a kind of sickly lustful determination, like a child stealing candy and quite determined to be as bad and make itself as miserable as possible. Even if they were sickly, however, there were too many of them for us to fight. And they probably had weapons, which we had not. After a moment, without a word, Dora and Abby went out of the courtyard in the direction of the stables.

Brother Red was looking at his shoes, his mouth pursed up.

“If Korè rules this world,” said Izzy, “I see why she chooses to let you Weelians go extinct. You’re not fit to live.”

“We have as much right to survive as you do,” said the Weelian stubbornly.

“Survival schmurvival,” Izzy snarled. “Who says you need to survive? Leave it to the rest of us tribes, we’re doing all right. By and large we show more tolerance and acceptance and good sense than
humans
like you! We don’t force our females to have babies. Go extinct! I quite frankly don’t care! Faros VII will probably do far better with the world than you ever did!”

“Haven’t we suffered enough?” cried Brother Red. “Don’t we deserve a chance?”

“As Korè wills,” cried the countess. “You claim to be Korèsans. Why don’t you put yourself in Her hands and let it be. As Korè wills!” Her voice reverberated in the walled courtyard, sending echoes across the mountain. She had spoken very, very loudly, and from her mouth the name of the goddess seemed to take on a
resonance of its own, coming back at us from a great distance. “Korè…ay…ay…ay.”

From outside the courtyard someone else cried that name as well. “Korè…ay…ay…ay.” It must have been an echo, but it silenced us. Or perhaps it was the countess who had silenced us.

After a time, the Weelians left us alone, and we began to talk of helping Dora escape. Or sending a mission to Chamony to rescue her after she’d been taken there. Or getting Faros to send an army to Chamony to conquer it. Or, or, or. Before we knew it, it was night, and we all retreated to the dormitory to whisper to Abby and Dora what we’d been talking of.