Brother Termite (17 page)

REEN STAGGERED
from the Cousin Place, looked around a moment, realized there was nowhere to go, and, dazed, sat on the steps.

A death sentence. The Community had given him a death sentence.

Along the dark horizon, the lights of Washington, D.C., painted a glowing dome on the bottom of the night. The air was brittle with frost. The moon, high and silent, was a lamp in the hands of Orion. Reen looked up, searching for home; but the star was too far and too faint to be seen.

Reen had misjudged how far and how fast Tali would go.
Now what?
he asked himself. There was no use going back inside and pleading. No one would listen.

Behind him, a quiet pop. The door opened, spilling light down the stairs. “Reen?” a low voice called.

Oomal. Oomal had called his name. Reen got to his feet. His Brother was looking at him, looking into his face as if nothing had happened.

Reen wasn’t sure about the etiquette involved, if he should respond to his Brother’s call.

Like a luminous eye closing, the door pressed shut. “You okay?” Oomal asked.

“Should we be talking?” Reen whispered. “If they hear us talking ...”

“Tali already tried to rebuke me because I said he was the egg-eater and not you. He’s in there shouting orders, and about half the Community is acting as if he were the one thrown away. It’s a mess, Reen.”

With a moist, kissing sound, the door parted again. Thural stumbled out. His dark gaze slipped past Reen and fixed on Oomal. “Tali cannot lead and be Conscience as well,” he said. “Oomal, you must be Conscience. Go back in there and tell him.”

Oomal shrugged. “I am already Conscience, Cousin Thural. Tali has nothing to do with the destiny of birth order. He’ll understand that when he gets over his snit.”

“But you are under rebuke, Cousin. How can Tali put his Conscience under rebuke?”

“He can’t. Tali knows Communal law. He’s bluffing. Go on back, Thural, before Tali tries to put you under rebuke, too. I’ll let him cool off and then remind him how the Community works.”

“He cannot be the First!” Thural shouted. “He cannot simply throwaway his Brother and then take over his place! This has never been done! Another First should rule.”

“We don’t have another First,” Oomal reminded him gently.

Thural’s cry shattered the night as Hopkins’s gun had shattered the mirror. “What he does is human, Cousin Conscience! This is a human thing Tali does, to murder a Brother in order to rule!”

“Yes,” Oomal said with a malicious chuckle. “I agree. Very human. You might go back in and point that out to the Community, too.”

Reen thought for sure that Thural, so full of indignation, would turn on his heel and march back to confront Tali. Instead his Cousin looked out at the dark landing strip and was silent for a long breathless moment. “What the Nameless did was evil, Cousin Conscience,” he finally said, “but not evil enough for this. If the Cousin Who Has No Voice should ask for help, I might hear his request and sleep at his side.”

Reen clapped his hand to his own cowardly mouth to keep from uttering an appeal. Enough murder had been done that night. A pair of Cousins didn’t make a Community. If he accepted Thural’s offer, they would spend the next three days in a sleepless wait for death.

“Never mind,” Oomal told him. “The Nameless will be taken care of. I have some Gerber execs who like the Nameless a lot more than they like Tali. If he wants to come to Michigan, he has a sleeping place. Now go back in there before Tali starts plotting against you.”

Reluctantly Thural went to the door and let it swallow him.

“I meant what I said.” Oomal turned to Reen. “You come on up to Michigan. Tali can’t do anything to me or my employees. Don’t worry about us. We won’t get thrown away just for hanging around with a Nameless Cousin.”

A Nameless Cousin.

Reen took in a ragged breath that tasted of ice. There were difficult things he would have to remember: that he would never again be able to give an order; that he would make no more decisions other than his own.

Commuter ships and the smaller runners squatted on the tarmac like a gathering of toadstools. Soon he would leave in one and never be able to return.

There had been a time when the Cousins’ obedience to him had been instinctive; when his Brothers, all but one, had loved him.

“I can’t go just yet,” Reen said.

“Don’t be a jerk, Reen.”

“If Tali does not have a consensus, he won’t dare go against the humans. But he will go after Marian Cole. I must warn her,” Reen said,

“Let her go. She hates us. Don’t you see that yet? Someday, Reen, she’s going to drink you dry.”

As a child, when Reen had first felt the sightless nuzzle of his Brothers exploring him for allegiance, love had poured from him like milk. It wasn’t just Marian who would drink him dry, it was the Community, it was the humans, it was Angela.

“I know,” he said.

HE HAD ALWAYS
come to her like a thief, sneaking into her house, rummaging through the closets of her mind. Down the hall, Howard wrestled with his nightmares, but Reen stood in the doorway watching Marian.

Her eyes opened. When she raised her head to look at him, he turned and went down the stairs to the kitchen. At his back a breathy whisper: “Reen?” He could hear her groping her drowsy way from the bottom of the steps to the hall.

“Here,” he replied, pulling out a chair and seating himself in the breakfast nook.

She shuffled into the dark kitchen and fumbled for the light switch. The fluorescents came on with a chill dazzle, igniting color in the room: the turquoise countertops, the terra-cotta-tiled floor.

Marian had hastily tied a pink terry-cloth robe over her nightgown, and she was squinting in the glare. “You always come to me like a dream,” she told him, rubbing her eyes with the tips of her fingers.

He sat, his hands linked on the tabletop. It was late, and the hours sagged around his shoulders. The colors in the room were painfully iridescent. Surreal.

“You want some coffee?”

Without waiting for an answer she went to the cabinets and pulled out an acid-green can of Folger’s. A hiss of water from the tap. The clunk as the glass carafe was set on the Mr. Coffee hotplate.

“I murdered William Hopkins tonight,” Reen said.

A crash. He turned and saw Marian staring down at a broken cup.

He reached for her, but she was too far away. In some ways she had always been. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

“No, of course not.” With a fussy gesture she pushed her hair back from her face. “How silly,” she said, bending to pick up the pieces of shattered cup. “How clumsy.”

On the counter the coffee maker spat. The aggressive scent of coffee pushed through the heavy air in the kitchen.

“Come here,” he said. “Please.”

She placed the shards of porcelain on the drainboard, then walked over, tucked her robe about her knees, and sat. “You look tired,” she said.

She was the one who looked tired. Without makeup, her eyes seemed smaller, a more watery blue. Her cheeks were a wan, weary color. Tiny lines checkmarked the skin around her lips.

“Sit with me a while,” he said, his voice trembling a little. “I want to apologize.”

She looked down at his hands and stroked the smooth gray surface of his fingers. “Don’t feel guilty about Hopkins. He deserved it. The man was a shit.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I want to apologize for what I’ve done to you.”

Her fingers halted in mid-caress. Her touch was warm but light as feathers.

“I’ve thought about what you told me, Marian. I’ve tried to understand what I did. I think that sometimes we fall in love with our opposites. Then we try to erase the differences. That’s what I did to you.”

“It was over a long time ago, Reen. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” he snapped.

They looked at each other, and he saw that, despite everything, they were the same irascible Reen and the same vexing Marian that had existed from the beginning of the genetic experiments.

“When you married Howard, I should have left you alone, or at least not allowed you to remember. You and Howard could have bought that country house you always wanted. You could have had your dogs. Your horses. I kept you from that.”

“Howard?” She was surprised. “You think I wanted Howard? You never told me I was putting on weight. You never noticed I was growing old. You never criticized the way I dressed or laughed at my opinions.”

“There are things I am unable ...”

“Don’t!” she said sharply. “For God’s sake, don’t blame yourself. How do you think that makes me feel? I wanted things from you that I knew you couldn’t give. You love as if everybody were important. As if everybody were the same. You know? Once I even slit my wrists so you would love me best.”

He drew his hand away in shock. He always thought she slashed her wrists for Howard.

“If you didn’t love Howard, you should have left him. You might have met someone else, someone who understood you ...”

Her sour laugh stopped him.

“A
man
who understands me? Shit. Little boys grow up in some damned club called No Girls Allowed. And by the time they get to adolescence and start thinking about girls, they only want to know how to get into our pants. Later, when they’re grown, they start trying to understand us, but by then it’s too late.”

Blinking hard, she said, “Women spend their whole lives wondering what we did wrong. Wondering why the ultimate insult for one eight-year-old boy to another is to call him a girl. Don’t you dare apologize to me, Reen. You’re no good at it. I’ve been apologizing my whole fucking life.”

Bracing her hands on the table, Marian pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s have some coffee.”

Then she walked away. Reen heard the clinking sound of glass against china, the gurgle of coffee pouring. A moment later she was back, pushing a cup and saucer across the butcher-block table toward him.

He stared into the liquid, dark and brown as blood. “Oomal wanted to use Loving Helpers to find out why you were lying to me. I didn’t let him.”

There was a long silence. When he glanced up, he saw that she was watching him over the rim of her cup.

“I want to trust you,” he said.

She put the cup down, turned it this way and that on the table, as if trying to find some perfect but elusive alignment.

“In a few days, I will die.”

Her eyes rose.

“Tali is now First. Oomal is now Conscience. Oomal is strong enough to keep Tali from using the virus, or at least he will be if I stay away. But he either can’t or won’t stop Tali from coming after you. I want you to leave tonight. Pack a few things. Drive to some safe place. Surely you have one.”

She gave a flat laugh. “Stop joking.”

“I will die, Marian. There is no way to prevent it. The Sleep Master and Tali have ordered me from the Community because of what I did to Hopkins.”

She grabbed at his arm, nearly spilling his coffee. “Don’t leave me, damn it!”

Reen put his head in his hands. Lack of sleep was already getting to him. His arms shook; his head felt heavy.

Suddenly she was kneeling on the tiles, pushing herself into him, arms around his waist, head to his chest. He sat back in confused and awkward alarm.

Marian was so good at embraces. In
all those years he had never really learned to hold her. He lowered his arms to her back. Pressing his face into her hair, he smelled the apple scent of her shampoo.

When he lifted his head, he saw Howard standing in the shadowed doorway watching, just watching. Reen wondered how long the man had stood there and how much he had heard. For a moment they looked at each other, then Reen turned away and put his head again on Marian’s silken, fragrant hair.

“We’ll go away together,” she said, “just the two of us. Let Oomal handle everything. I know how tired you’ve been lately, how the stress has gotten to you. Just walk away from it, can’t you? Can’t you do that for me?”

Reen looked up, but Howard was gone.

“I have to leave,” he said.

She clung to him. Now it seemed that her hot, hungry arms were eating at him; that if he sat any longer, he would be consumed.

He shoved free. Her hands fell away. She sat back on her heels, her eyes shuttered with hurt. “I was never enough for you, was I?”

“Cousin is tied to Cousin, Marian. I can’t help that.”

“Since I was five years old you’ve been my whole goddamned world. You ...”

He stood.

She stood, too. Her face was so twisted with anger that he thought she would strike him. “They always meant more to you than I did. Sometimes I hate you for that. Tali tells you to die, and you crawl off somewhere and stop living. Reen, you can learn to do without the other Cousins. I know you can.”

“We are hive creatures, Marian!” he shouted in exasperation. “I have to have the other Cousins around me to sleep! Listen to me. I want to know that you’re safe. Pack some things. Leave the house.”

She paled. “Wait. Stay here. Stay right here, just for a minute. I have something.” She rushed into the next room.

Through the dark doorway, the slam of a drawer. A muttered “What are you doing up?”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” It was Howard in the shadows, his tone thick with hurt.

Marian’s fierce whisper: “Where did you put it?”

“Just ... don’t do this. I know I can make things right. Just stay with me. Talk to me. Tell me what to do.”

The bang of a cabinet. “Goddamn you. Where is it?”

A pause. A hollow reply. “In the blue vase.”

Riffling sounds like paper. The clink of a diamond ring against porcelain. “Go to bed, Howard.”

“Please. You–you’ll be up in a few minutes, won’t you? We’ll talk. We’ll–”

A hoarse “Go to bed.”

A hesitation. Then Reen heard a heavy tread on the stairs. The squeak of a floorboard.

Marian rushed into the kitchen, her eyes wide. “Here! Take it! I killed for this!”

She shoved a cassette tape at him. He took it.

“You said you killed Hopkins, and it looks as if you didn’t get anything out of it. If you’re going to kill, Reen, at least do it right. This tape proves what Tali was up to. It proves everything.” Her voice caught. “This will save you, won’t it? They’ll forgive you now, won’t they?”

He turned and walked from the kitchen. Marian called his name. He closed the door on her voice, snapping it like a thread.