Fledgling_ a novel Part 19

The Gordon symbionts greeted me by touching me-my shoulders, arms, hands. I found that I was comfortable with that, although I had not expected it. It was as though they had to touch me to believe that I could be Ina and yet be awake.

"You aren't drowsy at all?" a woman named Linda Higuera asked. She was a nervous, muscular brown woman, at least six feet tall and leaning on a rifle. We were on the third floor of William's house, and she was one of his symbionts. From what I had seen, William preferred big, powerful-looking symbionts, male and female. Wise of him.

"I'm not drowsy," I said. "As long as I don't get too much sun, I'm fine."

She shook her head. "I wish William could do that. I would feel safer if he could at least wake up if we need him."

I shrugged. "Your turn to keep him safe."

She thought about that, then nodded. "You're right. d.a.m.n. He's so strong, I've just gotten used to depending on him. Guess it ought to work both ways." She stopped and thought for a moment. "Do you have a phone?"

"There are phones in the guest house."

"I mean a cell phone."

"No, I don't." I wasn't entirely sure what a cell phone was.

"You should have one so we can talk to each other if something happens. The house phones are too easy to disable."

That made sense. "Is there one I can borrow?"

She sent me down to wake up a huge man named Martin, a man so brown he was almost black. Martin not only supplied me with a charged cell phone, but saved several numbers on it and made me repeat the names that went with them and whose house each person was in. Then he showed me how to make a call, and I made a practice call to the guard at Daniel's house. Finally, he dug out a charger and showed me how to use that.

"Here's your number," he said, making it flash across the phone's small screen, "just in case you have to give it to somebody."

"Thank you," I said, and he grinned.

"No problem. How's Linda doing up there?"

"Doing well," I said. "Alert and thoughtful."

"And how about my son?" he asked in a different tone. "How's he?" I looked at him, startled. "You're Joel's father?"

"Yep. Martin Harrison. Joel move into the guest house yet?"

"He has, yes. I like him."

"Good. You're what he wants. If you take care of him, he'll take care of you."

I nodded and left him feeling much better about the safety of the Gordon community. With or without me, these people would not be caught by surprise and murdered, and now I could communicate with them in a quiet, effective way.

I walked around the community once more, stopping now and then to listen to the activity around me. There were symbionts eating meals, making love, discussing children who were away at boarding schools, discussing the vineyards and the winery, pruning nearby trees, washing dishes, ordering audiobooks by phone, typing on computers ... There were little children playing games and singing songs in a room at Hayden's house. It seemed that here some symbionts still carried on most of their activities during the day while others had switched to a nocturnal schedule to spend more time with their Ina.

As I wandered back toward the guest house, I found myself paying attention to a conversation that Wright and Brook were having there.

"They take over our lives," Brook said. "They don't even think about it, they just do it as though it were their right. And we let them because they give us so much satisfaction and ... just pure pleasure."

Wright grunted. "We let them because we have no choice. By the time we realize what's happened to us, it's too late."

There was a long pause. "It's not usually that way," Brook said. "Iosif told me what would happen if I accepted him, that I would become addicted and need him. That I would have to obey. That if he died, I might die. Not that I could imagine him dying. That seemed so impossible ... But he told me all that. Then he asked me to come to him anyway, to accept him and stay with him because I could live for maybe two hundred years and be healthy and look and feel young, and because he wanted me and needed me. I wasn't hooked when he asked. He'd only bitten me a couple of times. I could have walked away-or run like h.e.l.l. He told me later that he thought I might run. He said people did run sometimes out of superst.i.tious fear or out of the puritanical belief that anything that feels that good must have a huge downside somewhere along the line. Then he had to find them and talk them into believing he was a dream or an ordinary boyfriend."

Wright said, "By the time Shori asked me-or rather, by the time she offered to let me go-I was very thoroughly hooked, psychologically if not physically."

"That was probably because of her memory loss."

Wright made an "mmmm" sound of agreement. "I suppose. She's shown herself to be a weirdly ethical little thing most of the time. It still bothers me, though, and now there's this new guy she told me about ..."

"Joel," Brook said. "You haven't met him yet?"

"She didn't hang around to introduce us. I met him in the upstairs hall. He had the nerve to ask me which bedrooms were empty. You know she never even told me he was black."

"They're not human, Wright. They don't care about white or black."

"I know. I even know she needs the guy-or at least, she needs a few more people. But I hate the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I'm not going to do anything to him. I'll deal with this somehow, but Jesus G.o.d, I hate him!"

"You're jealous."

"Of course I am!"

"You aren't sure you want her, but you don't want anyone else to have her."

"Well, it's not like I can leave. h.e.l.l, I can feel the hold she's got on me. I can't even think of leaving her without getting scared."

"Would you change that?" Brook asked. "If you could escape her, would you?"

"... I don't know."

"I think you do. I've seen you with her."

"I can't imagine being without her, but I'm not sure I would have begun if I'd known what I was getting into." There was a silence, then he asked, "What about you? How do you feel about the way she claimed you?"

"Better," Brook admitted.

"Better?"

"She got us out of the Arlington house alive, and she shouldn't have been able to do that. And she stood her ground last night. The Gordons were pushing her, trying to intimidate her a little just to see what she would do, what she was like. Well, she's strong, and it matters to her how other Ina treat us. We can trust her. Celia said we could, but I wasn't sure."

"You're saying you want to be her symbiont, not some man's? I mean, I thought that after choosing to be with Iosif ..."

There was another short silence, then Brook said, "I would probably have chosen a man if I'd had a choice initially. But I'm okay with Shori. I can find myself a human man if I need one. I can't believe what she's done for Celia and me. I've seen symbionts who've lost their Ina. An old Ina who was visiting died while he was with us. I saw his symbionts in withdrawal, and I heard them screaming when other Ina tried to save their lives by taking them over. It was bad. Convulsions, pain, helpless fear and revulsion for the Ina who is only trying to help. It went on for days, weeks. It was really horrible. One of the symbionts died. But with Shori ... she's fed from me twice, and already it doesn't hurt anymore. It's not fun, but it's not bad. I can't wait to know what it will be like when I'm fully her symbiont."

"So ... they don't all feel the same when they bite?"

"No more than we all look the same. Their venom is different-very individual. I suspect her bite is spectacular. That's why she was able to get you the way she did."

"And she's only a kid," he said.

They said nothing more. I listened for a few moments for more conversation, then for outsiders, intruders. When I knew that the community was safe, for the moment, I thought about what Brook and Wright had said. What they had said, over-all, was that, except for Wright's problem with Joel, they were content with me. It felt remarkably good to know this. I was relieved, even though I had not realized I needed relief. Wright would have to find his own way to accept Joel, and Joel would have to do the same with Wright. There would be a period of unease that I would have to pay attention to, but we would get through it. Other families of Ina and symbionts proved that it could be done.

That day, there were no intruders. The symbionts kept watch, with fresh guards arriving every three hours so that no one got too tired or drowsy. I met a few more of them and liked their variety-a dentist, an oceanographer, a potter, a writer who also worked as a translator (Mandarin Chinese), a plumber, an internist, two nurses, a beautician who was also a barber, and, of course, farmers and winegrowers. And those were just the ones I met. Some no longer did the work they had trained to do except on behalf of the people of Punta Nublada. Some worked in nearby towns or in the Bay Area two or three days out of the week. Some worked in the vineyards and the winery that the Gordons owned. Some, who were self employed, worked in Punta Nublada. Three of the buildings I had mistaken for barns or storage buildings proved to be full of offices, studios, and workshops.

"We fill our time as we please," Jill Renner told me during her watch at Wayne Gordon's house, next to the guest house. "We help support the community whether we have jobs away from it or stay here, whether we bring in money or not." She was the daughter and granddaughter of symbionts and had been much relieved when Wayne Gordon took an interest in her and asked her to accept him. She had a half-healed bite just visible on the side of her neck. I realized that she wanted it to be seen. She was proud of Wayne's obvious attentions to her. Interesting.

That night Wayne and Manning, one of Wayne's fathers, drove to a local airfield where they kept a private plane. Each took two symbionts with him, so I a.s.sumed they expected to be gone for two full nights-not that they couldn't graze on strangers if they had to. The Gordons called it grazing. It was what I'd done when I lived with Wright at his cabin, except for Theodora. Ina often found new symbionts when they grazed.

Wayne and Manning came to the guest house before they left to tell me that they were going up to Washington to begin to work out the legal affairs of my male and female families and to look at the ruins of their former communities in the hope that they would see something that we had missed. I had Brook tell them the exact address of Iosif's guest house near Arlington. Let them look at that, too.

"Shall I go?" I asked them. "Won't you need me as daughter and only survivor? Anyway, I think I'd like to collect Theodora."

"We won't need you yet," Wayne said. He was tall even for an Ina, the tallest in his family. He towered over even his tallest symbionts. "We'll have to produce you eventually, but for now, we just want to find out who handled Iosif's and your mothers' legal affairs. Then we'll bite them and see how quickly all this can be sorted out. The land should be yours whether or not you want to live on any of it. If you like, you can sell one parcel and use the money to get a couple of houses started on the other. And your parents owned apartment houses in Seattle and quite a bit more than just the land their communities stood on. We need to learn all we can about their business affairs before you can even begin to decide what to do."

I nodded. "Can you collect Theodora?"

"Give us her address."

I called Wright, described Theodora's location three doors east of his uncle's house, and he told Wayne how to find her.

"Theodora Harden," I said. "I'll phone her and tell her you'll be there ... when?"

They worked that out. They would pick up Theodora on their way home on the third night.

"Thank you," I said. "Be careful. Someone should always be awake and on guard."

They nodded and went out to their huge, boxy car. Joel told me it was called a Hummer and that it cost more money than some houses.

Then they were gone.

The next day, Punta Nublada was attacked.

Sixteen.

The attackers arrived just after ten the next morning. Except for me, all Ina were asleep. I had spent nearly an hour on the phone with Theodora and was thinking about her, wanting her, looking forward to seeing her. Then I heard the cars.

They drove into the community in three large, quiet cars, each almost as big as the Gordons' Hummer, and I heard them before I was able to see them from my perch at one of the dormer windows in the guest-house bedroom that Wright and I shared. I didn't know who the newcomers were. They weren't talking among themselves. They weren't making much noise of any kind, but the moment I heard their approach, I was suspicious. I phoned two other houses and told the symbionts there to alert everyone else.

"Wake everyone," I said. "Wrap your Ina in blankets and be ready to get them out of the house. These people like to set fires. Watch. If they carry large containers, if they try to spread any liquid, shoot them."

I was worried about innocent visitors being killed by frightened symbionts, but I was even more worried about the Gordons and their symbionts being killed in their sleep, perhaps because of me or something to do with my family.

I pulled on my hooded jacket and put on my sungla.s.ses and gloves. The sun was shining outside. There were no clouds. Finally I ran downstairs and found Wright in the kitchen. He hadn't spoken to me at all today because I had spent part of the night with Joel. I grasped his arms. "This may be an attack," I said. "Get Brook, Celia, and Joel. Get guns. Watch! Don't show yourselves and don't fire unless you see gas containers or guns."

I needed to be outside so that I could keep an eye on things and take whatever action was needed. I went out the back door. I had my phone in my pocket-set to vibrate, not ring-but no gun. I would kill quietly if I had to kill.

The cars came down the private road that led to the Gordon houses. They stopped before they reached the first house-the guest house-and men spilled out of the doors. Each carried some burden in his hand, and at once I could smell the gasoline.

I phoned the nearest house-Wayne's house-and said, "Shoot them. Now!"

There was a moment when I thought they would not obey me. Then the shooting started. The symbionts had a wild mixture of rifles, handguns, and shotguns. The sound was a uneven mix of pops, thunderous roars, and intermediate bangs. Somehow, most of the invaders went down in that first barrage. They were used to taking their victims completely by surprise, setting their fires, and shooting the desperate who awoke and tried to run. Now it was the raiders who were running-at least those still able to run.

I heard someone running my way, around the side of the guest house toward the back, away from the road. The runner was human and smelled strongly of gasoline. He was spilling gasoline as he ran. He never saw me.

I let him come around the house to me, let him get completely out of sight of his friends, and then hit him with my whole body. As he went down, I broke his neck. He was too slow to understand fully what was happening. He made no noise beyond the rush of air from his lungs when I hit him.

I left his gun and his gasoline can out of sight behind a garage, then I ran along the backs of the houses, hoping that if anyone saw me, I would be moving too fast for them to aim and shoot. I ran around the community, killing three more men as the symbionts went on shooting and as someone set fire to Henry's house, then to Wayne's.

I saw that Henry was being looked after-three of his symbionts were carrying him from his house thickly wrapped from head to toe in blankets. They took him into William's house. The rest of Henry's symbionts poured out of his house, too, and three of them found hoses and began to fight the fire. The other two guarded them with rifles.

I felt a particular duty toward Wayne's symbionts because he had gone up to Washington to help me. I made sure everyone was out of his house, checked with the symbionts flowing out the doors, and told them to count themselves. All were present and healthy, three of them carrying young children whom they took to William's house. The rest got hoses and shovels and began to fight the fire. They needed no help from me.

I went through the community, looking everywhere. There was no more shooting. All the intruders seemed to be dead or wounded. Then I heard footsteps and caught an unfamiliar scent. I realized there was at least one intruder still alive and trying to get back to one of their cars. I spotted him moving behind the houses. He took off his shirt as he slipped past Preston's house. He wanted to blend in, look, at least from a distance, like one of the male symbionts who had been awakened unexpectedly and were now fighting the fires or tending the wounded, shirtless.

Shirtless or not, this man smelled of gasoline and alienness. He was an outsider. There was nothing of the Gordon community about him.

I ran after him as he sprinted from the back of Preston's house toward one of the buildings that housed offices and studios. This did not take him closer to any of his group's cars. He couldn't have reached them without running across a broad open s.p.a.ce. But the building was unlocked, and it would have given him a place to hide and bide his time. It was his bad luck that I had seen him.

I caught up with him, tripped him, and dragged him down just as he reached the building. He fell hard and knocked himself out on the concrete steps in front of the building. I was glad of that. I wanted him unconscious, not dead. I had questions to ask him. I took a full meal from him while he lay there. I didn't need it yet in spite of the running around and fighting I'd done, but I needed him cooperative.

He came to as I finished and tried to buck me off him.

"Be still," I said. "Relax."

He stopped struggling and lay still as I lapped at the bite just enough to stop the bleeding and begin the healing.

"All right," I said. "Let's go see how things stand between your people and mine." I stood up and waited for him to get up. He was a short, stocky, black-haired man, clean shaven but disfigured by the beginnings of a big lump over his left eye and a lower lip rapidly swelling from a blow that had probably loosened some of his teeth.

He stumbled to his feet. "They'll kill me," he said, mumbling a little because of the swelling lip and looking toward the cl.u.s.ters of people putting out the fires, gathering weapons, moving cans of gasoline away from the houses, checking dead or wounded raiders, keeping children away from the bodies.

"Stay close to me and do as I say," I told him. "If you're with me and if you don't hurt anyone, they won't kill you."

"They will!"

"Obey me, and I won't let anyone hurt you."

He looked at me, dazed. After a moment he nodded. "Okay."

"How many of you were there in those three cars?" I asked, glancing back at the cars. None of this group should escape. Not one.

"Eighteen," he said. "Six in each car."

"That many and your gear. You must have really been packed in."

I walked him back toward the houses, made him pick up his shirt and put it on again. Then I spotted Wright. He came toward me, looking past me at the raider.