The Family Tree

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “It’s from his Eminence, the Prime Duke Fasal Grun.”

  Apprehensively, she opened it, finding inside enough to fulfil her fears. The Prime Duke had learned that Fasahd was paying her a visit. The Prime Duke wished to be informed for what reason the Dire Duke had left Finial and was agitating among the neighbor realms, and why he had been invited to Estafan.

  She went to her desk in the moment, chewing the top of the pen as she drafted an answer. “Your Eminence knows that we are a weak nation, without protection, a nation which could not withstand an attack. Your brother came at his own invitation; he says the emperor knows from the seers that a conspiracy is taking place. Your brother has made an alliance with trees, which, so he says, are outraged. He has, so he says, a secret source of information. I have said we in Estafan are not outraged, but still he wishes to make a similar alliance with us, which I have so far dallied over. His eyes were hungry when he looked upon our peaceful land. Cannot the authority of Faros VII be brought to bear upon this unseemly appetite?”

  She turned to the courier, who was preening himself with a sidelong look into the mirror. “I presume he expects an answer?”

  He caught her glance and flushed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Well, give him this, and tell him to make all speed his sails will give him.”

  When he had gone, she turned to Blanche, her face very pale. “Oh, Blanche. Sometimes I wish I had wings to take me far from my responsibilities.”

  Blanche cocked her head and came as close as she ever did to a smile. “I think even wings cannot do that, Your Grace.”

  12

  A Certain Disposition of Garbage

  Dora had breakfast at a fast food place, alone at a corner table, reading a paper someone had left, rubbing at her eyes. She’d had too little sleep. The divorce papers had been served on Jared two days ago, and he had started phoning her, three or four times during the night. She was to return to his place, at once, said he. No, no, said she, she was quite happy where she was. He persisted, in that totally egocentric way of his, not even answering her feelings or opinions, but only asserting his own. He threatened. He would make her return, in a way she would not like. Perhaps he would institute his own suit on the grounds she had abandoned him. Fine. That was all right. If he liked. He would make her sorry. She would regret.

  At that point she had reminded him, “I’m a cop, Jared. You know I can file a report, saying you threatened me. I’ll put a recorder on this phone so if you do it again, I’ll have a tape of it. I can prove our marriage was never consummated, and you’ve often said you were perfectly contented before we married. During our marriage, we only met over the dinner table. Our tastes are not alike. It was a mistake. Let it go.”

  “It was not a mistake,” he had growled. “It was exactly as I intended it should be.”

  She had found no answer to this outrageous statement. He would worry her less if she could figure out why he cared, if it could be called caring. Was it hurt pride? Was his mother chaffing at him? Despite everything, Dora thought Mrs. Gerber had rather liked her. Perhaps Jared didn’t want to tell the men at the plant that he was single? Or he didn’t want to tell his mother why she’d left him. Sighing, she shut the quandry away and concentrated on the paper.

  A herd of cattle was reported lost, disappeared, there one day, gone the next. Hikers reported hearing noises in the woods during the night, a gigantic kind of gulping or blurping, they said, like a mud cauldron, which is what they thought it was. There were, however, no hot springs in the area.

  “What do you think?” she asked Phil as they drove toward the pharmaceutical firm, where more questions were to be asked. “You think it’s ETs?”

  “I think it’s greens, all right, but not little green men,” he said. “Bet you the environmentalists have decided to fight fire with fire. They’ve given up trying to protect the land by law, so they’re trying to make it expensive for people to let their cows graze up there.”

  “Could be,” she admitted. “The thought crossed my mind. I suppose a few big trucks could carry a whole herd away. I should think it would be difficult, though, rounding up cattle in the dark. That’s what baffles me.”

  “Ah, it’s like those crop circles,” he said. “Everybody says it’s impossible, it must be ETs, and then some guy shows how he and his friends did it by flashlight, with their feet and a piece of old two by four.”

  She grinned. Phil was a cynic. He didn’t believe anything unless he’d seen it at high noon when he was cold sober, and then only if it were repeated on several successive days.

  He saw the grin. “You know, Dora, when you look like that, you’re a hell of a good-looking woman.”

  “Hey…Phil….” She flushed, embarrassed.

  “You got pretty skin, like somebody twenty or so. I like your hair, like a shiny bell. Don’t worry. I’m not making a move on you. I’ve got this friend, though. I’ll bet you’d like him.”

  “Phil, for God’s sake. I haven’t been separated from Jared for even a month yet….”

  “Oh, shit, you never cared about Jared. I know you, Dora. You just married Jared because you thought it was time you married somebody.”

  She ducked her head angrily. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

  He nodded, accepting that. “It is a hell of a thing, because it’s true. I’ve watched you with Jared. You acted like you were his bored big sister. And he acted like you were the hired cook. So, let me introduce you to this guy. He used to be a neighbor of ours. He’s a professor, at the college. He’s got a terrific sense of humor. He’s—”

  To Dora’s relief, the radio blared, a call to Bart’s Used Cars. Phil said, “It’s not our business, but tell them we’ll take the call, it’s only six blocks away.”

  He swung the car back the way they had come, turned right, and sped up, swiveling his head looking for cross traffic. “That’s it.” He jutted his chin. “On the corner of Thirteenth. Bart’s.”

  An angry man approached them as soon as the car drew up, spluttering and waving his arms, making no sense.

  “Hey,” said Phil, “calm down. I didn’t do it. Don’t yell at me.”

  The man turned, still shouting, and led them across the lot to an area just outside the small salesroom. He pointed dramatically, stepping up the decibel level until he had to pause for breath, then he heard his phone ringing and ran for it.

  “What?” asked Dora, looking at the ground. “What’s he going on about?”

  “The asphalt,” Phil muttered. “Somebody tore it up.”

  The blacktop was disturbed, bumpy, as though heaved up from beneath. “It’s got pimples,” Dora offered. “It doesn’t look like vandalism.”

  “Could be a water pipe, leaking under there,” Phil offered. “Could be gas.”

  Dora backed away. “What? Call Public Service?”

  “I’m not going to fool with it.” He headed back to the car radio, to report, just as the angry man came plunging back out of the building.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What’re you going to do about it?”

  “My partner thinks it could be a leak in a water pipe, or it could be gas,” she said. “Just on the off chance it’s gas, I’d move these cars away. You know, fire danger and all that.”

  Bart, if this was Bart, gaped at her, torn between argument and action. The economic imperative took over, and he ran for the nearest car. While he was shifting vehicles, Dora walked around the outside of the pimply area, a space about twenty by thirty feet. The second time around, she noticed something green emerging from the tip of one of the pimples. A bit of asphalt broke loose and slid; a tendril poked into the air; leaflets unfurled and turned to look at her.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

  Phil spoke from just behind her. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Phil. I don’t think it’s water or gas. It looks like something growing under there, is all.”

  “Under asphalt?”

  �
�Mushrooms do it all the time. I’ve seen them push up blacktop along the edges of parking lots. What I think is, this guy should get himself a…botanist or somebody.”

  Between car shuffles, the man came at them again, red-faced. “What? Is it gas or not?”

  She shrugged. “No, it’s not gas. It’s something growing. What you need is a…a scientist. Somebody to tell you what it is and how to—”

  She had been going to say, how to kill it. The words had formed in her head, her mouth was ready to produce them, when she was overcome by a sense of imminent doom and bit her tongue instead. After a momentary pause, she gasped, “How to make room for it.” She breathed deeply, her heart pounding, as though she’d almost stepped on a deadly snake. She recognized the feeling. She’d had that same sense of doom one time when she’d seen a suspect and the gun he was pointing in her direction and heard the shot, and felt the splatter of brick when the bullet hit the wall an inch from her head, all three perceptions in one instant, realizing in that moment that if it had been an inch closer she’d have been dead in the line of duty. How to make room for it, she repeated to herself. How to…get along with it. How to be a good…neighbor.

  They left Bart when his complaints and annoyance ran down and went on to the pharmaceutical house. While Phil went to the men’s room, Dora walked down to the streambed where they’d discovered the body. Something about it had nagged her memory, and she thought another look might clarify the thought, whatever it had been.

  Just in the few days since she’d been there, the grasses had grown taller, and there were wildflowers blooming among them. She went slowly eastward along the dry streambed beside the line of pens. Animals came to the wire, watching her. A line of small pigs actually seemed to be in conversation with one another, mouths moving, heads shaking and nodding. And that was it, of course. She’d heard someone say something, that day when they’d been here. “Poor guy.”

  She strolled up the hill to the pens, along the wire, reaching fingers through it to entice the inhabitants. No takers. Before she reached them, the pigs, sleek and pink, left the wire and went back to their trough, still headshaking and nodding, making soft snorting noises. The next pen held a couple of sleepy dogs who opened their eyes but didn’t move from their curled-up position in the sun. There was a pen of big, stumpy-tailed monkeys. They were Japanese, she recalled, the kind she’d seen on TV nature programs, sitting in hot pools while the snow fell around them. Another large pen held two young bears and a big stump they were pulling apart with their claws. Farther up the hill, two men were walking down a lane between two ranks of pens, wheeling a cart loaded with feed of various kinds. That’s probably who it had been the other day, the guys doing the feeding. She strolled toward them, recognizing Joe and Bill, the two men who had found the body.

  “Hi,” she called, waving. They stopped and waited for her.

  “Does anyone else work out here with the animals?” she asked. “The other day when I was here, I heard someone talking.”

  The two exchanged glances, their faces blank. “Usually just us this time of day,” said Joe. “But there’s other animal tenders, and sometimes the lab people wander down here during coffee break. That’s probably who you heard.”

  She nodded, accepting this. She hadn’t seen anyone. But every pen had some kind of shelter in it, a hutch or shed or mini barn. Whoever it had been could have been behind something.

  “They find out who killed Dr. Winston?” asked the other man.

  She shook her head. “So far we’ve got zip.” She wandered along behind them, watching as they fed bobcats and otters and goats. “It’s a zoo, isn’t it?”

  “Right now it is. The lab guys have been doing this study on how the same gene operates in different animals. They’re writing a big paper about it for some national journal.”

  “Has that got anything to do with veterinary medicines?”

  Bill snorted. “It’s pure research. You never know what may turn up. Besides, it’s good publicity for the company. Winston used to say it helped recruit good scientists. Guys who read those journals, maybe they’ll decide this is a good place to work.”

  They went on with their feeding while Dora went back to join Phil. They repeated interviews with half a dozen associates of the victim, without learning anything new or helpful. Before they left, Dora asked if they had any written information about the research they were doing, and a harried lab assistant was sent off to get them. She returned with a dusty stack.

  “Will I understand these?” Dora asked.

  The lab assistant brushed dust from her clothing, muttering, “Honey, I sure as hell don’t. You’ll get a kind of rough idea, is all. Read the little summary paragraphs at the end or beginning. That’ll tell you what’s going on.” She dumped the pile into Dora’s arms, dust rising in a cloud around them both.

  At the station, Dora went to the women’s room to change her shirt. Tying a neat bow at the neck of the clean one, she considered herself in the mirror. So Phil liked how she looked. She herself had never paid much attention to how she looked. Clean, of course. And neat. Grandma had always insisted on that. The bell-shaped haircut was dictated by time and inclination—least possible expense, least possible fuss. The dark shiny hair was Grandma, too. The year before Grandma died, she’d still had dark, shiny hair. Who had bequeathed Dora the lean body and the good bones, GOK.

  Wetting a paper towel to get the dust off her face, she continued the inventory. Good nose, nice and straight, not too big. The mouth was too big, but not unshapely. The only time she noticed it was when she put lipstick on, which was seldom if ever. If she had to claim a feature as best, it would be her eyes. Nice greeny brown eyes. And why in hell did she care?

  Disgusted with herself, she brushed the last of the dust off her skirt and returned to her job, which proved to be a frustrating repetition for the rest of the day. Two out of every three calls were agitated people reporting stuff growing where it shouldn’t. Around two, they went out for a late lunch at the deli around the corner, where Roger Manconi had agreed to meet them.

  When he arrived, late and puffing a little, Dora laid out what they’d learned about Winston.

  “It sounds like a carbon copy of the Chamberlain case,” said Roger, running his finger down the menu. “Nice guy, smart scientist, everybody loved him to pieces, right? It’s like him and Chamberlain was twins.”

  “Maybe they knew one another,” Dora said. “I want to talk to Winston’s wife again anyhow, so if you don’t mind, I’ll ask her. I don’t want to step on your toes.”

  “Hell, you and Phil do what you want. I got nowhere with the thing. We put it down to murder during a robbery, only the perp got scared off. Maybe if it turns out they’re related, it’ll open up some new territory.”

  They had interviewed Mrs. Winston at the station previously. This time they went to the house, in the old country club area, once posh, still expensive, though with a kind of genteel shabbiness Dora rather liked. Nothing had been built here in forty years or more, and the trees had had a chance to grow tall.

  “Looks like a forest,” she commented.

  “Shady,” he agreed. “No place else in town has this many trees.”

  Melanie Winston was an appropriate woman, willowy, with flowing hair and an air of imperturbable calm. “Of course Edgar knew Martin Chamberlain,” she said. “They were very close, professionally.”

  “As scientists,” mused Dora. “Geneticists.”

  Melanie Winston nodded. “They worked on a number of research projects together.”

  “Your husband was stabbed.”

  Melanie pressed her lips together, eyes welling with tears. “Someone who would kill a man for his watch and his ring and his credit cards. And then not even take them!”

  “Did you know Martin Chamberlain was also stabbed?”

  Her mouth fell open, eyes glaring. “He was what?”

  “Also stabbed. We’ve talked with the officer responsible for investigating h
is death. The weapon could be the same in both cases.”

  “No one told me….”

  “It was in the papers.”

  “I don’t read…crime news. It’s too upsetting.”

  “Do you recognize the name Jennifer Williams?”

  “I’m sorry. It sounds only vaguely familiar. Who is she?”

  “She was another scientist who was stabbed. She was killed in May, Dr. Chamberlain in June, your husband in July.”

  They stayed a while longer, asked a few more questions, but learned nothing else of help. By the time Dora got home, she was tired with that kind of weariness which had little or nothing to do with physical effort. Heart hunger, Grandma would have called it. “When your heart is hungry,” she used to say. “That’s when you feel so tired and down.”

  Dora had recognized the symptoms. She’d had them every now and then since she was five. Before that, she wouldn’t have had heart hunger. Now she did. “What do you do about it?” she’d asked Grandma.

  One of the nicest things about Grandma had been that she had taken such questions seriously. She’d made them cups of hot tea and sat down at the kitchen table beside her, and said, “Dora, child, you need to find out what you’re hungry for. If you’re in the city, maybe it’s country you’re hungry for. Maybe it’s other people, if you’re lonely, or no people if you’ve been rubbing up against too many. Maybe it’s getting rid of something that’s been giving you a brain blister every time you think of it.”

  That’s how she felt now. Jared was giving her a brain blister. Two long years married to him, as wasted as though she’d been unconscious the whole time. Thirty-five years of virginity and twenty-four months of marital coma, all of it so separated from reality that she was now unprepared to deal with it. Like an old nun, turned out of her convent onto the streets!

  Why had she started worrying about that now? It was Phil’s fault. He had started her thinking like this. Him touting his friend the professor. Professor of what? Probably something deadly, like economics. Or German literature.