The Family Tree

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Rosa vanished into the darkness; the dogs scattered in various directions; Sheba made an impressive, almost slow-motion leap from the van. Dora took her gun from her holster, then dug into the bottom of her purse for the other one she always carried, just in case. After giving her troops a few moments to get into place, she beckoned to Abby and headed for the back door.

  Rosa emerged from the dark. “Nobody in garage,” she said. “Very old, strong smell there, but no person.”

  “Okay, so they’re in the house,” Dora whispered, putting her key in the lock while giving silent thanks that she was still wearing the trousers with the key in the pocket. The door opened into the kitchen, which was in darkness except for a thin line of light showing at the edge of the basement door.

  “Wait,” Dora directed. “I need to be sure they aren’t up here somewhere.” She handed the extra gun to Abby. “You know how to use this?”

  “You point it and pull the trigger,” he replied. “Oh, you have to get a bullet into the what-you-call-it first.”

  Dora took it from him, jacked a shell into the chamber and then sneaked off, checking the dining room and living room. A thick blanket of dust lay over everything, on the hall floor, on the stairs. No one had come into these rooms for weeks.

  She arrived back at the basement door at the same moment a squealing scream tore the quiet to shreds. She ripped open the door and plunged down the stairs, halting at their foot to see Jared poised in the cone of light below a shaded bulb, Sahir’s wriggling figure beneath his foot, both hands on the haft of a wide, double-edged blade that glittered in the light. He was dressed for the sacrificial rite, wearing a long black robe like those the countess had described the Weelians wearing, though his face was bare.

  “Jared,” Dora said very softly, in the wifely voice she had perfected while living with him. “What are you doing?”

  He looked up, mouth open, squinting into the shadows, able to see her only vaguely in the darkness. “Dora? Why are you here?” His voice cracked, his hand shook.

  “I had the report of a theft, Jared. Some valuable animals were stolen from Randall Pharmaceuticals. Someone followed your car here.”

  “Not stolen,” he grunted, still squinting, trying to see who was behind her. “Mine. I bought them. I paid the man at the lab a lot of money for them. They’re mine.”

  “No, Jared. They belong to Mrs. Winston. No one at the lab had any right to sell them. They really are stolen property. I have to take them back.”

  “Mine!” he screamed at her. “Dirty, filthy, mudeaters, shit-wallowers, don’t deserve to…”

  “To what, Jared?”

  “To…to…take up space.”

  “You bought them just to kill them?”

  “I can. If I want. They’re mine. I can kill them if I want to. I can eat them if I want to.”

  “But what a strange way to do it, Jared. People might misunderstand.”

  “Who cares. There’s no law against it. You’ve got no right to interfere!”

  Abby stumbled on the step behind her. Jared leaned forward, peering. “Who’s that?”

  “Just a friend,” said Abby, moving down beside Dora.

  Jared sneered. “The boyfriend? Not your cop friend, Phil? So it’s not really police business, Dora?” He said her name as though he were spitting an obscenity.

  Dora let her hand move into the light, the gun glinting dully. “Put that blade down, Jared.”

  “Put the knife down, Jared,” said the pig, unwisely.

  Sahir was, as Abby had said, a snotty little git who didn’t know when to keep his stupid mouth shut. Dora saw the Jared facade become Woput, saw him possessed of an ancient, cold fury, eyes slitted, neck swollen.

  “They’re mine,” he screamed, leaping at Dora with the blade extended, slashing with it, making a lethal circle of gleaming light and razor steel. It wasn’t a knife. It was a part of some machine. Others like it were ranked along one wall, the light glinting from their faceted surfaces.

  Dora stumbled away from him, her foot catching the edge of the step. She fell heavily to one side, taking Abby down with her. Sahir squirmed away and ran for the stairs, pursued by Jared, who seized his hind leg in one hand and jerked him upward triumphantly, turning his back to the stairs as he held the wriggling Sahir aloft.

  “Mine,” he repeated, putting the glittering edge to Sahir’s throat. “I didn’t need you after all! I found someone else to use! I found them without you….”

  Huge paws reached around his arms, pulling them back. Claws dug deeply into his flesh. Sahir dropped, squealing in fear and surprise. The blade fell from Jared’s hand as he shouted incoherently, his eyes very wide. Rosa pushed him facedown and stood on him, leaning her head forward to put her jaws delicately at either side of his neck.

  “Who?” cried Jared. “What?”

  Dora was struggling to get her feet under her, trying to decide what she would do when she got up, but Rosa didn’t wait for instructions. She simply hunched her shoulders and bit down. There was a cracking sound. Jared’s body twitched, then spasmed, arms and legs flailing as though from an electrical shock, the whole body twisting and shaking. The bear leapt aside. The spasms continued interminably, like a fit of grand mal, until the body went limp all at once. From somewhere outside came a pained and horrified screech, or a scream, or a howl, or all three, the sound going on and on, dimmishing so slowly into silence they could not feel it had ceased, but rather that it had moved away, past hearing.

  Then there was only the sound of Rosa’s deep breathing and a murmuring of pigs from the corner.

  Dora grasped the stair railing and pulled herself off the floor, turning to give Abby her shaking hand. He rose, cursing, white-faced. “God! Did she kill him?”

  Dora nodded, “I think so.”

  She knelt by the body, felt of the neck. Nothing. No pulse, no breath. “Now what?” she mumbled to herself. “Now what the hell? I didn’t plan…” She felt nothing, she realized. Shock, yes, but no sympathy, no pain. She looked up at Abby’s troubled face. “He’s dead. The Woput’s dead.”

  Abby absentmindedly brushed the dust from his clothes.

  Rosa said, “Good. He is better dead.”

  Dora tried to speak and could not, cleared her throat and tried again.

  “Abby. Can you get that net off the other pigs over there in the corner? Take that knife thing. The net’ll probably have to be cut.” She panted for a moment. “Damn, that’s the wrong thing to do.”

  “I’ve already done it,” said Abby, cutting the last few meshes and freeing the six terrified pigs who had been huddled inside the net.

  “Well, wipe the blade and put it back in Jared’s hand. Get his fingerprints all over it, including the sharp part. It’s wide and doubled-edged, so it’s probably the same thing he used to kill Winston and the others. Rosa, this house is thick in dust and I left my footprints all over upstairs. Go upstairs, wherever I walked, and put your footprints on top of mine. Be sure there are no shoe prints left up there. Get Oyk and Irk to help you. Then you all come down here and do the same thing. Be sure there are no pig prints or shoe prints left, only bear and dog feet. Abby, take the net out and put it in the van.

  “You people.” She gestured at the pigs. “Come with me. Quickly, silently, and if anyone’s out there on the street, stay out of sight.”

  Sahir opened his mouth, but she glared at him, hissing a threat to finish what Jared had started if he didn’t obey. When she tried to get up, she couldn’t. She was dizzy. It took a moment for the wave of dizziness to subside enough that she could climb the stairs. At the back door she found Soaz waiting with Sheba.

  “Put the scuini in the van with the goats,” she directed, turning back to wait for those still inside. “And keep Sahir quiet.”

  In a few moments, Oyk and Irk came out, followed by Rosa, who announced, “The light is still on down there.”

  “Leave it. We’ll leave this back door open, too.”

  “Y
ou want it to seem he was killed by a forest being?”

  “As I’ve explained to our people, Rosa, if he’s killed by a forest person, a non-human person, what we would call a beast, the police won’t investigate in the same way they would if they thought he was killed by another human. So long as you aren’t found, and we have no intention you should be, we don’t need to explain anything.”

  The bear nodded, licking her jaws as she led the way back to the van.

  Abby drove away. Dora watched him go, unable to get her own vehicle in motion. She was shaking too hard. Finally, seeing the red brake lights at the end of the block, waiting there, she turned the key and let the van roll silently away. She made the rest of the distance in a fog, as in a dream. During the drive there was barely a sound from the rescued peoples except for an outraged monologue from Sahir, muttered rather than shrieked. When it had gone on for some time, it was interrupted.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” said one of the new pigs.

  “Why should I?” demanded Sahir.

  “Because if you’d listened to us instead of telling us how important you were, you’d have known about the tunnel. If it hadn’t been for you, we could have gotten away, you idiot.”

  After which there was silence. When they arrived at the street before Dora’s place, the new acquisitions slipped out of the vans, a few at a time, and were directed where to go by Soaz or Izzy.

  Abby came to find Dora still behind the wheel, still shaking.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I can’t seem to stop…”

  “It wasn’t Jared, Dora. There was no Jared!”

  “I know. I just…can’t quite accept it yet.”

  Abby carried the bedding material back to the garage. Dora fetched a broom, and they swept the vans as clean as possible. Nassif appeared with a cup of something hot and reviving, and when she and Abby started for the public lot downtown, Dora was in control of herself.

  It was almost midnight before they returned, walking the few blocks from the avenue with their heads down, plodding, inexpressibly weary.

  Izzy met them at the gate. “Is everything taken care of?”

  Dora went over what she’d done, tallying each point. “I called nine-one-one from a public phone downtown. I said I was walking on that street, that I heard a terrible scream, that I saw an open door and a large shape disappearing in the trees. I did not give them a name.” She put her arms around herself, quelling her internal tremors.

  Abby replaced them with his own, hugging her close. “Where is everyone?”

  “The kapris are in the garage. They ate a few mouthfuls, just enough to settle them. The buck has finally said a word or two, not including ‘thank you.’ Oyk and Irk have taken their tribesmen into the woods. Irk found a den there yesterday, under a rocky place, and they would rather live in the open. The new armakfatid is upstairs with Dzilobommo, as is Sheba with Soaz, and Rosa with her children. Rosa says they will sleep outside, however, as your place is getting very crowded.”

  “The pigs?”

  “Sahir is upstairs. He’s in a rage, of course, but Nassif got him quiet, finally. The others prefer a place with the kapris and the veebles. They are not accustomed to clothing or to being, what would one say, sanitary minded? They can be, it is merely a matter of turning their attention to the matter, but for now…”

  “I understand,” said Dora, gratefully. She’d fleetingly wondered about that while they were making rescue plans. When she’d seen the condition of the pens at Randall Pharmaceuticals, it hadn’t indicated housetraining. “What about Sheba and Rosa?”

  “Cats are naturally fastidious,” Izzy remarked. “They always attend, so it is no trouble. Rosa is keeping an eye on her children.”

  “Is there room for me up there?” asked Abby in a weary voice.

  “We have all made places for ourselves in the outer room,” said Izzy, carefully looking elsewhere. “The inner room is vacant, awaiting you and Dora. We thought, after your labors…”

  “Izzy, you’re sweet,” said Dora, leaning forward and kissing him, surprising both herself and him.

  37

  Opalears: Rehearsals

  Dora and Abby left the new people with us and took the vans back to the city, and Dzilobommo began a list. Hay, he wrote. And more grain of all kinds. And many more apples and carrots and other root vegetables. The new armakfatid stood very near him, as though she had been lonely for so long she could not believe she had a fellow person to grummel with. Dzilobommo looked at her kindly, put his nose in her ear and licked her face.

  Sahir went into the bathroom and got into the shower, yelling at me to come turn on the water. I left, but he stayed in there. After a long time, I went to the doorway and asked him how he felt.

  “Dirty,” he snarled. “I stink of barbarians.”

  I knew what was bothering him. “Prince Sahir,” I whispered. “No one saw anything but seven naked animals. In this time, all the animals go naked. There is no shame to it.”

  It wasn’t precisely true, for Soaz had seen. Izzy had seen, and from what Izzy said, Sahir had behaved stupidly, and Sahir knew it. He would not be comforted. I scrubbed his back, thinking of his mother, the sultana, and how she had foreseen this time. He had a tusk wound on his rump, and I put medicine on it from Dora’s cabinet. I brought him clean clothing. When he came into the room where the rest of us were, he wore clean trousers and shirt, and his headcloth was white as the snow on the peaks of the Sharbak Mountains.

  “You look rested,” said the countess soothingly, fore-bearing to ask him questions. She knew he had been greatly shamed and wished to put it out of his mind.

  It was then Izzy suggested we leave the sleeping room for Dora and Abby, when they returned. They would be very weary, Izzy said, and a little privacy would be welcome to them. It was the least we could do, and we arranged ourselves as comfortably as possible and were mostly asleep when they returned. I was awake enough, however, to hear that Dora and Abby fell onto the bed and into sleep without any sweet words or romancing.

  I had thought that Dora and Abby were mates, but the more I saw them together, the more I thought not. Not yet, at any rate. Sometimes in her face I saw confusion, flicking like fish behind her eyes: “What is this? What am I feeling? What can I do about it?” I saw him looking at her with an expression much less equivocal. If she would, he certainly would. I thought she cared for him, but worried at the feeling, as a kanna worries at a bone, not content until he has shattered it.

  In the morning, Abby left early, and when Dora came sleepily from her room, she greeted us all, and bowed to the new armakfatid and to Sheba, who had spent the night curled up next to Soaz. While she was having her coffee, the phone rang, and she answered it, once again speaking to the Dionne person. When she put the instrument away, she said, “He’ll be bringing the archpriest here, tonight around suppertime. The archpriest will have to be told everything. Could one of you tell the story, so he has it from the horse’s mouth?”

  Then, seeing our expressions, she said, “No, not from the horse’s mouth, forget I said that, from one of you.”

  “Nassif will do it,” said Sahir. “She tells stories well.”

  I opened my mouth to object, but then closed it again. It was what I did well, so why should I not do it? Izzy would talk forever and would say everything except the story itself; the countess would be too diplomatic; Blanche too dry; Soaz too disapproving. I could be a horse-mouth if one was wanted.

  “Also,” said Dora, “since you are worshipers of Cory—”

  “Korè,” said Izzy, correcting her pronunciation. “Kohr-RAY.”

  “Since you are worshipers,” she went on, “is there some prayer or ritual you could do to convince this man you are…coreligionists?”

  Izzy said he would think of something. Dora had a bite of breakfast, took the list Dzilobommo had prepared and shook her head. “We’re feeding an army.” She sounded depressed. Or perhaps she was j
ust very tired.

  I went to remind her. “Please, take some of the gems to pay for our food.”

  “I won’t have time to market jewels today, Nassif. Maybe tomorrow. Before I leave, let’s see if the news is reporting on what happened last night.”

  She turned on the TV and found the story we all had expected: the death of a man, killed by a big animal or animals in the basement of his home, where, seemingly, he had not lived for some time. Police, so the teller said, had searched the woods around the house but had found nothing.

  Dora turned it off and sat for a moment with her head down.

  Anything else?” asked Izzy.

  “I was just thinking what we have to do before I can…take a rest.”

  “Perhaps we could help you more?”

  “No. I’ll manage.” She gave a short, almost mirthless laugh.

  “What?” asked Izzy.

  “I was thinking about the archpriest, when you tell him you made a tree talk,” she answered with a fierce grin. “Be ready to show off, Izzy. Before we’re through, I’ve got a hunch you’ll have to prove it.”

  And then she was gone, out and away, catching the bus to town, where she would return the vans and shop for foodstuffs, which she said she would bring early in the day, if she could. I kept forgetting that Dora had a job, that she was not free to go and do as she liked. In Tavor, not many people had jobs. People had businesses or they worked on farms or they made things, like pottery or cloth, but few of them had jobs that began at one hour and ended at another hour, during which time one’s life was not one’s own. If one wanted a person like that, one had a slave.

  I rallied our people and the guests, and we cleaned the house. As a former slave, I knew more about this than the others did, so I found myself directing matters. Dora had explained the machine which cleaned the floor, though it did not do it as well as I could do it on hands and knees in not much more time. Another machine washed the dishes, and another the clothes. We washed everything, the sheets, the blankets, all the plates. We put everything back as it had been when we arrived, including the scattered books onto the shelves. Dzilobommo, with the new armakfatid watching him from a high stool, set about preparing a luncheon, and I cleaned up after him, as I had done in the kitchens in the palace.