Fledgling(73)

“I had a late dinner,” Theodora said. “The other people, the symbionts—is that what they’re called?”

“It is, yes. It’s what you’ll be called, too, if you stay with me.”

She gave me a shy smile and looked downward. “They said I should have a hearty meal before I reached you.”

I laughed again, hungry for her, suddenly eager. “Come on upstairs. How are you? Is everything all right with your family?”

She got ahead of me and stopped me, hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to have to phone my daughter in a few hours. She’s worried about me. She tried to stop me from leaving. Sometime soon, she’s going to want to visit.”

“Phone her whenever you like,” I said. “I have to tell you more of what’s going on here so you’ll understand why she won’t be able to visit you for a while. But you can go see her.”

“Sounds like bad news.”

“Difficult, I think, but not bad. This is a time to be careful. We’ve found out who has been attacking us, and we’re going to have something called a Council of Judgment to deal with them.”

She looked at me as though she were trying to read my expression. “Is there danger right now?”

In the early-morning darkness with all the Gordon men awake and alert? With the Council of Judgment already being organized? “No, not now.”

“Good,” she said. “Then tell me about it in the morning.”

I smiled. “It is morning. But you’re right. First things first.”

I took her to the spare room. I had changed the bedding myself and made certain that the room was clean and ready for her. “I know I promised you more than this,” I said as she looked around. “I will keep my promise. It’s just going to take longer than I thought.”

“I want to be with you,” she said. “It’s all I’ve wanted since you first came to me. I don’t truly understand my feelings for you, but they’re stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, stronger than anything I ever expected to feel. We’ll find a way.”

I shut the door, went to her, and began to undo her blouse. “We will,” I said.

The next night I met with Wayne and Manning to find out what I could about my families’ land and business affairs.

“Your mothers and father understood how to live by human rules,” Manning said. “Their affairs are very much in order. You will have to work through the lawyers, but everything your families owned will be yours, and there’s cash enough for you to be able to pay your taxes without selling anything you don’t want to sell.”

“I don’t know what I want to do, really,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know anything.” I looked at Manning—one of the fathers of Daniel, Wayne, William and Philip. He was a quiet, kindly man, and there was something about his expression that looked uncomfortably close to pity.

“Tell me about the lawyers,” I said quickly. “Are there one or two who would make good symbionts?”

Manning shrugged. “I’m not sure what a good symbiont might be for you. Your Theodora is too old, but she loves you absolutely. She’s exactly the kind of person I would expect to be able to resist one of us—older, educated, well-off—but she couldn’t wait to get to you.”

“She was lonely,” I said. “Tell me about the lawyers.”

“One of the ones I bit might be good for you,” Wayne said.

I liked Wayne’s long, quiet face. He was the only one of the four sons who towered over me even when he was sitting down. “Tell me about that one,” I said.

He nodded. “She’s thirty-five. She has a good reputation among the others at her firm. She’s a good attorney even though she hates her work. She feels that she made a mistake going to law school, but now, she doesn’t know what else she might do. She’s an orphan with a brother who died six years ago. She’s divorced and has no children.”

“You investigated her. You planned to suggest that I go after her.”

“Yes. You’ll need a lawyer. She’ll help you, she’ll teach you, she’ll be your connection to the rest of the legal world, and once you have her—if you’re as right for each other as I think—she’ll be completely loyal to you.” He took a folded paper from his pants pocket and handed it to me. “Her name, home address, and work address.”

“Thank you,” I said and put the paper in my own pocket. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go see her until after the Council of Judgment.”

“I think that would be best,” Manning said. “The lawyers Wayne and I bit will look after your interests until then. But you should find her as soon as the Council ends. You need more than five symbionts.”

I continued to keep watch every day. I didn’t believe there would be another attack, but why take chances?

I saw the bodies of the attackers buried with a great deal of a powder called quicklime in a long, deep trench dug by a small tractor around one of the gardens well away from the houses. I saw the attackers’ cars driven away by gloved symbionts, followed by a Punta Nublada car. And, of course, only the Punta Nublada car returned.

I saw the three living attackers taken away to San Francisco where they would be three ordinary men catching three different Greyhound buses back to southern California where they lived. They wouldn’t attract attention. No one would be likely to remember them. The Gordons had supplied them with money, and I had supplied them with the outline of a memory of going north to do some work driving trucks, hauling cargo up and down the coast. They could each fill in the details according to their own past work experience. As it happened, they had all driven trucks of one kind or another professionally, so they would be able, as Hayden put it, to confabulate to their hearts’ content. But they would not remember one another, Punta Nublada, my families’ communities, or the house near Arlington. I told them to forget those things completely and to remember only the truck-driving job. It was unnerving to see that I could do such a thing, but clearly, I could. I did. I even helped the pimp decide that he was sick of abusing women for a living. His cousin had a landscaping company. He would work for his cousin for a while or for someone else and then go back to school. He was only twenty-one. I made him tell me what he believed he should and could do. Then I told him to go do it.