Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls (5 page)

I
CONTINUE LEARNING TO DRIVE AND
A
BALONE TAKES ME
regularly to visit with Professor Isabella. In various diners and occasional by-the-hour hotels, once again the professor reads to me, her passion for various lines and phrases branding them into my memory.

Abalone often sits in a corner with her “tappety-tap,” working out some complex forgery problem. When we grow weary, we rest and my two friends talk.

“You say that Head Wolf told the Pack to look for people from the Home?” Professor Isabella asks one near-dawn.

“Yeah, he did.”

Abalone tenses some. Head Wolf is still a sensitive topic between them, especially since Professor Isabella has somehow learned of my occasional visits to Head Wolf's lair. She blames Abalone, which is unfair. She may be immune to the hypnotic power in those dark eyes, but he draws me like a hummingbird to a new-blossomed hibiscus.

“I wonder why he wanted them?” Professor Isabella muses, “Were any others found?”

“A couple, I think.” Abalone's restless fingers trace the outlines of her notebook computer. “I think he spoke with them and sent them on. Did Head Wolf ask you anything, Sarah? What do you talk about when you've been alone?”

She blushes suddenly and bites her lip so hard that she leaves a thin blue line on her top teeth. Professor Isabella chuckles and Abalone sputters helplessly. My dragons giggle in duet. Over the prevailing flood of mirth and embarrassment, I find an adequate reply.

“Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—of cabbages—and kings—and why the sea is boiling hot—and whether pigs have wings.”

“Lots of nonsense,” Professor Isabella translates.

Yet, even as I accept her interpretation, I wonder. There have been many questions that I have struggled to answer, yet these are diminished beneath a vivid flood of nonverbal memories.

Head Wolf has his favorites. I am one. Edelweiss is another. A black/Asian mix Tail Wolf called Bumblebee is another. He is so generous with his attentions that he often mock-complains that he is worn out.

Yet, I have learned that many who share his tent do so for more than sex. For Head Wolf has a gift he gives beyond sexual pleasure—he cuddles, strokes, and comforts. His greatest talent is tenderness. He is never too busy to pet or soothe any of his Pack and for this a Tail Wolf may come to him although a night of turning tricks has left her numb.

I enjoy his tenderness, but I have often known kindness.
For some of the others in the Jungle, Head Wolf is the only one who has ever listened to them, cared for them. He admires their finery, settles their quarrels, and suggests what they should do when in trouble. Sometimes, he scolds; often he punishes. Always he cares.

Once, I believed fear and the Law bound the Jungle. Now I believe that what binds it is safety and compassion.

Although we enjoy our nights in diners and hotels, we cannot always loiter in these havens. Abalone explains that this would cause resentment among those of the Free People who lack her extraordinary skills. And Abalone's supply of money is not endless, especially now that she is stretching to supply three.

So, often we go to charity soup kitchens and stand on line with the other homeless awaiting something hot, cheap, and nourishing. Abalone looks at the miserable addicts and drunks who swarm around us, cursing under her breath.

Occasionally, I recognize other outcasts from the Home, but they do not seem to know me. Most are buried in the morass of their own minds.

Our favorite of these kitchens is called “When I Was Hungry.” It is run by Witnesses.

“They're good people, on the whole,” Abalone says as we wait at the end of a line. “They'll preach and pray, but their hearts are without that…”

She struggles to describe the emotion we so often encounter in the public dole lines.

“Scorn?” Professor Isabella suggests. “I agree with you. The Witnesses pity me for my religious ignorance and unredeemed status but they are without scorn. And even if Sarah
here has a better comprehension of the Bible in its glorious contradictions, I can take their preaching.”

“You sound as if you think Sarah's flipped short on the brains side,” Abalone says, and there is a growl in her voice. “You ever notice how much sense she makes? And I couldn't remember like she does.”

“Nor I,” Professor Isabella agrees, “but there is something ‘short' in her brains, something is missing that would let her reach in and make her own sentences.”

I am uncomfortable, as always, when they discuss me this way. Even my best friends seem to forget that I am able to hear them. Recently, I have noticed that Professor Isabella addresses Abalone as another adult, but speaks to me as a child.

Frustration bubbles in my throat as it has so often before. I want to claw away the bars of this cage built by my mind. My hands, as always, reach and find nothing to grab onto.

I move along the line, sliding my battered tray and accepting a plastic spoon, a napkin, a cup of weak coffee. As I look up to accept the wide plastic bowl heaped with some noodle-filled casserole, delight thrills through me and I stare. Words come quickly.

“A day without orange juice is a day without sunshine?” I ask, afraid that I am wrong or that he has forgotten me.

Jerome's head jerks up from his mechanical task. “Sarah? Sarah! What are you doing here, girl?”

The line has backed up behind us; only a few of the people that I am obstructing are alert enough to care about anything more than the simple fact that their one meal of the day is being delayed.

Jerome shoves my bowl to me. “Go along now. We're almost done. You wait and I'll come and speak with you. Hear?”

I nod, beam, and hurry on.

Abalone and Professor Isabella are curious, but I cannot find words to explain. I eat, feeding Betwixt and Between who, like me, are nearly too excited to eat the starchy stuff. Yet, I do, for I have learned that wasting food is a crime on the streets.

Jerome comes soon after the food line has closed down. He carries a pot of weak coffee in one hand and a few nearly fresh sweet rolls on a plate in the other.

“Sarah,” he pecks me on the cheek, the odors of tuna fish and mushroom soup not completely covering his own scent of scrubbed skin and after-shave.

I motion for him to sit and squeeze his hand. I rock a little on the bench, hunting for words to introduce him to the others.

“Jerome—A friend of publicans and sinners,” I manage at last.

Jerome jumps, surprised. “Sarah, you praise me.”

He turns to the ladies. “My name is Jerome—I guess you are friends of Sarah's.”

He speaks softly and slowly, as if he is uncertain that they will understand him. Yet, courtesy is there, too, as true as if he were addressing his peers.

Abalone smiles. “Yeah—I'm Abalone and this is Professor Isabella. We kinda watch out for Sarah. You know her from the Home?”

“Yes,” he nods, then chuckles. “I work there—in the cafe
teria. Always tell my Balika, my wife, that surely I can do the Lord's Work elsewhere. After shoveling food all day there, I'd rather not come here, but today she was ill and I came to take her place. The Lord does work in mysterious ways. I've been worrying about Sarah since the big Exodus and now I have an answer to my prayers.”

He bows his head for a moment. “I'm forgetting my manners. Coffee? Sweets?”

We all accept and with an almost sheepish smile Jerome drips the last of the pot into a little plastic scrap about the size of a thimble and puts a shred of pastry next to it.

“For the dragons,” he explains. “I think that's what caught me about Sarah, back at the Home. Her always carrying around that toy and always so careful to feed it.”

“Don't leave home without it,” I add, blowing on my coffee. “I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls.”

“And to these folks here,” Jerome says. “May I request that you two ladies fill me in on what Sarah's been doing? Poor child would be here 'til Armageddon looking for the words and I need to hustle on home to Balika.”

Abalone and Professor Isabella supply him with a very-edited version of the past month and a half. Jerome seems relieved when he learns that I am neither turning tricks nor doing drugs. He is wise enough not to question where we live and seems to assume that our food and clothing come from charity.

When we are leaving, he stands for a moment with the empty coffeepot dangling from one hand, his dark face suddenly creased with puzzlement.

“Funny,” he says. “I've only seen that golden-haired doc
tor who made such noise during the Exodus but once since. I made so bold as to ask her if she knew what had become of Sarah. She knew who I meant right off, said that she'd arranged to have her become a model, even promised me some pictures. Wonder why she'd go to the trouble to comfort me like that?”

“Guilt?” Professor Isabella answers.

“Who knows.” Jerome smiles. “Come back soon, now. Let me know how you are.”

He speaks in a general way, but I am warmed. The night seems more pleasant, the stars brighter, as we walk through the dark streets.

After leaving the soup kitchen, we head for one of Abalone's many safe holes. Tonight's is an abandoned building; it still has power, water, and, most importantly, phone service.

Abalone is intent over her tappety-tap. Professor Isabella drowses openmouthed on a pallet made from a few blankets Abalone has stashed there. I patiently play with my practice panel.

“Got it!” Abalone cries, waking Professor Isabella and startling me.

“What?” Professor Isabella yawns.

“I'm ready to let Sarah earn her keep,” Abalone says. “We can move as soon as tomorrow evening.”

Excitement and trepidation war within me. I am certain I can mechanically manage what Abalone wants, but doubt my nerve. Nor has Abalone yet confided the details of her plan to me; now seems a fit time to ask, while she is flush with her victory.

“The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft-a-gley. An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain, for promised joy,” I say.

“Huh?” Abalone's eyes are wide as I roll out the words in the Scottish accent of a sailor who had resided in the Home for a time.

“I believe she wants to know what you have in mind for her,” Professor Isabella says, shaking her skirts down. “I must admit, I've been sitting on my own curiosity.”

“Lumpy seat, that,” Betwixt snickers. “It's been popping up more than Head Wolf's…”

I pinch his mouth shut while Between laughs. Silently, I resolve that the dragons may wait in the Heights next time I visit the Lair.

Abalone has been considering Professor Isabella's question and, lifting the window curtain, she sees that we have some time left until proper daylight.

“I'll fill you both in,” she decides. “I think I've thought of everything but…You must have guessed that I break programs, Professor Isabella.”

Professor Isabella nods, her eyes lively as she sips from a cup of almost viscous coffee.

“Well, a while back, I found the way into the Vehicle Registration Banks. With some work, I can reregister anyone's vehicle to anyone else. What I do is usually cruise the streets until I find a nice piece or two habitually parked with either an electronic guard or none at all. I get the external ident data and then trace it in the VRB. After I craft a new ID, I register the target to me.”

The smile on Professor Isabella's face encourages Abalone to go on with barely a break.

“When I pick the vehicle up, I'm not stealing it. Even if I was pulled over, all the data would agree it was mine. The ‘real' owner would be hard-pressed to prove otherwise. Then I go to a dealer and make a quick sale.”

“Let me guess,” Professor Isabella interrupts. “You've done this often enough that your plan is to set Sarah up as the ‘owner' and have her sell the car. Have you decided how to get around her rather distinctive appearance and way of talking?”

“I thought of several,” Abalone replies, just barely bragging. “At first, I figured she could just memorize key responses to the questions. Funny, for all her remembering odd quotes, she couldn't get any of this.”

Professor Isabella shrugs with a theatrical sigh. “Sarah's memory is a mystery to me. What and why she chooses to remember or understand anything is a miracle. She apparently didn't speak at all until she was somewhere in her twenties.”

“Well,” Abalone continues, “when that didn't work out, I thought about fitting her with a voder and speaking through it. That was too crazy and complex. What I settled on is so simple that I can't handle it.”

“Go, on, Shellfish,” Professor Isabella exclaims. “Dawn is coming and won't Head Wolf turn you into a pumpkin if you're out past curfew?”

Abalone rolls her eyes. “She'll pretend that she's lost her voice and come in with a prepared sales offer. The guy I
have in mind speaks English real good but he doesn't read much English, just Korean—he voice notes his sales—He'll scan the offer into his computer, maybe dicker a little. Sarah can nod ‘yes' or ‘no' and I'll tell her the acceptable range.”

“Won't he wonder why she's selling while she's sick? Why she doesn't wait until she's better?”

“Nope.” Abalone flips onto her stomach and drums her heels in the air. “Not when he sees the registration and loan stuff. He'll see she's got a payment due the next day and realize that she needs to sell to cover it.”

“Clever,” Professor Isabella admits. “Simple and elegant. Of course, you'll disguise her more-distinctive features and all the dealer will see is another pretty Anglo. What are you doing on the street, girl?”

Abalone freezes up, burying her face in the pillow. Slowly, Professor Isabella inches across the floor to her and pats her shoulder.

“Sorry, Abalone, I should know better than to ask. God knows, every day I fear that one of my former students will recognize me. How could I ever explain? Not all of them would be as fine as sweet Sarah.”