Clay's Ark (13 page)

won't help. It might kill you."

Rane glanced at the woman's claws and said nothing. Lupe was as crazy as Ingraham and even more unpredictable with

her soft words and sharp nails. Rane was terrified of her-and furious at her for inspiring fear. Why should one thin-

limbed, pregnant woman be so frightening? One thin-limbed, startlingly strong, pregnant woman who sat down beside

Rane and caressed Rane's arm absently.

Rane looked at Ingraham-actually found herself looking for help from the man who had held a gun to her head. To her

utter humiliation, he laughed. Rane's vision blurred and for an instant, she saw herself smashing his head with a rock.

Suddenly Lupe grasped her chin, turned her head until she could see only Lupe, hear only Lupe.

"Chica, nothing has ever truly hurt you before," Lupe said. "Nothing has even threatened you enough to make you

believe you could die. Not even your sister's illness. So now you must learn a hard lesson very quickly. No, don't say

anything yet. Just listen. You think I'm threatening you, but I'm not. At least, not in the way you believe. We have

given you a disease that can kill you. That's what you need to understand. Some of our differences are signs of that

disease. You must decide whether it's better to live with such signs or die. Listen."

Rane listened. She heard about Eli and the Clay's Ark and Proxima Centauri Two. She listened, but she believed almost

nothing.

"You know," Lupe said when she had been talking for perhaps a half hour, "sometimes I look around and everything

seems to be the wrong color. The sun is too bright and . . . not red. I feel surprised that it isn't red. I couldn't figure out

what was going on when it first happened. It scared me. But when I told Eli, he said Proxi was red. A cool red star with

its three planets hugging in close around it. He bought some red light bulbs in Needles and put them in his den. They're

not right either, really, but every now and then I go over there. Every now and then, everyone goes over there and stays

for a while. It relaxes us. When things start to smell funny to you and you feel like you want to eat a live rabbit or rape

a man, we'll take you over there. It helps. Keeps you from jumping out of your skin."

"I've got a better solution for that last feeling," Ingraham said, grinning. He had gone away and come back. Now he sat

watching Rane in a way that made her nervous. In spite of the huge meal Rane had seen him eat, he was munching nuts

from a dish on the coffee table.

Lupe looked at him and smiled-all teeth. "You touch her like that and I'll cut your thing off."

Ingraham laughed, got up and kissed her, then stood before her, smiling. "You want me to get one of the kids for her to

see?"

"Get Jacob if you can catch up with him."

"Okay." He went out.

Looking after him, Rane sorted out two impressions. First, that Lupe meant her threat absolutely. She would kill him if

she caught him with Rane or any other woman. Second, he knew it. He enjoyed her possessiveness. Thus Rane was

probably safe from him in one way at least. Thank God.

"You're bright," Lupe said to her softly. "Very bright, but stubborn. You think you can choose your realities. You

can't."

Rane made herself meet the woman's eyes. "Reality," she said with contempt. "My father is a doctor. He really could

have gone out on the Ark. He has valuable training, he was within the age range when it left, and he was in good

physical shape. Would you believe me if I told you he was a fugitive astronaut?"

"Not if you're his kid, honey. Nobody with young kids went. No white guy married to a black woman went either.

Things never got that loose."

"And no ignorant con artist who can barely speak English went," Rane snapped. "If Eli's convinced you he did, you're

no smarter than he is!"

Surprisingly, Lupe smiled. "You're a lot less tolerant than I would have expected. A lot less observant too. But it

doesn't matter. Here's Jacob."

Ingraham came into the room carrying a small, large-eyed, brown boy. The boy was slender-without childish

pudginess- but not bone-thin like the adults. He wore a pair of blue shorts, but no shirt. He was startlingly beautiful,

Rane realized when he turned in Ingraham's arms and faced her. But there was something odd about him. He seemed

nothing like the thing that had run past her outside, but he did appear to be built for speed. An odd, slender little boy.

"Come on, nino," Lupe said. "Let's show you off a little bit. Come sit with us."

The boy scrambled against Ingraham, braced, and leaped to the bench on which Rane and Lupe sat. He landed next to

Rane, who started violently. Jacob had leaped like a cat and landed on all fours. His legs and arms were clearly

intended to be used this way. He was a quadruped. He had hands, however, and fingers. He looked at them, following

Rane's eyes.

"They work," he said in a clear, slightly deeper than average child's voice. "They work like yours." He grasped her arm

with the small, startlingly strong, hard hands. Sharp little nails dug into her flesh, and she drew away. Squatting, the

boy sniffed his hands, then wiped them on his shorts.

"You smell," he told Rane, and leaped off the bench and onto it again next to Lupe.

Lupe laughed. "Shame, Jacob. That's not nice to say."

"She does," the boy insisted.

"She's not one of us yet. She will be soon. Then she'll smell different."

Rane completely passed over the insult in her fascination with the boy-the whatever-it-was.

"Can he walk on his feet alone?" she asked Lupe.

"Not so well," Lupe answered. "He tries sometimes because we all do, but it's not natural to him. He gets tired, even

sore if he keeps at it. And it's too slow for him. You like to move fast, don't you, nino?" She lifted the strange little

body and placed it on her lap. Jacob immediately put his ear to her belly.

"I can hear it," he announced.

"Hear the baby?" Rane asked.

"Its heartbeat," Lupe said. "He can hear it without putting his ear to me. It's just a game he likes. He says this one's

going to be a girl. He doesn't understand how he can tell, but he knows. Smell, maybe."

"Guessing, maybe," Rane said.

"Oh no, he does know. He's called it right four times so far. Now women come and ask him."

"But . . . but, Lupe-"

"Stop for a moment," Lupe said. Then to the boy, "Okay, nino. Back out to play. Take some nuts."

The boy leaped down from her lap, trotted on all fours to the china nut dish on the plain, homemade coffee table. He

took a handful of nuts, stuffed them into the pocket of his shorts and zipped it shut. He seemed to have no trouble using

his hands. They were smaller than Rane thought they should have been, but he was less clumsy with them than a

normal child would have been. He was certainly much faster than any normal child, probably faster than most adults.

All his movements were smooth and graceful. A graceful four-year-old.

He stopped in front of her-beautiful child head, sleek catlike body. A miniature sphinx. What would it be when it grew

up? Not a man, certainly.

"I don't like you either," Jacob said. "You're fat and you smell and you're ugly!"

"Jacob!" Lupe stood up and started toward him. "Vayase! Ahora mismo! Outside!"

Jacob bounded out the door. No, human beings did not move that way. How had any disease made such a creature of a

child?

"He's telling the truth, you know," Lupe said. "You do look fat and odd to him, though you're not. And you smell . . .

different. Also, he couldn't miss how much you were repelled by him."

"I don't understand how such a thing could happen," Rane whispered.

"It's the disease, I told you. We don't even have a name for it-the disease of Clay's Ark. All our children are like Jacob."

"All . . . ?" Rane swallowed. "All animals? All things?"

"Shit!" Lupe said. "You're worse than I was. You should be more tolerant. He's a little boy."

Rane stared at her pregnant belly.

"Oh yes," Lupe said. "This child will be like Jacob too, just as my son is. Beautiful and different. And, chica, your

children will be like him too. The disease doesn't go away. It just settles in and stays with you and you pass it on to

strangers and to your children."

"Or you get treatment!" Rane said. "What the hell are you doing sitting in the middle of the desert giving birth to

monsters and kidnapping people?"

Lupe smiled. "Eli says we're preserving humanity. I agree with him. We are. Our own humanity and everyone else's

because we let people alone. We isolate ourselves as much as we can, and the people outside stay alive and healthy-

most of them."

"Most," Rane said with bitterness. "Most for now. But even now, not me. Not my father or sister. And what about you?

You don't belong here either, do you?"

"I do now," Lupe said. "Before, I was a private hauler. You know. Good money if you survive. My truck broke down

all the way over on I-Fifteen, and Eli caught me outside. When I realized what he had done to me, I thought I would

bide my time and kill him. Now, I think I'd kill anyone who tried to hurt him. He's family."

"Why?" demanded Rane. "If you really believe he's the cause of this sickness-and you know he's the guy who

kidnapped you . . ." Rane shook her head. "Didn't you have a husband or anything back in the real world? What about

your business?"

"I was divorced," Lupe said. "I lived in the truck on the road." She paused. Her voice became wistful. "I miss the road. I

almost got killed more times than I like to think about, but I miss it."

Rane listened without comprehension. A woman who could be nostalgic for work that kept nearly killing her could

probably make any irrational adjustment.

"I didn't have anybody," Lupe said. "We lived in a cesspool. My parents' house got caught in a gang war, got bombed.

One of the gangs wanted to make a no-man's-land, you know. They needed to put some space between their territory

and their rivals'. So they bombed some houses, torched others. They got their no-man's-land. My parents, my brother,

and a lot of other people got killed. My ex-husband, he's a wino somewhere. Who cares? So I was alone. I'm not alone

here. I'm part of something, and it feels good. Even Orel. There was a time when I carried two guns plus the truck's

usual defenses-and defensively, my truck was a goddamn tank-all to fight off people like him: bike packers, car bums,

rogue truckers, every slimy maggot crawling over what's left of the highway system. But they're not all as bad as I

thought. Orel isn't. Take away the gang and give him something better and he turns into a person. A man."

Rane listened with interest in spite of herself. She could not understand Lupe's interest in a man like Ingraham but she

was beginning to respect Lupe. Rane liked to think of herself as tough, but she had an uncomfortable suspicion she

could not have survived Lupe's life. She had never been alone, never been without someone who would help her if she

could not help herself. Now none of the people who cared about her could help her. Her father, her sister, two sets of