Fledgling (22 page)

The sun was rising now and growing bright enough to be uncomfortable even through the low clouds. I went back inside and found Celia frying frozen sausages from the refrigerator.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m good,” she said. “How about you? You didn’t hurt me, but you filled up on me, didn’t you?”

“I did.” I looked at the sausages. “Do you need more food? You can get things from one of the other houses.” That felt right. No one here would wonder why a symbiont needed to eat well.

“Some butter?” she asked. “There are frozen waffles in the refrigerator, and there’s syrup in the cupboard—good maple syrup—but no butter.”

“Go to the house next door and tell whoever answers that you’re with me. If they don’t have what you want, they’ll tell you who does.”

She nodded. “Okay. Don’t let my sausages burn.” And she ran off to the nearest house, introduced herself, and asked not only for butter, but for fresh fruit and milk as well. I listened while turning her sausages. Wright hadn’t managed to teach me to cook, but he had cooked food around me often enough for me to be able to keep pork sausage from burning. The symbiont who answered Celia just said sure, introduced herself as Jill Renner, put the things Celia wanted into a bag, and told her to have a good breakfast. Celia thanked her and brought them back to the guest-house kitchen. Brook came in just then, and she dove right into the bag, took out a banana, and began to peel and eat it.

“A new symbiont will be coming in sometime soon,” I told her. “Offer him breakfast, would you?”

“Ooh,” Brook said. “
Him
?”

“Damn,” Celia said and sighed. “See, now here’s where I don’t envy you guys. You’re going to go upstairs and kick that nice hairy man of yours right in his balls, aren’t you? A new man already! Damn.”

“Keep the new guy down here until I come back,” I said.

I left them and went up to talk to Wright.

Wright had showered and was shaving. There was another sink in the bathroom—one that had a chair in front of it and a large low mirror with lights around it. I sat down in the chair and watched him shave before a similar, higher mirror. He had collected his electric razor from his cabin when we stopped there and was using it now to sweep his whiskers away quickly and easily.

Then he looked at me. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Not wrong,” I said. “But perhaps something that will be hard for you.” I frowned. “Hard on you. And I don’t want it to be.”

“Tell me.”

I thought about how to do that and decided that directness was best. “Preston has offered me another symbiont, one whose mother, when she was alive, was one of Preston’s symbionts. The new one’s name is Joel Harrison.”

He turned his shaver off and put it on the sink. “I see. Is Preston the father?”

I stared at him in surprise. “Wright, that’s not possible.”

“I didn’t think it was, but I thought I’d ask, since you didn’t mention the father.”

“I don’t know who Joel’s father is, but he’s here. He’s one of William’s symbionts. Joel’s mother was killed in a traffic accident ten years ago.”

“What does the father think about his son coming to you?”

“He wanted his son to come to me. He asked Preston to introduce us.”

“So he’s pimping his own son.”

I hesitated. “I don’t know what that means, but your voice says it’s something disgusting. Joel’s father hasn’t done anything disgusting, Wright. He and Joel both looked at me and decided I would be good for Joel. He’s been away at school. He could have stayed away, could have come back now and then to visit his father. But he chose a life with the Ina, with us. I’m glad of it. I need him.”

“For what? You need him for what?”

I looked at him, wanting to touch him, knowing that at that moment he did not want to be touched. “Three of you aren’t enough to sustain me for long without harm to you. I’m going to try to have Theodora brought here, too.”

He shook his head angrily. “I don’t mind the women so much I guess. I kind of like the two downstairs. I was hoping you’d get all women—except me. I think I could deal with that.” He turned around, filled with energy and violence, and punched the wall, breaking it, leaving a fist-sized hole. And he had hurt his hand. I could smell the blood. But he did not seem to notice. “Hell,” he said, “you don’t even know Harrison. Maybe you’ll hate him.”

I shrugged. “If I don’t like him, I’ll have to find someone else and soon.”

He looked at me sadly. “My little vampire.”

“Still,” I said.

He stepped over to me, picked me up with a hand under one arm, sat down, and sat me on his lap. I took his injured hand and looked at it, licked away the blood, saw that he hadn’t done himself much damage. It would heal overnight like a shallow bite.

“I could get a lot more pissed with you if you were bigger,” he said softly.

“I hope not,” I said.

He wrapped both arms around me, held me against him. “I don’t think I can do this, Shori. I can’t share you.”

I leaned back against him. “You can,” I said softly. “You will. It will be all right. Not now, perhaps, but eventually, it
will
be all right.”

“Just like that.” The bitterness and sorrow in his voice was terrible.

I turned on his lap, straddled him, and looked up at him.

After a moment, he said, “I want you for myself. It scares me how much I love you, Shori.”

I pulled his head down and kissed him, then rested my forehead against his chest, savoring his scent, his wonderful furry body, the beat of his heart. “Preston says our symbionts never know how much we treasure them,” I said.

“You treasure me?”

“You know I do.”

He held me away from him and looked at me. “You’ve taken over my life,” he said. “And now you want me to share you with another man.”

“I do,” I said. “Share me. Don’t fight with him. Don’t hurt the family by fighting with him. Accept him.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” I repeated. “You will. He’s part of the family that we must form. He’s one of us.”

When I left him and went down to the kitchen, I found Joel sitting at the table drinking coffee with Brook and Celia.

“Hey,” he said when I came in. He had two large rolling suitcases parked near his chair.

“Hey,” I said reflexively. “Come talk to me.” I took his hand and led him to the other end of the house to what I had been told was the “family room.”

“Don’t you mean that
you’re
going to talk to
me
?” Joel asked as he sat down in one of the large leather-covered chairs. I sat on the arm of his chair.

“First things first,” I said and took the wrist he had offered earlier. He watched me raise it to my mouth and kiss it a second time, and he smiled. I bit him.

He was delicious. I had intended only to taste him and get a little of my venom into him, but he was such a treat that I took a little more that a taste. And I lingered over his wrist longer than was necessary.

Finally, I looked up at him and found him leaning back bonelessly in the chair. “God,” he said. “I hit the jackpot.”

“How have you managed to stay unattached?” I asked. “Didn’t anyone here want you?”

He smiled. “Everyone wanted me. Everyone except Preston and Hayden. They said I was too young to join with them. The others … they left me alone when I asked them to, but before that, they were all after me. And I didn’t want to join with a man. There’s too much sexual feeling involved when you guys feed. I wanted that from a woman. Preston said he would check with nearby female families after I finished college, and he’s taken me to see a couple of them, but I wasn’t interested. You are the only Ina I’ve ever been attracted to.”

“After seeing me only once?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even see you when you were here before … before your parents died. I had gone to San Francisco to spend time with some friends from college.” He shook his head. “I liked your looks when I saw the pictures the Gordons had of you and your sisters. When I saw you last night, I didn’t have a chance.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m only beginning to form my family,” I said. “You would probably have an easier life with anyone here or any of the female families you’ve seen. You know my memory only goes back a few weeks.”

“I heard.”

“And when I leave the Gordons, I’ll be alone.”

He nodded. “Then let me help you make a new family.”

I looked at him and saw that his expression had changed, had become more serious. Good. “I want you to be part of my new family,” I said. “More than that, I need you. But you and my first will have to accept each other. You will accept him. There will be peace between you. No fighting. No endangering the rest of us with destructive competitions.”

“All right. I doubt that your first and I will ever be anything like friends, but I know how it is. I suppose you told him the same thing.”

“Of course.” I paused. “He helped me, Joel. When I had no one else, when I had no idea who or what I was, he helped me.”

“I wish I had had the chance to do such a thing.” He reached up and touched my face. “Like I said, let me help you make a new family.”

A little later that morning, I put on my hooded jacket, sunglasses, and gloves and walked around to each of the houses of the community. I spotted the guards from outside, then went into the houses to do what I could to help them be less easily spotted. Being easily spotted by the kind of attackers my symbionts and I had faced would mean easily shot.

The Gordon symbionts greeted me by touching me—my shoulders, arms, hands. I found that I was comfortable with that, although I had not expected it. It was as though they had to touch me to believe that I could be Ina and yet be awake.

“You aren’t drowsy at all?” a woman named Linda Higuera asked. She was a nervous, muscular brown woman, at least six feet tall and leaning on a rifle. We were on the third floor of William’s house, and she was one of his symbionts. From what I had seen, William preferred big, powerful-looking symbionts, male and female. Wise of him.

“I’m not drowsy,” I said. “As long as I don’t get too much sun, I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “I wish William could do that. I would feel safer if he could at least wake up if we need him.”

I shrugged. “Your turn to keep him safe.”

She thought about that, then nodded. “You’re right. Damn. He’s so strong, I’ve just gotten used to depending on him. Guess it ought to work both ways.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Do you have a phone?”

“There are phones in the guest house.”

“I mean a cell phone.”

“No, I don’t.” I wasn’t entirely sure what a cell phone was.

“You should have one so we can talk to each other if something happens. The house phones are too easy to disable.”

That made sense. “Is there one I can borrow?”

She sent me down to wake up a huge man named Martin, a man so brown he was almost black. Martin not only supplied me with a charged cell phone, but saved several numbers on it and made me repeat the names that went with them and whose house each person was in. Then he showed me how to make a call, and I made a practice call to the guard at Daniel’s house. Finally, he dug out a charger and showed me how to use that.

“Here’s your number,” he said, making it flash across the phone’s small screen, “just in case you have to give it to somebody.”

“Thank you,” I said, and he grinned.

“No problem. How’s Linda doing up there?”

“Doing well,” I said. “Alert and thoughtful.”

“And how about my son?” he asked in a different tone. “How’s he?” I looked at him, startled. “You’re Joel’s father?”

“Yep. Martin Harrison. Joel move into the guest house yet?”

“He has, yes. I like him.”

“Good. You’re what he wants. If you take care of him, he’ll take care of you.”

I nodded and left him feeling much better about the safety of the Gordon community. With or without me, these people would not be caught by surprise and murdered, and now I could communicate with them in a quiet, effective way.

I walked around the community once more, stopping now and then to listen to the activity around me. There were symbionts eating meals, making love, discussing children who were away at boarding schools, discussing the vineyards and the winery, pruning nearby trees, washing dishes, ordering audiobooks by phone, typing on computers … There were little children playing games and singing songs in a room at Hayden’s house. It seemed that here some symbionts still carried on most of their activities during the day while others had switched to a nocturnal schedule to spend more time with their Ina.

As I wandered back toward the guest house, I found myself paying attention to a conversation that Wright and Brook were having there.

“They take over our lives,” Brook said. “They don’t even think about it, they just do it as though it were their right. And we let them because they give us so much satisfaction and … just pure pleasure.”

Wright grunted. “We let them because we have no choice. By the time we realize what’s happened to us, it’s too late.”

There was a long pause. “It’s not usually that way,” Brook said. “Iosif told me what would happen if I accepted him, that I would become addicted and need him. That I would have to obey. That if he died, I might die. Not that I could imagine him dying. That seemed so impossible … But he told me all that. Then he asked me to come to him anyway, to accept him and stay with him because I could live for maybe two hundred years and be healthy and look and feel young, and because he wanted me and needed me. I wasn’t hooked when he asked. He’d only bitten me a couple of times. I could have walked away—or run like hell. He told me later that he thought I might run. He said people did run sometimes out of superstitious fear or out of the puritanical belief that anything that feels that good must have a huge downside somewhere along the line. Then he had to find them and talk them into believing he was a dream or an ordinary boyfriend.”

Wright said, “By the time Shori asked me—or rather, by the time she offered to let me go—I was very thoroughly hooked, psychologically if not physically.”