The Family Tree (31 page)

“T
hey don’t trust us,” Dora said, as the visitors disappeared into the woods.

“They have good reason not to,” said Abby.

“Maybe more than you know,” she said, dryly. “I’ve just realized this may be why Winston was killed, and Martin Chamberlain, and maybe the other scientist. They were all working in genetics. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the animals out at Randall Pharmaceuticals are the ancestors of our guests.”

“Do the animals at the pharmaceutical company talk?”

“According to Joe Penton, they had a dog that did.”

“Take our guests out there and have them wander around and find out.”

“Have them talk to the animals?”

“If they can communicate, they’re not animals, are they, Dora?”

“I’ve never thought so, no. Intelligent creatures are as human as most of us.”

“Scientists argue about that.”

“Scientists!” She made a spitting motion. “Back in the 1850s, scientists wrote that blacks were not human, that it was perfectly proper to enslave them. In the early 1900s, scientists said that women benefitted from clitorectomies, because it stopped their infantalism and allowed them to mature, though they were still too fragile to work outside the home. Right up until the 1990s, scientists could explain why gays were abnormal and perverted and needed to be cured or imprisoned. Research is often slanted by conviction, and you know it, Abby. If there’s power or reputation to be made, you can find some scientist who will say most anything.”

“My God,” he said. “What debate club did you graduate from?”

She flushed. “Grandma and I used to talk about it. We read a lot.”

“I love nature, too, dear one, but I’m not sure your guests are natural creatures.”

“So we’re not sure of that,” she said angrily. “So what? Even if they resulted from experimentation, who’s to say that same experimentation wouldn’t have occurred in nature, given enough time? We’re the result of nature’s constant reshuffling, aren’t we?” She turned away, shaking her head. “If a man and woman use their sex organs to make a baby, the baby’s natural and human. If a human being uses his brain to make a reasoning creature, is that less natural or human? Natural or not, it would be wrong not to help them.”

“I’d like to put Dzilobommo in my car and take him to visit a friend of mine who has a pet raccoon. I’d like to know if Dzilobommo can talk to him.”

“You’d have to take Lucy Low along, or the countess, as translator.”

“I can’t imagine the countess being willing to go without her clothes.”

“Well, Lucy doesn’t wear any. Her head is oddly shaped for an otter, though. And she’s big.”

“Maybe a cross between the giant otters of South America and a North American species?”

“More likely sea otter,” she said. “Though her feet aren’t entirely webbed, particularly the front ones. She’s only about two and a half feet tall when she stands on her hind legs.”

“Izzy and Nassif?”

“Japanese macaques. They’re the ones with stubby tails. The heads are different, though. I’m surprised they’re monkeys, not apes. Maybe there are apes, in their world.”

“Dora, I’m amazed at you. You seem very little surprised by any of this!”

She shook her head. “Oh, hell, Abby, I’ve always thought of animals as people. Many of them, at any rate. Not sheep. Not cows, much. But goats, yeah, and dogs and cats, sure, and monkeys, of course. And apes. Elephants. Dolphins. Whales. Some kinds of birds.”

“Cockroaches?”

“No. Not any kind of insect, except maybe a whole hive, as a kind of…what? Corporate personality?”

“You really meant all that stuff you were spouting while they were here, it wasn’t just fluff? For their benefit?”

“Did you think it was fluff?” she asked angrily, then gulped at being angry. Not with Abby. Why not? Well, because…Because he had suddenly become very important to her. Did she dare be angry with Abby? Would he let her be angry sometimes?

Evidently he would, for he said:

“Don’t get in an uproar, love. Just being sure. If we’re going to do something affecting the entire human race, here, I want to be sure I understand what the ground rules are.”

She thought about it as she moved about, clearing the dishes, stacking them in the dishwasher, putting away the items Dzilobommo had used. “I like our guests. I don’t want to see them wiped out. I like a lot of humans. I don’t want to see us wiped out, either. I don’t want to
die of a plague. I don’t want my brothers and sisters to die in one. If this Woput from the future succeeds in stopping the animal research, it will destroy our guests, but it won’t do anything to stop the plague. The Woput doesn’t even know about the plague. He doesn’t know the real reason humans get wiped out. His people, the so-called Weelians, didn’t know until Izzy told them.”

“You feel if the holy war can’t be stopped, better for our guests’ races to survive than for none of us to do so.”

“Well, yes, don’t you?” She examined his face closely, fighting down the urge to lean against him, let him put his arms protectively around her. She gritted her teeth and told herself to behave. “If creation has a purpose intelligible to us, then the development of intelligence may be it. Better intelligent pigs and dogs and monkeys than no intelligence at all!”

“You realize we may already be too late,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“If the animals are the result of the experimentation at Randall Pharmaceuticals, the scientist has been killed. We’re too late to do anything about that….”

She shook her head. “Maybe not. The experimental animals may still be alive. And I’ve got a pile of papers in the bedroom with bibliographies referring to dozens of other scientists. There are a lot more than three people working on this, though the Woput may have targeted them all!”

“Where do the trees fit in?”

“Fit into what?”

“Why did the trees start doing what they’re doing? Is that research that got out of hand? Is it an invasion? Is it a weapon that got loose? What’s going on with the trees?”

“I don’t know,” she said, plopping herself down on the couch. “Abby, I honest to God don’t have a clue about the trees, and seemingly neither do my guests, but I know somebody who might.”

He waited, head cocked.

“Harry Dionne,” she said. “Or maybe his father.”

He laughed. “What do you think? It’s an angelic visitation?”

“Harry talked about religion, but he didn’t say a word about angels.” She gave him a reproving look and went to the phone to call Harry Dionne.

O
ut in the woods we were having a conversation about one thing and another. We told Soaz and Prince Sahir all about Dora and her man Abby, but we couldn’t convince them the womb-man was actually intelligent.

“All you’re saying is she
sounds
intelligent,” said Sahir. “But it could just as well be instinctive behavior, copying responses she has heard in response to certain cue words. We all know that umminha simply are not intelligent.”

“Even in our time, they use tools,” said the countess.

“Tools!” Soaz snarled. “They will pull a board loose and use it to level a sleeping place. That’s not toolusing.”

“They put things around themselves to keep themselves warm,” I offered. “And around the bottoms of their young.”

“As does any veeble, making a nest for its sucklings.”

“They understand commands,” said Lucy Low.

“So do veebles,” growled Soaz. “And we all know umminhi make sounds like talk, but it has no sense in it.”

“It could be a language we simply don’t understand,” I offered.

Izzy shook his head. “It isn’t. I read an account in my library, some ponjic scrivener in Isfoin wrote a paper on it. The sounds umminhi make are not recognizable in any known language.”

“Of our time,” I persisted. “But what about this time? There may be languages spoken now that we know nothing of.”

Izzy shook his head. “My library records history for over seven thousand years. It begins with the Gyptian era, and every language spoken from that time to our time is in my library.”

“But the paper was written in Isfoin,” I shouted. “Where they don’t
have
your library! That author could only compare it to known languages
there
.”

“Hush,” said the countess. “All this talk is to no purpose. The umminha is intelligent. Her responses are not instinctive. Only your prejudice could make you believe so, Prince Sahir. We have for so long rejoiced in being intelligent, in pointing to the poor beasts who are not and comparing ourselves to them, that it is hard for us to relinquish our position of superiority. No matter what the umminhi of our age are like, this one here, now, is intelligent. And so is the man.”

“Well, I don’t believe it,” said Prince Sahir. “I believe when we move out into the world, we will find we have landed in some kind of zoo. We will find our people out there, and we will find the umminhi in stables, where they belong.”

“If the umminhi are correct, we would be mistaken to move into the world at all.”

“They’re lying,” said Sahir.

“Come now,” said the countess angrily, rising to her full height. “A creature without intelligence cannot lie.
You can’t have it both ways, Prince Sahir. If the creature is lying, she is intelligent. If she’s telling us the truth about the danger we’re in, she is intelligent.”

“You yourself say ‘creature,’” said Soaz, sulkily.

“Habit,” she said. “Nonetheless, I believe her.”

So did I. So did the onchiki. Blanche offered no opinion, one way or the other. Dzilobommo felt she was probably intelligent, because of the ingredients he found in her kitchen. Cuisine, he grummeled, was equivalent to intelligence. Only Sahir and Soaz believed, or claimed to believe, that Dora and her mate were merely animals who uttered previously learned phrases when cued by conversation, and who had also, possibly, taken over a dwelling built by ponjic people.

Of course, Sahir and Soaz had not seen Dora and her mate, a fact Izzy reminded me of. “My library is full of people asserting natural law on the basis of behavior that has never been observed in nature,” he whispered, before turning toward the prince. “Will you proceed on your beliefs?” he asked. “Will you leave the rest of us to go out in the city?”

“What city?” growled Soaz. “We have only the words of umminhi to tell us there is a city.”

“Very well,” said the countess in a tone I had not heard her use before, a very regal tone, one that held anger, but anger strictly controlled. “If you do not distrust Blanche’s eyes or ears or voice, I suggest we attempt to verify what Dora told us. The city, so says Dora, is beyond, in that direction,” and she pointed toward the house. “According to Abby, there is an avenue in that direction.” She pointed again, perpendicular to the first line. “I suggest Blanche fly, very quietly, to that avenue, then along that avenue until she can see the city. When she has seen it, when she can either verify or has disproved what we have been told, let her return to us here.”

“Blanche and I,” said Sahir. “We will both go to this avenue and see what we shall see.”

The countess seemed mindful to disagree with him,
but she had been put out of temper. She merely turned away from him, suggesting to the rest of us that we return to the house. No matter whether occupied by persons or by creatures, she said, the house at least seemed safe.

We politely hailed Dora from the foot of the stairs. When we came into the room, Soaz making his leather trousers creak with tension as he stared around himself with slitted eyes, I went forward to make the introduction.

“We met others of us in forest,” I said. “Prince Sahir has gone with Blanche to explore, and this is the eunuch, Soaz.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dora. “We do it to cats in our time, too.”

“Do what?” Izzy asked.

“Neuter them. Cut off their…well, you know. So they can’t make kittens.”

Izzy said something to Soaz, who screamed in rage, his fangs gleaming and the fur on his tail standing out.

Izzy said nervously, “In our…society it doesn’t mean that. Eunuch. It simply means he guarded females of another tribe, ah, species. Soaz wishes me to tell you he can make kittens, cubs, whenever he feels like it.”

Dora swallowed deeply, and I saw her struggling not to laugh. Abby said something loud and hearty to turn attention away, and we assembled ourselves comfortably in the room while Dora and Abby went to the kitchen area to get food for Soaz, politely refusing Dzilobommo’s offer of assistance.

I heard Soaz say to Izzy, “You see! You call that intelligence?”

Quickly, I followed the umminhi, staying out of sight beside the cold box as they whispered to one another.

“Now what’s he!” demanded Abby.

“I don’t know. He’s got kind of a Persian look to him, but he’s bigger than any domestic cat I ever saw. What do you think? Forty, fifty pounds?”

“He’s spotted.”

“Well, not really. It’s kind of an interrupted tabby. Grandma had a mama cat like that. It looks like spots, but it’s really interrupted stripes—”

“What’s the difference?” he hissed. “He’s spotted, he’s striped, he’s Persian, he’s a mutated cheetah. That doesn’t matter. What matters is, he talks!”

“If it weren’t for that rather fluffy fur, his head shape would be more evident. It’s big. Room enough in there for vocal chords, a bigger brain…”

I looked at Soaz with new eyes. He did, indeed, have a very large head. But then, so did I. Compared to the umminhi, that is. But then, they were taller.

“Sahir doesn’t think you are intelligent,” I said, coming out from behind the cold box, speaking quite loudly, so the others could hear me.

“We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Sahir,” said Abby.

“He says you just make noises. They don’t mean anything.”

“Well, if that were so, conversation would be difficult, wouldn’t it?” he said.

“Oh, Abby,” Dora said. “I don’t blame him. Think of all those people who’ve worked with apes. The ape learns hundreds of signs or symbols, and the ape learns to ask for things and comment on things, and then some linguist pops up and says it isn’t language at all, it’s just labeling or recitation of nouns or the researcher misinterpreted, or the standards weren’t rigorous, because the grammar isn’t there. Think of that gray parrot that can identify colors and shapes and materials. Not language, they say. They assume speech isn’t speech without grammar, and they assume human grammar is the only kind there is.”

“Well, if it isn’t the only kind of speech, why do
we
speak it?” I asked.

Dora sighed. I had heard the countess sigh in just such a fashion. Of these small things are similarities drawn.

“My guess,” she said. “My guess is that a scientist we know of, a Dr. Edgar Winston, or perhaps one of his
colleagues, did some gene mixing and came up with animals who had some humanish interpolations in their brains plus a more or less parrot or human voice box and tongue muscles. I say muscles, because Soaz’s tongue is not manlike, but his words are.”

Prince Izakar said, in a voice of dawning awareness, “You’re saying that there is in this…world…science of…ummm…changing creatures? Changing their shape? Their nature? Their, ah…characteristics?”

“Genetics,” she said. “Playing with DNA. Putting one creature’s gene’s in another creature’s body, or mind. Yes. Up until recently it was mostly vegetables, but they are recombining human and animal DNA. The man who was foremost in the research was murdered recently.”

More conversation, even more intense.

Then Izzy said incredulously, “You are saying, we are not people who have evolved but are…creations of your people?”

Dora looked at Abby, shrugging. We read what she meant, though she did not want to say it.

“In light of what we find here, one would almost think it possible,” said the countess at last, her solemn voice giving the words an ominous weight. “If you are only…speaking species in this time, we would have to consider…if your people could have created us.”

Soaz screamed. “No. Impossible! We were not created by umminhi!”

Silently, Dora crossed the room to a long, low bookcase that separated the room from the stair. She took from it a book, and she placed the book on the low table beside the couch. Izzy leapt upon the table, and so did I. We looked at the cover. It said:

The Audubon Society
E
NCYCLOPEDIA OF
A
NIMAL LIFE

Beneath the words was a picture of a regal person, his hair radiating from his forehead, his sideburns and beard smooth and well groomed, his eyes very wise, his expression one of kindly tolerance.

“The emperor!” cried Izzy. “A picture of the emperor!”

The countess came to look. “It is! How can you have a picture of Emperor Faros VII?”

Abby said very quietly: “It is a picture of a grizzly bear.”

We stared at the two umminhi, our mouths open. Dora’s expression was sympathetic to our confusion. “Look at the book,” she said. “Look at the book.”

Oh, we looked at the book. We found many ponji people in it. Lemurs and vervets and orangutans and chimpanzees and there, on page 39, a picture that could almost have been of Izzy. Macaque, it said. He was standing naked in a forest. The kasturic people, who do so much of our building, were there. Beavers, they were called. The sea people were there, and the Onchik-Dau, what are called sea lions. There were many pheleds. Soaz looked at those pictures long and hard. He was most like the lynx, I thought, looking from him to picture and back to him again. The kannic people were there, foxes and coyotes—almost like Oyk and Irk—and wolves. Dzilobommo’s people were there, on the same page as a mythical creature all our children knew, the panda. Who has not received a little stuffed panda doll as a child? I had one. I used to sleep with it.

There was the legendary elefant, huge and horrid, and there were the horses and burros, in many kinds. One was even striped. There were creatures we had never heard of: the rhinoceros and the tapir—relatives of the scuinic people, said the book—and the giraffe. There was only one, very unflattering picture of a scuinic person, and it was labeled “wild boar.” There were pictures of bison and deer—Soaz said they still existed, far to the south of Isfoin. There were also goats, much like our kapriel people. Then there were the birds, with a beau
tiful picture of one of Blanche’s kin, the Hyacinthine Macaw. And then the serpents and the fishes. Our mammalian peoples were all spoken of in the first few pages of the book. We were not many compared to all the swimming and squirming creatures of the world.

None of the peoples or creatures in the book wore clothing.

“Prince Sahir should have taken off his clothing,” I cried. “If a human sees him, he will be in danger.”

I had no sooner uttered the words than we heard Blanche, screaming at us from below. We could not make out her words until she arrived at the top of the stairs, where she flapped her wings in a frenzy and screamed:

“The prince has been captured; Prince Sahir has been captured. The umminhi have taken him away.”