Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

So by now, with no phone call, their bosses must have realized that something was wrong. I wondered how long it would take these enemy Ina to collect new human tools and send them out to try again.

“You said you did three jobs,” Preston said. “Where in Washington did you do those . . . jobs?” “One a few miles outside a little town called Gold Bar. Another not too far from a town called ...

Darlington? No, Darrington. That’s it. And one at a house near the town of Arlington. That’s all up in

western Washington. Pretty country. Trees, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, little towns. Nothing like L. A.” “You were successful in Washington?”

“Yeah, mostly. We hit the first two, and everything went the way it was supposed to. Something went wrong at the third. People got killed. The cops almost got us.”

“Weren’t people supposed to get killed?”

“I mean . . . our people got killed. We didn’t know what happened at first. Later we heard on the radio that two got shot and three had their throats ripped out. The rest of us never saw what did that—a dog, maybe. A big dog. Anyway, the cops were coming, and we had to run.”

I thought about telling him exactly what had killed his friends, then decided not to. None of it was his doing, really. Even so, I didn’t want to be sitting next to him any longer. I didn’t want to know him or ever see him again. But he was not the one who would pay for what had been done to my families. He was not the one I had to stop if I were going to survive.

I took a deep breath and spoke to Preston. “Do you know who’s doing this?”

He looked at Victor. “Who are they, Victor? What’s the name of the family who recruited you and sent you to kill us?”

Victor’s body jerked as though someone had kicked him. He looked at me desperately, confusion and pain in his eyes.

Hayden picked up the question. “Do you know them, Victor? What is their family name?” Victor nodded quickly, eager to please. “I know, but I can’t say . . . please, I can’t.”

“Is the name ‘Silk’?”

Victor grabbed his head with both hands and screamed—a long, ragged, tearing shriek. Then he passed out.

I didn’t want to care. It was clear from the Gordons’ expressions that they didn’t care. But I had bitten him twice. I didn’t want him, wouldn’t have kept him as my symbiont, but I did care what happened to him. I couldn’t ignore him. It seemed that the bites made me feel connected to him and at least a little responsible for him.

I listened to his heartbeat, first racing, then slowing to a strong, regular beat. His breathing stuttered to a regular sleeping rhythm. “What can we do with him?” I asked Preston. “I can talk him into forgetting all this and send him home, but what if the Silk family picks him up again?”

“You feel that you need to help him, in spite of everything?” he asked.

I nodded. “I don’t want him. I don’t like him. But none of this really has anything to do with him.” He looked around at his brother and his sons. Most of them shrugged.

Daniel said, “I don’t think the Silks will bother about him. They won’t know he survived. They probably don’t even know exactly where he lived before they picked him up. He’s just a tool. They might have rewarded him if he survived, but if they think he’s dead, that will be the end of it. We need to check what he’s said with what the other prisoners say. If their stories agree, they can all go home. You can send them back to their families.”

I nodded. “I’ll fix Victor. Do you want me to fix the others, too?”

“Once we’ve questioned them, you might as well. You’ve already bitten them.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about this. I wondered why.

“Is there transportation back to L. A. from somewhere around here?” I asked.

“We’ll get them back.” Daniel looked uncomfortable. “Shori, I think your venom is the reason this man is still alive, the reason he was able to answer as many questions as he did.”

This was obvious so I looked at him and waited for him to say something that wasn’t obvious. “I mean, your venom. If one of us had bitten him instead of you, I think he’d be dead now.”

I nodded, interested. That was something I hadn’t known.

“And that means that if the Silks do get him again somehow and question him, he won’t survive. There may be female relatives of the Silks—sisters or daughters—with venom that’s as strong as yours. They could question him, but chances are, they won’t. And he wouldn’t survive being questioned by males. Their venom would make it necessary for him to answer but not really possible. The dilemma would kill him. He’d probably die of a stroke or a heart attack as soon as they began.”

I looked at Victor and sighed. “Is there anything we can do to keep him safe?”

“No,” Preston said. “It really isn’t likely that the Silks will pick him up again. He’ll probably be all right.

But unless one of us wants to adopt him as a symbiont, we can’t keep him safe. Daniel only wanted you to know ... everything.” I heard disapproval in his voice, and I didn’t understand it. I decided to ignore it, at least for now.

I looked at Daniel and thought he looked a little embarrassed, that he was staring past me rather than at me. “Thank you,” I said. “So much of my memory is gone that I’m grateful for any knowledge. I need to know the consequences of what I do.”

Daniel got up and left the room.

I looked after him, surprised, then looked at Preston. “When should Victor be ready to go?” “A couple of nights from now. After we’ve questioned the others.”

“All right,” I paused. “Can one of you take him? I don’t want him back at the guest house.”

Preston glanced at the doorway Daniel had gone through. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll take care of him.”

“Thank you,” I said with relief. Then I changed the subject and asked a question I had been wanting to ask since I arrived. “Are there ... do you have Ina books, histories I could read to learn more about our people? I hate my ignorance. As things stand now, I don’t even know what questions to ask to begin to understand things.”

It was Hayden who answered, smiling. “I’ll bring you a few books. I should have thought of it before. Do you read Ina?”

I sighed and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. We’ll find out.”

eighteen

To my surprise, I did read and speak Ina.

Hayden brought me three books and sat with me while I read aloud from the first in a language that I could not recall having heard or seen. And yet as soon as I opened the book, the language seemed to click into place with an oddly comfortable shifting of mental gears. I suppose I had spoken English from the time I met Wright because he and everyone else had spoken English to me. If I had heard only Ina since leaving the cave, I might not know yet that I spoke English.

I shook my head and switched back to English. “I wonder what else I’ll remember if someone prods me.”

“Do you understand what you’ve read, Shori?” Hayden asked.

I glanced at the symbols—clusters of straight lines of different lengths, inclined in every possible direction, and often crossed at some point by one or more S-shaped lines. They told the Ina creation myth. “Iosif told me a little about this,” I said. “It’s an Ina myth or legend. The goddess who made us sent us here so that we could grow strong and wise, then prove ourselves by finding our way back home to her.”

“Back to paradise or back to another planet,” Hayden said. “There was a time when Ina believed that paradise was elsewhere in this world, on some hidden island or lost continent. Now that this world has been so thoroughly explored, believers look outward either to the supernatural or to rather questionable