I had already decided that! The countess, when she discusses Fasal Grun versus Fasahd, uses many of the same ideas Dora was using. Fasahd is a cannibal, without doubt, but the humans Dora spoke of sounded very person-eating to me.
“I’m sorry,” Dora said. “I shouldn’t rant on and on like that, but hearing that all of us, or most of us, are to be wiped out shortly makes me so…I have nephews, and nieces, and I love them. I have sisters and brothers…I don’t know whether to be angry or glad! I’ve thought of it, God knows, but even though we deserve it, I’ve always believed—always prayed that it would get just bad enough that everyone would admit it, and then we could fix it before it was too late.”
The man put his arms around her, very tenderly, I thought. When he looked at her, he looked rather like Izzy looking at me, and I found the idea surprising. I had thought Izzy’s regard was mere…fellow-tribe feeling, but perhaps it was more than that. I turned away, and there was Izzy, looking at me in that exact same way. I averted my eyes, feeling very strange inside.
Dora leaned her cheek against the man’s for a moment before pushing herself away from him. “We must think,” she said. “We must all think, very clearly. I believe we are all allies here, but we must be sure what is involved.”
The countess drew herself up and nodded. “You are wise to suggest this, person. I fear thus far, none of us have had time to think at all.”
Both Dora and Abby “called in sick,” which seemed to be something one could do in their world, providing one did not do it very frequently. It seemed that “sick of the routine,” or “sick of life in general” qualified one to take advantage of the opportunity. I thought how nice that would be for a slave in the harim. If I didn’t want to wash vegetables, I would just call in sick. The idea was amusing, and when I told Lucy Low, she too was amused.
“If I don’t want to swim out in the icy water and catch salmon in my teeth, I’ll just call in sick,” she said. Then she and her brothers and I all lost ourselves in giggles, they at the thought of sickness being an excuse, I at the thought of Lucy Low with a salmon in her teeth. Though they were, come to think of it, extremely sharp teeth.
Dora said the first order of business ought to be to guarantee the safety of us new arrivals. Her announcement of this priority started a general discussion.
“Look,” she said, when we had gone astray from the subject several times. “I’m trying to explain why you are not safe here, in this time. You are less safe as speaking, dressed-up people than you are as plain animals. While you do look slightly different from the animals I’m familiar with, it’s a difference that most people won’t notice, because most humans don’t really look at animals provided they’re not wearing clothing and commenting on the weather! Those who do really look at animals would probably be your friends, but there are the exceptions—the media people, for instance—”
We were unfamiliar with the word, so we interrupted her and she stopped to tell us about media people. “They are really cannibals,” she concluded. “They eat people three meals a day plus snacks!”
“Are you saying we dare not carry out our mission?” the countess asked.
“She’s saying that if you’re going to survive in order to carry out your mission, anyplace you go, anything you do has to be carefully thought out,” Abby replied. “In the forest, you’re probably fairly safe. Here, in Dora’s house, you’re okay. Half a dozen blocks that way is an avenue where there is no forest. As you approach the city, there are fewer and fewer trees. If you go to the city, asking to look at records, you’ll be mobbed within minutes.”
“Killed?” asked Lucy Low, her eyes very wide.
“Locked up in a cage,” said Dora. “In a zoo, or worse, in a laboratory. Where people would take samples of your blood and your bone and your brains.” She sighed. “Where they’d probably vivisect you to find out what made you tick and then tsk tsk when you died. You’ll have to trust us to do part of your mission for you. We can bring you the documents, so you can see them for yourself….”
“If there are any.” Abby frowned, staring out the window at the morning forest. “It’s like a needle in a haystack.”
Dzilobommo interrupted with a lengthy grummel.
Blanche persisted. “Dzilobommo wants to know why you are helping us? What is your advantage?”
Dora cried, “I’m not sure we have one. Knowing what you have told me, of course I’ll try to survive. I may not make it. The human race may not make it, but if humans die, does intelligence have to die as well? Earth includes its creatures, and that means you! Why shouldn’t we want to help you?”
“But other umminhi…persons will not think the same?” Blanche persisted.
“A lot of human beings don’t think at all,” Dora said in a weary voice. “So long as they have their flowerpot on the windowsill and their canary in a cage, they will live forever in concrete without realizing they are in prison.”
“If they do not know, what difference does it make?” I asked.
Abby shook his head at me. “To them, none. To you? Perhaps everything. Aren’t we allowed to choose sides?”
Another long silence during which we looked at one another. I believed the umminhi. I think Izzy believed them. I wasn’t sure about the others. The countess rose, saying our group would go into the forest, for private consultation, leaving the umminhi to talk together. We trooped away down the stairs, all of us, and from the window Dora watched us wander off among the trees, all but the veebles, who were sprawled against the sunny wall of the house, half asleep.
A little way into the woods we met Sahir and Soaz, who looked very tired and dirty, and while they rested we told them our news.
28
Criminal Connections
“They 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? N
atural 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.
29
Opalears: The Disbelievers
Out 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.
The Family Tree Page 32
