Part 8 (2/2)
Iosif said, ”We meet here on Sunday evenings or when there's something that needs community-wide discussion.”
There was a broad picture window on the backyard side of the great room; it ran across the top half the wall from one end of the room to the other. At one of the end walls, there was a huge fireplace where a log burned with much snapping and sparking. Books filled built-in bookcases on the two remaining walls.
In a corner near the fireplace, two men and a woman-all human-sat at a small table, their heads together, talking quietly. There were steaming cups of coffee on the table. There was no light in the room except the fire. Iosif walked us over to the three people.
”Brook, Yale, Nicholas.”
They looked up, saw me, and were on their feet at once, staring. ”Shori!” the woman said. She came around her chair and hugged me. She was a stranger as far as I was concerned, and I would have drawn away from any possibility of a hug, but she smelled of Iosif. Something in me seemed to accept her. She smelled of someone I had decided was all right. ”My G.o.d, girl,” she said, ”where have you been? Iosif, where did you find her?”
Both men looked at me, then at Wright. One of them smiled. ”Welcome,” he said to Wright. ”Looks like Shori was able to take care of herself.”
Iosif put his hand on my shoulder as the woman let me go. ”Is any of this familiar to you? Do you know these people, this house?”
I shook my head. ”I like the room, but I don't remember it.” I looked at the three people. ”And I'm sorry, but I don't remember any of you either.”
All three of them stared at Iosif.
”She was very badly injured,” he said. ”Head injuries. As a result, she's lost her memory. And she was alone until she found Wright Hamlin here. I'm hoping her memory will return.”
”Don't you have your own medical people?” Wright asked. ”People who know how to help your kind?”
”We do,” Iosif said. ”But for Ina, that tends to mean someone to fix badly broken bones so that they heal straight or binding serious wounds so that they'll heal faster.”
”You don't want to see what they mean by 'a serious wound,'” one of the men said. ”Intestines spilling out, legs gone, that sort of thing.”
”I don't,” Wright agreed. ”Shori told me she had been badly burned as well as shot. But she healed on her own. Not a scar.”
”Except for not knowing herself or her people,” Iosif said. ”I would call that a large scar. Unfortunately, it's not one we know how to fix.”
”Did I have friends here?” I asked. ”People who might know me especially well?”
”Your four brothers are here,” he said. He looked at the three humans. ”Look after Wright for a while,” he said. ”Answer fully any questions he asks. He's with Shori now. He's her first, but he knows almost nothing.” He took my arm and began to lead me away.
”Renee?” Wright said to me, and I stopped. It eased something in me to hear him call me by the name he had given me. ”You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. ”Yell if you need me. I'll hear.”
He nodded. He looked as though my words eased something in him.
I followed Iosif down a long hallway.
”These bedrooms belong to me and my human family,” he told me. ”They're the three you just met and five others who aren't here right now. They've all been with me for years. Eight is a good number for me, although at other times in my life I've had seven or even ten. I'm wealthy enough to care for all of them if I have to, and they feed me. They're free to hold jobs away from the community, even live elsewhere part time, and sometimes they do. But at least three of them are always here. They work out a schedule among themselves.”
We went through a door at the end of the hallway and out onto a broad lawn. I stopped in the middle of the lawn. ”Do they mind?” I asked.
”Mind?”
”That you need eight. That none of them can be your only one.” I paused. ”Because I think Wright is going to mind.”
”When he understands that you have to have others?”
”Yes.”
”He'll mind. I can see that he's very possessive of you-and very protective.” He paused, then said, ”Let him mind, Shori. Talk to him. Help him. Rea.s.sure him. Stop violence. But let him feel what he feels and settle his feelings his own way.”
”All right.”
”I suspect this kind of thing needs to be said more to my sons than to you, but you should hear it, at least once: treat your people well, Shori. Let them see that you trust them and let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions. Do that and they will willingly commit their lives to you. Bully them, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, and after a while, you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, and stifling their resentment. Do you understand?”
”I do, yes. I've made him do things but only to keep him safe-mostly to keep him safe from me-especially when Raleigh Curtis shot me.”
He nodded. ”That sort of thing is necessary whether they understand or not. How many do you have other than Wright?”
”I've drunk from five others, but Wright doesn't know about any of them.” I paused, then looked at him. ”I don't know whether they've come to need me. How will I be able to tell about the others? Will you look at them and tell me?”
”It isn't sight,” he said, ”it's scent. Did you notice Brook's scent?”
”She smelled of you.”
”And Wright smells of you-unmistakably. The scent won't wash away or wear away. It's part of them now. That should give you some idea of how we hold them.”
”Something, some chemical, in our saliva?”
”Exactly. We addict them to a substance in our saliva-in our venom-that floods our mouths when we feed. I've heard it called a powerful hypnotic drug. It makes them highly suggestible and deeply attached to the source of the substance. They come to need it. Brook and Wright both need it. Brook knows, and by now, Wright probably knows, too.”
”And they die if they can't have it?”
”They die if they're taken from us or if we die, but their death is caused by another component of the venom. They die of strokes or heart attacks because we aren't there to take the extra red blood cells that our venom encourages their bodies to make. Their doctors can help them if they understand the problem quickly enough. But their psychological addiction tends to prevent them from going to a doctor. They hunt for their Ina-or any Ina until it's too late.”
”Until they die or until they're badly disabled.”
”Yes. And even if they find an Ina not their own, they might not survive. They die unless another of us is able to take them over. That doesn't always work. Their bodies detect individual differences in our venom, and those differences make them sick when they have to adapt to a new Ina. They're addicted to their particular Ina and no other. And yet we always try to save their lives if their Ina symbiont has died. When I realized what had happened to your mothers' community, I told my people to look for wounded human symbionts as well as for you. I knew my mates were dead. I ... found the places where they died, found their scents and small fragments of charred flesh ...”
I gave him a moment to remember the dead and to deal with his obvious pain. I found that I almost envied his pain. He hurt because he remembered. After a while, I said, ”You didn't find anyone?”
”We didn't find anyone alive. Hugh Tang, the man you killed, found you, but we didn't know that.”
”All dead,” I whispered. ”And for me, it's as though they never existed.”
”I'm sorry,” he said. ”I can't even pretend to understand what it's like for you to be missing so much of your memory. I want to help you recover as much of it as possible. That's why we need to get you moved into my house and dealing with people who know you.” He hesitated. ”To do that, we need to clear away the remnants of the life you've been living with Wright. So think. Which of the humans you've been feeding from has begun to smell as much like you as Wright does?”
I carefully reviewed my last contact with each of the humans who had fed me. ”None of them,” I said. ”But there's one ... she's older-too old to have children-but I like her. I want her.”
He gave me a long sad look. ”Your attentions will keep her healthy and help her live longer than she would otherwise, but with such a late start, she won't live much past one hundred, and it's going to be really painful for you when she dies. It's always hard to lose them.”
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