Part 12 (2/2)

His father shook his head. ”Are Mickey and Donald prisoners?”

”No,” Jonathan said. ”We're raising them to see how much like people they'll turn into. They're guinea pigs, I guess, but they're not...” Shoveling in another forkful of potatoes let him make the pause less awkward than it might have been otherwise. ”Okay. I see where you're going.”

”The girl up there is a guinea pig, too,” his mother said.

”That's right.” Now his father nodded. ”Twenty years ago, the Lizards started doing what we're doing now. I wonder what sort of experiments they've run on her.” He sipped from a gla.s.s of Lucky Lager. ”Makes me think twice about what we're doing with the baby Lizards-seeing the shoe on the other foot, I mean.”

”It certainly does,” Jonathan's mother said. ”That poor girl-brought up to be as much like a Lizard as she could?” She shuddered. ”If she's not completely out of her mind, it's G.o.d's own miracle.”

”She sounded sensible enough,” his father said. ”She doesn't know what being a human is like. What bothers her most, I think, is that she can't be as much like the Race-like the rest of the Race, she'd probably say-as she'd like.”

”If that's not crazy, what is?” his mother returned. His father took another sip of beer, in much the same way as Jonathan had eaten those mashed potatoes.

”We ought to set her free,” Jonathan exclaimed: the idea blazed in him. ”We-the United States, I mean-ought to tell the fleetlord we know they've got her and they have to let her go.”

He expected his mother and father to catch fire, too. Instead, they looked at each other and then at him. ”I don't think that would be a good idea, Jonathan,” his mother said after a moment.

”What? Why not?” he demanded. ”If I'd been living up there all this time, I'd sure want to be free.”

”No.” His father shook his head in a way that could only mean he was ready to lock horns on this one. ”If you'd been living up there all this time, you'd want what Ka.s.squit wants: to be more like a Lizard. You play games about imitating the Race. With her, it's not a game. It's the real thing.”

Jonathan started to get angry at that. A couple of years earlier, he would have for sure. His old man had a lot of d.a.m.n nerve saying his study of the Race was only a game. But, he had to admit, trying to live like the Lizards wasn't the same as never having seen, never even having talked to, another human being in his life. ”Well, maybe,” he said grudgingly-from him, a large concession.

His father must have seen that he'd been on the point of blowing up, because he leaned across the kitchen table and set a hand on Jonathan's for a moment. ”You're growing up,” he said, which almost caused trouble again, because Jonathan was convinced he'd already grown up. But then his dad said something that distracted him: ”Besides, if you look at it the right way, Ka.s.squit's our ace in the hole.”

”Huh?” Jonathan said.

”I don't follow that, either,” his mother added. With a pointed look at Jonathan, she went on, ”I'm more polite about the way I say it, though.”

His father grinned. He always did when he put one over on Jonathan's mom, not least because he didn't do that very often. He said, ”Suppose the Race finds out we've got Mickey and Donald. What will the fleetlord do? Scream his head off, that's what, and probably tell us to give 'em back before he sends in the Lizard Marines.”

”Oh, I get it!” Jonathan said excitedly. ”I get it! That's hot, Dad! If he says, 'Give 'em back,' we can answer, 'Why should I? You've had this girl for years.' ” His old man could be sneaky, no two ways about it.

But Jonathan's mother said, ”I don't like that, Sam. It turns the girl into nothing but a p.a.w.n.”

”Hon, we both just told Jonathan that Ka.s.squit's never, ever going to have a normal life or anything close to it,” his father said. ”She's been the Lizards' p.a.w.n ever since they got hold of her. If she turns out to be our p.a.w.n, too, what's so bad about that?”

”I don't know,” his mother answered. Her gaze went down the hail toward Mickey and Donald's room. ”It's different somehow, thinking of that being done to a human being rather than a Lizard.”

”That's what the Race would say, too, Mom, except they'd put it the other way round,” Jonathan said.

”He's not wrong, hon,” his father said. His mother still didn't look happy, but she finally nodded. His father went on, ”And speaking of Mickey and Donald...” He got up from the table and put his dishes in the sink, then pulled a knife from the drawer next to it and opened the refrigerator. ”Time they had their supper, too.”

Jonathan also got up. ”I'll feed 'em, Dad, if you want me to.”

”Thanks.” His father nodded. ”I'm glad you help with the ch.o.r.es around here, believe me I am, but I'll take care of this. I was the one who got ordered to raise them, after all, so I will.”

”Well, I'll come along, if that's okay,” Jonathan said. ”I like Lizards, in case you hadn't noticed.” He tapped himself on the chest. With the weather warm, he didn't bother wearing a s.h.i.+rt. This week, his body paint declared him an electronic instruments repairmale.

His father paused while slicing corned beef. (Jonathan sometimes thought the hatchlings ate better than he did. But then, the government paid for all their food, while his folks had to sh.e.l.l out for what went down his throat.) ”Sure. Come right ahead. Be good for the little guys to know people visit sometimes, that we aren't just the gravy train.”

As they walked down the hall toward the Lizards' room, Jonathan asked, ”Aren't you going to shut that door?”

”Hmm? Oh. Yeah.” His dad did, but then said, ”It won't be too long, or I hope it won't, before we don't have to do that any more. We'll be able to start letting them loose in the house. I hope we will, anyhow.”

”You don't think they'll rip the furniture to ribbons?” Jonathan said. ”Mom won't be real happy if they do.”

”Well, neither will I-we've talked about that,” his father answered as he opened the door to Mickey and Donald's room. ”But heck, you can teach a cat to use a scratching post-most of the time, anyhow-so I figure we can probably teach these guys to do the same thing. They're smarter than cats, that's for darn sure.”

The hatchlings had been playing some sort of game with a red rubber ball-an active one, by the way they stopped and stood there panting when Jonathan and his father came in. The ball was about golf-ball size. A human baby would have stuck it in his mouth and likely choked to death. Jonathan wouldn't have known something like that for himself, but his parents both insisted it was true. Mickey and Donald were different, though. Unlike human babies, they knew from the very beginning what was food and what wasn't; at need, they could catch their own.

Donald did something with the ball no cat could: he picked it up and threw it at Jonathan. Jonathan tried to catch it, but it bounced off his hand and away. Both Donald and Mickey sprang after it. His father clicked his tongue between his store-bought teeth. ”Have to score that one an error, son.”

”Yeah, I know,” Jonathan said in mild annoyance. He was sure that, had the baby Lizard thrown the ball at his father, he would have caught it even though he had only one free hand. Jonathan was stronger than his dad these days, but he still wasn't half the ballplayer his father was. That got under his skin when he let himself think about it.

But he preferred thinking about Mickey and Donald. ”Come and get it,” his father told them, and they didn't waste much time abandoning the ball for corned beef. He and Jonathan both talked to them, and with each other. Letting them get used to the idea of language, Letting them get used to the idea of language, Jonathan's dad always called that. Turning to Jonathan, he remarked, ”They aren't stupid-they're just different.” Jonathan's dad always called that. Turning to Jonathan, he remarked, ”They aren't stupid-they're just different.”

”Uh-huh.” Jonathan could get away with grunts and even split infinitives around his father, where his mother would come down on him like a ton of bricks. He sometimes wondered if his dad found talking around his mom hard, too. But that wasn't anything he could ask. Instead, he pointed to Mickey, who had a little shred of corned beef hanging from one corner of his mouth, and said, ”You're a little pig, you know that?”

One of the hatchling's eye turrets swung to follow his pointing finger: it might have been danger, or so evolution warned. Mickey's other eye kept watching Jonathan's father, who at the moment emphatically was the source of all blessing. Sure enough, he offered Mickey another strip of corned beef, and the little Lizard leaped forward to take it.

”I wonder what he and Donald will be like in twenty years,” Jonathan's father said, and then, more than half to himself, ”I wonder if I'll be around to see it.”

Jonathan had no idea how to respond to that last sentence, and so he didn't. He said, ”I wonder what that-Ka.s.squit, was that her name?-is like now. She'd be somewhere close to my age, wouldn't she?”

”Maybe a little younger-she said the Lizards got her after the fighting stopped,” his father answered. ”She's smart-no two ways around that. But as for the rest... I just don't know. Pretty strange. She can't help that.”

”I'd like to talk with her myself,” Jonathan said. ”It would be interesting.” He used an emphatic cough, forgetting he wasn't supposed to do that around Mickey and Donald.

”Don't know if I could arrange it,” his father said, in tones suggesting he had no intention of trying. But then his gaze sharpened. ”You know, it might not be so bad if I could, though, especially with the video hooked up. You look like a Lizard, you know what I mean?-or as much as a person can.”

”That might make her feel easier,” Jonathan agreed, and then, ”What does she look like?”

His father laughed. ”I don't know. She didn't have her video on, either.”

”Okay, okay. I just asked, that's all.” But Jonathan was glad Karen hadn't been around to hear that question. She wouldn't have taken it the right way. He was sure of that. Women are so unreasonable, Women are so unreasonable, he thought, and never stopped to wonder how he would have felt had she asked whether some man was good-looking. he thought, and never stopped to wonder how he would have felt had she asked whether some man was good-looking.

Donald and Mickey were both looking at his father. ”Sorry, boys,” Sam Yeager told them. ”That's all there is-there ain't no more.” He winked at Jonathan, as if to say he knew he was putting one over on Jonathan's mother by using bad grammar behind her back. The baby Lizards didn't understand anything about that, but they'd put away enough corned beef that they weren't too disappointed not to get any more.

”Bye-bye,” Jonathan said to them, and waved. His father echoed him with word and gesture. And, a little tentatively, a little awkwardly, the hatchlings waved back. Even a couple of weeks before, they hadn't known to do that. Excitement tingled through Jonathan. The Lizards couldn't talk. Heaven only knew when they would. But they'd started to communicate without words.

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