Fledgling_ a novel Part 28

"How can he know what very old Ina are doing? Did you tell him?"

"No, he just keeps his eyes and ears open. His nose is no better than most other humans', but his intelligence is first-rate. His son is a lot like him."

That left me thinking again of Joel and wondering how like his father he would turn out to be.

The first day of the Council of Judgment ended with an effort on the part of the Silks to make me look irresponsible (at best) and make Daniel and, by extension, the Gordons look as though they were lying. They failed in both efforts. They would have one more day to try to undermine us. On the third day, judgment would be argued, truth acknowledged, and the Council would say, according to Ina law, what must be done.

That was all. It seemed almost ... easy. Would the Silks simply give themselves up to be killed or allow their unmated young sons to be sent away to other communities? Could anyone do that?

As the Council ended its session just a hour before dawn, I felt the need to talk to someone. Then Brook, Wright, and Joel came to collect me, and I realized I was almost weak with hunger. Joel and Brook both recognized the signs, though I don't think Wright did yet.

"Let's go home," Brook said.

I nodded. I wanted to go find Martin Harrison and ask him questions, but I thought that might be better done during the day when other Ina could not listen.

I let my symbionts walk me home, then kissed each of them, and went to find Celia. I had not touched her for four nights. Tonight she would be expecting me. She was not entirely mine yet, not bound to me, as Daniel would say. Not quite. Tonight would be her turning point. Her scent told me she was almost there. Tonight, she would be mine.

She was asleep, warm and smelling of the soap she had used when she bathed earlier that night. In spite of her bath, she also smelled of the man she had had s.e.x with before was.h.i.+ng. I took in the scent and, after a moment, was able to picture the man-a symbiont of Peter Marcu's. He was a short, muscular man with very smooth skin-skin so dark it looked truly black. Someone had said he was from Ghana and that his name was Kwasi Tuntum. He had tired her out, made her sleepy. Eventually I would wake her up. I didn't think she would mind.

But when I slipped into bed beside her, she opened her eyes. I didn't think she could see me, but she said, "Hey, Shori, I thought you forgot about me."

"You didn't think that," I said. "You were enjoying yourself too much with Kwasi to worry about me forgetting you."

She froze next to me. I could feel her body go rigid.

I kissed her face, then her mouth. "Do you really care that I know?" I asked. "I can't help knowing."

"You ... don't mind?"

"Should I mind?"

She shrugged against me. "Stefan didn't mind. He said I had the right to have human partners and have kids if I wanted them. After all, he couldn't give me kids." She frowned.

I said, "Why did it bother you that he didn't mind?"

She was silent for a long time. I used the time to explore what Kwasi had done with her. He had kissed her mouth and her neck and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He had kissed her between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and taken her nipples into his mouth ... I tried that, and she giggled. I'd never heard her giggle before. Then her scent changed, and she made a different sort of noise in her throat.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Learning," I said after a moment. "Why did it bother you that Stefan didn't mind your having s.e.x with other people?"

"I think I wanted him to love me more-love me so much that he couldn't not care that I went with another guy."

"He cared. I'm female and I care. But if you're mine, I can accept the rest. And you do have the right to have your own human mate, your own children, or just have pleasure with a man when that's what you want." I lay on my back and moved her so that her body rested against mine. "I know how to take my pleasure with you," I said. "Will you teach me to pleasure you?"

"You will pleasure me this time, I think. I want you to feed. I love the feel of you against me. I almost feel the way I did when I knew Stefan wanted me, when I wanted him."

I smiled, hungry for her, starved for her, but taking my time enjoying the antic.i.p.ation as much as I would soon enjoy feeding.

She looked up at me, perhaps able to see me a little now. "I'll teach you more when this Council thing is over. And you can teach me what else I can do to make you feel good. But for now, you're hungry. You have that scary, gaunt look." She rubbed the back of my neck. "You'd think I'd be afraid of you when you look like that, wouldn't you? Come here to me." She rolled us over onto our sides, facing one another, holding me against her, so welcoming that I couldn't wait any longer. I bit her deeply, hurt her a little, but also pleased her. She held me as though she thought I might leave her too soon. She held me as though laying claim to me.

That afternoon, right after Celia and I got up, Martin Harrison came to see me. I had intended to find him eventually. I was surprised that with all the work he had to do satisfying the Gordons' guests, he had time to come looking for me. And I was surprised at the way he looked-tired, angry, sad, but struggling to keep his expression under control.

"You and I have gotten to know each other a little," he said. "I've come to you now because I believe it's better for you to hear what you have to hear from someone who isn't a stranger."

I stared back at him suddenly afraid, although I didn't know what I was afraid of. His expression made me not want to know.

"Hear what?" Celia asked. She spoke to Martin, but she was looking at me. She got up and came over to stand beside me. I had been keeping her company while she cooked and ate a huge meal and took vitamins and an iron supplement that she'd had in her luggage. She said Stefan had always made her take vitamins and an iron supplement because she had been his smallest symbiont, and he worried about her health. She had stopped taking them when he died. Now she had dug them out of her suitcase and begun using them again.

She was wearing a pullover sweater that fully displayed her half-healed bite. As it happened, Martin also had a half-healed bite on his neck. It showed just above the collar of his s.h.i.+rt. "What do you want her to hear?" Celia asked again. Wright, Joel, and Brook came in just then, flanked by two Gordon symbionts. I realized suddenly that the Gordon symbionts had gone out and found my symbionts and brought them to me, and I could see by their faces that they didn't know why any more than I did.

Martin glanced at them, then looked at Celia-a kind look. A frighteningly kind look. "Stay close to her today and tonight," he said to Celia. "All of you, stay close. She'll need you."

"What do you mean?" Celia demanded.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that someone was missing. "Theodora!" I said. "What's happened to Theodora?"

Martin sighed and turned to face me. "Carmen was going into San Francisco today," he said. "She needed some medical supplies, and she wanted to see her youngest sister who's just had twins. Carmen found Theodora lying on the ground between Hayden's house and his garage. Theodora's dead, Shori."

Twenty-four.

Several Gordon symbionts had gathered around Theodora's body, but they had not touched it. Only Carmen had done that, checking to see whether Theodora was alive, whether she could be helped ...

Martin told me that when Carmen told him Theodora was dead, he asked her to stay with the body and keep everyone else away while he went to find me and send others to find the rest of my symbionts.

I was not fully in control of myself as I approached Theodora. I had demanded that Martin take me to her, but I was not truly seeing or understanding what was happening around me. I could not believe my Theodora was dead. It made no sense that she would be dead. None. Then I touched her cold flesh.

"She's been dead since early this morning," Carmen said behind me.

My own eyes and nose had already told me that much. Hours dead. Dead well before sunrise. Dead while Russell Silk and I tore at one another. Dead while I lay making Celia my own. Dead.

I found myself on my knees beside Theodora making sounds I could not recall ever having made before. She had come to me because she trusted me, loved me. She had been so happy when I asked her to join me here at Punta Nublada where she should have been safe. I had promised her a good life, had had every intention of keeping my promise. I would have kept her with me for the rest of her life. How could she be dead?

I wanted the people around me gone. I wanted to be let alone to examine Theodora, to understand her death. I must have made some gesture because the watching symbionts all took a few steps back. I knelt on the ground alongside Theodora, selecting out scents that were not her own, separating them into odors and groups of odors that I recognized. Theodora had gone to at least one of the parties, and that made for a confusion of scents-sweat, blood, aftershave, cologne, food and drink of several kinds, s.e.xual arousal, many personal scents. There were fourteen distinct, personal human scents.

The odor that screamed loudest at me was the strong blood-scent in Theodora's hair-her blood. I looked and found the wound there. Her hair was stiff and matted with dried blood. Dead blood. I touched her head, ran my fingers over it, and found the place where there was a softness, an indentation. Someone had hit her so hard that they broke her skull.

Someone had murdered her.

Who had done it? Why? No one knew her here. No one had reason to harm her. No one would have harmed her ... except, perhaps, to harm me. Would someone do that? Murder one person in the hope of causing pain to another? Why not? Someone-the Silks, surely-had murdered nearly two hundred people, human and Ina, in the hope of killing me, killing all that my eldermothers had created.

I closed my eyes, tried to quiet my thoughts and focus on Theodora. After a moment, I breathed deeply again and continued sorting through the scents. She had been in contact with fourteen different humans-Gordon symbionts and visitors. I didn't recognize all of them, but six I could picture. These were people I had met or had had pointed out to me. The others ... the other scents I would remember. When I found the people they belonged to, I would know them. Any of them could have killed her, or perhaps they had only brushed against her at one of the parties. Perhaps they had danced with her or touched her in some other casual way. She had not had s.e.x with anyone recently.

There seemed no way to tell which of the fourteen might have hit her, but ... Had her blood splashed on the killer? Had the killer kept the weapon used to kill her? Had the killer touched her at all beyond battering her to death, perhaps to examine her to be certain she was dead?

I put my face down closer to her broken, b.l.o.o.d.y head. But then the scent of dead blood, of Theodora's beloved body, ten or more hours dead, became all that I could smell, and I had to turn away from it after a moment. I stood up and stepped a short distance away, gasping, sick, desperate for clean air.

Someone spoke to me, came near, and I shouted, "Let me alone! Get away from me!" A moment later, I realized that I had shouted at Wright, my first. I had told him to go away. Stupid of me. Stupid!

I looked up at him, saw that he was already backing away, not wanting to go but going.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Stay here, Wright. Stay near me while I finish this."

I breathed deeply for a moment, then turned back to Theodora and tried again. I rolled her from her back onto her side so that I could see and smell whatever had been trapped under her. The significant odors were more blood, of course, and the scents of five more people. Again, I recognized some of them-three of the five. Through the night, then, nineteen people had had enough contact with Theodora to leave their scents on her-nineteen people, any one of whom might be her murderer. I would have to find each of them and speak to them or to their Ina.

I stood up, finally, and went on looking at my dead Theodora. I would have to go to her daughter and son-in-law and tell them that she was dead. They couldn't know everything, but they had a right to know that. After I found her killer, I would go to her family.

I looked around for Martin. He was still there. The onlookers had gone away, but Martin and my four symbionts still waited.

"Has anyone left the community today?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Not that I know of."

"Could someone have left without your knowing?"

"Of course. I have to sleep, too, girl."

And William Gordon had bitten him early this morning. I looked back at Theodora. "I don't know what should be done with the dead, Martin."

"She should be cleaned up, given a funeral, and ... well, buried. We have our own cemetery here."

I still didn't know what to do. Theodora should be prepared for burial. A memorial service of some kind should be arranged. Her killer should be caught, should be killed. And yet in a few hours the Council of Judgment would begin its second night, and I would have to be there.

"Shori, girl," Martin said. He spoke with such gentleness that I wanted to run away from him. I could not dissolve emotionally and lose myself in grief. I did not dare. There was no time.

"Shori, we'll take care of her body. We'll prepare her for burial. We can have services for her after the Council is over. You go find out who did this. That's what you want to do, isn't it?"

I looked at him, and all I could do was nod.

"Leave her to us." He almost turned away, then stopped and drew a deep breath. "Two things, Shori. They're important."

"All right," I said.

He looked down and met my gaze with a different expression-harder, unhappy, but determined.

"Tell me, Martin," I said. "You've been a friend. Go ahead and say whatever it is that you don't want to say."

He nodded. "Don't kill anyone. No matter how certain you are that you've found the right person, don't kill. Not yet. Chances are, the murderer is one of the visitors-one of the Gordon family's guests. You are more than a guest. You'll be mated to the sons of the family in a few years. But still ... Tell Preston or Hayden what's happened before you take a life."

I stared at him, unable to answer at first. Until that moment, if I had learned that Martin himself had killed Theodora, I'm not sure I could have stopped myself from killing him. And yet, I understood on some murky emotional level and from slivers of recovered memory that it would be a serious offense against the Gordons to kill one of their guests. I couldn't remember anyone ever doing such a thing, but I felt enough horror and disgust at the thought of doing it to know that I must not.

"I won't kill anyone," I said finally.

Another nod.

"And don't bite anyone."

That one was even harder. But I could see the reason for it. If I found the killer, he or she would be the symbiont of someone here. Again, I knew-again without understanding fully how I knew-that it would be wrong to interfere with someone else's symbiont.

"The Ina might be the guilty one," I said. "Probably would be."

"All the more reason not to abuse the symbiont."

"I won't bite unless someone attacks me," I said. "I would rather bite than break bones or tear flesh." And I walked away from him. My symbionts followed me.

When we were alone, Wright pulled me to him and hugged me and held me for a while. I felt as though I wanted to stay that way, safe with him, breathing his good, familiar scent. It mattered more than I would have thought possible that he was alive, that he loved me and wanted somehow to comfort me. I knew that if I let him, he would take me home and put me to bed and stay with me until I fell asleep. I knew he would do that because I had come to know him that well. I longed to let him do that.

But there was no time. If possible, by the time tonight's Council session began, I wanted to know who had killed Theodora. I wanted to prevent the murderer from leaving or killing anyone else, and I wanted to put this new crime before the Council to see whether they would deal with it. If they didn't, I would.

I pushed back from Wright and realized that he had lifted me off the ground and was holding me so that I could look at him almost at eye level. I kissed the side of his mouth, then kissed his mouth and said, "Put me down."

He set me on my feet. "What do you want us to do?" he asked.

And I almost disintegrated again. He understood. Of course he did. "I need you to stay together," I said. "Protect one another." I looked at each of them, missing immediately the face that was not there. "I don't know whether Theodora's murder has anything to do with the other attempts on us or with Council of Judgment, but it seems likely." I paused. It hurt to say her name. I took a breath and went on. "Go talk to Jill Renner sym Wayne. She spent some time with Theodora last night and left her scent for me to find. She wouldn't have hurt Theodora, but she might have seen her having trouble with someone or leaving a party with someone. Was there a party at Wayne's house last night?"

"Sym Wayne?" Wright said, frowning. "Is that how you say it, then, when someone is a symbiont? That's what happens to our names? We're sym Shori?"

"You are," I said.

"Something you remembered?"

"No. Something I learned from hearing people talk. What about Wayne's house? Was there a party?"

"Not at Wayne's," Celia said. "But there was a party at Edward's and a big party at Philip's. Jill, Theodora, and I were at both of them. Theodora was a little shy at first, and she kind of hung out with me at Edward's. We ate there and talked with a lot of people. But at Philip's she met a couple of guys. They got her dancing, and the three of them just sort of stayed together, dancing and flirting and enjoying themselves."

Wright frowned at Celia as though she had said something wrong, but Celia ignored him.

"Who were the two men?" I asked.

"A couple of older guys. I don't know their names or who their Ina is. They were both graying, maybe five-ten, well built. They could have been brothers. They looked a lot alike."

"Did you touch them?" I asked. "Shake hands or squeeze past them?" She shook her head.

"Tell me what you can about them. See them in your memory, and tell me what you see." We were walking toward Wayne's house where Jill Renner was probably still asleep.

Celia frowned and looked desperate for a moment, as though she were grasping for something that she couldn't quite reach but had to reach. She glanced at me, then closed her eyes, focusing, remembering. Finally she said, "They both had the same salt-and-pepper hair-black with a lot of white. One of them had a mustache. It was salt-and-pepper, too. They aren't with the Gordons. I'm sure of that. Westfall! I think they're the two male Westfall symbionts. The rest of the Westfall syms are women. These guys talk like they've been here for a long time, but every now and then you could hear a little English accent ..." She let her voice trail away. Then she said, "The one with the mustache, he has a scar on his forehead, or maybe it's a birthmark. I'm not sure which. I don't know how big it is. It starts just below the hairline and goes back into the hair. It's a red oval, or I think it would have been oval if I could have seen all of it."

"All right," I said. "Relax. I know who you mean. I've never spoken to them, but I saw them and got their scent when the Westfalls arrived. Their scents were on Theodora. You're right. They probably are brothers. I'll find them. The rest of you go talk to Jill Renner."

"Let me stay with you," Joel said. "I know a lot of the visitors, and they know me. I might be able to help."

I glanced up at him and nodded. "You three, watch out for one another."