died. I had gone to San Francisco to spend time with some friends from college.” He shook his head. “I liked your looks when I saw the pictures the Gordons had of you and your sisters. When I saw you last night, I didn’t have a chance.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m only beginning to form my family,” I said. “You would probably have an easier life with anyone here or any of the female families you’ve seen. You know my memory only goes back a few weeks.”
“I heard.”
“And when I leave the Gordons, I’ll be alone.”
He nodded. “Then let me help you make a new family.”
I looked at him and saw that his expression had changed, had become more serious. Good. “I want you to be part of my new family,” I said. “More than that, I need you. But you and my first will have to accept each other. You will accept him. There will be peace between you. No fighting. No endangering the rest of us with destructive competitions.”
“All right. I doubt that your first and I will ever be anything like friends, but I know how it is. I suppose you told him the same thing.”
“Of course.” I paused. “He helped me, Joel. When I had no one else, when I had no idea who or what I
was, he helped me.”
“I wish I had had the chance to do such a thing.” He reached up and touched my face. “Like I said, let me help you make a new family.”
A little later that morning, I put on my hooded jacket, sunglasses, and gloves and walked around to each of the houses of the community. I spotted the guards from outside, then went into the houses to do what I could to help them be less easily spotted. Being easily spotted by the kind of attackers my symbionts and I had faced would mean easily shot.
The Gordon symbionts greeted me by touching me—my shoulders, arms, hands. I found that I was comfortable with that, although I had not expected it. It was as though they had to touch me to believe that I could be Ina and yet be awake.
“You aren’t drowsy at all?” a woman named Linda Higuera asked. She was a nervous, muscular brown woman, at least six feet tall and leaning on a rifle. We were on the third floor of William’s house, and she was one of his symbionts. From what I had seen, William preferred big, powerful-looking symbionts, male and female. Wise of him.
“I’m not drowsy,” I said. “As long as I don’t get too much sun, I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “I wish William could do that. I would feel safer if he could at least wake up if we need him.”
I shrugged. “Your turn to keep him safe.”
She thought about that, then nodded. “You’re right. Damn. He’s so strong, I’ve just gotten used to depending on him. Guess it ought to work both ways.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Do you have a phone?”
“There are phones in the guest house.” “I mean a cell phone.”
“No, I don’t.” I wasn’t entirely sure what a cell phone was.
“You should have one so we can talk to each other if something happens. The house phones are too easy to disable.”
That made sense. “Is there one I can borrow?”
She sent me down to wake up a huge man named Martin, a man so brown he was almost black. Martin not only supplied me with a charged cell phone, but saved several numbers on it and made me repeat the names that went with them and whose house each person was in. Then he showed me how to make a call, and I made a practice call to the guard at Daniel’s house. Finally, he dug out a charger and showed me how to use that.
“Here’s your number,” he said, making it flash across the phone’s small screen, “just in case you have to give it to somebody.”
“Thank you,” I said, and he grinned.
“No problem. How’s Linda doing up there?” “Doing well,” I said. “Alert and thoughtful.”
“And how about my son?” he asked in a different tone. “How’s he?” I looked at him, startled. “You’re Joel’s father?”
“Yep. Martin Harrison. Joel move into the guest house yet?” “He has, yes. I like him.”
“Good. You’re what he wants. If you take care of him, he’ll take care of you.”
I nodded and left him feeling much better about the safety of the Gordon community. With or without me, these people would not be caught by surprise and murdered, and now I could communicate with them in
a quiet, effective way.
I walked around the community once more, stopping now and then to listen to the activity around me. There were symbionts eating meals, making love, discussing children who were away at boarding schools, discussing the vineyards and the winery, pruning nearby trees, washing dishes, ordering audiobooks by phone, typing on computers ... There were little children playing games and singing songs in a room at Hayden’s house. It seemed that here some symbionts still carried on most of their activities during the day while others had switched to a nocturnal schedule to spend more time with their Ina.
As I wandered back toward the guest house, I found myself paying attention to a conversation that
Wright and Brook were having there.
“They take over our lives,” Brook said. “They don’t even think about it, they just do it as though it were their right. And we let them because they give us so much satisfaction and . . . just pure pleasure.”
Wright grunted. “We let them because we have no choice. By the time we realize what’s happened to us, it’s too late.”
There was a long pause. “It’s not usually that way,” Brook said. “Iosif told me what would happen if I accepted him, that I would become addicted and need him. That I would have to obey. That if he died, I might die. Not that I could imagine him dying. That seemed so impossible . . . But he told me all that. Then he asked me to come to him anyway, to accept him and stay with him because I could live for maybe two hundred years and be healthy and look and feel young, and because he wanted me and
needed me. I wasn’t hooked when he asked. He’d only bitten me a couple of times. I could have walked away—or run like hell. He told me later that he thought I might run. He said people did run sometimes
out of superstitious fear or out of the puritanical belief that anything that feels that good must have a huge downside somewhere along the line. Then he had to find them and talk them into believing he was a
dream or an ordinary boyfriend.”
Wright said, “By the time Shori asked me—or rather, by the time she offered to let me go—I was very thoroughly hooked, psychologically if not physically.”
“That was probably because of her memory loss.”
Wright made an “mmmm” sound of agreement. “I suppose. She’s shown herself to be a weirdly ethical little thing most of the time. It still bothers me, though, and now there’s this new guy she told me about ...”
“Joel,” Brook said. “You haven’t met him yet?”
“She didn’t hang around to introduce us. I met him in the upstairs hall. He had the nerve to ask me which bedrooms were empty. You know she never even told me he was black.”
“They’re not human, Wright. They don’t care about white or black.”
“I know. I even know she needs the guy—or at least, she needs a few more people. But I hate the bastard. I’m not going to do anything to him. I’ll deal with this somehow, but Jesus God, I hate him!”
“You’re jealous.” “Of course I am!”
“You aren’t sure you want her, but you don’t want anyone else to have her.”
“Well, it’s not like I can leave. Hell, I can feel the hold she’s got on me. I can’t even think of leaving her without getting scared.”
“Would you change that?” Brook asked. “If you could escape her, would you?” “. . . I don’t know.”
“I think you do. I’ve seen you with her.”
“I can’t imagine being without her, but I’m not sure I would have begun if I’d known what I was getting into.” There was a silence, then he asked, “What about you? How do you feel about the way she claimed you?”
“Better,” Brook admitted. “Better?”
“She got us out of the Arlington house alive, and she shouldn’t have been able to do that. And she stood her ground last night. The Gordons were pushing her, trying to intimidate her a little just to see what she would do, what she was like. Well, she’s strong, and it matters to her how other Ina treat us. We can trust her. Celia said we could, but I wasn’t sure.”
“You’re saying you want to be her symbiont, not some man’s? I mean, I thought that after choosing to be with Iosif . . .”
There was another short silence, then Brook said, “I would probably have chosen a man if I’d had a choice initially. But I’m okay with Shori. I can find myself a human man if I need one. I can’t believe what she’s done for Celia and me. I’ve seen symbionts who’ve lost their Ina. An old Ina who was visiting died while he was with us. I saw his symbionts in withdrawal, and I heard them screaming when other Ina tried
to save their lives by taking them over. It was bad. Convulsions, pain, helpless fear and revulsion for the Ina who is only trying to help. It went on for days, weeks. It was really horrible. One of the symbionts died. But with Shori . . . she’s fed from me twice, and already it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s not fun, but it’s not bad. I can’t wait to know what it will be like when I’m fully her symbiont.”
“So . . . they don’t all feel the same when they bite?”
“No more than we all look the same. Their venom is different—very individual. I suspect her bite is spectacular. That’s why she was able to get you the way she did.”
“And she’s only a kid,” he said.
They said nothing more. I listened for a few moments for more conversation, then for outsiders, intruders. When I knew that the community was safe, for the moment, I thought about what Brook and Wright had said. What they had said, overall, was that, except for Wright’s problem with Joel, they were content
with me. It felt remarkably good to know
