Brother Termite Read online

  He fought to keep his treacherous mouth shut. Had they been alone, he would have told her. He would have answered any question, no matter how ugly the truth.

  “Come on,” she said. “What are you guys waiting for?”

  Hans Krupner burst into tears. “We have always the same meetings. Threats. Shouting. Everyone at one another’s throats. So this is the peace the Cousins promised us? I tell you, I cannot stand such peace anymore.”

  At that moment the President rose. The NSC looked expectantly, encouragingly to Womack. Vilishnikov stared at the President with the wonder of a blind man catching his first glimpse of the sun.

  Womack fumbled with his fly, took out his penis, and, before the Secret Serviceman could stop him, voided his bladder on the tariff bill. Urine splattered. Krupner forgot his tears and inched away from the spreading wet.

  “Meeting adjourned,” Reen said, rising and heading quickly to the door. There he stopped and looked back. The members of the NSC were standing, gazing down at the urine-splattered papers. The humans were differing shapes, differing colors. Even in physical appearance they were chaotic. He felt he could read idiosyncratic fears and individual ambitions behind their tiny eyes.

  “Does that count?” DiSecco asked. “Listen. Could we somehow construe that as a signature?”

  Reen called, “Director Cole.”

  Marian lifted her head.

  She was angry with him, he knew; and that was to his great regret. On the other hand, she didn’t have the courage to refuse his direct order.

  “I will see you now in my office.”

  REEN WAITED in the Oval Office fifteen minutes before opening the door to the huge reception area to find Marian Cole talking to Natalie as though they were old friends. The two women, one tall and blond, the other short and blond, turned. Natalie, he noticed, had exchanged her irritating blouse for a cream-colored sweater.

  “I told you I wanted to see you,” Reen said to Marian.

  Natalie spoke up: “But you said first thing this morning to hold all calls.”

  “You might have announced Director Cole was here.”

  “That would have been a call. You tell me ‘Hold all calls’ when you don’t want to talk to anyone; and then you’re supposed to say, ‘Hey, I asked so-and-so to come over, so forget the holding-the-calls thing.’ That’s how you’re supposed to talk to a secretary.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Hold all calls while the director and I are speaking,” Reen told her.

  Natalie went back to her typing. “Okay.”

  When he reentered his office, Marian followed. He closed the heavy oaken adjoining door, his claw clicking on the brass knob.

  “So. What’s Billy Hopkins been saying about me?” she asked.

  Reen walked to the windows and peered out. The riots were over, and a sanitation department truck was washing the blood from the streets. “I don’t talk about him to you or you to him. That would be disloyal.”

  “Disloyal?” she asked in amusement. “I thought maybe Billy was babbling again.”

  He was glad that she was standing directly at his back, right in the sixty-degree dead spot of his three-hundred-degree vision field. He didn’t want to see her face. “Angela asks about you.”

  Behind him there was silence. Reen, who ached no less for Marian’s approval than four-year-old Angela did, longed to turn to see if she was smiling or frowning. “It’s been nearly a month. I thought we would go see her.”

  “I’m tired of this, Reen.” Marian’s voice was so weary that it frightened him. Humans aged in too short a season, like the fleeting Appalachian fall. From the past year to this it seemed that her moistness and energy had gone. There were new lines on Marian’s face, more silver in her hair. She was slipping from him too quickly.

  Marian moved slightly to the right and entered his peripheral vision. She stood as she stood when they had first met: hands clasped, chin lifted. The other children, stolen in their sleep and awakened to alien surroundings, had screamed. But not five-year-old Marian.

  That one, he told the doctors. I hope it will be that one.

  “Don’t fight me, Marian,” he told her.

  She gave Millard Fillmore an appraising look. “How can I? You always get your way.”

  He knew he should apologize but didn’t. Too many years, too many chances for apologies had passed. He opened the French doors for her, and together they walked to the south lawn.

  In the Rose Garden the crisp air held the tangs of autumn and cordite. Down the spread of grass, on the other side of the fence, stood two knots of humans encumbered by still cameras and minicams. Reen would have found it difficult to distinguish reporter from tourist but for the frenzied shouting from the media and the CNN truck parked nearby.

  His eye lit on a solitary figure between the throngs: a young man with a purple Vespa and a backpack. For two days now, each time Reen had ventured onto the south lawn, he had seen the boy. And even from that distance Reen could feel the disquieting intensity of his stare.

  What could be so important to demand such a single-purposed vigil? The boy’s pose was taut, his expression that of barely contained fervor. Reen pictured the boy reaching in the backpack, bringing out a gun, a bomb. Head down, Reen hurried his stride.

  Past a knee-high barrier of ornamental shrubbery the ovoid commuter waited as it always did. And there waited Thural, a head taller than the three Loving Helpers at his side. His black eyes were pools of calm. The Loving Helpers’ eyes were dark, abandoned wells.

  “Cousin Reen-ja,” Thural said, speaking quietly in Cousin language. “Jonis went with two Loving Helpers to observe the riot and has not yet returned.”

  Reen entered the shelter of the ship’s doorway, just out of the backpacked boy’s possible line of fire. “But the riot has been over for some time.”

  “Yes, Reen-ja. It causes me to wonder.”

  “Inform the Community, then,” Reen said. “Maybe they can find him. In the meantime we will be taken to West Virginia.” He motioned to Marian, who was standing on the lawn, well out of the shadow of the ship’s overhang. Well out of the Loving Helpers’ reach.

  “Keep those things away from me,” she said.

  After a self-conscious glance at Marian Cole, Thural told the Loving Helpers, “Go.” In unison the three about-faced and marched toward the command room, Thural at their heels.

  When they left, Marian entered. Reen led her down the right-hand corridor.

  “I hate them,” she said. “I can’t stand the way they move, like little robots. I hate the blank way they look at me. Ninety-three percent of your people. Doesn’t that scare you?”

  Reen stopped in the middle of the hall and looked back, searching her expression for pity. Her face was hard. “We live with it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Embarrassed, he continued down the hall to the lounge. Marian gave the monochromatic, minimalist room a sweeping glance and then tried to make herself comfortable on a chair that was too short for her legs. Reen perched on a sofa opposite her and contemplated the wall. There was a falling sensation as the ship’s gravity changed.

  When Reen glanced at Marian, he found himself staring into the side of her cheek.

  “I want you to be happy,” he told her.

  “That’s great, Reen. You rape me, then insist I enjoy it.”

  Humans always muddied the clear water of emotion; and in that murk the handsome, darting shapes of love swam with ugly creatures of lust.

  Once she had loved him as a playmate. Then he took the place of her absent father. I’m going to marry you, Marian, at six years old, had told him. And the psychologists, accustomed to the caprices of human children, had laughed.

  But neither Reen nor the psychologists had been prepared for her determination. It was Marian, not Reen, who always got her way.

&nbs
p; Remembering that touch was important to humans, he leaned forward to grasp her beautifully wrought hand. The Cousins, in their twelve hundred centuries of civilization, could have created splendor with hands like those. With their three stubby fingers and claw they had managed only to produce utility.

  He noticed the aging lizard texture of her skin and tried, with helpless dismay, to smooth it. His claw gently traced the raised white scars at her wrist, the evidence of her earlier disappointment with her husband. Once, he reminded himself, she had loved Howard, too.

  “It’s my fault you’re so bitter. If I had known that remembering would ...”

  She slipped her hand from his. “You never come by anymore. But you got what you were after.”

  “Angela.” He rolled the name in his mouth like candy. “Wasn’t Angela worth it?”

  Her eyes narrowed, her lips twisted. The savagery in her face unnerved him. “Women are made to be brood mares, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No,” he replied, wondering what he could do to make things right. He suddenly realized how deluded he had been. And how tragically his experiment was turning out.

  Thural poked his head into the lounge to say they had landed. Marian got to her feet.

  “You will hug her,” Reen blurted.

  She looked at him blankly.

  “I don’t care how you feel about me. And it doesn’t matter whether you wanted Angela or not. She is here, and you are her mother. Angela is a mammal. She needs to be hugged. I’m not practiced at touching. And I suspect I’m no good at it.”

  But Marian knew that, didn’t she? Their own shy, awkward embraces had led to–what? he wondered. A sterile thing that surely hadn’t been enough for her and had been nearly too much for him. No, theirs had been a laboratory mating, not warm limbs wrapping warm limbs but a petri-dish entwining of DNA.

  As he followed her off the ship, he wondered dismally if she needed more and if that was the reason for her anger.

  It had snowed in the West Virginia mountains. The sun was struggling to peek out from behind a layer of cirrus clouds. Reen slogged through the drifts on the walkway and kicked his boots clean on the mat before he entered the house.

  A knot of gray, large-headed, and huge-eyed children were playing ball on the living room floor. As soon as Marian entered, one popped up from the group and darted her way, as dramatically and hopelessly drawn to Marian as an iron filing to a magnet.

  Love, Reen thought. One day his daughter would choose another of the recombinants to mate with, and when they mated, they would do so with love. Perhaps they would talk after the act was over, the way humans so often did. Angela’s children would grow up under the sunny indulgence of both mother and father, and her life would be sweeter than Reen’s had been.

  As Angela hugged Marian’s legs, Marian stood immobile, gazing into the distance, seemingly unaware or perhaps embarrassed by the show of adoration. After a heartrending wait, Marian bent, pried the child’s grasping hands from her thighs, and picked her up.

  Reen relaxed and studied the perfect five-fingered gray hand now clasped in Marian’s pink one. Angela’s nose was tiny and well formed, her mouth a small bow. On the top of her head was a dusting of hair as pale as the snow on the hills outside. Despite her color, despite her huge eyes, she was mostly Marian’s child.

  “Reen,” Angela said and blinked.

  The ice of Reen’s earlier annoyance thawed. He put out his hand to his daughter, and she grabbed his claw.

  Sandra Gonzales, the caregiver, and Quen, the Cousin overseer, ambled up.

  “Such a good child,” Mrs. Gonzales was saying. The caregiver had the plump roundness of bread dough. Gray children trailed in her wake like eager gulls behind a tugboat. “Angela’s such a kind, sweet little thing, Ms. Cole. She plays with the other children so well.”

  Marian had not ceased her vague contemplation of the room. Although she held Angela in her arms, she had not once looked at her child. “You should have some colors in the house. Children like bright colors.”

  “Distracting,” Quen said. “They must learn to focus. They are human, but they are Cousin as well.”

  Marian put the little girl down. “I want to take her outside. Does she have a coat or something?”

  Mrs. Gonzales fluttered her hands. “Yes, yes. A coat.” She bustled out of the room, the children following.

  The two Cousins and Marian Cole stood in uneasy silence until Mrs. Gonzales came back and began to bundle Angela into a zippered windbreaker. “Your mother wants to take you outside. Won’t that be fun? And then you can tell all the other children about it.”

  “What will she tell them about?” Marian asked sharply. “About having a mother that she knows or about playing in the snow?”

  The smile slid like melted frosting from Mrs. Gonzales’s sweet roll of a face.

  “The other children have no idea who their parents are,” Marian said.

  “Not important,” Quen told her.

  Mrs. Gonzales was studying the zipper intently, much more intently than the job deserved.

  “Then why is it so damned important that Angela know who I am?” Marian asked Quen with such ferocity that the Cousin blundered backward.

  “Why is it so important?” Marian demanded.

  No one answered her. Quen stood where his backward flight had taken him, his gaze averted. Mrs. Gonzales, lips puckered, was still fiddling with the coat zipper.

  “They’re killing us off,” Marian told Mrs. Gonzales. “All very quietly. We’re being sterilized, lady. Did you know that? Look at the statistics. The birthrate is down eighteen percent, and no one realizes what’s happening.”

  “Not in front of the children,” Reen said.

  She gave him a brief glance and turned to Mrs. Gonzales.

  “Can’t you see? In a hundred years or so, there won’t be any humans left. These children will take over the world.”

  Quen stiffened. “These children,” he said with pride, “will inherit the universe.”

  Giving the seam of the zipper a last tug, Mrs. Gonzales said in firm, quiet benediction, “There now,” as though she were an elderly marzipan queen sending her champion into battle.

  The tension in the room evaporated; an inevitable sadness took its place. Marian took her daughter’s hand and led her to the door.

  “Reen,” Angela called, flapping her fingers at him. “Reen.”

  He followed a discreet step or so behind. Outside, in the wind, a blush rose on Angela’s cheeks, pink human color, from either the cold or her excitement.

  Reen remained on the porch while Marian walked the child to the edge of the forest. Picking up a handful of snow, Marian packed it into a ball. Her voice drifted across the frozen yard. “Like this, kid. Here.”

  Quen stood at Reen’s side. “Do you not want to be with her, too, Reen-ja?”

  “Later.” After three unsuccessful tries, Reen finally managed to grasp his own meager clump of snow.

  By the evergreens, Marian was bending down to Angela’s height. The wind carried Marian’s faint voice to him. “Come on. Every kid should know this. Body heat. That’s what makes the snow pack down.” Whirling, Marian threw the snowball. It sailed across the glade and, before Reen could duck, slammed into his chest, shattering into a thousand glittering pieces.

  He staggered back. Quen asked anxiously, “Are you all right?”

  “It didn’t hurt.” Reen brushed the snow from his uniform with his free hand. The snowball hadn’t been meant to injure. What hurt were Marian’s icy glances, her hard-packed words.

  She was laughing. Reen knew enough about human children to realize that, had Angela’s mind been as human as her looks, she would have been laughing, too. Instead his serious little girl bent and, dogged as any Cousin, packed her own snowball.

  “That’s a good girl,” came
the shadow of Marian’s voice. “Now throw it at your daddy. Throw it hard.”

  Reen stood, an easy target. He would not have moved even if his daughter had been holding a gun. Angela threw overhand as her mother had done. The snowball rolled off her fingers and dropped to the ground a couple of feet in front of her shoes.

  “That’s okay, kid,” Marian was saying. “We’ll make another one. You can always make another snowball.”

  Reen looked at the snow he held. When he relaxed his grip, it slipped through his fingers like sand.

  “She knows a great deal about us,” Quen said.

  Reen nodded.

  “Will she talk?”

  “No.”

  In her red dress Marian was a cardinal in the trees, a holly berry among the green of the pines.

  “But what if she is not so much under your control as you believe?” Quen asked, skirting the edge of indelicacy.

  Reen dusted his hands. “She has revealed nothing important. The programming is working.”

  But was it? Perhaps her new coldness toward him was the first symptom of rebellion. It had been years since Marian was under the power of the Loving Helpers, and time had a way of blunting things. Probably he should put her under Communal control again, to make certain, but he hadn’t the heart. No. He would stand, vulnerable and still, and accept the snowballs of her rage.

  Marian, all warmth and brightness, was bending down to Angela, his gray, quiet child. She was speaking too low now for him to hear what she was saying, but Angela was staring into her mother’s face as though all the wisdom of the prophets was hidden there.

  “But what if that is not enough?” Quen asked. “What if she is capable of breaking the programming?”

  Reen’s heart, too, had its secret compartments. In the largest compartment lay the Community. In the next, Angela. Marian and Jeff Womack resided in their own places. But Reen knew what should be important and what should not.

  “Then she will have to be killed,” he said.