I thought, Some day, some other day when there isn’t anything else going on, I want to hear about gruuaa society.
“We have demonstrated Takahiro is important to both of us. They will have drawn their own conclusions. I have some authority by long association, and I can say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I said ‘yes’ to their staying near Takahiro. Which is not to suggest that they always do what I ask them—rather like a dog again, perhaps, although gruuaa plan and conjecture more than dogs. They are neither domestic nor domesticated. But right now they are so pleased to have me recognize them again they are eager to do what I ask.”
“That’s really nice of you,” I said after a pause. Here I was doing something alone after dark with Val. And with his shadows. And saying “nice” to him. He’d called me his stepdaughter to the army creep. I suppose it made us sound more united or something.
Val glanced at me. “Takahiro will be all right once the military leave the area again, taking their equipment with them. Then the gruuaa will come back to us. Unless one of them develops an individual bond with Takahiro and decides to stay.”
“Do they all have names?” I said.
“Oh yes,” said Val. “But I do not know all of their names. I had—have wondered if the names they give us to use are the same as the ones they use to each other. Indeed I am not sure they use names among themselves.”
“But . . .” I said, and then couldn’t think how to go on. “But . . .”
“I was trying to be what I had promised to be,” said Val. “What I believed myself now to be.”
“How long?” I said. I didn’t know how to ask what I was really asking: How long ago was it that you killed your best friend? How do you—what do you do after that? Did your government just—knock you out somehow, like a zoo vet with a trank gun knocks out a tiger? Did they tie you up for two months, two years?
But he heard me anyway. “Seven years,” he said. “It took my government five years to . . . some of it was for their safety, but some of it was for mine.”
He was silent a minute, and then went on: “It has been a somewhat full two years, at last, when they let me go . . . since I came to Newworld. My old habits and instincts have no place here; and I had been out of the ordinary world entirely for five years. That there was a great swathe of my old skills and—facilities simply gone did not seem any more surprising or difficult than much else I found here. That I dreamed of much I had lost—including the gruuaa—that I imagined even that I saw them sometimes—did not seem surprising either. I still see my friend’s face. . . .” He was silent for another moment. “And then there was Elaine.” He shrugged again, that very un-Newworld shrug. “I suppose I will sound old and foolish to you when I say that Elaine has made my new life worthwhile, whatever I have lost.”
No, I thought, I think it’s about the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard anyone say who wasn’t in a book or a movie. For just a flash I was seeing Casimir’s grin in my memory. But then it faded, and it was Takahiro, looking at me levelly over a bowl of chickpea and tomato stew, and then looking away. Saying ee, sugoi, and smiling into his coffee. I barely knew what Takahiro’s smile looked like. I was pretty sure I’d like it if I got the chance to develop a relationship with it.
We stopped at a red light. When the light turned green Val added, “And now I am discovering—I must discover—what I have not lost.”
“And not get screwed up by Kleinzweig’s goons while you’re at it.”
“Yes.”
“Loophead,” I said.
“Yes,” said Val, who had (fortunately) caught on to my Mongo-nickname routine. You want your dog to react to the sound of his name, so you need to call him something else when you don’t want him to react. “I think it is a very good thing you brought him tonight,” Val continued. “We have proven that the army do not have a reading for werewolf, but Takahiro will have been emitting something that their meters might have read, if it weren’t for the gruuaa and—er—Loophead.”
“But they didn’t.”
“They did not, or we would be in three little rooms being asked questions,” said Val grimly. He glanced at me again. “I apologize. Perhaps it is not that way here.”
“I don’t know what way it is, any more,” I said. “But—you said you did have weres in Oldworld.”
“We do,” said Val. “But any not known to the government will be in a great deal of trouble if discovered.” He glanced at me a third time. “It is, as Takahiro said, stress that causes involuntary change. A properly trained and mentored were will not change, even under extreme stress. But the myth lingers that weres are untrustworthy and unpredictable. Therefore the government can do what it likes with you, or your boss or your neighbors will come to learn what you are.”
“That’s—blackmail,” I said, appalled.
“It is,” agreed Val.
When we got to Jebali Lane the soldiers were still there. Still waving their box. The same one strutted over to the corner as Val made the turn. Val stopped and slid the window down again.
“All well, sir?” said the soldier.
“I believe so, zir,” said Val.
The soldier glanced across Val to me. “Glad you’ve got that dog in the back seat,” he said, and patted the roof of the car like giving us permission to live.
“Bugsucker,” I said under my breath as Val slid his window closed and drove on. Val laughed.
Mom was opening the front door before we were out of the car. I thought: Elaine has made my new life worthwhile, whatever I have lost, and looked the other way when he put his arm around her. I slowly clipped Mongo’s lead on and then (quite a lot faster) took him for a walk.
CHAPTER 9
I PICKED MY ALGEBRA BOOK OFF THE KITCHEN table and took it and Mongo upstairs with me again. He threw himself on the floor and then bounced on and off the bed several times. “Hey,” I said in my best dog-trainer voice. “Stop that.” Usually he jumped onto the bed immediately and lay flat, trying to look invisible, in case I changed my mind and made him sleep in the kitchen after all. (Note that I wouldn’t dream of bringing him upstairs at bedtime and then taking him back to the kitchen. In the first place it’s totally unfair and in the second place he has a heartrending poor-sad-dog routine that would make a stone weep. Or possibly General Kleinzweig.)
Mongo looked confused for a moment, standing stiffly, tail up . . . and then I realized Hix was caroming around the room, very much like a dog inviting another dog to play chase-me. She was making a tiny half-imaginary sweet-smelling breeze. I had no idea what a gruuaa-trainer voice sounded like—or to what extent gruuaa would accept “training” from a mere human. “Stop that,” I said.
Hix collapsed. I could only see her because I had been looking straight at her when she went from lightning strike to stain on the carpet. “Bedroom rules,” I said to the stain on the carpet. “You lie down and be quiet. Or you sleep in the kitchen.” Like she had a collar and I could drag her downstairs. And she could probably slide under closed doors. The stain on the carpet roused itself and twinkled. “You’re allowed on the bed,” I said, and patted it, “as long as there’s still room for me.”