“Will we see it? Will we see the people walk upside down?”
When he laughed, I knew he was teasing me, and I shut my mouth tightly, much annoyed.
“Oh, girl, Opalears…no, I must say, Nassif. You must let me tickle your naïveté a little. We will go through the country of Estafan, though it may no longer be a kingdom. Everything north of the mountains and along the sea has been taken over by the Farsakian Empire.” He fell silent, brooding, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
Since he was in a talkative mood, I asked another question, which had been bothering me ever since St. Weel had been mentioned.
“Why are we really going, Soaz? Surely there are physicians nearer than St. Weel. It seems a dreadful long and dangerous way to go.”
“The prince’s health is only an excuse,” he murmured to me, watching the prince from the corner of his eye. “We are actually going because of an old oracle the sultan met in his travels, years ago, when Great-tooth was minding the throne.”
I put on a slightly interested look, just enough to encourage him.
“The sultan tells me he was in the desert, far east of Isfoin. He’d been traveling for days in that blinding heat before he came to an oasis which encircled the ruins of a vast, ancient caravansary. In the ruins, off in one dusty corner, an old gray female had built herself a little hut, quite snug and safe and protected from the desert winds. She wasn’t of the sultan’s race. She was ponjic, and, like all of you, she was clever with her hands….”
“Which is why we make such good slaves and servants,” I said in a snippy voice, quoting my father.
“True,” said Soaz, raising his eyebrows. “But she was neither a slave nor a servant. She wore the garb of a free person, and she said she had come originally from Sworp by way of Palmia and the Wycos Valley. The sultan gave her some food and spices, less from charity than from surprise at finding anyone there, and in return, she gave him a reading of the bones. From the pattern the bones made in falling, she could read, so she said, the sultan’s future, and the future of his people.”
“An interesting tale,” I murmured in a casual way, though in fact I was avid to hear the rest.
Soaz nodded and went on. “When she had peered at the bones for a very long time, she said, ‘I have an instruction and a talisman for you. You must keep the talisman safe, unopened. If you go into danger, put it in a place of safety. You must not look at it until time of need.’”
“What did she give him?”
“He told me it was a fortune. One of those folded parchment ones the onchiki use for money. Then she said, ‘Sultan, are you true to the faith of your ancestors?’
“The sultan told her he was Korèsan born and bred, a faithful son of that faith. ‘I see Korè being threatened,’ she said. ‘I see darkness coming. I hear trumpets blaring war and the umminhi screaming beside the picket fires. I feel treachery and a death of peoples, worse than a death, an unbeing. When that day approaches, help may be found at St. Weel.’
“The sultan believed the old one. He said there was something about her that made him believe. Since he would be riding into some danger, he sent the talisman to me, back in Tavor, with instructions to put it in the lock box in my own rooms. I never got it. I learned from my palace spies that a message from the sultan had been intercepted by Great-tooth. I challenged him to produce it, and he, to cover his tail, accused Halfnose Nazir of taking it, then cut Nazir’s head off so he couldn’t say otherwise.”
My eyes filled. “Poor Father. Did you get the thing back?”
“Great-tooth died, quite mysteriously, before the sultan returned”—he smiled a strange smile—“and though I searched the palace for the talisman, it has never been found.”
“And what has all that to do with this journey?”
“The last thing the old woman said to the sultan. ‘If you do not go to St. Weel, then send your son. Well before the year of the vulture, send him, for if he goes not and learns not, then in the year of that uncouth bird, the tree of heaven falls.’” He sighed, then frowned. “She did not tell him which son to send. It has taken the sultan quite a time to decide on Sahir.”
I was busy telling over the calendar to myself. “But it’s still four years until the year of the vulture.”
“Four years is only a little time,” said Soaz. “Oh, child, you have no idea. For such a journey, four years is a very short time.”
“Will we meet cannibals?” I murmured in a frightened voice. “And monsters?”
He hummed in his throat, the way pheledian people sometimes did, like a kettle simmering. “The Farsaki were cannibals once, surely. But they have changed over time. Though they’re still determined to conquer the world, they’ve softened greatly in the way they’re going about it. Something mysterious in that, I’m told. Some exotic influence. Or, perhaps Korè spoke to them.”
“Is that true?” I asked doubtfully. “Or is it only a story?”
“True enough that they’ve changed, though no one knows exactly why. A few decades ago the Farsaki took Palmia as a tributary province, but instead of eating the inhabitants, they allowed it to continue under its own governance. And among the north lands, Wycos and Tavor are yet free of them.”
“What about the Strangers at the Hospice of St. Weel? Do they belong to the Farsaki?”
His voice dropped to a mere murmur. “There have been whispers about St. Weel for generations! I wouldn’t speculate about it aloud.” And that was all he had to say about anything for that day, at least.
5
Dora Deals with a Body
Dora knew it was silly to think the weed had followed her to her new home like a pet cat, but the idea itched at her for the next couple of weeks until she drove over to Jared’s place to look, half expecting Jared’s weed to be gone. One look served to reassure her that Jared’s weed, the weed that had put Jared in the hospital (she knew the weed had done it, she just didn’t know how) was still there at Jared’s place, very lush and green, covering almost the whole front of the house and looking very satisfied with itself. Someone had pulled out the dead trees and the dead bushes and had planted some saplings in little clusters. The grass needed cutting, but except for that, the place looked really good. Since she was already in the neighborhood, she decided to stop in to see her former landlady-cum-mother-in-law, if Jared’s car wasn’t there.
Jared’s car wasn’t, and Mother Gerber told her about the house, right off. “Jared’s decided to sell it. He’s tired of fussing with it, and he says he’d rather just live here with me than go through getting used to a housekeeper. I told the real estate lady about that weed thing, and she said it looked all right, she’d just get rid of the dead stuff and leave it at that.”
“Did she plant the new trees?”
“I saw that! She didn’t tell me she was going to do that! I think it looks messy.” She lifted one nostril. “People don’t keep up the way they used to. It looks like a wilderness. These environmentalists, someone like that, they’ll probably love it.”
Dora patted her shoulder and went on to work, feeling obscurely sorry for Momma Gerber while still being thankful to have left Jared. Phil, as usual, had left the reports for her to do, and she’d no sooner finished the stack than she and Phil caught a call from a maintenance man at Randall Pharmaceuticals who said he’d found a body. Randall’s was clear out on the northeast edge of town toward the airport.
The caller had had sense enough not to inform anyone but the police and to have a coworker guard the body while he met them at the gate. The man who met them wore green overalls and a company logo on the back: a double helix and test tube. He introduced himself as Joe Penton, then climbed in the backseat and directed them around the side of the gatehouse and down a rutted drive past a long, low annex and then a maze of pens and sheds and feed bins. Farther down the hill, through sparse clumped grasses, they came to a grove of trees that was part of a narrow woods stretching in both directions along the almost dry creek bed.
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bsp; The body was there, half hidden in the trees, with another overalled man squatted down not far from it. “It’s Dr. Winston,” this one told them, looking up from where he was crouched. “Dr. Edgar Winston.”
Dora gave the place a quick going over. No sign of a struggle. Nothing disturbed. Just the body, lying there, the long white lab coat stained with something down the front, the elderly victim’s face drawn in an expression of concentration that might mean something and might not. There was grass all around him, no surface to take footprints. The series of pens and shelters ran from the annex almost all the way down the hill to where they were.
“What’s the low building there?” she asked their guide. “And the pens?”
“Animal labs,” he replied. “The company makes veterinary medicines.” He indicated the nearest pens, where half a dozen pigs were lined up against the fence, staring in their direction.
“For pigs?” Phil asked, in his disbelieving voice.
“Sure, pigs,” said Joe Penton. “And horses and cows and dogs and cats and anything else people keep for livestock or pets or in zoos.”
Dora took her phone from her pocket and called for the medical examiner and the forensics team. If they’d hurry, they could get here before people started piling out of that building. Already she could see round pale blobs at third-floor windows. They were no doubt wondering what the hell the car was doing down here, light flashing.
She took out her notebook. “And your name is?” she asked of the kneeling man.
“Twenzel,” he said. “Bill.”
“We take care of the animals,” said Penton. “Once or twice a week we walk the perimeter and check the fences. There’s a cut in the fence, by the way.” He pointed down to the tree line, toward leaning posts and sagging chain link. “Anyhow, that’s how we found Dr. Winston.”
“And you know him?” Dora asked.
“Well, sure. We work for the animal labs. There’s six of us altogether, four for weekdays and a weekend crew. We clean pens and do the feeding, stuff like that, so we see…saw Dr. Winston almost every day. He was the head honcho. He headed up the improved breeds project.”
“Improved breeds?”
“They’re using DNA to make new breeds of livestock. You know, like hybrids. Cattle resistant to disease, or leaner pigs, like those guys over there.” He gestured toward the pens, where the pigs were still lined up, noses to the wire.
Leaving Phil to continue the questioning, Dora began to inspect the area. Her primary task right now was to locate and protect anything that might be used as evidence and keep people from messing up the crime scene. If it was a crime scene. They wouldn’t know whether it was or not until they had a cause of death. The guy might have dropped dead of a heart attack.
“Poor guy,” said someone.
She turned, trying to find the source of the voice, but could not. The pigs had gone back to their food troughs, and the other pens seemed almost empty, though she spied a scurry of quick movement from one about halfway up the hill.
“What kind of animals have you got out here?” she called.
Joe walked over, ready to be expansive. “Oh, different kinds. Farm animals out here, plus dogs and cats. Some exotic animals, too. Monkeys are housed inside. Dr. Winston uses this set of genes from this one and that set of genes from that one. One time he got this pig with horns, honest to God.”
“Poor thing,” said Dora, depressed.
“Oh, hell no,” the other man put in. “Pinky liked his horns. He became the terror of the pig yard. It was a mistake, though. The others had nothing to fight back with. Dr. Winston had to cut them off.”
“What about the doctor?” she asked. “What was he doing down here?”
Joe replied, “Who knows? I saw him in the labs early this morning, when I was cleaning the cages inside. Bill says he saw him having a coffee break about ten, in the company cafeteria. Then around eleven thirty, we came down here on our regular fence check, and there he was. We didn’t touch him except to make sure he was dead, then Bill waited while I went back up to the gate to call the police.”
“You didn’t tell the boss, or whoever here at the plant.”
Joe and Bill exchanged glances. “Nope,” said Joe. “We decided to let you do that.”
Dora frowned. “So they don’t even know?”
“Not unless one of them did it,” snarled Bill.
Dora saw a car arrive at the gate, lights flashing. That’d be the forensics people. She took a last good look around. They were in an open floodplain, no buildings nearby, just the long narrow line of woods, the space between the larger trees growing up in saplings with low grassland everywhere else. Through the trees she could see the cut in the fence, a man-sized hole, from top to bottom. The fence evidently marked the edge of the company’s property. Beyond it was an upsloping grassy meadow with a ball stop halfway up, and at the top, the backsides of a row of houses. All very peaceful.
It didn’t stay that way. Things got complex. Dora and Phil strung up a crime tape just before the first people arrived from the Randall Building, which they did, by dozens. Some head honcho arrived full of orders and instructions, and Dora had to tell him to back off, they’d do fine, thank you. The photographer arrived and departed, then the body went. All available cops began a close search of the area.
The lieutenant beckoned. Nodding at the backs of the houses across the way, he said, “Medical examiner says it’s a stabbing wound in the back, he’ll know more after the autopsy, but he thinks it’s a wide, doubled-edged blade of some kind. Somebody might’ve seen something. Dermot, you and Henry start with the houses over there, both sides of the street, get the names of any kids might’ve been out in that field. Here’s the vitals on the guy: white, five nine, blue eyes, mostly bald, brown hair where he’s got hair, sixty-nine years old, past retirement, you’d think, but they say he was irreplaceable so they kept him on. No scars or tattoos. You saw what he was wearing: khakis, blue knit shirt, long white coat.”
Dora spoke up. “Did the medical examiner say what the weapon might have been?”
“Stabbed, not slashed. The blade went in between the ribs. You’re not looking for a machete or a stiletto, but that’s about all we know yet.”
They spent the afternoon going from house to house talking to this one and that one, coming back to the ones who weren’t home, getting names of kids who might have seen something, names of other people who might have seen something. Not many. The row of houses was occupied by mostly older people, working people, people who wouldn’t be likely to have been playing ball where they could see anything on a weekday. End of the day, effort max, results nil. Phil was in a hurry.
“Anniversary,” he said. “I forget, I get home late, I don’t bring a present, all next year is down the drain.”
“Go on home, Phil. I’ll type up the report.”
“I ever tell you you’re a sweetheart, Dora Henry?”
“Don’t let Charlene hear you say it. And tell her thank you again for my house.”
“Hey, how’s that working out?”
“I love it. Just the right size and everything.”
“Well, good luck with it.” And he was gone, out, leaving her in the noisy room to struggle with the computer.
Roger Manconi dropped into the chair next to her. Roger was a perennial dropper and hugger and fanny patter, but he did it with guys, too, or anything else that breathed air. Dora liked him.
“Funny one, huh,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she said, concentrating on her typing.
“That guy Winston. The lieutenant says he wasn’t robbed. Wallet still on him, and an expensive watch. Wonder who had it in for the guy? You and Phil were out there?”
“Yeah. He was just lying there, peaceful as an oyster. He looked more thoughtful than dead, to tell you the truth. Phil and I spent the afternoon going up and down the street across the creek.”
“I didn’t know there was a creek down there.”
&
nbsp; “It’s not much. Sort of wide flat gully and a…I guess you’d say a woods. Lots of saplings coming up, right down next to the water. There’s a field on the other side, looks like somebody mowed it within the last week or so, maybe cut hay on it or something. There’s a ball stop. I don’t know why. Nobody in the neighborhood seems to use it.”
“Did you have any luck at all?”
“Even if somebody’d been home, nobody could’ve seen him from over there. Too many trees. Only chance would have been if some kid had been right down in the woods, chasing a ball, maybe.”
He thought a moment. “Did I hear right, this guy was doing research?”
“Yeah. They’re doing genetic stuff with animals. Seeing if they can gene splice them.”
“Gene splice?”
“You know. Mix them up.” She laughed. “Make a rat with feathers. That kind of stuff.”
“Why?”
“You got me. Why do scientists do anything?”
“He’s the second one killed, just lately.”
Dora frowned, suddenly reminded of the other guy. “The one Phil and I did some leg work on. About a month ago.”
“He was stabbed, too,” Manconi remarked. “And nobody robbed him, either.” He saluted with a finger and wandered off, leaving her to draw her own conclusions. It itched at Dora. What about the guy in the parking lot? Phil had completed the file while she was out. Hadn’t that victim been a geneticist, too? She should have made the connection right away!
Both guys had been interfering with nature. Like Jared, in a way. Jared goes out and sprays a plant, then he gets sick from weedspray. And this guy, Winston, he fools around mutating animals, and then he gets very dead. What had the other one been working on?
She went downstairs to Records and waited around until Lynn Beatty was free, then went over to her desk.
“Dora! Hey, sorry to hear about your husband. That was very strange.”
“Yeah, it was.” She didn’t want to say he wasn’t her husband, or wouldn’t be for long, but she didn’t want to lie, either. She reiterated a truth, hoping that would do. “It was all…very strange.”