Читать книгу Darwin’s Children - Greg Bear - Страница 21

“There,” Trinket said, putting away the phone and drying his short hair with a towel. “Have you ever met with more than one or two of the children at a time?”

Stella did not answer for a moment, it was such an odd question. She wanted to think it over, even though she knew what he meant. She looked around the living room of the big house. The furniture was colonial, she knew from reading catalogs and magazines: maple with antique print fabric—butter churns, horse tack, plows. It was really ugly. The wallpaper was dark green flocked velvet with floral patterns that looked like sad faces. The entire room smelled of a citronella candle burning on a small side table, too sweet even for Stella’s tastes. There had been chicken cooking in the past hour, and broccoli.

“No,” she finally said.

“That is sad, isn’t it?”

The old woman, the same as in the photos, entered the room and looked at Stella with little interest. She walked in rubber-soled slippers with hardly any sound and held out a long-necked bottle of Nehi strawberry soda, brilliant red in the room’s warm glow.

Trinket was at least fifty. Stella guessed his mother might be seventy, plump, with strong-looking, corded arms, peach-colored skin with only a few wrinkles, and thin white hair arranged neatly on a pallid, taut scalp, like the worn head of a much-loved doll.

Stella was thirsty, but she did not take the bottle.

“Mother,” Trinket said, “I’ve called Stella’s parents.”

“No need,” the woman said, her tone flat. “We have groceries.”

Trinket winked at Stella. “We do indeed,” he said. “And chicken for lunch. What else, Stella?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“What else do we have to eat?”

“It’s not a game,” Stella said huffily.

“Broccoli, I’d guess,” Trinket answered for her, his lips forming a little bow. “Mother is a good cook, but predictable. Still, she helps me with the children.”

“I do,” the woman said.

“Where are they?” Stella asked.

“Mother does her best, but my wife was a better cook.”

“She died,” the old woman said, touching her hair with her free hand.

Stella looked at the floor in frustration. She heard someone talking, far off in the back.

“Is that them?” she asked, fascinated despite herself. She made a move toward the long, picture-lined hall on the right, following the sound of voices.

“Yes,” Trinket said. He shot a quick glance at the book in her hands. “Your parents kept you secluded, didn’t they? How selfish. Don’t we know, Mother, how selfish that would be for someone like Stella?”

“Alone,” his mother said, and abruptly turned and set the bottle down on the small table beside the candle. She rubbed her hands on her apron and waddled down the hallway. The combined sweetness of candle and Nehi threatened to make Stella dizzy. She had seen dogs whining to be with other dogs, to sniff them and exchange doggy greetings. That memory brought her up short.

She thought of the two men in the Texaco minimart.

You smell as good as a dog.

She shivered.

“Your parents were protecting you, but it was still cruel,” Trinket said, watching her. Stella kept her eyes on the hallway. The wish that had haunted her for weeks now, months if she thought back that far, was suddenly strong in her, making her dull and steepy.

“Not to be with your own kind, not to bathe in the air of another, and not to speak the way you all do, such lovely doubling, that is painfully lonely-making, isn’t it?”

Her cheeks felt hot. Trinket studied her cheeks. “Your people are so beautiful,” he said, his eyes going soft. “I could watch you all day.”

“Why?” Stella asked sharply.

“Beg pardon?” Trinket smiled, and this time there was something in the smile that was wrong. Stella did not like being the center of attention. But she wanted to meet the others, more than anything on Earth or in the heavens, as Mitch’s father might have said.

Stella’s grandfather, Sam, had died five years ago.

“I do not run an accredited school, nor a day care, nor a center of learning,” Trinket said. “I try to teach what I can, but mostly I—Mother and I—create a brief refuge, away from the cruel people who hate and fear. We neither hate nor fear. We admire. In my way, I’m an anthropologist.”

“Can I meet them now?” Stella asked.

Trinket sat on the couch with a radiant grin. “Tell me more about your mother and father. They’re well known in some circles. Your mother discovered the virus, right? And your father found the famous mummies in the Alps. The harbingers of our own fate.”

The sweet scents in the room blocked some human odors, but not aggression, not fear. Those she would still be able to smell, like a steel spoon stuck in vanilla ice cream. Trinket did not smell mean or fearful, so she did not feel she was in immediate danger. Still, he wore nose plugs. And how did he know so much about Kaye and Mitch?

Trinket leaned forward on the couch and touched his nostrils. “You’re worried about these.”

Stella turned away. “Let me see the others,” she said.

Trinket snorted a laugh. “I can’t be in a crowd of you without these,” Trinket said. “I’m sensitive, oh yes. I had a daughter like you. My wife and I acquired the masks and knew the special scents my daughter made. Then, my wife died. She died in pain.” He stared at the ceiling, his eyes wet pools of sentiment. “I miss her,” Trinket said, and slapped his hand suddenly on the bolster of the couch. “Mother!”

The blank-faced woman returned.

“See if they’ve finished their lunch,” Trinket said. “Then let’s introduce Stella.”

“Will she eat?” the older woman asked, her eyes unconcerned either way.

“I don’t know. That depends,” Fred Trinket said. He looked at his watch. “I hope your parents haven’t lost their way. Maybe you should call them…in a few minutes, just to make sure?”