"Will you help me find her?" His ears swerved wildly, back and forth.
"I don"t think that would be a good idea."
She looked pleadingly at Dave, who frowned. She kept her eyes locked on his until he nodded.
"Tommy," he said, "this is your home, here with your mother and me and Heather and Erin."
"No it"s not! I"m going to find my real mommy."
He burst out of her lap, leaping away from the house, toward the woods.
"Tommy, no!"
Tommy climbed. Whistling in distress, ears wrapped securely over his nose, he pulled himself up the tall unbending branches. Higher and higher, until he reached the nasty p.r.i.c.kers.
As he had suspected, there were no branches above the p.r.i.c.kers. Probing with his tail, he searched for a gap in the p.r.i.c.kers, but they were close together, only as far apart as his upperhand was wide. Pulling all four lower limbs as close to the top as he could, he braced his upper hands in the gaps between the p.r.i.c.kers and launched himself up and over. Owww, that hurt, a sharp pain pulling along his left side. Crash! He landed hard, in a bush, a regular bush, much softer than the p.r.i.c.ker bush, but still not exactly soft. Moss would have been nicer. He licked his side where the p.r.i.c.ker had torn. It throbbed. He whimpered, low in his throat-sac.
Dave slammed his hand on his thigh. "Let the little-let him go. Let them all go, G.o.ddammit!
Isn"t six years enough? Six years of isolation, six years without anyone to share my research with? No, I"m not done. I know you"ve tried to understand my work, but dammit, you have Amanda and Gillian to talk to, to share your theories with. I"m sitting on a gold mine of genetic possibility here, and G.o.d knows what they"re doing with these plants, out there in the real world. All the duplicated research, the dead ends I"ve wasted years on. Maybe all my work is for nothing."
"Like mine?" Jo-ann asked, her voice low and rough. She didn"t want to cry. "Tommy was our son, is our son."
"He"s not our son! He never was, he was just an experiment. A scientific experiment."
Jo-ann gasped in shock and wrapped her hands around her stomach. "He"s our son," she repeated, rocking back and forth.
Dave sighed, loud, and ran his hands through his hair. "Ah, sweetie, I"m sorry. He"ll come back. Or maybe Heather and Erin will know how to find him. They"ve got great sense of smell, don"t they? I bet they can follow him just fine."
"And then what? Even if we find him, he hates me." Jo-ann snuffled, wiped her nose. "He"llnever forgive me."
"Jo-ann, look at me. I"m not sure how the kid will feel. How would you feel?"
"I would feel-I don"t know. I wonder if he can find his, the mother of his litter." Jo-ann wondered again if Froggies had mother-child relationships like humans. For that matter, how many people did she know who had mother-child relationships the way humans supposedly did? And then there were those who could never even try.
"Maybe we should let him look for her," Dave said gently. As they stood up to go inside, Erin and Heather came charging out of the house. Heather first, bounding across the yard, veering around Dave and Jo-ann. Erin followed, stopping once, turning her head toward the house. Gillian stood in the doorway, raised her hand, but didn"t speak. After a moment, Erin raced after Heather. Jo-ann walked toward Gillian.
"They"re going with Tommy," Gillian said unnecessarily.
Tommy heard whuffing and whistling, nearby, behind. He smelled Heather and Erin. He pinged in that direction-there, beyond the barrier. "Guys, hey, here I am," he called. "Over the top, come on, let"s go find Froggies. People like us ..."
"How do you get over?" Erin asked.
"Grab the top, between the sharp p.r.i.c.kers, jump hard." Tommy perched on a nice soft mound and directed them. "Here, there"s moss on this side if you jump from here." He yelped as Heather landed on his foot. They tried to scramble out of the way, but Erin was too fast. The three rolled off the mound in a tangle of limbs.
"Hey, watch out, you." Heather started tickling Erin"s ribs. "Look who"s talking, foot-stomper," Tommy said, pinning Heather. "Erin, I"ve got her. Get her, fast." But Erin, ever unpredictable, pounced on Tommy, using the tip of her tail to tickle his midback, right where he couldn"t reach. "Aaagh, no fair. Heather, help me."
"No way." And Heather started tickling Tommy, too. He laughed helplessly until he could barely breathe. "Stop, stop, I"m going to tell-"
All three froze. Tommy keened a bit. Heather rubbed her head along his jaw. Erin patted his lower back gently.
"Tell who?" Erin mumbled. They rocked for a moment, in silence. "What are we gonna do?"
"I want to find our real mommies. Do you think they miss us?" Tommy couldn"t help shivering, even though the midday sun was hot on his back.
"How do we find them? We don"t know where they live." Heather scratched her toe in the dirt.
Around them was the restless whirling of small fliers everywhere. Erin twisted her head right, up, left, down, chasing their movements. Pollen floated by Tommy"s nose; he sneezed.
"Let"s see where the small flier is going. Maybe he"s got a nest." Erin bounded away through the trees.
"Erin, wait, we should stay near the running-water sound. We don"t want to get lost."
"Why not?" she said, but she stopped chasing the little creature.
"No, Erin, Tommy"s right. I want to stay near the water, too."
"Okay, but I don"t think it"s going to take us to the Froggies."
Tommy asked, "Do you think it"s different, out here?" He knew, from the way the p.r.i.c.kers had curved out at the top, that they would not be able to return over the barrier."I don"t know, smells the same to me. Same trees, same dirt, same bugs." Erin grabbed a fuzzy insect with her tail and popped it into her mouth to prove her point. "Yup, tastes the same, too."
Heather hrrmmed, low in her throat. "Feels different. This plant, here, feel this, the leaves are fuzzy, sharp edges. I never found one like this before."
Tommy returned from the edge of the clearing. "Nothing around here like Daddy"s plants.
The new ones are tasty, though."
They hopped for a while through the forest, keeping close to the stream.
"I"m tired. Can we stop and eat?" Heather was always the first to think of food.
"Tommy, did you notice, something feels different, inside, here. Like, back home, there"s always a feeling, that this way is nicer than that way, you know, the paths where it"s easier to move along, like in my backyard from the door to the orange tree, and at your house out to the special bushes ..."
"Yeah, it"s moved, here. Pulls another way now." While they were talking, Tommy noticed that Heather was sniffing around for the peppery plants they liked to eat. "Guys, over here, yummy food, come eat!"
She had dumped over an insect hive, and they devoured the citrusy nectar inside. Sated, worn out by the excitement and the sun, they curled up for a nap.
Symbols, a series of indentations in dirt, flickering one after the other. Dreaming fingers trace the surfaces, next, next, next. There, a repeat? Impossible to say. Impressions come from nothing, then flicker away. The symbols continue, a steady flow. Suddenly, the hand is grasping wet fruit, squeezes, pulp drips between startled fingers. A puff of air across the hand, all clean! Then fingers are racing over new surfaces, tracing more symbols. The same symbols come back, sometimes, here and there. Then just as quickly disappear, replaced by something new. Next, next, next. Another squeeze of rotten fruit, smell, too, this time. Whew!
Tommy, stretched, woke up, untangled himself from the others. "I just had the weirdest dream-"
Erin giggled. "Couldn"t be any weirder than mine."
"I bet mine was the weirdest," Tommy said.
"No, mine. I had funny dirt-pictures, lots and lots of them-"
"-and rotten fruit, too, in the middle, then at the end, it stank,"
Tommy finished.
"No way, that was my dream," said Erin.
"What do you think it means?" asked Tommy.
Heather interrupted. "What are you guys talking about?"
"The funny dreams," Erin said. "Didn"t you have them?"
"No. I don"t get it. Dirt-pictures? How is that a dream?"
Erin emitted the confusion-scent. "I"m not making it up."
Tommy realized something was different. "Hey, Erin, did you feel it?
The pull was different in the dream. The direction, just a little more that way."
"It was the same as my dream, last night," said Erin. "And mine. Mommy said it was the "Froggies" in the dream. Maybe this was them, too," said Tommy."So if we go more this way, until the pull direction is like in the dream-"
"Maybe we"ll find the Froggies," said Tommy.
The two headed out through the trees.
Heather refused to budge. "Guys, this is stupid! You want to follow directions from your dreams? I"m not going."
"Aw, come on, Heather, where else are we going to go?"
Waiting was almost worse than bad news. At least with bad news, there was something to react to, something to attack. Here, Jo-ann had to sit, trust in Amanda and Gillian to present their case to the Department of Xenoanthropology. They had gone through their archives, putting together the video to showcase the intelligence of their Froggie children. Without live testimony, she wasn"t sure how convincing it was. But with the kids gone over the wall, they finally had to admit that they"d gone as far as they could, separated from the outside world. So many times over the years, they had wished for colleagues to brainstorm with, computers powerful enough to find meanings in the ultra- and subsonic frequencies. If there were any. But the ethics panel would have had a field day with her methodology.
Looks like they"d have their chance now.
She went out to the garden. Dave, whistling tunelessly, was tending to his hybridized azaleas. She wondered what he was thinking. "How are they coming?"
"Good, actually. I finally got that mite infestation killed off. Mostly weeding, right now."
"Okay, I get that the mites aren"t really mites. They just act like mites, right? But how do you decide what"s a weed?"
"Like anywhere else. Weeds are the plants with the strongest roots." Dave sawed off the base of a thick vine and carefully unwrapped its reaching tendrils from around the new growth of his azalea.
"No, really."
"Really. Weeds are total nutrient hogs. They suck all the minerals out of the soil, but don"t produce interesting fruit or fragrant flowers."
"I don"t know-vacuum cleaners of the plant world, could be something valuable there."
"Well, someone Out There is probably working on it. But I think I"m getting close to isolating the regenerative function. I"ve produced it in the azaleas, and now the orange bush."
Jo-ann saw his pride in his plants, but also how it ate at him, not being able to share the work with colleagues. "You know, you don"t have to wait with me. You can go back, show these plants right away."
"I don"t want to leave you here alone. . . ."
Tension-she thought her head would burst. She rubbed her temples. "You know what, the h.e.l.l with this. No way are they going to buy those videos. They"ll say we faked it. Without a live demonstration, our case won"t be strong enough. I"ve got to find Tommy, bring him back to the Department. Then they"ll believe me and fund another effort to establish communications."
"Um, Jo-ann, I"m not sure how likely-"
"If we had better computers, we could a.n.a.lyze the subsonics."
"Jo-ann, we"ve been over this-"
"If they see Tommy, they"ll understand. I"ve got to find him. Where are those aerial maps?"
"Honey, slow down. This is not a good idea.""Don"t you want Tommy back? Oh, skip it, you never did care."
"Okay, that"s enough. Don"t even say that. I"ve stuck it out for six years. You find one other person who would have done this for you. But it"s over. Let it go, G.o.ddammit. Come back with me. Tommy is better off out there."
"To h.e.l.l with you then. I"m going to find him."
He came after her. "Jo-ann, wait, at least wait until you hear from Amanda and Gillian."
The children made their way down the hill. A huge clearing filled the s.p.a.ce below, and the smell of themselves came up to them. Their ears and noses quivered with excitement, and Erin kept dashing ahead.
"Wait up, Erin, I"m tired," Heather said.
"But smell, smell that, can"t you tell, it"s people like us. I want to meet them. Hurry!"
Tommy slowed down, slower even than Heather. "I don"t know. What if they don"t like us?"
The sun was getting cooler, near end-of-day, and by the time they made their way down to the valley, it was becoming night-cold. They headed for the strongest concentration of the smell, so tantalizing, so familiar. "Why don"t we hear anything?" Heather asked.
Tommy decided not knowing was worse. He said, "I don"t know. Let"s go find out." He approached a drop-off in the floor of the clearing, arched his ear out over the opening. He heard breathing, like Heather and Erin sleeping, but more. He curved his tail out, slow and careful, gently reached into the hole. He touched smooth surfaces, tummies and backs and limbs like his, only bigger. Lots and lots of them, all twined together. Throat-sacs quivered softly, chests rose and fell, ears swiveled back and forth. He extended an upperhand, stroked the length of an arm. Suddenly, a hand grasped his wrist. He jumped, squeaking in surprise, and jerked out of the grip. He backed away.
"Tommy, what is it," said Heather, "what happened?"
"There"s lots of, I don"t know-people?-sleeping here, all together, and I went to touch, and something grabbed me."
"Guess they didn"t like you poking them, huh?"
"Yeah. But they didn"t say anything, either."
"I don"t get it."
It was the strangest night. The adults-Froggies, Tommy supposed- moved slowly around the valley, eating plant leaves and insects. He browsed next to one, but the adult did not pay any attention to him or the girls. The feeding adults exuded the gingery scent of lazy contentment. A few Froggies splashed in the lake, slurping up the water-plants. Heather took a quick dip, reported that the water-plants didn"t have much flavor and that the adults didn"t seem to mind her company.
Finally, impatient, Erin went up to one and said, "Hi, I"m Erin. Who are you?" The Froggie did not answer, only shook its head as if distracted by a buzzing small flier. Frustrated, she tried talking to another, and another, but each ignored her. Once, Tommy touched an adult, tapping its upper arm for attention. The adult"s skin rippled, as though an insect had bitten it. It stepped away from Tommy, emitting a tangy, tarry annoyance-smell. Taking the hint, Tommy was careful not to touch any of the others.
"Hey, guys, will they talk to you?""Not me, it"s like they don"t know I"m here," said Heather.
"They act like I"m a bug crawling up their b.u.t.ts," said Erin.