“Do you want me to send Celia to keep you company?” I asked Wright. “Or would you rather have some time to yourself?”
He hesitated, then said, “Send her. I’ll ask her questions and find out more about this symbiont business.”
I looked at him and saw that he wasn’t asking me to send Celia to him, he was daring me. And he was smiling a little as he did it.
“Ask,” I said. “I’m afraid for you to talk to them and learn what they know—because I know so little. But you should talk to them. We’re a family, or the beginnings of one. We’ll be together for a very long time.”
“It’s all right,” he said, immediately contrite. “A little solitude might be good for me.”
“No,” I said. “Talk to her. Get to know her. Ask your questions. It isn’t all right, but it will be.” I walked away to where Brook was putting gas into her car.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m switching cars,” I said. “I want to do what I can to prod your memory.”
She sighed. “I’m still afraid I won’t remember.”
“I’ll drive, then,” Celia said through her open window. “We’re more likely to survive the trip if the driver isn’t looking all around trying to remember stuff.”
She was right. Brook hadn’t been driving when she visited these people before. Best for her not to be driving now. I went back and told Wright he would be driving alone after all and told him why.
He grinned. “Decided you didn’t want me to know everything, then,” he said.
I grinned back at him. “That must be it.”
They went into the store that was attached to the gas station and bought more maps, food, bottled water, and ice. Then Wright and Celia consulted over the new maps. Somewhere in Sonoma or Mendocino County in California we decided to use State Route I instead of U.S. 101 as we’d planned because Brook said State Route I “felt” like the right road. This apparently had to be discussed again. Then, finally, we were on our way. Celia led off.
Brook and I sat in the backseat, and she studied a huge, sheetlike map. Finally she put the map down and looked at me. “We’re close enough,” she said, “but I don’t recognize anything yet.”
“Are you still worried about your memory?” I asked.
She nodded. “Of course I am.”
“You will remember,” I said. “When you see things you’ve seen before, you’re going to recognize them. You’ve been to this place before. You’ve seen the way, going and coming. Now you’ll see the way a third time, and you’ll get us there. Look out the windows. Don’t worry about the map.”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
And yet we drove all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge before she began to see things that looked familiar to her. By then we had to cross the bridge, then find a place to turn back. On our way back, though, she kept seeing familiar landmarks, businesses, signs.
“I think I paid more attention when we were traveling to Punta Nublada from the airport,” she said. “We were headed north, the way we are now, and I know this place now. It all seemed so new to me when I came this way with Iosif. I hadn’t been anywhere far from home for a long time. I was so excited.”
Just over two hours later, a newly confident Brook had us turn down a narrow paved road that took us to a gravel road that led, finally, to Punta Nublada, a community of eleven large houses with garages and several other buildings scattered along either side of the road. It was almost a village. Behind some of the houses, I could see the remains of large gardens, most of them finished for the year, stark and empty. The community was dark and still, as though it were a humans-only place and everyone were asleep. I wondered why. I could smell Ina males nearby.
“Which house belongs to the oldest son, or perhaps we should see one of the elderfathers?” I asked, then had another thought. “Wait, which is the home of Daniel Gordon, the one you said first approached Iosif.”
“Daniel?” Brook asked. “He is the oldest son.”
“Show me which home is his.”
“Third house on the right.”
We stopped there. I got out and understood something interesting and frightening at once. There were people—human and Ina—watching us with guns. I smelled the guns, I saw some of the people hiding in the darkness. I smelled them and knew they were all strangers to me, but I sorted through them anyway. The scents of the Ina were very disturbing. These people were nervous. Some of the humans were frightened. At least none of the humans present had been among those who attacked Wright, Celia, Brook, and me. That possibility had not occurred to me until I smelled all the guns.