I listened to his heartbeat, first racing, then slowing to a strong, regular beat. His breathing stuttered to a regular sleeping rhythm. “What can we do with him?” I asked Preston. “I can talk him into forgetting all this and send him home, but what if the Silk family picks him up again?”
“You feel that you need to help him, in spite of everything?” he asked.
I nodded. “I don’t want him. I don’t like him. But none of this really has anything to do with him.”
He looked around at his brother and his sons. Most of them shrugged.
Daniel said, “I don’t think the Silks will bother about him. They won’t know he survived. They probably don’t even know exactly where he lived before they picked him up. He’s just a tool. They might have rewarded him if he survived, but if they think he’s dead, that will be the end of it. We need to check what he’s said with what the other prisoners say. If their stories agree, they can all go home. You can send them back to their families.”
I nodded. “I’ll fix Victor. Do you want me to fix the others, too?”
“Once we’ve questioned them, you might as well. You’ve already bitten them.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about this. I wondered why.
“Is there transportation back to L.A. from somewhere around here?” I asked.
“We’ll get them back.” Daniel looked uncomfortable. “Shori, I think your venom is the reason this man is still alive, the reason he was able to answer as many questions as he did.”
This was obvious so I looked at him and waited for him to say something that wasn’t obvious.
“I mean, your venom. If one of us had bitten him instead of you, I think he’d be dead now.”
I nodded, interested. That was something I hadn’t known.
“And that means that if the Silks do get him again somehow and question him, he won’t survive. There may be female relatives of the Silks—sisters or daughters—with venom that’s as strong as yours. They could question him, but chances are, they won’t. And he wouldn’t survive being questioned by males. Their venom would make it necessary for him to answer but not really possible. The dilemma would kill him. He’d probably die of a stroke or a heart attack as soon as they began.”
I looked at Victor and sighed. “Is there anything we can do to keep him safe?”
“No,” Preston said. “It really isn’t likely that the Silks will pick him up again. He’ll probably be all right. But unless one of us wants to adopt him as a symbiont, we can’t keep him safe. Daniel only wanted you to know … everything.” I heard disapproval in his voice, and I didn’t understand it. I decided to ignore it, at least for now.
I looked at Daniel and thought he looked a little embarrassed, that he was staring past me rather than at me. “Thank you,” I said. “So much of my memory is gone that I’m grateful for any knowledge. I need to know the consequences of what I do.”
Daniel got up and left the room.
I looked after him, surprised, then looked at Preston. “When should Victor be ready to go?”
“A couple of nights from now. After we’ve questioned the others.”
“All right,” I paused. “Can one of you take him? I don’t want him back at the guest house.”
Preston glanced at the doorway Daniel had gone through. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll take care of him.”
“Thank you,” I said with relief. Then I changed the subject and asked a question I had been wanting to ask since I arrived. “Are there … do you have Ina books, histories I could read to learn more about our people? I hate my ignorance. As things stand now, I don’t even know what questions to ask to begin to understand things.”
It was Hayden who answered, smiling. “I’ll bring you a few books. I should have thought of it before. Do you read Ina?”
I sighed and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. We’ll find out.”
Eighteen
To my surprise, I did read and speak Ina.
Hayden brought me three books and sat with me while I read aloud from the first in a language that I could not recall having heard or seen. And yet as soon as I opened the book, the language seemed to click into place with an oddly comfortable shifting of mental gears. I suppose I had spoken English from the time I met Wright because he and everyone else had spoken English to me. If I had heard only Ina since leaving the cave, I might not know yet that I spoke English.