The Tribuo - 33. Part IV, chapter 5

- V -

TARA

When I finally got back to the house that we had this time, it was almost seven in the evening. Seth glanced up at me when I walked in.

“I thought you were done at five,” he said.

“I was done at five,” I nodded. “Stopped by the store on the way home.”

He blinked when I put two bottles of Merlot on the table.

“Special occasion?” he asked.

“No,” I said indifferently. “I just want to get drunk tonight, that’s all.”

“Huh,” was all he said.

*****

It was three or four hours later, we were sitting outside, and I felt almost great. I squinted my eyes against the cigarette smoke, and thought that if I didn't want to end up spoiling this evening and spending the rest of it in the bathroom hugging the toilet, I'd better slow down on the wine. Seth acted as if he was reading my mind. He simply took the bottle away from me and put it on the ground next to his chair.

“Huh,” I said thoughtfully and looked at him.

“Are you winking at me?” he asked suddenly.

“Nope,” I said and opened my left eye.

“Trying not to see doubles?” he grinned.

“Yup,” I agreed lightly.

He laughed and refilled his own glass. He drank a hell of a lot more than I did, but he seemed to be as cool as ever. I looked at him with envy.

“Takes a lot more than this to get me drunk,” he shrugged when he saw the look on my face.

“Right…” I muttered. “So, do you wanna know why I am getting wasted?”

“No,” he said solemnly. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”

“Oh, right…” I grimaced. “You were watching, huh…”

“No,” he said again. “I just know you pretty well by now.”

“Oh…” I replied to that and looked at my glass that was still half-full. Or was it half-empty? I thought about it for a minute, shrugged, and drank some more. “So tell me…” I looked at him thoughtfully. “Have you ever gotten involved with a Tribuo?”

He looked as if it was the most usual question ever.

“It’s not a good idea,” he said simply. “For an Observer to get involved with a Tribuo.”

“Why not?” I looked at my reflection in the side of the glass and cracked up. It was funny. “Is it forbidden?”

“No,” he drank more. “It’s just not a good idea, that’s all.”

“Well, have you ever gotten involved with humans?” I asked and he hemmed.

“Sure.”

“Huh…” I lit another cigarette. “So, why it’s not a good idea?”

He sighed.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Let me make an example… A hypothetical situation.”

“Right,” I nodded. “Hypothetical.”

“Let’s say, you are an Observer…” he started slowly. “And let’s say, you spent a hell of a lot of time in this place…”

“Place or plane?” I looked at him.

“Whatever word you want to use,” he shrugged.

“Okay,” I nodded. “Go on.”

“Do you remember me telling you how all those emotions have a tendency of rubbing off on you?”

I nodded.

“Well,” he continued. “Let’s say, you were a strange individual to begin with… And after spending so much time here, it had only gotten worse. So one of those days you meet a brand-new Tribuo…”

I squinted my eyes at him, and he just sighed.

“I said a hypothetical situation,” he said patiently. “I know that your ego is a size of Tokyo, but believe me, it's not about you.”

“Huh,” now I felt stupid. “Go on.”

“All right. So you meet her, and before you know it…” he shrugged and twisted his mouth in a shadow of a smile. “...you realize that you are ready to do anything for her. And since she is brand-new to this whole thing, she is confused, bewildered, disoriented…” he paused and refilled his glass. “And of course, since you are always around her, she clings to you like you are her life vessel. So then after a while, you start thinking that hey, maybe this place is not that bad after all, you know…”

I lit a cigarette and he took it from me without even looking.

“Then she tells you that she is pregnant…”

“With a baby?” I closed my right eye this time.

Seth looked at me and it seemed like he was about to say something very sarcastic. He didn’t.

“Yes,” he said instead. “A baby. Then after a while, you two have a kid, and everything is so great that it feels unreal…”

“And…?” I said after he fell silent for almost five minutes.

He blinked.

“And then she gets her first assignment,” he said with his usual half-smile.

“So she got killed or something?” Oh dear God, I almost hiccupped.

“Really...” he sighed. “Do you remember anything I told you? Tribuos can’t die.”

“Ahhh,” I hissed with embarrassment. “Yeah, I remember… Sorry! So she gets her first assignment, and then what?”

He looked at me, his yellow eyes completely unreadable.

“What?” I frowned. He looked as if waiting for something to dawn on me. Well, it never did. Finally, he rolled his eyes.

“Okay… Do you remember what happened to you on your first assignment?”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel drunk at all. Instead, I felt cold.

“Yes,” I said softly, and pulled another cigarette out of the pack.

Seth nodded.

“That’s exactly what happened to her. So after that was over, she couldn’t wait to get the hell off this plane. She was remarkably good, so after her fifth one, she…”

“…was offered a choice,” I muttered and he nodded.

“Yes. And she was more than eager to finally move on.”

“What about you?” I asked and he glanced at me.

“I never said that this was about me,” he said without a smile. “I remember saying the words…”

“A hypothetical situation,” I said at the same time as he did.

“Exactly,” he nodded. “That’s what it is. Just a hypothetical goddamn situation…”

I finished my wine and thought of getting more.

“What about the baby?” I remembered suddenly.

“She was adopted by some good people,” Seth said absent-mindedly and pulled the bottle of wine from underneath his chair.

He refilled my glass without asking anything.

“Adopted?” I frowned. “Isn’t there some sort of… I don’t know… Heavenly Day Care or something like that? I mean, the kid wasn’t exactly human!”

“She was human enough,” Seth said with a half-smile. “And it doesn’t work like that. You don’t automatically get accepted just because of who your parents are.”

“She…” I looked at him with a small frown. “The baby was a girl then?”

“Girl… Boy…” he shrugged absent-mindedly. “Whoever. It’s just an example, remember?”

“You said 'she,' so…”

“Okay,” he shrugged lightly. “So let it be a girl.”

“She was adopted…”

“By really good people,” he nodded. “I made sure of that.”

I tried not to stare at him when I realized that he had no idea he just said, “I made sure of that.” Instead, I gulped down my wine. Jesus, now I didn’t even care if I drank until I puked.

“Yes,” I said finally. “Good people, you said that… So they didn’t have any kids, right?”

I looked at him and closed my left eye. He laughed.

“Go to bed, Rayne,” he said. “You have to be at work at eight in the morning.”

I sighed. Right, work… I carefully stood up. Okay, good, I am not going to kiss the ground after all. Right before I went back inside the house, I stopped and looked at him.

“Well, did they?” I asked quietly.

“Did they what?” he looked up at me. “And who, by the way?”

“Those people… Did they have any kids when they adopted that girl?”

He turned away from me and finished his wine.

“Yes,” he said finally. “They did. A two-year-old boy.”

Now my head was spinning, and it wasn’t because of the wine.

“Seth…” I muttered.

“Go to sleep, Rayne,” he said evenly. “Or you’ll have a hell of a morning tomorrow.”

I stood there for the next five minutes, but he never said anything else, and I finally went to bed.