Зенна Гендерсон - The People

"On Earth," Johannan smiled. "There is a Group of the People. More than one Group, they say. They have been here, we know, since the end of the last century. My wife was of Earth. She returned to the New Home on the ship we sent to Earth for the refugees. She and I met on the New Home. I am not familiar with Earth-that's why, though I was oriented to locate the Canyon from the air, I am fairly thoroughly lost to it from the ground."
"Mark," Meris leaned over and tapped Mark's knee. "He thinks he has explained everything."
Mark laughed. "Maybe he has. Maybe we just need a few years for absorption and amplification. Questions, Mrs. Edwards?"
"Yes," said Meris, her hand softly on Lala's shoulder.
"When are you leaving, Johannan?"
"I must first find the Group," said Johannan. "So, if Lala could stay-" Meris's hands betrayed her. "For a little while longer," he emphasized. "It would help."
"Of course," said Meris. "Not ours to keep."
"The boys," said Johannan suddenly. "Those in the ear. There was a most unhealthy atmosphere. It was an accident, of course. I tried to lift out of the way, but I was taken unawares. But there was little concern-"
"There will be," said Mark grimly. "Their hearing is Friday."
"There was one," said Johannan slowly, "who felt pain and compassion-"
"Tad," said Meris. "He doesn't really belong-"
"But he associated-"
"Yes," said Mark, "consent by silence."
The narrow, pine-lined road swept behind the car, the sunlight flicking across the hood like pale, liquid pickets. Lala bounced on Meris's lap, making excited, unintelligible remarks about the method of transportation and the scenery going by the windows. Johannan sat in the back seat being silently absorbed in his new world. The trip to town was a three-fold expedition-to attend the hearing for the boys involved in the accident-to start Johannan on his search for the Group, and to celebrate the completion of Mark's manuscript.
They had left it blockily beautiful on the desk, awaiting the triumphant moment when it would be wrapped and sent on its way and when Mark would suddenly have large quantifies of uncommitted time on his hands for the first time in years.
"What is it?" Johannan had asked.
"His book," said Meris. "A reference textbook for one of those frightening new fields that are in the process of developing. I can't even remember its name, let alone understand what it's about."
Mark laughed. "I've explained a dozen times. I don't think she wants to remember. The book's to be used by a number of universities for their textbook in the field if, if it can be ready for next year's classes. If it can't be available in time, another one will be used and all the concentration of years.-" He was picking up Johannan's gesture.
"So complicated-" said Meris.
"Oh yes," said Johannan. "Earth's in the complication stage."
"Complication stage?" asked Meris.
"Yes," said Johannan. "See that tree out there? Simplicity says-a tree. Then wonder sets in and you begin to analyze it-cells growth, structure, leaves, photosynthesis, roots, bark, rings-on and on until the tree is a mass of complications. Then, finally, with reservations not quite to be removed, you can put it back together again and sigh in simplicity once more-a tree. You're in the complication period in the world now."
"Is true!" laughed Mark. "Is true!"
"Just put the world back together again, someday," said Meris, soberly.
"Amen," said the two men.
But now the book was at the cabin and they were in town for a day that was remarkable for its widely scattered, completely unorganized, confusion. It started off with Lala, in spite of her father's warning words, leaving the car through the open window, headlong, without waiting for the door to be opened. A half a block of pedestrians-five to be exact-rushed to congregate in expectation of blood and death, to be angered in their relief by Lala's laughter, which lit her eyes and bounced her dark curls. Johannan snatched her back into the car-forgetting to take hold of her in the process-and un-Englished at her severely, his brief gestures making clear what would happen to her if she disobeyed again.
The hearing for the boys crinkled Meris's shoulders unpleasantly. Rick appeared with the minors in the course of the questioning and glanced at Mark the whole time, his eyes flicking hatefully back and forth across Mark's face. The gathered parents were an unhappy, uncomfortable bunch, each overreacting according to his own personal pattern and the boys either echoing or contradicting the reactions of their own parents. Meris wished herself out of the whole unhappy mess.
Midway in the proceedings, the door was flung open and Johannan, who had left with a wiggly Lala as soon as his small part was over, gestured at Mark and Meris and un-Englished at them across the whole room. The two left, practically running, under the astonished eyes of the judge and, leaning against the securely closed outside door, looked at Johanann. After he understood their agitation and had apologized in the best way he could pluck from their thoughts, he said, "I had a thought." He shifted Lala, squirming, to his other arm. "The-the doctor who came to look at my head-he-he-" He
gulped and started again. "All the doctors have ties to each other, don't they?"
"Why I guess so," said Meris, rescuing Lala and untangling her brief skirts from under her armpits. "There's a medical society-"
"That is too big," said Johannan after a hesitation. "I mean, Dr.-Dr.-Hilf would know other doctors in this part of the country?" His voice was a question.
"Sure he would," said Mark. "He's been around here since Territorial days. He knows everyone and his dog-including a lot of the summer people."
"Well," said Johannan, "there is a doctor who knows my People. At least there was. Surely he must still be alive. He knows the Canyon. He could tell me."
"Was he from around here?" asked Mark.
"I'm not sure where here is," Johannan reminded, "but a hundred miles or so one way or the other."
"A hundred miles isn't much out here," confirmed Meris. "Lots of times you have to drive that far to get anywhere."
"What was the doctor's name?" asked Mark, snatching for Lala as she shot up out of Meris's arms in pursuit of a helicopter that clacked overhead. He grasped one ankle and pulled her down. Grim-faced, Johannan took Lala from him.
"Excuse me," he said, and, facing Lala squarely to him on one arm, he held her face still and looked at her firmly. In the brief silence that followed, Lala's mischievous smile faded and her face crumpled into sadness and then to tears. She flung herself upon her father, clasping him around his neck and wailing heartbrokenly, her face pushed hard against his shoulder. He un-Englished at her tenderly for a moment, then said, "You see why it is necessary for Lala to come to her grandparents? They are Old Ones and know how to handle such precocity. For her own protection she should be among the People."
"Well, cherub," said Mark, retrieving her from Johannan, "let's go salve your wounded feelings with an ice cream cone."
They sat at one of the tables in the back of one of the general stores and laughed at Lala's reaction to ice cream; then, with her securely involved with two straws and a glass full of crushed ice, they returned to the topic under discussion.
"The only way they ever referred to the doctor was just Doctor-"
He was interrupted by the front door slapping open. Shelves rattled. A can of corn dropped from a pyramid and rolled across the floor. "Dern fool summer people!" trumpeted Dr. Hilf. "Sit around all year long at sea-level getting exercise with a knife and fork then come roaring up here and try to climb Devil's Slide eleven thousand feet up in one morning!"
Then he saw the group at the table. "Well! How'd the hearing go?" he roared, making his way rapidly and massively toward them as he spoke. The three exchanged looks of surprise, then Mark said, "We weren't in at the verdict." He started to get up. "I'll phone-"
"Never mind," boomed Dr. Hilf. "Here comes Tad." They made room at the table for Tad and Dr. Hill.
"We're on probation," confessed Tad. "I felt about an inch high when the judge got through with us. I've had it with that outfit!" He brooded briefly. "Back to my bike, I guess, until I can afford my own car. Chee!" He gazed miserably at the interminable years ahead of him. Maybe even five!
"What about Rick?" asked Mark.
"Lost his license," said Tad uncomfortably. "For six months, anyway. Gee, Mr. Edwards, he's sure mad at you now. I guess he's decided to blame you for everything."
"He should have learned long ago to blame himself for his own misdoings," said Meris. "Rick was a spoiled-rotten kid long before he ever came up here."
"Mark's probably the first one ever to make him realize that he was a brat," said Dr. Hill. "That's plenty to build a hate on." "Walking again!" muttered Tad. "So okay! So t'heck with wheels!"
"Well, since you've renounced the world, the flesh, and Porsches," smiled Mark, "maybe you could beguile the moments with learning about vintage cars. There's plenty of them still functioning around here."
"Vintage cars?" said Tad. "Never heard of them. Imports?"
Mark laughed, "Wait. I'll get you a magazine." He made a selection from the magazine rack in back of them and plopped it down in front of Tad. "There. Read up. There might be a glimmer of light to brighten your dreary midnight."
"Dr. Hilf," said Johannan, "I wonder if you would help me."
"English!" bellowed Dr. Hilf. "Thought you were a foreigner! You don't look as if you need help! Where's your head wound? No right to be healed already!"
"It's not medical," said Johannan. "'I'm trying to find a doctor friend of mine. Only I don't know his name or where he lives."
"Know what state he lives in?" Laughter rumbled from Dr. Hilf.
"No," confessed Johannan, "but I do know he is from this general area and I thought you might know of him. He has helped my People in the past."
"And your people are-" asked Dr. Hilf.
"Excuse me, folks," said Tad, unwinding his long legs and folding the magazine back on itself. "There's my dad, ready to go. I'm grounded. Gotta tag along like a kid. Thanks for everything-and the magazine." And he dejectedly trudged away.
Dr. Hilf was waiting on Johannan, who was examining his own hands intently. "I know so little," said Johannan. "The doctor cared for a small boy with a depressed fracture of the skull. He operated in the wilderness with only the instruments he had with him." Dr. Hilf's eyes flicked to Johannan's face and then away again. "But that was a long way from where he found one of Ours who could make music and was going wrong because he didn't know who he was."
Dr. Hilf waited for Johannan to continue. When he didn't, the doctor pursed his lips and hummed massively.
"I can't help much," said Johannan, finally, "but are there so many doctors who live in the wilds of this area?"
"None," boomed Dr. Hilf. "I'm the farthest out-if I may use that loaded expression. Out in these parts, a sick person has three choices-die, get well on his own, or call me. Your doctor must have come from some town."
It was a disconsolate group that headed back up-canyon. Their mood even impressed itself on Lala and she lay silent and sleepy-eyed in Meris's arms, drowsing to the hum of the car.
Suddenly Johannan leaned forward and put his hand on Mark's shoulder. "Would you stop, please?" he asked. Mark pulled off the road onto the nearest available flat place, threading expertly between scrub oak and small pines. "Let me take Lala." And Lala lifted over the back of the seat without benefit of hands upon her. Johannan sat her up on his lap. "Our People have a highly developed racial memory," he said. "For instance, I have access to the knowledge any of our People have known since the Bright Beginning, and, in lesser measure, to the events that have happened to any of them. Of course, unless you have studied the technique of recall it is difficult to take knowledge from the past, but it's there, available. I am going to see if I can get Lala to recall for me. Maybe her precocity will include recollection also." He looked down at his nestling child and smiled. "It won't be spectacular," he said, "no eyeballs will light up. I'm afraid it'll be tedious for you, especially since it will be subvocal. Lala's spoken vocabulary lags behind her other Gifts. You can drive on, if you like." And he leaned back with Lala in his arms. The two to all appearances were asleep.
Meris looked at Mark and Mark looked at Meris, and Meris felt an irrepressible bubble of laughter start up her throat. She spoke hastily to circumvent it.
"Your manuscript," she said.
"I got a box for it," said Mark easing out onto the road again. "Chip found one for me when you took Lala to the rest room. Couldn't have done better if I'd had it made to measure. What a weight-" he yawned in sudden release-"What a weight off my mind. I'll be glad when it's off my hands, too. Thank God!
Thank God it's finished!"
The car was topping the Rim when Johannan stirred, and a faint twitter of release came from Lala. Meris turned sideways to look at them inquiringly.
"May I get out?" asked Johannan. "Lala has recalled enough that I think my search won't be too long."
"I'll drive you back," said Mark, pulling up by the road.
"Thanks, but it won't be necessary." Johannan opened the door and, after a tight embrace for Lala and an un-English word or two, stepped out. "I have ways of going. If you will care for Lala until I return."
"Of course!" said Meris, reaching for the child who flowed over the back of the seat into her arms in one complete motion. "God bless, and return soon."
"Thank you," said Johannan and walked into the roadside bushes. They saw a ripple in the branches, the turn of a shoulder, the flick of a foot, one sharp startling glimpse of Johannan rising against the blue and white of the afternoon sky and then he was hidden in the top branches of the trees.
"Shoosh!" Meris slumped under Lala's entire weight.
"Mark, is this a case of folie a deux, or is it really happening?"
"Well," said Mark, starting the car again. "I doubt if we two could achieve the same hallucinations simultaneously, so let's assume it's really happening."
When they finally reached the cabin and stopped the motor, they sat for a moment in the restful, active silence of the hills. Meris, feeling the soft warmth of Lala against her and the precious return of things outside herself, shivered a little remembering her dead self who had stared so blankly so many hours out of the small windows, tearlessly crying, soundlessly wailing, wrapped in misery. She laughed and hugged Lala. "Maybe we should get a leash for this small person," she said to Mark. "I don't think I could follow in Johannan's footsteps."
"Supper first," said Mark as he fumbled with the padlock on the cabin door. He glanced, startled, back over his shoulder at Meris. "It's broken," he said. "Wrenched open-" He flung the door open hastily, and froze on the doorstep. Meris pushed forward to look beyond him.
Snow had fallen in the room-snow covered everything-a smudged, crumpled snow of paper, flour, sugar, and detergent. Every inch of the cabin was covered by the tattered, soaked, torn, crumpled snow of Mark's manuscript! Mark stooped slowly, like an old man, and took up one page. Mingled detergent and maple syrup clung, clotted, and slithered off the edge of one of the diagrams that had taken two days to complete. He let the page fall and shuffled forward, ankle-deep in the obscene, incredible chaos. Meris hardly recognized the face he turned to her.
"I've lost our child again," he said tightly. "This-" he gestured at the mess about them "-this was my weeping and my substitute for despair. My creation to answer death." He backhanded a clutter of papers off the bunk and slumped down until he lay, face to the wall, motionless.
Mark said not a word nor turned around in the hours that followed. Meris thought perhaps he slept at times, but she said nothing to him as she cautiously scrabbled through the mess in the cabin. She found, miraculously undamaged, a chapter and a half of pages under the cupboard. With careful hands she salvaged another sheaf of papers from where they had sprayed across the top of the cupboard. All the time she searched and sorted through the mess in the cabin, Lala sat, unnaturally well behaved and solemn, and watched her, getting down only once to salvage Deeko from a mound of sugar and detergent, clucking unhappily as she dusted the doll off.
It was late and cold when Meris put the last ruined sheet in the big cardboard box they had carried groceries home in, and the last salvageable sheet on the desk. She looked silently at the clutter in the box and the slender sheaf on the desk, shivered and turned to build up the dying fire in the stove. Her mouth tightened and the sullen flicker of charring, wadded paper in the stove painted age and pain upon her face. She stirred the embers
with the lid-lifter and rebuilt the fire. She prepared supper, fed Lala, and put her to bed. Then she sat on the edge of the lower bunk by Mark's rigid back and touched him gently.
"Supper's ready," she said. "Then I'll need some help in scrubbing up-the floor, the walls, the furniture." She choked on a sound that was half laughter and half sob. "There's plenty of detergent around already. We may bubble ourselves out of house and home."
For a sick moment she was afraid he wouldn't respond. Just like l was, she thought achingly. Just like l was! Then he sat up slowly, brushed his arm back across his expressionless face and his rumpled hair, and stood up.
When they finally threw out the last bucket of scrub water and hung out the last scrub rag, Meris rubbed her water-wrinkled hands down her weary sides and said, "Tomorrow we'll start on the manuscript again."
"No," said Mark. "That's all finished. The boys got carbon-copy and all. It would take weeks for me to do a rewrite if I could ever do it. We don't have weeks. My leave of absence is over, and the deadline for the manuscript is this next week. We'll just have to chalk this up as lost. Let the dead past bury the dead."
He went to bed, his face turned again from the light. Meris, through the blur of her slow tears, gathered up the crumpled pages that had pulled out with the blankets from the back of the bunk, smoothed them onto the salvage pile, and went to bed, too.
For the next couple of days Mark was like an old man. He sat against the cabin wall in the sun, his arms resting on his thighs, his hands dangling from limp wrists, looking at the nothing that the senile and finished find on the ground. He moved slowly and reluctantly to the table to push his food around, to bed to lie, hardly breathing, but wide-eyed in the dark, to whatever task Meris set him, forgetting in the middle of it what be was doing.
Lala followed him at first, chattering un-English at her usual great rate, leaning against him when he sat, peering into his indifferent face. Then she stopped talking to him and followed him only with her eyes. Then the third day she came crying into Meris's arms and wept heartbrokenly against her shoulder.
Then her tears stopped, glistened on her cheeks a moment, and were gone. She squirmed out of Meris's embrace and trotted to the window. She pushed a chair up close to the wall, climbed up on it, pressed her forehead to the chilly glass and stared out into the late afternoon.
Tad came over on his bike, bubbling over with the new idea of old cars.
"Why, there's parts of a whole bunch of these cars all over around here-" he cried, fluttering the tattered magazine at Mark. "And have you seen how much they're asking for some of them! Why I could put myself through college on used parts out of our old dumps! And some of these vintage jobs are still running around here! Kiltie has a model A-you've seen it! He shines it like a new shoe every week! And there's an old Overland touring car out in back of our barn, just sitting there, falling apart-"
Mark's silence got through to him then, and he asked, troubled, "What's wrong? Are you mad at me for something?"
Meris spoke into Mark's silence. "No, Tad, it's nothing you've done-" She took him outside, ostensibly to help bring in wood to fill the woodbox and frilled him in on the events. When they returned, loaded down with firewood, he dumped his armload into the box and looked at Mark.
"Gee, whiz, Mr. Edwards. Uh-uh-gee whiz!" He gathered up his magazine and his hat and, shuffling his feet for a moment said, "Well, 'bye now," and left, grimacing back at Meris, wordless. Lala was still staring out the window. She hadn't moved or made a sound while Tad was there. Meris was frightened.
"Mark!" She shook his arm gently. "Look at Lala. She's been like that for almost an hour. She pays no attention to me at all. Mark!"
Mark's attention came slowly back to the cabin and to Meris.
"Thank goodness!" she cried. "I was beginning to feel that I was the one that was missing!"
At that moment, Lala plopped down from the chair and trotted off to the bathroom, a round red spot marking her forehead where she had leaned so long.
"Well!" Meris was pleased. "It must be suppertime. Every one's gathering around again." And she began the bustle of supper-getting. Lala trotted around with her, getting in the way, hindering with her help.
"No, Lala!" said Meris, "I told you once already. Only three plates. Here, put the other one over there." Lala took the plate, waited patiently until Meris turned to the stove, then, lifting both feet from the floor, put the plate back on the table. The soft click of the flatware as she patterned it around the plate, caught Meris's attention. "Oh, Lala!" she cried, half-laughing, half-exasperated. "Well, all right. If you can't count, okay. Four it will be." She started convulsively and dropped a fork as a knock at the door roused even Mark. "Hungry guest coming," she laughed nervously as she picked up the fork. "Well, stew stretches."
She started for the door, fear, bred of senseless violence, crisping along her spine, but Lala was ahead of her, fluttering like a bird, with excited bird cries against the door panels, her hands fumbling at the knob and the night chain Meris had insisted on installing. Meris unfastened and unlocked and opened the door.
It was Johannan, anxious-eyed and worried, who slipped in and gathered up a shrieking Lala. When he had finally un-Englished her to a quiet, contented clinging, he turned to Meris. "Lala called me back," he said. "I've found my Group. She told me Mark was sick-that bad things had happened."
"Yes," said Meris, stirring the stew and moving it to the back of the stove. "The boys came while we were gone and ruined Mark's manuscript beyond salvage. And Mark-Mark is crushed. He lost all those months of labor through sense less, vindictive-" She turned away from Johannan's questioning face and stirred the stew again, blindly. "But," protested Johannan, "if once it was written, he has it still. He can do it again."
"Time is the factor:" Mark's voice, rusty and harsh, broke in on Johannan. "And to rewrite from my notes-" He shook his head and sagged again.
"But-but-!" cried Johannan still puzzled, putting Lala to one side, where she hovered, sitting on air, crooning to Deeko, until she drifted slowly down to the floor. "It's all there! It's been written! It's a whole thing! All you have to do is put it again on paper. Your word scriber-"
"I don't have total recall," said Mark. "Even if I did, just to put it on paper again-come see our 'word scriber.'" He smiled a small bent smile as Johannan poked fingers into the mechanism of the typewriter and clucked unhappily, sounding so like Lala that Meris almost laughed. "Such slowness! Such complications!"
Johannan looked at Mark. "If you want, my People can help you get your manuscript back again."
"It's finished," said Mark. "Why agonize over it any more?" He turned to the blank darkness of the window.
"Was it worth the effort of writing?" asked Johannan.
"I thought so," said Mark. "And others did, too."
"Would it have served a useful purpose?" asked Johannan.
"Of course it would have!" Mark swung angrily from the window. "It covered an area that needs to be covered. It was new-the first book in the field!" He turned again to the window.
"Then," said Johannan simply, "we will make it again. Have you paper enough?"
Mark swung back, his eyes glittering. Meris stepped between his glare and Johannan. "This summer I have come back from the dead," she reminded. "And you caught a baby for me, pulling her down from the sky by one ankle. Johannan went looking for his people through the treetops. And a three-year-old called him back by leaning against the window. If all these things could happen, why can't Johannan bring your manuscript back?"
"But if he tries and can't-" Mark began.
"Then we can let the dead past bury the dead," said Meris sharply, "which little item you have not been letting happen so far!"
Mark stared at her, then flushed a deep, painful flush.
"Okay, then," he said. "Stir the bones again! Let him put meat back on them if he can!" The next few hours were busy with patterned confusion. Mark roared off through the gathering darkness to persuade Chip to open the store for typing paper. And people arrived. Just arrived, smiling, at the door, familiar friends before they spoke, and Meris, glancing out to see if the heavens them selves had split open from astonishment saw, hovering treetop high, a truly vintage car, an old pickup that clanked softly to itself, spinning a wheel against a branch as it waited.
"If Tad could see that!" she thought, with a bubble of laughter nudging her throat.
She hurried back indoors further to make welcome the newcomers-Valancy, Karen, Davy, Jemmy. The women gathered Lala in with soft cries and shining eyes and she wept briefly upon them in response to their emotions, then leaped upon the fellows and nearly strangled them with her hugs.
Johannan briefed the four in what had happened and what was needed. They discussed the situation, glanced at the few salvaged pages on the desk and sent, eyes closed briefly, for someone else. His name was Remy and he had a special "Gift" for plans and diagrams. He arrived just before Mark got back, so the whole group of them confronted him when he flung the door open and stood there with his bundle of paper.
He blinked, glanced at Meris, then, shifting his burden to one arm, held out a welcoming hand. "I hadn't expected an invasion," he smiled. "To tell the truth, I didn't know what to expect." He thumped the package down on the table and grinned at Meris. "Chip's sure now that writers are psychos," he said. "Any normal person could wait till morning for paper or use flattened grocery bags!" He shrugged out of his jacket. "Now."
Jemmy said, "It's really quite simple. Since you wrote your book and have read it through several times, the thing exists as a whole in your memory, just as it was on paper. So all we have to do is put it on paper again." He gestured.
"That's all?" Mark's hands went back through his hair.
"That's all? Man, that's all I had to do after my notes were organized, months ago! Maybe I should have settled for flattened grocery bags! Why, the sheer physical-" The light was draining out of his face.
"Wait-wait!" Jemmy's hand closed warmly over his sagging shoulder. "Let me finish."
"Davy, here, is our gadgeteer. He dreams up all kinds of knick-knacks and among other things, he has come forth with a word scriber. Even better"-he glanced at Johannan-"than the ones brought from the New Home. All you have to do is think and the scriber writes down your thoughts. Here– try it-" he said into Mark's very evident skepticism.
Davy put a piece of paper on the table in front of Mark and, on it, a small gadget that looked vaguely like a small sanding block in that it was curved across the top and flat on the bottom. "Go on," urged Davy, "think something. You don't even have to vocalize. I've keyed it to you. Karen sorted your setting for me."
Mark looked around at the interested, watching faces, at Meris's eyes, blurred with hesitant hope, and then down at the scriber. The scriber stirred, then slid swiftly across the paper, snapping back to the beginning of a line again, as quick as thought. Davy picked up the paper and handed it to Mark. Meris crowded to peer over his shoulder.
Of all the dern-fool things! As if it were possible-Look at the son-a-gun go!
All neatly typed, neatly spaced, appropriately punctuated. Hope flamed up in Mark's eyes. "Maybe so," he said, turning to Jemmy. "What do I do, now?"
"Well," said Jemmy. "You have your whole book in your mind, but a mass of other things, too. It'd be almost impossible for you to think through your
book without any digressions or side thoughts, so Karen will blanket your mind
for you except for your book-"
"Hypnotism-" Mark's withdrawal was visible.
"No," said Karen. "Just screening out interference. Think how much time was taken up in your original draft by distractions-"
Meris clenched her hands and gulped, remembering all the hours Mark had had to-to baby-sit her while she was still rocking her grief like a rag doll with all the stuffings pulled out. She felt an arm across her shoulders and turned to Valancy's comforting smile. "All over," said her eyes, kindly, "all past."
"How about all the diagrams-" suggested Mark, "I can't vocalize-"
"That's where Remy comes in," said Jemmy. "All you have to do is visualize each one. He'll have his own scriber right here and he'll take it from there."
The cot was pulled up near the table and Mark disposed himself comfortably on it. The paper was unwrapped and stacked all ready. Remy and Davy arranged themselves strategically. Surrounded by briefly bowed heads, Jemmy said, "We are met together in Thy name." Then Karen touched Mark gently on the forehead with one fingertip.
Mark suddenly lifted himself on one elbow. "Wait," he said, "things are going too fast. Why-why are you doing this for us, anyway? We're strangers. No concern of yours. Is it to pay us for taking care of Lala? In that case-"
Karen smiled. "Why did you take care of Lala? You could have turned her over to the authorities. A strange child, no relation, no concern of yours."
"That's a foolish question," said Mark. "She needed help. She was cold and wet and lost. Anyone-"
"You did it for the same reason we are doing this for you," said Karen; "Just because we had our roots on a different world doesn't make us of different flesh. There are no strangers in God's universe. You found an unhappy situation that you could do something about, so you did it. Without stopping to figure out the whys and wherefores. You did it just because that's what love does."
Mark lay back on the narrow pillow, "Thank you," he said. Then he turned his face to Meris. "Okay?"
"Okay." Her voice jerked a little past her emotion. "Love you, Mark!"
"Love you, Meris!"
Karen's fingertip went to Mark's forehead again. "I need contact," she said a little apologetically, "especially with an Outsider."
Meris fell asleep, propped up on the bunk, eyes lulled by the silent sli-i-i-ide, flip! sli-i-i-ide, flip! of the scriber, and the brisk flutter of finished pages from the tall pile of paper to the short one. She opened drowsy eyes to a murmur of voices and saw that the two piles of paper were almost balanced. She sat up to ease her neck where it had been bent against the cabin wall.
"But it's wrong, I tell you!" Remy was waving the paper.
"Look, this line, here, where it goes-"
"Remy," said Jemmy, "are you sure it's wrong or is it just another earlier version of what we know now?"
"No!" said Remy. "This time it's not that. This is a real mistake. He couldn't possibly have meant it to be like that "
"Okay," Jemmy nodded to Karen and she touched Mark's forehead, He opened his eyes and half sat up. The scriber flipped across the paper and Karen stilled it with a touch.
"What is it?" he asked, "something go wrong?" "No, it's this diagram." Remy brought it to him. "I think you have an error here. Look where this goes-"
The two bent over the paper. Meris looked around the cabin. Valancy was rocking a sleeping Lala in her arms. Davy was sound asleep in the upper bunk. At least his dangling leg looked very asleep. Johannan was absorbed in two books simultaneously. He seemed to be making a comparison of some sort. Meris lay back again, sliding down to a more comfortable position. For the first
time in months and months the cabin was lapped from side to side with peace and relaxation. Even the animated discussion going on was no ruffling of the comfortable calmness. She heard, on the edge of her ebbing consciousness, "Why no! That's not right at all!" Mark was astonished. "Hoo boy! If I'd sent that in with an error like that! Thanks, fella-" And sleep flowed over Meris.
She awoke later to the light chatter of Lala's voice and opened drowsy eyes to see her trailing back from the bathroom, her feet tucked up under her gown away from the chilly floor as she drifted back to Valancy's arms. The leg above Meris's head swung violently and withdrew, to be replaced by Davy's dangling head. He said something to Lala. She laughed and lifted herself up to his outstretched arms. There was a stirring around above Meris's head before sleeping silence returned.
Valancy stood and stretched widely. She moved over to the table and thumbed the stack of paper.
"Going well," she said softly.
"Yes," said Jemmy, "I feel a little like a midwife, snatching something new-born in the middle of the night."
"Dern shame to stop here, though," said Remy. "With such a good beginning-oh, barring a few excursions down dead ends-if we could only tack on a few more chapters."
"'Uh-uh!" Jemmy stood and stretched, letting his arms fall around Valancy's shoulders. "You know better than that-"
"Not even one little hint?"
"Not even," Jemmy was firm.
Sleep flowed over Meris again until pushed back by Davy's sliding over the edge of the upper bunk.
"Right in the stomach!" he moaned as he dropped to the floor. "Such a kicking kid I never met. How'd you survive?" he asked Valancy.
"Nary a kick," she laughed. "Technique-that's what it takes." "I was just wondering," said Davy, opening the stove and probing the coals before he put in another chunk of oak.
"That kid Johannan was talking about-the one that's got interested in vintage cars. What about that place up on Bearcat Flat? You know, that little box canyon where we put all our old jalopies when we discarded them. Engines practically unused. Lifting's cheaper and faster. Of course the seats and the truck beds are kinda beat up, and the paint. Trees scratch the daylights out of paint. How many are there there? Let's see. The first one was about 19-ought-something-"
Johannan looked up from his books. "He said something about selling parts or cars to get money for college-" "Or restoring them!" Davy cried. "Hey, that could be fun! If he's the kind that would-"
"He is," said Johannan and went back to his reading.
"It's almost daylight." Davy went to the window and parted the curtains. "Wonder how early a riser he is?"
Meris turned her back to the light and slid back under sleep again.
Noise and bustle filled the cabin.
Coffee was perking fragrantly, eggs cracking, bacon spitting itself to crispness. Remy was cheerfully mashing slices of bread down on the hot stove lid and prying up the resultant toast. Lala was flicking around the table, putting two forks at half the places and two knives at the others, then giggling her way back around with redistribution after Johannan pointed out her error.
Meris, reaching for a jar of peach marmalade on the top shelf of the cupboard, wondered how a day could feel so new and so wonderful. Mark sat at his desk opening and closing the box wherein lay the finished manuscript. He opened it again and fingered the top edge of the stack, He caught Jemmy's sympathetic grin and grinned back.
"Just making sure it's really there," he explained. "Magic put it in there. Magic might take it out again."
"Not this magic. I'll even ride shotgun for you into town and see that it gets sent off okay," said Jemmy.
"Magic or no," said Mark, sobering, "once more I can say Thank God! Thank God it's done!"
"Amen!" said a hovering Lala, and, laughing, Jemmy scooped her out of the air as they all found places at the table. Tad was an early riser. He was standing under the hovering pickup, gaping upward in admiring astonishment.
"Oops!" said Davy, with a sidewise glance at Jemmy. Tad was swept up in a round of introductions during which the pickup lowered slowly to the ground.
Tad turned from the group back to the pickup. "Look at it!" he said. "It must be at least forty years old!" His voice pushed its genesis back beyond the pyramids.
"At least that," said Davy. "Wanta see the motor?"
"Do I!" He stood by impatiently as Davy wrestled with the hood. Then he blinked. "Hey! How did it get way up there? I mean, how'd it get down-"
"Look," said Davy hastily, "see this goes to the spark-"
The others, laughing, pried into Mark's car and drove away from the two absorbed autophiles-in-embryo.
The car pulled over onto a pine flat halfway back from town and the triumphal mailing of the manuscript. This was the parting place. Davy would follow later with the pickup.
"It's over," said Meris, her shoulders sagging a little as she put Lala's small bundle of belongings into Valancy's hands.
"All over." Her voice was desolate.
"Only this little episode," comforted Valancy. "It's really only begun." She put Lala into Meris's arms. "Tell her good-by, Lala."
Lala hugged Meris stranglingly tight saying, "Love you, Meris!"
"Love you, Lala!" Meris's voice was shaken with laughter and sorrow.
"It's just that she filled up the empty places so wonderfully well," she explained to Valancy.
"Yes," said Valancy softly, her eyes tender and compassionate. "But, you know," she went on. "You are pregnant again!"
Before Meris could produce an intelligible thought, good-bys were finished and the whole group was losing itself in the tangle of creek-side vegetation. Lala's vigorous waving of Deeko was the last sign of them before the leaves closed behind them.
Meris and Mark stood there, Meris's head pressed to Mark's shoulder, both too drained for any emotion. Then Meris stirred and moved toward the car, her eyes suddenly shining. "I don't think I can wait," she said, "I don't think-"
"Wait for what?" asked Mark, following her. "To tell Dr. Hilf-" She covered her mouth, dismayed.
"Oh, Mark! We never did find out that doctor's name!"
"Not that Hilf is drooling to know," said Mark, starting the car, "but next time-"
"Oh, yes," Meris sat back, her mouth curving happily, "next time, next time!"
The next time wasn't so long by the calendar, but measured by the anticipation and the marking time, it seemed an endless eternity. Then one night Meris, looking down into the warm, moistly fragrant blanket-bundle in the crook of her elbow, felt time snap back into focus. It snapped back so completely and satisfyingly that the long, empty time of grief dwindled to a memory-ache tucked back in the fading past.
"And the next one," she said drowsily to Mark, "will be a brother for her."
The nurse laughed. "Most new mothers feel, at this point, that they are through with childbearing. But I guess they soon forget because we certainly get a lot of repeaters!"
The Saturday before the baby's christening, Meris felt a stir of pleasure as she waited for her guests to arrive. So much of magic was interwoven with her
encounters with them, the magic of being freed from grief, of bringing forth a new life, and the magic of the final successful production of Mark's book. She was wondering, with a pleasurable apprehension, what means of transportation the guests would use, treetop high, one wheel spinning lazily! when a clanging clatter drew her to the front window.
There in all its glory, shining with love, new paint, and dignity, sailed the Overland that had been moldering behind Tad's barn. Flushed with excitement and pride, Tad, with an equally proud Johannan seated beside him, steered the vehicle ponderously over to the curb. There it hiccoughed, jumped, and expired with a shudder.
In the split second of silence after the noise cut off, there was a clinking rattle and a nut fell down from somewhere underneath and rolled out into the street.
There was a shout of relieved and amused laughter and the car erupted people apparently through and over every door. Meris shrank back a little, still tender in her social contact area. Then calling, "Mark, they're here," she opened the door to the babble of happy voices.
All the voices turned out to be female-type voices and she looked around and asked, "But where-?" "The others?" Karen asked. "Behold!" And she gestured toward the old car where the only signs of life were three sets of feet protruding from under it, with a patient Jemmy leaning on a brightly black fender above them. "May I present, the feet, Tad, Davy, and Johannan?" Karen laughed.
"Johannan is worse than either of the boys. You see, he'd never ever seen a car before he rode in yours!"
Finally everyone was met and greeted and all the faces swam up to familiarity again out of the remoteness of the time Before the Baby.
Lala-forever Lala in spite of translations!-peered at the bundle on Valancy's lap. "It's little," she said.
Meris was startled. Valancy smiled at her. "Did you expect her to un-English forever?" she teased. "Yes, Lala, it's a girl baby, very new and very little."
"I'm not little," said Lala, straightening from where she leaned against Meris and tightening to attention, her tummy rounding out in her effort to assume proportions. "I'm big!" She moved closer to Meris. "I had a birthday."
"Oh, how nice!" said Meris.
"We don't know what year to put on it, though," said Lala solemnly. "I want to put six, but they want to put five."
"Oh, six, of course!" exclaimed Meris.
Lala launched herself onto Meris and hugged her hair all askew. "Love you, Meris!" she cried. "Six, of course!"
"There has been a little discussion about the matter," said Valancy. "The time element differs between here and the New Home. And since she is precocious-"
"The New Home," said Meris thoughtfully. "The New Home. You know, I suspended all my disbelief right at the beginning of this Lala business, but now I feel questions bubbling and frothing-"
"I thought I saw question marks arising in both your eyes," laughed Valancy. "After church tomorrow, after this cherub receives her name before God and the congregation, we'll tackle a few of those questions. But now-" she hugged the wide-eyed, moist-mouthed child gently "-now this is the center of our interest."
The warm Sunday afternoon was slipping into evening. Davy, Tad, and Johannan were-again-three pairs of feet protruding from under the Overland. The three had managed to nurse it along all the way to the University City, but now it stubbornly sat in the driveway and merely rocked, voiceless, no matter how long they cranked it.
The three of them had been having the time of their lives. They had visited the Group's auto boneyard up-canyon and then, through avid reading of everything relevant that they could put their hands on, had slowly and bedazzledly come to a realization of what a wealth of material they had to
work with.
Tad, after a few severe jolts from working with members of The People, such as seeing cars and parts thereof clattering massively unsupported through the air and watching Johannan weld a rip in a fender by tracing it with a fingertip, then concentrating on the task, had managed to compartmentalize the whole car business and shut it off securely from any need to make the methods of The People square with Outsiders' methods. And his college fund was budding beautifully.
So there the three of them were under the Overland that was the current enthusiasm, ostensibly to diagnose the trouble, but also to delight in breathing deeply of sun-warmed metal and to taste the oily fragrance of cup grease and dust.
Mark and Jemmy were perched on the patio wall, immersed in some point from Mark's book. Lala was wrapped up in the wonder of Alicia's tiny, flailing fist, that if intercepted, would curl so tightly around a finger or thumb.
Meris smiled at Valancy and shifted the burden of 'Licia to her other arm. "I think I'd better park this bundle some where. She's gained ten pounds in the last five minutes so I think that a nap is indicated." With the help of Valancy, Karen, and Bethie, Meris gathered up various odds and ends of equipment and carried the already sleeping 'Licia into the house.
Later, in the patio, the women gathered again, Lala a warm weight in Valancy's lap.
"Now," said Meris, comfortably. "Now's the time to erase a few of my question marks. What is the Home? Where is the Home? Why is the New Home?"
"Not so fast-not so fast!" laughed Valancy. "This is Bethie's little red wagon. Let her drag it!"
"Oh, but-I" Bethie blushed and shook her head. "Why mine? I'd rather-"
"But you have been wanting to Assemble for Shadow, anyway, so that she'd have a verbalized memory of the Crossing. It's closer through your line." Her smile softened as she turned to Meris. "My parents were in the Crossing, but they were Called during the landing. Bethie's mother was in the Crossing and survived. Karen's grandparents did, too, but that's a step farther back. And, Bethie, haven't you already-" "Yes," said Bethie softly, "from the Home to the beginning of the Crossing. Oh, how strange! How strange and wonderful! Oh, Valancy! To have lost the Home!"
"Now you're question-marking my eyes," laughed Valancy.
"I've never gone by chapter and verse through that life myself. Jemmy-Mark-we're ready!"
"It'll be better, subvocal," said Bethie shyly. "Karen, you could touch Meris's hand so she can see, too. And Jemmy, you and Mark." The group settled comfortably.
"I went back through my mother's remembrances," Bethie's soft voice came through a comfortable dimming and fading of the patio. "Her grandmother before her verbalized a great deal. It was a big help. We can take it from her. We will begin on one happy morning-"
DELUGE
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