Зенна Гендерсон - Holding Wonder

The outside of me walked back to my carrel after the break, as usual, but the inside of me, for some reason, crept back unhappily and huddled tightly as I sat down in my chair. I stared blindly at the viewer, thinking nothing-only feeling a three-quarter beat pulsing-I thumbed the response button viciously and went off into history, silencing the tutor's jabbing introductory voice.
And then of course it was Release Time today. I usually like the break from regular school and feel pleased and loose for sure when we all go up to the church floor of the school complex and drift off, each to his own instructional class. I like getting into discussions of matters in which Man is the most important thing about earth instead of his just being an eddy of life around the bottom of the eyeless, towering buildings. But that day we had Immortality for our lesson. I suddenly couldn't even want to believe in it. Not with flesh so soft and unhappy and walls so hard and uncaring. I drooped, wordless, through the class.
Afterwards, everyone else left the building to go to their usual glides, but I cut through another way to go on an errand for Mother. All alone in the school Open, I looked up and up the sheer wall that towered without an opening on this side from Crib Level all the way up to Doctor's Degree. And it scared me. What if it should fall on me! I was so little and I could die! The building looked as though it didn't know I was alive. It looked solid enough to go on forever and ever after I died. I suddenly hammered my fists against the vitricrete and cried, "I'm supposed to be immortal, not you! You you unlive you! I've got a soul. Whoever heard of a vitricrete soul!"
But I was the one that bruised, and the vitricrete didn't even plop when I hit it.
And then home to Mother's breaking. And my tears in the slot. And a weary going on with the usual routine.
Dad came home that evening more silent than ever, if that's possible. My tears were long dried and I was sitting on the floor in front of the telaworld watching the evening news. I gave Dad a hi and cut my picture to half a screen to clear for his sports program. I removed the ear so I could hear what Dad had to say.
"Chis?" Dad asked as he flipped a finger to inflate the chair to his weight before he dropped wearily into its curving angles.
"Not in yet," said Mother guiltily, her face pinking.
"He knows," said Dad. "Guidance warned us-and him. If he glide-hops once more or enters male-subteen-restricted areas, he'll go to therapy."
"And so will we," I thought sickly. "The whole family will have to go to therapy if Chis does. Illness isn't isolated."
"I-I-" Mother looked miserable. "Darin, can't we do something for Chis? Can't we get him brighted on anything?"
"Like what?" Dad filled his half of the telaworld with his underwater program and fumbled for the ear. "Even Guidance is stumped."
"But at ten?" Mother protested. "At ten to be so quenched on everything?"
"Guidance says they're working on it." Dad sharpened the focus on his half-screen. A shark seemed to swim right off the screen at us. "He's on page 14 in volume 2-of the ten-year-olds. I wonder which, page they'd have me on?" He turned from the telaworld. "I don't imagine the list would be very long of malcontent males who stop in midmorning to remember the feel of sand dissolving from under his bare feet in a numbing-cold, running stream."
"I wish," said Mother passionately, "that we could-just go!"
"Where?" asked Dad. "How? We'd have to put in for locale amends, specifying a destination and motivation. Besides, is there any place-"
"Just any place," said Mother rigidly.
"Would it be different?" I asked, feeling hope surge up inside me. Mother looked at me silently for a moment; then she sighed and her wrists went limp. "No," she almost whispered. "It would be no different."
I didn't know when Chis came in. I guess he slid the secondary exit. But there he was, sitting in his corner, twirls and twirling a green stem between his fingers-a green stem with four leaves on it. I felt my heart sag. He had picket leaf! From greenery!
Mother saw him about the same time I did. "Chis," she said softly, and Dad turned to look. "Is that a real leaf?"
"Yes," he said, "a real one."
"Then you'd better put it in water before it dies," said Mother, not even a tone in her voice to hint of all the laws; he had broken.
"In water?" Chis' eyes opened wide and so did mine.
"Yes," said Mother. "It will last longer." She got a plastiglass from the dispenser and filled it. She held it out to Chis. "Put the stem down in the water," she said. And he did. And stood there with the glass tipping almost to spilling and looked at Dad. Then he leaned over and put the plastiglass on the table by Dad's chair. Dad looked at the leaf and then at Chis
"Will it grow?" asked Chis.
"No," said Dad. "It has no roots. But it will stay green for a while."
Chis reached his hand out and touched Dad gently on the shoulder. Dad showed no withdrawal. "I won't ever take another," offered Chis.
"It's better not," said Dad.
"But someday," cried Chis, "I'm going away! I'm going to find a place where I can run on a million, million leaves and no one will even notice!"
I hunched there in front of the telaworld and felt myself splintering slowly in all directions into blunt slivers that could never fit together again. This must be what they meant by crazing across. I was immortal, but I must die. And soon, if I couldn't touch the soil I had never touched. I didn't want to touch anywhere, and yet I could still feel a hand enveloping mine and another pressed firmly against my waist. I hated where I was, but sickened to think of change. But change has to come because. it had been noticeable that Dad hadn't withdrawn when his own son touched him. Nothing would be smooth or fitted together again-
I creaked tiredly to my feet. Mother quirked an eyebrow at me. "Only to the perimeter," I said. "I want to walk before dimming."
Outside our unit I paused and looked up the endless height of the building-blind, eyeless, but, because it is an older unit, I could still see scars where windows used to be-when windows were desirable. I walked slowly toward the perimeter, automatically reminding myself not to overstep. With Chis already on warning, it wouldn't do for me to be Out of Area after hours. Someday-some long away day-I'd be twenty-one and be able to flip my Ident casually at the Eye and open any area, any hour of the day-well, not the Restricted, of course. Or the Classified. Or the Industrial. Or the-well, I have the list at home.
Around me, as up as I could see, were buildings. Around me as far as I could see, were buildings. The Open of our area, ringed about by the breathing greeneries, must have had people coming and going, surely a few, but I didn't see them. I seldom do any more. Of course, you never deliberately look at anyone. That's rude. Nor ever speak in public places except when you absolutely have to. You do murmur to friends you meet. And because you don't look and don't speak, people sort of get lost against the bigness and solidbuiltness of the complexes. So I walked alone in the outer dimming, my pneumonosoles not even whispering against the resilicrete floor of the Open.
I found myself counting steps and wondered why. Then I smiled, remembering. Twenty-six paces this direction, then fourteen to the left, four small slides to the front, and a settling of feet slightly the other way, and– I slowly turned my head. Yes, I had remembered my old formula right. I had found the exact spot under the lights. No matter which way I looked, I could see a shadow of me. I was standing in the center of a bouquet of my own shadows! How pleased I used to be with the visual magic. No matter what shadow I saw, it was mine! All of the me's belonging to the one me! How enchanting it had been when I was young. But now the shadows no longer pointed at me –but away. I wasn't being put together any more. I was being pulled apart-thinned to no more substance than my own shadow. I ached. Then I turned back to the unit. All the other me's went somewhere else. I felt drafty and very small at the complex door.
That night I lay awake in my slot long after inner dimming. Every time I shut my eyes, I was swinging around the lounge again, with a disturbing sense of nearness. I don't like nearness. It interferes. You have to react, even if you'd rather not. And how can you be near to someone who doesn't even see you but just rubs his eyes past the place where you are? My pillow was hard. The lulltone was off-key. The air exchange was all wrong. And I was dancing again, around and around, farther and farther away from the lounge but nearer and
nearer and nearer.
"Engle Faucing! What a gonky name!" I muttered and poked my pillow. Then I was counting. "-Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-one, twentyone. Five is so many years! So many!" I flipped up in bed, hunching automatically to keep from thumping my head on Chis' slot. What was the matter with me? I couldn't be sickening for anything. Our lavcube is standard-we have the immunispray installation, so I couldn't be sickening for anything. I flopped back down and closed my eyes resolutely. And whirled around and around and shadow and one twothree one twothree.
At break-time next day I went to the lounge, expecting-I don't know what I was expecting. Engle was dancing with someone, swinging effortlessly around and around. I felt my chest clench on something that wanted to explode. Lellice was waiting for me on our usual bench, clutching two Squelches.
"Too bad," she said, as I grimaced through my first swallow of the gonky stuff.
"Too bad what?" I asked when I could.
"Too bad he doesn't dance with you again," Lellice said. "You sure were brighted."
"Waltzes always bright me," I said, wishing Lellice would cut it.
"But just think," she sighed. "If Engle had danced with you today, and then tomorrow, you'd have been opted, and he'd have to bid you to the BB-"
The BB! I'd forgotten all about the BB. Forlornly I let my Squelch dangle from my lax, hand. "lfzng never did anything," I said. "And nuts to the BB!" I wasn't about to let her think that I'd ever hoped-
"Twixt!" Lellice's eyes got big. "Such language! Besides, this is the first year you've been eligible to be bid-"
"Fooey on the BB-" I groped for every archaic, lefthanded phrase I could remember. "Big Blasts are for the birds! Who needs them! And this Squelch! It stinks!" I dropped the container and kicked it viciously. It rolled out onto the dance area, dribbling that gonky chartreuse in a sticky stream across the shining. And Engle-all unsuspecting-circling with his partner, stepped in the sticky stuff. And fell flat. And pulled his partner down. And her skirts flipped. And I just stood there looking and laughing so loudly that everyone in the room became aware of me. And of the two of them because of me.
I think I would have died on the spot if the break bell hadn't rung and emptied the lounge with most unusual speed. No one wants to be around a situation. Not even Lellice, though she did hesitate, her mouth open, before she gulped and fled. Engle left last. He looked back over his shoulder, dabbling at his Squelchy sleeve. "Three left feet!" he said. But he looked at me! He saw me! And, which was the worst of all, he'd remember me-and the Squelch.
Everyone was gone. I kicked the dribbling Squelch container with short vicious kicks clear across the deserted floor and all the way down the hall. I picked up the halfempty, battered thing and carried it into my carrel. As I sat in the chair that was molded to me from such long sitting in, the post-break tape was activated.
"Good morning, Twixt," said the history tutor brightly. "If you'll dial the
year 1960, we'll begin. Good morning, Twixt. If you'll dial the year 1960, we'll begin. Good morning-" I slammed the Squelch container down on the viewer. Then I deliberately poured the Squelch, to its last oozy drop, into every hole and crack and crevice I could find. With set teeth, I pushed every button in sight-by the palmsful. And pulled every lever-handsful at a time! Then right in the middle of the morning and just because I wanted to, I left school! I was so quaked that I could feel my toenails curling. I can't remember a thing about leaving the school complex or how many glides I boarded to what other glides, nor can I remember off-stepping at whatever J-station I off-stepped into. I was too busy to notice anything-too busy arguing in wordless savage gusts with no one.
I didn't even hesitate at the J-station, though I had never in all my life boarded a J-line by myself. I didn't look at signs or colors or sizes. I just pushed into the first empty jerkie I saw, actually pushed, taking with me, defiantly and uncaringly, the sight of the shocked eyes of the woman I had touched with no valid excuse. The door slid and I fumbled at the destination controls, not knowing how or where to punch for. Then I was crying with huge gulping sobs sandwiched between thin, tight whinings. I hammered the controls blindly with both fists and was jerked back against the seat in a sodden heap of misery.
I have no idea how long it was before I was jerked off the J-line to the destination my fists had chosen. Then I was jerked again. And again, bruisingly, the other way. Then the jerkie glided to a stop. I had thirty seconds to exit before the jerkie would be jerked back to the J-line, but I scrambled out afraid of getting caught half through the door. Snuffling and dabbling at my face, I turned back toward the jerkie, hoping no one would notice. And stopped in mid-turn in blank wonder.
Where on earth was I? There was no J-station. No station list, no line color code, only a narrow rail and a slab of some sort of Crete that was cracked across.
And greens: Green all around me! Underfoot, ankle deep! Higher than my head, covering the J-line tower completely and the smaller wooden-why, that wasn't a smaller tower! It was a tree! Just like the tapes! I waded through the green, guiltily looking around to find some way to get onto a legal paving. There wasn't any. No paving! Anywhere! I stumbled over to the tree and touched it the brown, unleafed part-the trunk. I guess I fingered the bark too roughly because a piece came loose. I tried hastily to put it back, but I fumbled and it fell. I dropped to my knees to get it, but there were so many pieces on the ground that I couldn't tell which one I had broken. I picked up one piece and shredded it in my fingers. I tasted it. It tasted like-like a tree! Warm and woody and dusty and real.
And then I saw it. There at my knee. The enchanting little line of bareness running out of sight into the green.
Breathlessly I slid down to my stomach, my cheek pressed to the green. I peered along the shadowy, secret hidden way. Now if only-if only-! And one did come! An ant, carrying something, hurrying along, so tiny! So tiny! On tapes they look so big and quick and armored.
I watched until the ant was out of sight-all unknowing of me. Then with a deep, shaking sigh, I sat up and looked around me. More trees-more green slanting down out of sight towards the smell of water, and a liquid sound. Then something moved across the green invisibly, bending it toward me. I felt a flowing around me. Wind! Wind blowing because it was a wind, not because a thermostat told it to! "Here," I thought, "here is a place that wouldn't be
the same! If we could only get locale amends for here!" I scrambled to my feet, suddenly clutched by wonder.
"There's no one," I whispered to myself in disbelief. "Here I am and there's no one else. Not anywhere. No one to see. No one to hear. No one to sense-!"
My arms lifted as though they knew wings and my feet barely touched the green as I surged my whole self up. Then in one swift, collapsing motion, I folded me down and stripped my feet bare. I ran fast, fast, and lightly-oh, lightly! across the green, the bottoms of my feet giggly at the spiky soft of the green and my hair flowing back from my face as my running made a little wind for me all alone. When had I last run? Oh, years! Oh, never before like this-never with boundlessness around me and such freeness!
Suddenly I was plunging down a steep slope unable to stop. Below me was a wide blue glint-water! As big as the ocean! I could drown in it! And I couldn't stop myself. My frightened, clutching hands caught leaves and tore them off the plants as I plunged past. Then I caught a branch and felt my shoulder yank back and pull me to a stumbling stop right in the edge of the glinting. I stood panting and shaken, watching the boiling brown water slosh my ankles. Then the water slowly cleared and I could see the distortion of my feet in the flowing wetness.
I took a cautious step. I felt graininess dissolve under the soles of my feet. Sand melting away just as dad had said, only this water wasn't numbing cold. It was brightly cool. I took another step and felt a squishy welling up between my toes! Mud between my toes! Squish, squish! Like an echo I heard swish, swish above me. My chin tilt– ed as I searched for the sound. There! Faintly far away, like a cobweb against the sky, the J-line. How fragile and lovely it looked from here. And here below it, I had found three dreams-Mother's in the little bare path, Chis' in the million, million leaves to run on, and Dad's in the dissolving sand. And the three, held together by all the other wonders, was really what mine had been all the time without my knowing it!
With a sigh, I turned back to the water, but the spell was broken. I was suddenly very small at the bottom of a bigness that had forgotten that Man made it. It whispered its arrogant roar down to me-to remind– I stepped out of the water onto the green, rinsing first one foot and then the other. Clutching my skirts and looking warily back over my shoulders, I scrambled up the steep slope, loosing one hand to help me.
Fear and panic began to build up. Where were the people? Where was movement and humming? The constant eternal humming of wheels starting or stopping, accelerating or decelerating-moving, moving, moving. The only thing I could see that looked anything like life or units was a huddle of small buildings far away low and little and lonely with sky showing between them.
Suddenly terrified that I might be the only person in the world, I staggered back to the J-line tower, my shadow, thinly tall, slipping up the massed greenery. There was the slab of Crete. And there, quietly and quieting, was a small white flower growing up out of the crack as though no one had ever bothered to mark the line of where things could grow and where they mustn't. Without even looking around, I picked it! My chin was high and defiant.
A sudden sound lowered my chin and sent me back into the hanging, swinging green on the tower. I muttered, "Vine,"-in belated recognition, just as a jerkie rounded the tower and jerked to a stop right in front of me. I pushed the white flower down tight into my pocket. The jerkie door slid. A man stepped out. His brows lifted when he saw me, but he smiled-and went on
looking! And spoke! And we had never met! "Want this jerkie?" he asked informally. I could get no words, so I nodded. He pushed the hold button and stepped out. I stumbled at the door and his hand caught my elbow and steadied me.
"Your pardon," he said formally, releasing me. "I trespassed."
"It was permissible," I gasped my part of the expected exchange.
"What J-station?" he asked, showing no awareness that he was asking a personal question.
"Area G," I gulped as though I told my area to any casual questioner. "Where is this?" "Area G," he repeated and reached in to set the controls. Before I could even repeat my question, the door slid. Through the view-plate I saw his mouth make a word. I thought it looked like Nowhere. How could it be Nowhere? I was jerked abruptly that way. Then this. Then the last jerk onto the J-line. I dropped back against the seat and stared down at my bare, dust streaked feet. I giggled helplessly. Cinderella doubled!
Then wonder possessed me and I was back among the green, trying to gather as many rememberings as I could to take home to my family-my waiting, eager family– I was off-stepping the glide at our complex before the wonder lightened enough for me to start choosing words. Then I was in our unit and babbling the whole thing to my gape-mouthed family, babbling so fast that I didn't make sense even to myself. Dad finally put his hand firmly over my mouth and held me tightly comforting with his other arm until Mother brought me a hush-me and a plastiglass of water. I swallowed obediently.
I leaned against Dad while I calmed. Finally he said, "Guidance has set an appointment for you tomorrow at ten –another Garath."
"It was worth it." I sighed shudderingly and relaxed onto the floor from Dad's arms. I hugged my knees to my chest. "It was worth it." "But Squelch in the viewer?" Chis was admiringly scandalized.
"And no one knowing where you were!" Mother's hand was tight and hot on my shoulder. "School called to ask, and no one knew where you were!"
"Not anyone!" I marveled, realizing all the illegal things I had done without even thinking or caring. "No one knew where I was!" "Out in school hours and you nowhere near twenty-one!" shrilled Chis, brighted to more nearly a boy after being solid lump of quenchedness for so long.
"Nowhere," I said softly. "That's where I was. Mother, I saw one of those lovely, secret paths through the grass. And I saw an ant running along it, not knowing I was there. It was carrying something. And the green all bent toward me and the wind flowed around me like-like light going somewhere to shine-"
"Where were you?" Mother's eyes were wide and dare
"I was-I was-" I stopped, stricken. "I don't know," said, a heavy realization tightening inside me. "I have no idea. Not a single idea. Only-only the man said Nowhere. At least it looked like Nowhere through the viewplate."
Dad's mouth twisted. "I imagine that's just exactly where you were," he said. "Nowhere." His eyes told me untruth as plainly as if he had said so.
"No matter what we call it," I cried, "I was there and I saw it-the little
bare path-" Mother's hand left my shoulder and her eyes flashed. "You're unkind to use my own words to cover your truancy.
"But-!' I protested. "I'm not covering. I really did. saw it. I felt it-a million, million leaves under my feet. And mud between my toes and-" I turned to Dad. "Sand, dissolving under my feet in a flowing stream-"
"Enough," said Dad quietly, his face hardening and his eyes not seeing me any more. "I suggest truthing to the Councilor."
"Honestly! Honestly! I'm truthing!" I cried. "It was just what we are all aching for! Our dreams-"
"We haven't asked you to account for your time," said Father-no longer an informal Dad. "We trust that whatever you did was ethically correct."
"Ethically correct!" Anger surged in me, stung to life by my disappointment. "Most correct! I pushed a lady to get into a jerkie. I rode the J-line all by myself to Nowhere. I ran barefoot across all the green I could. I squished mud between my toes. I looked at a stranger. And talked to him. And I picked-" I scrabbled in my pocket. A moist, greenish-black thread caught under my probing nails. I pulled my hand out and looked. The flower was crushed and dead. Only the tip of one petal curled coolly white from the ruin. "It was most secret and most lovely," I whispered forlornly.
My fingers cupped the flower protectively out of sight, and I pushed my hand down into my pocket.
Dad turned on the telaworld and reached for the ear. "Don't forget your appointment at ten tomorrow."
"And if I don't choose to remember?" I flared. Three pairs of astonished eyes focused on me. "Why should I go to Guidance?" I asked. "They'll only try to change me-to make me conform! I don't want to change! I don't want to conform!" I struggled with breath and tears.
"Let's truth it!" I felt my face pinking with more defiance. "We're non-conform-everyone of us! That's our whole trouble!" Chis doubled his hands into fists and Mother pinked slowly and painfully. Father just looked at me for a moment, then he said quietly, "Yes, we are non-conform. That is our problem. But so far we have either truthed it or kept still. Our fantasies we have plainly labeled fantasies-"
"And so have I," I said as quietly as he. "When I am fantasying. And I think that silence sometimes is the worst kind of untruthing." I turned away and went to Wardrobe. I undressed hurriedly, clutching my dress back from the renov to rescue the moist mashedness of the white flower.
I was still staring defiantly at the top of my slot when the lull-tone finally faded, thinking I was asleep. Then I heard the click of Chis' slot and knew he was above me. Slots are supposed to be completely contained, of course so that no one intrudes on another, but long ago Chis and I discovered a long thin crack at one end of our slots. We could whisper there and hear each other. Would he? Or did he think me untruthing, too. Or maybe he just didn't care-
Then I heard, "Twixt!" in a voiceless, small explosion. I could picture him twisted all around in his slot because the crack is at his foot. He's a boy and has to take the upper, and it is so old that the bedcovers pull out from only one end, but I can change where I put my head in mine. That week I had changed my pillow to the opposite end.
"Yes?" I breathed back at him, sitting up cautiously to get my mouth closer to the crack.
"It's true, isn't it?" he hissed.
"True," I said flatly.
"With green and water and trees?" His whisper was hungry.
"True," I said. "And little units far away, low, with sky between-"
"There's no J-station like that in two hours around," he breathed back at me.
"There has to be!" I felt my whisper threaten to become a voice. "Or else I was farther than that away. I was too. I saw my shadow slide up the J-tower. Up over the I!
"Twixt!" He almost broke into speaking. "If you saw your shadow in the afternoon, the sun was in back and the J-tower was east-" he fell silent.
East? Whoever uses directions any more except on maps instead of up and down and left and right. You just get the right transport and it goes where you want. And what has east to do with where my shadow was sliding-
Then Chis spoke again, very carefully. "Twixt, where was the river then, the flowing water-left or right?"
"I-I-" I visualized again the slim sliding of such a tall, tall shadow. "Left," I said. "On my left."
There was a brief breathy silence. "Listen, Twixt," his voice was urgent. "I bet I know what happened to you. You know the grid for J-stations? The same distance between, all the time? Well, it isn't always so. Sometimes there's a non-conform off-J in between. No station. Just an off and on for some reason or other. You have to have the destination code 'relse you don't even know there's an off there. You musta punched a non-conform off-J."
"But where is it?" I whispered back. "How'll I ever find it again? Because I'm going to find it."
"I'll find it for you," came his confident answer. "I know more about J-lines than anyone in the whole-the whole megapolis! I've hopped more hi-speed freight glides and stowed in more jerkies-'
"Chis!" I was horrified. "Jerkies alone? And you're not twelve yet!"
"Twelve!" His voice dismissed the whole idea of rules and permits. "But, Twixt, I think I know where that river is! If it was on your left and you were facing a J-tower in the afternoon-I'll find it. I'll find it if it takes until-until I'm twelve!"
His voice was gone, but I could almost see him so brighted that he shone in the dark! I wasn't very dim myself! And he's lust stubborn enough – do it," I thought admiringly.
"And then we'll bring the J-line destination code to Mother and Dad and take them there. Then they'll see. They'll believe then. And Dad will put in for locale amends and we'll go! We'll leave this huge external skeleton. We'll be tall, standing there in the green. We'll all strip off our pneumonosoles
and-"
I hugged myself in delight. "And then foof to you, Engle Faucing! Fooof!" I thumped back down on my pillow, starting the lulltone again. How had he got into my dream? I felt the delight melt from my face. The lulltone was a background for my unspoken, mouth-framed words, Most secret-most lovely. And I closed my eyes so the wetness wouldn't turn to tears.
Then I hurried back to the wonder, with a twinge of guilt for having roared poor Dad. I had untruthed by silence, myself, drinking that gonky chartreuse just because the other kids did. But I could change now. I felt as though I had split a hard, crippling casing clear up my back. Fresh air was flowing in. I was growing out. At last! Something worth being brighted for! Something to put together day by day until it became a shining, breathing somethingelse! Oh, wonder! Oh, wonder! And all we have to do is find Nowhere.
YOU KNOW WHAT, TEACHER?
Miss PETERSON looked resignedly around the school yard. Today was a running day. The children swept ceaselessly from one side of the playground to the other, running madly, sometimes being jet planes, sometimes cowboys, but mostly just running. She shifted a little as an angle of the wire fence gouged into her hip, sighed, and for the fourth time looked at her watch. Two minutes less of noon recess than the last time she had looked.
"You know what, teacher?" Linnet's soft little voice spoke at her elbow. "You know what my mother thinks?" "What does your mother think?" asked Miss Peterson automatically as she weighed the chances of getting across the grounds to one of the boys-who was hanging head down from the iron railing above the furnace-room stairs-before he fell and broke his neck.
"My mother thinks my daddy is running around with another woman." Miss Peterson's startled eyes focused on Linnet's slender little face.
"She does?" she asked, wondering what kind of answer you were supposed to give to a statement like that from a six-year-old.
"Yes," said Linnet; and she was swept away by another running group that left its dust to curl around Miss Peterson's ankles.
Miss Peterson passed the incident along to Miss Estes in the brief pause between loading the school buses and starting after noon duties.
"Piquant detail, isn't it?" said Miss Estes. "It might do some of these parents good if they knew just how much of their domestic difficulties get passed on to us."
"It's a shame," said Miss Peterson. "I've thought for some time that something was wrong at home. Linnet hasn't been doing well in her work and she's all dither-brained gain. She'd be in my upper group if she could ever feel secure long enough."
Rain swept the closed windows with a rustly, papery J. Miss Peterson tapped her desk bell and blessed the quiet lull that followed. Rainy days were gruesome when you had to keep the children in. They were so accustomed to playing outdoors that the infrequent rainy-day schedules always meant even more noise-making than usual. In a few minutes she would call the class to order and then have a wonderful five-minute Quiet Time before the afternoon activities began.
"Teacher, Wayne keeps breaking down what I build!" protested Henry, standing sturdily before her, his tummy pushing through the four-inch gap between his blue jeans and his T-shirt.
"Well, he knocked down my garage and he keeps taking all my spools," Wayne defended, trying to balance the sixth spool at the top of his shaky edifice.
"You got more'n I have," retorted Henry as the towering structure fell, exploding spools all over the corner.
"You both know we're supposed to share," said Miss Peterson. "We don't fight over things like that. You'd better begin to put the spools away, anyway. It's almost Put-Away Time."
"You know what, teacher?" Linnet's voice was soft by her shoulder.
"W-h-a-t, that's what," laughed Miss Peterson, hugging Linnet's fragile body against her.
Linnet considered for a moment and then smiled.
"I mean, you know what happened at our house last night?"
"No, what?" The memory of the previous report from the domestic front sobered Miss Peterson.
"My mother and my daddy had a big fight," said Linnet "Not a hitting fight-a holler fight."
"Oh?" Miss Peterson, still holding Linnet in the circle of her arm, reached for the bell and tapped the double PutAway signal. The clatter crescendoed as puzzles, blocks, books, spools, and scissors were all scrambled into their restorage spots.
"Yes, persisted Linnet. "I listened. Daddy said Mother spent too much money and Mother said she spent it for food and rent and not on women and she got so mad she wouldn't sleep in the bedroom. She slept all night on the couch."
"That's too bad," said Miss Peterson, hating battling parents as she looked into Linnet's shadowed face.
"I took her one of my blankets," said Linnet. "It was cold. I took her my blue blanket."
"That was nice of you," said Miss Peterson. "Honey would you help Lila get the doll house straightened out? It's almost Quiet Time"
"Okay, teacher." Linnet flitted away as soundlessly as she had come, one diminutive oxford trailing an untied lace Miss Peterson gnawed reflectively on a thumbnail.
"Parents!" she thought in exasperation. "Selfish, thoughtless, self-centered-! Thank Heaven most of mine are fair-to-middling!"
For the next few months the state of affairs at Linnet's house could have been charted as exactly as the season's temperatures. When she came hollow-eyed to school to fall asleep with a crayon clutched in one hand, it was either that Daddy had come home and they'd gone to the Drive-In Theater to celebrate, or Daddy had gone away again after a long holler fight the night before.
The school year rounded the holiday season and struggled toward spring. One day the children in Group Two sat in the reading circle studying a picture in their open primers.
"How is this bus different from ours?" asked Miss Peterson.
"It's got a upstairs," said Henry. "Ours don't got-" he caught Miss Peterson's eye-"don't have upstairses." "That's right," nodded Miss Peterson. "How else is it different?" "It's yellow," said Linnet. "Ours aren't yellow." "Our school buses are," said Henry. "They're really orange," said Linnet. "And when we go downtown, we ride on the
great big gray ones."
"Well, let's read this page to ourselves and find out what these children are going to do," said Miss Peterson. A murmuring silence descended, during which Miss Peterson tapped fingers that
pointed and admonished lips that moved. Page by page, the story was gone through. Then tomorrow's story was previewed, and the reading group was lifting chairs to carry them back to the tables.
Linnet lingered, juggling her book under one arm as she held her chair.
"You know what, teacher?" she asked. "Last night we rode on the bus a long ways." "Downtown?" asked Miss Peterson. "Farther than that," said Linnet. "We even had to get off our bus and get on
another one." "My! said Miss Peterson. "You must have had fun!" "I almost didn't get to go," said Linnet. "Mother was going to leave me with
Mrs. Mason, but she couldn't. We knocked on the front door and the back door
but she wasn't home." "So you got to have a pleasant ride after all, didn't you?" asked Miss Peterson.
"Mother cried," Said Linnet. "All the way home."
"Oh, that's too bad." Miss Peterson's heart turned over at the desolation on Linnet's face. "She didn't cry till we left the motel," said Linnet, lowering her chair to
the floor and shifting her book. "You know what, teacher? The lady at the motel got mixed up. She told Mother that Mrs. Luhrs was in one of her cabins."
"Oh, did you go to the motel to visit some relatives?" asked Miss Peterson. "We went to find Daddy. The lady said Daddy wasn't there, but Mrs. Luhrs was. But how could she be Mrs. Luhrs when Mother is Mrs. Luhrs? She wasn't in the
cabin.
"Well," said Miss Peterson, wondering, as she had frequent occasion to, how to terminate a conversation with a child unobviously.
"The money went ding ding in the box just like in our song," said Linnet.
"The money?"
"Yes, when we got on the bus. It went ding ding just like our song."
"Well, how pleasant!" cried Miss Peterson in relief. "Now you'd better get started on your writing or you won't have time for your fun-paper before lunch."
"It makes me so mad I could spit," she said later to Elsie Estes over the kerthump of the ditto machine she was cranking. The machine was spewing out pictures of slightly drunken cows, mooing at lopsided calves. She stopped and examined one of the pictures critically. "Well, they'll know what they're supposed to be-after I tell them."
Miss Peterson started the cranking again. "Why can't that mother manage to keep something from the child? There's no reason to drag Linnet through the nasty mess. Maybe if they had six kids, neither one of them would have time to-Do you want any of these, Elsie?"
"Yes, I guess so," said Miss Estes. "I don't know about that. Look at my Manuelo. He's got six brothers and sisters in school and only Heaven knows how many more at home, and papa turns up muy boracho nearly every payday and I get a blow-by-blow account of it next morning. Then Manuelo has a new papa for a while until the old papa beats the new papa up, and then it's all bliss and beans till papa goes on another toot."
"Well, I'm kind of worried. There, I gave you forty-five, just in case. I met Mrs. Luhrs at a PTA meeting several weeks ago. She looks-well, unstable-the mousy-looking kind that gives you a feeling of smoldering dynamite-if dynamite can smolder. Poor Linnet. I see now where she picked up the habit of .pressing three fingers to her mouth. But I don't like it at all. Linnet's such a sweet child"
"You could break your heart over any number of kids," said Miss Estes. "I found out long ago we can't reform parents and it's flirting with termination of contract if we try to. Remember how worried you were over your MexicanoChino last year? Didn't do either one of you any good, did it?"
"No." Miss Peterson stacked tomorrow's work papers, criss-crossing them. "And he's in the Juvenile Home now and his father's in the insane asylum. Elsie, when my emotional storm signals go up, something's cooking. You wait and see." Several weeks later, Linnet leaned against Miss Peterson's desk and asked, "How much more until lunch, teacher? I'm hungry."
"Not very long, Linnet. What's the matter, didn't you eat a good breakfast this morning?"
I didn't eat any breakfast," said Linnet, her eyes half smiling as she awaited the expected reaction.
"No breakfast! Why, Linnet, we always eat a good breakfast. Why didn't you eat one this morning?"
"I got up too late. I almost missed the bus."
"You'd better tell your mother to get you up earlier," said Miss Peterson.
"She didn't wake up, either," said Linnet. "The doctor gave her some sleeping stuff so she won't cry at night, and she didn't hear the alarm clock. She said one morning without breakfast wouldn't hurt me. But I'm hungry."
"I should think you would be. It's only fifteen minutes till lunch time, dear. That isn't very long."
Then, about a week later, Linnet came to school resplendent in a brand-new dress, carrying a huge box of crayons.
"Even a gold and a silver and a white one, teacher!" She was jiggling around excitedly, her newly set curls bobbing with an animation that they hadn't shown in months.
"You know what, teacher? Daddy came home last night. I woke up and I heard him tell Mother he was through with that double-crossing bitch and he'd never go away again."
Before Miss Peterson could gather her scattered senses to question Linnet's terminology, the child was borne away by an enthusiastic mob of classmates who wanted to try out the gold and silver and white crayons and admire the new dress and the ruffled slip under it . . .
"How long do you suppose it will last?" asked Miss Estes at lunchtime over the Spanish rice at the cafeteria serving table. "The poor kid must feel like a Yo-Yo. Don't look now, but isn't that your Wayne squirtin' milk through his straw? He just made a bull's eye in my Joanie's ear. Who'll do the honors this time you or me?"
It lasted a month.
Then Linnet crept around again in the schoolroom, not even caring when Henry took her white crayon and chewed it reflectively into a crumbled mess that he had trouble spitting into the wastebasket when discovered. Again her three trembling fingers crept up to cover a quivering mouth. Again she forgot simple words she had known for months, and again she cried before trying new ones.
One day the reading group laughed over the story of Spot dragging the covers of Ally to wake her up. They all had wide-eyed stories to tell about how hard they were to wake up or how incredibly early they woke up by themselves. Then Miss Peterson was dismissing the group with her automatic, "Lift your chairs, don't drag them."
"You know what, teacher? That's just like Daddy and Mother this morning," said Linnet softly. "They didn't get out of bed, so I fixed my own breakfast and got ready for school, all by myself."
"My, you're getting to be a big girl, aren't you?"
"Yes. When I got up I went in their bedroom but they weren't awake. I pulled the covers up for Mother because her shoulders were cold. Her nightgown hasn't got any sleeves."
"That was thoughtful of you," said Miss Peterson. "Who combed your hair for you if she didn't wake up?"
"I did." Linnet flushed. "I can get me ready."
"You did a pretty good job," acknowledged Miss Peterson, ignoring the crooked part and the tangled back curls.
When Linnet brought up the smudged, straggly writing paper that had again replaced her former neat and legible ones, Miss Peterson wondered why this morning, when Daddy was home, Linnet's work hadn't improved.
"You know what, teacher?" Linnet was saying. "Last night Mother promised she wouldn't cry any more, not ever again. And she said Daddy won't ever go away again."
"Isn't that fine?" asked Miss Peterson. "Now you can have lots of fun together, can't you?"
Linnet turned her head away. "Daddy doesn't like me any more."
"Oh, surely he does," protested Miss Peterson. "All daddies love their little girls."
Linnet looked up at her, her shadowy eyes and pale little face expressionless. "My daddy doesn't. Mother let me take him a cup of coffee last night while she was doing the dishes. He drank it and said, "Hell, even the coffee around here is enough to turn your stomach. Beat it, brat.' And he pushed me and I dropped the empty cup and it broke."
"But if he isn't going away any more-"
"Mother told me that." Linnet's eyes were full of unchildlike wisdom. "She told me lots of time before. But she didn't hear Daddy swear."
"Well, it'll be nice if your mother doesn't cry any more."
"Yes," said Linnet, "When she cries, I cry, too."
Miss Peterson watched Linnet go back to her table and start her fun-paper. Poor cherub, she thought . . .
"Do you suppose I ought to do something about it?" she asked Miss Estes in the cafeteria.
"Do what?" asked Miss Estes. "Call the sheriff because a father swore at his child and called her a brat?"
"You know it's more than that. An unwholesome home environment."
"What would you do?" asked Miss Estes, nibbling her square of cheese. "Take her away from them? In that case you'd have to take half the kids in the nation away from their parents. Nope, as long as she's fed and clothed and carries no visible scars, you can't invoke the law."
"Maybe I could talk with her mother."
"My, you are a neck-sticker-outer, aren't you? She'd probably spit in your eye."
"I'm awfully uneasy-"
"It's the beans. They didn't cook them long enough today."
After the buses had gone, Miss Peterson saw a lonely little figure sitting in one of the swings. "Oh, whirtleberries!" she thought. "Who missed the bus this time?" "Hi, teacher!"
"Why, Linnet! How did you ever come to miss the bus?" "I didn't miss it. Mother told me not to come home on the bus today. She said someone would come after me."
"Is she busy somewhere this afternoon?" Miss Peterson dropped into the swing next to Linnet, savoring the quiet of the empty playground. "I don't know." Linnet was opening and shutting a little blue-and-white box.
"What's that?" asked Miss Peterson. "It's empty," Linnet's voice defended. "Mother wouldn't care. She lets me play with empty boxes. But not with medicine in them."
"That's right," said Miss Peterson. "We never play with boxes that have medicine in them." "Mother got this at the drugstore yesterday. It had medicine in it then." "Yesterday?" Miss Peterson was surprised. "But it's all none."
"It was Mother's sleeping stuff." Linnet snapped the box shut again. Miss Peterson was curious. "Let me see it, Linnet." She took the box and turned it over in her hand. There was only a prescription number and Take as directed on it.
"You know what, teacher? She put an awful lot of sugar in Daddy's coffee before I took it to him, and he doesn't like very much sugar. Maybe that's why he got mad last night."
"Could be," said Miss Peterson grimly. "Where did you get this box, Linnet?" "It was on Mother's dresser by her coffee cup. When I went in this morning to
see if they were awake, I found it. It was empty. I took her cup back to the kitchen." Miss Peterson sat eyeing the box for a long minute. Of course it couldn't be.
Children so often exaggerate and draw mistaken conclusions. Add to that an overly imaginative teacher and you could dream up some mighty weird situations. But . . .
"Let's play something while you're waiting," she said. "Let's play What Comes Next. You know, like we do with the picture stories in our workbooks."
"Okay, teacher!" Linnet's eyes lighted with pleasure. "Now," said Miss Peterson. "Your mother started to wash the dishes last night. What Comes Next?"
"And I got to dry the knives and forks and spoons!" added Linnet.
"Yes. Then your mother poured your daddy's coffee. What Comes Next?"
"Oh, you missed What Comes Next!" laughed Linnet. "Mother put a lot of the sleeping stuff in Daddy's cup. She said Daddy was getting restless. Then she poured the coffee."
"Then you took it to your daddy?"
"Uh-uh! First I had to get Mother a hankie because she was crying. Then I took it to Daddy."
Miss Peterson massaged the goose bumps over each elbow.
"And then your daddy drank it." Miss Peterson's voice was flat. "What Comes Next?" Linnet swung herself to and fro without letting her feet move.
"I don't know," she said, her face averted.
You said you dropped the cup-" half-questioned Miss Peterson, sensing the withdrawal.
"Yes-yes, I dropped the cup when Daddy got mad and pushed me."
"Yes," said Miss Peterson, knowing Linnet was deliberately forgetting. The two sat in silence a while, then Miss Peterson took up the thread again.
"When it got dark, you got ready for bed and your mother and daddy said good night."
"Not Daddy," said Linnet. "He went to bed before I did last night. He yawned and yawned and went to bed. And then I went to bed and Mother woke me up and hugged me and told me she wouldn't ever cry again and that Daddy wouldn't ever leave her again. And then-and then-" Linnet's forehead creased and her three grubby little fingers came up to cover her soft, dismayed mouth. "Oh, teacher! You know what? She gave me a note to give to you and I wasn't even absent yesterday!"
"Where is it?" Miss Peterson felt her innards sinking into some endless nothingness. "Did you lose it?"
"No," cried Linnet triumphantly. "She put it in my shoe so I wouldn't." She pulled off the scuffled little oxford and fished inside it. Finally she came up with two grimy pieces of paper.
"Oh!" she was shocked. "It came in two. Is it spoiled?"
"No," said Miss Peterson, taking the two pieces and fitting the folds together. "No, I think I'll be able to read it." She sat in the swaying swing, watching vagrant papers rise and circle in a sudden whirlwind and then drift lazily to the ground again. And she wished with all her heart that she didn't have to read the note.
Then conscious of Linnet's eyes upon her, she unfolded the halves of paper.
Please don't let Linnet ride the bus home. Call AR 2-9276 when school is over. Ask them to keep her for a day or two until her grandmother comes. Thank you, Linnell Luhrs
Miss Peterson tasted the phone number again with silently moving lips. It tasted of her little Mexicano-Chino-the Juvenile Home.
"What does it say, teacher?" asked Linnet.
"It says for you not to go home on the bus," said Miss Peterson, her thumbnail straightening out a curl of the paper. "You're to wait."
She looked down at the cramped, close-written line that slanted sharply below the signature.
God forgive me, I couldn't let him go away again.
"Well," Miss Peterson stood up, feeling old and tired. "I have to go to the office and make a phone call. You stay here and play. Remember, don't go away. Don't move away from here." "I won't," Linnet promised. "You know what, teacher?" Miss Peterson looked down into Linnet's dark eyes. "No, what?"
"It's kinds lonesome here, all alone," said Linnet.
"Yes, it is, dear," said Miss Peterson, blinking against the sting in her eyes. "It is kinda lonesome, all alone."
THE EFFECTIVES
SUCH THINGS HAPPEN, inevitably, perhaps, since both seek isolation, but the sign post at the junction of the Transcontinental and the narrow secondary road seems a contradiction in terms:
AWAY-8 miles EDRU 14-12 miles
The association of these two groups is so unlikely that the picture of the sign post is always turning up in magazines, newspapers and TViews under Laugh-a-bit or Smile-While or Whoda Thunkit?
Away-in the remote possibility that someone does not remember-is the name chosen by one of the fairly large groups of people who choose to remove themselves, if not from the present age, at least from the spirit of it. They locate in isolated areas, return to the agricultural period wherein horses were the motive power, live exclusively off the land, foreswear most modern improvements and, in effect, withdraw from the world. There are degrees of fervency, ranging from wild-eyed, frantic-bearded, unwashed fanaticism, to an enviable, leisurely mode of living that many express longing for but could never stand for long. These settlements, and their people, are usually called Detaches.
EDRU 14, is of course, Exotic Diseases Research Unit # 14. Each unit of EDRU concerns itself with one of the flood of new diseases that either freeload back to Earth from space exploration or spring up in mutated profusion after each new drug moves in on a known disease. Each unit embodies the very ultimate in scientific advancement in power, sources, equipment and know-how.
In this particular instance, the Power Beam from the Area Central crossed the small acres and wooded hills of Away to sting to light and life the carefully-fitted-into-its-environment Research Unit while the inhabitants of Away poured candles, cleaned lamp chimneys, or, on some few special occasions, started the small Delco engine in the shed behind the Center Hall and had the flickering glow of electricity for an evening.
Despite the fact that EDRU 14 was only across a stone fence from Away, there was practically no overlapping or infringing on one another. Occasionally a resident of Away would rest on his hoe handle and idly watch an EDRU 14 vehicle pass on the narrow road. Or one of the EDRU 14 personnel would glimpse a long-skirted woman and a few scampering children harvesting heaven knows what vegetation from the small wooded ravines or the meadows on EDRU 14's side of the rock fence, but there was no casual, free communication between the so-unlike groups.
Except, of course, Ainsworthy. He was the only one at EDRU 14 who fraternized with the residents of Away. His relaxant was, oddly enough, walking, and he ranged the area between the two locales in his off-duty hours, becoming acquainted with many of the people who lived at Away. He played chess-soundly beaten most of the time-with Kemble, their Director-for so they call their head who is chosen in biennial elections. He learned to "square dance," a romping folk-type dancing kept alive by groups such as the one at Away, and sometimes brought back odd foods to the Unit that Kitchen refused to mess with. But; after a few abortive attempts to interest others at EDRU 14 in the group at Away, he gave up and continued his association with them without comment.
The disease, KVIN, on which EDRU 14 as well as EDRU 9, 11, and 12 was working was a most stubborn one. Even now very little is known of it. It is believed to be an old Earth disease reactivated by some usually harmless space factor that triggers it and, at the same time, mutates it. Even those who have experienced it and, the few miracles, recovered from it, are no help in analyzing it or reducing it to A = the disease, B = the cure. A + B = no further threat to mankind.
The only known way to circumvent the disease and prevent death is the complete replacement of all the blood in the patient's body by whole blood, not more than two hours from the donors. This, of course, in the unlikely event that the patient doesn't die at the first impact of the disease which most of them do. Even replacement would often fail. However, it succeeded often enough that each Regional hospital kept a list of available donors to be called upon. This, of course, was after the discovery of CF (Compatible Factor), the blood additive that makes typing of blood before a transfusion unnecessary.
In spite of all possible precautions practiced by the Unit, at unhappy intervals the mournful clack of the Healiocopter lifted eyes from the fields of Away to watch another limp, barely breathing, victim of the disease being lifted out to the Central Regional Hospital.
Such was the situation when Northen, the Compiler, arrived at EDRU 14-loudly. A Compiler would have been called a troubleshooter in the old days. He compiles statistics, asks impertinent questions, has no reverence for established methods, facts, habits or thoughts. He is never an expert in the field in which he compiles-and never compiles twice in succession in the same field. And very often, a Compiler can come up with a suggestion or observation or neat table of facts that will throw new light on a problem and lead to a solution.
"I don't like questions!" he announced to Ainsworthy at the lunch table his first day at the Unit. "That's why I like this job of playing detective. I operate on the premise that if a valid question is asked there is an answer. If no answer is possible, the question has no validity!"
Ainsworthy blinked and managed a smile, "And who's to decide if an answer is possible or not?" he asked, wondering at such immaturity in a man of Northen's
professional stature.
"I decide!" Northen's laughter boomed. "Simplifies things. No answer-forget it! But if I think there is an answer-tenacity's my middle name!"
"Then you obviously think there is a clear-cut answer to the question that brought you here," said Ainsworthy.
"Obviously-" Northen pushed back from the table. "This is an inquiry into a real problem, not one of those airy nothings-And to forestall another obvious question I'm always being pestered with-I consider that I am only one biological incident in a long line of biological incidents and when I die, the incident of me is finished. I have no brief for all this research into nonsense about soul and spirit and other lives! One life is enough! I'm not greedy!" And his large laughter swung all faces toward him as he lumbered up to the coffee dispenser with his empty cup.
Ainsworthy reflectively tapped his own cup on the table top, repressing a sudden gush of dislike for Northen. It was thinking like his that was hampering the Beyond Research Units. How slow! How slow the progress towards answers to the unanswerables! Was it because Believers and Unbelievers alike were afraid of what the answers might be? Northen was back.
"You were at the briefing this morning?" he half-questioned as he sat down massively, his bulk shaking the table.
"Yes." Ainsworthy inspected his empty cup. "Something about the odd distribution of cures of KVIN, or, conversely, the deaths from KVIN:"
"That's right," Northen inhaled noisily of his coffee. "As you know, a complete blood replacement is the only known cure. Only it doesn't work all the time. Which means," he waggled a huge forefinger triumphantly, "that replacement is not the answer! At least not the whole answer. But that's not the question I'm currently pursuing. I want to know why there is a geographical distribution of the cures. KVIN is a fairly scarce disease. We've had less than fifty cases a year in the fifteen years we have studied it-that is, the cases reported to and cared for at a Regional. There have been, undoubtedly, more unreported and untreated, because if a patient is out of reach of a Regional Hospital and immediate treatment, he's dead in four hours or less. But we've had enough cases that a pattern is emerging." He hunched closer to the table and Ainsworthy rescued his cup and the sugar dispenser from tumbling to the floor.
"Look. A gets a dose of KVIN on the West Coast. Quick, quick! San Fran Regional. Replacement. Too bad. Dead as a mackerel. Now look. B and C gets doses at Albuquerque. Quick, quick! Denver Regional! Replacement. B lives dies. Personal idiosyncrasies? Perhaps, except without exception all A's die. Half of B's and C's live! "
And D gets a dose at Creston. Quick, quick! Central Regional! D always recovers! Same technique. Same handling of blood. Same every thing except patients. So. Different strains of KVIN? After all, different space ports-different space sectors-different factors. So, E picks up a dose on the Coast. Quick, quick! Central Regional. Replacement. Recovery!"
Northen hunched forward again, crowding the table tight against Ainsworthy.
"So transport all the A's and B's and C's to Central? Not enough blood supply. Bring in more from other Regionals. It won't work at Central any better than where it came from! So-See? An answer to find and definitely in this area.
Now all I need is a case to follow through to get me started."
It had fallen to Ainsworthy to escort Northen about the Unit, to acquaint him with the area and answer any questions he might have concerning procedures and facilities. The two were in the small public lounge one afternoon, pausing between activities while Northen groaned over his aching feet and legs.
"I'm used to skidders," he boomed. "Faster, more efficient, less wearing on the legs! Just step on, toe the switch-swish!" He gestured with a massive arm.
"This Unit is really too small for skidders," said Ainsworthy. "Occasionally we use flitters out in the grounds, but only a few bother. Most of us enjoy walking. I do especially, since it's my relaxant."
"Really?" Northen peered in astonishment at Ainsworthy. "Imagine! Walking by choice!"
"What's your relaxant?" Ainsworthy asked, remembering his manners. "Blowing up balloons," said Northen proudly, "until they break! Bang! Wham!" His arms flailed again. "There's satisfaction for you! They're finished! Gone! Destroyed! Only a rag of rubber and a puff of carbon dioxide left! And I did it!"
"Pleasant," murmured Ainsworthy, automatically falling into polite phraseology, wishing Northen's eyes would not follow so intently every face that passed, knowing he was waiting for someone to collapse from KVIN.
He wasn't long disappointed. As they toured Lab IIIC a few days later, one of the lab assistants, Kief, carefully replacing the beaker he had been displaying, took tight hold of the edge of the table, drew a quavering breath, whispered, "Away!" and collapsed as though every bone in his body had been dissolved, his still-open eyes conscious and frightened.
In the patterned flurry that followed, Northen was omnipresent, asking sharp questions, making brief notes, his rumpled hair fairly bristling with his intense interest and concentration.
The Healiocopter arrived and, receiving the patient, clacked away. Ainsworthy and Northen, in one of the Unit vehicles-a mutation of the jeep-swung out of the Unit parking lot and roared down the road to Central Regional, Northen struggling with the seat belt that cut a canyon across his bulk.
Northen peered at his notes as they bounced along. "How'd this Kief person know he had KVIN?" he asked.
"Don't know exactly," said Ainsworthy. "It varies from person to person. Clagget-the one before Kief, said a big brightness seemed to cut him in two right across the chest and then his legs fell off. Others feel all wadded up into a sticky black ball. Others feel as though each cell in their bodies is being picked away as if from a bunch of grapes. I guess it depends a lot on the person's imagination and his facility with words."
"And when he said, `Away' just before he collapsed. That was part of this picking away idea?"
"No," Ainsworthy felt a surge of reluctance. "Away is the settlement next to our Unit –a Detach."
"A Detach!" Ainsworthy smiled slightly, his ears battening down hatches against Northen's expected roar. "Don't tell me you have any of those-!" He
bit off the last part of his sentence and almost the tip of his tongue as the jeep regrettably bucketed up over a hump in the road.
"The people from Away are our main source of donors for replacements," said Ainsworthy over Northen's muttered curses. "In fact, they've adopted it as a community project. Regional knows it never has to look farther than Away for an adequate number of donors-as long as the cases don't come too close together, which, so far, they never have." They had arrived at the turn-off to Away and jolted off the fairly good Unit road to the well-maintained dirt road to the settlement.
"Surprises me that they'll give anything to the world. Thought they gave it up along with the Flesh and the Devil!" grunted Northen, lisping a little.
"Maybe the World, but not the people in it," said Ainsworthy. "The most generous people I know. Unselfish" He fell silent against Northen's barely contained disgust.
"Why'd we turn off here?" asked Northen. "Thought we were headed for Regional."
"No telephones," said Ainsworthy, swinging between the stone gateposts of the drive to the Center. "Have to alert them." He was gratified that Northen fell immediately into the almost silent role of observer and kept his thoughts to himself.
Kemble met them at the door. "KVIN?" he asked, reading Ainsworthy's sober face.
"Yes," said Ainsworthy. "It's Kief. You probably heard the Healiocopter. Who's available?"
"Providentially, the workers are all in from the fields." Kemble stepped back inside the Center, and, tugging the bell rope that hung just inside the door, swung the bell into voice. Ten minutes later he spoke from the Center porch to the crowd that had gathered from the stone and log houses that, with the Center, formed a hollow square of buildings backed by the neat home vegetable gardens, backed in their turn by wood lands and the scattered areas where each family grew its field and cash crops.
"KVIN," said Kemble. "Who's available?"
Quickly a sub-group formed, more than twice as many as were needed if all were accepted. The others scattered back to their individual pursuits. Kemble gathered the donors together, briefly, speaking so quietly that Northen rumbled to Ainsworthy, "What's he saying? What's going on?"
"They always pray before any important project," said Ainsworthy neutrally.
"Pray!" Northen crumpled his notebook impatiently. "Wasting time. How they going to get to Regional? One hoss shay?"
"Relax!" snapped Ainsworthy, defensive for his friends. "These people have been personally involved in KVIN lots longer than you have. And they're going nowhere." Kemble turned back to Ainsworthy and accepted calmly the introduction to Northen, reading his attitude in a glance and smiling faintly over it at Ainsworthy. He excused himself and called, "Justin, you're co-ordinator today."
Most of the interior of the Center was one huge room, since it served as
meeting and activity center for the settlement. Under Justin's direction, closet doors were opened, cots were unfolded and arranged in neat rows down the hall. Equipment was set up, lines of donors were formed, and everything was in readiness by the time the Bloodmobile clacked out of the sky and pummeled the grass in the hollow square with the tumult of its rotors.
One by one the donors were given essential checks by means of a small meter applied to an ear lobe, and were accepted or rejected with quick efficiency.
Northen stood glowering at the scene of quiet activity. "Why can't they go to Regional like any other humans?"
"Any particular reason why they should?" asked Ainsworthy shortly. "They're a willing, never-failing source, and have been since our Unit was established. Why shouldn't we cater to them? It doesn't jeopardize any of our operations."
For a moment longer they watched the quiet rows of cots and their intent occupants, then Northen, with a grimace of annoyance, turned away. "Let's get to Regional," he said. "I want to follow this through, inch by inch."
"But there's got to be a difference!" Red-faced and roaring, Northen thumped on the desk in Isolation at Regional. "There's got to be! Why else do KVIN's recover here?"
"You tell us." Dr. Manson moved back in distaste from Northen's thrust-out face. "That's your job. Find out why. We've researched this problem for ten years now. You tell us what we have overlooked or neglected. We will receive with utmost enthusiasm any suggestions you might have. According to exhaustive tests from every possible point of reference, there is no difference in the blood of these donors and any donors anywhere!" He did a slight thumping of his own, his thin face flushed with anger. "And KVIN is KVIN, no matter where!"
"I don't like it," Northen growled to Ainsworthy a few days later, "Kief's convalescent now, but why? I've been drawing up another set of statistics and I don't like it."
"Must you like it?" asked Ainsworthy. "Is that requisite to valid results?"
"Of course not," growled Northen morosely.
"What statistics?" Ainsworthy asked, interest quickening. "A new lead?"
"It's true, isn't it, that the only blood donors used for KVIN replacements are those from Away?"
"Yes," nodded Ainsworthy.
"That's a factor that hasn't been considered before," said Northen. "I've queried the other Regionals-and I don't like it. There are no Detach donors involved at San Fran Regional. At Denver Regional, half their donors are Detaches." His thick hands crumpled the papers he held. "And curse'n'blastit! All the Central Regional donors are Detached"
Ainsworthy leaned back and laughed. "Exactly the ratio of deaths and recoveries regionally. But why are you so angry? Will it kill you if a Detach has something to do with solving our difficulty?"
"It's that those lumpheaded-sons-of-bowlegged-sea-cooks at Central swear there's nothing in the blood of any of these Detaches that's any different from any other donors! And the benighted-fuzzlebrains at Denver swear the same!"
"Hoh!" Ainsworthy leaned forward. "No answer?" he chuckled. "Maybe it's an invalid question. Maybe no one recovers from KVIN!"
"Don't be more of a fool than you have to," snapped Northern. Then automatically, "Your pardon."
"It's yours," Ainsworthy automatically responded.
The two sat in silence for a moment, then Northen pushed himself slowly to his feet. "Well, let's go see this-who's he? The Away fellow." "Kemble," said-Ainsworthy, rising.
"Yes, Kemble." Northen knocked his chair back from the table as he turned. "Maybe he can give us some sort of lead." Kemble was in the fields when they arrived so they had a couple of hours to kill before he could talk with them. They spent the time in touring the settlement, each aspect of which only deepened Northen's dislike of the place. They ended up at the tiny school where girls, long-braided, full-skirted, and boys, barefooted for the warm day and long trousered in the manner of Detaches, worked diligently and self-consciously under the visitors' eyes.
After they left the school, Northen snorted. "They're no angels! Did you see that little devil in the back seat slipping that frog down into the little girl's desk drawer?"
Ainsworthy laughed. "Yes," he said. "He was very adroit. But where did you get the idea that Detaches are supposed to be angels? They certainly never claim such distinction."
"Then why do they feel the world's so evil that they have to leave it?" snapped Northen.
"That's not the reason-" Ainsworthy broke off, weary to the bone of this recurrent theme harped on by those who dislike the Detaches. Well, those who took refuge in such a reaction were only striking back at a group that, to them, dishonored their own way of life by the simple act of withdrawing from it.
Kemble met them in a small office of the Center, his hair still glistening from his after-work wash-up. He made them welcome and said, "How can I help you?"
Northen stated his problem succinctly, surprising Ainsworthy by his being able to divorce it from all emotional bias. "So it comes down to this," he finished. "Are you in possession of any facts, or, lacking facts, any theories that might have a bearing on the problem?"
There was a brief silence, then Kemble spoke. "I'm surprised, frankly, at these statistics. It never occurred to me that we Detaches were involved in KVIN other than purely incidentally. As a matter of fact, we have no connection with the other Detach settlements. I mean, there's no organization as such of Detaches. Each settlement is entirely independent of any other, except, perhaps, in that a certain type of personality is attracted to this kind of life. We exchange news and views, but there are no closer ties."
"Then there wouldn't be any dietary rules or customs-"
"None," smiled Kemble. "We eat as God and our labors give us food."
"No hallucinogens or ceremonial drugs?"
"None," said Kemble. "We approach God as simply as He approaches us."
Northen shifted uncomfortably. "You're Religious." He made it a placard for a people.
"If the worship of God is so labeled," said Kemble. "But certainly, Detaches are not unique in that." The three sat silent, listening to the distant shrieking laughter of the released school children.
"Then there's nothing, nothing that might make a difference?" sighed Northen heavily.
"I'm sorry," said Kemble. "Nothing-" "Wait," said Ainsworthy. "It's remote, but what about your prayer before various activities?"
"Prayer" snorted Northen.
"But that's our custom before any-" Kemble broke off. He looked from Northen to Ainsworthy and back to Northen. "There is one factor that hasn't been considered," he said soberly. Then he smiled faintly, "You, sir, had better assume your most unemotional detachment." Northen hunched forward, scrabbling in his bent and tattered notebook for an empty page.
"Go on," he said, his chewed pencil poised in readiness.
"I had forgotten it," said Kemble. "It has become so automatic. Each of us donors, as our blood is being taken, prays continuously for the recipient of that blood, with specific mention of his name and illness if we know it. We try to keep our flow of intercessory prayer as continuous as the flow of blood into the containers."
Northen had stopped writing. His face reddened. His mouth opened. Ainsworthy could see the tensing of the muscles preparatory to a roar and spoke quickly. "Do you know if this is a practice among other Detaches?"
"We got the idea from a Denver Area settlement. We discussed it with them by correspondence and, if I'm not mistaken, we came to the same conclusion. It makes a purely impersonal thing into a vital personal service. They, as well as we, give intercessory prayer along with our blood." He stood up. "And that, Mr. Northen, is the only factor that I can think of that might make a difference. If you'll excuse me now, gentlemen, there are things to be done before milking time."
"One minute," Northen's voice was thick with control. "Can you give me a copy of the prayer?"
"I'm sorry," said Kemble. "There is no formal prayer. Each fashions his prayer according to his own orientation to God."
"Well, one thing," Northen sagged in exhaustion over his desk at the Unit. "This can be settled once and for all. The next case that comes up, we'll just make sure that no one prays anything while they're giving blood. That'll prove there's nothing to this silly idea!"
"Prove by a dead patient?" asked Ainsworthy. "Are you going to let someone die just to test this theory?"
"Surely you aren't feather-frittered-mealy-brained enough-" roared Northen.
"What other anything have you found to account for the recovery of KVIN's at Central?" Ainsworthy was impatient. He left Northen muttering and roaring in a whisper over his notebook.
About a week later, Ainsworthy was roused out of a sound post-midnight sleep by the insistent burr of the intercom. He half-fell out of bed and staggered blindly to answer it. "Yes," he croaked, "this is Ainsworthy?"
"No prayer-" The voice came in a broken rumble. "Not one word. Not one thought-"
"Northen!" Ainsworthy snapped awake. "What is it? What's the matter?"
"I've got it," said Northen thickly. "The answer?" asked Ainsworthy. "Couldn't you have waited until-"
"No, KVIN," Northen mumbled. "At least someone is sawing my ribs off one by one and hitting me over the head with them-" His voice faded.
"Northen!" Ainsworthy grabbed for his robe as he called. "I'll be right there. Hang on!"
"No praying!" said Northen. "No praying-This'll prove it. No-promise-promise-"
"Okay, okay!" said Ainsworthy. "Did you deliberately-but there was no sound on the intercom. He stumbled out the door, abandoning the robe that wouldn't go on upside-down and wrongside-out, muttering to himself, "Not another case already! Not this soon!"
"He couldn't have deliberately infected himself," protested Dr. Given as they waited on the heliport atop the Unit for the Healiocopter. "In the first place, we're not even sure how the disease is transmitted. And besides, he was not permitted access to any lab unaccompanied at any time."
"But two cases so close together-" said Ainsworthy.
"Coincidence," said Dr. Given. "Or"-his face was bleak = "an outbreak. Or the characteristics of the disease are altering-"
They both turned to the bundled up Northen as he stirred and muttered. "No praying," he insisted in a jerky whisper. "You promise-you promise!"
"But Northen," protested Ainsworthy, "what can you prove by dying?"
"No!" Northen struggled against the restraint litter. "You promised! You promised!"
"I don't know whether they'd-"
"You promised!" "I promised." Ainsworthy gave in. "Heaven help you!"
"No praying!" Northen sagged into complete insensibility. Ainsworthy was standing with Kemble, looking around at the brisk preparations in the Center at Away. The Delco plant in the little back shed was chugging away and the electric lights were burning in the hall and floodlighting the area where the Bloodmobile would land.
"It'll be difficult," said Kemble. "We are so used to praying as donors, that it'll be hard not to. And it seems foolhardy to take such chances. I'm not sure whether morally we have the right-"
"It's his express request," said Ainsworthy. "If he chooses to die to prove his point, I suppose it's his privilege. Besides, we really don't know if this is the key factor."
"That's true," Kemble agreed. "Very well, I'll tell the donors."
The waiting group looked back blankly at Kemble, after the announcement. Then someone-a girl-spoke.
"Not intercede? But we always-"
"I know, Cynthia," said Kemble, "but the patient specifically does not want intercession. We must respect his desires in this matter."
"But if he doesn't believe it'll do any good, why would it hurt him? I mean, our praying is our affair. His beliefs are his. The two-"
"Cynthia," said Kemble firmly. "He has been promised that there will be no intercessory prayer on his behalf. We owe him the courtesy of keeping the promise. I suggest to all of you that in place of interceding for the patient, you choose some other important need and intercede in its behalf. Or just blank your minds with trivialities. And Cynthia, you might use your time to assemble arguments pro and con on whether it is necessary for a person to know he is being prayed for, for prayer to be efficacious! I think Theo is going to give you a lot of trouble on that question as soon as we're through here!" The group laughed and turned away, offering all sorts of approaches to both Theo and Cynthia as they drifted out to wait for the arrival of the Bloodmobile. "It's hard to suspend a habit," said Kemble to Ainsworthy, "especially one that has a verbal tie-in with a physical action."
When Northen finally came back to consciousness-for come back he did-his first audible word was "Prayer?" "No," said Ainsworthy, shakily relaxing for the first time since the long vigil had begun. "No praying."
"See! See!" hissed Northen weakly, "it wasn't that!"
"Take satisfaction from the fact, if you like," said Ainsworthy, conscious of a pang of disappointment. "But you still have no answer. That was the only new angle you had, too."
"But it wasn't that! It wasn't that!" And Northen closed weary eyes.
"Odd that it should matter so much to him," said Dr. Manson.
"He likes answers," said Ainsworthy. "Nice, solid, complete answers, all ends tucked in, nothing left over. Prayer could never meet his specifications."
"And yet," said Dr. Manson as they left the room. "Have you read the lead article in this month's Journal of Beyond Research? Some very provocative-"
"Well, it's been interesting," said Ainsworthy as he helped a shrunken Northen load his bags into the jeep preparatory to leaving the Unit. "Too bad you didn't make more progress while you were here."
"I eliminated one factor," said Northen, hunching himself inside his sagging clothes. "That's progress."
"These clothes! Don't know whether to gain my weight back or buy new clothes. Go broke either way. Starved to death!"
"But you haven't answered anything," said Ainsworthy. "You still have the unexplained geographical distribution and the presence of the Detaches in the case."
"Eliminate nonessentials and what's left will be essential and the answer," said Northen, climbing into the jeep.
"But what have you got left to eliminate?" asked Ainsworthy.
"Curse'n'blastit!" roared Northen. "Stop needling me! If I knew what to eliminate, I'd be eliminating it! I'm backing off to get a fresh start. I'll put these KVIN units out of business yet. And you'll be eliminated!" And pleased with his turn of phrase, he chuckled all the way down the Unit drive to the road.
Ainsworthy felt a little disappointed and sad as the turnoff to Away swung into sight. He had an illogical feeling that, in some way, his friends had been betrayed or let down.
He braked the jeep suddenly, throwing Northen forward against the seat belt that no longer cut a gash in his bulk.
"What now?" Northen growled, groping for his briefcase that had shot off his lap.
"Someone flagging us down," said Ainsworthy, with a puzzled frown. "A Detach woman." He pulled the jeep up into the widening of the Away road where it joined the Unit road.
The woman from Away stood quietly now by the clump of bushes that bordered the road, her skirts swept back a little by the small breeze that moved the leaves.
"Can we help you?" asked Ainsworthy.
"I-I must speak to you." The woman was examining her clasped hands. She looked up timidly. "If you'd like to come over in the shade." She gestured to a log under the overhang of a huge tree just off the road. Ainsworthy looked at Northen, Northen scowled and they both flipped open their seat belts and got out.
"I-I'm very interested in your research on KVIN," the woman said to Northen as the two men gingerly found seats on the log. "Oh, I'm Elizabeth Fenway." Northen's eyes flicked with sudden intentness to her face. "Yes," she said softly. "You've heard of Charles Fenway. He was my husband. He preceded you in your job. He died of KVIN at the San Fran Regional. I was there with him. We were both born and grew up here at Away, so I brought him back here and stayed."
Ainsworthy intercepted Northen's astonished look and smiled, " Can any good come out of Nazareth?' " he quoted.
Northen reddened, shrugged inside his oversized clothes and fingered his notebook.
"When Charles was at San Fran Regional," Elizabeth went on, "just before he died, he had started checking out a new lead to KVIN that he had just turned up-the odd geographical distribution of deaths from KVIN." Northen's eyes snapped to her face again.
"He was going over the list of donors, to see if the key could be there when he died, in spite of replacement." Elizabeth smoothed her hands down the sides of her skirts. "He hadn't even had time to write up this latest development. That's why you had to retrace his steps. I had an idea of what you were doing when we heard you were at the Unit." She looked sideways at Northen. "I wondered how you were going to react when you found your research lead you into such distasteful company. You see, your opinion of us at Away and of anything religion-oriented is well known at Away. That's why we complied without much protest with your wishes concerning our intercessory prayers.
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