Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  “The bleeding’s nearly stopped,” said Meris. “And his eyes are fluttering.”

  Even as she spoke, the eyes opened, dark and dazed, the head turning restlessly. Mark leaned over the man. “Hello,” he said, trying to get the eyes to focus on him. “You’re okay. You’re okay. Only a cut—”

  The man’s head stilled. He blinked and spoke, his eyes closing before his words were finished.

  “What did he say?” asked Tad. “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mark. “And he’s gone again. To sleep, this time,

  I hope. I’m quite sure he isn’t dying.”

  Later, when Mark was satisfied that the man was sleeping, in the warm pajamas he and Tad had managed to wrestle him into, he got dressed in clean clothes and had Tad wash up, and put on a clean flannel shirt in place of his blood-stained one.

  “We’re going to the sheriff, after we find the doctor,” he told Tad. “We’re going to have to take care of those kids before they do kill someone or themselves. And you, Tad, are going to have to put the finger on them whether you like it or not. You’re the only witness—”

  “But if I do, then I’ll get in trouble, too—” began Tad.

  “Look, Tad,” said Mark patiently, “if you walk in mud, you get your feet muddy. You knew when you got involved with these fellows that you were wading in mud. Maybe you thought it didn’t matter much. Mud is easy to wash off. That might be true of mud, but what about blood?”

  “But Rick’s not a juvenile any more—” Tad broke off before the grim tightening of Mark’s face.

  “So that’s what they’ve been trading on. So he’s legally accountable now? Nasty break!”

  After they were gone, Meris checked the sleeping man again. Then, crawling into bed, shoving Lala gently toward the back of the bunk, she cuddled, shivering under the bedclothes. She became conscious of the steady outflow of warmth from Lala and smiled as she fanned her cold hands out under the cover toward the small body. “Bless the little heater!” she said. Her eyes were sleepy and closed in spite of her, but her mind still raced with excitement and wonder. What if Mark was right? What if Lala had come from a spaceship! What if this man, sleeping under their own blankets on their own cot, patched by their own gauze and adhesive, was really a Man from Outer Space! Wouldn’t that be something? “But,” she sighed, “no bug-eyed monsters? No set, staring eyes and slavering teeth?” She smiled at herself. She had been pretty bug-eyed herself, when she had seen his un-unbuttonable shirt.

  Dr. Hilf arrived, large, loud, and lively, before Meris got back to sleep— in fact, while she was in the middle of her Bless Mark, bless Tad, bless Lala, bless the bandaged man, bless— He examined the silently cooperative man thoroughly, rebandaged his head and a few of the deeper scratches, grabbed a cup of coffee, and boomed, “Doesn’t look to me as if he’s been hit by a car! Aspirin if his head aches. No use wasting stitches where they aren’t needed!” His voice woke Lala and she sat up, blinking silently at him. “He’s not much worried himself! Asleep already! That’s an art!” The doctor gave Meris a practiced glance. “Looking half alive again yourself, young lady. Good idea having a child around. Your niece?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Good to help hold the place until you get another of your own!” Meris winced away from the idea. The doctor’s eyes softened, but not his voice. “There’ll be others,” he boomed. “We need offspring from good stock like yours and Mark’s. Leaven for a lot of the makeweights popping up all over.” He gathered up his things and flung the door open. “Mark says the fellow’s a foreigner. No English. Understood though. Let me know his name when you get it. Just curious. Mark’ll be along pretty quick. Waiting for the sheriff to get the juvenile officers from county seat.” The house door slammed. A car door slammed. A car roared away. Meris automatically smoothed her hair as she always did after a conversation with Dr. Hilf.

  She turned wearily back toward the bunk. And gasping, stumbled forward. Lala was hovering in the air over the strange man like a flanneled angel over a tombstoned crusader. She was peering down, her bare feet flipping up as she lowered her head toward him. Meris clenched her hands and made herself keep back out of the way.

  “Muhlala!” whispered Lala softly. Then louder, “Muhlala!” Then she wailed, “Muhlala!” and thumped herself down on the quiet, sleeping chest.

  “Well,” said Meris aloud to herself as she collapsed on the edge of the bunk. “There seems to be no doubt about it!” She watched—a little enviously—the rapturous reunion, and listened—more than a little curiously—to the flood of strange-sounding double conversation going on without perceptible pauses. Smiling, she brought tissues for the man to mop his face after Lala’s multitude of very moist kisses. The man was sitting up now, holding Lala closely to him. He smiled at Meris and then down at Lala. Lala looked at Meris and then patted the man’s chest.

  “Muhlala,” she said happily, “muhlala!” and burrowed her head against him.

  Meris laughed. “No wonder you thought it funny when I called you muhlala,” she said. “I wonder what Lala means.”

  “It means ‘daddy,’ “ said the man. “She is quite excited about being called daddy.”

  Meris swallowed her surprise. “Then you do have English,” she said.

  “A little,” said the man. “As you give it to me. Oh, I am Johannan.” He sagged then, and said something un-English to Lala. She protested, but even protesting, lifted herself out of his arms and back to the bunk, after planting a last smacking kiss on his right ear. The man wiped the kiss away and held his drooping head between his hands.

  “I don’t wonder,” said Meris, going to the medicine shelf. “Aspirin for your headache.” She shook two tablets into his hand and gave him a glass of water. He looked bewilderedly from one hand to the other.

  “Oh, dear,” said Meris. “Oh, well, I can use one myself,” and she took an aspirin and a glass of water and showed him how to dispose of them. The man smiled and gulped the tablets down. He let Meris take the glass, slid flat on the cot, and was breathing asleep before Meris could put the glass in the sink.

  “Well!” she said to Lala and stood her, curly-toed, on the cold floor and straightened the bedclothes. “Imagine a grown-up not knowing what to do with an aspirin! And now,” she plumped Lala into the freshly made bed, “now, my Daddy-girl, shall we try that instant sleep bit?”

  ~ * ~

  The next afternoon, Meris and Lala lounged in the thin warm sunshine near the creek with Johannan. In the piny, water-loud clearing, empty of unnecessary conversation, Johannan drowsed and Lala alternately bandaged her doll and unbandaged it until all the stickum was off the tape. Meris watched her with that sharp awareness that comes so often before an unwished-for parting from one you love. Then, with an almost audible click, afternoon became evening and the shadows were suddenly long. Mark came out of the cabin, stretching his desk-kinked self widely, then walking his own long shadow down to the creek bank.

  “Almost through,” he said to Meris as he folded himself to the ground beside her. “By the end of the week, barring fire, flood, and the cussedness of man, I’ll be able to send it off.”

  “I’m so glad,” said Meris, her happiness welling strongly up inside her. “I was afraid my foolishness——”

  “The foolishness is all past now,” said Mark. “It is remembered against us no more.”

  Johannan had sat up at Mark’s approach. He smiled now and said carefully, “I’m glad my child and I haven’t interrupted your work too much. It would be a shame if our coming messed up things for you.”

  “You have a surprising command of the vernacular if English is not your native tongue,” said Mark, his interest in Johannan suddenly sharpening.

  “We have a knack for languages,” smiled Johannan, not really answering anything.

  “How on earth did you come to lose Lala?” Meris asked, amazed at herself for asking such a direct question.

  Johannan’s face sobered. “That was quite a
deal—losing a child in a thunderstorm over a quarter of a continent.” He touched Lala’s cheek softly with his finger as she patiently tried to make the worn-out tape stick again on Deeko. “It was partly her fault,” said Johannan, smiling ruefully. “If she weren’t precocious— You see, we do not come into the atmosphere with the large ship—too many complications about explanations and misinterpretations and a very real danger from trigger-happy—or unhappy—military, so we use our life-slips for landings.”

  “We?” murmured Meris.

  “Our People,” said Johannan simply. “Of course there’s no Grand Central Station of the Sky. We are very sparing of our comings and goings. Lala and I were returning because Lala’s mother has been Called and it is best to bring Lala to Earth to her grandparents.”

  “Her mother was called?” asked Mark.

  “Back to the Presence,” said Johannan. “Our years together were very brief.” His face closed smoothly over his sorrow. “We move our life-slips,” he went on after a brief pause, “without engines. It is an adult ability, to bring the life-slips through the atmosphere to land at the Canyon. But Lala is precocious in many Gifts and Persuasions and she managed to jerk her life-slip out of my control on the way down. I followed her into the storm—” He gestured and smiled. He had finished.

  “But where were you headed?” asked Mark. “Where on earth—?”

  “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 car. 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 threefold 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 quantities 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 Johannan. 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. “He—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 hi
m 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.