Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  “Of course it would have!” Mark swung angrily from the window. “It covered an area that needs to be covered. It was new—the first book in the field!” He turned again to the window.

  “Then,” said Johannan simply, “we will make it again. Have you paper enough?”

  Mark swung back, his eyes glittering. Meris stepped between his glare and Johannan. “This summer I have come back from the dead,” she reminded. “And you caught a baby for me, pulling her down from the sky by one ankle. Johannan went looking for his people through the tree-tops. And a three-year-old called him back by leaning against the window. If all these things could happen, why can’t Johannan bring your manuscript back?”

  “But if he tries and can’t—” Mark began.

  “Then we can let the dead past bury the dead,” said Meris sharply, “which little item you have not been letting happen so far!”

  Mark stared at her, then flushed a deep, painful flush. “Okay, then,” he said. “Stir the bones again! Let him put meat back on them if he can!”

  The next few hours were busy with patterned confusion. Mark roared off through the gathering darkness to persuade Chip to open the store for typing paper. And people arrived. Just arrived, smiling, at the door, familiar friends before they spoke, and Meris, glancing out to see if the heavens themselves had split open from astonishment, saw, hovering tree-top high, a truly vintage car, an old pickup that clanked softly to itself, spinning a wheel against a branch as it waited. “If Tad could see that!” she thought, with a bubble of laughter nudging her throat.

  She hurried back indoors further to make welcome the newcomers—Valancy, Karen, Davy, Jemmy. The women gathered Lala in with soft cries and shining eyes and she wept briefly upon them in response to their emotions, then leaped upon the fellows and nearly strangled them with her hugs.

  Johannan briefed the four in what had happened and what was needed. They discussed the situation, glanced at the few salvaged pages on the desk, and sent, eyes closed briefly, for someone else. His name was Remy and he had a special “Gift” for plans and diagrams. He arrived just before Mark got back, so the whole group of them confronted him when he flung the door open and stood there with his bundle of paper.

  He blinked, glanced at Meris, then, shifting his burden to one arm, held out a welcoming hand. “I hadn’t expected an invasion,” he smiled. “To tell the truth, I didn’t know what to expect.” He thumped the package down on the table and grinned at Meris. “Chip’s sure now that writers are psychos,” he said. “Any normal person could wait till morning for paper or use flattened grocery bags!” He shrugged out of his jacket. “Now.”

  Jemmy said, “It’s really quite simple. Since you wrote your book and have read it through several times, the thing exists as a whole in your memory, just as it was on paper. So all we have to do is put it on paper again.” He gestured.

  “That’s all?’ Mark’s hands went back through his hair. “That’s all? Man, that’s all I had to do after my notes were organized, months ago! Maybe I should have settled for flattened grocery bags! Why, the sheer physical—” The light was draining out of his face.

  “Wait—wait!” Jemmy’s hand closed warmly over his sagging shoulder. “Let me finish.”

  “Davy, here, is our gadgeteer. He dreams up all kinds of knick-knacks and, among other things, he has come forth with a word scriber. Even better”—he glanced at Johannan—”than the ones brought from the New Home. All you have to do is think and the scriber writes down your thoughts. Here— try it—” he said into Mark’s very evident skepticism.

  Davy put a piece of paper on the table in front of Mark and, on it, a small gadget that looked vaguely like a small sanding block in that it was curved across the top and flat on the bottom. “Go on,” urged Davy, “think something. You don’t even have to vocalize. I’ve keyed it to you. Karen sorted your setting for me.”

  Mark looked around at the interested, watching faces, at Meris’s eyes, blurred with hesitant hope, and then down at the scriber. The scriber stirred, then slid swiftly across the paper, snapping back to the beginning of a line again, as quick as thought. Davy picked up the paper and handed it to Mark. Meris crowded to peer over his shoulder.

  Of all the dern-fool things! As if it were possible— Look at the son-a-gun go!

  All neatly typed, neatly spaced, appropriately punctuated. Hope flamed up in Mark’s eyes. “Maybe so,” he said, turning to Jemmy. “What do I do, now?”

  “Well,” said Jemmy, “you have your whole book in your mind, but a mass of other things, too. It’d be almost impossible for you to think through your book without any digressions or side thoughts, so Karen will blanket your mind for you except for your book—”

  “Hypnotism—” Mark’s withdrawal was visible.

  “No,” said Karen. “Just screening out interference. Think how much time was taken up in your original draft by distractions—”

  Meris clenched her hands and gulped, remembering all the hours Mark had had to—to baby-sit her while she was still rocking her grief like a rag doll with all the stuffings pulled out. She felt an arm across her shoulders and turned to Valancy’s comforting smile. “All over,” said her eyes, kindly, “all past.”

  “How about all the diagrams—” suggested Mark. “I can’t vocalize—”

  “That’s where Remy comes in,” said Jemmy. “All you have to do is visualize each one. He’ll have his own scriber right here and he’ll take it from there.”

  The cot was pulled up near the table and Mark disposed himself comfortably on it. The paper was unwrapped and stacked all ready. Remy and Davy arranged themselves strategically. Surrounded by briefly bowed heads, Jemmy said, “We are met together in Thy name.” Then Karen touched Mark gently on the forehead with one fingertip.

  Mark suddenly lifted himself on one elbow. “Wait,” he said, “things are going too fast. Why—why are you doing this for us, anyway? We’re strangers. No concern of yours. Is it to pay us for taking care of Lala? In that case—”

  Karen smiled. “Why did you take care of Lala? You could have turned her over to the authorities. A strange child, no relation, no concern of yours.”

  “That’s a foolish question,” said Mark. “She needed help. She was cold and wet and lost. Anyone—”

  “You did it for the same reason we are doing this for you,” said Karen. “Just because we had our roots on a different world doesn’t make us of different flesh. There are no strangers in God’s universe. You found an unhappy situation that you could do something about, so you did it. Without stopping to figure out the whys and wherefores. You did it just because that’s what love does.”

  Mark lay back on the narrow pillow. “Thank you,” he said. Then he turned his face to Meris. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” Her voice jerked a little past her emotion. “Love you, Mark!”

  “Love you, Meris!”

  Karen’s fingertip went to Mark’s forehead again. “I need contact,” she said a little apologetically, “especially with an Outsider.”

  ~ * ~

  Meris fell asleep, propped up on the bunk, eyes lulled by the silent sli-i-i-ide, flip! sli-i-i-ide, flip! of the scriber, and the brisk flutter of finished pages from the tall pile of paper to the short one. She opened drowsy eyes to a murmur of voices and saw that the two piles of paper were almost balanced. She sat up to ease her neck where it had been bent against the cabin wall.

  “But it’s wrong, I tell you!” Remy was waving the paper. “Look, this line, here, where it goes—”

  “Remy,” said Jemmy, “are you sure it’s wrong or is it just another earlier version of what we know now?”

  “No!” said Remy. “This time it’s not that. This is a real mistake. He couldn’t possibly have meant it to be like that—”

  “Okay.” Jemmy nodded to Karen and she touched Mark’s forehead. He opened his eyes and half sat up. The scriber flipped across the paper and Karen stilled it with a touch. “What is it?” he asked. “Someth
ing go wrong?”

  “No, it’s this diagram.” Remy brought it to him. “I think you have an error here. Look where this goes—”

  The two bent over the paper. Meris looked around the cabin. Valancy was rocking a sleeping Lala in her arms. Davy was sound asleep in the upper bunk. At least his dangling leg looked very asleep. Johannan was absorbed in two books simultaneously. He seemed to be making a comparison of some sort. Meris lay back again, sliding down to a more comfortable position. For the first time in months and months the cabin was lapped from side to side with peace and relaxation. Even the animated discussion going on was no ruffling of the comfortable calmness. She heard, on the edge of her ebbing consciousness,

  “Why, no! That’s not right at all!” Mark was astonished. “Hoo boy! If I’d sent that in with an error like that! Thanks, fella—” And sleep flowed over Meris.

  She awoke later to the light chatter of Lala’s voice and opened drowsy eyes to see her trailing back from the bathroom, her feet tucked up under her gown away from the chilly floor as she drifted back to Valancy’s arms. The leg above Meris’s head swung violently and withdrew, to be replaced by Davy’s dangling head. He said something to Lala. She laughed and lifted herself up to his outstretched arms. There was a stirring around above Meris’s head before sleeping silence returned.

  Valancy stood and stretched widely. She moved over to the table and thumbed the stack of paper.

  “Going well,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” said Jemmy. “I feel a little like a midwife, snatching something new-born in the middle of the night.”

  “Dern shame to stop here, though,” said Remy. “With such a good beginning—oh, barring a few excursions down dead ends—if we could only tack on a few more chapters.”

  “Uh-uh!” Jemmy stood and stretched, letting his arms fall around Valancy’s shoulders. “You know better than that—”

  “Not even one little hint?”

  “Not even.” Jemmy was firm.

  Sleep flowed over Meris again until pushed back by Davy’s sliding over the edge of the upper bunk.

  “Right in the stomach!” he moaned as he dropped to the floor. “Such a kicking kid I never met. How’d you survive?” he asked Valancy.

  “Nary a kick,” she laughed. “Technique—that’s what it takes.”

  “I was just wondering,” said Davy, opening the stove and probing the coals before he put in another chunk of oak. “That kid Johannan was talking about—the one that’s got interested in vintage cars. What about that place up on Bearcat Flat? You know, that little box canyon where we put all our old jalopies when we discarded them. Engines practically unused. Lifting’s cheaper and faster. Of course the seats and the truck beds are kinda beat up, and the paint. Trees scratch the daylights out of paint. How many are there there? Let’s see. The first one was about 19-ought-something—”

  Johannan looked up from his books. “He said something about selling parts or cars to get money for college—”

  “Or restoring them!” Davy cried. “Hey, that could be fun! If he’s the kind that would—

  “He is,” said Johannan and went back to his reading.

  “It’s almost daylight.” Davy went to the window and parted the curtains. “Wonder how early a riser he is?”

  Meris turned her back to the light and slid back under sleep again.

  ~ * ~

  Noise and bustle filled the cabin.

  Coffee was perking fragrantly, eggs cracking, bacon spitting itself to crispness. Remy was cheerfully mashing slices of bread down on the hot stove lid and prying up the resultant toast. Lala was flicking around the table, putting two forks at half the places and two knives at the others, then giggling her way back around with redistribution after Johannan pointed out her error.

  Meris, reaching for a jar of peach marmalade on the top shelf of the cupboard, wondered how a day could feel so new and so wonderful. Mark sat at his desk opening and closing the box wherein lay the finished manuscript. He opened it again and fingered the top edge of the stack. He caught Jemmy’s sympathetic grin and grinned back.

  “Just making sure it’s really there,” he explained. “Magic put it in there. Magic might take it out again.”

  “Not this magic. I’ll even ride shotgun for you into town and see that it gets sent off okay,” said Jemmy.

  “Magic or no,” said Mark, sobering, “once more I can say Thank God! Thank God it’s done!”

  “Amen!” said a hovering Lala, and, laughing, Jemmy scooped her out of the air as they all found places at the table.

  ~ * ~

  Tad was an early riser. He was standing under the hovering pickup, gaping upward in admiring astonishment.

  “Oops!” said Davy, with a sidewise glance at Jemmy. Tad was swept up in a round of introductions during which the pickup lowered slowly to the ground.

  Tad turned from the group back to the pickup. “Look at it!” he said. “It must be at least forty years old!” His voice pushed its genesis back beyond the pyramids.

  “At least that,” said Davy. “Wanta see the motor?”

  “Do I!” He stood by impatiently as Davy wrestled with the hood. Then he blinked. “Hey! How did it get way up there? I mean, how’d it get down—”

  “Look,” said Davy hastily, “see this goes to the spark—”

  The others, laughing, piled into Mark’s car and drove away from the two absorbed autophiles-in-embryo.

  ~ * ~

  The car pulled over onto a pine flat halfway back from town and the triumphal mailing of the manuscript. This was the parting place. Davy would follow later with the pickup.

  “It’s over,” said Meris, her shoulders sagging a little as she put Lala’s small bundle of belongings into Valancy’s hands. “All over.” Her voice was desolate.

  “Only this little episode,” comforted Valancy. “It’s really only begun.” She put Lala into Meris’s arms. “Tell her good-by, Lala.”

  Lala hugged Meris stranglingly tight saying, “Love you, Meris!”

  “Love you, Lala!” Meris’s voice was shaken with laughter and sorrow.

  “It’s just that she filled up the empty places so wonderfully well,” she explained to Valancy.

  “Yes,” said Valancy softly, her eyes tender and compassionate. “But, you know,” she went on, “you are pregnant again!”

  Before Meris could produce an intelligible thought, good-bys were finished and the whole group was losing itself in the tangle of creek-side vegetation. Lala’s vigorous waving of Deeko was the last sign of them before the leaves closed behind them.

  Meris and Mark stood there, Meris’s head pressed to Mark’s shoulder, both too drained for any emotion. Then Meris stirred and moved toward the car, her eyes suddenly shining. “I don’t think I can wait,” she said. “I don’t think—”

  “Wait for what?” asked Mark, following her.

  “To tell Dr. Hilf—” She covered her mouth, dismayed. “Oh, Mark! We never did find out that doctor’s name!”

  “Not that Hilf is drooling to know,” said Mark, starting the car, “but next time— “

  “Oh, yes,” Meris sat back, her mouth curving happily, “next time, next time!”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Interlude: Mark & Meris 1

  The next time wasn’t so long by the calendar, but measured by the anticipation and the marking time, it seemed an endless eternity. Then one night Meris, looking down into the warm, moistly fragrant blanket-bundle in the crook of her elbow, felt time snap back into focus. It snapped back so completely and satisfyingly that the long, empty time of grief dwindled to a memory-ache tucked back in the fading past.

  “And the next one,” she said drowsily to Mark, “will be a brother for her.”

  The nurse laughed. “Most new mothers feel, at this point, that they are through with childbearing. But I guess they soon forget because we certainly get a lot of repeaters!”

  ~ * ~

  The Saturday bef
ore the baby’s christening, Meris felt a stir of pleasure as she waited for her guests to arrive. So much of magic was interwoven with her encounters with them, the magic of being freed from grief, of bringing forth a new life, and the magic of the final successful production of Mark’s book. She was wondering, with a pleasurable apprehension, what means of transportation the guests would use, treetop high, one wheel spinning lazily! when a clanging clatter drew her to the front window.

  There in all its glory, shining with love, new paint, and dignity, sailed the Overland that had been moldering behind Tad’s barn. Flushed with excitement and pride, Tad, with an equally proud Johannan seated beside him, steered the vehicle ponderously over to the curb. There it hiccoughed, jumped, and expired with a shudder.