Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  Mr. Kroginold said hastily to the eaves of the porch, “—as soon as possible. Hang on. Vincent’s got him again. Wait, I’ll relay. Vince, where can I reach him? Show me.”

  And damned if they didn’t all sit there again—with Vincent’s face shining with sweat and his mother trying to cradle his twisting body Then Mr. Kroginold gave a grunt, and Vincent relaxed with a sob. His father took him from his mother.

  “Already?” I asked. “That was a short one.”

  Mrs. Kroginold fished for a tissue in her pocket and wiped Vincent’s face. “It isn’t over yet,” she said. “It won’t be until the capsule swings behind the Earth again, but he’s channeling the distress to his father, and he’s relaying it to Jemmy up-canyon. Jemmy is our Old One. He’ll help us handle it from here on out. But Vincent will have to be our receptor—” “ A sort of telepathy,’ “ I quoted, dizzy with trying to follow a road I couldn’t even imagine.

  “A sort of telepathy.” Mrs. Kroginold laughed and sighed, her finger tracing Vincent’s cheek lovingly. “You’ve had quite a mish-mash dumped in your lap, haven’t you? And no time for us to be subtle.”

  “It is bewildering,” I said. “I’ve been adding two and two and getting the oddest fours!”

  “Like?” she asked.

  “Like maybe Vincent’s forefathers didn’t come over in the Mayflower, but maybe a spaceship?”

  “But not quite Mayflower years ago,” she smiled. “And?”

  “And maybe Vincent’s Dad has seen no life on the moon?”

  “Not so very long ago,” she said. “And?”

  “And maybe there is a man in distress up there and you are going to try to rescue him?”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Kroginold. “Those fours look all right to me.”

  “They do?’ I goggled. Then I sighed, “Ah well, this modern math! I knew it would be the end of me!”

  Mr. Kroginold brought his eyes back to us. “Well, it’s all set in motion. Ron’s gone for the craft. He’ll be here to pick us up as soon as he can make it. Jemmy’s taking readings on the capsule so we’ll be able to attempt rendezvous. Then, the Power being willing, we’ll be able to bring the fellow back.”

  “I—I—” I stood up. This was suddenly too much. “I think maybe I’d better go back in the house.” I brushed the sand off the back of my robe. “One thing bothers me still, though.”

  “Yes?” Mrs. Kroginold smiled.

  “How is the FBI going to convince the authorities of the other country?”

  “Ay!” she said, sobering. “Jake—”

  And I gathered my skirts up and left the family there on the school porch. As I closed the teacherage door behind me, I leaned against it. It was so dark—in here. And there was such light out there! Why, they had jumped into helping without asking one single question! Then I wondered what questions I had expected— Was the man a nice man? Was he worth saving? Was he an important personage? What kind of reward? Is there a need? That’s all they needed to know!

  I looked at the sleepcoat I hadn’t worn yet, but I felt too morning to undress and go to bed properly, so I slid out of my robe and put my dress back on. And my shoes. And a sweater. And stood irresolutely in the middle of the floor. After all! What is the etiquette for when your guests are about to go into orbit from your front porch?

  Then there was a thud at the door and the knob rattled. I heard Mrs. Kroginold call softly, “But Vincent! An Outsider?”

  “But she isn’t!” said Vincent, fumbling again at the door. “She said she isn’t—she’s a teacher. And I know she’d like—” The door swung open suddenly and tumbled Vincent to the schoolroom floor. Mrs. Kroginold was just outside the outer door on the porch.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Vincent thinks maybe you’d like to see the craft arrive—but—”

  “You’re afraid I might tell,” I said for her. “And it should be kept in the family. I’ve been repository for odd family stories before. Well, maybe not quite—”

  Vincent scrambled for the porch. “Here it comes!” he cried.

  I was beside Mrs. Kroginold in a split second and, grasping hands, we raced after Vincent. Mr. Kroginold had been standing in the middle of the playground, but he drifted back to us as a huge—well, a huge nothing came down through the moonlight.

  “It—where is it?” I wondered if some dimension I didn’t know was involved.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Kroginold. “It has the unlight over it. Jake! Ask Ron—”

  Mr. Kroginold turned his face to the huge nothing. And there it was! A slender silver something, its nose arcing down from a rocket position to rest on the tawny sands of the playground.

  “The unlight’s so no one will see us,” said Mrs. Kroginold, “and we flow it so it won’t bother radar and things like that.” She laughed. “We’re not the right shape for this year’s flying saucers, anyway. I’m glad we’re not. Who wants to look like a frosted cupcake on a purple lighted plate? That’s what’s so In now.”

  “Is it really a spaceship?” I asked, struck by how clean the lovely gleaming craft was that had come so silently to dent our playground.

  “Sure it is!” cried Vincent. “The Old Man had it and they took him to the moon in it to bury him and Bethie-too and Remy went with their Dad and Mom and—”

  “A little reticence, Son,” said Mr. Kroginold, catching Vincent s hand. “It isn’t necessary to go into all that history.”

  “She—she realizes,” said Mrs. Kroginold. “It’s not as if she were a stranger.”

  “We shouldn’t be gone too long,” said Mr. Kroginold. “I’ll pick you up here as soon—”

  “Pick us up! I’m going with you!” cried Mrs. Kroginold. “Jake Kroginold! If you think you’re going to do me out of a thing as wild and wonderful as this—”

  “Let her go with us, Dad,” begged Vincent.

  “With us?’ Mr. Kroginold raked his fingers back through his hair.

  “You, too?”

  “Of course!” Vincent’s eyes were wide with astonishment. “It’s my man!”

  “Well, adonday veeah in cards and spades!” said Mr. Kroginold. He grinned over at me. “Family!” he said.

  I studiously didn’t meet his eyes. I felt a deep wave of color move up my face as I kept my mouth clamped shut. I wouldn’t say anything! I couldn’t ask! I had no right to expect—

  “And Teacher, too!” cried Vincent. “Teacher, too!”

  Mr. Kroginold considered me for a long moment. My wanting must have been a flaring thing because he finally shrugged an eyebrow and echoed, “And Teacher, too.”

  Then I nearly died! It was so wild and wonderful and impossible and I’m scared to death of heights! We scurried about getting me a jacket. Getting Kipper’s forgotten jacket out of the cloak room for Vincent, who had come off without his. Taking one of my blankets, just in case. I paused a moment in the mad scramble, hand poised over my Russian-English, English-Russian pocket dictionary. Then left it. The man might not be Russian at all. And even if he was, people like Vincent’s seemed to have little need for such aids to communication.

  A door opened in the craft. I looked at it, thinking blankly, Ohmy! Ohmy! We had started across the yard toward the craft when I gasped, “The—the door! I have to lock the door!”

  I dashed back to the schoolhouse and into the darkness of the teacherage. And foolishly, childishly, there in the dark, I got awfully hungry! I yanked a cupboard door open and scrabbled briefly. Peanut butter—slippery, glassy cylinder—crackers—square-cornered, waxy carton. I slammed the cupboard shut, snatched up my purse as though I were on the way to the MONSTER MERCANTILE, staggered out of the door, and juggled my burdens until I could manipulate the key. Then I hesitated on the porch, one foot lifting, all ready to go to the craft, and silently gasped my travel prayer. “Dear God, go with me to my destination. Don’t let me imperil anyone or be imperiled by anyone. Amen.” I started down the steps, paused, and cried softly, “To my destination and back! Oh, please! And back!”
>
  Have you, oh, have you ever watched space reach down to surround you as your hands would reach down to surround a minnow? Have you ever seen Earth, a separate thing, apart from you, and see-almost-all-able? Have you ever watched color deepen and run until it blared into blaze and blackness? Have you ever stepped out of the context in which your identity is established and floated un-anyone beyond the steady pulse of night and day and accustomed being? Have you ever, for even a fleeting second, shared God’s eyes? I have! I have!

  And Mrs. Kroginold and Vincent were with me in all the awesome wonder of our going. You couldn’t have seen us go even if you had known where to look. We were wrapped in unlight again, and the craft was flowed again to make it a nothing to any detection device.

  “I wish I could space walk!” said Vincent, finally, turning his shoulders but not his eyes away from the window. “Daddy—”

  “No.” Mr. Kroginold’s tone left no loophole for further argument.

  “Well, it would be fun,” Vincent sighed. Then he said in a very small voice, “Mother, I’m hungry.”

  “So sorry!” Mrs. Kroginold hugged him to her briefly. “Nearest hamburger joint’s a far piece down the road!”

  “Here—” I found, after two abortive attempts, that I still had a voice. I slithered cautiously to my knees on the bare floor—no luxury liner, this— and sat back. “Peanut butter.” The jar clicked down. “And crackers.” The carton thumped—and my elbow creaked almost audibly as I straightened it out from its spasmed clutch.

  “Gollee! Real deal!” Vincent plumped down beside me and began working on the lid of the jar. “What’ll we spread it with?”

  “Oh!” I blankly considered the problem. “Oh, I have a nail file here in my purse.” I was fishing for it amid the usual clutter when I caught Mrs. Kroginold’s surprised look. I grinned sheepishly. “I thought I was hungry. But I guess that wasn’t what was wrong with my stomach!”

  Shortly after the jar was opened and the roasty smell of peanuts spread, Mr. Kroginold and another fellow drifted casually over to us. I preferred to ignore the fact that they actually drifted—no steps on the floor. The other fellow was introduced as Jemmy. The Old One? Not so old, it seemed to me. But then “old” might mean “wise” to these people. And on that score he could qualify. He had none of the loose ends that I can often sense in people. He was—whole.

  “Ron is lifting,” said Mr. Kroginold through a mouthful of peanut butter and crackers. He nodded at the center of the room, where another fellow sat looking intently at a square, boxy-looking thing.

  “That’s the amplifier,” Jemmy said, as though that explained anything. “It makes it possible for one man to manage the craft.”

  Something buzzed on a panel across the room. “There!” Mr. Kroginold was at the window, staring intently. “There it is! Good work, Ron!”

  At that moment Vincent cried out, his arms going up in their protesting posture. Mrs. Kroginold pushed him over to his father, who drew him in the curve of his shoulder to the window, coaxing down the tense arms.

  “See? There’s the craft! It looks odd. Something’s not right about it.”

  “Can—can we take off the unlight now?” asked Vincent, jerkily. “So he can see us? Then maybe he won’t feel so bad—”

  “Jemmy?” Mr. Kroginold called across the craft. “What do you think? Would the shock of our appearance be too much?”

  “It could hardly be worse than the hell he’s in now,” said Jemmy. “So—”

  “Oh!” cried Vincent. “He thinks he just now died. He thinks we’re the Golden Gates!”

  “Rather a loose translation.” Jemmy flung a smiling glance at us. “But he is wondering if we are the entrance to the afterworld. Ron, can we dock?”

  Moments later, there was a faint metallic click and a slight vibration through our craft. Then we three extras stood pressed to the window and watched Mr. Kroginold and Jemmy leave our craft. They were surrounded, it’s true, by their shields that caught light and slid it rapidly around, but they did look so unguarded—no, they didn’t! They looked right at home and intent on their rescue mission. They disappeared from the sight of our windows. We waited and waited, not saying anything—not aloud, anyway. I could feel a clanking through the floor under me. And a scraping. Then a long nothing again.

  Finally they came back in sight, the light from our window glinting across a mutual protective bubble that enclosed the two of them and a third inert figure between them.

  “He still thinks he’s dead,” said Vincent soberly. “He’s wondering if he ought to try to pray. He wasn’t expecting people after he died. But mostly he’s trying not to think.”

  They brought him in and laid him on the floor. They eased him out of his suit and wrapped him in my blanket. We three gathered around him looking at his quiet, tight face. So young! I thought. So young! Unexpectedly his eyes opened, and he took us in, one by one. At the sight of Vincent, his mouth dropped open and his eyes fled shut again.

  “What’d he do that for?” asked Vincent, a trifle hurt.

  “Angels,” said his mother firmly, “are not supposed to have peanut butter around the mouth!”

  The three men consulted briefly. Then Mr. Kroginold prepared to leave our craft again. This time he took a blanket from the Rescue Pack they had brought in the craft.

  “He can manage the body alone,” said Jemmy, being our intercom. A little later— “He has the body out, but he’s gone back—” His forehead creased, then cleared. “Oh, the tapes and instrument packets,” he explained to our questioning glances. “He thinks maybe they can study them and prevent this happening again.”

  He turned to Mrs. Kroginold. “Well, Lizbeth, back when all of you were in school together in the canyon, I wouldn’t have given a sandwiched quarter for the chances of any Kroginold ever turning out well. I sprinkle repentant ashes on my bowed head. Some good can come from Kroginolds!”

  And Vincent screamed!

  Before we could look his way, there was a blinding flash that exploded through every window as though we had suddenly been stabbed through and through. Then we were all tumbled in blinded confusion from one wall of our craft to another until, almost as suddenly, we floated in a soundless blackness. “Jake! Oh, Jake!” I heard Mrs. Kroginold’s whispering gasp. Then she cried out, “Jemmy! Jemmy! What happened? Where’s Jake?”

  Light came back. From where, I never did know. I hadn’t known its source even before.

  “The retro-rockets—” I felt more of his answer than I heard. “Maybe they finally fired. Or maybe the whole capsule just blew up. Ron?”

  “Might have holed us.” A voice I hadn’t heard before answered. “Didn’t. Capsule’s gone.”

  “But—but—” The enormity of what had happened slowed our thoughts. “Jake!” Mrs. Kroginold screamed. “Jemmy! Ron! Jake’s out there!”

  And, as suddenly as the outcry came, it was cut off. In terror I crouched on the floor, my arms up defensively, not to my ears as Vincent’s had gone—there was nothing to hear—but against the soundless, aimless tumbling of bodies above me. Jemmy and Vincent and Mrs. Kroginold were like corpses afloat in some invisible sea. And Vincent, burrowed into a corner, was a small, silent, humped-up bundle.

  I think I would have gone mad in the incomprehensible silence if a hand hadn’t clutched mine. Startled, I snatched my hand away, but gave it back, with a sob, to our shipwrecked stranger. He accepted it with both of his. We huddled together, taking comfort in having someone to cling to.

  Then I shook with hysterical laughter as I suddenly realized. “ ‘A sort of telepathy’!” I giggled. “They are not dead, but speak. Words are slow, you know.” I caught the young man’s puzzled eyes. “And of very little use in a situation like this.”

  I called to Ron where he crouched near the amplifier box, “They are all right, aren’t they?”

  “They?” His head jerked upward. “Of course. Communicating.”

  “Where’s Mr. Kroginold?” I asked. “
How can we ever hope to find him out there?”

  “Trying to reach him,” said Ron, his chin flipping upward again. “Don’t feel him dead. Probably knocked out. Can’t find him unconscious.”

  “Oh.” The stranger’s fingers tightened on mine. I looked at him. He was struggling to get up. I let go of him and shakily, on hands and knees, we crawled to the window, his knees catching on the blanket. For a long moment, the two of us stared out into the darkness. I watched the lights wheel slowly past until I reoriented, and we were the ones wheeling. But as soon as I relaxed, again it was the lights wheeling slowly past. I didn’t know what we were looking for. I couldn’t get any kind of perspective on anything outside our craft. Any given point of light could have been a dozen light-years away—or could have been a glint inside the glass—or was it glass?—against which I had my nose pressed.