Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  I felt Bethie’s arm trembing against mine. Then there was something beyond Kerry Canyon!

  “How come? What’s wrong with them?”

  “Why, nothing, Mac, nothing. Matter of fact they’re dern nice people. Trade here a lot. Come in to church and the dances.”

  “Dances?” I glanced around the steep sloping hills.

  “Sure. We ain’t as dead as we look,” the attendant grinned. “Come Saturday night we’re quite a town. Lots of ranches around these hills. Course, not much out Cougar Canyon way. That’s where your friends live, didn’t you say?”

  “Yeah. Out by Baldy.”

  “Well, nobody else lives out that way.” He hesitated. “Hey, there’s something I’d like to ask.”

  “Sure. Like what?”

  “Well, them people pretty much keep themselves to themselves. I don’t mean they’re stuck-up or anything, but—well, I’ve always wondered. Where they from? One of them overrun countries in Europe? They’re foreigners, ain’t they? And seems like most of what Europe exports any more is DP’s. Are them people some?”

  “Well, yes, you might call them that. Why?”

  “Well, they talk just as good as anybody and it must have been a war a long time ago because they’ve been around since my Dad’s time, but they just—feel different.” He caught his upper lip between his teeth reflectively. “Good different. Real nice different.” He grinned again. “Wouldn’t mind shining up some of them gals myself. Don’t get no encouragement, though.

  “Anyway, keep on this road. It’s easy. No other road going that way. Jackass Flat will beat the tar outa your tires, but you’ll probably make it, less’n comes up a heavy rain. Then you’ll skate over half the county and most likely end up in a ditch. Slickest mud in the world. Colder’n hell—beg pardon, lady—out there on the flat when the wind starts blowing. Better bundle up.”

  “Thanks, fella,” I said. “Thanks a lot. Think we’ll make it before dark?”

  Oh, sure. ‘Tain’t so awful far but the road’s lousy. Oughta make it in two-three hours, less’n like I said, comes up a heavy rain.”

  We knew when we hit Jackass Flat. It was like dropping off the edge. If we had thought the road to Kerry Canyon was bad, we revised our opinions, but fast. In the first place it was choose your own ruts. Then the tracks were deep sunk in heavy clay generously mixed with sharp splintery shale and rocks as big as your two fists that were like a gigantic gravel as far as we could see across the lifeless expanse of the flat.

  But to make it worse, the ruts I chose kept ending abruptly as though the cars that had made them had either backed away from the job or jumped over. Jumped over! I drove, in and out of ruts, so wrapped up in surmises that I hardly noticed the rough going until a cry from Bethie aroused me.

  “Stop the car!” she cried. “Oh, Peter! Stop the car!”

  I braked so fast that the pickup swerved wildly, mounted the side of a rut, lurched and settled sickeningly down on the back tire, which sighed itself flatly into the rising wind.

  “What on earth!” I yelped, as near to being mad at Bethie as I’d ever been in my life. “What was that for?”

  Bethie, white-faced, was emerging from the army blanket she had huddled in against the cold. “It just came to me. Peter, supposing they don’t want us?”

  “Don’t want us? What do you mean?” I growled, wondering if that lace doily I called my spare tire would be worth the trouble of putting it on.

  “We never thought. It didn’t even occur to us. Peter, we—we don’t belong. We won’t be like them. We’re partly of Earth—as much as we are of wherever else. Supposing they reject us? Supposing they think we’re undesirable—?” Bethie turned her face away. “Maybe we don’t belong anywhere, Peter, not anywhere at all.”

  I felt a chill sweep over me that was not of the weather. We had assumed so blithely that we would be welcome. But how did we know? Maybe they wouldn’t want us. We weren’t of the People. We weren’t of Earth. Maybe we didn’t belong—not anywhere.

  “Sure they’ll want us,” I forced out heartily. Then my eyes wavered away from Bethie’s and I said defensively, “Mother said they would help us. She said we were woven of the same fabric—”

  “But maybe the warp will only accept genuine woof. Mother couldn’t know. There weren’t any—half-breeds—when she was separated from them. Maybe our Earth blood will mark us—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Earth blood,” I said defiantly. “Besides, like you said, what would there be for you if we went back?”

  She pressed her clenched fists against her cheeks, her eyes wide and vacant. “Maybe,” she muttered, “maybe if I’d just go on and go completely insane it wouldn’t hurt so terribly much. It might even feel good.”

  “Bethie!” My voice jerked her physically. “Cut out that talk right now! We’re going on. The only way we can judge the People is by Mother. She would never reject us or any others like us. And that fellow back there said they were good people.”

  I opened the door. “You better try to get some kinks out of your legs while I change the tire. By the looks of the sky we’ll be doing some skating before we get to Cougar Canyon.”

  But for all my brave words it wasn’t just for the tire that I knelt beside the car, and it wasn’t only the sound of the lug wrench that the wind carried up into the darkening sky.

  I squinted through the streaming windshield, trying to make out the road through the downpour that fought our windshield wiper to a standstill. What few glimpses I caught of the road showed a deceptively smooth-looking chocolate river, but we alternately shook like a giant maraca, pushed out sheets of water like a speedboat, or slithered aimlessly and terrifyingly across sudden mud flats that often left us yards off the road. Then we’d creep cautiously back until the soggy squelch of our tires told us we were in the flooded ruts again.

  Then all at once it wasn’t there. The road, I mean. It stretched a few yards ahead of us and then just flowed over the edge, into the rain, into nothingness.

  “It couldn’t go there,” Bethie murmured incredulously. “It can’t just drop off like that.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not dropping off with it, sight unseen,” I said, huddling deeper into my army blanket. My jacket was packed in back and I hadn’t bothered to dig it out. I hunched my shoulders to bring the blanket up over my head. “I’m going to take a look first.”

  I slid out into the solid wall of rain that hissed and splashed around me on the flooded flat. I was soaked to the knees and mud-coated to the shins before I slithered to the drop-off. The trail—call that a road?—tipped over the edge of the canyon and turned abruptly to the right, then lost itself along a shrub-grown ledge that sloped downward even as it paralleled the rim of the canyon. If I could get the pickup over the rim and onto the trail, it wouldn’t be so bad. But—I peered over the drop-off at the turn. The bottom was lost in shadows and rain. I shuddered.

  Then quickly, before I could lose my nerve, I squelched back to the car.

  “Pray, Bethie. Here we go.”

  There was the suck and slosh of our turning tires, the awful moment when we hung on the brink. Then the turn. And there we were, poised over nothing, with our rear end slewing outward.

  The sudden tongue-biting jolt as we finally landed, right side up, pointing the right way on the narrow trail, jarred the cold sweat on my face so it rolled down with the rain.

  I pulled over at the first wide spot in the road and stopped the car. We sat in the silence, listening to the rain. I felt as though something infinitely precious were lying just before me. Bethie’s hand crept into mine and I knew she was feeling it, too. But suddenly Bethie’s hand was snatched from mine and she was pounding with both fists against my shoulder in most un-Bethie-like violence.

  “I can’t stand it, Peter!” she cried hoarsely, emotion choking her voice. “Let’s go back before we find out any more. If they should send us away! Oh, Peter! Let’s go before they find us! Then we’ll still have
our dream. We can pretend that someday we’ll come back. We can never dream again, never hope again!” She hid her face in her hands. “I’ll manage somehow. I’d rather go away, hoping, than run the risk of being rejected by them.”

  “Not me,” I said, starting the motor. “We have as much chance of a welcome as we do of being kicked out. And if they can help you—say, what’s the matter with you today? I’m supposed to be the doubting one, remember? You’re the mustard seed of this outfit!” I grinned at her, but my heart sank at the drawn white misery of her face. She almost managed a smile.

  The trail led steadily downward, lapping back on itself as it worked back and forth along the canyon wall, sometimes steep, sometimes almost level. The farther we went the more rested I felt, as though I were shutting doors behind or opening them before me.

  Then came one of the casual miracles of mountain country. The clouds suddenly opened and the late sun broke through. There, almost frighteningly, a huge mountain pushed out of the featureless gray distance. In the flooding light the towering slopes seemed to move, stepping closer to us as we watched. The rain still fell, but now in glittering silver-beaded curtains; and one vivid end of a rainbow splashed color recklessly over trees and rocks and a corner of the sky.

  I didn’t watch the road. I watched the splendor and glory spread out around us. So when, at Bethie’s scream, I snatched back to my driving, all I took down into the roaring splintering darkness was the thought of Bethie and the sight of the other car, slanting down from the bobbing top branches of a tree, seconds before it plowed into us broadside, a yard above the road.

  I thought I was dead. I was afraid to open my eyes because I could feel the rain making little puddles over my closed lids. And then I breathed. I was alive, all right. A knife jabbed itself up and down the left side of my chest and twisted itself viciously with each reluctant breath I drew.

  Then I heard a voice.

  “Thank the Power they aren’t hurt too badly. But, oh, Valancy! What will Father say?” The voice was young and scared.

  “You’ve known him longer than I have,” another girl-voice answered. “You should have some idea.”

  “I never had a wreck before, not even when I was driving instead of lifting.”

  “I have a hunch that you’ll be grounded for quite a spell,” the second voice replied. “But that isn’t what’s worrying me, Karen. Why didn’t we know they were coming? We always can sense Outsiders. We should have known—”

  “Q.E.D. then,” said the Karen-voice.

  “ ‘Q.E.D.’?”

  “Yes. If we didn’t sense them, then they’re not Outsiders—” There was the sound of a caught breath and then, “Oh, what I said, Valancy! You don’t suppose!” I felt a movement close to me and heard the soft sound of breathing. “Can it really be two more of us? Oh, Valancy, they must be second generation—they’re about our age. How did they find us? Which of our Lost Ones were their parents?”

  Valancy sounded amused. “Those are questions they’re certainly in no condition to answer right now, Karen. We’d better figure out what to do. Look, the girl is coming to.”

  I was snapped out of my detached eavesdropping by a moan beside me. I started to sit up. “Bethie—” I began, and all the knives twisted through my lungs. Bethie’s scream followed my gasp.

  My eyes were open now, but good, and my leg was an agonized burning ache down at the far end of my consciousness. I gritted my teeth but Bethie moaned again.

  “Help her, help her!” I pleaded to the two fuzzy figures leaning over us as I tried to hold my breath to stop the jabbing.

  “But she’s hardly hurt,” Karen cried. “A bump on her head. Some cuts.”

  With an effort I focused on a luminous clear face—Valancy’s—whose deep eyes bent close above me. I licked the rain from my lips and blurted foolishly, “You’re not even wet in all this rain!” A look of consternation swept over her face. There was a pause as she looked at me intently and then said, “Their shields aren’t activated, Karen. We’d better extend ours.”

  “Okay, Valancy.” And the annoying sibilant wetness of rain stopped.

  “How’s the girl?”

  “It must be shock or maybe internal—”

  I started to turn to see, but Bethie’s sobbing cry pushed me flat again.

  “Help her,” I gasped, grabbing wildly in my memory for Mother’s words. “She’s a—a Sensitive!”

  “A Sensitive?” The two exchanged looks. “Then why doesn’t she—?” Valancy started to say something, then turned swiftly. I crooked my arm over my eyes as I listened.

  “Honey—Bethie—hear me!” The voice was warm but authoritative. “I’m going to help you. I’ll show you how, Bethie.”

  There was a silence. A warm hand clasped mine and Karen squatted close beside me.

  “She’s sorting her,” she whispered. “Going into her mind. To teach her control. It’s so simple. How could it happen that she doesn’t know—?” I heard a soft wondering “Oh!” from Bethie, followed by a breathless “Oh, thank you, Valancy, thank you!”

  I heaved myself up onto my elbow, fire streaking me from head to foot, and peered over at Bethie. She was looking at me, and her quiet face was happier than smiles could ever make it. We stared for the space of two relieved tears, then she said softly, “Tell them now, Peter. We can’t go any farther until you tell them.”

  I lay back again, blinking at the sky where the scattered raindrops were still falling, though none of them reached us. Karen’s hand was warm on mine and I felt a shiver of reluctance. If they sent us away...! But then they couldn’t take back what they had given to Bethie, even if—I shut my eyes and blurted it out as bluntly as possible.

  “We aren’t of the People—not entirely. Father was not of the People. We’re half-breeds.”

  There was a startled silence.

  “You mean your mother married an Outsider?” Valancy’s voice was filled with astonishment. “That you and Bethie are—?”

  “Yes she did and yes we are!” I retorted. “And Dad was the best—” My belligerence ran thinly out across the sharp edge of my pain. “They’re both dead now. Mother sent us to you.”

  “But Bethie is a Sensitive—” Valancy’s voice was thoughtful.

  “Yes, and I can fly and make things travel in the air and I’ve even made fire. But Dad—” I hid my face and let it twist with the increasing agony.

  “Then we can!” I couldn’t read the emotion in Valancy’s voice. “Then the People and Outsiders—but it’s unbelievable that you—” Her voice died.

  In the silence that followed, Bethie’s voice came fearful and tremulous, “Are you going to send us away?” My heart twisted to the ache in her voice.

  “Send you away! Oh, my people, my people! Of course not! As if there were any question!” Valancy’s arms went tightly around Bethie, and Karen’s hand dosed warmly on mine. The tension that had been a hard twisted knot inside me dissolved, and Bethie and I were home.

  Then Valancy became very brisk.

  “Bethie, what’s wrong with Peter?”

  Bethie was astonished. “How did you know his name?” Then she smiled. “Of course. When you were sorting me!” She touched me lightly along my sides, along my legs. “Four of his ribs are hurt. His left leg is broken. That’s about all. Shall I control him?”

  “Yes,” Valancy said. “I’ll help.”

  And the pain was gone, put to sleep under the persuasive warmth that came to me as Bethie and Valancy came softly into my mind.

  “Good,” Valancy said. “We’re pleased to welcome a Sensitive. Karen and I know a little of their function because we are Sorters. But we have no full-fledged Sensitive in our Group now.”

  She turned to me. “You said you know the inanimate lift?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know the words for lots of things.”

  “You’ll have to relax completely. We don’t usually use it on people. But if you let go all over, we can manage.�
��

  They wrapped me warmly in our blankets and lightly, a hand under my shoulders and under my heels, lifted me carrying—high and sped with me through the trees, Bethie trailing from Valancy’s free hand.

  Before we reached the yard, the door flew open and warm yellow light spilled out into the dusk. The girls paused on the porch and shifted me to the waiting touch of two men. In the wordless pause before the babble of question and explanation, I felt Bethie beside me draw a deep wondering breath and merge like a raindrop in a river into the People around us.

  But even as the lights went out for me again, and I felt myself slide down into comfort and hunger-fed belongingness, somewhere deep inside of me was a core of something that couldn’t quite—no, wouldn’t quite dissolve—wouldn’t yet yield itself completely to the People.

  Interlude: Lea 3

  Lea stepped soundlessly toward the door almost before Peter’s last words were said. She was halfway up the steep road that led up the canyon before she heard the sound of Karen coming behind her. Lifting and running, Karen caught up with her.

  “Lea!” she called, reaching for her arm.

  With a twist of her shoulder Lea evaded Karen and wordlessly, breathlessly ran on up the road.

  “Lea!” Karen grabbed both her shoulders and stopped her bodily. “Where on earth are you going!”

  “Let me go!” Lea shouted. “Sneak! Peeping Tom! Let me go!” She tried to wrench out of Karen’s hands.

  “Lea, whatever you’re thinking it isn’t so.”

  “Whatever I’m thinking!” Lea’s eyes blazed. “Don’t you know what I’m thinking? Haven’t you done enough scrabbling around in all the muck and mess—?” Her fingernails dented Karen’s hands. “Let me go!”

  “Why do you care, Lea?” Karen’s cold voice jabbed mercilessly. “Why should you care? What difference does it make to you? You left life a long time ago.”

  “Death—” Lea choked, feeling the dusty bitterness of the word she had thought so often and seldom said. “Death is at least private—no one nosing around—”