Low grinned engagingly. 'My! You are new around here, aren't you? Are you ready to go?' 'I hope you're not in a hurry to get back to Kruper.' Low shifted gears deftly as we nosed down to Lynx Hill bridge and then abruptly headed on up Lynx Hill at a perilous angle. 'I have a stop to make.' I could feel his wary attention on me in spite of his absorption in the road. 'No,' I said, sighing inwardly, visualizing long hours waiting while he leaned, over the top fence rail exchanging long silences and succinct remarks with some mining acquaintance. 'I'm in no hurry, just so I'm at school by nine in the morning.' 'Fine.' His voice was amused, and, embarrassed, I tested again the barrier in my mind. It was still intact. ''Matter of fact,' he went on, 'this will be one for your collection, too.' 'My collection?' I echoed blankly. 'Your ghost-town collection. I'm driving over to Machron, or where it used to be. It's up in a little box canyon above Bear Flat. It might be that it-' An intricate spot in the road-one small stone and a tiny pine branch-broke his sentence. 'Might be what?' I asked, deliberately holding onto the words he was trying to drop. 'Might be interesting to explore.' Aware amusement curved his mouth slightly. 'I'd like to find an unbroken piece of sun glass,' I said. 'I have one old beautiful purple tumbler. It's in pretty good condition except that it has a piece out of the rim.' 'I'll show you my collection sometime,' Low said. 'You'll drool for sure.' 'How come you like ghost towns? What draws you to them? History? Treasure? Morbid curiosity?' 'Treasure-history-morbid curiosity-' He tasted the words slowly and approved each with a nod of his head. 'I guess all three. I'm questing.' 'Questing?'' 'Questing.' The tone of his voice ended the conversation. With an effort I detached myself from my completely illogical up-gush of anger at being shut out, and lost myself in the wooded wonder of the hillsides that finally narrowed the road until it was barely wide enough for the car to scrape through. Finally Low spun the wheel and, fanning sand out from our tires, came to a stop under a huge black-walnut tree. 'Got your walking shoes on? This far and no farther for wheels.' Half an hour later we topped out on a small plateau above the rocky pass where our feet had slid and slithered on boulders grooved by high-wheeled ore wagons of half a century ago. The town had spread itself in its busiest days, up the slopes of the hills and along the dry creeks that spread fingerlike up from the small plateau. Concrete steps led abortively up to crumbled foundations, and sagging gates stood fenceless before shrub-shattered concrete walks. There were a few buildings that were nearly intact, just stubbornly resisting dissolution. I had wandered up one faint street and down another before I realized that Low wasn't wandering with me. Knowing the solitary ways of ghost-town devotees, I made no effort to locate him, but only wondered idly what he was questing for-carefully refraining from wondering again who he was and why he and I spoke together underneath as we did. But even unspoken the wonder was burning deep under my superficial scratching among the junk heaps of this vanished town. I found a white button with only three holes in it and the top of a doll's head with one eye still meltingly blue, and scrabbled, bare-handed, with delight when I thought I'd found a whole sun-purpled sugar bowl-only to find it was just a handle and half a curve held in the silt. I was muttering over a broken fingernail when a sudden soundless cry crushed into me and left me gasping with the unexpected force. I stumbled down the bank and ran clattering down the rock-strewn road. I found Low down by the old town dump, cradling something preciously in the bend of his arm. He lifted his eyes blindly to me. 'Maybe-!' he cried. 'This might be some of it. It was never a part of this town's life. Look! Look at the shaping of it! Look at the flow of lines!' His hands drank in the smooth beauty of the metal fragment. 'And if this is part of it, it might not be far from here that-' He broke off abruptly, his thumb stilling on the underside of the object. He turned it over and looked closely.. Something died tragically as he looked. ' 'General Electric,' ' he said tonelessly. ' 'Made in the USA.' ' The piece of metal dropped from his stricken hands as be sagged to the ground. His fist pounded on the gravelly silt. 'Dead end! Dead end! Dead-' I caught his hands in mine and brushed the gravel off, pressing Kleenex to the ooze of blood below his little finger. 'What have you lost?' I asked softly. 'Myself,' he whispered. 'I'm lost and I can't find my way back.' He took no notice of our getting up and my leading him to the fragment of a wall that kept a stunted elderberry from falling into the canyon. We sat down and for a while tossed on the ocean of his desolation as I thought dimly, 'Too. Lost, too. Both of us.' Then I helped him channel into speech, though I don't know whether it was vocal or not. 'I was so little then,' he said. 'I was only three, I guess. How long can you live on a three-year-old's memories? Mom told me all they knew but I could remember more. There was a wreck-a head-on collision the other side of Chuckawalla. My people were killed. The car tried to fly just before they hit. I remember Father lifted it up, trying to clear the other car, and Mother grabbed a handful of sun and platted me out of danger, but the crash came and I could only hear Mother's cry 'Don't forget! Go back to the Canyon,' and Father's 'Remember! Remember the Home!' and they were gone, even their bodies, in the fire that followed. Their bodies and every identification. Mom and Dad took me in and raised me like their own, but I've got to go back. I've got to go back to the Canyon. I belong there.' 'What Canyon?' I asked. 'What Canyon?' he asked dully. 'The Canyon where the People live now-my People. The Canyon where they located after the starship crashed. The starship I've been questing for, praying I might find some little piece of it to point me the way to the Canyon. At least to the part of the state it's in. The Canyon I went to sleep in before I woke at the crash. The Canyon I can't find because I have no memory of the road there. 'But you know!' he went on. 'You surely must know! You aren't like the others. You're one of us. You must be!' I shrank down into myself. 'I'm nobody,' I said. 'I'm not one of anybody. My Mom and dad can tell me my grandparents and great- grandparents and great-great-grandparents, and they used to all the time, trying to figure out why they were burdened with such a child, until I got smart enough to get 'normal' 'You think you're lost! At least you know what you're lost from. You could get un-lost. But I can't. I haven't ever been un-lost!' 'But you can talk underneath.' He blinked before my violence. 'You showed me Lucine-' 'Yes,' I said recklessly. 'And look at this!' A rock up on the hillside suddenly spurted to life. It plowed down the slope, sending gravel flying, and smashed itself to powder against a boulder at the base. 'And I never tried this before, but look!' I stepped up onto the crumbling wall and walked away from Low, straight on out over the canyon, feeling Earth fall away beneath my feet, feeling the soft cradling sweep of the wind, the upness and outness and unrestrainedness I cried out, lifting my arms, reaching ecstatically for the hem of my dream of freedom. One minute, one minute more and I could slide out of myself and never, never, never… And then… Low caught me just before I speared myself on the gaunt stubby pines below us in the canyon. He lifted me, struggling and protesting, back up through the fragile emptiness of air, back to the stunted elderberry tree. 'But I did! I did!' I sobbed against him. 'I didn't just fall. For a while I really did!' 'For a while you really did, Dita,' he murmured as to a child. 'As good as I could do myself. So you do have some of the Persuasions. Where did you get them if you aren't one of us?' My sobs cut off without an after-echo, though my tears continued. I looked deep into Low's eyes, fighting against the anger that burned at this persistent returning to the wary hurting place inside me. He looked steadily back until my tears stopped and I finally managed a ghost of a smile. 'I don't know what a Persuasion is, but I
