complete. I became conscious of her only after her disaster and mine. The same explosion that maimed her took my parents. They were trying to get some Outsiders out of a crashed plane and didn't quite make it. Some of my most grandiose schemes have echoed hollow and empty against the listening receptiveness of Obla. And some of my shyest thoughts have grown to monumental strength with her uncritical acceptance of them. Somehow, when you hear your own ideas, crisply cut for transmission, they are stripped of anything extraneous and stand naked of pretensions, and then you can get a decent perspective on them. 'Poor child,' she cut in when I told her of Salla's hair being caught. 'Poor child, to feel that pain is a privilege-' 'Better that than having pain a way of life!' I flashed. 'Who should know better than you?' 'Perhaps, perhaps. Who is to say which is better-to hunger and be fed, or to be fed so continuously that you never know hunger? Sometimes a little fasting is good for the soul. Think of a cold drink of water after an afternoon in the hayfield.' I shivered at the delicious recollection. 'Well, anyway . . .' and I finished the account for her. I was almost out of the door before I suddenly realized that I hadn't mentioned Davy at all! I went back and told her. Before I was half through her face twisted and her hair swirled protectively over it. When I finished I stood there awkwardly, not knowing exactly what to do. Then I caught a faint echo of her thought. 'A voice again….' I think a little of my contempt for gadgets died at the moment. Anything that could pleasure Obla . . . I thought I was troubled about whether we should go or stay, until the afternoon I found all the Blends and In-gathereds sitting together on the boulders above Cougar Creek. Dita was trailing the water from her bare toes, and all the rest were concentrating on the falling of the drops as though there were some answer in them. The Francher kid was making a sharp crystal scale out of their falling. I came openly so there was no thought of eavesdropping, but I don't think they were fully aware that I was there. 'But for me-' Dita drew her knees up to her chest and clasped her wet feet in her hands, 'for me it's different. You're Blends, or all of the People. But I'm all of Earth. My roots are anchored in this old rock. Think what it would mean to me to say good-by to my world. Think back to the Crossing-' A ripple of discomfort moved through the Group. 'You see? And yet, to stay-to watch the People go, to know them gone-' She laid her cheek against her knees. The quick comfort of the others enveloped her, and Low moved to the boulder beside her. 'It'd be as bad for us to leave,' he said. 'Sure, we're of the People, but this is the only Home we've known. I didn't grow up in a Group. None of us did. All of our roots are firmly set here, too. To leave-' 'What has the New Home to offer that we don't have here?' Peter started a little whirlpool in the shallow stream below. 'Well-' Low stilled the whirlpool and spoke into a lengthening silence, 'ask Bram. He's all afire to blast off.' He grinned over his shoulder at me. 'The new Home is our world,' I said, drifting over to them, gathering my scattered thoughts. 'We would be among our own. No more concealment. No more trying to fit in where we don't fit. No more holding back, holding back, when we could be doing so much.' I could feel the surge and swirl of thoughts around me-each person aligning himself to the vision of the Home. Without any further word they all left the creek, absorbed in the problem. As they slowly scattered there was not an echo of a thought. Everyone was shutting himself up with his own reactions. All the peace and tranquility of Cougar Canyon was gone. Oh, sure, the light still slanted brightly through the trees at dawn, the wind still stirred the branches in the hot quiet afternoons and occasionally whipped up little whirlwinds to dance the dried leaves in a brief flurry of action, and the slender new moon was cleanly bright in the evening sky-but it was all overlaid with a big question mark. I couldn't settle to anything. Halfway through ripping a plank at the mill I'd think, 'Why bother? We'll be gone soon.' And then the spasm of acute pleasure and anticipation would somehow turn to the pain of bereavement and I'd feel like clutching a handful of sawdust and-well-sobbing into it. And late at night, changing the headgates to irrigate another alfalfa field, I'd kick the moss-slick wet boards and think exultantly, 'When we get there we won't have to go through this mumbo-jumbo. We'll rain the water where and when we want it!' Then again, I'd lie in the edge of the hot sun, my head in the shade of the cottonwoods, and feel the deep soaking warmth to my very bone, smell the waiting dusty smell of the afternoon, feel sleep wrapping itself around my thoughts and hear the sudden creaking cries of the red-winged blackbirds in the far fields, and suddenly know that I couldn't leave it. Couldn't give up Earth for any thing or any place. But there was Salla. Showing her Earth was like nothing you could ever imagine. For instance it never occurred to her that things could hurt her. Like the day I found her halfway across Furnace Flat, huddled under a pinion pine, cradling her bare feet in her hands and rocking with pain. 'Where are your shoes?' It was the first thing I could think of as I hunched beside her. 'Shoes?' She caught the picture from me. 'Oh, shoes. My-sandals-are at the ship. I wanted to feel this world. We shield so much at home that I couldn't tell you a thing about textures there. But the sand was so good the first night, and water is wonderful, I thought this black glowing smoothness and splinteredness would be a different sort of texture.' She smiled ruefully. 'It is. It's hot and-and-' I supplied a word, 'Hurty. I should think so. This shale flat heats up like a furnace this time of day. That's why it's called Furnace Flat.' 'I landed in the middle of it, running. I was so surprised that I didn't have sense enough to lift or shield.' 'Let me see.' I loosened her fingers and took one of her slender white feet in my hand. 'Adonday Veeah!' I whistled. Carefully I picked off a few loose flakes of bloodstained shale. 'You've practically blistered your feet, too. Don't you know the sun can be vicious this time of day?' 'I know now.' She took her feet back and peered at the sole. 'Look! There's blood!' 'Yep. That's usual when you puncture your skin. Better come on back to the house and get those feet taken care of.' 'Taken care of?' 'Sure. Antiseptic for the germs, salve for the burns. You won't go hunting for a day or two. Not with your feet, anyway.' 'Can't we just no-bi and transgraph? It's so much simpler.' 'Indubitably,' I said, lifting sitting as she did and straightening up in the air above the path. ''If I knew what you were talking about.' We headed for the house. 'Well, at Home the Healers-' 'This is Earth,' I said. 'We have no Healers as yet. Only in so far as our Sensitive can help out those who know about healing. It's mostly a do-it-yourself deal with us. And who knows, you might be allergic to us and sprout day lilies at every puncture. It'll probably worry your mother-' 'Mother-' There was a curious pause. 'Mother is annoyed with me already. She feels that I'm definitely undene. She wishes she'd left me Home. She's afraid I'll never be the same again.' 'Undene?' I asked, because Salla had sent out no clarification with the term. 'Yes,' she said, and I caught at visualization until light finally began to dawn. 'Well! We don't exactly eat peas with our knives or wipe our noses on our sleeves! We can be pretty couth when we set our minds to it.' 'I know, I know,' she hastened to say, 'but Mother-well, you know some mothers.' 'Yes, I know. But if you never walk or climb or swim or anything like that what do you do for fun?' 'It's not that we never do them. But seldom casually and unthinkingly. We're supposed to outgrow the need for childish activities like that. We're supposed to be capable of more intellectual pleasures.' 'Like what?' I held the branches aside for her to descend to the kitchen door, and nearly kinked my shoulder trying to do that and open the door for her simultaneously. After several false starts and stops and a feeling of utter foolishness, like the one you get when you try to dodge past a person who tries to dodge past you, we ended up at the kitchen table with Salla gasping at the smart of the Merthiolate. 'Like what?' I repeated. 'Hoosh! That's quite a sensation.' She loosened her clutch on her ankles and relaxed under the soothing salve I spread on her reddened feet. 'Well, Mother's favorite-and she does it very well-is Anticipating. She likes roses.'
