The People

'I'm sorry,' said Glory. 'I shouldn'ta spoken so short the other night, but I was worried.'
'It's all right,' I said magnanimously. 'And when my People come-'
'Look, Debbie.' Glory turned her back to the stove and clasped her hands behind her. 'I'm not saying you don't have folks and that they won't come some day and set everything right, but they aren't here now. They can't help now, and we got troubles-plenty of troubles. Seth's worrying about that bank coming down and shifting the water. Well, he don't know, but it came down in the night last night and we're already almost an island. Look out the window.'
I did, cold apprehension clutching at my insides. The creek had water in it. Not a trickle, but a wide, stainless-steel roadbed of water that was heavy with red silt where it escaped the color of the down-pressing clouds. I ran to the other window. A narrow hogback led through the interlacing of a thousand converging streams, off into the soggy grayness of the mountain beyond us. It was the trail-the hilltop trail Glory and Seth took to Skagmore.
'I hate to ask it of you,' said Glory. 'Especially after telling you off like I did, but we gotta get outa here. We gotta save what we can and hole up at
the mine. You better start praying now that it'll be a few days more before the water gets that high. Meanwhile, grab your bedroll and git goin'.'
I gaped at her and then at the water outside and, running to my cot, grabbed up the limp worn bedding and started for the door.
'Hold it. Hold it!' she called. 'Fold the stuff so you can manage it. Put on this old hat of Seth's. It'll keep the rain outa your eyes for a while, maybe. Wait'll I get my load made up. I'll take the lead.'
Oh not Oh no! I cried to myself as panic trembled my hands and hampered nay folding the bedclothes. Why is this happening to me? Wasn't it enough to take Thann away? Why should 1 have to suffer any more?..
'Ready?' Glory's intent eyes peered across her load.
'Hope you've been praying. If you haven't, you better get started. We gotta make it there and back. Seth's gotta rest some before he tackles it.'
'But I can lift!' I cried. 'I don't have to walk! I have my shield. I don't have to get wet! I can go-'
'Go then,' said Glow, her voice hard and unfriendly. 'Git goin'!'
I caught at my panic and bit my lips-I needed Glory. 'I only mean I could take your load and mine, too,' I said, which wasn't what I had originally meant at all. 'Then you could take something else. I can transport all this stuff and keep it dry.'
I lifted my own burden and hovered it while I took hers from her reluctant arms. I lifted the two together and maneuvered the load out the door, extending my personal shield to cover it all. 'How-how do I get there?' My voice was little and scared.
'Follow the hogback,' said Glory, her voice still unwarmed, as though she had been able to catch my hidden emotion, as the People do. 'You'll see the entrance up the hill a ways soon as you top out on the ridge. Don't go too far inside. The shoring's rotted out in lots of places.'
'Okay,' I said. 'I'll come back.'
'Stay there,' said Glory. 'Git goin'. I gotta get Seth up.' My eyes followed hers and recoiled from the little brown snake of water that had welled up in one corner of the room. I got going.
Even inside my shield, I winced away from the sudden increased roar of descending rain. I couldn't see a yard ahead and had to navigate from boulder to boulder along the hogback. It was a horrible eternity before I saw the dark gap of the mine entrance and managed to get myself and my burden inside. For several feet around the low irregular arch of the entrance, the powdery ground was soggy mud, but farther back it was dry and the roof vaulted up until it was fairly spacious.
I put the bedding down and looked around me. Two narrow strips of rail disappeared back into the mine and an ore car tilted drunkenly off one side, two wheels off and half covered with dirt on the floor beside it. I unearthed one wheel and tugging it upright, rolled it, wobbling and uncooperative, over to the stack of bedding. I started heating the wheel, making slow work of so large a task because I had done so little with the basic Signs and Persuasions-the practices of my People.
Suddenly it seemed to me a long time since I'd left the shack. I ran to the entrance and peered out. No Glory or Seth! Where could they be! I couldn't be all alone here with no one around to help me! I swished out into the storm so fast my face was splattered with rain before my shielding was complete. Time and again I almost lost the hogback. It was an irregular chain of rocky little islands back toward the shack. I groped through the downpour, panting to Child Within, Oh wait! Oh wait! You can't come now! And tried to ignore a vague, growing discomfort.
Then the miracle happened! High above me I heard the egg-beater whirr of a helicopter! Rescue! Now all this mad rush and terror and discomfort would be over. All I had to do was signal the craft and make them take me aboard and take me somewhere away-I turned to locate it and signal it to me when I suddenly realized that I couldn't lift to it I couldn't lift around Outsiders who would matter. This basic rule of The People was too deeply engrained in
me. Hastily I dipped down until I perched precariously on one of the still-exposed boulders of the trail. I waved wildly up at the slow swinging 'copter. They had to see me! 'Here I am! Here I am!' I cried, my voice too choked even to carry a yard.
'Help me! Help me!' And, in despair as the 'copter slanted away into the gray falling rain, I slid past vocal calling into subvocal and spread my call over the whole band, praying that a receptor somewhere would pick up my message.
'There's need!' I sobbed out the old childish distress cry of the Group. 'There's need!'
And an answer came!
'One of us?' The thought came startled. 'Who are you? Where are you?'
'I'm down here in the rain!' I sobbed, aloud as well as silently. 'I'm Debbie! I used to live in the Canyon! We went to the Home. Come and get me! Oh, come and get me!'
'I'm coming,' came the answer. 'What on Earth are you doing on Earth, Debbie? No one was supposed to return so lightly-'
'So lightly!' Shattered laughter jabbed at my throat. All the time I'd spent on Earth already had erased itself, and I was caught up by the poignancy of this moment of meeting with Thann not here-this watery welcome to Earth with no welcome for Thann. 'Who are you?' I asked. I had forgotten individual thought patterns so soon.
'I'm Jemmy,' came the reply. 'I'm with an Outsider Disaster Unit. We've got our hands full fishing people out of this dammed lake!' He chuckled. 'Serves them right for damming Cougar Creek and spoiling the Canyon. But tell me, what's the deal? You shouldn't be here. You went back to the Home, didn't you?'
'The Home-' I burst into tears and all the rest of the time that the 'copter circled back and found a settling- down space on a flat already awash with two inches of water, Jemmy and I talked. Mostly I did the talking. We shifted out of verbalization and our thoughts speeded up until I had told Jemmy everything that had happened to me since that awful crashing day. It was telling of someone else-some other far, sad story of tragedy and graceless destitution-Outsider makeshifts. I had just finished when the 'copter door swung open and Jemmy stepped out to hover above the water that was sucking my sneakers off the slant of the boulder I was crouched on.
'Oh, thanks be to The Power,' I cried, grabbing for Jemmy's hands, but stubbing my own on my personal shield.
'Oh take me out of this, Jemmy! Take me back to The People! I'm so sick of living like an Outsider! And Child Within doesn't want to be born on a dirt floor in a mine! Oh, Jemmy! How horrible to be an Outsider! You came just in time!' Tears of thankfulness wet my face as I tried to smile at him.
''Debbie!'
Surely that couldn't be my name! That cold, hard, accusing word! That epithet-that­
'Jemmy!' I collapsed my shield and reached for him. Unbelievably, he would not receive me. 'Jemmy!' I cried, the rain wetting my lips. 'What's the matter? What's wrong?'
He floated back so I couldn't reach him. 'Where are Glory and Seth?' he asked sternly.
'Glory and Seth?' I had to think before I could remember them. They were another life ago. 'Why back at the cabin, I guess.' I was bewildered. 'Why?'
'You have no concern of them?' he asked. 'You ask for rescue and forget them? What did The Home do to you? You're apparently not one of Us any more. If you've been infected with some sort of virus, we want no