“Then we can let the dead past bury the dead,” said Meris sharply, “which little item you have not been letting happen so far!”
Mark stared at her, then flushed a deep, painful flush.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Stir the bones again! Let him put meat back on them if he can!”
The next few hours were busy with patterned confusion. Mark roared off through the gathering darkness to persuade Chip to open the store for typing paper. And people arrived. Just arrived, smiling, at the door, familiar friends before they spoke, and Meris, glancing out to see if the heavens them selves had split open from astonishment saw, hovering treetop high, a truly vintage car, an old pickup that clanked softly to itself, spinning a wheel against a branch as it waited.
“If Tad could see that!” she thought, with a bubble of laughter nudging her throat.
She hurried back indoors further to make welcome the newcomers-Valancy, Karen, Davy, Jemmy. The women gathered Lala in with soft cries and shining eyes and she wept briefly upon them in response to their emotions, then leaped upon the fellows and nearly strangled them with her hugs.
Johannan briefed the four in what had happened and what was needed. They discussed the situation, glanced at the few salvaged pages on the desk and sent, eyes closed briefly, for someone else. His name was Remy and he had a special “Gift” for plans and diagrams. He arrived just before Mark got back, so the whole group of them confronted him when he flung the door open and stood there with his bundle of paper.
He blinked, glanced at Meris, then, shifting his burden to one arm, held out a welcoming hand. “I hadn’t expected an invasion,” he smiled. “To tell the truth, I didn’t know what to expect.” He thumped the package down on the table and grinned at Meris. “Chip’s sure now that writers are psychos,” he said. “Any normal person could wait till morning for paper or use flattened grocery bags!” He shrugged out of his jacket. “Now.”
Jemmy said, “It’s really quite simple. Since you wrote your book and have read it through several times, the thing exists as a whole in your memory, just as it was on paper. So all we have to do is put it on paper again.” He gestured.
“That’s all?” Mark’s hands went back through his hair.
“That’s all? Man, that’s all I had to do after my notes were organized, months ago! Maybe I should have settled for flattened grocery bags! Why, the sheer physical-” The light was draining out of his face.
“Wait-wait!” Jemmy’s hand closed warmly over his sagging shoulder. “Let me finish.”
“Davy, here, is our gadgeteer. He dreams up all kinds of knick-knacks and among other things, he has come forth with a word scriber. Even better”-he glanced at Johannan-“than the ones brought from the New Home. All you have to do is think and the scriber writes down your thoughts. Here-try it-” he said into Mark’s very evident skepticism.
Davy put a piece of paper on the table in front of Mark and, on it, a small gadget that looked vaguely like a small sanding block in that it was curved across the top and flat on the bottom. “Go on,” urged Davy, “think something. You don’t even have to vocalize. I’ve keyed it to you. Karen sorted your setting for me.”
Mark looked around at the interested, watching faces, at Meris’s eyes, blurred with hesitant hope, and then down at the scriber. The scriber stirred, then slid swiftly across the paper, snapping back to the beginning of a line again, as quick as thought. Davy picked up the paper and handed it to Mark. Meris crowded to peer over his shoulder.
Of all the dern-fool things! As if it were possible-Look at the son-a-gun go!
All neatly typed, neatly spaced, appropriately punctuated. Hope flamed up in Mark’s eyes. “Maybe so,” he said, turning to Jemmy. “What do I do, now?”
“Well,” said Jemmy. “You have your whole book in your mind, but a mass of other things, too. It’d be almost impossible for you to think through your book without any digressions or side thoughts, so Karen will blanket your mind for you except for your book-“
“Hypnotism-” Mark’s withdrawal was visible.
“No,” said Karen. “Just screening out interference. Think how much time was taken up in your original draft by distractions-“
Meris clenched her hands and gulped, remembering all the hours Mark had had to-to baby-sit her while she was still rocking her grief like a rag doll with all the stuffings pulled out. She felt an arm across her shoulders and turned to Valancy’s comforting smile. “All over,” said her eyes, kindly, “all past.”
“How about all the diagrams-” suggested Mark, “I can’t vocalize-“
“That’s where Remy comes in,” said Jemmy. “All you have to do is visualize each one. He’ll have his own scriber right here and he’ll take it from there.”
The cot was pulled up near the table and Mark disposed himself comfortably on it. The paper was unwrapped and stacked all ready. Remy and Davy arranged themselves strategically. Surrounded by briefly bowed heads, Jemmy said, “We are met together in Thy name.” Then Karen touched Mark gently on the forehead with one fingertip.
Mark suddenly lifted himself on one elbow. “Wait,” he said, “things are going too fast. Why-why are you doing this for us, anyway? We’re strangers. No concern of yours. Is it to pay us for taking care of Lala? In that case-“
Karen smiled. “Why did you take care of Lala? You could have turned her over to the authorities. A strange child, no relation, no concern of yours.”
“That’s a foolish question,” said Mark. “She needed help. She was cold and wet and lost. Anyone-“
“You did it for the same reason we are doing this for you,” said Karen; “Just because we had our roots on a different world doesn’t make us of different flesh. There are no strangers in God’s universe. You found an unhappy situation that you could do something about, so you did it. Without stopping to figure out the whys and wherefores. You did it just because that’s what love does.”
Mark lay back on the narrow pillow, “Thank you,” he said. Then he turned his face to Meris. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Her voice jerked a little past her emotion. “Love you, Mark!”
