Tad was an early riser. He was standing under the hovering pickup, gaping upward in admiring astonishment.
“Oops!” said Davy, with a sidewise glance at Jemmy. Tad was swept up in a round of introductions during which the pickup lowered slowly to the ground.
Tad turned from the group back to the pickup. “Look at it!” he said. “It must be at least forty years old!” His voice pushed its genesis back beyond the pyramids.
“At least that,” said Davy. “Wanta see the motor?”
“Do I!” He stood by impatiently as Davy wrestled with the hood. Then he blinked. “Hey! How did it get way up there? I mean, how’d it get down-“
“Look,” said Davy hastily, “see this goes to the spark-“
The others, laughing, pried into Mark’s car and drove away from the two absorbed autophiles-in-embryo.
The car pulled over onto a pine flat halfway back from town and the triumphal mailing of the manuscript. This was the parting place. Davy would follow later with the pickup.
“It’s over,” said Meris, her shoulders sagging a little as she put Lala’s small bundle of belongings into Valancy’s hands.
“All over.” Her voice was desolate.
“Only this little episode,” comforted Valancy. “It’s really only begun.” She put Lala into Meris’s arms. “Tell her good-by, Lala.”
Lala hugged Meris stranglingly tight saying, “Love you, Meris!”
“Love you, Lala!” Meris’s voice was shaken with laughter and sorrow.
“It’s just that she filled up the empty places so wonderfully well,” she explained to Valancy.
“Yes,” said Valancy softly, her eyes tender and compassionate. “But, you know,” she went on. “You are pregnant again!”
Before Meris could produce an intelligible thought, good-bys were finished and the whole group was losing itself in the tangle of creek-side vegetation. Lala’s vigorous waving of Deeko was the last sign of them before the leaves closed behind them.
Meris and Mark stood there, Meris’s head pressed to Mark’s shoulder, both too drained for any emotion. Then Meris stirred and moved toward the car, her eyes suddenly shining. “I don’t think I can wait,” she said, “I don’t think-“
“Wait for what?” asked Mark, following her.
“To tell Dr. Hilf-” She covered her mouth, dismayed.
“Oh, Mark! We never did find out that doctor’s name!”
“Not that Hilf is drooling to know,” said Mark, starting the car, “but next time—”
“Oh, yes,” Meris sat back, her mouth curving happily, “next time, next time!”
The next time wasn’t so long by the calendar, but measured by the anticipation and the marking time, it seemed an endless eternity. Then one night Meris, looking down into the warm, moistly fragrant blanket-bundle in the crook of her elbow, felt time snap back into focus. It snapped back so completely and satisfyingly that the long, empty time of grief dwindled to a memory-ache tucked back in the fading past.
“And the next one,” she said drowsily to Mark, “will be a brother for her.”
The nurse laughed. “Most new mothers feel, at this point, that they are through with childbearing. But I guess they soon forget because we certainly get a lot of repeaters!”
The Saturday before the baby’s christening, Meris felt a stir of pleasure as she waited for her guests to arrive. So much of magic was interwoven with her encounters with them, the magic of being freed from grief, of bringing forth a new life, and the magic of the final successful production of Mark’s book. She was wondering, with a pleasurable apprehension, what means of transportation the guests would use, treetop high, one wheel spinning lazily! when a clanging clatter drew her to the front window.
There in all its glory, shining with love, new paint, and dignity, sailed the Overland that had been moldering behind Tad’s barn. Flushed with excitement and pride, Tad, with an equally proud Johannan seated beside him, steered the vehicle ponderously over to the curb. There it hiccoughed, jumped, and expired with a shudder.
In the split second of silence after the noise cut off, there was a clinking rattle and a nut fell down from somewhere underneath and rolled out into the street.
There was a shout of relieved and amused laughter and the car erupted people apparently through and over every door. Meris shrank back a little, still tender in her social contact area. Then calling, “Mark, they’re here,” she opened the door to the babble of happy voices.
All the voices turned out to be female-type voices and she looked around and asked, “But where-?”
“The others?” Karen asked. “Behold!” And she gestured toward the old car where the only signs of life were three sets of feet protruding from under it, with a patient Jemmy leaning on a brightly black fender above them. “May I present, the feet, Tad, Davy, and Johannan?” Karen laughed.
“Johannan is worse than either of the boys. You see, he’d never ever seen a car before he rode in yours!”
Finally everyone was met and greeted and all the faces swam up to familiarity again out of the remoteness of the time Before the Baby.
Lala-forever Lala in spite of translations!-peered at the bundle on Valancy’s lap. “It’s little,” she said.
Meris was startled. Valancy smiled at her. “Did you expect her to un-English forever?” she teased. “Yes, Lala, it’s a girl baby, very new and very little.”
“I’m not little,” said Lala, straightening from where she leaned against Meris and tightening to attention, her
