we have to be.”
It was as I stood there in the control room that I left the Home. I felt it fade away and become as faint as a dream. I said good-by to it so completely that it startled me to catch a glimpse of a mountaintop through one of the ports as we hurried back to our spaces. Suddenly my heart was light and lifting, so much so that my feet didn’t even touch the floor. Oh, how wonderful! What adventures ahead! I felt as though I were spiraling up into a bright Glory that outshone the sun-Then, suddenly, came the weakness. My very bones dissolved in me and collapsed me down on my couch. Darkness rolled across me and breathing was a task that took an my weakness to keep going. I felt vaguely the tightening of the restraining straps around me and the clasp of Simon’s hand around my clenched fist.
“Half an hour,” the Oldest murmured.
“Half an hour,” the People echoed, amplifying the murmur. I felt myself slipping into the corporate band of communication, feeling with the rest of the Group the incredible length and heartbreaking shortness of the time.
Then I lost the world again. I was encased in blackness. I was suspended, waiting, hardly even wondering.
And then it came-the Call.
How unmistakable! I was Called back into the Presence! My hours were totaled. It was all finished. This-side was a preoccupation that concerned me no longer. My face must have lighted as Thann’s had. All the struggle, all the sorrow, all the separation-finished. Now would come the three or four days during which I must prepare, dispose of my possessions, say my good-bys-Good-bys? I struggled up against the restraining straps. But we were leaving! In less than half an hour I would have no quiet, cool bed to lay me down upon when I left my body, no fragrant grass to have pulled up over my cast-aside, no solemn sweet remembrance by my family in the next Festival for those Called during the year!
Simon I called subvocally. You know! I cried. What shall 1 do?
I See you staying. His answer came placidly.
Staying? Oh how quickly I caught the picture! How quickly my own words came back to me, coldly white against the darkness of my confusion. Such space and emptiness from horizon to horizon, from pole to pole, from skytop to ground. And only me. Nobody else anywhere, anywhere!
Stay here all alone? I asked Simon. But he wasn’t Seeing me any more. Already I was alone. I felt the frightened tears start and then I heard Lytha’s trusting voice-until your promise is kept. All my fear dissolved. All my panic and fright blazed up suddenly in a repeat of the Call.
“Listen!” I cried, my voice high and excited, my heart surging joyously, “Listen!”
“Oh, David! Oh, ‘Chell! I’ve been Called! Don’t you hear it? Don’t you hear it!”
“Oh, Mother, no! No! You must be mistaken!” David loosed himself and bent over me.
“No,” whispered ‘Chell. “I feel it. She is Called.”
“Now I can stay,” I said, fumbling at the straps. “Help me, David, help me.”
“But you’re not summoned right now!” cried David. “Father knew four days before he was received into the Presence. We can’t leave you alone in a doomed, empty world!”
“An empty world!” I stood up quickly, holding to David to steady myself. “Oh, David! A world full of all dearness and nearness and remembering! And doomed? It will be a week yet. I will be received before then. Let me out! Oh, let me out!”
“Stay with us, Mother!” cried David, taking both my hands in his. “We need you. We can’t let you go. All the tumult and upheaval that’s to start so soon for the Home-“
“How do we know what tumult and upheaval you will be going through in the Crossing?” I asked. “But beyond whatever comes there’s a chance of a new life waiting for you. But for me-What of four days from now? What would you do with my cast-aside? What could you do but push it out into the black nothingness. Let it be with the Home. Let it at least become dust among familiar dust!” I felt as excited as a teener. “Oh, David! To be with Thann again!”
I turned to Lytha and quickly unfastened her belt.
“There’ll be room for one more in this ship,” I said.
For a long moment, we looked into each other’s eyes and then, almost swifter than thought, Lytha was up and running for the big door. My thoughts went ahead of her and before Lytha’s feet lifted out into the open air, all the Old Ones in the ship knew what had happened and their thoughts went out. Before Lytha was halfway up the little hills that separated ship from ship, Timmy surged into sight and gathered her close as they swung around toward our ship.
Minutes ran out of the half hour like icy beads from a broken string, but finally I was slanting down from the ship, my cheeks wet with my own tears and those of my family. Clearly above the clang of the closing door I heard Simon’s call. Good-by, Gramma! I told you it’d be all right. See-you-soon!
Hurry hurry hurry whispered my feet as I ran. Hurry hurry hurry whispered the wind as I lifted away from the towering ships. Now now now whispered my heart as I turned back from a safe distance, my skirts whipped by the rising wind, my hair lashing across my face.
The six slender ships pointing at the sky were like silver needles against the rolling black clouds. Suddenly there were only five-then four-then three. Before I could blink the tears from my eyes, the rest were gone, and the ground where they had stood flowed back on itself and crackled with cooling.
The fingers of the music drew me back into the home. I breathed deeply of the dear familiar odors. I straightened a branch of the scarlet leaves that had slipped awry in the blue vase. I steadied myself against a sudden shifting under my feet and my shield activated as hail spattered briefly through the window. I looked out, filled with a great peace, to the swell of browning hills, to the upward reach of snow-whitened mountains, to the brilliant huddled clumps of trees sowing their leaves on the icy wind. “My Home!” I whispered, folding my heart around it all, knowing what my terror and lostness would have been had I stayed behind without the Call.
With a sigh, I went out to the kitchen and counted the four rosy eggs in the green dish. I fingered the stove into flame and, lifting one of the eggs, cracked it briskly against the pan.
