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 spreading of it.”
“You don’t want me?” I was dazed. “You’re going to leave me here! But-but you can’t! You’ve got to take me!”
“You’re not drowning,” he said coldly. “Go back to the cave. I have a couple of blankets in the ‘copter I can spare. Be comfortable. I have other people who need rescue worse.”
“But, Jemmy! I don’t understand. What’s wrong? What have I done?” My heart was shattering and cutting me to pieces with its razor-sharp edges.
He looked at me coldly and speculatively. “If you have to ask, it’d take too long to explain,” he said. He turned away and took the blankets from the ‘copter. He aimed them at the mine entrance and, hovering them, gave them a
