door slammed. A car roared away. Meris automatically smoothed her hair, as she always did after a conversation with Dr. Hilf.
She turned wearily back toward the bunk. And gasping, stumbled forward. Lala was hovering in the air over the strange man like a flannelled angel over a tombstoned crusader. She was peering down, her bare feet flipping up as she lowered her head toward him. Meris clenched her hands and made herself keep back out of the way.
“Muhlala!” whispered Lala, softly. Then louder, “Muhlala!” Then she wailed, “Muhlala!’” and thumped herself down on the quiet, sleeping chest.
“Well,” said Meris aloud to herself as she collapsed on the edge of the bunk. “There seems to be no doubt about it!” She watched-a little enviously-the rapturous reunion, and listened-more than a little curiously-to the flood of strange-sounding double conversation going on without perceptible pauses. Smiling, she brought tissues for the man to mop his face after Lala’s multitude of very moist kisses. The man was sitting up now, holding Lala closely to him. He smiled at Meris and then down at Lala. Lala looked at Meris and then patted the man’s chest.
“Muhlala,” she said happily, “muhlala!” and burrowed her head against him.
Meris laughed. “No wonder you thought it funny when I called you muhlala,” she said. “l wonder what Lala means.”
“It means ‘daddy,’” said the man. “She is quite excited about being called daddy.”
Meris swallowed her surprise. “Then you do have English,” she said.
“A little,” said the man. “As you give it to me. Oh, I am Johannan.” He sagged then, and said something un- English to Lala. She protested, but even protesting, lifted herself out of his arms and back to the bunk, after planting a last smacking kiss on his right ear. The man wiped the kiss away and held his drooping head between his hands.
“I don’t wonder,” said Meris, going to the medicine shelf.
“Aspirin for your headache.” She shook two tablets into his hand and gave him a glass of water. He looked bewilderedly from one hand to the other.
“Oh dear,” said Meris. “Oh well, I can use one myself,” and she took an aspirin and a glass of water and showed him how to dispose of them. The man smiled and gulped the tablets down. He let Meris take the glass, slid flat on the cot, and was breathing asleep before Meris could put the glass in the sink.
“Well!” she said to Lala and stood her, curly-toed, on the cold floor and straightened the bedclothes. “Imagine a grown-up not knowing what to do with an aspirin! And now,” she plumped Lala into the freshly made bed, “now, my Daddy-girl, shall we try that instant sleep bit?”
The next afternoon, Meris and Lala lounged in the thin warm sunshine near the creek with Johannan. In the piny, water-loud clearing, empty of unnecessary conversation, Johannan drowsed and Lala alternately bandaged her doll and unbandaged it until all the stickum was off the tape. Merle watched her with that sharp awareness that comes so often before an unwished-for parting from one you love. Then, with an almost audible click, afternoon became evening and the shadows were suddenly long. Mark came out of the cabin, stretching his desk-kinked self widely, then walking his own long shadow down to the creek bank.
“Almost through,” he said to Meris as he folded himself to the ground beside her. “By the end of the week, barring fire, flood, and the cussedness of man, I’ll be able to send it off.”
“I’m so glad,” said Meris, her happiness welling strongly up inside her. “I was afraid my foolishness-“
“The foolishness is all past now,” said Mark. “It is remembered against us no more.”
Johannan had sat up at Mark’s approach. He smiled now and said carefully, “I’m glad my child and I haven’t interrupted your work too much. It would be a shame if our coming messed up things for you.”
“You have a surprising command of the vernacular if English is not your native tongue,” said Mark, his interest in Johannan suddenly sharpening.
“We have a knack for languages,” smiled Johannan, not really answering anything.
“How on earth did you come to lose Lala?” Meris asked, amazed at herself for asking such a direct question.
Johannan’s face sobered. “That was quite a deal-losing a child in a thunderstorm over a quarter of a continent.” He touched Lala’s cheek softly with his finger as she patiently tried to make the worn-out tape stick again on Deeko. “It was partly her fault,” said Johannan, smiling ruefully. “If she weren’t precocious-You see, we do not come into the atmosphere with the large ship-too many complications about explanations and misinterpretations and a very real danger from trigger-happy-or unhappy-military, so we use our life-slips for landings.”
“We?” murmured Meris.
“Our People,” said Johannan simply. “Of course there’s no Grand Central Station of the Sky. We are very sparing of our comings and goings. Lala and I were returning because Lala’s mother has been Called and it is best to bring Lala to Earth to her grandparents.”
“Her mother was called?” asked Mark.
“Back to the Presence,” said Johannan. “Our years together were very brief.” His face closed smoothly over his sorrow. “We move our life-slips,” he went on after a brief pause, “without engines. It is an adult ability, to bring the life-slips through the atmosphere to land at the Canyon. But Lala is precocious in many Gifts and Persuasions and she managed to jerk her life-slip out of my control on the way down. I followed her into the storm-” He gestured and smiled. He had finished.
“But where were you headed?” asked Mark. “Where on earth-?”
“On Earth,” Johannan smiled. “There is a Group of the People. More than one Group, they say. They have been here, we know, since the end of the last century. My wife was of Earth. She returned to the New Home on the ship we sent to Earth for the refugees. She and I met on the New Home. I am not familiar with Earth-that’s why, though I was oriented to locate the Canyon from the air, I am fairly thoroughly lost to it from the ground.”
“Mark,” Meris leaned over and tapped Mark’s knee. “He thinks he has explained everything.”
Mark laughed. “Maybe he has. Maybe we just need a few years for absorption and amplification. Questions, Mrs. Edwards?”
