me anything as long as I only want to learn it for such childish reasons. What does he think I’m going to do, drop another Hiroshima bomb?”
I checked firmly the surge of remembered sorrow at his words. “One of us was there in that plane,” I said. “Remember?”
“But he didn’t use any of the Designs or Persuasions in the dropping of the Bomb-“
“No. If he had, we probably never would have been able to help him out of the Darkness afterward. Maybe Ron’s afraid you might do something as bad as that if you learn to be a Motiver and then get mad.”
“That’s silly!” cried Remy. “I wasn’t even born when the Bomb fell! And as if I’d ever do a thing like that anyway!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t, but if you don’t know how to be a Motiver, you can’t. Remember, every person who ever did anything bad was seventeen once, and anger starts awfully early. Some kids start to crook their trigger fingers in their cradles-“
“I still think it’s a lot of foolish fuss over nothing-“
“If it’s nothing,” I said, “give it up.”
“Why should I?” he flared. “I want-“
“What’s the matter with you this summer, Remy?” I asked. “Why are you so prickly?”
“I’m not-” he began. Then he flushed and lay back against the hillside, covering his eyes with his arm. “Sorry, Shadow,” he said gently after a while. “I don’t know what it is. I just feel restless and irritable. Growing pains, I guess. And I guess it bothers me that I don’t have any special outstanding Gift like you do. I guess I’m groping to find out what I’m supposed to do. Do you think it’s because we’re part Outsider? Remember, Mother’s a Blend.”
“I know,” I said, “but Mother managed to work out all her difficulties. You will too. You wait and see. Besides, a lot of kids that aren’t Blends don’t develop their Gifts until later. Just be patient.” Then I sighed without sound, thinking that to tell Remy to be patient was like telling the Cayuse to flow uphill.
It wasn’t until we were at the supper table that I remembered my find of the day. “I found gold today!” I said, feeling a flush of pleasure warming my face. “Real unmanufactured gold!”
“Well!” Father’s fork paused in mid-air. “That’s pretty good for a second week. When do we start carting it away? Will a bucket do, or shall I get a wheelbarrow?”
“Oh, Father, don’t tease,” I said. “You know this isn’t gold-like-that country! It was just a short wire of it, six feet inside a granite slope. But now I know what gold feels like-and silver and-and something slender and shiny-“
I broke off, suddenly not wanting to detail all my findings. Fortunately my last words were swallowed up in activity as Remy cleared the table so Mother could bring in the dessert. It was his table week and my dishes week.
Remy put in the next morning hacking and grubbing to clear the underbrush out of some of the campsites along Cayuse Creek. Very few people ever come this far into the wilderness, but the Forestry Service has set up several camp places for them just in case, and Father had this area this summer. Any other year he’d be spending his time in his physics lab back with The Group, trying to find gadgets to help Outsiders do what The People do without gadgets.
Anyway, Father released Remy after lunch and I talked him into going metal Sensing with me.
“Shall I bring Father’s bucket?” he teased. “It might be diamonds this time!”
“Diamonds!” I wrinkled my nose at him. “I’m metal Sensing, goon-child. Even you know diamonds aren’t metal!”
I didn’t do much Sensing on the way out, what with his chasing me over the ridge for my impertinence to my elders-he’s a year older-and my chasing him up-creek for chasing me across the ridge. We were both laughing and panting by the time we got to the Chimneys.
The Chimneys? “Wait-” I held out my hand and we stopped in mid-flight. “I just remembered. Remy, what’s slender and shiny and not iron and complicated?”
“What do you mean, slender? How slender? How complicated?” Remy sat cross-legged in the air beside me. “Is it a riddle?”
“It’s a riddle, all right, but I don’t know the answer.” And I told him all about it.
“Well, let’s go over and see,” he said, his eyes shining, his ears fairly quivering with interest. “If it’s something at the Selkirk, at least we know where it is.” We started off again.
“Can’t you remember anything that’d give you any idea of its size?”
“No-o-o,” I said thoughtfully. “It could be most any size from a needle up to-up to-” I was measuring myself alongside my memory. “Gee, Remy! It could be higher than my head!”
“And shiny?” he asked. “Not rusted?”
“Shiny and not rusted.”
We were soon hovering over the old Selkirk mine, looking down on the tailings dump, the scant clutter of falling-apart shacks at the mine opening.
“Somewhere there-” I started, when suddenly Remy caught me by the arm and we plummeted down like falling stars. I barely had time to straighten myself for landing before we were both staggering into the shelter of the aspens at the foot of the dump.
“What on earth!” I began.
“Hush!” Remy gestured violently. “Someone came out of the shack up there. An Outsider! You know we can’t let Outsiders see us lifting! And we were right overhead!”
