“But he has.”
“He has for sure! I had to fish him down from a treetop to look him over-” The doctor shuddered dramatically and laughed. “‘To see him hurtling down from the top of that tree curdled my blood! But there’s hardly even a visible scar left.”
“I know,” I said, jabbing my finger as I started to gather up the tacks. “‘I looked last night. I’m leaving tomorrow, you know.” I kept my eyes resolutely down to the job at hand. “I have this last straightening up to do.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said, and we both knew he wasn’t talking about straightening up.
“Yes,” I said soberly. “Awfully hard. Earth gets heavier every day.”
“I find it so lately, too. But at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you-“
I moved uncomfortably and laughed.
“Well, they do say: those as can, do; those as can’t, teach.”
“Umm,” the doctor said noncommittally, but I could feel his eyes on my averted face and I swiveled away from groping for a better box to put the clips in.
“Going to summer school?” His voice came from near the windows.
“No,” I sniffed cautiously. “No, I swore when I got my Master’s that I was through with education-at least the kind that’s come-every-day-and-learn-something.”
“Hmm!” There was amusement in the doctor’s voice. “Too bad. I’m going to school this summer. Thought you might like to go there, too,”
“Where?” I asked bewildered, finally looking at him.
“Cougar Canyon summer school,” he smiled. “Most exclusive.”
“Cougar Canyon! Why that’s where Karen-“
“Exactly,” he said. “That’s where the other Group is established. I just came from there. Karen and Valancy want us both to come. Do you object to being an experiment?”
“Why, no-I cried, and then, cautiously, “What kind of an experiment?” Visions oL brains being carved up swam through my mind.
The doctor laughed. “Nothing as gruesome as you’re imagining, probably.” Then he sobered and sat on the edge of my desk. “I’ve been to Cougar Canyon a couple of times, trying to figure out some way to get Bethie to help me when I come up against a case that’s a puzzler. Valancy and Karen want to try a period of training with Outsiders-” he grimaced wryly, “-that’s us-to see how much oL what they are can be transmitted by training. You know Bethie is half Outsider. Only her mother was of the People.”
He was watching me intently.
“Yes,” I said absently, my mind whirling, “Karen told me.”
“Well, do you want to try it? Do you want to go?”
“Do I want to go!” I cried, scrambling the clips into a rubber-band box. “How soon do we leave? Half an hour? Ten minutes? Did you leave the motor running?”
“Woops, woops!” The doctor took me by both arms and looked soberly into my eyes.
“We can’t set our hopes too high,” he said quietly. “It may be that for such knowledge we aren’t teachable-“
I looked soberly back at him, my heart crying in fear that it might be so.
“Look,” I said slowly. “If you had a hunger, a great big gnawing-inside hunger and no money and you saw a bakery shop window, which would you do? Turn your back on it? Or would you press your nose as close as you could against the glass and let at least your eyes feast? I know what I’d do.”
I reached for my sweater.
“And, you know, you never can tell. The shop door might open a crack, maybe-someday-“
IV
“I’D LIKE to talk with her a minute,” Lea said to Karen as the chattering group broke up. “May I?”
“Why, sure,” Karen said. “Melodye, have you a minute?”
“Oh, Karen!” Melodye threaded the rows back to Lea’s corner.
“That was wonderful! It was just like living it for the first time again, only underneath I knew what was coming next. But even so my blood ran cold when Abie-” She shuddered.
“Brother! Was that ever a day!”
“Melodye,” Karen said, “this is Lea. She wants to talk with you.”
“Hi, fellow alien,” Melodye smiled. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
“Do you believe-” Lea hesitated. “Was that really true?”
“Of course it was,” Melodye said. “I can show you my scars-mental, that is-from trying to learn to lift.” Then she laughed. “Don’t feel funny about doubting it. I still have my 3 A.M-ses when I can’t believe it myself.” She sobered. “But it is true. The People are the People.”
“And even if you’re not of the People,” Lea faltered, “could they-could they help anyway? I don’t mean anything broken. I mean, nothing visible-” She was suddenly covered with a sense of shame and betrayal as though caught hanging out a black line of sins in the morning sun. She turned her face away.
