by Mark Clifton
buttonholing everybody from doctors down to orderliesasking about you."
She gave a soft wolf whistle.
"Whew, imagine having not just one guy but two of 'em, absolutely crazyabout you. Just begging to see you, hold your hand a little. Twobeautiful men like that! You ready to see them soon?"
Miss Kitty felt a rush of shame again. In the cabin she would have beenforced to face them, but not now.
"No," she said firmly. "I _never_ want to see them again."
"Well, now, let me tell you something, Miss Kittredge," the nurse said,and this time there was a note of seriousness. "One of the symptoms ofthis sickness you picked up is that it makes you talk. Gal, you havetalked a blue streak for the last week. We know everything, everythingthat happened, everything you thought about. The doctor understood howyou might feel about things. So he told the lieutenant and Mr. Eade thatyou had got bitten about the time you were up in the rice swamp, andthat you hadn't been responsible for anything you'd said for the lastthree days back there on New Earth."
Miss Kitty felt a flood of relief.
"Did they believe the doctor?" she asked hesitantly.
"Sure they believed him," the nurse answered. "Sure they did. But youwanna know something? I've talked to those two men. And I've just gotmyself an idea that it wouldn't have made a particle of difference inthe way they feel about you even if they didn't believe it. You're topswith those two guys, lady. Absolutely tip-top tops. The way you pitchedin there, carried your share of things...."
She slipped the pan out from under the sheets, and put it into acompartment of the cart.
"You wanna know something else? I don't think you were out of your headat all when you propositioned those two guys. I think you were showingsome good female sense, maybe for the first time in your life. And Ithink they know you were.
"You think it over, Miss Kittredge. If I know you--and I ought to afterlistening to you rave day after day--you've got what it takes. You wantmy advice? You go right on being a normal female. Don't you be sillyenough to get back into that warped, twisted, frustrated kind of aman-hater you always thought you were.
"I gotta go now. You think it over. But not too long. Those two guys aregoing to be mighty, mighty hurt if they find out you're conscious andwon't see them."
She went out the door, pushing her cart in front of her.
* * * * *
Miss Kitty relaxed her neck, willed the tenseness out of her body, andjust lay for a while thinking of nothing. A gust, a rattle of raindrops,called her attention to the window. They had put her on the groundfloor. She was able to see through the window to the street outside. Therain was pelting down, like that first rain they'd had there on NewEarth. How chagrined the boys had looked when the roof started leakingin a dozen places!
She felt a warm sense of relief, of gratitude, that she could rememberthem without shame. The nurse had been right, of course. Probably thedoctors had planted that particular nurse in her room, anticipating herreturn to consciousness, anticipating the necessity for a little mentaltherapy.
_Good female sense._ With such a semantic difference from good malesense! The mind of a man and a woman was not the same. She knew thatnow. And she realized that deeply, hidden from her own admittance, shehad always known it. And the nurse's good earthyexpression--"propositioning those two guys"--approval that it had beennatural and right. And another expression, "the way you pitched inthere, carried your share of things."
Carried your share of things! That meant more than just cooking,mending, cleaning. More than just seeing that the race continued, too;although it somehow tied in with all these things.
She lay in her bed, watching the rain through the window, gettingcomfort from the soft, drumming sound. Along the street she could seepeople sloshing through the film of water underfoot. She watched thescene of turned-up collars, pulled-down hatbrims, bobbing umbrellas, asif it were something apart from her, and yet a part of her. She began toget a sense of rare vision, an understanding which she knew was morecomplete than any intellectual abstraction she had ever managed. Shebegan to get a woman's sense of purpose, completely distinct from thatof a man.
* * * * *
She recalled once reading of an incident where an Oklahoma oilmillionaire had built a huge mansion; then, because his squaw did notknow how to make a home within it, they pitched their tepee in the frontgrounds, to live there, unable to feel at home in anything else.
Yes, too often the mansions of science came in for a similar treatment.The vast rooms of ideas, the great halls of expansion, the limitlessceilings of challenge, the wide expanses of speculation; all thesethings which would exalt Man into a truly great existence were denied,put to no use beyond mere gadgetry. And the mass of human beings stillhuddled in their cramped and grimy little tepees of ancient syndromes,only there feeling at home.
It was the fault of the women. They had not kept up with the men. Thosewho attempted it tried to be men, to prove themselves as good a man asany man, the way she had done.
They had missed the real point entirely, every single bit of it.
The male was still functioning in the way males always had. There was noessential difference between the cave man who climbed a new mountain andexplored a new valley and brought back a speared deer to throw down atthe entrance of his home cave; no difference between him and the modernexplorer of science who, under similar hardships, brought back a brightand rich new knowledge.
But the ancient cave woman had not failed. She had known what to do withthe deer to strengthen and secure the future of the race.
And what about New Earth?
Lt. Harper and Sam had talked about the possibility of millions ofEarths, each infinitesimally removed from the other, and if they couldbridge the gap to one, they might bridge it to an uncountable number.Perhaps there were millions of others, but for her there was only oneNew Earth.
Would the processions of colonists going there spoil it? Would the womengoing there see in it a great mansion? Or, instead, would they simply gothere to escape here--escape from exhaustion, failure, anguish,bitterness--and, as always, take these things along with them? Wouldthey still live in grimy little syndromes of endless antagonism,bickering in their foolish frustrations, because they had no wisdomabout what to do with this newly speared deer?
_Oh, not on New Earth!_
Suddenly Miss Kitty knew what she must do. If that one particularmansion needed someone to make it into a home, why not herself? And whohad a better right?
Somewhere, there, perhaps that very one striding along under the eavesof that building across the street, with his hatbrim pulled down,leaning against the rain, somewhere, close, there must be a man whocould share her resolution and her dream. A man of the same breed as thelieutenant and Sam, a man who carried his head high, his shoulders back,who had keen, intelligent eyes, and laughter.
Yes, now she wanted to see the two men after all, and meet their luckywives, and see their children, the kind of children she might have had.
Might _yet_ have!
At a flash of memory, she smiled a little ruefully, and yet with aninner peace.
"I am not so old," she repeated in a whisper. "I still have time for atleast a half dozen sons and daughters before--before my barren years."