Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  “No, man, you ain’t with it!” Guesky’s voice squeaked. “She split. She traveled. She went off with some dude after he ran her down in town with his wheels. She split, man. She—was—gone! Now she’s back, shrieking and hammering the floor.”

  “Better the Listener than me,” I said, sliding back under my blanket, cradling the back of my head on my bent elbow. “Katie-Mary and I, we don’t jibe. She’s always expecting me to expect her to expect me to make a pass at her. Better the Listener.”

  So Guesky went away and I shut my eyes. But they didn’t stay shut. What was bugging Katie-Mary? She was usually fairly unflappable.

  Finally I rolled over until my ear felt the chill of the metal grating set in my floor. It was above one in the ceiling of the chicks’ dorm. No, you can’t see down through it. Dirt, dust, cobwebs, and a four-inch offset between gratings, that’s why. But if Guesky had brought the Listener instead of taking Katie-Mary— He had.

  Katie-Mary’s voice was the only one I heard. The Listener was The Compleat Listener.

  “...wasn’t hurt but it shook him so bad that I took him to Harmon Park until he got his cool back. He said he wasn’t used to driving. ‘Not on streets,’ he said!” Katie-Mary’s voice was rising and thinning. “ ‘And you don’t meet many pedestrians above the trees!’

  “That started it,” said Katie-Mary. “That hooked me. I hung around wondering how long he could keep up a line like that. He asked me again if I was hurt, and I told him again he’d only nudged me, not even to push me off my feet. He was so relieved, he began to talk—like, man! talk! Sometimes he’d pull up and look sorry for something he’d told, but off he’d go again.

  “Seems like he’d left his People. No, not a runaway. They gave him the car and what I suppose was the local equivalent of their blessing. Old. The car was old. But it ran brand new. He liked my talk about doing your thing and letting others do theirs.

  “ ‘I told them,’ he said, so pleased! ‘I told them no one minded anymore. Nobody’d care if I forgot and—and lifted instead of walking—or— other—little—things—like—that.’ “ Katie-Mary was having trouble with her articulation and voice modulation. There was a gasping silence; then her voice squealed hysterically.

  “You think he was putting me on? Man, are you ever wrong! Did you know he didn’t buy drop one of gas for that weird set of wheels of his the whole time he was in town. He laughed when I asked him about it. ‘Oh, I don’t need gas. I just lift the car so there’s just enough pressure to make the wheels turn. Of course, I do have to let the motor make enough noise to be convincing.’ “ Katie-Mary sobbed noisily, then gulped and went on.

  “He was so pleased to hear anyone could do anything any more and not—not—oh, I said that! But he was. Seems like his People—it sounds like a commune, but it isn’t. I saw—anyway, they’ve always been out of step with everyone—all of them. And uptight about letting anyone know. He—what? Oh, his name’s Degal—no, just Degal. I never asked.

  “ ‘It’s a good joke on the People,’ he told me once, like as if his People were the only people around. ‘They think they’re so different, and all along—wait until I tell them! You do have Sensitives, don’t you?’

  “ ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Oh, you know. Maybe you call them something else. You know— to touch the suffering—to read the reason for pain and illness. To go in. To heal.’

  ‘Man, you’ve flipped!’ I told him. ‘This faith-healing bit. Well, sure, if you go for that kind—’ But he looked at me—” Katie-Mary’s voice faltered. I barely could hear her when she spoke again, small and soft and wondering. “Then I felt him in my mind—asking—asking—hoping. Then he was gone—disappointed—still wanting to hope. Some way— some way I’d failed.

  “ ‘Some of our People,’ he said in a hurry, I guess, to comfort me, ‘have been so closed for so long that they find it hard to open to anyone, too. I’m sorry.’

  “No,” Katie-Mary said to a murmur. “Not all at one time. Oh, a month or six weeks. Little bits and pieces at different times. He’s so young-—oh, older than I am, but so young—so new—” Tears were gone from her voice but not the wonder.

  “I asked him once where he came from. ‘From the Home,’ he said. ‘Orphan’s home?’ I asked. He laughed. ‘No! From the Home! Of course, I didn’t. I was born on Earth, in the Canyon, but my grandfather—’ Get this, man ‘—my grandfather was one who came to Earth from the Home.’ ‘How?’ I asked. He said, like wondering why I’d ask something so plain, ‘Why, in the ship, of course. At the Crossing!’

  “That did it,” said Katie-Mary. “Flying saucers yet. ‘What you on?’ I asked him. ‘On?’ he asked, then waited a minute and laughed. ‘I don’t need to be on anything to get high. Watch this!’ “

  Katie-Mary’s voice faltered. “I didn’t want to watch after the first little bit. I—I was afraid. I couldn’t understand. I thought maybe I was out of my skull. But I kept looking—

  “We were down by the river, at the bend, one night. A bright night. He told me the moon was poured out on the water, and it looked like it. Well, he shot up into the air over the river like a rocket. Then up there above the shining water, above the shadowy trees, he—he—you know? like those gymnasts at the Olympics—on TV—only not held down. No danger of falling. No sweat. Easy—fast—like a wingless bird. Like a jet gone mad. When he came down with a swoosh, laughing and panting and saying, ‘That’s the kind of high—’ he found me huddled and scared under the trees, and he stopped smiling. He—he patted my shoulder. He said he was sorry. That he shoulda known I didn’t mean a physical high—

  “No!” Katie-Mary’s voice lifted. “No—not anything! You know I wasn’t! I don’t, ever! He did! He—he flew—he did! He did!

  “Then what? Then he asked me to split with him. To go meet his People. To prove to them that they didn’t need to keep being isolated any more. That it was time for them to move out into society and share all their Gifts and Persuasions—”

  I heard Katie-Mary squeal, “Don’t—don’t! You’re hurting me!”

  And the Listener with rough anger in a voice I hadn’t heard enough really to know: “You’re—putting—me—on!” He grated. “Who clued you? Who told—!”

  “No!” Katie-Mary squealed again. “Nobody—!”

  “Sorry.” The Listener’s voice really was. “Forget it. Just forget it—”

  I heard Katie-Mary’s wail cut off in the middle of a word. I was about to scramble out of the sack when I heard her ask blankly, “Where was I?”

  “He asked you to split—” prompted the Listener.

  “Yeah, he did,” said Katie-Mary. She sighed a long sigh as though she’d never breathe in again. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “Yes,” said the Listener. “Tell and it’ll be gone.”

  “It was at night.” Her voice was very quick and tiptoey, as though she was afraid she’d break through into something. “It was at night or I’d have flipped completely. We—we never touched a tire to a road. We never saw a road after we left town. I pried my eyes open once and saw mountains streaming by under us—way, way under us—like a jaggedy river streaked with white foam. And all the time he jabbered on and on with that space opera of his about the Home and the—the Crossing and— well, I stopped listening. I wanted out. I wanted out bad. I shivered and he—he smiled and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’ And the car got warm! All around. Softly, gently—-lovingly—”

  Katie-Mary’s voice slowed and faltered. “Oh, can’t you see?” she cried passionately. “Can’t you understand? I haven’t told you everything! I haven’t told you all the bits and pieces Degal told me that kept fitting together and getting clearer and clearer until that night, when he finally shouted, ‘There!’ and the car tilted and swooshed down like—like an eagle—and I saw his People coming up for him, pale faces way down there, streaming up to meet him in the air. And the car door opening to let him shoot out into all kinds of happy surroundings
like Arms, and Love and Returning and—and the car drifted down, tilting back and forth like a dry leaf, the left door flapping open and shut, open and shut. And me tick-tocking back and forth inside the car, hanging on for dear life, while outside— “I was outside that beautiful world—Degal’s Home—that he thought wasn’t so much different from the way the world is now. Oh, brother!

  “I reached over and flipped on the car lights. As the car swung, the lights swept back and forth across treetops and the happy chattering group darting around like big hummingbirds, clustering around Degal.

  “You know what those car lights looked like to me all at once? Do you know?” She was crying again, her voice choked.

  “ ‘And he placed at the east of the Garden, ‘ “ the Listener said slowly, “‘a flaming sword which turned every way to keep—

  “To keep me out,” said Katie-Mary. “Oh, I walked in, all right. I met them all. I met Valancy and Jemmy—they’re the Wheels. And Robelyn—that girl with the big eyes, all for Degal—and all those cunning little kids learning to fly across the creek. One of them fell in when she forgot how halfway across. They pulled her out and hugged her and teased her and gave her a goodie to stop her tears. The goodie was a fruit that made music when she took a bit of it. Her teeth were crimson from the juice when she giggled.

  “I was there for—well, I can’t tell you how long. One night I didn’t sleep for wondering what I’d got into. Another night I leaned on the windowsill and watched Degal and that Robelyn up against the moon and the treetops doing a sort of wild, wonderful dance, or something, all in the sky. And it seemed like it was to music—music that moved them like light moves—oh, there aren’t words! But there wasn’t any music either, when they disappeared. I guess their moving made the music. I listened with all my eyes—

  “And below my window someone said, ‘Skying? Already? Valancy’d better hurry the spinning.’ And happy laughter moving away.

  “But all the time I felt under—way down—as if I had to look up—

  “No! No way! They never put me down—not ever. They wouldn’t! They—they couldn’t! Together. One. Loving. Helping. Oh, you know! So many people talk it—they do it!”

  The Listener murmured into her tired silence.

  “No, no lockstep at all,” Katie-Mary said. “Everyone’s his own self. No one does something just because others do—except maybe the children.”

  Again a murmur.

  “No different from any town in the hills,” said Katie-Mary. “Campers stop for directions. They don’t notice anything, except they go away smiling and comfortable. Not many come. The Canyon is out of the way—

  “Yes, there’s a road—but it’s not much of one. They—because, of course, they don’t use it much.”

  Katie-Mary’s voice was tired now—no longer twanging like a too-tight string. “I still remember the soft sound of footsteps back and forth, back and forth. They have a big room for a meeting place, and I heard the footsteps upstairs—back and forth, back and forth. It kinda bugged me, and Karen laughed and took me up there. Valancy was there spinning thread on a huge spinning wheel like in old pictures. Not sitting—pacing back and forth across the floor, in and out of the splash of sun that came through a little window, pulling the thread out fine and letting it wind on a spindle.

  “That finished me—again,” Katie-Mary whispered painfully. “She was spinning the sunlight into thread! Sun! Maybe something else with it,” she answered the Listener. “But all I saw was the sun. ‘It’s special,’ Karen told me. ‘For weddings and christenings. We weave it—’ She held up a piece of light and smoothed her hand across it. It changed colors as she stroked it. ‘We don’t decide what color to hold it until we’re ready to use it.’ I wish now I had touched it. I was afraid to. Did you ever stroke the sun?

  “Imagine! Cloth of the sun and a guy out back chopping wood for the fireplaces. No roads ‘cause they don’t need them—and the kids picking peas in the garden for supper—”

  There was a long silence, and I wondered if Katie-Mary had gone to sleep. She sounded tired enough. But the silence sounded busy—-awfully busy. Then the Listener said something brief and broken.

  “Take you there!” Katie-Mary’s voice squealed into life. “No way, man! No way! I’m not bleeding again for no dude! No way!” Then her voice changed and pleaded. “I can’t. Honest, I can’t. Not even if you are lost. Not even if you’ve been looking all your life. I can’t! I don’t know the way—remember? How do you expect me to remember a road we never touched? You think maybe there are signposts on clouds? I don’t even know which direction—except—” her voice was thoughtful. “Except just before we started to walk down into the Canyon, the sun came up behind us and pointed our shadows into the Canyon.”

  Silence again.

  Then Katie-Mary: “Oh, no! Not another kook! What’s with me that every—” Her surrendering sigh was long and wavery, clearly audible to me. “Okay, then, okay. Maybe this is my thing I’ve been waiting here all this time to do. Okay, you do that.” She was resigned. “If you think you can make me have total recall, okay, we’ll give it a try. I don’t think my total will be very, but I’m too tired to fight with you. One kook more—”

  I scrambled down the ladder.

  They were waiting for me just outside the door, already on the bike, helmets in hand. Katie-Mary looked at me helplessly. “I’ll be back,” she said. “He says I will.” She nodded against the back of the Listener and pulled the helmet down and busied herself with the fastenings.

  The Listener smiled at me—like an eager child bursting with anticipation—maybe for Christmas. “Thanks, Frederic,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, “I think. But what for?”

  “Your floor was comfortable. The water was cool.” He grinned at me. “And Katie-Mary was here.” He pulled on his face-covering helmet. Light ran across the dark blankness where his face had been. I caught myself looking down at his hands to see if they were green—a little green man from—where? But he had gloves on.

  I didn’t see them after they left the rectangle of lamplight by the open door. I stood there a long time in the cold slant of light until the stuttering roar of their going was long gone.

  ~ * ~

  Sometimes I think it was a century—other times it was maybe ten minutes before Katie-Mary was standing there again in the lamplight, her face quiet and unsmiling. Actually, it was about a week. I think.

  “Hi, chick!” I said. “Come on in.” If I hadn’t stepped back, she would have walked right into me. She was like a dream walker.

  “I took him,” she said. “On that chopper of his. We split all that lovely, horrible silence. It was like sharp splinters all around us when we finally stopped at the Canyon. Degal was there at the entrance to the Canyon, waiting. And the Old Ones, Jemmy and Valancy. And the girl with big eyes. How could they have known?

  “The Listener sat there waiting—even after I got down. Then Degal said, ‘Hi, Katie-Mary. Hi, Listener!’ “ Something rippled across Katie-Mary’s face. “He never even met the Listener before, but he knew him.

  “Then the Listener got down. Just left his bike standing there, and it didn’t fall. He looked at those People from the Canyon. Then he— he—the Listener, all black in his biking outfit, lifted up in the air and stumbled toward them, as awkward as those little kids just learning to fly. They lifted up to him and they all touched hands and he didn’t stumble any more.

  “ ‘Home?’ asked the Listener as they settled slowly back down on the hillside.

  “ ‘Home,’ said Jemmy. ‘I’m Jemmy and this is—’

  “ ‘Valancy and Robelyn,’ said the Listener. He smiled. He was another person. You—you’d hardly recognize him. All at once he was way too big for how small I remembered him.” Katie-Mary suddenly sagged to the floor and sat, her empty hands palm up on the floor on each side of her, her hair falling forward and hiding her turned-down face. After a while her voice woke again. />
  “It was so—so warm that I nearly froze to death outside. Forever outside. Waiting. They were talking. All of them. So fast—so fast! And ail at the same time. And—not—one—sound!

  “When they finally stopped and looked at me, I had to look twice before I could tell which was the Listener and which was Degal. They had the same shiningness. The same—you know?—they’d put it all together.

  “ ‘Thank you, Katie-Mary,’ said the Listener. ‘All my life I’ve been looking, not even knowing if I’d ever find. Thank you. We’ll send you home again—’ “ She peered up through her hair at me. “ ‘We, not ‘they’ or ‘I,’ but we’ll send you home again,’ he said. ‘And give you forgetfulness after you tell Frederic. You’ll be happier so. Frederic needs to know the ending. Loose ends distress him.’

  “They sent me back.” Katie-Mary’s face was tilted up, eyes closed, her hand tangled in her hair. “They closed my eyes and sent me back all by myself—no chopper, no car. A little while ago they sent me back. The wind was cold on my cheeks and nose. There was a feeling of farness below me and above me. And speed. How fast How fast!” She almost sang it, drowsily, softly, fading to silence.