No different flesh

by Зенна Гендерсон Гендерсон

  David and I went often to Meeting, working with the rest of the Group on the preliminary plans for the ships. One night he leaned across the table to the Oldest and asked, "How do we know how much food will be needed to sustain us until we find asylum?"

  The Oldest looked steadily back at him. "We don't know," he said. "We don't know that we will ever find asylum."

  "Don't know?" David's eyes were blank with astonishment.

  "No," said the Oldest. "We found no other habitable worlds before the Peace. We have no idea how far we will have to go or if we shall any of us live to see another Home. Each Group is to be assigned to a different sector of the sky. On Crossing Day, we say good-by-possibly forever-to all the other Groups. It may be that only one ship will plant the seeds of the People upon a new world. It may be that we will all he Called before a new Home is found."

  "Then," said David, "why don't we stay here and take our Calling with the Home?"

  "Because the Power has said to go. We are given time to go back to the machines. The Power is swinging the gateway to the stars open to us. We must take the gift and do what we can with it. We have no right to deprive our children of any of the years they might have left to them."

  After David relayed the message to 'Chell, she clenched both her fists tight up against her anguished heart and cried, "We can't! Oh, David! We can't! We can't leave the Home for-for-nowhere! Oh, David!" And she clung to him, wetting his shoulder with her tears.

  "We can do what we must do," he said. "All of the People are sharing this sorrow so none of us must make the burden any heavier for the others. The children learn their courage from us, 'Chell. Be a good teacher." He rocked her close-pressed head, his hand patting her tumbled hair, his troubled eyes seeking mine.

  "Mother-" David began-Eva-lee was for every day.

  "Mother, it seems to me that the Presence is pushing us out of the Home deliberately and crumpling it like an empty eggshell so we can't creep back into it. We have sprouted too few feathers on our wings since the Peace. I think we're being pushed off the branch to make us fly. This egg has been too comfortable." He laughed a little as he held 'Chell away from him and dried her cheeks with the palms of his hands.

  "I'm afraid I've made quite an omelet of my egg analogy, but can you think of anything really new that we have learned about Creation in our time."

  "Well," I said, searching my mind, pleased immeasurably to hear my own thoughts on the lips of my son. "No, I can honestly say I can't think of one new thing."

  "So if you were Called to the Presence right now and were asked, 'What do you know of My Creation?' all you could say would be 'I know all that my Befores knew-my immediate Befores, that is-I mean, my father'" David opened his hands and poured out emptiness. "Oh, Mother! What we have forgotten! And how content we have been with so little!"

  "But some other way." 'Chell cried. "This is so-so drastic and cruel!"

  "All baby birds shiver," said David, clasping her cold hands. "Sprout a pin feather, 'Chell!"

  And then the planning arrived at the point where work could begin. The sandal shops were empty. The doors were closed in the fabric centers and the ceramic workrooms. The sunlight crept unshadowed again and again across the other workshops and weeds began tentative invasions of the garden plots.

  Far out in the surrounding hills, those of the People who knew how hovered in the sky, rolling back slowly the heavy green cover of the mountainsides, to lay bare the metal-rich underearth. Then the Old Ones, making solemn mass visits from Group to Group, quietly concentrated above the bared hills and drew forth from the very bones of the Home, the bright, bubbling streams of metal, drew them forth until they flowed liquidly down the slopes to the workplaces-the launching sites. And the rush and the clamor and the noise of the hurried multitudes broke the silence of the hills of the Home and sent tremors through all our windows-and through our shaken souls.

  I often stood at the windows of our home, watching the sky-pointing monsters of metal slowly coming to form. From afar they had a severe sort of beauty that eased my heart of the hurt their having-to-be caused. But it was exciting! Oh, it was beautifully exciting! Sometimes I wondered what we thought about and what we did before we started all this surge out into space. On the days that I put in my helping hours on the lifting into place of the strange different parts that had been fashioned by other Old Ones from memories of the Befores, the upsurge of power and the feeling of being one part of such a gigantic undertaking, made me realize that we had forgotten without even being conscious of it, the warmth and strength of working together. Oh, the People are together even more than the leaves on a tree or the scales on a dolfeo, but working together? I knew this was my first experience with its pleasant strength. My lungs seemed to breathe deeper. My reach was longer, my grasp stronger. Odd, unfinished feelings welled up inside me and I wanted to do. Perhaps this was the itching of my new pin feathers. And then, sometimes when I reached an exultation that almost lifted me off my feet, would come the weakness, the sagging, the sudden desire for tears and withdrawal. I worried, a little, that there might come a time when I wouldn't be able to conceal it.

  The Crossing had become a new, engrossing game for the children. At night, shivering in the unseasonable weather, cool, but not cold enough to shield, they would sit looking up at the glory-frosted sky and pick out the star they wanted for a new Home, though they knew that none they could see would actually be it. Eve always chose the brightest pulsating one in the heavens and claimed it as hers. Davie chose one that burned steadily but faintly straight up above them. But when Lytha was asked, she turned the question aside and I knew that any star with Timmy would be Home to Lytha.

  Simon usually sat by himself, a little withdrawn from the rest, his eyes quiet on the brightness overhead.

  "What star is yours, Simon?" l asked one evening, feeling intrusive but knowing the guard he had for any words he should not speak.

  "None," he said, his voice heavy with maturity. "No star for me."

  "You mean you'll wait and see?" I asked.

  "No," said Simon. "There won't be one for me."

  My heart sank. "Simon, you haven't been Called, have you?"

  "No," said Simon. "Not yet. I will see a new Home, but I will be Called from its sky."

  "Oh, Simon," I cried softly, trying to find a comfort for him. "How wonderful to be able to See a new Home!"

  "Not much else left to See," said Simon. "Not that has words." And I saw a flare of Otherside touch his eyes. "But Gramma, you should see the Home when the last moment comes! That's one of the things I have no words for."

  "But we will have a new Home, then," I said, going dizzily back to a subject I hoped I could comprehend. "You said-"

  "I can't See beyond my Calling," said Simon. "I will see a new Home. I will be Called from its strange sky. I can't See what is for the People there. Maybe they'll all be Called with me. For me there's flame and brightness and

  pain-then the Presence. That's all I know.

  "But, Gramma"-his voice had returned to that of a normal ten-year-old-"Lytha's feeling awful bad. Help her."

  The children were laughing and frolicking in the thin blanket of snow that whitened the hills and meadows, their clear, untroubled laughter echoing through the windows to me and 'Chell, who, with close-pressed lips, were opening the winter chests that had been closed so short a time ago. 'Chell fingered the bead stitching on the toes of one little ankle-high boot.

  "What will we need in the new Home, Eva-lee?" she asked despairingly.

  "We have no way of knowing," I said. "We have no idea of what kind of Home we'll find." If any, if any, if any, our unspoken thoughts throbbed together.

  "I've been thinking about that," said 'Chell. "What will it be like? Will we be able to live as we do now or will we have to go back to machines and the kind of times that went with our machines? Will we still be one People or be separated mind and soul?" Her hands clenched on a bright sweater and a tear slid down her cheek. "O
h, Eva-lee, maybe we won't even be able to feel the Presence there!"

  "You know better than that!" I chided. "The Presence is with us always, even if we have to go to the ends of the Universe. Since we can't know now what the new Home will be like, let's not waste our tears on it." I shook out a gaily patterned quilted skirt. "Who knows," I laughed, "maybe it will be a water world and we'll become fish. Or a fire world and we the flames!"

  "We can't adjust quite that much!" protested 'Chell, smiling moistly as she dried her face on the sweater. "But it is a comfort to know we can change some to match our environment."

  I reached for another skirt and paused, hand outstretched.

  " 'Chell," I said, taken by a sudden idea, "what if the new Home is already inhabited? What if life is already there?"

  "Why then, so much the better," said 'Chell. "Friends, help, places to live-"

  "They might not accept us," I said.

  "But refugees-homeless!" protested 'Chell. "If any in need came to the Home-"

  "Even if they were different?"

  "In the Presence, all are the same," said 'Chell. "But remember," my knuckles whitened on the skirt. "Only remember far enough back and you will find the Days of Difference before the Peace."

  And 'Chell remembered. She turned her stricken face to me. "You mean there might be no welcome for us if we do find a new Home?"

  "If we could treat our own that way, how might others treat strangers?" I asked, shaking out the scarlet skirt. "But, please the Power, it will not be so. We can only pray."

  It turned out that we had little need to worry about what kind of clothing or anything else to take with us. We would have to go practically possessionless-there was room for only the irreducible minimum of personal effects. There was considerable of an uproar and many loud lamentations when Eve found out that she could not take all of her play-People with her, and, when confronted by the necessity of making a choice-one, single one of her play-People, she threw them all in a tumbled heap in the corner of her room, shrieking that she would take none at all. A sharp smack of David's hand on her bare thighs for her tantrum, and a couple of enveloping hugs for her comfort, and she sniffed up her tears and straightened out her play-People into a staggering, tumbling row across the floor. It took her three days to make her final selection. She chose the one she had named the Listener.

  "She's not a him and he's not a her," she had explained.

  "This play-People is to listen."

  "To what?" teased Davie.

  "To anything I have to tell and can't tell anyone," said Eve with great dignity. "You don't even have to verb'lize to Listener. All you have to do is to touch and Listener knows what you feel and it tells you why it doesn't feel good and the bad goes away."

  "Well, ask the Listener how to make the bad grammar go away," laughed Davie. "You've got your sentences all mixed lip."

  "Listener knows what I mean and so do you!" retorted Eve.

  So when Eve made her choice and stood hugging Listener and looking with big solemn eyes at the rest of her play-People, Davie suggested casually, "Why don't you go bury the rest of them? They're the same as Called now and we don't leave cast-asides around."

  And from then until the last day, Eve was happy burying and digging up her play-People, always finding better, more advantageous, or prettier places to make her miniature casting-place.

  Lytha sought me out one evening as I leaned over the stone wall around the feather-pen, listening to the go-to-bed contented cluckings and cooings. She leaned with me on the rough gray stones and, snapping an iridescent feather to her hand, smoothed her fingers back and forth along it wordlessly. We both listened idly to Eve and Davie. We could hear them talking together somewhere in the depths of the koomatka bushes beyond the feather-pen.

  "What's going to happen to the Home after we're gone?" asked Eve idly.

  "Oh, it's going to shake and crack wide open and fire and lava will come out and everything will fall apart and burn up," said Davie, no more emotionally than Eve.

  "Ooo!" said Eve, caught in the imagination. "Then what will happen to my play-People? Won't they be all right under here? No one can see them."

  "Oh, they'll be set on fire and go up in a blaze of glory," said Davie.

  "A blaze of glory!" Eve drew a long happy sigh. "In a blaze of glory! Inna blaza glory! Oh, Davie! I'd like to see it. Can I, Davie? Can I?"

  "Silly toola!" said Davie. "If you were here to see it, you'd go up in a blaze of glory, too!" And he lifted up from the koomatka bushes, the time for his chores with the animals hot on his heels.

  "Inna blaza glory! Inna blaza glory!" sang Eve happily.

  "All the play-People inna blaza glory! Her voice faded to a tuneless hum as she left, too.

  "Gramma," said Lytha, "is it really true?"

  "Is what really true?" I asked.

  "That the Home won't he any more and that we will be gone."

  "Why yes, Lytha, why do you doubt it?"

  "Because-because-" She gestured with the feather at the wall. "Look, it's all so solid-the stones set each to the other so solidly-so-so always-looking. How can it all come apart?"

  "You know from your first consciousness that nothing This-side is forever," I said. "Nothing at all except Love. And even that gets so tangled up in the things of This-side that when your love is Called-" The memory of Thann was a heavy burning inside me-"Oh, Lytha! To look into the face of your love and know that Something has come apart and that never again This-side will you find him whole!"

  And then I knew I had said the wrong thing. I saw Lytha's too young eyes looking in dilated horror at the sight of her love-her not-quite-yet love, being pulled apart by this same whatever that was pulling the Home apart. I turned the subject.

  "I want to go to the Lake for a good-by," I said. "Would you like to go with me?"

  "No, thank you, Granma." Hers was a docile, little girl voice-oh surely much too young to be troubled about loves as yet! "We teeners are going to watch the new metal-melting across the hills. It's fascinating. I'd like to be able to do things like that."

  "You can-you could have-" I said, "-if we had trained our youth as we should have."

  "Maybe I'll learn," said Lytha, her eyes intent on the feather. She sighed deeply and dissolved the feather into a faint puff of blue smoke. "Maybe I'll learn." And I knew her mind was not on metal-melting.

  She turned away and then back again. "Gramma, The Love-" She stopped. I could

  feel her groping for words.

  "The Love is forever, isn't it?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Love This-side is part of The Love, isn't it?"

  "A candle lighted from the sun," I said.

  "But the candle will go out!" she cried. "Oh, Gramma! The candle will go out in the winds of the Crossing!" She turned her face from me and whispered, "Especially if it never quite got lighted."

  "There are other candles," I murmured, knowing how like a lie it must sound to her.

  "But never the same!" She snatched herself away from my side. "It isn't fair! It isn't fair!" and she streaked away across the frost-scorched meadow.

  And as she left, I caught a delightful, laughing picture of two youngsters racing across a little lake, reeling and spinning as the waves under their feet lifted and swirled, wrapping white lace around their slender brown ankles. Everything was blue and silver and laughter and fun. I was caught up in the wonder and pleasure until I suddenly realized that it wasn't my memory at all. Thann and I had another little lake we loved more. I had seen someone else's Happy Place that would dissolve like mine with the Home. Poor Lytha.

  The crooked sun was melting the latest snow the day all of us Old Ones met beside the towering shells of the ships. Each Old One was wrapped against the chilly wind. No personal shields today. The need for power was greater for the task ahead than for comfort. Above us, the huge bright curved squares of metal, clasped each to each with the old joinings, composed the shining length of each ship. Almost I could
have cried to see the scarred earth beneath them-the trampledness that would never green again, the scars that would never heal. I blinked up the brightness of the nearest ship, up to the milky sky, and blinked away from its strangeness.

  "The time is short," said the Oldest. "A week."

  "A week." The sigh went through the Group.

  "Tonight the ship loads must be decided upon. Tomorrow the inside machines must be finished. The next day, the fuel." The Oldest shivered and wrapped himself in his scarlet mantle. "The fuel that we put so completely out of our minds after the Peace. Its potential for evil was more than its service to us. But it is there. It is still there." He shivered again and turned to me.

  "Tell us again," he said. "We must complete the shells." And I told them again, without words, only with the shaping of thought to thought. Then the company of Old Ones lifted slowly above the first ship, clasping hands in a circle like a group of dancing children and, leaning forward into the circle, thought the thought I had shaped for them.

  For a long time there was only the thin fluting of the cold wind past the point of the ship and then the whole shell of metal quivered and dulled and became fluid. For the span of three heartbeats it remained so and then it hardened again, complete, smooth, seamless, one cohesive whole from tip to base, broken only by the round ports at intervals along its length.

  In succession the other five ships were made whole, but the intervals between the ships grew longer and grayer as the strength drained from us, and, before we were finished, the sun had gone behind a cloud and we were all shadows leaning above shadows, fluttering like shadows.

  The weakness caught me as we finished the last one. David received me as I drifted down, helpless, and folded on myself. He laid me on the brittle grass and sat panting beside me, his head drooping. I lay as though I had become fluid and knew that something more than the fatigue of the task we had just finished had drained me. "But I have to be strong!" I said desperately, knowing weakness had no destiny among the stars. I stared up at the gray sky while a tear drew a cold finger from the corner of my eye to my ear.