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You just can't. We only stated a fact. See?" He held out his hand to me and I
tried to take it. I couldn't. I didn't even stub my fingers against anything.
I flipped my own hand around, through, and among his hand, but I couldn't
touch it.
"Sorry," he said. "That's linearity for you. Penetration makes too many
problems. Have to have special permits, and on our level, we don't even aspire
to such a thing."
"Then you're not here," I said, feeling cheated, "Or else I'm not there-"
"Here-there!" Crinkle-cerise smiled. "Loaded words again." And his fingers
flicked.
Again-again-again- The whispered echo ran around the horizon. I was standing
by my car just off the pavement on the far side of the cloverleaf, repeating,
"Again, again, again!" pleadingly.
A second later I shook my head sheepishly and blinked around me at the
familiar scene, feeling oddly light, freed from the ever contracting and
expanding bands of tension.
"Well!" I thought, getting back into the car, "I met an angel! Two of them!"
So. That was it. I go over the whole experience every once in a while, to my
own comfort, especially after very loud, dark headlines. It's been a help all
these years knowing that there is a sign by which a cloverleaf can be set
right. Because, if a cloverleaf, surely vastly more important things are under
control, too. So I try to practice patience instead of panic. It's pleasanter.
The sign? Oh, I found out about that. It can be found somewhere on every
traffic exchange. Even the builders don't know why it's there, and sometimes
don't even know it's there. It's scrawled somewhere on the steel innards of
the structure. Or maybe built into the pattern of a guard rail. Or sometimes
it's the contractors' name and the date, tapped somewhere into the smooth wet
concrete. Look for it some time. It's always there somewhere-three-cornered
and secure.
THE TASTE OF AUNT SOPHRONIA
IT CAME from Space. One of the Explorer probes, returning, clucking
contentedly over the mass of data accumulated in its innards, homing in on
Space Base with lovely precision, brought it back. The men who loaded the
prober or the truck, those who brought it into Base Operations, those who
opened it and removed memos, those who seized the memos for processing, all of
them laid down their tools at day's end, looked at each other in bewilderment,
went home enveloped in the flare of fever, leaned against their wives and
died. Every one of them, to a man.
Their children wept for their dead fathers, wept until the fever dried their
tears and then their tender bodies and then they died. Every one, to a child.
The wives and mothers put their mortal and immortal houses in order, and
waited to die-some with hysterical outbursts of fear, some with incredulity,
some with prayerful preparation and resignation.
And they waited. And waited At first the Pain was no more than a twitching
away from a needle point, a discomfort to shrug away from. Then it came in
crashing, plunging surges that roared and tumbled through the body as though a
dam had burst. There was no isolating the Pain. It was as omnipresent as the
skin, or the lining of the body cavities. And nothing stopped it or even
alleviated it. Nothing. Some of the women finally found a way, though. With
guns or blades, or poison.
Six months after Prober Pain, as it had been tagged, had returned, the
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incident was closed. No new cases had occurred. No more suicides. No more
mention in the daily news except for one last squib in a remote corner, a
single sentence on a newscast. "The six surviving victims of the Pain have
been put into Suspension."
The six survivors, all that was left of a thriving subdivision of technicians
and other Base personnel-six child-bereaved widows who still lived in a Pain
that had no anodyne and to which they could build no immunity. So they were
put into Suspension, into deep freeze-freeze so deep it rivaled the cold of
the Space that the Pain had come from. And the six lay neatly in their
Suspension slots waiting for the toiling researchists to come up with an
answer to their illness.
Periodically they were awakened to try some new development, to let them
breathe consciously for a while and to let them be reminded that the world
still existed. And the years pleated into decades while the research plodded
doggedly on.
Then came the waking when Thiela lay slenderly in the brisk white precision of
the hospital bed, watching shadow patterns of blowing leaves on the wall, too
relaxed to turn her head to see the leaves themselves. She was watching for
the first flutter of waking from Ruth, who lay in the bed next to her. For a
blessed little while the Pain was in abeyance, though soon it would signal its
presence and come welling and flooding, filling and probing like a heavy tide
across the flats. Thiela's tongue outlined her pale lips quickly, easing the
smile she needed to hold before Ruth's fluttering eyelids, her waking eyes.
"Hi!" she said softly. "Beat you this time!"
"Then I'll see you off to Suspension first," said Ruth, her voice a mere
shaping of an outflowing breath. "Awake." She blinked at the ceiling. "Thank
God for waking."
"Amen," said Thiela, "and for Suspension." Ruth's face made no answer to
Thiela's smile and she had no echoing "amen."
"How many are we?" she asked.
"Four," said Thiela. "Gwen died in mid-Suspension."
"But I'm still alive," said Ruth, "And life is no gift any more." Tears
slipped thinly down her cheeks.
"Ruth," Thiela reached a hand out to touch the quiet arm nearest her. "They
may have found something this time. They've had Gwen to help them for half of
the Suspension. Maybe-"
"Have they said yet?" Ruth's voice quickened. "Have they?"
"I haven't had a chance to ask," said Thiela, "But the longer we wait to know,
the longer we can hope." She laughed softly, "Oh me of little faith!"
"Even if they haven't," whispered Ruth, "I don't go into Suspension again."
"Oh, Ruth," Thiela was shaken, "If you don't "
"I know," said Ruth. "The Pain. Rather that. It wouldn't be too long. The
exhaustion-"
"What's the matter, Ruth?" asked Thiela, troubled. "You never talked like this
before."
"Sorry." Ruth's smile was pinched. "Nice dreams?"
"Oh, wonderful!" Thiela's eyes shone. "So many about Gove and the kids. Gove
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