Holding Wonder Part 12

"What's a tear-of-sorrow?" asked Vannie.

"Don't you know how to cry?" asked Ingrid.

"I know how to dance," said Vannie. And she fluffed up wider and wider, swinging around and around, trilling a happy little song.

"Gee!" said Ingrid, wide-eyed.

"I can carry you," said Vannie. "Then you'll be dancing, too. Jump on!" Ingrid giggled and clutched at Vannie. Vannie caught her up and swirled off across the yard, cradling the ecstatically shrieking Ingrid in her fluff.

"Hey!" Beegun bellowed. "That looks like fun!" And the boys pelted off across the playground after the two girls.

The bus driver-late leaving for the second load-spat reflectively out the window and roared into reverse. "Telephone booths and hula hoops and then this. What next!" Mrs. Quinlan dropped down on the step and smiled up at me weakly. My answering smile broke to laughter as Stringler slouched back up onto the porch from around the corner muttering, "Color film to burn and my camera back at the ranch!"

So that was Vannie. She did stay only a short time. Before Christmas there was a low green fireball slanting down over the Nuevas and, after Christmas-Vannie was the Angel Hosts and got puzzled compliments on her costume-two green fireb.a.l.l.s slanted up over the Nuevas. One of them carried a school transfer made out to Vannie Powdang.

And all recess the next day, Ingrid rotated sadly, holding out the thin fluff of her skirts, singing a thin high song without words-a song that bubbled to sobs when she got so dizzy that she had to stop for a while.

THREE-CORNERED AND SECURE.

I DIDN'T LIKE the cloverleaf. Sounds foolish, a grown man -almost twenty-one-and presumably in his right mind, taking a dislike to a loop in a road. But it was so. Every time I approached the area, the skin on my armsfrom elbow to shoulder p.r.i.c.kled and stung, and dread, ulcer-like, gnawed at a corner of my stomach. And, for some reason, I always recalled vividly that there was a spring somewhere here where my grandad always camped, finding water for his horses and shade for the wagon, on his week's journey from the ranch to town. Any my dad patronized the same spring to fill the radiator of his Model A on his six-hour trip over the same route. But now I hardly knew where the spring was, because who ever stopped out here in the middle of nowhere any more? Except to build cloverleaves. So why did I think about the spring? A cloverleaf, at that time, was a curiosity, especially way out here where the side road-the reason for the strange convoluted archings-over and goings-under-might, once a week, emit a pickup truck or a firewood-laden Indian wagon, and maybe once a season, a lost tourist. Of course now all that complication carries only half the traffic through here.

Anyway, aside from its unsightliness, I still couldn't get used to the cloverleaf and I always shot out the other side of it and down the long, almost imperceptible slant of the sonora down from Picacho Grande toward town with a feeling of relief, still conscious of That Thing looming behind me, bulking emotionally larger than the thrust and tumble of the red boulders of Picacho Grande behind it.

But one day it was different. As usual, as I entered the first curve of the cloverleaf, I was absorbed in trying to a.n.a.lyze my uneasiness. Suddenly the sky yanked up sideways into slanting wrinkles! Then it tore diagonally in sudden, soundless gashes!

I hit my brakes and felt a thump as though my front wheels had come back down to the road from somewhere. My whole body felt like a cork starting to pull out of a bottle. There was no place to pull over and stop-not where I was at the moment-so I got my foot back on the accelerator and eased forward. The suction that had been lifting me bodily from the seat of my car was gone and the sky, what I could see of it, was serene and unblemished again. I wiped a wondering hand over the bottom of my face. What was going on?

Then it did it again! As though something had grabbed the film the world was painted on and was dragging it up sideways! This time the slant of my car tilted me back firmly against the seat. I saw the upward drag widen into an opening rip. And before I could blink or think, my car slid right into it.

Sight was gone. Feeling was so distorted that I could relate to nothing except an emptying sink and then an inching forward to be born. Then I came apart and I was a constellation in a bright desert sky. And a spiky jumping-cactus rosette of thorns bounding along a sand wash, my own skin puncturing at every bound.

There was a kind of pokkk and the sky straightened. I was lying on sand. At least I felt the sand under me, though I had more of a feeling of being suspended against the sand rather than resting on it. Anyway, I was lying on the sand by my car. I mean my half car. Because when I scrambled warily to my feet, there was my car, radiator, hood, wheels, front seat-and nothing more.

No back seat. No rear wheels. No trunk.

I slid both hands along the side of the car, holding myself up, and groping for some sort of explanation, too. Both my hands pa.s.sed the front door and touched-nothing. It wasn't that the car ended and my hands slid around in back. There was just nothing where the rest of the car should have been. And I couldn't even get a fingernail in back of it. How could I have? You can't poke a fingernail through the side of a car-but if the side ended- I clamped my hands over both my ears and surged bodily forward against something that surged me back again. All of me was tattering out in ragged lines of tensionthat were trying to relax to rest. Staggering away from my curtailed car, I fell face down, my poked-forward elbows crunching; in the sand of the dry wash. I held onto the thought and the feeling of that crunching fall as things slid and wrinkled and the sand became a taste and a smell and I dissolved.

There was a man crouching there in the sand across the narrow pool of water from me, eyeing me warily. I tried to spit the sand off my tongue, but only managed a dry, breathy thppppp. The second attempt went a little better. I wavered to my hands and knees and surged shakily forward against the tension that threatened to yank me back if I relaxed even slightly. It felt as though every corner of me was connected to a tightly drawn elastic band. But I wanted water -the water in the pool beyond which the man crouched. I plodded and plodded on all fours. I made it. My face splashed down into the water.

There was a flare of shadowy lights and echoing rainbows and I nearly drowned myself before I could get strength in my neck and elbows to lift myself. I rolled a little away from the pool's edge and blinked my eyes free of the water. Even my eyelids seemed to work against the stretching tension.

The man still crouched across from me, but now he was staring incredulously at something he clutched in both hands. Shakily he lifted the thing and pointed it at me. It was a weapon and the slight flare of the muzzle wavered hardly three yards away from my face. His hands tightened and the echoes and rainbows and lights came on again. Then his hands dropped and he stared at me. I stared back, tonguing a last sand grain out of my mouth, feeling the water trickling down the sides of my face. The weapon slid to the sand as he slowly got to his feet, his eyes intent on me. He backed away until the outthrust of orangy gold granite boulders stopped him. He glanced up and my eyes followed his.

A long s.h.i.+ny metallic curve pointed down at him. At first glance I thought it was an artillery sh.e.l.l of some kind. Then I saw that it was some kind of vehicle, slanting out of a clear sky-half a vehicle. It stopped just as my car did. Just quit a few inches behind an open hatch. Just wasn't beyond that point. It hung there, stuck through the sky.

"Well," I laughed shakily. "Welcome to the club, only I thought Sputnik was round."

"You can speak!" He was startled. So was I. I could understand him but his mouth didn't match what I heard-like a poorly synchronized sound track. And something was going on between his saying and my hearing.

"Sure I can speak," I said. "What did you expect-smoke signals?"

"Are you co-eval with savages?" he asked.

"Co-eval? Oh, brother! Vocabulary!" I grinned. "Savages? What savages?"

"It must be a time warp," he said, "though none was charted-"

"I'll pull the next corny line," I said. "What movie are you making?"

"How did you find me?" he asked sullenly. "This sector has been deactivated for decades. And I didn't know KAFKA had developed a defense against the ZAPT.

They told everyone there was no defense."

"Fugitive, huh?" I said. "Was that thing supposed to kill me?"

"No need for four letter obscenities," he said, frowning with a prissy distaste. "It was supposed to cinder you." He reached out and nudged the weapon with his toe. Then his eyes sharpened. "What uniform is that? It isn'tKAFKA's."

"Uniform?" I asked, looking down at my ranch clothes. "Levi Strauss's latest.

No uniform-well, not exactly anyway."

"On what basis is your time computed?" he asked.

"Time?" I relaxed a little against the sand. As long as he talked, he was forgetting that ZAPT thing. "Days? Hours? Months? What time?"

"Years," he said, "I want to know how far back I've gone."

"Back?" I asked. "How do you know you haven't gone forward? After all, your ZAPT thing didn't cinder me much."

"Idiot" he snarled. "I doubt if you're even Tech! Any Tech knows you can't go forward in time. Time isn't until it's been-"

The sand yanked sideways and pulled into wrinkles up the edge of the sky and we both went sprawling. As I whirled over in the wrinkles, I saw the sky vehicle above me slide down another yard or so. I thudded against my car and became aware of an added rear wheel by thumping my head on the right rear hubcap. The door above me swung open as the front wheels elongated and crept up the sky. I clutched the door and clung. I heard the glove compartment snap open and the acc.u.mulated miscellany cascaded down to the slanting floor.

Without consciously planning to, I surged forward and grabbed my .22 pistol as it slithered from under a road map.

Then I remembered the other fellow-a little late, because all I saw of him was his distorted face as he launched himself toward me, his weapon reversed to make a club. My arm went up protectively around my forehead, my hand tightening to a fist as it did so. There was a spaaat from the pistol and a yowl from the fellow. He rolled back and forth in the sand, nursing his hand between his knees and yelping like a coyote.

I backed away from him warily, pulling my tension along with me. "I musta missed," I said thankfully.

The fellow scuttled back under the overhang of his vehicle, still clutching his wrist. "Some weapon!" he spat. "Didn't even singe me!"

"It wasn't aimed," I said. "And it doesn't singe. It perforates. Anyway, why should I want to singe you? The thing went off accidentally. What's with your wonderful weapon?"

"Your force beam knocked it out of my hand," he said sullenly.

"What force beam?" I asked. "That was a solid chunk of lead." His head lifted, interested. "You mean your weapon propels solids? Then you are primitive.

Practically Techless!" He relished the insult.

"Oh?" My eyebrow humped up inquiringly. "My weapon smashed the daylights out of yours. Yours didn't even singe me! And if that solid had hit you instead of your gun, you'd be leaking blood all over the place!"

His face shut down almost into a pout and he had no answer. He flicked a look of hatred at me, then his eyes widened as they focused at something out to one side of me and out of range of my peripheral vision. His jaw dropped.

"That's an old one," I said, "Can't you--" And then my jaw dropped as I looked down stupidly at the s.h.i.+ver of my s.h.i.+rt sleeve and the arrow-head that hadcreased a fire along my forearm as it ripped the fabric.

"Well, h.e.l.l-a-mighty!" I spluttered. "How come I'm fair game, coming and going?" I yanked the arrow out of my sleeve and whirled.

Maybe it was an Indian glaring at me, but it was the hairiest one I ever saw.

He was crouching behind the stiff crackle of some kind of animal hide that covered him diagonally from one shoulder to the opposite knee. I just had time to hit the sand before another arrow streaked past me and the almost inaudible twaaaaang of the bow was swallowed up in a howl from the other fellow. This arrow had creased him from mouth corner to ear and red was seeping from under his pressing hand. His eyes were staring, astonished and pained.

I meant to try for the bow arm with my .22 but, as I felt the shot jerk off against the ever-present tension, I knew with a sinking in my stomach, that the muzzle had been dead centered on the hide over the savage's hairy belly. I gulped and dropped my gun, waiting for him to fall. He stood and glared and made no move at all. I backed away, my hands groping behind me on each side until my car stopped me. "Brother! I'm sure glad I'm such a lousy shot! I musta missed again!"

"With what?" He had that unsynchronized sound and lip motion, too. "You're not armed." He reached for another arrow from the quiver behind his shoulder and, with a smooth continuation of movement, pulled back until the stone point met the bent bow.

"Hey!" I protested. "Why so bloodthirsty? Why's everyone so all-fired set on perforating me? I haven't been around long enough to do anything to anyone!"

"You're a stranger." That was sufficient for the savage.

"I have to get you before you get me." That was the other fellow.

"Well, I'm peaceable," I said. "And it won't kill either one of you to talk for a minute. Sit down!" I gestured toward the other fellow. "There, under your vehicle, if that's what it is. Don't you wonder why it's hanging up there like that? "

"And you," I pointed at the savage. He pointed back with the arrow that edged back against the bowstring again. "You can see we're not armed. Neither of us can reach you. Put that thing down for a while." Slowly he lowered his arms.

"What's that?" he asked, gesturing with his chin towards my car.

"That?" I asked. "That's my car. It really has four wheels, not three." I was embarra.s.sed for it. "I ride in it from here to there." I hoped whatever it was that made it possible for us to understand each other, was feeding him some meaning to my words.

"Why not walk?" (Apparently the whatever was on duty!) "A hundred miles?" I asked. "Two hundred?"

"Why go so far" he asked.

"Well, because what I want is that far away."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've been there before. Brother! You've sure got curiosity!" "Why didn't you stay there then if what you want is there?"

"Well," I scratched the bridge of my nose. "I want lots of things. Not all of them are here nor there. They're all over the place."

"Food's food," said the savage, "and females are females."

"There are other things to want," I said.

"Shelter from cold and from beasts too big to kill-" He dismissed them with a shrug.

"There are other things," I insisted. "Life isn't just-just-there are other things."

"To live by?"

"To live by." I was positive in the face of his skepticism. "Even if you can't touch them or show them-" My face was getting hot. I wasn't at ease with this type of discussion-nor this type of audience.

The savage opened his mouth, paused, looked puzzled and then thoughtful. One of his hands went to his shoulder and his mouth closed.

I turned to look at the other fellow, feeling lines of tension twist up from both my ears to some point above and out as my head moved.

"If I had my ZAPT-" he snarled.

"Why are you so set on killing?" I asked. "No one's a danger to you at the moment."

"Everyone's a danger to me every moment!" He fingered his smashed weapon. "You cinder or get cindered-any Tech knows that from Cindergarten on up." His face crumpled a little, sickly weary. "That 'Cindergarten' is supposed to be a joke-at least it used to be, a joke. But the law now is that everyone is armed from first public appearance. They say a third of the kindergartners never make it through their first year. A real live ZAPT is so much fun when you first get it."

"You mean everyone you know is as bloodthirsty as you are? That you kill because someone's in front of your ZAPT thing? There must be dead people all over the place! Wall-to-wall corpses!"

"If I had an operational 'ZAPT thing,"' he burlesqued my phrase savagely, his face harshly distorted, "you'd be cindered by now for your obscene speech!" He was white with anger and disgust.

"Kill and dead and blood and corpse?" I questioned, laying out before him again the words that had stung him. "Obscenities? But you apparently kill as casually as you breathe-"

"There are acceptable terms," he insisted. "Only the unTech have such limited vocabularies that they have to resort to such language-" I shook my head, wonderingly, and decided to change the subject.

"I want to know," I started.

"What good would it do?" asked the savage."Why bother?" asked the other fellow.

"I want to know," I insisted, "how we got here. I was going to town-"

"I was trying to find refuge," said the other fellow, his face bending again, "I get so tired of trying to stay alive-"

"I was hunting," said the savage. "This water hole-" We all looked at the quiet water in silence, then- "But I still want to know," I persisted. "How come we landed here together? We don't belong together. What's happened to us?" The two looked at me warily, and then at each other. "And I want to know why your gun couldn't singe me."

The other fellow's eyes fell to his battered weapon and he muttered sullenly.

"And why my gun couldn't hurt you." I nodded at the savage. "But it blasted his ZAPT." I waved my chin at the other fellow. "And why your arrows nearly got both of us." The savage and I exchanged looks.

Before any of us could open his mouth there came the twisting and the dragging again. The three of us were tumbled together and shaken thoroughly together. I grabbed at memory as I hunched myself trying to avoid flying elbows and heels.

Mom's voice was calling to me out of the darkness-"If you kids don't stop fussing, I'll put you all in a sack and shake you up and see which one comes out first!"

We all three came out together. There I was, face down in the edge of the water hole across the back of the savage's legs, holding him down effectively and murderously, the other fellow lying across the small of my back, holding me down. I humped and sent the other fellow sprawling. I grabbed the savage out of the water. He sputtered and spewed and gasped deeply a couple of times between spouting water as I thumped him on the back. Then he scuttled away warily and paused within hiding distance of a goodsized boulder.

Then I saw! There were two more! About my age! They were standing patiently, waiting to be noticed. They looked to me like telephone linemen, or maybe highway surveyors, except that their edges s.h.i.+mmered and crinkled-at least to me. I wondered what they looked like to the savage and the other fellow.

"Okay now?" My ears heard the easy colloquialism, but my eyes saw mouth-movings that didn't equate. We all three nodded. Well! We did share something in common! We could all indicate no!

"Catch you, too?" I half-asked, half-stated. "Whatever it is"

"No. We came," said the one whose edges crinkled faintly cerise, "to uncatch you."