Holding Wonder Part 13

"What-?" I gulped. I must know these fellows! There was a familiarity I couldn't understand-a sudden awe-full feeling clogged my throat. "Why-"

"If you'd finish a question," suggested the Crinkle-green one.

"Who are you?" I asked.

Crinkle-green shot a side glance at Crinkle-cerise. "I knew it'd catch up with me. I never did learn my era-terminology tables very well. Who are we here?"

Crinkle-cerise grinned. "He asked you. It's your answer. Go on, tell the man!" "Well," said Crinkle-green. "I did learn this terminology table once on a bet-the whole thing though, without the eras. So here goes. We're-" And he started doggedly down a list of terms, none of which made any sense to me. But about six terms down, the savage gasped and staggered back against a boulder.

He groped under his garment's shoulder fastening and fumbled out a small, k.n.o.bby package. He clutched it in his shaking hand as he slid down slowly to the foot of the boulder, his eyes so wide they must have ached him.

Crinkle-green smiled rea.s.suringly, said, "Don't be afraid," and went on with his catalog. Suddenly a hint of familiarity caught me, then another, then- "Angels!" I gasped. "You're angels?"

"Apparently in your era," said Crinkle-green and went on for several more phrases until the other fellow jerked and let his jaw fall stupidly.

"But you don't exist!" he gulped. "It's just un-Tech folklore!"

"We're here," said Crinkle-cerise gravely.

The other fellow turned a sickly yellow-white. "Then it's possible that what the un-Techs say about something existing higher than Tech-that we're responsible to someone-" You could see the nausea sweep over his face and he turned away retching deeply, as though physical vomiting could rid him of an intolerable idea.

"Actual messengers from G.o.d?" I gasped, still trying to take in the idea.

"Among other things, messengers," said Crinkle-green. "Which brings up the matter in hand. It's your era that's the trouble spot," he said to me.

"Building traffic exchanges all over the place. Unfortunately, some of the best designs for them are patterns that will penetrate. And when they puncture through, they drag all the other linearities out of line, and we end up with this kind of confrontation. We've come to mend this penetration and to seal it against a repet.i.tion.

"First, we have to restore order-" Crinkle-cerise was up in the air, pushing against the nose of the vehicle hanging in the sky. With his feet braced lightly against nothing and the flat of his hand up against the vehicle, he pushed back and back until there was a slow sloooop, and the vehicle was gone.

The sky curved scarlessly blue above us. Crinkle-cerise bounced lightly down to the sand by the water hole.

"Where-where-" The other fellow came staggering on rubbery legs toward Crinkle-cerise, the back of his hand trying to erase the awful taste of useless retching from his mouth. Crinkle-cerise held out his cupped hands, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with water, to him.

"Don't touch me!" The other fellow edged around him. "You don't exist! You're nothing but a four-letter obscenity to anyone who's Tech! You can't be true, because then, senior to you there would be-" He bogged down in the enormity of the ideas a.s.sailing him.

"Well, you're Tech," suggested Crinkle-cerise. "If you see us and know we exist, then we must exist. You could tell the others-"

"Tell the others!" yelped the other fellow. "I know lapse-fatigue when it hits me! Tell them? And be euthanized?"

Crinkle-cerise shook his head with a sigh and picked up the other fellow's damaged weapon. He ran his finger the length of it and held it out, as complete and mutedly bright as it had been before my bullet hit it. The otherfellow s.n.a.t.c.hed it in one feverish lunge and backed away, the muzzle of the weapon swinging in a small, deadly arc to cover us all.

"Now!" he gritted, visibly trying to force the nausea back behind his teeth, "Now!"

Echoes, rainbows, lights! Everything was gone except the fireworks that bathed me all over. The two angels were gone-disappeared into a vast silvery reflection that stood squarely up to the sky before it shimmered and slid back down to the quivering glitter of the water hole.

The other fellow was sobbing over his clenched hand and his weapon. The savage, backed against his boulder with his arms curved tightly back against it, his head strained back, rolled large white eyes at me. With a deep sense of deprivation, I blinked toward the spot where the angels had stood.

There they were! As though they had never moved! Crinkle-cerise flicked his fingers. The other fellow was gone, his departure marked by a slight kishshsh.

"Poor, stormy, aimless era." Crinkle-green shook his head wonderingly, then looked at Crinkle-cerise. "Say, no one told us this was a changing point! I suppose this is where the awakening started, because he will tell, you know, and try to teach. And they will euthanize-" He squatted down on the sand and ran his fingers over the area, somehow covering the whole place without moving from his position. Then he was inspecting the cupped palm of his hand. "Four hairs, one fingernail and two drops of blood from the scratched cheek. He never did quite manage to up-chuck his revulsion. That's the lot." He stirred his other forefinger around his palm and there was a sudden intensified green crinkle. After it flicked out, he dusted his palms together briskly.

Crinkle-green turned to the savage who had gathered himself together and stood straight and still, his hands clasped around his little bundle.

"Don't be afraid," I heard Crinkle-green say, though his lips didn't move that way.

"Let me fear," said the savage in a voice that wavered and then steadied. "It is a good fear. To bear it one time or maybe two is to be strong. To bear it more is to be mad and a shouting voice of confusion to the others." He held out the little package on the flat of his hand. "Touch my Luck that I may be a leader to my people, to tell them there is something else to live by besides the hunt and the belly." Crinkle-green reached toward the Luck. The green intensified until it became almost audible. Then it paled and the savage, with tender reverent hands, tucked the Luck away inside his garment again.

"Now," said Crinkle-green briskly. "We'll put you back just after your kill.

Good feasting! Short winter!" And he flicked his fingers. The savage was gone.

"A worthy fore-runner of David," said Crinkle-green. "King David, that is-"

"I know David," I said, reflecting that my utterance was quite an anticlimax after the savage's well-rounded phrases. We lose a lot by being afraid to be emotional or corny nowadays! And there I was, left alone by the water hole with my bob-tailed car and two angels. Angels! One of which was, in effect, vacuuming the sand wash of any remnants of the vanished savage.

"You don't look very angelic," I mentioned casually.

"Ever try to tidy up three continuums-continua-umm-three linearities while wearing a white robe and a halo and-and-a harp!" Crinkle-cerise was reading myideas-and incidentally, speaking direct without the unsynchronized bit-and ended up on an incredulous yelp. "You've got to dress for the part, especially when it's a combination-or equivalent-well, we're sort of-well, plumbers, electricians, jacks-of-all-trades-one thing for sure, I've got to get in on a refresher course in terminology!"

"I thought angels spent most of their time in praising G.o.d-" I began.

"What else is honest work?" retorted Crinkle-cerise. "But getting back to the matter in hand-"

"But I want to know!" I protested, questions swarming like hornets without my being able to lay a tongue on a one.

"Like what?" asked Crinkle-green as he began pushing; my car back through the side of things.

"Characteristic," reminded Crinkle-cerise, combing the sand for any of my personal debris. "Always in this era their curiosity is so strong they forget to be scared-"

"Like how can a pattern of a cloverleaf puncture-"

"Well, look," said Crinkle-green, "or maybe I should say 'behold'?" He looked at me. I shook my head. He shook his. "Wrong terminology again. That goes with 'Fear not'. Well, look then. Everytime is so close to everytime-as close as if they were painted on plastic film, one on each side-"

"You mean the past and the present and the future are all simultaneous?" I asked.

Crinkle-green sighed again. "You'd have to define your terms. Boy! Talk about loaded! Past present future-simultaneous! Anyway, being so close, they naturally interact. That's as it's supposed to be. But intermingling throws all kinds of monkey wrenches. So when this traffic exchange pattern evolved, we found it penetrated-well, you see for yourself. So we have to go around and restore linearity and sign the spots against recurrence."

"Sign them?" I asked. "You can make a sign to end something like this?"

"Sure," said Crinkle-cerise. "If he's not forgotten his sign manual, too!"

"Aw, cut it out," protested Crinkle-green. "I outpointed you in the qualifiers:"

"Yeah, three points!" retorted Crinkle-cerise. "And you must have put a squitch on the Recorders to do that!" Crinkle-green suddenly remembered me and coughed delicately behind a somewhat grubby hand. "You were asking-?" He gave me his full attention.

"The sign," I reminded.

"Oh, yes," he said matter-of-factly. "Any sign is an inplace-of-something.

In-place-of words, or in-place-of an action, or in-place-of a function. We use the tripart.i.te sign of creation." He paused, but noticed that I was still waiting expectantly for an explanation. "Uh-" His lips moved silently, and I supposed he was galloping down another terminology list. Finally he brightened and suggested, "Trinity?"

"Trinity, like in church?" I asked, taken aback."Yes," he nodded, pleased. "Unless you are more familiar with-" But my ears gave me no clue to the movement of his mouth. "Trinity," he said, nodding again. "So when we get the linearity straightened out, we just sign it and the function implicit in the sign holds everything secure!" He ended triumphantly.

"Now, your vehicle," said Crinkle-cerise briskly and the two finished shoving my car back through the rip. I felt a little lonely as I heard its reluctant slooop. Long bands of tension tw.a.n.ged from it to me as it moved. "And you-"

Crinkle-cerise lifted his fingers to flick me out.

"Wait! Wait!" I put out a protesting hand. "Wait a minute!" The two exchanged patient looks.

"Yes?" said Crinkle-cerise.

"Why couldn't that fellow's ZAPT hurt me? And yet the savage could wound both of us with his arrows!" I asked, grabbing at one of the million questions that swarmed around me.

"Oh, that," said Crinkle-cerise. "Because the invention of the arrow pre-dated both of you. Neither of your weapons had any effectiveness against the savage, but he could have killed both of you, and you could have killed the other fellow, but he, poor kid, couldn't have killed either of you, not by firing his ZAPT. His weapon couldn't penetrate any time before his-not as an effective agent, anyway. See?"

"Oh," I said blankly. "Yeah. Okay. But then-well-" I felt my face tighten with awkwardness. "Are you two really angels?"

"Angels!" The answer rolled around me like distant thunder.

"And you've actually been in the presence of G.o.d?"

"The presence of G.o.d!" The voices multiplied against the hills. I blinked against the dazzle of their faces. They weren't my contemporaries any more.

They were timeless.

"And you've actually seen Him in all His glory?"

"All His Glory!" It was as though a mult.i.tude of the heavenly hosts augmented the answer and the two were too bright for me to look at.

"And you've been touched by His loving hands-?"

"His loving Hands!" The morning stars joined in the hallelujas that were one surge of joy with no noise at all.

"Then-then-" I gasped as I covered my eyes with the curve of my arm. "Let me-let me touch you!"

"You can't." Flatly the words spatted me back to the dullness of sand and the sullen glint of water.

"Why not!" I cried sharply, anger the obverse of ecstasy.

"Don't misunderstand," said Crinkle-cerise, nineteen again, or maybe twenty-one and in his lineman's outfit. "We didn't say we wouldn't let you.

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 s.p.a.ce. One of the Explorer probes, returning, clucking contentedly over the ma.s.s of data acc.u.mulated in its innards, homing in on s.p.a.ce 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. Withguns or blades, or poison.

Six months after Prober Pain, as it had been tagged, had returned, the 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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d 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 "