Holding Wonder Part 5

And greens: Green all around me! Underfoot, ankle deep! Higher than my head, covering the J-line tower completely and the smaller wooden-why, that wasn't a smaller tower! It was a tree! Just like the tapes! I waded through the green, guiltily looking around to find some way to get onto a legal paving. There wasn't any. No paving! Anywhere! I stumbled over to the tree and touched it the brown, unleafed part-the trunk. I guess I fingered the bark too roughly because a piece came loose. I tried hastily to put it back, but I fumbled and it fell. I dropped to my knees to get it, but there were so many pieces on the ground that I couldn't tell which one I had broken. I picked up one piece and shredded it in my fingers. I tasted it. It tasted like-like a tree! Warm and woody and dusty and real.

And then I saw it. There at my knee. The enchanting little line of bareness running out of sight into the green.

Breathlessly I slid down to my stomach, my cheek pressed to the green. I peered along the shadowy, secret hidden way. Now if only-if only-! And one did come! An ant, carrying something, hurrying along, so tiny! So tiny! On tapes they look so big and quick and armored.

I watched until the ant was out of sight-all unknowing of me. Then with a deep, shaking sigh, I sat up and looked around me. More trees-more green slanting down out of sight towards the smell of water, and a liquid sound.

Then something moved across the green invisibly, bending it toward me. I felt a flowing around me. Wind! Wind blowing because it was a wind, not because a thermostat told it to! "Here," I thought, "here is a place that wouldn't bethe same! If we could only get locale amends for here!" I scrambled to my feet, suddenly clutched by wonder.

"There's no one," I whispered to myself in disbelief. "Here I am and there's no one else. Not anywhere. No one to see. No one to hear. No one to sense-!"

My arms lifted as though they knew wings and my feet barely touched the green as I surged my whole self up. Then in one swift, collapsing motion, I folded me down and stripped my feet bare. I ran fast, fast, and lightly--oh, lightly!

across the green, the bottoms of my feet giggly at the spiky soft of the green and my hair flowing back from my face as my running made a little wind for me all alone. When had I last run? Oh, years! Oh, never before like this-never with boundlessness around me and such freeness!

Suddenly I was plunging down a steep slope unable to stop. Below me was a wide blue glint-water! As big as the ocean! I could drown in it! And I couldn't stop myself. My frightened, clutching hands caught leaves and tore them off the plants as I plunged past. Then I caught a branch and felt my shoulder yank back and pull me to a stumbling stop right in the edge of the glinting. I stood panting and shaken, watching the boiling brown water slosh my ankles.

Then the water slowly cleared and I could see the distortion of my feet in the flowing wetness.

I took a cautious step. I felt graininess dissolve under the soles of my feet.

Sand melting away just as dad had said, only this water wasn't numbing cold.

It was brightly cool. I took another step and felt a squishy welling up between my toes! Mud between my toes! Squish, squish! Like an echo I heard swish, swish above me. My chin tilt- ed as I searched for the sound. There!

Faintly far away, like a cobweb against the sky, the J-line. How fragile and lovely it looked from here. And here below it, I had found three dreams-Mother's in the little bare path, Chis' in the million, million leaves to run on, and Dad's in the dissolving sand. And the three, held together by all the other wonders, was really what mine had been all the time without my knowing it!

With a sigh, I turned back to the water, but the spell was broken. I was suddenly very small at the bottom of a bigness that had forgotten that Man made it. It whispered its arrogant roar down to me-to remind- I stepped out of the water onto the green, rinsing first one foot and then the other. Clutching my skirts and looking warily back over my shoulders, I scrambled up the steep slope, loosing one hand to help me.

Fear and panic began to build up. Where were the people? Where was movement and humming? The constant eternal humming of wheels starting or stopping, accelerating or decelerating-moving, moving, moving. The only thing I could see that looked anything like life or units was a huddle of small buildings far away low and little and lonely with sky showing between them.

Suddenly terrified that I might be the only person in the world, I staggered back to the J-line tower, my shadow, thinly tall, slipping up the ma.s.sed greenery. There was the slab of Crete. And there, quietly and quieting, was a small white flower growing up out of the crack as though no one had ever bothered to mark the line of where things could grow and where they mustn't.

Without even looking around, I picked it! My chin was high and defiant.

A sudden sound lowered my chin and sent me back into the hanging, swinging green on the tower. I muttered, "Vine,"-in belated recognition, just as a jerkie rounded the tower and jerked to a stop right in front of me. I pushed the white flower down tight into my pocket. The jerkie door slid. A man stepped out. His brows lifted when he saw me, but he smiled-and went onlooking! And spoke! And we had never met! "Want this jerkie?" he asked informally. I could get no words, so I nodded. He pushed the hold b.u.t.ton and stepped out. I stumbled at the door and his hand caught my elbow and steadied me.

"Your pardon," he said formally, releasing me. "I trespa.s.sed."

"It was permissible," I gasped my part of the expected exchange.

"What J-station?" he asked, showing no awareness that he was asking a personal question.

"Area G," I gulped as though I told my area to any casual questioner. "Where is this?"

"Area G," he repeated and reached in to set the controls. Before I could even repeat my question, the door slid. Through the view-plate I saw his mouth make a word. I thought it looked like Nowhere. How could it be Nowhere? I was jerked abruptly that way. Then this. Then the last jerk onto the J-line. I dropped back against the seat and stared down at my bare, dust streaked feet.

I giggled helplessly. Cinderella doubled!

Then wonder possessed me and I was back among the green, trying to gather as many rememberings as I could to take home to my family-my waiting, eager family- I was off-stepping the glide at our complex before the wonder lightened enough for me to start choosing words. Then I was in our unit and babbling the whole thing to my gape-mouthed family, babbling so fast that I didn't make sense even to myself. Dad finally put his hand firmly over my mouth and held me tightly comforting with his other arm until Mother brought me a hush-me and a plastigla.s.s of water. I swallowed obediently.

I leaned against Dad while I calmed. Finally he said, "Guidance has set an appointment for you tomorrow at ten -another Garath."

"It was worth it." I sighed shudderingly and relaxed onto the floor from Dad's arms. I hugged my knees to my chest. "It was worth it."

"But Squelch in the viewer?" Chis was admiringly scandalized.

"And no one knowing where you were!" Mother's hand was tight and hot on my shoulder. "School called to ask, and no one knew where you were!"

"Not anyone!" I marveled, realizing all the illegal things I had done without even thinking or caring. "No one knew where I was!"

"Out in school hours and you nowhere near twenty-one!" shrilled Chis, brighted to more nearly a boy after being solid lump of quenchedness for so long.

"Nowhere," I said softly. "That's where I was. Mother, I saw one of those lovely, secret paths through the gra.s.s. And I saw an ant running along it, not knowing I was there. It was carrying something. And the green all bent toward me and the wind flowed around me like-like light going somewhere to shine-"

"Where were you?" Mother's eyes were wide and dare "I was-I was-" I stopped, stricken. "I don't know," said, a heavy realization tightening inside me. "I have no idea. Not a single idea. Only-only the man said Nowhere. At least it looked like Nowhere through the viewplate."

Dad's mouth twisted. "I imagine that's just exactly where you were," he said.

"Nowhere." His eyes told me untruth as plainly as if he had said so.

"No matter what we call it," I cried, "I was there and I saw it-the littlebare path-" Mother's hand left my shoulder and her eyes flashed. "You're unkind to use my own words to cover your truancy.

"But--!' I protested. "I'm not covering. I really did. saw it. I felt it-a million, million leaves under my feet. And mud between my toes and-" I turned to Dad. "Sand, dissolving under my feet in a flowing stream-"

"Enough," said Dad quietly, his face hardening and his eyes not seeing me any more. "I suggest truthing to the Councilor."

"Honestly! Honestly! I'm truthing!" I cried. "It was just what we are all aching for! Our dreams-"

"We haven't asked you to account for your time," said Father-no longer an informal Dad. "We trust that whatever you did was ethically correct."

"Ethically correct!" Anger surged in me, stung to life by my disappointment.

"Most correct! I pushed a lady to get into a jerkie. I rode the J-line all by myself to Nowhere. I ran barefoot across all the green I could. I squished mud between my toes. I looked at a stranger. And talked to him. And I picked-" I scrabbled in my pocket. A moist, greenish-black thread caught under my probing nails. I pulled my hand out and looked. The flower was crushed and dead. Only the tip of one petal curled coolly white from the ruin. "It was most secret and most lovely," I whispered forlornly.

My fingers cupped the flower protectively out of sight, and I pushed my hand down into my pocket.

Dad turned on the telaworld and reached for the ear. "Don't forget your appointment at ten tomorrow."

"And if I don't choose to remember?" I flared. Three pairs of astonished eyes focused on me. "Why should I go to Guidance?" I asked. "They'll only try to change me-to make me conform! I don't want to change! I don't want to conform!" I struggled with breath and tears.

"Let's truth it!" I felt my face pinking with more defiance. "We're non-conform-everyone of us! That's our whole trouble!" Chis doubled his hands into fists and Mother pinked slowly and painfully. Father just looked at me for a moment, then he said quietly, "Yes, we are non-conform. That is our problem. But so far we have either truthed it or kept still. Our fantasies we have plainly labeled fantasies-"

"And so have I," I said as quietly as he. "When I am fantasying. And I think that silence sometimes is the worst kind of untruthing." I turned away and went to Wardrobe. I undressed hurriedly, clutching my dress back from the renov to rescue the moist mashedness of the white flower.

I was still staring defiantly at the top of my slot when the lull-tone finally faded, thinking I was asleep. Then I heard the click of Chis' slot and knew he was above me. Slots are supposed to be completely contained, of course so that no one intrudes on another, but long ago Chis and I discovered a long thin crack at one end of our slots. We could whisper there and hear each other.

Would he? Or did he think me untruthing, too. Or maybe he just didn't care- Then I heard, "Twixt!" in a voiceless, small explosion. I could picture him twisted all around in his slot because the crack is at his foot. He's a boy and has to take the upper, and it is so old that the bedcovers pull out from only one end, but I can change where I put my head in mine. That week I had changed my pillow to the opposite end."Yes?" I breathed back at him, sitting up cautiously to get my mouth closer to the crack.

"It's true, isn't it?" he hissed.

"True," I said flatly.

"With green and water and trees?" His whisper was hungry.

"True," I said. "And little units far away, low, with sky between-"

"There's no J-station like that in two hours around," he breathed back at me.

"There has to be!" I felt my whisper threaten to become a voice. "Or else I was farther than that away. I was too. I saw my shadow slide up the J-tower.

Up over the I!

"Twixt!" He almost broke into speaking. "If you saw your shadow in the afternoon, the sun was in back and the J-tower was east-" he fell silent.

East? Whoever uses directions any more except on maps instead of up and down and left and right. You just get the right transport and it goes where you want. And what has east to do with where my shadow was sliding- Then Chis spoke again, very carefully. "Twixt, where was the river then, the flowing water-left or right?"

"I-I-" I visualized again the slim sliding of such a tall, tall shadow.

"Left," I said. "On my left."

There was a brief breathy silence. "Listen, Twixt," his voice was urgent. "I bet I know what happened to you. You know the grid for J-stations? The same distance between, all the time? Well, it isn't always so. Sometimes there's a non-conform off-J in between. No station. Just an off and on for some reason or other. You have to have the destination code 'relse you don't even know there's an off there. You musta punched a non-conform off-J."

"But where is it?" I whispered back. "How'll I ever find it again? Because I'm going to find it."

"I'll find it for you," came his confident answer. "I know more about J-lines than anyone in the whole-the whole megapolis! I've hopped more hi-speed freight glides and stowed in more jerkies-'

"Chis!" I was horrified. "Jerkies alone? And you're not twelve yet!"

"Twelve!" His voice dismissed the whole idea of rules and permits. "But, Twixt, I think I know where that river is! If it was on your left and you were facing a J-tower in the afternoon-I'll find it. I'll find it if it takes until-until I'm twelve!"

His voice was gone, but I could almost see him so brighted that he shone in the dark! I wasn't very dim myself! And he's l.u.s.t stubborn enough - do it," I thought admiringly.

"And then we'll bring the J-line destination code to Mother and Dad and take them there. Then they'll see. They'll believe then. And Dad will put in for locale amends and we'll go! We'll leave this huge external skeleton. We'll be tall, standing there in the green. We'll all strip off our pneumonosolesand-"

I hugged myself in delight. "And then foof to you, Engle Faucing! Fooof!" I thumped back down on my pillow, starting the lulltone again. How had he got into my dream? I felt the delight melt from my face. The lulltone was a background for my unspoken, mouth-framed words, Most secret-most lovely. And I closed my eyes so the wetness wouldn't turn to tears.

Then I hurried back to the wonder, with a twinge of guilt for having roared poor Dad. I had untruthed by silence, myself, drinking that gonky chartreuse just because the other kids did. But I could change now. I felt as though I had split a hard, crippling casing clear up my back. Fresh air was flowing in.

I was growing out. At last! Something worth being brighted for! Something to put together day by day until it became a shining, breathing somethingelse!

Oh, wonder! Oh, wonder! And all we have to do is find Nowhere.

YOU KNOW WHAT, TEACHER?.

Miss PETERSON looked resignedly around the school yard. Today was a running day. The children swept ceaselessly from one side of the playground to the other, running madly, sometimes being jet planes, sometimes cowboys, but mostly just running. She shifted a little as an angle of the wire fence gouged into her hip, sighed, and for the fourth time looked at her watch. Two minutes less of noon recess than the last time she had looked.

"You know what, teacher?" Linnet's soft little voice spoke at her elbow. "You know what my mother thinks?"

"What does your mother think?" asked Miss Peterson automatically as she weighed the chances of getting across the grounds to one of the boys-who was hanging head down from the iron railing above the furnace-room stairs-before he fell and broke his neck.

"My mother thinks my daddy is running around with another woman." Miss Peterson's startled eyes focused on Linnet's slender little face.

"She does?" she asked, wondering what kind of answer you were supposed to give to a statement like that from a six-year-old.

"Yes," said Linnet; and she was swept away by another running group that left its dust to curl around Miss Peterson's ankles.

Miss Peterson pa.s.sed the incident along to Miss Estes in the brief pause between loading the school buses and starting after noon duties.

"Piquant detail, isn't it?" said Miss Estes. "It might do some of these parents good if they knew just how much of their domestic difficulties get pa.s.sed on to us."

"It's a shame," said Miss Peterson. "I've thought for some time that something was wrong at home. Linnet hasn't been doing well in her work and she's all dither-brained gain. She'd be in my upper group if she could ever feel secure long enough."

Rain swept the closed windows with a rustly, papery J. Miss Peterson tapped her desk bell and blessed the quiet lull that followed. Rainy days were gruesome when you had to keep the children in. They were so accustomed to playing outdoors that the infrequent rainy-day schedules always meant even more noise-making than usual. In a few minutes she would call the cla.s.s to order and then have a wonderful five-minute Quiet Time before the afternoon activities began."Teacher, Wayne keeps breaking down what I build!" protested Henry, standing st.u.r.dily before her, his tummy pushing through the four-inch gap between his blue jeans and his T-shirt.

"Well, he knocked down my garage and he keeps taking all my spools," Wayne defended, trying to balance the sixth spool at the top of his shaky edifice.

"You got more'n I have," retorted Henry as the towering structure fell, exploding spools all over the corner.

"You both know we're supposed to share," said Miss Peterson. "We don't fight over things like that. You'd better begin to put the spools away, anyway. It's almost Put-Away Time."

"You know what, teacher?" Linnet's voice was soft by her shoulder.

"W-h-a-t, that's what," laughed Miss Peterson, hugging Linnet's fragile body against her.

Linnet considered for a moment and then smiled.

"I mean, you know what happened at our house last night?"

"No, what?" The memory of the previous report from the domestic front sobered Miss Peterson.

"My mother and my daddy had a big fight," said Linnet "Not a hitting fight-a holler fight."

"Oh?" Miss Peterson, still holding Linnet in the circle of her arm, reached for the bell and tapped the double PutAway signal. The clatter crescendoed as puzzles, blocks, books, spools, and scissors were all scrambled into their restorage spots.

"Yes, persisted Linnet. "I listened. Daddy said Mother spent too much money and Mother said she spent it for food and rent and not on women and she got so mad she wouldn't sleep in the bedroom. She slept all night on the couch."

"That's too bad," said Miss Peterson, hating battling parents as she looked into Linnet's shadowed face.

"I took her one of my blankets," said Linnet. "It was cold. I took her my blue blanket."

"That was nice of you," said Miss Peterson. "Honey would you help Lila get the doll house straightened out? It's almost Quiet Time"

"Okay, teacher." Linnet flitted away as soundlessly as she had come, one diminutive oxford trailing an untied lace Miss Peterson gnawed reflectively on a thumbnail.

"Parents!" she thought in exasperation. "Selfish, thoughtless, self-centered-!

Thank Heaven most of mine are fair-to-middling!"