"And me," said Dorothy, not smiling.
"Well.... Okay, Dope."
Pakriaa's thin wrinkled face turned to him. "Nisana and I?
Miniaan--she would remember the Vestoian dialect--but she is at the
city. It would need an hour to send for her, and then it would be
getting dark."
"Yes, come with us...."
The site of Jensen City was not where Wright and Paul had originally
dreamed of it but two miles south, where the radiance of Sears Lake
hung in the hills. A gap in the west admitted ocean winds; the outlet
of the lake ran for a mile to the edge of a red stone cliff and
tumbled over in a waterfall five hundred feet high. There would one
day be houses along that mile of river. Already, near the waterfall,
there was a temple of red and black stone devoted to quiet without
ritual, thought of sometimes as a memorial to Sears and to the other
dead, more often simply as a place to go for the satisfactions of
silence. It had no name; Paul hoped it would never have one.
Miniaan of Vestoia was an eager citizen. The old wound had left one
side of her head cruelly scarred; from the other side she was
beautiful, by Charin as well as pygmy standards. Younger than Pakriaa,
she was the mother of four, by Kajana--the archer whom Mijok had once
carried on his shield, who would never walk again nor live a day
without pain, and who was more cheerful as a permanent habit of mind
than any of the other pygmy survivors of that war. The fifty-four
pygmy children of Jensen City were all fathered by Abara and Kajana--a
fact which caused old Abara to draw dead-pan comparisons between
himself and Mister Johnson and to grow darkly desperate when Kajana
wistfully asked him to explain why it was a joke....
Elis shipped the oars; Paul let down the anchor, a heavy block of
stone, in two fathoms of blackening water; Elis lifted the dugout over
the side and held it for them. He himself swam the short distance to
the beach and eased the canoe through the shallows. Even now at low
tide there was barely a quarter mile of gray sand between water and
cliffs. Chipping away of building stone had created a fair path a
hundred feet up; beyond, natural irregularities made it possible to
climb another two hundred to the first setback of the great sea
wall--a ledge which ran only as far as the next patch of beach, five
miles south. Sunset had been ending when _Argo IV_ came home; here
there was a depth of evening quiet, no sign of smoke or life, no sound
but the long hiss and moaning of small waves. "We might make a fire
here," Wright said. "But there's enough light. They--they?--must have
seen _Argo_."
"There," Dorothy said, and ran up the sand.
The others watched in frozen helplessness as the woman came down the
crude cliff path, gaunt, seeming tall only because of the
gauntness--flaring ribs, thighs fallen in, every arm bone visible. Her
hair was black disorder to her waist, her body a battleground of
bruises, dirt, scars old and new, and she winced away from Dorothy
with protesting hands. "You mustn't touch me because I'm very dirty,
but I know who you are. Besides, I had to burn the last of my clothes.
My baby died. I know who you are. You see, my milk stopped. You're
Dorothy Leeds. I left him on the cliff. Matron would not approve. You
see----"
"Ann--Ann----"
"I have two other sons, but this one died. On the cliff. I used to
know a man who called me Miss Sarasate, but that was just his way of
talking--I don't happen to be in practice." Still trying to fend off
Dorothy's arms, Ann fell on her face....
Pakriaa was speaking softly, in the room where Ann was
sleeping--Wright's room. "She will be healed," Pakriaa said. "I can
remember--and you remember it too, Paul--how my own mind refused to be
my servant for a while." Since Ann had been brought to Jensen City,
Pakriaa and Nisana had never left her: the little women, both now far
from youth, took on the duties of nursing with a fierce
protectiveness, so that there was little for even Dorothy to do. Ann
had slept heavily all night and morning. At noon the stone-walled
house remained cool; mild air entered at the screenless window
openings, stirring the wall map of Adelphi and the three of Paul's
paintings which were the only decorations Wright allowed in this
ascetic shelter. There was glass-making now, but in such a climate,
with no serious insect pests, it seemed a waste of effort to make
windows; a long overhang of the eaves was sufficient against the
rains. The house was large, U-shaped around a garden courtyard open
toward Sears Lake; the walls were of black stone, the roof of a
material indistinguishable from slate, carried by hardwood timbers.
Wright shared this house with Mijok and Arek, Pakriaa, Nisana,
Miniaan, and their children and Arek's. There were five other such
communal houses overlooking the lake; a seventh was building. The
children were everywhere: it was, and would be for many years, a city
of the young. Rak had died in the Year Four, a matter of falling
asleep without waking, but Kamon lived, sharing a house with Tejron,
Paul and Dorothy, Brodaa and Kajana. Lately Sears' daughter had taken
over the task of caring for Kajana in his helplessness, lifting him to
and from a wheel chair that Paul and Mijok had contrived or carrying
him to a hammock slung near the waterfall, where he could watch the
ocean and its changes. In middle age, Kajana had taught himself to
write, and kept a journal of the colony with a sober passion for
detail.
Ann had not waked when Dorothy and Nisana washed her and clipped the
dreadful tangle of her hair. "She will be healed," Pakriaa insisted.
"Maybe in the next waking." And when Ann's gray eyes came open an hour
later, they did show a measuring sanity, recognizing Dorothy and Paul,
but wincing away when Nisana smiled and touched her.
"Do not be afraid of us," Pakriaa whispered. "We are still proud. But
our pride now is that no one is afraid of us.... You came to my house
in the old old days, remember? My blue house, and I thinking I would
be Queen of the World? I laugh at that now. Do not look at what I was,
Ann."
"Pakriaa.... Paul, you haven't changed much."
"One of our other friends is about to bring a man-sized meal----"
"Why, Paul, you must be----"
"Fifty, Earth calendar----"