The Loafers of Refuge (23 page)

Timmy found his thoughts straying back to the distasteful way in which he had learned that Earthman-Loafer unions could never result in children, and quickly brought his mind back to the present. His voice was low but steady when he said, “It grieves me to have caused you pain.”

Doreen nodded numbly, fought with herself for a brief
moment, then drew hard on her nerve and forced her leaden feet forward. With arms that shook despite herself she pulled the small Loafer girl into a quick but warm embrace, then whirled and ran out of the firelight.

Carey started after her, hesitated, and found Marge at his side. “I’ll go after her. She doesn’t need you at a time like this.”

Cassie Harper now held a baby in each arm. Marge vanished after Doreen. And Carey, tears of empathy stinging his own eyes, was left standing companionably with a sense of guilt which told him he should have anticipated this development and tried to cushion his impulsive sister’s fall.

Timmy raised his voice and addressed the assembled people, “In my travels I have talked to many people who feel as I do, and some hundreds of them have left their old homes and are on the march into the deep woods. I ask that all who would go with me to join them come forward and take my hand. Search well your hearts, and do as your spirit bids you.”

There was a sudden mass rush forward and leading the line, and the first to clasp Timmy’s hand in fervent submission, was old Himkera. Every Loafer in the crowd, man, woman and child, came forward and shook Timmy’s hand.

The last person in line was Carey Sheldon. The two friends clasped hands, hard white fingers in hairy hand of leather. “When my son is ready for initiation I will come seeking you,” said Carey. “Till then all Earthpeople in this area who wish to learn Controlling can study and work with the People of the Trees.”

“That is good, for they and the breshwahr have much still to teach, and it will be many years before your people influence their lives too strongly. Develop your powers to the fullest and know that I will look forward through the long years to the time of our next meeting. And tell Doreen I hope she will not hate me too much. I do what I must.”

“Till we meet again,” said Carey, and turned and walked into the darkness.

M
AUD CRADLED THE
six-month-old form of Leonard Lyon Sheldon in her arms and wished, for the hundredth time, that Carey and Marge’s second had been a girl. She had two granddaughters, true, but they lived apart and she seldom saw them. And baby girls were so much more fun than boys.

Young Leonard Lyon grunted in a demanding tone of voice and she replaced his bottle in his mouth. Odd, that a girl with Marge’s full bosom should have no milk, but it had been that way with both babies. Still, she and Carey were happy as any couple she knew in Refuge, and all their worries were minor ones. Thank heaven they had elected to stay in the family home rather than build. It would have been unbearably lonely there with only Harvey and herself. And, of course, Doreen.

It looked as if Doreen was going to be with them forever. She was even thinner than she had been as a girl, and a woman of twenty-two looked very bad when her bones were obvious. She made no effort beyond the bare minimum to improve her appearance, and had become so short-tempered and snappish during the past year that no one spoke to her without good reason. Some of the old affection for Carey remained, but she was barely on speaking terms with Marge and the fault was all her own. And she almost never touched little Harvey or the baby. Doreen was a spinster at twenty-two, and a pretty sour one at that. If only she had consented to continue her education on Earth, as they had urged. But her only real interest in life had been that Controller stuff, and when Timmy married and left she had dropped even that.

Carey came in, dusty and tired from ploughing. He kissed
Marge affectionately, stopped a moment to take away the baby’s bottle and tease him until he made him laugh, then retired to their room to bathe and change. He had not spoken to Doreen, but Maud saw the troubled look he gave her as he left the room. Doreen was reading, as usual. She spent all her time either working like a woman possessed or reading, and lately she had seemed to be a little tired even of working.

Carey was thinking along the same lines as he towelled off and donned some worn but clean clothes. Something had to be done about Doreen, but he was not certain what was best to do. She couldn’t go on this way, but he did not have the power to change her, or re-direct her life. She had been more deeply hurt than he had thought possible when Timmy married Bilejah and moved to the High Forest, but Timmy had only done what he felt he had to do for his people. There was no reason for her to waste her life in grief.

As he was combing his hair he made a sudden decision, and between one stroke of the comb and the next he sent a ringing call through the peaceful spring evening, a call that moved with the speed of thought itself, rushing over the Whitecap Mountains and into the High Forest, spreading, searching, seeking with questioning tendrils of awareness. And the call was
Micka! Micka! Micka! Need! Need! Need!

Almost instantly there was an answer, a strong sense of her presence, and with the sense the instant understanding that Micka had changed, grown. He had last seen her as a child. She was now a woman, and in ways more subtle than the physiological changes brought on by puberty.
Greetings, friend Carey. There is no need to scream. Vocalize your thoughts and project.

He had not tried to contact Micka since they moved to the High Forest two years ago, but if he had known it was this easy perhaps he would have called earlier.
Micka, I am troubled for Doreen. She has lost interest in life, in herself. She has not recovered from the hurt dealt her by Timmy, and I think she needs outside help. Can you restore her lost will, give her the desire to live again?

I do not know, friend Carey. I can try. But I would never
enter Doreen’s mind without her permission. Once I did, to save her life. I will not repeat that violation.

Carey broke from his contact a moment to think. Those darn Loafers, with their insistence that every person must decide his own destiny, even if that destiny was degradation and the grave. They did not concede that
anyone
could decide for someone else better than the person himself. He did not know whether or not Doreen would consent to Micka administering internal therapy, but seriously doubted it.

I must talk with Doreen,
he projected.
If she consents I will call you back. When could you come?

When she consents, friend Carey,
came an answer, and there was a slight overtone of mirthful mockery. The sense of presence was gone.

Doreen took her book and retired soon after dinner, a common habit now. Carey waited until the rest of the household was asleep, though he was: quite tired himself, then tapped on the door of her room. He found’ her sitting up in bed when he entered, the book lying by her on the coverlet, closed. Her lamp was not adjusted for reading.

He sat down by her, took one of the bony hands and held it firmly between his own, without speaking. After a moment, slowly, like the wash of a low wave over the gentle incline of a shelving beach, her thin lips formed into a tranquil smile.

“Doreen, my sister, you have become a burden on myself and the rest of the family,” said Carey in a low voice.

The shock of the words hit her like a physical blow. She gasped, sat a little more upright, flushed red under the tanned skin, made an effort to speak and could only stammer. And then the tears came.

He let her cry without touching her, wondering to himself how he could be so cruel, well aware there was only a small kernel of truth in his words. When the sobbing eased and she groped about for a handkerchief he proffered his own; she slowly wiped her eyes, still sniffling.

“Do—do you wa-want me to leave, Carey?” she asked when she could speak. There was nothing but abject submission in her voice. And from fiery Doreen perhaps that was the worse reaction of all.

“I hadn’t thought of it, but yes. I want you to go to Earth; get your Master’s in chemistry. But you can’t go the way you are now.”

“Wha-what do you mean?”

“You’re an emotional cripple. You’ve let one disappointment warp your entire life. You must be cured before you leave or there’s no point in going at all.”

“Disappointment?” Doreen blew her nose violently, discarded the handkerchief and slid down in bed. “Do you think that’s all I suffered, Carey? A little disappointment?”

“No, but two years is a long time in which to grieve. You should have got over Timmy by now. I want to help you forget him. Will you trust me? Trust me absolutely, completely, placing yourself entirely in my hands?” He took her hand again, staring intently into her face.

“Oh, Carey! Carey!” she was sobbing again, but more quietly than before. “Carey, I don’t
want
to be like this!”

“Then it’s settled. I want you to go to sleep, as quickly as you can. When you are soundly asleep I’ll return with Micka. She is going into your mind and see if she can relieve some of the hurt and frustration locked up there.”

“Micka? Is she here?”

“She will be. But she will not go into’ your mind unless you give your consent. Which is why,” he grinned in the old easygoing intimate way, “I had to bully you a little, and maybe stretch the truth a bit.”

“Then you didn’t really mean—Oh Carey, you
are
a brute! And a stinker besides.” For the first time in months there was a smile on her face which did not look pasted on.

Carey left the room feeling as if the therapy had started work already. When he returned an hour later she was sleeping soundly.

Then Carey called Micka. He felt the instant answer of the sense of her presence, and suddenly his ears popped from an increase of air pressure in the room, the odd feeling of being in the midst of a storm of raw power filled and overflowed his receptive senses, and Micka stood before him.

The air pressure receded, his eyes began to accept that which they could not believe, and the power in the room
melted away. Micka smiled at him, and there was a new maturity and understanding in the smile, and even more of the grave sweetness she had always displayed as a young girl. She was completely nude and he noted the widened hips, the small firm girlish breasts, the other signs of maturity in a young female. Micka would soon be ready for marriage herself.

She read his thoughts without the use of her powers and the smile deepened. “Yes, I am a woman now, Car-ree. My mother and Timmy send greetings, and declare to you their love.”

“A woman, and a darn pretty one at that,” said Carey, and laughed to see her blush and look away. Power had not spoiled Micka.

“I had a long talk with Doreen and she agreed that you could enter her mind and work as you think best,” Carey went on. “Actually, after our talk tonight I think she is already starting to pull out of it, but it will be faster and easier with your help.”

“Then let us go to her,” said Micka, and he led her to the room.

Micka sat on the edge of the bed, placed her hands on Doreen’s head and closed her eyes. Carey opened his mind to reception and felt the throb and pulse of the power she was exerting, but it was nothing compared to what he had felt when she teleported. Micka kept her eyes closed less than a minute, then opened them and smiled. She removed her hands and almost instantly Doreen moved her head, yawned, and sat up. The two women embraced with very feminine squeals of delight.

Carey waited until they separated, then asked Doreen how she felt.

“Never better,” she answered cheerfully.

“I did not do much, Car-ree,” said Micka in her soft voice. “I buried some of the pain a little deeper, and perhaps removed some of the—the want-to-but-can’t feeling. She did not need much help. I think,” and the voice was near girlish laughter again, “she needs some whampus milk and fresh fruit more than my help.”

“Perhaps. But I’ve been wanting to ask ever since you arrived how you learned to teleport, and how long you’ve been doing it?”

“I have been trying for many seasons, Car-ree, since we first made our new home in the High Forest, for it was the thought of my uncle Timmy that I should be able to do with the mind what Earthpeople do with their great machines. I did not succeed, though, till I became a … a woman … a year ago. At that time my powers increased, and I was! able to move through the-space-that-has-no-time. Now it is quite easy, and Sanda will be able to move when he becomes a man, I am sure.”

“But no one else?”

“Not at present. There are other young children for whom we have hope.”

“Then progress is still slow and hard,” said Carey, disappointed. “I had hoped for more.”

“We are moving forward in other ways, Car-ree. Timmy is happy with us. And now I must return. Remember, you are to bring your first child to us when he is ready for initiation.” She leaned forward to hug Doreen again, pulled back, vanished. There was a sudden and violent movement of air in the room and a low whistling as air rushed in through cracks at the door.

Carey said goodnight to Doreen and returned to his own room, where Marge and the baby were sleeping soundly. He curled up against his wife’s warm back and lay there lost in thought.

“I am very happy to say, Carey, that from now on you’re going to
get paid
for all your work,” said Varinov English as he handed Carey a Certificate of Appointment to Voluntary Government Service. “This makes you officially what you have been in fact for the past ten years, the Security Section’s troubleshooter for Loafer-human relationship problems. Incidentally, you’ll report directly to me, which makes you a department in itself. And I couldn’t ask any more of you than
that you continue to do as good a job as you’re already doing.”

Carey glanced at the certificate and saw that his yearly salary was healthy without being impressive. Since he would still have sufficient time to work the farm, though, the combined income was very worthwhile.