Her father realized what they were doing before he died. He first cursed her, called her a harlot. Then he apologized and wept. He seized Eli's wrist with only a ghost of the great strength he should have possessed.
"Take care of her!" he whispered. It was more a command than a request. Even more softly, he said, "I know it might have been me or one of her brothers if not for you. Take care of her, please."
To Eli's own surprise, he wept. He was trapped in a vise of guilt and grief. He was alive because of the old man. Gabriel Boyd had given him a home and thus kept him from drifting into a town and spreading the disease. It was his
grandfather all over again-a stern, godly old man who took in strays. A dangerous practice these days-taking in strays. He worried about Meda. Worried that he might not be able to take care of her-that she might die in spite of her apparent
adjustment. That would make him a complete failure. That would drive him away even if her sisters-in-law lived. In his
mind, only her living would ease his questioning of his own humanity. He had stayed to save her. Now she must live or he was a monster, utterly evil, completely without control of the thing that made him monstrous.
She lived. He stayed with her constantly during the period when she might try to take her life. Later when the organism took firmer hold, suicide would be impossible. Now, he watched her.
Most of the time she hated him at least as much as she needed him. She lost weight and her clothing sagged on her. She gained strength, and when she hit him, it hurt. Guiltily, he did not strike back.
She helped him wash the corpses of her parents, her brothers, and her nephew. For him it was a penance he would not permit himself to avoid. For her it was a good-bye.
They wrapped the bodies in clean sheets, took them to a place she had chosen. There, together, they broke the ground, dug the graves. The sisters-in-law did not help, but they crept out to stand red-eyed over the graves as Eli read from
Lamentations and from Job. They cried and Meda said a prayer and it was over.
Later, Meda tried to comfort her sisters-in-law. They were older than she, but she had a more dominant personality, and they tended to defer to her-except in one important way. They preferred to be comforted by Eli. Their drives were as much increased as Meda's and they had no men.
Meda understood their need, but resented it. Even when she hated Eli, she did not want to share him. Her possessiveness seemed to surprise her, but it did not surprise Eli. He would have been equally possessive of her if there had been another man on the ranch. He saw to it that Gwyn and Lorene were reinfected until he was certain they would live. Then he avoided temptation as best he could until Meda was comfortably pregnant-and her pregnancy did comfort her. She did not understand why. She had been isolated and sheltered by her parents, brought up to believe having a
child outside marriage was a great sin. But her pregnancy relieved tension she had not recognized until it was gone. It also relieved tension she had recognized all too clearly.
"I'm going to sleep with Lorene," Eli told her one day. "It's her time."
Meda rubbed her stomach and looked at him. "I don't want you to," she said. He could see that she meant the words, but he heard little passion behind them. She had some idea what he was feeling, and she knew positively what Lorene was feeling. She wanted to hold on to him, but she had already resigned herself to his going.
"There are no other men," he said unnecessarily.
"Will you come back?"
"Yes!" he said at once. Then more tentatively, "Shall I?"
"Yes!" she said matching his tone. She put her hand to her stomach. "This is your child too!"
She did not know how much he wanted to be a father to it. He had been afraid she would do what she could to make that difficult.
"We need men for Lorene and Gwyn," she said.
He nodded. He was glad she had said it. She would share the responsibility this time when they infected two more men. He had known all along what had to be done. He had not thought the women were ready to hear it until now. The other deaths had seemed too fresh in their minds. Without meaning to, he had enjoyed the harem feeling the three women gave him. When he realized how much he enjoyed it, he wanted to look for other men at once. He found any feeling that would have been repugnant before his illness, but that was now attractive, to be suspect. He would not give the organism another fragment of himself, of his humanity. He would not let it make him a stud with three mares. He would make a colony, an enclave on the ranch. A human gathering, not a herd. A gathering headed where, God knew, but wherever they were headed, since they were not going to die, they had to grow.
PRESENT 14
Lupe and Ingraham shared Rane with a newcomer introduced as Stephen Kaneshiro. No one explained what he was doing there. He offered to help with the wall painting when Lupe and Ingraham got out the paint and brushes-real brushes-but Rane did not get the impression he lived with them. He touched her from time to time as Lupe and Ingraham did. After a couple of hours of this, she stopped cringing and trying to avoid their fingers. They were not hurting her. There was no more scratching. They were endurable.
Eventually the reason for Stephen's presence became clear to her.
The painting had been going on for a while when Lupe asked her if she wanted to help. She shook her head. She knew the request might really be a command, but she decided to wait and see. Lupe simply shrugged and turned back to the wall she was working on. The two men were on their way to work on the outside of the house. Stephen stopped, looked at her, then at Lupe. "Do you suppose she'll be this lazy when she has her own house?" he asked.
Lupe smiled. "That one isn't lazy. She's sitting there cooking up an escape plan."
Startled, Rane turned to look at her. Lupe laughed, but Stephen seemed concerned. He put down a can of paint and came over to Rane. He was a small, brown man, so heavily tanned that he and Rane were about the same color. He was clean-shaven and long-haired, his black hair pulled back and loosely bound with a rubber band. Under different circumstances, she would have welcomed attention from him, even been a little overwhelmed. He was as thin as everyone else on the ranch, but he was also one of the best-looking men Rane had ever seen. Somehow, his thinness did not detract from his good looks. Yet he had the disease. She braced herself against the renewed offense of his touch.
But this time he did not touch her. He clearly wanted to, but he held back. "If you'll come with me," he said, "I won't touch you."
"Do I have a choice?" she asked.
"Yes, but I'd like you to come. I want to talk to you."
Rane glanced at Lupe, saw that she was paying no attention. Stephen did not seem fearsome. He was her size and not afflicted with any twitches or trembling. She sensed none of Ingraham's quick temper behind the quiet, black eyes. More important, she was learning absolutely nothing sitting in Lupe's living room and being stroked like an animal
whenever someone thought of her. She needed to look around, find a way out of this place.
She stood up, looked at Stephen, waiting for him to lead the way.
"We're going outside," he said. "I'll show you around while we talk. Don't run, though. If you run, I'll have to hurt you- and that's the last thing I'd want to do."
There was no special warmth in his voice when he said these last words, but Rane was suddenly suspicious.