Holding Wonder

"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 Space. One of the Explorer probes, returning, clucking contentedly over the mass of data accumulated in its innards, homing in on Space 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. With
guns 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 Space 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 God 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 "
"I know," said Ruth. "The Pain. Rather that. It wouldn't be too long. The exhaustion-"
"What's the matter, Ruth?" asked Thiela, troubled. "You never talked like this before."
"Sorry." Ruth's smile was pinched. "Nice dreams?"
"Oh, wonderful!" Thiela's eyes shone. "So many about Gove and the kids. Gove had a slick little black moustache this time!" She laughed softly, not to waken the napping pain. "You can imagine how odd it looked with his blond blondness!"
"I used to dream like that, too," said Ruth, "But now– Oh Thiela! Do you suppose my brain is beginning to rot?" She lifted herself up on one wavery elbow. "It's not only nightmares doubled and tripled, but nightmares oozing putrescence and slime! Horribleness I had no idea I was capable of imagining, let alone living through!" She fell back against her pillow, careless that sudden movement could start the Pain smoldering sooner.
"Oh!" said Thiela. "Oh, how awful! Dreaming is about the only thing that keeps me sane. If my dreams should turn against me-" She shook her head. "But surely the, doctors-"
"Dream pills?" Ruth rubbed her tears against the pillow. "Dream pills? A blue one for love? A green one for adventure? I've never heard of a pill for dreaming."
"Sleep too deep for dreams?" suggested Thiela.
"Any deeper than Suspension?" asked Ruth.
"Ask anyway," urged Thiela, "you never know. In this, advanced age-"
Evening pouring softly through the windows was an event to celebrate. "Look!" cried Thiela. "The sunset! The sunset!" She bounced on the bed. "Oh, Ruth! Twelve hours and moving as much as we have and no Pain! No Pain!
"Yet," said Ruth wanly.
"Oh, come!" chided Thiela. "The conscious Now is all we can live at one time anyway and we are still conscious. Oh bless Gwen! She helped them find this-."
"This stop-gap." Ruth could not let go of the dread waiting so closely the other side of waking.
"Watch me! Watch me!" cried Thiela, a happy child. "Watch me walk! Clear to the window!" Daringly, she dangled her feet over the side of the bed and wavered upright, clutching at the footboard. "Look! Look! All the way!" She shuffled and staggered and half-fell the four steps to the window. She leaned panting against the window frame and melted slowly down to the floor, holding herself chin-high to the window sill.