“Honey, I told you, they use a hypnotic gas in those damn tapers of theirs. You couldn’t help it.”
Blake laughed again, a happy, boyish sound. “Wait until they use the fake wine along with the tapers,” he said finally. “It’s an antidote.”
They all laughed almost hysterically, and afterward Lorna cracked nuts with gusto. They slept close together for warmth, and when Lorna awakened once during the night listening to a strange noise, she found that Blake’s arms were about her, her cheek against his chest. She fell asleep again instantly.
Blake paced them and demanded more of them than they would have thought they could give. But they were happy, and the days continued fairly mild. They had no more rain until the ninth day. They spent the entire day under a rock that formed a ledge over their heads. Winifred caught Blake eyeing her several times, and each time, she straightened up consciously, only to slump again as soon as he looked away. He had her lie down and he ran his hands over her back later in the day, pressing gently here and there. She relaxed under his hands and the pain that had tormented her was eased, but she knew that she could not hike through the mountains for the next six or eight weeks, the time he said it would take to get to a cabin in Pennsylvania.
That night Blake left them. Lorna woke to find him gone. She touched Winifred lightly on the arm and two women sat shivering for the next two hours until they heard the snort of a horse close by. Lorna screamed.
“It’s all right,” Blake’s voice called softly.
They could see nothing, but presently he was there with them again. “I thought we were fairly near a Cherokee village that I visited once,” he said. “I paid a visit to the chief and he loaned me a couple of horses. I’m going to leave you both with his people. They’ll take care of you.”
Over the morning fire Lorna protested. “I won’t stay,” she said. “I know I’ve been nothing but trouble, but I won’t stay here. I want to help you, Blake. You said Derek is with you, let me come too.”
Blake looked at her hard, then shrugged. He got the women up on the horses and led them through the trees. Lorna never had been on a horse before, and by the end of the first hour she was too sore to move.
“How did you get way over here in the middle of the night?” she asked Blake some time later. They were pausing briefly on a bluff, and in the distance they could see the gleam of white birch tents.
Blake shrugged. Winifred remembered the enlarged lungs and hearts of his people and knew that accounted for his stamina. She wished she shared it. She felt faint with fatigue.
They bypassed the tent village. Blake grinned and said, “That’s for the tourists. Show only. They don’t live like hat.” He continued to lead their horses, and finally they started down the cliffs. Suddenly, rounding a bend, they came within sight of the village. It was so well hidden that the appearance of the two dozen small cottages was almost like a conjurer’s trick. There were neat fields, not plowed yet, standing green with a winter wheat crop, and a windmill, and a group of children playing with a ball. It was a scene of timeless simplicity.
Chief Whitehorse met them. A tall strong man dressed in Levis and a plaid shirt, he greeted them warmly. “Dr. Harvey, you are welcome to be our guest as long as you like. We are very happy to receive you.” He clasped her hand. His knowing gaze passed from Lorna to Blake and there was a smile crinkling the skin about his eyes. “Miss Daniels, if you change your mind, please accept our hospitality, such as it is.”
Breakfast was ready, he told them. Coffee, eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, corn bread, wild honey…. Over coffee he explained that no outsider had stumbled across their village for forty years. Winifred asked mildly how Blake had found them, and he smiled and said that Blake was their brother. “We adopted him in order to keep our record clean,” the chief said.
The next day Blake and Lorna left again, this time on horseback, accompanied by one of Chief Whitehorse’s sons, who would ride with them for two days, and bring back the horses then.
Winifred watched them out of sight with tears on her cheeks. The chief stood silently by her side until she turned toward him. Then he said, “He has friends, many, many friends. If he has need of them they will materialize everywhere around him. He is a great chief among men and beasts.” His sharp eyes held hers and he added, “He is the alien, isn’t he?” Winifred nodded. “Yes, I suspected as much years ago when he came to us as a boy. Come now, Dr. Harvey, and let me explain to you the psychology of the tourists who want to believe that dried corn silk glued to pigskin and enclosed in duralite blocks are actually scalp locks for which they are willing to give much, much money.”
INTERLUDE TWELVE
Bookworld, Nov. 1993
Today the N. Y. Supreme Court upheld the decision handed down by the lower court granting the Voice of God Church on injunction against the North American Publishing Corporation, its president, Orson Beamish, and writer Newell Oates, who are ordered to cease and desist the distribution of Oates’s latest book, The Paranoid Church. Meanwhile the plunder and arson of those bookstores and department stores where the book has been on display continue….
Washington Post, Nov. 1994
Today the CDL, Committee for Decent literature, received the official recognition and official status that it has been seeking for over a quarter of a century. Miss Grace Livingstone, retired in 1973 after teaching high school literature for twenty years, was named director of the department, which will operate under the auspices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Miss Livingstone said that her department immediately will start a review of all materials in public schools, libraries, for sale in public places, or advertised In any media that is easily accessible to the public as a whole. A board of review, already formed, will then examine any questionable material and decide whether or not it is in the public. interest to permit it to remain where it is accessible to young, developing minds, she stated.
Special to the New York Times
Today the N. Y. Supreme Court upheld the decision handed down by the once-defunct House Un-American Activities Committee, known as HUAC. HUAC has been granted an appropriation of $785,000, and the mandate to investigate the activities of “certain people and groups of people who seek to perpetuate works of atheistic views in order to undermine the freedom of religion established under the Constitution of our country.”
Crandall Worth, committee chairman, announced following the vote that the committee would hold its first hearings next Wednesday in New York City. Mr. Worth denied that there was, or could possibly be, a conflict between the freedom granted in the First Amendment and the freedom of religion amendment which he has sworn to uphold. He said, further, that those members of the House who had seen fit to vote against the motion might well find themselves in the witness chair when his meetings get under way. Citing the recent reversals of the Supreme Court, overthrowing decisions made in the sixties, Mr. Worth thanked those House members who had voted with him in reestablishing the committee. His concluding statement was, “If our committee finds evidence that any religion is being vilified, then those persons guilty of such a transgression of God-given law will face due process of law. We are a nation under God, let us not forget that. Our founding fathers were men inspired by God, and today we have among us yet another man so inspired who is God’s hand now in this time of mortal peril. Those who would question this fact will have to answer to our committee.”