I laughed.
“Go on! Laugh!” he said, jerking upright. “Fine deal when my own sister laughs!”
“Remy.” I looked at him, smiling. “You’re acting about ten years below yourself and a seven-year-old isn’t very attractive in a frame the size of yours!”
He sank back and grinned. “Well, I bet I could. A craft wouldn’t be so hard to build. I could use scrap metal-though why does it have to be metal? And we could check in the newspaper for when Canaveral says is the best time-“
“Remy”-the light in his eyes quenched at the tone of my voice-“how far is it to the moon?”
“Well, us-I’m not for sure. I think it’s about 250,000 miles, give or take a couple of blocks.”
“How far have you ever lifted a vehicle?” I asked.
“Well, at least five miles-with your help! With your help!” he hastened as I looked at him.
“And how far out of the atmosphere?” I asked.
“Why none at all, of course! Father won’t let me-“
“And in free fall? And landing in no air? And coming back?”
“All right! All right! Don’t rub it in,” he said sulkily. “But you wait!” he promised. “I’ll get into Space yet!”
That evening, Father quirked an eyebrow when Remy said he wanted to start training to become a Motiver. Oh, he could learn it-most any of The People could-but it’s a mighty uphill job of it if you aren’t especially gifted for it. A gifted Motiver hardly needs any training except in how to concentrate on a given project for the time necessary. But Remy would have to start from scratch, which is only a notch or two above Outsider performance-which is mostly nil. Father and Remy both knew Remy was just being stubborn because he so wanted to go out into Space, but Father let him go to Ron for study and I got pretty lonely in the hours he spent away from camp. After all, what is there for a shadow to do when there’s no one to follow around?
For a day or two I ranged above the near slopes and hills, astonishing the circling buzzards by peering over their thin, wide wings, or catching a tingly downward slide on the last slants of the evening sun through the Chimneys. The Chimneys are spare, angular fingers of granite that thrust themselves nakedly up among the wooded hills along one bank of the Cayuse. But exploring on your own stops being fun after a while and I was pretty lonesome the evening I brought Mother a little cottontail rabbit I’d taken away from a coyote on the edge of night.
“I can tell he’s hurt,” I said, holding the soft, furry thing gently in my hands and securely in my Concern. It lay unwinking on my palms, its quick nose its only movement.
“But I can’t decide whether it’s a break or a strain. Tell me again how to tell the difference.”
Mother laid her hand softly on the creature after reassuring it with her Concern. “It’s a strain,” she said softly. “Don’t you sense ” And the rest of it was thinking that has no separate words for it so I can’t write it down. And I did finally Sense the strain in the rabbit’s muscles and the difference between it and how a break in a bone would feel.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I won’t forget again. Shall I let him go, then?”
“Better put him in the patient-pen,” said Mother. “At least for the night. Nothing will fright him there and we can let him go tomorrow.”
So we slipped him into the pen and Mother and I leaned over to watch him hide himself in the green tangle of growing things at the far end. Then I carefully did as Mother did. We reached inside ourselves to channel away the pain we had Sensed. That’s one of the most important things to be learned if you’re a Sensitive—which we both are. When Mother was a girl, she lived among Outsiders and she was almost destroyed before she found our Group and was taught how to Channel.
Still full of the warm, prayerlike feeling that follows the Channeling, we walked back toward the house in the half dark.
“You’ve been missing Remy,” said Mother.
“Yes,” I sighed. “It wouldn’t be so bad if we were back with the Group, but being up here till Father’s shift is over makes it kinda lonesome. Even with Remy coming back here to sleep, it’s not the same. There’s nothing to do-“
Mother laughed. “I’d like a dime for every time a child has said that to a parent! Why not use this so empty rime to develop a new Gift or Persuasion?”
“Like what?” I wasn’t very enthusiastic.
“Well.” Mother considered. “Why not something that would go along with being a Sensitive? You’re Gifted with that already. Choose something that has to do with Sensing things. Take metal or water or some Awareness like that. It might come in handy sometime, and you could map the springs or ore deposits for the Group. Your father has the forestry maps for this area, but the People haven’t mapped it yet.”
Well, the idea was better than nothing, so that evening Mother helped me review the Awareness of water and metal and I set my mind to Group Memory that night so by morning I had a pretty good idea of the Basics of the job. It’d take years really to be an expert, but I could play around with it for the rest of the summer.
Water wasn’t scarce enough in Cayuse Canyon to make looking for it much fun, though I loved the little blind stream I found in a cave above the creek, so I tried the metal Awareness and got pretty adept by the evening of the first day. Adept, that is, at finding campers’ dumps and beef cans-which isn’t much to brag about. It’s like finding a telephone pole when you’re really looking for a toothpick.
By the end of the week, I had fined down my Sensing. Hovering a hundred feet or so over the surface, I had found an old, two-tined fork buried under two and a half feet of silt at the base of one of the Chimneys, and an ox shoe caught in a cleft of rock six feet above the creek on another of the Chimneys. Don’t ask me how it got there.
“Big deal!” Remy shoved the shoe with his finger when I showed the family my spoils after supper that night. “Both of them iron both manufactured. Big dealt”
I flushed and talked right back at him as I practically never do. “How far did you move the world today, wise guy? Was that the house I heard roaring past me this afternoon or a matchbox you managed to tilt off the table?”
Which was hardly fair of me because he was having a lot of trouble with his Motiving and had got his reactions so messed up that he could hardly lift anything now. Sort of a centipede trying to watch his feet when he walks. The trouble would clear up, of course, with further training, but Remy’s not the patient type.
“Who’s a wise guy?” Before I knew it, I was pressed against the ceiling, the light fixture too hot near the back of my neck.
“Remy!” Mother cried out. “Not at the table!”
“Put her down.” Father didn’t raise his voice, but I was tumbled back so fast that the hem of my skirt caught the flower bowl and nearly pulled it off the table.
“I’m sorry.” Remy glared at his clenched hands on the table and shut us all out so completely that we all blinked, and he kept us out all the rest of the evening.
He hardly said good-by when he left next morning, kicking petulantly at the top of the pinyon tree by the gate as he went by. Mother and Father looked at each other and shook their heads like parents and Father folded his mouth like a father and I was sorry I had started the whole thing-though I’m not sure I did.
I had fun all day. I was so absorbed in sorting out the different junk I Sensed that I lost track of time and missed lunch completely. When I checked the shadows for the time, it was long past the hour and I was too far to bother with going home. I wanted to finish this part of the Chimneys before going home anyway. So I sighed and filled my empty stomach with fresh cold spring water and took off again, enjoying the sweep of wind that brushed my hair back from my neck and dried the perspiration.