“But maybe the warp will only accept genuine woof. Mother couldn’t know. There weren’t any-half-breeds-when she was separated from them. Maybe our Earth blood will mark us-“
“There’s nothing wrong with Earth blood,” I said defiantly.
“Besides, like you said, what would there be for you if we went back?”
She pressed her clenched fists against her cheeks, her eyes wide and vacant. “Maybe,” she muttered, “‘maybe if I’d just go on and go completely insane it wouldn’t hurt so terribly much. It might even feel good.”
“Bethie!” my voice jerked her physically. “Cut out that talk right now! We’re going on. The only way we can judge the People is by Mother. She would never reject us or any others like us. And that fellow back there said they were good people.”
I opened the door. “You better try to get some kinks out of your legs while I change the tire. By the looks of the sky we’ll be doing some skating before we get to Cougar Canyon.”
But for all my brave words it wasn’t just for the tire that I knelt beside the car, and it wasn’t only the sound of the lug wrench that the wind carried up into the darkening sky.
I squinted through the streaming windshield, trying to make out the road through the downpour that fought our windshield wiper to a standstill. What few glimpses I caught of the road showed a deceptively smooth-looking chocolate river, but we alternately shook like a giant maraca, pushed out sheets of water like a speedboat, or slithered aimlessly and terrifyingly across sudden mud flats that often left us yards off the road. Then we’d creep cautiously back until the soggy squelch of our tires told us we were in the flooded ruts again.
Then all at once it wasn’t there. The road, I mean. It stretched a few yards ahead of us and then just flowed over the edge, into the rain, into nothingness.
“It couldn’t go there,” Bethie murmured incredulously. “It can’t just drop off like that.”
“Well, I’m certainly not dropping off with it, sight unseen,” I said, huddling deeper into my army blanket. My jacket was packed in back and I hadn’t bothered to dig it out. I hunched my shoulders to bring the blanket up over my head. “I’m going to take a look first.”
I slid out into the solid wall of rain that hissed and splashed around me on the flooded flat. I was soaked to the knees and mud-coated to the shins before I slithered to the drop-off. The trail-call that a road?-tipped over the edge of the canyon and turned abruptly to the right, then lost itself along a shrub-grown ledge that sloped downward even as it paralleled the rim of the canyon. If I could get the pickup over the rim and onto the trail it wouldn’t be so bad. But-I peered over the drop-off at the turn. The bottom was lost in shadows and rain. I shuddered.
Then quickly, before I could lose my nerve, I squelched back to the car.
“Pray, Bethie. Here we go.”
There was the suck and slosh of our turning tires, the awful moment when we hung on the brink. Then the turn. And there we were, poised over nothing, with our rear end slewing outward.
The sudden tongue-biting jolt as we finally landed, right side up, pointing the right way on the narrow trail, jarred the cold sweat on my face so it rolled down with the rain.
I pulled over at the first wide spot in the road and stopped the car. We sat in the silence, listening to the rain. I felt as though something infinitely precious were lying just before me. Bethie’s hand crept into mine and I knew she was feeling it, too. But suddenly Bethie’s hand was snatched from mine and she was pounding with both fists against my shoulder in most un-Bethie-like violence.
“I can’t stand it, Peter!” she cried hoarsely, emotion choking her voice. “Let’s go back before we find out any more. If they should send us away! Oh, Peter! Let’s go before they find us! Then we’ll still have our dream. We can pretend that someday we’ll come back. We can never dream again, never hope again!” She hid her face in her hands. “I’ll manage somehow. I’d rather go away, hoping, than run the risk of being rejected by them.”
“Not me,” I said, starting the motor. “We have as much chance of a welcome as we do of being kicked out. And if they can help you-say, what’s the matter with you today? I’m supposed to be the doubting one, remember? You’re the mustard seed of this outfit!” I grinned at her, but my heart sank at the drawn white misery of her face. She almost managed a smile.
The trail led steadily downward, lapping back on itself as it worked back and forth along the canyon wall, sometimes steep, sometimes almost level. The farther we went the more rested I felt, as though I were shutting doors behind or opening them before me.
Then came one of the casual miracles of mountain country. The clouds suddenly opened and the late sun broke through. There, almost frighteningly, a huge mountain pushed out of the featureless gray distance. In the flooding light the towering slopes seemed to move, stepping closer to us as we watched. The rain still fell, but now in glittering silver-beaded curtains; and one vivid end of a rainbow splashed color recklessly over trees and rocks and a corner of the sky.
I didn’t watch the road. I watched the splendor and glory spread out around us. So when, at Bethie’s scream, I snatched back to my driving all I took down into the roaring splintering darkness was the thought of Bethie and the sight of the other car, slanting down from the bobbing top branches of a tree, seconds before it plowed into us broadside, a yard above the road.
I thought I was dead. I was afraid to open my eyes because I could feel the rain making little puddles over my closed lids. And then I breathed. I was alive, all right. A knife jabbed itself up and down the left side of my chest and twisted itself viciously with each reluctant breath I drew.
Then I heard a voice.
“Thank the Power they aren’t hurt too badly. But, oh, Valancy! What will Father say?” The voice was young and scared.
“You’ve known him longer than I have,” another girl-voice answered. “You should have some idea.”
“I never had a wreck before, not even when I was driving instead of lifting.”
“I have a hunch that you’ll be grounded for quite a spell,” the second voice replied. “‘But that isn’t what’s worrying me, Karen. Why didn’t we know they were coming? We always can sense Outsiders. We should have known-“
“Q. E. D. then,” said the Karen-voice.
“‘Q. E. D.’?”
“Yes. If we didn’t sense them, then they’re not Outsiders-” There was the sound of a caught breath and then, “Oh, what I said, Valancy! You don’t suppose!” I felt a movement close to me and heard the soft sound of breathing. “Can it really be two more of us? Oh, Valancy, they must be second generation-they’re about our age. How did they find us? Which of our Lost Ones were their parents?”
Valancy sounded amused. “Those are questions they’re certainly in no condition to answer right now, Karen. We’d better figure out what to do. Look, the girl is coming to.”
I was snapped out of my detached eavesdropping by a moan beside me. I started to sit up. “Bethie-” I began, and all the knives twisted through my lungs. Bethie’s scream followed my gasp.
My eyes were open now, but good, and my leg was an agonized burning ache down at the far end of my consciousness. I gritted my teeth but Bethie moaned again.
“Help her, help her!” I pleaded to the two fuzzy figures leaning over us as I tried to hold my breath to stop the jabbing.
“But she’s hardly hurt,” Karen cried. “A bump on her head. Some cuts.”
With an effort I focused on a luminous clear face-Valancy’s-whose deep eyes bent close above me. I licked the rain from my lips and blurted foolishly, “You’re not even wet in all this rain!” A look of consternation swept over her face. There was a pause as she looked at me intently and then said, “Their shields aren’t activated, Karen. We’d better extend ours.”