“You would have tried?”
“Don’t make it necessary for me to try. For your own sake, Alanna, be careful.”
“I’m careful. All the time. I think the ones who attacked me have learned to be careful too now.”
He grinned suddenly. “Yes, I don’t think they’ll bother you again. You taught them a lesson they needed.”
She began to draw closer to him then. Twice, he had stood against his people for her. He had chosen to do this—as her parents, on that final day, had chosen to stay behind and fight. From the time of her parents’ death, she had not been close to another person. Others were, at best, competitors for the limited food supply. At worst, they were Clayarks, predators, willing to eat the flesh of normal humans whom they considered inferior primitives. But the Verricks had been different from the first. She could remember a time when she was recovering from her gunshot wound—a time when Neila sat beside her and put food into her mouth. This was the most overwhelming of her early Missionary experiences. In the wilds, if someone was weak and attempting to eat, someone else might come to pry the food out of his mouth—but never to put food in. And Neila Verrick had done another thing for her.
An older woman, Beatrice Stamp, had been visiting Neila while Alanna was recuperating. Alanna was pretending to be asleep. She often did that during her recuperation when people other than the Verricks were in the house. Thus she avoided seeing the smiles that even she could read as false, and the frowns from more honest people that were all too real. But Beatrice Stamp had already had her look at the captive wild human—she was one of those who had smiled. Now she had come to see Neila for another reason.
“Neila, I’ve been talking to some of the others and they agree. If we’re going to keep the girl in the colony, surely she’d be happier with her own kind.”
There had been a moment of silence, then Neila spoke quietly. “Her own kind? Who are you suggesting I give my daughter to, Bea?”
The older woman sighed. “Oh, my. I knew this was going to be difficult. But, Neila, the girl isn’t white.”
“She’s Afro-Asian from what she says of her parents. Black father, Asian mother.”
“Well, we don’t have any Asians, but one of our black families might…”
“She has a home, Bea. Right here.”
“But…”
“Most of the blacks here are no more interested than the whites in adopting a wild human. The ones who are interested have already been here. Jules and I turned them down.”
“…so I’d heard.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I thought that after you’d had a few days with the girl, you might… reconsider.”
There was the sound of Neila’s laughter. “Come to my senses, you mean.”
“That’s exactly what I mean!” snapped the older woman. “Several of us feel that you and Jules ought to be setting a better example for the young people here—not encouraging them to mix and…”
“Bring it up at the next council meeting, Bea.” Neila sounded weary.
“I had hoped we wouldn’t have to do that.”
“If you feel it needs doing, do it. Now I’m awfully busy, so unless you had something else you wanted to discuss…”
Beatrice Stamp left, offended. Later when Alanna’s speech was a little better—from the beginning, she understood more than she could say—she asked Neila about the incident. And she learned for the first time how important some Missionaries believed their own coloring to be.
“We’ll be getting our ship soon,” said Neila. “We’ll be immigrating to a world all our own. I wonder whether people like Bea really think our small colony can survive separating itself into this and that race.”
“She’ll make trouble?” said Alanna.
Neila smiled unpleasantly. “She’d like to, but she wouldn’t dare. The people here are too bound together already. She has no support except from her little clique of aging bigots.”
“I’ll stay here then?”
“Do you want to stay here, Lanna, with Jules and me?”
“Yes.” Food, shelter, warm clothing, kindness. “Yes.”
“This is your home then.” Neila hugged her. For the first time, Alanna did not try to pull away. She was growing used to being touched.
Verrick Colony remained on Earth for two more years before it received its Mission Ship. By then, the Missionaries and Alanna had gotten used to each other. There was no more trouble even from Beatrice Stamp and her friends. Alanna had made a few friends herself. She had learned to read and write, and she could quote more from the Bible than most lifelong Missionaries. She was careful to observe Mission law even when, as often happened, it seemed foolish to her. She was as much a Missionary as she would ever become.
Finally, with the Missionaries of Verrick Colony, she prepared to leave Earth. There would be no returning. The Mission Ship would take the colonists and their supplies to a habitable new world, then it would die. It would become nothing more than a carcass to be cannibalized. The ship’s builders were taking no chances. Only Earth’s first starship, the Clay’s Ark, had been allowed to return after its voyage. With it had come the Clayark microorganism, secure inside the bodies of the surviving members of the crew. The men and women of the crew, driven by a disease-induced need to spread their affliction, evaded their mandatory quarantine and examination. They escaped easily since no one had expected them to try to escape. Then they disappeared into the general population and gleefully began spreading a world-wide epidemic. The Clayark plague had killed over half the population. It was still killing, and still causing the distinctive Clayark mutation in the young of its surviving victims.
The Missionaries were not leaving solely to escape the Clayark plague though. As Neila Verrick told Alanna on their last night at Verrick Colony, “We’re going to fulfill our part in the Mission. We’re going to spread the Sacred Image to one more world.”
Alanna sat comfortably on the bare floor of the Verrick house listening to the pious words, and knowing that Neila believed them. But Alanna had heard words less pious from other Missionaries—words that bothered her. She frowned, spoke to Neila.
“Some people are saying the ship is a trick. They say there is no ship and we’re being led like cattle to be slaughtered.”
Neila sighed, put aside the book she had held open pn her lap. She was sitting in a rocking chair made of wood. Her favorite chair, soon to be abandoned with the rest of the settlement’s furniture. “Do you believe the rumor, Lanna?”
“That we are to be slaughtered? Even the people who say it don’t believe it. If they did, nothing would move them from here.”
Neila gave her a small relieved smile. “Exactly. And just to put your mind fully at ease, I’ll tell you, I know the starships are real. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them launched with Missionaries aboard. Most of the people here haven’t had that experience, and they’re a little afraid.”
“They say the people who build the ships aren’t Missionaries, so why should they help Missionaries.”
“Because they’re human—more or less. Because they care whether or not the human species survives. We Missionaries are their insurance. They have no choice but to stay here with the Clayarks. They think they can survive, but whether they can or not, they hope we will. Some of us, at least.”
“They can’t leave even though they have the ships?” said Alanna.
“That’s right. We’re lucky. If they could have left, they might have abandoned most of us. Their weakness gives us a chance.”
“What weakness? What’s wrong with them?”
“Some Missionaries say God has quarantined them on Earth in their city, their Forsyth. Chained them here for their own attempt at altering the Sacred Image.”
“I’ve heard that talk.”
“And you don’t believe it—just as you don’t really believe other more important things.”