Suddenly the awful caterwauling of the shift lessened as the iron-banded, studded door thudded into position.
"Boy saw. Boy saw!" Elric was shouting.
"If Vale saw something," Steve's voice cut through Elric's chant, "then, by God, you must have, Chloe. You must have! Who's missing? Who did you jettison this time, you witch? Who did you dump?"
"Burleigh and Travers aren't here," Jean cried, "nor the three new ones…".
"Burleigh and Travers?" Steve's echo hung, a scorn-laden accusation in the supercharged atmosphere.
Muffling his sobs of terror, Vale struggled to a sitting position, trying to focus through tears on the tense knot of dimly seen figures.
"What's bothering you now, Chloe?" Steve demanded in a harsh, bitter voice. "Your magic slipping? Don't your spells work on Nuclear Age minds? Or is it that you can't run philters through a food synthesizer?"
"Thee had best leave off nattering, Steven, and get this fruit to the machine. Happen thee brought any of the fish?"
The icy fear in Vale's chest was dispelled by the calm unruffled tone of Chloe's voice. Why was Steve so angry with her? Even if Vale had cried alarm the moment he saw the first ripple, there would not have been enough time to save Burleigh and his work party. Sudden shifts had happened before. Why didn't Jean stop crying?
"Is food all you can think of, you… you black witch?"
"Shifts can be frightening times for us all. I am not without compassion and true understanding, Steven…"
"Don't try that crap on me anymore, Chloe!"
Vale gasped, for he could see that Steve had Chloe by the arm. Elric, who had slumped to his knees after getting the heavy door closed, stood up, growling. He had been uncongenial to Steve ever since Chloe had taken Steve into the front room.
"Unhand me, Steve!" For all she had neither changed tone or volume, Chloe was to be obeyed. "Vale sweeting, compose thyself. Bring us light. We must salvage the fruit. Ah, Teo-somoli, we shall thank thee for the fish before this shift is over. 'Twill be a long one, I fear."
As much to be out of the tension as to do Chloe's bidding, Vale ducked past Steve, into the front room. The shelf where the power beams were kept was to the right of the door. His hand unerringly closed on the smooth rectangles of plastic. He fumbled slightly for the notched edge of the switch. Light blinded him momentarily. He adjusted the strength down. You so often saw much more in less light. And learned more in total darkness.
Vale shivered. He didn't want to think about that now. He spotted a twig of three cherries and picked it up. There was bruised fruit all over the floor. Teo-somoli was waddling to- ward the Fooder room, her buckskin skirt gathered before her, showing her knock knees. Fascinated and hopeful, Vale stared until she turned the corner. He wondered what Chloe's…
"Yes, let's save the fruit and give thanks for the fish," Steve was saying now. Of those in the chamber only he and Chloe did neither. "We're one big happy family again, aren't we? Who else was with Burleigh and Travers? Did Grace make it back? She was farthest down the stream."
"No, she stumbled and got pulled back," Peter's choked voice said from the dark.
"We tried, but she was too soon pulled beyond our reach," Samuel added.
"Neatly done, Chloe. Neatly done," Steve said. "All the dissidents have been sloughed. Well, nearly all." Steve strode after Teo-somoli, his boot heels clacking on the stones.
It was a bad shift, a deep one, and Vale tried hard, very hard, not to listen to himself. Deep shifts were always preceded by many flickerings and waverings. Chloe had told him that time and time again, after she realized that he actually could see what only her eyes had been able to discern before. It was such a bad shift that even the cellar rocked under the impact of time distortions.
Elric chanted constantly, but that was better than the girls' hysteria. Couldn't they try to be congenial? Chloe finally dosed them. Vale half hoped that she'd offer him some of the cup, but he was relieved when she didn't.
She sat by him instead, which was infinitely preferable. And when he had to put his hands to his ears against the high whines of time, she pulled his head to her bosom. He wondered fleetingly why Burleigh had called her a "cold bitch." She was so warm and there was always a lingering spicy smell about her, so different from a Mother's astringent purity.
The shift went on and on, with dead still periods that were worse than the roaring currents. Reassured by Chloe's soothing nearness, Vale tried to sleep during the calms. But everyone talked then, trying to break that horrible quiet with the sounds of humanness. Everyone, except Steve and Jean, who had pointedly moved into the unfinished back room: another fact that others tried to ignore. Vale thought it was awfully brave of them, and very uncongenial. Chloe was angry with them. He could feel her body go hard though her hands remained gentle as she stroked his head.
In such times, you ought to be congenial, even if you didn't feel like it. Vale thought. It was your duty to the Dorm in which you lived. And this cellar, with mixed sexes and ages, was still a Dorm situation.
If only he'd been congenial that day, centuries back and across time, he'd be a Guidance Aide by now. That is, if he had turned fourteen. Subjective time was impossible to measure but his body was manifesting certain changes that marked the onset of puberty. At that point of his Born-time, you could be a G.A. and have access to the File Banks. He might even get lucky and have a chance to find out who his dam and sire were from the Dorm Files. Traffer had. Or said he had.
Then Vale, Dorm 143, M-82, had to pull an antisocial and get caught up in a time Shift - without even knowing such a thing existed until it swooped him away from everything familiar and known. But here, Chloe called him "her" boy, son of her heart, and she'd find the perfect time for him, the shift that gave him the best possible chance of making something of himself, instead of being pounded and chipped into a congenial mold. A time shift. Vale hoped wistfully, when he could have a family, a mother and a sister… Though he only thought such blasphemy. Vale shivered with delight. He might even have grandparents, whatever they were. But could they compare - ever - to a Chloe? Grace had said she had had grandparents, and aunts and uncles and cousins.
Well, all those relatives hadn't made her quick and clever. She'd been sobby and clumsy, silly nonconforming behavior. And that's why she'd got caught in the shift, not because Chloe hadn't warned…
The banshee wail of the time-winds rose to make even thought impossible.
They couldn't go out when the shift was completed. Not even to get water. Chloe removed the tiny plug set in the door and hastily bunged it up.
"Inferno," she said in her calm voice and sat down, her hands folded in her lap, as she composed herself to wait again. Vale had kept close to her when he felt that the shift was ending, just to be sure his hunch was accurate. He'd said nothing, of course, and hadn't looked at anyone, trying to keep his face expressionless, but pleasant, the way Chloe did, so no one would guess what he was thinking. And he'd known the shift ended badly. Even before Chloe announced it.
These were the times Vale hated most of alclass="underline" the wait between shifts, with the water getting foul, the air fouler, and the Fooder slabs thinner and thinner… as well as people's tempers. This time, though, Chloe, didn't insist that they work on enlarging the back chamber. They didn't need it now. Vale reflected, not with so many gone. He fell to wondering what time stream had swirled away Burleigh and Travers and Grace and the others. A natural one, or a warring one? It was amazing how Chloe could tell from just looking into the valley. Maybe she'd meant to leave Burleigh and Travers, even Grace, in that lovely era, with cherries in the trees and fish in the stream, rabbits jumping about in the woods and singing birds.