“She is,” Karen said, nodding at Bethie.
“She is?” Dr. Curtis looked intently at the shy lovely face. He shook his head wonderingly and turned back to me.
“Anyway this one, Valancy, says Bethie can sense every condition in the child’s body and that she will be able to tell all the injuries, their location and extent without X rays! Without equipment?”
“Yes,” I said. “If they say so.”
“You would be willing to risk a child’s life—?”
“Yes. They know. They really do.” And I swallowed hard to keep down the fist of doubt that clenched in my chest.
“You believe they can see through flesh and bone?”
“Maybe not see,” I said, wondering at my own words. “But know with a knowledge that is sure and complete.” I glanced, startled, at Karen. Her nod was very small but it told me where my words came from.
“Are you willing to trust these people?” The doctor turned to Abie’s parents.
“They’re our People,” Mr. Peters said with quiet pride. “I’d operate on him myself with a pickax if they said so.”
“Of all the screwball deals—!” The doctor’s hand rubbed across his face again. “I know I needed this vacation, but this is ridiculous!”
We all listened to the silence of the night and—at least I—to the drumming of anxious pulses until Dr. Curtis sighed heavily.
“Okay, Valancy. I don’t believe a word of it. At least I wouldn’t if I were in my right mind, but you’ve got the terminology down pat as if you knew something—. Well,
I’ll do it. It’s either that or let him die. And God have mercy on our souls!”
I couldn’t bear the thought of shutting myself in with my own dark fears, so I walked back toward the school, hugging myself in my inadequate coat against the sudden sharp chill of the night. I wandered down to the grove, praying wordlessly, and on up to the school. But I couldn’t go in. I shuddered away from the blank glint of the windows and turned back to the grove. There wasn’t any more time or direction or light or anything familiar, only a confused cloud of anxiety and a final icy weariness that drove me back to Abie’s house.
I stumbled into the kitchen, my stiff hands fumbling at the doorknob. I huddled in a chair, gratefully leaning over the hot wood stove that flicked the semidarkness of the big homey room with warm red light, trying to coax some feeling back into my fingers.
I drowsed as the warmth began to penetrate, and then the door was flung open and slammed shut. The doctor leaned back against it his hand still clutching the knob.
“Do you know what they did?” he cried, not so much to me as to himself. “What they made me do? Oh, Lord!” He staggered over to the stove, stumbling over my feet. He collapsed by my chair, rocking his head between his hands. “They made me operate on his brain! Repair it. Trace circuits and rebuild them. You can’t do that! It can’t be done! Brain cells damaged can’t be repaired. No one can restore circuits that are destroyed! It can’t be done. But I did it! I did it!”
I knelt beside him and tried to comfort him in the circle of my arms.
“There, there, there,” I soothed.
He clung like a terrified child. “No anesthetics!” he cried. “She kept him asleep. And no bleeding when I went through the scalp! They stopped it. And the impossible things I did with the few instruments I have with me! And the brain starting to mend right before my eyes! Nothing was right!”
“But nothing was wrong,” I murmured. “Abie will be all right, won’t he?”
“How do I know?” he shouted suddenly, pushing away from me.
“I don’t know anything about a thing like this. I put his brain back together and he’s still breathing, but how do I know!”
“There, there,” I soothed. “It’s over now.”
“It’ll never be over!” With an effort he calmed himself, and we helped each other up from the floor. “You can’t forget a thing like this in a lifetime.”
“We can give you forgetting,” Valancy said softly from the door. “If you want to forget. We can send you back to the Tumble A with no memory of tonight except a pleasant visit to Bendo.”
“You can?” He turned speculative eyes toward her. “You can,” he amended his words to a statement.
“Do you want to forget?” Valancy asked.
“Of course not,” he snapped. Then, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t often work miracles in the wilderness. But if I did it once, maybe—”
“Then you understand what you did?” Valancy asked smiling.
“Well, no, but if I could—if you would— There must be some way—”
“Yes,” Valancy said, “but you’d have to have a Sensitive working with you, and Bethie is it as far as Sensitives go right now.”
“You mean it’s true what I saw—what you told me about the—the Home? You’re extraterrestrials?”
“Yes,” Valancy sighed. “At least our grandparents were.” Then she smiled. “But we’re learning where we can fit into this world. Someday—someday we’ll be able—” She changed the subject abruptly.
“You realize, of course, Dr. Curtis, that we’d rather you wouldn’t discuss Bendo or us with anyone else. We would rather be just people to Outsiders.”
He laughed shortly, “Would I be believed if I did?”
“Maybe no, maybe so,” Valancy said. “Maybe only enough to start people nosing around. And that would be too much. We have a bad situation here and it will take a long time to erase—” Her voice slipped into silence, and I knew she had dropped into thoughts to brief him on the local problem. How long is a thought? How fast can you think of hell—and heaven? It was that long before the doctor blinked and drew a shaky breath.
“Yes,” he said. “A long time.”
“If you like,” Valancy said, “I can block your ability to talk of us.”
“Nothing doing!” the doctor snapped. “I can manage my own censorship, thanks.”
Valancy flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be condescending.”
“You weren’t,” the doctor said. “I’m just on the prod tonight. It has been a day, and that’s for sure!”
“Hasn’t it, though?” I smiled and then, astonished, rubbed my cheeks because tears had begun to spill down my face. I laughed, embarrassed, and couldn’t stop. My laughter turned suddenly to sobs and I was bitterly ashamed to hear myself wailing like a child. I clung to Valency’s strong hands until I suddenly slid into a warm welcome darkness that had no thinking or fearing or need for believing in anything outrageous, but only in sleep.
It was a magic year and it fled on impossibly fast wings, the holidays flicking past like telephone poles by a railroad train. Christmas was especially magical because my angels actually flew and the glory actually shone round about because their robes had hems woven of sunlight—I watched the girls weave them. And Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, complete with cardboard antlers that wouldn’t stay straight, really took off and circled the room. And as our Mary and Joseph leaned raptly over the manger, their faces solemn and intent on the miracle, I felt suddenly that they . were really seeing, really kneeling beside the manger in Bethlehem.
Anyway the months fled, and the blossoming of Bendo was beautiful to see. There was laughter and frolicking and even the houses grew subtly into color. Green things crept out where only rocks had been before, and a tiny tentative stream of water had begun to flow down the creek again. They explained to me that they had to take it slow because people might wonder if the creek filled overnight! Even the rough steps up to the houses were becoming overgrown because they were seldom used, and I was becoming accustomed to seeing my pupils coming to school like a bevy of bright birds, playing tag in the treetops. I was surprised at myself for adjusting so easily to all the incredible things done around me by the People, and I was pleased that they accepted me so completely. But I always felt a pang when the children escorted me home—with me, they had to walk.