“Care?”
Ben heard the pain there, sharp, undeniable. He closed his eyes hard.
“Should I weep and howl and tear my clothes, and bang my head on the wall? Should I beg you not to leave me, to stay with me always? Should I throw myself from the topmost window of this house? Should I grow thin and pale and wither away like a flower in the autumn, killed by the cold it never understands? How should I show I care, Ben? Tell me what I should do.”
He felt her hand on his cheek and opened his eyes and found they were burning.
“Come with me, Ben,” she said gently. “And afterwards perhaps we shall weep together when we say goodbye.”
“We promise never to harm her,” Barry said quietly. “If she has need of one of us, someone will go care for her. She will be permitted to live out her life in the Sumner house. We shall never display or permit others to display her paintings, but we shall preserve them carefully so that our descendants may study them and understand the steps we have taken today.” He paused and then said, “Furthermore, Ben, our brother, will accompany the contingent who will go down the river to set up a base camp for future groups to use.” Now he looked up from the paper before him.
Ben nodded gravely. The decisions were just and compassionate. He shared his brothers’ anguish, and knew the suffering would not end until the boats returned and they could hold the Ceremony for the Lost for him. Only then would they all be freed again.
Molly watched the boats glide down the river, Ben standing in the prow of the lead boat, the wind streaming his hair. He didn’t turn to look at the Sumner house until the boat started around the first curve that would take it out of sight, and then briefly she saw his pale face, and he was gone, the boat was gone.
Molly continued to stand at the wide windows for a long time after the boats had disappeared. She remembered the voice of the river, the answering voices from the high treetops, the way the wind moved the upper levels without stirring a blade of grass. She remembered the silence and darkness that had pressed in on them at night, touching them, testing them, tasting them, the intruders. And her hand moved to her stomach and pressed against the flesh there, against the new life that was growing within her.
The summer heat gave way to early September frosts and the boats returned, and this time another stood in the prow. The trees burned red and gold and snows fell and in January Molly gave birth to her son, alone, unaided, and lay looking at the infant in the crook of her arm and smiled at him. “I love you,” she whispered tenderly. “And your name shall be Mark.”
All through the latter stages of her pregnancy Molly had told herself almost daily that tomorrow she would send a message to Barry, that she would submit to his authority and allow herself to be placed in the breeders’ quarters. Now, looking at the red infant with his eyes screwed so tightly closed he seemed without eyes, she knew she would never give him up.
Each morning the Andrew brothers brought firewood, her basket of supplies, whatever she asked for, deposited it all on her porch, and left again, and she saw no one, except at a distance. As soon as Mark could understand her words, she began to impress upon him the need for silence while the Andrew brothers were near the house. When he grew older and started to ask “why” about everything, she had to tell him the Andrew brothers would take him away from her and put him in a school and they would never see each other again. It was the first and only time she saw him react with terror, and after that he was as quiet as she when the young doctors were there.
He learned to walk and talk early; he began to read when he was four, and for long periods he would curl up near the fireplace with one of the brittle books from the downstairs library. Some of them were children’s books, others were not; he didn’t seem to mind. They played hide-and-seek throughout the house and, when the weather was pleasant, up and down the hillside behind the house, out of sight of the others in the valley, who would never under any circumstances enter the woods unless ordered to do so. Molly sang to him and told him stories from the books, and made up other stories when they exhausted the books. One day Mark told her a story, and she laughed delightedly, and after that sometimes she was the storyteller and sometimes he was. While she painted he drew pictures, or painted also, and more and more often played with the river clay she brought him, and made shapes that they dried in the sun on the balcony.
They wandered farther up the hillside as he became sturdier. One day in the summer when he was five, they remained in the woods far several hours, Molly pointing out the ferns and liverworts to him, drawing his attention to the way the sunlight changed the colors of the delicate green leaves, deepened the rich greens to nearly black.
“Time,” she said finally.
He shook his head. “Let’s climb to the top and look at the whole world.”
“Next time,” she said. “We’ll bring our lunch and climb all the way up. Next time.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
They walked back down slowly, stopping often to examine a rock, a new plant, the bark of an ancient tree, whatever caught his interest. At the edge of the woods they paused and looked about carefully before leaving the shelter of the trees. Then they ran to the kitchen door hand in hand and, laughing, tried to get through together.
“You’re getting too big,” Molly cried, and allowed him to enter first.
Mark stopped abruptly, yanked on her hand, and turned to run. One of the Barry brothers stepped from the dining room into the kitchen, and another closed the door to the outside and stood behind them. The other three entered the kitchen silently and stared in disbelief at the boy.
Finally one of them spoke. “Ben’s?”
Molly nodded. Her hand clutched Mark’s in a grip that must have hurt him. He stood close to her and looked at the brothers fearfully.
“When?” the brother asked.
“Five years ago, in January.”
The spokesman sighed heavily. “You’ll have to come with us, Molly. The boy too.”
She shook her head and felt weak with terror. “No! Leave us alone. We’re not hurting anyone! Leave us alone!”
“It’s the law,” the brother said harshly. “You know it as well as we do.”
“You promised!”
“The agreement we made didn’t cover this.” He took a step closer to her. Mark tore his hand free from her grasp and flew at the doctor.
“Leave my mother alone! Go away! Don’t you hurt my mother!”
Someone caught Molly’s arms and held her, and another of them caught Mark and lifted him as he kicked and lashed out furiously, screaming all the while.
“Don’t hurt him!” Molly cried, and struggled to free herself. She hardly felt the pinprick of the injection. Dimly she heard one last scream of anguish from Mark, and then there was nothing.
Chapter 18
Molly blinked and shut her eyes against the glare of a silver frost that covered everything. She stood still and tried to remember where she was, who she was, anything. When she opened her eyes again, the blinding glare still dazzled her. She felt as if she had awakened after a long, nightmare-haunted dream that was becoming more and more dim as she tried to recapture it. Someone nudged her.
“You’ll freeze out here,” someone said close by. Molly turned to look at the woman, a stranger. “Come on, get inside,” the woman said louder. Then she leaned forward and looked at Molly closely. “Oh, you’re back, aren’t you?”
She took Molly by the arm and guided her inside a warm building. Other women looked up idly and then bent down over their sewing again. Some of them were obviously pregnant. Some of them were dull-eyed, vacant-looking, doing nothing.