Zenna Henderson Holding Wonder

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jerked abruptly that way. Then this. Then the last jerk onto the J-line. I
dropped back against the seat and stared down at my bare, dust streaked feet.
I giggled helplessly. Cinderella doubled!
Then wonder possessed me and I was back among the green, trying to gather as
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many rememberings as I could to take home to my family-my waiting, eager
family- I was off-stepping the glide at our complex before the wonder
lightened enough for me to start choosing words. Then I was in our unit and
babbling the whole thing to my gape-mouthed family, babbling so fast that I
didn't make sense even to myself. Dad finally put his hand firmly over my
mouth and held me tightly comforting with his other arm until Mother brought
me a hush-me and a plastiglass of water. I swallowed obediently.
I leaned against Dad while I calmed. Finally he said, "Guidance has set an
appointment for you tomorrow at ten -another Garath."
"It was worth it." I sighed shudderingly and relaxed onto the floor from Dad's
arms. I hugged my knees to my chest. "It was worth it."
"But Squelch in the viewer?" Chis was admiringly scandalized.
"And no one knowing where you were!" Mother's hand was tight and hot on my
shoulder. "School called to ask, and no one knew where you were!"
"Not anyone!" I marveled, realizing all the illegal things I had done without
even thinking or caring. "No one knew where I was!"
"Out in school hours and you nowhere near twenty-one!" shrilled Chis, brighted
to more nearly a boy after being solid lump of quenchedness for so long.
"Nowhere," I said softly. "That's where I was. Mother, I saw one of those
lovely, secret paths through the grass. And I saw an ant running along it, not
knowing I was there. It was carrying something. And the green all bent toward
me and the wind flowed around me like-like light going somewhere to shine-"
"Where were you?" Mother's eyes were wide and dare
"I was-I was-" I stopped, stricken. "I don't know," said, a heavy realization
tightening inside me. "I have no idea. Not a single idea. Only-only the man
said Nowhere. At least it looked like Nowhere through the viewplate."
Dad's mouth twisted. "I imagine that's just exactly where you were," he said.
"Nowhere." His eyes told me untruth as plainly as if he had said so.
"No matter what we call it," I cried, "I was there and I saw it-the little
bare path-" Mother's hand left my shoulder and her eyes flashed. "You're
unkind to use my own words to cover your truancy.
"But--!' I protested. "I'm not covering. I really did. saw it. I felt it-a
million, million leaves under my feet. And mud between my toes and-" I turned
to Dad. "Sand, dissolving under my feet in a flowing stream-"
"Enough," said Dad quietly, his face hardening and his eyes not seeing me any
more. "I suggest truthing to the Councilor."
"Honestly! Honestly! I'm truthing!" I cried. "It was just what we are all
aching for! Our dreams-"
"We haven't asked you to account for your time," said Father-no longer an
informal Dad. "We trust that whatever you did was ethically correct."
"Ethically correct!" Anger surged in me, stung to life by my disappointment.
"Most correct! I pushed a lady to get into a jerkie. I rode the J-line all by
myself to Nowhere. I ran barefoot across all the green I could. I squished mud
between my toes. I looked at a stranger. And talked to him. And I picked-" I
scrabbled in my pocket. A moist, greenish-black thread caught under my probing
nails. I pulled my hand out and looked. The flower was crushed and dead. Only
the tip of one petal curled coolly white from the ruin. "It was most secret
and most lovely," I whispered forlornly.
My fingers cupped the flower protectively out of sight, and I pushed my hand
down into my pocket.
Dad turned on the telaworld and reached for the ear. "Don't forget your
appointment at ten tomorrow."
"And if I don't choose to remember?" I flared. Three pairs of astonished eyes
focused on me. "Why should I go to Guidance?" I asked. "They'll only try to
change me-to make me conform! I don't want to change! I don't want to
conform!" I struggled with breath and tears.
"Let's truth it!" I felt my face pinking with more defiance. "We're
non-conform-everyone of us! That's our whole trouble!" Chis doubled his hands
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into fists and Mother pinked slowly and painfully. Father just looked at me
for a moment, then he said quietly, "Yes, we are non-conform. That is our
problem. But so far we have either truthed it or kept still. Our fantasies we
have plainly labeled fantasies-"
"And so have I," I said as quietly as he. "When I am fantasying. And I think
that silence sometimes is the worst kind of untruthing." I turned away and
went to Wardrobe. I undressed hurriedly, clutching my dress back from the
renov to rescue the moist mashedness of the white flower.
I was still staring defiantly at the top of my slot when the lull-tone finally
faded, thinking I was asleep. Then I heard the click of Chis' slot and knew he
was above me. Slots are supposed to be completely contained, of course so that
no one intrudes on another, but long ago Chis and I discovered a long thin
crack at one end of our slots. We could whisper there and hear each other.
Would he? Or did he think me untruthing, too. Or maybe he just didn't care-
Then I heard, "Twixt!" in a voiceless, small explosion. I could picture him
twisted all around in his slot because the crack is at his foot. He's a boy
and has to take the upper, and it is so old that the bedcovers pull out from
only one end, but I can change where I put my head in mine. That week I had
changed my pillow to the opposite end.
"Yes?" I breathed back at him, sitting up cautiously to get my mouth closer to
the crack.
"It's true, isn't it?" he hissed.
"True," I said flatly.
"With green and water and trees?" His whisper was hungry.
"True," I said. "And little units far away, low, with sky between-"
"There's no J-station like that in two hours around," he breathed back at me.
"There has to be!" I felt my whisper threaten to become a voice. "Or else I
was farther than that away. I was too. I saw my shadow slide up the J-tower.
Up over the I!
"Twixt!" He almost broke into speaking. "If you saw your shadow in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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