Virginia Hamilton (5 page)

From her cramped position in the
dark,
she set up sense-posts around the prey to protect him and give herself warning. The sense-posts would cause her hindquarters to tingle uncomfortably in the event something disturbed the prey’s
dark.

He may not be like Star. He may truly be of the past, thought Miacis. But he can be found here and now. He can be sniffed by beasts of Nolight who grope, unseen, to hurt him.

Tiredness reached into the marrow of her bones. Her breath came in rushes of awkward lung-breathing. Each time she exhaled, a high whine left her throat. It was a thin sound which gave her satisfaction, reminding her of the pleasure she found on the edge of sleep.

Tired to my teeth, as the prey would say, Miacis thought. She sighed. The prey do carry on such cursing, too! Funny stuff!

She snuggled deeper. Images drifted in and out of her mind. Breathing grainy air, she was aware of no disturbance. Sensed no Rollers on the borders of Nolight. This she knew of Rollers. They were her ships; she, their herald. This she accepted.

Whining, Miacis fell in and out of an agitated surface sleep as through frightening emptiness. Within vague dreaming, she asked herself, “Is my Master touching me? Who is here?”

She slept, dreaming. Hers was the land. Its sameness was happiness.

The dreaming changed. She searched for creatures and could not find them. Saw herself, whining and forlorn, futilely hunting. Star-glow spoke to her that, once touched by humans, she would never be the same again.

Then this changed. Peace came. It was the Master.

Miacis warm now in her
darkden.
Her breath came in shallow puffs: She was now deep asleep. No dreams to see. Stillness within. But much later she again was aware.

Miacis sprang loose from the
dark.
Before she was wide, awake, she commenced galloping in long, powerful pulls of her legs.

Almost Graylight, she thought. Man, brother! I sure was sleeping—damn!

Her sense-posts around the prey had been numbed. All but one, that is, which the prey had overlooked. That single sense-post had managed an uncomfortable tremor deep within her. It was what had awakened her.

The prey was on the move. How long he’d been going, Miacis couldn’t say. But he was moving fast.

J
USTICE IMAGED HUGE.
Twelve feet tall, she moved slowly, aimlessly, back and forth, before she settled down at last in billows of choking dust. Awesome she was as she bent on one leg and rested foot-wide hands on her right knee. Her gaze seared furrows in Dustland ground.

Abruptly, Justice quit it. She tuned herself down to conserve her and the healer’s power.

Since Thomas’ escape, Levi had been only semi-conscious, lying in the dust. She thought it best to leave him as he was.

Give him more time, she thought. He’s bound to come out of it the way we did. It just takes him longer because he’s not as strong.

Larger than anyone in real life back home, Justice breathed in waves that stirred the grimy powder at her feet into ebb and flow.

“Better to be huge, like me,” she rumbled, just to hear how scary was her roar and mutter.

Dorian trembled at the sputtering echoes her voice made.

“Better being large than little-bitty, teeny-tiny!” she growled at the murk of Dustland. “Really bad news being the size of some dripping germ-o!”

After the shadowy day of Graylight had come, Justice had made herself as minute as a bacterium. Being microscopic had taken what seemed a lifetime. Years, in which she fought a creature who tried to trap her in the sticky substance dribbling from slits in its face. She had used her will on it. And the creature had brought others to surround her and catch her off guard.

“That’s no fair!” she yelled at them. “You have to fight me one at a time!”

But they would not. They forced her to invent something—a deadly piece made from Dustland’s grime and sub-atomic grit. The weapon had done the job. It sliced through germs cleanly. Forced to kill in self-defense, well, then, best that the dirty work be done smoothly, was Justice’s opinion. Before imaging large once again, she’d balanced the weapon on her thumb for a last good look at it. What a gleam it had!

Now she kept the weapon safe in the crease her thumb made, in that line above the joint. There was an immense chasm for hiding anything so minute as her deadly weapon. If she should need to image tiny again, the weapon would be instantly in her palm.

Dorian peered up at her. He didn’t speak to her or shake his head at her. There wasn’t any need to. She read him without altering her tired gaze from the land. If she stayed large, she would soon sap him of his healer’s power.

The two of them weren’t as close as they would have been had the unit stayed whole. But they held together some part of the enormous sensation that was the unit’s power. Desperately they needed Thomas in order to have the unit again. Justice and the healer were bound in understanding. Their minds had made the same connections. They had seen the same since the time back home when Justice learned of her power through Dorian and his mother, the Sensitive.

Now she imaged normal height and size. Dorian settled next to her. His mental aura calmed her.

“Only reason I made myself grow was to forget the pain,” she told him. “I feel like I have a hundred muscle cramps from doing handstands all day.”

“It’s not true pain,” he told her.

“Well, it sure feels like it,” she said.

“When Thomas pulled out,” Dorian said, “he took psychic chunks of us with him.”

“But I can feel aching in my arms and legs just like it was real,” she said.

The healer placed his hand on her brow. At once her spirits lifted. Her discomfort moved up and out, as though through the top of her head;

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she told him. Dorian took on others’ pain as though it were his own. Soon her distress faded out of his eyes. His expression relaxed.

“You must be a god, Healer,” she said.

He smiled. She had made him smile for the first time this day. “It’s the unit that’s the god,” softly he spoke. “Sometimes it scares me. And you must be the Goddess Enormous.” He managed a grin at her, but, clearly, his heart wasn’t in it. Dustland always made him uneasy.

“No, but really,” she said, “can’t you grow up and down the way I do?”

“I haven’t tried,” he said. “Remember, you only just sprung it on me awhile ago. But I know I can’t do it.”

“It’s part of me in the past and the part of me here combining, projecting huge and then tiny,” she said. “I hate tiny. I don’t know why I do it. All those slimy buggies. Guess they’re part of the future, too, but who can tell? Yuk!”

Dorian laughed. “You sound just like some little eleven-year-old.”

“Which I am,” she said, “way back in the world before Dustland.” To think about home made her sad and teary-eyed.

“Your mind is growing beyond us,” the healer said. “We’ll never be able to keep up, the rest of us won’t.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. She didn’t like being separate from them because of her greater power. Studying her friend, she wondered if someday when they grew up they would marry. She allowed Dorian to become alert to her thinking. He mind-read her and blushed.

“I was only kidding,” she said kindly. “But we’ll always be close friends, won’t we?” And he nodded his agreement.

Both of them were made edgy by Thomas’ running away, by Levi’s long sleep and by the strangeness of Dustland. They wanted to be back home; but they couldn’t get there without Thomas. And they concentrated on keeping their growing fear at bay.

That was the reason they sought a mutual center. The healer closed his eyes. Justice had already done so. They formed themselves in dusky shade beside the deep, inner current of themselves. They gazed in at the still center. It gave back only their reflection, at first. Then it brought home to them.

Justice’s father and mother in the front parlor of their home. All was in disarray. Mrs. Douglass sat with hands clutching her arms, her head bowed. Mr. Douglass sat across from her. He leaned forward as if about to say something to her, something for which he could never quite find the words. Their faces sagged with fatigue more than age. Their eyes glinted with the pain of anger, insult. Fear. Emotions came on and went off, like blinking lights through wet window glass.

Justice ached inside to see her folks so miserable.

“They haven’t changed,” Dorian spoke within. “You suppose if my mom stopped over there the next time, it would ease them a little?”

“Nothing much can ease them,” Justice said. “We’ve all tried. Nothing will change their minds about us. Oh, let’s look at home the way it used to be. I liked it better then.”

They saw scenes, not the way home was now, now that it had become a heartache for Justice. They saw it the way it had been when only they and Dorian’s mother knew of their power.

Dorian felt a longing, then, for the past, as Justice did.

Houses of their small town, windows open and window screens in place. Light spilling out of the windows in bright squares on black lawns. It was a hot summer night at home and there were spearmint breezes blowing. Lightning bugs were sparks in the dark fields.

They, all of Justice’s family, were outside. Dorian was there, too. He was as close to family as he could be. Even Thomas was there. And Levi. Justice’s mom and dad, too. Mr. Douglass picked tomatoes in the dark. Had a paper sack to put them in. The sack crackled every time he carefully placed a tomato in it. Made Justice smile through the darkness, too, at so safe a sound.

Mrs. Douglass had Justice close, with one hand on the scruff of her neck. Playful. A bunch of them had something to say right at the same time.

“What er you doing, Dad, pickin’ tomatoes in the dark of night?” Justice saying to her dad.

“Ticey, baby, did you go and chop off your hair?” Mrs. Douglass asking Justice. “It sure feels like you took a dull knife and whacked it off. What d’you go and do it for?”

“Why are you asking what I’m doing when you already seem to have figured out what I’m doing?” Mr. Douglass saying right back to Justice. “Beside which, that glare from the bloodred tomatoes prit near put my eyes out this very same day. Now, they don’t dare do that in the dark.”

“I didn’t chop it off with a knife,” Justice saying back to her mom, “I took some scissors. Never can get so many tangles of hair out in the morning.”

“It looked real nice all day long,” Dorian saying about her hair.

Finished, straightening up from his night work, Mr. Douglass bumped Mrs. Douglass, who stepped on Justice pretty hard; laughed when her daughter screamed like the dickens. “Oh, Tice, I’m so sorry!” She turned Justice loose.

Justice tripped into Levi. No, it was Thomas, she could tell. Had to be Thomas, like a fence-post planted in the dark. He resisted. Rather than give her a hand to guide her, the way Levi would have, Thomas pushed her roughly away. She fell into Dorian, grabbed for his neck to get some balance and they both tumbled over. A hand touched them to help them. Levi. Had to be. Justice squealed and giggled, scrambling up. Dorian giggled high just like she did.

“I think somebody fell over,” Mrs. Douglass saying.

“Have ’em be careful,” Mr. Douglass saying.”Holes happen to folks in a night garden. Fall into a night-garden hole is tragic. And never find your way out lest you happen by way of East Asia.”

“That’s a big fib, Dad,” Justice saying. “B-b-bump into
mmme
l-like th-that!” It was Thomas. Sullen, stuttering; suddenly he was angry at her.

“She didn’t hurt you—how could she of hurt you?” Levi had said.

“L-like nnnothing touching m-m-me in-in theee d-dark.”

“Oh, Thomas,” Mrs. Douglass sighing.

“Ssure, t-t-take her ssside. Al-always d-do.”

On and on. Them in the night-dark, half joking, most of the time having a lot of fun. The only anger coming out of Thomas when he was sure someone had slighted him in favor of his sister. Still, it was mostly a close and warm feeling they all had. Even maybe Thomas felt it for a moment or two at a time, when he let himself. It had been night and warm and mysterious. Close together, and night, and mystery. It was home and night, loving and caring.

And gone. Most likely forever.

That was all, then. The mutual feeling between Justice and Dorian pulled away from their center and back into the future. They opened their eyes. They were in Dustland. It was real. Dustland had happened to them, never to reverse and never to have been.

Justice shivered, shaking off the sadness. She felt cool, suddenly, over her body. They had passed through Dustland’s unbelievable dawn an hour ago. Now what passed for day blistered with heat, without moisture. She felt excitement; felt as if she were holding herself in. Warned herself not to think deeply or risk having the land’s contradictions shatter her senses.

Was the whole future a dustland, or was Dustland but a hundred, a thousand miles?

Justice turned her second sight upward again through shrouds of grit, as she had done before. Again, searching outward, her mind went beyond horizons as far as she could project it. She had no idea how far that might be. She suspected that, without the whole unit, she had not projected terribly far. She measured lumens of light. She related these to time and to space. The very continuum of it was clogged with dust. Dust curved.

“Oh, my!” Justice gasped out loud.

Above the dust she found the sky as it was at home. And the sun. And sensed that the sun was as it had always been.

Thank goodness. Then how much time would have passed?

Something else.

Her extrasensory homed in on echoes. Whispers.

What?

Thoughts floating far above the land. They were connected to no mind. They were lost, projected outward toward something called—
Star!

There were other thoughts, she discovered. Somewhere about her and Dorian and Levi. And about someone, the prey—
Thomas!

Justice knew whose thoughts they were.

Miacis has a god.

The pleas of Miacis were neither accepted nor turned down by this god. For at no time in the past or in the future was the sun a thinking entity.