they WERE IN the kitchen, at the big scrubbed-pine table, their meal finished, when there were footsteps on the flagstones outside. The latch creaked, then the door swung outward. Ben stood in the doorway, looking in, his left arm held strangely at his side.
"That smells good."
His mother got up. "Sit down. I'll cook you something."
"Thanks. But not now." He looked at Meg. "Are you free, Megs? I need to talk."
Meg looked across at her mother. She had been about to help her with the washing. "Can I?"
Beth smiled and nodded. "Go on. I'll be all right."
Meg got up, taking her plate to the sink; then she turned back, facing him. "Where have you been . . . ?" She stopped, noticing how he was holding his left arm. "Ben? What have you done?"
He stared at her a moment, then looked toward his mother. "I've damaged the hand. I must have done it on the rocks." He held it out to her. "1 can barely use it. If I try to it goes into spasm."
Beth wiped her hands, then went to him. She took the hand carefully and studied it, Meg at her side, her face filled with concern.
"Well, there's no outward sign of damage. And it was working perfectly well yesterday."
Ben nodded. "Yes. But that stint at the piano probably didn't help it any."
"Does it hurt?" Meg asked, her eyes wide.
"It did when I woke up. But I've learned how not to set it off. I pretend the problem's higher up. Here." He tapped his left shoulder with his right hand. "I pretend the whole arm's dead. That way I'm not tempted to try to use the hand."
Beth placed his arm back against his side, then turned away, looking for something in the cupboards. "Have you notified anyone?"
He nodded. "Two hours ago, when I came in from the meadows. They're sending a man this afternoon."
She turned back, a triangle of white cloth between her hands. "Good. Well, for now I'll make a sling for you. That'll ease the strain of carrying it about."
He sat, letting his mother attend to him. Meg, meanwhile, stood beside him, her hand resting gently on his shoulder.
"Why was the keyboard black? I mean, totally black?"
He turned, looking up at her. "Why?"
Meg shrugged. "It's been playing on my mind, that's all. It just seemed . . . strange. Unnecessary."
Beth, kneeling before him, fastening the sling at his shoulder, looked up, interested in what he would say.
He looked away. "It's just that I find the old-style keyboard distracting. It preconditions thought; sets the mind into old patterns. But that all-black keyboard is only a transitional stage. A way of shaking free old associations. Ultimately I want to develop a brand new keyboard—one better suited to what I'm doing."
"There!" Beth tightened the knot, then stood up. "And what are you doing?"
Ben met her eyes candidly. "I don't know yet. Not the all of it, anyway." He stood, moving his shoulder slightly. "Thanks. That's much easier." Then he looked across at Meg. "Are you ready?"
She hesitated, wondering for a moment if she might persuade him to listen to the piano phrase she had learned that morning, then smiled and answered him softly. "Okay. Let's go."
IT WAS LATE morning, the sun high overhead, the air clear and fresh. They sat beneath the trees on the slope overlooking the bay, sunlight through the branches dappling the grass about them, sparkling on the water below. Above them, near the top of the hillside, obscured by a small copse of trees, was the ruined barn, preserved as it had been when their great-great-great grandfather, Amos, had been a boy.
For two hours they had rehashed the reasons why Ben should leave or stay. Until now it had been a reasonably amicable discussion, a clearing of the air, but things had changed. Now Meg sat there, her head turned away from her brother, angry with him.
"You're just pig stubborn! Did you know that, Ben? Stubborn as in stupid. It's not the time. Not new."
He answered her quietly, knowing he had hurt her. "Then when is the time? I have to do this. I feel I have to. And all the rest. . . that's just me rationalizing that feeling. It's the feeling—the instinct—that I trust."
She turned on him, her eyes flashing. "Instinct! Wasn't it you who said that instinct was just a straitjacket—the Great Creator's way of showing us whose fingers are really on the control buttons?"
He laughed, but she turned away from him. For once this was about something other than what he wanted. This was to do with Meg, with her needs.
"Don't make it hard, Megs. Please don't."
She shivered and stared outward, across the water, her eyes burning, her chin jutting defiantly. "Why ask me? You'll do what you want to anyway. Why torment me like this, when you know you've decided already what you're going to do?"
He watched her, admiring her, wanting to lean forward and kiss her neck, her shoulder. She was wearing a long nut-brown cotton dress that was drawn in below the breasts and buttoned above. The hem of it was gathered about her knees, exposing the tanned flesh of her naked calves. He looked down, studying her feet, noting the delicacy of the toes, the finely rounded nails. She was beautiful. Even her feet were beautiful. But she could not keep him here. Nothing could keep him. He must find himself. Maybe then he could return. But for now . . . "Don't chain me, Meg. Help me become myself. That's all I'm asking." She turned angrily, as if to say something, then looked down sharply, her hurt confusion written starkly on her face.
"1 want to help you, Ben. I really do. It's just. . ."
He hardened himself against her, against the pity he instinctively felt. She was his sister. His lover. There was no one in the world he was closer to and it was hard to hurt her like this, but hurt her he must, or lose sight of what he must become. In time she would understand this, but for now the ties of love blinded her to what was best. And not just for him, but for the two of them.
"Keep me here, Meg, and it'll die in me. It'll turn inward and fester. You know it will. And I'll blame you for that. Deep down I'll come to hate you for keeping me here. And I never want to hate you. Never."
She met his eyes, her own moist with unshed tears. Then she turned and came to him, holding him, careful not to hurt his damaged arm, her head laid warmly, softly, on his right shoulder.
"Well?" he said after a while. "Will you support me against Father?"
He noticed the slight change in her breathing. Then she moved back away from him, looking at him intently, as if reading something in his face. "You think he'll try to stop you?"
Ben nodded. "He'll make excuses. The uncertainty of the times. My age." "But what if he's right, Ben. What if it is too dangerous? What if you are too young?"
"Too young? I'm seventeen, Meg. Seventeen! And apart from that one visit to Tongjiang, I've never seen anything other than this; never been anywhere but here."
"And is that so bad?"
"Yes. Because there's more to life than this. Much more. There's a whole new world in there. One I've no real knowledge of. And I need to experience it. Not at secondhand, through a screen, but close up."
She looked down. "What you were saying, Ben, about me chaining you. I'd never do that. You know I wouldn't. And I can free you. But not in there. Not in the City." She raised her eyes. "This is our place. Right here, in the Domain. It's what we've been made for. Like the missing pieces of a puzzle." She paused, then, more earnestly: "We're not like them, Ben. We're different. Different in kind. Like aliens. You'll find that out."
"All part of Amos's great experiment, eh?"
"Maybe . . ." But it wasn't what she had meant. She was thinking less of genetic charts than of something deeper in their natures, some sense of connection with the earth that they had, and that others—cut off" by the walls and levels of the City—lacked. It was as if they were at the same time both more and less advanced as human beings: more primitive and yet more exalted spiritually. They were the bridge between heaven and earth, the link between the distant past and the far future. For them, therefore, the City was an irrelevancy—a wrong direction Man had taken—and for Ben to embrace it was simply foolish, a waste of his precious .time and talents.