“Yeah. Yeah, you bet I will. It’s important that everybody knows these things, so that when we make the Crossing we aren’t all bewildered. That we know about the Design, that we know which the Pivot Worlds are, and all.” Tom felt the fever of joy rising in him so strong that he thought it might even call up a vision right here. This woman, this wonderful woman—he had never known anyone like her. “Where I think it begins,” Tom said, “is with the Theluvara, when they ruled the Imperium—”
She held up her hand. “No, not right now, Tom. I’m awfully sorry. There isn’t time this morning. I’ve got to get out and see the people I look after here, the sick people. Suppose I give you a day to think about things, okay? And then we’ll meet again here tomorrow, and the same time every morning until you’ve told me all you want to tell me. Is that all right?”
“Sure. Whatever you like, Elszabet.”
There was a knock at the door. On the little screen just next to the door Tom saw the image of the person standing outside, a big soft round-bodied sweet-faced woman in a pale pink sweater. Tom had seen her around before. “Come in, April,” Elszabet called, and pushed something that automatically opened the door. “Tom, this is April Cranshaw. She’s one of the people I look after here. I thought you and she would like to get to know each other a little better, maybe. Take a walk with her now, just stroll around the grounds—I think you two will like each other very much.”
Tom turned to the fat woman. She looked very young, almost like some sort of huge little girl, although he could tell that actually she must be as at least as old as he was and it was simply the flesh of her, like baby fat, that smoothed out all the lines in her face. And she was wide open, as wide open as anyone he had ever known. As tightly as that man Ed Ferguson was shut, that was how wide this April was open. Tom had the feeling that all he needed to do was touch his fingertip to her plump wrist and every vision he had ever seen would go pouring into her, she was that wide open. She seemed to know it, too: she was staring at him in a timid, fearful way. Look, he wanted to say, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not Stidge, I’m not Mujer. I won’t do anything bad to you.
“Is that all right with you, April?” Elszabet asked. “Will you take Tom for a walk?”
In a soft fluttery voice April said, “If you want me to.”
Elszabet frowned. “Is something wrong, April?”
The fat girl was bright red. “Should I say? In front of—”
“It’s all right. Just tell me.”
“I guess I’m a little upset this morning,” she said, soft-voiced, breathy-sounding, little girl within a big huge body. “I know you want me to go for a walk with him, but I just feel kind of upset.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.” A wary look in Tom’s direction. “The space dreams. The visions. They’re coming so close together, Dr. Lewis. Sometimes I almost don’t know where I am, they’re so strong. Whether I’m here or on one of those worlds, I mean. And since I walked into your office just now—I mean—that is—”
“Go on, April.” Elszabet was leaning forward again, giving the fat girl her fullest attention, no longer looking at Tom at all.
“I mean it’s—getting—very—hard—for—me—to—think—straight—”
“April? April?”
“She’s going to fall down,” Tom said. He rushed toward her as she tottered and managed to get his arms around her just in time, under her breasts, and hold her up. She was heavy. She was incredibly heavy. Must weigh two, three times as much as me, he thought, struggling with her. Elszabet went around to the other side and helped him. Together they eased her down to the floor. She lay there on her back, gasping. Elszabet turned to him with a nervous smile and said, “Will you go out and down the hall, Tom, and ask Dr. Robinson to come in here? You know who he is, the tall dark-skinned man? Go send him here, Tom. Will you, please?”
“Did I do that to her?” Tom asked.
“It’s hard to know that, isn’t it? But she’ll be all right in a minute or two.”
“I guess I’ll have to take that walk with her some other time,” he said. “Okay. Dr. Robinson. I’ll go send you Dr. Robinson. Thanks for talking to me, Miss Elszabet. It means a lot to me, having someone to talk to.”
He went out, down the hall.
“Dr. Robinson? Dr. Robinson?”
That poor fat girl, Tom thought. Passing out like that. It’ll be a blessing, dropping the body, that one. The poor fat girl. I wish her an early Crossing, he thought. But that’s what I wish us all, every one of us, an early Crossing. I hope we can go next week, even. Tomorrow, even. Tomorrow.
3
WHENFerguson came back to the dorm after morning therapy he found two letters lying in the middle of his bed. He scooped them up, dropped them on the floor next to the bed, and sprawled out, bone-weary. He could play the letters later. Wasn’t ever anything in the mail worth knowing, anyway. Dr. Lewis went through everybody’s letters first, cut out anything that might be considered disturbing.
Tired. Suffering Jesus. First an hour-long interview with Dr. Patel, the precise little British-accented Indian, who always came at you with questions from six different unexpected angles. He was still working on space dreams, how Ferguson felt about them, the fact that other people were having them and he was not. Or was he? “You are not now by any chance beginning to experience the perceptions of that sort, are you, Mr. Ferguson?” Screw you, Dr. Patel. I wouldn’t tell you even if I was. And then an hour jumping up and down like a lunatic in in the rec center, physical therapy session led by that ferocious dykey broad Dante Corelli—holy Jesus, they make you dance until you drop and don’t even apologize—
If only I had managed to get the hell out of this place when I tried it, Ferguson thought. But no, no, they had their goddamn little chip in me, they just sent out their copter and reeled me in like a fish—that was how it was, wasn’t it, I actually did escape, me and Allie, we were gone three goddamn hours, was it? Five, maybe. And then they reeled me in.
He looked around the room. Same old dismal roommates. Nick Double Rainbow zonked out on his bed, brooding about Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill. Poor bastard, he must wipe out General Custer ten times a day in his head. Lot of good it does him. And over there, the other sad case, the Chicano, Menendez. Chanting and muttering to himself all the time, praying to the Aztec gods. Nice peaceful guy, probably dreaming of putting us all on the altar and cutting out our hearts with a stone knife. Jesus. Jesus, what a looney bin!
Ferguson picked up one of his letters and stuck the little cube into the playback slot. On the three-by-five screen the image of a good-looking blonde woman appeared. She’d have been terrific if she didn’t look so solemn.
“Ed,” she said. “This is Mariela. Your wife, in case they’ve picked that out of you.”
Well, they had. How were you supposed to deal with all this? Ferguson halted the letter and touched his ring. “Request wife,” he said.
Back at him came the data he had stored: “Wife: Mariela Johnston. Birthday August seventh. She’ll be thirty-three this summer. You married her in Honolulu on July fourth, 2098—”
He let it play on to the finish, wondering how the people in charge here expected him to make sense out of anything, since they didn’t know he had this little ring-recorder to fill him in on his own history. He activated the letter-cube again and Mariela returned to the screen. “I just want you to know, Ed, that I’m going back to Hawaii. I’m booked on a boat next Tuesday, which is a day after you’ll get this. It isn’t that I don’t love you any more, because that isn’t so, but I felt after that visit I had with you at the mindpick center in July that there simply wasn’t anything happening between us any more, that maybe you didn’t even remember who I was, that you certainly didn’t care for me any more, and so I want to go away from California before they release you. For both our sakes. I’ll be filing the papers in Honolulu, and—”