Pakriaa was speaking softly, in the room where Ann was
sleeping--Wright's room. "She will be healed," Pakriaa said. "I can
remember--and you remember it too, Paul--how my own mind refused to be
my servant for a while." Since Ann had been brought to Jensen City,
Pakriaa and Nisana had never left her: the little women, both now far
from youth, took on the duties of nursing with a fierce
protectiveness, so that there was little for even Dorothy to do. Ann
had slept heavily all night and morning. At noon the stone-walled
house remained cool; mild air entered at the screenless window
openings, stirring the wall map of Adelphi and the three of Paul's
paintings which were the only decorations Wright allowed in this
ascetic shelter. There was glass-making now, but in such a climate,
with no serious insect pests, it seemed a waste of effort to make
windows; a long overhang of the eaves was sufficient against the
rains. The house was large, U-shaped around a garden courtyard open
toward Sears Lake; the walls were of black stone, the roof of a
material indistinguishable from slate, carried by hardwood timbers.
Wright shared this house with Mijok and Arek, Pakriaa, Nisana,
Miniaan, and their children and Arek's. There were five other such
communal houses overlooking the lake; a seventh was building. The
children were everywhere: it was, and would be for many years, a city
of the young. Rak had died in the Year Four, a matter of falling
asleep without waking, but Kamon lived, sharing a house with Tejron,
Paul and Dorothy, Brodaa and Kajana. Lately Sears' daughter had taken
over the task of caring for Kajana in his helplessness, lifting him to
and from a wheel chair that Paul and Mijok had contrived or carrying
him to a hammock slung near the waterfall, where he could watch the
ocean and its changes. In middle age, Kajana had taught himself to
write, and kept a journal of the colony with a sober passion for
detail.
Ann had not waked when Dorothy and Nisana washed her and clipped the
dreadful tangle of her hair. "She will be healed," Pakriaa insisted.
"Maybe in the next waking." And when Ann's gray eyes came open an hour
later, they did show a measuring sanity, recognizing Dorothy and Paul,
but wincing away when Nisana smiled and touched her.
"Do not be afraid of us," Pakriaa whispered. "We are still proud. But
our pride now is that no one is afraid of us.... You came to my house
in the old old days, remember? My blue house, and I thinking I would
be Queen of the World? I laugh at that now. Do not look at what I was,
Ann."
"Pakriaa.... Paul, you haven't changed much."
"One of our other friends is about to bring a man-sized meal----"
"Why, Paul, you must be----"
"Fifty, Earth calendar----"
Dorothy said, "We measure it in Lucifer years, pretty please."
"Nicer," Paul admitted. "That way I'm around thirty-seven. Ann,
you--let's see: one Earth year, one point three eight--damn mental
arithmetic--let's call you half past twenty-seven."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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