Part 15 (1/2)

The red second-hand sliced the last minute away.

”Ruth!” Thiela shook her shoulder firmly. ”Waking up time!”

Ruth's eyes could hardly open, but her hand groped for Thiela's.

”What will I do?” Her voice was mushy with hopelessness. ”The Pain's coming back. But I can't go back into Suspension. I can't sleep!” She twisted against the Pain. ”I can't stay awake with the Pain! Oh, Thiela!” ”Ruth, I have something for what ails you,” said Thiela briskly, uncorking the green bottle. ”Open your mouth. The spoon has to be br.i.m.m.i.n.g!”

”What is it?” asked Ruth, wincing away from the spoon.

”It's Aunt Sophronia's stuff for what ails you,” said Thiela. ”Here, don't let it spill.” She thrust the spoon into Ruth's reluctant mouth. Ruth swallowed, gagged, coughed, and gasped. ”Is it poison?”

”I don't think so,” said Thiela doubtfully, frowning at the bottle. ”But just to keep you company-” She poured out a br.i.m.m.i.n.g spoonful and swallowed the dose. ”Ig!” she gasped, bleary-eyed. ”Tastes just like Aunt Sophronia!”

”No-wonder-people-got-well-” Ruth slid down the pillows. ”Self-defense.” Her eyes closed and her face smoothed.

”Ruth!” whispered Thiela, the stuff in the green bottle slos.h.i.+ng as she tucked it hastily away from the swoosh of the opening door. ”Oh, Ruth!”

”Hmmm?” Ruth snuggled her cheek to the pillow. ”Hmm?” And her breath came softly and regularly.

”Is she-is she-?” The Nurse was clutching, wild-eyed, at the foot of the bed.

”She's sleeping,” said Thiela, ”Don't wake her. Let her sleep until the Pain comes.” Ruth slept most of the week, waking with sleepy smiles and drifting off again, happy, relaxed, blissful, excepting when the Pain wakened her.

Which wakenings became more and more frequent at the week wore on. All of the Gwen-shots were used up-pebbles thrown against a storm.

So, patiently, Thiela and Ruth submitted to preparations for return to Suspension. They said their last, private farewells to each other the night before, toasting, ”Hope,” and ”Sweet dreams!” with two more gaggingly large spoonsful of Aunt Sophronia. ”just in case,” said Thiela, ”just in case my dreams start going sour too.”

”Bless Aunt Sophronia's weedy old heart,” said Ruth, her cheeks inpuckered.

”But couldn't she have put something in to hide the taste?”

”Medicine's not medicine,” said Thiela, ”unless it's nasty. How else can you know you've been medicated?” She waited out a wave of the Pain, her knuckles white on the big bottle, then she knelt at the dresser and tucked the bottle away under odds and ends of long outmoded underthings.

Suspension always seemed to Thiela like a chilly nap- one where you are awake enough to feel the need of another cover, but where you can't wake up quite enough to pull one up. Of course this was only the edge of entering and emerging from Suspension. The first consciousness was a s.h.i.+ver, blossoming into gooseb.u.mps across her shoulders, and then the awakening.

”Already?” She smiled at her own unthinking question. Time goes into Suspension, too. ”How long?” she amended.

”Less than halfway through the period.”

Thiela screened the doctor's face in her half-opened lashes and finally put a name to him-Dr. McGady. ”At first,” he went on, ”we thought the instruments were not functioning correctly because they-”

”And Ruth?” Thiela cut into his hardly heard words.

”Beat you out this time!”

Thiela turned her head cautiously toward Ruth's bed. Ruth smiled at her as she busily braided a heavy hank of hair into a second braid to match the one over her other shoulder. ”And happy dreams to you, too. Don't be so cautious.

We have more Gwen-shots. According to the muchly maligned machinery we've been in Suspension long enough to make them effective again.”

Thiela smiled and stretched. ”And Eileen and Glenda?”

”Dead,” said Dr. McGady solemnly. ”They died just a while after we attempted return to Suspension. Their dreams-” The three shared a brief memorial servicefor their two dead, Ruth's br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes catching Thiela's questioningly.

It wasn't until Dr. McGady had left that Ruth slipped over the side of her bed and inched along its support until she managed to stagger to the dresser and unearth the green bottle and big spoon. ”Bless Aunt Sophronia,” she said, tacking cautiously back to the bed. ”For what ails you!” she whispered as she trembled the br.i.m.m.i.n.g spoon to Thiela's open mouth.

”And to you, too,” gasped Thiela through the jaw-locking gulp of nastiness, and Ruth downed her dose with hardly a gag. ”Ruth, do you suppose if we had given Eileen and Glenda-” Thiela shuddered as she licked a stray drop off the comer of her mouth.

”That's something we are not given to know,” said Ruth :firmly. ”Rather give praise that we are preserved-if we are. It might not be Aunt Sophronia, you know.” She put the bottle and spoon away again and climbed on her bed. She laughed. ”You should have seen Dr. McGady and the others. Their ears fairly lighted up Tilt! We're not conforming the way the machines say we should--or rather the way they used to say we should.”

”Well, machinery I've never liked-” Thiela began. Her words broke off and they both leaned to listen.

People were crowding down the hall past their closed door-lots of people.

Heavy steps of carrying people, light., hurried child steps, half skipping.

And the sounds-they both knew the sounds. The sobbing under-moan, the caught breath, the broken sentence and the heart-squeezing sudden child-cry.

”There's more!” whispered Thiela. ”Go look, Ruth! There's more!”

Ruth scuttled to the door and opened it a crack. She shut it quickly as though to shut out a cold wind.

”Lots more!” she whispered. ”And men and children! Some still walking. That means they're still in the fever stage! Oh Thiela! What they will have to go through!” She trembled back to the bed. ”All the dead children! All the dead men!”

”Oh, no more!” cried Thiela, ”No more!” She turned her grieving face to the wall.

It was all dark except for the ghosty flip of a window curtain in a breath of night wind. Thiela slid cautiously from her bed. Not trusting her recently awakened legs, she crept on all fours across the floor toward the dresser. Her outstretched hand touched something warm and moving. For a moment, fear paralyzed her, then she collapsed on the floor with a soft, relieved laugh.

”After all!” she breathed. ”She was my Aunt Sophronia!”

Ruth's face was a dark blur near hers. ”Mine now, too,” she laughed back. ”How much of her is left?” She sloshed the bottle she had already extracted from the dresser drawn ”No more than two thirds of a bottle. Won't go far.”

”I'll make more-”' Thiela started, then remembered. ”I can't. It's the wrong time of the year. No jack-o'-lantern blossoms.”

”Let's get back to bed,” said Ruth. ”And do our figuring out.

”The children die,” said Thiela from against her pillows. And so do the men.

The women could wait until blossom time-”

”If we knew how many-” said Ruth.

”Even if we had enough for everyone,” said Thiela, how would we ever get it into them without someone knowing? ”

They both inspected a dark ceiling for a while. ”Quote,” sighed Thiela, ”quote Aunt Sophronia, 'Tell the truth and shame the Devil!' Let's tell Dr. McGady.” ”He'll say 'no.' He'll take Aunt Sophronia away from us.” warned Ruth.

”Over my dead body!” Thiela's eyes glinted in the dark. Over my dead body!”

After they had finished telling him in a breathless antiphonal style, expecting at any moment to be interrupted by laughter, Dr. McGady stood tapping his bottom teeth with thumb nail and stared at exhibit A-the big green bottle.

”We know nothing about this Pain, even yet,” he said. And we're getting lots of no-answers. That's why we have fall back on Suspension. Odder things than big green bottles have happened in medical research. Just think of how leukemia was finally eliminated. And yon two aren't dead. I'd say try it.”