Gordon R. Dickson Read Online Free PDF Page A

and reach a city called Ely, that turned
out to be no longer there. I had not understood then that what I had done to
the squirrel was what later I was to do to Sunday—be with it when it came out
of shock, making it totally dependent on me.... Then, a week or so later, there
had been the log cabin and the man in leggings, the transplanted Viking or
whoever, who I thought was just anyone cutting firewood with his shirt off,
until he saw me, hooked the axe over his shoulder as if holstering it, and
started walking toward me... .
    I was into it again. I was really
starting to replay the whole sequence, whether I wanted to or not; and I could
not endure that, lying trapped in this tent with two other bodies. I had to get
out. I got to my feet as quietly as I could. Sunday lifted his head, but I
hissed at him between my teeth so angrily that he lay down again. The girl only
stirred in her sleep and made a little noise in her throat, one hand flung out
to touch the fur of Sunday's back.
    So I made it outside without them
after all, into the open air where I could breathe; and I sat down with my back
against the rugged, soft bark of one of the big cottonwoods. Overhead the sky
was perfectly clear and the stars were everywhere. The air was still and warm,
very transparent and clean. I leaned the back of my head against the tree trunk
and let my mental machinery go. It was simply something I was stuck with—had
always been stuck with, all my lifetime.
    Well, perhaps not all. Before the
age of seven or eight, things had been different. But by the time I was that
old, I had begun to recognize that I was on my own—and needed no one else.
    My father had been a cipher as far
back as I could remember. If someone were to tell me that he had never actually
realized he had two children, I would be inclined to believe it. Certainly I
had seen him forget us even when we were before his eyes, in the same room with
him. He had been the director of the Walter H. Mannheim private library in St.
Paul; and he was a harmless man—a bookworm. But he was no use either to me or
my younger sister as a parent.
    My mother was something else. To
begin with, she was beautiful. Yes I know, every child thinks that about its
mother. But I had independent testimony from a number of other people;
particularly a long line of men, other than my father, who not only thought so,
also, but told my mother so, when I was there to overhear them.
    However, most of that came later.
Before my sister was born my mother was my whole family, by herself. We used to
play games together, she and I. Also, she sang and talked to me and told me
stories endlessly. But then, after my sister was born, things began to change.
Not at once, of course. It was not until Beth was old enough to run around that
the alteration in my mother became clearly visible. I now think that she had
counted on Beth's birth to do something for her marriage; and it had not done
so.
    At any rate, from that time on, she
began to forget us. Not that I blamed her for it. She had forgotten our father
long since—in fact, there was nothing there to forget. But now she began to
forget us as well. Not all of the time, to start with; but we came to know when
she was about to start forgetting because she would show up one day with some
new, tall man we had never seen, who smelled of cigars and alcohol.
    When this first started happening,
it was the beginning of a bad time for me. I was too young then to accept it,
and I wanted to fight whatever was taking her away from me; but there was
nothing there with which I could come to grips. It was only as if a glass
window had suddenly been rolled up between her and me; and no matter how I
shouted or pounded on its transparent surface, she did not hear. Still, I kept
on trying to fight it for several years, during which she began to stay away
for longer and longer periods-all with my father's silent consent, or at least
with no objections from him.
    It was at the close