CHAPTER
13
Bleys, carrying his
suitcase and some parcels, trudged across the yard, up the steps and into the house, expecting to find it empty. But it was not. All three were there. Uncle Henry, Joshua and Will.
They were busy at the cheesemaking, which could be done with one or two persons, but went faster if more hands were available. Clearly, the fact that Henry was there with the boys had kept them from dashing out into the yard the moment they heard the hovercar coming up the road to the farm. They looked at him bright-eyed now; but Henry merely gave him a brief flash of his normal wintry smile of welcome and spoke.
"Put your things in the bedroom," he said, "then change into some clean work clothes and come out to help us, here."
Bleys obeyed. There was a strange, unreal quality to the tiny, spartan rooms of the farm after the ample, luxurious ones he had been used to over the weekend; and the whole smell and process of cheesemaking. He put his suitcase and packages on his bottom bunk and made the change into his work clothes, then returned to the kitchen and joined the work.
"You look well, Bleys," said Henry unexpectedly from the other end of the table where they were working. "Your weekend was good for you."
"Yes, Bleys, you're all bright an—"
"Will," said Henry, "my remark was not a signal for general chatter. Work mixed with conversation goes slowly."
His two sons became silent, but kept glancing at Bleys whenever they had a chance. He knew at once to what Henry had referred and what had caused it. He had felt a sudden sense of guilt at his uncle's words, which deepened now. For four days he had not thought about his effort to make himself into a Friendly. It was that mind of his which became captured by any new puzzle that presented itself.
But that, he told himself, was no excuse. Dahno's way of living was not his, Bleys' way. Not yet at any rate—and perhaps never. His home was here now. His struggle was a religious one. This cheesemaking was more important than all of Dahno's mysterious trainees and people interviewed in a restaurant.
Now that he thought of it, he had gradually let his prayers slide while he was in Ecumeny, until the last two days mere had been none at all. He told himself he would pray extra hard and long tonight before bed.
Nonetheless, the sense of unreality he had felt, stepping into the house and the small rough bedroom he shared with Will and Joshua, stayed with him. The boys were obviously brimful of questions, which they would be asking as opportunity provided in the next few days.
But for now, under their father's eyes, they concentrated on their work without words. Bleys joined them, and the simple habitual actions of what they were doing reinforced his feeling of unreality; so that a transparent, invisible wall seemed to surround him and block him off from the rest of them, even as he worked side by side, occasionally touching the others in the process of his job.
Later on that evening, over the dinner table, the boys bombarded him with questions; and Henry permitted it.
The questions did something to thin the air of unreality that held him, but it was actually several days before it disappeared completely. Once it did, curiously, Ecumeny and the four-day weekend there began to seem unreal in turn. It was as if Henry's farm and Dahno's city were places in two different universes, and there was no way they could coexist in the same moment as realities.
However, from then on the daily activities went in pretty much their normal fashion.
Dahno dropped by at least a couple of times a month; and the trips on which he took Bleys gradually had a tendency to run longer and longer; until nearly every trip meant at least a four-day if not a six-day absence. At the farm, Bleys himself was both growing up and sorting matters out in his own mind.
It was not until Will mentioned it one day, that he realized he was now a good two inches taller than Joshua. Joshua himself had not made any reference to it; simply because Joshua was not at all concerned about whether Bleys was taller than he was or not—Josh's self-possession still remained unshakable—because in his view of the world their relative heights made no difference.
Nonetheless, Bleys was shooting up like a weed. He would soon be as tall as Henry himself, although he remained thin, and almost gawky-looking.
He was at home with the farm, now. By this time he knew more about what needed to be done about the place than anyone, possibly including Henry himself. Henry, finally asked directly by Bleys if Bleys could help with the motor, had let him do so. The truth of the matter was, Henry was no mechanic.
Bleys was not a mechanic, either; but he had a natural feeling, both for the logic of things and for how the parts of the real world fitted together—including the parts of an engine.
By the time he was thirteen years old, they had the engine running; and four months later, at Bleys' demand upon Dahno for the funds to do so, they had bought a used tractor into which it could fit.
Henry was overjoyed, but would not show it. He went to the unheard-of extent of not merely thanking God for Bleys' help, but thanking Bleys personally.
At the same time, Bleys was beginning to realize that once again he was isolated. Henry and the two boys had accepted him. But the community—particularly that part of the community that clustered around the church most closely—still saw him as a complete outsider.
They had accepted Henry's explanation gained from Dahno, that Bleys was unusually intelligent and needed to study beyond what the local school could offer.
It was a convenient fiction, one the others could accept easily and so they did. Nonetheless, it was not something that, by itself, endeared them to Bleys. In addition, Bleys himself had found that no matter what he did, he tended to distance himself from other people.
He finally accepted that the truth of the matter was he simply did not want people emotionally close to him. He had accepted Henry and his two young cousins, simply because they were there and there was no way to live with them without being emotionally close to a certain extent.
In his own way he was fond of both his cousins. With the sensitivity of younger people, they felt this; and gave him back real affection, with which Bleys was at once uncomfortable and at a loss as to how to accept.
It was strange that all his life, from his earliest years with his mother, he had yearned for affection. But eventually, from her, he had learned to distrust it, and now he could not be at ease with it.
More attractive to him as the weeks, months, and years went on had been the rock-firm religious structure of which Henry was so settled a part. Bleys found a kind of cold but deeply comforting feeling in the idea of a perfectly ordered and controlled universe.
But he could not conceive in the face of all he knew about science and logic that there could be such a universe without anchor, a controlling and regulating part. That regulating part, for Henry and other Friendlies, he knew, was the concept of God. But he could not make himself believe in a supreme deity. For some reason his mind, his imagination, his faith— whatever operated to produce that—would not work for him. In the years that followed he tried everything, even secretly making himself a hair-shirt out of a piece of goat-hide—it was really a girdle rather than a shirt—under all his other clothing and with the hairy side next to his skin. But all this discomfort did was make it difficult for him to fall asleep at night.
As a last-ditch effort, in desperation he conceived of the idea of fasting. Prophets and hermits had fasted and been vouchsafed an awareness of the deity. Perhaps he could duplicate that. However, he would have to have Henry's permission for something like that.
"Uncle," he said, cornering the older man by himself in the . goat shed one afternoon where he had been working with a billy goat who had somehow gotten his right front leg cut, and Henry was trying to clean the wound, "you know—I've never said anything, but I know you've noticed, Uncle, how unsuccessful I've been putting myself in touch with the Lord. I thought that maybe the way to do it would be the way Holy Men have done it for centuries. If it's all right with you, Uncle, I'd like to try fasting."
Henry was squatting on the floor of the goat shed before a basin brought from the house, holding some water and some of their homemade soap. He looked up as he finally rinsed his hands and wiped them on a clean cloth he had brought out in his hip pocket. He was not exactly frowning at Bleys, but there was a strong concern in his unflinching gaze.
"God himself knows I would never stand against anyone's search for a path to Him," he said, picking up the basin and standing. After stowing the towel back in his hip pocket, he went on. "But you're still a growing lad, Bleys. You need regular food for your health's sake."
He stopped speaking. Bleys stood watching him. It was unusual to see Henry indecisive about anything.
"I think," said Henry after a moment, "you had better go see Medician Roderick. If he says it's all right for you to fast, I'll agree you can do it."
"I can go on with my work here just as usual," said Bleys, "I'd just not eat."
"As to that, the details of it will be something that Roderick can decide," said Henry. "He's a good hour's walk from here, and another hour's walk back again. Why don't you clean up and get started right now? Then you can come home and tell me at dinner time, if you don't see me before, what his decision was."
Bleys, accordingly, left the farm for the long trudge down the dirt roads to the combined home and office of the medician.
The brief, very hot summer of Association, caused by its extreme tilt away from Epsilon Eridani, was with them once again. Bleys wore a wide-brimmed hat of plaited straw; and his lightest pair of pants and shirt, both of which had been lengthened in the sleeves and pant-legs until they came down and fastened to gloves and boots. They were clothes that had belonged to Joshua previously, and they were, if anything, too full in the waist, but a belt cinched that in.
Except for his face he was completely covered. Epsilon Eridani, at summer angle, was nothing to expose naked flesh to if it could possibly be avoided. This was one of the reasons all work outside on the farm ceased during the summer, and everything else went on inside—including the local school.
Bleys was lucky enough to find Medician Roderick at home when he got there. Even though travel outside in this season was nothing anyone wished to do, emergencies called Roderick out regardless. He was a heavy-set, dark-skinned man in his sixties, worn down by years of work at all hours, to save lives and deal with the many accidents that happened to farmers. He could be, Bleys knew, exceedingly gentle with his patients; but the years had also given him an explosive temper if his opinion was crossed.
Accordingly, all through his long walk, Bleys had been working out how best to suggest his fast.
Roderick set him down in a wooden chair with a slanted back, in the outside area that became his surgery in summer. After walking in the sun, the shade of the thatched roof high overhead made the area seem almost icy to Bleys.
"Well, Bleys?" said Roderick, once Bleys was settled, and with a glass of a cool summer version of the local coffee in his hand, "you said it was no emergency. Everyone's all right at the farm, I take it, then. So what is it?"
Bleys began by explaining his long struggle to see a deity. He ran it through the years, so that Roderick would understand that this was no sudden whim, but a desperate effort to solve an apparently unsolvable problem. But eventually it came down to stating what he wanted to do, in plain terms.
"—So I thought," Bleys wound up, "I could try fasting. We've got records of many people who've seen the Lord, once they've abstained from food for a while. I told Henry I could go right on working—"
"Out of the question!" said Roderick. "If you do any fasting, you don't want to be working at the same time. Oh, perhaps the first two or three days, but after that you'll want to take it easy. Moreover, youngster, if you want to have an experience where you come face to face with the Lord, it's best that you're away from familiar surroundings and all by yourself."
"That could be arranged," said Bleys. "We have a patch of woods near the back of the farm, with a stream running through it that has good water in it, even in this hot weather. I could build a sort of lean-to there, and just sit and pray and . . . fast."
"Not so quick," snapped Roderick, "I haven't agreed to your fasting yet. It depends on what kind of physical shape you're in. As I remember, you're prone to some sort of unusual sickness that your brother brings you medication for."
"Oh, but that never hits this time of year," said Bleys ingenuously.
"Well," said Roderick, "get those clothes off and let me give you a thorough examination. How old are you now?"
"I'll be seventeen in three months," said Bleys, as he stripped off his clothes.
"You're already a skyscraper," Roderick grunted, beginning to examine him with a listening instrument that clipped to his right ear. "You may grow out of sight before you're done . . ."
However, meanwhile he continued with the examination, thumping Bleys in various places, having him lie down, palpating his abdomen, and asking questions about his normal diet and how much he ate. He ended by taking a syringeful of blood from just below the inside of Bleys' elbow and put the blood into a little machine on a table nearby, which after a few seconds began to click out a number of figures on a strip of paper. It stopped eventually, and Roderick tore them off and studied them.
"Disgustingly healthy," he almost grumbled, "typical of one of Henry's boys; hard work, a simple but adequate diet—a good environment generally."
He sat down in a chair, .waved Bleys into another one and laid the paper on a little table beside the chair.
"Tell me," he said, "how do you sleep?"
"Oh, pretty well," said Bleys.
"What does 'pretty well' mean?"
"I wake up now and then in the night," said Bleys, "then, after a while I go back to sleep again. I've always done it—as far back as I can remember."
"But perhaps a little more lately, since you've been struggling to see God?"
"Perhaps
...
a little more," said Bleys cautiously, "but you see, it's always the way I've handled problems—I think about them a bit during the night."
"I see," said Roderick. "So you've been thinking about these efforts of yours to see God, in these waking periods at night? And you've been waking more lately?"