Free No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson Page A

couldn't recognize the choked voice that put the question. "How long before the Power summons us?"
    "We are not Called," said the Oldest. "Only the Home is Called. We-go."
    "Go!" The thought careened from one to another.
    "Yes," said the Oldest. "Away from the Home. Out."
    Life apart from the Home? I slumped. It was too much to be taken in all at once. Then I remembered. Simon! Oh, poor Simon! If he were Seeing clearly already-but of course he was. He was the one who had told the Oldest! No wonder he was terrified! Simon, I said to the Oldest subvocally. Yes, answered the Oldest. Do not communicate to the others. He scarcely can bear the burden now. To have it known would multiply it past his bearing. Keep his secret-completely.
    I came back to the awkward whirlpool of thoughts around me.
    "But," stammered someone, speaking what everyone was thinking, "can the People live away from the Home?
    Wouldn't we die like uprooted plants?"
    "We can live," said the Oldest. "This we know, as we know that the Home can no longer be our biding place."
    "What's wrong? What's happening?" It was Neil-Timmy's father.
    "We don't know." The Oldest was shamed. "We have forgotten too much since the Peace to be able to state the mechanics of what is happening, but one of us Sees us go and the Home destroyed, so soon that we have no time to go back to the reasons."
    Since we were all joined in our conference mind which is partially subvocal, all our protests and arguments and cries were quickly emitted and resolved, leaving us awkwardly trying to plan something of which we had no knowledge of our own.
    "If we are to go," I said, feeling a small spurt of excitement inside my shock, "we'll have to make again. Make a tool. No, that's not the word. We have tools still. Man does with tools. No, it's a-a machine we'll have to make. Machines do to man. We haven't been possessed by machines-"
    "For generations," said David. "Not since-" He paused to let our family's stream of history pour through his mind.
    "Since Eva-lee's thrice great-grandfather's time."
    "Nevertheless," said the Oldest, "we must make ships." His tongue was hesitant on the long unused word. "I have been in communication with the other Oldest Ones around the Home. Our Group must make six of them."
    "How can we?" asked Nell; "We have no plans. We don't know such things any more. We have forgotten almost all of it. But I do know that to break free from the Home would take a pushing something that all of us together couldn't supply."
    "We will have the-the fuel," said the Oldest. "When the time comes. My Befores knew the fuel. We would not need it if only our motivers had developed their Gift fully, but as they did not-
    "We must each of us search the Before stream of our lives and find the details that we require in this hour of need. By the Presence, the Name, and the Power, let us remember."
    The evening sped away almost in silence as each mind opened and became receptive to the flow of racial memory that lay within. All of us partook in a general way of that stream that stemmed almost from the dawn of the Home. In particular, each family had some specialized area of the memory in greater degree than the others. From time to time came a sigh or a cry prefacing, "My Befores knew of the metals," or "Mine of the instruments"-the words were unfamiliar "The instruments of pressure and temperature."
    "Mine" I discovered with a glow-and a sigh-"the final putting together of the shells of ships."
    "Yes," nodded David, "and also, from my father's Befores, the settings of the-the-the settings that guide the ship."
    "Navigation," said Neil's deep voice. "My Befores knew of the making of the navigation machine yours knew how to set."
    "And all," I said, "all of this going back to nursery school would have been unnecessary if we hadn't rested so comfortably so long on the achievements of our Befores!" I felt the indignant withdrawal of some of those about me, but the acquiescence of most of them.
    When