Free Restoree by Anne McCaffrey Page A

feet.
    “You don’t like it, but it’ll help,” he added proffering the bottle. I looked at him and then at Cire and reluctantly steeled myself for another long swig.
    “I’ll be drunk in no time,” I gasped.
    “You’ll be walking it off,” Harlan retorted.
    I’m not exactly sure “walk” is what I did. Harlan made me take considerable quantities of that brew once he felt me shivering through Cire’s jacket. I remember not too clearly the events following the first long climb from the shore. I remember putting one foot in front of the other and talking about it. I remember complaining because I wanted to sit down and no one would let me. I remember being carried and then I remember fighting with someone because they wanted to put me on a planecar and I knew that was not right and I shouldn’t get on a planecar and I couldn’t get away from Them. The last thing I do remember is Harlan’s voice, angry and arguing.
    “By the Deep Cave, she’s exhausted, that’s all. Naturally she’s talking gibberish. Here, give her to me a minute.”
    Someone was shaking me by the shoulders and I kept trying to get free. Then Harlan kissed me and I managed to focus on his face and realized he was the one holding me.
    “Sara, Sara,
listen
to me. We’re safe, we made it to Gartly’s. Go to sleep now. It’s all right to sleep now.”
    “Well, why didn’t someone say so?” I remember saying bad-temperedly. I heard Harlan laugh and then I slid down, gratefully, into dark softness and warmth.
    For me, time resumed after my legs stopped moving even in my dreams. I awoke in a comfortable bed in a pleasantly sunlit room with an indescribably appetizing odor tantalizing me. I sat right up in bed and looked around, trying to place my surroundings. The wide bed had had another occupant from the dents in the pillows beside mine. I decided I had better ignore speculations in that direction for the moment.
    It might even be a female Gartly, I told myself, having remembered Harlan’s final words to me. This pleasant blue room with its heavy wooden furnishings was the antithesis of the institutional asylum cottage.
    A long soft gray robe was draped on the chair nearest the bed which turned my attention on the nightdress I wore. To my relief, it was utilitarian but feminine. Whatever was cooking made me ravenous. I put on the robe and looking around for a bathroom, stumbled over Harlan’s fisher clothes.
    “That settles that,” I told myself, both irritated and pleased.
    The delicious odor was irresistible and I hurried through the necessary, noticing in passing the mirror that I had picked up a nice tan, and that I had lost my eyebrows and singed my hair slightly shorter in passing the force screen barrier.
    As I opened the bedroom door, I walked out into a hall, half open to the large room on the level below. Four men were sitting around a table cluttered with the debris of a meal. They had been talking solemnly and their voices died as first one, then another man became aware of my presence on the balcony. The oldest, gray-grizzled man glowered up at me fiercely and started to rise to his feet. I was about to take refuge in the bedroom when Harlan, laden with a plate of food and a mug backed through a swinging door from the side of the house.
    “Hi there, don’t run, Sara,” he laughed. “Come on down.” He noticed Gartly’s expression. “Gartly frowns to hide a tender heart and Jessl,” he added, nodding to the man he was passing on his way to the table, “frowns from unfamiliarity with the light of day.” He set his dishes down and, going to the foot of the stairs, waited for me to descend. He squeezed my hand reassuringly and led me to the table.
    He was an entirely different person in his joviality, in the obvious affection toward two of the men, Jokan and Jessl. The Harlan I had known in the hospital, tense, frustrated, pensive, the apparently unconcerned Harlan of the sailboat, had transformed into this admirable