She might have other, even more drastic reactions to the Sumner house, she thought, but now she knew she did not have to yield to the conditioned responses. Soon, she thought again, bending over her sewing.

Four times they had put her in the breeders’ hospital ward and installed a constant temperature gauge, and when the temperature was right, Nurse had come in with her tray and said cheerfully, “Let’s try again, shall we, Molly?” And obediently Molly had opened her legs and lain still while the sperm were inserted with the shiny, cold instrument. “Now, remember, don’t move for a while,” Nurse then said, still cheerful, brisk, and had left her lying, unmoving, on the narrow cot. And two hours later she was allowed to dress and leave again. Four times, she thought bitterly. A thing, an object, press this button and this is what comes out, all predictable, on cue.

She left the breeders’ compound on a dark, moonless night. She carried a large laundry bag that she had been filling slowly, secretly, for almost three months. There was no one awake; there was nothing of danger in the valley, perhaps in the entire world, but she hurried, avoiding the path, keeping to the sound-muffling grass. The thick growth surrounding the Sumner house created a darkness that was like a hole in space, a blackness that would swallow up anything that chanced too close. She hesitated, then felt her way between the trees and bushes until she came to the house.

She still had two hours before dawn, another hour or so before her absence was discovered. She left her bundle on the porch and made her way around the house to the back door, which opened at a touch. Nothing happened to her as she entered, and she breathed a sigh of relief. But then no one had expected her to get this far ever again. She felt her way up the stairs to her old room; it was as she had left it, she thought at first, but something was wrong, something had been changed. It was too dark to see anything at all, but the feeling of difference persisted and she found the bed and sat down to wait for dawn so she could see the room, see her paintings.

When she could see, she gasped. Someone had spread her paintings out, had stood them all up around the walls, on chairs, on the old desk she never had used. She went into the other room, where she had painted, and there on the bench that Mark had used for his clay, instead of the half-dozen crude figures he had shaped, there were dozens of clay objects: pots, heads, animals, fish, a foot, two hands . . . Weakly Molly leaned against the doorframe and wept.

The room was bright when she pushed away from the door. She had delayed too long; she had to hurry now. She ran down the stairs and out of the house, picked up her bag, and started climbing the hill. Two hundred feet up she stopped and began to search for the spot she and Mark had found once: a sheltered spot behind blackberry bushes, protected by an overhanging ledge of limestone. From there she could see the house but could not be seen from below. The bushes had grown, the spot was even more hidden than she remembered. When she finally found it she sank down to the ground in relief. The sun was high, they would know by now that she was gone. Presently a few of them would come to look over the Sumner house, not really expecting to find her, but because they were thorough.

They came before noon, spent an hour looking around the house and yard, then left. Probably it would be safe now to return to the house, she thought, but she did not stir from her hole in the hill. They returned shortly before dark, and spent more time going over the same ground they had covered before. Now she knew it was safe to go to the house. They never went out after dark, except in groups; they would not expect her to wander about in the dark alone. She stood up, easing the stiffness out of her legs and back. The ground was damp, and this spot was cool, sheltered from the sun.

She lay on the bed. She knew she would hear him when he entered the house, but she couldn’t sleep, except in a fitful, dream-filled doze: Ben lying with her; Ben sitting before the fire sipping pink, fragrant tea; Ben looking at her painting and becoming pale . . . Mark scrambling up the stairs, his legs going this way and that, a frown of determination on his face. Mark squatting over a single leaf of a fern, still rolled tightly at the end, and studying it intently, as if willing it to uncoil as he watched. Mark, his hands pudgy and grimy, gleaming wet, pushing the clay this way, smoothing it, pushing it that way, frowning at it, oblivious of her . . .

She sat up suddenly, wide awake. He had come into the house. She could hear the stairs creak slightly under his feet. He stopped, listening. He must sense her there, she thought, and her heart quickened. She went to the door of the workroom and waited for him.

He had a candle. For a moment he didn’t see her. He put the candle down on the table and only then looked around cautiously.

“Mark!” she said softly. “Mark!”

His face was lighted. Ben’s face, she thought, and something of hers. Then his face twisted and when she took a step toward him, he took a step backward.

“Mark?” she said again, but now she could feel a hard, cold hand squeezing her heart, making it painful for her to breathe. What had they done to him? She took another step.

“Why did you come here?” he yelled suddenly. “This is my room! Why did you come back? I hate you!” he screamed.

Chapter 19

The cold hand squeezed harder. Molly felt for the door-frame behind her and held it tightly. “Why do you come here?” she whispered. “Why?”

“It’s all your fault! You spoiled everything. They laugh at me and lock me up. . .”

“And you still come here. Why?”

Suddenly he darted to the workbench and swept it clean. The elephant, the heads, the foot, hands, everything crashed to the floor and he jumped up and down on the pieces, sobbing incoherently, screaming sounds that were not words. Molly didn’t move. The rampage stopped as abruptly as it began. Mark looked down at the gray dust, the fragments that remained.

“I’ll tell you why you come back,” Molly said quietly. She still held the doorframe hard. “They punish you by locking you up in a small room, don’t they? And it doesn’t frighten you. In the small room you can hear yourself, can’t you? In your mind’s eye you see the clay, the stone you will shape. You see the form emerging, and it is almost as if you are simply freeing it, allowing it to come into being. That other self that speaks to you, it knows what the shape is in the clay. It tells you through your hands, in dreams, in images that no one but you can see. And they tell you this is sick, or bad, or disobedient. Don’t they?”

He was watching her now. “Don’t they?” she repeated. He nodded.

“Mark, they’ll never understand. They can’t hear that other self whispering, always whispering. They can’t see the pictures. They’ll never hear or get a glimpse of that other self. The brothers and sisters overwhelm it. The whisper becomes fainter, the images dimmer, until finally they are gone, the other self gives up. Perhaps it dies.” She paused and looked at him, then said softly, “You come here because you can find that self here, just as I could find my other self here. And that’s more important than anything they can give you, or take away from you.”

He looked down at the floor, at the shambles of the pieces he had made, and wiped his face with his arm. “Mother,” he said, and stopped.

Now Molly moved. Somehow she reached him before he could speak again and she held him tightly and he held her, and they both wept.

“I’m sorry I busted everything.”

“You’ll make more.”

“I wanted to show you.”

“I looked at them all. They were very good. The hands especially.”