They watched the crew working on the boat for a few minutes, and then Barry said, “Lawrence, how good are the younger brothers at boat building?”

“The best,” Lawrence said promptly.

“I don’t mean just following orders. I mean, has one of the younger brothers come up with an idea you could use?”

Lawrence turned to study him again. “What’s bothering you, Barry?”

“Have they?”

Lawrence frowned and was silent for what seemed a long time. Finally he shrugged. “I don’t think so. I can’t remember. But then, Lewis has such clear ideas of what it has to be, I doubt if anyone would even think of contradicting him, or adding to anything he has planned.”

Barry nodded. “I thought so,” he said, and walked away on the snow-cleared path, edged on either side by a white fence as high as his head. “And it never used to snow this much, either,” he said to himself. There. He had said it aloud. He thought he probably was the first one of the inhabitants to say that. It never used to snow this much.

Later that day he sent for Mark, and when the boy stood before him, he asked, “What are the woods like in the winter, when there’s snow like now?”

Mark looked guilty for a moment. He shrugged.

“I know you’ve managed to learn to walk with snowshoes,” Barry said. “And you ski. I’ve seen your trail leading up into the woods. What is it like?”

Now Mark’s eyes seemed to glow with blue fires, and a smile formed, then left. He ducked his head. “Not like summer,” he said. “Stiller. And it’s pretty.” Suddenly he blushed and became silent.

“More dangerous?” Barry asked.

“I guess so. You can’t see dips, they fill up with snow, and sometimes snow hangs on ridges so you can’t be real sure where the land ends. You could go over an edge that way. I guess, if you didn’t know about it.”

“I want to train our children in getting around on snowshoes and skis. They might have to be in the woods in winter. They have to have some training. Can they find enough material to make fires?”

Mark nodded.

“We’ll start them on making snowshoes tomorrow,” Barry said decisively. He stood up. “I’ll need your help. I’ve never seen a pair of snowshoes. I don’t know how to begin.” He opened the door and before Mark left he asked, “How did you learn to make them?”

“I saw them in a book.”

“What book?”

“Just a book,” Mark said. “It’s gone now.”

In the old house, Barry understood. What other books were in the old house? He knew he had to find out. That night when he met with his brothers they talked long and soberly about the conclusions he had drawn.

“We’ll have to teach them everything they might ever need,” Barry said, and felt a new weariness settle over him.

“The hardest thing we’ll have to do,” Bruce said thoughtfully after a moment, “will be to convince others that this is so. We’ll have to test it, make certain we are right, then prove it. This will put a terrible burden on the teachers, on the older brothers and sisters.”

They didn’t question his conclusions. Each of them, given his direct observations, would have come up with the same conclusions.

“I think we can devise a few simple tests,” Barry said. “I made some sketches this afternoon.” He showed them: a stick figure of a man running, climbing stairs, sitting down; a sun symbol, a circle with rays extending from it; a tree symbol, a cone with a stick in the base; a house made of four lines, two parallel, an angle for the roof; a disc moon; a bowl with steam rising from it in wavy lines . . .

“We could have them finish a story,” Bruce said. “Keep it as simple as the drawings. A three- or four-line story without an ending, which they must supply.”

Barry nodded. They knew what he was after. If the children lacked the imagination to abstract, to fantasize, to generalize, they had to know it now and try to compensate. Within a week their fears were realized. The children under nine or ten could not identify the line drawings, could not complete a simple story, could not generalize a particular situation to a new situation.

“So we teach them everything they’ll need to know to survive,” Barry said harshly. “And be grateful they seem able to learn whatever we teach.”

They would need different lesson material, he knew. Material from the old books in the farmhouse, lessons in survival, in how to build simple lean-tos, how to make fires, how to substitute what was at hand for what was missing . . .

Barry and his brothers went to the old farmhouse with crowbars and hammers, ripped off the boarding at the front entrance, and went inside. While the others examined the yellowed, crumbly books in the library, Barry climbed the stairs to Molly’s old rooms. Inside, he stopped and took a deep breath.

There were the paintings, as he remembered them, and more, there were small objects made out of clay. There were wood carvings, a head that had to be Molly, done in walnut, done cleanly, expertly, like but unlike the Miriam sisters. Barry couldn’t explain how it differed, but knew it was not like them, and was like Molly. There were works done in sandstone, in limestone, some of them complete, most of them rough, as if he had started them and lost interest. Barry touched the carved likeness of Molly and for no reason he could name, he felt tears forming. He turned abruptly and left the room, closing the door carefully behind him.

He didn’t tell his brothers, and he didn’t understand the reason for not telling them any more than he had understood the tears he had shed over a piece of wood hacked out by a child. Later that night when images of the head kept intruding when he tried to sleep, he thought he knew why he hadn’t told. They would be forced to find and seal off the secret entrance Mark used to enter the house. And Barry knew he couldn’t do that.

Chapter 24

The paddle-wheel boat was bedecked with bright ribbons and flowers; it dazzled under the early morning sun. Even the wood pile was decorated. The steam engine gleamed. The troops of young people filed aboard with much laughter and gaiety. Ten of these, eight of those, sixty-five in all. The boat crew stood apart from the young explorer-foragers, watching them warily, as if afraid the carnival spirit of the morning might damage the boat somehow.

And indeed the infectious exuberance of the young people was dangerous in its spontaneity, drawing into itself the onlookers ashore. The gloom of the past expeditions was forgotten as the boat made ready to churn its way downriver. This was different, the mood cried, these young people had been specially bred and trained for this mission. It was their life fulfillment they sought. Who had a better right to rejoice at seeing life’s goal within reach?

Tied securely to the side of the paddle boat was a fourteen-foot canoe made of birch bark, and standing protectively by it was Mark. He had boarded before the others, or had slept there, perhaps; no one had seen him arrive, but he was there with his canoe that could outrun anything else on the river, even the big paddle wheel. Mark watched the scene impassively. He was slender, not tall, but his slim body was well muscled and his chest was deep. If he was impatient to be under way, he showed no sign of it. He might have stood there for an hour, a day, a week . . .

The elder members of the expedition now came aboard, and the cheering and singing ashore grew in volume. Nominally the leaders of the expedition, the Gary brothers nodded to Mark and took their places in the stern.

Standing on the dock, Barry watched smoke puff up from the stack as the boat started to foam the water, and he thought about Ben and Molly, and those who had not come back, or had come back only to go into the hospital and never emerge. The children were almost hysterically happy, he thought. They might be going to a circus, or a tournament, or to enlist in the king’s service, or to slay dragons . . . His gaze sought Mark’s. The bright blue eyes didn’t waver, and Barry knew that he at least understood what they were doing, what the dangers were, the prizes. He understood this mission meant the end of the experiment, or a new beginning for them all. He knew, and he, like Barry, was not smiling.