‘Grandma Hazel! I want to go home!’ She pulled out of her troubled thoughts to answer the child.
‘We’re going home, dear. But it’s going to take quite a while.’
‘I want to go home right now?’
‘I’m sorry but you can’t.’
‘But —’
‘Shut it up — or when I get you out of that sack, I’ll give you something to yelp for. I mean it.’ She again called for help.
Lowell made one of his lightning changes to serenity. ‘That’s better,’ approved Hazel. ‘Want to play a game of chess?’
‘No.’
‘Sissy. You’re afraid I’ll beat you. I’ll bet you three spanks and a knuckle rub.’
Lowell considered this. ‘I get the white men?’
‘Take ’em. I’ll beat you anyhow.’
To her own surprise she did. It was a long drawn-out game; Lowell was not as practised as she was in visualising a board and they had had to recount the moves on several occasions before he would concede the arrangement of men … and between each pair of moves she had again called for help. About the middle of the game she had found it necessary to remove her oxygen bottle and replace it with the one spare. She and the child had started out even but Lowell’s small mass demanded much less oxygen.
‘How about another one? Want to get your revenge?’
‘No! I want to go home.’
‘We’re going home, dear.’
‘How soon?’
‘Well… it’ll be a while yet. I’ll tell you a story.’
‘What story?’
‘Well, how about the one about the worm that crawled up out of the mud?’
‘Oh, I know that one! I’m tired of it’
‘There are parts I’ve never told you. And you can’t get tired of it, not really, because there is never any end to it. Always something new.’ So she told him again about the worm that crawled up out of the slime, not because it didn’t have enough to eat, not because it wasn’t nice and warm and comfortable down there under the water — but because the worm was restless. How it crawled up on dry land and grew legs. How part of it got to be the Elephant’s Child and part of it got to be a monkey, grew hands, and fiddled with things. How, still insatiably restless, it grew wings and reached up for the stars. She spun it out a long, long time, pausing occasionally to call for aid.
The child was either bored and ignored her, or liked it and kept quiet on that account. But when she stopped he said, ‘Tell me another one’
‘Not just now, dear.’ His oxygen gauge showed empty.
‘Go on! Tell me a new one — a better one.’
‘Not now, dear. That’s the best story Hazel knows. The very best. I told it to you again because I want you to remember it.’ She watched his anoxia warning signal turn red, then quietly disconnected the partly filled bottle on her own suit, closing the now useless suit valves, and replaced his empty bottle with hers. For a moment she considered cross-connecting the bottle to both suits, then shrugged and let it stand. ‘Lowell —’
‘What, Grandma?’
‘Listen to me, dear. You’ve heard me calling for help. You’ve got to do it now. Every few minutes, all the time.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Hazel is tired, dear. Hazel has to sleep. Promise me you’ll do it’
‘Well… all right’
She tried to hold perfectly still, to breathe as little of the air left in her suit as possible. It wasn’t so bad, she thought. She had wanted to see the Rings — but there wasn’t much else she had missed. She supposed everyone had his Carcassonne; she had no regrets.
‘Grandma! Grandma Hazel!’ She did not answer. He waited, then began to cry, endlessly and without hope.
Dr Stone arrived back at the Rolling Stone to find only her husband there. She greeted him and added, ‘Where’s Hazel, dear? and Lowell?’
‘Eh? Didn’t they come back with you? I supposed they had stopped in the store.’
‘No, of course not’
‘Why “of course not”?’
She explained the arrangement; he looked at her in stunned astonishment ‘They left the same time you did?’