By Any Other Name

By Wesa

Series: Crossover War of the Worlds/ The People

Rating: G

Category: Angst

Disclaimers: War of the Worlds characters belong to Paramount and Strangis & Strangis. The concept of The People belonged to the late Zenna Henderson until her death; I don't know who owns it now. I have nothing but admiration for those who created these characters and concepts, and I mean no disrespect. I'm not making any money from this; this is just for my own entertainment and for the entertainment of those who want to read it.

Note: This part adapts Ms. Henderson's story Deluge. All of the plot and large parts of the dialog are taken from Deluge, as it tells the story from another character's point of view, but had to remain consistent with the original story. Ms. Henderson was a far better writer than I am, and I recommend reading the original if you can find it.

By Wesa.

Gathering Day. It sounds innocent enough now, and it used to be, a holiday on which the children of the Home Gathered failova and flahmen, lovely luminescent flowers that popped into existence overnight. They had no leaves and were nearly stemless, and appeared to have fallen onto the ground like pools of moonlight. The children gathered them each year on Gathering Day and brought them home to be eaten fresh or made into jam.

On that last Gathering Day, Lytha and I were four-ing with Becky and Andy; we went to the Mountain and, I admit it, we were looking mostly for flahmen. No one remembered even then how the custom of loves sharing a flahmen came into being, but it was firmly entrenched into our traditions. Sharing that luminous loveliness petal by petal, one for you and one for me and all for us...

Early that morning, Lytha regaled us with the story of how her baby sister Eve had learned to Lift that morning while she and her siblings were out making their panthus-leaf baskets. Then David, her father, had teased her when he learned that we four were going together this year. Her brother Davy had scorned the idea of looking for flahmen with a girl.

"I pointed out," she said haughtily, "that he doesn't turn up his nose at flahmen after they're made into jam. And I told him that the time would come when he'd find himself wanting to share a flahmen with some gaggly giggle of a girl!"

Andy grinned at her. "She's talking about us, Becky," he said. Becky giggled.

We looked all morning, but there weren't any flowers. There wasn't a flicker of light on any of the hills where they had grown so thickly the year before. Minute by minute we grew more concerned; Becky stopped giggling. Lytha was worried, too, but I had no comfort to offer her. I had no idea how such a thing could be, either. Finally we decided to give up and go home.

Lytha's family met us in the meadow outside her home. Her little brothers and sister had found four misshapen failova and one hard-clenched flahmen bud with only a smudge of light at the tip. There was no flickering and glittering, no flushing and paling of petals. The flowers glowed dully and crumbled unappetizingly.

"No failova and no flahmen," Lytha said to her father, turning her basket up for his inspection. "Not a flicker on all the hills where they were so thick last year. Oh, Father, why not? It's as if the sun hadn't come up! Something's wrong."

"Nothing catastrophic, Lytha," David assured us with a smile. "We'll bring up the matter at the next meeting of the Old Ones. Someone will have the answer. It is unusual, you know." I kept my thoughts to myself, but he should have said it was unheard of! "We'll find out then." He boosted Eve to his shoulder and challenged the kids to a race. We teeners followed a little way before deciding to go to Becky's for lunch before heading out to our lake.

It bothered me all week, so when my father came home from the monthly meeting of the Old Ones, I was waiting up with Mother. My elder brother Rosh and his wife Mika were there as well. Everyone was uneasy, and became more so when Father sat down hard in the chair that was waiting for him.

"Neil, what is it?" Mother worried. "What did you find out?"

Father swallowed hard and tears welled up in his eyes. "The Home is dying," he told us, choking on the words. "No one even knows why and there's no time to find out now, but by next Gathering Day we must be gone - out - away from the Home. It has been Seen."

Mika's breath caught in a little cry, and Rosh protested, "Father, don't joke. Not about that."

"It's true," Father said. "There will be no Home. We must build ships and go."

"But - But we can't!" Mother protested. "We'll die away from the Home!"

"Father?" I interrupted. "Is everyone going to go in one ship?"

"No," Father replied, and my heart froze. "Each Group will build their own." I relaxed, until he added, "Our Group is to have six ships."

"Who - who is to go in which ship?" I asked, wincing at Father's expression. I knew it wasn't really appropriate right after learning about the Home, but it was important. "Lytha and I-"

Father's expression gentled. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry, Timmy, but I don't know. It won't be decided yet for a while."

**********

Sometimes over the next weeks I nearly forgot about the news Father had brought home from meeting that night. Lytha and I were two-ing now and were far too caught up in the wonder of each other to be able to think about something so horrible for very long. It was like a bad dream, and we would all wake up very soon. We ignored our onrushing fate and behaved as teeners always have and always will. We ranged the local hills together and found a little silver lake that no one else seemed to visit. It was summer now, and though cooler than normal, it was still warm enough for us to try wave-dancing across its shining water.

Both of us saw, but refused to acknowledge, the sudden tears, the sudden clutching of familiar things, that had become a sort of a pattern among the adults as realization came and went. Lytha had felt something wrong, different, in her Gramma Eva-lee's reactions, but didn't know what it was or what to do about it. All the grown-ups were acting strangely, though, and we decided this was just more of the same.

The Old Ones held meetings nearly every night, trying to find the memories and plan the plans that would take us away from the Home, even though the one who had Seen, speaking through the Oldest, could offer no assurance that we would ever find any habitable worlds. We had found none when we went out into space before the Peace. To increase the chances that someone would survive, each Group was assigned a different sector of the sky. On Crossing Day we would say goodbye, possibly forever to all the other Groups. It was possible that only one ship would plant the seeds of the People upon a new world. Perhaps we would all be Called before anyone found a new Home.

Some wanted to know why we didn't just stay and take our Calling with the Home, but the only answer was that the Power had said to go, and had given us time to go back to the machines we would need to do so. We were leaving for the benefit of the children - like Lytha and me and our friends - that we might live out whatever years were left to us.

Mother was inconsolable, sobbing on Father's shoulder in terror at the thought of leaving the Home for who knew where, or maybe even nowhere at all. Father just held her, letting his own tears fall into her hair. I sought out Lytha, and she said her parents had had a similar discussion. I held her close to my heart and we comforted each other with the thought that if this was all for the future of the children, we would at least be together until the end, whatever that end would be.

When planning was complete to the point that the physical work could begin, the Old Ones went together from Group to Group to draw from the hills the bubbling streams of the needed metals, letting them flow liquidly down to the workplaces that would become the launching sites. The process fascinated Lytha, but it sent a shiver through my soul. They really meant it; we were really going to leave the Home.

One day I caught from Mother the memory of a conversation she had had with 'Chell, Lytha's mother, about the kind of world we might find. Eva-lee had been struck by the thought that our new Home might already be inhabited. 'Chell had at first thought that would be a good thing, that we would then find friends, help, and places to live, but Eva-lee had worried that we might not be accepted, even though we were homeless refugees. "Remember," she had warned, "only Remember far enough back, and you will find the Days of Difference before the Peace." Mother was sick with worry.

I sought out Lytha, not telling her what was wrong. I was scared and helpless, and I struck out at those who seemed to be the source of the problem. "They're crazy," I told her angrily. "It's only a late spring. Nothing is going to happen to the Home! Why are we rushing out into Space on the words of someone who won't even reveal himself to the rest of us?"

She held me and sobbed, frightened by what was happening around us, to us. "I - I asked Gramma," she said. "I asked her if it was really true, because everything seems so solid and looks like it can never come apart. She said that nothing This-side is forever, except Love. She said that Love This-side is a part of The Love, like a candle lighted from the sun. Oh, Timmy! What if our candle goes out in the winds of the Crossing?"

**********

A few days later, the ships were nearly complete. Lytha and I watched helplessly as the Old Ones hovered in a circle over each of the ships in succession, thinking the thought that Eva-lee shaped for them. The skin of each in succession quivered, became liquid, and solidified again, a seamless whole from tip to tail.

The next night, Father gave me the news. Our family and Lytha's were to be in different ships. I stared at him in disbelief. "No," I protested. "I told you, Father. I told you Gathering Night!"

"I'm sorry, Timmy," Father apologized. "Ships fell by lot. There just wasn't any other way to do it."

"Then I'll go to her ship!" I cried. "Or let her come to ours! Father, please!"

"If you were to go with Lytha, we might never all be together again," Father said. I felt like he had slapped me. "Families must remain together. Each ship leaves the Home with the assumption that it is alone."

"What about Lytha and me?" I asked. "We might someday be a family, we might - " I bit my lip and tried to calm down. "I would go with Lytha, just the same," I said.

Mother and Father looked at each other. "You can't," Father said heavily. " All the loads have been computed. No changes can be made."

"It's only a late spring anyway!" I protested, my doubts spilling out of my mouth, completely out of control. "Nothing's going to happen to the Home, and it's just silly to go rushing off into Space because some flowers didn't bloom!" There, I'd said it straight out.

Father stared at me in astonishment. "Timmy, how can you doubt it? It's been Seen."

"By whom?" I demanded. "Does anyone actually know?" Father had no answer to that, and I turned away from him, leaving the room and the house.

**********

Lytha and I met the next night at Tangle-Meadows. I had brought my family's camping gear, and we headed up into the hills to our tiny lake, our Happy Place, the place where we had discovered that we had feelings for each other. It had no glitter or gleam that night; its waves were much too turbulent for dancing or even daring. We set up camp on a curve of beach where the sand met the hillside. Lytha found some Glowers that had not died from the lack of summer and brought them into the cubicle, where they clung to the roof with their fragile legs and shed their warm golden light over our little room. We put our sleeping mats down, and I hung the curtain between them. We sat up late, talking and hurting together until we fell asleep, holding hands under the curtain between us.

Sometime after midnight, Lytha sat up sharply, her movement waking me. After a moment she told me, "Eva-lee is here." Calling her gramma by name told me that Eva-lee was there as an Old One, not as a grandmother.

We rose ceremoniously as Eva-lee entered, carefully keeping our faces respectful to an Old One. She sat down and so did we, holding onto each other's hands for comfort. "There is scarcely time left for an outing," Eva-lee said, holding one finger up to the Glowers. Attracted by her body heat, one of them glided down and clasped its wiry feet around the proffered finger. Its glowing wings hid her expression from us.

"We have our lives before us," I said as neutrally as I could manage.

"A brief span if it's to be on the Home," she replied. "We must be out before the week ends."

"We do not choose to believe that," Lytha said with a tremble in her voice. She was backing me up for the sake of Love; she didn't actually agree with me.

"I respect your belief," Eva-lee said formally, "but fear you have insufficient evidence to support it."

"Even so - " Lytha's voice broke in a sob. She tried again. "Even so, however short, we will have it together - "

"Yes, without your mothers or fathers or any of us," Eva-lee agreed. "And then, finally, soon, without the Home. Still, it has its points. It isn't given to everyone to be ... in ... at the death of a world. It's a shame you'll have no one to tell it to. That's the best part of anything, you know, telling it, sharing it."

I felt Lytha's heart breaking as she turned her face away.

"And if the Home doesn't die," Eva-lee went on, "that will truly be a joke on us. We won't even get to laugh about it because we won't be able to come back, being so many days gone, not knowing. So you will have the whole Home to yourself. Just think! A whole Home! A new world to begin all over again ... alone ... " Our hands convulsed together, and I gulped back a sob. My throat ached. My chest ached. My head hurt with unshed tears. "But such space!" she continued. "An emptiness from horizon to horizon ... from pole to pole ... for you two! Nobody else anywhere ... anywhere. If the home doesn't die ... "

Lytha and I both broke then, pouring out all our hurting and longing and rebellion and uncertainty, all without saying a word. Old One though she was, Eva-lee staggered under the weight of it; adults never understand teeners. I think they forget what it was like, if they ever had the same kinds of troubles at all. And I know Eva-lee had never faced what Lytha and I faced. Finally I managed to say, "We only want a chance. Is that too much to ask? Why should this happen, now, to us?"

"Who are we," Eva-lee chided me, "to presume to ask why of the Power? For all our lives we have been taking happiness and comfort and delight and never asking why, but now that sorrow and separation, pain and discomfort are coming to us from the same Power, we are crying why. We have taken unthinkingly all that has been given to us unasked, but now that we must take sorrow for a while, you want to refuse to take, like silly babies whose milk is cold!"

I felt lost and desolated, and I know Lytha felt the same. I think Eva-lee caught the feeling from one or both of us, because she hurried on, "But don't think the Power has forgotten you. You are as completely enwrapped now as you ever were. Can't you trust your love - or your possible love - to the Power that suggested love to you in the first place? I promise you, I promise you, that no matter where you go, together or apart if the Power leaves you life, you will find love. And even if it turns out that you do not find it together, you'll never forget these first magical steps you have taken together toward your own true loves.

"Things change!" she continued, but now her voice held laughter. "Remember, Lytha, it wasn't so long ago that Timmy was a - if you'll pardon the expression - 'gangle-legged, clumsy poodah that I'd rather be caught dead than ganging with, let alone two-ing.'"

"And he was, too!" Lytha seemed caught between smiles and sobs.

"You were no vision of delight, yourself," I retorted. "I never saw such stringy hair-"

"I was supposed to look like that!" she replied.

Our verbal sparring cleared the air a little, and I was able to take a breath again without feeling like I'd broken a rib - or several. Me, too, Lytha told me subvocally.

"It's quite possible that you two might change - " Eva-lee stopped abruptly. "Wait! Listen!" she exclaimed.

"To what?" Lytha asked, puzzled.

"Out, quick!" Eva-lee inexplicably scrambled up from the floor. "Oh, hurry!" She sounded near panic, and Lytha and I snatched up our small personal bundles as she pushed us, bewildered and protesting, out into the black night. For a long moment we watched her as she stood peering into the darkness, then she screamed, "Lift! Lift!" She grabbed at both of us and launched all three of us upward, away from the lake.

Overhead the clouds snatched back from the moon almost at the same moment that a crack like the loudest thunder came from below, and we watched as the lake bed broke cleanly from one hill to the other and all the water poured into the huge split in the ground. Eva-lee put her arms around us and shot up and away with a speed only an Old One could achieve. Behind us an earsplitting roar announced the return of geothermal steam which caught us and threw us even further, until we stumbled across the top of a hill. We watched, clinging to each other in awe and terror as the plume of steam rose far above, splitting the clouds far above and still it rose, rolling and white in the moonlight. Below, the lakebed tilted back and closed itself.

"Oh, poor Home," Lytha whispered. "Poor hurting Home! It's dying!"

Subvocally I told her, You're my love for sure, Lytha. We can trust in the Power to hold our love until Eva-lee's promise is kept.

The three of stood there quietly, weeping for the Home and our sorrow, and then we went home. Father met us behind Lytha's house, and we went home together. Eva-lee must have said something to him, because I wasn't scolded; he never even asked a question, just took me home with the kind of thankfulness that told me he had really been worried.

**********

It was the last day. After freeing our domestic animals and straightening the house, our family gathered together quietly. "Go say goodbye," Father said. "Go say goodbye to the Home."

Of course I went straight to Lytha. We held each other and cried, trying hard to trust in the Power, but we were still terrified we would never see one another again. After much too brief a time we parted, each going back to our families.

Mother, Father, Rosh and Mika, and I gathered once again in the Quiet Place in our house. We all made the Sign and prayed the Parting prayers, and we laid the anguish we felt before the Presence and in return received comfort and strength.

It was time. We each took up our small cahilla of belongings, and left the house, joining others on the path to our ship. No one Lifted, each of savoring this last contact with our home world. Inside the ship we put our things away in the allotted spaces. We lay on our couches and fastened the restraining straps around us, and slipped into the Group communication band.

"Half an hour," the Oldest murmured.

"Half an hour," the People echoed. I felt with everyone else the incredible length and terrible shortness of the time.

Suddenly I heard Lytha cry out to me in sorrow and joy, and I knew she was coming to me. "Lytha?" I said aloud. Before I could free myself from my couch, the Old Ones were with Father, telling him what had happened. He turned to me. "Eva-lee has been Called back into the Presence," he told me, helping me unfasten my restraining straps. "She is going to stay and take her Calling with the Home. There is room for one more on Lytha's ship."

"Neil, no!" Mother cried. "We'll never see him again!"

"This is how the Power wills it, Carla," Father said.

I clung to them briefly, thanking them for being my parents, telling them how much I loved them and would miss them. I turned, and there stood Rosh with my cahilla, a sheepish smile on his face. There were no words to say. I hugged him and Mika, laid my hand gently on their Child Within, and hurried out of the ship to meet Lytha as she came over the hill to meet me. I caught her in my arms and swung her around toward her ship, bound on getting her back in time to say goodbye to her grandmother before we had to leave.

Eva-lee was excited at being Called, at being able to stay and take her Calling with the Home, at being with her husband Thann again at last. Lytha's family said hurried good-byes as the minutes ran out.

Then Eva-lee was gone and I was strapping myself into her couch between Lytha and one of her brothers.

The Power had kept Eva-lee's promise. Lytha and I would be together. We held hands as the great fuel that powered the ship flung us away from the Home and into the future.