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. Again, this part is based in large part upon the works of Miss Henderson, specifically, the short story Angel Unawares. If you get the chance, please read the original work.

By Wesa.

Harrison blinked, re-orienting himself as he found himself back in Shadow's living room once more.

"Wow," Paul said softly. "I haven't - I mean - Wow."

"That doesn't even begin to express it!" Harrison exclaimed excitedly, oblivious to Randie's reaction. "Randie, can you do that with just anybody? Just think of the possibilities! Why, you could teach anybody anything! There'd be no lying in court, no mis-identifications. You could - " At last he caught the scowl Paul was directing his way. "Why not?" he asked.

Paul inclined his head toward Randie, who sat pale and trembling on her chair, withdrawn from Harrison's enthusiasm.

"Randie?" Harrison asked gently. "Are you okay?"

"I can't do what you want, Harrison," she whispered. "I can't. If they find out we're not from Earth, they'll kill us."

"No one's going to hurt you," he assured her solemnly.

She favored him with a hesitant smile. "You wouldn't, no." She gripped Paul's hand. "I trust both of you. But Harrison, there are those of Earth who are frightened of anything they don't understand. When they're afraid, they become angry, and when they're angry they ... they lash out. They want to hurt someone.

"If Europeans could do the things they did to Native Americans, could kidnap and enslave people from Africa; if the Nazis could do what they did to the Jews and Saddam Hussein could do what he did to the Kurds, how might someone react to news that people from another planet lived here, that we can do the things we can? If you were Japanese, how would you react upon learning that one of us was on the plane that dropped the Bomb?"

Both men looked at her in horror. "That's - Is that true?" Paul asked.

She nodded solemnly. "He didn't use his Gift, nor any of the Designs and Persuasions, in the actual dropping of the Bomb - and still the Darkness overtook him. It took Karen and Valancy years to lead him back to us."

"Is he okay?" Paul asked in a hushed voice. As a soldier himself, he had occasionally wondered about the mental reactions of those men after their mission had resulted in the deaths of so many civilians. He had had his own bout with Darkness after killing a woman he had presumed to be an enemy, but who had turned out to have been a hostage. To have the closeness the People had to God, their sensitivity to others, and then to be a part of that which had killed so many...

Randie nodded again. "He was Called last spring."

"This is okay?" Harrison asked. "I thought Called meant dead."

"Which is better?" Randie asked. "To have your father call you home, or to have a bully beat you until you go home without being called? That's the difference. And he was okay before then, anyway. We're very fortunate to have two Sorters in our Group."

"So what happened to the People on the ship?" Paul asked. "We know that they came here, but-"

Randie looked from one to the other and took their hands in hers to show them another memory.

**********

Mother's face was drawn. She was tired, nearing exhaustion. We all were. After so many weeks of searching for a new Home, we knew, finally, that it would be here, or nowhere. We could not make it to another star system. And this unremarkable yellow dwarf star didn't look at all promising. Its outermost world was a tiny ball of ice with a moon nearly as large as itself, the two worlds doing an intricate dance around each other as they revolved around their distant parent. The next four planets were gas giants, one with a glorious set of rings. Some of their moons might have proved livable if they were closer to their sun, or if we had had a place to live while we adapted them to our needs, but as they were we would have died before we had a chance to adapt them enough that we could survive there.

Next was a ring of rubble orbiting the star. It tore at our hearts to see the planet that had died there, so like The Home must now be. Were its former inhabitants out searching for a new Home somewhere among the stars? Or had they been allowed to stay and take their Calling with their Home?

There was a wide gap between the rubble and the next planet. Father said that the Old Ones considered there should be another planet in this space, but that perhaps it might be at the far side of its orbit. We looked inward toward the sun. We hoped that one of the remaining planets could be our new Home.

But when we skimmed the surface of the next world's moon, we were afraid it would be our new Home. Nothing but black rock, gray rock, and white dust from horizon to horizon...

And then the world this moon orbited came into view over the horizon ... blue with oceans, white with clouds, brown with soil, and green with life! We cried for joy at its beauty and praised the Power that brought us to this jewel, this haven, floating in the inky cold blackness of space.

Despite our joy the Old Ones were worried, and although all of the adults knew it, they tried to keep it from the children. We teeners knew, but we tried to keep the adults from finding out that we knew, and we joined with them in trying to keep the disturbing news from the younger ones. My sister Eve played with the only doll she had been allowed to bring and watched everyone else with huge dark eyes. Our brother Simon spent a lot of time with her. I think, somehow, he knew what was coming.

The Old Ones didn't know how to land the ship.

They spent hours in the control room, making observations of the world we hoped would be our new Home, calculating speed and distance, and making adjustments to our course. Finally there was no more time and we started down into the gravity well of the planet the Power had sent us to.

The Old Ones knew right away that they had made an error. We were going down too fast, and even the combined Lifting of all the Old Ones and everyone else aboard would not be enough to make a safe landing. We were instructed to get into our life slips and leave the ship.

By the time our turns came, the outer skin of the ship was on fire. Davy and I managed to follow Mother and Father in our life slips, but Simon - Simon was Called in the sky of our new Home, and Eve... I don't know where Eve is, if she was Called or if she managed to bring her life slip to a safe landing somewhere too far away for us to be able to sense her. And Timmy... I cling to the hope that my Love is here somewhere. If the Power wills it, we may see each other again one day.

I helped to set up a camp and build a fire as best I could. Father was desperately injured; I think he was helping Davy and lost control of his own life slip, though of course I would never say anything. Davy was so miserable there would be no teasing to it, only meanness. Mother was sick and exhausted already; guiding her life slip down was almost more than she could do. Dorcas - she was a neighbor of ours, back on The Home - her body was so broken and burned that we all knew she would surely be Called soon. For the time being, all we could do was to try to make them comfortable. I wished I were a Sorter or a Sensitive so that I could help more.

We all felt an unease that was more than the strangeness of this new world.

We slept that night under unfamiliar stars.

When dawn came the uneasiness was gone, and we set about finding water, finding food, and building our new home. Father's body was hurt, but he could still inanimate Lift, and Davy and I looked for rocks he could use for the walls of the house that would protect us from the weather. Slowly, however, throughout the day the sense of uneasiness gradually returned.

"It's some kind of an animal," Father said. "I don't think it's dangerous; it's afraid of us."

"But David," Mother protested, "there's more than one. It's almost like they're gathering out there."

"If they're afraid of us," Father said, "they're not likely to attack, no matter how many there are. Animals don't reason that way, 'Chell."

Father was an Old One; we all trusted his judgement. But even Old Ones don't know everything, especially about a new world.

**********

Our second dawn on this new world. I was beginning to enjoy the strange sounds of the birds of this world; they sang songs of greeting to the day every morning that were nearly like our own songs of praise to the Power. We held Festival and sang and Remembered those that had been Called in the previous year, Eva-Lee and Simon. We didn't know who else, and so we Remembered each of our companions on the ship and prayed that they were well and happy, wherever they were. We passed the day in song and praise, and tentatively tried some berries Davy had seen a bird eating.

The next morning they took us before we could waken.

They were men - They were sort of men, in shape anyhow. But they shouted at us and at each other, and none of us could touch their minds. They almost seemed to have no minds, or - no, they had a group mind, and it was bent on doing us harm. They caught us as we Lifted in fear. They bound our hands and feet and threw us into the transports drawn by beasts of some kind, though in truth the animals were less beasts than the men.

I thought Dorcas had fainted, but after a moment I heard her talking subvocally. She meant her words for Father, but her pain had weakened her control. David, why can't we touch their minds?

Father must have thought we all needed to know his reply. They may not be able to touch the Power as we can. They may not be able to feel the Presence. They're afraid. We must not do anything to frighten them further, or they will hurt us.

I'm scared, I said.

Me too, Davy admitted.

Trust in the Power, Father told us. All will be well. We found a new Home, didn't we?

If the Power willed it we would live, and if not we would be Called back into the Presence. It was hard not to be afraid, but we tried.

The creatures that looked like men took us in their wheeled vehicle over several low hills to a small group of buildings. We looked at one another in hope. Were these creatures bringing us to a place to live? Were they giving us a precious gift even in the face of their fear?

As they took us into one of the buildings, I looked up into the face of the one who carried me and - it just happened. I went in to him. I knew his mind, the terror, the uncertainty. And I knew his name: Caleb Derwent, God have mercy. Adonday veeah! I told Father. He is afraid of going back into the Presence!

How is that possible? Mother asked as her captor put her down in a pile of dried plants. She looked up at him and smiled in gratitude for this new house, even though it smelled of animals. It would keep us dry and warm, and it could be cleaned.

I looked up at Caleb Derwent, God have mercy, as he put me in the pile of dried plants beside her. Despite Father's reassurance and Mother's confidence in these new friends, I knew they did not mean us to live in this building.

As the men left, I struggled free of my bonds and went to untie the others. The twistings they had put in the ropes were unfamiliar. I had no idea how to untie their knots. I wondered why Caleb Derwent, God have mercy, had not twisted the ropes around my wrists and ankles the same way. I was still struggling with them when the door opened again and the men threw burning sticks into the building. Before we could react the dry plants whooshed up in bright flames that licked up the walls to the roof.

We were terrified. It was one thing to be Called back into the Presence, but to be burned to death?

Frantically, I tried and tried to untie the others, even though first Dorcas, then Father announced that they had been Called. Mother sobbed in terror and joy at her Calling, then even Davy looked up at me through the smoke and flames with tears of joy replacing the fear in his eyes.

You are not Called, Lytha, Father said sternly. Get out before you are burned.

"But Father!" I sobbed. "Father, Mother, I can't leave you here! Don't leave me alone!" I pleaded.

"Go!" Father thundered. I had never heard him give an order like that. He was frightened, not for himself, but for me. "Get out! Now!"

The burning roof caved in on top of us.

I don't remember making the decision to obey Father. I only remember Lifting out of the burning building past Caleb Derwent, God have mercy, and the Others. I Lifted far and fast, the wind first feeding then blowing out the fire in my hair and clothes. When I regained control of my fear, I turned back. I had to find my family; perhaps they could still be helped. Subvocally I called and called to them, but there was no answer. Carefully I Lifted back to the place where they had tried to kill us.

The building where my family had died smoked in lonely isolation. I knelt beside the ruin for a few minutes to say the Parting Prayers, asking them to meet me if they could when I was Called. I didn't think it would be long. When it got dark, I went to the other building and went inside.

There was no furniture, but there was a kind of a loft, high up near the rafters. I Lifted up there and tried to find a way to stay warm. I don't know how long I cried before I fell asleep.

I woke suddenly with the knowledge that there were more of the Others near. I looked carefully over the edge of the loft - and she was there, looking back up at me! In terror, I fainted.

When I woke, I was clean and my head felt wet. The woman was holding me gently, but speaking to a man who stood nearby. She smiled down at me and held out her hand to the man. He put a cup in her hand, and she held it to my lips. I was afraid of what it might be, but the smell of water was too strong to resist, and I gulped it down. She spoke again and hugged me. I didn't want to be hugged by one of the creatures that had killed my family. I couldn't escape, I knew that, but I didn't have to enjoy the contact.

She ran her hand over my head, and I realized they had cut my hair. The woman spoke again, gently, until she seemed suddenly to run out of words, and I knew she was avoiding referring to the fire. I sat up and looked around, trying to orient myself, until I saw a puff of smoke. The woman tried to prevent me seeing, but I caught hold of her arm and pulled myself up to be able to see past her.

The man spoke, then picked me up and carried me over to the fenced pen. He let me look for a long time before he decided I had seen enough and took me back to where the woman waited. She had spread a brightly pieced quilt out on the ground, and he put me down upon it. I lay still, mourning for my lost ones, while the strangers busied themselves around me.

After a time, the woman tried to rouse me, but I couldn't forgive these people for what had happened. I turned away. She put something in my hand and put my hand close to my mouth. They went a little way away and ate. The thing in my hand smelled like food, and I was so hungry! I hunched over it and took a bite, chewing cautiously. With an effort, I managed to swallow, then stuffed the rest of whatever it was into my mouth, tears of gratitude flowing down my cheeks. When I had finished the treat, the woman brought me another cup, this time full of a white liquid. She lifted my shoulders and held me as I drained it, then took the empty cup and helped me to lie down again. I managed to catch her wrist under my cheek.

As I lay listening to their quiet murmurs, I thought about what learned from that brief contact. This woman and her husband were angry and horrified at what had been done to us, but they didn't know why it had been done, or who had done it.

The man had buried my family's cast-asides, and after cleaning up from their meal, he carried me over to the single mound. I lay on the quilt and watched as they knelt and bowed their heads. Did they know of the Presence and the Power? They behaved as if they did. When they turned away, I held out a flower I had found, and the woman put it gently on the mound. Then the man picked me up and carried me to their wheeled vehicle. They connected the vehicle to their animals, and took me away with them.

That night they spread pallets on the ground under the stars. The woman brought me more of the soft sweet food and white liquid, which she had gotten from one of the animals, the one that was tied to the back of the vehicle. I was too hungry to object to such a disgusting food; I had already drunk some, and I knew it tasted good. I ate and drank eagerly, then fell asleep. I woke once, and sat up to scan the starry sky for any sign of other survivors of the Landing, but there was nothing. I sighed and lay back down to sleep.

Early the next morning we reached a place with water, and they stopped to fill the barrels they carried. The man and woman talked in their strange language; they seemed disturbed. They took a book from the vehicle, a book they handled with great reverence, and read something in it that distressed them.

By mid-day we were at the top of a high trail through some mountains, and I was getting desperate. The pressure inside my body had built to the point that I had to do something or I was going to have a very embarrassing accident. I slid from the vehicle where they had made a bed for me, wincing at the pain when my bare feet hit the gravelly ground.

The woman was getting food from a box on the side of the vehicle, and she smiled at me. She started talking to me as if she expected me to understand, then stopped, seeming to realize I didn't. She took a fold of the strange garment I had been wearing when I woke up and said a single word. "Gown."

I looked at the garment, then at her, but said nothing.

She put some of the sweet soft food into my hands and said, "Bread."

I put it carefully on the plate with the rest of what she was preparing for our meal, glanced around, then turned and hurried into the underbrush, holding the length of the gown high to keep the hem from trailing on the ground. The woman shouted to her husband in a panic that I would be out of her sight for even a moment, but he laughed while making his reply, and she ceased to sound worried. I could hear them talking while I relieved myself, but I had become so accustomed to their voices that I was able to become entranced with a stem of flowers I found. I picked one stem of the red funnel-shaped flowers, and was examining them as I returned to the people who had taken me into their care. I was not aware that I was Lifting until I looked up and saw the expressions on their faces.

The resurgence of terror crumpled me helplessly to the ground until the woman ran to me and tried to pick me up. I knew that I had made a mistake. I had used the Power, and now they were going to hurt me, even these people who had been so kind. I fought her, and the man came to help. I struggled against him, too, but he finally pinned both my arms against my body, speaking urgently to the woman, who stroked my face and spoke urgently yet gently, wiping my sweat- and tear-stained face with the corner of one of her garments. She tried to smile, and continued murmuring to me. Her words made no sense to me, but her tone told me that these people would not hurt me for forgetting that they couldn't use the Power as the People always had. Finally I relaxed, exhausted against the man who held me, and the woman gathered me close and comforted me.

She led me to the spring and demonstrated that I should wash my face and hands, then was surprised when I sat on a rock and slipped my sore feet into the cool water. She went back to the vehicle and returned with a pair of soft shoes that were too big for me, then turned up the hem of the gown and pinned it.

I ate with them for the first time, watching them to see how to handle the food, then tasting it cautiously. Afterward I helped the woman clean up and wash the dishes, all things that were done entirely differently than on The Home.

There were people at the next place we stopped. When I followed the woman to the spring for water, a small girl spoke to her. Something that was said upset the child, and she ran away. Halfway up the slope she was met by a grim-faced woman who hit the child unmercifully with a stick of some kind. I could not believe what I was seeing. I think I was in shock. I slept fitfully that night, and was glad when we packed up and left almost before dawn the next morning.

We hadn't been on the road long when Caleb Derwent, God have mercy, came after us, riding on one of the same sort of animals that drew the vehicle. He and my new family had a frantic discussion, and I think my real family and I were a large part of it. Caleb Derwent, God have mercy, needed a Sorter to help him, and once again I was sorry that I didn't know more of the function of those Gifts. He rode away again, and the man and woman talked a little more. I was astonished to discover that I was beginning to understand what they said. The woman turned to look at me, and I repeated the phrase I had understood, "Through the air!"

She cried out excitedly, but all I could do was to use one of the other words I had learned. "Gown," I said, fingering the collar of the strange garment she had given me.

I caught her thought; she wanted bread out of the box, and I rummaged among the boxes piled around my travelling bed until I found it. "Bread," I said, sending the bread floating through the air to her. "Bread!"

That night while the man was caring for the animals, the woman got out some of her clothes for me. They were too big, but with the help of their strange fastenings and four pins, we made them work. The man grinned when he saw me, and made a comment about my hair. I had always liked my hair long, and I was sorry it had been cut. I lifted one of the woman's braids and looked at her. "Hair," she said.

"Hair," I repeated, then straightened a lock of hair from my own head. "Curl."

**********

Not many days later, we arrived at a small Group settlement. I was afraid, and tried to disappear on the bench seat of the wagon between my foster parents. The woman washed the gown and put me to bed as soon as there was a place in our new house to make my bed, and I lay there almost debilitated by my fear, barely aware of what was going on around me. One day, the woman came to my bed and spoke to me intently, calling me Marnie, as she had almost from the first. I didn't understand, but caught her hand as she started to turn away, intent on learning what she had wanted to tell me. After a moment, I was able to recite carefully, "Aunt Gail, I have been sick. My hair is gone. I want bread!" She hugged me in delight.

I slowly learned to speak their language, to do things their way, but I found children much easier to deal with than teeners or adults. Small children didn't demand so much vocabulary from me, nor wonder at words they didn't hear with their ears. One day Aunt Gail caught me talking subvocally to Tessie Wardlow, and she explained to me why I must always speak, that it was because they didn't understand that the angry ones killed us.

Then I started school, made new friends and started ganging with Kenny and Loolie. I learned a lot from them, both words and ways. I startled them a couple of times by doing things they thought were impossible, and they reacted with anger and withdrawal. I had to wait some time each time before being accepted back into their company. I didn't forget often.

Some months later I began to feel again that strange uneasiness that we had felt before the angry ones came. There was something out there, something frightened and evil. I didn't know what it was. Aunt Gail feared I was falling ill until I told her about the animal outside, an animal that walked upright and sobbed, "God have mercy!"

The next day, Uncle Nils casually announced at dinner, "Guess who I was today? They say he's been around a week or so. Our friend of the double mind."

"Double mind?" Aunt Gail repeated uncomprehendingly.

"Yes. To burn or not to burn, that is the question."

"Oh! You mean the man at Grafton's Vow. What was his name, anyway?"

"He never said, did he?" Uncle Nils paused with his fork in mid-air as he realized.

"Derwent," I told them. "Caleb Derwent, God have mercy." I explained to them that I had taken his name from his mind to remember him with gratitude. Then I realized, "That's it! That's the frightened evil that walks around the house at night and passes by during the day! But he saved me from the fire! Why does he come now?" I asked to be excused from the table, unable to eat when I thought of someone repenting of good.

A few days later I was out at the East Shaft of the mine. Some of my Befores were Identifiers, and I had felt a pretty piece of chrysocolla down in the shaft; I wanted to get it for Aunt Gail's collection. I climbed through the fence, even though it was off limits to me as much as to the other children of Margin, and I was checking to see how far down in the shaft it was, when I looked up, and he was there!

He said, "Evil must die. I can't go back because you're not dead. I let you out of a little fire in this life, so I'll burn forever. 'He who endures to the end -'" Then he pushed me into the shaft.

Of course, I didn't fall, I just Lifted to the other side of the shaft, but he had pushed me so hard that he fell into the shaft! I caught him before he fell all the way to the bottom, but I had to do it our way, and then he was just stuck there, and I didn't know how to get him up. If I let him go, he would fall to his death, and if I left him there he would just bob up and down and up and - I couldn't leave him there! I ran home, forgetting to use the back steps, and poured out the story to Aunt Gail. Uncle Nils came in at the tail end of my explanation and went to the shed to get a rope, then we all went back to the mineshaft. We climbed through the fence and edged up to the shaft. Uncle Nils threw one end of his rope into the abandoned mine.

It was clear that Caleb Derwent needed a Sorter even more desperately than before. He thought Uncle Nils was God. Finally Uncle Nils suggested that I go down and tie the rope around him. I was eager to help after having made such a mess, but Derwent fainted when he saw me. I tied the rope, and Uncle Nils pulled him up while I kept him from falling.

Even when we got him out of the shaft and straightened out on the ground, he still wasn't fastened to the Earth with all the fastenings; I had loosened some of them to stop his fall, and I needed a source of light to fasten them back. It seemed forever and yet too short a time before the moon rose. Platting with moonlight is an adult activity. I desperately hoped I could handle it.

I cupped my hands and lifted them to catch a double-handful of moonlight. It flowed and wound across my palms and between my fingers, flickering alive and beautiful. I wove the living light into a Design that moved and changed and grew until it came to my elbows. It was too big, too powerful! I didn't know enough to be able to control it! I flicked it at Derwent...and caused an earthquake that caved in the mineshaft.

Derwent went away, and with the mine where Uncle Nils worked gone, so did everyone else. It didn't take long for the town to die.

I was horrified at what I had done, and all in the space of a year since Aunt Gail and Uncle Nils had found me, the morning after my family died. Aunt Gail found me crying one night, and thought I was crying for the mine. I explained to her about Festival, about my fear that I was the only one of my People left alive, the only one, anywhere, that Timmy -

She told me we would start packing the next morning to leave, that Uncle Nils thought he could find another job near the Valley.

I didn't want to go. It was my fault the mine was gone. My Befores were Identifiers; I would find another mine. I left a note, and I went.

Two days later, I returned. They had been worried, and each in turn hugged the breath out of me, then I told them about what I had found, not certain they would want it. I had taken with me a penny for copper, Aunt Gail's locket for gold, and a dollar for silver. By feeling them I could find other metals like them. The new place I had found had not so much copper as the old mine, and a little more gold, but, I apologized, "Mostly there is only silver. Much, much more than copper. Maybe if I looked farther -"

"But Marnie," Aunt Gail cried, "silver is better!"

**********

I don't exactly understand how it happened, but this mine belongs to Uncle Nils. It didn't take long for the town to grow again, not with a productive mine and a flat that was ideal for straight, wide streets. We had hills and trees and since the earthquake there was even a running stream. I watch with Aunt Gail and Uncle Nils the wonder of the growing, expanding town, and I help all I can at home, since Aunt Gail is going to have a baby soon. And I think about Timmy and wonder if he is still This Side or waiting for me Otherside. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the Power wills it, we will yet have children of our own.