"The rifle must now be cleaned," Chloe said, gesturing Michael to that task as she bent to examine Rayda.

Dorcas was already beside the woman, sponging away blood. "Nothing deep. Nothing to swoon over," said Dorcas.

"She's had a terrible shock," murmured Malenda.

Dorcas made one of her noncommittal sounds.

"Thee surely sustained the same shock, I think," Chloe remarked dryly as she began to smooth comfrey paste into the scratches. Blood drops formed on the deeper punctures but most of the gore was due to shallow scratches where Rayda had scrambled through briars and up the tree.

"The bear didn't come straight at me," Malenda said in Rayda's defense.

"Did thee manage to pick any berries before this tragic occurrence?"

"Yes, we did," and then Malenda faltered, looking warily at Chloe.

"Then thee may return to that labor and be sure to return also with Rayda's pail as well. Full, if at all possible. There are several more hours of daylight."

"Oh, you're impossible, Chloe!"

"If I truly were, then all this," and Chloe's sweeping gesture included the cave, its shelter and supplies, "would have been unavailable in Rayda's hour of crisis." Rayda groaned. "It will take Fensu and Destry time to dress the bear carcass. You will have their company in the berry patch. Gooseberries will go well with bear stew. Away with thee now!"

In fact, the gooseberries and johnnycake were the better parts of the evening meal. The bear had broken its winter's fast on a diet of fish, and its stringy meat was so tainted by that flavor that even Dorcas's fine hand with seasoning could not disguise the taste. Rayda, her hands bandaged and her legs smeared with comfrey paste, moaned from her sleeping bag that she couldn't possibly eat the flesh of the beast that had nearly killed her. A solicitous Malenda fed her pieces of the johnnycake and ripe berries. Fensu was the only one who had eaten heartily of the stew, smacking his lips with a courtesy that Chloe would have preferred he did not practice. When the men set to scraping the bear hide, Chloe settled herself on her stool outside the cave with the latest patch-work. Sewing did much to tranquilize her after the day's frustrations. Nor did she relish sitting inside on such a bright evening, particularly if she had to listen to Rayda's moans and Malenda's compassionate chirpings.

The current quilt Chloe was working in the Flock of Geese pattern, its patches cut from garments of former occupants of the cave. She had noticed over the years that blues, grays, and browns were the predominant shades of the rural past, while the vivid lighter primaries and curious virulent pastels seemed rampant in most city-futures. Chloe began a new square; the last of Issaro's red tunic triangles and Douglas's plaid patterned shirt were offset by Fanel's gray shirt. The gray was the finer material, to be sure, but of a similar weight to Douglas's and Issaro's. She did have to take care to match textures. She would have preferred good stout linsey-woolsey or calicoes, for the artificial fabrics of the futures puckered and stretched, thus ruining the look of the finished quilt. Still, one had to make do with whatever was to hand. No one complained about the look of the patchworks when they warmed a body during the intense and bitter cold of time storms.

They had been so lucky these past five shifts, like the goose triangles, all headed in the same direction - spring. The gray intervals had alternated between intense heat and dreadful cold.

Chloe set the final stitch into the square, but now she stopped, looking intently at the pattern, remembering with a sudden clarity the people whose discarded garments had been set to this new purpose. And she discerned an astonishing order in that purpose. There was, in truth, a pattern to the time shifts that had nothing to do with the varying intervals of storm and lull: it had to do with having been at each point, of remembering when it had been in past or future. She didn't need Issaro's calculations: all she had ever needed was her own recollections, placed in an orderly fashion, like the patchwork pieces, to see the pattern of shifts.

Suppressing her internal excitement, Chloe began to sort through the completed squares, identifying the fabrics, the people who had worn them, the cultures that had produced them. Time was like an enormous circular well. The planet Earth was a plumb weight suspended from a long cord, jerked up and down the well, hitting first one side of the well and then another, jounced up and down by the irresponsible hand that had initiated the time fracture. She was mixing her similes and metaphors but she knew what she meant. And she knew where she was.

First light tomorrow, she could in all conscience send Michael, Destry, and Fensu on a trip down the south river. They would find, she was now certain, a small but not primitive settlement where the south river joined the mightier torrent that flowed southeast to the sea. She would give Michael sufficient ammunition to reassure him. He'd never know. In this time there were few animals left: that poor specimen of a bear proved that to her. There would, however, be those skilled in medical treatments and she could, in conscience, dispatch Rayda to them, once Michael and Destry had returned. She rather thought that Fensu would find this time to his liking and disappear. Savage the man was, but not without cunning and perception. Malenda would go with Rayda. That would seem eminently logical and not the least bit unnatural in Chloe. Michael and Destry could stay on if they behaved but she could forgo their company. Edward might stay on another shift or two. Physically he had limited usefulness but his mind was sharp and she had not yet learned all the wisdom he had spent so much time storing in his head. Dorcas could abide. The babe would not be born for another four months. Chloe smoothed the next patch with careful fingers. The next time shift would bring them closer to Dorcas's original time. The woman would be more content there and undoubtedly find another husband.

Well pleased with those dispositions, Chloe sorted through the patches in her basket, for colors that would combine well in the next Flock of Geese square!

The Greatest Love

written in 1956

"You certainly don't live up to your name, Dr. Craft," Louise Baxter said, acidly emphasizing my name. "I trust your degree is from a legitimate medical college. Or was it the mail-order variety?"

I didn't dignify the taunt with a reply. Being a young woman, I held my Cornell Medical School diploma too valuable to debase it in argument with a psychotic.

She continued in the sweetly acerbic voice that must have made her subordinates cringe. "In the fashion industry, you quickly learn how to tell the 'looker' from the 'putter.' It's very easy to classify your sort." I refrained from saying that her sort - Cold Calculating Female posing as Concerned Mother - was just as easy for me to classify. Her motive for this interview with her daughter's obstetrician was not only specious but despicable. Her opening remark of surprise that I was a woman had set the tone of insults for the past fifteen minutes. "I have told you the exact truth, Mrs. Baxter. The pregnancy is proceeding normally and satisfactorily. You may interpret the facts any way you see fit." I was hoping to wind up this distasteful interview quickly. "In another five months, the truth will out."

Her exclamation of disgust at my pun was no more than I'd expected. "And you have the gall to set yourself up against the best gynecologists of Harkness Pavilion?"

"It's not difficult to keep abreast of improved techniques in uterine surgery," I said calmly.

"Ha! Quack!"

I suppressed my own anger at her insult by observing that her anger brought out all the age-lines in her face despite her artful makeup.

"I checked with Harkness before I came here," she said, trying to overwhelm me with her research. "There are no new techniques which could correct a bicornuate womb!"

"So?"

"So, don't try to con me, you charlatan," and the elegant accent faltered into a flat midwestem twang. "My daughter can't carry to term. And you know it!"

"I'll remind you of that in another five months, Mrs. Baxter." I rose to indicate that the interview was at an end.

"Ach! You women's libbers are all alike! Setting yourselves up above the best men in the country on every count!"

Although I'm not an ardent feminist, such egregious remarks are likely to change my mind, particularly when thrown in without relevance and more for spite than for sense.

"I fail to see what Women's Liberation has to do with your daughter, who is so obviously anxious to fulfill woman's basic role."

The angry color now suffused Louise Baxter's well-preserved face down to the collar of her ultrasmart man-tailored suit. She rose majestically to her feet.

"I'll have you indicted for malpractice, you quack!" She had control of her voice again and deliberately packed all the psychotic venom she could into her threats. "I'll sue you within an inch of your life if Cecily's sanity is threatened by your callous stupidity."

At that point the door opened to admit Esther, my office nurse, in her most aggressive attitude.

"If Mrs. Baxter is quite finished. Doctor," she said, stressing the title just enough to irritate the woman further, "your next patient is waiting."

"Of all the-"

"This way, Mrs. Baxter," Esther said firmly as she shepherded the angry woman toward the door.

Mrs. Baxter stalked out, slamming the street door so hard I winced, waiting for the glass to come shattering down.

"How did that virago ever produce a sweet girl like Cecily?" I mused.

"I assume that Cecily was conceived in the normal manner," said Esther.

I sat down wearily. I'd been going since four-thirty A.M. and I didn't need a distasteful interview with Baxter's sort at five P.M. "And I assume that you heard everything on the intercom?"

"For some parts, I didn't need amplification," said my faithful office nurse at her drollest. "Since this affair started, I don't dare leave the intercom hook up. Someone's got to keep your best interests at heart."

I smiled at her ruefully. "It'll be worth it -"

"You keep telling yourself -"

"- to see that girl get a baby."

"Not to mention the kudos accruing to one Dr. Allison S. Craft, OB-GYN?"

I gave her a quelling look, which she blithely ignored. "Well," I said, somewhat deflated, "there must be something more to life than babies who insist on predawn entrances."

"Have a few yourself, then," Esther suggested with a snort, then flipped my coat off the hook and gestured for me to take off the office whites. "I'm closing up and I'm turning you out, Doctor."

I went.

I had a lonely restaurant supper, though Elsie, who ran the place, tried to cheer me up. Once I got home, I couldn't settle down. I wanted someone to talk to. All right, someone to gripe to. Sometimes, like now, I regretted my bachelor-girl status. Even if I had had a man in mind, I really couldn't see much family life, the kind I wanted to enjoy, until I had a large enough practice to bring in an associate. On a twenty-four-hour off-and-on schedule that such an arrangement provided, I could hardly see marriage. Not now. Especially not now.

I poured myself a drink for its medicinal value and sat on my back porch in the late spring twilight.

So - Louise Baxter would sue me if her daughter miscarried. I wondered if she'd sue me if her daughter didn't. I'd bet a thousand bucks, and my already jeopardized professional standing, that the impeccable, youthful-looking Louise Baxter was shriveling from the mere thought of being made a "grandmother." Maybe it would affect her business reputation - or crack the secret of her actual age. Could she be fighting retirement? I laughed to myself at the whimsy. Cecily Baxter Kellogg was twenty-seven, and no way was Louise Baxter in her sixties.

However, I had told Mrs. Baxter the truth, the exact truth: the pregnancy was well started, and the condition of the mother was excellent, and everything pointed to a full-term, living child.

But I hadn't told the whole truth, for Cecily Baxter Kellogg was not carrying her own child. Another medical "impossibility" trembled on the brink of the possible. A man may have no greater love than to lay down his life for a friend, but it's a far, far greater love that causes one woman to carry another's baby: a baby with whom she has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common, except nine months of intimacy. I amended that: this baby would have a relationship, for its proxy mother was its paternal aunt.

The memory of the extraordinary beginning of this great experiment was as vivid to me as the afternoon's interview with Mrs. Baxter. And far more heartwarming.

It was almost a year ago to this day that my appointment schedule had indicated a 2:30 patient named Miss Patricia Kellogg. Esther had underscored the "Miss" with red and also the abbreviation "p.n." for prenatal. I was known to be sympathetic to unwed mothers and had performed a great many abortions - legally, too.

There was nothing abashed about Patricia Kellogg as she walked confidently into my office, carrying a briefcase.

"I'd better explain. Dr. Craft, that I am not yet pregnant. I want to be."

"Then you need a premarital examination for conception?"

"I'm not contemplating marriage."

"That... ah... used to be the usual prelude to pregnancy."

She smiled and then casually said, "Actually, I wish to have my brother's child."

"That sort of thing is frowned on by the Bible, you know." I replied with, I thought, great equanimity. "Besides presenting rather drastic genetic risks. I'd suggest you consult a psychologist, not an obstetrician."

Again that smile, tinged with mischief now. "I wish to have the child of my brother and his wife!"

"Ah, that hasn't been done." She patted the briefcase. "On a human,"

"Oh, I assume you've read up on those experiments with sheep and cows. They're all very well, Miss Kellogg, but obstetrically it's not the same thing. The difficulties involved..."

"As nearly as I can ascertain, the real difficulty involved is doing it."

I rose to sit on the edge of the desk. Miss Kellogg was exactly my height seated, and I needed the difference in levels. Scarcely an unattractive woman, Patricia Kellogg would be classified by men as "wholesome," "girl-next-door," rather than the sexy bird their dreams featured. She was also not at all the type to make the preposterous statements and request she had. Recently, however, I had come to appreciate that the most unlikely women would stand up and vigorously demand their civil and human rights.

Miss Kellogg was one to keep you off balance, for as she began doling out the contents of her briefcase, she explained that her sister-in-law had a bicornuate uterus. During my internship in Cornell Medical, I had encountered such a condition. The uterus develops imperfectly, with fertile ovaries but double Fallopian tubes. The victim conceives easily enough but usually aborts within six weeks. A full-term pregnancy would be a miracle. I glanced through the clinical reports from prominent New York and Michigan hospitals, bearing out Miss Kellogg's statements and detailing five separate spontaneous abortions.

"The last time, Cecily carried to three months before aborting," Pat Kellogg said. "She nearly lost her mind with grief.

"You see, she was an only child. All her girlhood she'd dreamed of having a large family. Her mother is a very successful businesswoman, and I'd say that Cecily was a mistake as far as Louise Baxter is concerned. I remember how radiantly happy Cecily and Peter, my brother, were when she started her first pregnancy six years ago. And how undaunted she was after the first miss. You've no idea how she's suffered since. I'm sorry; maybe you do, being a woman."

I nodded, but it was obvious to me, from the intensity of her expression, that she had empathized deeply with the sister-in-law's disappointments.

"To have a child has become an obsession with her."

"Why not adoption?"

"My brother was blinded in the Vietnam War."

"Yes, I see." Now that abortions were legal, there were fewer babies to be adopted, and consequently the handicapped parent was a very poor second choice.

"Children mean a lot to Peter, too. There were just two of us: our mother died at our births. Peter and I are twins, you see. But Cecily has magnified her inability all out of proportion, especially because of Peter's blindness. She feels that..."

"I do understand the situation," I said sympathetically as she faltered for adequate words.

"Since I got this idea," she went on more briskly, "I've been keeping very careful charts on my temperature and menstrual cycle," and she thrust sheets at me. "I've got Cecily's for the past six years. I stole them. She's always kept them up to date." She gave me an unrepentant grin. "We're just two days apart."

I smiled at that. "If matching estrous cycles were the only problem involved..."

"I know there're many, many problems, but there is so much at stake. Really, Dr. Craft, I fear for Cecily's sanity. Oh, no, I haven't breathed a word of this to Peter or Cece..."

"I should hope not. I'm even wondering why you're mentioning it to me."

"Chuck Henderson said you'd be interested." No name was less expected.

"Where did you meet Dr. Henderson?" I asked, with far more calm than I felt.

"I've been following the medical journals, and I read an article he wrote on research to correct immature uteruses... uteri?... and new methods to correct certain tendencies to abort."

I'd read the same article, written with Chuck's usual meticulous care, complete with diagrams and graphic photos of uterine operations. Not the usual reading matter for a young woman.

"Well, then, why come to me?"

"Dr. Henderson said that he hadn't done any research on implantation, but he knew someone who was interested in exogenesis and who lived right in my own town. He said there was no reason for me to traipse all the way to New York to find the brave soul I needed, and he told me to ask you how the cats were doing." She looked inquiringly at me.

The name, the question, brought back memories I had been blocking for nine years: memories (I tried to convince myself again) which were the usual sophomoric enthusiasms and dreams of changing mediocre worlds into better ones with the expert flip of a miracle scalpel.

Chuck Henderson had helped me catch the cats I had used for my early attempts at exogenesis. Cats were easy to acquire in Ithaca and a lot easier to explain to an apartment superintendent than cows or sheep. I had had, I thought, good success in my early experiments, but the outcome was thwarted by some antivivisectionists who were convinced that I was using the cats for cruel, devious pranks, and the two females that I thought I had impregnated disappeared forever beyond my control. Chuck had been a real pal throughout the stages of my doomed research, all the while caustically reminding me that good old-fashioned methods of impregnation did not arouse vivisectionists. "He said some pretty glowing things about you. Dr. Craft, and by the time he finished talking, I knew you were the one person who would help me."

"I'm obliged to him."

"You should be," she replied with equal dryness. "He has the highest opinion of you as a physician and as... as a person."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," I said evasively and turned toward the window, aware of a variety of conflicting emotions.

"Will you at least examine our medical records?" she asked softly after respecting my silence for a long moment. "I beg you to believe my sincerity when I say that I will do anything... painful, tedious, disagreeable... anything to provide my brother and sister-in-law with a child of their own flesh and blood."