27 Short Stories - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,13

just the Indios of the jungle, waking up one morning with their joints stiffening, hardening until no movement was possible. Benaxidene was the antidote, but you had to have it every few months or your joints would stiffen up again. As usual, the bureaucrats had diverted a shipment and there were a dozen Baniwas bedridden in the village. As usual, one or two of the Indians would be too far gone for the cure; one or two of their joints would be stiff for the rest of their lives. As usual, Anamari said little as she gave the injections, and the Baniwas said less to her.

It was not until the next day that Anamari had time to notice the young Yanqui boy wandering around the village. He was wearing rumpled white clothing, already somewhat soiled with the greens and browns of life along the rivers of the Amazon jungle. He showed no sign of being interested in anything, but an hour into her rounds, checking on the results of yesterday's benaxidene treatments, she became aware that he was following her.

She turned around in the doorway of the government-built hovel and faced him. "O que e'?" she demanded. What do you want?

To her surprise, he answered in halting Portuguese. Most of these Yanquis never bothered to learn the language at all, expecting her and everybody else to speak English. "Posso ajudar?" he asked. Can I help?

"Nao," she said. "Mas pode olhar." You can watch.

He looked at her in bafflement.

She repeated her sentence slowly, enunciating clearly. "Pode olhar." "Eu?" Me? "Voce, sim. And I can speak English." "I don't want to speak English." "Tanto faz," she said. Makes no difference. He followed her into the hut. It was a little girl, lying naked in her own feces. She had palsy

from a bout with meningitis years ago, when she was an infant, and Anamari figured that the girl would probably be one of the ones for whom the benaxidene came too late. That's how things usually worked-the weak suffer most. But no, her joints were flexing again, and the girl smiled at them, that heartbreakingly happy smile that made palsy victims so beautiful at times.

So. Some luck after all, the benaxidene had been in time for her. Anamari took the lid off the clay waterjar that stood on the one table in the room, and dipped one of her clean rags in it. She used it to wipe the girl, then lifted her frail,

atrophied body and pulled the soiled sheet out from under her. On impulse, she handed the sheet to the boy. "Leva fora," she said. And, when he didn't understand, "Take it outside." He did not hesitate to take it, which surprised her. "Do you want me to wash it?" "You could shake off the worst of it," she said. "Out over the garden in back. I'll wash it

later."

He came back in, carrying the wadded-up sheet, just as she was leaving. "All done here," she said. "We'll stop by my house to start that soaking. I'll carry it now." He didn't hand it to her. "I've got it," he said. "Aren't you going to give her a clean sheet?" "There are only four sheets in the village," she said. "Two of them are on my bed. She

won't mind lying on the mat. I'm the only one in the village who cares about linens. I'm also the only one who cares about this girl." "She likes you," he said. "She smiles like that at everybody.

"So maybe she likes everybody." Anamari grunted and led the way to her house. It was two government hovels pushed together. The one served as her clinic, the other as her home. Out back she had two

metal washtubs. She handed one of them to the Yanqui boy, pointed at the rainwater tank, and told him to fill it. He did. It made her furious. "What do you want!" she demanded. "Nothing," he said. "Why do you keep hanging around!''

"I thought I was helping." His voice was full of injured pride. "I don't need your help." She forgot that she had meant to leave the sheet to soak. She began rubbing it on the washboard.

"Then why did you ask me to ..." She did not answer him, and he did not complete the question. After a long time he said, "You were trying to get rid of me, weren't you?" "What do you want here?" she said. "Don't I have enough to do, without a Norteamericano

boy to look after?"

Anger