“Will you let me look?” Harribon asked, holding his breath and his temper.
“Sure! Look! Anywhere. Ask questions. Get a flier from the garage. Go on out to Bubble Lake, if you want to see something pretty. Or Cloudbridge.”
“Bubble Lake? Cloudbridge?”
“Sure. They’re close by. Anyone down at maintenance can tell you how to get there. Supper’s at nightwatch two. That’ll give you time to clean up after you go digging around.” He bowed and swept one arm in a long arc toward the door, giving his guest the freedom of the settlement.
Harribon had never heard of Bubble Lake or Cloudbridge. Besides, he hadn’t come to look at scenery. So far as he knew, no one ever went anywhere on Hobbs Land to look at scenery. What he wanted to know would be in the settlement, anyhow, so he went first to the barns and equipment yards, looking for nothing in particular. He found nothing in particular. People seemed to be fully occupied, not hurrying, but not wasting time either. They greeted him, introduced themselves, seemed pleased to see him, but didn’t stand around looking for an excuse not to work. He stood for a while in the door of the main tractor shed, watching a man and woman working on a fertilizer pump. She was doing the repair. He was fetching and carrying. Harribon saw her put out her hand for a tool and the tool being slapped into it, then the hand again and another tool. He watched for some little time, then left, realizing only after he’d left that the two hadn’t exchanged a word. That’s the kind of teamwork he envied. He saw it sometimes at Three, but it was a rare and wonderful commodity.
In the fields the weeders and fertilizer spreaders moved slowly down rows of rootcrops, across the tops of grain fields. Water ran in glittering rivulets here and there. Harribon stood on a bridge over a main ditch, watching the threads of silver sparkle away into the distance. Beneath him, the bank of a ditchlet had recently given way, letting the water spill onto the surrounding soil to make a tiny swamp. Harribon looked up to see if anyone was near enough to call. No need. From across a field, a quarter of a mile away, a man was moving toward him with a shovel, grinning as he came. Three strokes of the shovel fixed the ditch wall.
“Nice day,” said the worker, looking out over the field. “You visiting?”
“From Settlement Three,” Harribon told him. “How’d you know this ditch was broken?”
“Thought it was likely,” the man grinned, giving him a knowing look.
The place must have broken before, Harribon told himself. The settler evidently knew it was likely to break again.
A power truck moved out from the central garage, stopping at field side at the same moment that the robot weeder drew up to the road. The operators exchanged chitchat while the weeder was fueled, then they went their separate ways.
“How’d you know he was out?” Harribon asked the truck operator.
“Usually runs out about now,” was the casual answer.
He walked back through the settlement, stopping to peer into the ruined temples, to walk around on the shattered mosaic floors and stare at the grillwork and the central stone. He’d made a trip here, years ago, to see the God. He didn’t remember it as having been anything very impressive. A chunk of stone with sparkles in it. Now it was gone. He went out to the north, stopping briefly at the crèche and again at the school, to find they appeared to be much like the Settlement Three crèche and school. Here, however, the children weren’t yelling at each other. Yelling, yes, but not at each other. The sonic effect was the same, but the psychic effect was quite different, noisy but purposeful. Like an orchestra tuning up.
North of the town the path dropped into a streambed, up the other side, and out onto fairly level ground where the other ruined temples stood, just as he’d seen them the last time he’d been here.
Except that one of them had been rebuilt. Where had he heard that? Someone from CM had told him. Jamice. Last time he’d consulted her about a new chief mechanic, she’d told him how surprised they’d been at the reconstruction. So this was it?
He circled the structure, startling several cats and surprising four children who were busy plastering the exterior walls with what appeared to be a mixture of clay and straw.
“Hi,” he said. “Sorry to have startled you.”
“That’s all right, sir,” the largest of the boys said. “You must be the visitor from Settlement Three.”
“Harribon Kruss,” he said, holding out a hand.
Each took it in turn, announcing his or her own name. Saturday Wilm. Jep Wilm. Gotoit Quillow. Willum R. Quillow.
“That’s quite a big job,” Harribon commented. “You going to do the whole outside?”
“It’s traditional,” remarked Gotoit. “To do it every year.”
“After it’s smooth and dry, we can paint it,” said Saturday. “We’re thinking up the designs now.”
“What do you plan to put on it?”
“This year we think some kind of aquatic motif,” said Gotoit. “Creelies and water weed and all kind of little creepers. Like out at Bubble Lake …”
“This Bubble Lake,” interrupted Harribon. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that before.”
“Well we only found it recently,” said Jep. “It lies out west of the settlement, in a little fold, sort of, where you wouldn’t happen on it ordinarily.”
“Anywhere near Cloudbridge?”
“No, Cloudbridge is more up toward the Gobbles. Past the New Forest.”
Harribon nodded. He hadn’t heard of a New Forest, either, trees being in short supply anywhere except up on the escarpment.
“Okay if I go inside?” he asked.
There was a moment’s hesitation, only a moment, as though they were thinking this over.
Then, “Sure,” said Saturday. “No reason why not. Don’t scuff up the floors, though. They were a lot of work.”
He took off his boots when he went inside, slipping along the curved floors in his socks, floors curved to fit the rumps of the Departed, so he’d been told. The place had a strange beauty. He didn’t remember the temple he’d visited before as being beautiful, but this one was. Very dim, of course, with only the light reflected through the grills from the central space and the tiny amount that came in through the ventilation slits and open door. Would the Departed have used the temples at night? How would they have lighted them? There were no candle sticks, no lanterns. He roamed around the scooped floor, stopping at the grilled door to peer into the central space.
It stood there, regarding him. He remained poised, almost off-balance for a long, frozen moment as he stared at it, then he stumbled back the way he had come. The children were outside the door, mixing more mud plaster.
“You have … you have another God,” he said, wondering if they knew.
“Oh, yes,” said Jep offhandedly. “Did it startle you, sir? I’m sorry.”
“It’s name is Birribat Shum,” said Saturday. “Jep and I are the Ones Who take care of it.
“We help,” protested Gotoit and Willum R. simultaneously.
“Oh, yes,” Saturday agreed. “Lots of people help. And cats.”
“How long have you had it?” Harribon asked, pulling on his boots, his blood pressure slowly returning to normal, now feeling slightly ashamed of his first reaction.
“He was raised fifteen days ago,” said Saturday. “Between the tenth and the eleventh hour of the day watch. Like his predecessor, he was Noon Discovered.” She laughed, the others laughing with her. “It’s a pun,” she told Harribon. “Or maybe a riddle. Bondru Dharm means ‘Noon Discovered.” so Birribat is also Bondru Dharm.”
The children went back to their plastering. Harribon sat where he was, just outside the door of the temple, listening to them bickering back there. They sounded like any children anywhere. Willum R. was teasing Jep about being Saturday’s sweetheart, threatening to paint a big heart with an arrow through it on the temple when they got it plastered. Gotoit was telling him to quit teasing and get more straw. After a time other children came through the willows,
greeted him, and went to help the plastering crew.
Harribon sat and listened. There was a mud fight. There was much squealing and laughter, but no one was hurt, though Gotoit spoke vehemently to Willum R. about his getting mud in her ear. Several faces were washed down at the stream. Still Harribon sat. When it began to grow dark, Saturday and Jep Wilm came from behind the temple and offered to walk with him back to the settlement. They stopped at the stream to wash.
“The only problem with this job is it’s really filthy,” Saturday complained. “It’s like monstrous mud pies.”
“Should you say that?” Harribon asked in slight wonderment. “Since it’s for the God?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” she asked him. “The God doesn’t care about stuff like that.”
“I thought Gods were very strict about stuff like that,” he persisted. “Strict about, ah … blasphemy. Joking about … sacred things.”
“There’s nothing sacred about plastering the temple, is there, Jep?”
Jep was drying his face on his shirttail and only grunted in reply.
“Isn’t the God sacred?” Harribon went on, wondering why he was asking these children questions like these. “I mean, you do call it God.”
“Oh, we could call him anything,” Saturday announced. “We could call him Bafflebreeze. Or Chinless. Or Australia. It doesn’t matter what you call him, for shish sake. He’s Birribat Shum, just like I’m Saturday, and Jep’s Jep. Just like you’re Harribon Kruss, Topman of Settlement Three. It’s just a name, that’s all. Kind of a label, you know.”
“It’s just a way,” said Jep. “A convenience. A kindness.” He stopped abruptly. “Here’s where we have to cut off for our clanhome, sir. A pleasant nightwatch.”
Harribon stood and watched them darting away through the dusk, down a sideway toward a cluster of houses, which were no doubt fully occupied by the Wilm clan. They were no different from the clanhouses found in Settlement Three, and yet he found himself examining them, trying to find something strange or exotic about them. Everything was built of foam panels. There wasn’t much a builder could do to make a sponge-panel structure look distinctively different from any other sponge-panel structure. The brotherhouse had a wide porch and welcoming door. The several sisterhouses spread from it, each with its private entrance leading to private spaces inside, space for women to entertain their lovers and friends, private space for older women, too, grandmas and such, along with plenty of room for growing children. Jep would probably be moving out of his mother’s place and into the brotherhouse within the next year or so. Willum R. probably already had. Most boys moved when they started having love affairs—or thinking about having love affairs. Just thinking could go on for a considerable time without anything really happening, not like those marriage cultures, where all the women were trying to cling to their virginity and all the males were trying to take it away from them, everybody panting and rushing, trying to grab off acceptable partners under acceptable conditions before they got too old.
Thinking of getting old: if there were retireds in Settlement One, people who were no longer contractually obliged to work in production, it wouldn’t be long before brotherhouses would hire them as housekeepers and cooks for the clans. And then it wouldn’t be long before some of the settlers would have land rights of their own. And after that Hobbs Transystem Foods would turn Settlement One over to the people in accordance with the contract and begin recruiting for a Settlement Twelve, off in the nowheres. Harribon had once asked Spiggy how many settlements there would be, altogether, when Hobbs Foods was finished planting and harvesting. Hundreds, Spiggy had said. Hundreds, spread across the arable plains of Hobbs Land, with wide stretches of the original Hobbs Land left untouched between.
“Land left between, so there will be no extinctions,” Spiggy had said. “Not of plants. Not of animals.” Authority frowned on extinctions. At least, the Science Advisory did, which was pretty much the same thing.
It was all so familiar, and yet it felt foreign, exotic. It was too peaceful. Perhaps that was it. At home, in Settlement Three, there were always problems. Always the subliminal whine of discord, somewhere, like the snarling of a trapped cat. Here, Harribon was aware of no problems. If there were problems, Sam would handle them.
Or, he told himself, perhaps Birribat Shum would handle them. Before they ever happened.
• “You look tired,” Sal told Harribon over the liqueurs as they sat by a window of the Girat brotherhouse, looking out over the fields. Behind them in the kitchen they could hear the bustle and clatter of two of the retireds who were cleaning up after dinner, mixed with the treble chatter of Sal’s young ones.
Harribon smiled, shaking his head. “Not really. Just thoughtful. Your brotherhouse is very quiet, Sam. You were an only son?”
“I had one brother, Maechy. He died as a child, before we came to Hobbs Land. In fact, it was his death that prompted my mother to become a settler. My parents were married, in Voorstod upon Ahabar, but mother was the only one who came to Hobbs Land.”
“Sam’s brotherhouse will fill up when Sande and Sake get to be big men,” Sal laughed. “Then Sam can play uncle, right enough.” About fourteen, that’s when boys needed to live with men, so said the conventional wisdom. Up until then, mothers did well enough.
“What about your mother?” Harribon asked them, trying to remember what it was he had heard about Sam’s mother.
“Maire? She has a small sisterhouse to herself,” Sam said. “She works at the crèche, which she enjoys. We invited her to join us tonight, but she said she was too tired of people to eat with people. Some of the older settlers are talking about building a retireds home when we get land rights, maybe up north of the settlement, where it’s quiet.”
“Up by the temples,” Harribon offered.
“West of there. But fairly close.”
“I was up there today.”
“Were you?” asked Sal. “How were the kids coming with the plastering job?”
Somehow, Harribon had not expected her to know about the plastering job. “They seemed to be enjoying it.”
“Yeah, they get a kick out of doing stuff for the God,” said Sam. “The way Birribat Shum and Vonce Djbouty used to. Did they tell you they were the Ones Who?”
Harribon nodded. “They said everyone helped.”
“Oh, well, yes. If something needs doing. But mostly the kids. It’s good for them. Teaches them a lot about planning a job and sticking with it until it’s done. And with the child labor provisions in the settlement contract, they can’t be involved in production, so it gives them something they can feel good about having accomplished.”
A peaceful silence. Harribon swallowed again, almost painfully. “I didn’t know you had another God, Sam.”
Sam furrowed his brow, scowled into his drink. “I guess we haven’t made any announcement about it.”
“Stirs things up too much,” agreed Sal, making a face. “Can you imagine Zilia Makepeace if we tell her we have a new God. ‘Who authorized you to have a new God.’ ‘Why wasn’t Native Matters consulted about this new God?’ ” She laughed. “Or what about Jamice Bend? ‘What are the personnel implications of your having another God.’ We just didn’t want to bother. We figure eventually they’ll find out,, and then we can say, ‘Zilia, Jamice, it’s been here for years. Why make a fuss now?’ ”
“Where … where did you get it?”
“The children found it,” said Sam. “And since they’d already prepared the temple, of course we raised it.”
“Found it? Raised it?”
“It was buried. In the soil.” Sam regarded him thoughtfully. “Does that bother you, Hani?”
“Don’t let it bother you, Hani,” said Sal, regarding him with lovely, luminous eyes.
“It isn’t fair,” he said, his voice rising uncontrollably, angrily. “It isn’t fair!”
There was a slight noise at the door, and they turned to see Saturday and Jeopardy Wilm standing there.
>
“Excuse me,” said Saturday. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but we had to bring something for Topman Harribon.”
“For me?” The anger which had flooded him flowed away in an instant, leaving him feeling empty and ashamed. He looked at the package the child was offering him without understanding anything. He didn’t understand why he felt as he did. He didn’t understand who he was mad at. He didn’t understand why he was standing here holding a film bag with something white inside it. It meant nothing to him.
“Isn’t there someone at Settlement Three who’s dying?” Saturday wanted to know.
The words caught in Harribon’s throat. “My … my mother,” he said at last. “How did you know?”
Saturday drew him away and talked to him in a low voice, giving him the package, touching his face with her hands. Jep was talking too, patting him, stroking him.
“It’ll be all right,” the children said. “All right. We’re the Ones Who know about these things. You’ll see.” Then they were gone. “What did she give you?” Sal asked curiously, taking the packet from Harribon’s hand and peering at it.
Harribon stared through them, not seeing them, not sure what he saw. “A God for Settlement Three,” he said at last. “They knew I thought it wasn’t fair. So they gave me a God for Settlement Three.”
• Elitia Kruss died at the sixteenth hour of the nightwatch three days after Harribon returned from Settlement One. Her passing was peaceful. She went from alive to not alive on a passing breath. Harribon, who had spent the past two nightwatches on a couch in her room, did not even realize she had gone until the breathless silence woke him from a drowse.
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