Raising The Stones

by Tepper, Sheri S.

  So, before he went on with his work, worthwhile work, which he was anticipating with pleasure, before he saw his friends at CM again, it would be appropriate to see the Thykerites off Hobbs Land, to get them on their way, before they had a chance to do any further explorations.

  Spiggy felt the High Baidee should go as soon as possible, for they would not understand the way, the convenience, the kindness which was manifesting itself on Hobbs Land.

  TWO

  • “We’re going tomorrow,” said Sam to Theseus in the night hours, as they stood in the Temple of Poseidon, upon a shining hill, watching phantom horses grazing in the meadows. “The thing is, I want to talk to him. To Phaed. To my father.”

  “What do you want to say?” asked the hero.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I figure it out, but then it doesn’t seem to be the right thing.”

  Theseus tossed his sword in the air, spinning, and caught it by the hilt. “I’ll pretend to be him, and you can practice. How would that be?”

  Sam was doubtful. “You don’t look like him at all.”

  “Oh, I can be him,” said Theseus, sitting down on the hillside and compressing himself, becoming squattier and bulkier. A moment later he looked up at Sam, slantwise, with Phaed’s remembered face, exactly, even to the big cap hiding most of his hair. “Well, hello, boy! And where’d you drop in from?”

  Sam was silent, shocked. It was the voice he remembered, too, and the very words.

  “Hello, Dad,” said Sam after a moment. “I’ve come all the way from Hobbs Land to see you.”

  “That’s a long way to come. I always hoped you would, though, no matter how far it is.”

  “Well, if you missed me, you could have come to me, Dad.”

  “Not really, boy. I mean, when your mam went away, it was because she wanted to be rid of me, wasn’t it? So what kind of man would I have been to go invading her privacy, showing up in her town?”

  “You were thinking of her?”

  “Well, of course, boy. She’s my wife. Mother of my children. I always think of her.”

  “So you love her still, do you?”

  “We’re man and wife, Sammy. We made vows …” The man looked off into the distance, sadness in his eyes.

  “Dad.”

  “Yes, Sammy.”

  “I need you to explain something. About when Maechy died.”

  “Oh, sad, sad, that was.”

  “Mam said you didn’t grieve. She said you just cursed the man for not shooting straight.”

  The huddled figure shook with sobs. “Oh, I grieved, Sammy. By the Almighty, I grieved. I cursed at the fool who killed him, and I grieved. He was my son, too. Not my eldest, not you, Sam, only a tiny boy, but he was my son, too. The pain was so deep I couldn’t weep, boy. I thought I’d die with the sorrow of it. All I could do was curse or I’d have died …”

  “Then they weren’t your men who killed him?”

  “My men? What men is that, Sammy? I have no men who would do such a thing. Your poor mam always thought I was involved in things like that, but I was only a farmer, only a man seeing to flocks and fields, as you do, lad. We farmer kings are the true heroes, don’t you think? It makes me proud to see you, following in my footsteps so to speak.”

  Sam turned away, tears in his eyes. It would be something like that. When he really came to it, it would be like that.

  “Did you say what you wanted to say?” asked Theseus, back in his own form, tossing up his sword again, spinning, up and up until it almost touched the heavy beams above.

  Sam nodded. Yes. Something like that.

  Later that night, Sam walked back to the village, his face reflecting only calm, his belt and helmet no longer causing the apprehension they once had. Lots of people wandered about at night, now, going out to Bubble Lake for a swim or into the newly discovered marsh district to hunt phoenix feathers, or down to the Grove of Fabulous Beasts with the children. Night-wandering was no longer odd.

  He found Maire waiting for him at the brotherhouse, wanting to go over her plan once more, to see if she had forgotten anything.

  “Tomorrow we go to Ahabar,” she said. “The Door takes us to Fenice, the capital city. We will go from there to Jeramish, the area bordering Green Hurrah, where Commander Karth has offered us hospitality and protection. He will keep us safe from being seized up and made off with. At least, so he says in the messages he has sent me.

  Sam had heard this a dozen times, but he had never wondered until now how it was she knew this commander. He asked her now. “How did you come to know a commander in Ahabar?”

  “I met him once, long ago …” Her voice trailed away in memory. She had known him only briefly, she a young mother with two dirty children clinging to her skirts, a road-wearied trio who had walked out of Green Hurrah straight into the hands of an Ahabarian patrol. Karth had been the officer in charge. She remembered him as generous and attractive. In the intervening years she had often thought of him, regretting the vows that had prevented her responding to his unspoken invitation. She had not hesitated to send him a reminder of their former meeting, begging his help. He remembered her, so he said, and, usefully, he was in command of the garrison now.

  She went on, explaining her plan to Sam. “My plan was to wait there, well-guarded in Jeramish, until Jep was brought out safe. But when Saturday involved herself, it meant we would have to do it differently. She claims she must go into Voorstod, to whatever place Jep’s being held, then they will come out together.”

  “Which is no doubt the best reason of all for my going along,” said Sam, realizing he had found a suitable role for himself. “A girl that age obviously should not have to travel alone.” Not among men like Mugal Pye—whom he had liked no more than Maire had. “Now, suppose we get Jep out safely. What happens then? Do they want you to return to Voorstod and sing? Do you think they want you for some symbolic purpose? The old Maire Manone, Sweet Singer, all that.” He smiled at her, trying to cheer her.

  “Certainly they want me for some purpose of their own,” she agreed. “They sought me, particularly. They took Jep because he is my grandson, to their way of reckoning, so it is clear they want me.” She turned away, not wanting her son to see the fear in her face. In a country in which children were taught to inflict pain for fun, it would be foolish for any woman to consider herself immune from receiving similar attentions. She didn’t know what they wanted with her, but she was sure there was pain in it somewhere. Still, she could not live with herself if Jep came to harm through her. “I’m frightened,” she said, wanting him to hold her. If no man had ever held her gently, surely her son could do that, now that she was old.

  But Sam had never held her. He did not even think of holding her now. “But you have no idea what they want, Mam,” he said, trying to get her to look at it in a less dangerous light. “It could be something fairly innocent.”

  “Oh, I’ve tried to convince myself of that,” she said. “I’ve had plenty of practice.” She was thinking how much practice she had had. We do it all the time, we women, she said to herself. We marry, and it turns out to be hell. So we hope they will stop drinking, but they don’t. We hope they will stop beating us and the children, but they don’t. We hope they will stop killing, but they see no reason to stop. Why should they, when they can sit in the tavern and tell one another how fine they are, how powerful and clever they are, how they’ll take nothing from nobody. No man’s a match for them. No woman’s enough. And nothing matters so long as they’re faithful to the Cause. Still, we women keep hoping, we keep telling ourselves maybe things are fairly innocent.

  Sam’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Perhaps they want you there because too many women have left.” It was an insight, which had just come to him. “That’s possible. They want you there to tell them to come home.”

  “Oh, perhaps.” She nodded, thinking about this. It made as much sense as anything else. “Perhaps so, Sammy. Perhaps there are not enough women left to breed men for th
e Cause’s purposes. I suppose Mugal Pye and his cronies might believe I could undo what once I did when I sang them away. Well, they can only have of me what I have to give, Sammy. As for what good you’ll do, being there, I can’t say.”

  Sam couldn’t say either, but he burned to go, nonetheless.

  • At first daywatch of the following morning, Saturday met Gotoit and Willum R. Quillow at the temple.

  “You know what’s to do,” she told them. “The front of the temple’s still to be painted.”

  “I know,” said Gotoit. “Don’t worry, Sats. Willum and me will take care of it.”

  “Be alert if it needs ferfs,” Saturday said, wracking her brain for any other instructions she might remember when it was too late. “Lucky’ll know.”

  “They’ve begun talking, you know,” said Willum R. “The cats.”

  “Talking!”

  “Well, a kind of talking. Not human talk. They haven’t the right physical structure for that. But they’ve been talking a kind of cat talk. If you listen and watch, you can understand a lot of it.”

  Saturday thought Willum R. might have gone a little odd, but when she encountered Lucky and two of her kittens outside the temple, Lucky addressed Saturday in a long, complicated yowl, which Saturday found she understood perfectly well as an instruction to walk softly and smell very carefully before getting herself into anything. Saturday replied in human talk that she would do so, and Lucky nodded as though she fully comprehended what Saturday had said. She sat down and licked a front paw with every evidence of satisfaction.

  “Have you got the you-know?” asked Gotoit in a half whisper.

  Saturday nodded. She had the packets sewn into her chemise where they would lie next to her skin.

  “That’s good then,” said Gotoit, hugging her. “It’ll be all right.”

  Saturday, who was not at all sure it would be all right, returned the hug and tried very hard not to cry.

  • At the third daywatch, Africa Wilm, with Saturday beside her, picked up Sam and Maire at the Girat clanhome and set off for CM in one of the settlement fliers. It was a virtually silent trip. Africa had tried talking to Saturday, without success. It wasn’t that Saturday wouldn’t talk, it was that she, Africa, couldn’t.

  “It will be all right,” said Saturday, reaching to stroke her mother’s face. This was merely reassurance, with only hopeful supposition behind it, and they both knew it.

  There was a time, Africa told herself, when she would have resented what was happening now, resented being informed that something needed doing. Now, however, she examined herself for any feelings of coercion and found none. No demand. Simply information. The thing was necessary. The difference now was that she was unable to reject the information or rationalize it away. If one was informed, one knew it was true, and there was no point playing with the idea or talking about it. It simply was, that’s all.

  “Take care of China,” Sam begged her, when they arrived at the departure area. “Please, Africa.”

  Africa merely nodded, saying yes, she would look out for China. Undoubtedly Sam, too, was being informed that something needed to be done, as Saturday herself had no doubt been informed. Africa hugged her daughter, muttering words of warning and caution which, in the sense of them, were remarkably similar to those the cat Lucky had uttered. Walk softly. Be careful.

  Africa didn’t stay to watch them go through the Door. She let them out and drove away, tears flowing down her face. She was not being silly, she told herself. She was just … just missing her daughter, that was all. Inside her, calm and peace were urged upon her, but she fought against being consoled. It was proper to feel this way. Proper to be lonely. Proper and human to grieve.

  The consolation withdrew as though considering the matter. Perhaps, it agreed, it was more proper to grieve. Consolation was proper, but grieving, too, had its time and place.

  Inside the reception area, Sam, Maire, and Saturday encountered the team of Baidee who had been up upon the escarpment doing the ancient monuments survey, ten of them, counting the techs. Sam greeted Volsa, Shan, and Bombi by name and was introduced to some of the other persons in the party—Dr. Feriganeh and a busy little man named Merthal. The several technicians were busy with their boxes and bundles of esoteric equipment, muttering among themselves.

  “Did you find anything exciting?” Sam asked Volsa, relying upon their brief acquaintance in the settlement to excuse his obvious curiosity.

  “A rare fungus of some kind,” said Volsa, warming to Sam as she had in the settlement. She turned to smile at Saturday. She had seen the girl before, singing with the choir. “A fungus that grows into long, radially arranged bodies beneath the soil. So far as our botanists can tell, the growths may have been there for centuries. They’re dormant. There have been many meteor strikes on the escarpment. We believe it probable the growths are not native to this world, and the planet lacks something they need for development.”

  “Almost a unique find,” said the doctor with enthusiasm. “There are similar growths on two other Belt worlds, similarly dormant. My colleagues will be envious that I have had this opportunity.”

  “That’s marvelous,” said Saturday. “All the time we settlers have been here, and you come along and find something completely new!”

  Her remark drew Shan’s attention. He turned calculating eyes upon her, recognized that he had seen her before, and said, “I went out for a walk early this morning and saw that while we have been working on the escarpment, the people of CM have built a temple like the one rebuilt in Settlement One. At least, I suppose it is similar. I did not look at it closely. Why was that done, do you suppose?”

  Sam responded before Saturday could. “I think it’s because we’re a little starved for history upon Hobbs Land. We have no monuments, no memorials. We’ve adopted this indigenous architectural form as a kind of symbol. Not unlike, perhaps, the ritual dress which your group wears. You bond yourselves together by similar dress. So we bond our various communities together by building in this ancient form. It is Hobbs Landian, like us.”

  “You think it will be a persistent symbol then?” Shan asked. “Or a mere fashion?” It was his youth more than his tone that made the question seem arrogant.

  “Only time will tell.” Sam shrugged. “When we build a future of our own, perhaps we’ll abandon this relic of the Owlbrit people. Personally, I hope we’ll keep the little temples. We can begin our history with a continuation of the former one.”

  “I would have liked something prettier,” said Maire, moved by some impulse she could not identify to argue with Sam. “I wish they had built towers instead of these flattish things.”

  “You disagree with your … is it your son?” asked Shan.

  “Oh, fairly regularly,” she laughed. “We are not in agreement about a number of things.”

  “Tell me,” Shan asked Sam, almost as though he had not been listening. “Do you have a choir at Central Management?”

  Sam was caught by surprise. “Not that I know of,” he answered.

  Saturday and Maire, who had both helped organize

  the choir at CM, kept their mouths shut. Shan had no chance to ask other questions, for Spiggy and Dern Blass came bustling in, bonhomous and full of farewells.

  “Came to thank you,” Dern said to the Damzels with a nod to the others of their party, shaking Bombi’s hands between his own, oozing conviviality. “We’ve wanted the survey done for a decade or so now. Good to have it. Will you be making any recommendations?” He looked hard at all three of them. “Any recommendations for preservation or reconstruction?”

  Bombi shook his head, responding to the warmth expressed. “We think not at this point,” he said. “There are thousands of village houses, over a thousand temple clusters. Any scholarly work that is done will probably be done from the survey itself.”

  “You will recall that there had been some accusations concerning the Departed,” Dern insisted. “Did you find any evidence of malfeasanc
e, misfeasance, naughty doings?”

  “As to the matter you raised originally with the Advisory?” asked Volsa. “We found no evidence that there has been anything done which would be of concern to the Advisory. I believe Zilia Makepeace was misled …”

  “Though perhaps not totally in error,” interrupted Shan, who was standing close beside his sister.

  Dern Blass’s eyebrows went up into his hair and stayed there while he regarded the two young Baidee with astonishment. “You disagree? Perhaps and perhaps not?”

  Shan said, “There is no evidence that any settler has ever committed an untoward act toward any of the Departed. There is no evidence that any remnant of the Departed still exist, and we have covered the escarpment thoroughly. However, I agree with the Makepeace woman that some influence of the Departed remains upon Hobbs Land. I can identify it no more clearly than she did. Nonetheless …” His words trailed away as he gave Spiggy a long, weighing look.

  Spiggy, correctly interpreting Shan’s stare, returned it with calm indifference. Shan had never approved of Volsa’s liaison with Spiggy. He had obviously considered Spiggy to be a self-indulgent backslider who was, when all was said and done, little better than a Low Baidee. Relationships between them, up on the escarpment, had been strained at best, which did not matter now. Spiggy had come to the departure area this morning for only one reason, to be sure that all of the Baidee went away.

  A soft horn sounded, signifying that a scheduled departure was imminent. The board above the gate flashed: Chowdari upon Thyker. No one moved. Anticipation of that wrenching, turned-inside-out feeling made it usual for passengers to linger at the gate, shifting from foot to foot, dallying.

  Chowdari upon Thyker, flashed the sign above the gate repeatedly, then Final call.

  Dern bowed, spreading his arms wide, smiling, as though to say, “Well, we can not postpone this occasion further, or you will miss your destination. Farewell.”