“Jason knows you’ve done enough!” Aven said, his voice rising.
“And you’ve done more than enough!” came back the savage retort. “At least let someone who really loves the boy care for him now!”
Hoom recognized the other voice. It was Stipock. But now Grandfather Noyock’s voice came, soothing, gentling. “Aven, the law is the law. And if a man injures his child, the child is no longer in his care.”
A moan, a cry. “I didn’t mean to hurt him!” Aven said, his voice twisted and bent with weeping. Father weeping! The thought was incomprehensible to Hoom. “You know I didn’t mean to hurt him, father!”
But Noyock said nothing to him, only told Stipock to go ahead.
Hoom felt the blanket come off him. The cold air was biting. Gentle hands touched his legfire ran up his spine.
“This is terrible, terrible,” Stipock said softly.
“Can you heal him?” Noyock asked. “We’ve never had an injury this bad, at least not one that left the poor fellow alive.”
“I’ll need help.”
Aven spoke up from the corner. “I’ll help you.”
“No!” Hoom hissed from his pain-clenched teeth. “Don’t let him touch me.”
Hoom couldn’t see Aven turn away, or Esten put her arm around her husband to comfort his remorse. All he could see behind his closed eyes was the hatred on his father’s face.
“You help me then, Noyock. Is that all right, Hoom?”
Hoom nodded, or tried to. Apparently Stipock understood his assent, for he began giving instructions. “You’ll have to hold the boy by the armpits, from above. And don’t try to spare him any pain. Gentleness won’t help him now.”
“What’s happening to me? What are you doing?”
“Trust me now,” Stipock said. “This is going to hurt like hell, Hoom, but it’s the only way we can fix it so you’ll ever walk again.”
And then a hand gripped him at the ankle, which made Hoom moan, and another hand gripped him just below the break, high on his shin, which made him cry out in pain.
“Don’t hurt him” began his mother, and then silence, as Stipock said, “Now pull with all your strength, Noyock,” and Hoom felt as if he were being pulled apart. The pain rose and rose and rose, until, suddenly, Hoom could feel no more pain, except that he knew he was virtually dead with it. Above the pain he floated, and felt the dispassionate movement of his body as Stipock pushed the fragment of shin back into place, where it fit again with a terrible snap (I don’t feel it; it isn’t me); as Stipock slid the kneecap back into position, forced the joint to fit again; as the leg, already used to the torture of the bones out of place, now began to feel the worse torture of the bones back together.
“Is that it?” he heard Noyock ask, from a great distance.
“We need wood and cloth strips,” Stipock said. “Straight firm wood, no twigs or branches or green wood.”
“I’ll get it,” Aven said, and “I’ll get the cloth,” said Esten, Hoom’s mother. And then, at last, Hoom fell back down into the sea of pain and drowned in it, drifted down to the bottom, and slept.
He woke again, and it was dark. A tallow lamp sputtered by the bed. His head ached, and his broken leg throbbed dully; but the pain was much better, much eased, much gone, and he could leave his eyes open.
The room focused, and he saw Stipock sitting by his bed. “Hi,” he said, and Stipock smiled. “How do you feel?” Stipock asked softly.
“The pain’s not as bad.”
“Good. We’ve done all we can do. Now it’s up to your leg to heal.”
Hoom smiled wanly.
Stipock turned toward somewhere elsea door, Hoom assumedand said, “He’s awake now. You can call the others.” Then he turned back to Hoom and said, “I know you don’t feel well, but some decisions have to be made, that only you can make.”
Footsteps coming into the room, and one by one they came into Hoom’s range of vision. First Noyock, looking grave. Then Esten, her eyes red from crying. And then Aven.
Seeing his father, Hoom turned his head upward, to the ceiling.
“Hoom,” said Noyock,
“Yes,” Hoom answered, his voice soft and husky.
“Stipock wants to take care of you,” Noyock said. “He wants to take you out of your father’s home, if you want to, and take care of you until you can walk again.”
Hoom tried to control them, but the tears dripped out of the corners of his eyes anyway.
“But, Hoom, your father also wants to take care of you.”
“No,” Hoom said.
“Your father wants to say something to you.”
“No.”
“Please,” said Aven. “Please listen to me, son.”
“I’m not your son,” Hoom said softly. “You told me so.”
“I’m sorry for that. You know how it was. I went crazy for a minute.”
“I want to go with Stipock,” Hoom said.
Silence for a few moments, and then Aven bitterly spat out his feelings about Stipock, who came to steal children away from their parents. “I won’t let you take the boy!” Aven said, and might have said more except that Noyock’s voice, harsh with anger, cut through.
“Yes, you will, Aven!”
“Father!” Aven cried out, anguished.
“The law says that after a father has injured his child, the child must be taken by another family, for its own protection.”
“Stipock isn’t a family,” Aven said.
“I will be,” Stipock said, “when your son is living with me.”
“It only makes sense, Aven,” Noyock said. “Stipock can help the boy nowyou can’t.”
“I can help him,” Aven insisted.
“By pushing him out of windows?” Stipock quietly asked.
“Shut up, Stipock,” Noyock answered mildly. “I’ll ask Hoom one more time, and then that’s it, and there’ll be no complaint, no more discussion, and no resistance, or I swear I’ll have you bound up and kept in a locked room until Jason comes again. Now, Hoom, will you stay with Stipock, or with your father?”
Hoom half-smiled. He felt a glow of satisfaction: the broken leg would be worth it, for the chance to make this choice. “Stipock is my father,” Hoom said. And Aven’s low moan of pain was some measure of repayment, Hoom felt, for the pain he had gone through. With that thought he closed his eyes and dozed.
But he became vaguely alert again a few minutes later. It seemed that Noyock and Stipock were alone in the room, and they were arguing.
“You see the harm it caused,” Stipock said.
“The law didn’t give you any power to take this boy out of his father’s home until his father nearly killed him.”
“The law is the law,” Noyock said, “and only Jason can change it.”
“That’s the point!” Stipock insisted. “The law needs to be changed. If Jason were here, he’d change it, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe,” Noyock said.
“Then why can’t we? Not just you and me, but all the people. Vote. Let the majority change the law.”
Noyock sighed. “It’s what you’ve wanted all along, Stipock. To let the majority of people in Heaven City change any one of Jason’s laws they want.”
“Just this law,” Stipock said. “Just the law that lets fathers beat their children.”
“Just this law? I’m not a fool, Stipock, though you seem to feel that everyone in Heaven City is stupider than a newborn pig. Once we’ve changed one law that way, there’ll be other laws to change, and people will begin to think all the laws are changeable.”
“Aren’t they?” Stipock asked. “Why don’t you just ask them? On Jason’s Day, when they gather at First field, call a council, ask them to vote on whether voting should be allowed. See what they decide.”
“I said, Stipock, that I’m not a fool. If I let them vote on anything, that becomes a lawful way for decisions to be made.”
“So you aren’t going to change the law?”
<
br /> “Just let me think, Stipock.”
“Let you? I’m begging you to. Do you really think the majority of people in this colony will decide stupidly? Don’t you trust them?”
“I trust them, Stipock. It’s you I don’t trust.” And Noyock left the room, his footfalls ringing in Hoom’s ears.
“Stipock,” Hoom whispered.
“Hmmm? Are you awake? Did we wake you?”
“That’s all right.” Hoom found it hard to use his voice. It was hoarse. Had he cried out that much from the pain? He didn’t remember shouting at allbut his voice was as hoarse as if he had been yelling all day in the fields. “Stipock, what’s a colony?”
“What? Oh, yes, I did use the wordit’s still hard, even after all these months”
“What is a colony?”
“It’s a place whereit’s when some people leave their homes behind, and go to a new place, and start to live there, far away from the others. Heaven City’s a colony, because theuh, the Ice Peoplethey left the Empire and came across the space between the stars and lived here.”
Hoom nodded. He had heard that story beforeStipock’s miracle stories, they all called them behind his back. Wix didn’t believe them, and Hoom wasn’t sure.
“When we live across the river, we’ll be a colony, then, won’t we?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Stipock.”
“Yes.”
“Move me across the river.”
Stipock chuckled. “When you can walk again.”
“No. Move me now.”
“Your leg is bound up. You can’t walk for months, Hoom.”
“Then get my friends to carry me. Take me out of Heaven City. I want to get out of Heaven City. Even if I have to live in the open, in a tent. Get me out. Get me out.” And Hoom’s voice drifted away as he slept again.
Stipock sat studying the boy’s quiet, gentle, but pain-scarred face. The lips were turned permanently downward; the forehead, even in sleep, was furrowed; the eyes were bagged with exhaustion, not crinkled with laughter as they should have been.
“All right,” Stipock whispered. “Yes, now. That’s a good idea, Hoom. Very good idea.”
Two days later, two horses drew the cart that carried Hoom jokingly down Noyock’s Road to Linkeree’s Bay. Then, with a crowd of several hundred people gathered around, they carried Hoom on a plank out to the boat, which was waiting a few meters from shore. And the boat, this time in broad daylight, spread its white wings and danced skimmingly out of the bay into the current. Hoom laughed with pleasureat his freedom, at the movement of the boat on the water, at his friends’ proof of their true friendship. Dilna was at the tiller, and she smiled at him. Wix poked him now and then with his toe as he passed, working the sails, just to let him know he was noticed. And then they reached the other shore, and they set him down by a tree to watch as they cleared a patch of ground and laid the walls of a rough cabin. The floor was of planks, which had been cut the day before, and the door and windows were gaping holes. The roof couldn’t be put on before dark, but they all promised they’d be back in the morning, and then carried Hoom inside. He looked around at the walls of his house.
“Well,” asked Wix, “how is it?”
“Ugly as hell,” Hoom said. “I love every inch of it.” And then, before he could thank them and cry, they whooped and hollered their way out of the house and back to the boat.
It was getting dark, but there were plenty of blankets over him, and the stars were shining. Breakfast was in a bag on the floor beside him, and Hoom listened to the distant sounds of the boat being launched again.
As the sound grew softer, he listened to the breeze in the branches above him. Leaves were drifting lazily down; soon all the leaves would have turned colors and dropped, and the snow would come. Hoom felt a stab of lonelinessbut he quickly forgot it in the satisfaction of being out of Heaven City. A leaf landed on his face, and he waited a moment before he brushed it away. Was this what it was like for Linkeree, in the old story, when he left Heaven City and built his own home in the forest? This feeling of not being one of a city, but of being an intruder among the trees?
He heard footsteps in the grass and leaves outside his door. He froze, afraid of who it might be.
The ship was gonehad someone stayed behind? And why?
Dilna stood in the doorway.
“Dilna,” Hoom said, sighing in relief.
“Hi,” she said.
“I thought you went back with the others.”
“I decided not to,” she said. “Comfortable?”
Hoom nodded. “It’s a good house.”
“You promised me I could move in when the house was done,” Dilna said.
Hoom laughed. “As soon as you want to,” he said.
“Noyock promised me that he’d cross the river and marry us tomorrow. If you want to.”
“I want to.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course, come in. I didn’t know you were waiting for an invitation.”
Dilna came in, her face lit only by starlight, and knelt beside him. “Do you always sleep with your clothes on?” she asked.
“No,” he said, laughing at the idea. “But with a lumberyard tied around my leg, I’ve found it a little hard to get around.”
“I’ll help you,” she said, and Hoom was surprised that he felt no embarrassment as she gently, carefully undressed him, moving his leg without hurting him, touching him so casually he felt no shame. Then she turned her back and undressed, also. “I didn’t bring any more blankets. Any room to spare under yours?” she asked.
“I can’tI can’t do anything,” he said. “My legI can’t”
“Nobody expects you to,” she said, touching his forehead softly. “There’s plenty of time for that.” She lay down beside him and pulled the blankets up to cover them both. Then she snuggled close to him. Her body was cold with the chilliness outside the blankets. She put her arm across his chest, stroked his cheek. “Do you mind?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Better get used to it,” she said. “Because I plan to sleep here for a good long time.”
12
BILLIN’S VOICE sounded muffled in the heavy, smoky room, though he was shouting. Dilna sighed as she heard the same words again. “That damned History is our enemy! Every time something comes for a vote, Noyock pulls out the History and says, ‘That isn’t the way Jason did it! That isn’t the way Kapock did it!’ Well, I say, who the hell cares how they did it?”
Dilna carved savagely at the block of wood in her lap, as if it were Billin’s head. It was stupid, this meeting every night in the tavern. Everyone in Stipock’s Bay already agreedthey had to separate themselves from Heaven City. The laws had no relation to reality anymorethings were different here. But Billin didn’t help anything with his fury, that so infected the others.
Even Stipock, she noticed, was watching Billin intently. But she more than half-suspected that Stipock was analyzing more than he was listening. Surely Stipock wasn’t moved or impressed by Billin’s talk! But Dilna wondered just the same. Could Billin possibly be doing just what Stipock wanted?
“The History is just paper! Only paper, and that’s all! It can burn! And if that’s the barrier that keeps us from making our own laws here, then I say, Burn it!”
Oh, clever, Dilna thought. The whole point is to win our independence, as Stipock had so often said, without losing our interdependence. If those on the other side of the river come to hate us, she silently asked, where would we get our copper, our tin, our brass? Paper? Ink? Flour? None of the tiny streams on this side of the river had enough force to turn a mill. But if Billin had his way, we’d rush over right now, burn the History, and then somehow persuade them to amicably let us be independent, while trade continued.
The chair next to hers scraped along the floor, and she looked up to see Stipock sitting down next to her.
“The aging philosopher comes to
chat?” she asked.
“Aging,” Stipock said. “It’s worry, not years.”
Billin’s voice reached a climax. “Does it matter how the vote goes? As long as we own the boats, we decide what laws get enforced on this side of the river!” Some beery cheers arose from the audience.
“The man’s an ass,” Dilna said. “Even if you were the one who first pointed out that whoever owns the boats makes the laws on this side of the river.”
“Billin gets a little too angry,” Stipock said.
“As the great Stipock has always said,” Billin shouted, “a man who rejects a government is no longer truly governed by it!”
“Is that what the great Stipock has always said?” Dilna asked, smiling.
“I wish to hell no one would ever quote me.” He looked at the wood she was working on. “What are you carving?”
“A canehead for a rich old codger from Wienway. One of Wien’s sons, in fact, who thinks a bit of bronze will buy anything.”
“Won’t it?” Stipock asked. She laughed. “Almost anything.”
Stipock sat in silence, surveying the room. “Hoom isn’t back yet?”
“You know how it isonce you start visiting with relatives”
“Hoom and his father, under the same roof tonight. Will the house burn down, do you think?”
“Good chance,” Dilna said, but she didn’t laugh.
“And Wix is with him?”
“I assume so,” she said. Suddenly she felt her knife hand gripped by Stipock’s powerful fingers.
“Dilna. Hoom knows.”
She gasped, before she could control herself. Damn, she thought, trying to cover the reaction. Damn, now whatever he suspects is confirmed.
“Hoom knows what?” she said, doing a bad job of acting innocent.
“I said Hoom knows. And no one else matters. I’m just warning you, Dilna. Hoom loves you too much to do anything about it. Unless you leave him. If you leave him, you’ll have to kill him.”
“What are you talking about? I have no intention of leaving Hoom. What an idea.”
“Good thing,” Stipock said, releasing her wrist.
“Damn you,” Dilna said.
“You’re an idiot,” Stipock said. “No one on this side of the river is half of Hoom’s quality as a man.”
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