Raising The Stones (38 page)

He went out, into the air. From the height, to the south, he could see a string of lakes dotted with tiny islands where he did not remember any lakes being before. That the islands were real was impressed upon him by the scent which came from them on the wind, sweetness and spice, and he could see the colors of the enormous flowers from where he stood. On several of the islands stood the pillared shapes of small circular buildings with sweetly rounded domes, like women’s breasts.

A nice place, he thought, to take a shallow boat and skim along, smelling the flowers, seeing the no doubt charming small birds and animals that lived among them, perhaps a nice place to stop and picnic, a nice place to make love in one of those little buildings.

He wondered if Dern knew about the lake, and then realized that of course Dern did. Everyone did. But they weren’t telling. No news of this lake had been sent out into System, anymore than there had been news of the canyon west of Settlement One, or the New Forest, or any of the other recent wonders. These were Hobbs Land things. No one wanted curious outlanders flooding in, asking questions, threatening the … the what? The whatever it was.

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 the 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.”