Raising The Stones (64 page)

•
Sam and China
went to the settlement office and made arrangements for extra milk for the cats, intensive cat sweeps of the warehouses, and round-trip cat transport to the escarpment, before walking over to China’s sisterhouse, where they sat on the porch, unwilling to separate but unable to do anything together that was either constructive or enjoyable. They felt a pained solidarity, a joint grief, which nothing seemed likely to transmute into either recovery or catharsis.

“You’re not yourself yet, Sam,” said China. While they were in the office together, she had decided to get it out in the open and talk about it. Sam had said almost nothing about Voorstod. Most of what China knew, she had learned from the kids. “Are you still grieving over Maire?”

“I’ve been … grieving over something,” he said with a grimace. “It won’t come clear for me. I’m not sure yet what it is I’m grieving over.”

She sat very still, not understanding him. When he said nothing more, she whispered, “What else could it be, Sam?”

“I don’t know.” He put out his hands, palms up, looking at them as though they should have held an answer. “I went to Voorstod for a reason, China. Not only my reason, I know what my reason was. But why was I
allowed
to go? It wasn’t to protect Saturday or Jep. They would have probably done fine without me. What was my purpose there?”

“Perhaps your reason was all that was necessary, Sam. To see your dad. To find out about him.”

He was silent a long time. At last he said, “I have the feeling there are things going on, things I have never seen. Things I have never recognized. As though I’d lived in some other world than this, all my life.”

“Like what, Sam?” she asked gently.

“Well, there’s the business of Maire. To save Jep, Maire Girat walked into Phaed’s hands, knowing she was risking her life. Gotoit Quillow assaulted an armed trooper with a rock to try and save Willum R.’s life. Maire died, Gotoit lived, but they were both doing the same thing. How many million women over the millennia have died, trying to keep their children or themselves or their loved ones from being slaughtered?”

“Many, I suppose. And many men, as well.”

“There’s little or nothing about them in the legends, China. The legends were my world, and there’s nothing about those people. Nothing at all.”

China knew that. She made no comment.

“All my life, China, I’ve been looking for the
single wondrous thing.”
He stood up and moved around, running his hands through his hair. “I put those stories into books, so I could take them down and look at them, feel them, see how the words looked on pages, the way our forefathers saw them, find in each one of them the
single wondrous thing
. In the legends, they always go after the
single wondrous thing
. The Holy Grail. The Enchanted Sword. The Kidnapped Wife. The Ring of Power. The Marvelous Jewel. Eternal Life. Summer’s Return. The Throne. The Crown. The Golden Bough. Whatever. Always seeking that special thing. The answer. The ultimate answer.

“That was my reason for going to Voorstod, really. I thought I’d find it there, with Dad. I thought it was one of the things Maire left behind.”

“Are you sure there is a single wondrous thing, Sam.”

“Why do we want one so badly, if there isn’t? Why do we long for quests? Why do we …”

She shook her head at him, beginning to feel as she had when he used to pick at her like this, questioning, questioning. “
We
don’t, Sam. I don’t. Africa doesn’t. Sal doesn’t. I don’t think women do, much. I don’t think we have time. Our lives are made up of many things, not just one. Many answers, not just one. It’s men that want one answer for everything. They’re always making laws, as though they could make one law that would be just in all cases. They can’t. They never have. I think men get derailed, sometime during their growing up. Instead of settling for what’s honest and real and sort of thoughtful, they go off on these quests. They go strutting and crowing, waving their weapons and shouting their battle cries. They say they’re seeking something higher, but it always seems to end in pain, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know …”

“I mean, like those laws they make. It’s almost always men who make laws, absolute laws, that don’t take into account what might be happening in each individual case. They particularly like to make laws regarding women, or children, as though the law could pin us down and make us be something we aren’t. Often the laws are unjust and cause great pain. But men are willing to trade justice for the law, because they can make the law but they can only approach justice, carefully and case by case. Like, on Thyker, those High Baidee make a law that says no killing, ignoring the times when killing is the only merciful thing to do, but then they make exceptions for war, because they like war. I know all about it. We women know all about it.”

He stared at her for a long moment, realizing the truth of what she said, then slumped to the floor beside her. “I guess that’s what I was saying. While all around me people were trying to live case by case, I was still questing, still looking for absolutes. While Maire was dying, I was still looking for the one perfect thing. Why didn’t I see? Why didn’t I feel the threat? Why did I come trailing along after, sorry when it was too late?”

She put her arms around him. “You were always after me for answers, Samasnier Girat. I swore I’d never love you again, you bothered me so, wanting answers. Now here you are again, wanting answers. Sam, I don’t know why! I don’t know the answer.”

“But I need to,” he said quietly. “It was born in me, China Wilm. Born in me and the God has not taken it away. If it were useless or futile or destructive, wouldn’t the God have removed it? If the God let me go to Voorstod, didn’t the God have a reason? Perhaps I am hardwired for fruitless quests. Perhaps I am driven by guilt to make up for Maire’s death. Perhaps the anger in me is too hot to be cooled.” He sighed, put his arms around her, held her close.

“Phaed Girat lives. My father. Murderer of my mother. He who was left behind with the other bloody legends. And it isn’t over between us.”

“Sam,” she cried, feeling his words like a knell.

“Sam,” he agreed. “Who has still at least one answer to find.”

He kissed her and walked away from her, and she wept to see him go. It was not that she feared losing him so much as she feared he was losing himself. As though there were something within him even the God Birribat Shum could not—or would not—make quiet.

•
On the third
day after the Outrage, Howdabeen Churry was located and brought in to be questioned by the Scrutators concerning the matter of Hobbs Land. Though he had been unequivocally identified by Shan Damzel, Churry did not at first confess to being involved.

When asked where he had been three days before, he said, “We were holding training exercises several days ago. Some of my men disappeared. I’ve been conducting a search, as a matter of fact.” All of this was true, though specious. Howdabeen had indeed been going through the motions of a search.

“Do you know Nonginansaree Hoven?”

“Of course. He’s one of my men.”

“Presumably not one of the missing men.”

“No.”

“Hoven is on Hobbs Land.”

“Whatever is he doing there?”

When informed that the Hoven trooper was wearing shackles in a cell at the detention facility at CM, Churry shook his head and refused to answer any more questions. There was no religiously acceptable way that Reticingh or any other of the Scrutators could force him to do so. They could not fool with his head no matter how much, as Reticingh said to his sister over a scanty dinner, Churry’s head needed fooling with. Of course, Churry did not need to confess in order to be found guilty of grave transgressions against System peace.

Churry’s strategy, insofar as it could be called a strategy, had been to let things blow over, just as they would have done if the damned Hobbs Landians hadn’t had some method of communication Churry hadn’t counted on and still couldn’t believe. Let it get to be old news. Let the anger cool. The Baidee who controlled the planetary government did not impose a death penalty for any infraction except head-fooling, but they did sentence malefactors convicted of major crimes to lengthy sequestration. Churry had already resigned himself to years, perhaps to life, in a penal colony somewhere in the southern deserts. However, the longer things dragged on, the less urgent the matter would seem, so he would delay. So he had thought.

It had not even occurred to him that people might go very hungry on Thyker before anything blew over at all.

“Mysore Hobbs says there is another way for food to get from Hobbs Land to Thyker,” Reticingh grated. “He intimated that the persons responsible for the raid would know about that.”

Once he understood the supply situation, Churry knew when to bow to the inevitable. “Let us say,” murmured Churry, “that the raiders might have had a … oh, something like a Combat Door with them.”

“Which would be what?”

“Which would be … ah, a Door that could be set up and taken down quite rapidly, perhaps. A Door that could be moved from place to place easily. A Door perhaps keyed to some other Door on some other place.” Churry fell silent, thinking of the dimensions of that Door. It was narrow. Hardly wide enough for two troopers to walk through abreast of one another. Two of the Hobbs Land Doors they had destroyed had been bulk-shipment doors, designed for continuous feed and wide as a house.

As though reading his mind, Reticingh asked, “How large might this Door be?”

Churry looked at his shoes.

Reticingh snarled, “Large enough, for example, to get the parts of another Door through, if they were transshipped from Phansure through Thyker? Which would, of course, take some time, because there aren’t Doors just lying around on Phansure, ready to be shipped.”

Churry swallowed painfully. “Large enough for that, I suppose. If the parts weren’t too big.”

“I have a feeling that’s the
minimum
time Thyker will be on short rations,” said Reticingh. “Until at least one new Door gets to Hobbs Land and is installed. I would hesitate to say what the maximum time may be.”

•
The news that
the blockade of Voorstod had been withdrawn paled beside the developments following the Hobbs Land raid by renegade Baidee. Renegade Baidee is what System News called them. Renegade Baidee is what the planetary government of Thyker called them when it announced, even before it was petitioned by Hobbs Transystem Foods on behalf of the settlers, that generous reparations would be paid. The examination of Howdabeen Churry and Mordimorandasheen Trust by the Circle of Scrutators, the subsequent questioning of the Circle of Scrutators by Authority, these events were fully covered by System News and were followed by almost everyone in System. The food shortages on Thyker and the resultant rioting were fully reported along with the announcement that the entire Arm of the Prophetess was to be sent to Hobbs Land as a convict crew to load food through the only available Door to Thyker. Hungry High Baidee were dismayed to learn that early shipments, scanty enough in themselves, would consist almost entirely of mammal meat and processed eggs. Dern Blass had his own methods of retaliation.

The entire Arm had been found out, the name of one leading to the name of another, as such conspiracies do. Baidee were not accustomed to actually telling lies, that is, saying things they knew to be untrue. Most of them had simply swallowed their pride, admitted their guilt, and asked how long it would take to expiate.

Since Shan Damzel, while admitting to having provoked the entire incident and having had guilty knowledge of it, had not done any killing or raiding or taken part in the plans, he was sentenced to the same duty, but to a shorter term. Shan’s siblings were swift to declare their own judgment before Shan was taken away.

“People
dead
because of you,” said Bombi, sounding more annoyed than grieved. “
Children
dead because of you, shot down in their innocent blood. The whole family is whispering to one another, wondering if you have gone beyond the
bounds.”

“Churry never said anything about killing anybody,” said Shan for the twentieth time. “He was going to go in and kill the things, and then we were going to see what happened.”

“Let us suppose the same thing happened here,” snarled Bombi. “Suppose the
prophetess
came back to Thyker, and suppose someone from Hobbs Land just happened by and shot her
head
off, what do you think would happen?”

“The prophetess is … was a human being.”

“So were those
hundreds
of people you killed.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Just as good as.”

Mixed with his dreams of the Porsa, Shan began to have dreams of mutilated bodies, broken faces, shattered children running from him, screaming. He thought he might rather be dead.

Phansure agreed to complete a Door in record time. The parts, including extras to allow for possible transport losses, were to be transshipped via Thyker to Hobbs Land, where Theor Close and Betrun Jun would set it up and put it to work. By that time, people would be notably thinner on Thyker, and the convict crew could look forward to little sympathy upon their return. If they ever returned. Except for Shan Damzel, the Baidee had been sentenced to a very long stay on Hobbs Land, where they were to load the Door by physical labor, using no machines, until everyone on Hobbs Land agreed that reparations were complete.

Jebedo Quillow, uncle to Willum R., said it would be a cold day on Collus before he would consider reparations complete. Dern Blass, still grieving over Tandle, thought the same. They were not alone among those who were determined that The Arm of the Prophetess would wither with age down to its last finger before it left Hobbs Land again.

The prisoners came through the Combat Door just eight days, Thyker, after the raid. What passed for justice on Thyker had always been admirably swift. All but three of them arrived quite safely. One of the three arrived inside out, and the other two did not arrive. This upsetting occurrence led to the disclosures that the Combat Door was not totally reliable and that Howdabeen Churry had known it all along.