Raising the Stones

by Sheri S. Tepper

  So, for a time, she had loved him as she longed to do, but now the gentle time was spoiled, leaving her hurting and close to tears. She resolved once again to stay away from Sam Girat.

  • • •

  • Shan, Bombi, and Volsa arrived in their flier at Settlement One and were met at the flier park by Sam in a surface vehicle.

  “You didn’t need to do this,” said Volsa, admiring Sam from beneath her lashes and thinking that, had she not been High Baidee, she would have set herself at this man. “We could have walked over to the guest quarters.”

  “Topman, I could not have walked,” said Bombi dramatically, falling about in not entirely pretended exhaustion. “I could have walked no farther than the nearest bathhouse. I am filthy. I want nothing but water, hot water and peace.”

  “What’s this I hear about your discovery?” asked Sam, with genuine curiosity. “Some kind of strange monument?” Monuments, any monuments, interested Sam greatly.

  “Some kind of strange something,” admitted Bombi, “which we have no idea what is, except that, probably, it has been there for a very long time. Animal, vegetable, mineral, real or mythical, we cannot say. Something which occurs naturally or something which was built. By the Departed or by some former race. Or, by visitors, there’s always that possibility.”

  “Remarkable,” said Sam, his mind spinning with a thousand questions. “Remarkable that it was never seen on survey maps.”

  Volsa shook her head at him. “The area is wooded. The mounds might have shown up if there had been no trees. They would have shown up on instruments if they were of very dense material, but they don’t seem to be any more dense than the surrounding soil and rock. We just don’t know. We didn’t bring the proper equipment to do excavation. As a matter of fact, we’re not trained xeno-archaeologists, and we’ll undoubtedly be criticized for even putting a probe into the soil. Of course, when the Ancient Monuments Panel learns of the discovery, who is to say what may take place? We’ll probably be innundated by experts.”

  “Interesting,” Sam murmured, thinking that the things they had found might have appeared recently, as certain other geographical features had, but not wanting to say so. Evidently these visitors had not noticed the new features, and Sam was no more eager than anyone to have teams from Thyker or Phansure or Ahabar investigating. He brought the vehicle to a halt beside the Supply and Admin building. “Guest quarters upstairs.”

  “Hot water,” moaned Bombi.

  “Hot water,” Sam agreed. “By the way, I’ve had some of our better cooks select and prepare food for you, in accordance with the information received by CM from your Religious Center. If anything seems improper or even doubtful, please let me know. I think we depended pretty heavily on poultry, fruits, grains, and vegetables.”

  They left him to go to the upper floor and make themselves at home. Shan fell onto a bed and was asleep within moments. Bombi got himself under the water shower and began singing Thykerian mind-clearing mantras, loudly and tunefully. Bombi had an excellent voice and had sung during the recurrent opera revivals in Serena. Shan, who had an even better voice, had never evinced any interest in music.

  Volsa used the sonic cleanser, which she preferred to getting wet, and then sat by the window, nibbling at the nicely prepared oddments she had found waiting on a tray in the kitchen and thinking of Sam Girat. It was all very well to be restrictive in one’s sexual pleasures, but on extended trips into places where there were no Baidee, one might desire to have other companions than one’s own brothers. It didn’t seem to bother Bombi much. Bombi had a tendency to take it or leave it, in almost any environment, and Shan had a strong touch of the ascetic in his makeup. For herself, however, Volsa preferred reasonably frequent access to acceptable companions. She decided to call Spiggy Fettle and ask him if he would join them for a few days when they returned to the escarpment. No point in making talk here in the settlement.

  Here in the settlement. She watched it from the window, in all its dusty frontier guise: low, flat-roofed, sponge-panel buildings with wide porches; mostly unsurfaced roads; greenhouses stretching their glittering length toward the west; fields, which could be seen over the rooftops, green and orange and yellow and purple and dun, in wide rows and narrow, and no rows at all, reaching away on all sides, almost to the western horizon, where the suns flattened.

  There were long, evening shadows across the streets. People went by purposefully, without hurrying. Children raced down the street and into a narrow alleyway and out again, shrieking, as children have always done. There were many cats. Volsa had expected that. Most farm settlements used cats, sometimes thousands of them, to keep the vermin in check. The local breed was sizeable, with large round heads, big eyes set well apart, and short hair. Some were plain-colored and some striped, and all had long, sinuous tails. Every now and then one of them looked up at her, standing quite still, tail carried low, one foot raised, eyes bright with a perspicacious, interested stare, as though to say, “Aha. Someone new.”

  Bombi came out of the shower much refreshed and very wet, his long hair hanging in dark strings almost to his knees. “No fas-dry in there,” he complained. “Only towels.”

  “Sit here in the sun,” she suggested. “It will dry quicker.” She stood behind him and plied the towels, several of them, until the long strands were only moist. Then she combed and braided his hair for him, as he often braided hers, the long, complicated braids that would end up wound tight under his turban. Volsa had often wished the prophetess had said minds instead of heads. How wonderful if she had said, “Don’t let anyone fool with your minds.” This business of never cutting one’s hair was a bore.

  Music came to them, at first faintly and then more loudly.

  “Are you dry enough to get dressed?” she asked.

  He nodded, sighing as he heaved himself out of the chair. “You want to go see who’s singing?”

  “It sounds interesting.” She leaned out of the window, trying to ascertain where the sounds were coming from. “Besides, we want to look at the temple, don’t we?”

  “I have seen enough ruined temples to last me forever,” Bombi said.

  “Shouldn’t we wake Shan?”

  “Leave him.” Ever since they had found the mounds, Shan had become a pain, twitchy and jumping at shadows. Bombi frowned. “He needs his sleep.”

  They went out into the air, found the ruined temples, and gave them a cursory once over, enough to know they were exactly like every other ruined temple upon the heights.

  “What’s the music?” Volsa asked a passerby, a stout woman in a bright coverall.

  “The choir?” she asked, surprised. “Oh, I’ve gotten so used to it, I don’t even hear it anymore. The children started a choir, many grown folk have joined, and Maire Girat is its leader. They practice out near the temple. Just follow the road across the stream, that way.” She pointed and smiled, then scurried away as they went in the direction she had indicated.

  “Happy place,” commented Bombi, two lines appearing briefly between his brows. “Remarkably.”

  “Everyone seems well-occupied,” agreed Volsa. “Busy.” The two of them walked in the direction indicated, toward the sound of the voices. “We should have brought Shan with us,” she fretted. “Except he’s been so strange lately. Have you any idea what’s wrong with him?”

  “Only the Overmind knows,” Bombi replied shortly.

  “Do you think it has something to do with that time, you know, the Porsa?”

  Bombi frowned again. He had resolutely not been thinking about that. He had been very self-consciously not-remembering. Now he did remember, and it made him cross. When Shan had first returned from Ninfadel, he had driven them crazy. He had spent most of every day bathing, over and over, claiming the smell of the Porsa had permeated his flesh. Night after night he had scrambled from his bed, screaming, bringing his siblings running to shake, wake him, talk him into reality again. After ten times, a dozen, it had been too much for Volsa and B
ombi. The doctors had been summoned, to give Shan things he could take to make him sleep, to teach him techniques for ridding himself of memory. The doctors couldn’t do it for him, since that would be fooling with his head. He had to learn to do it himself.

  As he had done, Bombi reminded himself. As Shan had done. Shan had concentrated, had studied, had learned to control it. Give him full credit for that. He had been very strong. Now Bombi gave homage to that strength by saying, “Volsa, he was over that years ago. He’s all right. He’s just tired.” And he repeated the words silently to himself, reassuring himself. Shan was just tired.

  “So we let him sleep,” said Volsa, willing to be convinced. It was what she wanted to believe. He was just tired.

  They crossed the stream and noticed the ribbon-willows, which were quite different from the Topes of the heights. They saw the rebuilt temple without, at first, realizing what they were seeing. The thatched roof completely changed the shape of the thing. The brightly painted walls made it seem almost spritely, almost joyous. They both realized at the same moment.

  “By the Overmind,” whispered Bombi. “A new one.”

  “It startled me for a moment, too, though I don’t know why,” Volsa commented. “We knew the children of the settlement had rebuilt a temple. That’s what Zilia Makepeace told the Native Matters Advisory, after all. It’s what set her off in the first place.”

  They thought for a moment of going in, but the choir drew their attention away from the structure, and they moved toward the singing. Childish trebles were soaring along with the women’s higher voices, deep bass notes anchoring their flight, the lighter baritones and tenors and contraltos filling the pattern with harmony. Highest and brightest of the voices was that of a child of about thirteen or fourteen lifeyears, standing at the front of the group, her voice tumbling through the harmony like that of an ecstatic bird.

  “Let’s sit here on the grass and listen,” suggested Volsa. “They’re really quite good.”

  “Not what I’d call up to professional standards, but yes, quite good,” agreed Bombi. They sat down on the grass, among a dozen settlers similarly engaged, falling under the spell of the music, letting the time pass gently.

  Back in the settlement, in his room in the guest quarters, Shan Damzel dreamed he was once again on Ninfadel.

  The dream started as his dreams had always started, with him just emerging from the Door to see the inside of the high-walled compound where several small buildings squatted on bare gravel amid stacks of supplies. Theoretically, the wall wasn’t necessary, not here on the highlands of Ninfadel. Nonetheless, a wall had seemed prudent to the bureau in Ahabar responsible for such things. In the dream, Shan already knew this.

  A pile of food crates lay on the sand beside him. All food came from Ahabar. Food could have been grown on the highlands of Ninfadel, but the soil required much labor to produce anything worth eating, and no one stayed long enough on Ninfadel to make the effort worthwhile. Shan knew this, too.

  In the dream a uniformed officer came across the sand toward him, holding out his hand, smiling an official smile. The handful of Ahabarian guards were changed every forty days. While on Ninfadel, they seldom went outside the walls. The small Native Matters contingent stayed longer, but even they went outside only rarely. Sometimes they told Shan this, sometimes he remembered it.

  In the dream, it was the Native Matters people who explained various things to him, putting their faces close to his, so that he saw their gums, their teeth, their vibrating tongues, repeating things he already knew, a litany he knew by heart.

  “We’ll tell you how to survive,” the Native Matters person said. “Do you understand? If you want to survive, you’ll listen.

  “First, you never step off the highlands without your faceplate down. Not one step. You don’t lift your faceplate anywhere below the altitude line. We had one guy, went down below the line and built himself an observation post up in a tree, slept up there without his faceplate. One of the Porsa slimed up somehow, got him in the night. So you never, we repeat never, go below the line without your faceplate down.

  “Second, never go beneath the line without one full day’s air in your emergency tank. Anytime you have less than that, you get here as fast as you can and get it refilled. One of ’em grabs you and you use up all but half a day’s air, don’t think you can get by. Next one might swallow you for a whole day. It’s been known to happen. Some of them lay in wait at the line, so don’t tell yourself you’re stepping over just for a minute.

  “Third, try not to go more than a quarter-tank’s distance away from the line, or you can’t be sure you’ll get back to refill your tank. There’s a counter on the tank, push it when you step over the line.

  “Fourth, if any mucous gets on your skin, wash it off while it’s still gooey. If it dries on you, it makes sores that don’t heal. Don’t take off your faceplate while you’re washing, either, if you do it down there. They like to grab you down at the river. The best thing to do is wash in the troughs we’ve piped water to, on the highlands. There are tall beacons by every trough. They’re easy to find.

  “Fifth, don’t try to talk to them. I don’t care what kind of Alsense machine you’ve got, keep it on translate and record, not on speak. They go crazy if you try to talk to them. They just love it. We’ve had some of them swarm over the line just because some student was trying to communicate with them. It kills them, but they don’t die right away. They live long enough to do a lot of damage.

  “Sixth, you’ll actually see more and hear more if you stay away from them than if you go close. If you go close, you’ll spend most of your time swallowed, and from inside you can’t see or hear anything much. The way to stay away from them is to stay above the line. That way nobody gets hurt. I know you won’t pay any attention, but it’s true. You’ll see just as much from up here as you will if you get closer. Use spy-eyes, if you like. They’ll get slimed fairly fast, but you can bring them back and clean them off.

  “Seventh, use the nose filters whenever you see or hear them. I know you don’t think a stink can kill you, but damn, it can come close. …”

  What they had said. What they said to every student who came to Ninfadel. Shan had heard it; now he dreamed it, every word. Perhaps he only remembered it, but in the dream it seemed that he heard it for the first time, felt, for the first time, his own scepticism. Shan was High Baidee. He believed what he himself knew to be true. He did not necessarily believe these Native Matters people from effete Phansure, these Ahabarian guards.

  They gave him the breathing hood, a tight, flexible garment with a hard visor-hinged faceplate. The plate was linked to a heavy tank containing two day’s worth of ultrapack-air. A tube inside the faceplate could give him water. Another could feed him nutri-paste. The whole assemblage was heavy to carry, uncomfortable to wear.

  “How long can I wear this thing?” he’d asked.

  “Some people wear it all their fives,” the officer had said, making a joke. It wasn’t a joke, of course. Shan had seen the recordings of the assemblages lying in the sun among scattered human bones: required viewing for any graduate student who had the arrogance to plan research among the Porsa.

  Or the courage, he told himself in the dream, as he had told himself in reality. Dedication, determination, courage. That’s all one needed. He went out of the outpost, into the security lock. The inner door closed and locked. The outer door opened. He walked along the high, rocky ground, keeping himself just inside the clearly marked glowing line, above which the Porsa died, looking down into sparse growth on the lower slopes of the hills and along the river. The smells were of spice and resin. Below him, by the stream, he saw a group of Porsa and heard them shouting at one another. Unthinkingly, he stepped over the line and went down onto the moist, sucking soil of the hill, turning on his Alsense machine so he could hear what they were saying.

  “Piss, shit, snot, pus,” said one to another.

  “Shit, slime, rot, you,” replied
the second.

  “Fartedy-fart-fart,” screamed a third. “Filth. You. Filth. You. Bury in feces.”

  They fell on one another, melting together, seeming to coalesce, then separating once more. As they did so, they caught sight of him and began sliming up the hill toward him, shouting greetings, great gray blobs of mucous covered with running sores. The stink that preceded them came in a palpable wave. Gagging, Shan thrust in the nose filters he had been holding and then remembered, at the last possible minute, to pull down the faceplate. Shrieking happily, they increased their speed.

  “Coming to you, filth. Coming to you.”

  “Wait, filth. Wait!”

  Shan dreamed that he ran, but they caught him. He dreamed that they swallowed him, one after the other, making gulping, liquid sounds.

  Shan began to scream and went on screaming.

  “Damzel!” someone shouted.

  “Let me out!” he screamed.

  “You’re out,” Sam yelled at him, shaking him. “Damzel, wake up. I heard you from my office downstairs. You’re on Hobbs Land. You’re all right!”

  Groggily, Shan thrust himself toward the top of his bed, sat up, tried not to breathe.

  “Breathe,” Sam commanded, as the man before him turned blue. “There’s nothing here to hurt you.”

  Shan tried a tentative sniff. Nothing. Only air. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought I’d learned not to do that anymore.”

  “You’re probably overtired,” said Sam, carefully not asking the questions he wanted to, such as, “What were you dreaming about.” Instead he asked, “Are you all right now?”