Raising the Stones

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “This Mugal Pye, is he really capable of killing anyone, Mam? Do you know for sure?”

  She screamed at him, anger at his wilful obstinacy overwhelming the gentleness she’d always tried to use toward him. “You’re trying to make excuses for them, Sammy. Well, don’t do like I did and lie to yourself! Are they capable of killing anyone, you ask? Wasn’t your little brother anyone then? Aren’t they anyone who die among the Abolitionists? When the bombs go off, aren’t they men and women and children bleeding on the ground with their arms and legs blown off? Aren’t the Gharm anyone? Whipped to death and starved to death and hounded to death, aren’t they anyone!”

  Sam shook his head at her, wishing he had not asked her, for she could not be rational about it. Still, even accepting that a good part of what she said might be true, it still didn’t mean Phaed was involved.

  She murmured, “Not that I could prove which ones they killed with their own hands. I could only say for sure they planned killing, hour on hour, night on night …”

  She could not prove it. Sam heard that, forgetting what else he had heard. His own dad was probably not part of any of this. Bad things happened in Voorstod, he no longer doubted, but his own dad was not part of it. Perhaps he was even being used by these conspirators.

  Maire went alone to the Wilm clanhome, refusing Sam’s company but taking the letter with her.

  “So what do we do now?” cried China. “What will you do, Maire? Dare you return?”

  “Dare I? No. I don’t dare. I’m terrified. But of course I’ll return,” Maire’s eyes were sunk deep, and her face was drawn. “To save the boy, of course. And not because he’s Sam’s … you know. Simply because he is. The thing is, my going back may not save him. I know those men. We can’t trust their word. I’ll have to think of a scheme to get him out safely.”

  “What will they do to you, when they get you back?” Africa wanted to know.

  “Only their vengeful prophet knows for sure. Awateh, they call him, the prophet of the Almighty, head of the whole butcher shop. He’ll have the last word on what happens to me. Still, I don’t think they’d kill me right away. They must have some reason for wanting me back besides merely killing me. They could have done that here.”

  She went back to Sam, trembling from fear, and Sam comforted her, telling her he wouldn’t let her go alone. He would have gone with her even had she gone blithely, with a song on her lips. This was what Theseus had promised him. He knew it. “I’m going with you, Mam. I will not let you go there alone. Depend upon it.”

  She wept on his shoulder, while he looked over her head at the wall. It was time for him to meet his father. The man his father. Phaed Girat. He told himself he wanted to know the truth, even while he assumed he already knew the truth. Dad was much maligned, not that Maire hadn’t had some right on her side, but she’d no cause to think all the evil of Voorstod dwelt in Dad’s skin and hung on his bones. No doubt Mugal Pye was a villain, but no doubt Sam and Phaed, once they were together, could put it right. Thereafter, Maire said things to him, and he to her, neither of them understanding the other, her thinking he was going along to protect her, and him thinking there was nothing, really, to protect her from.

  Maire wanted delay. The longer she could delay, the better, so she told herself. She had no intention of going directly to Voorstod. Her only reason for going at all was to guarantee the boy’s safety, so she was determined not to put herself at risk until Jep Wilm was free. Though Mugal Pye had promised no harm would come to the boy, Maire trusted him no more than she trusted the wind not to blow on any given day.

  Between herself and Sam, they kept Ilion hanging and hanging for days at a time, while messages went back and forth between Ilion and Mugal Pye and, secretly, between CM and Ahabar. Even though Maire agreed to go almost at once, she told Ilion she would not go alone, and Sam needed some time to take care of matters at Settlement One before he could depart. To Ilion, the whole matter seemed pointless, so he didn’t question this excuse. Luckily for Jep, the conspirators had allowed for a considerable period of time for the old woman to make up her mind. They had thought they might have to send a few slices of the boy, quite frankly, before she’d be jostled into action, and her early acquiescence had startled them agreeably. They didn’t see that having Sam with her made any difference. He would make another hostage, if they needed one. Within limits, they were willing to be patient.

  It was only days before they were to leave when Saturday Wilm came to Maire with a pronouncement.

  “I have to go with you,” said Saturday.

  “Never, child. I’ll not endanger another of you.”

  “It has nothing to do with danger, Maire Girat. It has nothing to do with what I want, or Jep wants, even. It has to do with the God. It is the God tells me to go, where Jep is. There’s something there I have to do. Wherever Jep is, I have to go there. You must stay outside of Voorstod until we return, both of us, but before Jep leaves there, I must go to him.”

  Maire shook her head. She would not consider it.

  Saturday gritted her teeth. “Maire, everything you told me about Voorstod, all the killings, all the maimings and the slavery, do you want it to go on? Do you want the Gharm to go free? Maire, do you want the killing to stop? Maire, are wee babies to be safe in Voorstod? Maire, are the bombs to stop going off in Green Hurrah and killing the children?”

  The older woman looked at the girl, shaken.

  “How do you know these things?”

  “Some of them you told me! I guess the God told me some things. What any person in Hobbs Land knows, the God knows. What you know, the God knows, Maire. Everything we know becomes all one thing, the thing the God knows, and what the God knows, so do the Ones Who, or maybe even just anybody if it is needful. If you want the killing to stop, Maire, then you have to take me with you.”

  Surprisingly, when Maire asked Africa Wilm if she would allow Saturday to go, Africa had already decided it was the only proper thing to do.

  Bleakly, she said, “Saturday and Jep are lovers, or soon to be. They are the Ones Who.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I wonder if either can live without the other. Let my daughter go with you.” She was not willing to say this, but she said it, and the tears ran until she thought she had no more.

  Later that night she went to China’s house and cried over hot tea in the kitchen. “I don’t know why I’m saying it,” she said. “I say it, and I know it’s right, but still I cry.”

  “Perhaps because you know, somehow, it will be best for them both,” whispered China, wiping her own face. “But at the same time, it is terribly dangerous for them.”

  “Terribly dangerous. And Sam, going with them, makes it no less so. He’s crazy, China!”

  “No,” said China soberly. “He’s not.”

  “He acts crazy!”

  “Africa, if Sam were crazy, he wouldn’t be here anymore. All the really crazy people have gone, or killed themselves. But Sam is still here.”

  Africa thought about this, shaking the tears from her eyes. It was true. Sam seemed solidly set in Settlement One. However. “You’re right about all the other crazy ones having left,” she whispered. “But maybe this is Sam’s way of leaving.”

  China felt something lurch within her. She couldn’t live with him, but, oh, the thought of his going away. And yet, his going might bring Jep back. Could she trade one for the other? She gulped, swallowed the pain, tried to get it to go down from the place it was lodged, just behind her breastbone. “Trust,” she whispered. “It comes down to that. Do we trust it?”

  “It?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Say it, China! Say it. Do I trust the God?”

  “Well, do you?”

  “Trust … what? What is it? It grew under the ground. We all know that. We don’t talk about it. We pretend not to notice it. Half the time we act as though it weren’t there at all. Sometimes we’ll go to the temple, to help clean it or something. Most times, we don’t.
It doesn’t ask for worship, you know. It doesn’t need worship. It doesn’t ask for hymns or praise or sacrifice, except for a few ferfs, and that’s more in the nature of food. When we sing, we’re singing about something else. We’re singing about ourselves, not the God. Most of the time … we just take it for granted. It’s there.”

  “You want it there, don’t you?”

  “Of course I … Yes. Yes, I want it there. But it should have come out of a fiery cloud. It should have descended from heaven. It should have … It should have come through a fiery gate, like that prophetess of the Baidee! But it just grew in the dirt like a turnip, China. How can we feel this way about something so common. Something that just grew in the dirt?”

  “Because it works. It doesn’t threaten us. It doesn’t damn us to hell as the Voorstoders do. It doesn’t require rituals as the Phansuri say their gods do. It just works.”

  “Yes,” Africa whispered, eyes shut, squeezing tears. “Yes, I know. It works. And that’s why Saturday has to go. Even though she may never come back.”

  • At CM, Zilia Makepeace and Dern Blass had become the Ones Who attended to the temple of Horgy Endure. Tandle Wobster helped out on occasion, as did Jamice, but Spiggy Fettle was still up on the escarpment, with the team from Thyker, unaware of the elevation of the God given the name of his former associate. Though information was consistently transmitted from escarpment to CM and back again, the new temple and the new God were simply taken for granted, and no one saw fit to mention them in the transmissions. Of course, no one on the escarpment had asked either.

  Meantime the God Horgy sat upon its pedestal in the temple, a man-sized chunk of something or other which broadcast an almost palpable charm. Young women, particularly, enjoyed visiting the temple of Horgy Endure. Many men, on the other hand, found the temple at Settlement Two very much to their liking, while older women enjoyed the temple at Settlement Three where the God Elitsia was enthroned, or perhaps, said some, en-plinthed would be a better word. Not that there was any evidence of religious frenzy or even of extreme devotion. If one happened to be in the vicinity of a favorite temple, one dropped in sometimes, because it felt good to do so. There was considerably more intersettlement travel than there used to be, as people became aware that answers to certain problems might exist here, or there, at some distance. Otherwise, the usual work went on, productively and without interruption. People enjoyed life. There was an upsurge in arts and crafts and inventions, as well as what amounted to a renaissance in vocal and instrumental music.

  On the escarpment, the Thykerites, augmented by the additional personnel, finished their personal survey of each and every ruin, took samples of several of the buried things, all of which turned out to be more or less of the same material, and decided to return home. Dr. Feriganeh had decided that Shan was physically healthy, though considerably fatigued. Shan was having bad dreams again, though he had been without them for several years. Neither the doctor nor Merthal had been able to find anything threatening on Hobbs Land. Shan was encouraged to take it easy.

  “Your feelings and ideas are your own,” the doctor reminded him. “So say the High Baidee. I may not interfere. I may not explain that you are wrong or attempt to convince you of error. I may not fool with your head. I may, however, recommend more sleep, more regular meals, and an easier schedule. The mind cannot exist without the body. The body must be healthy to carry the mind.”

  So much was doctrine, and to so much Shan acquiesced. He had not for a moment lost the notion that something on Hobbs Land was badly awry, but by following the physician’s orders he was able to get himself into a state where he stopped having nightmares and didn’t feel personally threatened. He told himself only the singing had made him feel threatened, and there was no singing upon the escarpment. When Shan mentioned this, Merthal went down to Settlement One to hear the choir for himself and enjoyed it thoroughly. He, like Bombi and Volsa, found it esthetically pleasing and not at all intrusive. He told Shan this, received a shrug in reply, and let it rest there. Once they were back on Thyker, he told himself, his young associate would recover a proper balance. He had simply been overstressed. Meantime Merthal went about humming to himself, “Rise up, rise up oh ye stones.”

  The buried things had turned out to be a kind of hard, woody fungus, something similar to a polypore. While their size was extreme, it was not unheard of. The Archives said there were similar things of even larger size on other worlds. Something similar had been found on several of the Belt worlds, and considering the constant bombardment from comets and other trash, a common source was probable. Perhaps there had been a world where these things grew, and it had been broken up, somewhere out there, and the pieces had been drawn into the System, several of them dropping on Belt worlds. This would explain their presence. The group was satisfied with this theory. With a singular lack of imagination, they did not look for other things that might have come from the same source. They took samples for the botanists on Thyker, finished up their documents, and returned to CM, where Spiggy, no less than Bombi, decided that hot water was the first priority.

  Spiggy hadn’t actively disliked his liaison with Volsa, though it had lacked certain aspects of mutuality, which would have allowed it to be enjoyable. He had felt summoned. He had felt patronized. His reward for service had had the same emotional weight as a pat on the head. “Here, little boy, take this coin and buy candy, the lady is busy now.” Well, he had no one to blame but himself. There was no requirement in his contract that he provide sexual services for visiting VIPs. To do so had been his own decision, based at least partly on what Spiggy himself identified as prurience of the first degree.

  When Spiggy returned to CM, and after a lengthy bath, he tried to tell a strangely relaxed and comfortable Jamice how he felt.

  “I’ve always wondered about the High Baidee,” he said. “I rejected the teachings as a child, but the curiosity remained. Kind of a nasty voyeurism, I suppose. I wanted to know what they were really like, up close.”

  “Well,” Jamice asked, who was being unaccountably accommodating, “what are they really like, up close.”

  “Intense,” he said. “Self-involved. Not Bombi, who has some sense of fun, even a little self-ridicule. But the other two … Well. They burn with a hot, clear flame, put it that way. Especially Shan. He has these nightmares and wakes up screaming, and then he goes around at white heat all day, making up for it. He’s a fearful and yet daring youngster, possessed by something very strange indeed. Capable of destruction, of self or others, I have no doubt.”

  “Best they go home soon, then,” said Jamice. “When do they?”

  “Immediately,” Spiggy said. “Tomorrow, I think. As soon as they can clean up and have a little rest.”

  “Good,” said Jamice, who had said nothing at all to Spiggy about the CM temple or the God Horgy Endure. Thus far, Spiggy had not asked about Horgy Endure. Perhaps he would not. The two had never been close friends. Better, perhaps, he did not ask, not until the Baidee had left. Perhaps the Baidee would all go to bed early, and no one would say anything, and then they would go. Best that they simply go. She did not question why she thought so. It was simply a feeling, but then, recently she had grown to trust her feelings. All of them at CM had learned to trust their feelings.

  Spiggy, however, found himself restless and unable to sleep. Perhaps he was too keyed up. Certainly he was on a high, jittery, strung-up, unable to relax. Perhaps he needed a walk. Though it was dark and late and quite cool, he put on warm clothing and went out into the night, finding just enough light to walk by without tripping over things. He went southeast, onto the rolling, low hills which surrounded CM on all sides except where the river valleys came in from the west and departed to the south.

  He came upon the temple without seeing it, almost bumping into it before the mass of it obtruded on his senses. Then it was as though someone spoke to him, and he found the door without trying, found the grill to the inner chamber without trying, found the
central area where the God stood upon its plinth, and was found by the God in turn.

  When he came to himself at first light, he was slumped on the mosaic floor just outside the inner chamber. When he rose, it was with the sensation of something tearing, as though he had been connected to the floor by a pelt of hair-fine filaments. The ripping sensation was not painful. He was not even certain it had been physical. It might well have been totally subjective, a symbolic expression of his being connected to this world. What was remarkable was how well he felt, not at all stiff after what should have been an uncomfortable night.

  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.