Raising the Stones

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Will you stay to see them leave?” the Commander asked.

  Sam didn’t answer for a moment, then he nodded. “Yes, I need to see what … who …” His voice trailed away.

  “We can’t stay any longer than that,” said Saturday, giving Sam a troubled look. “I have the feeling we should be getting back.” It was more than mere feeling. It was an urgency. Sam turned his weary, grieving face toward her as though to plead for some unspecified boon, but all she could do was press his hand between her own. Whether returning to Hobbs Land would help him or hurt him, she couldn’t say. Still, she knew they must go.

  “There are green snakes in Voorstod,” said Sam, his face quite expressionless. “And forest birds.”

  “We have heard,” said Saturday. “The Tchenka.”

  “No,” he shook his head at them. “Not Tchenka. Green snakes. Forest birds. Little ones. Real ones. I saw them, along the wayside, in the trees. Snakes. Birds. And other of the ancestor beasts of the Gharm as well.”

  When they got him inside, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

  When morning came, the Commander sat at a table near the Door, among a crowd of Archivists, busy with their recorders. Jep, Saturday, and Sam stayed in the command center, looking out from the darkened interior, where they would not be seen. Nothing was to occur that might upset the prophets. The Commander didn’t want them howling for Saturday’s blood, or Jep’s, or Sam’s. The Commander wanted them to go through the Door and away, forever.

  “Couldn’t you arrest the Awateh for the murder of my mother and execute him,” Sam asked, still in his depressed, expressionless voice.

  “We could. However, there might be riots, violence, more people hurt. We think this way will be most sensible. Can I trust you to stay calm, Sam?”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “I want no more innocent blood shed. I’ll be calm, Commander, but later …”

  “What do you mean, later?” Jep whispered, when they had gone inside, but Sam didn’t seem to hear him.

  The vehicles came at last, throwing up a long bushy tail of dust, stopping at the barrier. Veiled women stood in silent groups. Children, no less silent, gathered nearby. Gharm, light chains attached to their collars, were fastened to the carts, into which bulky bundles were shifted by long-haired men who stared around them with suspicion. One of the Awateh’s sons got out of a vehicle and approached the Commander, shifting his weight from side to side, fists clenched. His eyes showed white around the edges, as though he was about to bolt.

  “We wish to leave Voorstod,” he said. “The father of Queen Wilhulmia offered us land of our own if we would leave Voorstod. Now we wish to go.” He did not say the rest of what he was thinking. “Now we wish to go to a place of temporary safety while we complete our plans to destroy you all!” The prophets did not feel they had been routed. Though the manifestations in Voorstod were disconcerting, the prophets had not been driven away by the ancestor-spirits of the Gharm or by the apostacy of thousands of their followers. The prophets themselves were proof against whatever was happening in Voorstod. They had chosen to leave now as part of a coldly calculated and purely temporary retreat. For a time they would play the part of defeated men. So the Awateh had ordered.

  Such subterfuge had formed no part of their training, however, and they did it badly. Even the Commander thought so, as he regarded the young prophet with suspicion.

  It had been Wilhulmia’s great-grandfather, not her father who had promised resettlement land. The land the former king had offered was upon a Belt world which had long since been occupied, but the Commander did not bother with details.

  “The offer of resettlement land still stands,” he said. “How many of you are there?”

  “We are five hundred prophets of the Cause, with our wives and children and an equal number of the Faithful. We have certain requirements,” said the prophet, sweat standing out along his clean-shaven upper lip. “We require a habitable environment, with sufficient water for growing crops and for our flocks. We have brought certain Gharm with us to till our fields …” Actually, he needed none of these, but he was acting his part.

  “You will not be allowed to take any Gharm.”

  Though the prophet had been prepared for this, the actual words caught in his throat. “But we must have … must have … servants.”

  “There is a native race on the resettlement world.”

  The prophet mopped at his lip. “We have brought our flocks and our possessions, for so we are commanded to do. ‘Take up all that is yours,’ says our Scripture. ‘Your flocks and your people …’ ”

  “What is yours, you may take,” the Commander interrupted. “Each woman and each child over the age of ten will be asked if they wish to go. No person will be required to accompany you.”

  The prophet fought down a scream of rage and asked, “When may we go?”

  “Now,” said the Commander, gesturing at the Door. “Men through first. Then we’ll ask each woman if she wants to go, any who say no can stay here. Same with the children over ten.”

  “That’s unfair!” shouted the prophet, barely controlling himself. “You could keep our women, our families.”

  “Why would we want them?” asked the Commander coldly. “We do not consider your people civilized. We believe you to be barbarians who have chosen the most primitive and bestial elements of human nature and codified them into a cult. If you do not like the terms, you can go back to Cloud.”

  Sweat started out on the prophet’s face. He trembled with fury as he completed his assigned speech. “We prefer not to return. The devil is loose in Cloud. Jinni stalking in the streets. It is no longer an appropriate place for us.”

  “Then forward,” suggested the Commander, almost gently, sensing an end to whatever had been rehearsed. It had been rehearsed. He was sure of it.

  The prophet returned to the others of his group. After a pause, they straggled away from their flocks and families and went to the Door and through it. Soldiers gathered around to help the long-haired men herd the animals through.

  “There,” growled Sam from the door of the building in which he sat with the children. “Oh, there.”

  The others followed his glare, looked where he was looking, saw only the backs of the Faithful, going toward the Door with the animals before them.

  “There,” growled Sam again. “And now he’s gone. Phaed. Not now. No. But the time will come, Phaed.”

  Then the men were gone. The women went next, one by one, and the children. Only two of the younger women chose to stay on Ahabar. One of them had no tongue, but she screamed and threw off her veils, falling to her knees at the Commander’s feet to clutch at his knees. Her children were with her.

  Most of the older women never looked up or removed the veils from their faces. “Do you want to go with your husband.” A nod in response, soundless.

  After a time the last had gone and the Door was turned off.

  Saturday came out of the building to stare at the pale oval of dying fire. “So much hate,” she said. “So much pain, removed, as though it had never been. I can’t believe it.”

  “Will that be all of them?” the Commander asked.

  Sam shook his head. “I was told there were some of the Faithful back in the hills. I imagine they’ll either kill themselves or come out. If you can, you might leave the Door set up for a few days.”

  “I’m certainly not going to run the risk of having to set it up again,” snorted the Commander, signaling the Doormen who had supervised the departure to lock the controls. For the protection of everyone involved, the transfer had been one-way.

  “Where are they being settled?” asked Saturday. “Where did the Queen decide to send them?”

  The Commander smiled, a thin-lipped smile which, just for an instant, looked very much like the smile of the prophets. “We have sent them to the kind of place they asked for. A habitable place, appropriate for agriculture. It’s underpopulated. It even has a native race for them to enslave if the
y wish.”

  “To enslave?” Saturday was appalled. “Where?”

  The Commander pointed straight up, where the moons of Ahabar were in conjunction.

  “We’ve given them the highlands of Ninfadel,” he said.

  • When Howdabeen Churry received Shan’s request for an immediate secret meeting, he responded with polite alacrity and considerable curiosity. He had received Shan’s previous message; he had learned of the Four Questions. He had planned to act on the basis of those things alone. However, more information would not be amiss. What had his disciple, Shan, found on Hobbs Land that The Arm of the Prophetess should be cognizant of?

  They met in Chowdari. Shan, in a tight but determined voice, went into somewhat lengthy autobiographical detail before getting to the point, which was, he said, that he felt personally threatened by the Hobbs Land Gods.

  “Volsa goes on and on at me about their being completely beneficent, if they’re anything at all, but it seems to me something could appear to be beneficent, for its own purposes, couldn’t it?”

  “You mean as a kind of lure?” Churry’s steely eyes turned silver in concentration. “Bait?”

  “Precisely. Presumably the fish thinks the fly is beneficial, too, until he feels the hook. It is my opinion that the Hobbs Landers simply haven’t felt the hook yet.”

  “What makes you think these so-called Gods are inimical?”

  “In the first place, I don’t think it’s ‘Gods,’ ” said Shan. “I’m sure it’s all one thing, or was, originally. There was one there when they settled the planet. It died leaving a seed or something from which the new one came. All the settlements have built these little temples, as though waiting for one of their own to sprout. There’s even one at Central Management. They may have clones of their own by now, for all I know.”

  “But you said inimical?” prodded Churry.

  “Oh, well, one doesn’t know, does one?” he said with tightly controlled sarcasm. “There are three possibilities, I suppose. It could be beneficial. It could be neutral. It could be inimical. What are the chances of one alternative over another? There are more creatures that eat other creatures than there are creatures who don’t.” He shamed himself by giggling, hysterically.

  Churry gave him a look like a lash. “Control yourself, Damzel. You’re not making sense. You’ve said it’s some kind of vegetable. Existing only on Hobbs Land.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it? So long as it’s only Hobbs Land, one might afford to wait and see. But if it got off Hobbs Land …”

  “You think it will?”

  “I believe it has.”

  Churry leaned back in his chair. “Interesting.” He tapped his fingers on his booted leg, a rhythmic tid-a-rum. “I think it’s on Ahabar. I think somebody took seeds from Hobbs Land to Ahabar.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did they do it, or why do I think so?”

  “Why do you think so.”

  Shan wiped his nose. His nose kept running. It had started on Hobbs Land and had gone on ever since. “Because when Stenta Thilion was killed—even I knew who she was—everyone knew Voorstod had done it. When the Ahabar army was mobilized and set up the blockade, everyone approved. Voorstod is a boil up the ass of civilization, and everyone was ready for it to be lanced. We expected Ahabar to invade.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. One account I watched accused Wilhulmia of a failure of will. Another said she could not bring herself to the slaughter of Gharm which would result inside Voorstod.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing, Churry. Half an Ahabarian year, and the blockade is still there, and everything is quiet as a damned grave. That’s so unlikely it screams of machinations behind the scenes. You’ve read about the Voorstoders enough to know what they’re like. Do you really think they’ve stayed quiet for half a year?”

  “And your thought is that someone has taken some Hobbs Land God seeds into Voorstod and planted them, eh? Isn’t that pure supposition?”

  “Not quite pure.” Shan giggled, caught himself. “When we left Hobbs Land, there were a group of Hobbs Landers also ready to leave. The group included the Topman of Settlement One—which, incidentally, is where the Departed God was for thirty-some odd years—and his mother and a young girl I’d seen singing at the settlement. The three of them had that determined but depressed look that always reminds me of military training, when you get told off to do something dangerous. You can’t refuse. You want to do it well, but you don’t want much to die in the attempt, though that’s possible. You go off in this mood of depressed determination, carrying yourself on will alone. I recognized that kind of expression on the women’s faces.”

  “So?”

  “What I’m saying is, this was not a farmboy and his momma and daughter going off for a visit to the kinfolk. The three of them had some great purpose, at least the women did. So I decided to push a bit and see what they said. I’d noticed one of those temples at their management complex, and I asked about it.

  “The Topman spun me a line. He didn’t want me to know why they’d built it.”

  “And,” prodded Churry.

  “And, when you’re going through a Door, there’s a destination listing behind a panel on the wall of the waiting room.”

  “I know.”

  “Our destination was Chowdari, and the destination under ours was Fenice upon Ahabar.” Shan fell silent, waiting, wondering if he had said enough, or too much.

  “There’s something else. I can see it in your face,” said Churry.

  “I asked Archives to search for the three Hobbs Landers on Ahabar, see if there was any reference to their arriving or to the purpose of their visit. I knew the Topman’s name; he’d introduced himself to us when we came to his settlement: Sam Girat. It was a long chance, really, but as it turned out, Archives couldn’t have missed them if it had tried. They were at the concert hall when Stenta Thilion died, sitting with the military Commander and his daughter, right across from the Queen. You saw the account! It was replayed for days, until we were all thoroughly sick of it! The Hobbs Land girl was the one who sang the battle hymn. The woman saved Stenta’s life, temporarily. After the tragedy, they disappeared. Into Voorstod, I believe.”

  “To plant their seeds?”

  “Possibly. Maybe we’ll know soon. Ahabar can’t keep the blockade there forever. Presumably something has to happen. I understand Authority has been making rumbling noises, demanding that the blockade be raised.”

  Churry shook his head and grinned unpleasantly. “Everyone in the System knows the Religion Advisory has been bribed by the Voorstoders. Well, well. What are you really afraid of, Shan Damzel?”

  Shan shook for a moment. Whenever he thought about fear, he remembered it. Absolute, bowel-loosening fear, of drowning in glop. Of suffocating inside something that would not let go.

  “It could swallow us,” he said, his voice shaking. “If it’s swallowing the Voorstoders, it could swallow us.”

  “And if it is beneficent?”

  Shan shook his head, eyes wide. “Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter. Beneficent or not. Unlike my fool of a sister, you know that, Churry. You of all people …”

  Churry smiled again, this time almost fondly. “Yes, I do know that,” he said. “The prophetess was quite clear, wasn’t she? She didn’t differentiate between bad and good. She just told us to let nothing stop us from being ourselves. Whatever we are.”

  Churry turned for a few moments to the food and drink on the table beside him, which gave him time to think. He offered hospitality to his guest. When this politeness had been complied with, Churry asked, “You’re turning this matter over to me, are you?”

  Shan sighed in relief. “Yes. I can’t get any further with it. Reticingh asked some questions of the Advisory for me, through Native Matters, I think, but the result was inconsequential. I had hoped the Advisory would become frightened and do something, but all they did was argue. Even our High Baidee representatives
didn’t share my concern. I don’t have the authority or the money to do anything more about it on my own.”

  “Do anything about it. Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Meaning killing it,” whispered Shan. “Meaning killing it, before it spreads any farther.”

  • A small item on System News mentioned the partial withdrawal of the blockading force around Voorstod. Though the land blockade would be continued indefinitely, Voorstod was no longer to be shut off from the sea. The fisheries could get on with their business.

  Howdabeen Churry watched these developments with a good deal of interest. The question of the Hobbs Land Gods had been generally known for some time, but neither Authority nor the Circle of Scrutators had become exercised enough to do anything official. Now Shan thought the threat was spreading to Ahabar. Obviously, something had to be done, and The Arm of the Prophetess was the only group ready to do it!

  “My thinking is,” Churry said to his trusted lieutenant, Mordimorandasheen Trust, Mordy, “that if we go to Hobbs Land and simply destroy these so-called Gods—Shan Damzel says there can’t be more than a dozen of them—what follows will prove to us whether there’s any threat or not.”

  “Wasn’t he more worried about the ones he thinks may be on Ahabar?” asked Mordy Trust.

  “Well, yes. But Ahabar has quite a large army, and the only outside Doors are in Fenice, which would mean fighting our way half across a continent or figuring out some time-consuming and surreptitious way of getting to Voorstod. Hobbs Land doesn’t even have a militia. Half a dozen security people, and that’s about it.”

  “Better odds, is that it?”

  “Well, frankly, I don’t anticipate any opposition on Hobbs Land at all. It will be a preemptive, sanitary strike, to wipe out something that may be dangerous. So long as that’s all we do, nobody is going to become violent over it.”

  “So long as that’s all we do. We won’t carry any weapons, then.”

  “Don’t be silly,” laughed Churry, delighted with the prospect of action at last. “We may need to bluff a few farmers into moving off. It’s at least partly a training exercise, so we’ll go in full battle kit, of course.”