Raising the Stones

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Across the System, all eyes and ears were focused upon Hobbs Land, which was cut off from all aid. The twenty-one Actual Members of Authority had called themselves into emergency session. Thyker had been summoned before an Authoritative Commission to Answer Questions. Enforcement was put on alert status.

  From Enforcement, Altabon Faros had sent an urgent message to Ninfadel.

  In his tent, the Awateh smiled on his sons and gave certain orders. Almighty God had willed the diversion to occur sooner, rather than later.

  • Outside the Settlement One temple, where they had recently buried Willum R., some of the mourners remained for a time beside the grave. Jep sat with Saturday, Sam with China Wilm, Africa alone against the temple wall. Gotoit Quillow was around behind the temple with Deal and Sabby and Thurby Tillan, all of them talking about their dead comrades and crying. Jep thought it seemed he had done nothing much but cry or feel like crying since Mugal Pye had stolen him from Settlement One. He had thought coming home would fix everything, but it hadn’t.

  Saturday was stretched out on her stomach, head propped on a hand, staring at the grass blades a few inches below her nose. Sam sat under a tree with China, hugely pregnant between his knees, her back against his chest, his arms around her. They weren’t talking. None of them had talked much today.

  “What’s going to happen now?” China whispered to Sam. In the quiet, the whisper carried. They all heard her.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “We might know better if we knew exactly what the Baidee had been trying to accomplish when they came here.”

  “I think that’s obvious,” said Africa. “According to all the witnesses, they were mere youths. They wanted to play at being soldier, and they wanted to see what we would do after our Gods were destroyed.”

  “I know that,” said Sam. “I mean in addition to that.”

  “I don’t think there is any addition to that,” Africa went on. “I think that was all of it. They wanted to see what we’d do. They are Baidee. The idea of real Gods frightens them.”

  Sam mused, remembering the nightmare from which he had wakened Shan. “That Shan Damzel, he was the one. He was a very frightened man.”

  “Frightened men do stupid things. Now we’ve found their Door and shut it, so they can’t see, they’ll be frightened again. They don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “What are we doing?” asked China, wiping her eyes.

  “We’re grieving over our friends and relatives who have been killed in a exercise of pointless violence,” said Sam, who had thought he had left that behind, in Voorstod.

  “When we’ve done that, probably we’ll pretty much do what we always did.” Saturday wiped her face and squeezed Jep’s hand.

  One of the settlement cats came from behind the temple and addressed Saturday at length.

  “What did she say?” asked China.

  “She says if we aren’t going to use the milk, at least let the cats have all they’d like of it, and would we please tell the dairy people. She says not to store anything in the empty warehouses at CM until the cats have been through them, because they’re alive with ferfs, and she says cats are needed up on the escarpment to hunt ferfs, but they can’t stay up there by themselves because there’s nothing to eat.”

  “I’ll arrange it,” said Sam, getting slowly to his feet. He pulled China up after him, and the two of them walked slowly down to the creek and across, heading toward the settlement.

  “Poor Sam,” said Africa.

  “Why poor Sam?” asked Jep.

  “Because he’s spent his whole life looking for something, and he’s just figured out he was looking for the wrong thing, but he doesn’t know what the right one is yet.” She looked down at her knotted hands and thought them perfectly symbolic of China right now. Tightly knotted up, full of compassion, full of apprehension, not knowing which way to go. Poor China. Poor Sam.

  “If we knew, we could tell him,” mused Jep.

  “I can’t tell him, because I don’t know,” Saturday said. “I know some things. They come to me solid, like pieces of wood, all carved to fit and nailed down. I just know, and I open my mouth and out it comes, and that’s that. No questions. No hesitations.”

  “That’s the God talking,” Jep asserted.

  “I suppose it is. But when it comes to other things, I haven’t the least idea. Maybe those are things the God isn’t interested in.” Saturday sat up and brushed the grass off her trousers.

  “What kinds of things wouldn’t a God be interested in?” asked Gotoit Quillow from behind them. The crying session was evidently over, for both the other Quillows and Thurby Tillan were with her and nobody was blubbering. “I should think the God would be interested in everything we’re interested in.”

  Saturday had spent a lot of time while on Ahabar thinking about that matter. “I thought so, too. But then I got to thinking about what the God actually does. I mean, if the God is interested in something, it would probably do something about that, wouldn’t it? So, if it doesn’t interfere with what we do, day to day, it probably doesn’t care very much what we do.”

  Africa looked up from her hands and said, “Perhaps it’s simply that, within rather broad limits, it doesn’t matter what we do day to day. There are probably thousands of equally effective ways of raising food and getting along together. The God is not interested in minutiae, though it helps us toward efficiency by improving our communications and running off people who are disruptive.”

  Saturday nodded to her mother. “And it’s not just our communications, but cats’ too, and probably anything else on Hobbs Land that has any intelligence at all. So the God cares about intelligence.”

  “What else?” wondered Gotoit.

  Africa pondered this question. “It cares about diversity; Saturday’s right about the cats. Also, the people who’ve left tended to be those who thought man was more important than other parts of creation, and themselves more important than other men,” Africa mused. “Me-and-my-image devotees. Human fertility worshippers. The kind of people who will happily kill other species to make room for more humans, advocates of the old ‘fill up the world and ruin it’ philosophy.”

  “I wonder what would happen if I decided to do something to destroy intelligence or diversity. Would it stop me?” Jep asked.

  “It wouldn’t have to,” said Africa. “You simply wouldn’t do it, because you’d have been informed it wasn’t a good idea,” She stood up and brushed off her trousers. “Still, I get no sense that my autonomy has been destroyed. I believe I still have free will. I don’t think the God is directing us, except in a few specifics, and even those seem designed merely to increase our general welfare and freedom of choice.”

  “So, then, what was Shan Damzel afraid of?” asked Jep.

  The people sitting about shrugged. Africa shook her head. Saturday said, “I don’t know, Jep. I’m just positive Shan caused all this mess, and I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what might have made him do it, and I just can’t. He must have been afraid of something else entirely. Something we don’t know anything about.”

  • 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.”

&n
bsp; 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 C
ombat 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.