The Worthing Saga

by Orson Scott Card

  Stipock was genuinely surprised—and puzzled. “You want me to teach them? Do you have any notion of what I say?”

  “Oh, yes. You tell them how the world is a spinning globe, and the sun is a star. You tell them how sickness is the work of tiny animals, how the brain is the seat of the mind, and your story that Jason is only one of many who drive Star Towers through the sky has filled the children's mind with interesting speculations about what other worlds might be like, with all the miracles you talk about. It has little practical value, of course, but I'm not afraid of what will happen with the children thinking things that none of us have ever thought before. I think it's more to be encouraged than discouraged But that isn't why I want you to be our teacher.”

  “Why, then?”

  “You know things that will solve problems for us. You've talked of a water-powered mill to grind the grain—I want to build it, and I want you to teach some of the children the principles behind it so we can make more. You've talked of boats, so watertight that we could cross the Great River and sail out to the ocean.”

  “You know about the ocean?”

  “Of course.”

  “The children didn't.”

  “Those of us who have been in the Star Tower—Jason shows us the maps of the world, where the grasslands are, the forests, the metals hidden in the earth, the great rivers and the seas. He's shown us the computer and the pictures it draws in the air, he's shown us the coffins where the Ice People sleep. He showed me you, in fact, and warned me he might waken you this time.”

  “But you've told no one about it.”

  “There's been no need.”

  “But—they don't even know the shape and size of the world they live on.”

  “If they ask, I tell them. No one asks.”

  “Why should they ask? No one knows that you know.”

  “Well, you haven't kept your knowledge a secret, and that's all that matters now. Build your boats, Stipock, and take the children who adore you across the river. I'll help you—I can keep the frightened parents at bay. Start a new village there, with a river that only those who've learned to drive your boats can cross, and give these children a chance to become men and women without their parents breathing down their necks.”

  It was not at all what Stipock had expected. He had looked for a reprimand; he had come steeled for a quarrel. “Don't you realize how that will dilute your power, Noyock?”

  Noyock nodded gravely. “I know very well. But Heaven City is growing larger all the time. Jason told me to separate my work and give bits of it to the best men and women for the job. I've put Worin in charge of the building of firm roads, and he's doing well. Young Dilna is master of tools, since everyone knows she does fine metal work better than anybody else. Poritil is harvestmaster and keeper of the grain.”

  “And doing well. I didn't realize how new they were. I thought Jason set the system up.”

  “He suggested it. I only carried it out. But you—he didn't tell me what to do with you.”

  “But you said he warned you.”

  “That the children would follow you, and I was not to interfere, except—”

  “Except?”

  “That the peace and law of Heaven City must be maintained.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “That means that when you take the children across the river, Stipock, you will not teach them to disobey the law. I know more about the life of the Ice People than you think. Jason told us how they thought nothing of marriage, and coupled where they pleased, and killed their children.”

  “I can see he gave you a neutral picture of it—”

  “We need our sons and daughters, Stipock. I was here when there were only fifteen of us, besides Jason. I was here when the first babies grew, before they were ever men and women. Now there are nearly a thousand. Now there are people who can spend all their working time at the forge or at the loom, so that those who are best at a job don't have to drop their work to weed the fields or shear the sheep. We're free now, to follow our desires. We do not need two or three or four separate cities, each one doing for itself what we could all do more easily together. We are too few for that. And Jason warned me of another thing.”

  “What was that?” Stipock expected it to be something about him.

  “War. Do you know the word?”

  Stipock smiled tightly. “It was Jason's main line of work.”

  “The closest we've come to it was the burning of the house, back in the first year of Kapock. Jason told me stories of what it could be like. I believe him.”

  “So do I.”

  “The seeds are there, Stipock. The seeds of war are in this house. My grandson Hoom hates his father, and my son Aven has done his best to earn that hate. Look among the younger ones, Stipock. Find the best of them. Not a hotheaded fool, like Billin. Perhaps Coren, though she tends to play favorites. Perhaps Wix—calm, not quick to anger. Or Hoom himself, though I fear he's learned too much of bitterness, and not enough of love. Before you take the children across the river, come to me and we'll name a Little Mayor for the other side.”

  “No.”

  Noyock smiled. “You have another suggestion?”

  “On the other side, if the new town is to be settled by the people who believe in me—and they aren't children, Noyock, not anymore—then we'll choose our leader our way.”

  “Interesting. Shall we compromise? Let's choose a Little Mayor for the first year, and after that year we can let the people choose a leader by their own voice.”

  “I knew you before, Noyock, knew who you were, at least.”

  “I don't want to hear about it. I have trouble enough being who I am now, without being troubled with thoughts of who once was in another life.”

  “No, I didn't mean to dwell on it. I just wanted to tell you I never would have believed that you were the same man. Whatever else might be wrong with the way that Jason has things going here, it's made a good man out of Hop Noyock.”

  “But you, Stipock, you are the same man you were before.”

  Stipock grinned. “And no better, is that it? Well, I'm good enough for this—when the man in power is as flexible as you, it's hard to hate you. But I can promise you that if you let me do what you yourself have just proposed, in ten years the office of Mayor will be elected, and the laws will be made by the people of this place, and not by the dictates of a one-man judge and king and legislator.”

  Noyock laughed and shook his head. “Not only do you use words I've never heard of before, but you even pretend to be able to see the future. Don't overreach yourself, Stipock. Even Jason cannot see the future.”

  But Stipock knew that change would come, and knew that he was giving shape to that change already. Noyock was giving it to him as a gift. A town of his own, with a river between his people and the Mayor; authority to teach as he saw fit, and begin to modernize this backward place; and a promise of democracy to come. I'll hold him to that, thought Stipock. And when Jason comes back, he'll see what a little dose of truth and freedom can do, even to the medieval society he created.

  He took his leave of Noyock and opened the door to leave. Downstairs he could hear shouting.

  “Will you do what I forbid?”

  And the sound of a blow.

  “Will you do what I forbid?”

  Silence. And another blow. A crash of chairs falling. “I ask you, boy! Will you do what I forbid?”

  From behind him Stipock heard Noyock emerge from his office and close the door. “I think your son is beating your grandson, Noyock.”

  “And I think you know the cause of it,” said Noyock.

  Stipock turned and answered sharply. “Hoom told me that he had consent!”

  “Are you so wise, Stipock, and yet you can't tell from his face when a boy is lying? No, don't go downstairs. Not yet. It's between father and son.”

  From downstairs: “Will you do what I forbid? Answer, Hoom!”

  Esten, Aven's wife, began to plead with
her husband to stop hitting the boy.

  “He's beating the boy. Is that part of what parents are allowed to do?”

  “If the child is small, we take it away to save its life. But Hoom is old enough that he can't be beaten without his own consent. Listen—he's telling his mother to leave them alone. He doesn't want protection, Stipock.”

  “Answer me, little rutter!”

  From downstairs Hoom cried out in pain. “Yes, Father, I will do what you forbid! I will sail on the river, I will go where I like, you were a fool to forbid it—”

  “What do you call me! What do you—”

  “No! Don't touch me again, Father! You've beaten me for the last time!”

  “Oh, do you think you're a match for me?”

  Noyock brushed past Stipock and headed down the stairs.

  “Now we step in,” he murmured as he passed. Stipock followed him.

  They got there just as Aven picked up a broken chair leg and began advancing on his son, who stood defiantly in a corner.

  “Enough,” said Noyock.

  Aven stopped. “It's none of your affair, Father.”

  It seemed somehow pathetic that this fifty-year-old man called Noyock, who was fifteen years younger in appearance, Father.

  “It became my affair when you laid a hand on the boy,” Noyock said, “and it became an affair for all of Heaven City when you took a weapon in your hand. Is Hoom a badger that you need to kill to protect your herd of rabbits?”

  Aven lowered the chair leg. “He threatened me.”

  “When you are striking him and he merely offers to strike you back, Aven, I think the threat is hardly out of line.”

  “What right do you have, as my father or as Mayor, to interfere with what goes on within my own home?”

  “An interesting point,” said Noyock, “to which I offer this solution. Hoom, I have just asked Stipock to build boats, larger ones than the one that lies hidden at the river's edge.”

  Noyock is a deep one, Stipock realized. He gave me no hint that he knew that we had already built a boat.

  “You are the only carpenter to see that the boats are built well and safely. I am making it a project for the whole city, so the boats will belong to us all—but I place you in charge of the building.”

  Hoom's eyes widened. “For my man's share?”

  “For your master's share,” answered Noyock.

  “Master's share!” cried Aven. “You might as well say he's not my son!” It would have been bad enough to give Hoom a man's share, enough entitlement to food and clothing that he could have lived on his own. But a master's share was enough for him to build a house, and it freed him from a young man's constant liability to be called to road work or timbering. Indeed, Noyock had called it a city project, which meant Hoom would have the power to call others to work some part of the seven weeks of seven hours that each man and woman owed the city. Noyock had elevated Hoom above his father. It was Hoom's freedom from his father's house and his father's rule.

  It was also Aven's humiliation before his son. And Noyock knew that he was doing it. “When you took that chair leg in your hand, Aven, you declared that he was not your son. I only finish properly what you so badly had begun. Stipock, these things take effect immediately—would you help Hoom take his clothing from his father's house, and let him live with you until he finds a wife or builds a house?”

  “I will,” said Stipock. “Gladly.”

  Aven silently walked out of the room, brushing Esten out of the way. The woman came in and took her father-in-law by the hand. “Noyock, for my son I'm glad,” she said. “But for my husband—”

  “Your husband likes to wield authority he doesn't have,” said Noyock. “I raised nine daughters and one son. I have concluded that I'm a better father of girls than of boys.” He turned to Hoom. “What are you waiting for?”

  Stipock followed Hoom up the stairs. It didn't take long to get everything that Hoom owned. Three shirts, two trousers, winter boots and a winter coat, gloves, a fur hat—it all wrapped easily inside the coat and made a bundle under Stipock's arm. Hoom took the only things he prized: the saw and the adz that Dilna had made for him, the work that Noyock had seen before he made her master of the tools. Stipock marveled at how little Hoom possessed, how little any of them owned. How pitiful—a carpenter forced to use tools of bronze, when there was iron to be had in the world, if only Jason cared to bring his colony out of the dark ages. That is the best gift I can give these people, Stipock thought. I can take them south to the desert land, where the trees have taproots two hundred meters long, I can take them there and let them mine the iron that lies locked in cliffs just waiting to be taken, the only iron in the world in easy reach, and I will give them tools and machines and bring them out of darkness into light.

  Hoom stopped at the door of his room and looked back into it.

  “A house of your own soon enough,” Stipock said.

  “It was this house I wanted to belong in,” Hoom whispered. “He hates me now, and I'll never have a chance again to make it right.”

  “Give him time to see you as a man on your own, Hoom, and he'll come around, you'll see.”

  Hoom shook his head. “Not me. He won't forgive me.” He turned his face toward Stipock and smiled. “I look too much like Grandfather, don't you see? I never had a chance here.”

  Hoom turned and walked away. Stipock followed him down the stairs and out of the house, saying to himself, Remember that Hoom sees more than anyone thinks he sees.

  On the morning of Midsummer Day, Hoom and Dilna left their house, and with every other man and woman and child of Stipock's city, they climbed aboard a boat and let the southwest wind carry them against the current to the landing place at Linkeree's Bay. There were nine boats now, and Hoom had built them all; and because of his boats there were cattle grazing on the broken meadows to the north, and a new tin mine with a richer vein than any they had had before, and above all, Stipock's city, where Wix was Little Mayor because the citizens had voted for him themselves. All because Hoom could make a boat that was tight enough to hold water. He looked at the others, in his own boat, in the other boats strung out along the river, and he said to them silently, I gave this to you with my own hands. These boats, this river, the wind in the sails, they are who I am in Heaven City.

  And Stipock gave them all to me, when he taught me how a boat could be.

  And Dilna gave it all to me, when she made the tools that fit my hand.

  And Grandfather gave it all to me, when he set me free of Father.

  So in their way, they also made these boats. But between them and the water, I am. These boats are myself, and someday they will take me to the sea.

  “You're quiet,” Dilna said.

  “I'm always quiet.”

  Little Cammar was nursing. “The wind over the water makes him hungry,” Dilna said. “The wind makes me want to shout. But you—the water makes you still.”

  Hoom smiled. “Plenty of chances to shout today, when we vote.”

  Dilna tossed her head. “Do you think that it will pass?”

  “Grandfather says it will. If all of us from Stipock's city come and vote for it, then it will pass. We'll have a council to make our laws, and I have no doubt, Dilna, that you'll end up a member of it, shouting at people to your heart's content.”

  Wix shouted from the tiller. “Stop talking and get ready for shore!”

  Dilna started to pry Cammar's mouth away from her breast. Hoom stopped her. “You don't have to do every job, every time. There are enough of us to pull the boat ashore without interrupting Cammar's breakfast.” Then he jumped over the side, rope in hand, and splashed ahead, pulling the boat into the channel it had dug for itself on previous landings. The others quickly joined him, and soon the boat was firmly aground. On their side of the river, they had built floating platforms tied to shore, and they moored the boats in the water, without having to get their feet wet. But the people on the Heaven City shore wouldn't build such do
cks, or even allow them to be built. “If you want to live across the water,” they said, “you shouldn't mind getting wet.” Just one more of the reasons why grandfather's compromise had been so hard to reach—there had been so much vindictiveness over the two years that Stipock's city had existed. Petty things, like when a group of older people had demanded that Noyock not count road work and land-clearing on the Stipock side of the river against the seven weeks of seven hours. Father had been part of that. And the long quarrel over whether Dilna should be allowed to carry tools across the water—that had been Fathers idea from the start, and he began it right after Dilna married Hoom. He couldn't bear the thought that Hoom would have children of his own, that Hoom was really free of him at last.

  But you can't hurt me now, Father. I have Dilna for my wife, and Wix and Stipock for my friends, I have my child, my house, my tools, and above all, my boats. That was the one thing they hadn't argued with—when Hoom decided to locate his boat yard on Stipock's side of the river. “I hate the sight of the things,” Father had said. “Build them under water, if you ask me.”

  They walked together up the road. Of course— 110 carts were sent to greet them, and no horses. Hoom could almost hear his father saying, “They have horses and carts of their own on the other side of the river, why should they use ours?” But it was all right. They were all friends, or almost all, and the exceptions were tolerable. Billin, for instance, with his sharp tongue and his love for quarreling—but Hoom knew how to avoid him, most of the time. Today, for instance, Billin was oil with the dozen or so friends who thought that he was wise. They walked behind the rest, no doubt plotting something absurd, like how to climb up into the Star Tower and bring Jason down, or some such thing.

  At the crest of Noyock's hill they could look down the way they came and see their boats on the shore, then look the other way and see the Star Tower, rising still higher than they were, even here on the top of the hill, a vast, massive thing of stark white, so pure that in winter it almost disappeared, and now, in summer, it dazzled in the sunlight.

  And at the foot of the Star Tower, there was First Field, where two and a half years ago, Jason had brought them Stipock. Stipock, who feared no one, not even Jason. Stipock, who had opened up the world to them. Stipock, who was even greater than Grandfather.