Hot Sleep

by Orson Scott Card

  Then Kapock said to everybody Im going now to find Linkeree and Batta. While I am gonn you will obey Sara as if she were Jason or me. If I dont come back at all then you obey her until Jason comes back.

  And he made all people promise but I said Dont go Kapock but he didint answer just went out of the door and into the snow which falls so fast.

  Im writing all these things so that Jason will know the truth of wat has happind no matter what lies Hux and Ryanno try to tell.

  Wat has happind to us it is not three moons yet since Jason left us and went into the Star Tower and now there has been much wrong and Linkeree and Batta and maybe Kapock are surely dead tonight who can live in this snow? It breaks branchis. It breaks even roofs tonight sometimes when it is so bad.

  And I have not said to Kapock yet because he has been so worried but I am about to have another baby will this baby ever see his father? Even now in the early morning Ciel cries in his bed saying

  Kack, Kack, which is all he can say of Kapocks name I would suffer any pain if it only meant I could see Kapock at the door smiling at me Im so afraid Ill never see my husbind again.

  Now has been three days Kapock and Linkeree and Batta they are gonn and nobody thinks theyll come back not even me. Jason why did you go away and leave us like this? If you were here Kapock would not be dead.

  Now at last with three of our best people dead even my husbind now Hux and Wien and everybody they are being good and doing wat I say and not causing argumints. Hux does not even speak to anybody he is so ashamed but I want to spit on him everytime. I stay away from him because I would spit on him every time I see him. Today we are fix three roofs that broke in places during the bad storm it was so bad that one of the yung sheep it died of the cold. Even with its wool it died oh Kapock I cant write anymore now I am Warden but I want Kapock to be Warden and hell never be.

  It is five days and today Hux wont eat. I hate him but I dont want him to die we made him eat anyway. I said Hux only the good people have died and I wont let you be like them. Then he cried but he did not try to not eat or to die any other way eather.

  The snow meltid a little today the sun is up and hot for winter. Today we went out looking for them to find the bodies maybe but we couldint find any tracks for the snow had coverd all of it. I do not let myself cry at night anymore because it makes Ciel and Mun wake up and cry too and it is not good for these little ones to be unhappy when they do not even understand why.

  Where Linkeree and Batta are and how we built a house.

  I am Kapock and I have come back from my time in the forest with Linkeree and Batta. I have read all that my wife Sara has written, and she has written well, for the things she wrote are mostly important. She even now holds to me and cries because she is happy and tells me, Kapock, do not write that for I will seem foolish.

  I said, Sara, you are foolish. It is why I love you, because I am foolish too. I cried when I came home. Ciel now says my name.

  Sara has already written all things before I left and there is no need for me to add to this because she has written it well, though her writings are not always the way J has taught us to write.

  I, Kapock, went into the forest and I was afraid because the snow was falling very fast and covering all the ground deeper than before and there was a wind that moved the snow so that the deep places looked like smooth ground. I called often in the darkness and the snow, but no one answered me. Then I thought to come back but I could not find the way, and as I searched I fell into a deep place and when I got out I was wet all over and very cold, and I knew I would die.

  Then it was that Linkeree and Batta came to me, for they had heard my cries and by chance I was not far from the place where they were hiding. They had been afraid that I was coming to do them harm because they had burned the new house, but then they remembered that even though I was not always wise I had never tried to do them harm and they came to me.

  Now this was how they had built a house: They found a place where two trees grew close to a steep hill. They cut long branches and put them between the low branches of the trees and between the trees and the hill making a roof. Then they covered it with many branches and dead leaves that they uncovered from the early snows. This way when the snow began to fall they already had a roof, and as the snow was falling they made walls out of branches leaning against the roof and they were dry. They made a small fire at the door of this house, and the wind blew the smoke away but also the heat, and even in blankets it was cold all that night.

  In the day the snow still fell, but Linkeree and Batta and I decided that waiting would only make us freeze like the water of the Star River, and we must work to be warm. So Linkeree cut trees while Batta and I brushed snow from a place on the ground, even though the snow still fell, and then we moved the logs to the place and began to build walls. Linkeree and I built the walls as Batta kept sweeping out the snow. During the day the little house by the hill fell in from the snow on it, and so we hurried to finish the new house by dark, but we could not. So once again we only used the walls of the house which were about shoulder high to stop the wind, and we built a fire, and snow fell on our blankets and we were cold but the snow was not as bad as the wind, and so it was better that night and I did not freeze and neither did they.

  Then the next day the snow was less, and we finished the walls, even with a door and a little door. Then we all made the roof frame out of logs and long, thin branches but we had no straw for thatch and so we used only leaves and this did well enough for this time, though water drips in many places. Also we made a door and a little door frame to cover the holes and on the third night we were warm and mostly dry.

  Then I said to Linkeree, Who built this house?

  You and Batta and I built it, he said to me.

  Then who owns this house? I asked.

  All of us, for we built it. If all of them had helped us build it, then it would belong to all of them.

  This is true, I said. And now, Linkeree, I give you and Batta this house. It is no more mine, just yours and Batta’s. But you must also give me something.

  What can be as much as a house? asked Linkeree.

  You must promise me, I said to them. You have to promise me that even though you will live just the two of you here, and will surely plant seed here and make a field just like the field at Heaven City, you will always be a part of Heaven City.

  No, said Linkeree. I do not want to be a part of them.

  But I said to him, This is a new thing you have done, and we did not know what to do. When you made the cloth for catching fish, none of us knew what it was for, did we?

  No, he said to me.

  But still it was good, and when we understood we all were made stronger and better by it. Now you also have learned from me and others. Is my woollen cloth not warm? Do you not put cloth in front of your door like I do in the summer?

  But Linkeree said nothing. Then I said to him, Linkeree, my friend, you are wise like J, you think of things that no man has thought of before. We need you. But you also need us. How will you plow and plant without an ox? How will you do it without seeds? And we need you to help us make straight walls and to teach us the things you think of that have never been done before. You are part of us, and we are part of you. I said this to Linkeree.

  Then he said to me, If I promise you to be part of Heaven City always, and obey, you must promise me that what I make with my own hands will belong to me and what Batta and I make together will belong to us.

  And so I promised him this, even though it will surely make J angry, because I think it is more important for us to be together than it is for us to have all things equally. Yet it hurts me to write this, because it seems good to me that all men and women have things the same as each other. For now that Linkeree has his own field to plow and care for, we will be weaker, and he will be weaker, for we will not take care to put food in the mouth of our friend, but only in our own mouth. This is ugly to me.

  When J comes again he wil
l see what has happened and he will know that it is bad and he will not make me Warden anymore. I will be glad. And now I make an end of writing and I will write no more, because I do not want my children to read even this much, for it tells only of my foolishness and my children will be ashamed that I am their father, and J will be ashamed that I am his son. I make an end.

  J comes in the night.

  I thought never to write again, and for several moons I did not. But it is now the moon which at its ends means we will plant, and tonight J came to my house in the night.

  He came quietly and commanded Sara and me to wake no one. This is what he said:

  Kapock, I come to see what has happened while I was in the Star Tower. But I do not want the others to know I came, for they must expect me only in the harvest moon, and not look for me at other times.

  And so Sara and I promised.

  Then J read all we had written. He cried twice. Once when he read what Sara wrote about J himself, and once at the end of it when I wrote. He said to me: Oh Kapock, you have done wisely, not foolishly. It was a hard choice and no one could have done better, not even me.

  But I said, You could have done better, tor you see into men’s hearts and you would have known that Linkeree planned to burn the house, and that Hux planned to take it away from him.

  And J said to me: That is true. But my power is not the power of a man, and you did all that a man could do.

  And you, too, Sara, he said. You did wisely and well, and I will say the same punishment on Hux that you said, for there is nothing a man can do that is worse than what Hux did, which is to make another man do your will by striking him without thought for his life. And if a man kills another man, or a woman kills, either one, then the man or woman who has killed man or woman, he will also be killed.

  And who will kill him? Sara asked.

  All the people will kill him, Jason answered. This is an ugly thing, but it is the only way to keep a strong man from killing the weak who will not do his way.

  I will never do it, Sara said.

  But others will, J said. And I thought he looked sad as he said it.

  Then J went out of the house and took me with him. The moon was not full, but it still was bright and so were the stars, and we could see for a long way. We could see even the mountains to the south, which are so far that we could never go to them.

  J said to me, All of this that you can see, it is not even the hundredth part of the world.

  I asked him what is the world.

  He said to me, The world is round like a berry and we stand on its face. And it flies through the air.

  I said to him, Is this why there is wind?

  But he looked sad and said, No Kapock, for we move with it and do not feel its motion. But this I did not understand, for how can a thing move and not know that he moves?

  But I asked him a question because he seemed to be ready to answer questions, and I asked him a question I had thought of often.

  I asked him Who makes all these things? When you bring the Ice People from the Star Tower every year at harvest time and we feed them and teach them to walk and talk, where do they come from? And who made the Star Tower? And the forests? For I know who made the houses and the fields, for I make them myself. And I know who makes the children and the new lambs and the calf oxen, but I do not know what makes the Ice People.

  Then he said to me a story, and I try to write it as I remember it.

  Once J was in the sky with 333 of the Ice People, and the Star Tower flew like a bird only faster. Then an enemy came and with one hand killed 111 of the Ice People and with the other hand made 111 more of the Ice People sleep so they could never wake up, and then with his spit the enemy made even the last 111 Ice People forget all things.

  Then J killed the enemy and brought the Star

  Tower to this world. There are many worlds, with many people, but this world was empty, and he brought the 111 Ice People who could waken out of the Star Tower and J said that Sara and I and all the others are these Ice People.

  But there are not 111 of us, I said.

  There will be, he said.

  But I am foolish and I asked him, J, who made the Ice People, then? And who made this world if you only found it?

  Then J shook his head and laughed softly and said, God did, Kapock.

  But this is not an answer, because what is God? I asked him this, but he would say no more, except this: I have told you the truth, but you cannot understand it, neither can any of the others. I will tell you only the truth that you can understand.

  This is why I have written all that J said, for somewhere in what he said must be the answer to my question of who made all these things, or of what this God is.

  Then J and I went inside, and he said to me that the promise I made to Linkeree and that Linkeree made to me is a good promise, and that this will be the law of all men and women: What a man makes with his own hands is his own; what many men make together belongs to all who worked. When a man owns a thing that another needs, the other must give the man something that he needs in trade for this thing, and the trade must be fair, or it is a crime.

  This is a new word, which I shall teach the people. Crime. J said it means those things which if all people did them would make a man want not to live among men.

  J said many other things which I will not write because he said not to. I write these things because he did not say not to, and they are important.

  After many hours in the darkness J left us, and after he left Sara and I could not sleep, and so I write. But now Sara sleeps and I too can sleep, and so I make an end of writing for this time.

  We plow three fields.

  The plowing is done and we have plowed three fields. First the field at Heaven City, which is the first and the largest. Then the field where Linkeree and Batta now live, which is not large, but which has black soil that feels warm and that will grow much food, I think.

  The third field is at the place where Linkeree built the house that later he bruned. We have all built a new house there, and into it Hux has moved. And we have plowed a field with Hux, and he will live alone.

  But not alone. Rather only apart from the most of us. For I saw that Hux was truly sorry for all he had done wrong, I believe that he will not let anger make him do such bad things anymore. So I called all the people of Heaven City together and asked them, one by one, saving only Linkeree and Batta, if they had any thing bad to think of Hux for anything he had done to them. And not one of them said anything bad except Sara, and she would not speak. Then I said to Hux, Neither do I have anything bad to say of you, Hux. Yet that is because no harm has been done to me.

  I said to him, Linkeree and Batta are the only ones who can speak bad of you. And so I say this: Hux will be allowed to marry Ryanno and live in a new house which we all will build, but only if he asks permission of Linkeree. Then it will be Linkeree who gives Hux a house if he is to have a house. This is only right, for Hux took a house from Linkeree.

  Then Hux went to Linkeree and asked him for a house, and Linkeree and Batta said, We will work with our own hands to help build you a house.

  That is the house that Hux lives in now, and it has the little door just as Linkeree’s own house has, and it is a good house, and when Hux and Ryanno moved into it all of us sang and there was dancing and laughing and we caught many fish and ate them because it was a good day, for even though we live in three places instead of two, we are one people.

  And now tonight I thought of what J said to me that night and I think this: When J said, God made all this, he was laughing because I did not know that J made all these things, so he made up a name and said this person did it. Or maybe God is J’s other name. But this I am now sure of: J brings the Ice People from the Star Tower, and he is thus the maker of the Ice People. He must also be the maker of other things, for if he can make a man whole, without it growing from a woman, he could surely make all other things. This is what I think. If I am wrong then J will think I
am foolish. But then, I am foolish. Why should he not think it?

  We have found another thing. The Star River is large, but it goes only a little way from Heaven City and then it flows into a great river, a river so wide that the other side looks as far away as the mountains, and the water is muddy and not good to drink. It is also deep, and a man or woman can only walk a little way and the water is up to the shoulders and the river pulls as if to sweep you away.

  Now I see something that I did not know before. There are small rivers and larger rivers. Alone, the small rivers are not strong, like the Star River that we can walk across. But when the small rivers flow into the large ones, then the large ones are stronger.

  This is like Heaven City, for Linkeree and Hux live apart, yet they flow into the Heaven City like the Star River flows into this big river. And so I have named the big river Heaven River, and said to the people:

  Flow always into Heaven City as you see the Star River flow into the Heaven River. Then Heaven City will always be as strong as you see this great river to be.

  But if you flow in different ways, like the Star River does when it splits upstream into two rivers that pass on both sides of the hill I live on, then you become weak.

  Not all the people understood me, but many did.

  I did not tell them that J is God who made all these things. This is a thing I will keep without telling, for it is a hard thing, and I do not understand it yet.

  I am no longer afraid to be Warden. For I know that J does not expect me to act always as he would act. Rather he expects only that I act in the best way I know how to act. And this I can do. And I make an end of writing for this time.

  I have thought of J as a father.

  Today Ciel spoke to me and said, Father let me come. I was going to shear the sheep and he said, Father let me come.

  When he said this I knew that he would someday say other things, and I felt then that someday Ciel will grow wise like the Ice People, and a son of my body may speak to me as my friends speak to me.