Time of the Stones

by Fred Rothganger

  “I don’t want to hear about the Fourth Order anymore.”

  “Fine. It’s probably too late to save you anyway.” She stared at the silent sky. The life expectancy of this new civilization depended on something fickle as the weather.

  * * *

  The valley gradually opened into the main river basin, where many other tributaries gathered. The Basin was over 100 kilometers across. In the clear high-altitude air it was possible to see all the way to the other rim. The finger of the Long River traced through the landscape toward the south.

  A large settlement stretched along its banks, really a series of small towns that had grown into each other, the living heart of a once greater Ancient city. Most of the buildings were less than a hundred years old, constructed over the midden of the past.

  Near evening the company entered Chefurbo. People lined the street and cheered as they pulled the cart along. They stared in numinous awe at the Ancient artifact, glimmering in all the colors of the rainbow. Susan turned off all projection modes. When in doubt, hide.

  They reached the center of town: a smallish ziggurat perhaps 20 meters high, arranged like a square cake with three layers, each one a little narrower than the one below. A set of stairs formed a ramp up one side.

  Another company of soldiers waited there, with all the necessary pieces in place to deliver the Stone. The stairs were covered over with planks in two tracks to allow the wheels of the cart to roll smoothly. On the mesa, another hoist and windlass.

  The men attached four ropes and ran them up to a waiting crowd at the top. About 40 men took hold of each line and hauled the cart up. They lifted and placed the Stone in roughly the reverse manner as loading it.

  The Big Man walked up. “Antikva, I know you can hear me.”

  “Yes,” came a disembodied voice beside him.

  “This place is a little drab, but it’s the best we can do on short notice.”

  “I’d rather be in the mountains.”

  He waved around broadly. “We’ll decorate a bit, maybe add some fluted pillars and potted plants.”

  “Don’t put anything close to the Stone.”

  “This used to be the Temple of the Sun, but we just recently changed the state religion.”

  “I won’t play God for you.”

  “You don’t need to. Our priestcraft has kept the people safely away from God for years.”

  Chefurbo

  Year 0, Day 351

  Susan settled in and arranged her furniture. The console went just outside the projection zone. She entered new coordinates for the beloved old farmhouse. It transferred instantly from its place in the mountains to the far end of the mesa, away from the stairs. She made a few adjustments to the physics so it could hang off the edge without falling.

  When the Stone started the next morning, Susan found priests standing along all four edges of the mesa with their arms raised to the sky in prayer. Their long white robes caught the rays of the rising sun and glowed splendidly, probably visible across the entire city. Apparently there was little change in the liturgy with her arrival.

  The morning service lasted about half an hour, then the priests filed off the mesa.

  A woman arrived leading two children by the hand, a boy of 10 and a girl of 6. She approached the Stone. “Ancient One, may I present the children of the Big Man.”

  Susan stepped into the core. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

  The woman grinned with wide-eyed wonder. “By the Big Man’s orders, these are his children for you to teach.”

  Susan struggled for a moment, then a flash of understanding struck. “You speak Ancient English!”

  Now the woman looked confused.

  Susan bubbled with excitement. “You speak Ancient English, but your accent is strange. Perhaps it would better for us to talk in Baseno.”

  The woman hung her head in shame. “Yes. I apologize for my presumption.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Please, tell me how you know the language of the Ancients?”

  “I’m a nun from the Abbey. We preserve Ancient literature, and also teach children of the elite from several basins.”

  “Ah yes.” Susan smiled. “Children, please tell me your names.”

  The boy put on an air of great formality and said, “Hello, my name is Karlo.”

  “Very well said, Karlo.”

  The girl offered in Baseno, “I’m Ida.”

  “I’m Susan. We shall get along very well, I think.” She looked up at the woman. “And what is your name?”

  “Olivia.”

  Susan frowned in bemusement.

  Olivia added, “That’s not the name my mother gave me. When we join the order, we take an Ancient name as part of the ceremony.” She grinned. “The rest of the ceremony I can’t mention in front of the children.”

  Susan taught Karlo and Ida for many hours, while Olivia sat behind them and silently maintained discipline. That job was not too difficult, as the children were enthralled by the being of light speaking to them. Susan focused on a foundation of math and science. Eventually the children lost focus, so she brought up an educational video from the archive.

  The eyes of all three humans grew large in wonder at the images appearing inside the Stone. When it finished, Olivia asked, “Is this what an Ancient reading machine was like?”

  “I suppose, except the Stone is much bigger.”

  Olivia nodded. “People in my order talk about the reading machines. We have drawings, but no one alive has ever seen the real thing. We keep them carefully sealed in jars because they are falling apart. It’s very sad. We know there is a great wealth of literature in them, but we can’t get it out.”

  Susan brought up an image of an electronic tablet. “Is this what you mean?”

  Olivia’s face brightened. “Yes! That looks like the drawings.”

  “It’s called a mobile. I owned several myself when I walked the Earth.”

  “Can you extract the literature from them?”

  Susan shook her head. “If they are as broken as you say, then I can’t talk to them either. Supposedly, anything worth having is already in the Stone. Speaking of, what were you able to save? What happened during the Dark Times? Tell me everything!”

  “I could bring our historian tomorrow if you want.”

  “Please. And some of your literature, if you can spare it.”

  * * *

  After the morning prayers, Karlo and Ida hopped onto the mesa. Olivia followed, holding hands with a man. During the lesson they petted each other as much as they could get away with, whenever the children were focused elsewhere.

  Around noon Susan released the children to eat lunch and play a little. Olivia said, “This is Dale, a monk from the Abbey. He keeps the records for our order.”

  “Pleased to meet you. You two seem quite, er, fond of each other.”

  “Oh yes!” Olivia gave Dale a soupy look. “He’s my new partner.”

  “Um, so, I don’t usually think of nuns and monks, you know ...”

  Dale said, “Ah, you must be thinking of monasteries from Ancient times. Celibacy and all that nonsense. What an awful way to live. Our order practices free love.”

  “But ...”

  “The point of celibacy was to invest your extra productivity in pursuits of the mind, rather than raising children. When we finally understood that truth, we gave it up. Birth control works just as well, and it’s much more fun.”

  “Where do you get birth control around here?”

  “When a man joins the order, he gets a vasectomy. The surgery is quite simple, and we always have a few people in the order who know how to do it. When a woman joins, she takes a vow of childlessness. Of course, a few kids always slip through. There aren’t many, and we raise them with great affection.” Dale smiled. “I’m actually a child of the order myself. That’s sort of how I became our historian. I guess I wanted to understand my roots. As a boy, I hung around our old historian, always asking her questions. She tau
ght me everything she knew, showed me all the old annals, up to the place where she had written.” He sighed. “She passed away, and now my handwriting follows hers.”

  “Tell me about the very beginning of your order.”

  “I rather hoped you would tell me about that time.”

  Susan shook her head. “The Ancients put me on the mountain at the end, far away from the troubles of the world. I never saw what happened after that.”

  Dale closed his eyes in deep thought, apparently trying to retrieve very old memories. “The first entries in our annals speak of great houses for books. The Ancients once used paper to read. But then they made the reading machines and stopped printing. Gradually the book houses went away.

  “Then, as you say, the end came. The Ancients lost the ability to make reading machines. The ones they had slowly stopped working. By the time our founders saw what was happening, it was almost too late. They searched everywhere for books, in old abandoned buildings, in the dark places of people’s homes, even in trash heaps. From the few machines that still worked they hand-copied what they could.” He reached into his satchel and extracted a codex. “Olivia said you wanted to know what we saved. Here is a list of our treasures.”

  “Please, could you flip through the pages for me? I only need a few seconds on each one.”

  Dale complied, carefully turning the pages and holding the codex open so Susan could see the full spread. When it reached the end, she said, “Many of your books are not in my collection ... but for a good reason. I mean, half of them are pulp romance. No wonder you practice free love, if these are your sacred texts.”

  Dale smiled and shrugged. “We saved what we could. Apparently a lot of paper was dedicated to romance.”

  “So, you spend your days copying this stuff out by hand?”

  “Of course not. We have a press. You would probably find it quite crude, but it sure beats writing.”

  “Do you sell books to support the abbey?”

  “A few, but only the elite know how to read. We get some support to teach their children. The rest comes from our vineyard.”

  Susan muttered, “Alcohol and free love ...”

  * * *

  After the turn of the year, stonework for the fluted columns was finally completed. Workmen delivered the pieces to the ziggurat using pulleys and ropes. Each column consisted of five sections of stone, stacked precisely so that the seams were barely visible. They were not very thick or particularly tall, only decoration. Gradually the mesa turned into something like a Grecian temple with no roof.

  After the pillars, they brought large clay pots with lush vines spilling over the sides. Despite her objection to being there, Susan found herself quite pleased with the beauty.

  The Big Man came to survey his handiwork, or rather the work of his servants. He stood next to Susan. “So Antikva, do you still hate me for bringing you here?”

  “No,” she answered softly, “but I do hate you for keeping me away from the people. Everyone should be allowed to climb those stairs and talk with me.”

  “It’s all pageantry. I need this temple to remind people of my authority. What symbol could have more power than the Stone?”

  “They can’t even see it from down there.”

  “Ah, but they know it’s here.”

  Susan shook her head at the absurdity.

  He asked, “What do you think of my children?”

  “I’m quite fond of them. Karlo might grow up to be a good man, if he can learn to control his ego. Ida needs to know she’s a princess. Maybe if her daddy told her sometime.”

  “Do what you can with them. I have bigger problems.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Politics are not your specialty, Antikva. Stick with teaching children or those fools from the monastery.”

  * * *

  General Perio, the Big Man’s second-in-command, came onto the mesa after morning prayers. Behind him, a band of soldiers herded along three prisoners. He said, “Antikva, these men have been convicted of thievery. The Big Man wants me to consult with you on a reasonable punishment.”

  Susan said, “Don’t bring this kind of business to me. I’m a teacher, not a lawgiver.”

  Perio snapped, “And I’m a military leader. I should be out conquering, not stuck here enforcing the peace.” He turned the men behind him. “Give them the usual.”

  They forced the first man to the ground. One of the soldiers raised a cane and started beating him, while another counted.

  Susan cringed as if her own back were in pain. She imagined burning in places where the cane fell on the victim. It seared until she could hardly move. She doubled over in agony and shrieked, “Stop it!”

  The soldier paused with the cane midair.

  Perio asked, “What’s the matter with you?”

  “The Ancients made me sensitive to human suffering. Don’t ever do this where I can see or hear it. And I can hear a mighty long way.”

  “You want us to go outside the city, simply to administer justice?”

  “Justice? How do you know the right amount of punishment unless you have felt as many lashes yourself?”

  “By that rule, no one will ever be whipped.”

  “I see no loss in that.”

  “Beatings and executions are how we maintain control.”

  “I thought justice was about protecting everyone from a few who want to rob or harm them.”

  Perio laughed. “You’re naive, Antikva. Do your Nomad friends have jails or beatings?”

  Susan thought hard. She could not remember a single instance of criminal justice in the village. There were arguments and fights, but little property worth stealing. Usually a go-between helped the two sides work out their differences. If someone were truly anti-social, they’d probably just get kicked out of the village.

  He gloated over her silence. “You see? It’s not about the people; it’s about our power over them. Your little Nomad village could never build this ziggurat, or the citadel, or field an army to subdue the rest of the Basin.”

  “Yes, but they wouldn’t care to.”

  “My point exactly. It takes coercion to do anything important.”

  * * *

  Susan settled into her role as teacher and passive religious icon. Thankfully, the priests said nothing to her at all. They came, did their rituals for others to see, then left. Her relationships with the children and people from the Abbey were much more personal.

  Rainy season came a little late that year. Officially it was supposed to start on the summer solstice and end on the winter solstice, but those dates were only an approximation. Strictly speaking, the Long River Basin didn’t have a winter, just cooler weather during the dry season. Few people alive had ever seen snow.

  Like the Stone itself, this beautiful temple atop the ziggurat felt timeless. Only the gradual turning of the seasons reminded her of its passage. Rainy season followed dry in slow succession. Three cycles passed while she taught the children.

  Karlo grew into a young man, and Ida into a bigger girl. Now a fourth rainy season was starting. Thunderstorms usually developed in the afternoon, so they rarely interrupted the morning lessons. Susan stood inside the Stone and asked, “How many people can the Earth hold?”

  Karlo shrugged. “Maybe a few thousand?”

  “You know big numbers. Try again.”

  “A million?”

  “Let me show you something.” Susan stepped out of view. A globe appeared inside the Stone. It slowly turned, showing thin wispy clouds, green forests and croplands, brown deserts, blue seas and white ice caps. “This is the Earth as it was in the time of the Ancients. Look, this is your home.”

  The globe stopped and zoomed to the Long River Basin. The streets and buildings of a city thrived at the confluence of the headwaters. Around it, to the furthest extent of the central valley, green circles packed into a grid pattern. “The Ancients used machines to grow food. They cleared the forest, the grasslands, everything that was good
. Back then, this city held over a million people.”

  The globe slowly zoomed out and resumed turning. Cities stretched along entire continents. Crops tessellated great swaths of land. “Think of your small home compared to the size of the Earth. The Ancient world had over ten billion people. Today your city holds only ten thousand. Without machines, that’s the most you can feed. How many people can the Earth hold?”

  Karlo thought for a minute. It was another one of those awful ‘story problems’ that the Ancients tortured their children with. Whoever invented them should be assigned a special circle in Hell ... “Um, one hundred million?”

  Susan’s voice wafted back, “That’s how the numbers work out. Neither of us knows for certain until we go count them.” The music of her laughter dismissed the possibility. “Now imagine that you had machines again. Should you fill the Earth with ten billion people?”

  “Yes?”

  “No! Do you enjoy the forests and the rivers? Why plow them under and drain them dry to feed more people?”

  “Father says our people need more food.”

  “They will always be hungry, until the day you accept limits. Ever wonder why your people abandoned their Nomad ways?”

  Karlo scratched his head. “The stories say that the Sun-god revealed how to gather his blessings into one place, so we settled along the river—but everyone knows that’s a myth.”

  “You grew too numerous for the land to support hunting and gathering, so you were forced into agriculture. Eventually you will reach the next limit, when planting by hand is no longer enough. Machines let the Ancients go far beyond that, and it led to their destruction.”

  “How?”

  “They acted as if the fuel for their machines would last forever. Population grew until they were utterly dependent, then the fuel ran out. It’s a time I don’t like to remember.”

  “Don’t be sad, Antikva.”

  “You need rain like the Ancients needed fuel.”

  “The rains always come.”