Raising The Stones (53 page)

“Whatever it is that grows where we put it, beside the temple. Whatever grows in us all.”

“Do you suppose I can get it back? A new one? Or when this one dies, will that have been my only chance?”

The Gharm patted her. “Maire, I am your friend. We have each other.”

She wept, trying to smile through the tears. “We’re so separate. Each of us, always. So separate. I first knew that when I had babies. They’d cry, and I’d try to help, try to figure out what was wrong. But they were separate, as though there was a wall between them and me. Even when they learned to talk, the wall was still there. What they said and what I heard were always different things. Between me and Sammy! A wall, like stone. He would look at me with his eyes blank, listening politely, but not hearing, not caring. And then we came to Hobbs Land. And after a time there, the wall seemed to get thinner. It wasn’t that I could read his mind. I still didn’t know why Sam does the things he does … all those books. All that reading in the Archives, all those old legends. No, it wasn’t that I could read his mind, but I was beginning to see something of the mystery in him. Perhaps, if I’d been able to stay there, I would have understood him at last!”

“As the Ones Who say,” murmured the Gharm. “A way. A convenience. A kindness.”

Maire wiped her eyes. She heard a stick crack among the trees. The Gharm stiffened and crouched.

“A kindness you say?” came a voice from the forest, full of rough, gloating joy. “So we’ve found you, Maire Manone!”

They stepped out of the trees. Mugal Pye and half a dozen other men, all wearing the large caps of the Faithful. The Gharm tried to run, but they caught him and killed him before her eyes, as though they were killing a chicken. Then they turned to her.

“Phaed spoke to us of this place long ago, Sweet Singer. No doubt he forgot he told us of it. When we did not find you at the shore, we thought to try here. Pity. You gave us a good run.”

Maire rose. So. So she had come home again to all the legends she had left behind.

“Where will you take me?” she asked, already knowing.

“To the prophet Awateh,” Mugal Pye said with a sly grin. “And we will not bother to tell old Phaed we’re oil the way.”

•
Daytimes, Sam was
chained to a post in an upper corner room of the building. The chain was long enough that he could get from his mattress to the toilet. It was long enough that he could sit at a window, looking out.

Nights he sat on the mattress while Phaed taught him doctrine, hitting him with the butt of his whip whenever he did not respond correctly. After a time, he began responding correctly without thinking what he was saying. So animals were trained, he thought, wondering what one of the High Baidee might do under the circumstances. Find a way to commit suicide perhaps. Under ordinary conditions, Sam might have searched for a way to do just that. However, down from the hill above Sarby, something was growing. Sam knew it and hung on. Part of his strength came from conviction that things would change; part came from curiosity. He wanted to see what the God of Hobbs Land would do to Sarbytown.

“
Who is the God of Voorstod
?” Phaed would ask.

“The One, the Only, the Almighty God, in whose light all other gods are shown to be false idols created by men.”

“What is the desire of the One God?”

“That all living things shall acknowledge Him.”

“And how is this to be achieved?”

“By teaching those who will learn, and by killing all others.”

“I don’t understand this doctrine,” said Sam.

Phaed raised the butt of his whip, and Sam fended him off. “I didn’t say I disagreed with it, I said I didn’t understand it. I’m asking you to explain it to me.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“If God is Almighty, as you say, then why doesn’t he inspire all people to acknowledge him. Why be so wasteful about it?”

“What’s wasteful about battle?”

“People getting killed, mostly.”

“There’s too many people anyhow, most places. There’s always been too many men. One man can service half a dozen women or more, it’s wasteful having more men around than needful, so we have wars, to clear away the excess. The stupider and slower ones die, the survivors breed. That’s the way of things.”

“But you don’t have more women than men. You have it the other way around.”

“Because we’re cooped up here on Voorstod, boy! If we were free among the stars, it’d be different.” Phaed’s eyes glazed as they sometimes did, when he talked of being free among the stars. He had a vision of that future, which he did not share with Sam, but sometimes Sam saw him staring at a wall or out a window, his face lax, his mouth loose, his eyes alight, as though he saw Paradise.

“What will you do when you are free among the stars, Dad?”

“Oh, lad. Lad.” His eyes blazed. “There’ll be no end to what I’ll do.”

He never said more than that.

Sometimes they went up to the roof at night, Sam in his chains, Phaed with his book of doctrine, and did their lessons under the stars. From the roof, Sam could see the square clearly, the whipping posts and the gate of the citadel. There were always bodies hanging at the posts, mostly Gharm, sometimes human.

“Do they whip women?” he asked Phaed.

“Women are whipped at home,” said Phaed. “Where they belong.”

“Did you used to whip Mam?” Sam asked.

“Only when she needed it,” said Phaed in an offhand voice. “Beatin’ a woman for your own pleasure is counterproductive. There’s always Gharm you can whip for fun.”

“What pleasure does it give you, Dad?”

Phaed smiled, a lubricious smile, his tongue touching the corners of his lips. “I like it,” he said. “You learn to like it.”

Days and nights went by. One time Phaed went away for ten or twelve days, leaving Sam chained beside a store of food, reminding Sam before he went that if Sam yelled or attracted attention, the Awateh would be glad to hear of it. He left Sam another book of doctrine,
The Doctrine of Freedom
, telling him to learn it. Sam sat at a dirty window, peering down into the street, silent as a ghost, reading to himself. He was a ghost, he told himself, haunting this old building. People had been born here once. Nothing good was born here now.

“What is the place of women in the creation of the One God?”

“Women have no place. They are not followers of God, they are merely processes by which followers may be created. They are to be kept private, kept quiet, kept healthy
until they have borne children, and then they may be disposed of.”

“What are the numbers of those who will acknowledge the One God in the last days?”

“If there is one, and that one the only living one, one is enough.”

“What is the reward of the Faithful?”

“Paradise.”

“Are there women in Paradise?”

“There are virgins in Paradise, for the pleasure of the Faithful, but they are not human women.”

“I suppose you want that explained, too.” Phaed sneered.

“What are these women in Paradise, Dad?”

“Pure virgins.”

“You mean always?”

“Always. Every time a man takes one, she’s a virgin. No other man has ever had her or ever will.”

“Why would that please a man?”

“She’s yours. She’s tight, and it hurts her, and she cries out. Those little cries. The virgins have no thoughts. They never talk, they just sing or make those noises. Your Mam used to cry like that, at first.”

Sam swallowed and chose to ignore this. “Then the women of Paradise are nothing but dolls, manikins, things for you to rape. Don’t you want more than that?”

“What more than that is there, boy?”

“Don’t you want to know her thoughts? Don’t you want to know what she is?”

“Why would I care?” asked Phaed. “She’s a woman. Nothing about her would interest me. The Almighty knows that. Why else would he put pure brainless virgins in Paradise?” He watched Sam then, seeing the expression on his face, and then he laughed, mockingly. “When I married your mam, boy, I thought I’d come close to having one ahead of time!” And he roared with laughter again.

Sam swallowed anger. “But you care for her! I know you do!”

Phaed snapped, angrily. “I do what’s convenient, boy. Perhaps soon now it will be more convenient for me to remember she left me and made me a mockery.”

Sam shook his head. “You let her go, Dad. She asked you to come with her. Why pretend now that you cared?”

“Why not pretend whatever I like if it makes my life easier? We learn that, you see, we Faithful. We learn to say to ourselves whatever we need to say to make the task easy. We learn to say, ‘For God and Voorstod,’ when we blow up some old lady in the toilet or some schoolyard full of children. We wouldn’t necessarily do it for ourselves, you see, but we can do it for God and Voorstod. It’s the same thing with your mam. It may make it easier for me if I say she betrayed me.”

“But it’s not true,” blurted Sam, unable to keep quiet.

“ ‘
What I say ten times is true
.’ That’s one of our proverbs. We teach the young men to fill their heads with such words. Prayers. Chants. Endless circles of noise. The same sounds repeated over and over until they fill the mind. ‘
Resolution is the weapon of God; thought is the enemy of resolution; words keep thought out; therefore, learn words
,’ say the Scriptures. Even on Manhome, our sons learned words, by rote, to keep them from the dangers of thinking. What God wants followers who think and doubt? The Almighty wants Faithful, who obey!”

Time seemed endless. Day succeeded day. Sam counted, and lost count, and counted again. At least ninety days, he thought. Certainly no less than eighty. Sam learned Scripture. Sam learned doctrine. He believed none of it, but he learned it. Between the harsh lessons he made resolutions, what he would do and say when he returned to Hobbs Land. When he returned to Maire and Sal and even China. The things he would be sure to say to the women. The things he would be sure to do for the women. So they would know he cared for them.

He had thought his pronouncement of his commitment was enough. “Marry me, China,” he had said, in effect. What he had meant was, “Marry me so I can stop wooing you, stop worrying about you, stop being jealous of you. Marry me so I can put you in a box and punish you if you climb out.”

And the same with Maire, and Sal. “Here’s your birthday bouquet, Mam, now take this ration of reassurance and don’t bother me for a season. Here’s a Harvest gift, Sal, now do not pester me for more.”

So much easier that way, to put them in boxes and consider that the lids would keep them safe and away from other suitors, other sons, other brothers. Particularly easy when they had no other sons, no other brothers.

Though, a voice whispered, they might find them, somewhere. Blood kinship was not the only tie of the heart.

A night came at last when they went to the roof and there were no bodies in the square, a night when Phaed kept losing his place in the book, getting angry, putting down his whip, then looking for it, and being unable to find it. At last he set the book aside and merely sat, looking out over the city. It had never happened before.

“Can we just talk?” asked Sam.

“Why?” grunted Phaed.

“The thing is,” said Sam to his father. “The thing is, Dad, I want to talk to you.”

“What do you want to say?” asked Phaed.

“I want to tell you this chaining me up is foolishness. I came here all the way from Hobbs Land, of my own free will, to see you.”

“Well, and now you’re here. Where you should be. Learning what you should have learned long since.”

“Well, you could have come to me, Dad.”

“Why would I have done that? What are women or brats to go running after them. A man can get another woman. A man can get other sons. There’s no trick to it. You’ve done it yourself. That brat Jep was yours.”

“You can get another son, but it wouldn’t be me. You can get another wife, but she wouldn’t be Maire. Surely you’ve remembered Maire, thought of Maire.”

Phaed sniggered. “Well, of course, boy. She’s my wife. Mother of my children. I always think of her as a sample of what a man should try to avoid.”

“Don’t you love her still?”

“I’ve taught you what love is, Sam. Love is the obedience to God. I wanted Maire. That’s a different thing. Men who take the chance of death in the service of the Cause are entitled to have what they want.”

“Dad.”

“Yes …”

“I need you to explain something. About when Maechy died.”

“He died, that’s all.”

“Mam said you didn’t grieve. She said you just cursed the man for not shooting straight.”

The huddled figure shook with laughter “Oh, I grieved, Sam. By the Almighty, I grieved. Our one chance at that bastard from Ahabar, and we missed it. All we managed to do in was one infant child, and him one of us …” He laughed, his jowls jiggling in the half light.

“We? Then they were your men who killed him?”

“My men? Of course they were my men. They’re always my men if they’re men of the Cause. Your mam knew that well enough, that they were my men. …”

Sam turned away, too hardened and weary for tears. Maire had known what Phaed was. When he really came to it, Maire had always known, and there was nothing left here of legends. There was no father-king. No hero. Only what Maire had said was here, stones of hate, heavy, heavy.

“The prophets are leaving Sarby,” Phaed said suddenly. “Going to Cloud, they say. The Awateh needs them, they say.”

Sam swallowed bile. “Did the Awateh send for them?”

Phaed squinted at the sky, his mouth twisted tight. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Nobody knows. I have to go there, find out.”

“Well, if the prophets are going, you can let me loose,” said Sam. “There’ll be no one here to capture me for the Awateh if the prophets are going.”

Phaed had a crafty look. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“What about Mugal Pye, and Preu Flandry? Where are they?”