Raising The Stones (54 page)

“They haven’t been back since they went lookin’ for your mam.” Phaed chewed his lip and said in a distracted voice, “If they’d found her, they’d have come back to gloat, so I think they never found her. They may be hidin’ out.”

“So let me go. I’ll wait here for you.” And he would. If he could not admire the old man, he could at least forgive him. He was no worse than the others.

“Somebody might know who you are. I’ll leave you here with plenty of food. Until I come back.”

“Before you go, Dad, talk to me.”

“I’ve talked to you until I’ve turned blue, boy. What do you want to know now?”

“Aren’t there any among the Voorstoders who are different? Any of the men, I mean? Aren’t there any who argue against all this whipping and killing?”

“Now and again.”

“Do you ever listen to them?”

“Before we light the fire under ’em, sometimes. A little. For the laugh.”

Sam shook his head, and his father patted his shoulder, almost kindly. “Don’t you understand yet, boy. Once you’ve been given the answers, there’s no questions anymore. Once your father speaks and tells you what God wants, you don’t need to worry about it. That’s the trouble with all you poor fools on Ahabar and Hobbs Land and Phansure. All the time thinking, a servant to your doubts, a slave to your worries. We’re free men, we of Voorstod. Free, don’t you see?”

“What do you want sons for?” Sam whispered.

“To be like us, boy. To be just like us.”

He went away, leaving Sam to lie on his bed and stare at the faceless night.

The day Phaed left was the same day the prophets left, with their wives and children, and it was also the fourth day there had been no blood shed in Sarby, though no one had taken overt notice of that fact. It was almost as though the people of Sarby had agreed not to notice it. From the roof, Sam had noticed there were no dead at the whipping posts, though he didn’t know whether it was true elsewhere in the city as well.

On the eighth day, several Gharm slipped up the stairs in the old building and told Sam they’d been directed by Nils and Pirva to keep an eye on him, which they’d been doing. By now they were pretty sure, so they said, that Phaed wouldn’t return, so it was time to cut him loose. One of them had brought a cutter for the chain. They turned Sam free, suggesting that, since he had no money to take him to Green Hurrah and it was a long hungry walk, they’d heard there was a job available for a temporary manager at a farm east of town.

“No slaves there?” Sam asked, wonderingly.

“No slaves around Sarby. Not anymore.”

“How long?”

They looked at one another, tallying up. “Eight days,” they said, wonder on their faces.

There had been no whippings or bloodshed for all those eight days, said the Gharm, though the idea of whipping had occurred to a number of people during that time. They whispered to Sam of one housewife, furious at her cook for wasting food, who had determined to whip the Gharm half to death. The woman sat in her parlor, talking of it to herself, finding the idea satisfying. In fact, the idea was satisfying enough that she did not need the reality. It was even a bit boring, the woman said to herself aloud, so the cook could overhear her. It wasn’t a new idea. Not interesting, the woman said, forgetting about it.

The Gharm cook, who had stolen the food for escapees and who had been shaking in her sandals, stopped shaking and gave thanks to her Tchenka.

And there was a gang of bullies who caught a child Gharm in an alley and decided to see how many stripes a Gharm could take before it died. However, they fell to arguing about the possible number, the argument led to ennui. They decided they were hungry and went home to eat, leaving the Gharm considerably frightened but quite alive and uninjured, to tell the other Gharm of his narrow escape.

Shallow under the soil the net had pushed its way down from the hill and under the town, moving with almost visible speed, stretching and turning, making a new track along rock, through soil, netting through gravel, burrowing through root and wall, wider and wider until it had underlain all of Sarby. Upon the hill near the farm, where the little temple had been built, the net was thick and wooly around the hard, wonderful thing it had been growing.

Though all the prophets were gone, the priests had stayed. There was no reason for the priests not to stay. In fact, there was good reason for them to continue in Sarby, for people began coming into the churches, rather vaguely, as though looking for something they had thought might be there. A ninth day went by, a tenth, an eleventh. Two full weeks, with no blood upon the stones, no blood in the soil, no
voorstods
, no whip-deaths.

•
At this same
time, in Selmouth, certain persons living in an area of town surrounding an old church and graveyard got it into their heads to build a small circular temple in the churchyard. The priest in charge of the church had no objection. Even when the stones from the cemetery were taken up and used in the building, he did not complain. Even when one wall of the church was taken down, and its stones used over, he did not think it in the least odd. As it was, the temple was done just in time, for inside a crypt in the churchyard, a crypt which had not been disturbed by the building, the people found an object which they raised and placed at the center of the new temple with a good deal of unquestioning pleasure.

Among those helping raise the object was a busy Gharm with a sharp knife and a number of film bags. No one knew who he was, but everyone agreed he was extremely helpful.

“What is this?” they had asked him, thinking he might know for they did not.

“A Tchenka,” he had told them. “This is the Forest-bird Tchenka. It will take care of you. Soon, perhaps, it will walk among us.” The Gharm had assigned the Selmouth God this appellative. From what She-Goes-On-Creating had told them, they felt the God would not care.

The Forest-bird Tchenka soon came to an understanding with some Voorstodian cats, and a standing order was placed for the delivery of small scaled varmints. Though there were no ferfs on Ahabar, there were other things which secreted the same substances and could be used for the same purpose.

Shortly thereafter, the Gharm accomplished three more burials at Cloud, in addition to the one that had taken place there some time before. Cloud always had corpses. Of the total of four burials in Cloud, two had been Gharm and two human, one a child. The following night there were three burials at Scaery in addition to Scaery’s previous one. In addition to these six rituals, ten Gharm carrying film bags of whitish fiber were sent off into the countryside toward other Voorstod towns and hamlets. Not quite one hundred days had passed since Saturday Wilm had come to Sarby.

•
Commander Karth had
offered hospitality to Jep and Saturday when they returned from Voorstod, an offer which they had promptly accepted.

“I thought you might have to get back to Hobbs Land,” the Commander had said.

Saturday had shaken her head. “No, sir. We must stay here and try to keep anyone from invading or doing anything else violent. It would be better if everything was very quiet for a time. If Jep and I are right, you will see changes start, in there.”

The Commander passed this on to Crown Prince Ismer, who passed it on to his mother, the Queen, who was still in deep mourning for Stenta Thilion and still greatly desirous of exacting bloody punishment on Voorstod.

“What changes are anticipated?” she wanted to know. “Let me talk to these children.”

The children were brought to Fenice and housed in the palace. They had breakfast with the Queen. She didn’t want them terrified by the Privy Counselors, though, for the most part, the Counselors were far from terrible. She did ask Ornice, Lord Multron, to come along. He was too grandfatherly, she thought, to frighten anyone.

After what Jep and Saturday had been through with the prophets of Voorstod, the Queen and her counselor caused no trepidation at all.

“You may call me Ma’am,” the Queen told the children. “Having children call me Pacific Sublimity always makes me want to laugh.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Saturday. “These are very good eggs.”

“They are, aren’t they. They are lorsfowl eggs. Do you have lorsfowl on Hobbs Land?”

“We have chickens from Manhome,” said Jep, “though I think they’ve been elaborated somewhat to fit the environment, just as we have. And binnies. I think they were originally from Phansure.”

“Thyker,” corrected Saturday. “Quarshes were originally from Phansure. I do not like quarsh eggs. Binny eggs are very good, which is a pity, because the Thykerians don’t eat them at all, do they?”

“Only the High Baidee reject them,” offered Ornice, Lord Multron. “The other people on Thyker eat them.”

Jep sighed. “I guess we didn’t know there were any other people on Thyker but High Baidee. I saw some High Baidee once. They came to the settlement, but they didn’t stay long.”

“They were doing an Ancient Monuments survey,” Saturday informed the Queen. “They were sent by the Native Matters Advisory.”

“Advisories!” snorted the Queen. “Unethical. Unlawful. Bribe-taking advisories. A plague on them.”

“The Religion Advisory has presumed to question our blockade of Voorstod,” explained Ornice. “They wish us to remove it while they consider whether the assassination of Stenta Thilion can be considered a religious matter.”

“Well, of course it can,” said Jep, hotly. “I’ve met the prophet Awateh, and he’s very religious, but he’s also completely off his head. It seems to me religious toleration stops when they intend to kill you or hurt you with it. Africa, that’s my aunt, she always said noninterference was a two-way street.”

“See there!” crowed the Queen. “Isn’t that exactly what I said, Ornice? Exactly!”

“Furthermore,” said Jep, “it seems to me we’ve got a duty to convert the people away from such a religion as quickly as possible. Before they kill anybody else.”

“Ah,” said the Queen. “And is that what you’ve been doing, by any chance.”

Jep looked at his feet, flushing.

“Your Sub … Ma’am,” said Saturday, “would you think it dreadfully impolite of us if we didn’t tell you what we’ve been doing. Shouldn’t, I mean. We can tell you what to expect, if that would be all right.”

“By all means,” said Wilhulmia, intrigued. “What shall we expect.”

Saturday cleared her throat. “Some time fairly soon you should expect some of the people in Voorstod to come to the border and say they want to leave. Jep and I are pretty sure about that. If peace comes to Voorstod, there will be some people who just won’t be able to stand it.”

The Queen looked at her counselor, who returned the look. “People so dedicated to violence that they will not accept any other lifestyle?” she asked.

“
Can
not,” said Saturday, definitely. “Right, Jep?
Can
not. It tears something apart inside them.”

“One way of saying it might be that certain people are hardwired,” said Jep. “In our equipment maintenance classes, we have to learn a lot about agricultural machines. Some of our machines can be programmed to do different things. But some others, harvesting machines mostly, are hardwired for plucking or mowing or whatever. Saturday and I think that some people are hardwired a certain way, and they invent religions to go along with the way they are. Like they’re hardwired for bigotry or violence or being ignorant—or maybe ignorance is just a kind of bigotry. People say they don’t want to know a complicated truth, you know, because they already believe something simple, something that’s easier on their minds. Well, then those people convince others, followers, who maybe aren’t hardwired, but who are …”

“Impressionable?” offered the Queen.

Jep nodded. “Born followers, maybe. The followers might be able to change their minds, but the leaders, the hardwired ones, they can’t.”

“And Voorstoders can’t?”

“Some Voorstoders can’t. Probably most of the prophets can’t. That’s why they become prophets. Why would you want to be one, otherwise? Why would you want to scream your head off and threaten people with death and torture and Hell and make women cover themselves up unless you were hardwired for being crazy? The point is, if somebody’s hardwired and you’re not, the only thing he’ll let you be is a follower. If an ordinary person tries to talk to a hardwired person and be nice to him, it doesn’t do any good. It’s like being nice to a fruit-plucking machine. It’ll pluck out your eyes if you get in the way, no matter how fast you talk or how nice you are. Punishment doesn’t work, and talking to them won’t work, and arguing with them won’t work, any more than arguing with a plucking machine would work.”

The Queen cast another significant glance at her counselor. “So, some of these hardwired people will come to the border and ask to leave.”

“Probably,” said Saturday, agreeing to another helping of eggs offered by a liveried serving man. “If it happens, you should send them as far away as you can. If you can’t send them out of the System, then try to send them where there aren’t any people they can hurt. They’ll make slaves out of people if they can. It’s just wired into them, and by now their religion is all set up to make it even worse. It’s never going to come out right unless there’s some race of beings somewhere who
like
to be made slaves of. Then I suppose it might come out even.”

“I see,” said Wilhulmia, after a considerable pause. “And when will these men come out?”

“Not for a while yet,” said Jep. “How long is the year on Ahabar?”

“Four hundred and three days.”

“Well, probably less than a quarter year from now.”

“And then what?”

“Well, after the men leave, you can remove the blockade. That’s all.”

“And then the Voorstoders will come out and start setting off bombs once more?”

“No. They won’t. Everything will be fine. You’ll build a tomb to Stenta Thilion, maybe in Green Hurrah, a beautiful big one, in her memory. And maybe the people will build a little temple nearby. And that’s all. You might even start talking to the Voorstod people about their becoming part of Ahabar.”