Raising The Stones (17 page)

“Nonsense!” he growled. “I’m going to have my visit with you. I can always heat my dinner up if it’s cold when I get there, but Slagney will probably keep it warm for me.

He sat down comfortably, making himself obviously ready for a protracted stay. Elitia Kruss was dying. She knew it and the family knew it. If her condition had been curable, the techs would have kept her in the medical facility at CM. She wasn’t curable, so they’d sent her home to die in the skilled care center of her own settlement, a center staffed only as needed by people who worked in the fields when there were no sick or dying to care for, but who had been trained to provide expert supportive care. Harribon reflected that no matter how much humankind learned about disease and hurt bodies, there was always something new coming along they didn’t know how to cure. They could grow hands and feet and even whole arms or legs. They could take out organs and put in new, cloned ones. They could inject rectified DNA into a person and change all his cells. But this thing, a strange, rare kind of half-cancer half-fungus, nothing worked on at all. Less than a hundred cases, Systemwide, and one of them had to be Momma. They didn’t even know how it was transmitted, or if it was transmitted, or whether it might be some genetic thing they hadn’t figured out yet. They called it the ghost disease, because they couldn’t find it. The gene manipulations that had cured a thousand other diseases did no good in this case. Fifty generations of science, and people still died before their allotted five score lifeyears.

They talked for quite a while, she continuing alert, and he being unwilling to waste a moment of it. When she fell asleep suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he left her and went home to the brotherhouse, where his younger brother Slagney hadn’t waited the meal for him, though he had left a plate of food to stay warm in the cooker. Harribon sat late over this no longer very succulent supper and, in order not to think about Momma, considered the problem of envy.

Settlement One, long a thorn in the side of all other settlements on Hobb’s Land, had begun to fester. Now even the children were talking. The defeated teams returning from the last game with Settlement One had been rife with rivalry, rumor, and rebellion. Settlement One didn’t play fair, so ran the tale. Settlement One ought to be excluded from the games. Dracun Soames had brought this version straight from the lips of her son, Vernor. More worryingly, it had been accompanied by threats from Jamel and Vernor’s other uncles. They would, by damn, see fair play, they said, seeing no irony in this claim despite the fact that they themselves were well-known to strike the unwary and the unprepared without warning and from behind when they thought they could get away with it. Fair play was not what they had in mind. Settlement Three had had two homicides since the Soameses had been settlers, people bashed from behind, people Jamel had had words with. Harribon had always been sure it was Jamel, though he had been unable to prove it.

Early in the day, before the fight had started, Harribon had directed his home stage to print compilations of inter-settlement sports standings from the Archives, though he hadn’t had a chance to look at them until now. He ran a horny thumb down the standings, adding mentally. Settlement One had won about half their games. Seldom by much. They had lost about half. Seldom by much. They had stayed consistently in the middle most years. Twice in thirty-two years they had won the series. Three times in thirty-two years they had come in second. As they might have done by chance, all else being equal. Of course, all else was never equal, so the one-in-eleven win was, in itself, interesting.

More interesting was the fact they had never been at the bottom of the list. Never. Neither had Four. Not in the thirty-two years the games had been played. So, to that extent, people were right. Though Settlement One didn’t win top place any oftener than they should, they did not lose as often as some.

Harribon stared at the wall, wondering what that meant. If it meant anything. Someone settling onto a chair across from him broke his concentration.

“Dracun,” he murmured to the woman who was perched there like some great flying lizard, ready to dart off at any moment. She had come in without knocking. Her narrow face was drawn into harsh lines.

“What’s this about Jamel?”

“I told him to leave, Dracun.”

“I’ll go with him. We’ll all go.” It was a threat.

He sighed. “I knew you might when I told him to go, Dracun. I guess that should tell you something.”

She flushed. “He’s that bad, huh?”

“He’s that bad. It’s gone past what we can tolerate. Now you and your other brothers are welcome to stay, if you like. Without Jamel stirring things up, the other Soameses are only a little more belligerent than ordinary people.” He was trying to make a joke of it.

She chose to change the subject. “You said you were going to check about what Vernor said today. About Settlement One cheating. I suppose you’re going to tell me the fight put it out of your mind.”

“I did check,” he snapped, annoyed by her tone. “I had the listings printed here, so I’d have time to look at them. And if anything could have put it out of my mind, Dracun, it was the fact my momma is dying, which is happening only once. Thanks to your brothers, fights we have every day. Almost.”

She had the grace to look ashamed, but it didn’t prevent her asking, “Well?”

He tossed the compilation to her, pointed out the figures that were pertinent, waited while she read them for herself.

Her glare turned into a frown. “Are these accurate?”

He furrowed his low brow into three distinct horizontal convexities, pulled his stocky form out of the chair, and stalked to the window to stand staring out at his settlement. “That’s the way Archives gave it to me.”

“What about the production figures.”

“Well, yes. They’ve been consistently on top in production and at the bottom in disruptions. Considering how much time you and I spent today, sorting out who said what and who did what and who broke who’s arm, I think the two are intimately related.”

“That’s possible,” she admitted.

“Dracun, your son was wrong, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something to … well, to the impression he had. Why would Settlement One have no conflict?” He rubbed his face, feeling the scratch of his beard on his fingertips. “It isn’t natural, is it? I don’t know quite how to put that question to the Archives.”

She thought, rising to stalk about the room, settling again to say, “Religion, maybe? I mean, it can’t be genetics, can it? There’s been movement of population. Kids have grown up and moved from one settlement to another. People have moved up to management. People have given up their land credits and moved away. Other people have applied for vacant places, some Belt worlders, some System people. Haven’t they?”

Harribon paused for some time before he answered. “That’s all true, here, in Settlement Three.”

“And there? In Settlement One? Have they had people coming and going, too?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.”

“Will you find out soon?”

“Yes. I’ll find out soon. And, Dracun? Let me know if the whole Soames family is going to go with Jamel.”

She shook her head. “No. We won’t. You’re right. He’s too much, even for us. Better he go somewhere else. Celphius, maybe. Become a prospector.”

He smiled, relieved. So. He offered her a sop. “Maybe I should plan to take a trip over to Settlement One sometime soon, just to find out what’s really going on. I’ll message the Topman and tell him I’m coming.”

•
“They’re coming here,”
said Sam, annoyance in his voice and his stance. “Here. To question me.”

“Why?” asked Theseus. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Sam cried. “Everything! Production is down. Not much, not overall, but it’s down. Or, we’re a curiosity. So they’re coming here!”

“Who? Can we fight them? Challenge them? Set an ambush?”

Sam shook his head, half-laughing. “No, no. It’s not an invasion. They’re harmless. Just people. Like the courtiers in your father’s court.”

“Who plotted,” said Theseus loftily. “Always!”

“Well, these plot too, but they don’t go about killing people.” Sam shook his head, amused once more.

“Who are they?”

“Horgy, Jamice, Spiggy. A crazy woman named Zilia Makepeace. Harribon Kruss, the Topman from Settlement Three, but he’s coming later on. It’s no problem, really, just an annoyance. We’ll show them around, they’ll ask a few questions, they’ll go back home.”

“They don’t need to come,” said Theseus. “Whatever happened was only temporary. Everything will be as it was. Better than it was.”

“Settlement One will be first again?” asked Sam, doubtfully.

“How can you doubt it? With you in command?”

Comforting words, which Sam wasn’t sure he understood. How would Theseus know about farm quotas? Hardly his kind of thing.

As though aware of this scepticism, the hero whispered, “Have I told you about the monster? Of course I haven’t. I’ve been saving it!”

“What monster, where?”

“Just a little west of here. In a cave. It hasn’t been there long. I found it. You don’t have your sword yet, so you’ll have to kill it with your bare hands, but you can, Sam. I know you can.” The hero moved toward the west, beckoning.

“Tomorrow,” Sam suggested, feeling a bit weary.

“Now,” whispered the hero. “Tonight!”

At the western edge of the fields, Theseus left him, just beyond the dorge crop, tall rustling stalks bearing globular clusters of almost ripe grain heads, the rows alive with hunting cats. Sam carried a glow-bug lantern, and everywhere he turned he saw twin disks of cold fire, cat eyes, reflecting his own light back at him.

“Out there,” Theseus said, pointing westward. “There.” Then he turned on his heel and vanished among the dorge, glowing through the leaves, though none of the cats turned their heads to follow him with their eyes.

Sam looked westward, in the direction Theseus had pointed. Nothing was out there except undulating plains covered with sparse growth, dotted with short curlicue trees, runneled with streams so insignificant they did not even gurgle as they ran. Here and there water sneaked along the ground, over clean pebbles, silent as a snake. Nothing was out there but dullness and more dullness. Sam thought of refusing to go, then reconsidered. The walk wouldn’t hurt him.

His feet found water, first, and then a flattened trail beside the water, one easy for the feet to keep to. Something walked here, something cropped the scanty grasses, keeping the trail low and flat. Pocket squirrels, maybe, coming to drink. Legions of ferfs, marching by companies and battalions. Maybe an upland omnivore or two, fallen off the heights to be bored to death by the plains. There wasn’t anything larger native to the place.

The sound stopped him, one foot just lifting, so that he stood heronlike, poised, unable to move. A howl. A strangled paean of fury or hunger or … A guttural sound, a coughing roar. What?

Westward, whatever it was. Where silence was now, not even echoes to tell him he had really heard it.

Sam ran his hands over himself, taking inventory. Sword belt, helmet, work clothes, lantern. Tools on his belt: spy-light, knife, memorizer, trouble-link. His hands lingered on the link. If he triggered it, Africa and Jebedo Quillow would be alerted to his location. Both of them would arrive within minutes.

Not yet. He took off the sword belt and helmet, placing them carefully beside the trail. The memorizer went in the helmet, along with the spy-light. It wasn’t good for anything except disclosing the innards of machinery. Knife he would keep. Trouble-link he would keep. Lantern he would keep, though, just now, he would turn it off.

When his eyes had adjusted to the starlit surfaces around him, the faint glimmer of water, the barely discernable trail, he went westward once more. Up a tiny slope and down a tiny slope, the streamlet cutting through, between dwarf banks, edged with white flowers. The scent rose from them, dizzying. He had never seen them before.

At the foot of the slope, the stream dropped, suddenly and shockingly, over a bank. The sound of falling water alerted him before he stepped off into air, and he lit the lantern to find the source of the sound. It lay beneath him, the height of two tall men, a pool at the head of a … a canyon?

Hobbs Land had no canyons, Sam told himself, quite seriously. Therefore, he was dreaming, sleep walking, or in some other place.

The sound came again, closer. A coughing roar. A growl of fury. He turned off the light and scrambled over the edge of the bank, dropping onto a soggy patch beside the pool. More of the white flowers bloomed beside the pool, filling the canyon with their sweet smell, spicy, faintly resinous. A trail led along the stream, a larger stream than the one above, augmented from some source, some spring or underground brook which had joined it at the pool. The canyon grew deeper and wider as he walked. The little stream became a small river. There were holes, large and small, in the canyon walls, the smaller ones full of the flutter of wings. Trees rustled along the banks. Large stones stood blackly in the water, making it purl and chuckle as it roiled around them, starshine gleaming on the curved ripples.

The thing attacked him from behind. Sam fell forward, dropping the lantern, feeling teeth at the back of his neck, rolling frantically to get out from under it. It stank. It held on with clawed feet, clawed hands. Sam rolled into the water, and the thing broke from him, choking, then roaring, ready to attack again.

Sam had the knife in his hand. He didn’t remember getting it there, but it was there, open, sharp, something better than teeth, though not much. It was only a tool, something to cut vegetables with, in the fields, something to cut fruit from a tree or bush. Not a weapon, not intended as a weapon.

He felt claws rake his arms, smelled the breath of the thing, hot and stinking. He struck out with the knife and was rewarded with a howl, not so much of pain as of surprise. He leapt forward, knife out, slashing it, trying to wound. The knife encountered something hard, bone perhaps, and the howls increased in fury.