Raising The Stones (27 page)

•     •     •

•
“Mom,” asked Jep
one evening when Jep’s little sister was soundly asleep and the two of them were alone, a time that was increasingly rare. “Do you know anything about mycelium?”

“A little,” China replied. “Fungus isn’t my specialty, but I know what any competent botanist knows.”

“What does it do?”

“Well, I suppose mostly it’s like roots. It isn’t structured like roots, but it acts mostly like them. Mycelium is the mass made up of the interwoven, often underground threads that make up the body of a fungus.”

“I thought the thing on top was the fungus. The mushroom part.” He was thinking of the things that grew in the mushroom house.

“No, the thing on top is only what we call the fruiting body. Fruiting bodies don’t even need to be on top, sometimes they’re buried. Let’s see, there was a classic delicacy, way back, what was it? One still sees references to it. The truffle! That was an underground one. The actual fungus is the rest of it, the filaments, the interwoven threads, the part you don’t see.”

“What does it grow on?”

“Different things for different kinds. Tree roots. Straw. Manure. Rotted leaves. Often on something that’s decaying, like a dead tree or dead animal. What are you doing, homework?”

Jep nodded. Yes. He was doing homework.

“Where’d you find the word mycelium?” his mother asked.

“I was asking the Archives. About things that grow underground.”

•
“Are you worried
about the children?” Africa inquired of her sister. “I get a little worried sometimes.”

“About their getting involved with one another? No. The genetics look all right, and they make each other happy.”

“It isn’t that so much. More this business of their identifying themselves as the Ones Who. I keep rememevery every ten days or so. Saturday Wilm called ahead for an appointment with Horgy and arrived at his office just before noon. She had come alone. Horgy’s reputation was such that she felt she would get a better hearing if she went by herself, and Horgy was probably, so she and Gotoit had agreed, not at all dangerous to someone her age. In furtherance of the mission, however, she had paid particular attention to her dress and appearance.

Horgy invited her to lunch in the officer’s dining room, telling himself he would be offering this child a treat she would talk of for weeks. Saturday, who thought dressing up and being served was a bore, smiled and dimpled in gratitude. During the meal she told him about the idea of a visitation committee, being carefully inarticulate at times to show him how overcome she was at the honor of dining with him. Saturday could sound like Africa when she chose to, but she and Jep had agreed it wouldn’t be a good idea today.

“You know, finding things for kids to do is one of the problems we’ve got in settlements,” she said confidentially, when she figured she had been with him long enough to have regained some degree of poise. “Everybody knows that. Mothers and uncles are always telling us to go out and play, but you can only play so long. We’re not allowed to be involved in the work; we can only spend so many hours on studies or athletics. That’s why we did the temple rebuilding, really, just for something to do. Now we think this committee to visit sick people might be very interesting.”

Horgy was impressed, though he thought it best not to show it. “There aren’t many people who are very ill,” he said. “We’re a healthy lot, and mostly young enough that the diseases of aging haven’t caught up with us.”

“I know,” she admitted. “Even if there are only a few, it would be kind of fun to meet the kids from the other settlements, get to know them better. Really, the only times we see other kids are at the games, and there’s not a lot of time during a game to get to know anybody.”

“I don’t see why your committee wouldn’t be useful,” he said. “You’ll need a vehicle, I suppose.”

“We figure we’d need to use a settlement vehicle once in a while,” she said, smiling encouragingly at him. “The older ones of us will operate the vehicles.”

“On a trial basis then,” he agreed, giving her his charming look. “And you’ll report to me at intervals. I’ll also inform the Topmen. If they have a problem with it, we’ll discuss it later.”

None of the Topmen had a problem with it. The visitation committee was. well-accepted, not only by the few sick and injured, but also by the people of the settlements. Many of them were particularly touched by the little ritual the children worked up of keeping all-night vigil at the gravesides of those who died. Though there were only a few who were sick, there were always accidents, always fatalities. As time went on, the committee conducted vigils in every one of the settlements except One and Three.

Horgy was so moved when he heard of this that he wrote the whole thing up as one of the “innovations” reports Dern Blass demanded from all of them. Sometimes Horgy thought the damned innovations reports were the only ones Dern read.

•
The four men
from Voorstod had spent some time at CM, recording everything, bothering everyone. The policy of Hobbs Foods was to have everything open and aboveboard and available to anyone who wanted to look, but by the time the Voorstoders left CM, there were those who felt the policy went too far. The Voorstoders had burrowed, and they had snooped, to no purpose. None of the people who worked in the personnel office were at all susceptible to Mugal’s sly charms, and what Jamice Bend had told them had proved perfectly true. There was no available roster of settlement personnel.

If they were to find Maire Girat (always assuming she did not meet with them voluntarily), then they could look forward to recording all eleven settlements in addition to the fertilizer plant, the vacation camps, and even, so said Ilion in a depressed voice, the mines.

“It’s all for the Archives,” Mugal told the fertilizer plant supervisor, with a wave of one hand that seemed all inclusive. “The settlements, the mines, everything.” “Make pretty dull viewing,” said the supervisor. “One settlement is pretty much like another. And Hobbs Land is no great shakes for scenery.”

“Ah, well, it’s for students,” said Pye. “The duller, the better for them, eh? Make them dig. No point making it easy, no point letting the inadequate rise in the world. Patience, fortitude, that’s what does it every time, Lord knows. Dogged determination.”

“Still dull,” repeated the supervisor. “It’s all dull, when you come right down to it. Planting. Growing. Harvesting. Shipping out. Planting again. Everything flat, so the ditches will work right. Everything flat.”

“You sound bored, friend.”

“I’m not your friend, and I’m not bored,” the supervisor said, offended. “I chose a quiet life. I’m not a slave. But then, you Voorstoders would know more about that than I.” He said it with a certain cocky arrogance, a touch of hostility, his eyes watching Mugal’s hands, as though getting ready to counter a blow.

Mugal was quiet for the moment, his eyes drifting away from the man beside him to his three colleagues who were plying the tools of their supposed trade with the same dogged determination Mugal had just advocated for students. “How did you know we were Voorstoders?” he asked in a silken voice.

“You said ‘Lord knows,’” the man replied. “Voorstoders say that. I do a bit of reading in the Archives, bit of a hobby with me. Like to read about those old religions. That Lord-this, Lord-that kind of talk belongs to the old tribal religions, doesn’t it?” Old and outworn, said his voice. Old and outworn and suspect.

Mugal smiled, said something inconsequential, and then went away from the man. He hadn’t hidden the fact they were Voorstoders as they moved about on Hobbs Land, but he hadn’t advertised it either. It came as a shock to learn that he had given them away with two casual words.

“I heard him,” whispered Epheron, when Mugal rejoined the others.

“So did I,” whined Ilion. “I thought we didn’t want people to know we were from Voorstod.” “We’re not hiding it,” snarled Mugal. “For, if we hid it, and somebody learned we’d hid it, they’d wonder at us. We’ve just made nothing of it, that’s all.”

“This is all too difficult,” said Ilion. “This Maire Girat is making things too difficult. Maybe some other woman would have been easier.”

Mugal glared at him, annoyance mixed with amazement. “Some other woman? Have you been to school?”

“I’ve been,” the youth snorted. “And what is that to you?”

“Were you told in school of Maire Manone.”

“I was. Some singer or other. She was before my time. I never heard her. Except from the Archives.”

“Some singer or other! The Voice of Voorstod? Who wrote
Voorstod Ballads’?
And
The Songs of the NorthV

“She also wrote ‘The Last Winged Thing’,” said Ilion in a snippy voice. “Which made women and children leak away from Voorstod like water from a cracked jar. Are you saying she’s some connection to Aunty Maire?”

“She is your Aunty Maire, lad. And, difficult or not, we’ll keep looking until we find her.”

SIX

•
Atop the escarpment
, the surface of Hobbs Land was as softly undulating as the plains below, though wooded rather than bare. It had been a considerable time since the last great cataclysm, and that had come in response to the impact of an enormous rocky mass—perhaps belt flotsam? perhaps a comet lost in cold space for millions of years? perhaps even a stranger, plunging out of nowhere?—suddenly showing up and throwing itself down in a gravitic tantrum of self-destruction. Then had been much tumult and wreckage. Then were lakes overthrown and a large sea drained away into the southern ocean and the warm light of the sun hidden for several revolutions behind a cloud of ash. When the skies had cleared at last, however, there had been a new inhabitant upon the coalesced world: a threadlike growth that spread from the point of impact outward until it lay everywhere within the soil and over the stones and among the plants and among the clumsy, prototypical animals. It had come with the outsider. Where the outsider came from, or how it came to be carrying its strange burden, there had been

many, Shan and Bombi had decided, though Volsa still exhibited interest in what each day might disclose.

“Tomorrow will disclose another village or six,” Bombi told her in a bored voice, as he wiped dust from his eyes. The Baidee turbans had given way to caps; their white tunics had been replaced by rough coveralls of dark and heavy fabric. The High Baidee Damzels could have been anyone, anywhere, so long as the where was dusty and ancient and smelled of earth.

Bombi went on, “I cannot understand your
enthusiasm,
Volsa. We have seen almost four hundred villages by now, usually at the rate of two or three a day. Each has the ruins of little scoopy houses. Each has the ruins of
several
scoopy temples. The temples were built in series, we’ve established that. An old one fell to pieces before they built a new one, or concurrent with their building a new one. The villages all seem to have the same number of temples, as though
every
village decided to build at the same intervals. Six temples in every village. We don’t know
why,
of course, though the Archives suggest many historic parallels which would lend credence to a variety of
contradictory
hypotheses.”

He wiped his forehead and sighed dramatically, waiting for comment, which was not forthcoming. He sighed again, and went on. “All the house are
alike
. All the temples are more or less alike, except for the grillwork, which varies over time sufficiently that we might work up a dating scheme based on pattern, if there were any
conceivable
reason to do so. The very plain ones were first. Followed by leaves, followed by various inelegant conceits and useless
frills.”
He sighed once more, saying, “By the
prophetess,
but I’m thirsty.” The robot handi-serve beside him gurgled and offered a sip tube.

When he had drunk, he went on with his diatribe. “We have, however, made a noteworthy discovery. We
know
why the Old Ones died—of
boredom
. They had no talent for innovation. One might almost think they had pushed themselves too far in achieving this little and died of
exhaustion.”

He intended to be brittle and sophisticated and amusing, and thereby succeeded in speaking the absolute truth, though neither he nor his indifferent listeners recognized that fact.

“How many villages do we have left to do?” asked Shan in a weary tone.

“If we do them personally, entirely too many. However, if we don’t find something a
wee
bit different soon, I’d suggest we have the rest of the survey done by machine. We could turn the whole job over to something along the lines of a Setter Model 15J environment sampler. We can feed in a planetary survey, and it will do very nice diagrams, and because it won’t get
impatient,
as I most
certainly
am becoming, it will maintain better sampling technique than I do!” Bombi laughed shortly and accepted a lengthy drink from the robot.

“We could always program it to call us if it found anything different from what we’ve already surveyed,” Volsa said doubtfully.

‘ Bombi agreed. “Which would give us time to get down to the settlements, which we haven’t even seen yet. I must say that my whole being longs for enormous quantities of hot
water!”
The flier they were using had a sonic cleanser, but the quality of the experience was in no sense comparable to the tumbling torrent Bombi envisioned.

Shan exploded, “Hot water! Bombi, this has been a very easy trip. You don’t know what a hard trip is. You …”

“Do not want to hear about the
Porsa,”
Bombi told his brother sternly. “Volsa and I have heard about the Porsa, and do not want to hear about them
ever
again.”

“I was just going to make the point that …”

“Don’t,” said Bombi. “What do you think, Volsa? Shan? I don’t want to
shirk
the job, but so far this has been a waste of man-days. We’ve done nothing a robot couldn’t have done as well. Our contract with Native Matters Advisory says we can use whatever method seems advisable.”