Raising The Stones (33 page)

“I told you, I didn’t have a grandmother. China’s mother is dead.”

“I’m talking about Sam Girat’s mother, boy.”

“But she’s not my grandmother! Why would she do anything for me?” Jep thought with sudden panic that if his welfare depended upon Maire Girat, he was doomed. He scarcely knew the woman, only as one does in settlement, by name and face. Saturday knew her because she taught Saturday music, but Jep knew almost nothing about her!

“Brat,” sneered Epheron. “Ungrateful whelp.”

“Nah, nah,” breathed Mugal Pye. “He’s right, Floom. When we were there, I heard it for myself. It’s only the mother’s line they think of. They don’t say ‘Dad’ and they don’t say ‘Granddad.’ They do say ‘Uncle,’ though. The boy there has three uncles, and no father. And it may be Maire Girat thinks the same way. She’s been there a long time. If so, we’ve gone awry, someway. It was her daughter’s children we should have brought. Sal’s children. We thought to save ourselves some trouble and may not have done that at all.”

“Phaed told me she always felt so soft about the Gharm,” sneered Preu Flandry. “Maybe she’ll feel soft for this one, too. Whether she counts him family or not.”

Jep shivered again, and gagged. Sour bile moved at the back of his throat.

“Better feed him something,” said Mugal Pye, with a sneer. “Before he fades away on us.”

“Better give me something dry to wear,” said Jep, shivering. “Before I catch something and die. I’ll be no good to you dead.”

“Ah, well,” said Preu. “This is boring to be sure. He knows nothing of interest to us, so let the boy have the good of the fire. Send the Gharm to feed him. I’ll be getting back to Cloud. We don’t want anyone thinkin’ I’ve been away too long. Besides, it’s time someone talked to Phaed Girat. Which I’ll do soon. Tomorrow. Or next week. Or after that, sometime.”

He went out, and the others followed. When it was apparent they were not coming back, Jep got up and approached the chairs. One of them was a tall stuffed thing, much torn and stained upon the seat and back, but warm from the firelight. He curled up in it, trying to soak up all the heat there was. When the fire had somewhat restored him, he fetched the blankets from the bed and hung them across the other chair backs to let the hot light dance upon them. By the time a noise alerted him that someone was coming in, a cloud of steam was rising around the hearth.

Those who came were little people. Though Jep had much of his growing still to do, the tiny man came only to Jep’s shoulder, and the little woman only to his chest. The man carried a metal pot with a long-handled spoon protruding from it; the woman carried a bowl, a cup, and a bottle, which glugged solemnly as she set it down. Despite their diminutive size, Jep did not for a moment think of them as children. Something in their faces said they were grown, adult, mature, even dignified. They were very dark and ruddy in color, darker than even the darkest skinned persons of Jep’s acquaintance, the color of stained wood, very deep brown, with red lights in their skin and fur. Their heads were covered with fur the same color as their skin, fur that ran down the backs of their necks onto their shoulders. Their eyes were the same ruddy color as their skin, but their teeth were very white. They wore wrinkled trousers and loose shirts of a coarse, colorless fabric. Their feet were furry and bare.

“Something to eat,” said the woman, placing the bowl upon the table. She removed the cup, poured into it from the bottle, and held out the drink. “Good. Warm.”

“I was about frozen,” admitted Jep. “Who are you people?”

The two exchanged glances, almost of surprise. “We are Gharm,” the man said.

Jep thought about it. “I think I’ve heard about you. There’s some big controversy about you, isn’t there? Maire Girat told Saturday Wilm about you. Saturday said you were enslaved by the people of Voorstod. Is that right?”

They exchanged glances again and moved away from him, almost as though afraid.

“I won’t hurt you,” Jep cried. “I wouldn’t do that. Stay a little while. Tell me where I am …”

They wouldn’t stay. The food and drink was set upon the hearth and they fled.

Jep looked after them, tears gathering. He shook his head impatiently and laid his hand upon the kettle, finding it warm. He lifted the kettle to the table, filled the bowl and began to eat. The taste was not unfamiliar. Meaty. Grainy. What China would have called an eternal stew.

“Our remote ancestors ate such things when they first discovered fire,” she had said to Jep more than once as she threw things together to make their supper. “And first discovered pots, of course. Then they put tough meat and hard grain and harsh herbs together and let them cook until they could chew them and until the whole tasted better than the parts. If they were lucky, their cooks added bulbs and salts to make it tastier yet.” China always added good things. Almost always. Sometimes she said, “If they were not so fortunate, they ate it anyhow.”

He ate it anyhow, not allowing himself to be fussy, knowing he would have to keep strength and warmth and wits about him. When he had finished, he stayed beside the fire, soaking in the warmth.

Heavy footsteps approached, too heavy for the Gharm. It was Mugal Pye, returned. “Can you write?” he asked from the door.

“Of course I can write,” Jep said. “I’m not an infant.”

“On paper, with a brush, as well as on a stage?”

“I can,” Jep said.

“Then write.” The man put down sheets of paper, soft-edged, handmade. There was a woman in Settlement Two who made paper like that. She sold it to people who wished to make fancy, hand-lettered documents and memorials. “Write to Maire Girat. Tell her you are here, in Voorstod. Tell her no harm will come to you if she comes back to her home.”

“Her home is in Hobbs Land,” said Jep. “In Settlement One.”

“Write,” said the man, his lips quirking angrily at one side. “She will know what home is meant. Tell her also that she must not inform the Queen or the Authority, or you will surely die.” He set a pot of ink upon the table and held out a brush.

Jep took the brush he was offered and dipped it into the inkpot. Writing, as distinguished from entering information in words and symbols, was one of the decorative skills. Everyone was taught the decorative skills, though Jep was not very good at any of them. Saturday was far better at them than Jep was. The thought of her caught him unaware, beneath the ribs like a knife, and he gasped.

“What’s wrong?” demanded the gimlet-eyed man.

“I’m all alone,” Jep whispered. “My people are all far away.”

“Oh now, that’s true,” mocked Mugal Pye. “Tell that to Maire Girat. Tell her you’re lonely, and cold. Tell her you’re hungry. Tell her you will never be returned to Hobbs Land unless she comes to Voorstod once more. Comes, and sings.”

“She does not sing,” said Jep. “I know all the singers, and she is not one of them.”

“Does not sing?” said Pye, incredulously.

“She’s an old woman,” said Jep, laboriously writing the name of Maire Girat at the top of the page. “She’s an old woman, and she does not sing.”

He wrote as he had been directed. It was a difficult exercise, not something he did every day. The words were not simple ones to do with crops or animals, and the sense of the demands being made evaded him. Why Maire Girat should do something because he, Jep Wilm, was captive, he could not say. He could have used simplex form to make it easy—simplex was a phonic system with no room in it for interpretation, like taking dictation. He chose, instead, to use Phansure High Text, to show it was a serious matter. Between the lines, as he lettered the words of the message Mugal Pye intended, he added a superscription for Saturday, which told her, by allusion, that he loved her and needed her help. He could have directed his personal words to China or to Aunt Africa, but Saturday was a One Who, as he himself was.

“What’s this?” demanded Mugal Pye angrily, who understood enough High Text to read the message. “I didn’t tell you to write to your sweetheart.”

“I must,” Jep said. “She’d worry otherwise.”

“Damned brat,” said Mugal. “You’ve put it between the lines. I can’t even cut it off.”

“Leave it,” cried Jep desperately. “It won’t interfere with what you want!”

Mugal fumed for a moment, but decided after a time that the boy was right. Actually, the second message made the first one more poignant. While the first one had been dictated, the second one had come from the heart. They’d know the boy had written it himself, just from the pain in the words.

When the ink had been dried before the fire, Mugal Pye set bottle and brush upon the mantle and went away. Jep put his head down on his arms and wept. Gharm slipped through the door next to the fireplace like shadows, he and she again. He felt a soft hand on his arm, looked down into a pitying face.

“What are your names?” whispered Jep.

“Nils,” said the man.

“Pirva,” said the woman, holding out her hands. “Have you finished?”

He nodded, lifting the still-warm kettle into her arms. “Please don’t be afraid of me,” he begged. “I need someone to …”

“We know,” she said. “We were listening.”

“Are you slaves?” he asked.

The woman nodded, reaching up to pull her shirt away from her neck to show Jep the numbers branded there, along the top of her shoulder, the bare scars of the brand showing against the soft fur of her shoulder. Below the shoulder, the fur stopped, and Jep could see the skin of her chest. She had no breasts there, at least none that showed. Instead, her skin folded down her body, a long, vertical line. The Gharm were made differently from men. They were different about the ears, too, which were furry and flat. He flushed and looked away, noticing as he did so that she also wore a metal collar, with a ring in it, much like the ones used to tether livestock.

“Slaves.” He could scarcely believe it. He had no clear idea what it meant, except that they were not free, as he was, had been … might never be again. If slave meant captive, he, too, was a slave. “Why?”

Again that quick exchange of looks. “We’re not supposed to talk of it.”

“I won’t tell,” he promised. “I won’t tell you told me.”

“Because the men captured us and put us in cages and brought us with them when they came here,” said Nils. “They were bigger and stronger than we. We could not prevent it.”

“I thought there was a contract,” said Jep. He had heard some such.

“Later, they said we had signed a contract to serve them a thousand years. We signed nothing. We would rather have died there, in our own land.” She looked into the fire, seeing things there Jep could not see.

“Why do they want Maire Girat to come back?” he asked. “Why do they care?”

They shook their heads at him and were gone. He heard the locks chunking as they fastened him in.

At the window he pulled the curtain aside to see only darkness and the gleam of the fire on the bars that were set to keep him confined. He let the curtain fall and went back to the fire, so weary he could hardly move. There were chunks of fuel piled beside the chimney. He placed some of the fibrous stuff atop the embers, then spread the blankets before the fire and curled into their dry warmth. Light flickered on his face. The smell of smoke was comforting, like an ancient blessing. He shut his eyes in order to smell it better and thought of Saturday. The last time he had seen her, he had told her they could simply live from then on. It seemed he had been wrong. He had known something was wrong at home. Something had told him that. But nothing had told him not to go there.

He opened his eyes and stared at the rough wood above him. The God knew. The God knew all about it. But it hadn’t told him not to go home. After a time his eyes closed and he fell into sleep.

The following day he was given boots and a coat and told he would be working for the farmer who had the place and who could not feed him unless he worked. They locked a collar upon him, not a rough metal one like the Gharm collar, but a sleek, complicated piece of machinery with faceted dials and lights in it, like a piece of jewelry. They told him if he wandered more than half a mile from the farm house, the thing would blow his head off. They set him to digging ditches, and it was harder work than he had ever done.

All the day the mists enclosed him, making a wall at either side, a ceiling above. Sounds that filtered through the mists were dimmed and spread, like water coming through a weir. Each night he scratched a mark on the wall beside the fireplace before he lay down. He had no trouble sleeping. He told himself in time help would come. It was only by keeping this idea before himself, looking at it every moment, telling it over like a holy name, that he kept himself calm. Saturday, he said to himself, will come, will send someone. She could find him if he were at the bottom of a sea.

“We are the Ones Who, after all,” he muttered to himself. “The God Birribat Shum knew what was to happen and did not prevent it. The God Birribat Shum will not let either of us die until it is time.”

•
On the occasion
of the quincentennial of the monarchy of Ahabar, the Gharm harpist, Stenta Thilion, was to be featured with the Orchestra of Ahabar at the Royal Opera House in Fenice, the planetary capital. This was an event long-awaited. Traditionally, the music of Ahabar had made little use of the harp, or indeed, of any stringed instruments, being rather given over to brasses and percussion instruments of a hundred tinkling or booming kinds. Ahabar loved a good march. Hiking groups were traditionally led by drum and bugle corps. Machinery was the more valued if it made a good rhythmic whumpety-whump the workmen could tap-feet in time with. At least so much was true in the outlands, though the cities were becoming more sophisticated. String quintets from effete Phansure had been all the rage in social circles for some little time, and it was through one such prestigious group that a Phansure composer had been obtained and commissioned by Queen Wilhulmia herself to compose a work for Gharm-harp and orchestra that would encourage the patriotism of Ahabar while displaying the virtuosity of Stenta Thilion.

“Display, but not overtry,” the Queen had murmured in the ear of the composer, who had been invited to dinner. “She’s not a young person any longer. Perhaps you’d better get to know her work.”