Raising The Stones (63 page)

“Three hundred dead,” said Reticingh. “In Hobbs Land. Late yesterday, I suppose, our time.”

Shan blinked in honest astonishment. Churry had assured him there would be no killing.

“They have one Baidee in custody,” said Reticingh. “The clothing, the armament, the equipment, all Baidee. They were seen by hundreds of people. Think of it, Shan. Baidee, from Thyker, made an assault upon the religion of the people of Hobbs Land and killed hundreds of innocent, inoffensive people in the process. Several Baidee, perhaps ten or twelve, were killed by the Hobbs Landers, defending themselves, but the bodies were removed by the invaders.”

“I was here yesterday,” protested Shan. “I was meditating. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I know damned well where you were,” roared Reticingh. “What I want to know is where were you before that, and who did you talk to.”

Shan shut his mouth stubbornly and looked out the window, across the drill ground.

“Does this tie into that ‘lost platoon’ out there on the desert?” demanded Reticingh.

“I don’t know,” said Shan, who considered that he didn’t know for sure. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, Shan Damzel, perhaps you’d like to think about the following. Less than one-third of the food we need on Thyker is raised here on the planet. The rest comes from the Belt worlds. As of this morning, Mysore Hobbs has shut us down to receiving any food at all, except from Hobbs Land.”

“That ought to be plenty. There aren’t that many of us, and it’s a very productive farm world,” said Shan in a slightly surprised voice.

“Except that the Baidee raiders blew the Doors on Hobbs Land,” said Reticingh in an ominously soft voice, “So there’s nothing coming out. The Phansuri our import manager talked to seems to think there’s some other way for Hobbs Land food to get to Thyker, but he didn’t tell us what it was. He suggested the import man ask around. The import man came to me, so I’m asking around, Shan. We very much need to find that alternate way, Shan, or there are going to be a few million very hungry people informed that they’re hungry because of the Damzel and Churry clans. I can imagine what your mother will say. Think that over.”

Shan was taken under supervision, which is what the Baidee called putting someone in a small room with no access to the outside. After he had had time to think, Shan admitted he had “suggested” to Howdabeen Churry that the Hobbs Land Gods might be dangerous, but Churry hadn’t said anything to him about killing people or blowing Doors. This was true. Churry hadn’t confided in Shan. Churry had told himself he was acting swiftly to forestall possible danger. What he had actually been doing, in Reticingh’s opinion, was using Shan as an excuse for some excitement.

Howdabeen Churry stayed unavailable for the better part of two days, by which time some depots were already starting to run short of food. Those Baidee who attempted to go through Doors to other places were informed very politely by representatives of the governments of their putative destinations that, inasmuch as there had been extraplanetary hostilities allegedly committed by Baidee, no Baidee travelers from Thyker were being accepted.

•
On Hobbs Land,
all the bodies of those killed by the Baidee were taken up on the rampart and buried, that is, all but the one from each settlement and one from CM chosen for burial near the temples. Everyone who had gone to the escarpment on burial detail had commented on the increasing size of the mounds. They were taller than they had been the last time they were seen, and they were changing in shape. Also, the new mound at the center of the radiating ones was pushing up like the stalks of asparagus grown in the fragile vegetable houses. As though that were not quite surprising enough, other sets of radiating mounds, which were scattered over the escarpment, were also growing; some of them were growing very fast. Dern heard this without surprise. At this point, he felt, nothing could surprise him.

Saturday felt a moment’s trepidation when she heard about it, but then relaxed almost immediately. It was all right. It was perfectly all right. She didn’t feel she needed to discuss it with anyone, not even Jep. Everyone knew about it, but no one took time to discuss it.

The fires were out, and all the emergencies had been dealt with. Everybody who was going to die had probably died, said the medical people. Dern had made an all-settlements announcement that morning, reminding the people that, even though they were isolated at the moment, they were mostly healthy and would be well fed, with wider menu choices than heretofore, since no items could be earmarked only for export at the moment. Medical supplies on hand would last for an extended period. True, they would have to do without things like new clothing, new shoes, and new amusements from off-planet, at least for a time. A spinning and weaving class would be scheduled at the artisan center ten days hence, as would a course in shoe repair. A new drama group was being organized as well.

According to Mysore Hobbs, half a year, Standard, was the quickest time in which a Door could be built on Phansure and shipped to Hobbs Land—which were not at the best possible points in their orbits for this exercise—though it would probably take longer. Assembly of the new Door would take the Phansuri technicians some time after that, so there would be no off-planet materials for that long. Unless, that is, some other way of ingress could be found, in which case a Door might be brought in disassembled and then assembled by Phansuri technicians, cutting the total time by about two thirds.

Harvested food was to be stored for the time being. Nobody had decided yet what would happen after the warehouses were full. As for perishables, don’t bother to store them, said Mysore Hobbs. Raise what you need for yourselves and plow under anything else.

“How do you plow under milk vishes,” Africa had asked, annoyed. “You milk them or else.” The dairymen went on milking the vishes and herding the dermot, but the Settlement One field people were already turning over about a hundred square miles of hardy salad stuff.

Africa and her volunteers had found the Door the Baidee had left in the twisted canyon land north of CM. Nothing would go through, which meant that the single-destination interlock had been disconnected, so said Theor Close and Betrun Jun, the Phansuri engineers who were now trapped on Hobbs Land along with everyone else. They gave the Door a good looking-over, trying to decide how it could be dismantled or set for some other destination. Obviously, since it hadn’t come in already set up, it was designed to be dismantled, but, with no procedure manual, neither of the engineers wanted to be the first to try doing it. They agreed between themselves that it was a single-destination Door of a very archaic type and that they lacked the knowledge, the parts, and the mindless intrepidity to try and modify it.

Eventually, at Theor’s suggestion, a crew simply pulled the Door over on its face and built a fence around it. Anybody trying to come through from off-planet would end up inside solid rock. Africa and Sam had wanted to hide near the Door and intercept whomever came in, but Dern Blass said no. He was unwilling to risk further loss of life. Besides, Mysore Hobbs had something else in mind.

Across the System, all eyes and ears were focused upon Hobbs Land, which was cut off from all aid. The twenty-one Actual Members of Authority had called themselves into emergency session. Thyker had been summoned before an Authoritative Commission to Answer Questions. Enforcement was put on alert status.

From Enforcement, Altabon Faros had sent an urgent message to Ninfadel.

In his tent, the Awateh smiled on his sons and gave certain orders. Almighty God had willed the diversion to occur sooner, rather than later.

•
Outside the Settlement
One temple, where they had recently buried Willum R., some of the mourners remained for a time beside the grave. Jep sat with Saturday, Sam with China Wilm, Africa alone against the temple wall. Gotoit Quillow was around behind the temple with Deal and Sabby and Thurby Tillan, all of them talking about their dead comrades and crying. Jep thought it seemed he had done nothing much but cry or feel like crying since Mugal Pye had stolen him from Settlement One. He had thought coming home would fix everything, but it hadn’t.

Saturday was stretched out on her stomach, head propped on a hand, staring at the grass blades a few inches below her nose. Sam sat under a tree with China, hugely pregnant between his knees, her back against his chest, his arms around her. They weren’t talking. None of them had talked much today.

“What’s going to happen now?” China whispered to Sam. In the quiet, the whisper carried. They all heard her.

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “We might know better if we knew exactly what the Baidee had been trying to accomplish when they came here.”

“I think that’s obvious,” said Africa. “According to all the witnesses, they were mere youths. They wanted to play at being soldier, and they wanted to see what we would do after our Gods were destroyed.”

“I know that,” said Sam. “I mean in addition to that.”

“I don’t think there is any addition to that,” Africa went on. “I think that was all of it. They wanted to see what we’d do. They are Baidee. The idea of real Gods frightens them.”

Sam mused, remembering the nightmare from which he had wakened Shan. “That Shan Damzel, he was the one. He was a very frightened man.”

“Frightened men do stupid things. Now we’ve found their Door and shut it, so they can’t see, they’ll be frightened again. They don’t know what we’re doing.”

“What are we doing?” asked China, wiping her eyes.

“We’re grieving over our friends and relatives who have been killed in a exercise of pointless violence,” said Sam, who had thought he had left that behind, in Voorstod.

“When we’ve done that, probably we’ll pretty much do what we always did.” Saturday wiped her face and squeezed Jep’s hand.

One of the settlement cats came from behind the temple and addressed Saturday at length.

“What did she say?” asked China.

“She says if we aren’t going to use the milk, at least let the cats have all they’d like of it, and would we please tell the dairy people. She says not to store anything in the empty warehouses at CM until the cats have been through them, because they’re alive with ferfs, and she says cats are needed up on the escarpment to hunt ferfs, but they can’t stay up there by themselves because there’s nothing to eat.”

“I’ll arrange it,” said Sam, getting slowly to his feet. He pulled China up after him, and the two of them walked slowly down to the creek and across, heading toward the settlement.

“Poor Sam,” said Africa.

“Why poor Sam?” asked Jep.

“Because he’s spent his whole life looking for something, and he’s just figured out he was looking for the wrong thing, but he doesn’t know what the right one is yet.” She looked down at her knotted hands and thought them perfectly symbolic of China right now. Tightly knotted up, full of compassion, full of apprehension, not knowing which way to go. Poor China. Poor Sam.

“If we knew, we could tell him,” mused Jep.

“I can’t tell him, because I don’t know,” Saturday said. “I know some things. They come to me solid, like pieces of wood, all carved to fit and nailed down. I just know, and I open my mouth and out it comes, and that’s that. No questions. No hesitations.”

“That’s the God talking,” Jep asserted.

“I suppose it is. But when it comes to other things, I haven’t the least idea. Maybe those are things the God isn’t interested in.” Saturday sat up and brushed the grass off her trousers.

“What kinds of things wouldn’t a God be interested in?” asked Gotoit Quillow from behind them. The crying session was evidently over, for both the other Quillows and Thurby Tillan were with her and nobody was blubbering. “I should think the God would be interested in everything we’re interested in.”

Saturday had spent a lot of time while on Ahabar thinking about that matter. “I thought so, too. But then I got to thinking about what the God actually does. I mean, if the God is interested in something, it would probably do something about that, wouldn’t it? So, if it doesn’t interfere with what we do, day to day, it probably doesn’t care very much what we do.”

Africa looked up from her hands and said, “Perhaps it’s simply that, within rather broad limits, it doesn’t matter what we do day to day. There are probably thousands of equally effective ways of raising food and getting along together. The God is not interested in minutiae, though it helps us toward efficiency by improving our communications and running off people who are disruptive.”

Saturday nodded to her mother. “And it’s not just our communications, but cats’ too, and probably anything else on Hobbs Land that has any intelligence at all. So the God cares about intelligence.”

“What else?” wondered Gotoit.

Africa pondered this question. “It cares about diversity; Saturday’s right about the cats. Also, the people who’ve left tended to be those who thought man was more important than other parts of creation, and themselves more important than other men,” Africa mused. “Me-and-my-image devotees. Human fertility worshippers. The kind of people who will happily kill other species to make room for more humans, advocates of the old ‘fill up the world and ruin it’ philosophy.”

“I wonder what would happen if I decided to do something to destroy intelligence or diversity. Would it stop me?” Jep asked.

“It wouldn’t have to,” said Africa. “You simply wouldn’t do it, because you’d have been informed it wasn’t a good idea,” She stood up and brushed off her trousers. “Still, I get no sense that my autonomy has been destroyed. I believe I still have free will. I don’t think the God is directing us, except in a few specifics, and even those seem designed merely to increase our general welfare and freedom of choice.”

“So, then, what was Shan Damzel afraid of?” asked Jep.

The people sitting about shrugged. Africa shook her head. Saturday said, “I don’t know, Jep. I’m just positive Shan caused all this mess, and I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what might have made him do it, and I just can’t. He must have been afraid of something else entirely. Something we don’t know anything about.”