Sheri S. Tepper - Raising the Stones

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RAISING THE STONES

Sheri S. Tepper

Sinks whoever raises the great stones;

I've raised these stones as long as I was able

I've loved these stones as long as I was able

these stones, my fate.

Wounded by my own soil

tortured by my own shirt

condemned by my own gods,

these stones.

—George Seferis, "Mycenae"

Collected Poems, Princeton University Press

Hobbs Land

ONE

The God's name was Bondru Dharm, which, according to the linguists who had worked with the Owlbrit

before the last of them died, meant something to do with noonday. Noonday Uncovered was the most

frequent guess, though Noonday Found and Noonday Announced were also in the running. Only a

handful of the Owlbrit had been still alive on Hobbs Land when it was settled by Hobbs Transystem

Foods. All but one of them had died soon thereafter, so there hadn't been a lot of opportunity to clarify

the meanings of the sounds they made.

The settlers on Hobbs Land, who rather enjoyed using what little had been preserved of Owlbrit

language, called the God by his name, Bondru Dharm, or sometimes, though only among the smart asses,

Old Bondy. It was housed in the temple the Owlbrit had built for the purpose, a small round building kept

in reasonable repair by the people of Settlement One under the regulations of the Ancient Monuments

Panel of the Native Matters Advisory of Authority.

No one remembered exactly when the settlers had begun offering sacrifices. Some people claimed the

rite had been continued from the time the last Owlbrit died, though no mention of the ritual appeared in

Settlement One logs of years one or two. The first mention of it was in the logs of year three. What was

certain was that sacrifice had been recommended by the Owlbrit themselves.

Every word the Owlbrit had spoken from the moment the first settlers met them had been preserved in

digifax on the information stages, and among the few intelligible exchanges with the last Owlbrit was the

reference to sacrifice.

"Necessary?" the linguist had asked, relying heavily upon his Alsense translation stage to convey the

meaning of the word. The question had been directed to the last surviving Owlbrit in its tiny round house

near the temple.

"Not necessary," the Old One had scraped with his horn-tipped tentacles in a husky whisper. "What is

necessary? Is life necessary? Necessary to what? No, sacrifice is not necessary, it is only recommended.

It is a way, a convenience, a kindness."

It took the Owlbrit about thirty seconds to scrape, in a sound like wood being gently sawn, but it had

taken the last thirty years for the xenolinguists to argue over. They were still disputing over way,

convenience, and kindness, with the reconstruction school arguing strongly that the delicate rasp of the

Old One's tentacles actually conveyed the meanings of system, lifestyle, and solace. No matter what it

meant, sacrifice of a few mouselike ferfs every month or so had been instituted no later than the third year

of the settlement and had been carried on regularly since, with the ritual gradually gaining complexity as

the Ones Who added flourishes. One Who, these days, since Vonce Djbouty had died the previous year.

The only One Who who was left was Birribat Shum.

A Birribat who had lately been rather more evident and importunate than usual.

"I tell you Bondru Dharm is dying," he said to Samasnier Girat, the Topman, meantime wringing his hands

and sticking his knees and elbows out at odd angles, making himself look like some ungainly bird. "Sam,

he's dying!"

Young Birribat (no longer at all young, but called so out of habit) had been saying the God was dying for

some time, though not heretofore with such urgency.

Samasnier Girat looked up from the crop report which was already several days late, from the set of

planter-and-furrower repair-part requisitions which needed to go to Central Management on the

following morning, furrowed his handsome brow in executive irritation, and said, "Give it a few ferfs."

Birribat made a gesture. The movement had no meaning so far as Sam was concerned, being a kind of

swoop with the left hand, and a grab with the right, as though Birribat caught hold of a loose line

someone had left flapping in the wind. The gesture obviously had meaning for Birribat, however, for it

ended with the hands gathered together in prayer position and with Birribat gulping uncomfortably as he

said, "Please, Sam, don't. Don't say disrespectful things like that. Please. It makes it very hard for me."

Sam gritted strong white teeth and held onto his patience. "Birribat, you go find Sal. Tell Sal whatever it is

that's got you in an uproar. I'll talk to Sal about it tonight." Or next week, or next year. The God had

been squatting in its temple since Settlement, thirty some odd years now, without showing any evidence

of "doing anything" whatsoever. Sam Girat had the evidence of his own observation for that; he spent

time in the temple himself, mostly at night and for his own private reasons. However, he didn't believe the

God was truly "alive," and the thought of its dying did not greatly perturb him. Still, as Topman, he had to

keep in mind that anything Birribat said was likely to create unexpected reverberations among the

credulous, of whom there were more than enough in the settlement—in all eleven of the settlements.

Birribat took himself off, and a moment later Sam saw his angular form lurching along the street toward

the recreation center. When Sam looked up from his information stage again, it was to see Birribat and

Sal striding in the opposite direction, toward the temple.

Saluniel Girat, Sam's sister, who was serving a more or less permanent term as recreation officer, was

both gentler and more patient than her brother. Besides, she rather liked Birribat. At least, she found the

bony pietist odd and interesting, and when he told her the God was dying, she was sufficiently concerned

to go see for herself. As Birribat did, she stopped at the temple gate to pour water over her hands,

stooped on the stone porch to take off her shoes, and knelt at the narrow grilled door in the ringwall to

take a veil from the rack and drape it over her head and body. Sal wasn't a regular temple-goer, but she

had observed the sacrifices often enough to know what was appropriate for someone entering the central

chamber. The room inside the grill was like a chimney, about twelve feet across and over thirty feet tall.

On a stone plinth in the middle stood the God, a roughly man-sized and onion-shaped chunk of

something or other, vaguely blue in color, with spiders of light gradually appearing on its surface to

glimmer a moment before flickering and vanishing.

"What does it say?" Sal whispered.

"That it's dying," cried Birribat in an anguished half whisper.

Sal sat on one of the stone seats along the grill and peered at the God, watching the lights appear and

disappear on its surface. The last time she had been here, the sparkles had been rhythmic, like the beating

of a heart, flushes of light that started near the rounded bottom, gradually moved toward the top, then

went out, only to be replaced a moment later by another galaxy lower down. Now there were only

random spiders, bright centers with filaments which seemed to reach almost yearningly into darkness.

"Dying?" she asked, "Is there anything about that in the records?"

Birribat nodded, not taking his eyes from the God. "The Owlbrit told the linguists that Bondru Dharm was

the last of the Gods, that there had been others. I think."

Sal resolved to look up the matter in the Archives. After watching for a bit longer, she left Birribat in

attendance on the deity, went out the grilled door, hung up the veil, resumed her shoes on the porch, and

went down the empty street to her brother's office, which she found as empty as the street. At this time of

day—except for the kids in school, the babies in the crèche, and a few specialists like Sal—the whole

village would be out in the fields. Sam had probably gone out there as well and was busy supervising,

leaving the Supply and Admin building vacant, which was fine. Saluniel could get more done without

interruptions.

The storage files of the Hobbs Land Archives were located deep in the well-protected bowels of Central

Management, a considerable distance from any of the settlements, but the files were completely

accessible to settlers through their personal information stages, including the high resolution model on

Sam's desk. Sal insinuated herself between chair and desk and told the stage to search Archives for

anything to do with the Gods. She was promptly shown an endless catalogue of choices, words, and

images, beginning with ancient deities named Baal and Thor and Zeus who had been worshipped on

Man-home, and continuing through all the ages of exploration in a listing of every human and non-human

deity encountered or invented since.

"Gods of the Owlbrit," she said impatiently, which made the stage splutter at her in a tiny explosion of red

and purple fireworks before the new listing floated by. Most of it was devoted to boring scholarly

disputations filed in the Archives since settlement, and she didn't want any of that. "Original accounts of,"

she muttered, wondering why it always took her three or four tries to get anything. "By the Owlbrit," she

instructed, grunting with satisfaction at the appearance of the original interview with the Old One. He or

she or it squatted in a corner in turniplike immobility, delicate legs spread like a lace frill at its rump,

confronted by one pallid linguist and an Alsense machine with an irritating squeal in one search drive. All

in all, the interview wasn't notable for either clarity or dramatic impact, but when she'd viewed it through

to the end, she knew Birribat had been correct. Old One had said this God, Bondru Dharm, was the last.

"Only the Owlbrit last," said the Old One, giving the linguists something else to argue about.

From the interview alone, it wasn't clear when the former Gods had been around. However, there were

enough remnants of other temples in Settlement One—two of them squatting on high ground beyond the

north edge of the settlement and two others clustered near the temple of Bondru Dharm—to answer that

question. Since one of the temples north of the settlement was almost complete except for its roof, it was

logical to infer at least one other of the Gods had lived in recent historic time.

Sal didn't need the archives to tell her about the ruins. They had been a topic of settler discussion for

years. Should they be razed? Could they be used for something else? Except for the most recent ruin, the

rest were only tumbled circles of outer and inner walls, stubby remnants of radiating arches, a few

fragments of metal grills, and a few square feet of mosaic. Even the most recent one had no roof, door,

or windows, no seats in what must have been the assembly space, though the trough-shaped area

wouldn't have been at all suitable for any human gathering. It was a wonder, considering all the

disputation about them, that the ruins had never been disturbed. The two at the center of the settlement

certainly occupied sites that could have been put to better use. If Bondru Dharm actually died, the whole

question would undoubtedly come up again.

Sal looked up from the frozen images in the stage to find her brother standing beside her, his face not

saying much, which was rare for Sam. He usually either grinned or scowled at the world, furrowing his

handsome brow and making a gargoyle of himself, managing to evoke some response from even the

reluctant or taciturn. Still unspeaking, he sat down next to her, looking preoccupied and rather ill. She

could hear many people moving out in the street. The shuffling of feet sounded faintly where there should

have been no people before dusk.

"Sam?" she asked. "Was there an accident or something?"

He didn't answer. She went to the window to see a silent throng gathered down the street, not precisely

in front of the temple, more or less to one side of it: several hundred men and women and their children

as well—virtually the entire population of the settlement. As she watched, they fell to their knees in one

uncontrolled wave of motion. A cry rose in her throat and stayed there as she fell to her own knees,

possessed by a feeling of loss so great that she could not speak, could not moan, could only kneel, then

bend forward to put her head on the floor, then push out her legs until she was pressed to the floor,

utterly flat, arms and hands pressed down, legs apart and pressed down, cheek pressed down, as though

to imprint herself deep into the surface below her, knowing in some far-off part of herself that Sam was

beside her and that out in the street the whole settlement was lying face down in the dust, possibly never

to rise again, because Bondru Dharm had just died.

A day later, when they came, more or less, to their senses, there was nothing left of the God. The altar, if

it had been an altar, was empty and dust-covered by the time the first settler was able to get up off the

ground to go look. Birribat was where Sal had left him, in the central chamber, except now he was curled

on the floor, covered with fine black dust, dead.

Sam and two or three other people wrapped Birribat's body loosely in a blanket and carried it out to the

north side of town, near the ruined temples, even though the burying ground was nowhere near there. The

burying ground was on a hill east of the settlement, but it seemed more fitting to those who took Birribat's

body that a One Who should be buried near a temple, even a ruined temple. They laid him in a shallow

grave, and it wasn't long before people were saying that when a God died, he took his interpreter with

him.

But that was after everyone in the settlement lay idly about for eight or nine days, unable to do anything.

People started for the fields and then found themselves back in their clanhomes, looking at the walls.

People started to cook meals and then found themselves lying on the floor. Mothers went to look at their

kids and never got there, and the kids slumped in logy groups, not moving a lot of the time. Even the

babies didn't cry, didn't seem to be hungry, scarcely wet themselves.

About the tenth day, however, whatever-it-was began to wear off, and someone had enough energy to

call Central Management. Within hours there were med-techs and investigators swarming over the place,

hungry babies were yelling, and hungry, grumpy people were snapping at each other.

"Has it happened anywhere else," Sam wanted to know, rubbing his itchy beard and scraping gunk out of

the corners of his eyes, feeling as though he'd slept quite badly for about a week. Sam had been in the

habit of meeting with a private and personal friend every two or three evenings, rather late, and he had

just realized he hadn't seen his friend since this event began. This made him even more snappish and

apprehensive. "Has anything like this happened elsewhere?" he repeated, snarling.

"This is the only settlement built on the site of an Owlbrit village," the harried med-tech in charge told him

as she took a blood sample. "All the other Owlbrit ruins are up on the escarpment. So, no, it hasn't

happened anywhere else."

"Any ideas about what caused this … this depression?" He could remember feeling depressed and

inexpressibly sad, though right now he just felt edgy and annoyed and his legs jumped as though he

wanted to run away somewhere.

"One theory is that the thing had some kind of field around it that you'd all gotten used to. Chemical,

maybe. Pheromones, possibly. Electromagnetic, less likely. Whatever it was, when it was shut down, you

had to readjust."

"That's all?" It hardly seemed an adequate explanation to Sam. He was of a mood to be belligerent about

it, and only common sense and long experience as a Topman, who had learned more by listening than

talking, kept him quiet.

"Isn't that enough? It'll keep some of us busy for some little time."

Sam couldn't let it alone. "Did the initial Clearance Teams find any kind of field? I mean, nobody

objected to the settlement being put here in the first place, did they?" The idea that some carelessness

might have taken place only increased his feelings of annoyance. He took a deep breath and controlled

himself.

The med-tech was getting a little annoyed herself, and her snappish tone reflected that fact. "Topman,

nobody had any reason to. We've called up everything available from the Archives and found nothing.

Nobody found anything strange at this site except for the thing itself."

Sam growled wordlessly.

She went on, waving her finger at him. "Since it was sacred to the Owlbrit, the decision was made

high-up not to bother the thing except to test for radioactivity or harmful emanations, and there weren't

any. By the time the last of the Owlbrit died, your village seemed to have adopted the God as a mascot,

and Central had more important things to deal with than investigating some animal, vegetable, or mineral

which wasn't bothering anyone, which might resent being investigated, and which was, so far as we

knew, a unique phenomenon. Until ten days ago, nobody found anything weird about anything."

Sam shrugged, his best approach to an apology.

The tech sighed. "Speaking of weird, I understand you buried a body elsewhere than in the approved

burying ground. That's a public health matter, and it ought to be re-interred."

Sam vaguely remembered Birribat had been buried, but he couldn't remember who had done it, or

exactly where, and after a brief and aimless search for the grave, the health people gave up on that.

"You think we're over the worst?" Sam asked the woman in charge finally, having run out of everything

else to ask.

"You've been mourning," the med-tech said. "The psy-techs say the whole settlement had all the

symptoms of grief. Even though you didn't know what you were mourning about, that's what you were

doing. It's pretty much over, I'd say. The biologists are pissing themselves for not having investigated

earlier, but except for that everything is on its way to normal."

The medical person could be forgiven. She spoke as medical people have often done, out of a habit of

authority and reassurance, in a tone that admitted of no doubt or exceptions or awareness of human

frailty. She was, as many medical people have always been, dead wrong.

First time visitors to Hobbs Land, at least those who came on official business, were usually subjected to

an orientation session conducted by someone at Central Management. Production Chief Horgy Endure

often got stuck with the duty since he did it very well, even though he called his presentation, with

stunning unoriginality, "All About Hobbs Land." On a particular morning not long after the death of

Bondru Dharm (which Horgy had had no responsibility toward and had, therefore, ignored), he had a

group of five to instruct: two engineers from Phansure (Phansuri engineers being as ubiquitous in System

as fleas on a cat, and as itchy, though rather more benign) as well as the latest trio in Horgy's endless

succession of female assistants, three lovelies from Ahabar, not one of whom was actually brainless. The

engineers, specialists in robotic design, were going out to Settlement One to meet with Sam Girat, and

the lovelies were staying at Central Management to learn what Horgy could teach them. Two of them had

already had a sample and longed for more.

Horgy had gathered the five of them in the Executive Staff Room around an information stage, which he

had programmed to display eye-riveting visuals concurrent with his well-practiced oral presentation.

Horgy enjoyed orientations. He liked the sound of his own voice, which was rich and warm and did not

belie the sensual curve of his lips.

When they gathered, the stage was already showing a neat model of the System, the three tiny inner

planets twirling in their orbits, then Thyker, Ahabar, the Belt, and finally Phansure. The truncated model

included all of the occupied worlds and most of the occupied moons but not the outer planets, which

didn't fit the scale and weren't important for orientation anyhow. When Horgy cleared his throat, the

model gave way to actual holography of the Belt as taken from a survey ship, skimming past Bounce and

Pedaria and a few of the other fifteen-thousand Belt worlds, the stage pointing out, unnecessarily, that

though some of the Belt worlds were settled, some were merely named, while others were only

numbered and not even surveyed yet. Belt worlds were tiny to smallish, by and large, a few with native

life, some with atmosphere of their own, some with atmosphere factories, many of them with great

light-focusing sun-sails behind them, gathering warmth to make the crops grow, farm worlds for the

System.

"This world we now call Hobbs Land," said Horgy, watching it swim up on cue, a tannish-green blob

with an angular darker green belt, blue at its poles, fishbone striped by wispy clouds slanting in from the

polar oceans to the equator, "was mapped and sampled by the unmanned survey ship, Theosphes K.

Phaspe, some sixty lifeyears ago. About twenty years later, when the relative orbits of Phansure and the

newly mapped planet made the attempt economically feasible, Hobbs Land was optioned for settlement

by Hobbs Transystem Foods, under the direction of Mysore Hobbs I."

"Mysore One died last year," said the older of the two Phansuris to one of the lovelies. "Marvelous old

man, Mysore. Mysore Two's running things now."

Horgy smiled acknowledgement without missing a beat. "Transystem headquarters on Phansure sent a

settlement ship with parts for a continuous feed Door and the requisite technicians."

The stage showed the technicians putting the Door together, leaping about like fleas. The newly

assembled Door glittered with blue fire as construction materials, men, and machines began coming

through on a continuous belt. Time-jump holography showed men and machines creating the Central

Management structures—administration tower, equipment and repair, warehouses, staff and visitor

housing blocks, and recreation complex—all of them sprouting from the ground like mushrooms. At the

top of the Admin building, a sign flashed red and yellow: HOBBS LAND, a Farm Settlement World of

TRANSYSTEM FOODS.

Horgy went on, "Construction of the Central Management complex was already well underway when

on-planet surveyors discovered that the world, which had been thought to be uninhabited, was actually

the home of the Owlbrit people, a presumably ancient race, only twelve of whom were still living at the

time of first contact."

Visuals of tiny villages, tiny round houses, fat, turnip-shaped creatures dragging laboriously about on their

fragile legs.

"Only twelve of them?" asked Theor Close, the older of the two Phansuri engineers, "Were there really

only twelve?"

"Only twelve," said Horgy, firmly. "That is, only twelve anybody could find. Plus three or four of their

Gods, and all but one of them died immediately."

"That's sad," said one of the female assistants, a willowy blonde with impossible eyelashes. "Even though;

they're not very pretty."

Horgy smiled at her, his meltingly adoring smile, the smile that had convinced whole legions of female

assistants—Horgy never had anything else—that each of them was the most wonderful woman in the

universe. "It was sad," he admitted, his voice throbbing. "Though, you're right, they weren't pretty."

"So," said the other engineer, Betrun Jun. "What happened to the twelve survivors?"

"Ah … " Horgy reviewed what he had said and found his place again. "Through the immediate

efforts of topflight philologists and xenolinguists, it was learned that, far from resenting the presence of

humans upon their world, the Owlbrit people welcomed settlement. Such had been foreseen, they said.

Such had been promised by their Gods, in order that the will of the Gods could be accomplished."

"Nice for us humans," said Betrun Jun, with a wink at his companion.

Horgy acknowledged this with a nod and went on. "The last of the Owlbrit people died about five years

after settlement, though the last of their Gods remained in the condition which has been called 'alive' until

just recently."

"Why didn't I ever hear about the Owlbrits?" asked the brunette member of Horgy's trio, a young person

of astonishing endowments. "I never heard a word about them."

"It seems they didn't build anything," said Theor Close, thoughtfully. "No roads, no monuments, no cities."

"They didn't create anything," added the other Phansuri. "No art, no literature, no inventions. What did

they leave, Endure? A few ruined villages?"

Horgy, badly off his track but grateful for their interest, regrouped with his charming smile once more.

"That's about all. From space, the clusters of little structures look much like multiple meteor strikes, which

is probably why they were missed on first look-see. The on-site surveyors found ten live Owlbrit, in ones

and twos, among the ruins on the escarpment. They found one mostly ruined village down on the plain

containing two Owlbrit who said they'd been waiting for us. 'Waiting for somebody to show up,' is the

way the linguists translated it. That's where Settlement One was put. A couple of xenologists were

housed there until the last Owlbrit died. I recall reading that the last Owlbrit told one of the linguists that

watching the humans had interested him so much that he stayed alive longer than he would have

otherwise."

"So there's really nothing left of them," Theor Close said, his voice conveying both wonder and regret.

"The ruins and a few words and phrases of their language we've adopted as localisms," admitted Horgy.

"Names for places and things. Creely, that's a kind of local fish. Bondru, that means noon. We can make

only an approximation of their sounds I'm afraid. We can't really duplicate their language vocally."

"That's why I never heard of them, then," said the brunette with satisfaction. "They were all gone before I

was even born." Her tone conveyed the unimportance of anything that might have happened, anywhere,

before she came upon the scene. Horgy's assistants tended to be self-approving.

However self-absorbed, she was right. The Owlbrit, an enigmatic people, less than legendary, were

indeed gone, as the people of Hobbs Land knew. Xenologists in various places read books about them,

or wrote books about them, but in the last analysis there seemed very little to say about the Owlbrit

except they had lived once but were no more.

Turning to the engineers, Horgy said, "Before you get out to talk to Sam Girat at Settlement One, a few

brief words about the geography of Hobbs Land … " And he summoned up pictures of undulating

and remarkably dulls plains to get himself on track once more.

When Samasnier Girat, his sister, Saluniel, and their mother, Maire, had arrived on Hobbs Land, when

they had first set foot upon the glassy sand beyond the Door, with the wind of a strange world riffling

their hair, Sam's mam had knelt down to touch the soil.

"Thanks be to God!" Maire had cried. "There are no legends here."

She had uttered the words with a certain fatalistic satisfaction, in the manner of a woman who is packing

up house and has resolved to abandon some troublesome possession even though she knows she may

miss it later. Her words, uttered coincident with their arrival, had carried the weight of prophecy, and the

whole event had seemed so pregnant with intent that Sam never forgot it. Even when he was grown he

could recall the feel of the wind, the smell of the air—an empty smell, he had thought then and often

since—his mother's haggard but beautiful face under the dark kerchief she wore, her heavy shoes beside

his small ones on the soil, the very sack she had set down, the one that held their clothes and Sal's doll

and his own carved warriors, Ire and Iron and Voorstod, though Mam had not let him bring his whip.

The sack had been threadbare and stained, with a leather drawstring, and Mam had carried it all the way

from the town of Scaery, in Voorstod upon Ahabar.

After that, during his childhood, Sam thought of legends as things Mam had left behind; not valueless

things, like worn out shoes, but things difficult and awkward to transport, things that were quite heavy

perhaps, with odd knobs on them, or even wheels, difficult but fascinating things. Without ever saying so

in words to himself, and certainly without ever asking Maire, he assumed that one of the difficult things

Mam had left behind had been Sam's dad, Phaed Girat. Sam was never sure from day to day whether he

could forgive Mam for that or whether maybe he had forgiven her for it already, without knowing.

Maire had offered Sam his choice, back in Voorstod upon Ahabar, in the kitchen at Scaery, where the

fire made shadows in the corners and the smell of the smoke was in everything. Sam could not remember

that time without smelling smoke and the earthy scent of the pallid things that grew along damp walls. "Sal

and I are going away," Mam had said. "You can stay with your dad or go with us. I know you're too

young to make that decision, but it's the only choice I can give you, Sam. Sal and I can't stay here.

Voorstod is no place for womenfolk and children."

He had wanted to stay with Dad. Those were the words crowding at his throat when she gave him the

choice, but they had stuck there. Sam had been born with a quality which some might have thought mere

shyness but was in fact an unchildlike prudence. He often did not say what came to mind. What he

thought at the time was that he wanted to stay with Dad but it might be difficult to survive if he did so.

Dad was unlikely to help him with his reading, or cook his dinner, or wash his clothes. Dad didn't do

things like that. Dad threw him high in the air and caught him, almost always. Dad gave him a whip and

taught him to make it crack and to knock bottles over with it. Dad called him "My strong little

Voorstoder" and taught him to shout, "Ire, Iron, and Voorstod" when the prophets went by and all the

women had to hide in their rooms. But there were other times Dad scarcely seemed to notice him, times

when Dad growled and snarled like one of the sniffers, chained out behind the house, times when Sam

thought this big man was really someone else, someone wearing a mask of Dad's face.

Besides, with Sam's brother Maechy dead—Mam said he was dead and would never come

back—wouldn't Mam need a son to take care of her? Dad needed nobody, so he said. Men of the

Cause needed nobody but themselves and Almighty God, whether they had been men of Ire or of Iron or

of Voorstod to start with.

So Sam, prudently and dutifully, had said he would go with Mam and Sal. Even when Maire had told him

he would have to leave his whip behind, Sam had figured out it was his duty to go, but he wasn't sure

then or later he had made the right choice. As he got older, he still wasn't sure. Sometimes he dreamed of

Dad. At least, when he wakened, that's who he thought he'd been dreaming of. He also dreamed of

hands over his eyes and a voice whispering to him, "You don't see them, Sammy. They aren't there. You

don't see them." He woke angry from those dreams, angry that he'd been kept from seeing something

important, or that he'd chosen to come to Hobbs Land, or that Dad hadn't come along.

Remembering what he could of Dad, however, he could imagine why Maire had left him behind with the

rest of the legends. Dad had been much too heavy to move. When Sam remembered Phaed Girat, he

remembered him that way: a ponderous and brooding shape with no handles a person could catch hold

of. The thought was comforting, in a way. If Dad was too unwieldy to be moved, then he was still there,

in Voorstod, where Sam could find him later if he needed him. Voorstod upon Ahabar would always be

there, half-hidden in mists, smelling of smoke and of the pale fungi growing along the walls.

On Hobbs Land—as in most places elsewhere in the System—children had uncles, not fathers, and Sam

had to grow up without an older man of his own. Though Maire had had brothers in Voorstod, they

would not have considered betraying the Cause by leaving it. Sam pretended his carved warriors were

his father and his uncles. He put them on the table by his bed, where he could see them as he fell asleep.

Clean-shaven Ire, with his sandals and jerkin, his shield and sword; bearded Iron, wearing flowing robes

and headdress, carrying a curved blade; and mustached, heavy-booted Voorstod, with his whip at his

belt. Voorstod's name meant "Whip-death," and he was the fiercest of the three. Sam believed he looked

like Dad, the way Dad had sometimes been.

Sam grew up to be both dutiful and willful, a boy who would say yes to avoid trouble but then do as he

pleased.

He was biddable, but not docile, innovative in his thinking and tenacious in his memories. He had an

occasional and peculiarly trying expression, one which seemed to doubt the sensations going on inside

himself. Sugar was not sweet, nor vinegar sour, his face sometimes seemed to say, but to hide some

other flavor concealed therein. "It's all right, but … " his face sometimes said, to the irritation of

those around him. Beneath each sensation, within each explanation, Sam felt there must be others, more

significant and more profound.

When Sam was about twenty, he sometimes lay on his bed looking out at unnamed constellations,

thinking deep thoughts about who he was and what Hobbs Land was and whether he belonged there.

The settlers talked about all kinds of worlds, real ones and ones they had only imagined. Hobbs Land

had to be real, for who would bother to dream up a world like this? No one. Hobbs Land was dull and

bland, and not worth the effort. Except for a few blotches (scarcely more than pimples, really), a few

thousand square miles of field and farm and vineyard and orchard where the people were, there was no

human history or adventure in this place. No human-built walls staggered across the shallow hills; no

menhirs squatted broodingly upon the escarpment; no painted animals pranced at the edge of the

torchlight in chambered caves, full of wonder and mystery and danger, evoking visions of terrible,

primitive times.

Of course, men had never been primitives on Hobbs Land. They had come through the Door already

stuffed with histories and memories and technologies from other places. They had come from troubled

Ahabar and sea-girt Phansure and brazen Thyker and this moon or that moon. They had arrived as

civilized peoples—though not as a civilized people, which might have given them the sense of common

identity Sam thought he wanted.

And so far as monuments were concerned, it made no difference what kind of people had come there.

Hobbs Land had no monuments of any kind, civilized or not. No battles had been fought here, no

enemies defeated. The landscape was bland as pudding, unstained by human struggle, empty of triumph.

So he told himself, lying on his bed, longing for something more. Something nameless.

A few years later, Sam kissed China Wilm out by the poultry-bird coops on a starlit evening and thought

he might have found what he wanted. He sought among unfamiliar emotions to tell her how he felt. He

couldn't find the words, and he blamed Hobbs Land for that. He told himself he wanted similes for the

feel of her lips, which were silken and possessed of an unsuspected power; he wanted wonderful words

for the turmoil in his belly and groin and mind as well, but nothing on Hobbs Land was at all tumultuous

or marvelous.

"Sam, she's a child!" Mam had exclaimed, not so much horrified as embarrassed for him. China Wilm

was only twelve and Sam was twenty-two.

Sam knew that! But Sam was willing to wait for her! Sam had watched her grow from a glance-eyed

toddler; he had picked her out! He had no intention of despoiling a child, but she was his, he had

decided, no matter whether she knew it yet or not. Even at twenty-two, he was an ardent and articulate

lover who loved as much in his head as in his body. So he kissed her chastely, said only enough, he

hoped, to be intriguing, and let her go—for a time—while telling himself it must be those missing legends

that frustrated him. Among them, he was sure, he could have found all the similarities and examples he

needed. Surely if he'd had a chance to talk with his dad, Dad could have made it clear how it all fit

together.

Unthinkingly, Sam said as much to Maire Girat. The words left his mouth and he knew in that instant they

Sheri S. Tepper - Raising the Stones

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