Raising the Stones
Sheri S. Tepper
www.sf-gateway.com
Enter the SF Gateway …
In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:
‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’
Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.
The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.
Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.
Welcome to the SF Gateway.
Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Hobbs Land
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Voorstod
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Website
Also By Sheri S. Tepper
Author Bio
Copyright
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
