“So She-Goes-On-Creating said.”
“Perhaps it cannot live in any one of us alone. It needs the … the what, do you suppose?”
“Whatever it is that grows where we put it, beside the temple. Whatever grows in us all.”
“Do you suppose I can get it back? A new one? Or when this one dies, will that have been my only chance?”
The Gharm patted her. “Maire, I am your friend. We have each other.”
She wept, trying to smile through the tears. “We’re so separate. Each of us, always. So separate. I first knew that when I had babies. They’d cry, and I’d try to help, try to figure out what was wrong. But they were separate, as though there was a wall between them and me. Even when they learned to talk, the wall was still there. What they said and what I heard were always different things. Between me and Sammy! A wall, like stone. He would look at me with his eyes blank, listening politely, but not hearing, not caring. And then we came to Hobbs Land. And after a time there, the wall seemed to get thinner. It wasn’t that I could read his mind. I still didn’t know why Sam does the things he does … all those books. All that reading in the Archives, all those old legends. No, it wasn’t that I could read his mind, but I was beginning to see something of the mystery in him. Perhaps, if I’d been able to stay there, I would have understood him at last!”
“As the Ones Who say,” murmured the Gharm. “A way. A convenience. A kindness.”
Maire wiped her eyes. She heard a stick crack among the trees. The Gharm stiffened and crouched.
“A kindness you say?” came a voice from the forest, full of rough, gloating joy. “So we’ve found you, Maire Manone!”
They stepped out of the trees. Mugal Pye and half a dozen other men, all wearing the large caps of the Faithful. The Gharm tried to run, but they caught him and killed him before her eyes, as though they were killing a chicken. Then they turned to her.
“Phaed spoke to us of this place long ago, Sweet Singer. No doubt he forgot he told us of it. When we did not find you at the shore, we thought to try here. Pity. You gave us a good run.”
Maire rose. So. So she had come home again to all the legends she had left behind.
“Where will you take me?” she asked, already knowing.
“To the prophet Awateh,” Mugal Pye said with a sly grin. “And we will not bother to tell old Phaed we’re oil the way.”
• Daytimes, Sam was chained to a post in an upper corner room of the building. The chain was long enough that he could get from his mattress to the toilet. It was long enough that he could sit at a window, looking out.
Nights he sat on the mattress while Phaed taught him doctrine, hitting him with the butt of his whip whenever he did not respond correctly. After a time, he began responding correctly without thinking what he was saying. So animals were trained, he thought, wondering what one of the High Baidee might do under the circumstances. Find a way to commit suicide perhaps. Under ordinary conditions, Sam might have searched for a way to do just that. However, down from the hill above Sarby, something was growing. Sam knew it and hung on. Part of his strength came from conviction that things would change; part came from curiosity. He wanted to see what the God of Hobbs Land would do to Sarbytown.
“Who is the God of Voorstod?” Phaed would ask.
“The One, the Only, the Almighty God, in whose light all other gods are shown to be false idols created by men.”
“What is the desire of the One God?”
“That all living things shall acknowledge Him.”
“And how is this to be achieved?”
“By teaching those who will learn, and by killing all others.”
“I don’t understand this doctrine,” said Sam.
Phaed raised the butt of his whip, and Sam fended him off. “I didn’t say I disagreed with it, I said I didn’t understand it. I’m asking you to explain it to me.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“If God is Almighty, as you say, then why doesn’t he inspire all people to acknowledge him. Why be so wasteful about it?”
“What’s wasteful about battle?”
“People getting killed, mostly.”
“There’s too many people anyhow, most places. There’s always been too many men. One man can service half a dozen women or more, it’s wasteful having more men around than needful, so we have wars, to clear away the excess. The stupider and slower ones die, the survivors breed. That’s the way of things.”
“But you don’t have more women than men. You have it the other way around.”
“Because we’re cooped up here on Voorstod, boy! If we were free among the stars, it’d be different.” Phaed’s eyes glazed as they sometimes did, when he talked of being free among the stars. He had a vision of that future, which he did not share with Sam, but sometimes Sam saw him staring at a wall or out a window, his face lax, his mouth loose, his eyes alight, as though he saw Paradise.
“What will you do when you are free among the stars, Dad?”
“Oh, lad. Lad.” His eyes blazed. “There’ll be no end to what I’ll do.”
He never said more than that.
Sometimes they went up to the roof at night, Sam in his chains, Phaed with his book of doctrine, and did their lessons under the stars. From the roof, Sam could see the square clearly, the whipping posts and the gate of the citadel. There were always bodies hanging at the posts, mostly Gharm, sometimes human.
“Do they whip women?” he asked Phaed.
“Women are whipped at home,” said Phaed. “Where they belong.”
“Did you used to whip Mam?” Sam asked.
“Only
