“What do you think?” asked Dern, encountering the two youngsters at the end of a mound.
“I think whatever this would grow into would be huge,” said Jep.
“Dormant, the Baidee experts said,” Dern smiled.
“Dormant for how long?” asked Saturday.
Dern hadn’t thought to ask that question of the Baidee scientists. He found himself wondering if the Baidee scientists had asked that question themselves, and he stopped smiling.
“It’s only a hundred feet long,” he said, gesturing at the mound. “Some trees have roots that long.”
“This thing,” said Saturday, “is circular and is almost two hundred fifty feet in diameter. The visible part is about twelve feet high. There’s a circular mound started up in the middle. It’s all one thing, Director Blass.”
“Well, yes,” he admitted, rubbing his chin doubtfully. “I suppose it is.”
They went into the nearby Departed village, just to look around, and found the Theckle brothers from Settlement One, roaming among the ruins.
“What are you doing up here?” asked Sam.
“Picking gravesites for us,” said Emun Theckles.
“Having a nap under the trees,” said his brother, scratching the back of his neck.
“Are you really picking a place to be buried?” asked Saturday, curiously.
“That’s the idea I had,” said Emun. “Woke up this morning with the idea very clear that I should come up here and pick a place to be buried. Then when we got here, we were both sleepy, so we had a nap.” He brushed clinging, hairlike fibers from the back of his neck. “Now we’re hungry.”
Dern laughed and asked them to join the party. He had no objection to their hearing what had actually happened in Voorstod. They all sat down, and Dern asked for the tale. Jep began; Saturday continued; it went on for some little time. At the end of the rather rambling narrative, in which Saturday and Jep shared about equally, with Sam saying so little that it almost seemed he had not been involved, Zilia shook her head and said, “Now wait a minute, Jeopardy Wilm. There’s something here I don’t understand. You’re saying that the Gods in Voorstod changed the people there. The Gods here on Hobbs Land have not changed us.”
Dern Blass, who was able to appreciate the changes in
Zilia more than any of the rest of them, decided not to comment.
“Well it did, you know,” said Africa in a kindly voice. “It’s just that it didn’t need to change us much. Most of us were already fairly peaceable people, fairly kind, decent to our families and friends. Mostly what it changed was our response to surprise and fear, I think. In my experience, and from what I’ve read in learning management, most of human nastiness comes out of shock or fear.”
“I was afraid,” said Saturday. “In Voorstod. I was out of my head with fear sometimes.”
“We were separated from Birribat,” Jep mused. “And there was something real to be afraid of.”
“The Gods don’t interfere with real fear,” nodded Africa. “Not when there’s a reason. You get a malfunctioning harvester after you, the Gods won’t stop your running.”
“Interesting,” said Theor Close, the Phansuri engineer. “A panic suppressant that can distinguish between real and imagined fears?” He felt the whole matter could be explained in terms of chemistry, if the proper Phansuri researchers could only come to Hobbs Land and investigate.
Zilia shook her head. “You’re saying the prophets were afraid?”
Saturday nodded. “Were. Are. Of everything.”
Sam said, “I’ve been reading …” His voice trailed away.
No one said anything, waiting.
“I’ve been reading about Manhome. About the retributive religions, the surviving ones. They all came from a pastoral background. In primitive times, everything out there in the dark was a predator. One had to guard against everything that threatened the flock, had to kill it if possible. At night, the flock had to be sequestered, put in the fold and guarded. The shepherd had to stand guard, sleepless, night after night. Many of these societies had a taboo against dogs, so they had no guard dogs. They had to be their own dogs, always alert. The shepherd had to be afraid of everything …”
Africa said, “I imagine wives and children were thought of much as he thought of his vlishes or dermots …”
“Sheep,” said Sam. “Back at that time it was sheep.”
“Sheep, then. The sheep were property, the wives were property, the children were property, and they had to be guarded. Because they were a pastoral people, they didn’t have secure caves or houses. They had fragile tents. They didn’t have secure lands; they migrated, on foot. They were probably afraid all the time, of everything. They would have been very alert, I suppose. Very nervous.”
“Over time, I suppose,” said Jep, “only the people survived who were very alert and perpetually frightened, and thus very irritable and quick to attack. Perhaps it became a racial characteristic.”
“Reinforced by the religion,” Sam went on, staring into his plate. “It explains why violence and war went on under the name of religion for so long. Fear and hatred were simply racial characteristics of the people who had that religion—those religions. It’s a logical explanation, though I have no idea whether it’s true or not.”
Zilia said, “The prophets couldn’t … couldn’t change, was that it?”
Jep said, “It has to be genetic. I think the God could pacify any merely environmental influence. Either Sam’s right, and these people were the descendents of a race which selected for fear and apprehension, or maybe every now and then there are people born in the human race who are hardwired for hatred. They can induce some others to go along, followers, people who’ve had bad rearing or traumatic childhoods …”
“Like me,” said
