Sam stared at him, almost incomprehendingly. “I’ve always thought that was … just stories,” he said at last. “We had a while during peak season, you know, when everything went to hell. It was after our God died, old Bondru Dharm.” He laughed, shrugging. “We had a hell of a ten days there. I figured all the meanness that happened afterward was because of that. That’s what I told them at CM. But once we quit fretting over it, we got back to normal pretty soon.”
“Normal for you,” said Harribon, squeezing the words out between his teeth. “Sam, what’s normal for you isn’t normal for the rest of us, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. By my grandma’s left tit, you know what I’m saying. We need to know why. Thirty-some odd years, that’s long enough to say it isn’t chance! Not an accident! Something’s at work here, Sam, for shish sake.”
Sam shrugged again, still uncomprehending or giving every appearance of it. “Well, if you think so, maybe so. I don’t know what it is, Harri. Maybe it’s just because the way we are is the way we are. I’ve lived here all my life, almost. I don’t know how we’re different from anyone else. People come from CM now and then, look us over, sort of stamp around, make a fuss, and then go away again. You’d think if there were anything, they’d see it, wouldn’t you? They’ve been looking at us for all that time. Wouldn’t they have seen it?”
“Will you let me look?” Harribon asked, holding his breath and his temper.
“Sure! Look! Anywhere. Ask questions. Get a flier from the garage. Go on out to Bubble Lake, if you want to see something pretty. Or Cloudbridge.”
“Bubble Lake? Cloudbridge?”
“Sure. They’re close by. Anyone down at maintenance can tell you how to get there. Supper’s at nightwatch two. That’ll give you time to clean up after you go digging around.” He bowed and swept one arm in a long arc toward the door, giving his guest the freedom of the settlement.
Harribon had never heard of Bubble Lake or Cloudbridge. Besides, he hadn’t come to look at scenery. So far as he knew, no one ever went anywhere on Hobbs Land to look at scenery. What he wanted to know would be in the settlement, anyhow, so he went first to the barns and equipment yards, looking for nothing in particular. He found nothing in particular. People seemed to be fully occupied, not hurrying, but not wasting time either. They greeted him, introduced themselves, seemed pleased to see him, but didn’t stand around looking for an excuse not to work. He stood for a while in the door of the main tractor shed, watching a man and woman working on a fertilizer pump. She was doing the repair. He was fetching and carrying. Harribon saw her put out her hand for a tool and the tool being slapped into it, then the hand again and another tool. He watched for some little time, then left, realizing only after he’d left that the two hadn’t exchanged a word. That’s the kind of teamwork he envied. He saw it sometimes at Three, but it was a rare and wonderful commodity.
In the fields the weeders and fertilizer spreaders moved slowly down rows of rootcrops, across the tops of grain fields. Water ran in glittering rivulets here and there. Harribon stood on a bridge over a main ditch, watching the threads of silver sparkle away into the distance. Beneath him, the bank of a ditchlet had recently given way, letting the water spill onto the surrounding soil to make a tiny swamp. Harribon looked up to see if anyone was near enough to call. No need. From across a field, a quarter of a mile away, a man was moving toward him with a shovel, grinning as he came. Three strokes of the shovel fixed the ditch wall.
“Nice day,” said the worker, looking out over the field. “You visiting?”
“From Settlement Three,” Harribon told him. “How’d you know this ditch was broken?”
“Thought it was likely,” the man grinned, giving him a knowing look.
The place must have broken before, Harribon told himself. The settler evidently knew it was likely to break again.
A power truck moved out from the central garage, stopping at field side at the same moment that the robot weeder drew up to the road. The operators exchanged chitchat while the weeder was fueled, then they went their separate ways.
“How’d you know he was out?” Harribon asked the truck operator.
“Usually runs out about now,” was the casual answer.
He walked back through the settlement, stopping to peer into the ruined temples, to walk around on the shattered mosaic floors and stare at the grillwork and the central stone. He’d made a trip here, years ago, to see the God. He didn’t remember it as having been anything very impressive. A chunk of stone with sparkles in it. Now it was gone. He went out to the north, stopping briefly at the crèche and again at the school, to find they appeared to be much like the Settlement Three crèche and school. Here, however, the children weren’t yelling at each other. Yelling, yes, but not at each other. The sonic effect was the same, but the psychic effect was quite different, noisy but purposeful. Like an orchestra tuning up.
North of the town the path dropped into a streambed, up the other side, and out onto fairly level ground where the other ruined temples stood, just as he’d seen them the last time he’d been here.
Except that one of them had been rebuilt. Where had he heard that? Someone from CM had told him. Jamice. Last time he’d consulted her about a new chief mechanic, she’d told him how
