Harribon told the boy he would take care of it. He made another trip to Settlement One, this time with an engineering recorder capable of sampling materials. He made a record of the grills in all six temples, the rebuilt one, the recently ruined one, and the four others, where only fragmentary bits could be found. The grills differed mostly in details. Some were wrought with leaves, others with blades of grass. Some had curlicues, others were plain. Harribon’s mother had been fond of certain aromatic native plants, which she had grown in pots. Harribon made pictures of the plants and took the recorder notes and the pictures to an artist hobbyist at Settlement Nine who sent the resultant plans on to the artisans’ shop at CM for bid by any metal-working hobbyist. When the grills were delivered, subtly decorated with entwined metal leaves and stems, the children working on the structure did not seem at all surprised.
Harribon helped with the central roof truss, as did seven other men of the Settlement, including a couple of the Soames brothers. By that time, the thatching on the lower roof was complete and the mosaics were ninetenth’s laid on the scooped out floors. This building had a slightly shallower scoop to the floor than in the Settlement One temple, Harribon noted. As though something had realized humans weren’t built at all like the turnip shaped Departed.
When the building was complete, except for plastering, everyone went back to doing what they had done before. Except, of course, that they got more done these days because people had almost totally stopped getting angry with one another. At the end of the quarter, Harribon looked at the stats on production and permitted himself a wry and slightly fearful smile. If this kept up, Settlement Three would be neck-and-neck with Settlement One.
• • •
• “Mom,” asked Jep one evening when Jep’s little sister was soundly asleep and the two of them were alone, a time that was increasingly rare. “Do you know anything about mycelium?”
“A little,” China replied. “Fungus isn’t my specialty, but I know what any competent botanist knows.”
“What does it do?”
“Well, I suppose mostly it’s like roots. It isn’t structured like roots, but it acts mostly like them. Mycelium is the mass made up of the interwoven, often underground threads that make up the body of a fungus.”
“I thought the thing on top was the fungus. The mushroom part.” He was thinking of the things that grew in the mushroom house.
“No, the thing on top is only what we call the fruiting body. Fruiting bodies don’t even need to be on top, sometimes they’re buried. Let’s see, there was a classic delicacy, way back, what was it? One still sees references to it. The truffle! That was an underground one. The actual fungus is the rest of it, the filaments, the interwoven threads, the part you don’t see.”
“What does it grow on?”
“Different things for different kinds. Tree roots. Straw. Manure. Rotted leaves. Often on something that’s decaying, like a dead tree or dead animal. What are you doing, homework?”
Jep nodded. Yes. He was doing homework.
“Where’d you find the word mycelium?” his mother asked.
“I was asking the Archives. About things that grow underground.”
• “Are you worried about the children?” Africa inquired of her sister. “I get a little worried sometimes.”
“About their getting involved with one another? No. The genetics look all right, and they make each other happy.”
“It isn’t that so much. More this business of their identifying themselves as the Ones Who. I keep rememevery every ten days or so. Saturday Wilm called ahead for an appointment with Horgy and arrived at his office just before noon. She had come alone. Horgy’s reputation was such that she felt she would get a better hearing if she went by herself, and Horgy was probably, so she and Gotoit had agreed, not at all dangerous to someone her age. In furtherance of the mission, however, she had paid particular attention to her dress and appearance.
Horgy invited her to lunch in the officer’s dining room, telling himself he would be offering this child a treat she would talk of for weeks. Saturday, who thought dressing up and being served was a bore, smiled and dimpled in gratitude. During the meal she told him about the idea of a visitation committee, being carefully inarticulate at times to show him how overcome she was at the honor of dining with him. Saturday could sound like Africa when she chose to, but she and Jep had agreed it wouldn’t be a good idea today.
“You know, finding things for kids to do is one of the problems we’ve got in settlements,” she said confidentially, when she figured she had been with him long enough to have regained some degree of poise. “Everybody knows that. Mothers and uncles are always telling us to go out and play, but you can only play so long. We’re not allowed to be involved in the work; we can only spend so many hours on studies or athletics. That’s why we did the temple rebuilding, really, just for something to do. Now we think this committee to visit sick people might be very interesting.”
Horgy was impressed, though he thought it best not to show it. “There aren’t many people who are very ill,” he said. “We’re a healthy lot, and mostly young enough that the diseases of aging haven’t caught up with us.”
“I know,” she admitted. “Even if there are only a few, it would be kind of fun to meet the kids from the other settlements, get to know them better. Really, the only times we see other kids are at the games, and there’s not a lot of time during a game
