“I don’t see why your committee wouldn’t be useful,” he said. “You’ll need a vehicle, I suppose.”
“We figure we’d need to use a settlement vehicle once in a while,” she said, smiling encouragingly at him. “The older ones of us will operate the vehicles.”
“On a trial basis then,” he agreed, giving her his charming look. “And you’ll report to me at intervals. I’ll also inform the Topmen. If they have a problem with it, we’ll discuss it later.”
None of the Topmen had a problem with it. The visitation committee was. well-accepted, not only by the few sick and injured, but also by the people of the settlements. Many of them were particularly touched by the little ritual the children worked up of keeping all-night vigil at the gravesides of those who died. Though there were only a few who were sick, there were always accidents, always fatalities. As time went on, the committee conducted vigils in every one of the settlements except One and Three.
Horgy was so moved when he heard of this that he wrote the whole thing up as one of the “innovations” reports Dern Blass demanded from all of them. Sometimes Horgy thought the damned innovations reports were the only ones Dern read.
• The four men from Voorstod had spent some time at CM, recording everything, bothering everyone. The policy of Hobbs Foods was to have everything open and aboveboard and available to anyone who wanted to look, but by the time the Voorstoders left CM, there were those who felt the policy went too far. The Voorstoders had burrowed, and they had snooped, to no purpose. None of the people who worked in the personnel office were at all susceptible to Mugal’s sly charms, and what Jamice Bend had told them had proved perfectly true. There was no available roster of settlement personnel.
If they were to find Maire Girat (always assuming she did not meet with them voluntarily), then they could look forward to recording all eleven settlements in addition to the fertilizer plant, the vacation camps, and even, so said Ilion in a depressed voice, the mines.
“It’s all for the Archives,” Mugal told the fertilizer plant supervisor, with a wave of one hand that seemed all inclusive. “The settlements, the mines, everything.” “Make pretty dull viewing,” said the supervisor. “One settlement is pretty much like another. And Hobbs Land is no great shakes for scenery.”
“Ah, well, it’s for students,” said Pye. “The duller, the better for them, eh? Make them dig. No point making it easy, no point letting the inadequate rise in the world. Patience, fortitude, that’s what does it every time, Lord knows. Dogged determination.”
“Still dull,” repeated the supervisor. “It’s all dull, when you come right down to it. Planting. Growing. Harvesting. Shipping out. Planting again. Everything flat, so the ditches will work right. Everything flat.”
“You sound bored, friend.”
“I’m not your friend, and I’m not bored,” the supervisor said, offended. “I chose a quiet life. I’m not a slave. But then, you Voorstoders would know more about that than I.” He said it with a certain cocky arrogance, a touch of hostility, his eyes watching Mugal’s hands, as though getting ready to counter a blow.
Mugal was quiet for the moment, his eyes drifting away from the man beside him to his three colleagues who were plying the tools of their supposed trade with the same dogged determination Mugal had just advocated for students. “How did you know we were Voorstoders?” he asked in a silken voice.
“You said ‘Lord knows,’” the man replied. “Voorstoders say that. I do a bit of reading in the Archives, bit of a hobby with me. Like to read about those old religions. That Lord-this, Lord-that kind of talk belongs to the old tribal religions, doesn’t it?” Old and outworn, said his voice. Old and outworn and suspect.
Mugal smiled, said something inconsequential, and then went away from the man. He hadn’t hidden the fact they were Voorstoders as they moved about on Hobbs Land, but he hadn’t advertised it either. It came as a shock to learn that he had given them away with two casual words.
“I heard him,” whispered Epheron, when Mugal rejoined the others.
“So did I,” whined Ilion. “I thought we didn’t want people to know we were from Voorstod.” “We’re not hiding it,” snarled Mugal. “For, if we hid it, and somebody learned we’d hid it, they’d wonder at us. We’ve just made nothing of it, that’s all.”
“This is all too difficult,” said Ilion. “This Maire Girat is making things too difficult. Maybe some other woman would have been easier.”
Mugal glared at him, annoyance mixed with amazement. “Some other woman? Have you been to school?”
“I’ve been,” the youth snorted. “And what is that to you?”
“Were you told in school of Maire Manone.”
“I was. Some singer or other. She was before my time. I never heard her. Except from the Archives.”
“Some singer or other! The Voice of Voorstod? Who wrote Voorstod Ballads’? And The Songs of the NorthV
“She also wrote ‘The Last Winged Thing’,” said Ilion in a snippy voice. “Which made women and children leak away from Voorstod like water from a cracked jar. Are you saying she’s some connection to Aunty Maire?”
“She is your Aunty Maire, lad. And, difficult or not, we’ll keep looking until we find her.”
SIX
• Atop the escarpment, the surface of Hobbs Land was as softly undulating as the plains below, though wooded rather than bare. It had been a considerable time since the last great cataclysm, and that had come in response to the impact of an enormous rocky mass—perhaps belt flotsam? perhaps a comet lost in cold space for millions of years? perhaps even a stranger, plunging out of nowhere?—suddenly showing up and throwing itself down in a gravitic tantrum of self-destruction. Then had been much tumult and wreckage. Then were lakes overthrown and a large sea drained away into the southern ocean and the warm light of the sun hidden for
