come back. Would you like to go home now?”
The three turned abruptly, staring. They exchanged glances and began to walk across the field, but in a slow and reluctant manner. Three-quarters of the way there they stopped.
“Are you from Smallbrass?” demanded the one called Copperclad. “You can tell him, we quit. We haven’t been paid. No supply ship ever came, and she”—his voice broke—”she saved us. So we’re staying to help her!”
“Please, ma’am?” added Bolter.
“Thank you,” she said. “I would be grateful for your hard work.” They turned and walked rapidly back to the stones.
“Mother, how can you plan a garden here?” cried Lord Ermenwyr. “They’re going to build a city on it!”
The lady turned and regarded her son with a look of mild severity. He flinched, and Smith had to admire his composure; he himself would have been on his knees pleading for forgiveness.
“No,” she said. “Hlinjerith belongs to me, now. Your father made the necessary arrangements in their claim offices. When the Beloved comes again, he will find his sacred grove and his garden waiting for him.”
“Ah. How nice,” said Lord Ermenwyr, groping in his pocket for his smoking tube. “Well, I think I’ll just go on to Salesh—”
“The city will rise across the river,” his mother went on calmly. “You will build it for me, my son.”
Lord Ermenwyr froze in the act of lifting the tube to his lips. “What did you say?”
“You will build a city on that bank,” said the lady. “Bowers to shelter the pilgrims who will come. Gardens and greens, where classes will be taught. And a great library, and a guesthouse for the Children of the Sun, who are unaccustomed to living out of doors.”
“But—but—Mummy, I can’t!” Lord Ermenwyr wrung his hands in panic. “I don’t know anything about building! And I can’t live here, it’s so bloody damp and cold I’ll start growing toadstools! Why don’t you make Demaledon do it?”
“Because you would be better at it,” said his mother. “He doesn’t go among the Children of the Sun, as you do. You understand their culture, and their money, and their business practices. You will draw up plans, and order shipments of cut stone. You will hire workmen.”
“I think I’m starting to run a fever—”
“No, you’re not. I won’t see your talents wasted, my child. You’ve been running about the world on your father’s business long enough; it’s time you started tending to mine.”
“But the Children of the Sun wouldn’t come here,” Lord Ermenwyr protested.
“Yes, they would!” cried Willowspear. “I taught them meditation. I can teach them farming, and medicine.”
“Wait. Let’s consider this objectively, shall we?” Lord Ermenwyr said, widening his eyes in an attempt to look calm and reasonable. “They’re already overrunning the world. The only advantage we have over them is our knowledge of medicine, of agriculture, of, er, birth control and so forth. Now, do we really want to give them that knowledge?”
The lady looked at him sadly. “My child, that is a base and cynical thing to say. Especially in front of this man, who has suffered through your fault.”
Lord Ermenwyr winced so profoundly, he nearly lost his balance and fell over.
“Smith, I didn’t mean it like that! You almost wiped them out yourself, after all. Didn’t it seem the right thing to do, for a moment, back in that cave? Wouldn’t mass annihilation have solved a lot of problems? What I’m saying is, if the gods themselves thought that was a good idea, who are we to argue?”
“Maybe they’re not very nice gods,” said Smith. “If they kill their children. Maybe we should argue,”
“Perhaps,” the lady agreed. “And perhaps the gods were waiting to see if you’d give in to the temptation to destroy your world in a blaze of glory. It’s always so much easier to smash mistakes than to correct them. But if it wasn’t a test, then what can one assume but that the gods are foolish and not very powerful after all?”
She reached out and touched his shoulder. Where her hand passed, warmth flowed into him.
“I think that if your race could produce a man willing to make such a sacrifice, it’s a sign that they ought to be given another chance,” she said. “I intend to see that they have it.”
Lord Ermenwyr, who had been trying unsuccessfully to light his smoking tube in the damp air, said sullenly, “I’ll build your city for you, then. But if you’re expecting the kind of twits who sign up for meditation classes, I warn